When in July 2005 the Saudi Prince Turki bin Faisal became ambassador in Washington, he hired a young Saudi "analyst" Nawaf Obaid as a "security consultant". Nawaf Obaid wrote policy papers for the Zionist lobbyists at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy (WINEP) and worked with Anthony Cordesman at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS). He is something like a Saudi neoconservative.

In late November 2006 the Washington Post published an op-ed by Obaid in which he threatened a Saudi intervention in Iraq should U.S. troops leave. (This was shortly after the Iraq Study Group urged Bush to retreat from Iraq, an initiative which Bush answered with the "surge".) The King in Riad did not like what Obaid had written and he was immediately fired. Not coincidentally a few days later Turki himself was fired by King Abdullah. Even before the op-ed affair the King had preferred to work around rather then with the hawkish Turki.

Today the Washington Post published another op-ed by Nawaf Obaid: Amid the Arab Spring, a U.S.-Saudi split. Obaid now works for the King Faisal Center for Research & Islamic Studies where the Chairman is Prince Turki.

From the op-ed:

For more than 60 years, Saudi Arabia has been bound by an unwritten bargain: oil for security. Riyadh has often protested but ultimately acquiesced to what it saw as misguided U.S. policies. But American missteps in the region since Sept. 11, an ill-conceived response to the Arab protest movements and an unconscionable refusal to hold Israel accountable for its illegal settlement building have brought this arrangement to an end. As the Saudis recalibrate the partnership, Riyadh intends to pursue a much more assertive foreign policy, at times conflicting with American interests.

The backdrop for this change are the rise of Iranian meddling in the region and the counterproductive policies that the United States has pursued here since Sept. 11. The most significant blunder may have been the invasion of Iraq, which resulted in enormous loss of life and provided Iran an opening to expand its sphere of influence.

It follows some ballyhoo of how mighty, stable and prosperous Saudi Arabia is, how treacherous Obama is and how dangerous Iran and it ends much like it started.

With Iran working tirelessly to dominate the region, the Muslim Brotherhood rising in Egypt and unrest on nearly every border, there is simply too much at stake for the kingdom to rely on a security policy written in Washington, which has backfired more often than not and spread instability. The special relationship may never be the same, but from this transformation a more stable and secure Middle East can be born.

Thoughts:

Cont. reading: The Saudi-U.S. Special Relationship Will Not Change

It is claimed that the raid on the Bin Laden home in Abbottabad also caught a huge amount of data from computer storage devices allegedly found there.

Because no one else has this alleged data, the administration can use it as cover to claim anything about anyone. As I half jokingly wrote:

I am told that the huge amount of data found on DVD disks and memory sticks during the alleged assassination of Osama bin Laden contains proof of a railway plot and also reveals that:
a. Iran will have nuclear weapons within three years,
b. Iran's president Ahmedinejad uses sorcery,
c. Iran's supreme leader Khamenei has a chronic flatulence problem,
d. Iran has special trucks in which Khamenei produces those deadly islamist bio-weapons which makes him the world's greatest threat.
Other great, top secret facts from the found data will be revaled by the administration whenever it will fit its agenda.

We have already seen how this alleged data is used to defame Bin Laden by claiming, without any proof, that the data contained pornography.

Now the U.S. is using the threat to find something culpable in the secret data against Pakistan. As top NYT administration stenographer David Sanger sets out in a preview of Senator Kerry's current pressure mission in Pakistan:

A senior administration official said Saturday that the United States would try to use the threat of Congressional cuts to the $3 billion in annual American aid to Pakistan as leverage. Any evidence of Pakistan’s complicity in sheltering Bin Laden — culled from the hundreds of computer flash drives and documents recovered in the raid — could also be used, the official said. So far, no such evidence has been found.
…
Mr. Kerry’s main piece of negotiating leverage is Pakistan’s uncertainty about what officials are finding in the trove of computer data — which Mr. Donilon has compared to “a small college library” — about Pakistani complicity hiding the Qaeda leader.

This is pure blackmail: "We might have some evidence against you and publish it, but if you do what we want, then we might not have any."

