Depleted Uranium Weapons: Dead Babies in Iraq and Afghanistan Are No Joke

by Dave Lindorff


The horrors of the US Agent Orange defoliation campaign in Vietnam, about which I wrote on Oct. 15, could ultimately be dwarfed by the horrors caused by the depleted uranium weapons which the US began using in the 1991 Gulf War (300 tons), and which it has used much more extensively--and in more urban, populated areas--in the Iraq War and the now intensifying Afghanistan War.

Depleted uranium, despite its rather benign-sounding name, is not depleted of radioactivity or toxicity. The term “depleted” refers only to its being depleted of the U-235 isotope needed for fission reactions in nuclear reactors. The nuclear waste material from nuclear power plants, DU as it is known, is what is removed from the power plants’ spent fuel rods and is essentially composed of the uranium isotope U-238 as well as U-236 (a product of nuclear reactor fission, not found in nature), as well as other trace radioactive elements. Once simply a nuisance for the industry, that still has no permanent way to dispose of the dangerous stuff, it turns out to be an ideal metal for a number of weapons uses, and has been capitalized on by the Pentagon. 1.7 times heavier than lead, and much harder than steel, and with the added property of burning at a super-hot temperature, DU has proven to be an ideal penetrator for warheads that need to pierce thick armor or dense concrete bunkers made of reinforced concrete and steel. Once through the defenses, it burns at a temperature that incinerates anyone inside (which is why we see the carbonized bodies of bodies in the wreckage of Iraqi tanks hit by US fire). Accordingly it has found its way into 30 mm machine gun ammunition, especially that used by the A-10 Warthog ground-attack fighter planes used extensively in Iraq and Afghanistan (as well as Kosovo). It is also the warhead of choice for Abrams tanks and is also reportedly used in GBU-28 and the later GBU-37 bunker buster bombs, each of which can have 1-2 tons of the stuff in its warhead. DU is also used as ballast in cruise missiles, and this burns up when a missile detonates its conventional explosive. Some cruise missiles are also designed to hit hardened targets and reportedly feature DU warheads, as does the AGM-130 air-to-ground missile, which carries a one-ton penetrating warhead. In addition, depleted uranium is used in large quantities in the armor of tanks and other equipment. This material becomes a toxic source of CU pollution when these vehicles are attacked and burned.

While the Pentagon has continued to claim, against all scientific evidence, that there is no hazard posed by depleted uranium, US troops in Iraq have reportedly been instructed to avoid any sites where these weapons have been used—destroyed Iraqi tanks, exploded bunkers, etc.—and to wear masks if they do have to approach. Many torched vehicles have been brought back to the US, where they have been buried in special sites reserved for dangerously contaminated nuclear materials. (Thousands of tons of DU-contaminated sand from Kuwait, polluted with DU during the US destruction of Iraq’s tank forces in the 1991 war, were removed and shipped to a waste site in Idaho last year with little fanfare.) Suspiciously, international health officials have been prevented or obstructed from doing medical studies of DU sites in Iraq and Afghanistan. But an excellent series of articles several years ago by the Christian Science Monitor described how reporters from that newspaper had visited such sites in Iraq with Geiger-counters and had found them to be extremely “hot” with radioactivity.

The big danger with DU is not as a pure metal, but after it has exploded and burned, when the particles of uranium oxide, which are just as radioactive as the pure isotopes, can be inhaled or ingested. Even the smallest particle of uranium in the body is both deadly poisonous as a chemical, and over time can cause cancer—particularly in the lungs, but also the kidneys, testes and ovaries.

There are reports of a dramatic increase in the incidence of deformed babies being born in the city of Fallujah, where DU weapons were in wide use during the November 2004 assault on that city by US Marines. The British TV station SKY UK, in a report last month that has received no mention in any mainstream American news organization, found a marked increase in birth defects at local hospitals. Birth defects have also been high for years in the Basra area in the south of Iraq, where DU was used not just during America’s 2003 “shock and awe” attack on Iraq, but also in the 1991 Gulf War.

Deformed baby born in post-US Invasion Iraq: DU's legacy?

Further, a report sent to the UN General Assembly by Dr Nawal Majeed Al-Sammarai, Iraq’s Minister of Women’s Affairs since 2006, stated that in September 2009, Fallujah General Hospital had 170 babies born, 24% of which died within their first week of life. Worse yet, fully 75% of the babies born that month were deformed. This compares to August 2002, six months before the US invasion, when 530 live births were reported with only six dying in the first week, and only one deformity. Clearly something terrible is happening in Fallujah, and many doctors suspect it’s the depleted uranium dust that is permeating the city.

But the real impact of the first heavy use of depleted uranium weaponry in populous urban environments (DU was used widely especially in 2003 in Baghdad, Samara, Mosul and other big Iraqi cities), will come over the years, as the toxic legacy of this latest American war crime begins to show up in rising numbers of cancers, birth defects and other genetic disorders in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Of course, as in the case of Agent Orange in Vietnam, the toxic effects of this latest battlefield use of toxic materials by the US military will also be felt for years to come by the men and women who were sent over to fight America’s latest wars. As with Agent Orange, the Pentagon and the Veterans Affairs Department have been assiduously denying the problem, and have been just as assiduously denying claims by veterans of the Gulf War and the two current wars in Iraq and Afghanistan who claim their cancers and other diseases have anything to do with their exposure to DU.

The record on Agent Orange should lead us to be suspicious of the government’s claims.
The deformed and dead babies in Iraq should make us demand a cleanup of Iraq and Afghanistan, medical aid for the victims, and a ban on all depleted uranium weapons.

From Cynthia McKinney: Report from South Africa, Upcoming Events, Interesting Video Links

Cynthia McKinney: Report from South Africa, Upcoming Events, Interesting Video Links

Hello, as promised, I'll give you a brief report from my visit to Cape Town, South Africa.

First of all, I was hosted by two activists who founded Channel Four News, a hard-hitting, truth-telling, non-special interest news outlet serving Cape Town and all of South Africa. But because of their hard-hitting questions to elected leaders, the post-apartheid era government chose to enact regulations that resulted in their temporary shutdown. Undaunted, they organized a very informative film festival chock full of documentaries recalling the South Africa-Israel connections that beefed up repressive capabilities in both states; the role of Coca Cola during the sanctions era; scenes from Gaza after Israel's Operation Cast Lead; and stories of general Palestinian life with plays, songs, and films. Please click here to hear one of the most moving songs I have heard in a very long time:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H99mzLiBenw

(Note from Anita: for some reason this video would not come up for me and I got a strange YouTube error message: The URL contained a malformed video ID.)

The name of the group is Desert Rose. The woman singing loaned me her makeup because I was without my suitcases, and it turned out that she sang the most heart-wrenching song of the night, Ayala Katz. The song has been banned by certain Rabbinical authorities in South Africa. Please share this song with all of your friends. I listen to it every day.

Much is at stake today in South Africa at a time when criminal charges have been brought against the South African National Police Commissioner and those charges have implications for the country's leading political party; in addition, there are ongoing investigations into arms deals that could lead all the way to top ANC leaders; information is beginning to leak out about secret negotiations between certain elements of the black resistance and the global elite even before ANC took power; and all of this information coming out at this time might indicate that the people's interests were sold out long before the ink was dry on these arms deals. It is good that South Africans are beginning to look critically and more closely at what they (a nd we, the progressive forces in the world) actually won and to investigate whether they voluntarily stopped short of complete victory. Of course, it was the people on the ground, inside South Africa, who bore the
brunt of the struggle and who should reap the benefits of the victory. And they are not, and that's why this line of questioning is more prevalent.

Likewise, for us, prudence dictates that we all now pay very close attention to what is happening in the "post-racial" economy of the U.S. I am absolutely certain that there are lessons in the South African experience for us today.

Just before I arrived in Cape Town, approximately 60,000 textile workers had been on strike all over the country since September 15th. Before that, South Africa had seen general strikes called by municipal workers (over 150,000), construction workers, doctors, and taxi drivers.

I've just been told that the second electricity price hikes have been announced in order to pay for the 2010 World Cup infrastructure needs. If you'll recall, the 2006 World Cup was stolen from South Africa by one racist voter on the Committee who refused to follow his country's instructions and vote for South Africa and instead voted for Germany and the World Cup governing body, FIFA, allowed the vote to stand, so the 2006 World Cup went to Germany, instead. Well, 2010 is South Africa.

And are they building stadium after stadium! And they're beautiful. But the problem is that apartheid-era economic divisions remain and they are stark. On one side of the mountain are the pristine manses, but they have to be served by the blacks, who still live in squalor, so on the other side of the mountain is the most putrid poverty one could witness. Unfortunately, ANC leadership went along with changing the face of the political apartheid regime while allowing the gross, mean, ugly economic apartheid to remain rigidly in place. Land reform, one of the more obvious disparities, is not even on the agenda, I was told.

At the Film Festival, I debuted a short documentary on the murder of Oscar Grant in Oakland, California. This documentary shows the occupation of black and brown neighborhoods by a militarized, local law enforcement apparatus that parallels, in many ways, the current experiences of neighborhoods of color in post-apartheid South Africa, and of Palestinians on their own occupied land.

The film was done by Operation Small Axe (from the Bob Marley song) and it
is narrated by Pacifica's and the San Francisco Bay View Newspaper's own J. R. Valrey, known in the Bay Area as the Minister of Information. The film was very well received by the South African audience who told me that their experience is exactly like that experienced by the young people of the Bay Area, up to and including the murder of Oscar Grant, as chronicled in the film. The South African audience could not believe that they were watching actual footage of a young man's murder.

