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ENEMY OF THE STATE
Thursday January 12, 2006
Saturday January 7, 2006
http://english.pravda.ru/world/20/91/368/16706_america.html
Latin America: Shaking off Washington's shackles
New axis of reason forges closer ties
Timothy Bancroft-Hinchey
01/05/2006
Washington's legacy in Latin America is abominable . Witness to this is a string of fascist, repressive regimes spanning decades, mass graves, a human rights record which parallels Washington's own in Iraq and a sheer and total absence of democracy.
After Fidel Castro's Cuba stood firm as a shining example of what a progressive government can achieve - enviable social welfare systems and an education policy which is second to none in the continent - Latin America finds itself today facing a future in which Latin Americans themselves take control of their own destiny and face up to Washington on equal terms, not simply putting into practice what the firms around the White House and Pentagon dictate.
Despite the continued existence of fascist regimes, such as Alvaro Uribe's in Colombia, there is a growing wave of independence sweeping across the continent. Today, Evo Morales of Bolivia and Hugo Chavez of Venezuela join Fidel Castro as leaders (or in the case of the former, President-elect) of socially progressive systems which focus on the need to create programs which serve the interests of the people, and not the corrupted super-rich clique of elitists living at Washington's beck and call.
While Argentina's Nestor Kirchner, Chile's Ricardo Lagos Escobar, Uruguay's Tabare Vazquez and Brazil's Lula da Silva cannot be classified as leftists per se alongside Chavez, Morales or Castro, nevertheless they pursue policies which follow their national interests first and not Washington's.
After a high-profile visit to Cuba (his first), Bolivia's President-elect is to visit President Chavez in Venezuela and Brazil's President Lula, in a 10-day trip taking in seven countries before taking office on January 22nd.
Reasons for the growth of the left
While Washington continues to adopt a confrontational, intrusive, meddlesome policy inside Latin America (such as supporting groups inside Venezuela which oppose President Chavez), there will be an appeal to back the regimes which the USA frowns upon.
The reason for this is perfectly simple: the monetarist-capitalist market-oriented economic policy pressed by Washington simply does not work either in theory or in practice. The fact that Washington has to keep the model alive by imposing tariffs on imports and granting subsidies to exporters to artificially control prices and markets is proof that it is flawed from the start.
The result of the imposition of this aggressive regime on Latin America has been dramatic: 100 million people in Latin America are classified as being extremely poor (less than 1 USD/day), while 220 million out of a population of 550 million are regarded as poor. GDP per capita has not grown in real terms for two decades (4.000 USD per capita) while income has not accompanied the rise in prices.
The fact that the leftist policies favour the people over the oligarch (whose soul is sold to Washington) means that the left will continue to expand in Latin America and elsewhere, as the farce which is the monetarist-capitalist model defended by Washington (in which corporate elitists even dictate foreign policy) is exposed for the lie it is.
Timothy Bancroft-Hinchey
"Our mission is socialist because it puts social aspects first. Capitalists put capital first." - Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez | | | |
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Friday January 6, 2006
War is economics by other means...
http://www.teamliberty.net/id209.html
January 4, 2006 – On November 10th 2005, the Muckraker Report published an article that described one of the unspoken reasons why the United States had to invade Iraq; to liberate the U.S. dollar in Iraq so that Iraqi oil could once again be purchased with the petrodollar. See The liberation of the U.S. Dollar in Iraq
In November 2000, Iraq stopped accepting U.S. dollars for their oil. Counted as a purely political move, Saddam Hussein switched the currency required to purchase Iraqi oil to the euro. Selling oil through the U.N. Oil for Food Program, Iraq converted all of its U.S. dollars in its U.N. account to the euro. Shortly thereafter, Iraq converted $10 billion in their U.N. reserve fund to the euro. By the end of 2000, Iraq had abandoned the U.S. dollar completely.
Two months after the United States invaded Iraq, the Oil for Food Program was ended, the country’s accounts were switch back to dollars, and oil began to be sold once again for U.S. dollars. No longer could the world buy oil from Iraq with the euro. Universal global dollar supremacy was restored. It is interesting to note that the latest recession that the United States endured began and ended within the same timeframe as when Iraq was trading oil for euros. Whether this is a coincidence or related, the American people may never know.
