Colonel Pat Lang wrote yesterday:

I am told that NATO has decided on regime change using military action if necessary. The Hula thing is the instrument of perception management that has been chosen. Look for a Chapter 7 resolution soon. pl

But as Russia and China have made clear there will be no chapter 7 resolution and without that, the new French president said, NATO will not go to war on Syria.

Russia and China have not fallen for that sentimental perception management, or lies, that the rebels and "western" media put out:

Alistair Crooke points to the real culprits:

[O]ne thing that stands out quite clearly, and which is very important, is that the methodology, this type of killing – of beheadings, of slitting of throats, slitting of throats of children, too, and of this mutilation of bodies – has been a characteristic, not of Levantine Islam, not of Syria, not of Lebanon, but really of what happened in the Anbar province of Iraq. And so it seems to point very much in the direction of groups that had been associated with the war in Iraq against the United States, who have perhaps returned to Syria, or perhaps Iraqis who have come up from Anbar to take part in it…. But this whole process of mutilation is so very much against the tradition of Levantine Islam that I think it’s very hard to see this will have come either from soldiers or even from others who might have been bent on revenge… I don’t think this speaks of soldiers going on the rampage.’

I agree.

The NATO Friends of Syria also have the quite difficult problem that they lost their puppets game with the Syrian National Council. Another meeting with them was supposed to take place in Washington this month but that did not happen because the SNC fell apart. Today it also became clear that the Free Syrian Army in Turkey has no say at all towards the fighters on the ground:

"Nobody has the right to issue press releases, take decisions, or speak about operations in the Free Syrian Army's name, except for the FSA command inside Syria," the group's spokesperson Colonel Kassem Saadeddine told AFP.

He was reacting to a statement by Turkey-based FSA chief Colonel Riyadh al-Asaad who earlier denied that armed rebels gave the Syrian regime a 12 pm Friday deadline to observe a UN-backed peace plan to end the violence.
…
An FSA statement issued from inside Syria earlier had given the Syrian government until noon on Friday to observe the Annan plan.

"If the Syrian regime does not meet the deadline by Friday midday, the command of the Free Syrian Army announces that it will no longer be tied by any commitment to the Annan plan … and our duty will be … to defend civilians," a FSA statement said.

"Defend civilians" means to kill more of them.

It is clear that the rebels have used the ceasefire to rearm and to prepared for expanded action. The FSA in Syria now threatens a new offensive starting Friday. Expect to hear tomorrow of some big suicide attacks in Syria and possibly of all out attacks on Syrian government checkpoints.

Their western overlords wanted the FSA to wait with the new offensive until the end of the Annan mission. That would have given more justification for intervention. If full FSA action restarts tomorrow it will quite difficult to blame the Syrian government for breaking the ceasefire. Even perception management can not cover up for too many lies.

A long piece in the NYT covers Obama's record of killing by drones.

It is headlined Secret ‘Kill List’ Proves a Test of Obama’s Principles and Will. But as the URL reveals the original title was the rather sycophantic "Obama's leadership in the war on Al Qaida". Despite some seriously troublesome issue reported in it the piece, as the original title, is quite sympathetic to his policies and avoids the difficult questions. And contradicting its new headline the piece shows that Obama has no principles at all but is moving those he purports to have whenever he deems that convenient. Here are some excerpts from the long piece to demonstrate that.

Obama is bending the law to fit his agenda:

When he applies his lawyering skills to counterterrorism, it is usually to enable, not constrain, his ferocious campaign against Al Qaeda — even when it comes to killing an American cleric in Yemen, a decision that Mr. Obama told colleagues was “an easy one.”

While claiming to be against some Bush policies he is giving himself loopholes to continue them:

A phalanx of retired generals and admirals stood behind Mr. Obama on the second day of his presidency, providing martial cover as he signed several executive orders to make good on campaign pledges. Brutal interrogation techniques were banned, he declared. And the prison at Guantánamo Bay would be closed.

What the new president did not say was that the orders contained a few subtle loopholes.

The CIA is still in the "rendition" business of illegal detention, Guantanamo is still open and from those facts we can guess about the torture issue.

Now on to drone strikes which, according to the piece, get Obama's personal sign off. Here is how he avoids his alleged prinicple of not killing innocent people:

Cont. reading: Obama – Killer By Drones – Has No Principles

Currently every "western" country seems to be busy to expel Syrian diplomats. So far Australia, France, the U.K., Germany and Canada have done so. Others will likely follow later today.

I believe that this is happening now to catch the headlines and thereby to cover up different rather inconvenient news item that ran a few hours ago.

After the Houla massacre the UN monitors emphasized that some ammunition debris was found in the area and that this pointed to government guilt in the killing. That was also emphasized in the UN security council press statement. But earlier today the severity of these allegations were seriously degraded:

Most of the 108 people killed in Syria's Houla region on Friday were summarily executed, the UN says.
…
Rupert Colville, spokesman for the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, told journalists in Geneva that initial investigations suggested that fewer than 20 of the victims in the village of Taldou, near Houla, were killed by artillery or tank fire.

