Saturday, January 6, 2007

Is Copper Signaling a Recession?

Jan 6, 2006

By Bonddad
bonddad@prodigy.net


From CBS MarketWatch

A sell-off in commodities -- from copper to crude oil -- over the past few sessions is telling some veteran market watchers that a slowdown in economic growth, likely one of considerable magnitude, is already underway.

In the last two days alone, commodity prices seem to have fallen off a cliff. Copper futures, which tumbled 7.7% on Wednesday, fell another 1.8% on Thursday -- and have dropped 27% from their December highs.

Crude-oil prices fell nearly 5%, following a 4% drop in the previous session. The front-month futures contract was trading at its lowest level since June 2005. See Futures Movers.

Here's a daily copper chart. The price has gapped down and continued downward last week:

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The reason copper is predictive?

Most commodities are used in the production of industrial goods. When producers start demanding fewer raw materials, it becomes noticeable in commodities prices much earlier than in official economic statistics, explained Barry Ritholtz, chief market strategist at Ritholtz Research & Analytics.

Copper, in particular, is often used as a reliable economic indicator because of its widespread use in production.

"Copper is the metal with a Ph. D. in economics," Ritholtz said. "It's used in the wiring of homes and offices, in plumbing in construction, and it's also a key component in electronic goods.

High stockpiles are one of the reason for the drop in copper prices:

Stockpiles of copper monitored by the LME have doubled since the start of last year. The exchange said earlier today copper stocks held in its warehouses had risen another 1,700 tonnes to total 194,875 tonnes

However it also reported that cancelled warrants, which represent warehouse stocks booked and due for delivery, have climbed to just over 17,000 tonnes, suggesting copper might soon start leaving LME warehouses

"With the large inflows of metal believed to be nearing an end, net falls in LME stocks could start to resume, which would support prices," said UBS Investment Bank analyst Robin Bhar

Simple supply and demand comes into play here. Higher supply = lower price.

Bloomberg has a bit more to flesh out the story:

Copper prices in New York had the biggest weekly decline in 10 years as slower U.S. economic growth and a building slump reduced demand for the metal used in homes, appliances and cars.

Global stockpiles are at the highest since June 2004. The U.S. economy grew at the slowest pace of 2006 in the third quarter, led by a decline in homebuilding. Builders are the biggest consumers of copper. Prices tumbled 12 percent this week, touching a nine-month low.

``I don't think anybody has predicted it would go this low,'' said Karen Poniachik, Chile's mining and energy minister and chairwoman of state-owned Codelco, the world's biggest copper producer.

According to Bloomberg, the slowdown in the US housing market is a prime reason for the drop:

Construction spending fell for a third month in November as homebuilding fell by 1.6 percent, the eighth-straight drop, the Commerce Department said this week. Fewer Americans signed contracts to buy previously owned homes in November, suggesting continuing weakness in the real estate, an industry group said yesterday.

``If overall housing sales stay slow, you could easily pare another 30 or 40 cents off of copper,'' Frank McGhee, head metals trader at Intergrated Brokerage Services Inc., said yesterday. ``Copper is a leading indicator. It's very sensitive to perceived economic conditions.''

Something to keep in mind is the futures markets have become the high tech market of the late 1990s. A ton of money flooded into the futures markets over the last 6 years. This is one of the reasons for the huge price run-ups over the same period. Increased demand = higher prices. Some of this selling may simply be people taking profits. In other words -- this could be speculators leaving the market.

However, the fundamentals indicates there may simply be weaker demand. Housing construction in the US is down. Overall stockpiles are up. This indicates copper production may be too high right now, anticipating a level of demand not warranted by the underlying economic fundamentals.

For market and economic commentary, go to the Bonddad Blog

American Enterprise Institute Is Setting Policy for Iraq

January 06, 2007

Bush is Following The American Enterprise Institute - hook, line and sinker

As I predicted in my post of January 1, 2007, it is becoming very clear that President Bush has dismissed the work of the Iraq Study Group and has embraced the work of The American Enterprise Group. No need to wait until next week, just go to the American Enterprise website and download the report titled "Choosing Victory: A Plan for Success in Iraq". Just about everything that the President will propose next week is sitting right there.

In the Executive Summary Portion, they outline the basics of the plan. Here they are (I summarize and those items in parens are my comments):

  1. Ground forces must accept longer tours of duty for several years. National Guard units will have to accept increased deployments during this period.
  2. Equipment shortages must be overcome by transferring equipment from non-deploying units. The military industry must be mobilized to provide replacement equipment sets urgently (Investment opportunities?? - My comment in the parens)
  3. The President must request a dramatic increase in reconstruction aid for Iraq (How about New Orleans first?)
  4. The President must request a substantial increase in ground forces end-strength. The President must issue a personal call for young Americans to volunteer to fight in the decisive conflict of this generation (How about his daughters first?)
  5. The President and his Representatives in Iraq must forge unity of effort with the Iraqi government.

Deep in the proposal, they basically support what Thomas Ricks said in the book Fiasco. In this book, he showed how the US Military totally blew the identification of the insurgency then blew the actual fighting of the insurgency. These recommendations call for:

  1. Secure Baghdad first - The US Military will be playing "policeman" in the Country's capital.
  2. "Live Among the People" - This means "bye bye green zone". All the "warriors" who have been talking about the big war from the security of the Green zone and the internet cafes, gyms etc. are going to learn what real war is like. They are going to move to tents, foxholes and 24 hour vigilance because they will be out among the people.
  3. Huge amounts of money going to reconstruction. Imagine, we cannot reconstruct New Orleans but we are now going to fix Baghdad.

Overall, this is nothing more than an escalation plan. A surge implies a quick hit and run type thing but even in the AI study, they call for this to be many years long. That is an escalation not a surge.

