5.28.2007, Monday

http://www.thetrumpet.com/index.php?page=article&id=3215

Benedict’s Evangelical BlitzkriegBy Ron Fraser Monday, May 28, 2007 From his onslaught on liberalism during the papacy of John Paul II, Joseph Ratzinger, the current Pope Benedict XVI, has possessed a determination to return Roman Catholicism to the global influence it exerted during medieval times.

Any astute observer of Joseph Ratzinger is aware of his deliberate and calculated agenda to wind back the clock during his papacy. He wants the Roman Catholic Church to reverse the damaging liberal social politics and rationalist theology that so weakened its political and moral authority in the decades following World War ii and return to the position it once enjoyed at the peak of its power.

Ratzinger accomplished much of this agenda in tandem with Karol Wojtyla, Pope John Paul ii. The closeness of the relationship enjoyed by the Polish pope and the Bavarian cardinal was evident by how religiously they adhered to their weekly scheduled private Friday meetings, and the fact that Ratzinger was the only cardinal permitted to address the pope in his native German tongue.

The papal political platform Ratzinger built in association with Wojtyla established the ideal launching pad for his now increasingly aggressive evangelizing papal agenda for the Roman Catholic Church.

Benedict’s most recent evangelizing initiatives have been directed at Latin America, specifically during his recent visit to Brazil to open the Fifth General Assembly of the Latin American bishops’ conference celam just north of the city of Sao Paulo.

This visit to Brazil was not by invitation. It was by Benedict’s own personal choice—thus, no doubt, in pursuance of the latest phase in his agenda to progressively evangelize the world.

That this pope is in a hurry to fulfill his agenda is made obvious by the fact that he has, just two years into his papacy, enjoined war on not one, but now on four distinct fronts—and has done so with elegance and panache using rapier-like thrusts of both tongue and pen.

On the home front, Benedict wasted no time in making a number of deliberate personnel changes at the Vatican after he took over in April 2005. He is intent on building a team in Rome that will support his agenda. He closed some Vatican offices and consolidated others, thus ensuring that no individual Vatican functionary is left with a degree of undue power that might frustrate his efforts at returning to a more traditionalist approach to liturgy, nor interfere with his wider global political agenda. We should expect to see further refining of the papal base of support in Rome as Benedict gains ground on the other three fronts of his evangelical crusade.

Benedict opened a second front in his onslaught last September at his old alma mater, University of Regensburg, when he, in the words of Dr. George Friedman, ceo of Stratfor, “thr[e]w a hand grenade” into the Islamic arena. The outcry over the pope’s deliberately chosen words in his verbal attack on Islam is now a matter of history. It was, as Friedman pointed out, “an elegant move. He has strengthened his political base and perhaps legitimized a stronger response to anti-Catholic rhetoric in the Muslim world. And he has done it with superb misdirection. His options are open” (Sept. 19, 2006). That’s the way of this pope. He will go for the jugular, but with such finesse that it leaves his options open. This is the mark of a quintessentially expert diplomat.

Benedict is working to stem the Islamic onslaught that has brought the crusading imams right up to the Vatican’s doorstep.

On a third front, the pope frontally attacked European secularism when he used the occasion of the 50th anniversary of the European Union to castigate the leaders of the EU for their failure to recognize the traditional religion of Europe, which grew out of Rome, in its declaration of fundamental values. He accused Europe of being “built upon a cynical form of pragmatism that compromises on all principles, sacrificing fundamental ideals and undermining the dignity of human nature and freedom” (CWNews.com, March 26).

CWNews.com recently ran a story pointing out how Benedict’s attacks on secularism were further endorsed by Bishop Giuseppe Betori, secretary of the Italian bishops’ conference. Betori declared that “the Christian people face a new challenge, in the form of political forces that are ‘attempting to storm our cities, undermine their peaceful order, and bring turbulence into their lives’” (May 16).

Benedict drew a fourth line in the sand in his global crusade during his most recent trip to Brazil. In his address to the bishops of Latin America, Benedict challenged them to galvanize a continent-wide evangelical crusade to rout the competing non-Catholic religions—“sects” as he called them—that have penetrated Latin America on the heels of the liberalizing wave that hit the church in the 1960s and ’70s.

Having declared, before gaining papal office, that no Protestant church could be regarded as a true church, it would seem that Benedict’s ecumenical thrusts will be primarily directed to the Orthodox religions. But it is the evangelical “sects” largely emanating from North America that have most significantly penetrated Catholicism in Latin America. A purge of these competing religious groups may well be on the horizon as Latino bishops lobby national governments for legislation to ban their operation within Latin America.

Pope Benedict has high hopes for his challenge to the Latin American bishops to evangelize afresh that which he calls “the continent of hope.” His intentions are to create the springboard within Latin America that will lead to a re-energizing of Catholicism not only in Europe, the continent of Rome’s “religious roots,” but also, indeed, across the whole globe!

That this is the ultimate goal of his evangelical agenda was made obvious during his weekly address in St. Peter’s Square Sunday, May 20. Addressing the crowd assembled below, Benedict called for a “‘renewed Pentecost’ for the entire church, and especially for the church in Latin America …” (CWNews.com, May 21).

But this pope’s agenda is broader than just an appeal for Catholic laggards to return to their faith. It has definite political overtones—of a global nature.

On the eve of the G8 conference shortly to convene under Germany’s leadership, CWNews.com ran an article headlined, “Global Economy Needs Catholic Insights, Pope Says.” Receiving delegates of the Centesimus Annus Pro Pontifice Foundation, established under John Paul ii to promote the social teachings of the church, Benedict “noted that their recent conferences have studied ‘Asian countries characterized by strong economic growth which, however, does not always lead to real social development; and on African nations where, unfortunately, economic growth and social development face many obstacles.’ In both cases, the holy father said, societies could profit from the insights of church teaching” (May 21).

As we have often pointed out, this is a pope worth watching: A real mover and shaker whose small, somewhat unimpressive physical appearance is belied by strength and force of his public pronouncements. Here, indeed, is a pope intent on evangelizing the world using religion, the world economy, social issues, global politics or whatever weapon he chooses that suits the time,

place and public mood. And Benedict is making it increasingly clear that he is prepared to take on all comers in his quest to revive the global dominance of the Vatican’s religion.

Benedict xvi won’t rest until he has achieved that goal!

http://www.javno.com/en/world/clanak.php?id=47705

Premier Turns West Against HimselfThe Republika Srpska premier was threatened in Washington to be dismissed, but he responded that RS people would not settle for that.

The Stratfor American market analysis agency ahs assessed that Republika Srpska Prime Minister Milorad Dodik had turned the West against himself because of his disagreement on reforms in Bosnia-Herzegovina, adding that the West would use every opportunity to remove him from his function, which could be dangerous for Bosnia.

According to agencies, Startfor said this in its analysis after Dodik and the Bosniak member of the Bosnian Presidency, Haris Silajdzic, had visited Washington to talk with American officials.

The Americans tried to help with solving the most important problems in Bosnia, which are constitutional problems, police reform and the status of Srebrenica.

Dodik clashed with the U.S. ambassador in Bosnia

The talks failed and Dodik clashed in Washington with the U.S. Ambassador to Bosnia, Douglas McElhaney, says the report.

In Washington McElhaney threatened Dodik that he would be dismissed from office, but the premier replied that the people of the Bosnian Serb entity would not settle for that and his friends in high places would not allow that to happen as that would destabilise the region.

According to Stratfor, not only does the West have legal authority to remove him from function, but is impatient to get rid of such an unpredictable leader and will use any excuse to do so after the Dodik-induced headaches.

The report, however, warns that Dodik was returning to Republika Srpska to gather support, which could cause a great, possibly, bloody, fight if removed from office.

Destabilisation in Bosnia-Herzegovina would be catastrophic for West

The report adds that it is not likely that Dodik has friends in high places in Washington, but that it is correct that the destabilisation of BH would be catastrophic for the West that is already busy with growing threats in Serbia and its secessionist province of Kosovo.

It would be disastrous if the West had to take care of two conflicts in the Balkans at the same time, the analysis says.

Damir Arnaut, Haris Silajdzic’s legal advisor, told the Oslobodjenje daily that he knew absolutely nothing about the report. But, after he looked at it, he said it was a “lobbyist organisation that drafts paid reports”.

Stratfor as CIA’s shadow

Stratfor is a private intelligence corporation referred to as the CIA shadow. It was founded in 1996 with the aim of providing the world public with exact forecasts of political, economic and social

events. It was founded by George Friedman who is today its executive director. Friedman is an American politilogist. His parents survived the Holocaust and he is one of the first designers of computer war games. Stratford’s clients are not known, mentioned are governments, armies, large financial corporations and oil companies. But, Stratford’s predictions are known. They announced, among other things, the crisis in the European Union, the fall of the Indonesian and Philippine governments and warned that the attacks on Iraq would have nothing to do with weapons of mass destruction, Oslobodjenje writes.

Report ordered for pressure

The report of the Stratfor agency is viewed by Dodik’s party as more pressure on Milorad Dodik and government in Republika Srpska.

http://gold.seekingalpha.com/article/36625

Aurelian Resources: A Gift to Value Hunters

Posted on May 28th, 2007

Mark Turner submits: Another day, another country, another story, another buying opportunity. So far this year we have taken advantage of shock and horror press coverage of Venezuela and have made good gains from reactions to over-imagined risk. Thus we are pleased (though only from the investor’s point of view) to see Ecuador as the new media target of “infierno del dia”. As a result, the canny player has the chance to pick up a top class gold stock at a bargain price.

Non-Existent Risk

Gustavo Larrea, the Ecuadorian government minister and confidante of President Rafael Correa, was reported as saying on Thursday evening that miners would be hit with a tax regime so strict that it would take away 70% to 80% of revenues. Or did he?

Larrea in fact told news agency Agence France Press that (translated) “in the new contracts with petroleum companies, the percentage (of revenues) left for the private company will vary between 20% and 30%, and 70% or 80% for the state”. He then went on to say that “these are the rules in Brazil, Colombia, Mexico and in Venezuela…and they will also be in Ecuador, same as for the mines issue.”

Textually correct, as one would expect from a quality newswire service such as AFP. Larrea was clearly talking about raising taxes on the petroleum industry and clearly not talking about slapping 80% burdens on miners operating in Ecuador. The reference to miners was fair comment about having the same playing field for resource extraction businesses in Ecuador as already exists in the other countries mentioned. Does anybody seriously believe that an 80% mining tax burden is the same situation as in Brazil? Or in Mexico? If so, they have bad news for Newmont, (NEM), Barrick (ABX), Freeport (FCX), Goldcorp (GG), Penoles (IPOAF.PK), Southern Copper (PCU), CVRD (RIO) and hundreds of other large and small mining companies operating in LatAm.

Lost in Translation Again?

However, business media service Stratfor decided to report the story in the following way:

“May 24, 2007 21:31 GMT. Ecuador's upcoming Constitutional Assembly will be presented with proposed reforms to laws regarding foreign investment in the country so the state will be able to assume 70 percent to 80 percent of the earnings from the oil and mining sectors, Agence France-Presse reported May 24, citing Government Minister Gustavo Larrea.”

For those who are unaware, Stratfor likes being known as “the shadow CIA” of news intelligence services. We also note in passing that Stratfor, operating since 1996, is a mere puppy when compared to AFP founded in 1865.

“It’s socialism, Jim, but not as we know it”

The Ecuador government led by President Correa is undoubtedly left-leaning, but on the issue of mining it is clearly trying to foster a good working relationship with local companies. Only last month, Dynasty Metals (DMM.v) were awarded the last of the permits they needed to ramp their Zaruma project in southern Ecuador. At that time Dynasty CEO Robert Washer said that “… it clearly demonstrates the intention of the new government to support the development of the Ecuadorian mining industry”. He has also said that “it’s no more difficult for me to work in Ecuador than it was to work in Australia”. This from a man who has lived and worked for 14 years in Ecuador, which is longer than Stratfor has been in business.