Having secret data from Bin Laden will allow all kinds of such threats against many nations and people. Beware of believing any of it.

Meanwhile where is Obama holding Osama's son Hamza?

To me this seems to be related to this and smells of entrapment.

From the second link, published a week ago in the Irish Times, on the Irish gunshot "bailout" in the financial crisis:

Ireland’s Last Stand began less shambolically than you might expect. The IMF, which believes that lenders should pay for their stupidity before it has to reach into its pocket, presented the Irish with a plan to haircut €30 billion of unguaranteed bonds by two-thirds on average. [Minister for Finance] Lenihan was overjoyed, according to a source who was there, telling the IMF team: “You are Ireland’s salvation.”

The deal was torpedoed from an unexpected direction. At a conference call with the G7 finance ministers, the haircut was vetoed by US treasury secretary Timothy Geithner who, as his payment of $13 billion from government-owned AIG to Goldman Sachs showed, believes that bankers take priority over taxpayers.

Now from the first link published on the first page of today's New York Time:

The managing director of the International Monetary Fund, Dominique Strauss-Kahn, was taken off an Air France plane at Kennedy International Airport minutes before it was to take off for Paris on Saturday and arrested in connection with the sexual attack of a maid at a Midtown Manhattan hotel, the authorities said.

Mr. Strauss-Kahn, 62, who was widely expected to become the Socialist candidate for the French presidency, was apprehended by detectives of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey in the first class section of the jetliner, and immediately turned over to detectives from the Midtown South Precinct, officials said.

Now it may of course well be that Mr. Strauss-Kahn didn't behave like a gentleman. But does anybody believe that some other high up, for example the CEO of Goldman Sachs, would have been shamed like this over such an issue without the usual official cover up attempt?

I don't think so. The ultimate crime Mr. Strauss-Kahn committed was to suggest to let the bankers bleed instead of small tax payers. He is lucky that his assassination by the U.S. administration is limited to his character.

When I had this great much too big apartment some old-time MoA folks who visited me will remember my only complain was that it was on the third floor. When I looked for a new place I wanted it to live on the ground floor and with some greener environment. This picture shows one reason why.

bigger

Today this girl came by my desk. She and her elder male collegue do that every day to ask for their regular walnut offering. I was out of walnuts but after some negotiations she settled for a quarter of an apple.

Cont. reading: A Friday With A Monday Deadline

The U.S. military hopes that it can stay in Iraq. It knows of course that with the Sadr movement being totally against this and prime minister al-Maliki's coalition depending on al-Sadr, the chance to reach a new stationing agreement are small and would require some serious diplomacy. But as the military's only tool is force, it is applying just that tool:

DIALA / Aswat al-Iraq: The U.S. Forces have attacked the Headquarters of the Shiite Sadrist Trend, north of Diala Province on Wednesday, the Legislature of Diala Province, Hussein Hamham said.

“The American Forces have attacked a headquarter of “Martyr Sadr” in Judeidat-al-Shatt town in Khalis township, 15 km to the north of Baaquba, harshly fiddling with its contents,” Hamham told Aswat al-Iraq news agency.

This will not help. One cannot convince Sadr by force.

Prime minister al-Maliki knows that he depends on Sadr's votes to stay in office. But he also knows that the U.S. supported his biggest competitor Allawi and wanted him out. His political maneuvering here is just for show and to keep the nagging U.S. folks off his back:

Iraq’s prime minister indicated Wednesday that he might ask some U.S. troops to stay in the country beyond a year-end deadline if most of Iraq’s main political blocs support such a decision.

Nouri al-Maliki, who has been under pressure from the United States to decide within weeks on a lasting U.S. military presence, said he would call together leaders from the main blocs by the end of this month to begin hashing out a response.

Maliki's talk was so non-committing that I doubt it is as serious as the lede to that WaPo piece suggests. Indeed:

Maliki was particularly vague Wednesday about what he would consider “majority” support for keeping a U.S. troop presence, saying at one point, “When the consensus reaches 70, 80 or 90 percent, then I call this consensus.”

