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Blackwater is out of control

Jeremy Scahill: Blackwater is Still in Charge, Deadly, Above the Law and Out of Control
Posted June 19, 2008
By Antonia Juhasz

On June 3, Jeremy Scahill's bestselling Blackwater: The Rise of the World's Most Powerful Mercenary Army was released in fully revised and updated paperback form. The new edition includes reporting on the now-famous Nisour Square massacre on Sept. 16 of last year, in which Blackwater mercenaries opened fire in a Baghdad neighborhood, brutally murdering 17 Iraqi civilians. The killing spree, which the U.S. Army would label a "criminal event," would reveal the extent of the lawlessnewss enjoyed by private contractors abroad and the lengths the Bush administration will go to protect its private army of choice.

Antonia Juhasz caught up with Scahill on the phone the day the new edition was released. A fellow at Oil Change International and author of The Bush Agenda, Juhasz is also the author of the forthcoming book The Tyranny of Oil: The World's Most Powerful Industry, and What We Must Do to Stop It. Juhasz and Scahill discussed, among other topics, the story behind Blackwater, congressional inaction, radical privatization, Barack Obama, corporate vs. independent media, GI resistance in the age of private mercenaries, getting real about challenging corporations and the power of dissent.

Antonia Juhasz: I first have to admit that, until now, I had not read Blackwater and that, as someone who had been reading your Nation articles, I had quite erroneously assumed that I knew what you had to say about this company. I could not have been more wrong. This is a fantastic, informative, insightful and critically important book.

Jeremy Scahill: Thank you. I started writing this book by accident. I'd been writing about Blackwater when my [Nation] editors Katrina vanden Heuvel and Betsy Reed sat me down and said, "We've published ten articles about one company and you're doing great work, but you either need to write a book or get a new beat." Once I began researching the company in the context of a book, I realized that, in many ways, it was a metaphor for so much that was happening with the country, particularly with the privatization agenda of the war machine. So, while there are some parts of the book that are based on reporting I did for the Nation, the vast majority is new investigative research.

AJ: What drew you to Blackwater?

JS: I was in Yugoslavia during the 1999 NATO bombing that Bill Clinton prosecuted ... Halliburton and other war contractors, like Dyncorp, were very much present on the ground during the Yugoslavian civil war, primarily in Bosnia. And so that was really my first direct interaction with this sort of parallel army of contractors.

Then the [U.S. attack on] Iraqis in Falluja was very important to me as a reporter, because I had been there many times and had friends inside of Falluja. I remember watching on March 31, 2004, when those four Blackwater contractors were ambushed and killed inside Falluja, and my immediate response after seeing the way it was covered in the press -- that they were "civilians" [or] "civilian contractors" -- was "Oh my god, Bush is going to destroy that city."

I began my reporting on Blackwater [in April 2004] based on a very simple question: "How were the deaths of these not-active-duty U.S. soldiers -- not civilians, but four corporate personnel working for Blackwater, a mercenary company -- how do their deaths warrant the destruction of an entire city?"

I realized that it was a story that spoke volumes to what we were seeing happening in this country with the export of this incredibly violent foreign policy, the connections of political allies of the president to the war industry… [So I began] an in-depth investigation of Blackwater: Who runs the company? What are their connections to the Bush administration and the national security apparatus of the U.S., etc.?

AJ: What did you hope that writing the book would accomplish -- and has it?

JS: When I was writing, I wasn't thinking of it in terms of what I hoped to accomplish. What I was looking at was: Here is this company that was on no one's map, basically, before March 31, 2004, and even in the weeks and months after that, was really just a blip on the media radar screen. I was hoping to expose this company as something much bigger than just its boots on the ground in Iraq, or its role in Falluja, Najaf and elsewhere -- but to explain, in a readable way, that this is a very dangerous trend that has been put on a radical fast track almost overnight.

Once we started to realize just how deeply embedded in the occupation of Iraq Blackwater has been, and its connection to the Bush administration, then the point of the book (became) raising hell in Congress and in the public -- saying to people, "We have to wake up and do something about this!"

Has that been a success? Well, probably not. I learned a very humbling lesson after the Nisour Square killings in September 2007, when it really appeared as though this company was on the ropes, and that it was quite possible that their time in Iraq was at an end. And I largely blame the Democrats in the Congress for failing to deliver that knockout blow. Because this was a company that had been involved in the worst massacre of Iraqi civilians to date in the Iraq war involving a private company, and yet their contract gets renewed in April 2008 and the Democrats continue to fund their operations -- and with the exception of [congressman] Henry Waxman [D-Calif.], almost no one in the Congress has done anything to effectively take on these individuals or this company.

AJ: You write in the book about the lack of both serious congressional inquiry and mainstream media coverage, but the book is filled with examples of congressional hearings, investigations, stand out members and references to many mainstream media reporters and stories. You also write in the new introduction to explain Democratic inaction, almost as a throwaway line, that "the Democrats take mercenary money too," but then you tell a story that is uniquely about the Bush administration in particular and the Republican Party in general. Talk about these seeming inconsistencies. What explains congressional inaction? And, in terms of informing the public, why aren't a few excellent stories at the LA Times, Washington Post, New York Times and other outlets enough?

JS: Change does not happen through one-off articles or one-off hearings. Only drumbeat coverage in the media, drumbeat action by Congress, leads to change. You can find examples of corporate media outlets doing a great job explaining one incident involving Blackwater or a congressional hearing where some very important things were said, but the action has not been aggressive, and most importantly, it has not been sustained.

Blackwater is unique among war contractors in that it only butters one side of the bread -- the Republican side. [Founder and CEO] Erik Prince and other senior executives at Blackwater are die-hard ideological Republicans. They are foot soldiers for President Bush's domestic and international agenda … But Blackwater is unusual. Most war contractors give depending on which way the political wind is blowing. Right now, Antonia, for the first time in 14 years, weapons manufacturers are actually donating more to the Democrats than to Republicans -- about 52 percent of the defense industry's donations. In 1996, Democrats got just 32 percent.

AJ: Could Democratic inaction be summarized as: (1) money, and (2) there is an inherent contradiction that, if they really blow the cover on the private contractors, they will simultaneously be challenging the very continuation of the war, which far too many are not truly prepared to do?

JS: I interviewed one Democratic congressperson starting to work on this issue, and he said repeatedly, "I don't want to be portrayed as anti-contractor," almost like contractor was the new Israel … No one who has political aspirations is going to give the perception that they are anti-business, and war is very, very big business in this country. I've also learned that congresspeople are just flat-out lazy. A lot of them have a pack of kids in their early 20s, in the case of the House, who are only looking at job listings for jobs on committees and to hop over to the Senate, and they couldn't care less …

AJ Jeremy, you do know that I was once one of those kids, right?

JS You would have been extraordinary and an exception. I've had congresspeople say to me, "My staffers are a bunch of frat boy idiots whose only aspiration is to move up the chain." One congressman asked me to help him write a bill. I asked him about his legislative aides and he said, "Legislative aides? Are you kidding me?! I'd have to write my own bill. These kids couldn't write their way out of kindergarten."

I'd never had any experience on the Hill. I learned the lesson that if the member wants to do something, unless the member makes this a priority, probably nothing will be done. I also think that the Democrats are too busy funding the war … they can't even get straight what they want to do about official U.S. forces in Iraq, much less the shadow army of contractors.

AJ: Talk about the presidential candidates.

JS: There is something deeper here when you talk about Sen. Obama's Iraq plan … (which) is going to necessitate using these private contractors for the foreseeable future in Iraq … Obama refuses to rule out using Blackwater or other private security companies in Iraq. The reason is simple, [there is] no one who can step in and fill Blackwater's role come Jan. 21, 2009 … [Obama has] identified them as unaccountable, above the law, out of control, jeopardizing the safety of U.S. troops -- but, because he does not plan to end the U.S. occupation, he may very well have to use them.

[However] Obama is the author of the Democrats' contractor reform bill that passed the House and is now before the Senate [the "Transparency and Accountability in Military and Security Contracting Act"]. He introduced it eight months before Nisour Square. I have problems with that legislation, but it's a start … Obama more than probably anyone in the Senate, except for Bernie Sanders [I-Vt.], probably understands this issue.

But, I did a story in the Nation in February 2008 [in which Obama's] staffers acknowledge that … he will not sign on to the Sanders-Schakowsky bill, "Stop Outsourcing Security Act," which seeks to ban the use of these companies in U.S. war zones and make all of the diplomatic security agents full-time employees of the U.S. government, which means that they would have an accountability structure in place.

AJ: Is it a good bill?

JS: I would back it 75 percent. There is a part of it that will allow a sort of permanent status of a paramilitary force in the U.S. State Department and just transfer the job from the private guys to full-time State Department employees. But in terms of trying to get those companies out of Iraq and shut down their operations there, the bill would go very far in doing that.

AJ: Let's talk about the impact of private mercenaries on U.S. troops and anti-war organizing.

JS: That's my challenge to the anti-war movement moving forward … This plays into some of the actions that you've been involved with, Antonia. Right now in Iraq there are 180,000 private contractors operating alongside 150,000 American troops, those contractors are not all armed individuals. In fact we don't know the exact numbers.

AJ: What percentage do you think are mercenaries?

JS: The GAO estimated approximately 70,000 people working for private security firms in Iraq. In 2006, the estimate was about 48,000. But it's incalculable because of the labyrinth contracting system. It took Congressman Waxman three years just to find out who the Blackwater contractors were working for when they were attacked in Falluja.

So, when you realize that there are 630 companies on the U.S. government payroll in Iraq right now, with personnel from 100 countries -- we would need hundreds of people working in the Congress making this their priority to get the kind of answers to the question you're asking. Realize that we're in a situation now where the private army, the corporate army, is now bigger than the U.S. military presence in Iraq.

The top priority of anti-war movement should be a two-pronged attack: Go after the war corporations, without whom the occupation of Iraq would be absolutely untenable, and those congresspeople who purport to be for change and continue to fund this corporate army.

We have many allies who are coming out of the ranks of the U.S. military, we should embrace them as a lot of us have with Iraq Veterans Against the War (IVAW) and move forward and realize that this is now a corporatist state, and the corporations have been let off the hook for far too long with the exception of a few dedicated activists across the U.S. This needs to be priority No. 1 for the anti-war movement, because that's the way to shut down the war, is to shut down the business of the companies that make it possible.

AJ: You and I were both at IVAW's Winter Soldier hearings in Maryland, and I was just at the Northwest Winter Soldier in Seattle. GI resistance, the organizing of veterans, and counter-recruitment are all key organizing strategies against this war. Much of this is based on a model from Vietnam. But, the key difference today is the role of private mercenaries. Talk about this resistance within the context of the private mercenaries. Is there an impenetrable weakness in this strategy if private contractors can simply take their place? Or, would it be impossible to entirely fight a war using private contractors? What about organizing the private contractors against the war?

JS: It would not be possible to fight the entire war with contractors. Right now, we have the most powerful army on earth and a parallel army of contractors in Iraq, yet the U.S. is still militarily losing the war to a disorganized resistance that is also killing itself. The U.S. military is far more coordinated and organized than any army of contractors would ever be.

We have to adapt and adjust our tactics to those of the war machine. The war contracting companies are also taking advantage of the economic conditions of those they end up hiring. Who gets killed in Iraq for Halliburton? Poor people who go over there as truck drivers because they are in debt.

I think that raising the visibility of the counter-recruitment movement to include those people targeted for employment with these war companies would be a very difficult undertaking, but a very important one if we're serious about ending this war and stopping this system of radical privatization of the war machine.

