There are multiple signs that some military action by Israel against Hizbullah and Hamas will soon take place.

Two weeks ago Olmert traveled through European capitals to get international support for a big Gaza operation. The plan seems to be to put the problem into the hand of international troops after such an operation has finished. (Any volunteers?)

The Israeli Mossad assassinated Hizbullah’s military planer Imad Mugniyah in Damascus last week, Hizbullah has pledged revenge.

On the 14th the Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Faisal visited Moscow for a few hours with Putin. On the 15th he was in Washington for a short meeting with Bush. In-between he dropped by in Berlin and Paris. None of the usual news agencies reported about these visits!

Yesterday Faisal warned Saudi citizens not to travel to Lebanon:

"The foreign ministry advised Saudi citizens not to travel to Lebanon in light of unstable political and security circumstances in Lebanon right now," said a statement reported by the official news agency SPA, in a rare move for Saudi Arabia.

…
Political analyst Khaled al-Dakhil said: "Perhaps they have intelligence information that something is going to happen or they think the negotiations taking place now on presidential crisis are going nowhere. They are in a position to know."

…

France temporarily shut down its cultural centers in South-Lebanon and Qatar has withdrawn its troops from the UN mission at the Lebanese Israeli border.

Then there is military movement in Israel:

Cont. reading: A New Lebanon War?

The above snapshot, just taken from the Washington Post homepage, is a fine demonstration of the inconsistencies in Bush’s foreign policy.

Cont. reading: ‘Model’ Foreign Policy in Pakistan

Please add your comments, news & views …

Open thread …

It is President’s day so let me take another look at the aspirants. Even if there are only bad choice, one might want to look at their differences. In honor of this great shopping day, we will do so by looking at presidential quotes.

For me as a European,
the key point in judging candidates is U.S. foreign policy. The main point therein is exeptionalism as a justification for imperial policies and wars. Here is how John McCain saw it in 2000:

I believe in American exceptionalism. I believe we were meant to transform history. I believe that the progress of all humanity will depend, as it has for many years now, on the global progress of American interests and values. I believe we are still the last, best hope of Earth.
Sen. John McCain Addresses Shadow Convention, July 30, 2000

McCain has not changed his tone since then. This is him last week:

But now comes the hard part, and for America, the much bigger decision. We do not yet know for certain who will have the honor of being the Democratic Party’s nominee for president. But we know where either of their candidates will lead this country, and we dare not let them.
…
They will paint a picture of the world in which America’s mistakes are a greater threat to our security than the malevolent intentions of an enemy that despises us and our ideals; a world that can be made safer and more peaceful by placating our implacable foes and breaking faith with allies and the millions of people in this world for whom America, and the global progress of our ideals, has long been “the last, best hope of Earth.”
Text of McCain’s Potomac Primaries Victory Speech, February 12, 2008

McCain is wrong to claim that ‘either’ Democratic candidate is taking a less exceptionalist position than he himself.

Obama, in his major foreign policy speech, is reading from the same book McCain uses:

Cont. reading: The “last, best hope”?

A big ‘kinetic event’ happened in Kandahar, Afghanistan, today. The reports seem suspicious to me.

The headlines:

• Reuters: Picnic site blast kills over 80 Afghans
• Associated Press: Suicide bomber kills 80 in Afghanistan
• Agence France-Press: Afghan suicide blast kills 80: governor
• AP: photo of damaged cars
• AP: video of aftermath

At the "picnic site," as Reuters labels it, were some 500 men (no women allowed) who came together to watch and bet on dog-fights some seven miles outside of Kandahar.  Something exploded, 80+ are dead and 100+ wounded. The dead include some local war-lord and militia leader who is friendly with the government and therefore also labeled as ‘commander of an ‘auxiliary police force’. According to the AP video voice-over, all the men attending the event were ‘militia and police’. It is unclear to me if or how many real police men were there.

AFP:

Cont. reading: Suspicious ‘Suicide Bomber’ Report

Now some organized criminals of Albanian heritage in Kosovo declare independence and Washington and some extraordinary stupid idiots in Brussels will loudly clap their hands and congratulate themselves for this blatant illegal and disastrous act.

Do people in Europe notice whose flag these people are waving? A independent Kosovo will be an ever infectious strategic wound in Europe’s legs. "That is a feature, not a bug," thinks Washington, "That is the deeper reasoning behind Camp Bondsteel."