In March 2006, Iran will take Iraq’s switch to the petroeuro to new heights by launching a third oil exchange. The Iranians have developed a petroeuro system for oil trade, which when enacted, will once again threaten U.S. dollar supremacy far greater than Iraq’s euro conversion. Called the Iran Oil Bourse, an exchange that only accepts the euro for oil sales would mean that the entire world could begin purchasing oil from any oil-producing nation with euros instead of dollars. The Iranian plan isn’t limited to purchasing one oil-producing country’s oil with euros. Their plan will create a global alternative to the U.S. dollar. Come March 2006, the Iran Oil Bourse will further the momentum of OPEC to create an alternate currency for oil purchases worldwide. China, Russia, and the European Union are evaluating the Iranian plan to exchange oil for euros, and giving the plan serious consideration.
If you are skeptical regarding the meaning of oil being purchased with euros versus dollars, and the devastating impact it will have on the economy of the United States, consider the historic move by the Federal Reserve to begin hiding information pertaining to the U.S. dollar money supply, starting in March 2006. Since 1913, the year the abomination known as the Federal Reserve came to power, the supply of U.S. dollars was measured and publicly revealed through an index referred to as M-3. M-3 has been the main stable of money supply measurement and transparent disclosure since the Fed was founded back in 1913. According to Robert McHugh, in his report (What’s the Fed up to with the money supply?), McHugh writes, “On November 10, 2005, shortly after appointing Bernanke to replace Greenbackspan, the Fed mysteriously announced with little comment and no palatable justification that they will hide M-3 effective March 2006.” (To learn more about Robert McHugh's work, please visit https://www.technicalindicatorindex.com/Default.asp)
Is it mere coincidence that the Fed will begin hiding M-3 the same month that Iran will launch its Iran Oil Bourse, or is there a direct threat to the stability of the U.S. dollar, the U.S. economy, and the U.S. standard of living? Are Americans being set up for a collapse in our economy that will make the Great Depression of the 1930’s look like a bounced check? If you cannot or will not make the value and stability of the U.S. currency of personal importance, if you are unwilling to demand from your elected officials, an immediate abolishment of the Federal Reserve Act of 1913 and the fiat money scheme that the banking cartel has used for nearly a century now to keep our government and our people in a state of perpetual debt, than you are faced with but two alternatives, abject poverty, or invading Iran.
The plans to invade Iran are unspoken, but unfolding before our very eyes. The media has been reporting on Iran more often, and increasingly harshly. For the U.S. government to justify invading Iran, it must first begin to phase out the War in Iraq, which it is already doing. Next, it must portray the Iranian President, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, as a threat to the region and the world. Finally, once naive American people are convinced the “weapons of mass destruction” that were to be found in Iraq are actually in Iran, coupled with the almost daily media coverage of Iran’s nuclear power / weapons program aspirations, and what we will soon have on our hands is another fabricated war that will result in tens of thousands of civilian lives being lost, all because the political elected pawns in Washington DC lack the discipline to return our currency to a gold or silver standard, end the relationship with the foreign banking cartel called the Federal Reserve, and limit the activities of the U.S. government to those articulated in Article I Section 8 of the Constitution for the United States of America.
When a wayward and corrupt fiscal policy and fiat currency, coupled with runaway government spending, forces a nation to only be able to sustain the value of its currency with bullets, the citizenry of the country involved in wars primarily to sustain its currency have historically first became slaves to their government, and then to the nations that finally conquer them. If you question the validity of such a premise, or whether it could happen to the United States of America, study the fall of the Roman Empire. If you read the right books on the subject, you’ll quickly discover that towards the end of the Roman reign, the Roman Empire was doing exactly what America is doing today; attempting to sustain a failed fiat money system with bullets.
Understanding fiat money is not an easy task, and the Federal Reserve, World Bank, and International Monetary Fund have purposely made it that way. They do not want the American people to realize that the money in their wallet loses its value with each new dollar that they print. They do not want people to understand that our money does not become money until it is borrowed. When the Federal Reserve has money printed, when it is in uncut sheets of paper, it is not yet money. After it is cut, bundled, and placed into the Federal Reserve vaults, it still is not money. It only becomes money once it is borrowed. Consequently, if all debt were to be paid, if the United States didn’t have an $8 trillion national debt and the American people were debt free, and if all loans of U.S. dollars made to foreigners were paid in full, there would be exactly zero U.S. dollars in circulation because it will have all been returned to the vaults of the Federal Reserve. This might seem hard to fathom, but it is the gospel of fiat money.
