Global warming? We’re on top of it!

Posted by: beq | Aug 27 2004 19:05 utc | 3

Teacher Punished for Showing Abu Ghraib Photos in Class The truth is verboten! All ‘lessons’ must be filtered through the Ministry! Seig Heil mein Fuher!

Posted by: Uncle $cam | Aug 27 2004 22:53 utc | 5

as all the reports including fay make clear is the american army is a production line of col. kurtz’s
the madness, the utter madness of american culture is perverting what were once saintlier cultures whether it was in latin america, south east asia & now in the middle east
what walt disney, johnny carson, leave it to beaver, father knows best & the last fifty years of pornography that they call family entertainment has created men & women who cannot tell good from evil. in any sense. they themselves as the waffen ss before them – are eveil incarnate – because fundamentally the other is a subhuman & the subhuman does not matter
& it is not so strange because america itself to its own has mainted this barbaric edge – if you are a loser or if ytou are outside the paradims of ‘success’ – you are vermin or worse than vermin – you are not even considered
& this absence of humanity has a name & it has an ideology & it obviouslly has a practice & this practice is beiong played out before our eyes
& next month it will be played out in iran, i suppose, i would not be surprised – there are clearly no limits to the level of debasement of the empire
beautiful article by john berger in common dreams on the beauty of the anger of michael moore on the site – common dreams
as wilhelm reich sd to get through to eros we have to go though the death instinct
still steel

Posted by: remembereringgiap | Aug 27 2004 23:28 utc | 7

@Uncle $cam:
You weren’t really surprised by that, were you?
@remembereringgiap:
Nice to see you back here.
@RossK:
Ditto above.

Posted by: Anonymous | Aug 27 2004 23:50 utc | 9

@UncleScam
double ditto.
(does that mean we’ve lost our heads?)

Posted by: RossK | Aug 28 2004 0:00 utc | 11

Seriously though, I think I am approaching a place were I might be willing to consider that this stooge story is nothing but a SpInversion to innoculate against the charge that the PentaGogues actually actively sought out AIPAC input….
Regarding this….Uncle $cam wasn’t there a story awhile back about the complete relaxation of secuity and monitoring during visits by a certain state’s officials to the Pentagon…

Posted by: RossK | Aug 28 2004 0:40 utc | 13

Thanks TG….
So are there any heavyweights in the SCLM looking for comments from Ms. Kwiatowski right now?

Posted by: RossK | Aug 28 2004 0:55 utc | 15

CNN tonight naming Wolfowitz and Feith as associates of the unnamed “the israeli spy” …
amazing to see these tidbits come out … esp just before the RNC – someone wants an interesting news cycle heading to NYC

Posted by: Siun | Aug 28 2004 3:18 utc | 17

The Goddamn entire Bush regime is one gigantic security breach. To the Hague!

Posted by: uncle $cam | Aug 28 2004 3:57 utc | 19

Shoot Uncle,
Wow! somebody sure gave an almost unlimited hangout to the New Pravda….I think alabama may be right re: the invisible hand moving towards the collective hyoid bone…don’t know who the character is specifically, but sure smells like somebody associated with whoever ran Ledeen the first time around.

