Thanks to Deborah Osborne / The Rag Blog
Thorne Webb Dreyer, Editor
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Sign of the Times!
Giving Up Something in Solidarity with Their Kids
Perhaps we can convince George W. Bush to show a little solidarity with some of these folks by giving up something near and dear to his heart, just the way golf was before he so generously ditched it to show solidarity with the American families who were losing sons and daughters in Iraq.
What a guy !! I spit on your shadow, Junior, you fuckin’ hypocrite.
Richard Jehn / The Rag Blog
Kidney for Bread in oil-rich Iraq
By Afif Sarhan / May 13, 2008
BAGHDAD — Iraq, which has the world’s third-biggest oil reserves, is making billions of dollars in oil exerts thanks to record-setting prices. Still, many of its citizens sell parts of their own bodies just to survive.
“I couldn’t see my children crying for food and I can not get them at even bread,” Ali Hassnawi, a 34-year-old Baghdad resident, told IslamOnline.net.
“One day a friend of mine told me he had sold his kidney and I decided to do the same,” he recalled.
“I got $1,500 dollars for it, two months later my wife got a better payment for hers. She got $3,000 because the man who bought it was nearly dying.”
Abject poverty in oil-rich Iraq has driven many like Hassnawi and his wife to a growing organs black market, where kidney is the most sought-after.
Prices vary between $500 to $5,000 dollars depending on and urgent the kidney is needed.
According to the Health Ministry, renal disease is common in the country and more than 7,000 Iraqis currently need urgent kidney transplants.
“The lives of many Iraqis are threatened because haemodialysis machine are old and many aren’t working properly,” stressed Taha Abdel-Rahman, a ministry media officer.
“We have a long list of patients requesting kidneys and in many times when they can get the organ, they are already dead.”
Iraq, which is a member of OPEC and has the world’s third-biggest oil reserves, earned $38 billion in oil export revenue last year.
For 2008, the country has already raked in $20 billion from oil shipments just through April, according to the US Energy Department.
Read all of it here. / Axis of Logic / Uruknet
The Rag Blog
Keith Olbermann : Special Comment on Bush’s Great Sacrifice
Keith Olbermann’s Special Comment, May 14, 2008
Which includes, in part, the following:
“Mr. President,” he was asked, “you haven’t been golfing in recent years. Is that related to Iraq?
“Yes,” began perhaps the most startling reply of this nightmarish blight on our lives as Americans — on our history.
“It really is. I don’t want some mom whose son may have recently died to see the Commander-in-Chief playing golf. I feel I owe it to the families to be as — to be in solidarity as best as I can with them. And I think playing golf during a war just sends the wrong signal.”
Golf, Sir?
Golf sends the wrong signal to the grieving families of our men and women butchered in Iraq?
Do you think these families, Mr. Bush – their lives blighted forever — care about you playing golf?
Do you think, Sir, they care about you?
You, Mr. Bush, let their sons and daughters be killed.
Sir, to show your solidarity with them – you gave up golf?
Sir, to show your solidarity with them – you didn’t give up your pursuit of this insurance-scam, profiteering, morally and financially bankrupting war.
Sir, to show your solidarity with them – you didn’t even give up talking about Iraq -a subject about which you have incessantly proved without pause or backwards glance, that you may literally be the least informed person in the world?
Sir, to show your solidarity with them, you didn’t give up… your 4,000 dead Americans and your response… was to stop playing golf!
Golf. Not “gulf” – golf.
Source. / The News Hole
Also see The Compassionate Conservative Rides Again! / The Rag Blog
The Rag Blog
Edwards Endorses Obama — Video
Breaking News: Edwards Endorses Obama Pt.1
Breaking News: Edwards Endorses Obama Pt.2
Posted May 14, 2008 / The Rag Blog
The Earth : Love it or Lose it, Part II
Before it’s too late…
Support rapid development of “alternative”, renewable energy sources (solar, wind, wave, geothermal…)
by Paul Spencer / The Rag Blog
[This is the second in a series on The Rag Blog by Paul Spencer and others that will take a serious look at the threatened ecology of the earth and explore ways to address the problem. Paul Spencer is a former Austin activist and staff member of sixties/seventies underground newsppaper The Rag, who has been running for president as a way of addressing the serious issues facing our society and the world. Paul’s first piece was To reinvigorate the quest for clean air.]