AJ: Do you think that private mercenaries should be outlawed? That they shouldn't exist?

JS: Yes. I think that we have a grave threat, not only to democratic processes of the U.S., but to global peace and stability when a system that intimately links corporate profit to an escalation of war and conflict is not only permitted but actively supported. And we can talk until we're blue in the face about the misdeeds of Blackwater in Iraq, but the reality is, Blackwater wouldn't be there if there wasn't a demand. Blackwater is the fruit of a poisonous tree -- this unquenchable thirst for offensive war and U.S. domination. The only function that these companies play in U.S. society is to enable unpopular, aggressive wars of conquest and a subversion of democratic oversight and accountability over U.S. taxpayer-funded operations.

AJ: I was fascinated by your discussion of the role of private security companies and oil corporations. We are in a historic moment with cases moving in U.S. courts against Chevron for its operations in Nigeria and against ExxonMobil in Indonesia. The companies are accused of using domestic military forces to brutally suppress local resistance. What if the companies had used private mercs? Mercenaries against whom, as you describe in great detail, we essentially have no laws?

JS: That's a very interesting question, and I don't know. Blackwater has a private intelligence company called Total Intelligence Solutions that offers what they describe as "CIA-type services" to Fortune 1000 corporations when they go into hostile areas. The U.N. Working Group on the Use of Mercenaries said recently about Latin America that, and I quote, "an emerging trend in Latin America and also in other regions of the world indicates situations of private security companies protecting transnational extractive corporations whose employees are often involved in suppressing legitimate social protest of communities and human rights and environmental organizations of the areas where these corporations operate." It's on right now, and it's growing by leaps and bounds.

I think it would be very difficult for local people in those communities to even know who did the action if mercenaries did it. Nigerians knew exactly who the people were who attacked them, from their insignias on their uniforms. And that information is being used in the case brought against Chevron. In the case of these private companies, often they operate with no indicator of who they are. It would take a huge amount of effort just to discover who the hell it was doing the torturing or whatever. We've already seen that its tremendously difficult to get any information about the official work of official forces, not to mention when you put it through layers of secrecy that come with contractors and subcontractors.

AJ: Let's talk about the incredible success of the book. What makes a politically charged book, which bucks the popular narrative, an international bestseller?

JS: When the book came out -- and, really, up until this moment -- corporate newspapers largely ignored it. There were no reviews. When it debuted at No. 9 on the New York Times bestseller list, the paper did a favorable little 150-word article on it. But that's it. Instead, it was a tremendous victory for independent media that the book debuted in the way it did because it was community media, grassroots activism, and online media activists and journalists that pushed this book around the country and raised awareness about it.

We did this very long book tour organized largely through the network of community radio stations that I've worked with over my life. In many places these were fund-raisers for stations [which] are often at the center of activism in their local communities. They connected me to activists, independent newspapers, online journalists, etc. The power of grassroots community media around the U.S. is what kept the book afloat and the issue afloat for the many months preceding the Nisour Square killings.

AJ: Nisour then brought the issue in to the headlines and brought you into mainstream media. Talk about that experience.

JS: On Sept. 16, I was just starting to think to myself that maybe I should start working on something different. I wouldn't drop this issue, but I was wondering, "What's the next phase of this work for me?"

I woke up the next morning and before I know it, I'm in a car on my way to CNN. I'm on live for five minutes, and it was clear from the beginning that they didn't exactly know who I was, that maybe a producer had just quickly googled "Blackwater," saw there is someone who wrote a book, and let's get them on the show. A lot of the interview was about the basics of Blackwater. Then at one point the host says, "So it sounds like you're critical of these companies and of Blackwater," and asked, "So, what are the alternatives?" What I think he meant was, "Should the military do this instead? Is there another company?" But I said, "I think that U.S. should withdraw all of its military forces from Iraq, all of the mercenary companies and the army of contractors." I thought for certain that was it, that they would shut down in the interview, and there was sort of a pause, and I decided well, hell, I'll just keep going if they're going to let me talk, and I said, "and I think that the U.S. should pay reparations to the Iraqi people for the destruction of their country." And with that the interview ended.

I left there thinking that I'd likely never be on CNN again or any other corporate media. [Instead] I was asked to be on almost every corporate media outlet except FOX. In one night, I was on ABC World News Tonight, CBS Evening News, and NBC Nightly News. All of a sudden all of these journalists who were ignoring the book and the story systematically for a year were calling me up and demanding to speak with me.

I took it deadly seriously, and it was a very humbling experience, because I felt like this is one chance that we have to have someone who is firmly against this war to get on corporate media. I viewed it as a campaign to try to inject as much truth about the war as possible into the corporate media landscape. For almost two months, all I was doing with my life was going on these shows. It really seemed as though it was having an impact, as though something was really going to happen in Congress. I learned a lesson about power, and Congress, and media … The ball was dropped at the moment when it mattered the most.

AJ: What does it say about the mainstream media that they were so eager to have you on? Why did they continue to have you on after it was clear that you were an anti-war voice?

JS: In all candor, I have no idea. It was one of those rare moments where the media took this story very seriously and realized that this was legitimate criticism of a very powerful company. I also think it was a sensational story in a true tabloid sense, so everyone was interested. There were also very few people who have any sort of in-depth knowledge of Blackwater and what it is and does.

To your bigger point, though, about the anti-war movement, I think its one of the great media crimes of our lifetime that articulate anti-war people have been completely and totally wiped out of the media landscape in this country.

But did it go anywhere? You know, it's sort of depressing when I think about that … I think it did raise awareness in a much broader segment of the population about the dangers of the radical privatization agenda with these companies. But, where it really matters, in the halls of Congress -- I don't know that it had any real effective impact.

If anything, the real lesson was a very powerful reminder of the importance of small groups of grass-roots activists who are determined, who show up every Thursday afternoon in front of the federal building or at a company headquarters. It reinforced my belief that the conscience of this country can be found in those people in small groups across the country who are standing up against this madness. Those who have made a personal lifelong dedication. Congress is fickle, but activism is consistent.

Our challenge is to keep those actions going and growing but also to become very serious about what we're doing to stand up to the Democrats in the Congress about the war and what they're doing (or not doing) to confront these corporations. The war machine is very sophisticated. We have brilliant people in our movement -- there's no reason why we can't elevate to the level of taking them on in a way that actually impacts their bottom line.
http://tinyurl.com/63mwx3

AL QAEDA'S PLAN B
July 1, 2008
By AMIR TAHERI

NO one should feel safe without submitting to Islam, and those who refuse to submit must pay a high price. The Islam ist movement must aim to turn the world into a series of "wildernesses" where only those under jihadi rule enjoy security.

These are some of the ideas developed by al Qaeda's chief theoretician, Sheik Abu-Bakar Naji, in his new book "Governance in the Wilderness" (Edarat al-Wahsh).

Middle East analysts think that the book may indicate a major change of strategy by the disparate groups that use al Qaeda as a brand name.

The Saudi police seized copies of the book last week as they arrested 700 alleged terrorists in overnight raids.

Naji's book, written in pseudo-literary Arabic, is meant as a manifesto for jihad. He divides the jihadi movement into five circles - ranging from Sunni Salafi (traditionalist) Muslims (who, though not personally violent, are prepared to give moral and material support to militants) to Islamist groups with national rather than pan-Islamist agendas (such as the Palestinian Hamas and the Filipino Moro Liberation Front).

All five circles are at an impasse, says Naji. Some accept the status quo while hoping to reform it. Others have tried to set up governments in a world dominated by "infidel" powers, and have been forced to abandon Islamic values. Still others failed because they didn't realize that the only way to win is through total war in which no one feels safe.

NAJI claims that the fall of the Ottoman Empire and the abolition of the Islamic Caliphate in 1924 marked the start of "the most dangerous phase in history." Those events put all Arab countries, the heartland of Islam, under domination by the "infidel"- who later continued to rule via native proxies.

In Naji's eyes, it is impossible to create a proper Islamic state in a single country in a world dominated by "Crusaders." He cites as example the Taliban - which, although a proper Islamic regime, didn't survive "infidel" attacks and opposition by Afghan elements.

Instead, he says, the Islamic movement must be global - fighting everywhere, all the time, and on all fronts.

SINCE 9/11, Islamist terror movements have been de bating grand strategy. Osama bin Laden had theorized that the "infidel," led by the United States, would crumble after a series of spectacular attacks, just as the Meccan "infidel" government did when the Prophet Muhammad launched deadly raids against its trade routes. Yet the 9/11 attacks didn't lead to an "infidel" retreat. On the contrary, the "Great Satan" hit back hard.

That persuaded some al Qaeda leaders that a new strategy of smaller, slower but steadier attacks was needed. Ayman al-Zawahiri, al Qaeda's No. 2, has advocated such a strategy since 2003, arguing that the jihad should first target Muslim countries where it has a chance of toppling the incumbent regimes.

Now Naji takes that analysis a step further - suggesting that low-intensity war be extended to anywhere in the world with a significant Muslim presence.

Islamists in the "wilderness" must create parallel societies alongside existing ones, Naji says - but not set up formal governments, which would be subject to economic pressure or military attack.

These parallel societies could resemble "liberated zones" set up by Marxist guerrillas in parts of Latin America in the last century. But they could also exist within cities, under the very noses of the authorities - operating as secret societies with their own rules, values and enforcement.

But they could also take shape in Western countries with large Muslim minorities: The jihadis are to begin by giving areas where Muslims live a distinctly Islamic appearance, by imposing special styles of dress for women and beards for men. Then they start imposing the shariah. In the final phase, they create a parallel system of taxation and law enforcement, effectively taking the areas out of government control.

The "wilderness" will provide the cover for bases for jihad operations. Jihad would be everywhere, rather than in just one or two countries that the "infidel" could hit with superior firepower.

IN a notable departure from past al Qaeda strategy, Naji recommends "countless small operations" that render daily life unbearable, rather than a few spectacular attacks such as 9/11: The "infidel," leaving his home every morning, should be unsure whether he'll return in the evening.

Naji recommends kidnappings, the holding of hostages, the use of women and children as human shields, exhibition killings to terrorize the enemy, suicide bombings and countless gestures that make normal life impossible for the "infidel" and Muslim collaborators.

Once parallel societies are established throughout the world, they would exert pressure on non-Muslims to submit. Naji believes that, subjected to constant intimidation and fear of death, most non-Muslims (especially in the West) would submit: "The West has no stomach for a long fight."

The only Western power still capable of resisting is the United States, he believes. But that, too, will change once President Bush is gone.

NAJI makes it clear that the United States is the chief, if not the exclusive target, of jihad at this time. He mentions Israel only once, as "America's little female idol." His only reference to Palestine is in a historical context.

Naji asks jihadis to target oilfields, sea and airports, tourist facilities and especially banking and financial services. He envisages "a very long war," at the end of which the whole world is brought under the banner of Islam.

He identifies several Muslim countries as promising for establishing "the governance of the wilderness": Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Yemen, Turkey, Jordan, Libya, Tunisia and Morocco. The implication is that "wilderness" units already exist in nations such as Afghanistan, Iraq, Lebanon, Egypt, Somalia and Algeria.

Naji's theory is built on the concept of terror as the main organizing principle of the mini-states he hopes to set up everywhere in preparation for the coming Caliphate. He claims that the Prophet himself practiced the tactic by making his enemies in Medina, where he ran his version of the "wilderness," pay "the maximum price" for any deviance, and through constant raids on trade caravans belonging to his enemies in Mecca.