Posted by: RossK | Aug 28 2004 4:04 utc | 21

@ U$
Could this be it????
Three items from William Bowles’ original October Surprise Cache….
Item #1
“October 29-30, 1980 – Richard V. Allen and George Bush meet in Paris, France with a representative of Iranian Mohammad Beheshti, a key member of Iran’s Hostage Policy Committee (other key members were Rafsanjani and Khomeini’s son). Bush and Allen give Beheshti’s representative bribe money to delay release of the 52 hostages until after the 1980 election (ie. to make sure Carter would not win).”
Item #2
” Why did Oliver North’s friend, Donald Gregg, an assistant in Democratic President Carter’s National Security Council staff, accompany the alleged mission of Republican George Bush to Paris in October 1980? Isn’t it curious that Gregg is now (in 1988) Vice President George Bush’s national security advisor? “
Item#3
“…The former CIA operative, West Coast arms dealer Richard J. Brenneke, testified that he was present at meetings in Paris on Oct. 19, 1980, attended by Bush and then-Reagan campaign chairman William Casey, who became Reagan’s CIA director.
Brenneke testified that others at the meeting were Donald Gregg, who later became Bush’s national security adviser; Richard Allen, national security adviser to Reagan; a representative of Hashemi Rafsanjani, one of Khomeini’s lieutenants and later speaker of the Iranian Parliament; arms dealer Cyrus Hashemi; Manucher Ghorbanifar, an Iranian citizen with ties to the prime minister’s office; and Robert Banes, of France.”
If this is what the leak to the NYT is referring to, somebody could be going for the whole ball of wax…..

Posted by: RossK | Aug 28 2004 4:48 utc | 23

Ross K
If you’d read the links between your fevered speculations….

Posted by: Anonymous | Aug 28 2004 5:25 utc | 25

thanks Pat…
Was going too fast….

Posted by: RossK | Aug 28 2004 5:39 utc | 27

OK….
I’ve taken off that aluminum-lined, cast-iron head gear now…..and boy, was it heavy…..
From the NYT piece:
“…The secret meetings were first held in Rome in December 2001, were approved by senior Pentagon officials and were originally brokered by Michael Ledeen, a conservative analyst at the Washington-based American Enterprise Institute who has a longstanding interest in Iranian affairs.”
Sorry all for getting carried away, but at least my initial intuition re: Ledeen was on the money…and regardless, it does truly appear to be the same old gang….
Atrios has fingered Harold Rhode or Larry Franklin in Feith’s office based on this:
“…In a NEWSWEEK interview in Paris last month, Ghorbanifar, a former Iranian spy who helped launch the Iran-contra affair, says one of the things he discussed with Defense officials Harold Rhode and Larry Franklin at meetings in Rome in December 2001 (and in Paris last June with only Rhode) was regime change in Iran.”
Whew! Glad that fever broke…

Posted by: RossK | Aug 28 2004 7:27 utc | 29

If it is Franklin, they can pretend all they want that it is not important because he wasn’t in a position to influence policy but that is a red herring because of this (from b’s WaPo link above):
“….the case is likely to attract intense attention because the official being investigated works under William J. Luti, deputy undersecretary of defense for Near East and South Asian Affairs. Luti oversaw the Pentagon’s “Office of Special Plans,” which conducted some early policy work for the 2003 invasion of Iraq.”
If it gets play, they’re doomed I tell ya, doomed…

Posted by: RossK | Aug 28 2004 7:57 utc | 31

Argentina End US Domination
Police fire to disperse anti-U.S. protesters in Kashmir
6,000 in Athens protest U.S. Iraq policy
Powell Cancels Greece Visit Amid Protests
Proposal to replace US troops in Iraq with Muslims stalls
British envoys under siege in Basra
Five killed, 32 wounded in US airstrikes in Fallujah
U.S. Battles Militants in Baghdad Slum

Posted by: b | Aug 28 2004 11:25 utc | 33

Thanks, Jerome, for the corrections and additional information regarding Prager’s assessment.
I considered adding a “Jerome could weigh in” note at the end of the exerpt, but figured you’d be by sooner or later to comment on it.

Posted by: Pat | Aug 28 2004 13:57 utc | 35

I have to agree with Uncle $cam in that I too am amazed that the spy story is in the mainstream media.
Might be a red herring to distract us from some other stuff like the buildup of protests to the Republican Convention in New York.
Even though the Washington Post suspects Franklin, I noticed that Rhode was a strong supporter of Chalabi. Could it be that he (Rhode) is getting paid back for his arrogance by the CIA who wanted their guy Allawi in power?
It would give me a warm feeling to know that Rhode and Pollard are sharing a cell, it would be even nicer if that cell were in Guantanamo where they rightly deserve to be.

