Touring Israel’s Barrier With Its Main Designer
~Snip

Tirza supports the route in no small part because he, more than anyone else, drew it.
“The main thing the government told me in giving me the job was to include as many Israelis inside the fence and leave as many Palestinians outside,” Tirza said in an interview. “The idea was to do it with balance.”
Tirza, a Jewish settler who believes Israel has a historic right to the land between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River, drew the barrier along a route that effectively annexes 10 percent of the West Bank. In the absence of a peace agreement, the course cements the territorial claims of tens of thousands of Jewish settlers, including Tirza’s.

Posted by: Bea | Aug 8 2007 13:32 utc | 4

…and thanks for the blogroll b, except maybe the last 2.

Posted by: beq | Aug 8 2007 15:21 utc | 6

First thanks for including Gorilla’s Guides. We will at some point get around to reciprocating I promise. Also I’m delighted to see you’ve got Main And Central on your list. It is IMO one of the best blogs around – written by someone with a fair amount of military experience under his belt. An intelligent lefty vet with compassion who could ask for more?
May I suggest a news service:
News Now it’s the one we use. The link is to its homepage. Using the drop down boxes you can rapidly get the latest news crawled from a huge variety of sources on a huge variety of topics. Maybe the “regions” drop down will be of especial use to those who would like to monitor coverage of various countries. Such as Iraq or … pick the region/land that interests you such as Kashmir. Fair warning – it can be quite addictive.
MVH
du

Posted by: Dubhaltach | Aug 8 2007 15:54 utc | 8

catlady
the talk is on video at google & its interesting – in that the real fatigue that we sometimes feel here is expressed on his face
also the book, as usual is fabulous – especially the harsh critique of the anc’s historical comprimise

Posted by: remembereringgiap | Aug 8 2007 17:45 utc | 10

from New Yorker, Aug. 6, “Still Small Voice: the Fiction of Robert Walser”
pour rgiap, avec un baiser:

In later years years, stung by his failure to be taken seriously as a writer, Walser claimed that the ingenuousness was just an act: “My vocation, my mission, consists mainly in making every effort to keep my audience believing that I am truly simple. I give them the illusion that unspoiledness and naïveté still exist.” But it can be hard to tell. When Walser met Lenin in Zurich, during the war, all he had to say was “So you, too, like fruitcake?”

I was really drawn to B. Kunkel’s portrait of Walser, and Walser’s notion of smallness as an answer to power.

Posted by: catlady | Aug 8 2007 20:55 utc | 12

grab youself a stiff one and sit down…
Evidence related to the Duke Cunningham-MZM CIA contracting scandal was heard this morning in extraordinary secrecy by a panel of 6th Circuit Court of Appeals Judges in Pasedena. See, Cunningham Bribery – Foggo (CIA)-MZM Cases Linked to Saudi Slush Fund Scandal

The extreme secrecy is highly unusual. Veteran lawyers could not remember another time when the appeals court held a completely closed hearing.
The subjects to be discussed are transcripts and documents related to the February guilty plea of Thomas Kontogiannis, a New York developer who admitted to a single count of money laundering in the Cunningham case. Kontogiannis’ checkered past includes convictions for bribery and bid-rigging, an estimated $70 million fortune, and a knack for staying out of prison.

The reason this is being kept under wraps that is Greece, like Turkey, has been buying GOP Congressmen and CIA officials . . . with Saudi money, as part of an enormous multinational arms and political influence buying scheme being operated by the Saudi Royal Family in several western countries, particularly focused on the US and UK.
Thomas Kontogiannis’ motives in bribing Cunningham has long been obscure. A month ago, it finally came out that Kontogiannis’ interest in the matter was arms transfers to his native Greece. According to details that have slowly trickled out of the case, the Saudis are lurking in the background of this, apparently as bankers for the deal.
Mr. Kontogiannis was acting as an agent for the Greek military, which we are now told was seeking backroom business with General Dynamics and other U.S. defense contractors. See, Disgraced former U.S. Rep. Duke Cunningham details kickbacks in FBI interviews.
The lure of Saudi money appears to be key to these bribery and intelligence scandals, which also connects to the Valerie Plame mega-scandal and falsification of Iraq WMD intelligence by San Diego-based defense contractor, MZM.
This is just another side of the same scandal that snared Dennis Hastert, Jerry Lewis, and several dozen other Republican big-wigs and ranking members of various committees, along with the CIA #2, Dusty Foggo. This appears to be part of the American tie-in to the monster scandal in the UK involving BAE, a big British (and US) defense contractor, the Saudi Royal family, and an $80 billion slush fund, Yamamah (“The Dove”, rhymes with “Ya mama”), which has been buying western politicians and intelligence services since the mid-1970s.
In 1976, CIA Director George Herbert Walker Bush first entered into an illegal deal with Saudi Intelligence Chief, Prince al-Turki, to continue covert Agency operations banned by Congress in exchange for Saudi money. In 1982, he was picked as Reagan’s running mate, and, using Saudi funding, went on run a series of notorious “rogue” intelligence operations out of the Office of the Vice President. See, The Saudi Prince’s Secret: Bush, Sr. Sold-Out CIA to Build Pakistan A-Bomb
This has been an ongoing conspiracy. Today, it also touches on the scandal surrounding the sudden firing early this year of US Attorney Carol Lam, who was forced out by AG Gonzales just two days after the arrest on February 13 of Dusty Foggo, chief lieutenant to CIA Director Porter Goss. Eight days later, Kontogiannis cut a deal with prosecutors in the Cunningham case, and was offered an unusually light sentence for his role in bribing the Congressman.
TPM Muckraker has been on-top of this story. Consider this Josh Marshall column from last March about Kontogianni and the connections which had then first emerged about MZM owner Mitchell Wade, and his partner, Brent Wilkes, have with corrupt elements of US intelligence and the Saudi Royals: here

03.09.06 — 4:53PM // link
Another piece of the puzzle.
Remember Thomas Kontogiannis? He’s the larger than life twice-convicted Greek-born real estate developer who is better known in Duke Cunningham’s plea agreement as co-conspirator #3.
If you look through the Duke files, Kontogiannis’ role was mainly as a pass through for large sums of money. Yes, he gave bribes and of course he was involved in a boat transaction with Duke. But in the Cunningham corruption club that was almost a rite of passage. Now, from the records, one of things that Kontogiannis wanted from Duke was some help trying to beat the rap (and later get a pardon for) a bid-rigging scandal back in New York. And for a long time I’d always sort of figured that Brent Wilkes and Mitchell Wade were the real players in this story, with Kontogiannis just added in for comic relief and — as someone who controlled a mortgage company — someone who could easily move money around.
But I’m hearing it may not be that simple. Consider this. Mitch Wade was in naval intelligence before he left to work in the fraud and public corruption sector. Brent Wilkes — and we’re going to be hearing a lot more about this — was deep into the darker regions of the intel world. Both of their scams were the same, plying the government contracting biz deep in the classified realm where scrutiny and oversight is minimal at best.
Now you have the third player Thomas Kontogiannis (#4 was Kontogiannis’ nephew. So I’ll consider him an extension of his uncle.). Given the background and habits of the other two, is this guy really just a real estate developer from Long Island? Consider this passage from a piece in the San Diego Union-Tribune that I excerpted back in November …
In a previously undisclosed link between Cunningham and Kontogiannis, the developer accompanied the congressman to Saudi Arabia last year. A Saudi-American businessman flew Cunningham to Saudi Arabia twice last year aboard a private jet. On the second trip, the jet stopped in Athens to pick up Kontogiannis, a native of Greece with businesses interests in several countries. Ziyad Abduljawad, founder and chairman of San Diego-based PLC Land Co., paid for Cunningham’s two trips to Saudi Arabia, each at a cost of more than $10,000. Cunningham has described Abduljawad as an acquaintance who shares his interest in improving U.S.-Saudi relations.
SNIP
It was unclear who paid for Kontogiannis’ trip.
SNIP
Just how did Kontogiannis get into the mix with Wilkes and Wade? What’s Kontogiannis’s real line of work?

