Something fun to read: An excerpt from the upcoming book A Secret History of The American Crash, called “The Bombing of Gachsaran Oil Field”

Posted by: expat229 | Jan 17 2014 21:07 utc | 3

dim bulb Lurch: “Assad must accept that he has to go”

Posted by: ran | Jan 17 2014 21:59 utc | 5

@5 – i heard obama’s voice saying syrian regime change on cbc 4pm news here as well.. i like the open nature of this.. regime change is cool if it is someone we want to get rid of, but if it is one of our dictators – well they can continue on indefinitely.. the silence around egypt speaks volumes.

Posted by: james | Jan 18 2014 0:47 utc | 7

Hi Virgile…. I think that is, “Geneva II is a lose-lose for the opposition and they know it.

Posted by: Skip | Jan 18 2014 1:56 utc | 9

I viewed the film with an open mind (in my mind)…
Don’t be surprised if people borrow that one from time to time.

Posted by: Hoarsewhisperer | Jan 18 2014 2:24 utc | 11

Where is the Man from Atlantis when one needs him? It is not looking good under the waves.

The ocean is broken
IT was the silence that made this voyage different from all of those before it.
See your ad here
Not the absence of sound, exactly.
The wind still whipped the sails and whistled in the rigging. The waves still sloshed against the fibreglass hull.
And there were plenty of other noises: muffled thuds and bumps and scrapes as the boat knocked against pieces of debris.
What was missing was the cries of the seabirds which, on all previous similar voyages, had surrounded the boat.
The birds were missing because the fish were missing.
Exactly 10 years before, when Newcastle yachtsman Ivan Macfadyen had sailed exactly the same course from Melbourne to Osaka, all he’d had to do to catch a fish from the ocean between Brisbane and Japan was throw out a baited line.
“There was not one of the 28 days on that portion of the trip when we didn’t catch a good-sized fish to cook up and eat with some rice,” Macfadyen recalled.
But this time, on that whole long leg of sea journey, the total catch was two.
No fish. No birds. Hardly a sign of life at all.
“In years gone by I’d gotten used to all the birds and their noises,” he said.
“They’d be following the boat, sometimes resting on the mast before taking off again. You’d see flocks of them wheeling over the surface of the sea in the distance, feeding on pilchards.”
But in March and April this year, only silence and desolation surrounded his boat, Funnel Web, as it sped across the surface of a haunted ocean. […]

What a depressing read.
Follow that up with a youtube video from the US Naval War College of the evening lecture – Jeremy Jackson: Ocean Apocalypse January 7, 2013 – and you get the idea.
Jeremy Jackson is Senior Scientist Emeritus at the Smithsonian Institution and Professor of Oceanography Emeritus at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography. He studies human impacts on the oceans and the ecology and paleoecology of tropical and subtropical marine ecosystems.
It is going downhill, fast!

Posted by: Juan Moment | Jan 18 2014 3:15 utc | 13

Alot of movement seems to be going on behind the scenes in the Middle East. Of course next Wednesday is the long awaited Geneva 2 peace talks. Washington is going for its Plan B, where regime change by military force failed, they will attempt regime change via political negotiations. The goal of the Resistance Axis and Russia will be to hamper this goal and with victories on the ground they have some breathing room.
Last Thursday, January 16th , Syria’s foreign minister and Iran’s foreign minister both travelled to Moscow to meet Lavrov and prepare a united front. But the rumours swirling was that Russia has another move to checkmate the US, as many commenters here have said, Russia plans to bury US sanctions on Iran.

No sooner than he (John Kerry) heard that Iranian foreign minister Mohammad Javad Zarif was heading for Moscow, Kerry dialled up his Russian counterpart Sergey Lavrov to dissuade Russia from concluding the barter deal of oil-for-goods with Iran that could result in a whopping 50% increase in Iran’s oil exports and add $18 billion to Tehran’s export revenues, catapulting Russia as Iran’s number one buyer of Iranian crude. Lavrov would have said, ‘Nyet’.

Of course everyone knows Russia doesn’t need to buy oil from anyone. So why is it spending 18 Billion to buy Iranian oil? In order to repackage it as “Russian Oil” and then sell it on to India and China, thus getting around the sanctions regime. It also has the benefit of strenghtening Iran ahead of the nuclear talks and the Congressional troubles by making it clear that the sanctions against Iran are collapsing anyway so the US might as well do a deal now.
But there are more moves going on in the Middle East. Alot of meetings are happening between former allies, Turkey and Iran.

Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan is expected in Tehran within two weeks. Meanwhile, both countries’ foreign ministers exchanged visits within a short time period; Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif visited Turkey on Jan. 4, while Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu was in Tehran a week earlier. As these words are written, Iranian Undersecretary for Arab and African Affairs Hussein Amir Abdulahyan is in Ankara to meet his counterpart.

Turkey and Iran used to stand shoulder to shoulder with regards Israel, the Iraq war, and Hezbollah. Around 2011 and the start of the Arab Spring they moved apart taking opposite sides. Since then though Turkey has been betrayed, first in Egypt where it lost its ally Morsi because of the actions of its new allies in the US-Saudi. Then Syria turned into a mess and Turkey was left to deal with refugees, the odd car bomb, and instability. Now Erdogan believes the US is trying to get rid of him via the Gulen Movement. With allies like that who needs enemies? Maybe its time for Turkey to go back to old allies.

Day after day there are indications that Ankara and Iran are heading slowly but surely toward strategic relations, which could result in the countries signing what a source in Tehran described as a “strategic cooperation treaty.”

It would be good to get Turkey back to the days when it sent the Mavi Marmava aid convoy to Gaza, such a move would also be good for Iran since it could show Shia Iran in alliance with Sunni Turkey in the face of Saudi extremism.

Posted by: Colm O’ Toole | Jan 18 2014 14:56 utc | 15

13, Thanks for that. Very sad. When the Navy is discussing this – tasked with defending the “way of life” that makes it possible – you know we’re deep in it.
And, after all, why does the US Navy care? So they know the conditions in which their nuclear armed cruisers will go underway in? So they can know a tiny bit more about the extinction of life on the bottom of the ocean as they plan the extinction of their “enemies” on its surface? So they can better spend their allotted hundreds of billions per year not trying to solve the problem, but on honing their ability to fight amongst the ruins?

Posted by: guest77 | Jan 18 2014 16:16 utc | 17

@18 Thanks for that bevin – for this link and others you post, but especially your own writings, which have had a great affect on me.
I found another interesting article in the magazine you linked to which I think discusses some of the issues we see in the talk that Juan provided, and in fact gives a very complete overview of the state of the world today. It draws from the interviewees personal relations with personalities from the heyday of socialism – the years following the First World War.
Barbarism on the Horizon:
An Interview With István Mészáros by Eleonora de Lucena
Some pull quotes:

No other country than the US can even dream about imposing a 17-trillion-dollar debt on the rest of the world. But dominance resting on such foundations can only be unstable….
Traditional cyclical/conjunctural crises used to strengthen capitalism in the past, since they weeded out unviable capitalist enterprises and thereby actively promoted what Schumpeter idealizingly called “creative destruction.” The problems are much more serious today… it is much more accurate to describe what is happening today as destructive production.
There are representatives of the “radical right” who do not hesitate to “play with fire” and even openly advocate the full legitimacy of playing with fire…President Clinton… Xavier Solana… George W. Bush… [insisting] that “[i]mperial understretch, not overstretch, appears the greater danger of the two…” Rationality is obviously a great handicap in the pursuit of such strategies. No one can therefore say that the possibility of even a world conflagration can now be excluded from our historical horizon.
…if I had to modify today Rosa Luxemburg’s famous words about “socialism or barbarism” I would have to add: “Barbarism if we are lucky.”

Posted by: guest77 | Jan 18 2014 19:40 utc | 19

Great link bevin@18. I found this depressing piece on Europe’s situation.
http://monthlyreview.org/2014/01/01/european-labor
(excerpt)
Constitutionalized Neoliberalism
Second, neoliberalism has been constitutionalized as the economic system of the European Union through the Treaty of Lisbon and former treaties. Capital’s freedom of movement and right of establishment are carved in stone, and all other considerations are subordinated to this principle, which we clearly have seen in the labor market (see below). Free competition is another basic principle in the EU treaties. In recent years this has also increasingly been applied to the services market, which differs from the commodity market in the way that trade in services mainly deals with the buying and selling of mobile labor power.
It has long been a common saying on the European political left that socialism is prohibited by the EU treaties. With the stability criteria, and the new sanction regime to force member states’ structural budget deficit below 0.5 percent and government debt below 60 percent of GDP, we can conclude that traditional Keynesianism, or what we may call traditional social-democratic economic policy of the post-war period, is not allowed. This represents a dramatic curtailment of democracy in the EU member states and represents a major step towards a more authoritarian, neoliberal European Union.

