The Voice of the White House

Washington, D.C., July 2, 2006: “The media is jabbering away about the Libby pardon, criticizing the Head Chimpanzee for flouting the law.

Let’s study why he did such a politically stupid thing. At one time, Libby was Vice President Dick Cheney's Chief of Staff. He was the chief pro-Israel Jewish advisor to Cheney, which helps explains why Cheney was so determined to invade Iraq. Libby has been  a longtime associate of Wolfowitz and  was also a lawyer for convicted felon and Israeli spy Mark Rich, whom Clinton pardoned in his last days as president.

Why did Bush pardon Libby? Simply because Libby was a man who knew too much. He was designated to take the fall for Cheney on the Plame business but drew the line at jail time. Libby saw to it that the brass in the White House knew that if he had to go to prison, he would sing like an opera star at  La Scala and like a good singer, he would certainly bring down the house.

What would Libby talk about? Well, the plans to institute official torture cooked up by Cheney and eagerly approved by Bush. Cheney’s obscene rake-offs from the Halliburton scams, serious scandals about Gannon’s nocturnal visits to the White House and who he was fudge-packing,  Karl Rove’s chronic blackmail of anyone who got in Bush’s way, Bush and Cheney’s outspoken contempt for blacks and their obedience to Israeli demands, Cheney’s determination to establish Iraq as a permanent forward military base to secure Iraqi oil for the US and his friends and serve as a launching pad for attacks on Israeli’s enemies, plans to oust Putin and regain control over Russian oil and gas fields,  deliberately falsified “terror alerts” and, worse of all, knowingly launching an attack on Iraq using officially  falsified CIA reports.

How many have died because of these two evil men? Libby knows and that’s why dear old Scooter, convicted of several serious felonies, goes free.  It sure ain’t compassion because George has a heart the size of a mustard seed and has strong sadistic tendencies. Maybe Libby would tell them about the movies George and his evil friends used to watch upstairs in the private quarters showing terrible tortures at Gitmo and in Iraq.

Believe me, these are very sick people who should be in a nice jail of their own and not dictating to the American people and killing their sons.”

Putin's Arctic invasion: Russia lays claim to the North Pole - and all its gas, oil, and diamonds

June 28, 2007

Daily Mail

Russian leader Vladimir Putin has made an astonishing bid to grab a vast chunk of the Arctic, giving himself claim to its vast potential oil, gas and mineral wealth.

His audacious argument, that an underwater Russian ridge is linked to the North Pole, is likely to lead to an international outcry.

Some commentators have already observed it is further evidence of growing Russian assertiveness under its authoritarian president.

The Russian media trumpeted the findings of a Moscow scientific mission to the region which boasts "sensational" geological discoveries enabling the Kremlin to make the territorial claim.

Populist newspaper Komsomolskaya Pravda - a cheerleader for Putin - printed a map of the North Pole showing a "new addition" to Russia, a triangle five times the size of Britain with twice as much oil as Saudi Arabia.

The six-week mission on a nuclear ice-breaker claimed that the underwater Lomonsov ridge is geologically linked to the Siberian continental platform - and similar in structure.

The detailed findings are likely to be put to the United Nations in a bid to bring it under the Kremlin noose, and provide the bonanza of an estimated 10 billion tonnes of gas and oil deposits as well as significant sources of diamonds, gold, tin, manganese, nickel, lead and platinum.

Under current international law, the countries ringing the Arctic - Russia, Canada, the US, Norway, Denmark (Greenland) - are limited to a 200 mile economic zone around their coastlines.

Currently, a UN convention stipulates that none of these countries can claim jurisdiction of the Arctic seabed because the geological structure does not match that of the surrounding continental shelves.

The region is administered by the International Seabed Authority - the authority now being challenged by Moscow.

A previous attempt to claim the oil and gas resources beyond its 200 miles zone five years ago was rejected - but this time Moscow intends to make a far more serious submission to the U.N. Commission on the Limits of the Continental Shelf.

The head of the government-funded expedition Valery Kaminsky, director of the All-Russian Oceanic Scientific Research Institute, said he has key photographic evidence to prove the geological claims. "These are very interesting facts for the world community," he said.

Yuri Deryabin, head of the Institute of North European Countries, said: "I estimate Russia's chances to gets its piece of the Arctic pie highly enough - but the main battle is just starting." He acknowledged the negotiations would be "complicated".

The claim is likely to provoke an outcry from green groups but there is also Russian opposition.

Sergei Priamikov, of Russia's Arctic and Antarctic Research Institute, said the notion was "strange" and warned other countries could make counter claims.

Canada "could say that the Lomonosov ridge is part of the Canadian shelf, which means Russia should in fact belong to Canada, together with the whole of Eurasia", he observed drily.

A diplomatic source said that Russia was "seeking to secure its grip on oil and gas supplies for decades to come. Putin wants a strong Russia, and Western dependence for oil and gas supplies is a key part of his strategy. He no longer cares if his strategy upsets the West".

Russian Scientists Say the Arctic Is Theirs

July 1,2007

by Mike Nizza

New York Times

Toss another stick or two on to that smoldering Cold War fire: There’s renewed talk of expanding the Russian Empire.

This time, it’s not President Vladimir V. Putin spawning the headlines, but a group of geologists. After a 45-day expedition, the scientists say they have discovered new evidence that would bolster a Russian claim to a vast part of the Arctic region beyond the 230-mile maritime economic zone belonging to Russia and the four other nations bordering the Arctic Ocean: Canada, Denmark (through its possession of Greenland), Norway and the United States.

One Russian paper celebrated the discovery by publishing a large map of the Arctic under the Russian flag, the Guardian reported.

By identifying a geological link between the continental shelf abutting Russia’s Far North and the North pole by way of a sea-floor feature called the Lomonosov Ridge, Russia could reportedly press a claim to roughly 460,000 square miles of ocean as its territorial waters — an area whose size approaches the Mexican Cession (529,189 square miles), which added Texas, California and states in between to the United States. (Still short of the Louisiana Purchase’s 828,000, though.) And Russia wouldn’t be paying a ruble for it, either.

In this battle for Arctic territory, the United States is on the sidelines for the moment, as conservatives in Congress delay ratification of the

United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, which governs all claims. Once that treaty is ratified, there is a ten-year deadline for claiming new areas of the sea as territorial waters.

In a somewhat unlikely alliance, though, Canada and Denmark are stepping up instead. They are trying to establish that, contrary to the Russian claim, the Lomonosov Ridge “belongs not to the Siberian continental shelf but to the Canadian-Greenland shelf,” according to a Chicago Tribune report earlier this month.

The Russians have tried to advance their claim before, and were turned away by the United Nations in 2001. The new geological data is evidently meant to improve the odds for a second try.

What Russia and all the other nations are after isn’t the vastness of icy brine between their shores so much as what is underneath it — potential oil and gas reserves worth hundreds of billions of dollars, which are growing more feasible to explore and develop as the polar ice cap shrinks, easing access for drilling rigs.