"Most of the rest of the victims in Taldou," he added, "were summarily executed in two separate incidents."

Most of the people were killed by throat cutting or by direct gun/pistol fire. The killing happened in an area that is supposedly under the control of the Free Syrian Army.

How could the Syrian government be responsible for this? And why would a government with all its military might resort to such by-hand killing? How would ut supposedly benefit from this?

It is by now well known that AlQaeda like groups are active in Syria. Such are known to have created such massacres, including by beheading, in Iraq and elsewhere.

But as this becomes more clear "western" governments are busy to create some new headlines and to punish the Syrian government for something that was very likely outside of its realm of control.

Joby Warrick reports for the Washington Post:

U.S. officials among the targets of Iran-linked assassination plots

In November, the tide of daily cable traffic to the U.S. Embassy in Azerbaijan brought a chilling message for Ambassador Matthew Bryza, then the top U.S. diplomat to the small Central Asian country. A plot to kill Americans had been uncovered, the message read, and embassy officials were on the target list.
…
The threat, many details of which were never made public, appeared to recede after Azerbaijani authorities rounded up nearly two dozen people in waves of arrests early this year. Precisely who ordered the hits, and why, was never conclusively determined. But U.S. and Middle Eastern officials now see the attempts as part of a broader campaign by Iran-linked operatives to kill foreign diplomats in at least seven countries over a span of 13 months. … the officials say.

… according to U.S. and Middle Eastern security officials. An official report … said two officials who have seen the six-page document.

Strikingly, the officials noted, …

… said a Western diplomat briefed on the assassination plots …

Many U.S. officials and Middle East experts see …

The Obama administration has declined … U.S. officials say …

… said a senior U.S. official …

… U.S. intelligence officials believe …

… according to U.S. and Middle Eastern officials familiar with the incidents …

… while officials in Washington tried to assess the seriousness of the threats, the officials said …

… said a former State Department official …

… according to a Middle East investigator involved in the case …

… officials said …

… U.S. and Middle Eastern officials said.

… according to a brief statement issued by the Azerbaijani government …

The Obama administration acknowledged …

… said the former State Department official …

… the Iranian Embassy in Baku suggested in a statement that the plot was fiction.

… Baku officials have …

… Elin Suleymanov, Azerbaijan’s ambassador to Washington, said in an interview …

U.S. and Middle Eastern officials say … U.S. intelligence officials note.

The report presented to U.S. officials … the reports states.

Israeli and Indian officials have described …

… said the Western diplomat briefed on the evidence.

How does one call this style of reporting that Judith Miller Joby Warrick is attempting here? What distinguishes this writing down what lots of officials, diplomats and investigator say from pure stenography?

Some 90 people, 30+ of them children died yesterday night near Houla in the Homs countryside in Syria.

The rebels claim that government forces shelled the area ellegedly in revenge for the killing of some government soldiers. The Syrian government’s news agency Sana claims (graphic pictures) that these were two attacks by “Al-Qaeda-linked terrorist groups”. It also reports that 27 army and law enforcement members were buried today.

The UN monitors found debris of tank and artillery ammunition in Houla that would be consistent with the use of government weapons.

Yesterday’s status report (pdf) by the Annan mission speaks of continued violence by rebel groups, government forces and by established terrorist groups. It notes attacks by opposition forces on UN monitors.

The so called Free Syrian Army announced that it would now abandon the Annan peace plan to which it had never agreed to anyway. Some of it groups immediately launched new attacks (I am not sure though that this video shows a real fight) on government forces.

What to make of this? Was this a revenge act by some Syrian army unit. Was an army unit lured into firing into civilian areas by rebel attacks? Did terrorist groups used captured ammunition as IED against these civilians in preparations of the next, certainly already planned, political moves against Syria?

We may never know the answers to these questions.

Whatever.  The armed opposition, sponsored and urged on by the “west” and the Gulf dictatorships, will now likely no longer adhere to even a minimal form of the Annan plan. Three days ago I wrote it is Time for Assad to prepare to attack. Those preparations should end soon. The right time for a full onslaught on the armed opposition may come the very next days.

Waiting too long with a decisive move will only let the problem of amred rebels fester and would, in the end, likely cost much more blood on all sides of the conflict.

The U.S. Institute For Peace released a new report with recommendations for policies towards Pakistan: Fixing Pakistan’s Civil-Military Imbalance: A Dangerous Temptation.

The report argues that the U.S. should not fix the imbalance which favors the military, but should only selectively react harshly towards the military when it displays hostility towards the U.S. It empathizes to continue with the duality of contacts with the civil government and with the military.

The Pakistan commentator Kamran Shafi (rightly) critizes the report for furthering the (U.S. sponsored) imbalance and for not acknowledging the primacy of the civil government:

No one needs to deal ‘harshly’ with any Pakistani department of government: all the Americans have to do is to deal directly, and only, with the civilian government. That is all.