Justin Rood fills in the answer to that last question, : here:

Cunningham, Felon Met With Saudi Crown Prince
By Justin Rood – April 17, 2006, 1:06 PM Over the weekend, a new profile by Copley News Service added to our understanding of former GOP Rep. Randy “Duke” Cunningham’s “Co-conspirator #3,” the mysterious Thomas Kontogiannis. Today, we can add a bit more. Recall that Kontogiannis bribed Cunningham through purchasing a yacht from the congressman — and paying several hundred thousand dollars more than it was worth. His finance company also handled some of Cunningham’s questionable mortgages. But reporters and investigators have struggled to understand what Kontogiannis was getting from Duke for all the money he spent on the lawmaker. The latest theory seems to be that Duke was introducing him to world leaders. As Copley reports:
Cunningham “introduced him to people. It was like he had a congressman on retainer,” added.
The Copley story notes that he twice accompanied Cunningham to the White House, and kept a picture of himself meeting President Bush in his house. Now, TPMmuckraker has learned he apparently met the man who would shortly become king of Saudi Arabia. It’s been known that Kontogiannis, a wealthy businessman and two-time felon, in 2004 accompanied Cunningham and a Saudi constituent, San Diego real estate mogul Ziyad Abduljawad, to Saudi Arabia. Rep. Ken Calvert (R-CA) also went. Abduljawad paid for the trip. Until now, we haven’t known much about the trip — who the group met with, why, what they talked about. Cunningham is said to have gone in order to promote U.S.-Saudi ties, or some other such pap. Beyond that, we’ve had nothing. I called Calvert last week to ask him more about the trip. (He’s the only one of the crew who’s talking these days: Cunningham’s in the pen, Abduljawad declined an interview, Tommy K’s lawyer doesn’t return calls.) Calvert’s memory wasn’t perfect, but he had some details to share. The group met with Saudi Crown Prince Abdullah — then the de facto ruler of Saudi Arabia, and now its king. Kontogiannis was at the meeting, Calvert recalled, although “he didn’t say anything, as I remember,” the lawmaker told me. Copley now tells us its sources say Tommy K’s purpose “appeared to center on an oil business he owned in Europe.” That’s not much to go on. The group also met with “ministers of various government institutions within Saudi Arabia,” Calvert said. He recalled Kontogiannis being present for “some” of those meetings. As for what was discussed, Calvert recalled only that a number of the ministers pressed Cunningham to help ease post-9/11 restrictions on student visas for Saudis. With Abdullah, Calvert said the discussion was “primarily social,” and “trying to build a better relationship with the United States.” Now a U.S. citizen, Kontogiannis is worth about $70 million, Copley reporter Joe Cantlupe tells us. He spent over $300,000 on Cunningham. “What Kontogiannis, 59, got from the relationship with Cunningham remains unclear,” Cantlupe writes, but notes that the businessman visited the White House twice with the Duke. And now we know they visited the Saudi crown prince together also. Was that it? He bought Cunningham — a well-positioned but hardly towering member of the U.S. House — to meet world leaders?

Bottom-line: MZM-Cunningham appears to be part of the American side to the monster scandal involving multi-billion dollar kickbacks from defense contractors to the Saudi Royal family, which has been in turn buying western politicians and intelligence officials for decades.
Over the years, the Yamamah slush fund has bankrolled a series of Saudi black operations from Pakistan’s nuclear program, to the BCCI rip-off, to the Iran-Contra operation, to the creation of al-Qaeda and political influence buying in the US and UK by various factions of the Royal family.
Every time the US and Britain puts together an arms deal with the Saudis, and now with third-countries such as Turkey and Greece, the overpricing and kickbacks funds a black program, often inside the US and Britain.
All the above and better formatted via here.

Posted by: Uncle $cam | Aug 9 2007 0:04 utc | 14

Another suggestion, perhaps in the Mother Jones grouping:
http://www.theatlantic.com
Too many of their articles are subscriber-only, but you can sometimes catch something good that is posted in full.
Also http://www.aldaily.com though their links took an odd right turn a couple years ago and I stopped checking after a while.

Posted by: mats | Aug 9 2007 2:13 utc | 16

Kuwait Energy sees big oil, gas potential in Somalia

DUBAI, Aug 8 (Reuters) – Kuwait Energy Company is assisting the development of Somalia’s oil and gas sector and has high hopes for the country’s future production, KEC’s chief executive Sara Akbar told Reuters on Wednesday.
KEC has a preliminary agreement with Somalia to take a 49-percent stake in a newly-formed state petroleum firm with Indonesia’s PT Medco Energy Internasional Tbk , Akbar said in a telephone interview.
“I hope we will be able to assist Somalia to become a big oil and gas producer,” she said. It was too early to say what the country’s potential output was, she said.
Under the terms of the preliminary agreement, KEC also helped draw up the oil law and has also provided technical assistance and training, she said.
The oil law sets up a framework for production sharing agreements between international oil companies and the newly-formed state company, she said.
She declined to say how the 49 percent stake in the state oil company would be divided between KEC and Medco and what investment each would make.
Details would not be finalised until the oil law was agreed by parliament, Akbar said. The law was expected to be debated this week.
…
Akbar said she is a personal friend of Somali Prime Minister Ali Gedi.
…
KEC is a small independent oil and gas exploration and production company founded in 2005. It is targeting production of 50,000 barrels of oil equivalent per day (boepd) by 2010, from 1,971 boepd at the end of last year.
The company has operations in Kuwait, Egypt, Oman, Yemen, Russia and Cambodia.
KEC is one of several small private oil and gas companies that have sprung up in the Gulf Arab region eyeing potential opportunities both within the region and internationally.
They are part of a wider wave of acquisitions among Gulf Arab investors flush with cash as economies boom on record oil prices. Regional investors acquired more than $40 billion in foreign assets in the first half of 2007.
KEC is 40 percent-owned by Kuwait’s Global Investment House, Akbar said. Aref Investment Group owns 37 percent. A Chicago-based company owns 15 percent and the rest is with small shareholders, Akbar added.