Posted by: Dan of Steele | Aug 28 2004 15:06 utc | 37

why leak to AIPAC when you have strong (and openly) pro-Likudniks framing US policy at the very top of the administration?
Posted by: Jérôme | August 28, 2004 10:37 AM
Because the AIPAC members involved made good conduits of sensitive information.
Because the proposed policy toward Iran contained details disappointing or disturbing to some.
Because the passed information would provide
opportunity for counteraction on the other end.
Speculation on my part.

Posted by: Pat | Aug 28 2004 16:09 utc | 39

this leads to an equal and opposite burden of omniscience
upon those at the top, in the eye of the pyramid. All that is
forbidden to those at the bottom-the conscious activities of
perception and evaluation-is demanded of the Power Elite, the
master class. They must attempt to do the seeing, hearing,
smelling, etc. and all the thinking and evaluating for the whole
pyramid.
But a man with a gun (the power to punish) is told only what
the target thinks will not cause him to pull the trigger (write the
pink slip, order the court-martial). The elite, with their burden of
omniscience, face the underlings, with their burden of nescience,
and receive only the feedback consistent with their own preconceived
notions and reality-tunnels. The burden of omniscience
becomes, over time, another and more complex burden of
nescience. Nobody really knows anything anymore, or if they do,
they are careful to hide the fact. The burden of nescience
becomes omnipresent. More and more of sensory experience
becomes unspeakable.
As Paul Watzlawick notes, that which is objectively repressed
(unspeakable) soon becomes subjectively repressed (unthinkable).
Nobody likes to feel like a coward and a liar constantly. It
is easier to cease to notice where the official tunnel-reality
differs from existential fact. Thus SNAFU accelerates and rigiditus
bureaucraticus sets in-the last stage before all brain activity
ceases and the pyramid is clinically dead as an intellectual entity.
We also propose that “national security” is another semantic
spook, an Empedoclean knot; that the search for national security
Prometheus Rising 243
is the chief cause of national insecurity and a potent anti-intelligence
mechanism.
As Leary writes:
Secrecy is the original sin. Fig leaf in the Garden of Eden. The
basic crime against love… The purpose of life is to receive,
synthesize and transmit energy. Communication fusion is the
goal of life. Any star can tell you that. Communication is love.
Secrecy, withholding the signal, hoarding, hiding, covering up
the light is motivated by shame and fear.
As so often happens, the right wing is half right for the
wrong reasons. They say primly: if you have done nothing
wrong, you have no fear of being bugged. Exactly. But the
logic goes both ways. Then FBI files, CIA dossiers, White
House conversations should be open to all. Let everything
hang open. Let government be totally visible. The last, the
very last people to hide their actions should be the police and
the government.
What my eminent colleague states so poetically can be stated
more functionally as follows:
Every secret police agency must be monitored by an elite
corps or secret-police-of-the-second-order. This is because
(a) infiltration of the secret police, for purposes of subversion,
will always be a prime goal of both internal subversives and
hostile foreign powers and (b) secret police agencies acquire
fantastic capacities to blackmail and intimidate others, in and out
of government. Stalin executed three chiefs of the secret police