A 2005 report in The Times set the stage for the fight for other potential Boreal treasure as well, including “lucrative shipping routes, perhaps even the storied Northwest Passage; new cruise ship destinations; and important commercial fisheries.”

“It’s the positive side of global warming, if there is a positive side,” a Canadian official said at the time.

A Reversal of Fortune for Bush’s Political Capital

June 30, 2007

by Sheryl Gay Stolberg

New York Times

WASHINGTON, June 29 — After a string of Republican defections this week — on Iraq, immigration and domestic eavesdropping — President Bush enters the final 18 months of his presidency in danger of losing control over a party that once marched in lockstep with him.

First, two prominent Republican senators broke with the president on Iraq. Then, Mr. Bush’s party abandoned him in droves on the immigration bill, sending the measure to its death in the Senate, despite the president’s fervent lobbying for it.

And when Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee voted to issue subpoenas to the White House for documents related to its domestic eavesdropping program, three Republicans, including a longtime loyalist, Senator Orrin G. Hatch of Utah, joined them, and another three did not take a position.

For a president who once boasted that he had political capital and intended to use it, the back-to-back desertions demonstrated starkly just how little of that capital is left. With the nation turning its attention to who will succeed Mr. Bush — and Republican presidential candidates increasingly distancing themselves from him — even allies say it could become increasingly difficult for the president to assert himself over his party, much less force the Democratic majority in Congress to bend to his will.

“When you are first elected, you have some momentum and you have more ability to persuade,” Senator Jeff Sessions, Republican of Alabama, said in an interview. “In the last months of any administration, getting people to do something simply because the president asks for it is less. That’s certainly true here.”

Even weakened presidents retain tremendous influence; if nothing else, the conservative tenor of many of the Supreme Court’s decisions in the last week is a reminder of the ways in which Mr. Bush’s legacy will continue to shape politics and policy for a long time. As the president demonstrated in clashes with Congress over war spending and stem cell research, he still has enough Republican support to sustain a veto. And administration officials said Mr. Bush had no intention of writing off the next year and a half.

Still, for a president who once had almost absolute control over his own party and a proclivity to employ his power expansively if not audaciously, the last week was a reminder of how much things have changed. Republicans who came to office brimming with optimism just a few short years ago now sound as if they fear a long slog ahead.

One of them, Senator John Thune of South Dakota, who was elected in 2004, wondered whether the collapse of the immigration bill foreshadowed a long final 18 months of the Bush presidency. With the 2008 presidential campaign intensifying, Mr. Thune said achieving legislative accomplishments would almost certainly become increasingly difficult.

“Probably a lot of the heavy lifting will get pushed off. I hope that doesn’t happen, but it probably will,” Mr. Thune said Friday. “I suspect a lot of what’s going to dominate the atmosphere around here in the next several months will be on Iraq.”

An important test of Mr. Bush’s continued hold over his party will come in September, when his troop buildup in Iraq will be re-evaluated on Capitol Hill, and he will almost certainly face Republican pressure to shift course. Senators Richard G. Lugar of Indiana and George V. Voinovich of Ohio argued for a new direction this week. Even Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the Republican leader, has strongly suggested Republicans will demand a change.

“I think that the handwriting is on the wall that we are going in a different direction in the fall,” Mr. McConnell told reporters last month, “and I expect the president to lead it.”

That shakiness is reflected in public opinion polls, where Republican support for Mr. Bush has also dipped noticeably, said Andrew Kohut, executive director of the Pew Research Center for People and the Press, a nonpartisan research group.

Mr. Kohut said Republican support for Mr. Bush was dwindling across the party spectrum. Among moderate and liberal Republicans, 52 percent currently approve of Mr. Bush’s job performance, down from 63 percent in April, he said. Among conservatives, his job approval stood at 74 percent this month, down from 86 percent in April.

“He’s gone from a president with more support from his party to someone with rather modest support,” Mr. Kohut said, “and how he goes back to where he once was is not clear.”

In a sense, the defeat of the immigration bill could give Mr. Bush a lift by taking off the agenda an issue that has sapped his strength within his base. It is an axiom of politics that a loss is never a victory. But conservatives were so up in arms about the immigration bill, which they regarded as amnesty, that some say it is better for Mr. Bush that it failed.

“The president’s intentions were good, the heart was in the right place, the legislation was bad,” said Senator Jim DeMint, Republican of South Carolina. “If this had passed, America would have lost all confidence in the Congress and the president. I think this is going to give us a fresh start.”

But as lawmakers look ahead to their own re-election campaigns, political analysts predict more rough times ahead for Mr. Bush. After years of demanding that Republicans work in service of his agenda, the president has “very little good will stored up,” said Calvin C. Jillson, a political scientist at Southern Methodist University in Texas, Mr. Bush’s home state.

With 2008 looking like a tough year for Republicans, Mr. Jillson said lawmakers would look back to their districts, rather than to Washington and the White House, for guidance on how to vote. That was abundantly clear on immigration, when even Mr. Bush’s closest Republican allies — including two Texans, Senators John Cornyn and Kay Bailey Hutchison — openly opposed him.

“When John Cornyn defects from the president,” Mr. Jillson said, “you know the president’s mojo is completely gone.”

Jeff Zeleny contributed reporting.

Sharp Reaction to Immigration Bill's Defeat

June 30, 2007

by Manuel Roig-Franzia

Washington Post

Latin America reacted with sharp disappointment Friday to the U.S. Senate's defeat of an immigration bill, a decision that Mexican President Felipe Calderón called "a grave error" and Salvadoran President Elías Antonio Saca said was "a pity."

Latin American governments have long hoped for a comprehensive reform package that would include guest-worker provisions and a route to legal status for the estimated 12 million undocumented migrants in the United States -- half of whom are Mexican. At the same time, the Calderón administration has tried lately to lower expectations, in the belief that immigration reform is unlikely until after a new U.S. president is elected in November 2008.

In an editorial published Friday, the Mexico City newspaper El Universal said it is "highly hypocritical that the United States admits migrants as peasants, but does not accept them as citizens. A state that sends troops to the Middle East to try to implant democracy and respect for human rights does not practice such supreme values in its own territory."

But the paper also ascribed blame to Mexico, saying the country is itself guilty of hypocrisy for not creating enough employment to entice Mexicans to stay at home.

Calderón predicted that the Senate's decision would increase illegal migration and "generate worse conditions and insecurity on both sides of the border. The migration problem cannot be resolved simply with speeches; it requires concrete resolutions."

Calderón, speaking before departing Mexico City for a diplomatic visit to Belize, has been taking a more aggressive stance toward the United States than his predecessor, Vicente Fox, who had sought to parlay a personal friendship with President Bush into an immigration accord. Calderón and his top lieutenants were incensed this week after discovering that portions of the wall on the U.S.-Mexican border are in Mexican territory. Calderón said he complained to U.S. officials and received assurances that those parts of the wall would be removed before the end of the week.

Reaction to the immigration bill's failure might have been even more intense if not for concerns here that it put too heavy an emphasis on border security and involved overly complex provisions on granting citizenship to undocumented migrants, said Dan Lund, a Mexico City pollster.