IN a simple language, Naji of fers a synthesis of the themes that appeal to different jihadi groups. With anti-imperialist sentiments, missionary dreams, ethnic and class grievances and puritanical obsessions, he mixes a deadly cocktail.

Naji's message is stark: Western civilization is doomed. Its last bastion, America, lacks the will for a long war. The "infidel" loves life and treats it as an endless feast. Jihadis have to ruin that feast and persuade the "infidel" to abandon this world in exchange for greater rewards in the next.
http://tinyurl.com/5q8k8v

US 'running $400m covert operation in Iran'
July 1, 2008
by Anne Davies

ONE OF America's foremost foreign affairs reporters, Seymour Hersh, has claimed America is running a covert operation into Iran, funded by $US400 million ($A414 million) siphoned from other programs, with authorisation from Democratic congressional leaders.

According to Hersh, a journalist with the New Yorker magazine, Congress agreed to a request from President George Bush late last year to pay for a significant escalation of covert operations against Iran.

He said these included activities by the the Central Intelligence Agency and the Joint Special Operations Command, and involve support of the minority Ahwazi Arab and Baluchi groups and other dissident organisations.

They also included gathering intelligence about Iran's suspected nuclear-weapons program.

Hersh said covert operations were not new but had been stepped up dramatically in recent months, causing disquiet in Congress.

"United States Special Operations Forces have been conducting cross-border operations from southern Iraq, with presidential authorisation, since last year," he said. "These have included seizing members of al-Quds, the commando arm of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard, and taking them to Iraq for interrogation, and the pursuit of 'high-value targets' in the President's war on terror, who may be captured or killed."

In December 2007 the National Intelligence Estimate issued a report saying that Iran had put its military nuclear program on hold in 2003, but was continuing to enrich uranium. The report's reversal of more dire assessments did not placate the Bush Administration. Instead it sparked a furious internal debate over whether Iran's enrichment program was reason enough to take military action.

The US ambassador to Iraq, Ryan Crocker, denied Hersh's report, which did not name any sources. "I can tell you flatly that US forces are not operating across the Iraqi border into Iran, in the south or anywhere else," he said on CNN.

But analysts will pore over the report, trying to gauge whether Mr Bush might launch an air strike against Iran before he leaves office.

Signs pointing towards a strike include reports of increased training exercises by the Israeli air force and the strike last September against a suspected nuclear reactor in Syria by the Israelis.

Factions within the US Administration, notably within the Pentagon and the State Department, oppose military action, arguing that it would help galvanise support for President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

Vice-President Dick Cheney is the strongest advocate of a military strike. But even he has pared back his rhetoric in recent months, amid doubts that an air strike would be effective.

Iran's threat to disrupt oil tankers passing through the Strait of Hormuz also poses a strong argument against action. Some 40% of the world's daily oil supplies pass through the strait.

Speaking on CNN on Sunday, Hersh compared the operation under way to that portrayed in the film Charlie Wilson's War, which was based on the true story of America's clandestine involvement in Afghanistan during the Soviet invasion.

Hersh said the operations were described in a Presidential Finding signed by President Bush, and had been agreed to by congressional leaders and the heads of the intelligence committees of Congress — although they were now concerned that the operations had gone beyond those authorised.
http://tinyurl.com/5kqrrp

Spiritual effects of hallucinogens persist, Johns Hopkins researchers report
Public release date: 1-Jul-2008

Related report gives safety guidelines for hallucinogen research
Johns Hopkins Medical Institutions

In a follow-up to research showing that psilocybin, a substance contained in "sacred mushrooms," produces substantial spiritual effects, a Johns Hopkins team reports that those beneficial effects appear to last more than a year.

Writing in the Journal of Psychopharmacology, the Johns Hopkins researchers note that most of the 36 volunteer subjects given psilocybin, under controlled conditions in a Hopkins study published in 2006, continued to say 14 months later that the experience increased their sense of well-being or life satisfaction.

"Most of the volunteers looked back on their experience up to 14 months later and rated it as the most, or one of the five most, personally meaningful and spiritually significant of their lives," says lead investigator Roland Griffiths, Ph.D., a professor in the Johns Hopkins departments of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences and Neuroscience.

In a related paper, also published in the Journal of Psychopharmacology, researchers offer recommendations for conducting this type of research.

The guidelines caution against giving hallucinogens to people at risk for psychosis or certain other serious mental disorders. Detailed guidance is also provided for preparing participants and providing psychological support during and after the hallucinogen experience. These "best practices" contribute both to safety and to the standardization called for in human research.

"With appropriately screened and prepared individuals, under supportive conditions and with adequate supervision, hallucinogens can be given with a level of safety that compares favorably with many human research and medical procedures," says that paper's lead author, Mathew W. Johnson, Ph.D., a psychopharmacologist and instructor in the Johns Hopkins Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences.

The two reports follow a 2006 study published in another journal, Psychopharmacology, in which 60 percent of a group of 36 healthy, well-educated volunteers with active spiritual lives reported having a "full mystical experience" after taking psilocybin. {See http://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/Press_releases/2006/07_11_06.html}

Psilocybin, a plant alkaloid, exerts its influence on some of the same brain receptors that respond to the neurotransmitter serotonin. Mushrooms containing psilocybin have been used in some cultures for hundreds of years or more for religious, divinatory and healing purposes.

Fourteen months later, Griffiths re-administered the questionnaires used in the first study -- along with a specially designed set of follow up questions -- to all 36 subjects. Results showed that about the same proportion of the volunteers ranked their experience in the study as the single most, or one of the five most, personally meaningful or spiritually significant events of their lives and regarded it as having increased their sense of well-being or life satisfaction.

"This is a truly remarkable finding," Griffiths says. "Rarely in psychological research do we see such persistently positive reports from a single event in the laboratory. This gives credence to the claims that the mystical-type experiences some people have during hallucinogen sessions may help patients suffering from cancer-related anxiety or depression and may serve as a potential treatment for drug dependence. We're eager to move ahead with that research."

Griffiths also notes that, "while some of our subjects reported strong fear or anxiety for a portion of their day-long psilocybin sessions, none reported any lingering harmful effects, and we didn't observe any clinical evidence of harm."

The research team cautions that if hallucinogens are used in less well supervised settings, the possible fear or anxiety responses could lead to harmful behaviors.

###

These studies were funded by grants from NIDA, the Council on Spiritual Practices, and the Heffter Research Institute.

Additional researchers who contributed to this work include Matthew W. Johnson, Ph.D. and Una D. McCann, M.D. of the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine; psychologist William A. Richards of the Johns Hopkins Bayview Medical Center; and Robert Jesse of the Council on Spiritual Practices, San Francisco.
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American financial fiasco could take down world economy
Posted 25 June 2008
By BERT HIELEMA

Triple warnings this past week: the Royal Bank of Scotland fears a steep fall in the world stock market; the bank of all banks in the world,
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the BIS, Bank of International Settlements, in Switzerland, said that a worldwide depression is now a distinct possibility;
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Morgan Stanley, a leading American Investment firm, signaled similar pessimistic messages.

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So what's happening out there? Frankly, all financial institutions are in deep trouble, and the reason is the American dollar. The situation is so dire that it's not going to make a hoot of difference who becomes the next president of the United States: it's beyond the power of the rulers of the American political and economic system to curtail severe damage to its entire economic enterprise. Neither Obama nor McCain can do anything to stem the disaster that will be fully employed by the end of this year.

Part of the cause is that the USA happens to be the most indebted nation on the planet and its people the least prepared to cope with peak oil and peak food. Even now Americans throw away up to 40 per cent of the food they buy, their high-powered and fuel-thirsty automotive park cannot be converted to more efficient vehicles for many years, while their exurban lifestyle makes car-sharing and mass transport impossible for most.

So what's so inevitable of the current monetary scene?

The world's entire Gross domestic product is some $50 trillion, of which the USA accounts for about $13 trillion. However, it owes more than $2 trillion to foreigners, of which Japan and China carry about half and Great Britain some 10 per cent with the remainder divided over many countries. Canada has less than one per cent. The American public carries $9 trillion in credit-card debt and even more in mortgages. Its national debt is close to $10 trillion while its Social Security and Medicaid has a future liability in excess of $50 trillion, burdening the average USA household with debt totaling more than $600,000.

And then there are the outstanding derivatives! They grew from $100 trillion 5 years ago to $500 trillion in 2007. Warren Buffet -- the world's richest man after Bill Gates and a most savvy investor -- wrote in 2002: "We try to be alert to any sort of mega-catastrophe risk, and that posture may make us unduly

appreciative about the burgeoning quantities of long-term derivatives contracts and the massive amount of uncollateralized receivables that are growing alongside. In our view, however, derivatives are financial weapons of mass destruction, carrying dangers that, while now latent, are potentially lethal."

Now, when everything that can go wrong is going wrong, this financial WMD, this weapon of mass destruction, is no longer latent but out in the open ready to kill the American economy.

According to the LEAP think tank, based in Europe -- subscriptions cost 200 Euro or $300 per year -- in the next six months all factors affecting the economy will converge, and create a perfect socio-economic hurricane.

The root of the problem is always money, basically the US dollar of which there are trillions too many in circulations, so many that its value is decreasing, and the world doesn't know what to do with them. It's this flood of money that drives up the price of all commodities, including oil, of course. Nobody wants more US dollars, unless its value increases.

But that can only happen when the US pushes up interest rates, which will cause the US economy to die within a few weeks, as the real estate market falls to zero by lack of affordable credit, interest on Adjustable Rate Mortgage loans skyrockets, drastically shrinking consumption, and corporate failures multiply exponentially and stock markets collapse.

No, higher interest rates are not the solution. However, to do nothing is not an option either, because soon nobody will accept U. S. dollars anymore.

Basically the US has lost the ability to govern its own economic policy. Thanks to its trillions of debts, it is now powerless to avoid disaster. No wonder banks are getting nervous.

The immediate consequence of America's economic collapse will be the end of the war in Iraq, because, suddenly, as the greenback disappears as the world currency, the US will be forced to live within its means. Since the war is the most costly of all its undertakings, the troops will abruptly go home.

Curiously the WMDs -- the weapons of mass destruction -- were not in Iraq: they are in the heart of America, right on Wall Street. Pity the veterans and the wounded; there will be no money to look after them -- no pensions, no jobs, no medical care.

Eventually a new financial system will emerge, but only after a period of tremendous turmoil and pain.
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China Orders Strike Against US For Catastrophic Earthquake
May 30, 2008
By: Sorcha Faal, and as reported to her Western Subscribers

Russian Foreign Ministry reports are stating today the Prime Minister Putin’s ‘sudden’ diplomatic trip to France was made at the behest of China’s President Hu in order to ‘warn’ the European Union not to become involved with the US following what is widely expected to be a ‘retaliatory strike’ against the United States, and who the Chinese military has blamed for the catastrophic May 12th earthquake that has killed nearly 90,000 human beings.

Chinese and Russian Military scientists, these reports say, are concurring with Canadian researcher, and former Asia-Pacific Bureau Chief of Forbes Magazine, Benjamin Fulford, who in a very disturbing video released from his Japanese offices to the American public, details how the United States attacked China by the firing of a Billion Million Volt Shockwave from the Americans High Frequency Active Auroral Research Program (HAARP) facilities in Alaska.