in a row because of this danger. As Nixon so wistfully said in a
Watergate transcript,
Well, Hoover performed. He would have fought. That was the
point. He would have defied a few people. He would have
scared them to death. He had a file on everybody. [Italics
added.]
Thus, those who employ secret police agencies must monitor
them, to be sure they are not acquiring too much power.
Here a sinister infinite regress enters the game. Any elite
second order police must be, also, subject to infiltration, or to
acquiring “too much power” in the opinion of its masters. And so
it, too, must be monitored, by a secret-police-of-the-third-order.
244 Prometheus Rising
In brief, once a government has n orders of secret police
spying on each other, all are potentially suspect, and to be safe, a
secret police of order n plus 1 must be created. And so on,
forever.
In practice, of course, this cannot regress to mathematical
infinity, but only to the point where every citizen is spying on
every other citizen or until the funding runs out.
National Security, in practice, must always fall short of the
logically Empedoclean infinite regress it requires for perfect
“security.” In that gap between the ideal of “One Nation under
surveillance with wire taps and urine tests for all,” and the
strictly limited real situation of finite resources and finite funding,
there is ample encouragement for paranoias of all sorts to
flourish, both among the citizens and among the police.
THE BURDEN OF OMNISCIENCE
or: Why you can’t reach the Court
or the Castle in Kafka’s allegories
Thus, the USSR after 62 years of Marxist secret police games
reached the point where the alpha males were terrified of painters
and poets.
Prometheus Rising 245
In spying-and-hiding transactions, worry leads to more worry
and suspicion leads to more suspicion. The very act of participating,
however unwillingly, in the secret police game-even as
victim, or citizen being monitored-will eventually produce all
the classic symptoms of clinical paranoia.
The agent knows who he is spying on, hut he never knows who
is spying on him. Could it be his wife, his mistress, his secretary,
the newsboy, the Good Humor man?
If there is a secret police at all, in any nation, every branch
and department of government, and institutions which are not
even admitted to be parts of government, becomes suspect in the
eves of cautious and intelligent people as a possible front for, or
tunnel to, the secret police. That is, the more shrewd will recognize
that something bearing the label of HEW or even International
Silicon and Pencil might actually be the CIA or NSA in
disguise.
In such a deception network, conspiracy theories proliferate.
Rumor is necessary, it has been found, when people cannot find
“official” news sources that can be trusted to tell them what is
really going on. The present author, having worked in the civil
rights movement, the anti-war movement, the legalize-pot
movement and other dissident causes, has repeatedly been
approached by friend A with dire warnings that friend B is
almost certainly a secret police agent, only to be told later and
independently by friend C that friend A is a secret police agent.
It requires delicate neurological know-how to keep one’s sense
of humor in the secret police matrix.
The more omnipresent the secret police, the more likely it is
that intelligent men and women will regard the government with
fear and loathing.
The government, on discovering that growing numbers of
citizens regard it with fear and loathing, will increase the size
and powers of the secret police, to protect itself.
The infinite regress again appears.

