More Food For Thought
If a cannibal kept assuring you that you were on his dinner menu as soon as he got all his knives sharpened, wouldn’t you consider that a real enough threat to attack the cannibal first? Or would you wait until he started carving a roast off your flank?
Iran has claimed a test firing of 9 missiles including long-range (1250 miles) “Shahab” missiles capable of carrying a nuke to Israel although a “senior US defense official” said that only seven were launched on Wednesday, not nine as claimed. This is very likely true as Iran has a consistent history of exaggerating the facts for the sole purpose of taunting their enemies. They’ve made it very clear that they intend to wipe Israel off the map, have repeatedly said so, have developed the missiles capable of delivering the death blows and are steadily progressing toward building nuclear weapons for the missiles to carry.
So will Israel wait until the Iranians actually detonate nukes in Israel, or will they attact pre-emptively? One of the two will happen.
The financiers of our planet seem to expect the latter, as crude-oil futures Friday soared more than $5 to a new all-time high above $147 a barrel, rallying on speculation that Israel may be nearer to launching an attack on Iran and on worries that supplies in Nigeria and Brazil may be disrupted.
Most of the current upward pressure is about Iran, but there’s concern about more violence likely in Nigeria from the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta, “MEND”, and an oil workers strike looming in Brazil. While Iran is the worlds 4th largest producer of oil, that’s not as much as it sounds, since that’s only 5% of the total global production, but it’s enough to drive changes in the market.
Before the price of oil skyrocketed, war with Iran was financially unthinkable because of the degree of price increase that would result. Now, however, the loss of Irans oil is less important in terms of price increases. The previous spectre of oil at $150 or $200 a barrel as a result of such a war has already faded into the light of the reality of those prices now, and it’s only been this economic fear that’s prevented war.
Iran is deliberately provoking this war, to bring about “the return of the hidden Imam”, a crackpot religious belief that supposedly ends with the entire world being converted forcibly to Islam, and they will have it one way or another. We know it, too, and all these efforts at diplomacy have only allowed Iran to progress further toward their goal.
July 11th, 2008 at 4:49 pm
That Nigerian group are one of the few terrorist groups whose aims I have some sympathy for. Those that live in the oil rich area should see some of the benefits in my view. I see that our utter arse of a PM has just made things worse. Why the hell should we support the Nigerian govt?
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/africa/brown-blunders-in-pledge-to-secure-nigeria-oil-865035.html
Curious that despite our relative powerlessness, Afghanistan, Iraq, Iran and large parts of the Africa and the Middle East still view the UK as the big evil, 2nd only to the US. I suppose people who still bring up the crusades in any argument must have very long memories.
Off topic but you might like to fulminate on this:
http://www.hurryupharry.org/2008/07/10/were-being-sued-by-hamas-uk/#comment-205185
Hamas UK? Why is there such a thing? We must be stark raving mad.
July 11th, 2008 at 5:30 pm
LOL, so you’d send a donation in the name of Mr. Pikey Scum, eh?
The Crusades argument is a load. The whole purpose of them was to wrest the Holy Lands, which were forever Jewish, back from the Muslims who stole them. Guilt over the Crusades is bullshit. It’s just too bad they didn’t succeed.
And while I agree that oil revenues should be shared with the impoverished population, your government doesn’t do that for you, instead they tax holy hell out of you to where you pay $8 a gallon, yet I don’t see you launching terrorist attacks because of it. All that succeeds in doing is creating yet more poverty, misery and death while it helps drive up oil costs even higher, which those impoverished citizens also have to pay for, and drives up their food costs as well, making things even worse.
Instead of attacking the oil supply they should be attacking the corrupt government officials and killing them off. Then something might get done.
July 11th, 2008 at 5:59 pm
Unfortunately, criminal elements have become involved in the Nigerian Delta as they do in any political struggle, the IRA and UDA were nothing more than bunches of thugs running protection rackets in the end, the fate of Northern Ireland was quite secondary. I am not defending kidnappings of oil workers and others but in the earlier days they were never ill treated.