Also LatAm expert Stephen Bailey of Frontier Strategy Group, leaders in emerging market risk analysis, recently said, “Certainly Correa is not an ideal pick for foreign investors, but I think that he’s taking more of a measured approached (than Venezuelan President Chávez).”

The Usual Suspects, The Usual Result

So opinion from those on the ground and looking closely at Ecuador clearly points to it being a mining-friendly environment. However, when it comes to today’s South America the world prefers a good shock story than measured analysis, case histories or even listening to what ministers actually say. The result of the Stratfor newswire was unfortunately predictable; stocks of miners with Ecuador exposure fell sharply in Friday’s trade, with IAMGOLD Corp (IAG), Corriente Resources Inc (ETQ), Dynasty Metals and Mining Inc (DMMIF.PK) Lateegra Gold Corp [LRG.V] as a few examples of large and small miners hit hard in intraday trading. ETQ, DMM.v and IAG managed to claw back most of the lost ground once word began to get round that the story was not all it was cracked up to be, but LRG.v lost 8% on 4X normal volumes traded and couldn’t recover.

However the eye of the storm was Aurelian Resources Inc. (AUREF.PK) [ARU.to]. Aurelian began the day at CAD$33.10 and dropped a full 20% to trade intraday at CAD$26.40. The company wisely released a PR casting doubt on the newswire story and it recovered somewhat to finish 5% down at CAD$31.40 on volume of 5.7m shares traded, a whopping 14X average daily volumes.

aru.to

The Blessing In Disguise

By way of a little background on the company for those not familiar with the story, Aurelian Resources Inc. is a Canadian gold, silver, and base metals exploration company that controls over 234,000 acres of concessions at their ‘Condor’ property in southeastern Ecuador. The property has 38 concessions and has already identified dozens of gold and copper targets on site. ARU.to has very solid looking financials with around U$79m cash at bank, no debt and 35.5m shares fully diluted, giving a total market cap of just over U$1Bn. Insiders and institutions together hold 55% of stock.

ARU.to has so far concentrated its efforts on one site, the Fruta del Norte [FDN] gold discovery. Without the slightest exaggeration, the results so far from the FDN drilling program have been spectacular. One particular hole reported March 27th 2007 graded an incredible 35g/t gold over 820 feet, later described by a leading analyst as “the best drill hole that has ever been drilled in a gold project”. One 10ft long part of that drill core showed over 1kg of gold contained per tonne of rock. With a kilo of gold selling at around U$21,000 today, if ARU.to doesn’t impress you we

suggest you find another sector in which to invest your money. The photo below shows a close-up photo of the FDN drill core with clearly visible gold.

FDN drill core

The company is due to publish a resource estimate for the FDN central core in mid 2007, and there has been a lot of speculation as to the size of the resource estimate that will be announced. Guesses range between 6 million and 14 million ounces of gold at FDN without taking into account the silver credits. If at the higher end of the resource guesstimate scale as we ourselves suspect, the underground gold would be priced at U$73 per ounce as a ratio to Aurelian’s market cap and therefore on FDN alone ARU.to is extremely good value at its present stock price. On top of this, only 1.2km of the FDN strike has been examined so far, and there is every reason to believe the same strike continues for a full 3km. And heaped on top of this, FDN is only the first of 31 targeted sites contained inside “El Condor” that has been drilled. The company is currently drilling at their “El Tigre” target, with results expect in a few weeks’ time.

Whatever the new drilling results bring, the future certainly looks bright for ARU.to and we consider it a real bargain. Upside is difficult to accurately predict as the company is still in early stage explorations, but our modeling suggests a CAD$48 price tag would be very reachable in 2007, representing a targeted upside of 53% to Friday’s close.

Separately, we have also heard some background talk of ARU.to as a buyout target. If so we would expect the stock to at least double before the company goes to the highest bidder, but we stress that buyout scenarios are more likely once Aurelian has solid measured and indicated resource figures to show the world, something that would probably come no earlier than FY08.

Conclusion

When it comes to LatAm, don’t believe everything you read, especially when reading in English. We have witnessed a growing tendency towards sensationalism in regional reporting recently, and as such advise any investor with LatAm exposure to check and re-check stories before rushing to trade and having to repent at thy leisure. On the other hand, we reiterate that the smart and nimble investor can take advantage of a situation with suitable background knowledge at hand.

Friday’s trading on “news” has given investors a golden opportunity to buy Aurelian on the cheap. We are applying the same proven formula to Ecuador as we have done with Venezuela this year. The knee-jerk reaction of investors once again allows us to take a position in a financially excellent company trading at a short-term discount. We recommend a long position in ARU.to at CAD$31.40 with a target of CAD$48 for end 2007.

5.29.2007, Tuesday

5.30.2007, Wednesday

BBC Monitoring International ReportsMay 30, 2007 Wednesday

BOSNIAN SERB PM EXPLAINS REASONS FOR FAILURE OF US TALKSLENGTH: 640 words

Text of report by Bosnian Serb Banja Luka Radio on 29 May

[Report by Milanka Snjegota on interview with Serb Republic Prime Minister Milorad Dodik by unnamed interviewer on the Serb Republic Radio-Television on 28 May in Banja Luka - recorded]

Serb Republic Prime Minister Milorad Dodik said that his proposal to have the quota of one third for the entity vote be reduced to one forth and to preserve the Serb Republic police was rejected in the recent talks in Washington. In an interview with the RTRS last night, Dodik said that the "April package" was offered, modified on the basis of the request by Party for B-H leader Haris Silajdzic to give up the entity vote on certain issues relating to the original powers of B-H. More from Milanka Snjegota:

[Snjegota] Prime Minister Dodik said that at the beginning of the talks in Washington there was a request to change the name of the Serb Republic, along with the request to abolish the entity vote and the Serb Republic police. However, he said that he categorically refused to talk about changing the Serb Republic's name. Dodik said that no compromise was achieved on the entity vote, either.

[Dodik] Although, in the end, I agreed to discuss that topic. So, if you are linking these issues, then I am offering that, instead of a quota of one third for the entity vote, to reduce that to one fourth - which would mean a few votes less - but you then accept my Serb Republic police. But, of course, this was not accepted, so we parted.

[Snjegota] Asked why the Croat representatives did not attend the talks in Washington, Dodik said that he did not organize the meetings, and that he did not know if the Croats had been invited. Furthermore, on the margins of the meeting between Dodik and Silajdzic, B-H Islamic Community leader Mustafa Ceric was also in Washington. According to Dodik, Ceric was not in Washington because of his faithful, but because of a synchronized action, which was aimed at presenting the Serb Republic in a negative light.

[Dodik] He went to various institutions and was sending political messages aimed at smearing the Serb Republic, reinforcing their intention to say that it is genocidal. Ceric was also sending a message that the Bosniaks do not feel safe or feel insufficiently equal in B-H.

[Snjegota] Speaking about the announcements by High Representative Christian Schwarz-Schilling that he would soon initiate talks on the constitutional changes, Dodik said that he would be the first to respond, but he added that a new dimension should be introduced in those talks.

[Dodik] I would like everyone to clearly see the things that cannot be changed or agreed on and to put them aside, and to see what we can do and achieve and agree on that, and declare that as a kind of success, and to unblock the Stabilization and Association Agreement.

[Snjegota] Commenting on the assessment by the American Stratfor agency for strategic analysis that he turned the West against him over disagreement on the reforms in B-H and that the West would use any opportunity to remove him from office, Dodik said that he was not interested in analyses that could be commissioned by anyone.

[Dodik] Whether it is about me and the West, you can ask the West. I know my position, which is the Serb Republic as a permanent category. Those who neglect this cannot expect any other solutions here.

[Snjegota] The Serb Republic prime minister's message was that the Serb Republic could be a partner and should be part of B-H. If that is not accepted, then the Serb Republic citizens will decide themselves where and how to go in the future. One thing is certain, Dodik said, the Serb Republic citizens would not allow being outvoted or becoming a minority.

Source: Bosnian Serb radio, Banja Luka, in Bosnian/Croatian/Serbian 1400 gmt 29 May 07

BBC Monitoring

5.31.2007, Thursday

http://www.antiwar.com/malic/?articleid=11050

Bosnia's StraitjacketEmpire Pushes Centralizationby Nebojsa Malic

Even though the 1995 Dayton Accords stopped more than three years of brutal interethnic warfare, the conflict between communities in Bosnia-Herzegovina has continued ever since, through politics and media. Despite the near-dictatorial oversight of the "international community," embodied in the Office of the High Representative and the NATO (now EU) occupation force, the fundamental question of Bosnia's identity and organization remains as contentious today as it was in 1992.

No sooner was the Dayton agreement implemented on the ground, its international overseers began revising it in conformity with a vision of "integrated" Bosnia over half of the country's population had emphatically rejected. U.S. and EU support of centralization was generally cheered on by the Bosnian Muslims, and viewed far less enthusiastically by the Serb and Croat population. Through intimidation, coercion and even brute force, Serb and Croat opponents of centralization have been suppressed by Bosnia's Imperial overlords.

Muslims advocate centralization as "more efficient," claiming the country has too much bureaucracy. However, most of that bureaucracy is on their own side – the Muslim-Croat Federation, established in 1994 at Washington's urging, is composed of 10 mini-states. Several other cases suggest that Muslims are committed to integration only when it offers them an advantage. When it became obvious they would be a minority in Mostar, for example, they completely reversed years of rhetoric demanding the city's unification. Given that Muslims are the largest ethnic group in the country (over 44%, according to the 1991 census) - though not a majority – and that they have adopted a name for themselves ("Bosniaks") and their dialect ("Bosnian language") suggesting that Bosnia is their own nation-state, while Serbs and Croats are minorities at best, belligerent interlopers at worst, it becomes clear who stands to benefit from a centralized "citizen state."

Talks or Threats?

Last week, the U.S. Department of State summoned the leader of Bosnian Serbs Milorad Dodik and Muslim leader Haris Silajdzic to Washington, hoping to force through a new centralization package. According to Reuters, the State Department tried to persuade Silajdzic to accept a watered-down version of last year's constitutional amendments, while Dodik was under pressure to accept a centralized police authority and change the Serb Republic's name to something more acceptable to Muslims and Croats.

However, the talks collapsed after two days, with both politicians refusing American offers. Following the breakdown, Financial Times cited "sources close to [Dodik's] delegation" to allege that Dodik was threatened with removal from office. A Texas-based intelligence outfit, Stratfor, further claimed Dodik had dared the U.S. diplomats to try.

As usual, there was no intimidation, much less criticism, of Silajdzic. The Muslim nationalist continued on to Seattle, where he thanked the "Bosnian diaspora" for supporting his opposition to the constitutional amendments, claiming this gave his "patriotic forces" a stronger bargaining position.

This is a repeat of events from a year ago, when Silajdzic led the fight against the proposed constitutional amendments, put together by American diplomats. Instead of threatening Silajdzic for "obstructing the peace process" (a charge invoked every time the OHR would purge Serb or Croat politicians), Americans instead criticized – Dodik! The man who refused further attacks on Serb autonomy and answered Silajdzic's belligerent rhetoric with a defense of the Dayton accords was accused of "nationalism." Silajdzic easily won the Muslim vote and became not just a member of the state Presidency, but the new political leader of Muslims, replacing Alija Izetbegovic who died in 2003.

Standing Firm

Quite unlike his predecessors, or even himself in earlier years, Dodik has steadfastly refused to be bullied by the Empire. The day his talks at the State Department started, he published an editorial in the conservative daily The Washington Times, in which he reaffirmed his commitment to Bosnia's integration into the EU, but rejected centralization as detrimental to human rights:

"Bosnia and Herzegovina can survive as a community of peoples and entities enjoying the same rights, and in which protective mechanisms are clear and unbiased. Any other BiH would be a country tailor-made by one ethnic group and it would certainly not be European or democratic. […]

"It is important that all of us understand that we cannot build Bosnia and Herzegovina on fears. We can only build it on a mutual understanding. The Republic of Srpska has only one tiny condition for BiH, and that is to be a part of it."