My predictions:

  1. If you are an active reservist - see ya later. Good luck, you are going to Iraq for at least two years.
  2. If you are active duty - move your family home because you are gone for a long time.
  3. If you are IRR (Individual ready reservist) - Get your finances and family care in order. You are either going to Iraq or you are going to backfill current active troops on bases in the US and Germany.
  4. There will be a "surge" in US deaths and combat injuries.
  5. The only way a true escalation would work is to send in at least 100,000 troops. 10,000 to 20,000 are what we call "speed bumps"

No need to wait. Go read it now!!

--cptkevin@mac.com

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Holding Intelligence Liars Accountable

Editor’s Note: From both the White House and Congress, there's lots of talk about how important it is to look to the future, not dwell on the past. But one of the painful lessons from the Iraq debacle is that Official Washington's failure to understand the past -- and the real histories of key players -- contributed to the present catastrophe.

In this guest essay, two former U.S. intelligence analysts -- Ray McGovern and W. Patrick Lang -- argue that the United States can ill afford letting the Iraq War-era liars off lightly, even if that means taking a hard look back over the past several years:

Lies have consequences.

All those who helped President George W. Bush launch a war of aggression—termed by Nuremberg “the supreme international crime”—have blood on their hands and must be held accountable. This includes corrupt intelligence officials. Otherwise, look for them to perform the same service in facilitating war on Iran.

“They should have been shot,” said former State Department intelligence director, Carl Ford, referring to ex-CIA director George Tenet and his deputy John McLaughlin, for their “fundamentally dishonest” cooking of intelligence to please the White House. Ford was alluding to “intelligence” on the menacing but non-existent mobile biological weapons laboratories in Iraq.

Ford was angry that Tenet and McLaughlin persisted in portraying the labs as real several months after they had been duly warned that they existed only in the imagination of intelligence analysts who, in their own eagerness to please, had glommed onto second-hand tales told by a con-man appropriately dubbed “Curveball.”

In fact, Tenet and McLaughlin had been warned about Curveball long before they let then-Secretary of State Colin Powell shame himself, and the rest of us, by peddling Curveball’s wares at the U.N. Security Council on Feb. 5, 2003.

After the war began, those same analysts, still “leaning forward,” misrepresented a tractor-trailer found in Iraq outfitted with industrial equipment as one of the mobile bio-labs. Former U.N. weapons inspector David Kay, then working for NBC News, obliged by pointing out the equipment “where the biological process took place... Literally, there is nothing else for which it could be used.”

George Tenet knows a good man when he sees him. A few weeks later he hired Kay to lead the Pentagon-created Iraq Survey Group in the famous search to find other (equally non-existent, it turned out) “weapons of mass destruction.”

(Eventually Kay, a scientist given to empirical evidence more than faith-based intelligence, became the skunk at the picnic when, in January 2004, he insisted on telling senators the truth: “We were almost all wrong—and I certainly include myself here.” But that came later.)

On May 28, 2003, CIA’s intrepid analysts cooked up a fraudulent six-page report claiming that the trailer discovered earlier in May was proof they had been right about Iraq’s “bio-weapons labs.” They then performed what could be called a “night-time requisition,” getting the only Defense Intelligence Agency analyst sympathetic to their position to provide DIA “coordination,” (which was subsequently withdrawn by DIA).

On May 29, President George W. Bush, visiting Poland, proudly announced on Polish TV, “We have found the weapons of mass destruction.” [For Consortiumnews.com's contemporaneous challenge to the mobile-lab report, see "America's Matrix."]

When the State Department's Intelligence and Research (INR) analysts realized that this was not some kind of Polish joke, they “went ballistic,” according to Ford, who immediately warned Colin Powell that there was a problem.

Tenet must have learned of this quickly, for he called Ford on the carpet, literally, the following day. No shrinking violet, Ford held his ground. He told Tenet and McLaughlin, “That report is one of the worst intelligence assessments I’ve ever read.”

This vignette—and several like it—are found in Hubris: The Inside Story of Spin, Scandal, and the Selling of the Iraq War by Michael Isikoff and David Corn, who say Ford is still angry over the fraudulent paper. Ford told the authors:

It was clear that they [Tenet and McLaughlin] had been personally involved in the preparation of the report... It wasn’t just that it was wrong. They lied.
This, of course, was just one episode in the long drama of deliberate perversion of intelligence to grease the skids for justifying the invasion of Iraq—the most serious foreign policy blunder in our nation’s 230-year history.
“Hubris,” the overweening arrogance that brought down many a protagonist of the Greek tragedies, is an aptly-chosen title for the revealing Isikoff/Corn study.

Some of the ground they cover is familiar to us Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS), who well before the war started chronicling the Bush administration’s lies. What makes the book different is its cumulative impact—the detailed, first-hand accounts of lie and cover-up, lie and cover-up, ad nauseam .

Protagonists need a supporting cast. And many of the dramatis personae were intelligence analysts—former colleagues of mine.

The question lingers: How could they allow themselves to be seduced into enlisting in the meretricious march to mayhem in Iraq? Much of the answer (and much of the reason this misguided war is allowed to continue) lies in the fact that those planning and facilitating the war in Iraq are not fighting it.

Unlike Vietnam, no one “important” is being asked to put life and limb at risk; nor, generally speaking, are their children. Interestingly, most of our troops come from towns with populations of less than 10,000.

Theirs Not To Reason Why

Into the valley of death rode the 3,000.

“U.S. Toll in Iraq Reaches 3,000” screamed The Washington Post ’s lead story on New Year’s Day, which included the Pentagon’s count of more than 22,000 troops injured. As is known, the Pentagon does not count dead Iraqis, but reputable estimates put that number at about 650,000.

As we pass this sad milestone, it behooves us to pause and consider the enormity of what has been allowed to happen—and how to prevent it from happening again. The House and Senate Intelligence committees in the new Congress need to reinstitute genuine oversight, including a close look at why so many intelligence officers cooperated in the dishonesty leading to war. We owe that to the 25,000, not to mention the 650,000.