By the most generous interpretation of the federal Department of Energy budget, in the terms that most of us understand under the rubric of “renewable energy sources”, the U.S. is spending substantially less than $1 billion per year on related research and implementation. The U.S. government also supports related development via a modest income tax credit that depends on the level of the taxpayer’s investment in the installation of covered devices.
China is spending more than $10 billion per year on wind- and solar-based energy for the next 12 years. (Interesting comparison: China spends less than 10% of the amount that the U.S. spends per year for “defense”, but spends more than 10 times as much on renewable energy. I know – “go back to China”. No thanks; I have lived here for my whole life, and I think that I will stay.) Japan and Germany and Taiwan and Spain and India and New Jersey and California offer billions of dollars in incentives per year for private industry to develop, manufacture, and install such systems (primarily solar-based). Now the other four far-west U.S. states are joining California in government-supported development of both the industries per se and applications of their products.
Ten years ago GE was the premier photovoltaic cell manufacturer in the world in terms of total power-generating capability manufactured per year. Today, GE is not close to the top 10. Four manufacturers in this group are Japanese companies, three are German, one is Chinese, and one is Taiwanese. The remaining company in the top 10is BP Solar, son of B(ritish) P(etroleum). Chinese manufacturers were virtually non-existent three years ago, but they have already passed U.S. manufacturing capacity and will – in fact – soon dominate the field.
By far the largest wind-power system manufacturer is Danish with a large – and growing – number of competitors from all over the globe. With respect to this segment of the renewable-energy-generation industry, we are primarily consumers. Some of our utilities – mostly private, for-profit utilities – are buying and installing these machines. A northwestern utility (PGE) is developing a “wind farm” in north-central Oregon that is projected to supply 10% of their electrical energy sales at completion. Huge cylinders and blades are being trucked along Interstate 84 to a huge wind-generation project in Wyoming. There are plans for massive developments in California and Arizona. West Texas is the current wind-generation capital of the country; the big towers sit out there in the mesquite and sage where the oil-drilling derricks were once ubiquitous.
The upshot of the level of national government support and investment is that the U.S.A. is currently the bobbed tail of the dog; and we are not wagging that dog, either. As the current occupation of Iraq attests, the Bush administration is almost exclusively focussed on petroleum-based energy production to the near-exclusion of renewable resources. In the face of intelligent and increasing interest and support from many state governments, the federal government offers a piddling tax credit to consumers, melded with more breaks for the fossil-fuel-related industries.
The good news is that there is apparently a large contingent of U.S. companies – plus some cases of university-supported research partnerships – that are pursuing improved-conversion-efficiency, lower cost, more versatile photovoltaic devices. Even in the wind-power industry, which is generally considered a fairly mature field, there is an interesting development that tries to use the aerodynamics of roof configurations to power a vertical-axis generating system. Four advantages that are immediately apparent are: 1) no tower; 2) more visibility for birds; 3) less structural-integrity issues; and 4) small-scale, localized deployment.
Another related field that shows rapid and promising technological development is energy storage. There are several recent patents which cover what some call “hyper capacitors”. This is a kind of mechanical storage of electrons, rather than the chemical storage that we associate with batteries. And in the battery arena lithium-ion batteries are now in production for many applications with further development – especially in terms of safety – proceeding quickly. At least one of the solar-based heat-to-steam-to-turbine-to-electricity systems uses a fluid that is heated to a temperature well above the boiling point of water, so that sufficient fluid, plus insulated storage for that fluid, allows electrical generation to occur after the sun sets for the day.
Conservation of energy is not considered a renewable resource, but it is an essential component of energy policy, so I’m going to blend it into this paper. The largest effect in the shortest time interval can be obtained by: 1) increasing fuel efficiency standards of motor vehicles; 2) insulating and weather-proofing older houses; 3) exchanging incandescent and halogen types of lighting for fluorescent (and soon, LED) “bulbs”; 4) increasing the use of car pools and mass transportation…. Of course, conservation is a mature policy, and it has already been proven to have good effect in the 1970s and 1980s. Seems like a good time to re-enlist in these programs in a serious and comprehensive manner.