Posted by: Uncle $cam | Aug 28 2004 17:51 utc | 41

@ uncle
an so the media would call this “group think”
the 40 billion $ intelligence monolith, that does
not realize that ground shaking, ear shattering,
90 mile an hour freight train with its head light
blinding the eyes
is on the same track as us
uncle, you made my day, thanks for that!

Posted by: anna missed | Aug 28 2004 18:54 utc | 43

The scene is almost illegible. Why, for example, do we know the names of sixty or seventy neo-cons in high places, but the names of only six or seven of their antagonists? The antagonists don’t make the news. Either they don’t exist, or they’re thoroughly schooled in the arts of invisibility. I’m inclined to support the latter hypothesis, if only because the State Department and CIA learned, during the McCarthy era, that survival depended on being invisible (I watched them “vanish” with my very own eyes). Something like this is happening with the Bush campaign: now that they’ve decided to go centrist–Rove would have figured this out a month ago–they put it out to the NYTimes that he, Bush, is running the campaign! So I don’t expect to see or hear the name of “Rove” for the next eight weeks–just the names of Hughes, and Card, and Bush, folks who don’t know the first thing about polling or focus-group testing (but of course I’m just guessing here, because the scene is almost illegible).

Posted by: alabama | Aug 28 2004 19:32 utc | 45

Ops, Sorry mate

Posted by: Cloned Poster | Aug 28 2004 20:10 utc | 47

(T)he U.S. finds itself fighting a two-front war, one front against the Shi’ite Mahdi Army, the other against the Sunnis in Anbar Province. The U.S. Marine Corps has blanked out the news from that front, but the reported toll of Marine casualties seems to be rising.
Some news on the Anbar front in tomorrows NYT In Western Iraq, Fundamentalists Hold U.S. Forces at Bay
Fallujah and Ramadi are enemy territory. The governement has not a bit of control. Some cruel details how the fundamentalists kill governers and US spies. Some thoughts of US commanders to flatten Falluja.

Both of the cities, Falluja and Ramadi, and much of Anbar Province, are now controlled by fundamentalist militias, with American troops confined mainly to heavily protected forts on the desert’s edge. What little influence the Americans have is asserted through wary forays in armored vehicles, and by laser-guided bombs that obliterate enemy safe houses identified by scouts who penetrate militant ranks. Even bombing raids appear to strengthen the fundamentalists, who blame the Americans for scores of civilian deaths.
…
American commanders confess they have no answers in Anbar, and say their strategy is to curb the militants’ ability to project their violence farther afield, especially in Baghdad, only 35 miles east of Falluja.
…
But leaving the militants in control could pose a disabling threat to American political plans, which may already have been shaken more than American officials will admit by events in Najaf. Top American officials say that events there, with Moktada al-Sadr’s militiamen finally driven from the Imam Ali shrine, have set the stage for a turn in American fortunes across the Shiite heartland of Iraq. But even there the prospects seem deeply clouded by the failure to effectively disarm Mr. Sadr’s surviving fighters as they left the shrine with shouldered rifles and donkey carts loaded with rockets…

No word on Samarra which was mentioned elswhere as also being out of control.

Posted by: b | Aug 28 2004 21:15 utc | 49

On the spy case Franklin for Israel, Laura at “War and Piece” has the broadest information: The FBI investigation

Posted by: b | Aug 28 2004 22:05 utc | 51

icasualties.org
Casualties in Iraq

Posted by: b | Aug 28 2004 23:50 utc | 53

In yeserday’s edition of the Forum (forum.com):
Forward Forum
An Unwavering Commitment To Reforming the Middle East
By John Kerry
August 27, 2004
@alabama, RossK
This isn’t the Great Un-Doing of the Neoconservative Cabal, nor is it a part of the Great Un-Doing. They’re smart operators and they do know the law.
Either Franklin is a dirt-dumb cowboy who poses a serious danger to their cause (which I doubt) or there’s far less to this story than initially reported.

Posted by: Pat | Aug 29 2004 3:04 utc | 55

Pakistan Losing Grip on Extremists
Attacks on Officials Linked to Al Qaeda
By John Lancaster and Kamran Khan
Washington Post Foreign Service
Sunday, August 29, 2004; Page A01
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — A recent series of assassination attempts on high-level officials here is the result of a growing and deadly alliance between Pakistani extremists and second-rung al Qaeda operatives from Arab countries and Central Asia who use the border area with Afghanistan as a refuge, according to senior Pakistani intelligence sources.
The development is a disquieting one, foreign diplomats said, because it suggests that Pakistan’s security services may be losing control over home-grown militants they once embraced as allies, first in the struggle against the Soviets in Afghanistan and more recently against Indian forces in Kashmir.
An attack on Lt. Gen. Ahsan Saleem Hayat, a top military commander, on June 10 was conducted by Pakistani assailants who later confessed they had been trained in small arms, explosives and conducting ambushes at an al Qaeda camp in Pakistan’s rugged tribal region of South Waziristan, near the Afghan border, according to two senior intelligence officials.
The gunmen identified their instructors as Uzbeks and Arabs.
The Pakistani extremists, disguised in military-style uniforms, attacked Hayat as they waited in a stolen van in the port city of Karachi near a bridge frequented by military officials, then opened up with machine guns on his motorcade.
Hayat survived the carefully planned ambush, but 11 others were killed, including his driver. The assailants were quickly identified and rounded up, traced through a cell phone left at the scene, authorities said.
Pakistani officials said they believed that foreign al Qaeda operatives working with Pakistani militants were also behind two attempts to kill Gen. Pervez Musharraf, Pakistan’s president, in December.
The same combination, they said, may have carried out the July 30 assassination attempt against Shaukat Aziz, then the finance minister, who became prime minister on Saturday…