So powerful was this Shockwave, Britain’s Times Online News Service is reporting that the entire atmosphere over the Chinese earthquake zone became mysteriously changed 30 minutes prior to the 8.0 Magnitude Trembler

“Can clouds predict earthquakes? YouTube has footage of strange multicoloured clouds seen just before the recent earthquake struck Sichuan province in China.

The first impression is of a rainbow smeared on to small scraps of clouds, a phenomenon best known in a circumzenithal halo. This is created when sunlight shines through cirrus clouds full of tiny hexagonal ice crystals shaped like plates. The crystals behave like glass prisms, splitting the light into a bow with the colours of the spectrum, often brighter than a rainbow.

But one puzzle is that the colours in the Chinese clouds were upside down from a normal circumzenithal halo – red pointing towards the horizon and blue towards the Sun, instead of the other way round.”

Russian scientists are further speculating that the United States strike against China was ‘exactly timed’ to coincide with the dangerous experiments ongoing at Large Hadron Collider for the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN), and which we had previously reported on in our May 13th report titled “CERN ‘Nailed Heart Of Earth’ With China Quake, Chilean Volcano”.

Russian Military Analysts note that though China’s Military has ordered its vast submarine fleet to ‘disperse’ throughout the Pacific Ocean, the Chinese ‘attack’ against the United States would, most likely, take a form of economic warfare instead of an actual clashing of forces.

More disturbing, however, in these reports is China’s urging of both Syria and Turkey not to allow more water into mighty rivers of the Euphrates and Tigris, which the Iraqis are warning are running dry due to the severe drought in that war-torn Nation.

The importance of this latest move by China is the newly signed Defense Pact signed between Iran and Syria which would allow Chinese Military Forces permission to use Iranian territory to come to the aid of Syria.

It should be further noted that the Christian Bibles New Testament Book of Revelations (Chapter 16, Verse 12) prophesied that the Euphrates will dry up in preparation for the Battle of Armageddon and would be crossed by an Eastern Army of 200 million soldiers, of which in our World today only China is able to field and have the ability to reach by land alone.

As the United States and China battle for their very survival in a World becoming increasing volatile due to the rapidly growing shortages of both food and fuel, one does indeed wonder if the End Times are now upon us all.
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Induced Earthquakes Targeting US Energy Sources
Scalar Quake Weapons Being Aimed At Oak Ridge?
6-29-8

GOTHAM CITY NEWS
SUNDAY, JUNE 29, 2008
SUNDAY EDITION
COMMENTARY BY KAFKA: Oak Ridge National Research Facility / Tennessee Valley Authority Waterways, Electrical Power Stations and Dams

"Others are engaging even in an eco-type of terrorism whereby they can alter the climate, set off earthquakes, volcanoes remotely through the use of (Scalar) electromagnetic waves So there are plenty of ingenious minds out there that are at work finding ways in which they can wreak terror upon other nationsIt's real, and that's the reason why we have to intensify our efforts, and that's why this is so important." William Cohen, U.S. Secretary of Defense, April 1997, Quoted from Department of Defense News Briefing.
In recent months, Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) military induced scalar earthquakes have been occurring along a line area in east Tennessee and into an area in northernmost Alabama, below Chattanooga, Tennessee. These earthquakes leave evidentiary value signatures from their size, repetitive nature and location. They are harbingers, signaling targets and future probable attempts to destroy the United States Government, Oak Ridge National Research Facility, Tennessee Valley Authority power generating plants, Watts Bar Nuclear Plant, reactor 1, Sequoyah Nuclear Plant, reactor 1 and 2, Brown's Ferry Nuclear Plant, reactor 1,2, and 3, and hydro electric plants, dams and waterways, we are told.


East Tennessee Earthquakes
Location of two nuclear & 4 coal power plants
There are multiple electrical generating power plants of three types in east Tennessee, northern Georgia and Alabama. Nuclear, hydro-electric and coal, fossil burning. Nuclear and hydro electric plants will go down if dams and waterways are compromised. Fossil plants will cease to operate if railroad track access is damaged.
In addition to electrical power generating plants, consider possible loss of Oak Ridge National Research Facility.
U.S. Government,
Oak Ridge National Research Facility
East Tennessee
Nuclear assembly for the application facility
Biological research
Weapons Research
Nuclear Nonproliferation Programs
National Security Directorate
UT/ORNL Center for Homeland Security and Counterproliferation
Computing and Computational Science Directorate
Neutron Science
Spallation Neutron Source (SNS)
High Fluc Isotope Reactor (HFIR)
Oak Ridge Electron Linear Accelerator Pulsed Neutron Source (ORELA)
Joint Institute for Neutron Sciences
SNS and HFIR User Group
Bioenergy Science Center
Biological and Environment Science Directorate
Microbial Systems Biology
Mammalian Generics and Fenomics
Environmental Data Science and Systems
Computational Biology
Bioconversion Science and Technology
Computing and Computational Science Directorate
Center for Computational Science
Computational Science and Engineering
Computer Science and Mathematics
Bioenergy Science Center
Energy and Engineering Science Directorate
Energy Efficiency and Renewable Resources
Engineering Science and Technology
NanoApplications Center
Nuclear Science and Technology
Nuclear Energy
USITER
Fossil Energy
Fusion
Tennessee Valley Authority
Nuclear Electrical Generating Plants
East Tennessee
Watts Bar, reactor 1 operational
Sequoyah, reactor 1,2
Brown's Ferry, reactor 1,2,3
Coal-Fossil Electrical Generating Plants
East Tennessee
Kingston
Bull Run
John Sevier
Widows Creek
Dams on the Tennessee River,
East Tennessee,
Hydro Electric Plants
Watts Bar
Guniersville
Chickamauga
Pickwick Landing
Ft. Loudoun
Nickajack
Cherokee
Wheeler
Douglas
Wilson
Ocoee 1
Ocoee 2

TVA sells power to 158 local power companies that serve 8.5 million people and 650,000 businesses and industries in the seven-state TVA area. TVA serves almost all of Tennessee and parts of Alabama, Georgia, Kentucky, Mississippi, North Carolina, and Virginia. TVA also sells power to 62 large industrial customers and federal installations.

TVA operates 21 hydroelectric dams, seven coal-fired power plants, three nuclear power plants, and four combustion turbine sites in Tennessee, with a combined generating capacity of more than 19,000 megawatts. Coal-fired Plants: Allen, Bull Run, Cumberland, Gallatin, John Sevier, Johnsonville, and Kingston; with combustion turbines at Allen, Gallatin, Johnsonville, and Lagoon Creek. Nuclear Plants: Sequoyah and Watts Bar. Hydroelectric Plants: Boone, Cherokee, Chickamauga, Douglas, Fort Loudoun, Fort Patrick Henry, Great Falls, Melton Hill, Nickajack, Norris, Ocoee 1, Ocoee 2, Ocoee 3, Raccoon Mountain Pumped Storage, Pickwick Landing, South Holston, Tims Ford, Watauga, Watts Bar, and Wilbur. TVA owns and/or maintains 261 substations and switching stations and greater than 17,000 circuit miles of transmission line in Tennessee. TVA operates 10 solar facilities in the state of Tennessee: a 27-kilowatt facility at the Adventure Science Center in Nashville, two 18-kilowatt facilities at Dollywood in Pigeon Forge, an 18-kilowatt facility at Gibson County High School in Dyer, a 15- kilowatt facility at Ijams Nature Center in Knoxville, a nine-kilowatt facility at Cocke County High School in Newport, a 15-kilowatt facility at the American Museum of Science and Energy in Oak Ridge, an eight-kilowatt facility at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Oak Ridge, an 85-kilowatt facility at+ Finley Stadium in Chattanooga, and a 26-kilowatt facility at the Bridges Center in Memphis. TVA operates three wind turbines on Buffalo Mountain in Oliver Springs, with a generation capacity of two megawatts. TVA also purchases the output of 15 additional wind turbines on Buffalo Mountain, owned by Invenergy LLC, with a generation capacity of 29 megawatts.


For ten years, governments have denied the existence of the chemtrail aerosol programs worldwide. Clearly, they lied after spraying hundreds of millions of people with unknown biological and chemical substances from aircraft. Since early 1960s, governments have also refused to acknowledge the existence of applied Tesla scalar technology in weather control, destructive weapon systems, human electrical system behavior and thought process / mind control. Through their silence, their sin of omission, government continues to deceive citizens. On almost every issue before us, government continues to lie to citizens while allowing them to die through direct or collateral damage. Recent massive storm flooding and devastation in the Midwest has the fingerprint of Russian FSB scalar induced, we are told.
American citizens are long suffering by nature, but it is time for moral God caring citizens to be alert, to become active and make their presence know, to shout to military, government, bankers, politicians, perpetual victims bitching and moaning. No more, enough, stop ! Conditions are becoming serious, we are losing our country. It is time to protect self and family. There is a just God who presides over the destinies of nations, and who will raise up friends to fight our battles for us. The battle is not to the strong alone; it is to the vigilant, the active, the brave.

Recently, while in conversation with an on-duty, uniformed city policeman, he suggested I purchase a shotgun and ammunition. He said, "you will need it to protect yourself and your family. It is later than you think."

"For Whom does the Bell Toll?," and the answer, "It tolls for thee."
-- Kafka
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The Whitehouse Coup
BBC - Radio 4 Document - Greenham's Hidden Secret
Monday 23 July 2007

Document uncovers details of a planned coup in the USA in 1933 by right-wing American businessmen
View a picture gallery of images related to this edition.

The coup was aimed at toppling President Franklin D Roosevelt with the help of half-a-million war veterans. The plotters, who were alleged to involve some of the most famous families in America, (owners of Heinz, Birds Eye, Goodtea, Maxwell Hse & George Bush’s Grandfather, Prescott) believed that their country should adopt the policies of Hitler and Mussolini to beat the great depression.

Mike Thomson investigates why so little is known about this biggest ever peacetime threat to American democracy.
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LISTEN TO THE FULL PROGRAM:
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As Oil Hits Another Record High, A Look at the New Geopolitics of Energy
June 27, 2008

Oil prices have jumped to yet another record high, nearing $142 a barrel in Asian trading today. The latest price surge comes a day after OPEC’s president said crude prices could reach $170 this summer. Meanwhile, Libya has threatened to cut oil production in response to US threats against oil producers. We speak with Michael Klare, author of “Rising Powers, Shrinking Planet” and Arun Gupta of The Indypendent.

Michael Klare, author of 13 books, including “Blood and Oil” and “Resource Wars.” His latest is “Rising Powers, Shrinking Planet: The New Geopolitics of Energy.” He is the defense analyst for The Nation and the director of the Five College Program in Peace and World Security Studies at Hampshire College in Amherst.

Arun Gupta, an editor of The Indypendent who has written extensively on the political economy of the global oil order.

AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, the war and peace report. That is Nina Simone singing. I’m Amy Goodman with Juan Gonzales. Juan?

JUAN GONZALES: Oil prices have jumped to yet another record high nearing $142 a barrel in Asian trading today. Meanwhile, the Dow Jones industrial average on Thursday fell to its lowest mark in more than one year and general motors’ stock prices to its lowest levels in more than a quarter- century at the close of trading on Thursday. At over $140 a barrel, oil prices and more than double from $70 since one year ago. The latest price surge comes a day after Opec’s president said crude prices could reach $170 this summer. Meanwhile, Libia has threatened to cut oil production in response to the U.S. threats against oil producers. The house recently passed a bill that would allow the justice department to sue members of Opec for limiting supplies of oil and setting prices. Meanwhile, Opec, which produces 40% of the world’s oil says speculators are responsible for pushing up crude in reaction to a falling dollar and tensions in oil-producing countries, such as Iran, Iraq and Nigeria.