Dodik also gave an interview to the conservative magazine NewsMax, complaining that the U.S. was supporting militant Islam in Bosnia. The interview was condemned by the press in Sarajevo as "Serb propaganda," but no one saw fit to mention that a senior American legislator openly stated just last month that the U.S. supported a "Muslim country in the very heart of Europe." Granted, he was talking about the overwhelmingly Muslim Albanians in Kosovo, but the shoe fits…

Hatred Unrelenting

While Dodik felt more comfortable approaching the more conservative media, Silajdzic reveled in the attention of Reuters, Associated Press, the Washington Post, and other mainstream outlets. An AP report published on May 24 in the International Herald Tribune made no mention of Dodik, but quoted Silajdzic extensively. In his Washington appearances, we learn, Silajdzic "repeatedly referred to the genocide he said was committed against Bosnian Muslims by Serbs in 1995."

Silajdzic had displayed remarkable political opportunism when he officially broke with Izetbegovic in 1996 and created his own splinter party, which has been a part of every coalition government thereafter. But he managed to launch a successful bid for political leadership of Muslims only when he chose to ramp up militant nationalist rhetoric, call for the abolition of the Serb Republic as "genocidal" and harp endlessly on the issue of Srebrenica.

In March, when the International Court of Justice ruled against the Bosnian Muslim lawsuit accusing Serbia of genocide, Silajdzic spun the verdict as "vindication" of Muslim claims that what happened in Srebrenica was genocide. He has since urged Muslims to leave Srebrenica, and called for its secession from the Serb Republic – all in the function of creating a political crisis that would justify the abolition of Dayton and creation of a centralized state. Such a state would be dominated by Muslims, of course – and himself in particular.

It is true that Bosnian Serbs have taken to pointing out Muslim ties with Islamic terrorists (especially after 9/11), but it's hard to blame them for trying to seize a propaganda advantage

after a decade of demonization. Besides, the majority of their allegations have been well documented. Muslim response? "Serb nationalists are the real terrorist threat," claims a Bosnian Muslim "expert" employed by a Turkish NGO.

Promoting Insanity

At the crux of Bosnia's conflict is the nature of the country itself. Since the Ottoman conquest in the XV century, it was never an independent polity till 1992, but always administered from the outside. Once Yugoslavia was renounced by half its inhabitants, and Communist doctrine of ethnic brotherhood was repudiated, Bosnia's ethnic communities pursued different visions. Croats wanted to join with Croatia. Serbs sought to remain in Yugoslavia (with fellow Serbs), or secede. Neither wanted a centralized state dominated by the plurality of Muslims – which was precisely the desire of Izetbegovic and his followers (including Silajdzic). This is what caused the war in 1992, and a concession to Croat and Serb claims (in Washington and Dayton, respectively) is what stopped it.

Now the U.S. and the EU are once again seeking to re-create the Bosnia of 1991, unaware that this could easily turn into another ethnic conflagration. Meanwhile, they are also pushing for separation of occupied Kosovo from Serbia, justifying it by claims that Albanians refuse to live together with Serbs. There is no logic in those "solutions," except that of power and wishful thinking. They are madness, pure and simple – but don't dare point that out, or you too might be demonized and condemned like Mr. Dodik.

http://www.theconservativevoice.com/article/25504.html

Bush Loses Control of IranMay 31, 2007 01:25 PM EST

President Bush is destabilizing the Middle East by appeasing Iran. Iran is responding to Bush's concessions by escalating. This is a very dangerous trend. Bush and Congress must find a middle way in dealing with Iran between the extremes of appeasement and war.

President Bush is making unprecedented concessions to Iran.

First, President Bush is throwing an economic lifeline to Iran. Bush authorized the World Bank to approve a mammoth $7 billion natural gas pipeline deal with India and Pakistan, two key US allies on the war on terrorism. This is the first World Bank mega-project approved for Iran. By itself, this World Bank announcement weakens UN’s economic sanctions and advances Iran's nuclear program. Bush is raising investor confidence in the Iranian economy, while casting doubt on US willingness to support nuclear-related sanctions.

Second, as this loan was approved President Bush replaced Paul Wolfowitz as World Bank president, from all accounts a NO vote on major projects for Iran, with State Department favorite Robert Zoellick, a sure YES vote on Iranian projects. In sum, the World Bank is now open to Iran.

Third, President Bush is throwing Iran a military and diplomatic lifeline by establishing the US-Iran Security Committee on Iraq, which held its first meeting this week. The US and Iran will use these meetings to coordinate joint security activities in Iraq. According to Stratfor, the US and Iranian lists of security objectives are virtually identical. The agreement is that Iran accepts the short-term presence of troops in Iraq. In return, the US agrees to turn over power to Iran in Iraq by excluding the Arab states from representation on the US-Iran security committee. In effect, the US and Iran have jointly declared war on the Iraqi Sunnis and their Arab state allies.

Fourth, the US is suppressing Muqtada al-Sadr and the Mahdi Army. Iran wants Sadr, who leads Iraqi Shia resistance to Iran, taken out of the picture as Iran takes power in Iraq. In other words,

Iran wants the US to do Iran’s dirty work in Iraq, while Iranian forces remain out of harms way. Iran then wants US forces to leave Iraq, while Iran partitions Iraq and steals two-thirds of Iraq's oil. No one can accuse Iran's Nazis of thinking small!

Finally, the US is escalating against Syria by blaming Lebanon’s crisis entirely on Syria while ignoring Iran’s contribution. Syria is Iran’s major rival for influence in Iraq. Syria opposes Iran’s takeover of Iraq, which Syria fears will lead to Iraq’s partition, a step that would destabilize Syria and the region.

Far from expressing gratitude for these sweeping US concessions, Iran has decided to escalate against the US and its allies.

First, in a high profile act of defiance, Iran has accused three American citizens in Iran with espionage. This is hostage taking, as staged by President Ahmadinejad.

Second, Iran and Al-Qaeda are now destabilizing Lebanon and the Gaza strip. The idea is to distract the US from Iraq, weaken US influence in the region, and show that Iran can ratchet up pressure against the US at will, thus forcing the US to make even more concessions in Iraq.

Third, Iran is also cooperating with Al-Qaeda to strengthen Taliban in Afghanistan, which also distracts US attention and resources from Iraq.

In short, Iran is now calling the shots in Iraq and the Middle East, thanks to Bush’s concessions. Bush has lost control of relations with Iran. Bush and Congress must find a middle way between appeasement and war.

The middle way s called diplomacy, i.e. restoring the balance of power in the Middle East by deterring Iran. The US can best restore the balance of power by aiding the anti-Nazis, Sadr and Assad. These two might be bad guys, but they are far better than Nazi Ahmadinejad. We will see this, soon.

http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/760/1/

Ecuador Hints at Changing Mining Laws Written by www.Decoin.org Thursday, 31 May 2007

El Comercio reported last week on Ecuadorian President Rafael Correa’s recent speech against mining concessions in Ecuador. Correa described the way the previous administration issued them as a disaster, and said that his government will review every single one of them. He said that that around 4,000 concessions have been issued, but that they have "created chaos and that certain areas they are on the brink of a civil war."

Correa also stated that communities are often not consulted in the issuing of the mining concessions, and that "the law needs to be changed to guarantee collective rights." According to the Web site www.Stratfor.com: "Ecuador will create a Constituent Assembly to reform the constitutional law regarding foreign investment in the country so the state will be able to assume 70 percent to 80 percent of the earnings from the oil and mining sectors, Government Minister Gustavo Larrea said May 24. Private companies holding majority stakes in oil or mining operations will then be left with 20 percent to 30 percent of the earnings. Despite this announcement, Larrea said Ecuador does not have any plans to nationalize the two sectors."

This comes amidst the recent government decision to reject the environmental impact study of Canadian mining company Corriente Resources, leading the government to issue a stop work order. A similar stop work order was issued against Ascendant Copper in December 2006.

6.1.2007, Friday

http://www.asiantribune.com/index.php?q=node/5967

Pakistani generals must act before it is too lateFri, 2007-06-01 02:30

By *Wajid Shamsul Hasan - Syndicate Features

Not many countries in the world would envy Pakistan for being constantly in the focus of international media—adversely. Until recently with more than half of its population living under poverty-line, Pakistan was proud to have Shaukat Aziz as the richest prime minister in the world. And lately he has done it more proud by getting himself hard up to deserve mention as perhaps the only known gigolo prime minister in recent history.

The latest book on US Secretary of State “Twice as Good: Condoleezza Rice and Her Path to Power,” by Newsweek’s senior editor Marcus Mabry has brought on record the “other” hitherto unknown qualities of Aziz as a Casanova. It has revealed that Dr Rice on her first visit to Pakistan in 2005 found herself face to face with Shaukat Aziz trying to bowl her over with his “gigolo” charm. She had to stare at him and cold water his hard on looks that he is reputed to employ to ‘conquer’ any woman in ‘two minutes.’

As if that was not enough we learn through BBC that the Pakistani military’s peace-keeping contingent in strife-torn Congo traded gold for guns and armed the militia they were supposed to disarm. Though Islamabad has rushed to deny the report as baseless, looking at the land grabbing habit at home of the Generals and their lust for riches, Congo gold would be no more than morsels for the troops trying to live up to the traditions set for them by their superiors.

Pakistan is yet to get over with the trauma of the mayhem by the armed thugs of the government in Karachi under the command and order of the Don of London’s Edgware as Daily Dawn’s columnist Ayaz Amir calls him. The London Economist (May 17) in a strong-worded indictment of the massacre said there are ‘plausible’ reasons to believe that “the violence was perpetrated by Karachi's ruling party, the Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM), an ethnically-based mafia allied with General Pervez Musharraf”. Its target was a ‘people’s rally’ planned for May 12th in the city at to protest against suspension of chief justice of Pakistan Iftikhar Chaudhry. He was to be the star speaker at the rally.

The Economist joined the wider media condemnation of the fact that while the carnage spread, killing scores and injuring hundreds, 15,000 strong police and paramilitary troops stood by silently.

Independent sources claim that the police were ordered by the “high ups” to give a free hand and to let the ethnic gangsters stage a bloody bath to teach the protestors a lesson for their defiance of the General. This is supported by the fact that the two main officers assigned for the maintenance of law and order in the province—the Inspector General of Police and the Home Secretary—an army brigadier—were busy holding the Chief Justice and his team of lawyers hostage at the Jinnah Airport after their attempt to kidnap him failed. Moreover, Karachi administration was entirely managed by the MQM governor, his team of ministers and advisers while the Chief Minister made himself conspicuous by his absence so that his face is not blackened any further.

There could not be more audacious a statement than the one made by the MQM Home Advisor who claimed on a television channel that it was he who had personally ordered laying of siege of the Sindh High Court by blocking all routes to it by parking huge containers to stop anti-Chief Justice rallies bulldozing into it. The actual motive obviously was to stop the Chief Justice from entering the High Court premises. The people of Pakistan —including Karachites—protested against the MQM behaviour by observing a hartal voluntarily. It was a mark of national condemnation of state sponsored fascism.

The Economist correctly summed up the mood when it observed, “If the MQM meant to deter General Musharraf's opponents with violence, it failed”. Rather, it helped the General, may be inadvertently—in digging his own grave. By playing his MQM card he showed his true colours to his constituency—the army—which is predominantly Punjabi (more than 80 per cent of it being from Punjab). He also stymied MQM in its plans to emerge out of the Sindh and spread to other provinces particularly Punjab. Also, May 12 paved the way for a nation wide all-party movement against the uniformed President. “With an election due this year, Pakistani democracy is stirring from the coma it slipped into eight years ago, when General Musharraf seized power”, remarked a leader writer and added the Chief Justice has finally shown the way by “telling a bullying general where to get off.”

The General’s standing abroad is fast becoming dubious. The European Parliament has just censured his regime by approving Baroness Emma Nicolson’s highly critical report on situation in ‘Azad’ Kashmir. At home, the swashbuckling commando of yesteryears is ending up as a Shakespearean tragic comic character.