The USIP report (pdf) is indeed deeply flawed as one can, for example, tell from this orientalism gem:

For one, the majority of Pakistanis do not see a clear good versus bad division between the civilians and the military. Surprising as it may be for Western audiences, the military ranks far higher than the political elite in terms of the trust people place in them.

The USIP writers seem to have zero self awareness and from that half-blind standpoint argue that the relation to the military and the civil government in Pakistan deserves to be seen as something special even when that it is absolutely not the case.

There is no surprise at all for aware "western audiences" that trust towards the military is higher than towards the civil government. In that the Pakistanis have just the same opinion that those "western audiences" have. From a mid 2011 Gallop poll:

Americans continue to express greater confidence in the military than in 15 other national institutions, with 78% saying they have a "great deal" or "quite a lot" of confidence in it. In addition to the military, a majority of Americans express high esteem for small business and the police. Congress ranks last among these institutions, behind big business and health maintenance organizations.

And here from a later AP poll:

The military in particular earns the most respect of the survey, with 54 percent deeply confident in the institution.

But deep contempt for Congress and aspects of President Barack Obama's health care law remain among Americans tired of partisan standoffs over basic pocketbook issues.

As the Pakistani express about the same view as people in the U.S. do why does USIP think that this should surprise "western audiences"?

And as the USIP uses the higher trust the people have towards the military as an argument for ignoring the civil government in Pakistan and handling (and bribing) the military in Pakistan directly would it give the same recommendations to other countries for their relations with U.S. power structures?

Dear USIP, should Lavrov ignore Clinton and Obama and negotiate directly with General Dempsey? No? Then why do you recommend that for Pakistan?

Demonstrators attack Jewish migrants in south Berlin
Nat.Soc. MR describes Jews as cancer; government prepares for mass deportation

Some 1,000 protesters rallied in Berlin’s Neukölln neighborhood on Wednesday and called for the ousting of Jewish migrants from Germany.

Demonstrators attacked Jewish passersby while others lit garbage cans on fire and smashed car windows.

Another group of demonstrators stopped a shuttle taxi and searched for Jewish migrants among the passengers, while banging on the windows.

The crowd cried “The people want the Jews deported” and “Infiltrators get out of our home.”

Nationalsocialist Member of the Reichstag Hans Weigel participated in the protest and said that “the Jews were a cancer in our body.”

Germans attack Jewish migrants during protest against refugees
Seventeen arrested after protesters go on ‘unbridled rampage’ targeting Jewish workers and looting shops serving refugees

A reporter for the German daily Tagesspiegel described it as an “unbridled rampage” and explosion of “pent-up rage”.

“Suddenly one of [the protesters] noticed that in one of the cars waiting for traffic to move were two young darker-skinned men, apparently Jewish workers. For the hundreds of inflamed and enraged young people, that was all they needed. Within minutes, they dismantled – there is no other word to describe it – the car and its passengers. Some of them smashed the windows with their hands and rocks, others kicked the car, bent the plastic parts and tried to attack the people inside. ‘I’m not a Jew, I’m not a Jew,’ the driver tried to tell the assailants, but nobody was listening at that stage.”

The protest followed a claim on Sunday by the prime minister, Bruno Neumann, that “illegal infiltrators [were] flooding the country” and threatening the security and identity of the German state. “This phenomenon is very grave and threatens the social fabric of society, our national security and our national identity,” he said.

The government is constructing a fence along the German-Polish border to deter migrants and asylum-seekers, and is building what will be the world’s biggest concentration camp, capable of holding up to 11,000 people.

It is urgent time for the dismantling of that Herrenmenschen state.

Back in January Laura Rozen reported on the U.S. negotiation position towards Iran's nuclear program:

Under the proposed measure, which the U.S. has been presenting to its P5+1 partners, Iran would agree to halt enriching uranium to 20 percent, and turn over its existing stockpile of 20 percent enriched uranium. In exchange, western countries would agree not to pass another UN Security Council Resolution sanctioning Iran.

I characterized that position as ludicrous. Iran would have to give up all the progress it has made while enduring sanctions for … NOTHING. It showed that the U.S. was not interested in serious negotiations.

Four month later the U.S. is still not serious about negotiations. Current talks between Iran and the P5+1 in Baghdad again offer Iran nothing of value:

In its proposal to Iran here on Wednesday, the P5+1 offered to ease sanctions that bar the exports of U.S.-made spare aircraft parts to Iran's national carriers and aid for Iran's development of nonmilitary applications for nuclear power, people briefed on the talks said.

In return, the international bloc formally proposed to Iran that it freeze production of nuclear fuel enriched to 20% purity and ship its stockpile of the fuel to a third country, Western diplomats said. The proposal package also seeks to close an Iranian enrichment facility built inside a fortified military bunker near the holy city of Qom.