The major news media in the United States, fed by Washington DC which in turn is fed by the Federal Reserve, literally, has already begun conditioning the American people for invading Iran. Media accounts of Iran’s nuclear ambitions along with amplification of the potential instability and core evilness of Iran’s president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, is setting the stage to spring the invasion of Iran on the American people. There does appear to be a direct correlation between the winding down effort underway in Iraq and the increase of anti-Iran rhetoric. How American soldiers ultimately arrive in Tehran is uncertain at this time, but it is reasonable to expect that if the Iran Oil Bourse opens for business in March 2006 as planned, it will only be a matter of time before the United States will have to blow it up.
If the United States invades Iran, or if Israel starts military actions by launches missiles at Iran’s nuclear power facilities, which then opens the door for the United States to intervene, most Americans will believe that our military actions in Iran will be to defend freedom and liberty while spreading democracy, when the truth is that we’ll be fighting a war in Iran because of our nation’s relationship with the Federal Reserve, a so-called bank that is not owned by the federal government, maintains no reserve, and isn’t a bank at all, but a cartel. Just like our war in Iraq, Americans and foreigners will die in battle so that the historical power bankers and brokers; cartel members such as Rothschild, Morgan, Lehman, Lizard, Schrader, Lobe, Kuhn, and Rockefeller to name a few, can continue collecting interest on every single U.S. coin and dollar bill in circulation, while controlling the U.S. Congress to the extent that the U.S. taxpayer becomes the collateral and lender of last resort to cover bad loans and unpaid debts that these institutions create by loaning money to third world countries, some of which are devout enemies of the United States. Remember the $400 billion savings & loan bailout approved by the U.S. Congress during the Reagan Administration? America is still paying for it – you and me, and so will our children and grandchildren.
It is well overdue for Americans, every American, to do whatever it takes to fully understand the relationship between the United States and the Federal Reserve, along with the grave consequences of our current fiat money system; for even if the United States wanted to continue to sustain the supremacy of the U.S. dollar with bullets, it is historically, impossible. When bullets become the commodity to secure a currency, it is a clear sign of devastating calamity looming. To ignore the warning signs, is to suffer like you have never suffered before, or to die. Harsh words, but true.
ALSO READ:
http://lnk.nu/usa.mediamonitors.net/7gc
Petrodollar Warfare: Dollars, Euros and the Upcoming Iranian Oil Bourse
by William R. Clark
(Friday August 05 2005)
"A successful Iranian bourse will solidify the petroeuro as an alternative oil transaction currency, and thereby end the petrodollar's hegemonic status as the monopoly oil currency. Therefore, a graduated approach is needed to avoid precipitous U.S. economic dislocations."
MORE AT LINK... http://lnk.nu/usa.mediamonitors.net/7gc
SNIPPET...
"...While the publicly stated reasons for any such overt action will be premised as a consequence of Iran's nuclear ambitions, there are again unspoken macroeconomic drivers underlying the second stage of petrodollar warfare – Iran's upcoming oil bourse. (The word bourse refers to a stock exchange for securities trading, and is derived from the French stock exchange in Paris, the Federation Internationale des Bourses de Valeurs.)
In essence, Iran is about to commit a far greater "offense" than Saddam Hussein's conversion to the euro for Iraq's oil exports in the fall of 2000. Beginning in March 2006, the Tehran government has plans to begin competing with New York's NYMEX and London's IPE with respect to international oil trades – using a euro-based international oil-trading mechanism.[7] The proposed Iranian oil bourse signifies that without some sort of US intervention, the euro is going to establish a firm foothold in the international oil trade. Given U.S. debt levels and the stated neoconservative project of U.S. global domination, Tehran's objective constitutes an obvious encroachment on dollar supremacy in the crucial international oil market....