Posted by: Pat | Aug 29 2004 4:32 utc | 57

Pat, the neo-cons are very smart indeed, but they’ve also alienated a few people, and so I expect to see them decapitated in the near term. Or more precisely, I know that I WANT to see them decapitated in the near term–and so I’m bound at the least to find out how much my “thinking” is based on desire….You, as a practiced interrogator, would certainly find out rather quickly whatever I had to offer–of this I’m pretty confident….And I also recall having bet some $500 last New Year’s Eve that Howard Dean would win the election by 70 electoral votes: my conviction on that particular point was truly unshakeable….

Posted by: alabama | Aug 29 2004 5:17 utc | 59

Susan, how did you access the Iran-Contra II article. I only receive an error message that the page can not be found and can not find it when I go directly to the Washington Monthly.

Posted by: Fran | Aug 29 2004 6:27 utc | 61

Right you certainly are, Fran–upside-down is the thing. So I pick up tomorrow’s NYT and WaPo, and what should I find there but lots of worried, wrathful Republicans, and a back-pedalling Karl Rove who talks about leaving the White House after November ….Since we have to come up with a reading, no matter how wrong it may be, I’ll volunteer the following: since Rove’s own numbers are showing that Bush will lose in November, the only game left to play is to limit the Party’s damage–no losing of the Senate, please, and hold on to all those House seats! Bush himself will be toxic for lots of candidates, so he’ll probably run on his lonesome….McCain’s been a very good boy, so he’ll get the nod for the election in 2008.

Posted by: alabama | Aug 29 2004 7:23 utc | 63

Hey Alabama, Rove et al will are being fitted for orange suits for the big house and they know it. Rove could be planning a quick getaway to an extradition free zone. The question is will he leave before or after the election.
And another question, all this stuff (Israel spies, Iranian spies, Plame, Edmonds, 9/11 “official story” falling apart, Iraq quagmire, Abu Ghraib, Halliburton, Bush AWOL, ect., ect., ect.) seems to be coming to a head, so will the Bush implosion happen before the election? and if so who is the republican running in bushes place? Since Illinois can put a candidate that isn’t a resident of the state on its’ ballot for senator, it seems to me that the logical thing for them to do is outsource their choice for president, so which foreigner would the republicans replace bush with?

Posted by: sukabi | Aug 29 2004 8:13 utc | 65

Iraq:
‘Peaceful Options Not Exhausted’

Iraq’s top Shiite authority yesterday said peaceful options for resisting US-led presence in the country were not exhausted yet. The announcement was made after a meeting at the house of Grand Ayatollah Ali Husseini Al-Sistani in Najaf.
The meeting of the group known as the Marjaiya came a day after armed followers of Moqtada Sadr vacated the Imam Ali Mosque.
“A main concern of the Marjaiya since the beginning has been for the government and the police to take control of the city and establish the rule of law,” a spokesman for Grand Ayatollah Bashir Al-Najafi said.
“We are not out of peaceful solutions yet to end the occupation. But when we are, no more words will be spoken, and armed struggle will become a possibility,” warned spokesman Sheikh Ali Najafi.

When their will be no election in Iraq in January – and I do not expect one – the Marjaiya will decide to take up arms.

Posted by: b | Aug 29 2004 14:14 utc | 67

Well, sukabi, since I’d like to see Mexico annex Texas–or, more precisely, that part of Texas that was recently annexed by the Republican Party–I’d urge the Republicans to outsource their Illinois senate candidacy to Vicente Fox….Dual citizenship in Illinois and Mexico–wouldn’t this help make the governing of a newly-annexed Texas just a little more manageable? It could help Fox abolish the death penalty, for example….