The only additional offer here are aircraft parts Iran can either make itself or buy from China and some "aid" for civil nuclear programs that Iran has proven it does not need.

For that Iran would have to give up 20% enrichment it needs for its Tehran Research reactor which nowadays is used for nuclear medicine. Iran has payed for this already by enduring the current sanctions. It will not give up on it without getting back something valuable. And why should it close the enrichment plant near Qom? That site is not, as the WSJ claims, a military installation and it is under IAEA control. Why should Iran make it easier for the U.S. and Israel to eventually bomb its civilian nuclear program?

Why would Iran, or anyone else in such a position, agree to such a lopsided offer?

Unless the unreasonable U.S. position changes today there will nothing come out of these talks but hand wringing and more bullshit about bombing Iran. You might want to fill up your gas tank before renewed warmongering sends gas prices through the roof.

Despite the deployment of UN ceasefire monitors in Syria the rebels seem to intensify their fighting by regularly attacking government checkpoints and logistics. Each day they kill some 15 to 20 government security personal and thereby undermine the Annan plan.

It is obviously that the rebels have used the ceasefire to rearm with the quite open help of the U.S, the Gulf countries and Turkey. Of special concern is the visible proliferation of anti-armor weapons. Their main logistic line of communication seems to run through Tripoli, Lebanon where the Saudi financed Hariri Salafists have their base. The rather few genuine Syrian rebels also get active help from international AlQaeda like terrorist groups. While this helps the narrative of the Syrian government it makes its physical fight more difficult.

The countries supporting the rebels obviously do not agree with the Annan peace plan and want it to fail. There is little hope in the near term that they will change their policies of regime change and state destruction by proxy force.

Since the introduction of the ceasefire and the UN monitors Syria has held back on offensive military moves. But without such moves the rebel problem will fester and they will continuously become better armed, trained and effective. As they and their backers are not sticking to the Annan plan and attack Syria should feel free to respond in kind.

As I had earlier suggested Syria seems to have given a more free reign to Kurdish rebels who dislike the Turkish government policies towards the Kurds. Turkey protesting about that is quite hypocritical as it houses the command of the Free Syrian Army and the now mostly defunct political arm of the rebels in the form of the Syrian National Council. There are also activities by forces friendly to the Syrian government to interrupt the rebels weapons pipeline from Lebanon.

But those moves raise the price for the supporters of the rebels only modestly. They will not end the problem. The government will have to become more active against the rebels on Syrian ground.

There is of course the concern that any offensive move by the government will be denounced as “breaking the ceasefire” by those that support the rebels. But there is little appetite for international military intervention with regular forces and therefore only little chance of further negative consequences.

Currently the Syrian government is fighting only in the defensive with both hands tight behind its back. It could go on the offense but then would still have to take care of not hurting the civilians the rebels are using for cover. That would be fighting with one hand tied behind its back.

To untie that second hand the Syrian government could ask the civilians from the rebel infested areas, mostly along rural parts of the Lebanese and Turkish borders, to evacuate and offer them shelter in safe and controlled areas. It could then use its full military might to attack and defeat the rebels in their current operational and retreat areas.

While that would likely still be a messy fight such an all out and carefully planned government offense is likely to shorten the overall conflict. The Syrian government should urgently prepare for it.

Whatever's on your mind …

The Pew Global Attitudes Project just released an interesting new survey.

Divisions on Sanctions and Use of Force
A Global “No” To a Pedophile Vatican

A 21-nation Pew Global Attitudes survey finds widespread opposition to the Vatican’s purchase of orphaned boys for sexual intercourse. And in most countries, there is majority support among opponents of a pedophile Vatican for international economic sanctions to try to stop Rome’s boy buying and fucking program. The Chinese and the Russians are notable dissenters in this regard. The poll also found majorities in Western Europe and the United States disposed to taking military action to prevent a pedophile Vatican. Again, the Russians and Chinese disagreed.
…
Nine-in-ten people or more among the transatlantic E3+3 partners oppose the Vatican’s boy buying and fucking program. But just over half (54%) of Chinese agree. There are even greater differences among the negotiating partners over economic sanctions. Among those who oppose Rome’s pedophile program, about eight-in-ten Americans, Germans and British back sanctions, but only 38% of Chinese and 46% of Russians are in agreement.

The military option is even more divisive among those who are against Rome’s pedophile program. A solid majority (63%) of Americans would turn to military force to prevent the Vatican from going into little boys’ anuses. Roughly half of Washington’s European allies would support such a move. And there is very little Chinese or Russian support for a military strike.

A big thanks goes to PEW for doing such valuable research.

But how much sense does it really make to do global surveys on completely hypothetical questions?

Why would a survey asking about boys getting fucked in the Vatican not mention the common opinion of all sixteen U.S. and other “western” intelligence agencies that the Vatican stopped an alleged rudimentary boy buying and fucking program in 2003 and has since not revived it? Why not mentioned the pope’s religious ruling against all pedophile tendencies and how it would do serious damage to his authority should the Vatican divert from it?