There will be no 90, 80 or even 70% consensus in Iraq to keep the U.S. troops in the country. To reach even a 50% majority on that would be political magic. The U.S. stop its stupid harassing or fiddling of Sadr's movement, pack up and just leave.

The big mess at the Fukushima Daiichi plant continues as the damaged reactors there are still releasing radioactive substances into the environment. A new leak through a cable shaft and to the cooling water intake of the no 3 reactor to the sea was found only today. UPDATE: It was briefed today (Thursday) that reactor no 1 had a full core meltdown (see below).

At the no 1 plant the reactor vessel continues to be fed with cooling water but can not be filled up above the level of the exposed nuclear fuel likely because of leaking pipe connections at a certain height. UPDATE: As was learned today (Thursday) a welded pipe failure near the bottom of reactor vessel has been leaking large amounts of water, likely since the quake/tsunami incident. This caused all the cooling water in reactor 1 to leak into the primary containment vessel. The fuel elements in the core were totally exposed with little cooling and have melted. They and the also melted structures holding them now form a Corium mass at the bottom of the reactor vessel and it seems likely that some Corium dropped further from there into the primary containment vessel. This would probably through the control rod tubes as the control rods in this particular reactor type are actuated from the below the reactor vessel. END-UPDATE

Now the primary containment vessel around the reactor vessel will get filled with water. This creates a “water sarcophagus” to cool the reactor vessel from the outside. So far over 9,900 tons of water have been pumped into it. Eventually water will be filled high enough to submerge the reactor vessel and thereby refill it through the leaking pipe connection.

Yesterday workers could access the inner no 1 reactor building for the very first time and they tried to install some new monitoring systems as the old ones are broken. Before the access door was opened and the workers could enter air was pushed through the building and through filters to reduce the radiation in the building. This was not very successful. Tepco had hoped to reduce radiation there to 1 millisievert per hour, but some areas inside the building that eventually need to be entered still have radiation levels between 600 and 700 millisieverts per hour, much higher than the maximum 250 millisievert lifetime(!) radiation limit that nuclear workers can be exposed to in emergency cases. Those areas will need to get shielded off before work around them can continue.

The spent fuel pool in no 1 continues to get refilled with water which then continues to evaporate through the severely damaged roof. Hydrazine was added to the water as corrosion inhibitor.

The number no 2 reactor vessel and primary containment are still leaking water into the basement of the machine hall of no 2 and 3 and from there through various ways into the environment. Work has started to pump the water out for decontamination and to block all ways from the basement into the environment. Eventually the leak in the containment vessel (likely at the damaged torus outside the primary containment which holds condensation water) will have to be repaired to allow for restoring a permanent cooling loop or to attempt to create a “water sarcophagus” around it. This will be very difficult to achieve as the water coming from the leak is radioactive.

The no 2 spent fuel pool seems for now to be fine as an improvised cooling loops has been established for it.

The no 3 reactor shows increasing reactor vessel temperature. Over the last 10 days the temperature temperature at the feedwater nozzle increased from below 100 degree centigrade to over 221 degrees now. As the reactor vessel and primary containment is also likely damaged this also increases evaporation and releases into the environment.

The spent fuel pool in no 3 continues to get intermittently refilled with water which then continues to evaporate through the severely damaged roof. A camera view (see May 10 entry) into the water filled pool showed only tons of heavy debris from the collapsed roof.

The heavily damaged no 4 building had no active reactor at the time of the quake but a full spent fuel pool. A few days ago a camera view (see entry at May 8) into the pool showed no visible damage to the fuel elements but some rubble on top of them. Some gas bubbles were coming up from the fuel elements which points to some damaged fuel rods and continued hydrate release.

According to this Russia News report there is some speculation (starting at 3:10) that the building of reactor no 4 began to lean to one side. NISA, the Japanese regulator had ordered Tepco to check the statics of that building some weeks ago. Maybe they had good reason to do so?

In the general surrounding of the plants rubble gets removed with remote operated machines and synthetic resin gets sprayed on all surfaces to prevent radioactive dust to come up.