AMY GOODMAN: For more, we’re joined by Michael Klare, author of 13 books including Resource Wars and “Blood and Oil” which was just made into a documentary. His latest book is called “Rising Powers, Shrinking Planet: The New Geopolitics of Energy.” He’s a defense analyst for The Nation, and the director of the Five College Program in Peace and World Security Studies at Hampshire College in Amherst. We are also joined by Arun Gupta, an editor of The Indypendent newspaper, who has written extensively on the political economy of the global oil order. We welcome you both to Democracy Now. Michael Klare, lay out your thesis in "Rising Powers, Shrinking Planet.”

MICHAEL KLARE: The title helps, which is that we are in a world where there are new players on the world stage, China, India, other developing countries, with an vast appetite for resources, especially oil at the same time that the world supply of energy in particular is shrinking. I should add there’s a third set of players, that is the older industrial countries, the United States, in particular, that don’t want to consume less. So you have a collision of demand, which is not shrinking, and a supply that is and that’s what is pushing up prices. In the competition for what’s is left, these countries are militarizing their pursuit of energy and that is leading to it geopolitical struggle around the world. In Africa, and the Middle East, and in central Asia. And I fear that unless we change our energy habits, this competition could lead to military friction, to crisis, and to war.

JUAN GONZALES: To what degree are these battles new? Aren’t battles over resources and energy, I mean, battles over resources and energy, going back through the history of all the major wars in the central role that control over energy resources have played for major powers. To what degree is this new from prior eras?

MICHAEL KLARE: Resource competition has been a central feature in world’s history, in warfare from the beginning of time. What is new is that you have not only the traditional powers, the European empires of the past, which were responsible for World War I, World War II, the Cold War, but now you have the rise of India and especially China, with a ravenous need for resources. Just an extraordinary need. This is changing everything on the planet. China is and Africa, Latin America—everywhere. This really is a new dynamic. At the same time, we see all of the sudden, all the major resources in demand beginning to shrink—oil, copper, iron ore, coal. All of these resources on which the world’s industrial economies depend, suddenly appear to be at risk. This is unprecedented. You have this extraordinary collision, which we see at the gas pump, but I think it will affect everything on the planet.

AMY GOODMAN: And yet, Arun gupta, you have the oil companies, Chevron, Enron, Exxon Mobil, the others, making more money than they ever have in history. How do you explain that?

ARUN GUPTA: That has to do with the rising prices. I think there are other factors at play, supply and demand are somewhat of an issue, but speculation is an enormous issue. We’ve seen oil prices rise by nearly six fold from 2003. Yet, no gas lines. Oil inventories are at a eight-year high. Gasoline stock are at three year highs. You cannot say it is the supply and demand issue fundamentally. It has much more to do was speculation. But the speculators could not be doing this if the supplies were not tight. We need to ask, why exactly are supplies tight? Michael’s book is enormously informative and insightful, but I want to take issue with the notion of shrinking planet because I do not think it is actually supported by the data that is out there. One of the most important concepts to understand is what’s known as the reserve to production ratio. That is, what is the total global proven reserves of oil and how many years will that last at current production rate? If we look of the last 20 years, it’s basically unchanged. Global proven reserves keep actually rising year after year. They’re now at 1.24 trillion barrels according to latest B.P. statistical review. You can also say the same about natural gas. There’s about 60, 62 years of natural gas supplies, that’s also virtually unchanged since 1987. During the 1990’s, this went a little and it is gone down a little recently, but this has to do with the legacy of the late 1990’s. In the late 1990’s there was an absolute collapse in the oil industry and oil prices when it went down to $10 a barrel, following the Asian financial crisis. What you had was all of these oil wells going offline. You had all this oil exploration grounding to a halt. You had an enormous loss of human know how as engineers and technicians went out of the industry. It takes 7-10 years to bring mega projects online. In a way, we’re reaping the legacy of that collapsed and exploration. It is only in the last year or two that you’re starting to see a rise in exploration. There’s a good article in the times about what is known as drill ships. These are the ships that do offshore exploration, which has increased dramatically. Offshore exploration now accounts for about a third of global oil production. In the previous six years, only eight drill ships came on to the market. This year alone, 16 drill ships are coming on to the market. What it means is, finally, oil exploration is beginning to ramp up. I do now to suggest that is a good thing, but the fact of the matter is, there is a lot of oil out there. There’s also the factor of U.S. foreign policy that in 2003, what is known as the excess global capacity, collapsed and that was because of two big factors. Venezuela, we supported the 2002 coups, then we supported the oil sector strike later that year. Their oil industry virtually collapsed and are still 1 million barrels below their daily production. Then we invaded Iraq. You saw excess global production capacity shrink from 6 million barrels a day to about 3 million barrels a day. Then in 2006 to 1 million barrels a day. And that’s how the speculators are able to take advantage of this.

AMY GOODMAN: Michael Klare?

MICHAEL KLARE: I agree that there’s been times when the rate of exploration dropped, but with all the money that is being spent on exploration, they’re coming up empty and the few new wells that have come on line like off the shore of Brazil, are going to be far more costly to develop than any in history. The one big new field that has been discovered, the Kashagan field in the Caspian sea, has been an unmitigated disaster. So yes, there is more oil in the world, but it’s of the tough oil variety, extremely hazardous and difficult to produce. My basic thesis that the supply of oil is increasingly inadequate to satisfy the needs of the rising powers, and the older powers, I think is correct. It is in this environment of tight supplies that any crisis that emerges, the fighting in Nigeria, the fighting in Iraq, the possibility of a hurricane season that is upon us, and the possibility, more than anything else, of a U.S. Strike on Iran, which I think is more than 50% likely—that is what is fueling this speculative frenzy that everyone has been speaking about. The speculators believe that more crises, more chaos in the middle east is likely. That’s what is lifting oil prices.

JUAN GONZALES: I would like to ask about that in particular. Obviously, you’re rasising the issue of not just a total supply of oil, but how easy and cheap it is to get to it. The other issue is, who controls that oil? Isn’t that the issue here at hand? There could be a lot of oil in the world, but if the United States or Europe control it, then the question of the price, the supply is an issue.

MICHAEL KLARE: Yes, indeed. Especially in that the major producing countries in the Middle East and Africa are run by state owned companies and I’m sure Arun could say more about this, they do not have the same incentive to produce, produce, produce and get it on the market. They want to keep producing for as long as possible, that’s their only source of wealth. They want to keep it in the ground as long as they possibly can and that is another reason why supplies are not as adequate as they might be.

AMY GOODMAN: You talk about the global assault on Africa’s vital reserves. Lay out the picture of Africa.

MICHAEL KLARE: Africa is important, not because of the magnitude of its supplies, but because it is the one area in the world that has growth potential. And in a world of shrinking resources, anywhere that has growth potential is going to be a magnet for oil companies and oil consumers. So you have the Europeans going in there. You have the U.S. flocking to Africa. And now China is going into Africa as well. Because this is an area of instability, all these countries, but a especially the U.S. and China, are seeking to secure this oil by also providing arms and military assistance as a way of cementing their ties. So there is an arms race underway in Africa fueled by this pursuit of energy.

JUAN GONZALES: Arun, in terms of energy, Michael talks a lot about this in his book, in terms of the role of Russia, Michael talks about this in his books, that it produces enough oil for itself but increasingly seeking to dominate supplies in other parts of the world.

ARUN GUPTA: A lot of that has to do with natural gas production. The former Soviet Union, when include countries like Kazakhstan and Azerbaycan, they’re actually at a peak. Russia’s oil production is looking like it will probably decline a bit. This has to do with investment. The important thing, there are not these absolute natural limits. These have to do with relations of production. There’s a lot of cheap, easy oil out there. We have to remember that it is locked up in Iran and Iraq because of U.S. foreign policy. Both these countries could be massive producers. Again, not that that is a good thing, but there is lots of oil out there. There’s also a lot of other countries apart from Africa that can bring back a lot of oil on line. Canada is developing the Athabasca tar sands in Alberta. They just releasing a report expecting a daily production to increase by 2 million barrels per day. It’s got awful and highly destructive, but they’re receiving a tremendous amount of investment. Brazil projects it will become an oil producer. Angola is increasing its oil production. The Saudis just brought a new field online. It will be up to 12.5 million barrels per day and 15 million barrels per day in a few years.

AMY GOODMAN: We are going have to leave it there. We thank you both very much for being here. Anrun Gupta is an editor at the The Indypendent and Michael Klare’s latest book is “Rising Powers, Shrinking Planet: the New Geopolitics of Energy.”
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End of the Petroleum Age?
Saturday, June 28, 2008
by Michael Klare

At the hastily convened global oil summit in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia on June 28, top officials of producing and consuming nations from around the world attempted to find a combination of solutions that would somehow extricate us from the current crisis over sky-high energy prices. These proposals ranged from increased output by major producers like Saudi Arabia and Kuwait to restrictions on the activities of international oil speculators.

But all were based on the premise that the crisis can be resolved through the right mix of actions, thus restoring an environment of cheap and abundant oil - a premise that is fundamentally flawed. More and more, the evidence suggests that this is not just a temporary crisis. It is the beginning of the end of the Petroleum Age.

How do we know that the Petroleum Age is drawing to a close? Two key indicators tell us that this is so. First, many of the giant fields that have satisfied our massive thirst over so many years are experiencing diminished output. Second, although the major oil producers are spending more money each year to discover new reserves, they are finding less and less oil. Either of these factors by itself is cause for significant worry; the combination is deadly.

Dangerous Reliance

Few people understand how reliant we have become on a relatively small number of mammoth fields for the lion’s share of our daily petroleum intake. Though the world possesses tens of thousands of operating fields, a mere 116 of them - each producing more than 100,000 barrels per day - together account for nearly one-half of total global output. Of these, all but a handful were discovered more than a quarter of a century ago, and most are showing signs of diminished capacity. Indeed, some of the world’s largest fields - including Ghawar in Saudi Arabia, Burgan in Kuwait, Cantarell in Mexico, and Samotlor in Russia - appear to be now in decline or about to become so. The decline of these giant fields matters greatly. Compensating for their lost output will take increased yield at thousands of smaller fields, and there is no evidence that this is even remotely possible.

Signs of decline at the major fields began accumulating this spring when Mexico announced that Cantarell’s output had fallen by 416,000 barrels per day, a 25% reduction over its 2007 output. Though state-owned Pemex was able to boost output at a number of other fields, the decline at Cantarell was so significant that Mexico reported a 9% drop in net oil output for the first quarter of 2008 as against 2007. This is an ominous sign from a country that a year ago was America’s second leading supplier of crude petroleum. A similar sign of alarm came this spring from Russia, until recently the rising star of the oil world. Since last October, output there has fallen about 2%, with no hint of a recovery in sight.

The biggest mystery is the status of Ghawar. This Saudi Arabian field, the world’s biggest by far, accounts for about 7% of global supply. Saudi Arabian officials insist that the field is in good shape and fully capable of sustaining daily output of nearly 5 million barrels for years to come. But many skeptical analysts, including noted Houston investor Matthew Simmons, believe that Ghawar is on its last legs and will soon go into decline. In his 2005 book Twilight in the Desert, Simmons cited technical papers to show that field pressure at Ghawar was being artificially maintained through the heavy use of water injection - a technique that cannot be sustained indefinitely and is usually followed by a rapid plunge in output.