Posted by: okie farmer | Jan 18 2014 21:58 utc | 21

I did not write the following but it needs to be known..

It helpful to realize why the FCC set themselves up for failure: To appease their future employers. We were sold out.
Former FCC Chairman Michael Powell (Colin Powell’s son), who oversaw the reclassification of cable modem services as “information services” rather than “telecommunications services.” Is now the President and CEO of NCTA.
James M. Massey, former Senior Democratic Counsel on Communications and Media Issues for the Committee chaired by U.S. Sen. Daniel K. Inouye (D-HI) and Telecommunications Counsel for former U. S. Sen. Ernest F. Hollings (D-SC). Is now the Executive Vice President of NCTA.
K. Dane Snowden, former Chief of the FCC’s Consumer & Governmental Affairs Bureau (CGB) from 2001 – 2005 (The period when net neutrality was gutted by FCC’s leadership.) Is now the Chief of Staff of NCTA.
NCTA is the top lobbying organization for the cable industry in the US.
http://www.latimes.com/business/hiltzik/la-fi-mh-net-neutrality-20140114,0,522106.story
http://bgr.com/2014/01/15/net-neutrality-regulators-lobbyists/

Door Closes to Open Internet, But All May Not Be Lost | If the outcry is loud enough the FCC could be moved to take action.

Posted by: Uncle $cam | Jan 19 2014 5:43 utc | 23

” People ranting about socialism have it all wrong. ” – You can say that again. The Alex Jones people drive me mad. At least the more intelligent ones like Kurt Nimmo must know that their constant 1950s-style red-baiting is just something they do to keep their big donors happy. The trick is the constant use of the code-word “globalists”, which every now and then they say means ‘socialists’ but generally just leave hanging in its ambiguity.

Posted by: Rowan Berkeley | Jan 19 2014 14:13 utc | 25

On: *the death of social democracy in the age of global monopoly financial capital*, posted by bevin at 18.
http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/2014/foster180114.html
Quite so.
Putting aside for now ‘capitalism’ and the sometime promising but weak compromise of ‘social democracy’, or the craven, ugly ‘neo-liberalism’ trend, the interview is brief, so short on facts and more.
In the past 20 or so years, Finance has gathered more and more control, infiltrated Gvmts, and so on.
On the whole its motive has been to skim off the top, remain behind the front lines, wield power underground: demanding huge bail-outs, manipulating indices, trading for pure profit, creating bubbles like the sub-prime crisis, eliminating oversight, etc.
That is what ppl see, condemn, leading them to request (not impose as they can’t) more regulation, etc. Though the speculative boom in food commodities did attract some attention. (Big Finance has since held back on that.)
Behind the scenes, the alliances between (say) JP Morgan and GlenCoreXstrata (“one of the largest global diversified natural resource companies”) – if there is any, idk, and am not accusing – are opaque, open, complex, may evolve in the future…beyond of course the ‘accepted’ fact that anyone can own shares in anything 😉
Large Corps in the fields of energy, mining, agriculture, arms / control / surveillance / some technology, water, transport, bio-tech, and other minor players such as Pharma already ‘own’ much of the world in terms of its productive capacity.
Through land-grabs (e.g. Africa), land control by a small powerful club (e.g. US agri), special status, exceptional deals, public-private partnerships that are a joke, and control of Gvmts. thru lobbying, pay-ins (aka bribery) or just the nitty gritty of how things go, they have their hands on the levers.
Finance, first of all – they fix prices. Should be clear by now! Land and resource ownership, second, through deals with Gvmts, often forced.
The Nation State which presents an ideal of some population living on some territory and controlling it for a large part with a ‘participative’ Gvmt. (“democracy” or the like) is obsolete, though all the powerful prefer, for obvious reasons, to cover that up and focus quarrels between nations…