Apparently suffering from a deep seated paranoid, he is becoming more of a megalomaniac in his utterances. Having totally failed to perform, he wants to extend his stay in power by his pep talk. Eight years too late—perhaps out of his sheer fear of being prosecuted at some stage for committing acts of treason under Article 6 –that he has now started parroting that he would not violate the Constitution any more. This declaration in an interview to a private TV channel was sort of music to the ears keeping in mind his present existence being out of non-Constitutional wedlock through an act punishable with death since he blatantly betrayed the oath that he had taken as an army officer to “uphold the Constitution”.

Good news—though too late in the day—is to know that he “respects” the Constitution but his actions speak louder than his pious profession. He made a clown of himself when he repeated that he would not allow both the exiled former prime ministers to return home and participate in elections without telling his viewers under what constitutional provision he could do that. How bankrupt his sense of proportion could be gauged from the fact that he wants the nation to believe that it is Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz and his PLM (Q) clowns that are running the country and ruining it beyond reprieve.

He is a self-appointed President of Pakistan but he has scant regard for the rules of business and protocol of conduct. His usurpation of the Presidential Office does not entitle him to demean the Constitution by compromising his Presidential neutrality by his regular participation in dubiously contrived PML-Q meetings, addressing its rallies, and actively directing its politics as if he is its ex-officio chairman. No surprise therefore, his international and domestic ratings have sunk lowest. In a poll, privately held, 29% of respondents picked Ms Bhutto and 21.6% Musharraf as h politician they most agreed with. Some analysts believe that the poll overstate the general's popularity, since Pakistanis are afraid to speak ill of their uniformed ruler to an unknown questioner. Also because almost every day the news papers are reporting blood-curdling tales of missing persons picked up by the agencies for obvious reasons.

The General has ‘promised’ to the nation that he would not break his ‘promises’ any more. He regretted that he had reneged on the promise to take off his uniform by 31st December, 2004. According to him, he had rolled back his promise because MMA had vitiated the political atmosphere. Any how for him, uniform is his second skin as he calls it now. To discard any skin—

however useful or useless-- or to have it surgically removed -- is an excruciating experience. My view is that he would never like to be an anorchous Samson without his manly-power bearing hair. His uniform is what hair was to Samson.

The apex court would surely be approached by some one to save Pakistan army from the embarrassment of the day when it will have a COAS on wheel chair having outdone his normal tenure many times over. Now that the judiciary is finally on its own having rediscovered its lost spine, the regime will be at the receiving end of judicial whipping. Besides, the higher judiciary would no more be restrained by the imbecile executive to do away the two-time restriction on the prime ministerial candidate, graduation degree as a pre-requisite to contest elections and speedier judicial relief would be forthcoming to the two exiled prime ministers to enable them to return home to participate in the next polls. Not only that, no more would the superior judiciary condone the King’s Party to get away with its electoral rigging as it was allowed by the Chief Election Commissioner and the higher judiciary in 2004 elections.

Many analysts like the authors of Stratfor Intelligence Report on Pakistan, believes “General Musharraf will be forced to step aside, perhaps by the army itself. Failing this, he faces some distasteful choices. He can rig the election, as he did the 2002 referendum on his rule, though this would be certainly difficult against a pepped-up opposition. It might also annoy America, where support for him is flagging. According to Gary Ackerman, a Democrat who heads a Congressional panel on South Asia, “The truth is, for our goals to be achieved in Pakistan, there should be more than one phone number there to dial.”

A SMS message doing the rounds is interesting and it is worth reproducing here. It says Pakistan is a country where its Chief Justice is running from pillar to post to seek justice for himself and where its army chief, who is supposed to defend the country, has to lead a bunkered life to save and protect himself. And the General had to act against the Chief Justice to avert Pakistan from being declared a “failed state.”

Now Pervez Musharraf is caught up in a Catch-22 situation. The only exit route available to him is to call it a day and put in place an interim national government. He should be wise enough to show preference to preservation and not to sacrifice his first to save his second skin. His army colleagues should prevail on him to prevent him from going on a suicidal course that would even be too destructive for the entire military as an institution. They must beat a hasty retreat before the edge of precipice is crossed.

* Wajid Shamsul Hasan - the author is a former Pakistan High Commissioner to London

- Syndicate Features –

http://www.wsws.org/articles/2007/jun2007/mexi-j01.shtml

Mexico: Calderon uses drug violence as pretext for militarizing societyBy Kevin Kearney1 June 2007

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Much like George Bush in his fraudulent “war on terror,” Mexican President Felipe Calderon and his media supporters are deeply engaged in a fear campaign to bully Mexican public opinion into accepting a move toward authoritarian rule and increased US intervention.

Winning the presidency by the smallest margin in Mexican history—in an election marred by accusations of fraud—Calderon took office amid popular distrust and hostility. His opponent Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador challenged the election results by means of a mass anti-Calderon

mobilization in which millions repeatedly converged on the Zocalo, Mexico’s city square, converting it into a semi-permanent encampment and shutting down key portions of the city over a period of months. However, Lopez Obrador was careful to keep the movement safely within the boundaries of bourgeois electoral politics, demanding no more than a full recount of the votes.

Fearful that the struggle would get out of control, Lopez Obrador and his PRD party quickly liquidated the mass mobilization after the Federal Electoral Tribunal officially declared Calderon the victor, based on a partial ballot recount.

Simultaneously, a teachers strike in the state of Oaxaca had grown into a full-scale insurrection drawing in large sections of student youth, workers and peasants. The protesters eventually formed into an umbrella group called the APPO, which took control of the city center and held it for months. As in Mexico City, Lopez Obrador’s PRD eventually sought to cooperate with the PAN (National Action Party) and PRI (Party of Institutional Revolution) to “disappear” all the political organizations that came out of the protests—most importantly, the APPO.

Mexico has the world’s fourth largest population of millionaires, while 30 million scrape by on 22 pesos (barely US$2.00) or less a day. Millions of children suffer malnutrition and hunger on a daily basis. Last year’s outbreaks of mass civil disobedience were, in essence, a manifestation of anger over worsening living conditions and economic polarization. The upheavals sent a shock of fear through the upper echelons of Mexico’s ruling elite.

Politicians from all major political parties—eventually including Lopez Obrador’s PRD—and the Mexican media banded together in an attempt to neutralize the growing radicalization, by inundating the public with lies about the fairness of election procedures and the impossibility of a full recount. More recently this campaign has taken the form of vilifying Lopez Obrador as punishment for daring to involve the masses in politics.

With Calderon’s popularity sinking before he was even inaugurated, former president Vicente Fox was under pressure to resolve the situation in Oaxaca before handing over the reins of power. A combination of the Federal Preventive Police PFP and the military were sent to crush the uprising by means of state terrorism in late October.

After finishing Fox’s military operation against the people of Oaxaca—disappearing and/or killing dozens for their participation in a political protest—Calderon wasted no time in launching a full-scale military occupation of various Mexican states under the guise of a war on drug traffickers.

The US-based Stratfor web site, which bills itself as a private intelligence agency and “shadow CIA,” noted its approval shortly after Calderon’s inauguration in December, writing, “The holing up of APPO members highlights the Federal Preventive Police’s success in countering the group.... Calderon has proven that he has the backbone to govern Mexico and settle internal conflicts, but Oaxaca is only a start.”

Calderon’s ‘war’ on the long-standing and complex socioeconomic problem of drug trafficking began on December 8, when he set into motion a series of operations against drug cartels. Far from a plan to curtail the drug trade or protect the people from violence, the operation consisted of nothing more than a mass deployment of military units across the country. According to the Mexican daily La Jornada, 23,000 soldiers have been deployed so far with an official mandate to “use all necessary force to resolve disturbances and return peace to society.”

Predictably, the operations have resulted in a large increase in violent deaths among drug gangs, the military and the civilian population. In Calderon’s first 100 days La Jornada reported that 291 people had been executed by drug cartels, most of them in the northern states such as Guerrero, Sinaloa, Baja California and Michoacán—states that have received the bulk of the troops. Moreover, the attorney general’s office reported an average of 225 crimes per day related to

narcotics trafficking between December 1, 2006, and March 31, 2007 which represents a 40 percent increase over the 2006 average.

Instead of drawing attention to the ominous danger to human rights or the bloodbath that has resulted from the disastrous military operations, the Mexican and international press have dutifully lapped up sensational stories about shootouts and secret cartel armies like “the zetas” (a group of ex-special forces soldiers who have allegedly formed a mercenary army in the service of the cartels).

For months, the media has worked in tandem with the executive branch of the Mexican government to generate a virtual hysteria over drug-related killings, which Calderon has seized upon to push through a raft of reactionary legislation and executive decrees aimed at strengthening the executive and criminalizing any and all mass social movements opposed to growing economic inequality and political corruption.

On March 9, Bush met with Calderon as part of the latter’s trumpeted “Latin American tour.” A day later, Calderon announced that Mexico would launch a justice reform plan to strengthen police power and “speed up” court cases.

On April 27, a comprehensive reform bill—called the “antiterrorism packet”—was approved in the Mexican Senate. The bill vaguely defines terrorism declaring that “anyone who uses ... any type of violence to disrupt national security or pressure authorities to make a determination” can be charged with the crime of terrorism and sentenced to 40 years in prison. Moreover, anyone who fails to reveal the identity or activities of a “terrorist” can receive 9 years in prison, and anyone who threatens to commit “terrorism” can be sentenced to 15 years.

In an attack on the press, the reforms also prohibit “that anyone publish or distribute, or allow another to publish or distribute, photos or images without the express consent of those featured.” A person found guilty of this crime may be sentenced to eight years in prison. One day after its passage, Senators from both the PAN and PRI admitted the bill could serve to criminalize social protest and promised to amend it later, according to La Jornada.

Calderon is currently urging Mexico’s Congress to amend the Constitution to allow officials to tap phones without a judge’s approval in any case the government defines as “urgent.”

One of the first to be prosecuted under the new terror laws was Ignacio del Valle—leader of a peasant-based social movement called the Defense Front of Land Ownership in San Salvador Atenco, which fought authorities to prevent the illegal expropriation of their lands for the construction of a new multibillion-dollar international airport in 2002. De Valle was labeled a terrorist and sentenced to 67 years in prison for his role. Three other of the front’s leaders were detained and held incommunicado for over a year before receiving similar sentences.

That the first victim of the legal reforms was a political dissident did not deter Calderon and the media from repeating the lie that harsh measures were aimed at fighting drug cartels. Like the authoritarian movement in US politics, Calderon’s legal efforts have been aided by a right-wing Supreme Court. The Supreme Court of Nacional Justice (SCJN) anticipated Calderon’s military operations in Oaxaca, declaring last year that the military can legally aid police forces in the area of public security.

Last January, after the events in Oaxaca, the Court also ruled that law enforcement officials could conduct search and seizure without a court order in “flagrant situations,” despite the fact that this practice is constitutionally prohibited and in violation of the American Convention of Human Rights, which has been adopted as the law of Mexico. The result is that nearly any military personnel can search houses, seize property and detain individuals without any oversight, based on nothing but a suspicion of “flagrancy.”

Last month, Calderon issued an executive decree to organize and train a new Mexico City-based army within 90 days. The new force bears the ungainly title of “The Special Core of Federal Support Forces of the Mexican Army and Air Force” and will be centralized under the direct command of the president and administered by the Secretary of National Defense (Sedena). The announcement was made in the official newspaper of the federal government, El Diario Oficial, which stated that the soldiers will be trained to manage “critical situations in which social peace and public security are altered.” The number of troops has yet to be announced, but it is estimated that it will be in the thousands.

Sedena’s training manual states the purpose of the new force: “Those that alter or disturb public order, tumultuously gather, intimidate or oblige authorities to make any determination and put life or property in danger can be charged with the crime of rioting and become the object of repressive state action by special forces equipped with shot-guns, chemical agents and precision rifles.”

Plan México?