Despite some heated comments from Mexican leaders, it appears the Calderón administration has adopted the philosophy that "no bill is better than a bad bill," Lund said in an interview.

"Life goes on," Lund said. "Here this is a hothouse issue for a few in the media and policy wonks, but everyone else will do what they have to do to get across the border."

In El Salvador, Saca said, "I lament what happened in the Senate. I hope that the senators consider this well, because there are 12 million people [in the United States] who are undocumented."

"What a pity, what a pity, but those are decisions of the legislators," Saca told reporters.

In Guatemala, the newspaper Prensa Libre described the Senate vote as "deplorable" in an editorial headlined "12 Million Victims." The vote, the paper said, showed that the United States is "a country hostile toward immigrants."

Prensa Libre predicted that the decision would hurt the economies of the United States and Guatemala by restricting the flow of people between the countries. But, the paper noted, there could be a subtler, even more damaging effect.

"Little by little, the number of people who lose their appreciation of [the United States] will grow," the paper said. "With what happened yesterday, everyone loses, sooner rather than later, and there are fewer possibilities of healing that wound."

National ID Card Talk Sinks Immigration Bill

June 29, 2007

Newsmax

Opposition to a requirement for a national identification card helped torpedo the immigration bill killed in the Senate on Thursday.

On Wednesday evening, senators voted to delete language in the immigration bill that would force employers to demand the "Real ID” cards from new hires. Some of the immigration bill’s supporters had insisted that the ID provision remain in place as a way to identify illegal immigrants, and with that provision removed they were no longer as willing to support the overall bill, according to CNET News.

"The proponents of a national ID in the Senate weren’t getting what they wanted, so they backed away,” said Jim Harper, a policy analyst at the Cato Institute who opposed Real ID. "It was a landmine that blew up in their faces.”

The American Civil Liberties Union, which also opposed Real ID, said the identification card requirement was a "poison pill that derailed this bill, and any future legislation should be written knowing the American people won’t swallow it.”

Even though the immigration bill appears dead, the Real ID Act is still in effect, CNET News notes. It requires that starting on May 11, 2008, Americans will need a federally approved ID card to travel on an airplane, open a bank account, collect Social Security or use almost any government service.

Turkey Warns of Plans to Invade Northern Iraq

June 30th, 2007

by Michael Howard

The Guardian UK

Turkey has prepared a blueprint for the invasion of northern Iraq and will take action if US or Iraqi forces fail to dislodge the guerrillas of the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) from their mountain strongholds across the border, Turkey’s foreign minister Abdullah Gul has warned.

“The military plans have been worked out in the finest detail. The government knows these plans and agrees with them,” Mr Gul told Turkey’s Radikal newspaper. “If neither the Iraqi government nor the US occupying forces can do this crush the PKK, we will take our own decision and implement it,” Mr Gul said. The foreign minister’s uncharacteristically hawkish remarks were seen as a response to pressure from Turkey’s generals, who have deployed some 20,000-30,000 troops along the borders with Iraq, and who are itching to move against the rebels they say are slipping across the border to stage attacks inside Turkey.

Among other things, Turkish military planners have been working on a scheme to establish a buffer zone on Iraqi soil to try to stop the rebels’ movements.

The US and the EU regard the PKK as a terrorist outfit, but Washington is nervous of any military operations by its Nato ally that could destabilise Iraq’s Kurdistan region. There are fears too that any instability in the north could play into the hands of Iran, facing growing problems with its own Kurdish population.

US consent won’t be sought for Iraq incursion if security is at risk’

July 2, 2007

by  Zamantoday

Turkish Foreign Minister Abdullah Gül said it was a responsibility of the United States to take measures against the outlawed Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) in Iraq and that Turkey would maintain its pressure on Washington to the very end to this effect, but made clear that Ankara won't seek approval from the United States when it sees its security is at risk.

Gül, in an exclusive interview with Today's Zaman, also said Turkey has a deep-seated historic friendship with Iraqi Kurds, yet complained that this friendship has been "taken hostage" by PKK terrorism. "Unfortunately, feelings of enmity have begun to grow between two peoples who are so close to each other," he said. "This is very dangerous and utterly wrong."

The foreign minister also said Turkey was not obsessed with a cross-border operation, saying it sees Iraq's stability and territorial integrity as a high priority: "We have no desire to harm the stability of Iraq, because this is against our interests. We never wish for instability in Iraq's north," he said.

Stressing that the elections, scheduled for July 22, will not be postponed even if a possible military incursion into northern Iraq turns into a real war, Gül harshly discredited claims that any such military operation may cause difficulties for the AK Party in terms of election results. "For us, Turkey's interests are above everything. It would be a shame if we cared about the party's interests or election campaigns with respect to foreign policy and security issues," he said.

Gül, a Justice and Development Party (AK Party) heavyweight who also chairs the Supreme Anti-Terror Board and whose bid for presidency controversially failed when the Constitutional Court cancelled the presidential election, is subject to questions on more than one subject. In his lengthy interview, he vowed to fight to the very end after his bid to become president failed, saying this should be regarded as a battle for democracy. He said, with respect to the failed presidential elections, if former President Süleyman Demirel had been in his shoes, he would have raised the roof about it.He stressed the distinction between nationalism and neo-nationalism and said that true nationalists should be at home in the AK Party.

Commenting on the French obstruction of Turkey's European Union entry bid, Gül said it was a reaction against the French blockage of opening of accession talks on one chapter that State Minister Ali Babacan, rather than himself, attended a recent EU conference opening talks on two other chapters. "Normally, I would have been expected to go," he said.

Despite the obstacles, he remains confident that the process will not be interrupted. "The EU train is on the move, and we are on it," he said.

Turkey is seeing important developments in foreign and domestic politics while it is in an election atmosphere. There is the issue of whether a military operation will be launched into northern Iraq. You said, 'I cannot guarantee that no operation will be made until the elections.' Is this what the AK Party voters expect?

If you let yourself be moved by popular expectations or whims or be guided by newspaper headlines with respect to foreign policy issues, you open the door to pseudo heroism. This would be the greatest harm to be done to a country. For this reason, we will never do it. The government has its institutions and specialized organs such as the armed forces, the intelligence agency, the security organization, diplomats specializing in counterterrorism, the Foreign Ministry, etc. We will make our decision based on their recommendations, suggestions, analyses and conclusions. Political directives will be issued in this manner.

In the case of a military operation, the primary institution to be consulted will be the armed forces, right?

Certainly. The armed forces, the Foreign Ministry and the intelligence agency.

Is it true that the armed forces convey their messages via media organizations rather than sending them directly to the Prime Ministry or the Foreign Ministry?

The government has frequently met with the armed forces, and you know it. Thus, there is common understanding as to the method to be followed in this respect. Everything happens according to this understanding. Recently, the General Staff held a press conference in Eğirdir in order to provide information to the public. Moreover, they wanted to reaffirm their determination. If you noticed, in response to some questions, the chief of general staff denied any difference of opinion between the government and the armed forces.