After seeing what I've seen in Cape Town, it appears to me that the World Cup in South Africa will be just like the Olympics were in Atlanta: the public treasury was expended for the benefit of the fat cats and political insiders who managed most of the private reward. In Atlanta, the citizens were lucky if they got street lights and sidewalks from the deal. Gentrification, a nice way of saying ethnic cleansing, was accelerated and black homeowners were pushed out of the central city--much by design. And along with them went much of their powerful political punch.

A blockbuster book is about to be written by one of South Africa's leading journalists, whom I was able to meet, about the still-brewing arms scandal where, upon inauguration of the post-apartheid government, $5 billion was spent on arms with BAE Systems, rather than on the people. The only thing is that the deal was sealed with what authorities call "financially incentivising" politicians to the tune of C2A3100 million.

And remember, just last year, Mark Thatcher, Margaret Thatcher's son pleaded guilty to gun running and coup plotting in oil-rich West Africa, in a story that Channel Four News played a central role in breaking and developing.

So, I was with this same Channel Four News outfit that was so chock-full of information about post-apartheid South Africa, from the triumphs to the disappointments of the people. It was sad as I rode through the many townships of the Cape Town area and saw sewage running through the streets, no land for any type of community gardening or farming, not even trees for a brief respite from the sun, or from which to pluck a piece of fruit.

As we made our way to Robben Island, the famous prison of South Africa's most famous political prisoners, I could see and hear Steve Biko, Chris Hani, Robert Sobukwe in my mind; my hosts told of their apartheid-era exploits--everyone played a role in the liberation of South Africa, but everyone must now also play a role in its stewardship and the management of the reward a nd the people's resources.

I'll go back to South Africa, I want to spend even more time with my hosts, and learn more about their struggle, experience the incredible vistas, and find ways to apply their knowledge to the problems confronting us inside this country today.

Probably, the most important lesson from Cape Town and Paris is this: We a re a part of a global movement for truth and justice. And we cannot be stopped.

If we want Policy instead of Speeches by Cynthia McKinney

Vers La Verité Speech in Paris by Cynthia McKinney

President Obama’s Nobel Peace Prize was not the only news yesterday. And in my opinion, it’s not even the biggest news. It’s not even the saddest news. But it does provide us with some critical information as we move forward. The three-part question for us, tonight however, is “What are we moving forward TO; is that the place we want to go; and if not, what do we do about it?

In other words, “What is our vision for the future and how do we define success?”

I have been and am still in deep pain over the institutional homicide of my aunt and in my grief, I’ve considered giving up.

But then, I wiped the tears from my eyes long enough to remember communities of people that I’ve been blessed enough to get to know, from Toronto, Canada to Cape Town, South Africa; from Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia to Valdosta, Georgia, there are people struggling through their own pain, their own deep personal disappointments to reach a better place—not just for themselves, but for the global community of man. And I know deep in my own heart, as broken as it is, that I cannot give up. My brain tells me that the struggle for truth, justice, peace, and dignity is too important to lose because of heartbreak.

The one thing that probably best defines everyone in this room are our search for and activities on behalf of principles that are bigger than ourselves. We want our governments to tell us the truth; we want them to deliver justice; we want our global community to live in peace; and we want respect for the dignity of all humankind.

So if these are the ingredients of our vision, what tools do we need to produce the desired result?

Well, first of all, the desired result has to have definition.

I mentioned in one of my messages to a dear friend in response to the Nobel award to President Barack Obama that we needed to keep our eyes on the prize and then I erased it because I don’t think we’ve sufficiently defined what the prize is.

So there must be a small, cohesive, international group of rock-solid people feverishly working to redefine for all who want to be active, and a part of our vision, just what the prize is. And this “prize,” our vision, must be repeated and explained often so people can differentiate our vision, from their reality.

Here is where language becomes important. If we want policy instead of speeches, then this must be repeated early and often because what I’m alarmed by is that in the absence of us providing real definition, and there are reasons for that, people are beginning to think that a speech IS policy.

But, as I said earlier, there was a lot of news yesterday. Some of it even more important than the Nobel Peace Prize Award, but the award certainly overshadowed all other stories.

And I’m always searching for context. Because, as the U.S. military puts it, “perception management” is important. And we must understand the context of what happens and when it happens, in order to understand why.

I always say that we must see the invisible, hear the unspoken, and read the unwritten. That’s what some of the organizers of Vers La Verité were professionally trained to do, before they became whistleblowers, and now our leaders.

Now, what were some of those other interesting news items?

Well, at a Native American Lodge located next to Senator John McCain’s ranch, two people died and several others were hospitalized following a hazardous materials situation at the Sweat Lodge, which is like a spiritual retreat led by Native Americans. I’ve even been invited to participate in one upon my return to the U.S.

Now, I find this interesting and a story that should be followed up on and I will be doing that because I want to make sure there’s no bigger story hidden in an important cultural ritual of the Native Americans who are victims of a genocide in North America that continues to this day.

On the day that the Nobel Prize was announced, we also learned that the U.S. bunker buster bomb will be ready in a few more months.

This is the bomb that holds over 5,000 pounds of explosives and is designed to penetrate hardened facilities, including those underground. Some brilliant people in the U.S. even want to put nuclear tips on bunker buster bombs. However, in announcing the near deployment of the project that pays McDonnell Douglas to adapt the B-2 bomber so it can deliver the Boeing-made bomb to its intended target, the Pentagon press secretary said, "The reality is that the world we live in is one in which there are people who seek to build weapons of mass destruction and they seek to do so in a clandestine fashion." The article noted that the Obama Administration had not ruled out military action against Iran.

Another story noted that hours after winning the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize, President Obama met with his military advisors about troop levels in Afghanistan. The troop increase requested by the U.S. Commander ranged, it is reported, from 10,000 to 60,000—although the top number isn’t listed in that news report. One has to go to another news item to see the true top number. At any rate, it seems that the choices confronting U.S. and European leaders is whether to increase the current 68,000 U.S. boots on the ground in Afghanistan or to merely increase the number of drone attacks. Decreasing death and destruction and bringing our young men and women home is not on the Nobel Peace Prize winner’s agenda for discussion.

The last article of note is about a restaurant in west Georgia that is using the “N-word” on its marquee to describe President Obama. It reminds me of the Atlanta area restaurant that put on its marquee that I was Buckwheat with Boobs. Now, those of you who are from the U.S. will know what that means and the depth of insult that was intended. The article notes that I’ve made this restaurant’s marquee, too. Both restaurant owners claim to not be racists and to be protected by free speech.

My point in including this particular news item is that we still have so far to go just in terms of our human relations. It is imperative that we do what we can to spread our message and our vision and reach those who can be reached.

Which brings me to who can be reached.

Those with enough discernment to know that what is being pronounced from on high is not their reality. And rather than accept or discount the contradictions, we want them to join us and struggle for a better reality for everybody.

I am saddened beyond belief that on the day of the Peace Prize award, a struggling democracy in Honduras was besieged with U.S. supplied weapons and U.S.-trained paramilitaries and snipers in support of coup leaders over the democratically-elected people’s leaders. In fact, the latest dispatch from Honduras is that many of the snipers and paramilitaries—now descending on Honduras from all over Latin America—were trained in my home state of Georgia.

More and more people are experiencing cognitive dissonance and rightly so. Our leaders and respected organizations are lying to us! One friend and former Congressional Staffer of mine puts it this way: we need a democratic military instead of a militarized democracy.

The United States, with the help of its European and Asian allies maintains over 700 bases around the world. The number is increasing under President Obama.

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. said that we must combat racism, poverty, and militarism. Our movement cannot struggle against militarism and fail to address racism. We must be comprehensive and to racism, militarism, and poverty, we must now add gaining control of a media that will allow us to communicate to a broader community and not just within our small spheres, and regaining control of education so that people are not so dumbed down that they actually believe that war is peace, slavery is freedom, ignorance is strength, and lies are truth.

And if we are right, then others will join us. They will share with us their dreams and their passions and we will help to empower them.

Global resistance combined with local action, organization, vision, commitment, and resources will allow us to have significant victories in the future.

Vers La Verité understands that the foundation of all of this action, attainment of the prize, can only happen with truth as our foundation.

It’s already a brave new world, let’s get busy and make it ours!!!

Tidbits from the CIA's very own copies of "Counter Spy" [and a little Brazilian history]

Although the CIA abhorred the circulation of "Counter Spy," the magazine started in 1973 by renegade CIA agent Philip Agee, the agency's archives are replete with hundreds of copies of pages snipped from the controversial magazine, published until 1984. The impetus for the 1981 Intelligence Identities Protection Act, which later came to the forefront in the controversy over the Bush White House's "outing" of the covert identity of Valerie Plame, Wilson, was attributed to the alleged disclosures of CIA agents' identities in "Counter Spy."

"Counter Spy" from April/May 1979 contains a reference to a CIA agent who was instrumental in setting up a training program for centralized police forces around the world. He was Byron Engle, who trained police in Japan after World War II and, more interestingly, established a police advisory board in Turkey. Engle used the State Department to launder CIA funds for the police training program. The "State Department" program resulted in none other than FBI director J. Edgar Hoover complaining that the State Department training program was "just one more CIA cover."

In 1961, after Joao Goulart, a progressive and pro-unionist, was elected president of Brazil, Engel and his assistant, CIA officer Lauren J. ("Jack") Goin, oversaw the steady stream of CIA and U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) official cover agents into Brazil. Goin had worked with Engel is setting up the CIA's police advisory team in Turkey and Goin helped establish a similar CIA training advisory team in Indonesia.