Recommended reading:
The Dismantling of Yugoslavia: A Study in Inhumanitarian Intervention (and a Western Liberal-Left Intellectual and Moral Collapse)
and
Independence for Kosovo: the domino effect – An end to Balkan national states

Here is the current plan to achieve regime-change in Iran:

The Iran NIE was greeted with some relief as it asserted that Iran didn’t have an active military nuclear program. People believe that this has made an attack on Iran unlikely. But as I remarked when it was published, the NIE contained a poison pill. It also asserted that Iran has had a military nuclear program up to 2003. Iran must now "confess" this or it will be used to justify more sanctions and, in the end, war on Iran.

There is no public or reported evidence for the second NIE assertion and the IAEA has found no hints for a past or present military nuke program in Iran. Despite threats against IAEA director ElBaradei from the U.S. and France, the IAEA is likely to give Iran a clean bill of health in its upcoming report.

But the U.S. is committed to regime change and ever tightening economic and physical pressure on Iran is seen as the way to get there.

It has now laid out a strategy for implementing this:

• The U.S. accuses Iran of some nefarious programs Iran has most likely never done.
• Selected secret evidence for such programs from the highly dubious Niger papers "Laptop of Death" has been given to the IAEA. (The Laptop might be somewhat authentic and include some Iranian student’s college notes. Its content could also be completely forged. Most likely it is a mix of both. The Niger papers were false but written on real Nigerian embassy stationery.)
• The U.S. now officially demands that Iran "Must Confess" that it has had the military nuke program the NIE alleges.
• The IAEA will ask Iran about the plans and experiments laid out in the secret evidence and, as Iran has never had these, come back with nothing.
• El Baradei, the IAEA chief, will say that there is no proof for such programs. But he will be pressed into also saying that the "absence of evidence is not evidence of absence."
• The IAEA board, which consists of 35 country seats, will then report to the UN that the IAEA has done all it can, but that it cannot guarantee for the peaceful nature of Iran’s nuclear program.
• The UN security council will then either tighten sanctions and demand that Iran proves a negative, or, more likely, not further sanction Iran.

The situation is then the same as it was on Iraq and the U.S., with the support of France and the UK, will in one way or another act with the flimsy justification that the "UN is not willing to act."

The most likely act is a blockade of sea transport from and to Iran.

Under the justification of the need to prevent smuggling and proliferation of nuclear material, the U.S., the UK and France will establish sea patrols that will interdict all ships from and to Iran and search these for "dual use" material. (The French are preparing for this with their new Navy base in the United Arab Emirates.) They will confiscate any "dual use" stuff under a similar flexible definition of "dual use" as was used against Iraq and killed 500,000 Iraqi children.

Such plans for sea interdiction were laid out in the first reports about a third round of UN sanctions against Iran. These were not, as falsly reported by the NYT, part of new sanctions the permanent SC members had agreed upon, but a suggestion in one of various proposals that were distributed to non-permanent UN security council members.

In international law, the interruption of free sea traffic without a UN SC resolution is an act of war. Iran will be fully in its right to use force to break such an imposed blockade. But if it does, the Iranian use of force will be a welcome justification for punative air strikes and devastating cruise missile attacks against it.

After the first few air campaign days Iran will no longer have an Air Force and Navy to speak of. It will be bombed again and again, its trade further suffocated, until its people submit to U.S. will by changing their government, or until Iran, ten years from now, is just a former shell of itself that can easily be invaded.

That is the script, as far as I can tell. It is independent of who will become U.S. president. If it looks somewhat familiar to the history of what happened to another Middle East country that is certainly no coincidence.

The script has worked once. That why it is used again.

Terrorists increasingly favor using women as suicide bombers to thwart security and draw attention to their causes, a new FBI-Department of Homeland Security assessment concludes.

…
For example, the assessment points out women can hide explosives in prosthetic devices that mimic the look of pregnancy.
U.S. agencies warn of female suicide bombers, CNN, Feb 12, 2008

Seems like these nuts had time to read Ivan Bloch during office hours.