Dire Prognosis

To better gauge the status of the world’s largest fields, the International Energy Agency (IEA), an arm of the Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development, is conducting a survey of the top 400 reservoirs. Although the survey is not due to be published until November, early drafts of the report have been leaked in The Wall Street Journal - and the prognosis is not promising. “The world’s premier energy monitor is preparing a sharp downward revision of its oil-supply forecast,” the Journal reported in May, “a shift that reflects deepening pessimism over whether oil companies can keep abreast of booming demand.”

The most troubling finding in the IEA report, according to those who have seen early drafts, is that the rate of depletion in existing fields like Cantarell, Ghawar, and Burgan is far greater than previously thought. In other words, we are running out of known oil reserves at a greater rate than previously assumed. “This is a dangerous situation,” said Fatih Birol, the IEA’s chief economist, in an interview with the Journal.

We could live with the decline of these great reservoirs if we had some confidence that new reserves were being discovered all the time to replace all those now reaching the end of their productive life. But this is not the case. Despite a sharp increase in spending on exploration and development, the rate of new reserve discovery has been falling steadily for the past 30 years. According to the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, the last decade in which new discoveries exceeded the rate of extraction from existing fields was the 1980s. Since then we have been consuming more oil than we have been finding - a pattern that can only result, eventually, in the complete exhaustion of the world’s known petroleum reserves.

Few New Finds

Only one giant field has been discovered in the past 25 years - Kashagan in Kazakhstan’s sector of the Caspian Sea - and it has turned out to be an unmitigated disaster. With estimated reserves of 7-13 billion barrels of oil and natural gas liquids, Kashagan was originally expected to come on line in 2005 at a cost of $50 billion. As a result of environmental hazards, government intervention, and disputes among members of the consortium established to operate the field, it is now scheduled to begin pumping oil in 2011 at the earliest at a minimum cost of $135 billion.

Recently the Brazilian state firm Petrobras has announced an equally large discovery in the deep waters of the Atlantic, some 150 miles off the coast of Rio de Janeiro. Although very promising, the Tupi field will take many years to develop and will require the use of more costly and advanced technology than any now in widespread use.

These new discoveries may add one or two million barrels of oil per day to existing output in 2015 and beyond, but by that point output from existing fields is likely to be considerably lower than it is today. Nobody can predict exactly where combined worldwide production will stand at that time. But more and more analysts are coming to the conclusion that the output of conventional (i.e., liquid) petroleum will peak at about 95 million barrels per day in the 2010-2012 time-frame and then begin an irreversible decline. The addition of a few million added barrels from Kashagan or Tupi will not alter this trend.

There is, of course, much talk about other, “unconventional” sources of oil: untapped reserves in Alaskan wilderness areas and America’s outer continental shelf, Canadian tar sands, Rocky Mountain shale rock.

True, these various prospects - if brought to fruition and putting aside the massive costs and environmental risks involved - could add anywhere from a 750,000 barrels a day (in the case of Alaskan oil) to a few million barrels (in the case of the others) to global energy supplies in the years ahead. But, when all is said and done, none of this can stop the inevitable closing of the Petroleum Age.

End of an Era

Consider: In 2030, according to the U.S. Department of Energy, world “liquids” demand is expected to reach 117.6 million barrels per day. Of this amount, unconventional fuels - synthetic liquids derived from tar sands, shale rock, and biofuels - may provide a total of 10.5 million barrels. That leaves 107.1 million to be supplied by conventional petroleum. But what if global oil output has fallen to 60-70% of that amount by 2030, as projected by many analysts? Under those circumstances, no amount of oil from Alaska or the outer continental shelf will be able to save this country (or the rest of the world) from a catastrophic energy crisis.

Some say that any palliative is worth the expense as we head toward certain disaster. But this is not a logical response. Knowing that the age of petroleum is drawing to a close, it is far better to devote our talents and investment dollars on hastening the arrival of its successor, rather than prolonging the agony of oil’s decline.

At this point, we cannot be absolute certain of the dominant energy source of the post-petroleum era. Will it be the Solar Age or the Biofuels Age or the Hydrogen Age? But we do know that it will revolve around some constellation of renewable, climate-friendly, domestically-produced supplies. From now on, America’s top priority in the energy field must be to explore all potential components of this new energy future and move swiftly to develop those with the greatest promise.

Michael T. Klare is a professor of peace and world security studies at Hampshire College, the author of Rising Powers, Shrinking Planet: The New Geopolitics of Energy (Metropolitan Books, 2008), and a columnist for Foreign Policy In Focus (www.fpif.org). Klare’s previous book, Blood and Oil: The Dangers and Consequences of America’s Growing Dependency on Imported Petroleum has been made into a documentary movie - to order and view a trailer, visit www.bloodandoilmovie.com
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It used to be deer poaching, now rural gangs move into the oil business
Saturday June 28, 2008
by Steven Morris, The Guardian

· Tankers tailed by vans on hunt for red diesel
· Petrol stations installing 'stingers' to stop drive-offs

It may not be quite like the film Mad Max out there, with violent gangs roaming Britain in search of the few remaining drops of fuel, but for farmers like Eddie Cowpe it feels a little bit like it.

He returned to his farm shop in Lancashire recently to find that thieves had emptied his 10,000-litre diesel tank. What they did not take they let drain away on to his stone yard and into the water course, leaving Cowpe facing a bill of almost £70,000 for the fuel lost and the clean-up.

"I said two years ago that this country was going to see serious civil unrest and riots because of food and fuel shortages," said Cowpe. "It's going to come true. It's a frightening scenario. These people are morons and vandals. They just don't care. I don't know where it's going to end."

In the week that Rosemary Dove, a farmer's wife from Co Durham, collapsed and died after an alleged diesel raid, the fuel crisis is hitting farmers, truckers, motorists and householders in the pocket - and making them feel rather less safe.

With oil prices jumping to another record high yesterday to break through the $142 a barrel level, it is likely to become an even more attractive target for thieves.

The latest surge in prices took oil up to $142.26, with Opec predicting that it could soon hit $170 a barrel.

Oil prices have been on an upward trend since the millennium, when they were around $10-20 a barrel. The huge increases have led to gangs of thieves in lorries or vans fitted with drums and pumps roaming the countryside, often tailing tankers so they can be sure of finding freshly topped-up containers.

Petrol stations are even setting up "stingers" that puncture the tyres of motorists who drive off without paying and farmers are getting together to create secure compounds for their fuel.

It is difficult to obtain precise figures to illustrate the extent of the problem. The Association of Chief Police Officers' vehicle crime intelligence service (Avcis), has only started collating the statistics relating to fuel theft in the last two months.

However, Cumbria police said the number of thefts of red diesel, which farmers use in tractors and other agricultural vehicles, had increased in its area by 75% in the first three months of this year. North Wales police said fuel thefts had doubled in six months in some of its areas.

Esure, the insurers, released a survey this week in which they claimed that more than 5 million private motorists - almost one in six - had been the victim of fuel theft or knew someone who had been. It pinpointed East Anglia as a hotspot.

NFU Mutual, which insures many farmers, said claims concerning thefts of red diesel for the first five months of this year were up by 30% on the same period in 2007. It highlighted Co Durham and Cornwall as problem areas.

Richard Dodd, a Northumberland farmer and north-east director of the Countryside Alliance, said: "Three years ago red diesel was 11p a litre and now it's 70p. It has become worthwhile for criminals to target farmers' diesel tanks. There are rich pickings to be had."

While once farmyards were bustling places, changing working practices mean they are often deserted for long periods.

Tim Price, a spokesman for NFU Mutual, said farmers were often hit by a double whammy. After the thieves take what they want, they leave valves open and let fuel leak out. Farmers face a bill for the fuel, which is usually covered by insurance, but also one for cleaning up the mess, which may not be. Cowpe's fuel loss, for instance, amounted to £6,000 - the other £60,000 was to cover the clean-up.

Price said the gangs were undoubtedly organised. Ten years ago, when there was a spike in diesel prices, thieves stole small amounts but today they are draining tanks. They need pumps, vehicles fitted with large containers to whisk the fuel away and a ready market to sell it to.

NFU Mutual has heard of farmers moving their supplies into secure, guarded compounds - but the worry is that thieves will see these mini-depots as even more tempting targets.

Truckers are used to taking precautions to protect their valuable loads but now they are having to try to guard their fuel caps when they are parked.

David Webb, managing director of Cambridgeshire hauliers G Webb, said thieves were parking some distance from targets, prising open diesel tank caps, running long hoses into them and pumping fuel out at their leisure as the driver sleeps.

Depots are also being hit regularly. Webb's company is spending tens of thousands of pounds on protecting its depot and has even redesigned its tipper trucks to make the fuel tank less accessible.

"But we can't stop the thieves. If they are determined enough, they will get through," said Webb.

Then there are the ordinary motorists. Chevrolet driver Alastair Fox, who works for the probation service, was one of seven motorists whose fuel caps were prised off in a car park in the village of Pin Mill, Suffolk. "It's annoying more than anything. It was parked in a car park and you worry that they must be prowling around there." He lost about £20 of fuel and has not even bothered to report the matter to the police.

Many householders, too, who rely on oil for their heating feel someone is watching them.

The web-based oil company BoilerJuice has received dozens of reports of tanks being drained. Again, there is good money to be made - a 1,000-litre tank holds more than £600 of fuel.

One victim, Jon Ward, of West Sussex, has gone to great lengths to stop thieves striking at his tank again. He has three dogs in his garden, has set up security lighting and CCTV and built a fence topped with razor wire. "Let the bastards try it now. Shotgun is also at the ready," he said.

Privately, police forces admit they are struggling. Paul Labotte, head of Avcis, urged drivers to take extra care. But even he said haulage companies and drivers were in an "awkward" position. If they try to secure diesel or petrol tanks they may face a double whammy - the thieves could drill a hole through the tank and the driver will be facing a bill for the fuel and the damage caused.

There have been a few successes. Drive-offs from petrol stations rose by 13% last year, at a cost of £32.5m. Jaginder Singh Mudhar's family had to close down their petrol station in the Midlands because they were so badly hit by drive-offs - so he decided to invent a device to stop it happening to other people.

The Drivestop device, a set of spikes that puncture tyres if someone tries to leave a forecourt without paying, has been installed at 18 sites. Drive-offs at these forecourts have stopped completely.
http://tinyurl.com/43ok27

Rare Iraqi Jewish books 'surface in Israel'
Fri Jun 27, 9:29 AM ET

ERUSALEM (AFP) - Some 300 rare and valuable books confiscated from Iraq's Jewish community by Saddam Hussein's regime have been secretly spirited into Israel, an Israeli newspaper reported on Friday.

The books include a 1487 commentary on the biblical Book of Job and another volume of biblical prophets printed in Venice in 1617, the Haaretz daily said.

The volumes are part of a massive collection of books confiscated by the secret police of the executed Iraqi dictator and stored in security installations in the Iraqi capital until the US-led invasion of 2003.

Many volumes were damaged during the bombing of government buildings in the opening weeks of the war, and after the fall of Baghdad most of the books were sent off to be temporarily stored at the Library of Congress in Washington.

Others however ended up in the hands of private dealers.

"We bought them from thieves," Mordechai Ben-Porat, an Iraqi-born Jew and the founder of Jerusalem's Babylonian Jewry Heritage centre told the newspaper, adding that the foundation paid some 25,000 dollars (16,000 euros).

In the beginning, Ben-Porat sent an emissary to Baghdad who shipped the books directly to Israel, but once the Americans caught wind of his activities they forbade further shipments, forcing him to smuggle the rest, he said.