Start with Tenet and McLaughlin and include Alan Foley, the retired chief of CIA’s Center for Weapons Intelligence, Nonproliferation and Arms Control (WINPAC) and devotee of imaginative intelligence on bio-labs, uranium from Niger, aluminum tubes and other artifices to justify an unnecessary war.

Most of the suspects owe their meteoric careers in large measure to Defense Secretary Robert Gates who, as head of CIA analysis and later as CIA director, institutionalized the politicization of CIA analysis more than 20 years ago, mostly by moving malleable managers up the pay scale.

Another beneficiary of Gates is George Tenet who, as staff director of the Senate Intelligence committee in 1991, helped Gates overcome strong opposition to his confirmation as director. It is a safe bet that Gates returned the favor by recommending that Tenet be kept on as director when George W. Bush became President in 2001.

Gates learned well at the knee of his original mentor, William Casey, President Ronald Reagan’s CIA director. They and those that followed had remarkable success in perpetrating the dual crime of which, long ago, Socrates was accused: making the worse case appear the better and corrupting the youth.

Thus, in September 2002 when Senate Intelligence committee Democrats Dick Durban and Bob Graham insisted on a National Intelligence Estimate on “weapons of mass destruction” before Congress voted for war, George Tenet found himself the ultimate beneficiary of Robert Gates’ finely tuned Geiger counter for corruptibility.

The pliant managers promoted originally by Gates were happy to conjure up a formal estimate written to the specifications of their frequent visitor, Vice President Dick Cheney. [For more on Gates's record, see Consortiumnews.com's "The Secret World of Robert Gates."]

Those who tell consequential lies need to be held accountable. That includes, of course, Colin Powell. Congress needs to ask the former Secretary of State why he decided to disregard the objections of his own intelligence analysts and turned instead to faith-based intelligence for war.

He has expressed regret for his scandalous performance at the U.N., but only because it put “a blot on my record.” We would like to see him try that out on Cindy Sheehan and 3,000 other bereaved mothers.

Powell and I [McGovern] grew up a mile from each other in the Bronx. There we had a word for his forte, which remains a ubiquitous scourge in Washington. It was both noun and verb: “brownnose.” And it has nothing to do with skin color.

It was a familiar word before I [McGovern] learned “sycophant.” Webster’s provides this meaning: “To ingratiate oneself with, to curry favor with; from the implication that servility is equivalent to kissing the hinder parts of the person from whom advancement is sought.”

Rep. Lloyd Doggett, D-Texas, put the effects of all this most succinctly in a floor speech last year:

This war was launched without an immediate threat to our families... Radical "know-it-all" ideologues here in Washington bent facts, distorted intelligence and perpetrated lies designed to mislead the American people into believing a third-rate thug had a hand in the 9/11 tragedy and was soon to unleash a mushroom cloud.

Much is being said today about honoring the sacrifices of our fallen soldiers. Perhaps the best way to do that is to find out who did the misleading and hold them to account before they do it again.

Ray McGovern was an Army infantry/intelligence officer before his 27-year career as a CIA analyst. W. Patrick Lang, a retired Army colonel, served with Special Forces in Vietnam, as a professor at West Point and as Defense Intelligence Officer for the Middle East (DIA). Both are with Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity. (This story originally appeared at TomPaine.com.)

The Global Gohar of the USA…

January 4, 2006
Arun Shrivastava CMC

Today Saddam was hanged. Instead the bunch of eunuchs comprising Bush, Blair, Cheney, their side kicks, and their handlers should have been hanged. But they will never be hanged because 30-35% of the people who elect them live in a media-engineered "consensus trance.(1)" So long as the 33-35% of electorates in the western world continue to live in their surreal, make believe, so-called "free" world, the rest of the world can’t have peace.

Every USAmerican must learn this term… Gohar!

"Gohar" [pronounced Go’-haar; verb, noun] is a term used in the state of Bihar of India to describe total decimation of a community.

Gohar is engineered against weaker castes in Bihar by upper castes, aka the ruling castes. Well known Goharists are the big landlords, feudal mentality, and ruthless ways to assert their rights on lands, often others’ lands, illegally occupied. A Gohar is invariably engineered for imagined crimes. If a lower caste peasant refuses to till the land of high caste landlord, or if the men of lower caste refuse to perform menial work for the upper castes, the entire community can be Gohared.

Gohar involves planned attack on the villages of the lower castes. Operational plan is drawn up with military precision. Professional murderers, arsonists and rapists are invited to the hacienda of the lord. These are people from all castes because Goharists believe in professionalism and core competency [favorite theories in the US armed forces]. They are wined and dined, paid cash, 50% advance, 50% after the job is done. Then the plan is executed.

The attack invariably takes place after midnight. When the world is asleep……the Goharists rise to decimate.

The Goharists roll out to the target village in motorcycles, jeeps, and tractors with trailers, armed to the teeth with guns, petrol bombs and swords. Swords are nice weapons: when the Goharists kill they can actually say that they had a nice warm blood bath. Bullets are used sparingly, and often by the cowards.

The Goharists reach the target village and surround it. The leader gives a signal. The arsonists fire their salvos of petrol bombs to set the huts on fire. When the huts are on fire people run out and try to save whatever meager belongings they have. When they come out the sharpshooters shoot the men, leaving the women to be caught and raped by professional rapists. The children are of course casually thrown into burning huts to be roasted alive in front of mothers being gang raped.

As dawn creeps over the horizon, all one can see is the smoldering fire and the ashes, and the dead bodies, and the living dead, and the barely living brutalized women and children. I doubt if any journalist has seen a Gohar in action. I have not seen any but I know of one that took place back in the 1970s.

I wish that every western citizen, particularly those in the US forces, understands this term because the US Government and its lackeys have been directly or indirectly involved in a Gohar in virtually every developing country on earth, just as European colonialists were before the 1950s.