Further, in the course of the eighteenth century, the peculiar fashion of false stomachs, ‘pads’ or ‘paddies’, was revived. These were used for a time at the end ‘fifties, and were seen again in the ‘nineties. Archenholtz says: ‘This was the most senseless invention, against all decency and delicacy, and disfiguring the female body; it caused a deformity which is only seen in the female sex during pregnancy. These decorations were called pads, and the smaller ones paddies; they were usually made of tin, and were therefore called "tin pinafores". These artificial stomachs were in great favour, particularly with unmarried women, which caused the wits to say that a revolution had taken place amongst the signs of the Zodiac, and the Twins had come too near Virgo. But above all, these pads were the butt of jokers, who used them unmercifully, and their use soon had to be discontinued. Such a fashion was in too bad taste to last long. It was in existence in London in February 1793, but by the end of the spring it was over in England and went to Dublin, where it was welcomed by the women. During the migration which took place as a result of the French war, it was taken to Germany by refugee English women, but was not copied there.’
Ivan Bloch: Sexual Life In England Past and Present 1903/1938 quoted here.

Why else would they come up with this threat when:

The assessment said the agencies "have no specific, credible intelligence indicating that terrorist organizations intend to utilize female suicide bombers against targets in the homeland."

Nuts …

Did the corrupt Saudi dictator family threaten to blow up London, or did Tony Blair lie to investigators about such a threat to get a new arms deal done?

That is the question coming up in front of a British court.

The British arms manufacturer BAE payed a £1 billion bribe to Prince Bandar of Saudi Arabia. When the Serious Fraud Office inquired into this, then Prime Minister Blair intervened and stopped the investigation on grounds of national security.
From the Guardian’s take:

[Prince Bandar] was accused in yesterday’s high court hearings of flying to London in December 2006 and uttering threats which made the prime minister, Tony Blair, force an end to the Serious Fraud Office investigation into bribery allegations involving Bandar and his family.
…
[A] paper trail set out in court showed that days after Bandar flew to London to lobby the government, Blair had written to the attorney general, Lord Goldsmith, and the SFO was pressed to halt its investigation.

The Independent adds:

Ms Garlick[the SFO’s assistant director,] said the Attorney General had also asked for her advice, and she described attending a meeting at the Foreign Office where "we had been told that ‘British lives on British streets’ were at risk". Ms Garlick stated: "If this caused another 7/7 [bomb attacks on London on 7 July 2005] how could we say that our investigation, which at this stage might or might not result in a successful prosecution, was more important?"
…
Lord Justice Moses suggested that, in reality, the Saudi threat involved saying that Britain would not be told if the Saudis learnt that someone was going to "blow you up". Mr Sales said the threat of withdrawal of co-operation went wider.

Did mighty Britain cave in to terror blackmail by an oil sheik?

Did Blair invented this threat and interfered with the judiciary to further a new arms-sale by BAE?

Those seem to be the only possible interpretations here.

Independent of which one will turn out to be right, Blair should not ever again have any role in government issues, except as defendant in a war crime suit.

Please sign the Petition against the nomination of Tony Blair as "President of the European Union"

by Debs is dead
lifted from a comment

I don’t understand why people are even debating the Obama Clinton
thing especially on the thin ice of race, since HRC spent a good deal
of effort trying to paint her opponent into a Jessie Jackson type
candidate for african americans only. The stereotyping was led by Cigar
Bill of course and the only thing it appeared to achieve was to swing
away black voters disenchanted by the spectacle of the "first black
prez" showing his true colors. The bullshit flowed from both sides
which is to be expected.

We know this, just as any thinker knows that a person capable of
winning the nomination from either party, dem or rethug is a guaranteed
enemy of ordinary humans inside and outside amerika who is going to
continue the policies of amerikan imperialism plugged-in, that GWB
introduced.

There is only one tiny chink of light showing anywhere in this. It
seems likely that as Susan articulated so well earlier, the Clinton
dynasty has screwed the pooch badly.
The dynasty is going to have to fight dirty (well dirtier), to secure
their ‘rightful gig’. Even the dynasty’s number one supporter, the NYT conceeds that here:

Cont. reading: The Dem Rethug Farce

BushCheney blow another disarmament treaty. They want to weaponize space.

Remember these headlines from last spring?

Pentagon: China’s anti-satellite test poses threat
U.S., Japan Criticize China for Testing Anti-Satellite Missile
Experts: US Should Worry About Chinese Anti-Satellite Device
Cheney: China’s anti-satellite test ‘not consistent’ with stated goal of a peaceful rise

All these headlines were of course highly hypocritical. The U.S. has tested anti-satellite weapons since the late 1950s and shot down one of its own satellites in 1985. The Soviets had a similar program.

As experts have pointed out, the U.S. missile defense system, especially the parts based on AEGIS cruisers, are useable as anti-satellite weapons.

