I’m getting quite interested in the “Big Picture” of superpower competition over resources, and would like to hear more from anyone who has insight on this. I’d love to see regular coverage or some way to keep score of the various moves made by the US, Russia, and China — to start. Here are links to three pieces that I’ve read lately that address some of this. Does anyone know how on target this information is?
The Sino-Russian Alliance: Challenging America’s Ambitions in Eurasia
The “Great Game” Enters the Mediterranean: Gas, Oil, War, and Geopolitics
Bush Team Grossly Misjudged Putin

Posted by: Bea | Oct 15 2007 15:06 utc | 103

A site to bookmark. Just heard this guy, Clyde Prestowitz, on Thom Hartmann’s prog. today discussing how Am. is committing economic suicide by shipping all it’s manufacturing to Asian nations, while they are practicing protectionism by manipulating their currencies to keep this process going on until America is wiped out. Does anyone know anything about him?

Posted by: jj | Oct 15 2007 20:08 utc | 105

Bea, great 3 links above. In three words a reply.
Capitalism killed USA.
It’s an energy game now. Bush/Blair blew it with 911 as a raison’detre. Is the a fission bomb that kills but does have a footprint to kill man?

Posted by: Cloned Poster | Oct 15 2007 20:42 utc | 107

& this

Posted by: remembereringgiap | Oct 16 2007 0:02 utc | 109

Gee, aren’t we suddenly all open and honest lately? Do you think someone administered a truth serum to these guys?
Gen. Sanchez: Iraq war is a “catastrophic failure” in the Bush administration’s leadership of the Iraq war had plunged the US into “a nightmare with no end in sight”.
Gen. Abizaid: “The Iraq war is all about oil, and we have treated the Arab world as a collection of gas stations.”

Posted by: Bea | Oct 16 2007 3:21 utc | 111

#111: What happened with the six nukes being outed seems to have shown some in the military that there is more resistance to the extreme militaristic policies being contemplated by the ruling junta, and they are lashing back.
@jj #104: Very well put. Yes, we are approaching the demagogue moment as things break down. (Bush himself has always been a bit of a demagogue, but far more extremem examples wait in the wings.) Libertarians, like Paul, mystify power dynamics in the world, which is how they are useful to the ruling elite in misleading the clueless. To imagine the UN dictating policy to the US, rather than the other way around, is laughable — but it assuages the feelings of powerlessness held by those in the heartland whose economic bases were cut out from under them. The answer is education, not clueless and helpless populism.
@jj #105: A brief tour of ESI’s website will leave you running in disgust: They are chips off the Ron Paul/Ron Reagan model. Current lead article is a scare piece of how asbestos litigation should be dropped because it will bankrupt corporations. Director takes credit for elping shepherd NAFTA through. You, and Thom Hartmann, have better places to go to seek information.
From ESI’s website: Over the past decade, ESI has had a major influence on the conclusion of the NAFTA and Uruguay Round negotiations, U.S. economic and trade policy towards Japan, China and Europe, and telecommunications, international aviation, and other important economic and trade issues. ESI has also helped shape strategy for a number of multinational corporations.
As we move into the next century, the world’s marketplace will become even more complex to corporations, governments, and consumers. The Economic Strategy Institute is well suited to tackle these complexities and provide expert analyses and leadership on the important elements of the globalized economy.
…Globalization is both necessary and desirable as rising costs of research and investment compel exploitation of worldwide markets and as nations realize that being left out means being left behind. But precisely because globalization is inevitable, the terms on which it is accomplished are of critical importance. Globalization based on fair and transparent rules, mutually open markets, equal treatment of investors regardless of nationality, and competitive business practices is different from globalization based on mercantilism, cartels, administrative guidance, and unchecked speculation.
No great vision there…
Try the Guns and Butter interviews with Kuchinich’s head economic advisor, Michael Hudson, for a better take on what is happening in the world of economics and where the robber barons want to take us. Recommended listening for all on MoA.
Also Unwelcome Guests, simply the best program on radio. Puts Thom Hartmann to shame. Start with #379, right up your alley, with Paul Grignon, Hugo Blanco, Genevieve Vaugn, and work your way backwards throught the archives. Don’t waste time with TH when there is so much better out there. Again, recommended listening for all on MoA.

Posted by: Malooga | Oct 16 2007 7:40 utc | 113

Ran Hacohen’s note at Antiwar.com once again shows that Israeli debate on policy toward
Palestine is considerably more lively than that usually heard in the U.S.

Posted by: Hannah K. O’Luthon | Oct 16 2007 8:22 utc | 115

We have agencies like the CIA and NSA who are supposed to handle all the top secret stuff._
Do we really need all this top-secret stuff in a democracy?