Posted by: Noirette | Jan 19 2014 16:13 utc | 27

So, because there was some brief discussion of it here (in the comments), and because I have a long commute, I decided to put Sen. Bob Graham’s The Keys to the Kingdom into my book pile. I had originally felt that this would be the book to lay out the case against the Saudis should they get too unmanageable due to their anger over the US/Iran rapprochement.
But having read it, my take is that Graham subtly but surely tries to link not the Saudis and al Qaeda, but Iran and al Qaeda, and tries to ignore facts and history of the Middle East by blending Hezbollah and al Qaeda into one nebulous “terrorist threat” which has to be confronted.
For instance, there is a sequence where bin Laden blows up the Saudi Oil Fields, and “Iran is the main beneficiary”. There is a sequence where the President of Pakistan is assassinated during the course of an al Qaeda bombing campaign, and again “Iran is the main suspect.” There is his thesis that the Saudis allowed bin Laden to use their intelligence network inside the US so as to avoid bin Laden leading an “Iranian-style” (?!) revolution in the Kingdom.
Frankly, knowing what we know about al Qaeda and Iran, this is all bizarre, and all a set up for what I would call America’s Next Great Mistake: the conflating of Hezbollah and al Qaeda into one threat (pleasing Israel and the Islamophobes at home, no doubt), while ignoring completely the important differences – such as US vital support for al Qaeda throughout it’s existence. And while Graham clearly wants to paint Hezbollah with the al Qaeda with the same brush, history and facts make this an impossibility. But of course the danger is that history and facts will play as much of a role in the next phase of US Middle East policy as it has in the most recent.
Another note: The primary evildoer is still bin Laden, though “Politics” itself comes in a close second. Taking the brunt of Graham’s contempt, though, are the State Department “Arabists” – who are characterized by a fat, bald, out-of-shape fortunate son of New England that Graham makes out to be an actual bomb-welding terrorist/traitor in the novel. This disdain is on display when we hear the Hero of the novel – the tennis playing, Ford Mustang-driving Cuban exile, the “Will Smith of the State Dept.” (yes, that’s a quote) – opine to himself about the Arabist:

The jerk is given to the two longest running diseases at State: Arabism – an excessive affection for the Muslim world – and going native – allowing that affection to distort your loyalties.

Now, I don’t think anyone could possibly accuse US foreign policy of showing “excessive affection” for the Muslim world. I don’t think anyone could possibly accuse US foreign policy of showing “excessive affection” for the plight of the Palestinians. Though maybe Sen. Graham thinks even what little care we do show for the victims of Israel is still too much.
There are some points where we might say that Graham takes on some US institutions – Graham scorns the CIA, saying the US “put too much faith” in them and shows them actively trying to quash foreign investigations of the plotters before the attacks. There is the notion that – though Graham is careful to note that it is “fiction” he also calls it “not a long leap” (see more on C-Span at 23:23) – that the United States, under Bush I and then continued under the auspices of a private firm, helped the Saudis build a nuclear bomb. And then there is of course the very real FBI quashing of investigations that the Saudis allowed bin Laden access to their intelligence and financial network in the US – though Graham explains this away saying the Kingdom only acquiesced after being threatened by bin Laden and they didn’t know how it would be used. And I have no idea why one would make the assumption that the Kingdom was simply “ignorant and coerced” knowing what we know about the Kingdom and their links with al Qaeda.
All in all, we just have just more suggestions the US Security State goes out of its way to prevent any investigation into terrorist attacks which threaten the lives of average citizens. More suggestions that the engineering of the conditions that create terrorism – so long as they advance the fortunes of the power elite – are meant to appear as just life in “our dangerous world”. Another good reason for the citizenry to cling to the power elite – and flood their pet projects with our desperately-needed-elsewhere tax dollars – even more.
Funny how that works, huh?

Posted by: guest77 | Jan 19 2014 20:42 utc | 29

CODE BLUE – FOR YOUR EYES ONLY
POTUS must make public speech on NSA infiltration of American privacy!
Cue ‘Lone Survivor’ the week before the speech. Rehash ‘Navy Seals-OBL’.
Write POTUS speech ‘Something for Everyone’ egregiously oily platitudes.
“My fellow Americans, tonight we are launching a re-evaluation effort which holds
the promise of changing the course of American intelligence. There will be risks,
and results take time. But I believe we can do it. As we cross this 1984 threshold,
I ask for your prayers and your support. Thank you, good night and God bless you.”
Cue ‘Hail to the Chief’. Back to you, Bryan.
Cue NYT-Guardian-Speigel ‘Operation Full Court Press’, pitch ‘Big Concessions’.
Cue ‘Ride Along’ Keystone Cops weekend after.
Time to Superbowl Playoffs, add ‘Vagina Armpits’.
NSA, …rounding the square into a bullseye on your back since 2001.