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http://waynemadsenreport.com/
January 4, 2006 -- More indications and warnings about Iran attack preparations. The National Intelligence Directorate has been busy hiring global positioning system (GPS) target mappers to work at its Underground Facility Analysis Center (UFAC), which is comprised of analysts from the CIA, Defense Intelligence Agency, NSA, National Geo-spatial Intelligence Agency, U.S. Strategic Command, and US Geological Survey.
The National Intelligence Directorate
Underground Facility Analysis Center (UFAC)
Defense/Intelligence/Geopolitical
Herndon, Virginia
Clearance: TS/SCI
ADDENDUM
Military Geospatial Technology Online Archives
This article was Originally Published on Jul 26, 2005 in Volume: 3 Issue: 2
Underground Facility Analysis Center
The Director of Central Intelligence’s Underground Facility Analysis Center is but one example of how NGA is moving toward multi-intelligence (Multi-INT) collaboration.
By Major Mark Esterbrook
“Unearthing the Truth in Defense of Our Nation”—that’s the motto of the Director of Central Intelligence’s Underground Facility Analy-sis Center (UFAC). The National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency is one of several agencies involved in the Center, which is composed of highly specialized analysts. This involvement is but one example of how NGA is moving toward multi-intelligence collaboration.
Converging Intelligence
Historically, it was possible to divide knowledge base efforts among the intelligence and non-intelligence agencies because the effort was very detail-oriented and less urgent in many respects. With the potential for strikes in the United States now a much greater reality, the cost of measured and separate approaches to threat knowledge bases is too dear. The convergence of intelligence disciplines has become an operational imperative in order to provide decision makers with more specific, timely, and focused analysis of where the threat originates from in order to thwart it prior to attacks on U.S. soil and interests.
Enter the UFAC. Created in 1997, the UFAC is a consortium dedicated to detecting, identifying, characterizing and assess-ing for defeat adversarial underground facilities or hardened and deeply buried targets (HDBT). More specifically, the center’s mission is to provide intelligence and related data supporting HDBT defeat to national policymakers, weapons developers and military forces and their commanders, and lead the intelligence community and Defense Department in that effort.
NGA’s Role
NGA plays a key role in this effort by applying many of its primary tradecrafts to the task at hand. As one might expect, geospatial intelligence is one of the most important elements of analysis, espe-cially high resolution terrain information data. In addition, through Defense Intelligence Agency Web pages, applicable maps, related site diagrams and related imagery are but a mouse click away. But at the heart of NGA’s participation is detailed and tailored analysis. Such analysis paves the way for operational uses, including targeting decisions, for intelligence of-ficers and operational forces around the world.
The UFAC includes primary intelligence agencies as well as key organizations outside of the national in-telligence community. Each organization contributes its unique skills and capabilities directly to the creation of a truly coordinated response.
The organizations that make up the UFAC include the CIA; DIA’s Central Measure-ment and Signatures Intelligence Directorate, Technical Collections Directorate and Intelligence Directorate; the Defense Threat Reduction Agency, NGA, National Security Agency, U.S. Geological Survey, and U.S. Strategic Com-mand Joint Intelligence Center. Without the collaboration of these organizations, the UFAC’s ability to successfully tackle the underground mission would be lost.
As shared knowledge is the key to the U.S. military transformation, it is, as well, the key to HDBT defeat. The purpose of underground facilities is concealment and survival. Detection and characterization are difficult at best. Determining function and construction features presents com-plex collection, analysis and engineering challenges. Typical underground facilities protect and conceal key military and civil-ian leadership and operations involving communications, command, control and computers, weapons of mass destruction and terrorism/insurgency. Today, the center researches over 10,000 such facili-ties and there is a suspected equal number yet to be discovered—a daunting task for any organization.
Knowledge Base
The UFAC knowledge base consists of two elements:
Individual analysts and engineers. The most valuable knowledge base component is the minds of the UFAC and affiliated analysts, engineers and collection managers. Applica-tions and tools cannot duplicate the associative and intuitive skills inherent in good analysis. The intellectual understanding that is the product of analysis remains a human—not a machine—trait. This makes analyst/engineer development vitally important. The key features of that development are recruitment, training, broad experience and the understanding of need that comes from interaction between the consumer and the UFAC members and affiliates. The UFAC program includes ana-lytic growth in both mission and task. Staying the course on that program is a fundamental management and oversight imperative.