There are some relatively new developments in energy efficiency (a form of conservation) to discuss, too. The technology is not new in the case of ground-source-heat-pumps (water-to-air), but improved system designs and the relevant support data are relatively recent. Essentially, the average efficiency improvement for GSHP is on the order of 30% against air-to-air (standard) heat pumps and 70% vs. electric resistance heating. New residential and commercial construction are the best applications in the short run, because the infrastructure (wells or trenches) costs can easily be accomodated in the construction process. The actual dollar savings on energy consumption typically run higher than the additional mortgage costs for the system, to the extent that the return-on-investment for the system per se runs between 2 to 10 years.
Another “old” solar-based energy system is water heating via rooftop collection. The news here is that we don’t need the heavy, clumsy, material-intensive systems that proliferated in the 1970s. The latest approach is black plastic mats of built-in, small-diameter tubes that are freeze-resistant, light in weight, low in cost, and easy to install. This is actually one of the most efficient forms of heat-energy capture from any source.
Some of the other technologies, such as wave-based generation of electricity, hydrogen-based fuel systems, Stirling-type heat engines, solar concentrator, and unknown inventions of the future, may be pie-in-the-sky-bye-and-bye; but we should be funding research if for no other reason than “it looks good on paper”. How else does new technology develop? Somebody dedicates time and money to an idea.
So – we have a lot of invention and a fair amount of implementation. But we lack the focus and commitment that will get us out of our “petroleum addiction”. How come? I read a recent poll that said to me that 80% of our adult population supports kicking the oil habit and deploying many of the systems described above. As the situation in Iraq implies, however, we are governed by a group that wants to control and sell as many gallons of petroleum as possible. For the petro-pushers any gallons sold by Iraq to the French (pre-invasion situation) are dollars lost to Exxon, Chevron, and BP. Any gallons sold by Iran to the Chinese (current situation) are, also, dollars lost to the Anglo-American oil oligopoly. If renewables become the salient energy source, there is an automatic delay in the wealth transfer to the oligarchs – which is a good thing in my opinion.
Of course, the only domestic solution to this problem – i.e., the greed of our oligarchs – is political. Electoral politics is the solution of choice. We need to: 1) promote renewable energy systems; 2) finance system implementation; 3) support related research; and 4) eliminate tax and other government-sponsored advantages enjoyed by the petroleum and coal industries. The world – the U.S.A. in particular – will be a better place when the Sun’s radiation and related terrestrial phenomena warm us, cool us, and transport us to a major degree. It’s within reach and just needs our political will to be a congenial destiny.
Part I of The Earth : Love it or Lose it.
The Rag Blog
Posted in Rag Bloggers
Tagged Alternative Energy, Ecology, Energy, Environment, Social Action
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Cyberspace Command : Hackers With Wings
When this happens, we can all feel safe at last.
Roger Baker / The Rag Blog
Air Force Aims for ‘Full Control’ of ‘Any and All’ Computers
By Noah Shachtman May 13, 2008
The Air Force wants a suite of hacker tools, to give it “access” to — and “full control” of — any kind of computer there is. And once the info warriors are in, the Air Force wants them to keep tabs on their “adversaries’ information infrastructure completely undetected.”
The government is growing increasingly interested in waging war online. The Air Force recently put together a “Cyberspace Command,” with a charter to rule networks the way its fighter jets rule the skies. The Department of Homeland Security, Darpa, and other agencies are teaming up for a five-year, $30 billion “national cybersecurity initiative.” That includes an electronic test range, where federally-funded hackers can test out the latest electronic attacks. “You used to need an army to wage a war,” a recent Air Force commercial notes. “Now, all you need is an Internet connection.”
On Monday, the Air Force Research Laboratory introduced a two-year, $11 million effort to put together hardware and software tools for “Dominant Cyber Offensive Engagement.” “Of interest are any and all techniques to enable user and/or root level access,” a request for proposals notes, “to both fixed (PC) or mobile computing platforms… any and all operating systems, patch levels, applications and hardware.” This isn’t just some computer science study, mind you; “research efforts under this program are expected to result in complete functional capabilities.”