Easier said than done to actually get at government officials, as here in the West they afford themselves massive protection at the expense of their citizens while leaving those same citizens at the mercy of revenge attacks for their actions. In practice, saying those in the Delta should only attack the authorities concerned leaves them with no other option but to accept their fate.
TBH, Western oil workers are not innocent bystanders but a part of the problem. They are not fools and accept risks in return for financial reward knowing full well that the companies they work for are colluding with a corrupt regime to rape the riches of that area and give almost nothing to its inhabitants.
We think carefully before supporting unjust regimes for short term gain. Forget morality, it’s a matter of practicality. Those regimes do not always last and then comes the reckoning. Would Iran be the problem it is today without the idiotic actions of the US/UK in fostering the 1957 coup? I doubt it.
July 11th, 2008 at 6:52 pm
French find some sense. Wahee
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/worldnews/article-1034412/Veiled-Muslim-woman-denied-French-citizenship-amid-concerns-radical-religious-views.html
July 11th, 2008 at 7:19 pm
Can’t agree. Difficulty in attacking politicians over ease of attacking oil workers is no excuse for doing the latter. A lot of those oil workers are imported from countries with few opportunities. They probably are told a mountain of lies about conditions, as well, to get them there.
The corrupt politicians are the ones who should suffer, and just because they’re harder to hit is no excuse to go after easier but less guilty targets. All this is doing is making lives a lot worse for everyone else who lives in Nigeria, and they have enough Kwasiorkor babies now.
I think about 3 months of total global anarchy would be just about right to clean everything up and get a nice fresh new start, you know?
As for the French, every time the French language reminds me of the braying of donkeys, they turn around and do something smarter than the rest of us. It confounds Hell out of me, I gotta tell you.
Isn’t that a fine ass on that gal? Now I know why they call them ass-ets.
July 12th, 2008 at 4:43 pm
Ah well, we agree about the ass-ets.
July 12th, 2008 at 4:46 pm
Another off topic but you might “like” this
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/7503519.stm
Nice neighbours, dunno though, talking of neighbours I could use one of those Mexican hitmen.
July 13th, 2008 at 11:18 pm
Those of you who do not believe Peak Oil Theory should first make sure you fully understand it. According to this theory, after a reservoir has been depleted by half of its total volume, the output begins to plateau or remain constant for some unknown period. At some later time (which is unpredictable) the output begins a permanent decline of variable duration (which is also unpredictable) until the remaining quantity of oil is no longer economically feasible to extract with current technology. Therefore, Peak Oil Theory does not state that the earth is running out of oil. It states that the earth is running out of inexpensive oil, otherwise known as conventional oil – the high-grade oil that comes out by drilling on land and requires minimal refinement costs.
What this means is that there is enough total oil (conventional plus non-conventional) say for the next 100 years, but that does not matter. What really matters is how much conventional oil reservoirs remain because this is the lowest cost oil to produce. In other words, Peak Oil is concerned with how much crude we can produce and refine per given day per dollar.
The United States reached its peak oil period in the early 1970s. Ever since that time, it has relied more and more on foreign oil imports. Interestingly, since that time the US have also relied more and more on imported goods, while both consumer and federal debt have ballooned. According to many independent (and unbiased) oil experts, the world will soon have reached, or may already have reached this peak oil period, causing even more dependence on exploration for non-conventional oil.
Over the past two decades, new conventional oil finds around the world have been far and few. And what was once thought as large finds have turned out to yield much less than first thought. Throughout this period oil demand has continued to increase. It has especially strengthened over the past few years due to the rapid expansion of Asia .