Consumer-accessible automated databases. Unlike the human ana-lyst/engineer/collection manager, automated databases, at present, tend to be static entities only as complete as their last human input. Two kinds are pertinent to the UFAC. The first is a family of internal support data-bases. The second is the knowledge repository in which is assembled the essentials of UFAC analyst/engineer understanding in a way that is readily accessible, searchable and interoperable. Technology offers the opportunity to enhance these databases in new and increasingly effective ways
The Future …
Six goals are guiding UFAC development. These will likely evolve with time and experience, but the main thrusts that they represent, which are fundamental to successful intelligence operations, are unlikely to change:
• Bring the multi-discipline UFAC analytic capacity to a level of sustained sophistication that assures its continu-ing status as an essential contributor to U.S. national interests and security.
• Establish a focused, integrated, sup-portive relationship with the collection community.
• Lead U.S. HDBT knowledge-building activities and work with friends and allies to ensure broad-based substan-tive cooperation.
• Establish and maintain an enduring, interactive relationship with each operational, policy, and weapons development/acquisition entity for which underground facility knowl-edge is mission essential.
• Ensure, through active program-matic support and involvement, the continued examination of new ways to collect against, analyze and exploit underground facilities of all types.
• Sustain funding and, as appropriate, encourage growth for the center and its affiliated activities.
In the final analysis, the fusion of intel-ligence disciplines, engineering analysis and collection requirements is not a future pipe dream. It exists in the here and now and the UFAC represents yet another resounding success story in NGA’s pursuit of true multi-INT collaboration. N
Editor’s note: Esterbrook is a staff officer in NGA’s Office of Corporate Relations. This article originally appeared in the January/February issue of the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency’s internal publication Pathfinder.
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Tuesday January 3, 2006
You've probably already read reports of a planned attack by the U.S. upon Iran.
Wayne Madsen, who I consider a very reliable source, offers some further chilling details.
Frankly, if the American people allow this to happen, we'll deserve the fate dealt us by the rest of the world.
Ultimately, we will all be held responsible.
EOTS
"... their power is dependent on the obedience of the citizenry.
When that is withdrawn, governments are helpless. We have seen
this again and again in history..." - Howard Zinn
THE WAYNE MADSEN REPORT
http://waynemadsenreport.com/
January 2, 2006 -- Intelligence indications and warnings abound as Bush administration finalizes military attack on Iran.
Intelligence and military sources in the United States and abroad are reporting on various factors that indicate a U.S. military hit on Iranian nuclear and military installations, that may involve tactical nuclear weapons, is in the final stages of preparation. Likely targets for saturation bombing are the Bushehr nuclear power plant (where Russian and other foreign national technicians are present), a uranium mining site in Saghand near the city of Yazd, the uranium enrichment facility in Natanz, a heavy water plant and radioisotope facility in Arak, the Ardekan Nuclear Fuel Unit, the Uranium Conversion Facility and Nuclear Technology Center in Isfahan, the Tehran Nuclear Research Center, the Tehran Molybdenum, Iodine and Xenon Radioisotope Production Facility, the Tehran Jabr Ibn Hayan Multipurpose Laboratories, the Kalaye Electric Company in the Tehran suburbs, a reportedly dismantled uranium enrichment plant in Lashkar Abad, and the Radioactive Waste Storage Units in Karaj and Anarak.
Primary target: Bushehr nuclear reactor and hundreds of Russian technicians
Other first targets would be Shahab-I, II, and III missile launch sites, air bases (including the large Mehrabad air base/international airport near Tehran), naval installations on the Persian Gulf and Caspian Sea, command, control, communications and intelligence facilities. Secondary targets would include civilian airports, radio and TV installations, telecommunications centers, government buildings, conventional power plants, highways and bridges, and rail lines. Oil installations and commercial port facilities would likely be relatively untouched by U.S. forces in order to preserve them for U.S. oil and business interests.
There has been a rapid increase in training and readiness at a number of U.S. military installations involved with the planned primarily aerial attack. These include a Pentagon order to Fort Rucker, Alabama, to be prepared to handle an estimated 50,000 to 60,000 trainees, including civilian contractors, who will be deployed for Iranian combat operations. Rucker is home to the US Army's aviation training command, including the helicopter training school.