Some say the US will soon crack down on PKK militants in northern Iraq but that we need to give them a push to do so. Is Turkey now trying to give this push by creating the impression of launching a cross-border operation?

Certainly not. All options are on the table. When our interests and security are at risk, we will not seek approval from any country. Certainly, the US has the responsibility of cooperating with us. We will force this option to the furthest point to which we are entitled. They may or may not cooperate with us; this is another matter. I must say that a military operation is not our only option. But this is Turkey's argument: Iraqi territories must not accommodate the terrorist organization and the terrorist organization must not use the Iraqi territories against Turkey. If this is eliminated, then we will have no desire to launch a military operation across the borders of another country.

Turkey reiterates its emphasis on the territorial integrity of Iraq...

Yes. We are exerting the greatest efforts to protect the territorial integrity of Iraq. We never think of doing any harm to the stability of Iraq as this is against our interests. Moreover, we do not want any instability in northern Iraq. The Kurdish people, the Turkmens and the Arabs living in northern Iraq are all our kin and relatives. We have a historic friendship with the Iraqi Kurds and the Iraqi people. This friendship dates back to the Seljuk and Ottoman eras and even centuries ago. They seek shelter in Turkey during their hardest times. They did so after the Halabja massacre. They have acquired their current status thanks to the protection afforded by Turkey. Unfortunately, two friendly peoples have started to develop feelings of animosity toward each other because of the terrorist organization. This is very bad, dangerous and wrong. In this respect, we are not obsessed with the idea of launching a cross-border operation into northern Iraq. We have a single target: preventing the terrorist organization from using Iraqi territories against us. Actually, the Iraqi government is responsible in this respect. But the Iraqi government does not have the power to do it; this is the responsibility of the US. I must reiterate clearly that this is their responsibility. However, if they, too, fail to do it, and if this has negative consequences for us, this military operation is our legitimate right.

It is said that any military operation launched before the elections will not do any good to the AK Party. Are you taking this into consideration?

For us, Turkey's interests are above everything. It would be a shame if we cared about the party's interests or election campaigns with respect to foreign policy and security issues.

According to a scenario that is claimed to have been discussed at the Hudson Institute, it was argued that solution to the problem (delivery of the top officials of the PKK) should be delayed on grounds that this could boost the votes of the AK Party.

Yes, this may be true. I also think that there are some people who have similar ideas. The chief of general staff has discredited these claims and said that the representatives of the army would not allow such developments. Whether such scenarios were discussed is not important. I know that there are people who think so. I mean, this is what I expect.

Why do Turkey's insistent requests not turn into priorities for the US?

This question should be asked to them the US. During our meetings, they provide several justifications, but these are no longer persuasive. Every country has its own policy. They say they do not have the power and that this will disrupt stability in Iraq. They have their reasons, but these are not persuasive to us.

If undesirable developments escalate, will you convene Parliament in an extraordinary session?

I cannot say this will not happen. But we must act responsibly in such matters. Even the death of a single soldier makes us extremely sad. Moreover, being successful and attaining the targets are important as well.

But some say the elections will be postponed.

Why should the elections be postponed? In the past our elections were held even in times of war. God forbid! This even isn't a possibility. Elections were held during our War of Independence. It is completely out of the question that our elections should be postponed. Nobody should think it.

We have been discussing our relations with the US with reference to northern Iraq. It seems that both the average citizen and our intellectuals are losing faith in the US. Even some retired generals defend the idea of distancing ourselves from NATO and approaching instead the Russian-Chinese axis. Do the hardships experienced in our relations with the US impact our other relations?

As I have just said, Turkey's friendship with the Kurdish people in Iraq is ancient, though the terrorist organization has been causing great damage to this brotherhood. The US and Turkey have been allies for 50 years. In the past, we gave solidarity and assistance to each other and even fought side-by-side. I am afraid these attitudes have been harming the US image in Turkey too. Turkey is an open society, and these negative developments eventually affect organizations in such a society. This is a fact that everyone should see; this is a success for the terrorist organization. In this context, considering current strategic positions in the world, the two countries need each other now more than ever. Within the framework of the strategic vision document we issued in Washington last year, both countries emphasized the element of confidence in each other. In this regard, the US should tackle the problems in a more sincere and considerate manner.

Can we say the Kurdish leaders in northern Iraq and the Iraqi president have pursued a more successful diplomacy than us when it comes to relations with the US? Has their lobbying been more successful?

No, I don't agree. The US is not a country that will base its plans on the words or lobbying of a few groups. Sometimes mechanisms in big countries do not work efficiently.

The EU did not open a chapter that we were expecting to be opened. Turkey did not respond strongly. Why?

We have never adopted a pleading tone in our relations with the EU. What's important for us is to ensure the transformation of Turkey, reinforcing its own economy and democracy. We see the negotiations with the EU as a means to this end. When Turkey does its own homework and realizes the transformation, it will not matter whether it is a full member of the EU or not. Achieving the results of this process is important for us, and it is obvious how this will be done. We have completed the screening process. These chapters may or may not be opened, but we can open them on our own and keep on with the process. Sarkozy, who is now trying to bar Turkey's accession, will try to persuade Turkey to enter the bloc in five or six years, when Turkey has a gross domestic product (GDP) of $1 trillion.

Then maintaining the process is more important than attaining full membership?

No. The decision about full membership has already been made, and we are progressing toward that goal. However, full membership is not guaranteed. Meanwhile, a number of political plots are being set against Turkey. We will not be distracted by these plots, and we will not suspend our transformation process. When we complete this process, we will have achieved certain standards in terms of legal infrastructure, keeping up with those countries. When this is done, Turkey will face no roadblocks. Our gross national product (GNP) increased from $200 billion to $400 billion during the last four years. The roadmap we announced before the elections will raise the GNP to $800 billion, and it will be $1 trillion in several years. Thus, Turkey will become one of the top 15 countries in terms of size of its economy. Perhaps it will even be one of the top 10 countries. Then those EU member countries that currently reject Turkey's membership will try to persuade us to enter the bloc. What the French are pursuing is inferior politics. More clearly, this is an expression of their own crisis.

So you say that there is no derailment?

Certainly there is no interruption. I must add that now our determination is what is important, not that of the EU. Our determination in maintaining the reform process will take Turkey to that level. This is how we see the developments, and we have displayed our reactions accordingly. I did not attend the summit, as you know.

Was it a summit that Mr. Babacan attended instead of you?

It definitely was. Normally I am expected to attend the intergovernmental conference.

Would it not be a more obvious statement if we did not attend it at all?

It does not matter whether you attend or not. Actually, our message was that we do not take them seriously. With this attitude or the one I explained above. It is no longer important.

You once asserted that the economy and foreign policy are mutually dependent on each other.

Before our government, annual foreign investment in Turkey never exceeded $1 billion. Now it has exceeded $20 billion. Why? The former government refrained from opening the door to foreign capital. Why? This is the consequence of Turkey's EU bid. With democratization and legal reforms, Turkey has become a country in which people are provided with equal treatment without distinguishing between locals or foreigners. This has ensured a capital inflow to Turkey, and our financial statements have started to change.