The CIA destabilization force in Brazil was reacting to Goulart's battle with the International Monetary Fund over its demand that Goulart emaciate Brazil's financial strength and comply with the demands of global bankers. The U.S. began to cut off Goulart's government from financial assistance while at the same time boosting aid to conservative state governors in Guanabara and Sao Paulo.

After Goulart redistributed privately-held land to the poor and nationalized oil refineries, the Brazilian military and its CIA overseers struck. Goulart was overthrown in a military coup on April 1, 1964, which, for Brazilians is as ever etched in their memories as is September 11, 1973 for Chileans, the day the CIA helped engineer the coup against populist President Salvador Allende.

Goulart was replaced by General Humberto Castello Branco, a veteran of the Allied invasion of Italy in 1945 and the Rome roommate of a U.S. Army Lieut. Colonel named Vernon Walters, who would later become the CIA's top coup master and Deputy Director of the CIA under Richard Nixon. In 1964, as the coup plans in Brazil got underway, Walters was, conveniently, the U.S. military attache in Brazil.

Three U.S. banks used as CIA money launderers -- First National City Bank, the Bank of Chicago, and the Royal Bank of Canada -- were discovered to have illegally pumped $20 million into Brazil to fund the election campaigns of anti-Goulart political candidates.

After the coup against Goulart, the CIA ensured the expansion of "death squads" in Brazil. Torture of political opponents of the regime also became widespread.

In what now appears to be a precursor for recent torture techniques employed in Guantanamo Bay, Abu Ghraib, and other American gulags, "Counter Spy" describes what are now familiar torture techniques taught to Latin American special forces and intelligence agents at Fort Gulick, Canal Zone's School of the Americas and the Special Wafare School at Fort Bragg, North Carolina as early as 1961:

"A common torture routine consisted of a preliminary beating by a flat wooden paddle with holes drilled through it called a palmatoria. This would be followed by a more concentrated application of electric wires to the genitals designed to elicit information from the victim. If this method failed, the prisoner was subjected to another round with the palmatoria -- often for six hours at a time. Today, Brazil's terror technology has advanced beyond the electric prod and the wooden paddle. Testimony from political prisoners verified by the Brazilian Congress of Lawyers lists among the newest innovations a refrigerated cubicle called as geladeira. Nude prisoners are boxed in a geladeira for several days at a time, receiving frequent dousing of ice-cold water. All the time, loudspeakers emit deafening sounds. One prisoner described this as a 'machine to drive people crazy.'"

In a case of poetic justice, one of those targeted for harassment and imprisonment by the Brazilian junta and the CIA was the head of the Greater Sao Paulo metal, mechanical, and electrical workers' union, one Luis Inacio Lula da Silva, the current President of Brazil who managed to wrest the 2016 Summer Olympics for Brazil even after the personal intercession before the International Olympic Committee on behalf of Chicago of one-time CIA operative and Business International Corporation front man Barack Obama.

As the late Paul Harvey used to say, ". . . and now you know . . . the rest of the story."

Columbus Day celebrates the Native American Holocaust

Columbus Day celebrates the Native American Holocaust

Italian Mercenary initiated the American Holocaust of 65 Million

The trail of tears and celebrating an American Holocaust

During a news conference at the UN General Assembly session last month, Venezuela's President Hugo Chavez spoke of an emerging "American Indian" style of socialism in Latin America. Chavez hailed fellow Latin American presidents who are of native American stock, including Evo Morales of Bolivia, who Chavez called a "proud Aymara."

Matched against the newly-emerging native American power movements in Latin America is the fact that the United States continues to celebrate a holiday in honor of an Italian mercenary in the employment of the Spanish crown whose mercantilist brigands brought forth in the Western Hemisphere a six hundred year Holocaust that saw the genocide of 65 million native Americans through warfare, premeditated slaughter, disease, and famine. Columbus's arrival also presaged the destruction of the 500 native American nations that graced the Western Hemisphere from the Arctic Circle to Tierra del Fuego.

The peculiar celebration of Christopher Columbus's arrival in the "New World" is generally billed as a celebration of Italian-Americans in the United States. However, for native Americans, it is a celebration of colonialism, mercantilism, imperialism, and racism. If there is a need to celebrate Italian contributions to America, why not celebrate Frank Sinatra Day? Certainly, his musical contributions, unlike the pestilence and colonial greed introduced by Columbus, did not lead to the wholesale slaughter of an entire race of people.

Or, at the very least, October 12 could be a dual-holiday, Columbus Day for those who want to celebrate the exploits of a genocidaire, and, as it is celebrated in Venezuela, a "Day of Indigenous Resistance," for those who want to remember the holocaust of the native Americans. For Africans, Columbus is remembered as a Portuguese slave trader who pimped out his services to the Portuguese.

Today, the United States "celebrates" the native Americans by naming its sports teams "Washington Redskins" (Andrew Jackson, who graces the twenty dollar bill, and his Indian fighters skinned native American males from the waist down and fashioned pants from their skin, i.e. "redskin pants") and "Cleveland Indians" (with a racist logo of bucked tooth native American). For some Americans, native American reservations are now gambling meccas. Jailed GOP lobbyist Jack Abramoff, who employed every shyster business tactic he could think of to maximize his profits from lobbying for Indian gaming and casinos, called his native American clients "monkeys" (his name for the Choctaw tribal council), "troglodytes," "morons," and "mofos."

The sovereignty of native American nations, enshrined by the treaties various U.S. Presidents sign with the tribal nations, has been perverted by a group of "mishpucka" gangsters intent on abusing the sovereignty of the tribes to foster gambling, as its associated vices of booze, cigarette and drug smuggling, and prostitution.

President Chavez told the press in New York that he once served, as a Venezuelan military officer, with a mission sent to Guatemala. There, he witnessed the local Guatemalan special forces, the School of the Americas-trained Kaibiles, boasting of their massacres of the native Mayan Indians. Chavez said he then realized that those were "my people" being killed by the Guatemalan military. Chavez said he vowed that the native Americans people would no longer be subjected to such brutality and as President of Venezuela, Chavez has made common cause with those Latin American leaders and groups that are fighting the neo-imperialism directed against the native peoples of the Western Hemisphere. And it is no coincidence that the only country in the Americas that is named after Columbus is Colombia, a narco-fascist-run nation that will soon host seven U.S. military bases, courtesy of Nobel Peace Prize winner Barack Obama.

On this day, there should be a presidential ceremony at a site on the Washington Mall that honors the Holocaust. Not the museum at the west end of the Mall, the European Holocaust Museum, but the one at the east end of the mall, the Native American Museum. Those who visit the Native American Museum will hear a recording describing the holocaust of 65 million native Americans. It is the Holocaust that no one wants to talk about -- it is holocaust denial in the extreme.

But now, back to the real America. Everyone go out and take advantage of those Columbus Day sales. After all, it is a fitting way to celebrate someone who was doing the blood-soaked bidding of the Spanish mercantilists and capitalists of his day.

LBJ aided and abetted Israel's uranium enrichment program

Archived CIA files, woefully incomplete because of the political selectivity involved with the Freedom of Information and National Archives and Records Administration Acts, do contain enough information that highlights the participation of the administration of President Lyndon Johnson in the illegal acquisition by Israel of enriched uranium from the United States for Israel's nuclear weapons program.

Apparently, the CIA got around the political problems associated with maintaining detailed records on Israel's nuclear proliferation by keeping open source articles on the Israeli espionage activities. One of the archived documents is a Washington Postarticle written by Charles Babcock, dated June 5, 1986, titled "U.S. an Intelligence Target of the Israelis, Officials Say."

The article details the operations of Mossad operative Raphael ("Rafi") Eitan in illegally procuring 200 pounds of enriched uranium -- enough uranium for six nuclear fission bombs -- from a company called NUMEC -- Nuclear Materials and Equipment Corporation -- in Apollo, Pennsylvania in September 1968. Eitan and three other Mossad operatives traveled to NUMEC's plant and arranged with its owner, an American Zionist nuclear scientist named Zalman M. Shapiro, to have the enriched uranium shipped to Israel clandestinely. Shapiro denied the charges that he gave the uranium to the Israelis and the FBI closed the case, code named "Operation Divert," without charges ever being filed.

The Post article, however, points to a declassified FBI document that points to "Raphael Eitan, chemist, Ministry of Defense, Israel, born 11/23/26 in Israel," was part of the four-man Mossad team that went to the NUMEC facility in September 1968. The actual visit was on September 10, 1968 and it was approved by the Atomic Energy Commission. The team also included Avraham Hermoni, the scientific counselor at the Israeli embassy in Washington, and two officials of Israel's Department of Electronics, which was part of the Israeli Ministry of Science and Development. The Pittsburgh Tribune-Reviewidentified the other two Israelis as Ephraim Beigon and Abraham Bendor, aka Avraham Shalom. Bendor later became the head of Shin Bet, Israel's domestic intelligence service. In addition, Ephraim Lahav, the science minister-counsellor of the Israeli embassy in Washington, made several trips to NUMEC in the 1960s. One of NUMEC's metallurgists was Bernard Cinai, aka Baruch Cinai, an Israeli citizen. NUMEC's illegal nuclear proliferation network extended from Israel and the United States to Britain, France, Japan, Spain, Belgium, and Germany. NUMEC and Israel ran a front operation called Isotopes and Radiation Enterprises (ISORAD). Some NUMEC engineers ended up working for Westinghouse Electric and were interviewed by FBI agents about the missing uranium.