In addition, there has been an increase in readiness at nearby Hurlburt Field in Florida, the home of the U.S. Air Force Special Operations Command. The U.S. attack on Iran will primarily involve aviation (Navy, Air Force, Navy-Marine Corps) and special operations assets.
There has also been a noticeable increase in activity at Marine Corps Air Ground Combat Center at Twentynine Palms, California, a primary live fire training activity located in a desert and mountainous environment similar to target areas in Iran.
From European intelligence agencies comes word that the United States has told its NATO allies to be prepared for a military strike on Iranian nuclear development and military installations.
On November 17, 2005, Russian President Vladimir Putin spent seven hours in secret discussions with Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan during the the opening ceremonies in Samsun, Turkey for the Russian-Turkish underwater Blue Stream natural gas pipeline, festivities also attended by Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi.
According to sources knowledgeable about the meeting, Erdogan promised Putin, who has become a close friend, that Turkey would not support the use of its bases by the United States in a military attack on Iran. That brought a series of high level visits to Turkey by Bush administration officials, including CIA chief Porter Goss, FBI Director Robert Mueller, and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.
Although Erdogan listened to Goss's and Rice's pleas for Turkish logistical, political, and intelligence help for an attack on Iran and Turkish Army Chief Yasar Buyukanit heard much the same from Pentagon officials during his recent trip to Washington, the word is that Putin now has enough clout in Ankara to scuttle any use of Turkey by the U.S. for an attack on Iran. [Mueller delivered Ankara intelligence "proof" of Iranian backing for Kurdish Workers' Party (PKK) guerrillas in Turkey. Intelligence agencies and business intelligence units around the world are now discounting any intelligence coming from the Bush administration as neocon propaganda invented by think tanks and discredited intelligence agencies in Washington, Tel Aviv-Herzliya, and Jerusalem].
A U.S. Attack on Iran: The Perfect Storm for wider nuclear conflict
U.S. political and military officials have also approached Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Jordan, Oman, and Azerbaijan seeking their support for a U.S. attack on Iran. In a replay of the phony pre-war intelligence on Iraq, Washington is trying to convince various countries that a link exists between Iran and "Al Qaeda."
Polish intelligence sources report that Poland's Defense Minister Radek Sikorski assured Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld of Poland's support for any U.S. strike against Iran. Sikorski is a former American Enterprise Institute colleague of such neo-cons as Richard Perle, Michael Ledeen, and Lynne Cheney, the so-called "Second Lady" of the United States. Sikorski and Polish Foreign Minister Stefan Meller assured Rumsfeld and Rice, respectively, that Poland would stand by the United States during the split in NATO that will occur as a result of the American strike. Polish intelligence sources, who are unhappy with the arrangement of the new right-wing government in Warsaw with the Bush administration, leaked the information about the recent U.S. demarche to NATO in Brussels about preparation for the attack.
Similar intelligence "leaks" about the U.S. attack plans were also leaked to the German magazine Der Spiegel.
European intelligence sources also report that the recent decision by Putin and Russia's state-owned Gazprom natural gas company to cut supplied of natural gas to Ukraine was a clear warning by Putin to nations like Ukraine, Poland, Romania, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Slovenia, Croatia, Moldova, France, Austria, Italy, Hungary, Bosnia, Serbia, and Germany that it would do the same if they support the U.S. attack on Iran. Gazprom natural gas is supplied, via pipelines in Ukraine, from Russia and Turkmenistan to countries in Eastern and Western Europe. The Bush administration charged Russia with using gas supplies as a "political tool."
Putin has additional leverage on Western Europe since former German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder accepted an appointment to the board of a joint Russian-German North European Gas Pipeline Consortium that is controlled by Gazprom. The pipeline will bring Russian gas to Scandinavia, Germany, Netherlands, and Britain, giving Putin additional leverage over Washington in Europe.
Southeast Asian intelligence sources report that Burma's (Myanmar's) recent abrupt decision to move its capital from Rangoon (Yangon) to remote Pyinmana, 200 miles to the north, is a result of Chinese intelligence warnings to its Burmese allies about the effects of radiation resulting from a U.S. conventional or tactical nuclear attack on Iranian nuclear facilities. There is concern that a series of attacks on Iranian nuclear installations will create a Chernobyl-like radioactive cloud that would be caught up in monsoon weather in the Indian Ocean.
