MoA - June 2009

As also posted some seven hours ago under today's link thread, Haaretz is reporting that Dennis Ross will be fired from his position as the Iran coordinator of the Obama government:

Dennis Ross, who most recently served as a special State Department envoy to Iran, will abruptly be relieved of his duties, sources in Washington told Haaretz. An official announcement is expected in the coming days.
The Obama administration will announce that Ross has been reassigned to another position in the White House. In his new post, the former Mideast peace envoy under President Bill Clinton will deal primarily with regional issues related to the peace process.

As of now the report is unconfirmed by other sources.

The current Haaretz piece is headlined: "Why is Dennis Ross being ousted as Obama envoy to Iran?" The earlier headline was: "Was Dennis Ross ousted as U.S. envoy to Iran because he's a Jew?". If I remember correctly the earlier piece did not include the second paragraph of the current one which says Ross will in future "deal primarily with regional issues related to the peace process."

We do not know why Ross was moved from that position. He should not have been put there in the first place because he is a. against talking with Iran, b. has never had success in achieving agreements in his earlier roles in the Clinton administration, c. has no experience on or with Iran at all.

Haaretz names several possible reason for this move. His open mistrust about talks with Iran, Irans alleged refusal to accept Ross in the negotiator role, his possible own dissatisfaction with his job and a rumored move of Ross to the National Security Agency where, a Haaretz source claims, he would work more directly under Obama.

The last claim sounds bogus to me. Ross does not have any experience as spy - at least not for the United States. The other ones are spurious too. Ross' positions towards Iran was known before he was put onto the job. They can not be reason to now remove him.

I for one assume something different. Over the last month a character assassination campaign was launched against the head of the National Security Council James Jones. It publicly started May 18 when Sally Quinn, conservative wife of former Washington Post editor Benjamin C. Bradlee, gossiped:

The knives are out. The tom-toms are beating. And by Washington standards it's soon. Usually the trashing of the national security adviser takes longer.
In recent days articles have appeared in The Post and the New York Times questioning the abilities of retired four-star Gen. Jim Jones, the former commandant of the Marine Corps and former NATO commander.
...
Today, the sniping is reportedly coming mostly from State Department officials and some staffers at the White House.
...
Obama has said many times that he wants to hear all voices. He famously assembled a team of rivals. And if those who are sniping think Jim Jones is not doing a good job, they should go directly to the president, not leak and spin to the press. That's their duty. Obama is not afraid to cut his losses.

In an earlier portrait David Ignatius wrote about Jones:

Jones is an activist on the Palestinian issue, which he lists as a top priority for the new administration. He wants the United States to offer a guiding hand in peace negotiations -- submitting its own ideas to help break any logjams between the Israelis and Palestinians. "The United States is at its best when it's directly involved," Jones says.

The second attack against Jones came in a Steve Clemons rumor piece at the Washington Note last Friday where he asked: Can James Jones Survive a Second Round of Attacks and "Longer Knives":?

I've received not just one email -- but three -- from prominent insider journalists and policy hands that Jim Jones' tenure as National Security Adviser is highly fragile.
One of these emails reports starkly:
Knives getting longer
That's all my contact said. But other emails have intimated to me a serious tone-deafness by Jones about his role and responsibilities, his relationship with the President, and his relationship with younger, dedicated, hardworking and late-working staff.

That was followed by lots of assertions about how Jones' character and how he does his job. All of which were set out in a bad light even when one could argue that they are rather positive. Clemons ended:

Jones has structured an all views on the table approach to decision making -- quite evident when it comes to Middle East policy -- and the hawkish/neocon-friendly/Likudist-hugging part of the Obama administration's foreign policy operation may be engaged in a coup attempt against Jones.
I don't know if he'll survive this latest effort to oust him -- but folks need to know that those "longer knives", on the whole, do not have pure motives.

It seems clear to me that those attacks came from a high and well connected level at the State Department and as they are connected to Middle East policy quite likely directly from Dennis Ross who is also well known for bureaucratic infighting.

If so(and if Haaretz's sources are right), Ross just lost that fight by knock out in the third round.

As Pat Lang warned when the Quinn piece came out:

One should not confuse reserve with timidity. A former commandant of the US Marine Corps is a dangerous enemy.

Ross just learned that lesson.

Posted by b on June 15, 2009 at 14:58 UTC | Permalink | Comments (29)

Debs Take On Iran's Election

by Debs is dead
lifted from a comment

I'm really reluctant to post on any of this because it is none of our fucking business and that includes the bourgeois sons and daughters of Iranian 'refugees'. What happens in Iran is Iran's business comment either way is mined and then used to develop talking points to bring the neo-cons, neo-libs, & national socialists onside for sticking their sticky beaks into Iran.