Federal law enforcement sources told the Postthat Hermoni attended a meeting at Shapiro's house in November 1968 at which 11 American scientists were present. In June 1969, FBI counter-intelligence agents witnessed Shapiro meeting with another Israeli embassy science attache at Pittsburgh airport. Shapiro's home and work phones were tapped by FBI agents and he was trailed by FBI agents at every move. Attorney General Ramsey Clark authorized electronic surveillance of Shapiro based on the evidence compiled of his dealings with Mossad. Shapiro used an encrypted telephone provided by Mossad to communicate with Mossad agents in New York.

The only sanctions taken against NUMEC was a $930,000 fine it received from the Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) for losing the enriched uranium. However, it was clear that FBI director J. Edgar Hoover, who usually held ultimate sway over domestic espionage matters, wanted to indict Shapiro, who later became the head of the Pittsburgh chapter of the Zionist Organization of America, but was overruled by the Atomic Energy Commission and the Johnson and Nixon White Houses. However, there is also evidence of a strange turn-around in Hoover's feelings about NUMEC and Shapiro. The AEC sent a letter to Hoover in the late 1960s asking whether Shapiro should register as a foreign agent. The FBI director replied that Shapiro was not required to do so. However, after the Justice Department ordered the FBI to back down from its investigation of Israeli nuclear smuggling and the role NUMEC played in it in 1972, Hoover reportedly became very offended at the FBI being called off the case. Hoover died suddenly after his the rift with the Justice Department.

The FBI tried to interview Navy Admiral Hyman Rickover, the father of the U.S. nuclear submarine, over his dealings with NUMEC and his awarding the firm lucrative Navy contracts. Rickover refused any interviews with FBI agents over his association with the firm. The Navy's contracts with NUMEC saw the transfer of weapons-grade uranium from Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee to the Apollo plant ostensibly for the production of fuel rods for U.S. nuclear submarines.

In 1974, after the Israeli penetration of America's nuclear weapons program had reached critical mass, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Air Force General George "Scratchy" Brown, stated to a Duke University audience that Jews had too much control over America's banks, newspapers and elected officials and that Israel was a "burden" to the Department of Defense. One nettlesome individual Brown had to deal with was Israeli Colonel Yosef Langotsky, the assistant army attache at the Israeli embassy in Washington. Langotsky was known to the FBI as a Mossad spy and he often was caught in secure areas of the Pentagon trying to recruit agents, most of them American Jewish employees of the Defense Department, into serving Israeli intelligence. Langotsky was eventually refused access to the Pentagon and he was recalled by the Tel Aviv authorities in 1979. Brown's comments about Jews were: "they own, you know, the banks in this country. The newspapers. Just look at where the Jewish money is." President Gerald Ford refused to fire Brown, although Ford was under immense pressure to do so, and Brown continued to serve into President Jimmy Carter's administration. Carter also resisted Jewish pressure to fire Brown. Brown retired on June 21, 1978 and died some six months later in December 1978 from a fast-acting form of cancer.

An investigation of Israeli nuclear proliferation by Representative Morris Udall's (D-AZ) House Committee on Interior and Insular Affairs yielded little success. In December 1978, Shapiro told Udall under oath, "Let me state emphatically that I have never participated in any theft or diversion of special nuclear material." Udall, who ran for President in 1976, was diagnosed with Parkinson's disease the year following his investigation of Israel's nuclear materials smuggling from the United States. The disease forced Udall to resign from Congress in 1991 and he died in 1998.

It was after Representative John Murtha (D-PA) asked for an investigation of the radioactive pollution caused by NUMEC, Atlantic Richfield, and Babcok & Wilson Co. at the Apollo plutonium and uranium plant in 2002, that the corporate media began investigating Murtha's connections with lobbyists. Representative Steny Hoyer (D-MD), whose sister served as executive director of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), edged out Murtha for House Majority Leader after the Democrats took over control of the House in 2006. Murtha was also targeted in the FBI "Abscam" investigation, which used a convicted con-man named Melvin Weinberg to target a number of Democrats, including Senator Harrison Williams (D-NJ), who believed they were dealing with an Arab sheikh who was actually an impostor. Many, including federal judges, believed the Abscam investigation had a certain "odor" about it and was a case of prosecutorial misconduct.

Israel's illegal acquisition of U.S. nuclear technology was aided and abetted by President Lyndon B. Johnson and his CIA director Richard Helms. The chief of the CIA's Science and Technology directorate, Carl Duckett, planned to draft a National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) in 1969 detailing Israel's development of an atomic bomb in 1968. Duckett told the Post that Johnson told Helms not to publish the NIE. According to the Post, Duckett said Johnson told Helms "Don't tell anyone else, even Dean Rusk and Robert McNamara." Rusk and McNamara were Johnson's Secretaries of State and Defense, respectively. The CIA reportedly had secretly placed "sniffing" devices at Dimona that provided intelligence that proved Israel was developing nuclear weapons. The CIA also kept a wary eye on the smaller Israeli nuclear research facility at Nahal Soreq on the Mediterranean coast, although the site was often used by Israeli propagandists to show to the world that Israel's nuclear ambitions were purely peaceful. Soreq NRC was a branch of Shapiro's and the Israeli government's ISORAD. Duckett and his team had asked the AEC in a 1969 to estimate how many nuclear bombs Israel could make if it possessed all the missing uranium from NUMEC.

Ever since the Johnson administration, every U.S. president has followed a policy of "don't ask, don't tell" when it comes to Israel's nuclear weapons. An acknowledgement by the United States of Israel's nuclear arsenal would not only spur demands for Israel to open its program to international inspection but also focus on the covert methods by which Israel obtained the materials for its nuclear program. However, on a few occasions, U.S. intelligence and military documents have pointed to Israel's nuclear weapons program. The Post article cites a CIA document that was "inadvertently" made public in 1974. The document states: "We believe Israel already had produced nuclear weapons. Our judgment is based on Israeli acquisition of large quantities of uranium, partly by clandestine means."

One of the reasons that Israel is preventing Israeli nuclear scientist Mordechai Vanunu from emigrating from Israel is the knowledge the scientist undoubtedly possesses of Israel's clandestine nuclear technology acquisition program, including its work with apartheid South Africa and Taiwan in developing nuclear weapons outside the framework of the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. Vanunu was kidnapped by Mossad agents in Rome and tried and sentenced him in a secret tribunal in Israel for providing photographs of Israeli's Dimona nuclear weapons site to the Sunday Times of London. Israeli Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion had claimed the facility was a "textile factory." Vanunu, who worked at Dimona, was sentenced to 18 years in solitary confinement. Vanunu now leads a Kafkaesque existence in Israel and although he converted to Christianity from Judaism in 1985, Vanunu, a native of Morocco, is prevented from leaving Israel for Australia or the United States.

A longtime CIA operative told WMR that, ideally, the United States should offer to swap convicted Israeli spy Jonathan Pollard for Vanunu. Ironically, Pollard's Israeli control officer during his espionage for Israel while working for U.S. Naval Intelligence, was Eitan, who later became the head of an Israeli government owned chemical company. Eitan now leads the Gil pensioners' party in the Israeli Knesset. The failure to offer Pollard for Vanunu by successive U.S. administrations points to the power that Israel has over the U.S. decision-making process. In this case, what is good for America is not good for Israel and the loyalty of the Israel Lobby in Washington genuflects to what is good for Israel.

During Pollard's espionage for Israel in the 1980s, the FBI identified California businessman Richard K. Smyth in a scheme to ship 810 "krytrons," electronic triggers for nuclear weapons, to Israel. Smyth fled the United States after his federal indictment in May 1985. Babcock & Wilson Company, which took over the Apollo plant from NUMEC, continued to report the loss of enriched uranium.

Shapiro eventually went to work for Westinghouse's nuclear fuel division and he served as a consultant to the CIA.

With the revelations about the cooperation between the Turkish "Deep State" and Israeli in nuclear proliferation networks brought to light by former FBI translator Sibel Edmonds, as well as what is known about the CIA brass plate counter-proliferation operations of Brewster Jennings and Associates and Valerie Plame Wilson, there is no reason to believe that Israel has stopped its aggressive acquisition of nuclear materials and technology from the United States and other countries. Shapiro's and the Israeli government's ISORAD later inked a fuel contract with a Turkish entity called Global Fluids International SA. ISORAD has also developed links with the Chinese and Indian nuclear programs. The Post article maintained in the CIA archives quotes John Davitt, the head of the Justice Department's internal security section until 1980, as saying that Israeli intelligence was "more active than anyone but the KGB . . . They were targeted on the United States about half the time and on Arab countries about half the time."

Documented evidence that individuals with AIPAC, the Defense Technology Security Administration (DTSA), and the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs (JINSA), as well as successive "science advisers" at the Israeli embassy in Washington and the Israeli Consulate General in New York have been involved in espionage activities in the United States indicates that not much has changed since Davitt identified the Israeli intelligence threat during his time at the Justice Department.

The Shame and Cowardice of the Chickenhawk

by Bob Wallace



The usual definition of a chickenhawk is someone who supports war but actively avoids fighting. Whenever I think of one, what comes to my mind are Young Republicans, but also leftists, who are just as bad if not worse.

A writer, whose name unfortunately completely escapes me, said the aforementioned definition is not totally accurate. A better one is that a chickenhawk is someone who believes supporting war is a sign of his personal bravery and patriotism, and is convinced that those who oppose war, for whatever principled and thoughtful reasons, are always cowards and traitors.

Still, chickenhawks are cowards. Why, then, can they not see what they are?

There is only one reason: They deceive themselves as to what they truly are. They idealize themselves as proud, brave and patriotic, while others, more clear-sighted, see them for what they are: cowards who will do nothing except stand on the sidelines and yell, "Okay, throw the ball here! Now throw it over there!"