Calderon’s “war on drug cartels” has been accompanied by his repeated calls for increased US support and intervention in the form of money and logistical support, similar to that received by Colombia in its long-standing “drug war” against the FARC guerrillas.

On January 22, Calderon oversaw the extradition of the suspected leader of Mexico’s Gulf drug cartel—Osiel Cardenas—to US authorities. In response to the handover of Cardenas—and 15 other prisoners—Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales enthusiastically hailed the collaboration as “unprecedented in ... scope and importance.”

On February 7, officials of the US Drug Enforcement Administration and the FBI met with police chiefs from Mexico, Belize, El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras for a three-day summit in Los Angeles to discuss strengthening multilateral efforts against what they call “transnational gangs.” On April 23, Mexican authorities publicly called for US assistance in locating a suspected murderer in Durango state, despite the fact that local police lost the suspect nearly 500 miles from the border between the US and Mexico. Finally, in early May, Calderon announced that Mexico had begun to work with the US to detect gun purchasers of Mexican origin in the United States.

On April 27, the Los Angeles Times reported that the US State Department has provided Calderon with a new $3 million Communications Intercept System, which will enable him to begin his own domestic spying program. Susan Pittman, of the State Department’s Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs, told the Times, “It is a government of Mexico operation funded by the US.” The contract states that the system is designed to allow both governments to “disseminate timely and accurate, actionable information to each country’s respective federal, state, local, private and international partners.”

These joint operations demonstrate a growing US involvement that is developing in tandem with the drive to impose new border security measures as part of the pending immigration legislation in the US. The proposed immigration bill requires a doubling of Border Patrol agents and the creation of a massive detention center on the border with capacity for up to 30,000 prisoners at any one time. Given Calderon’s desire to become Washington’s junior partner in the global war on terror, these measures could easily be adapted to form a new link in the international chain of US gulags into which Mexican and American political prisoners can be more efficiently disappeared.

Calderon is using the Bush administration’s erection of the framework for a police state in the US as a model for imposing similar measures aimed at controlling the explosive growth of social discontent in Mexico.

Unlike the Bush administration, however, Calderon’s move against democratic rights is being implemented contemporaneously with the eruption of mass popular movements around the country and is more nakedly directed against political dissent. The reckless attempts to utilize drug cartel violence as Mexico’s 9/11 reflect a profound desperation within Mexico’s economic elite. In the end, however, it may well create the opposite of the intended effect, fomenting more vigorous mass political opposition and unifying previously localized upheavals against the entire Mexican government.

http://www.unobserver.com/layout5.php?id=3564&blz=1

Trish Schuh: The Salvador Option in Beirut

2007-06-01 | "The only prospect that holds hope for us is the carving up of Syria... It is our task to prepare for that prospect. All else is a purposeless waste of time." Zionist militant Zeév Jabotinsky, From "We and Turkey" in Di Tribune, November 30, 1915

"We should prepare to go over to the offensive. Our aim is to smash Lebanon, Trans-Jordan, and Syria. The weak point is Lebanon, for the Muslim regime is artificial and easy for us to undermine. We shall establish a Christian state there, and then we will smash the Arab Legion, eliminate Trans-Jordan, and Syria will fall to us." -David Ben-Gurion, From "Ben-Gurion, A Biography" by Michael Ben-Zohar, May 1948

"It is obvious that the above military assumptions, and the whole plan too, depend also on the Arabs continuing to be even more divided than they are now, and on the lack of any truly mass movement among them... Every kind of inter-Arab confrontation will assist us in the short run and will shorten the way to the more important aim of breaking Iraq up into denominations as in Syria and Lebanon... Syria will fall apart." -Oded Yinon, 1982. From "The Zionist Plan for the Middle East"

"Regime change is, of course, our goal both in Lebanon and Syria. We wrote long ago that there are three ways to achieve it- the dictator chooses to change; he falls before his own unhappy people; or if he poses a threat to the outside, the outside takes him out..." -Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs (JINSA), From strategy paper #474 "Priorities in Lebanon & Syria", March 2, 2005

From mission statement to mission accomplished, the slam dunk cakewalks continue. But from Baghdad to Beirut, the forgery looks the same.

Unlike Iraq, there is no “weapons of mass destruction threat” to facilitate toppling the Syrian regime. This time, a United Nations Tribunal could provide the means, deploying Lebanese Prime Minister Rafiq Hariri's murder as the weapon. But like the US show trial to convict Saddam Hussein, the show trial to convict Syria for Hariri's murder, built by the United Nation's International Independent Investigation Commission (UNIIIC), has a history of problems.

Several of the UNIIIC's prime witnesses have admitted to perjury, accusing the US-Israeli backed Lebanese government of bribery and foul play. Witness Hussam Taher Hussam claimed Future Movement MP Saad Hariri (son of former Prime Minister Rafiq Hariri) offered him $1.3m USD to incriminate top Syrian officials. Witness Ibrahim Michel Jarjoura said he was assaulted and forced to lie by Lebanese Telecommunications Minister Marwan Hamade. Star witness Zuhir Ibn Mohamed Said Saddik, who had accused Lebanese President Emile Lahoud and Syrian President Bashar Assad of ordering Hariri's murder, bragged of earning millions by falsely testifying to the UN Commission. Although much of their discredited testimony is still included as evidence, both UNIIIC prosecutors Brammertz and Mehlis said that the use of lie detector tests was not an option.

In his country, Mehlis has been rebuked for unethical and unprofessional practices. According to Germany's Junge Welt magazine, former UN investigator Detlev Mehlis received a $10m USD slush fund to rig the UNIIIC outcome against Syria. An inquiry by German public TV Zweites Deutsche Fernsehen found that Mehlis had relied on CIA, MI6 and Mossad intelligence in prior investigations, namely the Berlin Disco bombing of the 1980s where Mehlis knowingly used testimony supplied by Arab Mossad agent Mohammad Al Amayra in his case against Libya. Mehlis also relied on NSA intercepts of fake telephone calls that former Mossad officer Victor Ostrovsky revealed were made by Mossad agents, posing as Arab terrorists. The phone calls proved Libyan guilt and justified America's bombing of Libya.

In the Hariri case, German critics claimed "the choice of Mehlis was done because of his links to the German, American, French and Israeli intelligence agencies". Lebanese news source libnen.com, and Le Figaro confirmed that the British MI6 and Mossad have been supplying much of the UN Commission's intelligence.

When Mehlis resigned in disgrace, the UN hired Belgian prosecutor Serge Brammertz at Mehlis' recommendation - but Brammertz could also be vulnerable to US pressure if he assembles a verdict not to America's liking. Under Belgium's Universal Competence Law, Belgian legislators charged US Centcom General Tommy Franks, President George W Bush, VP Dick Cheney and Secretary of State Colin Powell with war crimes in Iraq. In 2003, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld threatened to pull NATO headquarters out of Belgium if the prosecutions commenced. Shortly after, the Universal Competence Law was dropped.

At the UN, Brammertz told me questions about similar US retaliation against his country regarding an unapproved Hariri outcome were not relevant and were "unhelpful".

But much of the questionable case built by Mehlis has been retained by Brammertz. Although Brammertz's secretive style preempts most outside debunking of questionable evidence, it is clear that fundamental issues remain unresolved. Brammertz's latest UN report estimates that TNT and RDX explosives were used. But military experts and vehicle manufacturers claimed that blast damage to Hariri's heavily armored Mercedes had the distinctive “melting signature” incurred by high density DU munitions. Israel's recent attack on Lebanon destroyed that evidence, by contaminating the crime scene with American DU-tipped GBU-28 bunker buster bomb residue.

It is also not certain where the explosion that killed Hariri was detonated. French experts assessed it was underground because the blast had cracked the foundations of adjacent buildings; manhole covers on the street had blown off and asphalt was propelled onto nearby rooftops. After it was found that an underground explosion would not implicate Syria - but rather the pro-US/Israeli Lebanese government who had supervised road work in the days before Hariri died - the focus shifted to an above-ground blast, via suicide bomber.

Then in a psyops setup, reminiscent of the Pentagon's Al Qaeda cutout Abu Musab Al Zarqawi (who terrorized the length and breadth of Iraq with a wooden leg), several UN reports feature a “Zarqawi-inspired” suicide car bomber, Ahmed Abu Adass as the killer. “Martyr” Adass's video confession debuted on Al Jazeera, Bin Laden-style, with all the requisite hoopla. But according to Reuters and ABC News, the "Syrian-coerced" car bomber had never learned how to drive. (3/4/05)

America's United Nations Ambassador at the time, John Bolton, who usually criticized the United Nations as "irrelevent", praised Mehlis, Brammertz and the UNIIIC investigation's "great work" saying, "The substantial evidence speaks for itself."

But the irrelevant evidence Brammertz refuses to speak of could prove far more substantial. Last June, the Lebanese Army discovered several networks of Arab mercenaries, sponsored by

Israel's Mossad, conducting terrorist attacks and car bombings connected to the Hariri assassination.

Israel National News "Arutz Sheva" reported that Lebanese Foreign Minister Fawzi Salloukh was ignored when he protested to the UN about the discoveries. (6/25/06) The US Ambassador to Lebanon Jeffrey Feltman, who helped manufacture the Cedar Revolution, through the American Embassy in Beirut, then threatened Lebanon with very "grave consequences" and a boycott of foreign aid if Salloukh filed a formal UN complaint about the findings.

Despite Feltman's ultimatums, Lebanese Military Investigating Magistrate Adnan Bolbol was to begin questioning witnesses over the Mossad assassinations in mid-July. On July 11, the Lebanese opposition publicized its demand for a United Nations Security Council Resolution against Israel, as well as a full inquiry into the Mossad's Arab-camouflaged spy killings.

Responding within hours, on July 12, Israel hastily retaliated with a full scale attack on Lebanon,m using the Hezbollah border kidnapping as pretext. Did the war on Lebanon cover up exposure of a "Salvador-style" slaying of Rafiq Hariri and the other assassinations blamed on Syria?

Using the Salvador Option against Syria had first been raised by Newsweek and the London Times in January, 2005. After Hariri's death, on February 14, Hariri's long-time personal advisor Mustafa Al Naser said: "The assassination of Hariri is the Israeli Mossad's job, aimed at creating political tension in Lebanon." (Asia Times 2/17/05) The Sunday Herald of Scotland hinted at a US role. "With controversial diplomat John Negroponte installed as the all-powerful Director of National Intelligence, is the US about to switch from invasions to covert operations and dirty tricks? The assassination of the former Lebanese PM has aroused suspicions." (Sunday Herald 2/20/05)

Fred Burton, Vice President of counter-terrorism at Stratfor, was also suspicious. Burton, who spent over 20 years as a counter-terrorism expert at the US State Department and the Secret Service, has investigated most terror attacks against US Embassies abroad, as well as the first World Trade Center bombing, and the murder of Israeli PM Yitzhak Rabin. Stratfor's Burton also specialized in Syrian terror operations and methods. He rejected both Syria and Hezbollah as the perpetrators behind the Hariri killing. "Syria lacks the finesse", and the "complex nature" of the remote-control technology needed to implement "the surgical nature of the charge" are beyond their capacity, he insisted. "This is not their style... and Hezbollah would not have this capability." (UPI 6/27/05)

According to United Press International, Stratfor's report on the Hariri crime concluded that the Lebanese assassinations were "so sophisticated that few in the world could have done it." Burton told UPI that only five nations had such advanced resources- Israel, US, Britain, France and Russia. "This type of technology is only available to government agencies." Burton then asked: "Suppose that these bombings were 'merely collateral'? That the true target in the plot is the Syrian regime itself? If Damascus were being framed, who then would be the likely suspect?"

"Israeli intelligence is standing behind this crime", claimed German criminologist Juergen Cain Kuelbel. In his book "Hariri's Assassination: Hiding Evidence in Lebanon" he wrote: "Syria is innocent and has nothing to do with that crime or the other assassinations." Kuelbel discovered that the jamming system used to disable the Hariri convoy's electronic shield was manufactured by Netline Technologies Ltd of Tel Aviv, an Israeli company co-developed with the Israel Defense Forces and Israeli law enforcement agencies, and sold through European outlets. The UNIIIC dismissed Kuelbel's findings as "ridiculous" and irrelevant.