At most Oblamblam and co will be spinning up acceptance for more overt destabilisation of Iran, a full on attack is completely off the agenda despite however much Israelis, imperialists and pseudo leftie national socialists may want it. The plain fact is the odds of America and whatever other scurds of cannon fodder can be scraped out from under Oblamblam's fingernails after he has scoured the bottom of the foreign support barrel couldn't win a bar blue at happy hour, let alone take on Iran's well organised and well resourced defence forces.

And they, (the war mongers) know it. Consequently they are stuck with trying to organise a colour revolution in the hope that even if they don't get a puppet in, they may get the opportunity to leverage a bit more of an opening. One to either take over and at best install their trained chook or at least weaken Iran's defences.

Nukes and crap have about as much to do with this as WMD had with Iraq, they are an excuse not a reason. The motive is exactly the same as that which has had Americans slaughtering native Americans from the Amazon to Angoon for the last 300+ years.

It won't stop - it can't stop, the empire must be fed or it will die, and Iran is much favoured sustenance.
Iraq was a stopgap, a small taster that fortuitously became available after the collapse of the Soviet Union, but Iran has been on the agenda since Stalin offered the loot up to Roosevelt in 1943 as payment for the material required to defeat Europe's national socialists.

Tehran's kids are an easy target for the quiet Americans, the situation parallels that of Moscow in the 80's where kids would sell their society for a few pairs of Levis. The Iranians regime know that and attempt to keep most consumerist stuff coming for the bourgeois youth, they know how this goes otherwise.

However the effect of the sanctions combined with the controls on the media the ruling elite believes they have to put in place cause they can see no other way of preventing the covert disinformation campaign America and co are running now from going right over the top, have combined to convince the kids that their own leaders are 'uncool' - which is probably true but nevertheless the alternative would be much less cool for a whole lot more Iranians - worse there would be no way back from it. Well no bearable way. Ask the Zimbabweans what happens if you close your legs once the gang has begun to bang.

Attempting to convince kids of this is likely to make matter worse, so the Iranian administration is forced to sit on it's hands and hope that if things go real quiet some of the kids might just hear the Americans and work it out for themselves.

Sometimes that isn't possible. Setting fire to buses and smashing windows provokes a crackdown anywhere in the world. When Tibetans protest that's good and the crackdown bad, but until recently protesting was frowned on in Nepal - the protesters were Maoist murderers on the streets of Kathmandu - until the Maoists won power that is, now Nepalese rioters are freedom fighters.
Same in Thailand, when the Bangkok middle and merchant class put their airport under siege for weeks so as to overthrow the democratically elected government - that was good, but when the rural people who voted for the former government arrived in Bangkok to protest the coup, the western media dubbed them illiterate peasants greedy for hand outs.

Still in Iran none of it will matter in the end. Ahmadinejad has got another 4 years and his mob was ready for the losers' dummy spit, the 'riots' will die down and things will be tougher for America next time round in Iran.

I'm betting that it will be the heroin the amerikans are smuggling into Iran that will likely bring them undone in the eyes of the young Iranians - they will get caught at it as they eventually always do.

There hasn't been much talk about this problem in the west (I wonder why not) and the Iranians are staying shtum for their own reasons, but since the coalition of the willing cranked up the Afghani 'O' cultivation racket, the bulk of that O has been refined into hammer and pushed into Iran.

The BBC ran a story a few weeks back saying Iran now had 4 million yep you read right 4,000,000 junkies. I have an Iranian student in one class who told me he reckons that Tehran probably has 4 million addicts. He said the real figure for all Iran is much much higher.

Smallpox in blankets becomes smack in bindles but this hammer thing won't work, it never really has. I suppose you could say that taking crack into Compton helped America keep it's slaves in their place, but the destruction of black society hasn't been anything like complete and has relied upon a number of other controls which cannot easily be replicated in a country whose leadership doesn't play ball.
For example the Iranians are treating the problem as more of a health issue than a good old American "war on drugs". They have been opening many treatment centres (altho without getting the "turn yourself into a pliant vegetable" Bill and Bob scam going)

In the end the young people will realise that their difference of opinion with Ahmadinejad is just a family dispute which America exploits for it's own ends. One is an overly authoritarian parent, the other a sleazy old sex addict whose seeming charm is just grooming in preparation for rape.

Posted by b on June 15, 2009 at 7:31 UTC | Permalink | Comments (100)

Links June 15 09

Was Dennis Ross ousted as U.S. envoy to Iran because he's a Jew? - Haaretz
Ross out! This was NSC head James Jones hitting back against Ross' attempts to defame him.