As demand has increased and new finds have diminished, OPEC has fudged oil reserves data for many years, causing concerns about Peak Oil to remain hidden up until recently. As a result, oil prices have soared. And this has made exploration for non-conventional oil not only more feasible, but mandatory. Consequently, over the past few years, the world has become increasingly reliant on more non-conventional oil sources, such as tar and oil sands and deep water drilling. These are considered non-conventional sources because they require large expenditures of money and energy to produce finished petroleum products. Three variables – increased demand and decreased supplies of conventional oil, and speculation by Wall Street entities on unregulated futures markets, have been the main forces responsible for record oil prices. Wall Street parasitic entities speculating in the futures markets are causing global starvation to feed their greed. Over the past year, oil has also risen due to the inflationary effects from the Federal Reserve, which has weakened the dollar. The dollar-oil link explains many things.
Oil industry giants such as Exxon continue to insist that we have plenty of oil for decades, but then add that more investments are needed for offshore exploration. What they are really saying is that higher oil prices are due to Peak Oil – the decline in conventional oil reservoirs, which is forcing companies to focus on non-conventional oil. They use word games to hide the truth because they realize any possibility of Peak Oil will cause a push for alternative energy, which would threaten their monopoly. OPEC plays the same game. Washington goes along with these fantasies as well for a much bigger reason – to preserve the dollar-oil link.
As long as the world is dependent on oil, the dollar remains backed by crude since you can only buy it with the dollar (with one rare exception to be mentioned shortly). This dollar-oil link helps keep the dollar as the universal currency. And because the entire world must use the dollar, you can understand how that dilutes the inflationary effects seen in America due to the Fed’s printing presses. Thus, the dollar-oil link ensures the Fed’s inflation machine is spread throughout the globe. Without the dollar’s link to oil, the inflation seen in America would be much more severe. The holding of dollars internationally ensures the export globally of US Fed engineered inflation, which returns to bite the ass of US population, with higher commodity prices.
This is the secret that virtually no one realizes. It is not a conspiracy. It is a fact. The conspiracies lie in the military-industrial complex that has grown up in the US in order to project the military power globally to protect this dollar-oil link. And the few in Washington who realize it are never going to admit it. But consider why it is that America has such good relations with the Saudis. After all, it was President Nixon who negotiated with the Saudi Royal family to demand dollar payments for oil shortly after severing the finally link to the gold standard. (Or rather it was Kissinger, of CFR, and Trilateral affiliations, in the back of a taxi who came up with the proposals of mutual convenience for the two countries, - an altogether brilliant concept that ensured Americas global domination for decades to come, and when explored in detail, explains so much of todays global machinations.)
Soon after all of OPEC followed suit. In exchange for the dollar-oil link, the Saudi Royal family receives the protection of the U.S. military. This is why the Saudis are rarely criticized by Washington . They have earned a blanket exception for virtually anything they do, including involvement in terrorism and yes, even including holding down oil output.
The Saudis know well that they have a good deal of control over the fate of the U.S. economy. Given the fact that Iran has now created an oil exchange (Iranian Oil Bourse, March 2006) that accepts only the Euro, you should understand why they want nuclear weapons – for protection against a U.S. attack. As Iran realizes, severing the dollar-oil link is the easiest way to destroy the U.S. And any nation that tries to do this will be dealt with accordingly. Saddam Hussein tried to sell oil accepting only the Euro in 2000 and we know what happened to him. As well, any committed push to transition the U.S. into alternative energy threatens to destroy the global enslavement by the dollar-oil link. Alternative energy will come. But it will come slowly and Washington will make sure of this.
Let’s take a more detailed look at the previously mentioned, “Global Machinations”
Sudan, - Darfur!
What’s at stake in the battle for Darfur? Control over oil, lots and lots of oil.
With its more than $1.3 trillion in mainly US dollar reserves at the People`s Bank of China, Beijing is engaging in active petroleum geopolitics. Africa is a major focus, and in Africa, the central region between Sudan and Chad is priority. This is defining a major new front in what, since the US invasion of Iraq in 2003, is a new Cold War between Washington and Beijing over control of major oil sources. So far Beijing has played its cards a bit more cleverly than Washington. Darfur is a major battleground in this high-stakes contest for oil control, and the western media, paid for via Washington, plays religion as its cause.