Anti-Vatican forces will certainly laud PEW for this valuable survey as it will help them to further propagandize for their much coveted destruction of the Vatican. They will certainly be eager to fill the PEW Centers coffers with lots of money for more of such nonsensical research.

It is becoming clear what the U.S. plans for Syria are when Obama is citing Yemen as a “model” for what he wishes Syria to become.

President Barack Obama told G8 leaders meeting at Camp David that Syrian President Bashar al-Assad must leave power, and pointed to Yemen as a model of how political transition could work there, the White House said on Saturday.

So Yemen is a model but for what?

For a fake election with only one person on the ballot and no way to vote against that person?

For persistent civil war with multiple parties:

On one side of Arhab’s conflict are tribesmen linked to Islah, the country’s most powerful Islamist party, and Ali Muhsin al Ahmar, a renegade general. On the other side are Republican Guard troops led by Saleh’s son, Ahmed Ali Saleh.
…
Muhsin — whose Islah party is now part of Hadi’s coalition government — and Ahmed Ali have each sent only one company of troops to the south, said a senior Yemeni official close to Hadi, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the matter.

Muhsin’s troops in particular have abundant experience fighting insurrections, having fought six civil wars against Shiite Houthi rebels in the north.

“Al-Qaeda will get stronger if this situation continues in the capital,” said Sultan al-Barakani, a top ruling party official.

For seriously wounded U.S. soldiers who “helped train Yemeni coastguards”?

There are at least four parties fighting each other all over Yemen and in between the U.S. and its Forward Air Controllers are bombing these or those “signature” emitting humans. Why is that supposed to be a model for Syria?

Would the U.S. soldiers that already train to seize Syria’s chemical weapons really be welcomed with sweets and flowers? Isn’t there already another not-so-good model case for that?

No. I do not think that anyone sane in Syria or elsewhere would consider Yemen to be a good “model” for their country.

Only someone who wants to completely destroy the Syrian state could make that “model” case. But we already know that exactly this, like in Libya, is what the U.S. really wants.

So called human rights organizations are increasingly used as propaganda tools against the enemy du jour of western imperialism.

When Georgia attacked Russia peacekeepers in South-Ossetia resulting in a short and lost war Human Rights Watch misidentified cluster ammunition used during that war as Russian when it was, according to its own mine identification charts, indeed Georgian ammunition which had been purchased from Israel. Human Rights Watch continued to push the false claim even weeks after it had been proven wrong

When the French wanted to attack Libya Amnesty International's French director falsly claimed that Gaddhafi was using black mercenaries. Such claims later resulted in violent atrocities by the Libyan rebels against all black people.

Human Rights Watch lamented about Syria putting mines on its borders against weapon smuggling. It claimed that such mines are internationally banned which they are not. But it did not say a word when Israel mined its border with Syria to prevent Syrian refugees from coming in.

The partisanship of these organizations has now reached a new level with Amnesty International openly calling for NATO to prolong the war on Afghanistan.

Amnesty International Advertisement for the NATO summit in Chicago

bigger

Amnesty's new slogan: "NATO: Keep the progress going!"

What progress?

Amnesty International is cheerleading the war ostensibly for "Human Rights for Women and Girls in Afghanistan". In that it is joining Laura Bush on the neo-conned Washington Post opinion pages.

But as Sonali Kolhatkar, founder of the Afghan Women's Mission (AWM) and Mariam Rawi of the Revolutionary Association of Women of Afghanistan (RAWA) wrote a while ago on AlterNet:

Under the Taliban, women were confined to their homes. They were not allowed to work or attend school. They were poor and without rights. They had no access to clean water or medical care, and they were forced into marriages, often as children.

Today, women in the vast majority of Afghanistan live in precisely the same conditions, with one notable difference: they are surrounded by war. The conflict outside their doorsteps endangers their lives and those of their families. It does not bring them rights in the household or in public, and it confines them even further to the prison of their own homes. Military escalation is just going to bring more tragedy to the women of Afghanistan.
…
Waging war does not lead to the liberation of women anywhere. Women always disproportionately suffer the effects of war, and to think that women's rights can be won with bullets and bloodshed is a position dangerous in its naïveté.

This Amnesty campaign should make clear to anyone that some prominent organizations like Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch are now mostly tools of imperialism with no credibility for any real humanitarian concern. Fortunately there are still other organizations though which do real humanitarian work.

This administration spin piece in the New York Times on the upcoming negotiations with Iran has some revealing language:

For President Obama, the stakes are huge. A successful meeting could prolong the diplomatic dance with Tehran, delaying any possible military confrontation over the nuclear program until after the presidential election. It could also keep a lid on oil prices, which fell again this week in part because of the decrease in tensions. Lower gasoline prices would aid the economic recovery in the United States, and Mr. Obama’s electoral prospects.