When people refuse to see their bad qualities (what Jung called their Shadows), there is only one thing they can do to protect their self-delusion: project those qualities on other people. Here is an example: when leftists talk about "hate" (which they do all the time), they are projecting their own unacknowledged hate onto other people.

Chickenhawks are the same: They cannot acknowledge their own cowardice, so they must project it onto others. Those Others, to the chickenhawk, are the cowards and traitors, not the chickenhawk.

Yet, the chickenhawk must know, somewhere deep inside, that he is a coward, and so has to be ashamed of himself. How does he cover up his shame? With pride. Pride on top, hiding shame underneath.

The first time I ran across that formulation of pride covering shame was in John le Carre's novel, The Spy Who Came in from the Cold, when he wrote of Leamas' "protective arrogance concealing shame."

Plato once wrote, "The cause of all sins in every case lies in the person's excessive love of self." I wouldn't call what he's writing about "self love." Excessive pride, arrogance, grandiosity, yes, but not self-love.

The social researcher James Gilligan, who spent 35 years dealing with prisoners, wrote, "Shame . . . motivates not confession but concealment of whatever one feels ashamed of." Guilt, he writes, can on the other hand lead to confession and penance.

He also writes, “…people who feel ashamed typically attempt to diminish that painful feeling both by assuming attitudes of arrogance, self-importance, and boastfulness.”

We'll never see confession and penance from chickenhawks, because they have no guilt. And it's a lot easier to admit guilt than shame. And chickenhawks' shame and cowardice is something they will not, cannot, admit. So they project it onto others: “You should be ashamed of yourself for being a coward who’s not supporting our country and its wars.”

I believe the average chickenhawk must be exceptionally narcissistic, which is correctly defined as splitting things into all-good and all-bad – idealization and devaluation. The chickenhawk has to see himself as all good (brave and patriotic), so his own unacknowledged badness (his cowardice) has to be projected onto others.

The late M. Scott Peck, a psychiatrist, called this kind of projection “the genesis of human evil.” If he’s correct, and I believe he is, then what chickenhawks are doing, in their self-deception, their unacknowledged cowardice, their arrogance and grandiosity, and their scapegoating of the innocent, is evil.

I sometimes wonder if chickenhawks ever think about how they would handle combat. I think they'd do what a soldier friend of mine saw another soldier do: brag to everyone how tough and brave he was (pride), but when the first shot was fired, he turned and ran (shaming himself).

It's probably a good thing chickenhawks aren't in the military: their cowardice and incompetence would probably get innocent soldiers killed. No, not probably. Would.

There's an old saying -- and I have no idea where it's from -- that the best warriors are the least war-like. I will nod and agree with it.

Why in the world anyone listens to chickenhawks is beyond me. Would anyone in his right mind listen to any coward about anything? All of them should be laughed at and ridiculed into silence -- because the one thing no coward can stand is to be laughed at.

Do the CIA and Mossad have both sides of coin covered in Iran?

Recent reports that Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad hails from a Persian Jewish family with the surname Sabourjian, which translates from the "weaver of the sabour," sabour being the Persian Jewish prayer shawl, has intelligence agents all over the Middle East wondering if Ahmadinejad, with his bluster about there being no Holocaust and his reviling of Zionism, is just not too good to be true for those who want to attack Iran and overthrow the Islamic Republic. Ahmadinejad's father, Ahmad, did change the family's name from Sabourjian to Ahmadinejad, some say to hide the family's Jewish roots by adopting a Muslim name.

Of course, having Jewish roots in no way makes Ahmadinejad some sort of secret agent for the Mossad. However, the reports could undermine Ahmadinejad's standing among the more radical members of the Iranian Islamic leadership.

Ahmadinejad is linked politically to the Supreme Ayatollah Sayyid Ali Hoseyni Khamenei. However, according to an undated CIA document titled "Recent Developments in Iran," that appears to be from the time of the Iraq-Iran war of the 1980s, Khamenei is linked to the group of mullahs that included Mir Hossein Mousavi, Ahmadinejad's losing challenger in the recent Iranian presidential election. Mousavi served as Prime Minister under then-President Khamenei in the 1980s. More significantly, Mousavi, who received a great deal of financial support from groups associated with George Soros and his CIA-linked "foundations" during the recent presidential election campaign, was part and parcel of the Iranian end of the Iran-contra affair. Mousavi played a key role in freeing the American hostages in Lebanon in return for secret U.S. military aid in Iran's war against the forces of Saddam Hussein, who was also secretly backed by the Americans.

Another member of the Khamenei bloc, according to the CIA document, was Ayatollah Mohammad Reza Mahdavi Kani, now the Secretary General of the Combatant Clergy Association. Kani's colleague in the bloc, according to the CIA document, was Ayatollah Abdul-Karim Mousavi Ardabili, the head of the Iranian judiciary under Ayatollah Khomeini, who was, along with Khamenei, Rafsanjani, and Ayatollah Seyyed Mohammad Hosseini Beheshti, believed by many in Iran and abroad of having pre- and post-revolution links to the CIA. Beheshti was killed, along with over 70 other members of his Islamic Republican Party on June 28, 1981 in a terrorist bombing carried out by the neocon-supported Mohajedin-e-Khalq (MEK), the favorrite Iranian terrorist group of Richard Perle and Michael Ledeen. Beheshti was close to Mohamad Khatami, who would later become a moderate president of Iran, and Khomeini.

One of Ledeen's associates, Manucher Ghorbanifar, an Iranian Jew who lived mostly in Rome, was a key middleman in the supply of U.S. weapons to Iran in the Iran-contra scandal. Ghorbanifar also became a key interlocutor in the lead-up to the U.S. attack and occupation of Iraq and his involvement is suspected in the forged Niger "yellowcake" uranium documents that were partially used to justify the attack on Iraq.

According to the CIA document, the Khamenei-Mousavi bloc was oposed by the bloc of Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, a former president and, ironically, a backer of Mousavi in the recent election. Rafsanjani was also a key player in the Iran-contra affair and is suspected of receiving gifts from top Reagan administration officials in cementing the Iranian end of the Iran-contra operational pipeline. Also associated with the Rafsanjani bloc was Grand Ayatollah Hosein-Ali Montazeri, a once-powerful and quite liberal mullah who was exiled to Qom and house arrest by Khamenei. Earlier, Montazeri's chief aide, Mehdi Hashemi, was accused of leaking information on Rafsanjani's connections to the Iran-contra scandal and he was executed as a counter-revolutionary in 1987.

It is noteworthy that the CIA document states that the second, Rafsanjani-Montazeri group had the "backing of fanatic terrorist organizations." In fact, the more radical policies came out of the first group that included Khamenei and the now-"moderate" Mousavi. Nevertheless, from the Iran-contra scandal to the secret U.S. arming of Iran, the CIA had its links to both blocs. The relationships built between the CIA and the Khamenei-Mousavi and Rafsanjani blocs in the 1980s may continue with the Khamenei-Ahmadinejad bloc today.

Although the Mossad and CIA were heavily involved in the secret Iran-contra arms shipments to Iran during the 1980s, the CIA document also reveals that an Italian middleman named "Seratore" was involved in secret negotiations to provide Iran with weapons, including tanks from Argentina and armored personnel carriers from Italy.

Netanyahu failed to get back Mossad commandos.

Netanyahu failed to get back Mossad commandos.

Israeli support for rogue regimes brings out the anti-Semitism charges from the usual suspects

As if on cue, the Anti-Defamation League of Israeli excesses apologist Abe Foxman is charging that verified reports of Israeli security assistance to the Honduras coup plotters led by Roberto Micheletti into power in Tegucigalpa smacks of "anti-Semitism." Foxman and his coterie are also charging that statements of ousted Honduran President Manuel Zelaya that Israeli security advisers and mercenaries were involved in supporting the coup are stoking anti-Semitism in Honduras. Venezuela's President Hugo Chavez has also come in for criticism from the ADL zealots who charge that his statement that only Israel recognized the Honduran regime are untrue. In fact, Israel represents the Honduran junta diplomatically in Argentina, which severed relations with the junta.

The diplomatic quid pro quo on Argentine representation between the junta and Israel represents de facto recognition by the Jerusalem authorities of the junta in Tegucigalpa. Since the Republic of China on Taiwan has not extended diplomatic recognition to the junta, that means that Israel is the only nation in the world that has extended recognition to the Micheletti junta. However, for the ADL and its supporters, the truth never matters when it comes to Israel and its flagrant violations of international norms and law.

Documents from the CIA archives illustrate how many times in the past Israel backed regimes that had little, if any, international diplomatic support. Although Israel's nuclear and intelligence relations with the apartheid regime of South Africa are well known, the CIA files have yielded some other interesting facts about Israeli "rogue diplomacy."

A CIA Joint Publication Research Service, Foreign Broadcast Information Service document dated June 15, 1979, contains a briefing that states "an important person from the Israeli Secret Service Mossad recently went to Njamena [sic] [Chad], where he met with Goukouni Oueddei."

Oueddei became dictator of Chad in 1979 after his slow ascendancy to power following the 1975 assassination of Chadian President Francois Tombalbaye. Oueddei quickly became an ally of Libyan leader Muammar Qaddafi. However, the CIA document indicates that Israel and Qaddafi were backing the same horse in Chad, Oueddei. Eventually, Oueddei was ousted by his pro-Western Defense Minister Hissene Habre. Oueddei fled to Tripoli, Libya and exile. The CIA document states that the Mossad official "promised that an important contingent of Israeli commandos would soon be sent to support the Goukouni-Hissene Habre clique in Chad." Habre, who was ousted in 1990 and fled into exile to Senegal, is currently on trial in Dakar for the murder of thousands of Chadians while he was dictator. Habre is known as the "African Pinochet," a reference to the murderous Chilean dictator General Augusto Pinochet who was installed with the help of Henry Kissinger and who was also supported by Israeli intelligence.