Beijing has embarked on a series of initiatives designed to secure long-term raw materials sources from one of the planet’s most endowed regions – the African subcontinent. Today China draws an estimated 30% of its crude oil from Africa. That explains an extraordinary series of diplomatic initiatives which have left Washington furious. China is using no-strings-attached dollar credits to gain access to Africa’s vast raw material wealth, leaving Washington’s typical control game via the World Bank and IMF out in the cold. Who needs the painful medicine of the IMF when China gives easy terms and builds roads and schools to boot?
In November 2006, Beijing hosted an extraordinary summit of 40 African heads of state. They literally rolled out the red carpet for the heads of among others Algeria, Nigeria, Mali, Angola, Central African Republic, Zambia, South Africa.
China has been generous in dispensing its soft loans, with no interest or outright grants to some of the poorest debtor states of Africa. The loans have gone to infrastructure including highways, hospitals, and schools, a stark contrast to the brutal austerity demands of the IMF and World Bank. In 2006 China committed more than $8 billion to Nigeria, Angola and Mozambique, versus $2.3 billion to all sub-Saharan Africa from the World Bank. Unlike the World Bank, a de facto arm of US foreign economic policy, China shrewdly attaches no strings to its loans.
This oil-related Chinese diplomacy has led to the bizarre accusation from Washington that Beijing is trying to “secure oil at the sources,” something Washington foreign policy has itself been preoccupied with for at least a Century.
No source of oil has been more the focus of China-US oil conflict of late than Sudan, home of Darfur.
Beijing’s China National Petroleum Company, CNPC, is Sudan’s largest foreign investor, with some $5 billion in oil field development. Since 1999 China has invested at least $15 billion in Sudan. It owns 50% of an oil refinery near Khartoum with the Sudan government. The oil fields are concentrated in the south, site of a long-simmering civil war, partly financed covertly by the United States, to break the south from the Islamic Khartoum-centered north.
http://www.engdahl.oilgeopolitics.net/Geopolitics___Eurasia/Oil_in_Africa/Sudan_Oil_Fields.png
This link shows the areas of oil rights.
CNPC built an oil pipeline from its concession blocs 1, 2 and 4 in southern Sudan, to a new terminal at Port Sudan on the Red Sea where oil is loaded on tankers for China. Eight percent of China’s oil now comes from southern Sudan. China takes up to 65% to 80% of Sudan’s 500,000 barrels/day of oil production. Sudan last year was China’s fourth largest foreign oil source. In 2006 China passed Japan to become the world’s second largest importer of oil after the United States, importing 6.5 million barrels a day of the black gold. With its oil demand growing by an estimated 30% a year, China will pass the US in oil import demand in a few years. That reality is the motor driving Beijing foreign policy in Africa, is a motor driven by $billions of deficit spending by the US on Chinese imports, and the major reason for constant Washington demands for Chines currency adjustments!
The southern Sudan oil concessions shows that China’s CNPC holds rights to bloc 6 which straddles Darfur, near the border to Chad and the Central African Republic. In April 2005 Sudan’s government announced it had found oil in South Darfur which is estimated to be able when developed to pump 500,000 barrels/day. The world press forgot to report that vital fact in discussing the Darfur conflict.
Genocide was the preferred theme, and Washington was the orchestra conductor. Curiously, while all observers acknowledge that Darfur has seen a large human displacement and human misery and tens of thousands or even as much as 300,000 deaths in the last several years, only Washington and the NGO’s close to it use the charged term “genocide” to describe Darfur. If they are able to get a popular acceptance of the charge genocide, it opens the possibility for drastic “regime change” intervention by NATO and de facto by Washington into Sudan’s sovereign affairs.