Unlike an Air Force colonel’s proposal, to knock down enemy websites with military botnets, the Research Lab is encouraging a sneaky, “low and slow” approach. The preferred attack consists of lying quiet, and then “stealthily exfiltrat[ing] information” from adversaries’ networks.
But, in the end, the Air Force wants to see all kinds of “techniques and technologies” to “Deceive, Deny, Disrupt, Degrade, [or] Destroy” hostile systems. And “in addition to these main concepts,” the Research Lab would like to see studies into “Proactive Botnet Defense Technology Development,” the “reinvent[ion of] the network protocol stack” and new antennas, based on carbon nanotubes.
raditionally, the military has been extremely reluctant to talk much about offensive operations online. Instead, the focus has normally been on protecting against electronic attacks. But in the last year or so, the tone has changed — and become more bellicose. “Cyber, as a warfighting domain . . . like air, favors the offense,” said Lani Kass, a special assistant to the Air Force Chief of Staff who previously headed up the service’s Cyberspace Task Force. “If you’re defending in cyber, you’re already too late.”
“We want to go in and knock them out in the first round,” added Lt. Gen. Robert Elder, commander of the 8th Air Force, which focuses on network issues.
“An adversary needs to know that the U.S. possesses powerful hard and soft-kill (cyberwarfare) means for attacking adversary information and command and support systems at all levels,” a recent Defense Department report notes. “Every potential adversary, from nation states to rogue individuals… should be compelled to consider… an attack on U.S. systems resulting in highly undesireable consequences to their own security.”
Source. / Wired
Also see Secret Cybersecurity Plans / Wired
The Rag Blog
The Compassionate Conservative Rides Again!
Bush: I quit golf over Iraq war
May 14, 2008
WASHINGTON — US President George W. Bush said in an interview out Tuesday that he quit playing golf in 2003 out of respect for the families of US soldiers killed in the conflict in Iraq, now in its sixth year.
“I think playing golf during a war just sends the wrong signal,” he said in an interview for Yahoo! News and Politico magazine.
“I don’t want some mom whose son may have recently died to see the commander-in-chief playing golf,” he said. “I feel I owe it to the families to be in solidarity as best as I can with them.”
The US president traced his decision to the August 19, 2003 bombing of UN headquarters in Baghdad, which killed the world body’s top official in Iraq, Sergio Vieira de Mello.
“I remember when de Mello, who was at the UN, got killed in Baghdad as a result of these murderers taking this good man’s life. And I was playing golf — I think I was in central Texas — and they pulled me off the golf course and I said, it’s just not worth it anymore to do,” said Bush.
Bush’s last round of golf as president dates back to October 13, 2003, according to meticulous records kept by CBS news.
On the day of the bombing two months earlier, he had cut short his golf game at the 12th hole and returned to his ranch in tiny Crawford, Texas.
Source. / Agence France-Presse
Thanks to Jim Baldauf / The Rag Blog
Unboxed: Moving from Curiousity to Wonder
Can You Become a Creature of New Habits?
By Janet Rae-Dupree
HABITS are a funny thing. We reach for them mindlessly, setting our brains on auto-pilot and relaxing into the unconscious comfort of familiar routine. “Not choice, but habit rules the unreflecting herd,” William Wordsworth said in the 19th century. In the ever-changing 21st century, even the word “habit” carries a negative connotation.
So it seems antithetical to talk about habits in the same context as creativity and innovation. But brain researchers have discovered that when we consciously develop new habits, we create parallel synaptic paths, and even entirely new brain cells, that can jump our trains of thought onto new, innovative tracks.
Rather than dismissing ourselves as unchangeable creatures of habit, we can instead direct our own change by consciously developing new habits. In fact, the more new things we try — the more we step outside our comfort zone — the more inherently creative we become, both in the workplace and in our personal lives.
But don’t bother trying to kill off old habits; once those ruts of procedure are worn into the hippocampus, they’re there to stay. Instead, the new habits we deliberately ingrain into ourselves create parallel pathways that can bypass those old roads.