Some people where allowed to visit the evacuated areas to remove stuff from their homes. The government seems to finally adopt the evacuated area to a real assessment of the radiation. It had at first created a 20 kilometers and then a 30 kilometer circular evacuation zone. But the days after the explosions at the plant the wind blew over land towards north-northwest before turning back to the sea and that area has of course now higher radiation levels even beyond the 30 kilometer zone than areas more near to but south of the reactors. (I remember seeing saw a German radiation prediction chart just a few days after the reactor explosions that showed just that. What took the Japanese government so long to come to this conclusion?) Higher levels of radiation have been found in wastewater facilities beyond the current evacuation area. This will likely be from runoff water that went into the sewage. The sludge that the wastewater facilities create is used to produce cement which will now be slightly radiated.

The prime minister of Japan has ordered another nuclear site with six reactors, Hamaoka, to shut down as it stands above a tectonic fault which is suspected to create a big quake and probably soon. This will increase the electricity deficit this summer, which will lead to blackouts and further economic damage.

Cont. reading: Fukushima Update – May 11

Is there god somewhere who anointed Obama to rule the world?

AP sources: US closer to declaring Assad’s rule in Syria illegitimate

Administration officials said Tuesday that the first step would be to say for the first time that President Bashar Assad has forfeited his legitimacy to rule, a major policy shift that would amount to a call for regime change that has questionable support in the world community.

Who or what does the Obama administration believe has given it the legitimacy to declare the (il)legitimacy of another country’s administration?

According to John Locke legitimacy derives from the consent of the governed. “The will of the people shall be the basis of the authority of government,” says the Universal Declaration of Human Rights which is part of the United Nations charter. There is no sign that Bashar Assad has lost the consent of the majority of the Syrian people.

Damascus, the capital, seemingly tranquil, and Aleppo, a key conservative bastion, has been relatively quiet ..

The arrogance of the Obama administration is embarrassing.

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — The public outing of the CIA station chief here threatened on Monday to deepen the rift between the United States and Pakistan, with U.S. officials saying they believed the disclosure had been made deliberately by Pakistan’s main spy agency.
…
The CIA station chief’s name was first aired by a private Pakistani television station on Friday, and a misspelled version of the name was published the next day in the Nation newspaper, which is considered close to the security establishment. The Washington Post does not typically publish the names of intelligence officers working undercover.
Pakistanis disclose name of CIA operative

Also:

On Friday, the private TV channel ARY broadcast what it said was the current station chief's name. The Nation, a right-wing newspaper, picked up the story Saturday.
…
The AP is not publishing the station chief's name because he is undercover and his identity is classified.
Pakistan Media Out Alleged Name Of CIA Station Chief

What is the purpose of this dubious self censorship in U.S. media? "We are not going to report the name but will tell you where to look it up:

ISLAMABAD: Director General ISI Ahmed Shuja Pasha held a meeting with station chief CIA Mark Carlton in Islamabad, sources said.

Also, while the Post hints that only The Nation spelled the name wrong, "a misspelled version of the name was published the next day in the Nation newspaper", ARY TV is using just the same spelling.

But again – what is the purpose of withholding the name when one reports exactly where to find it?

A weakened insurgency or growing violence. Which is it?

NATO says insurgency weakened, May 9

KABUL, Afghanistan – NATO said Monday that it has significantly weakened the Taliban insurgency, capturing or killing thousands of militants in Afghanistan during the past three months.

It also said that the Taliban failed in an attempt to carry out attacks against key government buildings over the weekend in the southern city of Kandahar, birthplace of the Taliban and the economic hub of southern Afghanistan.

U.S. issues warning, violence grows across Afghanistan, May 9

U.S. officials in Kabul said on Monday the movements of staff in parts of Afghanistan's volatile south were being restricted, warning of more attacks after a two-day siege came to a bloody end and insurgents killed at least 11 people in other attacks.
…
"U.S. government personnel in Marjah have been confined to their compounds due to a reported specific threat to Afghan government facilities in Marjah, Lashkar Gah and possibly Gereshk beginning today," the U.S. bulletin said.

Bonus read: Morale plunges among troops in Afghanistan, May 9

U.S. troops fighting in Afghanistan are experiencing some of the greatest psychological stress and lowest morale in five years of fighting, reports a military study.