Posted by: alabama | Aug 29 2004 15:27 utc | 69

Sovereign government in Iraq

In Baghdad’s volatile Shiite neighborhood of Sadr City, the American military met for five hours with representatives of the rebellious cleric Moktada al-Sadr today, searching for peace in a zone where the cleric’s ragged army remains well armed, entrenched and defiant.
…
[The] Baghdad representative of Mr. Sadr, .. said he was scheduled to hold more talks tonight with officials of the interim Iraqi government.

U.S. Military Makes Peace Effort in Volatile Section of Baghdad

Posted by: b | Aug 29 2004 21:01 utc | 71

From Defense and the Naional Interest (d-n-i.net)
The Sanders Hypothesis:
Will War Offset the Deteriorating Financial Position of the United States?????
August 27, 2004
Comment# 522
Discussion Threads – Comments: #518 & 519
——————————————————————————–
The welfare of future generations in the United States is threatened by growing financial imbalances and associated indebtedness. The twin deficits—the federal budget and our national balance of payments—reflect a breakdown in our political and economic processes and perhaps even the social contracts that glue our society together.
The worsening federal budget deficit reflects a failure to choose, and since politics is about choice, the federal deficit is a manifestation of political failure. Left unchecked, this political failure will eventually cause politicians to renege on the current social contracts between the generations, like Medicare and Social Security, as well as other government services that are now expected. The growing trade deficit reflects a deeper breakdown in the larger political economy of the entire nation, manifesting itself most directly in the ongoing shift from an economy that produces real goods to some sort of finance-based (flim-flam Ponzi?) economy that figures out how to import more manufactured goods (and maybe eventually services) than it exports on a permanent basis. No one knows where this ongoing transformation will take the United States, or what it means for the private as well as governmental social contracts binding this nation together.
In the attached article, my friend Chris Sanders, an international banker based in London, posits one theory about a possible evolutionary pathway of this transformation. He argues the United States, in effect, is choosing to take the easy way out of its problems by going to war (and by implication using the tragedy of 9-11 as a political pretext for this policy). The Sanders hypothesis boiled down its essentials: the United States does not produce enough of what the world wants (goods and services), so it going to war to monopolize control of what the world needs (i.e., the supply of oil). If true, this is a formula for perpetual war.
I hope that the Sanders Hypothesis will be disproved by events, but the attached report on the US trade deficit explains the reasons why he posits this view. Agree or not, it merits careful consideration.