May 15, 2007: Kuwait’s Global Investment House Seeks To Raise $1.5B

Kuwait-based Global Investment House is seeking to raise $1.5 billion to make investments in the Middle East and North Africa, according to a person at the firm. The fund was officially launched May 14.
For the first time, the firm will market to foreign investors, due to investment diversification benefits, a rapidly growing population in the area and the tremendous need in the region for growth capital. The person said that JP Morgan and Bear Stearns have already signed on to make commitments.
The person added that Washington-based Carlyle Group has asked to co-invest in deals that Global Investment House will do in the region.

Posted by: b real | Aug 9 2007 3:48 utc | 18

British Criticize U.S. Air Attacks in Afghan Region

A senior British commander in southern Afghanistan said in recent weeks that he had asked that American Special Forces leave his area of operations because the high level of civilian casualties they had caused was making it difficult to win over local people.
Other British officers here in Helmand Province, speaking on condition of anonymity, criticized American Special Forces for causing most of the civilian deaths and injuries in their area. They also expressed concerns that the Americans’ extensive use of air power was turning the people against the foreign presence as British forces were trying to solidify recent gains against the Taliban.
…
In just two cases, airstrikes killed 31 nomads west of Kandahar in November last year and another 57 villagers, half of them women and children, in western Afghanistan in April. In both cases, United States Special Forces were responsible for calling in the airstrikes.
…
A civilian NATO from Kabul added, “The problem is Afghans are waking up and thinking: ‘Why are they doing this?’ ”
…
“The Americans are killing and destroying a village just in pursuit of one person,” said Mahmadullah, 24, referring to Osama bin Laden. “So now we have understood that the Americans are a curse on us, and they are here just to destroy Afghanistan. They can tell the difference between men and women, children and animals, but they are just killing everyone.”
A trained mullah from the village of Kutaizi, half an hour from Sangin, Mahmadullah reacted with sarcasm to the idea that reconstruction and assistance could change the minds of the people.
“First they kill me, and then they rebuild my house?” he said. “What is the point when I am dead and my son is dead? This is not of any worth to us.”

Posted by: b | Aug 9 2007 6:10 utc | 20

Robin Wright is sniffing something in the air about an attack on Iran:
In the Debate Over Iran, More Calls for a Tougher U.S. Stance

Fourteen months after Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice offered to talk to Iran, the failure of carrot-and-stick diplomacy to block Tehran’s nuclear and regional ambitions is producing a new drumbeat for bolder action, including the possible use of force.
The emerging debate — evident in an array of new reports, conferences and commentaries — is still in the early stages, but some of the language urging the Bush administration to be more aggressive during its final 17 months is reminiscent of arguments from think tanks and commentators that shaped the case for invading Iraq.
…
“Discussions about attacking Iran began with the nuclear issue, but it has now become a silver bullet to also deal with Iran’s activities with Iraq, Syria, Hezbollah and Hamas, and even to provoke a process of regime change,” said Augustus Richard Norton, a retired Army colonel now at Boston University.

A possible timetable has emerged as well. “The consensus I’m hearing is to give the [U.N.] Security Council process more time but not unlimited time, and, at some point in the spring of 2008, there has to be a good hard look at whether that process should continue and whether other options should then be considered,” said Kenneth Katzman, a Middle East expert for the Congressional Research Service.

Posted by: b | Aug 9 2007 7:21 utc | 22

Iraqi Kurds, in an apparent “screw you” gesture to the vacationing central government in Baghdad, pass their own hydrocarbons law, PSAs and all.

Yesterday, in a nudge to their counterparts in Baghdad who have taken a summer break, the Kurdish parliament in Irbil passed its own petroleum law. It has also listed 40 exploration blocs in the Kurdistan region it is putting out for tender.
“We do not want to be hobbled by the political paralysis in Baghdad,” said Mr Hawrami. “We believe that the production-sharing agreements are the best way to move swiftly forward and help not just the Kurds but all Iraqis.” The operations at Taq Taq and Tawke are based on controversial production-sharing agreements signed with the Kurdistan regional government, under which the private companies get between 10%-20% of the profit. The rest goes into government hands.
Such production-sharing agreements are anathema to much of Iraq’s oil establishment, as well as to the country’s oil unions. The unions, which are strongest in the southern oilfields around Basra, have also rounded on the Iraqi oil minister, Hussein Shahristani, threatening to disrupt production and exports if foreign oil companies are granted too much access to Iraqi oil. In response, Mr Shahristani has ordered his ministry’s agencies and departments not to deal with the unions.

Posted by: Bea | Aug 9 2007 9:38 utc | 24

Await :http://wikileaks.org/mirror/static/w/i/k/Wikileaks.html

Posted by: curious | Aug 9 2007 17:02 utc | 26

“Left Behind : Eternal Forces” Game To Go To US Troops In Iraq, Afghanistan
cool.

Posted by: beq | Aug 9 2007 17:33 utc | 28

Wiliam Pfaff, longtime IHT colomnist, remarks:

Is there a real difference between the foreign policy views of the two leaders in the Democratic presidential campaign and those of George W. Bush? Or is there is single American attitude towards the world, and fundamentally a bi-partisan policy? Political blackmail plays a part in this, of course: dissent from the common policy is open to attack as unpatriotic. But there is more to it than that.
…
Did Obama misspeak? Probably not. He would have been told by his advisers that attack and invasion are the strong and manly things to do, thus countering any implication of weakness in talking to rogue states.
The proposal that American forces intervene in territory where even Pakistani forces are reluctant to operate, against what would unquestionably be the united opposition of the Pathan population of the Tribal Territories, who have apparently accorded Osama bin Ladin their hospitality and protection (and who have ruled this region without effective challenge since at least the third century B.C.), is so absurd as to make one think that Obama and his advisers are mad. But such is the way Washington thinks, especially when grazing on the locoweed of presidential politics.
…
Invading Pakistan presumably was not an idea originated by the likable and idealistic Chicago community organizer and former Illinois state senator. It is the kind of thing he and other politicians are told to say by the supposed policy experts of the cross-party Washington political class, for whom the world is a playground for American arms and action cinema. In their game, anything, however irresponsible, can be said, or done, to sway a vote in the Iowa primary.

Greenwald

The Foreign Policy Community — our establishment “scholars” — were almost unanimously supportive of George Bush’s invasion, worked themselves into a lather over Saddam’s WMDs and mushroom clouds over U.S. cities, stayed silent in the face of obvious Bush abuses and excesses, embraced the most manipulative and fictitious neoconservative doctrines, and they still continuously issue all sorts of theoretical constructs to justify America’s increasingly militaristic and imperial role.

There is no real dispute within it about the most fundamental foreign policy questions we face (which is why the “liberal” Brookings Institutional “scholars” are so pro-war and work so cooperatively with the neoconservative AEI). And they not only have a monopoly over deciding who is Serious and who is not, but also in declaring which issues are off-limits from real debate. The foreign policy disasters of the last six years, at least, are their doing.

As Powers points out, the Foreign Policy Community has proven itself to be reckless, irresponsible and deeply unserious. These “scholars” have lost the right to judge anyone or to declare anyone else unserious. It is long past time to aggressively challenge their most precious orthodoxies.