Thus far the men and women in western mainstream media have only reported US Gohars from the safe distance of their hotel room as embedded journos that the Goharists wanted them to see. I truly doubt if any would ever be able to maintain their sanity when they see one true Gohar in action from close proximity. I say this because I am prepared to give them the benefit of the doubt that they are not automatons; on the contrary I believe that they are human, possibly programmed-humans. Nevertheless, human.

The scaled up US Gohars

Every US citizen should know that in the last 100 years, the US Government has employed "Gohar" in nearly every country of Asia, Africa and Latin America. Whilst an Indian Gohar destroys about 250-300 people every decade, the American Gohars since 1899 have decimated probably closer to 100 million if we take into account "collateral damage". That averages out to about one million dead for every year of the 20th century. Some democidographers, like R.J. Rummel2 [see Rummel’s website http://www.hawaii.edu/powerkills/ ], would have us believe that mega murderers were Hitler, Stalin, Pol Pot, Idi Amin, General Pinochet, General Yahya Khan, and the likes. But who was behind them? Analyze any of these instances of mega murders and it invariably leads to substantial role of the US Government and the US elite. The United States of America shines as the world’s only GIGA-MURDERER, ten times over.

The better known US Government Gohars include the ones in their own country where they killed an estimated 12 million Red Indians and caused the deaths of tens of millions of African slaves, then Japan [first country to be nuked] and Germany [mindless bombing to "shock ad awe"], then Korea, then Vietnam, ………and the Iraqi Gohar has been going on for over the last three years. Latest report indicates over 655,000 Iraqi civilians have been Gohared for their OIL. That makes the US barely 655 Kilo-MURDERER, 200K PLUS EVERY YEAR. The lesser known ones are kept in the basement of the government offices, US Government Offices. If the truth be ever known, "people are going to hang us", as Bush senior said some years ago of what they do within the four walls of the White House.

The ruling elite have convinced the Americans and Europeans that the rest of world hates them. A "professionally trained-in-the-art-of-murder" GI is brain-washed to cut throats, cut off hands, cut out the tongues…because the rest of the world hates the western way of life. Some way of life, some way of killing, some way of defending freedom! Some historical absurdity? You bet.

Any difference?

Scaled up Gohars of the United States seeks total control over nations….. not to export democracy but to take control of people’s resources, the natural resources which local communities have used to ensure their livelihoods for over six millennia. True Gohar seeks to take control of the key resource of weaker castes….LAND.

Earlier the Europeans fought amongst each other to divide the rest of the resource rich world among them and killed innocent men, women and children. Often mindless killing merely to assert racial superiority, as mindless as the assertion of caste superiority of the badland Bihar’s Goharists. With globalization of fascism under the US flag these bird-brained bastards have lined up for the spoils. Like vultures, after the hyenas are gone.

The global Gohars of the US decimates entire nations. It is scaled up operation, vast in scope, awesome in spectacle shown at prime time and grand for the spectators. It pumps up the adrenaline for all: the Goharites, the MSM reporters and the vast sheeple spectators. For them it is spectacle; and it also pumps up the rudimentary libido of the eunuchs.

Leave nothing alive…kill everything living

The American Goharists, aka neocons with PNAC for the global village, should know that all the villages around the world are theirs for the taking. So, I say this,

"Come on Goharists, shoot every man, woman and child on earth……that will leave about 300 million Americans and 470 million Europeans=nice tidy total population of 770 million on earth, same as 1750AD population, to claim all the lands, all the water, all the forests, all the animals, all the natural resources all over the world.

Why bother about diplomatic niceties and the elaborate charade of declaring innocent people as "terrorists? Just blow them up like you blew up the twin towers.

Leave no Islamist jehadist, no Hindoo fundamentalist, no deviant Jew or Christian renegade alive. Leave no Chavez to finger your ass in the UN. Leave no Chinese to threaten you with 9:1 attack force, no figlio du na putana Putin to blow your Baku Cayhan oil pipeline.

Leave no animals alive either, especially tigers.

[And this is my message to Tony Blair and his ilk……When the British came to India they had never seen a tiger; they were used to fox hunting. They thought that every animal has to be about the same size as a fox! When they accompanied Indian Maharajas on tiger shoot and confronted a tiger in full fury, they realized that actually a fox is a different animal that they killed using five hundred hounds and a thousand riders. In India men kill tigers, alone, face to face. But what the British historians never mention in history books is that behind every photograph of a British LORD with his prized tiger shoot is the story of a pair of trousers quietly sent to the local dhobi [washerman] soiled with shit. British shit. Very soon we shall be seeing soiled trousers of US marines, everywhere. If we are all animals, nature has taught us only one way to react. And there is no scope for flight because we’ve nothing to lose. But most importantly, Tony Blair’s trousers, after the Iraq disaster, should be hanged in the British museum; because time is ripe….museums must store historical artifacts in real time.]

And, of course, the rest of the world must fight the American Goharists. When they catch the marines alive, they have every right to hang them, high. They have every right to ensure that each one of the Goharist dies as much a painful death as he or she inflicts on the rest of us. The Vietnamese did them in. Iraqis are doing what the Goharists deserve.

Expand further east, and we are just about ready. The Goharists have no idea how every Shia and Sunni Mussalman felt on 30th of December, 2006. All differences were submerged to condemn the Bushist Goharites. None of their intelligence agencies can ever fathom the level of hatred we Hindoos and Mussalmans have for the US Government. Steeped in the crass, corrupt, Christian Goharism, they have failed to understand the Asian mind. The west Asians that the perverts call the MID-EAST, as if between two "civilized" world of USAmerica and Australia there is some region that falls in between, are truly Asians with civilization going back to the era when your ancestors lived naked up on the trees.

The hanging of Saddam has turned 1 billion Indians, possibly five billion third world citizens against the US Government. All that prevents these billions of people from openly boycotting anything American is the co-opted minions of neoconservative Goharists supported by mercenaries of the Goharists. Use them, now, for tomorrow it may be too late. Hang us all.