Posted by: Pat | Aug 30 2004 16:11 utc | 73

Sorry about the length of the exerpt. From “Force Size and Strategy,” by AEI’s Thomas Donnelly (aei.org/publications):
…China regards the “global war on terrorism as creating a ‘strategic window of opportunity’ for China.” The new American “focus on counterterrorism has reduced perceived U.S. ‘pressure’ on and ‘containment’ of China, opening opportunities to strengthen internal security and create a more favorable situation along the periphery.”[10] At the same time, American actions, particularly those resulting from the invasion of Afghanistan, have created new problems:
China’s leaders appear to have concluded that the net effect of the U.S.-led campaign has been further encirclement of China, specifically by placing U.S. military forces in Central Asia, strengthening U.S. defense relations with Pakistan, India, and Japan, and returning the U.S. military to Southeast Asia. . . . Because of these perceptions of Washington’s strategy and presence Beijing believes U.S. intervention in conflict scenarios involving China . . . is increasingly likely.[11]
Thus China’s strategic horizons have been expanded by the events of the last several years. Beijing now thinks in terms of its “greater periphery,” encompassing Central Asia and the Middle East. Its goals include “maintaining access to natural resources and markets, and pursuing a ‘counter-containment’ strategy by establishing a regional presence and influence to balance and compete with the United States.”[12]
The most notable feature of this new turn in Chinese strategy is Beijing’s increasing interest and presence in the greater Middle East. Energy security is becoming a central concern as China’s economy continues to grow and industrialize. China is now the world’s second largest energy consumer and third largest net oil importer, more and more dependent on outside sources of supply. As the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission reported to Congress in June, “this dependency influences China’s energy and national security policies. China has a growing sense of insecurity because of increased dependence on tanker-delivered Middle East oil via sea lanes, including the Straits of Malacca and Hormuz, controlled by the U.S. Navy.”[13]
Energy shortages are a paramount concern for Beijing, which is already having to ration its electric power supply, slowing the manufacturing economy and threatening overall economic growth, which the ruling Chinese Communist Party regards as key to retaining power and ensuring domestic peace. Thus Beijing takes a strategic view to securing its energy supplies, the exact inverse of U.S. energy policy. Moreover, the problem will be exacerbated with time; China’s share of world oil consumption is projected to grow significantly, with consumption doubling and perhaps tripling by 2010.[14] Thus, China is planning to create a strategic petroleum reserve, is pursuing a variety of pipeline deals with Central Asian states-investments that are difficult to justify economically absent very high per-barrel oil prices-and, most ominously, pursue “non-market reciprocity deals with Iran, Sudan, and other states of concern, including arms sales and WMD-related technology transfers that pose security challenges to the United States.”[15]
In keeping with its political and strategic view, Beijing has an autarkic energy policy, “focused on owning the import oil at the production source.” This has the effect of creating strategic partnerships between China and those states that supply it with oil. The United States, by contrast, takes a market-driven approach to energy, and its security policies, particularly toward the oil states of the Persian Gulf and the greater Middle East, have sought to maintain influence from a distance. Thus, as Energy Department official James Caverly bluntly puts it: “geopolitically, this could soon bring the United States and Chinese energy interests into conflict. Both countries will be in the Persian Gulf for oil.”[16]

Posted by: Pat | Aug 30 2004 16:35 utc | 75

Did that guy ever look into a mirror?
The US does not take a strategic view to securing its energy supplies?
The US in ME sought to maintain influence from a distance?
China will need the access to energy to be able to feed it´s people and to prevent internal wars -or worse- a breakup. The will risk a lot to succed with this.

Posted by: b | Aug 30 2004 17:33 utc | 77

Perhaps someone can tell me: Is it necessary for the US government to be involved, at any step of the way, in the resource exploitation undertaken by US corporations in foreign countries?

Posted by: Pat | Aug 30 2004 19:58 utc | 79

Pat, is it necessary for US corporations to be involved, at any step of the way, in resource exploitation in foreign countries?

Posted by: alabama | Aug 30 2004 20:25 utc | 81

@Pat –
corporations -> polticians: money
politicians -> electorate: promises
electorate -> politicians: government
government -> corporations: support
corporations -> polticians: money
not necessity, but unforunatly reality
at least this should be corrected:
NYT OpEd Abolish the Electoral College

George Bush became president even though he lost the popular vote to Al Gore by more than 500,000 votes. Many people realized then for the first time that we have a system in which the president is chosen not by the voters themselves, but by 538 electors. It’s a ridiculous setup, which thwarts the will of the majority,…

Posted by: b | Aug 30 2004 20:39 utc | 83

@Dan of Steele
No, it’s not a trick question.

Posted by: Pat | Aug 30 2004 22:54 utc | 85

If Hoffmania is right, seems as if the goalpost still is to high. His take of the first day at the RNC, nobody seems to be eager to jump.
The Elephant and Pony Show

Posted by: Fran | Aug 31 2004 4:40 utc | 87

@Fran:
Enjoyed both posts, esp. the last:
Hesiod’s a powerful writer.
Thanks

Posted by: Anonymous | Aug 31 2004 6:53 utc | 89