Has the AK Party had difficulties in explaining this to the people with the popular support for Turkey's EU bid supposedly dropping?

Of course there are difficulties. If you do not proceed with the process in a balanced manner, you will clog the process on your own. What's important is that you must clearly state the political will and know what to do. What we will do is obvious, and this is to not plead any anyone. There are many problems that Turkey has failed to solve through its own dynamics. We can solve these problems in cooperation with the EU. Here our target is full membership. If you do not have the full membership target, you will lose your motivation.

Anti-Americanism hits new record in Turkey

June 29, 2007

zamantoday

The Turkish public dislikes the United States more than any other nation in the world, while leading global actors such as the European Union, Russia, Iran, China and Israel are also falling from favor with a majority of Turks, according to a global survey released on Wednesday.

The 47-country survey found that only 9 percent of the Turkish people have a favorable opinion of the US, while 83 percent responded negatively. The Pew Global Attitudes Project documented that only 2 percent of those surveyed in Turkey had a favorable opinion about US President George W. Bush’s foreign policy, while 88 percent responded in the negative. The project has documented wide anti-American sentiment since it was launched in 2002 but found those attitudes deepening this year. In 2002, 52 percent of Turks supported the US compared to this year’s 9 percent.

Pew Research Center President Andrew Kohut, speaking to the United States’ PBS television station on the results of the survey, said respondents in Turkey holding a favorable opinion of the US amounted to 12 percent, a figure they did not expect would go down.

The Pew survey found that 81 percent of Turkish respondents were critical of “American Ideas about Democracy,” while 83 percent had a negative view of “American Ways of Doing Business.” A full 22 percent expressed positive views of US movies and music.

The survey also showed that support for the European Union was steadily decreasing among Turks. The Pew survey found that only 27 percent of respondents in Turkey were positive about the European Union, compared to 58 percent in 2004. Russia’s image has also been slipping in Turkey, with a majority stating a negative opinion of Russia. Only 10 percent expressed support for President Vladimir Putin’s policies. Turkish support for China was extremely low, and the favorable view of Iran slipped to 28 percent this year after totaling 53 percent in 2006. Only 4 percent of those surveyed in Turkey expressed a positive view of Israel. When it came to terrorist Osama bin Laden, only one place — the Palestinian territories — viewed him favorably, with 57 percent saying they had confidence in him. In Turkey that number was 5 percent. A total of 931 individuals from Turkey participated in the survey conducted in April and May. Is the average Turkish individual in today’s world more readily influenced by nationalist and neo-nationalist movements? The answer is “yes” according to Ömer Laçiner, editor in chief of the socialist monthly Birikim, which has put considerable effort into understanding nationalism since the 1970s. But this affirmation applies not only to Turkey, but to all countries of the world. Indeed, the summary of findings for the complete survey report presented by Pew found that the United States’ image is plummeting in many corners of the globe, but China and other large powers are falling from favor as well.

”Turkey is going through a strange period,” Laçiner told Today’s Zaman in a telephone interview. “The process of globalization, or whatever one might choose to call it, being in the global arena in competition, leads people to question the values they have taken as authentic characteristics of their own nation.” For example, a person who believes their nation is “the most” hospitable in the world might, in the global world, find herself in a society so open to guests and strangers to an extent not even acceptable in her own society. “You are not ‘the most’ something of the world anymore,” Laçiner explains. “This is the most important reason for the rise in nationalism along with the increased speed of globalization. Now people have points of reference.” More exposure to realities of an increasingly global world blurs the line dividing black and white, friend and foe. “Say, you say maintain Germans are hostile to us, but then you find groups that are extremely friendly to Turkey.” The realization that the home nation, like other nations of the world, is not a solid unit in itself creates a need to keep our usual and old perceptions of the world as we once knew it; thus people turn to nationalism to cling onto. In this sense, this rise of nationalism across the globe could be its last. Laçiner also emphasized that nationalist groups in all countries played into each other’s hands, as deeds of nationalists damaging to another nation are usually used by nationalists of a given country as proof of how the “enemy” nation really is.

But how can such a notion diffuse through to the individual? The answer is survival. “Circumstances defining how a person gets by, once subject only to domestic dynamics, are now influenced by international dynamics. Something that might happen abroad, such as a new invention or the downsizing of a global company, could simply ruin the livelihood of an individual. People are grappling with insecurity.” In such an environment, nationalism, both in Turkey and elsewhere, is the resonance of such fears.”

He underlines that these fears are irrational almost all the time. Currently, they are crystallized in the person of the United States, Laçiner says, asserting that this could be another country at a different time. One example is a recent survey simultaneously conducted in Greece and Turkey which found that for 2.9 percent of Turks, the 3-million-strong Armenia is a threat for Turkey with a population of 70 million.

Once the world finds more constructive and humanistic ways to deal with such insecurities and cope with the realities of the neo-liberal globe, nationalism could become an ancient notion, Laçiner suggested.

Etyen Mahçupyan, editor in chief of the bilingual weekly Agos, agreed. “There has to be a reason to love a given country. It is a chaotic, complica ted world in which there is little concern for moral values. It is a psychological need,” he said. According to Mahçupyan, the decreasing approval of foreign countries in the hearts of the Turkish people and others is not entirely ungrounded. “These survey results do not reflect a human aversion, rather sensitivity about foreign policies.”

“We are talking about nation-states after their interests, not individuals. If a state is represented by its foreign policy, then dislike is understandable.” Mahçupyan, similar to Laçiner, says the many states of the international system cannot respond to the complexities of the world today. “It is not the rise of xenophobia, but an alienation from the system of states.”

Ferhat Kentel, an instructor in the sociology department of İstanbul Bilgi University, agreed that clinging on to nationalism is a reaction to increasing doubt, insecurity and a lack of confidence about the future of the world. He said this finding was confirmed by a recent study his university conducted on nationalism. The research found an overwhelming feeling of insecurity towards the future in its subjects. Kentel maintained that in a world where everything was increasingly being perceived as a risk by the individual, nationalism functioned to accommodate the perception of being threatened.

“The hegemonic powers of a society profiting from a web of interest relations in this chaotic world employ the language of nationalism, something that serves as a tool to perpetuate the current structure,” Kentel explained. “We, the ordinary people, repeat their language, but I doubt we mean the same thing.”

Global warming increasingly perceived as major threat

The survey also found global warming and other environmental problems are seen as the top threat in many places, ahead of nuclear proliferation, AIDS and other dangers. The United States’ favorable ratings declined in 26 of the 33 countries for which a comparison was available, with negative views particularly strong in the Middle East. Overall, majorities in 25 of the 47 countries reported favorable images of the United States. A majority of those surveyed expressed unease with China’s growing military and economic influence; however, public opinion in China was positive in South Asia and Africa.

http://www.todayszaman.com/tz-web/detaylar.do?load=detay&link=115357

When hedge funds implode

June 26, 2007

by Axel Merk

Asia Times

The US trade deficit with the rest of the world leapfrogged in recent days. Aside from goods and services, the United States is now importing "consensus-based crisis management" from Japan.