Iraq once hosted a thriving 2,600 year-old Jewish community that numbered some 130,000 people at the time Israel was created in 1948.

But after Israel came into being and into conflict with its Arab neighbours, Iraqi Jews began to suffer discrimination and were often accused of being agents of the new Jewish state.

By 1952 more than 123,000 had left the country, and 20 years later there were no more than 500 left.

Many more left the country following the 1991 Gulf War and today, after the chaos unleashed by the US-led invasion and the overthrow of Saddam, only some two dozen are believed to remain.
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Bush Fulfills His Grandfather's Dream
June 27, 2008
David Swanson

It's remarkably common for a grandson to take up his grandfather's major project. This occurred to me when I read recently of Thor Heyerdahl's grandson taking up his mission to cross the Pacific on a raft. But what really struck me was the BBC story aired on July 23rd, 2007, documenting President George W. Bush's grandfather's involvement in a 1933 plot to overthrow the U.S. government and install a fascist dictatorship. I knew the story, but had not considered the possibility that the grandson was trying to accomplish what his grandfather had failed to achieve.

Prescott Sheldon Bush (1895 to 1972) attended Yale University and joined the secret society known as Skull and Bones. Prescott is widely reported to have stolen the skull of Native American leader Geronimo. As far as I know, this has not actually been confirmed. In fact, Prescott seems to have had a habit of making things up. He sent letters home from World War I claiming he'd received medals for heroism. After the letters were printed in newspapers, he had to retract his claims.

If this does not yet sound like the life of a George W. Bush ancestor, try this on for size: Prescott Bush's early business efforts tended to fail. He married the daughter of a very rich man named George Herbert Walker (the guy with the compound at Kennebunkport, Maine, that now belongs to the Bush family, and the origin of Dubya's middle initial). Walker installed Prescott Bush as an executive in Thyssen and Flick. From then on, Prescott's business dealings went better, and he entered politics.

Now, the name Thyssen comes from a German named Fritz Thyssen, major financial backer of the rise of Adolph Hitler. Thyssen was referred to in the New York Herald-Tribune as "Hitler's Angel." During the 1930s and early 1940s, and even as late as 1951, Prescott Bush was involved in business dealings with Thyssen, and was inevitably aware of both Thyssen's political activities and the fact that the companies involved were financially benefiting the nation of Germany. In addition, the companies Prescott Bush profited from included one engaged in mining operations in Poland using slave labor from Auschwitz. Two former slave laborers have sued the U.S. government and the heirs of Prescott Bush for $40 billion.

Until the United States entered World War II it was legal for Americans to do business with Germany, but in late 1942 Prescott Bush's businesses interests were seized under the Trading with the Enemy Act. Among those businesses involved was the Hamburg America Lines, for which Prescott Bush served as a manager. A Congressional committee, in a report called the McCormack-Dickstein Report, found that Hamburg America Lines had offered free passage to Germany for journalists willing to write favorably about the Nazis, and had brought Nazi sympathizers to America. (Is this starting to remind anyone of our current president's relationship to the freedom of the press?)

The McCormack-Dickstein Committee was established to investigate a homegrown American fascist plot hatched in 1933. Here's how the BBC promoted its recent story:

"Document uncovers details of a planned coup in the USA in 1933 by right-wing American businessmen. The coup was aimed at toppling President Franklin D Roosevelt with the help of half-a-million war veterans. The plotters, who were alleged to involve some of the most famous families in America, (owners of Heinz, Birds Eye, Goodtea, Maxwell Hse & George Bush´s Grandfather, Prescott) believed that their country should adopt the policies of Hitler and Mussolini to beat the great depression. Mike Thomson investigates why so little is known about this biggest ever peacetime threat to American democracy."

Actually, if you listen to the 30-minute BBC story, there is not one word of so much as speculation as to why this story is so little known. I think a clue to the answer can be found by looking into why this BBC report has not led to any U.S. media outlets picking up the story this week.

The BBC report provides a good account of the basic story. Some of the wealthiest men in America approached Marine Corps Major General Smedley Butler, beloved of many World War I veterans, many of them embittered by the government's treatment of them. Prescott Bush's group asked Butler to lead 500,000 veterans in a take-over of Washington and the White House. Butler refused and recounted the affair to the congressional committee. His account was corroborated in part by a number of witnesses, and the committee concluded that the plot was real. But the names of wealthy backers of the plot were blacked out in the committee's records, and nobody was prosecuted. According to the BBC, President Roosevelt cut a deal. He refrained from prosecuting some of the wealthiest men in America for treason. They agreed to end Wall Street's opposition to the New Deal.

Clearly the lack of accountability in Washington, D.C., did not begin with Nancy Pelosi taking Dubya's impeachment off the table, or with Congress' decision to avoid impeachment for President Ronald Reagan (a decision that arguably played a large role in installing Prescott Bush's son George H.W. Bush as president), or with the failure to investigate the apparent deal that George H.W. Bush and others made with Iran to not release American hostages until Reagan was made president, or with the failure to prosecute Richard Nixon after he resigned. Lack of accountability is a proud tradition in our nation's capital. Or maybe I should say our former nation's capital. I don't recognize the place anymore, and I credit that to George W. Bush's efforts to fulfill his grandfather's dream using far subtler and more effective means than a military coup.

Bush the grandson took office through a highly fraudulent election that he nonetheless lost. The Supreme Court blocked a recount of the vote and installed Dubya.

Prescott's grandson proceeded to weaken or eliminate most of the Bill of Rights in the name of protection from a dark foreign enemy. He even tossed out habeas corpus. The grandson of Prescott, that dreamer of the 1930s, established with very little resistance that the U.S. government can kidnap, detain indefinitely on no charge, torture, and murder. The United States under Prescott Bush's grandson adopted policies that heretofore had been considered only Nazi policies, most strikingly the willingness to openly plan and engage in aggressive wars on other nations.

At the same time, Dubya has accomplished a huge transfer of wealth within the United States from the rest of us to the extremely wealthy. He's also effected a major privatization of public operations, including the military. And he's kept tight control over the media.

Dubya has given himself the power to rewrite all laws with signing statements. He's established that intentionally misleading the Congress about the need for a war is not a crime that carries any penalty. He's given himself the right (just as Hitler did) to open anyone's mail. He's created illegal spying programs and then proposed to legalize them. Prescott would be so proud!

The current President Bush has accomplished much more smoothly than his grandfather could have imagined a feat that was one of the goals of Prescott's gang, namely the elimination of Congress.
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Mobile phones 'more dangerous than smoking'
Sunday, 30 March 2008
By Geoffrey Lean
Brain expert warns of huge rise in tumours and calls on industry to take immediate steps to reduce radiation

Mobile phones could kill far more people than smoking or asbestos, a study by an award-winning cancer expert has concluded. He says people should avoid using them wherever possible and that governments and the mobile phone industry must take "immediate steps" to reduce exposure to their radiation.

The study, by Dr Vini Khurana, is the most devastating indictment yet published of the health risks.

It draws on growing evidence – exclusively reported in the IoS in October – that using handsets for 10 years or more can double the risk of brain cancer. Cancers take at least a decade to develop, invalidating official safety assurances based on earlier studies which included few, if any, people who had used the phones for that long.

Earlier this year, the French government warned against the use of mobile phones, especially by children. Germany also advises its people to minimise handset use, and the European Environment Agency has called for exposures to be reduced.

Professor Khurana – a top neurosurgeon who has received 14 awards over the past 16 years, has published more than three dozen scientific papers – reviewed more than 100 studies on the effects of mobile phones. He has put the results on a brain surgery website, and a paper based on the research is currently being peer-reviewed for publication in a scientific journal.

He admits that mobiles can save lives in emergencies, but concludes that "there is a significant and increasing body of evidence for a link between mobile phone usage and certain brain tumours". He believes this will be "definitively proven" in the next decade.

Noting that malignant brain tumours represent "a life-ending diagnosis", he adds: "We are currently experiencing a reactively unchecked and dangerous situation." He fears that "unless the industry and governments take immediate and decisive steps", the incidence of malignant brain tumours and associated death rate will be observed to rise globally within a decade from now, by which time it may be far too late to intervene medically.

"It is anticipated that this danger has far broader public health ramifications than asbestos and smoking," says Professor Khurana, who told the IoS his assessment is partly based on the fact that three billion people now use the phones worldwide, three times as many as smoke. Smoking kills some five million worldwide each year, and exposure to asbestos is responsible for as many deaths in Britain as road accidents.

Late last week, the Mobile Operators Association dismissed Khurana's study as "a selective discussion of scientific literature by one individual". It believes he "does not present a balanced analysis" of the published science, and "reaches opposite conclusions to the WHO and more than 30 other independent expert scientific reviews".
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Barclays warns of a financial storm as Federal Reserve's credibility crumbles
28/06/200


US central bank accused of unleashing an inflation shock that will rock financial markets, reports Ambrose Evans-Pritchard

Barclays Capital has advised clients to batten down the hatches for a worldwide financial storm, warning that the US Federal Reserve has allowed the inflation genie out of the bottle and let its credibility fall "below zero".

"We're in a nasty environment," said Tim Bond, the bank's chief equity strategist. "There is an inflation shock underway. This is going to be very negative for financial assets. We are going into tortoise mood and are retreating into our shell. Investors will do well if they can preserve their wealth."

Barclays Capital said in its closely-watched Global Outlook that US headline inflation would hit 5.5pc by August and the Fed will have to raise interest rates six times by the end of next year to prevent a wage-spiral. If it hesitates, the bond markets will take matters into their own hands. "This is the first test for central banks in 30 years and they have fluffed it. They have zero credibility, and the Fed is negative if that's possible. It has lost all credibility," said Mr Bond.

The grim verdict on Ben Bernanke's Fed was underscored by the markets yesterday as the dollar fell against the euro following the bank's dovish policy statement on Wednesday.

Traders said the Fed seemed to be rowing back from rate rises. The effect was to propel oil to $138 a barrel, confirming its role as a sort of "anti-dollar" and as a market reproach to Washington's easy-money policies.

The Fed's stimulus is being transmitted to the 45-odd countries linked to the dollar around world. The result is surging commodity prices. Global inflation has jumped from 3.2pc to 5pc over the last year.

Mr Bond said the emerging world is now on the cusp of a serious crisis. "Inflation is out of control in Asia. Vietnam has already blown up. The policy response is to shoot the messenger, like the developed central banks in the late 1960s and 1970s," he said.

"They will have to slam on the brakes. There is going to be a deep global recession over the next three years as policy-makers try to get inflation back in the box."

Barclays Capital recommends outright "short" positions on Asian bonds, warning that yields could jump 200 to 300 basis points. The currencies of trade-deficit states like India should be sold. The US yield curve is likely to "steepen" with a vengeance, causing a bloodbath for bond holders.

David Woo, the bank's currency chief, said the Fed's policy of benign neglect towards the dollar had been stymied by oil, which is now eating deep into the country's standard of living. "The world has changed all of a sudden. The market is going to push the Fed into a tightening stance," he said.

The bank said the full damage from the global banking crisis would take another year to unfold.

Rob McAdie, Barclays' credit strategist, said: "The core issues have not been addressed. We're still in a very large deleveraging cycle and we're seeing losses continue to mount. We think smaller banks will struggle to raise capital. We're very bearish - in the long-term - on high-yield debt. The default rate will reach 8pc to 9pc next year."