Normal people would assume that successful negotiations would be those that lead to a peaceful solution of the issue. But the people talking to the NYT stenographer see success only in moving the day when the bombs start to fall. And as the oil issue lines explain the current negotiations are not at all about Iran's nuclear program but all about Obama's reelection. As soon as that is achieved new attempts for regime change in Iran, likely by force, will be back on top of the Obama agenda.

Then there is this:

Iranian officials have declared that the West has effectively endorsed Iran’s right to enrich uranium, a step they portrayed as a major strategic coup. American officials insist the United States has not done that and has been deliberately ambiguous about whether it would ever grant Iran the right to enrichment.

Which gods gave the U.S. the prerogative to "grant Iran" a right? Iran is a sovereign county. It does not need any rights "granted". As a member of the nonproliferation treaty its "inalienable right" to "to develop research, production and use of nuclear energy for peaceful purposes without discrimination" have already been acknowledged by the other NPT members which includes the United States.

Megalomaniac language like this shows that absurdity has taken over U.S. foreign policy.

Some investors got fleeced today by the big banks that sold them Facebook shares.

Facebook, a virtual service essentially at the end of its growth phase, was valued $106 billion in today’s IPO. That is 112 times its earnings. Goggle is valued at 19 times earnings and Apple at 14 times. Both too high in my view but they both still have more chance to grow further than Facebook.

Facebook claims to have 800 million “active users”. I very much doubt that number but the my definition “active user” is certainly a different one than the guys who sell the Facebook shares propagandize. But anyway – the company is now valued at some $100 billion. With 800 million users that is $116 per user. How many ads will a user have to look at to justify that value?

There is of course the possibility that Facebook may use the fresh money to buy some reasonable valued, actually productive company and eventually turn that into a steady revenue stream. But the chances for that are low. It is more likely that it will go the way of Netscape, Napster and AOL and other dot com dodos.

BTW – I have some extraordinary tulip bulbs I’d be willing to sell for the right price. Excellent and seldom colors. Anyone interested please leave me a note.

It seems obvious now that the U.S. and its NATO appendix lost the war in Afghanistan:

Over the past two years, the farming districts of Zhari, Panjway and Maiwand northwest of Kandahar city—the cradle of the Taliban movement—were the key battlefield of the U.S.-led military campaign in southern Afghanistan. The U.S. has held up its successes in routing the Taliban there as proof that it is winning the war.

Pushed out of these rural districts by the surge, the Taliban last year concentrated on Kandahar city, ramping up their campaign of assassinating government officials. This fighting season, however, they appear to have trickled back to their old home turf.

Enemy activity in the three farming districts has risen by 31% this fighting season, said U.S. Army Maj. Gen. James Huggins, the commander of coalition forces in southern Afghanistan. This upsurge contrasts with a sharp decline in attacks inside Kandahar city and in the neighboring southern provinces of Uruzgan and Zabul.

"The good news is we have been able to provide the major population center a tremendous amount of security. But it has pushed the insurgency into Zhari, Panjway and Maiwand," Gen. Huggins explained in an interview.

The U.S. surge troops squeezed the water filled balloon in the rural areas and the Taliban evaded the squeeze and fought in the city. Two years later the surge troops retreat from the rural area and press the balloon in the city. The Taliban flow back into the rural areas.

The U.S. military claims, of course, a double victory. First it won in the countryside and now it has won in the city. In fact nothing has changed at all. Two years on the surge had zero effect on the overall situation.

With limited resources and time the U.S. and NATO are losing the war.

Another example: This morning the ISAF Twitter account @ISAFmedia tweeted:

IJC morning op update: 10 day op in Farah province completed with multiple ins. detained and weapons confiscated. http://ow.ly/aY0ar

The link goes to the usual morning update which said:

[A] combined Afghan and coalition security force detained multiple suspected insurgents during a 10-day operation that ended Sunday in Khake Safayd district, Farah province. During the operation, the combined force searched a suspicious location and detained the suspected insurgents without incident. The force also recovered 21 IEDs, four rocket-propelled grenades, one mortar, seven AK-47 rifles, one machine gun, more than 8 pounds (4 kilograms) of opium and 30 motorbikes during a subsequent search of the area. The suspected insurgents were taken in for questioning and the weapons cache was destroyed.

But just a few minutes after that hit the wires reality caught up with such success phantasies:

At least 11 people died on Thursday after Taliban insurgents attacked a provincial governor’s office, but were beaten back by security forces, Afghan officials said.

The 10 a.m. attack was apparently an attempt to assassinate the governor of western Farah Province, Mohammad Akram Khapalwak, who was in his office at the time, and the insurgents once again resorted to the ruse of disguising themselves as Afghan police officers, according to the police security chief for the province, Mohammad Ghaus Malyaar.

A ten day operation in Farah province manages to find a few guns and to steals 30 motorbikes. But at the same time the Taliban, laughing at such diversion, successfully attack the province governors office and kill nearly all his bodyguards. It is obvious that the propaganda does not match the facts on the ground.