“The first thing needed for innovation is a fascination with wonder,” says Dawna Markova, author of “The Open Mind” and an executive change consultant for Professional Thinking Partners. “But we are taught instead to ‘decide,’ just as our president calls himself ‘the Decider.’ ” She adds, however, that “to decide is to kill off all possibilities but one. A good innovational thinker is always exploring the many other possibilities.”
All of us work through problems in ways of which we’re unaware, she says. Researchers in the late 1960s discovered that humans are born with the capacity to approach challenges in four primary ways: analytically, procedurally, relationally (or collaboratively) and innovatively. At puberty, however, the brain shuts down half of that capacity, preserving only those modes of thought that have seemed most valuable during the first decade or so of life.
Read all of it here / The New York Times / May 4, 2008
Thanks to Betsy Gaines / The Rag Blog
Just Another Day in Mosul
Iraq: Mosul Residents Suffer Shortage of Piped Water
May 13, 2008
[Text of report by Dubai-based Iraqi private Al-Sharqiyah TV on 7 May]
Mosul, capital of the Ninawa Governorate, especially the right side of the city [preceding five words as heard], is suffering from a shortage of piped water, because the purification stations stopped working due to the fact that pumps cannot pump water from the Tigris River, as its water level has dropped.
A source in the governorate said that the cut-off of water supplies on the right side of the city [preceding five words as heard] might last for a few days, noting that this has something to do with bringing about an increase in the water level of the river.
For his part, an official source at the Water Resources Directorate in Mosul said that the drop in the water level of the Tigris River is due to the dry season that Iraq experienced this year and the shortage of rainfall and snowfall in the northern region last winter, which decreased the number of the tributaries feeding the river.
Local residents in Mosul said that they observed a drop in the water level of the Tigris River, which passes through the centre of the city, to levels which some of them termed as scary, especially after the emergence of islands in the middle of the river. The residents were not used to seeing such a drop in the water level of the river in spring.
Originally published by Al-Sharqiyah TV, Dubai, in Arabic 1310 7 May 08.
Source / redOrbit
The Rag Blog
Dictating What You’re Allowed to Know
A fine example of suppression of the truth, a characteristic of the best examples of fascist states around the globe and throughout history. Remember that when you are carted off to jail for saying something unkind about an influential politician.
Richard Jehn / The Rag Blog
Military analysts named in Times exposé appeared or were quoted more than 4,500 times on broadcast nets, cables, NPR
Summary: A New York Times article detailed the connection between numerous media military analysts and the Pentagon and defense industries, reporting that “the Bush administration has used its control over access and information in an effort to transform” media military analysts “into a kind of media Trojan horse — an instrument intended to shape terrorism coverage from inside the major TV and radio networks.” A Media Matters review found that since January 1, 2002, the analysts named in the Times article — many identified as having ties to the defense industry — collectively appeared or were quoted as experts more than 4,500 times on ABC, ABC News Now, CBS, CBS Radio Network, NBC, CNN, CNN Headline News, Fox News, MSNBC, CNBC, and NPR.
To read all of it, complete with analysis of who did what and to whom, click here. / Media Matters
The Rag Blog
"Liberty City 7" and the Marginalization of Black Discontent
The Vendetta Against Black Men
By Salim Muwakkil / May 13, 2008
Despite the rise of Sen. Barack Obama, black men remain in the bull’s-eye of governmental repression and police brutality.
The government is currently re-trying six black men who have already faced two hung juries in a case accusing them of planning to blow up both the Sears Tower in Chicago and the Miami FBI headquarters.
American law enforcement has long marginalized black discontent by attributing it to more organized external forces.
Known as the “Liberty City 7,” after the low-income Miami neighborhood in which they lived, the seven arrested men could soon become domestic casualties in the war on terror. (In December, the jury acquitted one of the men but then deadlocked on the remaining six. On April 16, a second trial also ended with a hung jury.)
Close observers of the trial argue a case of government entrapment. The two FBI informants — immigrants from Lebanon and Yemen to whom the government paid more than $130,000 for their services — had incentive to exaggerate the scope of the plot. And, it turns out, they were the ones who suggested the targets, purchased the surveillance equipment and supplied the transportation.