The American Goharists in uniform

Is there any difference between a bunch of illiterate mercenaries of Bihar’s badlands and the Americans in uniform? Why, I think Kissinger is absolutely right when he says,"Military men are just dumb stupid animals to be used as pawns in foreign policy." Just as the feudal landlords in the badlands of Bihar fete out the mercenaries, Kissinger and his Goharists feed these men in US-Uniform the best Monsanto-bacon, genetically modified eggs, genetically modified corn-flakes, to metamorphose every gene in these humans to turn them into murderous louts. Thanks to Kissinger, and Baker, and Negroponte, and Wolfowitz, and Rumsfeld, and Rice, and…every preppy pimp in the power corridors of DC.

This bunch of "dumb, stupid animals" is used to protect the interest of the Goharists who wish to control the world? Whose agenda these dumb, stupid animals further?

* They fight and lay down life to ensure that soda pop laced with pesticides is sold to third world countries?
* They fight and lay down lives to ensure that nice smelling soaps, detergents, shampoos, and perfumes are sold to stinking sweaty third world denizens?
* They bomb farmers, rape women and shoot children to ensure that genetically modified seeds of Monsanto are sold to every farmer to destroy nature’s biodiversity the world over?
* They bomb civilians to make way for Kellogg’s cornflakes?
* They shoot millions on earth at will to ensure that US registered companies steal oil, and every conceivable natural resource the thieves brigade in the White House can think of, world-wide?

This global dance of the evil has many manly sights and sounds as well:

"Some of the dead were mutilated by having "C Company" carved into their chests; some were disemboweled. One GI would later say, "You didn't have to look for people to kill, they were just there. I cut their throats, cut off their hands, cut out their tongues, scalped them. I did it. A lot of people were doing it and I just followed. I just lost all sense of direction."

And why did the "C Company" cut up and mutilated the dead bodies of unarmed civilians? Did they merely lose "all sense of direction?" Can even the most evil Goharist in Bihar’s badlands lose "all sense of direction?"

Or is the truth what Layla Anwar (3)said in her dispatch [22/12/2006] from Iraq

I will tell you but sit still and don't freak out.
It is the agony of realizing that a "Third world", "Arab", "majority
Muslim" country has managed to pierce the Beast with it's deadly
rudimentary arrows.
The Beast is now trapped like a bull in a Corrida, giving its final
kicks before falling to the ground, inert.

An Asian woman’s intellect is worth more than a million bloody marines.

The eunuchs don’t fight

The eunuchs don’t fight because they are neither male nor female. When they think male, they are tormented; when they think female, they feel tormented. Therefore, these bird-brained Machiavellian "Never-do-an-enemy-a-small-injury" cowards make others do their dirty job. They hand the flag to these "dumb stupid animals" and tell them to fight for the flag. And these dumb stupid animals do just that…it is fun and these dumb, stupid animals get paid for having a bit of fun. Any different from badland Bihar’s Goharists?

The days of the likes of Wilfred Owen (4), when men in uniform could philosophize the futility of mindless violence are over.

If in some smothering dreams you too could pace
Behind the wagon that we flung him in,
And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,
His hanging face, like a devil's sick of sin;
If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood
Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,
Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud
Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,
My friend, you would not tell with such high zest
To children ardent for some desperate glory,
The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est
Pro patria mori.

For the illiterate, dumb, stupid animals in uniform, in plain English, dulce et decorum est, Pro patria mori means "It is sweet and proper to die for one's country." So die, son, and while you kill, inflict as much pain on every peaceful people on earth. Because die you must. There is no salvation for you. But one day each one of you would see in broad daylight the old lie: dulce et decorum est, pro patria mori.

Have a nice blood bath

In the grand old tradition of medieval Bihar, every American soldier should carry a sword to enjoy a warm fresh blood bath without soap or shampoo. And then plant the star spangled banner on the slit neck of a man or the dead body of a raped woman. It is macho! And I beseech…...

Come on man, if you are man enough slit the guys, rape their women…….plant your flag and sing your national anthem. And retire to your neighbourhood pub to talk about your manliness over a pint of lager….fighting for democracy, freedom, and liberty of the poor raped dead……………………land!

The United States of America has about 225 year long history. How much trouble, how much pain, how much suffering this one Genetically Engineered Frankenstein has caused nations all over the world and also within their own national boundary is beyond calculation in their short history? One can’t measure grief in dollar terms. The people of the United States of America can’t ever compensate the millions of people their government has destroyed in their name. Never. Even over a millennium.

"We are aware that History can be cruel in the short run but in the long run it is most merciful……. But we possess many things [the USAmericans] don't. We viscerally belong to this Land. We can trace our genealogy back millenniums." [ibid]

And in the same vein, someone closer to DC said the following words, in 1854…...
"Whatever Seattle says, the great chief at Washington can rely upon with as much certainty as he can upon the return of the sun or the seasons….
….There was a time when our people covered the land as the waves of a wind-ruffled sea cover its shell-paved floor, but that time long since passed away with the greatness of tribes that are now but a mournful memory. I will not dwell on, nor mourn over, our untimely decay, nor reproach my paleface brothers with hastening it, as we too may have been somewhat to blame. Our religion is the traditions of our ancestors -- the dreams of our old men, given them in solemn hours of the night by the Great Spirit; and the visions of our sachems, and is written in the hearts of our people….
…..Your dead cease to love you and the land of their nativity as soon as they pass the portals of the tomb and wander away beyond the stars. They are soon forgotten and never return. Our dead never forget this beautiful world that gave them being. They still love its verdant valleys, its murmuring rivers, its magnificent mountains, sequestered vales and verdant lined lakes and bays, and ever yearn in tender fond affection over the lonely hearted living, and often return from the happy hunting ground to visit, guide, console, and comfort them."(5)

Asia is our land. We are Asians. Our farmers have tilled the land, sown the land, and harvested their crops…..all by hand. We shall continue to do so, year after year.