The genocide theme is being used, with full-scale Hollywood backing from the likes of pop stars like George Clooney, to orchestrate the case for a de facto NATO occupation of the region. So far the Sudan government has vehemently refused, not surprisingly. A five-man panel UN mission led by Italian Judge Antonio Cassese reported in 2004 that genocide had not been committed in Darfur, rather that grave human rights abuses were committed. They called for war crime trials.
The United States, acting through surrogate allies in Chad and neighbouring states has trained and armed the Sudan Peoples’ Liberation Army, headed until his death in July 2005, by John Garang, trained at US Special Forces school at Fort Benning, Georgia.
By pouring arms into first southern Sudan in the eastern part and since discovery of oil in Darfur, to that region as well, Washington fuelled the conflict that led to tens of thousands dying and several million driven to flee their homes. Eritrea hosts and supports the SPLA, the umbrella NDA opposition group, and the Eastern Front and Darfur rebels.
There are two rebel groups fighting in Sudan’s Darfur region against the Khartoum central government of President Omar al-Bashir – the Justice for Equality Movement (JEM) and the larger Sudan Liberation Army (SLA).
In February 2003 the SLA launched attacks on Sudan government positions in the Darfur region. SLA Secretary-General Minni Arkou Minnawi called for armed struggle, accusing the government of ignoring Darfur. “The objective of the SLA is to create a united democratic Sudan.” In other words, regime change in Sudan. The US Senate adopted a resolution in February 2006 that requested North Atlantic Treaty Organization troops in Darfur, as well as a stronger U.N. peacekeeping force with a robust mandate. A month later, President Bush also called for additional NATO forces in Darfur. Uh huh… Genocide? Or oil?
The Pentagon has been busy training African military officers in the US, much as it has for Latin American officers for decades. Its International Military Education and Training (IMET) program has provided training to military officers from Chad, Ethiopia, Eritrea, Cameroon and the Central African Republic, in effect every country on Sudan’s border. Much of the arms that have fuelled the killing in Darfur and the south have been brought in via murky, protected private “merchants of death” such as the notorious former KGB operative, now with offices in the US, Victor Bout. Bout has been cited repeatedly in recent years for selling weapons across Africa. US Government officials strangely leave his operations in Texas and Florida untouched despite the fact he is on the Interpol wanted list for money laundering.
US development aid for all Sub-Sahara Africa including Chad, has been cut sharply in recent years while its military aid has risen. Oil and the scramble for strategic raw materials is the clear reason. The region of southern Sudan from the Upper Nile to the borders of Chad is rich in oil. Washington knew that long before the Sudanese government.
US oil majors have known about Sudan’s oil wealth since the early 1970’s. In 1979, Jafaar Nimeiry, Sudan head of state, broke with the Soviets and invited Chevron to develop oil in the Sudan. That was perhaps a fatal mistake. UN Ambassador George H.W. Bush had personally told Nimeiry of satellite photos indicating oil in Sudan. Nimeiry took the bait. Wars over oil have been the consequence ever since.
Chevron found big oil reserves in southern Sudan. It spent $1.2 billion finding and testing them. That oil triggered what is called Sudan’s second civil war in 1983. Chevron was the target of repeated attacks and killings and suspended the project in 1984. In 1992, it sold it’s Sudanese oil concessions. Then China began to develop the abandoned Chevron fields in 1999 with notable results.
But Chevron is not far from Darfur today.
Condi Rice’s Chevron is in neighbouring Chad, together with the other US oil giant, ExxonMobil. They’ve just built a $3.7 billion oil pipeline carrying 160,000 barrels/day of oil from Doba in central Chad near Darfur Sudan, via Cameroon to Kribi on the Atlantic Ocean, destined for US refineries.