But two months after the Hariri convoy was destroyed, Israeli-manufactured weapons began to appear near the homes and neighborhoods of politicians in Lebanon. On April 14, 2005,UPI

reported that Lebanese security forces had discovered six Hebrew-inscribed mortar shells manufactured by Israel on a deserted beach near the southern Lebanese village of Ghaziyeh.

Similar missiles and dynamite were also found along a road frequented by Hezbollah officials, and on December 10, 2005. four anti-tank rockets attached to wires ready for detonation were found planted on the road leading to MP Walid Jumblatt's Muktara Palace.

In February, 2006 Lebanon's Daily Star and An Nahar reported that Hebrew-marked 55mm, 60mm and 81mm rockets were discovered close to MP Saad Hariri's Qoreitem estate. Similar rockets had also been uncovered near the Majdelyoun home of Saad's aunt, legislator Bahia Hariri near Sidon.

While the pro-US/Israeli “March 14” government automatically blamed Syria for the findings, one of several Israeli spy rings was captured trying to assassinate Hezbollah Secretary General Hassan Nasrallah. AFP cited nine "well-trained, professional" paramilitaries who were intercepted with an arsenal of B-7 rocket launchers, anti-tank missiles, pump action shotguns, hand grenades, AK 47 rifles, revolvers, silencers, computers and CDs.

Then, in June 2006, Mahmoud Rafea, a mercenary from the South Lebanon Army, (created by Israel during the civil war with $10,000 bonuses) was caught on camera after car bombing two members of Islamic Jihad, the Majzoub brothers. Israel's ynet.com reported that Rafea confessed to committing the Majzoub slayings for Israel's Mossad, as well as to a number of other high level assassinations.

Israeli website DEBKAfiles said that Rafea had assisted "two Israeli agents [who] flew into Beirut International Airport aboard a commercial flight on false passports three days before the Majzoub brothers were assassinated." They "replaced a door of the brothers' car with a booby-trapped facsimile" and left the country after an Israeli airplane "detonated the planted explosives with an electronic beam." (Daily Star, 6/20/06)

Mahmoud Rafea, who was trained in Israel, also confessed to distributing bombs and ordnance to various locations around Lebanon to destabilize the country. A raid of Rafea's home yielded high tech Israeli surveillance gear, fake passports, IDs, and appliances and baggage with secret compartments, and detailed maps of Lebanon.

Rafea's network was only one among several. Lebanese Internal Security Forces are still searching for a different spy ring led by another Arab Mossad agent, Hussein Khattab. The Times of London wrote: "In a bizarre twist, Hussein Khattab, a Palestinian member of the spy ring, who is still at large, is the brother of Sheikh Jamal Khattab, an Islamic cleric who allegedly recruited Arab fighters for Al Qaeda in Iraq". (6/15/06)

Equally strange, Hussein Khattab's brother Jamal and his colleague Sheikh Obeida (mentioned in the UNIIIC report as head of Al Qaeda's Jund Al Sham) frequently met with the Zarqawi-inspired Hariri suicide car bomber Ahmed Abu Adass in the Ein Hilweh refugee camp of Lebanon. (Like Israel and the US, Zarqawi had demanded that Hezbollah be disarmed.) Israel National News "Arutz Sheva" (12/10/06) later wrote that "the US has been talking with Al Qaeda-sponsored terrorist groups in Syria in an all-out effort to topple the regime of President Bashar Assad".

In early January 2007, AP and the UK Telegraph reported that the CIA had begun covert operations in Lebanon using Arab proxies. During the riots in Beirut on January 20-22, a US proxy, the Progressive Socialist Party, distributed US weapons to fighters dressed as opposition Hezbollah/Amal supporters. The riots were then blamed on the opposition.

Comparing the Hariri car bombing to the mysterious car bombings in Iraq, Asia Times said: "What remains is the evidence of Baghdad in Beirut... The iron-clad certainty, on both sides [Sunni and Shia resistance in Iraq], is that these have been perpetrated not by ‘terrorists’ as the US claims,

but rather by Israeli black ops or CIA-connected American mercenaries, with the intent of fueling tensions and advancing the prospect of civil war. Now if only someone would come up with a Beirut smoking gun."

"The Gun" -as Meir Dagan is nicknamed- could be it.

Israeli website DEBKAfiles wrote that the above-named South Lebanon Army mercenary Mahmoud Rafea, had been assassinating/spying in Lebanon for Israel since 1989 when he was recruited by current Mossad director Meir Dagan.

In 2002, Meir Dagan was reappointed by Ariel Sharon to reprise the Mossad's covert operations in Lebanon, notably targeted killings abroad. Coinciding with Dagan's appointment, official Israeli policy was expanded to allow assassinations in friendly ally nations (including the US) using Kidon death squads from the Metsada Division. It was a job for which Dagan had ample experience. (The Australian 9/24/04 & UPI 1/15/03)

Under Ariel Sharon in 1970, Dagan commanded a secret assassination unit of the Israeli Security Agency called Sayaret Rimon that eliminated over 750 Palestinians in the Gaza Strip. In 1982, he helped command Israel's invasion of Lebanon. His main assignment was to manage undercover infiltrators and to train Lebanese collaborators for the pro-Israel South Lebanon Army.

Dagan commanded the Lebanon Liasion Unit (Yakal or Yaagal Border Unit) which was notorious for its cross-border raids into Lebanon to kidnap opponents, as well as its secret prison Camp 1391, where detainees were tortured and disappeared. Haaretz alleged Camp 1391 was the prototype for America's Guantánamo facility.

Dagan also operated the IDF Military Intelligence Unit 504, whose expertise was assassination, sabotage and spy running in Lebanon. The Israel Defence Forces call such spy saboteurs "Mista'aravim"- "soldiers disguised as Arabs". Used for clandestine reconnaissance and to frame enemies in false flag operations, these IDF soldiers impersonating Arabs and their proxies are "trained to act and think like Arabs" and to blend in to the target population with appropriate manners and language. (In 2002, this writer encountered at least one such Israeli “student” who claimed to be in Beirut "learning to think like 'the enemy'".)

One Mista'aravim specialty is the donning of Arab garb. In 1973, Israel's "Spring of Youth Operation" conducted by the IDF Sayaret Matkal in Beirut included future Prime Minister Ehud Barak dressed as an Arab woman while conducting death squad hits. Mista'aravim provocateurs camouflaged as Palestinians are still used in the West Bank and Iraq. Jane's Foreign Report said Mossad's Dagan had advised US officials in September 2002 on how Israeli special ops could help the US war effort in Iraq. Mista'aravim methods were exemplified in Basra where British SAS troops dressed as Arabs in a vehicle loaded with explosives were seized before detonating a car bomb. According to Israeli intelligence expert Ephraim Kahana, Sayaret Matkal is modeled on Britain's SAS. (Historical Dictionary of Israeli Intelligence)

Mista'aravim also specialize in close quarter urban combat using micro-Uzis, short-barreled M-16s and sniper rifles. Due to fluid street and residential changes, these teams rely on satellite photos and real-time drone imaging - like the complex technique used in the killing of the Majzoub brothers, where overhead drones monitored ground activity via cameras mounted on nearby objects - a level of capability not possessed by Syria.

Concerning the 2006 Lebanon War, DEBKAfiles boasted of other Israeli Mista'aravim successes: "two spy rings of Lebanese agents which the Israeli Mossad" operated had "planted bugs and surveillance equipment at Hizballah command posts before and during the war. They also sprinkled special phosphorus powder outside buildings housing Hizballah's war commands and rocket launchers as markers for air strikes. Well before the war, the Beirut ring had penetrated the inner circles of Hizballah and was reporting on their activities and movements to Israeli

controllers... Run by veterans of the South Lebanese Army (the force Israel created during its occupation), its job was to ‘paint’ targets for the Israeli Air Force and artillery…" DEBKAfiles claimed that Lebanon was "heavily penetrated by agents working for Israel intelligence".

One Lebanese in particular, General Adnan Daoud, even appeared on Israeli television, smiling and drinking tea with IDF soldiers while taking them on a four hour tour of his military base in Marjayoun. An hour after the Israeli soldiers' departure, IDF bombed the Marjayoun site. (AP/Jerusalem Post, 8/7/06)

Regarding yet other Mossad agents, DEBKAfiles wrote: "Hizballah's security officials detained two non-Lebanese Arabs wandering around the ruined Dahya district, taking photos and drawing maps. Several forged passports were in their possession..."

All factions concerned with the Hariri killing - the UNIIIC, Stratfor, Hezbollah, Syria, the US, Israel and the Lebanese “March 14” movement, agree on one thing - the Hariri perpetrator also carried out the other 22 assassinations, and possibly more. Lebanon's Daily Star quoted the FBI: "the same explosive was used in Hawi, Kassir and Hamade crimes", as that used against Hariri. On May 27, 2006, the Daily Star revealed that the killers of Hariri and the Majzoub brothers could be the same: "Internal Security Forces, forensics experts, judiciary police and members of Hizbullah's security apparatus inspected the blast site shortly after the bomb detonated. The shrapnel and iron balls found extensively around the explosion indicate the bomb was a specialized mine to assassinate individuals, and it is similiar to Hawi and Kassir's explosives."

Sources in Lebanon and at the UNIIIC in New York concluded that the same party responsible for Hariri's death and the other Lebanese assassinations also committed the Majzoub killings. In June, Mossad agent Mahmoud Rafea admitted killing the Majzoub brothers for Israel.

But such irrelevant evidence has been deliberately ignored by the UN International Independent Investigation Commission. At the United Nations, this writer questioned various officials over a period of months about a possible US-Israeli role in Hariri's murder, and if it was being investigated by the UNIIIC. Prosecutor Serge Brammertz stated that because the issue wasn't raised by the US/Israeli-backed Lebanese government, that line of enquiry would not be pursued. It seems only facts supporting a guilty verdict against Syria will be considered.

"As far as Israel is concerned, it would be difficult to imagine a more convenient scenario. Its stubborn enemies, Iran and Syria, are now being accused by the international community, one for its nuclear program, the other for its behavior in Lebanon... Israel has hoped for this outcome since the 9/11 terror attacks in the United States in 2001. Immediately after the collapse of the Twin Towers, Israeli officials began to speak about the anticipated change, and expressed a hope that the United States would bring order to the region, and would deal with Iran, Syria, Hezbollah, and not only Iraq." -Aluf Benn, Haaretz, October 25, 2005 From Baghdad to Beirut, the democracy dominoes keep falling. After Syria, an Iranian "Shah and Awe" forgery is the next imminent threat...

Trish SchuhU.N. OBSERVER & International Report

Trish Schuh was a co-founder of the Military Families Support Network and is a member of Military Reporters and Editors, and the United Nations Correspondents Association. She has lived and studied in Lebanon and Syria. This the third piece in a three part series on the attempted overthrow of Syria.

http://www.cfr.org/publication/13516/latin_americas_dueling_development_banks.html?breadcrumb=%2F

Latin America’s Dueling Development Banks

Chavez and Lula have conflicting views on a regional development bank (AP Image/Leslie Mazoch)June 1, 2007Prepared by: Stephanie Hanson

Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez proposed a regional development bank in the same March 2007 speech announcing his country’s withdrawal from the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund. Clearly, he hoped the so-called Bank of the South would supersede the two Western-dominated lenders. This vision, however, is not shared by most countries in the region, particularly regional powerhouse Brazil. Chavez lobbied for the bank to combine project lending with emergency-aid functions, but a recent meeting of finance ministers decided the bank would be solely a “development bank” (Economist). Several countries—including Colombia, Peru, Chile, and Mexico—have refused to participate (La Diaria) in the bank altogether.

Chavez has a history of such overreaching. In 1992, his attempt to overthrow then-President Carlos Andrés Pérez was quashed due to poor planning and lack of support. And a recent plan announced to create a single political party has run aground, as a new CFR.org Timeline on Chavez’s political rule describes. Now, his aspiration to create a regional development bank has fallen victim to regional politics.