Robert McNamara, following 1964 Chinese nuclear bomb blast, blared, "We have enough nuclear bombs to drop that would equal 14 tons of TNT per man, woman and child in China." Bravo, Bob! Where would it leave your own men, women and children? And the North Pole and the South Pole……..and your own rivers, valleys, and forests? Was it momentary lapse of reason or were you already institutionalized? Never mind, history is relentless; the people deserve their leaders.

Arun Shrivastava is a management consultant.
He lives in Delhi and can be contacted on arun1951@yahoo.com

References:

1. The term "consensus trance" is beautifully used by none other than my favourite author Richard Heinberg in a documentary "Oil, Smoke & Mirrors." See Google videos http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=8677389869548020370 Also: http://www.oilsmokeandmirrors.com/
He’s the author of "Oil Depletion Protocol" a must read for those who wish to understand USAmerica’s Global Gohar.

2. R.J. Rummel; http://www.hawaii.edu/powerkills/. Although Rummel is a good researcher, the unfortunate thing about his thesis is the attempt to distill out the true barbarity of the US Government. Not once does he say, in any of his papers that the US Government is the world’s sole Giga-murderer.

3. Layla Anwar, "An Arab Woman’s Blues" http://arabwomanblues.blogspot.com/

4. This is the audio clip of Wilfred Owen’s famous war poetry "Dulce et decorum est, Pro patria mori." Do please listen to the recitation by clicking on the url
http://encarta.msn.com/media_681500233_761569981_-1_1/%E2%80
%9CDulce_Et_Decorum_Est%E2%80%9D.html


5. "CHIEF SEATTLE'S 1854 ORATION" - version 1; authentic text of treaty oration; appeared in the Seattle Sunday Star on Oct. 29, 1887, in a column by Dr. Henry A. Smith; see Wikipedia.

New Year Reflections

January 6, 2006

Ramzy Baroud

2006 was yet another year of tribulations in the ever tumultuous Middle East. It defied all early expectations that 2005 would be the worst for many years to follow. It ended on a sad note in Palestine, and left wide open the chance for many appalling possibilities that stretch from Baghdad, to Lebanon, to Mogadishu, and elsewhere.

Like January 2005, January 2006 brought about momentous elections, the former in Iraq, and the latter in the Occupied Palestinian Territories; both occasions, which had the potential of becoming icons of democratic experiences, led to unmitigated disasters, exposing the American democracy charade for what it truly was, a farce, pure and simple.

The 120 Iraqi parties that fielded candidates in the country’s 2005 first nationwide elections since the toppling of former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein, revealed the country’s sectarian divisions; expectedly, Iraq’s Sunni population boycotted the elections, fearing that their participation was a rubber stamp in a highly suspicious US experiment aimed at dividing the country by stripping it of any national cohesion, thus smoothing the progress of a more manageable occupation. Sadly, many Iraqis allowed the US plan to fester civil strife bordering on civil war, which left countless innocents dead or maimed; The outcome of those divisions never expressed itself as clearly as it did in 2006, which left even the most optimistic amongst us anticipate nothing less than a full-fledged civil war morphing out of the current chaos.

Meanwhile, most Americans, as articulated in the Congressional elections of November 2006, expressed resentment for their country’s war in Iraq like never before on any foreign policy issue. Though their rejection of the Republican Party’s candidates was an illustration of their refusal of the Bush Administration staying the course mantra, the election brought back a divided Democratic Party that is equally supportive of the war, but wishes to convey its position in so clever a way so as to appear in disagreement of Bush’s war management style, but without offering any substantial policy shift. The elections will also likely position Democratic Senator Hillary Clinton of New York and Republican Senator John McCain of Arizona at the helm of Presidential candidates to follow the current lame duck president. Clinton is a staunch pro-war and pro-Israel savvy politician, and the latter wants to see a dramatic increase in the number of American troops in Iraq, as a way out of the quagmire. Using his constant opposition of President Bush’s foreign policies, McCain is unlikely to pay the price of Bush’s past failures, which, to varying degrees have damaged the credibility of most Republican politicians.

Like Iraq in the passing year, Palestinians embarked on 2006 on a hopeful note. Occupied and facing the most intense Israeli state terror regime, they delivered an awesome blow to those who contended that Palestinians were morally inferior to Israel for failing to espouse democratic governance. Though no occupied nation should be subjected to such cruel judgement, Palestinians prevailed, voting in what was described by former US President Jimmy Carter as the 'most transparent’ and democratic elections in that region in many years. The outcome of the vote was equally spectacular, for it defied all expectations by sidelining the ruling elite – despite generous financial and political backing from the US, of which they were and are still inundated - and bringing to power a political movement, Hamas, who despite it militant reputation, was clearly more in tune with the aspirations of Palestinian voters.

Soon after, Hamas found itself utterly isolated, and Palestinians were subjected to cruel collective punishment for their democratic choice, all with the backing and support of the US, Israel and President Mahmoud Abbas.

The year 2006 has closed with the dreadful shadow of civil war hovering over Gaza closer than ever before, as 17 people were killed and many more wounded in past weeks, following an assassination attempt orchestrated by some Fatah faction against Palestinian Prime Minister, Ismail Haniyeh. Unconditional US support of Abbas is strengthening the latter’s position, who has declared, in defiance of all democratic principles, his intent on dismantling the Palestinian Parliament and call for early elections.