Posted by: b | Aug 9 2007 19:05 utc | 30

A billing error: Whoops, a $265 million mistake

Lockheed Martin Aeronautics Co. says it discovered that it has overcharged the U.S. government by $265 million for work on the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter program and will promptly refund the money with interest.
In a statement released this morning the Fort Worth-based company said it had recently discovered “an inadvertent billing error.” Actually, it appears to be the same error over and over. The company had erroneously billed the government in each of the 11 billing periods since the F-35 program launched in late 2001.

Posted by: b | Aug 9 2007 22:09 utc | 32

the enemies of venezueala

Posted by: remembereringgiap | Aug 9 2007 22:40 utc | 34

ever since 2003 we have been witnesses to the horror that is the hundreds of hadithas.
the prosecution of this war has been murderous, intentionally murderous & crimes that were perhaps ‘exceptional’ have become commonplace
the bombings of fallujah & tal afar & all the towns bordering on syria have one & sole intent – murder.
it is as jorg friederich points out in his book ‘the fire’ on bomber commands terror bombing of germany – a campaign where the whole project is to aneantir the populatiuon, to destroy their will, to make them supplicant before force & power
it is in no sense ‘military’ tho it necessarily becomes it because from each murderous incident are borne the future members of the resistance & from that resistance – the accumulated lessons of a people & their culture & their land are turned against the enemy.
u s imperialism can go on & on in this campaign of terror but it is patently obvious that there is a historic cohesion to the national resistance. how else could it be so. the people, after all know who the enemy is & in this wars prosecution it is the people of iraq who have drawn the lessons
mr petraeus the warrior hero in the mold of nietzsche has faile like every commander before him because all he commands dissapears into thin air. there are no policy makers who can clean his underpants & he cannot be their crutch – tho the media will do its level best to make him a crutch – come septemeber – we will have little biopics of the great general & hos thoughtfullness – how he ‘knows’ the enemy, how he just needs a little more time but he will be like the fools in central command in vietnam who did not know the first thing either about the people the culture or the terrain which becomes the strategy
& that is beyond the western mind – that these cultures create their strategy from conditions – they possess a flexibility that the elaphantine u s force cannot even hope to match
whatever they learn at georgetown or at the citadel or at west point – will be no good for them or for their servant soldiers who day by day become perpetrators
perpetrators who become mass killers like those at haditha – who far from being an exception are the rule. their – go, go, go, go – is about the only coherent words they comprehend
but where will they go – they will go further & further into the sanstorms where they like other colonial armies will dissapear along with the ideas of old & stupid men who brought them to that impasse

Posted by: remembereringgiap | Aug 10 2007 0:45 utc | 36

& i dont know what it is that they teach at sandhurst but it certainly isn’t strategy – the absolute incompetence & the coming catastrophe – what is happening in basra is a disaster they could have learnt from a few history books
& beq there is a film of this conference on googlevideo

Posted by: remembereringgiap | Aug 10 2007 1:24 utc | 38

r’giap@36,
i hear you loud & clear
and if I live for a thousand years, its not nearly long enough to forget this outrage.

Posted by: jony_b_cool | Aug 10 2007 2:53 utc | 40

Foreign investment flocks to Ethiopia’s petroleum, mining sectors

August 9, 2007 (ADDIS ABABA) — Foreign investment from all corners of the world as well as joint ventures with local companies is flourishing in Ethiopia’s petroleum and mining sectors, said a cabinet minister Thursday.
To date, some 66 mineral operational licenses have been issued by the Ministry of Mines and Energy and two of the licenses are prospecting, while the remaining 38 and 26 were exploration and mining licenses, respectively, said Alemayehu Tegenu, minister of mines and energy.
The licenses were granted to 42 private companies engaged in large-scale mining operations, 14 of which are foreign, 21 are joint ventures, and seven local, Alemayehu said at a symposium on the petroleum and mining sectors.
Petroleum exploration is currently underway in the regions of Gambella, Ogaden, Southern Rift and Abay Basins, he said.
…
Alemayehu said his ministry is making all efforts to attract more foreign investors in the petroleum and mining sectors during the new Ethiopian millennium.
…
Though Ethiopia’s minerals and oil industry has reported the existence of a wide range of minerals and petroleum throughout the country, the government had authorized little exploration. Thus, there are no reliable estimates of the extent of mineral and petroleum resources.

Nigerian Militant Group MEND Vows New Oil Attacks

The main Nigerian militant group behind a wave of attacks on energy facilities and abductions of foreign oil workers vowed Thursday to renew attacks on oil pipelines in coming weeks and said it had still not held talks with the country’s new government.
The Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta, or MEND, hasn’t launched any assaults on energy facilities in three months as it said it would give Nigeria’s new government time to come up with a plan to address the deep-rooted poverty and social problems in the country’s Niger Delta, where most of Nigeria’s oil is produced.
…
“We will resume our attacks at the end of this month with greater ferocity,” MEND said in an e-mail response to Dow Jones Newswires, without elaborating. “Before then however, we will give the oil industry a reminder of some sort.”
“We are not in talks with the Nigerian government,” said the group through its representative who goes by the pseudonym Jomo Gbomo and who communicates with the media by e-mail.
MEND also pledged to continue its long-running tactic of abducting foreign oil workers in Nigeria, Africa’s biggest oil producer and a big source of crude for U.S. and European markets. “We will never stop hostage taking until we achieve our goal,” Gbomo said. More than 200 foreigners have been kidnapped since late 2005 by MEND and other militant groups and also by criminal gangs since late 2005.
Nearly all of the workers, most of whom are employees or contractors working for companies like Royal Dutch Shell PLC (RDSA), have been later released for ransom payments.
…
In a sign of the internecine conflict within the Delta, MEND’s Gbomo said the group had broken ranks several weeks ago with Mujahid Dokubo-Asari, an ethnic Ijaw leader whom MEND had only recently been demanding be released from prison.
Asari, who was put in jail in late 2005 on treason charges, was released from prison by the new government in June and then took up negotiations with the Yar’Adua government. He also called on his group, the Niger Delta People’s Volunteer Force, to lay down their arms. These moves by Asari caused MEND’s rupture with him, Gbomo said.
The rift underscores that even if the government manages to achieve peace with some groups in the Delta, other groups like MEND are likely to continue to foment violence against the country’s energy sector in their effort to gain more control of oil resources.

Posted by: b real | Aug 10 2007 4:50 utc | 42

U$: best laugh I’ve had all day. All hail YHVH.