This is now confirmed. The U.S. plans to shoot down a dead spy-satellite:

U.S. officials said Thursday that the option preferred by the Bush administration will be to fire a missile from a U.S. Navy cruiser, and shoot down the satellite before it enters Earth’s atmosphere.

The satellite in question is a 4.5 tons spy-object that malfunctioned after it was launched in December 2006.

Cont. reading: The Space Weapon Threat

Two years ago we took a look at The Laptop:

It is the overwhelming proof that Iran has nuclear weapons, ehh – might have nuclear weapons, hmm – could have nuclear weapons – or not.

The Laptop of Death, as emptywheel aptly named it, is supposed to have somehow come out of Iran and to contain thousands of pages of technical documentation of Iranian military nuclear programs. Reportedly the one word not included in this treasure trove of documents is ‘nuclear’.

The Laptop’s content is likely as genuine as the Niger papers about Saddam’s Uranium purchases. Despite several requests, the U.S. has never provided the ‘evidence’ from The Laptop to the IAEA.

But now it has changed its mind:

Cont. reading: The Iranian Laptop – Again

A big fight between the people of the U.S. and Wall Street is developing. At issue is a federal bailout for the three big bond insurers MBIA, Ambac and FGIC. Yesterday the banks lost a big advantage in this. Now more campaigns funds will flow.

The three insurance companies each have two lines of business. The traditional and relative sound one is to provide insurance against the default of municipal bonds. Such bonds are used by all states and bigger cities in the U.S. to borrow money for investment and their daily business. Uninsured bond issues have to pay much higher interest or will not find any buyers at all.

The newer line of business for the bond insurers are the various fraudulant mortgage bonds and their derivatives, CDOs and MBSs, through which major business banks resold bad debt under faulty triple A ratings. Now, as the bad debt bonds have been exposed as such, the insurers will have to pay for their default. But they have too little capital to do so. They will go bust any moment now.

Cont. reading: Why the Banks Hate White Knight Buffett

Uncle $cam writes in a comment on the militarizing of domestic police forces:

I believe it is scientific, part and parcel of a prototype blueprint of domestic strategia della tensione. Indeed, characteristic of what sociologist Erving Goffman, coined as the ‘Total Institution’. The goal of the total institution is to develop a tension between the home world and the institutional world. The goal is to maintain complete submission to authority by all means necessary, be it constant personal humiliation, a constant devising of new forms of psychological harassment along with physical control, a pattern of deliberately-planned severly abusive treatment. Conditioning.

Tangerine touched on the same issue in a comment on torture:

As a show of power, and a tool of control – it works. Its main use is to frighten both opponents and adherents, the actors, the servants, those on the ground.

Zbigniew Brzezinski in an op-ed on the psychological scheme behind the "war of terror":

Cont. reading: Culture of Fear

News & views …

Gideon Rachman is the Financial Times foreign columnist. He recently was in Afghanistan with Rice and Miliband and at his blog reported from inside the bubble:

The security is so tight that it must be virtually impossible for visiting western dignitaries to form any spontaneous impression of Afghanistan. Rice and Miliband arrived early this morning on an unadvertised flight from London. They were immediately put on a military plane to Kandahar – but did not leave the military base there. Then it was back to Kabul, and a short drive to see President Karzai on a road that had been cleared of all traffic. Then it was time to visit some more troops in a gym at Nato HQ. And that’s it.

…
I was told that British official advice is strongly against staying in a hotel in Kabul, so the embassy are putting me up. The diplomats are holed up in their official compounds and told not to visit markets or to eat in town.
…
It’s difficult to know what to make of it all. Anyway, I’m saving that up for my newspaper column next Tuesday.

The promised column was published today and it certainly shows how effective the bubble has worked on Mr. Rachman himself. He hasn’t seen anything of the real Afghanistan, but writes that it is Too soon to give up in Afghanistan. The column is highly manipulative:

Cont. reading: Reporting on Afghanistan from Inside the Bubble

The discussion of military U.S. meddling in Africa is centered around AFRICOM, the U.S. military command for Africa with headquarters in Stuttgart, Germany and under the control of the Defense Department [Question to Berlin: How is having that command in our country serving German interests?]