Posted by: Chip Nikh | Jan 20 2014 8:59 utc | 31

Extended George Galloway Q&A Session in Lebanon: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kAjn-4Qsjwg
on Al Mayadeen http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al_Mayadeen

Al Mayadeen (“The Squares” in Arabic) is a pan-Arabist satellite television channel launched on 11 June 2012 in Lebanon. The channel aims at reducing the influence of the Al Jazeera and Al Arabiya networks, both funded by oil-rich Sunni Arab countries in the Persian Gulf. It also plans to present an alternative to mainstream Arab satellite media, largely dominated by these two channels.
The channel is part of Al Mayadeen satellite media network, including a production company, a radio station, a website, an advertising company and other media-related projects. It is stated that the owners of the channel are anonymous Arab businessmen. There are speculations about the funding of the channel. Western media claim that the channel is a propaganda platform for Iran and Hezbollah and is funded by them. Omar Ibhais, a freelance Lebanese TV producer, argued that the channel is a joint venture between the Iranians and Rami Makhlouf, cousin of Syrian President Bashar Assad. However, Ghassan bin Jiddo, director of the channel, denied these claims and stated that the channel is funded by Arab businessmen whose identity he would not disclose.
The headquarters of the channel are in Beirut. It has a wide-ranging news network and three regional offices, one in Tunisia, another in Cairo with three reporters and a big studio, and a third in Tehran.

Posted by: guest77 | Jan 21 2014 6:27 utc | 33

Do you remember Rebekah Brooks? The editor of various Murdoch-owned British tabloids who was forced to resign amid a phone hacking scandal? Well, her story has got some pretty amusing sidelobes:

Prosecutors have told the phone-hacking trial that Rebekah and Charlie Brooks plotted to conceal items from police and then arranged for some “safe” material to be returned behind a rubbish bin in the car park of their London flat, where it was found by a cleaner and retrieved by detectives. The jury was given a detailed inventory of the contents of two bags the crown say were found tied up in a black bin-liner in the car park on Jul 18 2011, the day after police arrested Rebekah Brooks and searched her homes in London and Oxfordshire. A brown briefcase contained electronic equipment including a Sony VAIO laptop and a mobile phone, and items ranging from a Wimbledon tennis programme to the newsletter of the British Kunekune Pig Society, toothpaste and a conker. There was also a magazine titled Lesbian Lovers and the seven pornographic DVDs with titles that included Instant Lesbian, Lesbian Psychodrama 2 and 3 and Where the Boys Are 17.

Posted by: Rowan Berkeley | Jan 21 2014 9:29 utc | 35

Snowden to do a Q&A this Thursday, the 23rd: http://freesnowden.is/_2476.html

Posted by: guest77 | Jan 22 2014 3:20 utc | 37

One day Klichko announces that there may be casualties, and guess what, the next evening it happens. Apparently one demonstrator has been snipered “by the police”.
If this is meant to be a staged “revolution” beginning, it’s absolutely crazy! I guess Yanukovich has given orders to his police to keep completely peaceful and gentle, because police violence is the last thing he needs. Further, I’d assume that, given the relative areal restriction of this “riot”, it is quite possible to send only _those_ police, that follow their orders 100%. So if this is the kind of assasination we’ve seen carried out in Syria by “pro-western” agents killing one “of their own” because the police just wouldn’t do it, this is a new level of playing with fire in europe. Crazy! Makes you wonder, when these things are going to happen in other european countries, too.
Sorry for being a naive eurocentric, but I’m shocked.

Posted by: peter radiator | Jan 22 2014 9:15 utc | 39

damn, forgot to close the tag. could you correct and delete this one? sorry.

Posted by: peter radiator | Jan 22 2014 9:18 utc | 41

The US Empire has cast the dice: Erdogan has no longer the support of the US. His days are numbered.
http://www.boilingfrogspost.com/2014/01/21/bfp-eyeopener-report-sibel-edmonds-on-the-cias-reverse-engineering-of-turkeys-erdogan/

Posted by: Willy2 | Jan 23 2014 20:14 utc | 43

OP, Ian Beckett sums it up well: “Red convenience Islamist George Galloway vs Sunday Times armchair leftie Aaronovitch”

Posted by: ruralito | Jan 23 2014 20:34 utc | 45

Commies spreading … OMG! … Literacy!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F6ujoBMasc8

Posted by: ruralito | Jan 23 2014 21:29 utc | 47

more, faster

Posted by: dan of steele | Jan 28 2014 19:25 utc | 49