It is no wonder the U.S. and NATO are, rather silently, Beating A Retreat.

Like in the two scenes above the marketeers of upcoming NATO summit will have difficulties to patch over the obvious rush to the exit from this lost war.

This is a terribly excessive and overreaching executive order:

President Obama plans to issue an executive order Wednesday giving the Treasury Department authority to freeze the U.S.-based assets of anyone who “obstructs” implementation of the administration-backed political transition in Yemen.

The unusual order, which administration officials said also targets U.S. citizens who engage in activity deemed to threaten Yemen’s security or political stability, is the first issued for Yemen that does not directly relate to counterterrorism.
…
The order provides criteria to take action against people who the Treasury secretary, in consultation with the secretary of state, determines have “engaged in acts that directly or indirectly threaten the peace, security or stability of Yemen, such as acts that obstruct the implementation of the Nov. 23, 2011, agreement between the Government of Yemen and those in opposition to it, which provides for a peaceful transition of power . . . or that obstruct the political process in Yemen.”

It covers those who “have materially assisted, sponsored or provided financial, material or technological support” for the acts described or any person whose property has already been blocked, as well as those who have acted on behalf of such people.

The administration's plan is to keep the unbearable situation in Yemen virtually unchanged. While Ali Abdullah Saleh is gone as president he also received immunity, has kept all his money and is still in the country. His relatives still hold key security positions. His successor, the former vice-president Hadi, is a mere Saleh puppet and in 2014 Saleh may again get elected.

When one opposes this plan, for example by pointing out that a vote with a ballot with only one person on it and no possibility to vote "No" is a fake election, one will now get accused of engaging in acts that obstruct the Saudi/GCC/U.S. plan for Yemen. Then ones asset can be seized by the mere whim of a bureaucrat.

When the GulfNews.com writes negatively about the plan, its domain, which is under U.S. jurisdiction, can now be seized. It will now have to be careful with publishing opinions like these:

Why is Yemen in that situation? It is because as many people, including Nobel Laureate Tawakkul Karman have pointed out at the time, the Gulf Cooperation Council peace deal extracted by the wily Saleh was a monumental mistake. That mistake was supported by the US, whose singular concern was Al Qaida, and accepted by the opposition parties led by the hapless Yemeni prime minister, and by president Abd Rabbo Mansour Hadi, none other than Saleh's silent partner for decades.

And Princeton scholar Gregory Johnsen will have to watch for his bank accounts being frozen, because he believes that the Obama policy on Yemen, supporting the GCC deal, is a "catastrophic mistake" and writes against it. 

What about his 1st Amendment rights? And how about the Yemeni's right of self determinations? Anyone opposing Hadi and Saleh will now get their credit card seized? That certainly is democracy promotion – Obama style.

The video below the fold shows an attack on a car of UN observers in Syria which is seemingly wounding or killing some civilians standing in front of the car. When the observers speed away to save themselves they seem to drive over some of those wounded or dead. The incident is said to have happened in Khan Sheikhun, a town in Idlib province said to be under opposition control.

The scenes of this low quality video will be controversial. One side will claim that it shows that some seemingly anti-Syrian government forces are trying to sabotage the UN mission by attacking the observers. The other will claim that some government agent did this. But the worst issue is that it will enrage both sides against the observers for panicking and driving over the wounded.

There are four UN marked white cars in a city street with a dozen people around mostly in front of the first car holding it up. The observers are within the cars and ready to drive away. There are a lot of shoes lying in the street probably from an earlier demonstration against these observers.

Suddenly a bang and smoke is coming from the front of the first car. As the smoke retreats on can see that the cars hood is partially blown up and that some people are now lying in front of the car likely wounded or dead.

The first car tries to back up twice to turn but can not move much as the second car is immediately behind it. It then speeds forward and over the people lying on the ground. The second car follows.

The third car which was standing a few yards behind follows too but manages to drive around the corpses. The fourth car which was standing immediately behind the third is speeding to overtake the third car and, probably not seeing them, also overruns the bodies.

Reuters reports an incident in Khan Sheikhoun but it does not immediately fit with what the video shows:

Beirut – A car belonging to U.N. monitors was damaged by an explosion while they toured the central Syrian town of Khan Sheikhoun on Tuesday but none of the monitors was hurt, a member of the observer team said.

“We went to observe and after a while shooting occurred,” he told Reuters by telephone, adding that the shooting was followed by the blast which damaged the car.

The seven-strong team had lost their vehicles and were trying to organise a safe return to their base, he said without giving details. Another monitor and a member of the Free Syrian Army (FSA) said they were with FSA rebels.
…
“We are safe with the Free Army and we are waiting for a (U.N.) group to pick us up,” the second monitor said.

How come the cars were good enough to drive away from the incident but are now all lost? There is also no shooting in the video. This then may be a different (coordinated?) attack or just the usual confusion following such events.