Posted by: catlady | Aug 10 2007 5:06 utc | 44

W/the economy beginning to hit the bottom of the tank the Elite plotted to plunge it into in the Great Counter-Reformation they began in the early 70’s, it’s damn reassuring that the country is at least The Greatest Military Power in the history of the world… Oh, it can’t control the capital of a country w/no military, after 5 yrs. of trying??? Well, yes, there is that…and then there’s this equally unsurprising little problemo cropping up, as Paul Craig Roberts reminds us…
This week the Russian and Chinese militaries are conducting a joint military exercise involving large numbers of troops and combat vehicles. The former Soviet Republics of Tajikistan, Kyrgkyzstan, and Kazakstan are participating. Other countries appear ready to join the military alliance.
This new potent military alliance is a real world response to neoconservative delusions about US hegemony. Neocons believe that the US is supreme in the world and can dictate its course. The neoconservative idiots have actually written papers, read by Russians and Chinese, about why the US must use its military superiority to assert hegemony over Russia and China.
Cynics believe that the neocons are just shills, like Bush and Cheney, for the military-security complex and are paid to restart the cold war for the sake of the profits of the armaments industry. But the fact is that the neocons actually believe their delusions about American hegemony.
Russia and China have now witnessed enough of the Bush administration’s unprovoked aggression in the world to take neocon intentions seriously. As the US has proven that it cannot occupy the Iraqi city of Baghdad despite 5 years of efforts, it most certainly cannot occupy Russia or China. That means the conflict toward which the neocons are driving will be a nuclear conflict.
In an attempt to gain the advantage in a nuclear conflict, the neocons are positioning US anti-ballistic missiles on Soviet borders in Poland and the Czech Republic. This is an idiotic provocation as the Russians can eliminate anti-ballistic missiles with cruise missiles. Neocons are people who desire war, but know nothing about it. Thus, the US failures in Iraq and Afghanistan.
US Hegemony Spawns Russian-Chinese Military Alliance

Posted by: jj | Aug 10 2007 6:08 utc | 46

8 minutes worth your time – Battle at Kruger

Posted by: b | Aug 10 2007 8:26 utc | 48

kurt nimmo chimes in: Daily Kos: CIA Engineered Controlled Opposition?
Thursday August 09th 2007, 8:04 am

Is it possible Markos Alberto Moulitsas Zúñiga, leader of the “Kossaks,” that is to say followers and fawners of the Daily Kos, is a CIA operative? Francis Holland, posting on the My Left Wing messageboard, details Moulitsas’ relationship with the CIA:
“Markos Moulitsas Zúniga, owner of the DailyKos website, now admits that he spent six months in the employ of the US Central Intelligence Agency in 2001,” writes Holland. “In a one-hour interview on June 2, 2006 at the Commonwealth Club, Moulitsas, also known as ‘Kos,’ admitted that he was a CIA employee and would have ‘no problem working for them’ in the present.”

I’ve long been put-off by abundance of mutual-masturbatory indulgences I’ve seen at Daily Kos. This revelation of Markos’s softspot for the CIA really explains alot.

Posted by: Uncle $cam | Aug 10 2007 11:27 utc | 50

Interesting piece showing, small scale, the coming conflict between ultraorthodox settlers and the Israeli state.
‘You have no future in this country’

At a time when most Israeli children were spending their summer vacation at day camps and on trips, splashing in the sea and in swimming pools, the children of the Hebron day camp looked as though they lived on another planet. Glowering with hatred, with huge skullcaps and long curly earlocks, children age 10 and younger walked among the men in uniform and examined their dog tags.
Anyone whose non-Jewishness was discovered received the appropriate treatment: The wild, bleary-eyed little ones mercilessly hurled curses and insults at them. They are mere children and already experts in racial theory. Every possible epithet was hurled at the soldiers, but they, perhaps on orders from above, were silent as though catatonic. Their faces showed no emotion.
The children of Hebron are very reminiscent of the children at the summer camps of Jesus – those who live in America’s Bible Belt, who have been poisoned by religious ideology and have become the spearhead of Christian fundamentalism.
…
“You’re asking about the soldiers, so I’ll tell you. They aren’t Jews. Look at them, they’re Russians, Ethiopians and Druze. And even those who call themselves Jews are not Jews. They’re Zionists and leftists.”
“Israel’s big problem is Zionism,” continues Shmuel. “It severed the Jews from the Torah and from Jewish values. You have no future in this country. In the end you’ll all leave and only we will remain here.”
“Israeli” is a dirty word in this hate-crazed enclave in Hebron. Not one of the hundreds of residents here defines himself as such, as though Israel were a penal colony. Even after the state has showered them with protection, resources, assistance and even sympathy, these people consider Israel to be a foreign government. Israeli sovereignty has replaced the sovereignty of halakha (Jewish law) and in that way has decreed for itself the status of an enemy in every respect.
…
Two years after the evacuation from Gush Katif the government is facing an internal threat with strategic implications for its future image. This is a fateful moment in the tense coexistence between those who favor secular values and those who cherish halakha. It is not clear whether hundreds of thousands of skullcap-wearers will continue to see themselves as part of the state if a peace accord is reached that will require a major evacuation of West Bank land.
In such a case the army, which is a reflection of the society in which it lives, will posit an existential dilemma between those who favor the sovereignty of the state and those who favor the sovereignty of the halakha. For the first time since the territories were annexed to the State of Israel in the Six-Day War, it seems that Israel will not be able to avoid this expected confrontation. The first signs were seen this week during the evacuation of Hebron, when dozens of soldiers preferred the halakhic decision of rabbis to orders from their commanders.

Posted by: b | Aug 10 2007 13:38 utc | 52

This revelation of Markos’s softspot for the CIA really explains alot.
uncle, strange.

Posted by: annie | Aug 10 2007 18:40 utc | 54

Hmm it didn’t take long about a nanosecond after pushing send to regret the shooting fish in a barrel post on the latest Iraq thread. So by way of distraction here is a little soapie from the halls of academe in NZ.
It concerns Paul Buchanan* senior lecturer in political studies at Auckland Uni, specialist in Latin America and Security issues. An outspoken opponent of NZ’s involvement in Iraq during that debate in the early noughties, he is a self confessed ‘former’ CIA informant. This apparently dates from the time when he changed from being a ‘leftist’ fighting right-wing murderers to supporting the fight against other leftists in an un-named Latin American nation, probably Chile.
Believe it or not all of the above is relevant. He has been sacked for writing an unconscionably rude and racist email to one of his post graduate students – a young woman from the United Arab Emirates.
At first it appears an open and shut case. But nothing is simple. Buchanan apologised the next day without any prompting. He had written the email after an arguement with a faculty member who was responsible for preparing internatioanl students for post graduate study. The issue is echoed throughout uni’s around the world which aren’t in the top drawer of Oxbridge, Harvard or the Sorbonne. International students pay large fees to study and many working within those secondary universities feel that admission standards are sacrificed in pusuit of revenue. I’m sure that Yale probably has similar problems with Dubya, just as Cambridge struggled with Prince Charles standard or work. However those were undergraduate degrees and I suppose that anyone can gain admission to those course.
At post-graduate level however where as Buchanan says:

“It’s extremely hard to teach at graduate level when you have people who literally do not know the language of instruction.”