The Bank of the South’s potential influence is also restrained by its somewhat modest capitalization. In the latest meetings on the bank, Brazil succeeded in persuading member countries that the bank should have equal representation and capital share from its seven members—Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Ecuador, Paraguay, Uruguay, and Venezuela. This limits the bank to capital shares that can be borne by the smaller member countries, or an estimated total funding of about $2.1 billion. The World Bank alone gave nearly $6 billion in loans to Latin America in 2006, which means the Bank of the South “is not about to edge out the ‘competition’ in development loans,” says intelligence analysis website Stratfor. A new Backgrounder examines how the World Bank and affiliated development banks function.

The World Bank is not the prospective bank’s only competition: There are already several institutions in the region that fund development projects. According to its financial statements, the National Bank of Economic and Social Development of Brazil (BNDES) lent roughly $24 billion (PDF) in 2006 to clients including Brazilian and foreign entities and individuals. The Bank Information Center, a monitoring group critical of BNDES, notes that “As a relatively non-transparent and unaccountable institution, the lending prowess of the BNDES poses a formidable barrier to any alternative institution that seeks to raise standards for development finance in the region.” Another group, the Andean Development Corporation, lent roughly $4.7 billion to Andean region countries in 2005.

Private lenders further complicate the lending landscape. Though they can also attach tough conditions to their loans, their lending rates can be more favorable than those of the World Bank or the IMF, and they lack the same tarnished image in the region. Yet it’s unclear how their favorable borrowing terms would affect the theoretical Bank of the South. Washington Post columnist Marcela Sanchez argues that despite the unpopularity of the World Bank and the IMF in Latin America, most regional leaders want the institutions reformed rather than closed. A Council Special Report recommends IMF reforms should include giving developing countries more voting power.

http://www.realtruth.org/articles/070601-005-ancw.html

A New Cold War… Soon to Get Hot?A rift is widening between Russia and the West. Where will this lead?BY MARK P. DENEE

The anti-U.S. rhetoric coming from Russia is once again approaching Cold War levels—and some believe it is on the verge of becoming worse.

Source: MCT

While the relationship between the two powers has been strained since the beginning of the Iraq War, the exchanges and events of recent months indicate that Russia and the United States, along with their respective allies, are on conflicting paths.

In addition, several recent events in or connected to Russia are proving that authoritarian government is alive and well in the world’s largest country.

Consider for a moment recent events surrounding sociopolitical freedom in Russia. The BBC reports that Scotland Yard is preparing arrest warrants for three former KGB agents suspected of murdering Alexander Litvinenko, a former KGB agent and outspoken opponent of Russian President Vladimir Putin. Mr. Litvinenko died in November 2006 in London from radiation poisoning. His wife and friends maintain that his death was a function of “state-sponsored terrorism,” allegedly carried out from an order by President Putin.

In the meantime, Russia has twice demanded that Britain extradite Russian billionaire Boris Berezovsky, who, from his London office, has been calling for Mr. Putin’s removal from power.

German magazine Der Spiegel reported in October 2006 that no less than eight influential journalists have been murdered during Mr. Putin’s reign, some of whom were highly critical of the Russian president (in regard to issues such as the war in Chechnya). Most were investigating areas of Russian life that were presented in a less than flattering light. The Committee to Protect Journalists ranked Russia as number three on a list of nations in which journalists are most likely to be killed.

In mid-April, about 2,000 Russians participated in anti-Kremlin demonstrations in both Moscow and St. Petersburg, each ending with fights involving baton-wielding police and interior ministry troops. According to BBC reports, many were beaten, including an elderly man. Former chess champion Garry Kasparov, who was one of those arrested, said, “It is no longer a country…where the government tries to pretend it is playing by the letter and spirit of the law.”

The crackdown brought formal statements of concern, including from several European states and the EU presidency.

More recently, Der Spiegel reported that the Russian government has told all state-run media outlets to produce at least 50% “positive” reports about Russia. The recent takeover of the nation’s largest independent radio news network leaves an increasingly small number of media outlets not managed directly by the Kremlin or the state national gas company, Gazprom, which is itself a major owner in the Russian media industry.

The article also indicated the Russian parliament is examining news resources on the Internet as well, and went on to theorize this latest campaign “seemingly aimed at tying up the loose ends before a parliamentary election in the fall that is being carefully stage-managed by the Kremlin.” Media watchdog groups say the recent restrictions are the worst since the dissolution of the Soviet Union.

In a national address similar to the American “State of the Union,” President Putin said Russia would not tolerate the continued “colonial-style” assault from the West on Russia’s internal affairs. He also announced that Russia would implement a freeze on its observance of the 1990 Conventional Forces in Europe treaty, which placed limits on non-nuclear forces in Europe. Mr. Putin indicated that this was in response to U.S./NATO plans to install anti-missile systems in Poland and the Czech Republic. He also told Russian media, “The threat of causing mutual damage and even destruction increases many times.”

The Itar-Tass news agency also quoted him as saying, “This is not just a defense system, this is part of the U.S. nuclear weapons system,” after meeting Czech President Vaclav Klaus.

Reuters also reported that Mr. Putin stated the following: “These systems will monitor Russian territory as far as the Ural Mountains if we don’t come out with a response. And we will indeed do this. Anyone would. We will not get hysterical about this. We will just take appropriate measures,” he said, without elaborating.

Mr. Putin also confirmed that he would indeed be stepping down as president in 2008. The expected successor is one of the two current First Deputy Prime Ministers, Dmitry Medvedev and Sergei Ivanov. Analysis by Peter Zeihan of Stratfor (a private intelligence agency), based on the fact that history largely operates in cycles, indicates that Russia is in the process of transition between what he refers to as a “white rider”—a leader who is primarily optimistic and operates with a grander vision in mind—and a “dark rider”—a leader who rules with great power and authority, regardless of any morals or beliefs.

Mr. Zeihan further indicates that the crackdowns in April, on what were relatively small groups of demonstrators, were intentional and indicative of Mr. Putin’s realization, involvement in, and preparation for, this leadership transition.

Few, it would seem, can still maintain the position that Russia is “an ally” of the U.S. in the “war on terror.” Russia has always sought its own interests first and foremost, and will likely continue to do so. Many would also concede that, at this point, Mr. Putin has done a “good job” in this regard, and that Russia has maintained and/or restored its position on the world scene as a major power. This alone will set the nation once again on divergent and, ultimately, likely conflicting paths with the United States of America. In addition, few can still insist that Russia is, or is going to be, any sort of democratic nation—its history, people and geography seem to dictate that it is characteristically governed with a strong hand.

Consider just a few points based on the autobiography of former Russian spy Colonel Stanislav Lunev and an interview he had with talk radio host Barry Farber:

* The current alliance between Russia and China makes the landscape more dangerous than during the Cold War, when these giants were in ideological conflict. They are now cooperating politically and militarily. * The Russians now have more than 100 spy satellites, mostly searching for new technology developed by the U.S. * Russia’s first democratic leader was bitterly anti-U.S. and vigorously pro-military. Yet the Americans considered him a friend of democracy and presented him billions of dollars to rescue the economy and to dismantle the Soviet arsenal—but these funds were mostly used for weapons research and development.

The geopolitical winds of change are blowing hard. Consider: the soon-coming changes in government in Russia, the United Kingdom and the U.S.; the renewed effort in Europe, with Germany leading politically and economically, toward a “United States of Europe”; the burgeoning Chinese economy and military; the turbulence in Iraq; the nuclear standoff with Iran; and the ongoing unrest in the Middle East.

Ask yourself: What if the U.S. Dollar collapses?

What if Turkey undergoes a bloody revolution?

Who will come out on the other side of any of these possible scenarios in better shape—America or Russia?

Keep reading The REAL TRUTH for insight found nowhere else.

6.2.2007, Saturday

http://www.canada.com/nationalpost/financialpost/story.html?id=f3fb9e1c-d3eb-4168-aa0b-0eb7c32605a1&k=68026

National Post's Financial Post & FP Investing (Canada)June 2, 2007 Saturday

National Edition

Maverick money; Sovereign wealth funds are huge, still relatively uncharted investors

BYLINE: Jacqueline Thorpe, Financial PostSECTION: FINANCIAL POST; Pg. FP1LENGTH: 1515 words

They are big, secretive and about to slap down a mountain of cash on a stock market near you. Together with a wave of brash new emerging market tycoons, they are becoming a growing force on global financial markets, giving further support to riskier assets like equities, emerging markets, commodities and real estate, reinforcing a nascent bear market in bonds and potentially ratcheting up market volatility.

They have leapt into the investing spotlight with such force in the past couple of months that they now have their own acronym: SWFs, for sovereign wealth funds. While countries such as Norway and Singapore have had them for years, China's announcement last month that it would buy a US$3-billion stake in private-equity firm Blackstone Group LP as part of its plans to deploy US$200-billion to US$350-billion through a new state investment vehicle, takes their influence to a whole new level.

"It's only the most important thing that's going to happen over the next few years in international markets," said George Magnus, senior economic advisor at UBS in London, only half jokingly.

Stratfor, a U.S. company that provides analysis on geopolitical, security and public policy issues, said a US$350-billion market infusion from China would be important simply because of its scale.

"That amount represents the single largest pool of cash that any government has thrown at anything, ever," Stratfor said in a report. "Adjusted for inflation, the United States' largest effort, the Marshall Plan, comes in at just over US$100- billion. In essence, China is about to throw a very large rock into the pond without telling anyone where specifically to expect the splash."

In addition to China, other countries have recently been tripping over themselves to set up funds that would do more than just buy government bonds and gold. Russia plans to divert some of its US$113.7-billion oil stabilization fund into a future generations fund that will have US$32-billion in

seed capital when it is up an running in 2008, according to estimates by Morgan Stanley. In April, Korea Investment Corp. said it would boost the size of its fund to US$50-billion from US$20-billion by 2010, while the Middle Eastern investment funds have been surging.

Morgan Stanley recently estimated SWFs may now total US$2.5- trillion though Mr. Magnus is more circumspect since the size of many of the Middle Eastern funds are completely unknown as few reveal details of their plans. He estimates the total at US$1.5-trillion to US$2.5-trillion.

"Given that formally identified and reported foreign exchange reserves are about US$5-trillion, already this must be about 20% to 30% of global foreign exchange reserves but the probability is that their funds will grow much more rapidly and allocations from central bank reserves will grow, " he said.

At US$2.5-trillion, SWFs may only represent a fraction of the US$60- trillion under management in the world, but government buying of U.S. treasuries have already been identified as a key factor in holding down bond yields in recent years and as the funds quickly grow -- Morgan Stanley estimates they will rise by about US$500-billion a year -- their impact on global markets is sure to grow, too.

So how did some countries come to accumulate such riches? Through a combination of trade, foreign exchange manoeuvring and surging oil prices.

"A great boom in global reserves is merely the mirror image of a great boom in worldwide trade," said Chen Zhao, managing editor of Global Investment Strategy at BCA Research in Montreal, in a report. Big exporting countries have simply been racking up huge trade surpluses while China's de facto currency peg and Asia's aggressive foreign exchange market intervention have kept their currencies low, contributing to the rise in surpluses. China's foreign exchange reserves now total a whopping US$1.2-trillion while Middle Eastern countries have been benefitting from surging oil prices.

Until recently, many of these countries were content to hold the bulk of their foreign exchange reserves in safe instruments like government bonds, T-bills and gold but they can not afford to do so any longer.

"The reserves have become so big that traditional, passive reserve management has become too risky for them," Mr. Zhao said in an interview. "It's ironic, if they don't take more risk it becomes too risky for them."

SWF's current dependency on government debt was highlighted in a recent study by Lawrence Dyer, U.S. interest rate strategist at HSBC Securities USA Inc.

Mr. Dyer found foreign investors now own 80% of U.S. treasury notes due in three to 10 years. The U.S. Treasury department meanwhile, estimates foreigners hold 50% of all U.S. treasury notes and bonds. And while some are likely private investors a good chunk are governments.