To do it, they worked with Chad “President for life,” Idriss Deby, a corrupt despot who has been accused of feeding US-supplied arms to the Darfur rebels. Deby joined Washington’s Pan Sahel Initiative run by the Pentagon’s US-European Command, to train his troops to fight “Islamic terrorism.” The majority of the tribes in Darfur region are Islamic.
Supplied with US military aid, training and weapons, in 2004 Deby launched the initial strike that set off the conflict in Darfur, using members of his elite Presidential Guard who originate from the province, providing the men with all terrain vehicles, arms and anti-aircraft guns to Darfur rebels fighting the Khartoum government in the southwest Sudan. The US military support to Deby in fact had been the trigger for the Darfur bloodbath. Khartoum reacted and the ensuing debacle was unleashed in full tragic force.
Washington-backed NGO’s and the US Government claim unproven genocide as a pretext to ultimately bring UN/NATO troops into the oilfields of Darfur and south Sudan. Oil, not human misery, is behind Washington’s new interest in Darfur.
The “Darfur genocide” campaign began in 2003, the same time the Chad-Cameroon pipeline oil began to flow. The US now had a base in Chad to go after Darfur oil and, potentially, co-opt China’s new oil sources. Darfur is strategic, straddling Chad, Central African Republic, Egypt and Libya.
US military objectives in Darfur – and the Horn of Africa more widely – are being served at present by the US and NATO backing of the African Union troops in Darfur. There NATO provides ground and air support for AU troops who are categorized as “neutral” and “peacekeepers.” Sudan is at war on three fronts, each country – Uganda, Chad, and Ethiopia – with a significant US military presence and ongoing US military programs. The war in Sudan involves both US covert operations and US trained “rebel” factions coming in from South Sudan, Chad, Ethiopia and Uganda.
The completion of the US and World Bank-financed oil pipeline from Chad to the Cameroon coast was designed as one part of a far grander Washington scheme to control the oil riches of central Africa from Sudan to the entire Gulf of Guinea.
But Washington’s erstwhile pal, Chad’s President for Life, Idriss Deby, began to get unhappy with his small share of the US-controlled oil profits. When he and the Chad Parliament decided in early 2006 to take more of the oil revenues to finance military operations and beef up its army, new World Bank President, Iraq war architect, Paul Wolfowitz, moved to suspend loans to the country. Then that August, 2006, after Deby had won re-election, he created Chad’s own oil company, SHT, and threatened to expel Chevron and Malaysia’s Petronas for not paying taxes owed, and demanding a 60% share of the Chad oil pipeline. In the end he came to terms with the oil companies, but winds of change were blowing.
Deby also faced growing internal opposition from a Chad rebel group, United Front for Change, known under its French name as FUC, which he claims is being covertly funded by Sudan. This region is a very complex part of the world of war. The FUC has based itself in Darfur.
Into this unstable situation, Beijing has shown up in Chad with a full coffer of aid money in hand. In late January, 2007, Chinese President Hu Jintao made a state visit to Sudan and to Cameroon among other African states. In 2006 China’s leaders visited no less than 48 African states. In August 2006 Beijing hosted Chad’s Foreign Minister for talks and resumption of formal diplomatic ties cut in 1997. China has begun to import oil from Chad as well as Sudan. Not that much oil, but if Beijing has its way, that will soon change.
In April, 2007, Chad’s Foreign Minister announced that talks with China over greater China participation in Chad’s oil development were “progressing well.” He referred to the terms the Chinese seek for oil development, calling them, “much more equal partnerships than those we are used to having.”
The Chinese economic presence in Chad, ironically, may be more effective in calming the fighting and displacement in Darfur than any African Union or UN troop presence ever could. That would not be welcome for some people in Washington and at Chevron headquarters.
These moves are but part of the vast China effort to secure “oil at the source” across Africa. Oil is also the prime factor in US Africa policy today. George W. Bush’s interest in Africa includes a new US base in Sao Tome/Principe 124 miles off the Gulf of Guinea from which it can control Gulf of Guinea oilfields from Angola in the south to Congo, Gabon, Equatorial Guinea, Cameroon and Nigeria. That just happens to be the very same areas where recent Chinese diplomatic and investment activity has focussed.