Whatever it still comes back to Buchanan telling a student whose father had just died:
“You are close to failing in any event, so these sort of excuses-culturally driven and preying on some sort of Western liberal guilt-are simply lame.
Prove that your father died and your were distraught and unable to complete assignments-in spite of your abysmal record to date as an underperforming and underquallifed student- and perhaps you might qualify for an extension to get a C-. “
Buchanan maintains he had only just been told of the closure of the New Zealand Centre for Latin American Studies, of which he was acting director. No need for latin American spooks anymore? Nah! That’s probably just my paranoia. Since the end of the 90’s students from Latin America, particularly Argentina and Chile have been staying in their own countries to study rather than coming to NZ. Latin America is no longer a ‘hot spot’ and that may be what Buchanan was unconsciously so upset about. His particular expertise was no longer a ticket to a senior position.
There is juice in this for all tastes. Buchanan who has been a supporter of Palestinian causes is now reported as:

“Dr Buchanan believes that “a small group of students believe I am a CIA-Zionist agent”.
“Some of these students are pursuing degrees in my former department, and it is possible that at least one of them received a mark in my course that was less than expected (although a tutor did the actual marking),” he said.

What do MoA-ites reckon? The feeling amongst most here seems to be that he should have been punished for such an offensive email, but dismissal is too severe. They reckon he is being punished for “other” reasons.
I dunno I always dismissed him as a spook, but he does seem to have an academic conscience so there is probably more than that to him.
*Paul Buchanan
* Born in New York, USA.
* Aged 52.
* Taught at US Naval Postgraduate School, University of Arizona and University of South Florida.
* Senior lecturer in politics at Auckland University since 1997.
* Critic of President George W. Bush’s foreign policy.
* Opposed sending NZ troops to Iraq after the US invasion.

Posted by: Debs is dead | Aug 10 2007 23:54 utc | 56

@ANNIE ET AL…
There are numerous indications Kos’ wealthy, right-wing family in El Salvadore were involved in supporting death squads, the era in which Kos himself was working for Ronald Reagan. Holland follows up:
Markos Moulitsas Revealed
I’ve no doubt Kos is an operative of the CIA. The site has an incredibly authoritarian atomosphere. There are “troll hunters” continuously stalking the site looking for thoughtcrime, the vitriol against Cindy Sheehan being the most recent example. In 2004, saying the election might have been stolen was a banning offense.
DailyKos is just the sort of thing COINTELPRO was set up to do. Distract, dilute, divert, and neutralize true progressives, who are too trusting by half. Not to mention tracking and profiling them.

Posted by: Uncle $cam | Aug 11 2007 1:28 utc | 58

b @ 48. I HATE these shows but I stuck it out. Thanks.
There’s a lesson there, somewhere.

Posted by: beq | Aug 11 2007 2:14 utc | 60

Finally some reporting in the NYT about Israeli misdeeds: A Segregated Road in an Already Divided Land

Israel is constructing a road through the West Bank, east of Jerusalem, that will allow both Israelis and Palestinians to travel along it — separately.
There are two pairs of lanes, one for each tribe, separated by a tall wall of concrete patterned to look like Jerusalem stones, an effort at beautification indicating that the road is meant to be permanent. The Israeli side has various exits; the Palestinian side has few.
…
The vast majority of Palestinians, unlike Israeli settlers, will not be able to exit in areas surrounded by the barrier or travel into Jerusalem, even into the eastern part of the city, which Israel took over in 1967.

Posted by: b | Aug 11 2007 5:16 utc | 62

From above:
A Segregated Road in an Already Divided Land
Already divided, fait accompli. Actually every New Yorker who reads this title will catch the chiasmatic reference to the immortal “Headless Woman in Topless Bar,” not a very serious beginning.
one for each tribe?
So now Israelis — Jew and non-Jew, Russian, Ethiopian, Moroccan, Brooklyner, Pomeranian, Chocolate Lab, whatever — form one tribe? Bring in the Anthropologists…. Do we not want to dignify the Palestinians with the equal term, “Nation,” perhaps?
Martin S. Indyk, a former American ambassador to Israel now running the Saban Center at the Brookings Institution, argue that Israel should yield E1 to the Palestinians. “E1 is a critical issue in maintaining the territorial integrity and contiguity of the West Bank with East Jerusalem — it’s the only place where it’s possible to do that,” he said.
This is the US “liberal” position: yield this one block, not the entire West Bank. We don’t want to steal too much.
Micaela Schweitzer-Bluhm, a spokeswoman for the American Consulate in Jerusalem, repeated American policy that Palestinians should be allowed to travel more easily through the West Bank “consistent with the need to maintain security.” Asked if this road predetermines final status, she said, “The U.S. government has encouraged the parties to avoid any actions that would predetermine permanent status,” but said she was not authorized to comment more specifically.
Security for whom? Got to keep those Palestinians safe. And yes, we want to avoid any actions that might ever lead to permanent status, as long as we are able to keep stealing land.
************
Actually, I am in favor of this segregated road — as long as the Palestinians have the opportunity to build similar roads within the State of Israel where they may exit, but Israelis can’t. doh!

Posted by: Malooga | Aug 11 2007 6:28 utc | 64

@U$ 39: A great old thread. Yes, that short article really changed my thinking and woke me up, fifteen or twenty years ago.
@U$ 43: As The Angry Arab might say: “Sounds like the sub-committee on Hummus was meeting.”
@Wolf 59: Don’t tell me you believed all that “Free Trade” fairy tale claptrap. What’s good for GM is STILL good for America!

Posted by: Malooga | Aug 11 2007 6:43 utc | 66

The “douchebag” Kos has an OpEd in todays WaPo that damns the Democratic Leadership Coucil. How We Won the Mainstream

In fact, we pushed the party so far left that we positioned it squarely in the American mainstream and last year won a historic, sweeping congressional victory, something the “centrist” groups had been unable to accomplish for decades — not even in the DLC’s glory days of the 1990s.

Posted by: b | Aug 11 2007 6:54 utc | 68

Monolycus, b, Wolf DeVoon…
A New Kind of Bank Run …a new financial architecture has emerged that relied more on securities and less on banks as intermediaries. With the worth of [these new] securities now being questioned — and no equivalent of deposit insurance — some who financed the securities want their money out, a fact that has created the 21st-century equivalent of a run on a bank. . It’s no wonder these securities are being questioned, when some are based on Ninja mortgages and foreclosures are up 58% from last year.
Some of us may want todust of our old copies of
‘The Grapes of Wrath’ welcome to 21st century financial panic.
An occasional poster named ‘bookie’ put up an absolutely phenomenal comment on mefi the other day:

Subprime is an issue, but it’s not the issue. Of itself it’s nowhere near enough to break the market. What is enough is a spread from subprime into a contagion of other credit / credit derivative markets, and that is what’s proved so interesting / alarming about the past few months. Will it or won’t it?
There have been multiple distress signals from credit markets, hedge funds and mortgage providers in recent times. All par for the course. However, this morning we saw the london interbank market effectively cease to function. This is the marketplace where banks source their daily funding requirements for ongoing operations.
Interbank liquidity is, absent a black swan every five years or so, a given. The sun rises and sets, the banks lend and borrow. But not today. What these banks were saying was, in effect, “I don’t trust any of these other banks enough to give them any cash at 4%pa overnight, because I’m not sure I’ll get it back”.
Think about that for a minute. I’m pretty sure most of you have your cash sitting at those same banks earning a paltry rate of interest, and I’m pretty sure most of you think it’s safe. Well, this morning, following bnp paribas’ revelations, the banks weren’t so sure. The ECB then had to step in and guarantee any and all funding requirements for the day. About US$120bn all up. They’ve never had to make this guarantee before.
As a contrast, on 9/11 (the last time a similar operation was engaged) they injected around US$95bn. Without Government intervention, the European banking system may have shut down this morning – or at least operated in a half-arsed illiquid take-it-or-leave-it fashion. In other words, the market ‘failed’ (to free-market capitalists, the market was doing what it should do, simply re-pricing credit to make it more expensive given all the prevailing uncertainty / risk).
Does all this mean the world’s gonna end? Not necessarily. The US Fed, in contrast, added $24bn, net $10bn this morning. Maybe double normal. On 9/11 they added roughly $200bn. So today was no big deal Stateside. Of course the S&P500 may not have agreed, and tomorrow is another day …
So: Right now there’s a lot of apprehensive traders and prudent risk managers and an inappropriately large number of rumsfeld’s unknown unknowns out there. The central banks played failsafe / backstop exactly as the system intended. All we’ve got for sure is a market that’s spooked and running on fear. The danger is that, absent a circuit-breaker – say the Fed lowering interest rates 50bp by end October – is that the fear will lead to a vapourlock and total absence of liquidity in the marketplace. What did Enron in – and LTCM – was not just their leverage, and not just their wrongheaded underwater positions. It was the refusal of their counterparties to allow them any further credit – in effect, asking them to pony up and cover their outstanding debts before they would do any further business with them. Given they were leveraged to the gills, this was of course impossible, and under they went. So what, you ask? Well, unfortunately for all of us the banks operate under a fractional reserve banking system. Just because Cramer’s on the excitable side doesn’t make him wrong. For the record, though, the central banks’ actions to date have been commendable.
Most commentators are spot on in noting the IB’s self-interest. The pressure that’s being bought to bear on the Fed – and in particular Bernancke – is enormous. There’s a concerted PR campaign being waged out there to ensure Bernancke understands that if this goes wrong, he will be hung out to dry by Wall Street. They’re after reassurance that the ‘Greenspan put’ is still alive and kicking … it’s understandable that there’s some anger at the ‘too big to fail’ notion for the financial system, but a word of caution to those above wanting to pull the financial system down around their ears: be careful what you wish for. You may just get ten-fifteen years of tough times in which to work through your schadenfreude.
I won’t continue to bore you with detail, but for now all you need to know is:
(1) IB’s and hedge funds are holding a pile of toxic / junk credit that no-one can sensibly value;
(2) No-one wants to have this credit sensibly valued, because doing so would lead to massive writedowns / losses across the board. If you don’t value it, there are no losses. The wonders of mark-to-market, a la Enron;
(3) No-one, at present, aside from the occasional side deal (Citadel/Sowood) is willing to buy this credit at any price (meaning in effect its value is zero in the current marketplace). The holders of this credit are refusing to accept this as reasonable and believe that eventually ‘normality’ will return. This concerns me, because it may not.
(4) There is an extensive OTC market in credit derivatives (CDO’s, CLO’s etc etc) that are priced and traded based on the underlying debt. As the underlying debt cannot be valued, neither can the derivatives. Just how big the losses are in these instruments, and who bears the bulk of these losses, is the big guessing game for now. Its a tangled web that the IB’s don’t really want to unravel – mainly because they’re not sure what they’ll find. Sometimes pulling on a single thread can unravel the whole jumper …
(5) The market could, in its current frame of mind, run to a place where the Fed is forced to bail them out (beyond supplying repo / discount window liquidity, they may have to cut the overnight rate. FYI, the Fed Funds and Eurodollar futures have already priced in the assumption that this will happen. As is typical with markets, they’ve priced in the endgame well before the whistle is blown.
How this ends up, no-one knows. I’m not a big fan of making sweeping public predictions about market direction, as there’s little upside in doing so. We could be back in happyland in three months, or we could spiral into something far more sinister. But there’s enough historical synchronies with the current environment to make me wanna pull out my beat-up ol’ copy of The Grapes of Wrath and get to reading …*
*Excuse the length. I just got to typing, and now here I am.

The grim meat-hook future is upon us…

Posted by: Uncle $cam | Aug 11 2007 7:27 utc | 70

The “War Zar” finally makes his first appearance (where has been all along?) and throws a mighty stink bomb:
Bush war adviser says draft worth a look

Frequent tours for U.S. forces in Iraq and Afghanistan have stressed the all-volunteer force and made it worth considering a return to a military draft, President Bush’s new war adviser said Friday.
“I think it makes sense to certainly consider it,” Army Lt. Gen. Douglas Lute said in an interview with National Public Radio’s “All Things Considered.”
“And I can tell you, this has always been an option on the table. But ultimately, this is a policy matter between meeting the demands for the nation’s security by one means or another,” Lute added in his first interview since he was confirmed by the Senate in June.

Posted by: b | Aug 11 2007 9:24 utc | 72

@ b. 48 video
please don’t forget that all of us don’t have access to video and audio downloads, so please include at least a brief precis of the content.
It is an honor you could perform for we unfortunates, thank you.

Posted by: jonku | Aug 11 2007 11:30 utc | 74

@jonk – sorry, you’r right of course. link

Dubbed Battle at Kruger, the video shows a pride of hungry lions attacking a herd of buffalo near a watering hole. They catch a small calf and wrestle it into the water. But things take a twist when a crocodile tries to snatch the calf for itself. A brief tug of war ensues, before the lions drag the calf away.
But the situation becomes even more incredible when the buffalo return to take on the lions. Charging the predators, they successfully chase the cats away – even goring one and tossing it into the air – before the calf manages to get up and return to its family.

It’s an amateur video without cuts shot at Kruger park in South Africa. Not the regular animal movie on TV.
(BTW: I was asonished to learn a while ago that professional animal documentaries ala BBC are about the most expensive movies to make.)

Posted by: b | Aug 11 2007 12:40 utc | 76

@b, et al
Central bank lending doesn’t shock me, although “adding liquidity” is a euphemism for debasing the currency. What got my attention was the allegation that the US Treasury was secretly buying DJI options to goose the market index, just before the close. It’s easy enough to cover up and explain away as “program trades” by hedge funds. In turn, that makes me wonder how many hedge funds are covert fronts for the US Treasury and Bank of England?
Maybe I’m stupid. The Japanese government has been propping up the Topix for at least 15 years, a widely reported fact. It never occurred to me that the US Treasury might being do the same thing. Does it matter? Yes. The entire M&A + LBO + subprime money machine is predicated on valuations divorced from real asset values IMO. As long as the Dow moves only one direction (up) no one has to tell the truth, ask hard questions, weigh the risk of lending or investing.
There is an enormous consensus in America, financially. No one wants the Dow to pause or decline. Even if I could prove that the Treasury was manipulating the market, most folks would approve. It’s like voting for free lunch, free beer, and cheap gas. What’s not to like?
W.