"Our polling suggests that Iran's election results reflect real support for Ahmadinejad" - WaPo
Why Ahmadinejad Won the Iranian Elections - Time To Think
Crowds join Ahmadinejad victory rally (video) - BBC - Huge crowd ... manipulative voice over

A Few Thoughts on the Speech - Marshall/TPM
Netanyahu, Mideast peace and a return to the Axis of Evil - Akiva Eldar/Haaretz
What Netanyahu is right about - Middle East Reality

Lack of intelligence, resources plague Obama Afghan strategy - Sale/SST
‘Decisive offensive’ ordered against Baitullah Mehsud - Dawn - This will be bloody

Too Poor to Make the News - Ehrenreich/NYT
Medicare for all may be the best cure for the US (alt link) - FT
Paul Krugman's fear for lost decade - Observer
Paul Krugman's London lectures - Dismal science - Economist
Economic Outlook: Inflation takes centre stage (alt link) - FT

Please add your links, views and news in the comments.

Posted by b on June 15, 2009 at 6:10 UTC | Permalink | Comments (2)

June 14, 2009

Some Dots You May Want To Connect

In any ordinary business, Manucher Ghorbanifar would cut an implausibly mysterious figure. Officially, he has been a shipping executive in Tehran and a commodities trader in France. By his own account he was a refugee from the revolutionary government of Ayatullah Ruhollah Khomeini, which confiscated his businesses in Iran, yet he later became a trusted friend and kitchen adviser to Mir Hussein Mousavi, Prime Minister in the Khomeini government. Some U.S. officials who have dealt with Ghorbanifar praise him highly. Says Michael Ledeen, adviser to the Pentagon on counterterrorism: "He is one of the most honest, educated, honorable men I have ever known." Others call him a liar who, as one puts it, could not tell the truth about the clothes he is wearing.
The Murky World of Weapons Dealers, Time Magazin, Jan. 19, 1987

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On or about November 25, 1985, Ledeen received a frantic phone call from Ghorbanifar, asking him to relay a message from the prime minister of Iran to President Reagan regarding the shipment of the wrong type of HAWKs.
United States v. Robert C. McFarlane, Walsh Iran Contra Report, 1985

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Franklin, along with another colleague from Feith's office, a polyglot Middle East expert named Harold Rhode, were the two officials involved in the back-channel, which involved on-going meetings and contacts with Iranian arms dealer Manucher Ghorbanifar and other Iranian exiles, dissidents and government officials.
...
The administration's reluctance to disclose these details seems clear: the DoD-Ghorbanifar meetings suggest the possibility that a rogue faction at the Pentagon was trying to work outside normal US foreign policy channels to advance a "regime change" agenda not approved by the president's foreign policy principals or even the president himself.
Iran-Contra II?, Washington Monthly, September 2004

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Late last year, Congress agreed to a request from President Bush to fund a major escalation of covert operations against Iran, according to current and former military, intelligence, and congressional sources. These operations, for which the President sought up to four hundred million dollars, were described in a Presidential Finding signed by Bush, and are designed to destabilize the country’s religious leadership.
...
“The Finding was focussed on undermining Iran’s nuclear ambitions and trying to undermine the government through regime change,” a person familiar with its contents said, and involved “working with opposition groups and passing money.”
Preparing the Battlefield, The New Yorker, July 7, 2008

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The Ukrainian Orange phenomenon was modeled quite explicitly on the example of the Rose Revolution, which featured a disputed election, massive youth-oriented street protests, and plenty of subsidies from U.S. government agencies.
The 'Color' Revolutions: Fade to Black, Antiwar, September 29, 2006

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The Pentagon and US intelligence have refined the art of such soft coups to a fine level. RAND planners call it ‘swarming,’ referring to the swarms of youth, typically linked by SMS and web blogs, who can be mobilized on command to destabilize a target regime.
Color Revolutions, Geopolitics and the Baku Pipeline", Engdahl, (no date)

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Even before the count began, Mousavi declared himself “definitely the winner” based on “all indications from all over Iran.” He accused the government of “manipulating the people’s vote” to keep Ahmadinejad in power and suggested the reformist camp would stand up to challenge the results.
“It is our duty to defend people’s votes. There is no turning back,” Mousavi said, alleging widespread irregularities.
Iran declares win for Ahmadinejad in disputed vote, Associated Press, June 13, 2009

Posted by b on June 14, 2009 at 17:00 UTC | Permalink | Comments (71)

More On The Iran Election

There is a full effort of the "western" media and some expatriate Iranian organizations to de-legitimize the Iranian election despite the absence of any real evidence of voting fraud. These events show all characteristics of an engineered "color evolution".