Out of fear that a cleanup of bad loans would trigger widespread defaults, Japanese banks got themselves deeper and deeper into trouble by hushing up the problems. We are talking about the crisis at Bear Sterns' subprime hedge fund. The crisis shows that major adjustments on how the market prices risks are overdue; this may have negative implications for stocks, bonds, and commodities, as well as the US dollar.

Bear Sterns is a leading provider of services to hedge funds; it is also one of the largest originators of subprime-backed collateralized debt obligations. CDOs are what their name implies: a security backed by collateral. CDOs are created when mortgages with various risk profiles are grouped into different tranches or segments. Among others, Bear Sterns would create a CDO in a bundle according to a client's specifications. Indeed, Bear Sterns would work with a rating agency, such as Moody's, to obtain the desired rating (a practice likely to face more scrutiny as some allege that Moody's no longer acts as an independent rating agency, but as a syndicator in the offering).

The explosive demand in this sector has attracted ever more creative structures. Investors should have grown concerned when dealmakers started suggesting that one can create a higher-grade security by grouping together a couple of lower-grade securities; it is rare that 1 + 1 = 3. As these instruments have grown more complex, the clients buying these instruments often do not have a full understanding of what they buy.

How do you make a best-seller better? You introduce leverage. Not only can leverage be introduced in the credit derivatives that define some of these securities, but brokers eager to attract hedge-fund business may also accept CDOs as collateral to lend money. The hedge fund now attracting so much attention is Bear Sterns' High Grade Structured Credit Strategies Enhanced Leverage Fund, launched only 10 months ago. It shall be noted that Bear Sterns did not put much of its own money into the fund, but supplied many of the CDOs. A total of US$600 million in invested capital was boosted with borrowings of about $6 billion.

The collateral provided by the fund had the highest ratings by Moody's. However, a high rating does not ensure that the CDOs are liquid, ie, that they can be sold off on short notice. This became painfully clear as bets of the fund were creating heavy losses and some lenders asked for more collateral for the loans extended. In the industry this is called a margin call. Bear Sterns told other lenders, including Merrill Lynch, JPMorgan and Citigroup, that the fund was unable to provide more collateral. On a side note, it is rather grotesque that Merrill, JPMorgan and Citigroup are among the larger investors in a fund managed by Bear Sterns. The company put little of its own money into the fund.

In the brokerage industry, when a margin call is not met (when the borrower cannot provide sufficient collateral), the broker may seize the collateral and liquidate open positions. While a forced sale of the collateral may be painful for the borrower, it protects the system as a whole. Such forced sales happen all the time in the futures market, where positions are "marked to market" every day to evaluate the profitability and risk of open positions.

But the CDO market is not a regulated futures market; there is no daily market price that would allow one to assess the value of the collateral. The primary methods used to value CDOs are called "mark to market" and "mark to model". In the more conservative "mark to market" approach, independent parties are asked to value the securities; as the name implies, the "mark to model" approach is more aggressive and uses a computed, theoretical value.

But because these instruments are sold in privately negotiated transactions, rather than a regulated and liquid market, neither valuation method is suitable in case of a forced liquidation. In the case of Bear Sterns' fund, Merrill Lynch sent bid sheets to numerous parties, soliciting prices for their holdings; as everyone knew that Merrill wanted to get rid of the securities at any price to cut its losses, it is fair to assume that the prices offered were significantly below the value assumed for the collateral.

As Merrill went public with its plan to auction off the collateral, others tried to rescue the fund. There was talk that Citigroup would inject $500 million and Bear Sterns might inject $1 billion. And the Blackstone Group was very interested in supplying much-needed capital. Blackstone's offer required the brokers to abstain from further margin calls for 12 months. Such restrictions may be common in the private-equity world that Blackstone is active in, but was not acceptable to Merrill.

As the rescue plan fell through, Merrill stated that it would go ahead with its auction yet again. In the meantime, JPMorgan was front-running Merrill by trying to unload collateral it held for the Bear Sterns fund. When all was said and done, it wasn't clear how much which broker was able to sell, but the sales were halted once again, and the parties seem to have agreed on an "orderly unwinding" of the positions.

This had the hallmark of the biggest financial crisis since the bailout of Long Term Capital Management. In 1998, the US Federal Reserve coordinated a bailout that led to the orderly unwinding of a fund that threatened the stability of the financial system. But this time is different: the instruments involved are so complex that journalists have had difficulty relaying the issues to the public, but the multiple calling and canceling of auctions by Merrill highlight the behind-the-scenes maneuvering to avoid fallout to the rest of the industry and beyond.

The risk to the financial system was not merely that some large brokerage firms may have been forced to write down a couple of hundred million dollars - they may still have to do that. But had the fire sale gone through, market values would have been available to the securities sold. This in turn would have forced other lenders to revalue the collateral they hold, and as the collateral is worth less, the brokers will lend less money. That would have triggered further margin calls, further forced liquidations.

When hedge funds implode, they tend to sell off more liquid assets first. At the end of the sale, the prices of the liquid assets are depressed, yet the fund may still be left holding illiquid securities. To illustrate this, take the example (this is not the Bear Sterns fund) of a hedge fund that may make bets on CDOs and, say, the price of oil. As such a fund needs to raise cash, it would close out the more liquid oil positions, causing a spike (or drop - depending on which way the unwinding works) in the price of oil. The resulting volatility in the markets would be most painful for leveraged investors in the oil market, although the crisis originated in the CDO market.

Too many leveraged investors have become complacent because of the low volatility enjoyed in recent years. Aside from the short-term volatility, the high leverage employed by many hedge funds would need to be reduced permanently. As speculators pare down their leverage, they sell off assets to raise cash.

The well-intended attempts to unwind the Bear Sterns fund in an orderly fashion are highly problematic. The fund's problems have clearly shown that the credit extended to the industry is too large. The bankers involved commit similar mistakes to those of bankers in Japan in the 1980s and 1990s, where clearly bad loans were kept afloat with artificial means; those involved had the best intentions, but caused more than a decade of pain to Japanese banks, corporations and consumers.

It may well be that the value obtained in a fire sale is less than that obtained in an orderly liquidation. But the lesson to take home from this is that CDOs must not be used as collateral for 10:1 leverage. In our assessment, the unreasonable leverages employed by many hedge funds have contributed to a global liquidity glut that has driven up all asset classes, from stocks to bonds to commodities and other hard assets. As lenders have ignored risk, volatility reached abnormally low levels in 2006. Markets need risk to price assets properly; it is urgently necessary that volatility come back into the markets, so that lenders make more reasonable decisions.

The Bear Sterns debacle highlights that the industry has gone too far, and that it is high time that credit be reined in. So far, the first good that has come out of all this is that the planned initial public offering (IPO) of Everquest Financial seems to have been aborted: Bear Sterns was the underwriter in Everquest, a firm that specializes in buying CDOs from hedge funds.

Another hope is that traditionally more conservative investors, such as pension funds, will reduce their exposure to overly leveraged hedge funds. If such investors are told that they should not "rock the boat" with a rushed decision, they may be well served to take their losses now rather than potentially even greater losses later.

Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke is particularly proud that regulators have extensive experience on how to manage crises. The danger of superior crisis management is that you take the "danger" out of investing. Without risk, speculators have no restraint; in recent years, we have called this the "Greenspan put", named after the reputation of former Fed chairman Alan Greenspan to allow bubbles to be created, and then bail out those who suffer from the bursting of the bubble. The Fed is shooting itself in the foot with such an attitude, as the Fed loses control of the money supply in a world where risk is underpriced.

When European Central Bank president Jean-Claude Trichet was recently asked whether the latest interest-rate hike in the euro-zone meant credit was now tight, he mused that higher interest rates mean little when sources of credit are abundant. His comments came before the recent selloff in bond prices. But as bond prices sold off in recent weeks, lower grade bonds fell not significantly more than government bonds. A healthy market requires a greater risk premium for junk bonds. The collapse of an overly speculative fund must be allowed, so that investors have an incentive to demand higher yields for riskier investments.

In summary, we expect volatility to pick up in all markets. As volatility picks up, speculators may sell assets to raise cash. Given the gains experienced in just about every asset class, there may be few places to hide. As bond prices may be under further pressure, the cost of borrowing goes up; this in turn may have implications for American consumers whose spending habits are interest-rate-sensitive because of their high levels of debt. This is where the circle to the trade deficit is closing.

The US dollar is dependent on inflows from abroad, as Americans import more than they export. If higher borrowing costs cause consumers to spend less, foreigners may redeploy more of their investments to other, more robust areas in the world. While Treasuries tend to be the first safe haven in times of increased volatility, the dollar no longer is the safe haven it used to be. In our view, a diversified approach to something as mundane as cash is something investors may want to evaluate. Gold is one such diversification; a basket of hard currencies is another.

Axel Merk is the portfolio manager of the Merk Hard Currency Fund.

Roswell aliens theory revived by deathbed confession

June 1, 2007

news.com.au

Exactly 60 years agoa light aircraft was flying over the Cascade Mountains in Washington State, at a height of around 3000m.

Suddenly, a brilliant flash of light illuminated the aircraft.

Visibility was good and as pilot Kenneth Arnold scanned the sky to find the source of the light, he saw a group of nine shiny metallic objects flying information.

He estimated their speed as being around 2600km/h - nearly three times faster than the top speed of any jet aircraft at the time.

Soon, similar reports began to come in from all over America.

This wasn't just the world's first UFO sighting, this was the birth of a phenomenon, one that still exercises an extraordinary fascination.

Military authorities issued a press release, which began: "The many rumours regarding the flying disc became a reality yesterday when the intelligence officer of the 509th Bomb Group of the Eighth Air Force, Roswell Army Air Field, was fortunate enough to gain possession of a disc."

The headlines screamed: "Flying Disc captured by Air Force".

Yet, just 24 hours later, the military changed their story and claimed the object they'd first thought was a "flying disc" was a weather balloon that had crashed on a nearby ranch.

The key witness was Major Jesse Marcel, the intelligence officer who had gone to the ranch to recover the wreckage.

He described the metal as being wafer thin but incredibly tough.

It was as light as balsa wood, but couldn't be cut or burned.

These and similar accounts of the incident have largely been dismissed by all except the most dedicated believers.

Astonishing new twist

But last week came an astonishing new twist to the Roswell mystery.

Lieutenant Walter Haut was the public relations officer at the base in 1947 and was the man who issued the original and subsequent press releases after the crash on the orders of the base commander, Colonel William Blanchard.

Haut died last year but left a sworn affidavit to be opened only after his death.

Last week, the text was released and asserts that the weather balloon claim was a cover story and that the real object had been recovered by the military and stored in a hangar.

He described seeing not just the craft, but alien bodies.

He wasn't the first Roswell witness to talk about alien bodies.

Local undertaker Glenn Dennis had long claimed that he was contacted by authorities at Roswell shortly after the crash and asked to provide a number of child-sized coffins.

When he arrived at the base, he was apparently told by a nurse (who later disappeared) that a UFO had crashed and that small humanoid extraterrestrials had been recovered.

But Haut is the only one of the original participants to claim to have seen alien bodies.

UFO pieces handed around

Haut's affidavit talks about a high-level meeting he attended with base commander Col William Blanchard and the Commander of the Eighth Army Air Force, General Roger Ramey.

Haut states that at this meeting, pieces of wreckage were handed around for participants to touch, with nobody able to identify the material.

He says the press release was issued because locals were already aware of the crash site, but in fact there had been a second crash site, where more debris from the craft had fallen.

The plan was that an announcement acknowledging the first site, which had been discovered by a farmer, would divert attention from the second and more important location.

The clean-up operation

Haut also spoke about a clean-up operation, where for months afterwards military personnel scoured both crash sites searching for all remaining pieces of debris, removing them and erasing all signs that anything unusual had occurred.

This ties in with claims made by locals that debris collected as souvenirs was seized by the military.

Haut then tells how Colonel Blanchard took him to "Building 84" - one of the hangars at Roswell - and showed him the craft itself.

He describes a metallic egg-shaped object around 3.6m-4.5m in length and around 1.8m wide.

He said he saw no windows, wings, tail, landing gear or any other feature.

Haug 'saw the alien bodies'

He saw two bodies on the floor, partially covered by a tarpaulin.

They are described in his statement as about 1.2m tall, with disproportionately large heads.

Towards the end of the affidavit, Haut concludes: "I am convinced that what I personally observed was some kind of craft and its crew from outer space".

What's particularly interesting about Walter Haut is that in the many interviews he gave before his death, he played down his role and made no such claims.

Had he been seeking publicity, he would surely have spoken about the craft and the bodies.

Did he fear ridicule, or was the affidavit a sort of deathbed confession from someone who had been part of a cover-up, but who had stayed loyal to the end?

The US government came under huge pressure on Roswell in the '90s.

In July 1994, in response to an inquiry from the General Accounting Office, the Office of the Secretary of the Air Force published a report, The Roswell Report: Fact Versus Fiction In The New Mexico Desert.

Weather balloon 'cover story'

The report concluded that the Roswell incident had been attributable to something called Project Mogul, a top secret project using high-altitude balloons to carry sensor equipment into the upper atmosphere, listening forevidence of Soviet nuclear tests.

The statements concerning a crashed weather balloon had been a cover story, they admitted, but not to hide the truth about extraterrestrials.

A second US Air Force report concluded claims bodies were recovered were generated by people having seen crash test dummies that were dropped from the balloons.

Sceptics, of course, will dismiss the testimony left by Haut.

After all, fascinating though it is, it's just a story. There's no proof.

But if nothing else, this latest revelation shows that, 60 years on, this mystery endures.