Andrew Exum at Abu Muqawama is mocking the Pakistani Army:

I, for one, fail to see why the Pakistani military and security services continue to enjoy such a privileged position in Pakistan. Has it escaped the notice of Pakistan's 180+ million people that their proud, pampered army has never actually won a war? Or that it committed horrific war crimes in Bangladesh (en route to defeat, naturally)? Or that its support for Lashkar-e Taiba has endangered the security of every Pakistani man, woman and child by risking a massive Indian counterstrike?

Glasshouse, stone …

What please is the last war the U.S. has won?

In World War II the U.S. beat the Japanese. While the U.S. is still bragging about victory over Germany it was actually beaten by the Soviets. Operation Overlord and the battle of Normandy was just a diversion from the much more massive Soviet Operation Bagration which broke the back of the Wehrmacht.

And after World War II I do not see any war the U.S. has really won. And no, Grenada does not count. The Korea War ended in a stalemate at the 38th parallel north, just where it had started. The Vietnam War certainly wasn't a victory. While the 1991 war against Iraq put the Kuwaiti Emir back into power, it did not beat Saddam into submission. The 2003 war against Iraq will end with a strategic loss when the U.S. is leaving at the end of this year. In Afghanistan the war will also likely end with a U.S. retreat.

A good Pakistani response to Exum's arrogance should therefore read:

I, for one, fail to see why the U.S. military and security services continue to enjoy such a privileged position in the United States. Has it escaped the notice of the U.S.'s 300+ million people that since 1945 their proud, pampered army has never actually won a war? Or that it committed horrific war crimes in Korea, Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan (en route to defeat, naturally)? Or that its support for Mujaheddin against the Soviets endangered the security of every U.S. man, woman and child by risking a massive counterstrike which came on 9/11 and which cost you $3 trillion?

So there is sorcery within the Iranian government of president Ahmadinejad, allies of him have been arrested for it and he will step down?

Today Yves Smith links to a Raw Story piece which is headlined Iranian president may resign after allies arrested, charged with sorcery. Raw Story has no sources for that claim but a link to a Guardian piece which claims:

Several people said to be close to the president and his chief of staff, Esfandiar Rahim Mashaei, have been arrested in recent days and charged with being "magicians" and invoking djinns (spirits).

Ayandeh, an Iranian news website, described one of the arrested men, Abbas Ghaffari, as "a man with special skills in metaphysics and connections with the unknown worlds".

The Guardian provides no source for its report but that Iranian website Ayandeh it links to.

But there is little Iranian with that website except its use of Farsi language. It has an English title "Iranian Futurist". It's full domain name is www.ayandeh.nu and it is registered via Loopia Webbhotell AB in Vasteras, Sweden. The admin email for that website is info@ayandehnegar.org and that domain is registered to one Hossein Mola with an address in Kesta, Sweden.

Hossein Mola also registered the domain vahidthinktank.com. That site only has a Farsi Donation page (google translate link) and a button "English" which brings one to a blogspot page of one Vahid V. Motlagh who claims to be a futurist and looks into "Ideas for a deeper sense of life".

But back to the Guardian's source, the futurist Iranian/Swedish/Norwegian website ayandeh.nu. I can not find (google translate link) any article that would fit this as a source for the "sorcery" and "arrests" the Guardian reports. The website is a mix of futurology including from Vahid V. Motlagh, Iranian human rights stuff and a few news items about Iran. It is neither really Iranian nor a reliable source.

The whole sorcery and arrests claims are likely nonsense invented to make a little reported constitutional crisis within Iran's ruling class look more mysterious than it is.

Now lets talk about that crisis.

Cont. reading: Iran: No Sorcery But A Constitutional Struggle

Many in the U.S. blame Pakistan for not knowing about the alleged Bin Laden safe house in Abbottabad.

No one in the U.S. blames Pakistan for not knowing about the alleged CIA safe house in Abbottabad.

Many in the U.S. blame the Pakistani soldiers working at the Pakistani Military Academy in Abbottabad for not knowing about the nearby alleged Bin Laden safe house.