But part of the money for U.S. military action is burried within the State Department’s budget. Via Danger Room we learn of a current State Department solicitation for military base preparation and other services in Africa:

The Department of State (DOS), Bureau of African Affair’s Africa Peacekeeping Program (AFRICAP) program covers much of the security assistance work being requested throughout the continent of Africa.
The program enhances African countries ability to conduct peacekeeping
operations and builds African capacities for crisis management and
counter terrorism. One of the program’s key objectives is regional
peace and stability.
…
DOS uses its peacekeeping operations (PKO) funds to advance that goal by undertaking training of armed forces, enhancing their ability to deploy by land, air and sea. AFRICAP contractors also work with regional organizations to enhance their abilities to prevent, manage, and resolve conflict and supporting peacekeeping and peace building operations.

We can think of some examples here. Like the bloody U.S. coup in Somalia via Ethiopian proxy forces which were trained by U.S. military. Such training will now be privatized:

Cont. reading: Department of State adds $s to Africom

What is the story of the four Obama primary victories in Louisiana, Nebraska, Washington State and Maine? Why did Clinton lose? Tell me.

TPM says Obama may win all February primaries. The momentum then might be enough to let him win some big ones in March.

But then there is quite some gerrymandering in districts and a big victory in a state may not mean a big number of delegates for the winner. As Alex Cockburn points out Obama got 302,684 votes in Alabama and Clinton got 226,454. But somehow that resulted in the same number of delegates for each of them.

When one clicks through the states in the NYT election guide, the details of the delegate allocation seem to vary everywhere and are quite complicate. Just as an example – Nebraska:

Based on the results of precinct-level caucuses on Feb. 9, delegates are pledged to vote for candidates at county conventions in June where, in turn, state delegates are elected. On June 28, state delegates caucus at the state convention. Sixteen pledged delegates result from this process, and five at-large pledged delegates are chosen at the state convention. Additionally, three pledged delegates are selected from party leaders, for a total of 24 pledged delegates. Party leaders comprise six unpledged delegates, and an additional unpledged delegate is selected at the state convention.

Obama won with 68% against Clinton with 32%. But only 16 of 31 total delegates were chosen in that election. Obama got 11 and Clinton 5. The other 15 delegates still can go either way.

Am I the only one to find this system bizarre?

On the Republican side there seems to evolve a "anything but McCain" movement which gave Huckabee two wins. The Washington state party establishment pulled the emergency break and stopped counting votes when McCain was in danger to lose there too.

We have seen such before in Florida, but in a party primary?

While it strives to export ‘democracy’, the U.S. may first need to import that product to see how it is supposed to function.

On December 3 last year I argued that rate cuts will not help in the developing bank crisis but will have severe inflationary effects.

Central Banks should now push interest rates higher and stop the inflation trend before it gets out of control. To lower rates now will only feed another bubble, possibly in commodities, and lead to more pain and an even bigger bust later on.

On December 11 the Fed cut its lending rate from 4.5 to 4.25%. The Fed lowered its rate again on January 22 by an alarming 75 basis points to 3.5%. On January 30 it cut again by another 50 basis points to 3%. Additionally the Fed lightened restrictions for certain financial businesses. It flooded the markets with fresh credit to bail out the money men on Wall Street.

As predicted the Fed miss-action did not help where it was supposed to help. The fresh money is  not put to the intended use, but into new speculation. The financial markets are still in turmoil. Banks are still at the border of bankruptcy and some will step over it. But the rate slashes launched a new bubble.

Doug Noland at Prudent Bear reports in his weekly market review (scroll down to the last part):

Cont. reading: Fed Rate Cuts Kill People

After delivering his prepared remarks Gates fielded questions from his audience, which included dozens of top government officials, mainly from Europe and the United States, as well as military officers, private security specialists, members of Congress and European parliamentarians.

A member of the Russian parliament, leading off the questioning, accused the United States of having created today’s al-Qaida threat through its support in the 1980s for the mujahadeen resistance to Soviet occupation of Afghanistan.

Gates disputed that assertion but said he did regret that the United States abandoned Afghanistan after the Soviets withdrew in 1989.
“The threat from al-Qaida began with the Soviet invasion of a sovereign state in December 1979, a state that up to that point had not represented a threat to anybody in the world, except to a certain extent its own people because of its weakness and poverty,” Gates said in response to the Russian’s question.
Gates Cautions on NATO’s Survival, AP, Jan Feb 10, 2008

Somehow I remember that different. Wasn’t there a former CIA director who wrote about this? Who claimed that Carter sent big money to the Mujah groups, from which al Qaeda grew, before the Sowjets intervened on the side of the attacked Afghan government?

Indeed:

Cont. reading: Gates: “Who are you gonna believe, me or my memoirs.”