Rangoon (Yangon) capital moved 200 miles north over fears of monsoon season Iran nuclear fallout?
Low-lying Rangoon lies in the path of monsoon rains that would continue to carry radioactive fallout from Iran over South and Southeast Asia between May and October. Coastal Indian Ocean cities like Rangoon, Dhaka, Calcutta, Mumbai, Chennai, and Colombo would be affected by the radioactive fallout more than higher elevation cities since humidity intensifies the effects of the fallout. Thousands of government workers were given only two days' notice to pack up and leave Rangoon for the higher (and dryer) mountainous Pyinmana.
In neighboring West Bengal, the leftist government and its national leftist allies around the country are planning massive demonstrations during Bush's upcoming trip to India. They are protesting the war in Iraq as well as the threats against Iran.
Reports from Yemen indicate that western oil companies are concerned about U.S. intentions in Iran since the southern Arabian country catches the edge of the monsoon rains that could contain radioactive fallout from an attack, endangering their workers in the country.
The Bush administration aborted last minute plans to attack Iranian nuclear and political installations prior to the 2004 presidential election. On October 9, Rumsfeld met with defense minister colleagues on the now decommissioned USS John F. Kennedy in the Persian Gulf to seek support for the attack. That meeting has been confirmed by the Danish Defense Minister who was in attendance, however, the topic of the meeting was not discussed. According to U.S. naval personnel on board the Kennedy, a special "war room" was set up to coordinate the attack. Britain, Australia, Italy, Netherlands, and Japan did not attend the meeting because of their opposition to the attack plans.
Intelligence and military officials around the world are also bracing for the results of a U.S. attack on Iran. This includes the distinct possibility of a major Shia retaliatory attack in Iraq, the Eastern Province of Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates, Lebanon, and Afghanistan against U.S. military, diplomatic, and economic targets in the region. Radioactive fallout from a conventional or tactical nuclear attack on Iran will result in major problems with Pakistan, India, China, Russia, Japan, and other downwind countries in Asia and the Pacific Rim, possibly including the fall of the Pervez Musharraf government in Pakistan and replacement by a radical Islamist regime having possession of nuclear weapons. That would provoke a military response from nuclear power India.
In a counter-attack, Iran would immediately launch its Shahab I and II missiles at the U.S. Green Zone in Baghdad, the Al Udeid airbase in Qatar, the US Navy base in Bahrain, Camp Doha base in Kuwait, Al Seeb airbase in Oman, Baghdad International Airport, the U.S. base in Kandahar, Afghanistan. Iran would also launch its long-range Shahab III missiles on the Israeli cities of Tel Aviv, Haifa, Beersheba, Eilat, and the Israeli nuclear complex at Dimona. Iranian missiles would also be launched at US naval ships in the Persian Gulf and oil installations in Saudi Arabia and Kuwait.
The virtual end of NATO as a viable defense organization may also result from an attack that will drive a final wedge between Washington and Europe. And China may elect to respond financially and militarily against the United States since Iran is China's second largest source of imported Middle East oil after Saudi Arabia and plans to use an Iranian terminal for the export of natural gas from Turkmenistan. [China now imports 60 percent of its oil needs, and Iran represents 17 percent of those imports].
Russia recently participated in, through the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), a three-way military exercise (code named "Indira 2005") between Russia, China, and India to prepare for any new U.S. power projections in Asia, including an attack on Iran, a prospective SCO member. Last August, Russia and China held their first-ever joint land-sea-air military exercises.
Iran also held a large military exercise in early December in Bandar Abbas on the Gulf. An Iranian C-130 carrying Iranian journalists from Mehrabad airport to Bandar to cover the exercise crashed into a Tehran apartment building on December 6, killing at least 116 people, including 68 journalists.
Within the U.S. military and across the globe, there is heightened tension about the intentions of the neocon Bush administration and its allies in Israel.
"Our 'neoconservatives' are neither new nor conservative,
but old as Babylon and evil as Hell." - Edward Abbey
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