“West Africa’s oil has become of national strategic interest to us,” stated US Assistant Secretary of State for Africa, Walter Kansteiner already back in 2002. Darfur and Chad are but an extension of the US Iraq policy “with other means” – control of oil everywhere. China is challenging that control “everywhere,” especially in Africa. It amounts to a new undeclared Cold War over oil.
Now let’s take a look at Kosova.
Kosovo is a tiny parcel of land in one of the most strategic locations in all Europe from a standpoint of US military objectives of controlling oil flows and political developments from the oil-rich Middle East to Russia and Western Europe. The current US-led recognition of the self-declared Republic of Kosovo is a continuation of US policy for the Balkans since the 1999 US-led NATO bombing of Serbia, a NATO “out-of-area” deployment never approved by the UN Security Council, allegedly on the premise that Milosevic’s army was on the verge of carrying out a genocidal massacre of Kosovo Albanians.
Some months before the US-led bombing of Serbian targets, a senior US intelligence official in private conversation told Croatian officers in Zagreb about Washington’s strategy for former Yugoslavia. According to these reports, the Pentagon goal was to take control of Kosovo in order to secure a military base to control the entire Southeast European region down to the Middle East oil lands.
Since June 1999 when the bombing ended, when the NATO Kosovo Force (KFOR) occupied Kosovo, then an integral part of then-Yugoslavia, Kosovo has been under a United Nations mandate, UN Security Council Resolution 1244. Russia and China also agreed to that mandate, which specifies the role of KFOR to ensure cessation of inter-ethnic fighting and atrocities between the Serb minority population, others and the Kosovo Albanian Islamic majority. Under 1244 Kosovo would remain part of Serbia pending a peaceful resolution of its status. That UN Resolution has been ignored by the US, German and EU parties.
Germany’s and Washington’s prompt recognition of Kosovo’s independence in February 2008, significantly, came days after elections for President in Serbia confirmed pro-Washington Boris Tadic had won a second four year term. With Tadic’s post secured, Washington could count on a compliant Serbian reaction to its support for Kosovo. To date that seems the case.
The US strategic agenda for Kosovo is primarily military, and its prime focus is against Russia and for control of oil flows from the Caspian Sea to the Middle East into Western Europe. By declaring its independence, Washington gains a weak state which it can fully control. So long as it remained a part of Serbia, that NATO military control would be politically insecure. Today Kosovo is controlled as a military satrapy of NATO, whose KFOR has 16,000 troops there for a tiny population of 2 millions.
US-NATO military control of Kosovo serves several purposes for Washington’s greater geo-strategic agenda. First it enables greater US control over potential oil and gas pipeline routes into the EU from the Caspian and Middle East as well as control of the transport corridors linking the EU to the Black Sea. It also protects the multi-billion dollar heroin trade, which, significantly, has grown to record dimensions in Afghanistan according to UN narcotics officials, since the US occupation. Kosovo and Albania are major heroin transit routes into Europe. According to a just -released 2008 US State Department annual report on international narcotics traffic, several key drug trafficking routes pass through the Balkans. Kosovo is mentioned as a key point for the transfer of heroin from Turkey and Afghanistan to Western Europe. Those drugs reportedly flow under the watchful eye of the Thaci government.
Since its dealings with the Meo tribesmen in Laos during the Vietnam era, the CIA has protected narcotics traffic in key locations in order partly to finance its covert operations. The scale of international narcotics traffic today is such that major US banks such as Citigroup are reported to derive a significant share of their profits from laundering the proceeds.
Immediately after the bombing of Serbia in 1999 the Pentagon seized a 1000 acre large parcel of land in Kosovo at Uresevic near the border to Macedonia, and awarded a contract to Halliburton when Dick Cheney was CEO there, to build one of the largest US overseas military bases in the world, Camp Bondsteel, with more than 7000 troops today.