"You can't grow 5% or 10% a year when you own 80% of a market," Mr. Dyer said in an interview. "There's a point where you've got to say I guess I've got to hold something else."

And so SWFs are on the prowl for riskier assets, powered also by the need to boost returns to pay for an ageing population. They will be competing with emerging market tycoons who are increasingly flexing their muscles outside their home markets including India's Lakshmi Mittal and Mukesh Ambani, Russia's Roman Abramovich and Brazil's CVRD, which recently snapped up Canada's Inco.

Apart from the SWFs, state-owned companies from China and the Middle East are also moving outside their borders to search for resources. Abu Dhabi National Energy Co., for example, scooped up Calgary-based Northrock Resources Ltd. earlier this week.

While China is unlikely to dump its stash on markets all at once, Morgan Stanley says growing talk of SWFs moving into equities has already likely contributed to recent sell-off in bonds, more for psychological reasons as private investors try to "front-run" the sovereigns.

"Effectively it's many, many investors deciding that the best investment opportunity is equities not fixed income at these kind of yields," said Douglas Porter, deputy chief economist at BMO Capital Markets. "That's precisely what's going on around the world, whether it's companies, individuals or funds, they have all been arriving at the same decision over the last couple of years."

SWFs then, are one reason for the great global equity boom to keep rolling along and for bond yields to keep nudging higher but it is ambiguous what they mean for the U.S. dollar, in a bear market of its own for the last five years.

While China's Blackstone investment demonstrates a desire for U.S. assets remains a priority, Mr. Magnus believes the SWFs will increasingly gravitate toward the growth regions of emerging markets. Anecdotal evidence suggests Gulf investment funds are already much less invested in the United States than central banks, said Mr. Magnus.

"Typically the U.S. dollar share of their assets is maybe anywhere between 30% and 50% where for a central bank it may be 60% to 65%," he said.

While SWFs may give more overall support to equities, they could also inject volatility, and they raise a host of transparency and protectionism issues.

A 5% loss could be devastating for a SWF and could throw the march to equities into reverse, sideswiping individual investors along the way, analysts say. There has simply been no experience of how the Chinese would react to a global meltdown in stocks.

While some SWF's such as Norway's give full accountings of where their money is deployed, details on others like the Gulf states are scanty. Morgan Stanley believes SWFs could also become a source of political tension, just as trade has.

"The complications of CNOOC and Dubai Port [both of which recently tried to invest in the United States] could become recurring events, now that a good part of the official reserves is made available for equity acquisitions," Morgan Stanley said. "The transformation of these foreign central banks from creditors to owners could lead to political reactions not just in the U.S., but also in Australia, Canada and other countries offering assets that reserve-rich nations find desirable."

There is also the issue of political interference.

"There is a very high risk that politicians will start meddling and intervening and trying to steer this money for political reasons," said Dan Mitchell, a senior fellow at the Cato Institute. "That has two negative effects. When these investment funds start allocating their resources on the basis of politics rather than rate of return that's obviously bad for the people who are supposed to benefit from the funds. The other problem is a more macroeconomic problem. When politicians start this meddling you have resource misallocation."

Politicians may decide where the funds go, skewing their economies.

China has obviously tried to avoid this problem with its investment in Blackstone and many of these funds will undoubtedly move to independent outside managers. But as these funds flex

their muscle around the globe, private investors could ride their coattails and all the turbulence they may create.

jthorpe@nationalpost.com

Hindustan TimesJune 2, 2007 Saturday 1:40 PM EST

Stratfor sees Musharraf regime cracking down on dissent

BYLINE: Report from the Asian News International brought to you by the Hindustan TimesLENGTH: 249 wordsDATELINE: Washington

Washington, June 2 -- In a commentary, the U.S.-based security consulting intelligence agency Strategic Forecasting (Stratfor) has predicted that the Musharraf regime has decided to crack down on increasing dissent nationwide, starting with the requirement that private electronic media outlets must now obtain permission from the Pakistan Electronic Media Regulatory Authority before each live broadcast.

According to, Pakistan's increasingly assertive judiciary and media have played a key role in the growing crisis of governance, the most recent "blow" being the harsh criticism of military's control of the state heard on May 26 during a Supreme Court Bar Association seminar.

In a May 30 speech to officers at Jehlum, Musharraf warned the media to stop politicising the judicial crisis.

Regime insiders appear to be of the view that the proliferation of private channels has damaged the public perception of the Musharraf Government.

According to Stratfor, Musharraf's most important source of power is the support he receives from the military, particularly the army.

Criticism of his dual role as military chief and president apart, the questioning of the military's control over the state has changed things dramatically, claims Stratfor.

The agency says that Musharraf "must now show the generals he is very much in control and is capable of ensuring that the military maintains its hold on the state."

Published by HT Media Ltd. with permission from Asian News International.

ANI reprint: http://www.newkerala.com/news5.php?action=fullnews&id=34895

http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=2007%5C06%5C02%5Cstory_2-6-2007_pg7_9

Stratfor sees crackdown on dissent

WASHINGTON: The Musharraf government has decided to crack down on increasing dissent nationwide, starting with the requirement that private electronic media outlets must now obtain permission from the Pakistan Electronic Media Regulatory Authority before each live broadcast.

According to a commentary released by Stratfor, Pakistan’s increasingly assertive judiciary and media have played a key role in the growing crisis of governance, the most recent “blow” being the harsh criticism of military’s control of the state heard on May 26 during a Supreme Court Bar Association seminar. The seminar enraged the regime, which responded by saying that abusive and derogatory remarks about national institutions, especially the armed forces, will not be tolerated.

In a May 30 speech to officers at Jehlum, Gen Musharraf warned the media to stop politicising the judicial crisis. Ironically, it is Musharraf’s government that allowed a proliferation of private channels to counter public criticism that it is autocratic and military-dominated. Pakistan’s private vibrant channels have damaged the public perception of the Musharraf government. While media coverage of political events has not led to the protests attaining “critical mass”, the government is moving towards a major crackdown that will drastically curtail free speech.

According to Stratfor, Musharraf’s most important source of power is the support he receives from the military, particularly the army. Criticism of his dual role as military chief and president apart, the questioning of the military’s control over the state changes things dramatically. This forces the top generals to question Musharraf’s ability to look after the military’s interests. Hence, he is rushing to clamp down on the media. “He must now show the generals he is very much in control and is capable of ensuring that the military maintains its hold on the state. Losing the confidence of the army’s senior leadership would prove fatal to his own hold on power. It is unlikely a crackdown on political dissent will help Musharraf shore up his position; in fact, it likely will make the situation worse for him. The verdict in Chaudhry’s appeal case and the controversial presidential vote set to take place in September will only accelerate the momentum of the country’s growing unrest,” Stratfor maintains. khalid hasan

Associated Press OnlineJune 2, 2007 Saturday 11:48 PM GMT

Feds Foil JFK Terror Plot, Arrest 3

BYLINE: By ADAM GOLDMAN, Associated Press WriterSECTION: DOMESTIC NEWSLENGTH: 935 wordsDATELINE: NEW YORK

Federal authorities announced Saturday they had broken up a suspected Muslim terrorist cell planning a "chilling" attack to destroy John F. Kennedy International Airport, kill thousands of people and trigger an economic catastrophe by blowing up a jet fuel artery that runs through populous residential neighborhoods.

Three men, one of them a former member of Guyana's parliament, were arrested and one was being sought in Trinidad as part of a plot that authorities said they had been tracked for more than a year and was foiled in the planning stages.

"The devastation that would be caused had this plot succeeded is just unthinkable," U.S. Attorney Roslynn R. Mauskopf said at a news conference, calling it "one of the most chilling plots imaginable."

In an indictment charging the four men, one of them is quoted as saying the foiled plot would "cause greater destruction than in the Sept. 11 attacks," destroying the airport, killing several thousand people and destroying parts of New York's borough of Queens, where the line runs underground.

One of the suspects, Russell Defreitas, a U.S. citizen native to Guyana and former JFK air cargo employee, said the airport named for the slain president was targeted because it is a symbol that would put "the whole country in mourning."

"It's like you can kill the man twice," said Defreitas, 63, who first hatched his plan more than a decade ago when he worked as a cargo handler for a service company, according to the indictment.

Authorities said the men were motivated by hatred toward the U.S., Israel and the West. Defreitas was recorded saying he "wanted to do something to get those bastards."

Despite their efforts, the men never obtained any explosives, authorities said.

"Pulling off any bombing of this magnitude would not be easy in today's environment," former U.S. State Department counterterrorism expert Fred Burton said, but added it was difficult to determine without knowing all the facts of the case.

Richard Kuprewicz, a pipeline expert and president of Accufacts Inc., an energy consulting firm that focuses on pipelines and tank farms, said the force of explosion would depend on the amount of fuel under pressure, but it would not travel up and down the line.

"That doesn't mean wackos out there can't do damage and cause a fire, but those explosions and fires are going to be fairly restricted," he said.

Since Defreitas retired from his job at the airport, security has significantly tightened and his knowledge of the operation was severely outdated.

He was arraigned Saturday afternoon in federal court, but did not enter a plea. He was to be held pending a bail hearing scheduled for Wednesday, prosecutors said. A phone number for his lawyer could not be located.

Two other men, Abdul Kadir of Guyana and Kareem Ibrahim of Trinidad, were in custody in Trinidad. A fourth man, Abdel Nur of Guyana, was still being sought in Trinidad.

Authorities said Kadir and Nur were longtime associates of a Trinidadian radical Muslim group, Jamaat al Muslimeen, which launched an unsuccessful rebellion in 1990 that left 24 dead.

Kadir, a former member of Parliament in Guyana, was arrested in Trinidad for attempting to secure money for "terrorist operations," according to a Guyanese police commander who spoke on condition of anonymity.

Kadir left his position in Parliament last year. Muslims make up about 9 percent of the former Dutch and British colony's 770,000 population, mostly from the Sunni sect.

Isha Kadir, the Guyanese suspect's wife, said her husband flew from Guyana to Trinidad on Thursday. She said he was arrested Friday as he was boarding a flight from Trinidad to Venezuela, where he planned to pick up a travel visa to attend an Islamic religious conference in Iran.

"We have no interest in blowing up anything in the U.S.," she said Saturday from the couple's home in Guyana. "We have relatives in the U.S."

The pipeline, owned by Buckeye Pipeline Co., takes fuel from a facility in Linden, N.J., to the airport. Other lines service LaGuardia Airport and Newark Liberty International Airport.

Buckeye spokesman Roy Haase said the company, which moves petroleum through pipelines in a number of states, had been informed of the threat from the beginning but he declined to detail the company's security measures.

"Given the nature of Buckeye business and the importance of this transportation network, we have an intense and ongoing communications relationship with the Port Authority, the New York City fire and police departments, the federal Department of Homeland Security and the FBI," he said. Buckeye is a subsidiary of Buckeye Partners, L.P. based in Macungie, Pa.

JFK and the area's other airports remained at a heightened state of alert Saturday, the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey said.

Jeanie Mamo, a spokeswoman for the White House, said President Bush had been briefed and updated regularly as the investigation into the plot progressed.

"This case is a good example of international counterterrorism cooperation," Mamo said.

The arrests mark the latest in a series of alleged homegrown terrorism plots targeting high-profile American landmarks.

A year ago, seven men were arrested in what officials called the early stages of a plot to blow up the Sears Tower in Chicago and destroy FBI offices and other buildings.

A month later, authorities broke up a plot to bomb underwater New York City train tunnels to flood lower Manhattan.

And six people were arrested a month ago in an alleged plot to unleash a bloody rampage on Fort Dix in New Jersey.

Associated Press Writer Tom Hays and Pat Milton contributed to this report.

AP reprint: http://www.suntimes.com/news/nation/412132,CST-NWS-jfk03.articlehttp://www.officer.com/article/article.jsp?siteSection=8&id=36373

6.3.2007, Sunday