The video:

Cont. reading: A Tragic Attack On UN Observers In Syria

As the Iranian marxist cult M.E.K. is now, with the help of the U.S., committing terrorist attacks against civilians in Iran it will no likely be taken off the official U.S. list of groups committing terrorist attacks against civilians.

The Obama administration is not the first to show such hypocrisy.

The Bush administration first claimed that the groups presence in Iraq as proof that Saddam Hussein supported terrorist organizations:

Iraq shelters terrorist groups including the Mujahedin-e-Khalq Organization (MKO), which has used terrorist violence against Iran and in the 1970s was responsible for killing several U.S. military personnel and U.S. civilians.

Then, switching into Saddam Hussein's role, it trained and used the group for terror attacks against Iran:

The M.E.K.’s ties with Western intelligence deepened after the fall of the Iraqi regime in 2003, and JSOC began operating inside Iran in an effort to substantiate the Bush Administration’s fears that Iran was building the bomb at one or more secret underground locations. Funds were covertly passed to a number of dissident organizations, for intelligence collection and, ultimately, for anti-regime terrorist activities. Directly, or indirectly, the M.E.K. ended up with resources like arms and intelligence. Some American-supported covert operations continue in Iran today, according to past and present intelligence officials and military consultants.

My assumption is that the delisting is announced now to sabotage the upcoming nuclear talks with Iran. The U.S. has no interest in solving the nuclear issue or in peace with Iran. It wants Iran under its control and that necessitates regime change.

Just like the use of Jihadists against the Libyan and Syrian government the use of the M.E.K. against Iran again proves that the war on terror the U.S. is allegedly waging is indeed a war of terror against whomever disagrees with it.

Do you remember those rather infamous drawings of mobile bio-weapon laboratories Colin Powell presented to the United Nations Security Council as "proof" for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq?

The guy who drew those is back:

An image said to come from inside an Iranian military site shows an explosives containment chamber of the type needed for nuclear arms-related tests that U.N. inspectors suspect Tehran has conducted at the site. Iran denies such testing and has neither confirmed nor denied the existence of such a chamber.

The image was provided to The Associated Press by an official of a country tracking Iran’s nuclear program who said the drawing proves the structure exists, despite Tehran’s refusal to acknowledge it.

The official said he could not discuss the drawing’s origins beyond that it was based on information from a person who had seen the chamber at the Parchin military site, adding that going into detail would endanger the life of that informant. His country, a member of the International Atomic Energy Agency, is severely critical of Iran’s assertions that its nuclear activities are peaceful and asserts they are a springboard for making atomic arms.

A former senior IAEA official said he believes the drawing is accurate. Olli Heinonen, until last year the U.N. nuclear agency’s deputy director general in charge of the Iran file, said it was “very similar” to a photo he recently saw that he believes to be the pressure chamber the IAEA suspects is at Parchin.

Yeah! sure! But that image the AP's dubious anti-Iranian sources delivered looks like a fifteen minutes training exercise for Google SketchUp newbies and I can easly provide a better and more real one.

This is a detonation tank to create nanodiamonds, not a nuclear device.

In the late 1990s the Iranians had a contract with an Ukrainian scientist who had earlier worked at a Soviet research facility that was also involved with nuclear weapons. But that scientist, Vyacheslav Danilenko, is a lifelong expert in creating nano-diamonds by detonations in closed, bus-sized water filled explosion chambers. He is NOT a nuclear scientist.

In a recent write up on Iran's nuclear program even the prestigious CSIS analyst Anthony H. Cordesman admits that much:

The [IAEA] Agency has been able to verify through three separate routes, including the expert himself, that this person was in Iran from about 1996 to about 2002, ostensibly to assist Iran in the development of a facility and techniques for making ultra-dispersed diamonds (“UDDs” or “nanodiamonds”), where he also lectured on explosion physics and its applications.

Furthermore, the Agency has received information from two Member States that, after 2003, Iran engaged in experimental research involving a scaled down version of the hemispherical initiation system and high explosive charge referred to in paragraph 43 above, albeit in connection with non-nuclear applications. This work, together with other studies made known to the Agency in which the same initiation system is used in cylindrical geometry, could also be relevant to improving and optimizing the multipoint initiation design concept relevant to nuclear applications.

There are civilian applications for nearly all technological fields one needs to build nuclear weapons. Many things could be used in a nuclear weapons program and that includes knifes and forks. That means that any decently industrialized country is likely to have all these technologies available. It is therefore then "nuclear capable" which means that it could make nuclear weapons if it wanted to. That is the case for the Netherlands just as much as it is for Brazil and Japan and Poland and Iran and several dozen other countries.

Instead of that SketchUp exercise of some junior Israeli disinformation agent AP should just publish the picture of the detonation chamber Danilenko build for his own Ukrainian company to create nano diamonds. We are pretty sure that it is much more similar to the one in Parchim, Iran, than that rough computer graphic the AP is using here to spread disinformation onto the public.