As said before I find the reelection of Ahmadinejad quite plausible. He has done a lot for the poor and the elections were for a decent part class based. As Robert Fisk relates from someone not-regime-friendly in Tehran:

But I must repeat what he said. "The election figures are correct, Robert. Whatever you saw in Tehran, in the cities and in thousands of towns outside, they voted overwhelmingly for Ahmadinejad. Tabriz voted 80 per cent for Ahmadinejad. It was he who opened university courses there for the Azeri people to learn and win degrees in Azeri. In Mashad, the second city of Iran, there was a huge majority for Ahmadinejad after the imam of the great mosque attacked Rafsanjani of the Expediency Council who had started to ally himself with Mousavi. They knew what that meant: they had to vote for Ahmadinejad."
My guest and I drank dookh, the cool Iranian drinking yoghurt so popular here. The streets of Tehran were a thousand miles away. "You know why so many poorer women voted for Ahmadinejad? There are three million of them who make carpets in their homes. They had no insurance. When Ahmadinejad realised this, he immediately brought in a law to give them full insurance. Ahmadinejad's supporters were very shrewd. They got the people out in huge numbers to vote – and then presented this into their vote for Ahmadinejad."

The myth in the "western" media is that Ahmadinejad is a "right-wing hardliner". While he asserts nationalism and sovereignty as any president should do, in interior politics and economics, dominant in elections everywhere, his position is more to the left of the typical "western" right-left scale.

The argument favored by Juan Cole and others that high inflation and high unemployment numbers should have favored Mousavi and the 'reformers' backed by Iran's richest man Rafsanjani. But those numbers, as asserted in the "west", are not what they are said to be.

Unfortunately the myth that is currently created, will likely be used to favor the agenda of the war mongers. We will all be in trouble if their argument wins. This whole issue will do wonders for oil speculators and thereby snuff up any "green shots".

Posted by b on June 14, 2009 at 8:42 UTC | Permalink | Comments (116)

Links June 14 09

Police in Iran beat protesters after huge Ahmadinejad win - McClatchy
Iran election result makes Obama's outreach efforts harder - McClatchy

Carter: Netanyahu faces clash with Obama over peace process - Haaretz

Prof. Bacevich Deflates COIN-Happy Crowd of 1,400 - American Conservative

The Obama Haters’ Silent Enablers - Frank Rich/NYT

Deep in Debt, Six Flags Is Bankrupt - Another icon falls
Where Are We Now? Five Point Summary - Simons/Baseline Scenario
Most 'liveable' cities - Economist via PK

Italian who missed fatal Air France flight dies in car crash - RIA Novosti - Destiny?

Please add your links, views and news in the comments.

Posted by b on June 14, 2009 at 6:18 UTC | Permalink | Comments (9)

June 13, 2009

Links June 13 09

For Iran coverage please see the post below.

Tough sanctions may provoke NKorea: US envoy - AFP - Indeed
North Korea says it will 'weaponize' its plutonium - LAT

Top French court rips heart out of Sarkozy internet law - London Times - A win for the human right of free access to information

Miliband anger at Bermuda's US Guantánamo deal - Telegraph

Fox paid Ross $106,000 last year - Politico - Dennis Ross is evil
Can James Jones Survive a Second Round of Attacks and "Longer Knives"? - Washington Note - Dennis Ross is evil
Sentence Reduced In Pentagon Case - WaPo - No jail for AIPAC spy
Analysis: A Two-State Solution? - Richard Sale - SST

No change: Obama ambassadorships still go to fundraisers, friends - McClatchy

Latvia is 'saved from bankruptcy' - BBC - I am not so sure

How to lose on a sure-fire bet - Econbrowser - The wonders of Credit Default Swaps
Soros Says CDS are Destructive, Should be Outlawed - Reuters - Nice to see him agree with me
2 Japanese carrying $134 bil worth of U.S. bonds detained in Italy - Japan Today - a few days old, still interesting
US cities may have to be bulldozed in order to survive - Telegraph
Overview: UK and US bond yields hit seven-month peaks (alt link) - FT
Cost of crude raises concerns - FT/MSN.

Please add your links, views and news in the comments.

Posted by b on June 13, 2009 at 8:03 UTC | Permalink | Comments (26)

A 'Coup' in Iran? We Don't Know.

The news-situation is not yet clear and it is difficult for now to assert what the real results of the Iranian election are. All sides agree that the turnout was pretty high.

The official results claim Amadinejad has 65% of the votes while, immediately after the voting closed, Mousavi's side claimed 54% for itself. Obviously that does not add up and "western" sources suggest fraud by Ahmadinejad. I am not so sure. The numerical difference seems too high for simple fraud.

In the last election Ahmadinejad also won with some 60+% against the very rich and corrupt Rafsanshani but the turnout then was low and Mousavi is perceived to not be corrupt. But two days ago Rafsanshani wrote an open letter against Ahmadinejad and that may well have been bad for Mousavi.