He said investors had taken their eye off the slow-motion disaster engulfing the US bond insurers or "monolines". Together these firms guarantee $170bn of structured credit and $1,000bn of US municipal bonds.

The two leaders - MBIA and Ambac - have already been downgraded as the rating agencies belatedly turn stringent. The risk is further downgrades could set off a fresh wave of bank troubles. "The creditworthiness of many US financial institutions will decline in coming months," he said.

The bank warned that engineering and auto firms we're likely to face a crunch as steel and oil costs surge. "Their business models will have to be substantially altered if they are going to survive," said Mr McAdie.

A small chorus of City bankers dissent from the view that inflation is the chief danger in the US and other rich OECD countries. The teams at Société Générale, Dresdner Kleinwort, and Banque AIG all warn that deflation may loom as housing markets crumble under record levels of household debt.

Bernard Connolly, global startegist at Banque AIG, said inflation targeting by central banks had become a "totemism that threatens to crush the world economy".

He said it would be madness to throw millions out of work by deflating part of the economy to offset a rise in imported fuel and food prices. Real wages are being squeezed by oil, come what may. It may be healthier for society to let it happen gently.
http://tinyurl.com/3tjerw

The Big Outcome of the '60s: The Triumph of Capitalism
Posted June 27, 2008
By Slavoj Zizek, In These Times

After the social tumult of the '60s capitalism usurped resistance itself, turning attempts at subversion into commodities.

In 1968 Paris, one of the best-known graffiti messages on the city's walls was "Structures do not walk on the streets!" In other words, the massive student and workers demonstrations of '68 could not be explained in the terms of structuralism, as determined by the structural changes in society, as in Saussurean structuralism. French psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan's response was that this, precisely, is what happened in '68: structures did descend onto the streets. The visible explosive events on the streets were, ultimately, the result of a structural imbalance.

There are good reasons for Lacan's skeptical view. As French scholars Luc Boltanski and Eve Chiapello noted in 1999's The New Spirit of Capitalism, from the '70s onward, a new form of capitalism emerged.

Capitalism abandoned the hierarchical Fordist structure of the production process -- which, named after auto maker Henry Ford, enforced a hierarchical and centralized chain of command -- and developed a network-based form of organization that accounted for employee initiative and autonomy in the workplace. As a result, we get networks with a multitude of participants, organizing work in teams or by projects, intent on customer satisfaction and public welfare, or worrying about ecology.

In this way, capitalism usurped the left's rhetoric of worker self-management, turning it from an anti-capitalist slogan to a capitalist one. It was Socialism that was conservative, hierarchic and administrative.

The anti-capitalist protests of the '60s supplemented the traditional critique of socioeconomic exploitation with a new cultural critique: alienation of everyday life, commodification of consumption, inauthenticity of a mass society in which we "wear masks" and suffer sexual and other oppressions.

The new capitalism triumphantly appropriated this anti-hierarchical rhetoric of '68, presenting itself as a successful libertarian revolt against the oppressive social organizations of corporate capitalism and "really existing" socialism. This new libertarian spirit is epitomized by dressed-down "cool" capitalists such as Microsoft's Bill Gates and the founders of Ben & Jerry's ice cream.

What survived of the sexual liberation of the '60s was the tolerant hedonism readily incorporated into our hegemonic ideology. Today, sexual enjoyment is not only permitted, it is ordained -- individuals feel guilty if they are not able to enjoy it. The drive to radical forms of enjoyment (through sexual experiments and drugs or other trance-inducing means) arose at a precise political moment: when "the spirit of '68" had exhausted its political potential.

At this critical point in the mid-'70s, we witnessed a direct, brutal push-toward-the-Real, which assumed three main forms: first, the search for extreme forms of sexual enjoyment; second, the turn toward the Real of an inner experience (Oriental mysticism); and, finally, the rise of leftist political terrorism (Red Army Faction in Germany, Red Brigades in Italy, etc.).

Leftist political terror operated under the belief that, in an epoch in which the masses are totally immersed in capitalist ideological sleep, the standard critique of ideology is no longer operative. Only a resort to the raw Real of direct violence could awaken them.

What these three options share is the withdrawal from concrete socio-political engagement, and we feel the consequences of this withdrawal from engagement today.

Autumn 2005's suburb riots in France saw thousands of cars burning and a major outburst of public violence. But what struck the eye was the absence of any positive utopian vision among protesters. If May '68 was a revolt with a utopian vision, the 2005 revolt was an outburst with no pretense to vision.

Here's proof of the common aphorism that we live in a post-ideological era: The protesters in the Paris suburbs made no particular demands. There was only an insistence on recognition, based on a vague, non-articulated resentment.

The fact that there was no program in the burning of Paris suburbs tells us that we inhabit a universe in which, though it celebrates itself as a society of choice, the only option available to the enforced democratic consensus is the explosion of (self-)destructive violence.

Recall here Lacan's challenge to the protesting students in '68: "As revolutionaries, you are hysterics who demand a new master. You will get one."

And we did get one -- in the guise of the post-modern "permissive" master whose domination is all the stronger for being less visible.

While many undoubtedly positive changes accompanied this passage -- such as new freedoms and access to positions of power for women -- one should nonetheless raise hard questions: Was this passage from one "spirit of capitalism" to another really all that happened in '68? Was all the drunken enthusiasm of freedom just a means to replacing one form of domination with another?

Things are not so simple. While '68 was gloriously appropriated by the dominant culture as an explosion of sexual freedom and anti-hierarchic creativity, France's Nicholas Sarkozy said in his 2007 presidential campaign that his great task is to make France finally get over '68.

So, what we have is "their" and "our" May '68. In today's ideological memory, "our" basic idea of the May demonstrations -- the link between students' protests and workers' strikes -- is forgotten.

If we look at our predicament with the eyes of '68, we should remember that, at its core, '68 was a rejection of the liberal-capitalist system, a "NO" to the totality of it.

It is easy to make fun of political economist Francis Fukuyama's notion of the "end of history," of his claim that, in liberal capitalism, we found the best possible social system. But today, the majority is Fukuyamaist. Liberal-democratic capitalism is accepted as the finally found formula for the best of all possible worlds, all that is left to do is render it more just, tolerant, etc.

When Marco Cicala, an Italian journalist, recently used the word "capitalism" in an article for the Italian daily La Repubblica, his editor asked him if the use of this term was necessary and could he not replace it with a synonym like "economy"?

What better proof of capitalism's triumph in the last three decades than the disappearance of the very term "capitalism"? So, again, the only true question today is: Do we endorse this naturalization of capitalism, or does today's global capitalism contain contradictions strong enough to prevent its indefinite reproduction?

There are (at least) four such antagonisms: the looming threat of ecological catastrophe; the inappropriateness of private property rights for so-called "intellectual property"; the socio-ethical implications of new techno-scientific developments (especially in biogenetics); and, last but not least, new forms of apartheid, in the form of new walls and slums.

The first three antagonisms concern the domains of what political theorists Michael Hardt and Toni Negri call "commons" -- the shared substance of our social being whose privatization is a violent act that should be resisted with violent means, if necessary (violence against private property, that is).

The commons of external nature are threatened by pollution and exploitation (from oil to forests and natural habitat itself); the commons of internal nature (the biogenetic inheritance of humanity) are threatened by technological interference; and the commons of culture -- the socialized forms of "cognitive" capital, primarily language, our means of communication and education, but also the shared infrastructure of public transport, electricity, post, etc. -- are privatized for profit. (If Bill Gates were to be allowed a monopoly, we would have reached the absurd situation in which a private individual would have owned the software texture of our basic network of communication.)

We are gradually becoming aware of the destructive potential, up to the self-annihilation of humanity itself, that could be unleashed if the capitalist logic of enclosing these commons is allowed a free run.

Economist Nicholas Stern rightly characterized the climate crisis as "the greatest market failure in human history."

There is an increasing awareness that we need global environmental citizenship, a political space to address climate change as a matter of common concern of all humanity.

One should give weight to the terms "global citizenship" and "common concern." Doesn't this desire to establish a global political organization and engagement that will neutralize and channel market forces mean that we are in need of a properly communist perspective? The need to protect the "commons" justifies the resuscitation of the notion of Communism: It enables us to see the ongoing "enclosure" of our commons as a process of proletarization of those who are thereby excluded from their own substance.

It is, however, only the antagonism between the Included and the Excluded that properly justifies the term Communism. In slums around the world, we are witnessing the fast growth of a population outside state control, living in conditions outside the law, in terrible need of minimal forms of self-organization. Although marginalized laborers, redundant civil servants and ex-peasants make up this population, they are not simply a redundant surplus: They are incorporated into the global economy, many working as informal wage workers or self-employed entrepreneurs, with no adequate health or social security coverage. (The main source of their rise is the inclusion of the Third World countries in the global economy, with cheap food imports from the First World countries ruining local agriculture.) These new slum dwellers are not an unfortunate accident, but a necessary product of the innermost logic of global capitalism.

Whoever lives in the favelas -- or shanty towns -- of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, or in Shanghai, China, is not essentially different from someone who lives in the banlieues -- or outskirts -- of Paris or the ghettos of Chicago.

If the principal task of the 19th century's emancipatory politics was to break the monopoly of the bourgeois liberals by politicizing the working class, and if the task of the 20th century was to politically awaken the immense rural population of Asia and Africa, the principal task of the 21st century is to politicize -- organize and discipline -- the "destructured masses" of slum-dwellers.

If we ignore this problem of the Excluded, all other antagonisms lose their subversive edge.

Ecology turns into a problem of sustainable development. Intellectual property turns into a complex legal challenge. Biogenetics becomes an ethical issue. Corporations -- like Whole Foods and Starbucks -- enjoy favor among liberals even though they engage in anti-union activities; they just sell products with a progressive spin.

You buy coffee made with beans bought at above fair-market value.

You drive a hybrid vehicle.

You buy from companies that provide good benefits for their customers (according to corporation's standards).

In short, without the antagonism between the Included and the Excluded, we may well find ourselves in a world in which Bill Gates is the greatest humanitarian fighting poverty and diseases, and NewCorp's Rupert Murdoch the greatest environmentalist mobilizing hundreds of millions through his media empire.

In contrast to the classic image of proletarians who have "nothing to lose but their chains," we are thus ALL in danger of losing ALL. The risk is that we will be reduced to abstract empty Cartesian subjects deprived of substantial content, dispossessed of symbolic substance, our genetic base manipulated, vegetating in an unlivable environment.

These triple threats to our being make all of us potential proletarians. And the only way to prevent actually becoming one is to act preventively.

The true legacy of '68 is best encapsulated in the formula Soyons realistes, demandons l'impossible! (Let's be realists, demand the impossible.)

Today's utopia is the belief that the existing global system can reproduce itself indefinitely. The only way to be realistic is to envision what, within the coordinates of this system, cannot but appear as impossible.
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Historian Reveals the Double Life of “The Great Beast 666”
June 17, 2008

MOSCOW, Idaho – Aleister Crowley (1875-1947), known as “the Great Beast 666,” is most widely remembered as a practitioner of black magic and the father of modern occultism.

His hideous reputation lives on, and has grown. In 2002, the British Broadcasting Company (BBC) conducted a poll on the 100 most influential Britons of all time. Crowley came in at number 73.

Crowley has been the subject of several biographies, but none that investigate his alleged connection to British Intelligence.

“That notion was dismissed by most biographers as idle boasting,” said Richard Spence, professor and chair of the University of Idaho's Department of History. His recently published book, "Secret Agent 666: Aleister Crowley, British Intelligence and th