More troubling is the larger inference that black radical groups like the Moorish Science Temple, to which the men had a peripheral connection, are somehow in league with Islamic radicals like al Qaeda.
It’s an example of how American law enforcement tends to marginalize black discontent by attributing it to more organized external forces. This is a tendency rooted in U.S. tradition: black radicals and civil rights activists of past eras were often linked to communists and other “outside agitators” — as if the progeny of enslaved Africans needed Karl Marx to detail their gripes about life in America. Now, apparently, the government claims the link is with Osama bin Laden.
Despite no verdict of guilt, the men have been locked up since their 2006 arrest. Incidentally, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents took into custody the man acquitted during the first trial and transported him to a detention center in Lumpkin, Ga., a day after the trial ended. Deportation proceedings have since begun against the man, a legal U.S. resident originally from Haiti.
Surely, these six struggling black men — who neighbors contend were simply trying to provide positive role models and improve their crime-ridden community — pose no serious threat to national security. However, by implying the men have mysterious Islamic links and a general hatred for America, the government can justify persecuting them.
It’s enough to make you say, “God Damn America!”
And if that’s not enough, consider the case of Sean Bell, an unarmed black man who died in a 50-shot fusillade of police bullets in Queens, N.Y. In November 2006, Bell had a bachelor party at a strip club the day before his wedding and was leaving with two friends when undercover officers confronted and then shot them. The officers mistakenly thought the men were armed and reaching for their guns. Bell’s surviving friends said their attackers never identified themselves as police officers.
The three cops who fired the bullets killing Bell and injuring his friends were acquitted of all charges. The judge ruled, essentially, that the officers’ fear justified firing 50 bullets at the unarmed trio.
The Bell case is just one of dozens — perhaps hundreds — of similar cases of police abuse against young African-American men.
In Chicago, for example, police — reportedly chasing a seat belt scofflaw — broke into a South Side home on April 30 with no warrant and arrested six members of a family, including two juveniles. Witnesses and lawyers for the family members say the police acted abusively. Among those arrested and brutalized was Elijah Henderson, 18, one of two youths wrongfully arrested in the 1998 murder of 11-year-old Ryan Harris.
“I don’t think it’s a coincidence that this young man, who was falsely accused 10 years ago, is now in a lockup, beat up by Chicago police,” says Andre Grant, Henderson’s attorney.
Obama spoke briefly about the Bell case, urging aggrieved New Yorkers to express support for the judge’s not-guilty ruling. But he has said nothing publicly about the Liberty City 7 verdict and re-retrial or the problems of police brutality in his home city.
By downplaying these racial grievances, Obama is doing his part in the implicit deal he made with the American public to avoid any suspicion of playing the race card.
The Rev. Jeremiah Wright disrupted that deal, so he had to go. Question is: What else will go with him?
Salim Muwakkil is a senior editor of In These Times, where he has worked since 1983, and an op-ed columnist for the Chicago Tribune. He is currently a Crime and Communities Media Fellow of the Open Society Institute, examining the impact of ex-inmates and gang leaders in leadership positions in the black community.
More information about Salim Muwakkil.
Source. / In These Times
Thanks to Mercedes Lynn de Uriarte / The Rag Blog
Posted in RagBlog
Tagged African-American, American Society, Criminal Justice, Racism
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It’s All About the Oil … Again
The US lines up its chess pieces to trigger the demise of the Bolivarian Revolution and achieve regional dominance.
By Ramón Santiago / May 13, 2008
Since the violation of Ecuador’s sovereignty by the Colombian military, relations between Venezuela and Colombia have been fraught to say the least. The “magical laptops” allegedly captured by Colombian forces have become a fountain of highly debatable intelligence information – all aimed at proving that Venezuela and President Chavez are somehow in cahoots with the FARC – and by extension will “prove” that the Venezuelan state is in fact a “sponsor of terrorism”. Interpol is due to report on the contents and findings in the laptops this Thursday, May 15th.