Another CIA Joint Publication Research Service, Foreign Broadcast Information Service document dated August 21, 1979, reveals the close links between Israel and Rhodesia, run by a white minority government, recognized by no other state other than apartheid South Africa. The document states "Israel has just established a veritable intelligence network in Salisbury under the direction of a former infantry colonel. This branch of Mossad was set up with the approval of Bishop Muzorewa who asked the Israeli agents to help him track down and eliminate his PF enemies. According to Rhodesian sources, it is possible that Salisbury could become Mossad's main station for the Indian Ocean and southern Africa."

Bishop Abel Muzorewa, who was very pro-Israel, was briefly the Prime Minister of the interim "Zimbabwe-Rhodesia," the nation that followed the "internal settlement" of 1978. The PF, or Patriotic Front, was led by Robert Mugabe, with whom the Zimbabwe-Rhodesia was still battling in a guerrilla war. In 1980, Zimbabwe-Rhodesia became Zimbabwe under the presidency of Mugabe.

Israel's support for the Micheletti regime in Honduras follows decades of Israeli support for some of the world's worst dictators and rogue regimes. Israel and its apologists abhor the facts, however, in the case of Honduras, Chad, and Rhodesia, they speak for themselves.

Maher Zain - Palestine Will Be Free فلسطين سوف تحرر

Cause they even bombed the United Nations...

The Tropes of 'Jewish Antisemitism'

The concept of the 'self-hating Jew' has been dignified with a pseudo-psychopathology by those keen to suppress dissent By Antony Lerman October 05, 2009 "The Guardian" -- - From the moment he took the job heading the UN Human Rights Council's mission to investigate human rights and international humanitarian law violations during the Gaza conflict, it was inevitable that Judge Richard Goldstone, born into a South African Jewish family, would be labelled a "self-hating Jew" and a Jewish antisemite. Immediately on the release in September of his findings, which concluded that both Israel and Hamas had committed war crimes, Israel's finance minister, Yuval Steinitz, couldn't wait to make this accusation. He certainly wasn't alone. The charge is so popular these days that people who use it must have felt as though they had won the lottery when they were presented with such a high-profile target like Goldstone. They were probably still savouring Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's outburst in August when he railed against the two senior and Jewish aides of President Obama, Rahm Emanuel and David Axelrod, calling them "self-hating Jews". If anything finally shows up the concept as bogus and bankrupt, it should be the use of it against Goldstone. Jewish self-hatred means rejecting everything about yourself that is Jewish because it is so hateful to you. As a description of Goldstone, nothing could be further from the truth. A life-long Zionist and a Governor of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Goldstone believes bringing war criminals to justice stems from the lessons of the Holocaust and that the creation of Israel symbolised what the postwar human rights movement was all about. But to those who level the accusation, the real degree of Jewish affiliation of the accused is irrelevant. Now it's quite obvious that calling someone a self-hating Jew in the context of the Israel-Palestine conflict is intended as a demeaning political insult, a way of delegitimising the views of Jews with whom you violently disagree. But one of the reasons why the charge is so ubiquitous and is impervious to evidence and argument that proves it to be bogus is that it's not just used as an epithet. To some scholars and serious commentators, Jewish self-hatred is a proven psychopathological condition, an academically respectable category, and exponents of it can be found throughout history. Their testimony helps to underpin the accusation. Professor Robert Wistrich, who heads an antisemitism research centre at the Hebrew University, accepts the concept without question and taught a course on it. Lord Sacks, Britain's mainstream Orthodox Chief Rabbi, endorsing the concept in his last two books, says it was born in 15th-century Spain. A recent convert to this way of thinking is David Aaronovitch, the Times and Jewish Chronicle columnist, who "discovered" that there was such a thing as a genuine self-hating Jew after encountering the virulently anti-Jewish writings of Otto Weininger, the brilliant young Viennese Jew who converted to Christianity in 1902 and killed himself a year later. And Robin Shepherd, of the Henry Jackson Society, in a thoroughly wrong-headed book out this month subtitled Europe's Problem With Israel, uses the concept to explain why leftwing Jews "publicly turn against Israel". This is sheer intellectual laziness, or an ideological or political predisposition dressed up in academic language, or both. In fact, the way all of the key historical figures from the late 19th and early 20th centuries who are used to prove the existence of Jewish self-hatred – Weininger, Sigmund Freud, Karl Kraus, Heinrich Heine – related to their Jewishness has been shown to be far too complex to allow the self-hating Jew label to be anything other than a crude mis-characterisation. Moreover, the perceived antisemitism in their writings was mirrored in the writings of Zionists, especially the founder of political Zionism Theodor Herzl. He painted the weak ghetto Jew, in his 1897 essay "Mauschel", as "a distortion of the human character, unspeakably mean and repellent", interested only in "mean profit". Far from being the antithesis of Jewish self-hatred, it is arguable that Zionism was actually a display of it. The Jewish self-hatred accusation assumes that there is a correct manner and degree to which people should express their Jewish identities in public; and that there is a particular set of core values and institutions which one should favour. Neither of these assumptions is justifiable on the basis of Jewish teachings or Jewish history. The accusation also assumes that Jewishness "is or should be a primary identity", and therefore to reject it or criticise it is somehow unnatural and wrong. Yet, criticising an aspect of one's identity does not automatically imply criticism of that identity per se. Implied in the concept of Jewish self-hatred is the notion of a Jewish essence. But the long history of the Jews – integral to which is conversion, assimilation, a wide variety of sometimes clashing Jewish identities, the understanding that Jewishness can be any one of or any combination of religion, ethnicity or culture – makes nonsense of such an idea. Those who use the accusation sit in judgment on the Jewishness of others. This might be understandable (though insulting) if you are, say, an Orthodox Zionist Jew. But it's clear that many prominent accusers are not of that persuasion. They are, rather, people who would object very strongly to Orthodox rabbis sitting in judgment when they claim the right to determine who is a Jew. When the self-hating Jew allegation is levelled at someone with the degree of integrity of Judge Goldstone, who takes such pride in his Jewishness, and is orchestrated by the Israeli government and prominent Jewish leaders and commentators, the ugly desperation of the accusers is laid bare. Regrettably, given the appalling state of public debate about antisemitism and Israel-Palestine among Jews, no matter how clearly and how often the charge of Jewish self-hatred is shown to be nothing more than a political and personal insult that demeans the accuser and demonises the accused, it won't be going away any time soon.

The demise of the dollar By Robert Fisk

In a graphic illustration of the new world order, Arab states have launched secret moves with China, Russia and France to stop using the US currency for oil trading

By Robert Fisk

In the most profound financial change in recent Middle East history, Gulf Arabs are planning – along with China, Russia, Japan and France – to end dollar dealings for oil, moving instead to a basket of currencies including the Japanese yen and Chinese yuan, the euro, gold and a new, unified currency planned for nations in the Gulf Co-operation Council, including Saudi Arabia, Abu Dhabi, Kuwait and Qatar.

Secret meetings have already been held by finance ministers and central bank governors in Russia, China, Japan and Brazil to work on the scheme, which will mean that oil will no longer be priced in dollars.

The plans, confirmed to The Independent by both Gulf Arab and Chinese banking sources in Hong Kong, may help to explain the sudden rise in gold prices, but it also augurs an extraordinary transition from dollar markets within nine years.

The Americans, who are aware the meetings have taken place – although they have not discovered the details – are sure to fight this international cabal which will include hitherto loyal allies Japan and the Gulf Arabs. Against the background to these currency meetings, Sun Bigan, China's former special envoy to the Middle East, has warned there is a risk of deepening divisions between China and the US over influence and oil in the Middle East. "Bilateral quarrels and clashes are unavoidable," he told the Asia and Africa Review. "We cannot lower vigilance against hostility in the Middle East over energy interests and security."

This sounds like a dangerous prediction of a future economic war between the US and China over Middle East oil – yet again turning the region's conflicts into a battle for great power supremacy. China uses more oil incrementally than the US because its growth is less energy efficient. The transitional currency in the move away from dollars, according to Chinese banking sources, may well be gold. An indication of the huge amounts involved can be gained from the wealth of Abu Dhabi, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Qatar who together hold an estimated $2.1 trillion in dollar reserves.

The decline of American economic power linked to the current global recession was implicitly acknowledged by the World Bank president Robert Zoellick. "One of the legacies of this crisis may be a recognition of changed economic power relations," he said in Istanbul ahead of meetings this week of the IMF and World Bank. But it is China's extraordinary new financial power – along with past anger among oil-producing and oil-consuming nations at America's power to interfere in the international financial system – which has prompted the latest discussions involving the Gulf states.

Brazil has shown interest in collaborating in non-dollar oil payments, along with India. Indeed, China appears to be the most enthusiastic of all the financial powers involved, not least because of its enormous trade with the Middle East.

China imports 60 per cent of its oil, much of it from the Middle East and Russia. The Chinese have oil production concessions in Iraq – blocked by the US until this year – and since 2008 have held an $8bn agreement with Iran to develop refining capacity and gas resources. China has oil deals in Sudan (where it has substituted for US interests) and has been negotiating for oil concessions with Libya, where all such contracts are joint ventures.

Furthermore, Chinese exports to the region now account for no fewer than 10 per cent of the imports of every country in the Middle East, including a huge range of products from cars to weapon systems, food, clothes, even dolls. In a clear sign of China's growing financial muscle, the president of the European Central Bank, Jean-Claude Trichet, yesterday pleaded with Beijing to let the yuan appreciate against a sliding dollar and, by extension, loosen China's reliance on US monetary policy, to help rebalance the world economy and ease upward pressure on the euro.