Lebanon didn’t fair much better in 2006, as a 34-day war, which was clearly premeditated at least a year in advance, brought the country’s thriving economy into a total state of paralysis. The war, which followed Hizbollah’s capture of two Israeli soldiers at the Lebanon border wreaked havoc in southern Lebanon, but destroyed much of the civilian infrastructure throughout the country as well, as far as its northern border with Syria. The July-August Israeli assault on Lebanon killed over 1200 Lebanese civilians and an unspecified number of Hizbollah fighters; Hizbollah, which not only managed to shock Israel, but the world with its military preparedness and steadfastness, fired hundreds of rockets into Israel, killing 157 Israelis, mostly soldiers. As many members of the international community demanded an immediate end to the fighting, the US cheered Israel on, upholding its tired slogan of Israel’s 'right to defend itself’; the delay in ending the war however, wrought disaster on America’s ongoing plan to coerce Iran – the main backer of Hizbollah - into abandoning its nuclear program, giving Tehran instead a stronger bargaining position as it was indicated in the Baker-Hamilton report, a culmination of incessant deliberation and research by the Iraq Study Group (ISG). The report recommended that the US must engage Iran and Syria to escape its terrible fate in Iraq.

The ISG which was formulated at the behest and urging of the US Congress to decipher and thus conceive a new American outlook on the 'deteriorating’ situation in Iraq presented its recommendations to President Bush in December. Though the report had the courage to address the Iraq fiasco in the most honest depiction possible, and also the audacity to openly link the Iraq war to the absence of peace in Palestine, it failed to set a clear course of action out of Iraq and into a new era of realistic, thoughtful and inclusive foreign policy in the Middle East, denying 2006 that jolt of hope needed to offset some of its dreadful disappointments.

With Iraq left with no positive scenarios, hopes for a lasting Palestinian democratic experience turning into daring predictions of a civil war, coupled with bloody Israeli onslaughts against Gaza and the West Bank, Lebanon still bleeding under the outcomes of war and its own political mayhem, Bush’s 'vision’ for a democratic Middle East of 2005 has enlivened factionalism, sectarianism and the prospect for a regional civil war in 2006; this is yet another reckless American-Israeli experiment that if fully actualized, shall harvest untold political instability, debase America’s reputation even further and expand the list of innocent victims who have fallen as profusely as ever in this passing year.

One is only left with the hope that 2007 may bring some comfort and a moment of peace to the poor, the dispossessed and the resilient masses all around the world, who cannot afford to surrender their genuine hope, humble prayers, and whatever price necessary to achieve peace and freedom for themselves, for all of us.


Ramzy Baroud’s latest book is The Second Palestinian Intifada: A Chronicle of a People’s Struggle (Pluto Press) is available at Amazon.com and also from the University of Michigan Press.

The Neo-Cons' Role in Saddam's Execution 'Deal'

Raghida Dergham Al-Hayat - 05/01/07//

New York - The Iraqi government, its Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, as well as the US administration and President George W. Bush, are fully responsible for what happened to former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein upon his execution by the militias of sectarian and political vendetta.

For the issue at hand goes far beyond the prosecution of a regime and the lynching of a tyrant. What happened induces compulsory, key and critical questions regarding who is behind inciting sectarian hatred between the Shiites and the Sunnis, and the reality of US policies toward the Middle East region.

The issue at hand calls on George Bush to come forward and explain to us the real meaning of his policies toward Iraq and Iran and his perception of the role of the sectarian strife in the equation that drives the US interest in this oil-rich and strategic part of the world.

Neither condemnation nor indulgence in concepts, hypotheses, and mutual recriminations would suffice, since the significance of the sequence of events that took place before, during, and after the execution of Saddam Hussein bears fearsome consequences, not only on Iraq, but on the entire region. Therefore, answers to fundamental and key questions must be sought.

What happened implies that the neoconservative clique, which steered George Bush into embracing the doctrine of invading and occupying Iraq, still controls invisible strings of significance within the US decision-making process, as well as within Iraq.

For it was they who used the war in Iraq to launch the so-called superiority of the Shiite might as part of a strategy for the division of Iraq and the creation of a petroleum belt over the land of 'petro-stan' in a region that became known as the 'Shiite Crescent'.

The neoconservatives, despite their claims of being opposed to striking deals with the militia or making compromises with terrorism, have not once hesitated to summon the militia to become part of the de facto alliances, and the promises for a rosy tomorrow.

It is they who should have been prosecuted, because the US stands accused today of pushing the region into sectarian wars in order to capitalize on the tearing down of Arab countries and the hidden strategic alliances that are not related to public propaganda campaigns against certain regimes and axes.

The US president himself may be innocent of such charges, he may even be speaking out of personal honesty by touting a unified Iraq as a cornerstone in the success of his ambitious policies for a democratic Iraq that stands as a paragon of liberty for the Arab region.

If he is truly innocent and honest, the US president should then demand a thorough and immediate query into the sequence of events that ensued during and after the execution of Saddam, and the implications and dimensions of these events before coming forward with his comprehensive policies toward Iraq, expected to be unveiled in the coming days.

The US military's decision to turn Saddam over to the neo-executioners, who chanted slogans hailing the Muqtada al-Sadr militia, led to the resurfacing of questions on the reason behind allowing this series of US mistakes in Iraq to have been committed, and whether they truly were mere mistakes.

For it has become increasingly hard to believe this story of mistakes, and it is now high time to question once again who is really drawing the US policies in Iraq, Iran and the region.

There has to have been someone inside the US administration that fully understood the significance of executing Saddam Hussein on the first day of the holy Greater Bairam (Eid al-Adha), turning him into a martyr for some, even if that astonishing video had not emerged, which reveals that the Iraqi army has been infiltrated at the root level with the gangs and the militia.

It is not comprehendible that the US administration could lack experts, who understood the seriousness of the execution of Saddam on the day of Eid al-Adha, and who had access to key decision-makers that could have taken actions that would have prevented this 'mistake'.

Saddam Hussein was in US custody. The US forces turned him over to the US government to be executed on that same day, according to a political decision made by officials at the highest levels, despite the advice of the US ambassador to Baghdad.