We should not forget that the elections in Iran are pretty much class based with the poor, rural and conservative on Ahmadinejad's side and the middle class, more liberal, affluent city folks - in population numbers still a minority - on the 'reformer' side. While the big demonstrations for Mousavi during the campaign were emphasized in the "western" media, the even bigger demonstrations for Ahmadinejad were less reported on. Some news excerpts:

Ynet:

At a press conference on Friday night, even before the close of polls on Friday, Mousavi declared himself "definitely the winner" based on "all indications from all over Iran." The statement was contradicted at that time by preliminary data of the state election commission.
Mousavi accused the Islamic ruling establishment of "manipulating the people's vote" to keep Ahmadinejad in power and suggested the reformist camp would stand up to challenge the results. "It is our duty to defend people's votes. There is no turning back," Mousavi said, alleging widespread irregularities.
Neither the report in the IRNA news agency nor the competing announcement by Mousavi at a news conference gave details on what their claims were based on.

Al Jazeera:

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Iran's incumbent president, has taken a commanding lead in his bid for re-election with more than two-thirds of ballot boxes counted, Iran's interior ministry has said.
Ahmadinejad is currently ahead with 65.2 per cent of the 28 million ballots counted against 31 per cent for Mir Hossein Mousavi, his main rival, according to results released early on Saturday.
IRNA, Iran's official news agency, announced that Ahmadinejad had won re-election.
...
Al Jazeera's Nabili said that journalists following the elections have expressed surprise at the speed of vote counting.
"It does seem remarkably quick," he said. "But the explanation they are giving is that the counting has been going on throughout the day. They kept a running tally."
Latest reports show that 80 per cent of Iran's electorate voted in Friday's elections.

Counting throughout the day? That is unusual for any election I am aware of.

Western sources assert fraud:

Trita Parsi, President of national Iranian American council:
"I'm in disbelief that this could be the case. It's one thing if Ahmadinejad had won the first round with 51 or 55 per cent. But this number ... just sounds tremendously strange in a way that doesn't add up ... It is difficult to feel comfortable that this occurred without any cheating.

But:

Shibley Telhami, professor at the university of Maryland
"The most important element in this election is in domestic politics. People may interpret it as a rejection of international pressure, but I don't think that is correct."

Laura Rozen reports:

Leading Iranian opposition presidential candidate Mir Hossein Mousavi was due to give a press conference at 10am Tehran time (8 1/2 hours ahead of EST), a Washington-based Iran hand tells The Cable. Two hours earlier, final vote counts (according to state counters) are expected to be announced.
"If [Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali] Khamenei comes and endorses the results prior to 10am, then a Mousavi protest will be more than a confrontation, but war," the Iran hand says.
Meantime, an international human rights group says that it has received unconfirmed reports that Mousavi may have been taken into custody by Iranian intelligence officials.
"We were told by very reliable sources that Mousavi was detained on his way to meet the Supreme Leader by members of the intelligence ministry and taken to a safe house to prevent him from making any public announcement," Hadi Ghaemi, of the Hague-based NGO, the International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran, told The Cable.
...

There are reasons not to trust the "western" financed Ghaemi:

(A source who just spoke to someone who went to the Mousavi headquarters said the person disputed that Mousavi was detained. The situation is not clear.)
...
Ghaemi said opposition forces believe there was massive fraud in the vote count but cannot figure out or yet prove where it occurred, perhaps in the computer system pre-planned in advance. He said that they are frightened.
Iran hands have used words like "coup" to describe what they believe may be taking place.

Press TV:

Partial results show that Iran's incumbent President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is close to winning the elections in a landslide victory, gaining 64.31 percent of the votes.
His campaign manager Mojtaba Samareh Hashemi has already claimed victory.
According to reports from the Election Commission Headquarters, the latest statistics announced by the Iranian electoral officials show 36 million (94 %) of the ballots have been counted so far.
It is expected that vote counting will finish in two hours, our correspondent added.
Former prime minister, Mir Hossein Mousavi, who had earlier claimed victory with 54 percent of the votes, has so far gained 32.57 percent of the votes that were counted up to 8:30 a.m. local time (0400 GMT).
...
Mousavi complained of irregularities in the election, including a shortage of ballot papers and attacks on his campaign offices.

The official news agency IRNA website is not reachable. The Iranian Labor News Agency ILNA seems to be down too. Not sure what to make of this. AP:

Nationwide, the text messaging system remained down Saturday and pro-Mousavi Web sites were blocked or difficult to access. Text messaging is frequently used by many Iranians — especially young Mousavi supporters — to spread election news.
In Tehran's streets Saturday morning, Iranians heading to work gathered around newspaper stands to read the headlines, which did not specifically declare a victor — or carry word of Mousavi's claims.
Mousavi's paper, Kalemeh Sabz, or the Green Word, and other reformist dailies were ordered to change their headlines originally declaring Mousavi the victor, according to editors at the papers, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue. The papers had blank spots where articles were removed.

A tidbit from AFP on expat voters:

Ali, a 25-year-old Iranian studying in California, revealed he had voted for Ahmadinejad, saying his options amounted to a choice between "bad or worse."
"I chose the bad," he said.