One of the notable features of the indecent rush by Washington and other states to immediately recognise the independence of Kosovo is the fact that they well know its present government and both major political parties are in fact run by Kosovo Albanian organised crime.
Hashim Thaci, President of Kosovo and head of the Democratic Party of Kosovo, is the former leader of the terrorist organisation which the US and NATO trained and called the Kosovo Liberation Army, KLA, or in Albanian, UCK. In 1997, President Clinton’s Special Balkans Envoy, Robert Gelbard described the LKA as, “without any question a terrorist group.” It was far more. It was a klan-based mafia, impossible therefore to infiltrate, which controlled the underground black economy of Kosovo. Today the Democratic Party of Thaci, according to European police sources, retains its links to organized crime.
A February 22, 2005 67 page German BND report, labeled Top Secret, which has been leaked, stated,
(OK=Organised Crime; Translation: “Through the key players—for example Thaci, Haliti, Haradinaj—there is the closest interlink between politics, the economy and international organised crime in Kosovo. The criminal organisations in the background there foster political instability. They have no interest at all in the building of a functioning orderly state that could be detrimental to their booming business.”)
The KLA began action in 1996 with the bombing of refugee camps housing Serbian refugees from the wars in Bosnia and Croatia. The KLA repeatedly called for the “liberation” of areas of Montenegro, Macedonia and parts of Northern Greece. Thaci is hardly a figure of regional stability.
The 39 year old Thaci was a personal protégé of Clinton Secretary of State Madeleine Albright during the 1990s, when he was a mere 30-year old gangster. The KLA was supported from the outset by the CIA and the German BND. During the 1999 war the KLA was directly supported by NATO. At the time he was picked up by the USA in the mid-1990s, Thaci was founder of the Drenica Group, a criminal syndicate in Kosovo with ties to Albanian, Macedonian and Italian organised Mafia. A classified January 2007 report prepared for the EU Commission, labelled “VS-Nur für den Dienstgebrauch” was leaked to the media. It detailed the organised criminal activity of KLA and its successor Democratic Party under Thaci.
The question then becomes, why are Washington, NATO, the EU and inclusive and importantly, the German Government, so eager to legitimise Kosovo? The answer is not hard to find. A Kosovo run internally by organised criminal networks is easy for NATO to control. It insures a weak state which is far easier to bring under NATO domination.
The Thaci dependence on US and NATO good graces insures Thaci’s government will do what it is asked. That, in turn, assures the US a major military gain consolidating its permanent presence in the strategically vital Southeast Europe. It is a major step in consolidating NATO control of Eurasia, and gives the US a large help in the European balance of power. Little wonder Moscow has not welcomed the development, nor have numerous other states. The US is literally playing with dynamite in the Balkans.
Nothing is what it seems in this world, Black Sheep.
It is a world of political and media controlled smoke and mirrors.
No-one can be believed, all entities in power lie.
The competition for global resources is intensifying, and will become more bloody.
The sheep will always suffer, and probably never know the reason.
It is for this reason that ultimately the internet will become controlled, and we will be unable to speak like this. Governments in the west are working towards such ends. Freedoms are legislated away on a weekly basis.
The global financial crisis, which will reach fever pitch by this winter, has been planned for decades.
National Economists well knew the consequences of the over issuance of fiat currencies, and coupled with oil futures speculation by the usual culprits, the global warming carbon credit trading scams by the same culprits, and the consequent food price rises, and the grain stores in the arctic circle, as a counter to the terminator seeds of Monsanto et al, we begin to see the game plan of the elites evolving.
Post Democratic High Tech Feudalism, in a much reduced population world, is coming
Take care.
I’m gonna be busy this week, see you later.
j
July 14th, 2008 at 7:00 am
Great blog, subscribed to your rss feed. Thanks.