No one in the U.S. blames the U.S. soldiers working at the Pakistani Military Academy in Abbottabad for not knowing about the nearby alleged Bin Laden safe house.

As the AP reports:

An American diplomat says the U.S. will try to broker a deal to move a threatened Iranian opposition group away from its camp near Iraq's border with Iran.

The solution would be temporary, until the 3,400 members of the People's Mujahedeen can be resettled outside Iraq.

The Mujahedin-e-Khalq, a marxist cult which the U.S. rightly considers a terrorist group, will be moved in a deal (read: the U.S. will pay!) while at the same time the State Department says this about the MEK:

Activities: Worldwide campaign against the Iranian Government stresses propaganda and occasionally uses terrorist violence. During the 1970s the MEK staged terrorist attacks inside Iran and killed several US military personnel and civilians working on defense projects in Tehran. Supported the takeover in 1979 of the US Embassy in Tehran.[…]

As the AP report acknowledges, the U.S. in this doing this in rememberance of another of its dear friends:

Saddam Hussein gave the exiles refuge at Camp Ashraf, seeing them as an ally against Iran.

Update: I am told that the huge amount of data found on DVD disks and memory sticks during the alleged assassination of Osama bin Laden contains proof of a railway plot and also reveals that:
a. Iran will have nuclear weapons within three years,
b. Iran's president Ahmedinejad uses sorcery,
c. Iran's supreme leader Khamenei has a chronic flatulence problem
, d. Iran has special trucks in which Khamenei produces those deadly islamist bio-weapons which makes him the world's greatest threat.
Other great, top secret facts from the found data will be revaled by the administration whenever it will fit its agenda.

Let me recommend a very well written piece in The Caravan magazine about the "Maoists" in India: The Bloody Crossroads – The tragic fate of one village and the deadly consequences of India’s faltering struggle against the Maoist insurgency.

The issue fits the global picture in a smaller, but still quite big, area. Plutocrats stealing land rich with resources and the local people, threatened with losing their livelihood, fighting against the theft. Troops were called in and wage a bloody COIN campaign against the natives which in the end seems to fail.

Use also as open thread ..

There is a lot of criticism in the U.S. about Pakistan "not knowing" about the whereabouts of ObL and with some idiots, like Salman Rushdie, calling for declaring Pakistan a "terrorist state".

It might have been that some folks in Pakistan did know that the alleged ObL was there where he is said to have been murdered (though I am not convinced of that "fact"). But asserting that 160+ Pakistani million people are responsible for him being there is idiotic.

BTW – where were those people when an acknowledged terrorist, Eric Robert Rudolph, was hiding in the U.S.? Shielded by neighbors, friends and all kinds of admirers for more than five years. Back then, a mere six years ago, did Salman Rushdie ask for declaring the U.S. a "terrorist state"?

It is again back to the old slogan: "Do as we say, not as we do."

To me it seems that this "we took revenge by killing bin Laden" moment will unfortunately not be used to reduce the U.S. War On Abstract Nouns and to retreat from Afghanistan but instead will be used to widen the war. The War on Pakistan scenario may become real earlier, with more U.S. involvement and more intense than I anticipated.

There are a lot of open questions about the recent U.S. operation in Pakistan.

Politico notes that the administration is already changing significant parts on the story for example about the involvement of women as "human shields" (a phrase which is usually a hint to propaganda nonsense): White House modifies Osama bin Laden account.

At least four involved helicopters starting in the official account from Jalalabad in Afghanistan to fly to Abbottabad in Pakistan with at least the two backups hovering for 40 minutes and then to fly back does not fit the fuel capacity of any known helicopters. It is more likely, as The Atlantic's Marc Ambinder claims, that those helos started the operation from Pakistani ground.

The extraordinary electricity outage in Abbottabad just during the operation also points to significant Pakistani involvement. The Pakistani government would of course like to keep any involvement secret as cooperation with the U.S. in such an operation would diminish its domestic standing.

Those pictured parts of a downed helicopter do not fit any known helicopter type. What is it? How was it downed? Some reports said "mechanical failure", others claimed "shot down". 