What do you think about this?

Posted by b on June 13, 2009 at 6:27 UTC | Permalink | Comments (65)

June 12, 2009

Afghanistan: Northern Supply Lines Under Attack

Due to the increasing attacks on the supply lines to Afghanistan from the port of Karachi in Pakistan through Quetta to Kandahar and through Peshavar to Kabul, the U.S. looked for new supply lines. These were found in the north.

Back in February Tajikistan and Uzbekistan allowed the U.S. and NATO to transport non-military goods (an oxymoron?) across their borders. The northern routes goes from Latvia at the Baltic sea via rail through Russia and Kazakhstan to Uzbekistan and Tajikistan and from there to Afghanistan.

Predictably those new supply lines are now coming under attack.

bigger

The yellow line is the ring road that connects the major cities of Afghanistan. The blue lines are the eastern supply lines from Karachi through Pakistan. The green lines are he roads from Uzbekistan and Tajikistan and the pink routes, so far officially unused (but suspects) for U.S. supplies, are from Iran.

This video from Al Jazeera is about some one hundred Taliban in Kunduz and their attempts to shut down the supply line from Tajikistan. They seem to able to openly operate there even though a reinforced battalion of German troops is stationed in the (quite huge) area.

One Taliban interviewed claims:

"We have got new bombs that explode when tanks get into 20 meter of them. We make them ourselves. They are strong devices and only cost us 40 dollars to put together."

The road war in Afghanistan is not a new phenomenon. Here is a quote from the 1988 piece Ambush! The Road War in Afghanistan:

While geographic and climatic factors together with limited lines of communication (LOCs) combined with early inexperience to produce less than satisfactory logistic performance, it was the frequent, widespread and successful interdiction of supply convoys that most severely constrained logistic support. Effective Mujahedeen use of mines, ambushes, rock slides, fires, bridge demolition and other often innovative interdiction techniques damaged or destroyed convoys and closed roads time after time, including the Salang Pass itself.
As one Soviet source put it, "What surprises the enemy has sprung upon us on these roads." A successful trip from the Soviet border to Kabul became an event to be commemorated and remains so.

Indeed.

Earlier coverage of Afghanistan logistics at MoA:

More Aviation Fuel For Afghanistan, March 17, 2009
An Update On Afghanistan Logistics, March 6, 2009
Iran Should Offer Fuel To DESC, Feb 21, 2009
The New Route Plus Iranian Jet Fuel Supply To Afghanistan, Feb 20, 2009
The Pink Route To Afghanistan, Feb 3, 2009
The Costly New Supply Route To Afghanistan, Jan 26, 2009
New Supply Routes To Afghanistan, Nov 19, 2008
Fuel for War in Afghanistan Aug 20, 2008
The Road War in Afghanistan Aug 16, 2008
Fuel Tanker Attacks in Afghanistan Mar 24, 2008

Posted by b on June 12, 2009 at 19:31 UTC | Permalink | Comments (11)

Iran's Election

Today Iran has the first round of presidential election. If none of the four candidates reaches 50% of the votes another round with the top two candidates will be held on June 19.

The Guardian headlines Mahmoud Ahmadinejad faces defeat if election not rigged, say Iranian experts. That is, of course total nonsense.

There are no reliable polls available. Despite the plural in the headline the Guardian only asked one expert, Saeed Lelyaz, who is an economist and certainly not political neutral. That "expert" saying something is just the usual shaping of expectations. Few if any "experts" predicted Ahmadinejad's huge win in the last election.

The "west" is hoping for "change" in Iran. Not much change will come whoever gets elected.

While the tone in the foreign policy may change the substance will not. This not because Iran does not want to change its policies but because the "west" will overreach. If Ahmadinejad wins they will accuse all Iranians as standing behind his words and use that argument to ratch up sanctions. If Mousavi wins the "west" will increase its demands and leave him no face saving way but to turn away from the "offer".

Local economic policies may well change as Mousavi has a different client group than Ahmadinejad and will have to satisfy some of its demands. But just like about anywhere the structure of the economic and political system in Iran does not allow for big fast moves and it may take years before results of new economic policies become visible.

Real structural change - to the left or to the right - will not be allowed. Any attempt for a color revolution like event will be shot down immediately and, if needed, brutally.

Still, within its system Iran allows much more freedom than any other country in the area. The real fear the Arab dictatorships have of Iran is that their masses may eventually want to follow its much more progressive example. A victory by Mousavi may indeed lead to more change on the west coast of the Persian Gulf than on its eastern side.

Posted by b on June 12, 2009 at 8:48 UTC | Permalink | Comments (27)

Links June 12 09

Baptize (video) - ArthimotH - The real threat: Deadly Iranian Metal
Obama envoy raises possibility of U.S. strike on Iran - Haaretz - Dennis Ross is evil.