Ever since the Bretton Woods agreements – the accords after the Second World War which bequeathed the architecture for the modern international financial system – America's trading partners have been left to cope with the impact of Washington's control and, in more recent years, the hegemony of the dollar as the dominant global reserve currency.

The Chinese believe, for example, that the Americans persuaded Britain to stay out of the euro in order to prevent an earlier move away from the dollar. But Chinese banking sources say their discussions have gone too far to be blocked now. "The Russians will eventually bring in the rouble to the basket of currencies," a prominent Hong Kong broker told The Independent. "The Brits are stuck in the middle and will come into the euro. They have no choice because they won't be able to use the US dollar."

Chinese financial sources believe President Barack Obama is too busy fixing the US economy to concentrate on the extraordinary implications of the transition from the dollar in nine years' time. The current deadline for the currency transition is 2018.

The US discussed the trend briefly at the G20 summit in Pittsburgh; the Chinese Central Bank governor and other officials have been worrying aloud about the dollar for years. Their problem is that much of their national wealth is tied up in dollar assets.

"These plans will change the face of international financial transactions," one Chinese banker said. "America and Britain must be very worried. You will know how worried by the thunder of denials this news will generate."

Iran announced late last month that its foreign currency reserves would henceforth be held in euros rather than dollars. Bankers remember, of course, what happened to the last Middle East oil producer to sell its oil in euros rather than dollars. A few months after Saddam Hussein trumpeted his decision, the Americans and British invaded Iraq.

Jumpin' Jack Verdi, It's a Gas, Gas, Gas Iran and the Pipelineistan Opera By Pepe Escobar

Back before email, a world traveler who wanted to keep in touch and couldn't just pop into the nearest Internet café, might drop you a series of postcards from one exotic locale after another. Pepe Escobar, that edgy, peripatetic globe-trotting reporter for one of my favorite on-line publications, Asia Times, has been doing just that for TomDispatch readers as he explores the geography that undergirds our civilization, the pipelines that crisscross Eurasia through which flow energy -- and trouble. This, then, is his third "postcard" from what he likes to call Pipelineistan. The first in March began laying out a great, ongoing energy struggle across Eurasia via an embattled energy corridor (and a key pipeline) that runs from the Caspian Sea to Europe through Georgia and Turkey -- and the Great Game of business, diplomacy, and proxy war between Russia and the U.S. that has gone with it.

In May, he plunged eastward into tumultuous Central and South Asia and the devolving battleground that, in Washington, goes by the neologism AfPak (for the Afghanistan-Pakistan theater of operations). Now, he heads west toward Europe and another developing struggle, this time over just how natural gas from the Caspian Sea will reach Europe. Think of this as a story that lurks under so many other stories. For instance, this very day, the representatives of Russia, Germany, China, France, Britain, and for the first time, the United States, will be sitting down with Iran's representative in Geneva for what's billed as an historic exchange. On the table -- and in global headlines -- will be the Iranian nuclear program, a previously secret Iranian nuclear site, Iranian medium-range missile tests, sanctions of various sorts, the possibility of future attacks on that country's nuclear establishment, and so on. What won't be in the headlines, or the accompanying reams of analysis, is the approximately 15% of the world's natural gas deposits Iran controls. As it happens, for the Europeans and the Russians (and so for Washington), that's the story hidden under the Iranian imbroglio, which is why we need Pepe Escobar. Tom

Jumpin' Jack Verdi, It's a Gas, Gas, Gas

Iran and the Pipelineistan Opera
By Pepe Escobar

Brussels -- Oil and natural gas prices may be relatively low right now, but don't be fooled. The New Great Game of the twenty-first century is always over energy and it's taking place on an immense chessboard called Eurasia. Its squares are defined by the networks of pipelines being laid across the oil heartlands of the planet. Call it Pipelineistan. If, in Asia, the stakes in this game are already impossibly high, the same applies to the "Euro" part of the great Eurasian landmass -- the richest industrial area on the planet. Think of this as the real political thriller of our time.

The movie of the week in Brussels is: When NATO Meets Pipelineistan. Though you won't find it in any headlines, at virtually every recent NATO summit Washington has been maneuvering to involve reluctant Europeans ever more deeply in the business of protecting Pipelineistan. This is already happening, of course, in Afghanistan, where a promised pipeline from Turkmenistan to Pakistan and India, the TAPI pipeline, has not even been built. And it's about to happen at the borders of Europe, again around pipelines that have not yet been built.

If you had to put that Euro part of Pipelineistan into a formula, you might do so this way: Nabucco (pushed by the U.S.) versus South Stream (pushed by Russia). Be patient. You'll understand in a moment.

At the most basic level, it's a matter of the West yet again trying, in the energy sphere, to bypass Russia. For this to happen, however -- and it wouldn't hurt if you opened the nearest atlas for a moment -- Europe desperately needs to get a handle on Central Asian energy resources, which is easy to say but has proven surprisingly hard to do. No wonder the NATO Secretary General's special representative, Robert Simmons, has been logging massive frequent-flyer miles to Central Asia over these last few years.

Just under the surface of an edgy entente cordiale between the European Union (EU) and Russia lurks the possibility of a no-holds-barred energy war -- Liquid War, as I call it. The EU and the U.S. are pinning their hopes on a prospective 3,300-kilometer-long, $10.7 billion pipeline dubbed Nabucco. Planning for it began way back in 2004 and construction is finally expected to start, if all goes well (and it may not), in 2010. So if you're a NATO optimist, you hope that natural gas from the Caspian Sea, maybe even from Iran (barring the usual American blockade), will begin flowing through it by 2015. The gas will be delivered to Erzurum in Turkey and then transported to Austria via Bulgaria, Romania, and Hungary.

Why, you might ask, is the pipeline meant to save Europe named for a Verdi opera? Well, Austrian and Turkish energy executives happened to see the opera together in Vienna in 2002 while discussing their energy dilemmas, and the biblical plight of the Jews exiled by King Nabucco (Nebuchadnezzar), a love story set amid a ferocious struggle for freedom and power, swept them away. Still, it's a stretch to turn aluminum tubes into dramatic characters.

Of course, the operatic theater here isn't really in the tubing, it's in the politics and strategic implications that surround the pipeline. In Eastern Europe, for instance, Nabucco is seen not as a European economic or energy project, but as a creature of Washington, just like the Baku-Tblisi-Ceyhan (BTC) pipeline from Azerbaijan to Turkey that President Bill Clinton and his crew backed so vigorously in the 1990s and which was finally finished in 2005. For those who have never believed the Cold War is over -- the Eastern Europeans among them -- once again it's the good guys (the West) against the commies... sorry, the Russians... at an energy-rich OK Corral.

The Great Borderless Gas Bazaar

Russia's answer to Nabucco is the 1,200-kilometer-long, $15 billion South Stream pipeline, also scheduled to be finished in 2015; it is slated to carry Siberian natural gas under the Black Sea from Russia to Bulgaria. From Bulgaria, one branch of the pipeline would then run south through Greece to southern Italy while the other would run north through Serbia and Hungary towards northern Italy.

Now, add another pipeline to the picture, the $9.1 billion Nord Stream that will soon enough snake from Western Russia under the Baltic Sea to Germany, which already imports 41.5% of its natural gas from Russia. The giant Russian energy firm Gazprom holds a controlling 51% of Nord Stream stock; the rest belongs to German and Dutch companies. The chairman of the board is none other than former German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder.

Put this all together and Russia, with its pipelines running in all directions and firmly embedded in Europe, spells trouble for Nabucco's future and frustration for Washington's New Great Game plans to contain the Russian energy juggernaut. And that's without even mentioning Ukhta which, chances are, you've never heard of. If you aren't in the energy business, why should you have? After all, it's a backwater village in Russia's autonomous republic of Komi, 350 kilometers from the Arctic Circle. Built by forced labor, it was once part of Alexander Solzhenitsyn's Gulag archipelago. By 2030, however, you'll know its name. By then, a pipeline from remote Ukhta will be flooding Europe with natural gas and the village will be one of Nord Stream's key transit nodes.

While Nabucco as well as South Stream remain virtual, Nord Stream is a Terminator on the run. By 2010, it will be tunneling under the Baltic Sea heading for Germany. By 2011, it should be delivering the goods and a second pipe -- 12 meters wide, 100,000 tubes long -- will be under construction to double its capacity by 2014. Gazprom CEO Alexei Miller pulls no punches: this, he says, will be "the safest and most modern pipeline in the world."

How can Verdi lovers possibly compete? In the middle of a global recession, Gazprom is spending at least $20 billion to conquer Europe via Nord and South Stream. The strategy is a killer: pump gas under the sea directly to Europe, avoiding messy transit routes across troublesome countries like Ukraine. No wonder Gazprom, which today controls 26% of the European gas market, is expected to have a 33% share by 2020.

In other words, in many ways, the Nabucco versus South Stream energy war already looks settled. Nabucco is, at best, likely to be a secondary pipeline, incapable, as Washington once hoped, of breaking the EU away from energy dependence on Russia.

Brussels, predictably, is in its usual multilingual policy mess. Most bureaucrats at its monster, directive-churning body, the European Commission, publicly bemoan the "pipeline war." On the other hand, Ona Jukneviciene, chairwoman of the committees at the European Parliament dealing with Central Asia, admits that Nabucco cannot be the only option.