The administration's counterterrorism adviser John Brennan claimed that they would have captured Bin Laden alive it that would have been possible. That does not fit to what Attorney General Eric Holder told Congress just six weeks ago:

"Let's deal with reality," Holder said. Bin Laden "will never appear in an American courtroom."

Pressed further on that point, Holder said: "The possibility of catching him alive is infinitesimal. He will be killed by us or he will be killed by his own people so he can't be captured by us."

It also doesn't fit to what an anonymous U.S. national security official told Reuters:

"This was a kill operation," the official said, making clear there was no desire to try to capture bin Laden alive in Pakistan.

If this operation killed Osama Bin Laden it was an extrajudicial killing in breach of public international law.

There is also a lot of administration fed right wing chatter on how some Guantanamo torture confessions led to the necessary hints to find Bin Laden. That is likely just an attempt to justify such torture. The capture of the alleged Bali bomber Umar Patek in the same city, Abbottabad, in early April is much more likely to have given a lead to some hideout.

Then of course there is not even the slightest tiny bit of proof, not even an attempt to produce pictures, that Bin Laden was actually captured or killed in this operation, or was converted to crab food. Looking at the distances and the time needed to verify that the alleged dead person has been Bin Laden, how did the  alleged burying at sea happen so fast?

This whole operation seems to be more designed to create conspiracy theories than to reveal what really happened.

While I do not agree with Malooga's comment here, I concur that this was likely an operation to retire the "Bin Laden" marketing campaign which has helped to promote divisive U.S. war of terror policies over the last decade.

That does not mean that the "product" that encompasses those policies is now finished. Why should it be when it is still very profitable? A new theme will be found for a new campaign to promote exactly the same product and policy program.

There are more confusing holes in this story. Please document those and possible explanations in the comments.

Missing in most current “western” news accounts of “Osama’s is dead” is that a helicopter was shut down and crashed during the operation (or was this a diversion?) and that the place of the event is only a short walk away from the Pakistani Military Academy in Abbottabad. And what about Umar Patek, “an al-Qaida-linked Indonesian militant,” who was captured in Abbottabad in late January? Also missing is analysis how this event relates to the botched attempt to assassinate Gaddafi a day earlier. Keep in mind that both operations were ordered by the same man in the White House.

One might believes that Osama Bin Laden was killed yesterday or, as I do, that he died years ago. One might believe that the U.S. killed him or the Pakistanis as Xinhua claims. The information we have is incomplete. It all does not really matter because most people on all sides will believe what the PTB and media are telling them. We need to keep that in mind if we want to understand the likely reactions to this event.

Shortly before the announcement the U.S. put its people in Afghanistan into unprecedented lock-down mode:

The ISAF (International Security Assistance Force) has taken an unusual step by issuing a warning to all internationals, alerting of coordinated “spectacular attacks”, kidnapping of internationals, suicide bombings, and all manner of general mayhem to kick off Sunday, 1 May. To the best of my knowledge, this is the first time ISAF has ever distributed a written warning to internationals at large, it’s also the first time ISAF has used social media to reach out to the general public.

The UN has sent all their internationals scurrying to seek shelter in local PRT’s and declared “WHITE CITY” countrywide. This means emergency road movements only. Afghan security forces (ANSF) are out in force all over the country. Our local workers are now clearly spooked, but oddly none of them seem to know of any specific threat.

It is there that the U.S. expects an immediate response but it as several other governments also issued a general terror and travel warning.

But any immediate response is most likely to come in Pakistan. The Pakistani Taliban are in revenge mode:

“Now Pakistani rulers, President Zardari and the army will be our first targets. America will be our second target,” Ehsanullah Ehsan, a spokesman for Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), or Taliban Movement of Pakistan, told Reuters by telephone from an undisclosed location.

Asia Times Online contacts in the North Waziristan tribal area […] all confirmed an immediate and fierce retaliation against Pakistan and the breaking up of all ceasefire agreements with the Pakistan military.

The recent events will be perceived as another loss of Pakistani sovereignty and incite more anti-American feelings there and more hate for the Pakistani government cooperation with the United States.