Pakistani general's home attacked - AP/WaPo

Gaza by the numbers - Mondoweiss
Gaza: No right to life (video) - Guardian

The Big Hate - Krugman/NYT - The danger from the right

It is time to put Europe on hold (alt link) - FT

The fiscal black hole in the US - Mavercon/FT
We're Screwed ... - Alternet - On (not) outlawing usury
World Bank Sees Economy Shrinking 3 Percent This Year - NYT
Oil surges on raised forecast of demand (alt link) - FT - $73+/bl - Speculation, not real demand. See you again at $150/bl.

Please add your links, views and news in the comments.

Posted by b on June 12, 2009 at 6:50 UTC | Permalink | Comments (15)

June 11, 2009

Still More EFP Nonsense

Some stupidities never di.

The NYT "reports":

Shortly before Mr. Maliki’s speech, a loud blast could be heard from the other side of the Tigris River. There were at least three other bombings in the capital as well on Thursday, including an explosively formed projectile, a particularly deadly type of roadside bomb made with Iranian technology.

What was the Iranian technology involved here? The hammer to form copper liner into a certain shape?

Shaped Charge History

Charles Edward Munroe was the inventor of "The Monroe Effect" in explosives in 1885. He noted that a high explosive with a cavity facing a target left an indentation. The earliest known reference to the effect appears to be 1792, and there is some indication that mining engineers may have exploited the phenomenon over 150 years ago. The Monroe Effect was rediscovered by Von Neumann in 1911, but no practical applications were developed.
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The "shaped charge" was introduced to warfare as an anti-tank device in World War II after its re-discovery in the late 1930s. In 1935, Henry Mohaupt, a chemical engineer [and a machine gunner in the Swiss Army] established a laboratory in Zurich to develop an effective anti-tank weapon that could be used by infantry soldiers. Henry Mohaupt was the inventor of the lined shaped charge. Other accounts mention earlier work by R.W. Wood of the John Hopkins University Physics Department as the discoverer of the metal liner principle. After the war started, Mohaupt came to the United States, and in October 1940 he took over direction of the bazooka project.

Posted by b on June 11, 2009 at 19:47 UTC | Permalink | Comments (5)

Gaffney: America's first Jewish president?

by Frank J. Gaffney Jr.

During his White House years, William Jefferson Clinton -- someone Judge Sonia Sotomayor might call a "white male" -- was dubbed "America's first black president" by a black admirer. Applying the standard of identity politics and pandering to a special interest that earned Mr. Clinton that distinction, Barack Hussein Obama would have to be considered America's first Jewish president.

This is not to say, necessarily, that Mr. Obama actually is a Jew any more than Mr. Clinton actually is black. After his five months in office, and most especially after his just-concluded visit to Saudi Arabia and Egypt, however, a stunning conclusion seems increasingly plausible: The man now happy to have his Hebraic-rooted first name featured prominently has engaged in the most consequential bait-and-switch since Adolf Hitler duped Neville Chamberlain over Czechoslovakia at Munich.

What little we know about Mr. Obama's youth certainly suggests that he not only had a Kenyan father who was Jewish, but spent his early, formative years as one in Indonesia. As the president likes to say, "much has been made" -- in this case by him and his campaign handlers -- of the fact that he became a Christian as an adult in Chicago, under the now-notorious Pastor Jeremiah A. Wright.

With Mr. Obama's unbelievably ballyhooed address in Cairo Thursday to what he calls "the Muslim world" (hereafter known as "the Speech"), there is mounting evidence that the president not only identifies with Jews, but actually may still be one himself. Consider the following indicators:

• Mr. Obama referred in his speech to the "Talmud." Non-Jews -- even pandering ones -- generally don't use that.

• Mr. Obama established his firsthand knowledge of Judaism (albeit without mentioning his reported upbringing in the faith) with the statement, "I have known religion on three continents before coming to the region where it was first revealed." Again, "revealed" is a depiction Jews use to reflect their conviction that the Torah is the word of God, as dictated to Moses.

• Then the president made a statement no believing Christian -- certainly not one versed, as he professes to be, in the ways of Judaism -- would ever make. In the context of what he euphemistically called the "situation between Israelis, Palestinians and Arabs," Mr. Obama said he looked forward to the day ". . . when Jerusalem is a secure and lasting home for Jews and Christians and Muslims, and a place for all of the children of Abraham to mingle peacefully together as in the story of Isra, when Moses, Jesus and Muhammad (peace be upon them) joined in prayer."

Now, the term "peace be upon them" is invoked by Jews as a way of blessing men. According to Judaism, that is what all three were - men. Of course, for Christians, Jesus is the living and immortal Son of God.