In the event that George Bush had been excluded from the decision-making circle in this case, then it follows that he should understand precisely the significance of what has happened, as well as who allowed it to happen, and take these outcomes into account as key elements of his political package toward Iraq.

For the issue is not only related to the shifting of the Sunni-Shiite conflict to a qualitatively different stage on the Iraqi and the regional level, which, in itself, represents a highly serious and alarming development, but is rather connected to a key aspect of US policies in Iraq, namely: the training of the Iraqi forces and the Army, which will replace the US forces when they withdraw from Iraq.

Accordingly, the US supreme commander, President George Bush, is now expected to investigate whether money from US taxes and the treasury was being used to fund militias, who are either being incorporated into a short-lived army, or are exerting unimaginable control over the Iraqi army and government. The Supreme Commander is also required to explain to the American people and the world what is he actually doing.

There are those who are convinced that the pillars of the Bush administration still believe that the US should forge an alliance with Iran, the world's largest Shiite nation, and with the Shiites in general, who are a minority in the Islamic World, simply because al-Qaeda and its offshoots are Sunnis.

These also believe that the rising of a Shiite Crescent serves US strategic interests, and that the Iranian-Israeli relationship is essentially one of disengagement, and that the US-Iran-Israel axis is the most plausible axis for specific superiority in the Middle East region, especially on top of the ruins of an officially divided Iraq.

According to such rhetoric, the official division of Iraq necessarily requires that it must first fall into fragmentation, become the site of an excessive cruelty that justifies any 'other' alternative to the current situation and, in turn, the sequence of events that took place during the execution of Saddam Hussein, would be allowed to happen.

If George W. Bush is indeed innocent of these charges, then he should make an unequivocal commitment to guarantee the unity of the Iraqi territory as the starting point of announcing the new strategies to deal with Iraq.

He should also ask the head of the Iraqi government, Nouri al-Maliki, to choose between his allegiance to the likes of Muqtada al-Sadr and his militias, his spiritual and political connections with the Iranian leaderships in Tehran, and his allegiance to a unified Iraq that must be systematically distanced from the savage and deadly sectarian wars.

President Bush should also make it clear whether his position toward Iran truly corresponds to his publicly made statements, or if he was making these public statements while giving the 'go' for this undeclared strategic relation, favorable to the Iranian leaderships' mood.

The war in Iraq was a key aspect of a strategic shift that resulted in the consolidation, the success, as well as the undeniable advantages to both Iran and Israel, seen by the architects of this strategy as the natural allies in the drive to contain the Sunni influence and, with it, any unwanted Arab aspirations for superiority.

It is the duty of the US president, not only to the American public and the Iraqis, but also to Lebanon and the US allies in the Arab region, at a time when the US has become notorious for volatility and the overnight abandonment of its allies that come on top of charges of double standards it already faces today.

As directly involved in simultaneous sectarian, religious, cultural, civilization, political, oil, and strategic wars, the US is truly facing one of the most important tests.

George W. Bush is now required to explain to us what is the US policy toward Iraq, Iran, Syria, Lebanon, Palestine, Jordan, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and others. He is required to clarify his understanding of the official US stance with regards to the eruption of sectarian wars in Iraq and Lebanon, where the militia is drawing the fate of Lebanon, with Iranian funding and mobilization and the flow of arms through Syria.

Suspicions are rising that certain US administration key figures are the architects of deals that precede and shape US policies. Suspicions are rising that the inaudible voice of the neoconservatives these days is no more than a part of an elaborate drive to lower their visibility as they work on executing what they have been planning from the onset, namely: since new maps for the Middle East region were drawn, based on the destruction and the division of Iraq through a strategy of carefully executed 'mistakes' that benefits Israel and Iran, leaving behind the Arabs in pathetic wars, after being deprived of oil and key allies.

These suspicions may have recently surfaced because of the deliberate provocation that is more extensive than the hanging of a tyrant, and which clearly suggests that inflaming the Shiite-Sunni tension is being used as a means of expanding the scope of sectarian wars beyond Iraq for divisional ends, and, which are gaining more significance in light of the timing of the execution.

The comprehensive US policies toward Iraq, which are to be unveiled in the coming days, will contain answers to many questions regarding the fate of Iraq and the entire region. A key to these questions will be found in what George Bush decides with respect to the US policies toward Iran and its allies among the regimes, the militia, and the political parties in the region.

The window of opportunity before the impact of these decisions may be very narrow in terms of time and practicality. However, the sequence of events that have ensued since the execution of Saddam Hussein dictates that key Arab nations and entities insist on presenting the US administration with a review of the Arab memory, in which a series of US 'mistakes' and misleading proclamations, which intensified the mistrust of US promise, have been engraved.

http://www.raghidadergham.com/

Me And Julio Down By The Schoolyard

Sat Jan 06, 2007 at 10:58:58 AM EST

By Ed Garcia
kestrel9000@gmail.com





The mama pajama rolled out of bed, and she ran to the police station

When the papa found out, he began to shout, and he started the investigation

It's against the law,

it was against the law

What the mama saw,


it was against the law.

The mama looked down and spit on the ground ev'ry time my name gets mentioned

The papa say "Oy, if I get that boy

I'm gonna stick him in the house of detention."

I'm on my way, I don't know where I'm goin',

I'm on my way, I'm takin' my time, but I don't know where.

Goodbye to Rosie, the Queen of Corona

See you, me and Julio down by the schoolyard
See you, me and Julio down by the schoolyard

In a couple of days they come and take me away
But the press let the story leak

And when the radical priest come to get me released

We's all on the cover of Newsweek

Well, I'm on my way,

I don't know where I'm goin'

I'm on my way,

I'm takin' my time, but I don't know where

Goodbye to Rosie, the Queen of Corona

See you, me and Julio down by the schoolyard
See you, me and Julio down by the schoolyard
See you, me and Julio down by the schoolyard

Tags: Paul Simon, impeach, (All Tags)
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