Posted by: Malooga | Oct 16 2007 9:36 utc | 117

Good find, HKO!

Posted by: Malooga | Oct 16 2007 10:48 utc | 119

Thomas B. Edsall is the political editor of the Huffington Post.
Below is a link to his latest article on the Huffington Post. It is an illogical guilt by (non) association smear campaign against Ron Paul. This is a tactic not that much different from the media anti-Dean scream machine attacks.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2007/10/15/to-his-dismay-ron-paul-b_n_68575.html
Rawstory even repeats the article with a different headline!
Ron Paul has a biggotry problem
This is from a comment on the Rawstory post:
Ron Paul has a bigotry problem? And the word BIGOTRY is spelled wrong too? Did the editors for RAWSTORY create that title? Because if you go to the Huff post article, the title reads completely different? … why would you create a title that hints to him having a problem with “bigotry” when that’s not even what the story is about? Whoever did this is wrong for letting that title to the Huff story slip through like that. And I don’t believe for one second it was a simple accident.
Malooga & jj: Calling Ron Paul a “women hater” who wants to “deregulate everything” or even stating that “Libertarians, like Paul, mystify power dynamics in the world, which is how they are useful to the ruling elite in misleading the clueless.” is totally ridiculous. There is no mystery to Israel’s interest regarding U.S. foreign policy. It is no surprise to find the Huffington Post and Rawstory slamming Ron Paul. One wonders who the elite are fooling more – those on the right or those on the left!

Posted by: Rick | Oct 16 2007 13:01 utc | 121

@ Tantalus 122
My information is no better than yours: I even wonder if the Debka
boys are reading MOA and have decided to pull b’s chain. A moment’s
thought makes the Kleiaat base seem singularly risky in itself, and practically a slap in the face to the Turks (i.e. to the Turkish military).
But again, that’s just my opinion: I have no first hand knowledge of these matters.

Posted by: Hannah K. O’Luthon | Oct 16 2007 15:33 utc | 123

Thanks, HKO – I hadn’t even seen the DEBKA piece. I agree: it doesn’t take 10 seconds to realize that it doesn’t make any sense. It’s a classic Cold War move, though – suddenly occurred to me that it would be, position-wise, the Guantanamo of the ME.

Posted by: Tantalus | Oct 16 2007 16:02 utc | 125

Malooga #124,
Although I may not be as anti-U.N. as Ron Paul, nevertheless I am troubled. That is not to say that nations through the U.N. cannot work together to solve problems, indeed they should, especially concerning assistance to the poor and marginal of this world. But having nations coming together at the Security Council to make war really troubles me. I see no mystery here. And likewise, I am troubled at the thought of the U.N. having the authority to determine economic sanctions, policies or even social agendas.
Maybe this is, as you say, imagination, but the way I remember it, Bush, Blair and others used trumped-up U.N. Security Council violations by Iraq as an excuse to form a “coalition” to invade Iraq. Never mind that the head of the U.N. afterwards called the invasion of Iraq illegal. And speaking of laughable, I doubt the Iraqi people are laughing. Did the Iraqi people just imagine the U.N. Sanctions and Security Council Resolutions? How much influence did the Iraqi people have concerning the power struggles at the U.N. Security Council? No amount of Ron Paul’s mystification of world power can assuage them. The Iraqi families can never go back to the U.N. Security Council and get a “revote”. Quite simply, the U.N. sanctions on Iraq were immoral to say the least and the “oil for food program” became a sick joke on the Iraqi people.
I have a basic philosophy of social order and government. I believe Ron Paul shares a somewhat similar philosophy. And Iraq has become an almost textbook example of this philosophy. In Iraq, one will find the family, then the local community, as the basic unit now for any real social order. The Iraqis have never consented to this “occupation government”. Yet, both inside and outside of Iraq, the elite appear to be turning the world into a social order where the elite make the decisions, society is held together by a police state, and the least important in decision-making is the family and local community. Millions of Iraqis died due to U.N. economic sanctions even before this second Iraq War. I believe that Ron Paul shares a similar philosophy that social order and government legitimacy comes from the bottom, that is, the individual, the family, the local community, the state, and lastly the Federal Government. Ron Paul continually argues for States rights. The elite believe our social/economic order and even our human rights come from the top – heck, Bush says that our rights are no longer unalienable but given to us by our government – quite simply, if your not an American citizen, you don’t have any rights except for some fake lip service to the Geneva Conventions. And it seems here in the U.S., even our basic rights can be taken away at any time by the discretion of “the decider”. Unfortunately for the Iraqi people, Bush felt generous and decided to let them have some of this elitist democracy and human dignity.
Here is what Ron Paul said about the U.N. back in 2003 before the second Iraq War:

President Bush Sr. proudly spoke of “The New World Order,” a term used by those who promote one – world government under the United Nations. In going to war in 1991, he sought and received UN authority to push Iraqi forces out of Kuwait. He forcefully stated that this UN authority was adequate, and that although a congressional resolution was acceptable, it was entirely unnecessary and he would proceed regardless. At that time there was no discussion regarding a congressional declaration of war. The first Persian Gulf War therefore was clearly a UN, political war fought within UN guidelines, not for U.S. security – and it was not fought through to victory. The bombings, sanctions, and harassment of the Iraqi people have never stopped. We are now about to resume the active fighting. Although this is referred to as the second Persian Gulf War, it’s merely a continuation of a war started long ago, and is likely to continue for a long time even after Saddam Hussein is removed from power.

Speaking about the U.N. and giving it power, Dennis Kucinich voted for this HR 523 in 2005 and Ron Paul abstained:

Resolved, That the House of Representatives–
(1) condemns, in the strongest terms, Ahmadinejad’s outrageous and despicable threats and demands that he repudiate them;
(2) calls on the United Nations Security Council and all civilized nations to condemn and reject these statements and to censure Iran for its statements and for its policies aimed at destroying Israel;
(3) further calls on the United Nations Security Council and all civilized nations to consider measures to deny Iran the means to carry out its threats and to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons; and
(4) reaffirms the unwavering alliance between the United States and Israel and reasserts the commitment of the United States to defend the right of Israel to exist as a free and democratic state.

However, Congressional Res. 21, .a resolution in 2007 that pressures the United Nations Security Council to charge Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad with violating the 1948 Convention on Genocide and the United Nations Charter because of Ahmadinejad’s alleged calls for the destruction of Israel passed the House. Kucinich did not vote for this because he felt that the translation of Ahnadinejad’s words might have been incorrect. Only two voted against this, Ron Paul was the other lone dissenter. I believe Ron Paul would have been against giving the U.N. power over Iran no matter how good or bad the translation.
Malooga, do you honestly believe that Ron Paul is so naïve or clueless that he is unaware of the U.S. dictating policy or the U.S./Israeli influence at the U.N.? And with such influence, the U.N. is even more dysfunctional than what Ron Paul has described. Of course oil and other economic considerations were important factors in going to war in Iraq. Yet am I to believe that the elite of others in this world do not suffer from this defective “Amerikan” DNA gene of greed and power? Surely the U.N. without the U.S. could never be wrongly influenced by other elites, eh? Again, remembering your second line: “to imagine the U.N. dictating policy to the U.S. is laughable” – Well Malooga, things are changing fast and I’m not laughing. Often, an imagination is helpful, but here it is hardly necessary. And I do not feel assuaged in any sense of the word by Ron Paul’s position on the U.N., and I doubt that many those who live in the heartland are as clueless as you may believe.

Posted by: Rick | Oct 16 2007 22:10 utc | 127

This post at China Hand (of all places) seems to me to be one of the best analyses of the
background to the puffery and deception surrounding the Israeli strike in
the Syrian desert. The author is very polite in his choice of phrasing
with regard to the veracity of the “atomic threat” there, but the basic
thrust of the discussion is, I think, highly illuminating and incriminating.

Posted by: Hannah K. O’Luthon | Oct 17 2007 5:30 utc | 129

HKO@129 –
Astute and intriguing analysis at China Matters.
Excerpt:

Maybe strategic and political considerations—especially Israel’s relationship with the United States and America’s policy toward pre-emptive counterproliferation were the key issues at stake.
But whatever was there in Syria, in the public domain I think it was a lot of hype, hot air…and wishful thinking.
And I’ll bet a lot of it came from Uzi Arad, [former head of research for Mossad and National Security advisore to Netanyahu].
…..
To my mind, Arad is a man with an agenda, but he’s also careful to protect his credibility and his mojo as one of Israel’s infallible shadow warriors.
So I didn’t think he’d lightly stake out a position backing the nuclear story, even obliquely as he did to Newsweek, if he believed there was a chance that he’d look like an uninformed alarmist.
So I think there’s something nuclear, at least in the story Israel was pushing to Washington–if not in the Syrian desert.
What was Arad trying to accomplish by helping bring the Syria story into the public domain in the first place? And why did he apparently back down?
To step back for a moment, Uzi Arad’s primary bugbear is not Syria.
Arad sat in on last year’s “Track II” (non-governmental) discussions between Israeli and Syrian representatives, then bugged out when he apparently felt there wasn’t enough in Israel—Syria rapprochement for his country.
What Uzi Arad cares about today is Iran’s nuclear program.

Posted by: small coke | Oct 17 2007 17:50 utc | 131