Posted by: Wolf DeVoon | Aug 11 2007 14:04 utc | 78

@Wolf – we don’t know – certainly there are some working groups, formal or informal, and certainly there is at times coordinated activity between the Fed and the big banks. But as Mauldin who you cite says, if there was really a big secret beyond that, someone would have blown the whistle …
Just saw a Marc Faber (very successful swiss contrarian money manager in Asia) interview.
He says the Dow Jones in in a bear market now and will at least break the February low up to this fall (that’s another 10%) down. The real bear market he thinks will end with the down down some 30 of its peak, i.e. at 10,000 or so and the bottom will be reached when at last the big favorites of today, RIM, Apple, Google, will have broken significantly (30%). That may take some 2 years or so.
It’s impossible to “unplunge” such a big structural moves and Faber has good arguments for his reasoning.
Above you say: The entire M&A + LBO + subprime money machine is predicated on valuations divorced from real asset values IMO.
Real assets, yes, overvalued houses. When everything that’s in the construction state now is finished, some areas in California will have more houses/condos than possible inhabitants. There is no way to keep this going. Even if the Fed slashes the interest rate back to 1% tomorrow, the bubble in housing can not be reignited. The explosion might be moved some six month further away, but it inevitably would come and would be bigger. (As side effects the dollar would tank and U.S. import prices explode.)
Everybody might have interest in keeping house prices up. That doesn’t mean it is possible. The side effects at a point are just too nasty.

Posted by: b | Aug 11 2007 17:36 utc | 80

uncle #58, that link isn’t working. i am going to check over at nemos

Posted by: annie | Aug 11 2007 18:30 utc | 82

Bernhard, I don’t see Uruknet at the links page. They are a very good portal to Iraq and Palestine news (and they regularly link to MoA posts on these issues).
Re the Plunge Protection Team, I was thinking at this point they would be working to engineer a soft landing, wouldn’t they? A fall in global economy seems unavoidable, but it would matter very much how hard it falls and on whose collective heads…

Posted by: Alamet | Aug 11 2007 23:20 utc | 84

I’d be frankly amazed if they weren’t, anna missed. That’s what Big Brother does. Monitors folks. Everywhere.
According the NYT (for what the hell that’s worth… and I appreciate the subtle tone of approval with which the piece is written), Big Brother is tired of mainly watching Brits and Yanks…
In China, a High-Tech Plan to Track People
Snip…

At least 20,000 police surveillance cameras are being installed along streets here in southern China and will soon be guided by sophisticated computer software from an American-financed company to recognize automatically the faces of police suspects and detect unusual activity.
Starting this month in a port neighborhood and then spreading across Shenzhen, a city of 12.4 million people, residency cards fitted with powerful computer chips programmed by the same company will be issued to most citizens.
Data on the chip will include not just the citizen’s name and address but also work history, educational background, religion, ethnicity, police record, medical insurance status and landlord’s phone number. Even personal reproductive history will be included, for enforcement of China’s controversial “one child” policy. Plans are being studied to add credit histories, subway travel payments and small purchases charged to the card.
Security experts describe China’s plans as the world’s largest effort to meld cutting-edge computer technology with police work to track the activities of a population and fight crime. But they say the technology can be used to violate civil rights.
The Chinese government has ordered all large cities to apply technology to police work and to issue high-tech residency cards to 150 million people who have moved to a city but not yet acquired permanent residency.
Both steps are officially aimed at fighting crime and developing better controls on an increasingly mobile population, including the nearly 10 million peasants who move to big cities each year. But they could also help the Communist Party retain power by maintaining tight controls on an increasingly prosperous population at a time when street protests are becoming more common.
“If they do not get the permanent card, they cannot live here, they cannot get government benefits, and that is a way for the government to control the population in the future,” said Michael Lin, the vice president for investor relations at China Public Security Technology, the company providing the technology.

This sounds like the next step up for the Total Information Awareness program and a pretty hefty guinea pig of a population to work out the kinks with. Anybody know exactly who China Public Security Technology is, because this could not smell more like an American operation to me.

Posted by: Monolycus | Aug 12 2007 4:27 utc | 86

Just to make the obvious clear – NYT: Democrats Say Leaving Iraq May Take Years

Even as they call for an end to the war and pledge to bring the troops home, the Democratic presidential candidates are setting out positions that could leave the United States engaged in Iraq for years.
…
These positions and those of some rivals suggest that the Democratic bumper-sticker message of a quick end to the conflict — however much it appeals to primary voters — oversimplifies the problems likely to be inherited by the next commander in chief. Antiwar advocates have raised little challenge to such positions by Democrats.

Posted by: b | Aug 12 2007 7:14 utc | 88

Report: Israelis fighting guerillas in Colombia

Colombia’s defense minister confirmed recently that ex Israeli military men were helping his government fight guerilla organizations, Colombia weekly Semana recently reported.
Meanwhile, Colombian guerilla group FARC stated that Israeli commandos, along with American and British forces, were operating in the jungles against drug lords and guerilla fighters
…
The paper described the Israeli aides as “mercenaries,” but stressed that the Israeli government was aware of their actions.
In recent years, Israel has become Colombia’s number one weapon supplier, …

Posted by: b | Aug 12 2007 8:52 utc | 90

Barak says peace deal with Palestinians is a “fantasy”

Israeli Defence Minister Ehud Barak has been quoted by an Israeli newspaper as saying that a peace deal with the Palestinians anytime soon is “fantasy”.
Mr Barak also reportedly said Israel would not remove checkpoints from the West Bank for at least several years.
He was quoted by the newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth, which said the remarks had been made in private conversations.

Posted by: Bea | Aug 12 2007 9:20 utc | 92

Antiwar advocates have raised little challenge to such positions by Democrats.
if the nyt says it, it must be true

Posted by: annie | Aug 12 2007 13:13 utc | 94

oil $100 a barrel – chavez

Posted by: remembereringgiap | Aug 12 2007 16:12 utc | 96

His reasoning is that 1) they don’t have the votes to convict in the Senate and 2) if they pursue it, it will happen in the middle of primary season and will take people’s attention away from selecting which Dem candidate they will vote for. At the same meeting, Nadler also publicly stated he is supporting HRC.
to 1: An important part of the impeachment process is to investigate. A clame for “executive priviledge” during impeachment investigations by congress is much more difficult as in other congress investigations as impeachment is clearly one of the two constitutional measure congress has against a president. (That’s one reason why Nixon caved in at last on the tapes) (The second measure is to stop the finances, which requires a veto proof majority because it can be vetoed.)
Short: You don’t need the votes to start the process, only in the end in the full Senate vote. During the hearing and investigative phase, there is no need for Liebermans vote or such.
to 2: The major point of deciding which Dem primary candiate to vote for must be that candidate’s stand towards Bush’s crimes: Iraq war, illegal wiretapping, partisan abuse of the justice department and AGs, “unitary executuve”, etc.
Impeachment hearings and the primaries candidates reactions to these will be the best way to judge the candidates on the really important issues.
They will also highlight all the republican sins in the public and further a dem win in 2008.

Posted by: b | Aug 12 2007 18:40 utc | 98

interesting three part meditation by stan goff

Posted by: remembereringgiap | Aug 12 2007 20:46 utc | 100