As for Reinhard Mitschek, managing director of the Nabucco consortium, he tries to put a brave face on things when he stresses, "we will transport Russian gas, Azeri gas, Iraqi gas." As for the top European official on energy matters, Andris Piebalgs, he can't help being a pragmatist: "We'll continue to work with Russia because Russia has energy resources."

From a business point of view, it's tough to argue with South Stream's selling points. Unlike Nabucco, it will offer cheaper, all-Russian natural gas that won't have to transit through potential war zones, and while Nabucco will always deliver limited amounts of Caspian natural gas to market, South Stream, given Russian resources, will have plenty of room to increase its output.

The fact is that, as of now, Nabucco still has no guaranteed sources of gas. In order for the gas to come from energy-rich Turkmenistan, to take but one example, the Turkmen leadership would have to break a deal they've already made with Russia, which now buys all of that country's export gas. There's no way that Moscow is likely to let one of the former Soviet Republics do that easily. In addition, both Russia and Iran could well be capable of blocking any pipeline straddling the floor of the Caspian Sea.

Gazprom will pay to build South Stream, and then distribute and sell gas it already controls to Europe; Nabucco, on the other hand, has to rely on a messy consortium of six countries (Austria, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria, Turkey, and Germany) simply to finance one-third of its prospective costs, and then convince wary international bankers to shell out the rest.

The Pentagon does the Black Sea

So what does Washington want out of this mess? That's easy. Rewind to then-prospective Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in her Senate confirmation hearings on January 13, 2009. There, she decried Europe's dependence on Russian natural gas and issued an urgent call for "investments in the Trans-Caspian energy sector." Think of it as a signal: The new Obama administration would be as committed to Nabucco as the Bush administration had been.

What is never spelled out is why. Enter the Black Sea, that crucial geo-strategic stage where Europe meets the Middle East, the Caucasus, and Central Asia. Enter, thus, Bulgaria, home to a new Pentagon air base in Bezmer, one of six new strategic bases being built outside the U.S. and as potentially important to Washington's future games as the stalwart air bases in Incirlik, Turkey, and Aviano, Italy have been in the past. (Aviano was the key U.S./NATO base for the bombing of the Bosnian Serbs in 1995 and the 78-day bombing campaign against Serbia in 1999.)

With the Pentagon's bases already creeping within a stone's throw of Southwest and Central Asia, it doesn't take a genius to imagine the role Bezmer might play in any future attack on Iran (something the Russian defense establishment has already taken careful note of). With both Romania and Bulgaria now part of NATO, Article 5 of the alliance's charter now applies. NATO can take action "in the event of crises which jeopardize Euro-Atlantic stability and could affect the security of Alliance members."

In this way, Pipelineistan meets the American Empire of Bases.

Young Turks and Wily Russians

Why is everyone so damn hooked on Central Asian oil and gas? Elshad Nasirov, deputy chairman of the state-owned Azerbaijani oil company SOCAR, sums the addiction up succinctly enough: "This is the place where there is oil and gas in abundance. It is not Arab, not Persian, not Russian, and not OPEC."

It's the Caspian and, unfortunately for Europe, the region could, in energy terms, turn out to be not the caviar for which it's renowned but so many rotten fish eggs. No one knows, after all, whether the EU will ever be able to buy Iranian gas via Nabucco. No one knows whether the Central Asian "stans" have enough gas to supply Russia, China, and Turkey, not to mention India and Pakistan. No one knows whether any of their leaders will have the nerve to renege on their deals with Gazprom.

Ever since a 2008 British study determined that Turkmenistan may have natural gas reserves second only to Russia on the planet, the European Commission has been on a no-holds-barred tear to lure that country into delivering some of its future gas directly to Europe -- and not through the Russian pipeline system either. Turkmenistan's inscrutable leader, the spectacularly named Gurbanguly Berdymukhammedov, just has to say the word, but despite the claims of EU officials that he has agreed to send some gas Europe-wards, he's never offered a public word of confirmation. No wonder: with Nabucco unbuilt and a pipeline from his country to China still under construction, Turkmenistan can play Pipelineistan games only with Russia and Iran. In fact, Russia essentially controls the flow of Turkmen gas for the next 15 years.

Should Gurbanguly someday say the magic word -- and assuming the Russians don't throw a monkey wrench into the works -- he can marry Turkey, as the key transit country, with the EU and let them all sing Verdi till the sheep come home. In the meantime, angst is the name of the game in Europe (and so in Washington).

A declassified dossier from the FSB, the Russian heir to the KGB, is adamant: considering Nabucco's shortcomings, "Russia will remain the primary supplier of energy to Europe for the foreseeable future." Call it a matter of having your gas and processing it, too. Prime Minister Vladimir Putin has been making the point for years. If Europe tries to snub it, Russia will simply build its own liquefied natural gas (LNG) plants, to facilitate storage and transport, and sell its LNG all over the world.

Anyway it's worth paying attention to what the St. Petersburg State Mining Institute (where Putin earned his doctorate) has to say. According to the institute, Russia has only 20 years' worth of its own natural gas reserves left. Since Russia plans to sell up to 40% of its gas abroad, "Russian" gas may in the future actually mean Central Asian gas. All the more reason for the Russians to make sure that those massive Turkmen and other reserves flow north, not west.

Whatever Washington thinks, the Europeans know that energy independence from Russia is, in reality, inconceivable. Bottom line when it comes to natural gas: Europe needs everything -- Nord Stream, South Stream, and Nabucco. The bulk of the natural gas in this Pipelineistan maze may well turn out to be Central Asian anyway and a substantial part could be Iranian, if the Obama administration ever normalizes relations with Iran.

That, then, is the current state of play in the European wing of Pipelineistan. Russia seems to have virtually guaranteed its status as the top gas supplier to Europe for the foreseeable future. But that brings us to Turkey, a key regional power for both the U.S. and the EU. As President Obama has recognized, Turkey is both a real and a metaphorical bridge between the Christian and Muslim worlds. It is also an ideal transit country for carrying non-Russian gas to Europe and is now playing its own suitably complex Pipelineistan game.

Chances are that, like Ukhta in far off Siberia, you've never heard of Yumurtalik either. It's a fishing port squeezed between the Mediterranean Sea and the Taurus mountains, very close to Ceyhan, the terminal for two key nodes of Pipelineistan: the Kirkuk-Ceyhan pipeline from Iraq and the monster BTC pipeline. Turkey wants to turn Yumurtalik-Ceyhan into nothing less than the Rotterdam of the Mediterranean.

Even as it dreams of future EU membership, however, Turkey worries about antagonizing Moscow. And yet, being aboard the Nabucco Express and already fully committed to the functioning BTC pipeline puts the country on a potential collision course with Russia, its largest trading partner. Of course, this does not displease Washington.

On the other hand, the Turkish leadership draws ever closer to Iran, which provides 38% of Turkey's oil and 25% of its natural gas. Ankara and Tehran also have geopolitical affinities (especially in fighting Kurdish separatism). Together, they offer the best alternative to the Caucasus (Azerbaijan, Georgia) in terms of supplying Europe with Iranian natural gas. All this, of course, drives Washington nuts.

Needless to say, the Nabucco consortium itself would kill to have Iran as a gas supplier for the pipeline. They are also familiar with realpolitik: this could happen only with a Washington-blessed solution to the Iranian nuclear dossier. Iran, for its part, knows well how to seduce Europe. Mohammad-Reza Nematzadeh, managing director of the National Iranian Oil Company (NIOC), has insisted Iran is Europe's "sole option" for the success of Nabucco.

Is Russia just watching all this gas go by? Of course not. In October 2007, Putin signed a key agreement with Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad: If Iran cannot sell its gas to Nabucco -- a likelihood given the turbulence of American domestic politics and its foreign policy -- Russia will buy it. Translation: Iranian gas could end up, like Central Asian gas, heading for Europe as more "Russian" gas. With its European and Iranian policies at cross-purposes, Washington will not be amused.

When Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan threatened to "rethink Nabucco" if the tricky negotiations for Turkey to enter the EU drag on forever, EU leaders got the message (as much as France and Germany may be against a "Europe without borders"). Pragmatically, most EU leaders know very well that they need excellent relations with Turkey to one day have access to the Big Prize, Iranian gas; and that puts Europe's energy and EU membership inclinations at loggerheads.

Last July in Ankara, Nabucco was formally launched by an inter-governmental agreement. The representatives of Turkey, Austria, Bulgaria, Romania and Hungary were there. Obama's special Eurasian envoy, Richard Morningstar (a veteran of the BTC adventure), was there as well. The Central Asian stans were not there.

But crucially, Gurbanguly, ever the showman, finally made an entrance without ever leaving Turkmenistan, (almost) uttering the magic words in a meeting with his ministers in the capital, Ashgabat, on July 10th: "Turkmenistan, staying committed to the principles of diversification of supply of its energy resources to the world markets, is going to use all available opportunities to participate in major international projects -- such as, for example, [the] Nabucco project."

At the Vienna headquarters of Nabucco the mantra remains: this is "no anti-Russian project." Still, everyone knows that Russia's leaders are eager to kill it, and not a soul from Brussels to Vienna, Washington to Ashgabat, knows how to link Central Asia to Europe via a non-Russian pipeline, at the cost of more than $10 billion, without some assurance that Turkmeni, Kazakh, Azerbaijani, and/or Iranian natural gas will be fully (or even partially) on board. Who would be foolish enough to invest that kind of money without some guarantee that hundreds of miles of aluminum tubes won't remain empty? You don't need Verdi to tell you this is one hell of a quirky plot for a global opera.

Pepe Escobar is the roving correspondent for Asia Times and analyst for the Real News. His latest book is Obama Does Globalistan. He may be reached at pepeasia@yahoo.com.

Copyright 2009 Pepe Escobar