Resurrecting the US IV Fleet
While the laptop saga was developing it was announced that the defunct US IV Fleet will be reactivated after July 1st with the aim of, “employing naval forces to build confidence and trust among nations through collective maritime security efforts that focus on common threats and mutual interests”, according to Admiral Gary Roughead speaking from the Pentagon.
Despite Roughead’s attempt to describe the role of the IV Fleet as being somehow beneficial to the region, President Chavez sees it as outright intimidation as the US tries to shore up its declining influence in the Caribbean and South America. Remember that the IV Fleet was finally disbanded in 1950 after WWII as there were no threats in the region to US hegemony.
Manta military base to Colombo-Venezuelan border?
Upon assuming the Presidency of Ecuador in 2007, Rafael Correa stated that the US military base at Manta would not have its lease extended when it expires in 2009. The Manta base was established in Ecuador in 1998 under then president Jamil Mahuad.
The Manta base has been the subject of some controversy in recent weeks when suspicions pointed to the fact that the attack on the FARC camp on Ecuadorian territory was actually launched from Manta using US “smart bombs”. The attack was in collusion with the Colombian military whose Commander-in-Chief is President Álvaro Uribe.
Now we have the declarations of ex US Ambassador to Caracas, William Brownfield to consider. He was transferred to Bogotá from Caracas after failing to rally the Venezuelan opposition. Upon being asked about the Manta military base in Ecuador, which will be uprooted next year, Brownfield indicated that the base could be relocated on Colombian territory in La Guajira – on the Colombo-Venezuelan border. (See map below with La Guajira outlined in red)
indicated that the US AFB at Manta could be relocated at
La Guajira, on the Colombo-Venezuelan Border
Note that La Guajira borders with Venezuela’s resource-rich Zulia state where the old oligarchs have had a long history of trying to secede from Venezuela itself. After huge oil reserves were discovered in Zulia early last century, the US has always had a strong interest in this region of Venezuela. This goes all the way back to just before WWI.
Geopolitical chess board
At this point let’s review the geopolitical chessboard. Here are the pieces:
* US IV Fleet in the Caribbean after July 1st
* Secessionist rumblings in Zulia. State governor Manuel Rosales is a fierce opponent of President Chavez. He ran against President Chávez in the last presidential elections in 2006 and lost by a wide margin.
* Current hostile relationship between Colombia and Venezuela. President Álvaro Uribe of Colombia is Washington’s main ally in the region.
* US base to be established in La Guajira if we are to believe Ambassador Brownfield.
* The “laptops” will officially spill their secrets on Thursday May 15th and will no doubt be used to accuse Venezuela of “sponsoring terrorism”.
* Vast oil reserves and infrastructure to exploit them already set up in Zulia, which borders Colombia.
* World energy crisis looming with oil currently over US$120/barrel
* The US wants to destroy or at least weaken the Bolivarian Revolution as it spreads throughout the region, undermining US traditional influence in the “back yard”.
* The main objective is to oust President Chavez.
There you have it. Washington’s plans and objectives all ready to be put into action, with outright aggression impossible to rule out. The US IV Fleet and the establishment of a US military base in La Guajira are obvious taunts or to be more precise “saber rattling” against Venezuela.
We do not see US troops being involved but rather gradual proxy diplomatic tensions being built up by the Uribe regime. The objective will be to spark possible skirmishes in border regions such as in Táchira, Zulia and Apure which have been infiltrated by Colombian paramilitaries. (See map below)
been infiltrated by Colombian Paramilitaries
It’s all about oil….again
The chessboard and the heinous plans can be deciphered from the pieces in the US and Colombian “arsenals”. They hold all the ingredients to cause a regional conflict in South America. A regional conflict would suit US interests as a regional conflagration would give the US a pretext to “intervene to protect Venezuelan oil reserves in the interests of national security”. In another scenario, UN “peace-keeping troops” could be brought in as they were brought in for renewed occupation of Haiti, following the US-backed coup there.
The attack on the FARC camp in Ecuador was just a trial to judge the reaction of countries in the region as well as the OAS and the Río Group.
The next aggression in this ongoing chess game could trigger unforeseen consequences for the region as a whole. The pieces are in place but who will make the first attacking move, and when?
© Copyright 2008 by AxisofLogic.com
Source / Axis of Logic
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