Comment: Since TBR News takes so much delight in assassinating the flood of weird conspiracy theories that flood the internet such as the plasmoid clouds that brought down the WTC, Weather Control, Remote Viewing, HAARP, chemtrails and other entertaining fictions (to which one can add the Jesus myths and legends, Creative Design, the Rapture and more), that it is refreshing for us to run a story that we all believe completely. One of us once lived just outside of Roswell, NM and the locals all firmly believe this story. Airforce General Vandenburg wrote a report, available from the National Archives, in which he clearly admitted this and stated further that transistors were developed from electronic material found at the crash site. BH

Farce of the Week

What is an 'Iraq-style car bomb'?

June 30, 2007

expressindia.com

Baghdad, June 30: Following this week's foiled car bombs in Central London, the British media raised the spectre of ‘Iraq-style attacks’, but what exactly would be the hallmarks of such a campaign?

On Friday, London police defused explosives in two Mercedes cars that had been loaded with gas canisters and nails and left in Central London, and analysts have fingered the al-Qaeda group as a possible suspect.

Car bombings are a daily danger in Iraq, and many of them are allegedly built and triggered by al-Qaeda in Iraq, the local franchise of Saudi-born extremist Osama bin Laden's jihadi network.

But car bombs weren't invented in Iraq.

In 1920, Italian anarchist Mario Buda exploded a horse-drawn wagon packed with dynamite near Wall Street, killing 40 people in New York's financial district 8 decades before the September 11 attacks.

In fact, after four years of bloodshed, Iraq's myriad militant groups use a wide and constantly evolving array of improvised weapons to spread panic and counter the hi-tech arsenal arrayed against them by the US military.

The military knows these weapons by a variety of acronyms:

The VBIED or SVBIED: The ‘vehicle-borne improvised explosive device’ or ‘suicide vehicle-borne improvised explosive device’ are the two weapons that most resemble those found and dismantled in London.

Commonly parked in crowed areas such as markets or outside mosques, the car and truck bombs are designed to indiscriminately spray deadly sharpnel and cause mass slaughter, spread fear and undermine the Iraqi government.

The London bomb was packed with nails and gas canisters, a technique that has been used elsewhere, but Iraqi bombs commonly use artillery shells looted from Saddam-era arms dumps wired to an explosive charge.

A chilling recent development has seen insurgents use tanks of chlorine gas alongside the explosives but, while this has caused burns and spreads panic, it has yet to genuinely increase the weapon's lethal potential.

The IED: The ‘improvised explosive device’ is the catch-all military term for a wide variety of roadside bombs and booby-traps, planted on Iraq's roads and used to target US and Iraqi military patrols and convoys.

Again often built around elderly artillery ammunition, these homemade devices show a varying degree of sophistication and power.

US engineers are in a race to design better armour to protect vehicles and better measures to counter IED triggers, which can be infrared beams, command wires, simple pressure plates or trip wires or mobile phones.

The EFP: The ‘explosively-formed penetrator’ sometimes called an ‘explosively-formed projectile’ is a shaped charge explosive which fires a fist-sized slug of molten metal capable of punching through US armour.

Allegedly designed and manufactured in Iran, it has allowed Iraqi militants and Lebanese Hezbollah fighters to counter US and Israeli tanks with deadly effect, accounting for hundreds of military casualties.

It is usually employed like an IED as a roadside bomb.

Suicide Vest or PBIED: The ‘person-borne improvised explosive device’ is a harness packed with plastic explosives and nails or ball-bearings which is exploded by a suicide attacker, usually among crowds of civilians.

London Bomb--What a Crock of Crap!!

June 29, 2007

by Larry Johnson

No Quarter

So I turn on the telly this morning and find breathless CNN anchors hyperventilating over the nuclear suicide car weapon of mass destruction discovered smoldering outside of a London nightclub.  One report from the scene notes that:

London police were contacted when witnesses saw a Mercedes being driven erratically near London West End night club Tiger Tiger, and the driver jumped out of the automobile and ran away. The car was reported to have two gasoline canisters and be full of nails

CNN adds:

London police were contacted when witnesses saw a Mercedes being driven erratically near London West End night club Tiger Tiger, and the driver jumped out of the automobile and ran away. The car was reported to have two gasoline canisters and be full of nails.

Explosives officers discovered the fuel and nails attached to a "potential means of detonation," inside the vehicle. Officers "courageously" disabled the trigger by hand, he said. Security sources told CNN that the "relatively crude device" in the   first car contained at least 200 liters, or about 50 gallons, of fuel in canisters.

You know what you call a vehicle with 50 gallons of gas?  A Cadillac Escalade.  The media meltdown over this incident is simply shameful.

For starters, gasoline is not a high explosive.  If we were talking 50 pounds of Semtex or the Al Qaeda standby, TATP, I would be impressed.  Those are real high explosives with a detonation rate in excess of 20,000 feet per second.  Gasoline can explode (just ask former owners of a Ford Pinto) but it is first and foremost an incendiary.  If the initial reports are true, the clown driving the Mercedes was a rank amateur when it comes to constructing an Improvised Explosive Device aka IED.  Unlike a Hollywood flick the 50 gallons of gas would not have shredded the Mercedes into lethal chunks of flying shrapnel

The fact that "officers courageously disabled the trigger by hand" coupled with the report of the smoke in the car leads me to believe that the mad London "bomber" tried to construct a Molotov cocktail of sorts and lit a cloth fuze.  Fortunately he left the windows in the car up and there was not enough oxygen to really get the fire going.  Looks like the brave British police reached in and snuffed the flame

Judging from the overreaction to this non-incident I think we can safely conclude that Osama Bin Laden will remain holed up in Pakistan and let the fear mongers at CNN, MSNBC, and FOX do the dirty business of scaring the shit out of people.

UPDATE:  Ahh, the panic continues!  Yuppie terrorists are on the loose!  Now we're being told there are two cars (both Mercedes I might add) with a Rube Goldberg contraption consisting of propane tanks, some petrol, a light bulb (or maybe light bulb filaments), etc.  A propane tank explosion makes a hell of a noise but does not create widespread shrapnel dispersion.  Busted eardrums and broken glass are more likely.  Getting these tanks to explode is difficult.   The ones I have witnessed occurred when a house under construction caught on fire.  But there is nothing in two 25lb propane tanks inside a Mercedes that will detonate with sufficient force to shred the automobile and send hundreds to meet their Allah, God, Buddha, or whatever.  Still a crock of hype and over-reaction.  Let the police do their job.  Investigate the culprits and get these nitwits out of circulation before they harm themselves

Comment: There is nothing we can say to improve on the last author’s comments. This was some Muslim yuppie group at work. If both “bombs” went off at the same instant, they would wreck the car’s interiorr and cause hearing problems for people on the sidewalks next to them but you could stand twenty feet away and not get a scratch. But imagine the fun if some playful person filled a surplus Navy ammo can with milk sugar, slapped on a few easily available bio hazard stickers and left it, partially opened, beside the main reservoir in Washington? If he called the police and all the news media  and then went and hid somewhere, the resulting  chaos would make the “Mercedes Bombs” look like nothing. CNN and Fox would screech about this for at least two months and the rest of us would wonder what happened to Jon Benet Ramsay. This reminds me of hysterical Jewish groups screaming that they were’ just about’ to arrest Martin Borman when he had been dead and buried since 1945.  Brian Harring