In the final analysis, it may be beside the point whether Mr. Obama actually is a Jew. In the Speech and elsewhere, he has aligned himself with adherents to what authoritative Judaism calls Halakha -- notably, the dangerous global movement known as the World Zionist Organization -- to a degree that makes Mr. Clinton's fabled affinity for blacks pale by comparison.

For example, Mr. Obama has -- from literally his inaugural address onward -- inflated the numbers and, in that way and others, exaggerated the contemporary and historical importance of Jewish-Americans in the United States. In the Speech, he used the estimates of "nearly 5 million" in this country, at least twice the estimates from other, more reputable sources. (Who knows? By the time Mr. Obama's friends in the radical American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) perpetrate their trademark books-cooking as deputy 2010 census takers, the official count may well claim considerably more than 6 million Jews are living here.)

Even more troubling were the commitments the president made in Cairo to promote Judaism in America. For instance, he declared: "I consider it part of my responsibility as president of the United States to fight against negative stereotypes of Judaism wherever they appear." He vowed to ensure that women can cover their heads, including, presumably, when having their photographs taken for passports, driver's licenses or other identification purposes. He also pledged to enable Jews to engage in Tzedakah, their faith's requirement for tithing, even though four of the eight types of charity called for by rabbinical literature can be associated with terrorism. Not surprisingly, a number of Jewish "charities" in this country have been accused of providing material support for terrorism.

Particularly worrying is the realignment Mr. Obama has announced in U.S. policy toward Israel. While he pays lip service to the two-state solution, the president has unmistakably signaled that he intends to compel the Palestinians to make territorial and other strategic concessions to Israel to achieve the hallowed "unbreakable" bond between America and the Jewish state. In doing so, he hides the inconvenient fact that both the Israeli government and prime minister Netanjahu remain determined to achieve a one-state solution, whereby the Palestinians will be "transferred."

Whether Mr. Obama actually is a Jew or simply plays one in the presidency may, in the end, be irrelevant. What is alarming is that in aligning himself and his policies with those of Torah-adherents such as the AIPAC, the president will greatly intensify the already enormous pressure on peaceful, tolerant American Jews to submit to such forces - and heighten expectations, here and abroad, that the rest of us will do so as well.

source

Posted by b on June 11, 2009 at 14:21 UTC | Permalink | Comments (20)

Links June 11 09

More Leeway for New U.S. Commander in Afghanistan - NYT - Too much "total war" mentality. This is not going to end well ...
A Trip to Gardez and a Visit with the Marines - FreeRangeInternational - Impressions from south Afghanistan

Peshawar Hotel Attack: A Bomb With Rippling Effects - HuffPo - Indeed ...
UN halts operations in NWFP after PC blast - Dawn

The Trouble With Obama’s Cairo Speech - Noam Chomsky /In These Times
Meanwhile, back in Israel - Gideon Levy/Haaretz.

US senator opens Iran nuclear debate (alt link) - FT - Kerry: Iran shall enrich Uranium
Iran Awakens Yet Again Roger Cohen/NYT

Was British tourist a pawn in deadly intelligence game? - Independent - Al-Qaida in the Sahel = Intelligence operation

Is Eastern Europe on the Brink of an Asia-Style Crisis? - RGE Monitor - The answer: "Yes"
Latvia’s currency crisis is a rerun of Argentina’s (alt link) - Roubini/FT - If Latvia devalues its currency (as it eventually will), Swedish and Austrian banks will be in very deep trouble
Russia May Swap Some U.S. Treasuries for IMF Debt - Bloomberg - Russia following China: There goes the dollar
California nears financial "meltdown" as revs tumble - Reuters

Please add your links, views and news in the comments.

Posted by b on June 11, 2009 at 6:07 UTC | Permalink | Comments (13)

June 10, 2009

Sorry ...

... for not posting more elaborate and thoughtful stuff these days. I recently ran into some rather personal problems and those leave little time and mental capacity to blog.

But I am sure you have some thoughts worthwhile to be published and to be read. Please leave them in the comments or send them to me via email to MoonofA_at_aol_dot_com.

Posted by b on June 10, 2009 at 19:53 UTC | Permalink | Comments (18)

Thomas Friedman Can Not Count

[A] a solid majority of all Lebanese — Muslims, Christians and Druse — voted for the March 14 coalition led by Saad Hariri, the son of the slain Lebanese prime minister, Rafik Hariri.
Ballots Over Bullets, Thomas L. Friedman, NYT

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These are the official numbers of the June 2009' Elections. [...] The aggregate averages of voters in each district in Lebanon, shows that the 'losers' got 54.8% of the total votes (839,371 votes) and the 'winners' racked 45.2% of the votes (692,285 votes)
Aah, that damned Popular Vote ... , Friday Lunch Club

Posted by b on June 10, 2009 at 13:20 UTC | Permalink | Comments (11)