A significant Pakistani Taliban campaign against its government can easily bring the country to the brink and keep it there for a while until saner powers in its military manage to pull it back. Any interference from outside, especially a continuation of the drone campaign, will make the situation worse and should be avoided. Unfortunately the U.S. is unlikely to be patient and will try to do something when it perceives a destabilizing and untrustworthy Pakistan. The result may be a war on Pakistan form the inside as well as the outside.

Attacks against fuel tankers supplying U.S. forces in Afghanistan through Pakistan will again be news even when, as the last three days provide, those attacks never really stopped.

It is unlikely that there will be a significant change of the situation in Afghanistan. “Al-Qaida” hasn’t played any role there for a quite long time. This summer Obama will remove a few thousand troops as planned but he will otherwise continue the campaign without much change of pace. If he would try to pull back from Afghanistan without more political cover the Republicans would immediately again call him “weak on defense issues.” The Afghan Taliban will also continue their attrition campaign as planned though events in Pakistan may make the northern NATO supply lines an even more juicy strategic target.

Other countries and the “al-Qaida affiliates” there are currently absorbed with local issues. The compromise solution in Yemen with Saleh stepping down failed and makes a civil war there more likely. AQ in the Mediterranean is busy fighting against Gaddafi and the Moroccan king. As the U.S. moves out AQ in Iraq will be looking for a fresh fight with the government there and may also get busy with Syria.

The “west” is therefore unlikely to feel an immediate backlash from Osama’s (perceived) death. The blow-back that will come will be indirect as the consequence of a further destabilizing Pakistan.

Obama announced that Osama is still dead. The search for a new bogeyman continues. Carry on.

The German Federal Minister for the Interior, Hans-Peter Friedrich, is responsible for the Federal Criminal Police Office. He today commented (in German) on a recent arrest of three stupid immmigrant "terrorists" who had some weird ideas, a bit of acetone, some fireside lighters and even bought a soldering gun. The FCPO said these folks had no current plan on how to make or where to pop a "terrorist bomb" but arrested them anyway after a lenghty and barely legal surveilance mission. Friedrich said:

"Mit den Festnahmen zeigt sich, wie sinnvoll etwa die Übertragung von Aufgaben des internationalen Terrorismus auf das Bundeskriminalamt im Jahre 2009 war."

Translation:

These arrests show how sensible it was to transfer, in 2009, the task of international terrorism to the Federal Police.

A slip of tongue? Or rather admitting the truth?

Protection of civilians

4. Authorizes Member States […] to take all necessary measures […] to protect civilians and civilian populated areas under threat of attack in the Libyan Arab Jamahiriya …
UNSC Resolution 1973 (2011)

—

Nato air strike 'kills Gaddafi's son'

An apparent attempt to kill Colonel Muammar Gaddafi failed late last night when the Libyan leader escaped unharmed from a reported direct hit by a Nato air strike on his youngest son's house. However, his son Saif and three of his grandchildren were killed, according to a government spokesman.
[…]
The one-story house in a Tripoli residential neighbourhood was heavily damaged. Libyan officials took journalists to the house, which had been hit by at least three missiles.
[…]
The attack was not the first on Tripoli yesterday.

Strikes in the morning damaged a building which houses the Libyan Down's Syndrome Society, and the government commission for children, according to evidence shown to journalists by officials. The force of the blast blew in windows and doors in the parent-funded school for children, and officials said it damaged an orphanage on the floor above. "I felt sad really. I kept thinking, what are we going to do with these children?" said Ismail Seddigh, who set up the school 17 years ago after his own daughter was born with Down's Syndrome.

It seems reasonable to conclude that it is necessary to fight the attacking NATO countries "to protect civilians and civilian populated areas under threat of attack in the Libyan Arab Jamahiriya." Also some lawyers have obviously resolved that "all necessary measures" include the killing of the attacking leaders and their families. The UNSC has authorized all UN member states to take "all necessary measures."

I wonder if Cameron, Sarkozy and Obama have reflected about the consequences of the legal logic they are creating here. Micronesia can now legally assassinate them. If it only gets their children that's of course just collateral damage in an attempt to fulfill the UN resolution to "protect civilians."