Happy New Year

Happy Year of the Ox, starting January 26, 2009, for “Calm, hard work, resolve, and tenacity.”
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With only public channels to inform one, it is necessary to rely on the obvious.
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What is obvious is that having siphoned off as much oil as possible from Iraq, the next goal of the USA would be Iran, with equally unconvincing reasons given for the action, and that this would be blocked by China and Russia in the modern version of “The Great Game.”
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Everyone has noticed that the way to avoid being invaded by the US is to actually have nukes, like North Korea. If you don't, like Iraq, the US will claim you have them and invade you.
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Successful attacks, such as the train bombing in Spain and the bus bombings in Britain, were carried out by amateurs with family in countries being invaded by western armies, who had no discernible links to Al Qaeda or Bin Laden. Since it would remove the main reason for the war in Afghanistan, this is kept quiet.
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When two farmers are killed in Asia, one of them is often reported as “allegedly a senior Al Qaeda operative.” The people writing this stuff are psy ops, propaganda warfare, writers and should be ignored.
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The abuses at Abu Ghraib prison caused hundreds to flock to Iraq to attack US soldiers, since that is a great deal easier than getting into the United States to cause trouble. Gaza will produce thousands more.
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Osama Bin Laden himself has stated that he was not responsible for the 9/11 attacks on the Trade Towers, and the official US record of his acts includes the Khobar Towers bombings, the USS Cole, and the Kenyan embassy, for all of which he has claimed responsibility, but not the 9/11 attack.
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Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, currently held at Guantanamo where he was tortured, has claimed responsibility for planning the 9/11 attack, but also for a number of other attacks, some of which he could not possibly have been involved with, illustrating why confessions obtained under torture are inadmissible in most western courts, since they are notoriously unreliable.
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The regular threat to destroy the entire planet with nuclear weapons if the state of Israel is in danger will have to be faced at some time, remembering Bonhoeffer. Working out how much further any of us are down the list from Gaza is not an appealing alternative.
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So much for “terrorism,” of which the only useful thing to be said is Chomsky’s “If you want to stop terrorism, there’s a really easy way – Stop practicing it.”
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My view of Obama comes from working out how a Luo from Kenya, a Kikuyu majority country, would probably set about protecting himself if he came to power. Recruiting his main potential enemies into his coalition (hence Emmanuel, followed by Gates) is an obvious move, and does not, of itself, discredit him.
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If Obama can move to torchium as a source for atomic power, without the Chernobyl dangers of uranium 235, or the waste disposal problems, and also without the spin off to nuclear weapons, that would be a massive advance. (Gates favors increased nukes, like Wolfowitz.)
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On Obama’s $850 billion bail out plan the Republicans, discredited though they are, are the more correct. Letting BoA, Merrill Lynch, AIG, old Uncle Tom Cobley an’ all go bankrupt (imprison or hang the culprits, who cares) would at least mean starting with a clean sheet. US public and private debt at 385 per cent of GDP is not sustainable, and printing another two trillion dollars for the banks to hand out in bonuses and redecorating their offices while howling that China is “manipulating its currency” seems the act of a lunatic. That China still hopes to achieve an 8% growth rate, though 6.8% is more commonly predicted, is hardly a subject for attack from an economy that contracted by 3.8%.
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Spain has a law on its books since 1870 allowing its courts to prosecute foreigners for such crimes as genocide, crimes against humanity, and torture committed anywhere in the world, the basis for holding General Pinochet of Chile in the UK some years ago. The Spanish High Court announced this week a war crimes investigation into an Israeli ex-defense minister and six other top security officials for their role in a 2002 attack that killed a Hamas commander and 14 civilians in Gaza. According to Ms. Tzipi Livni, the Israeli premier, Spain has now agreed to exclude Israel from the list of countries that can be charged. Burning children with white phosphorus and the use of DIME weapons, which inject heavy metals into the bloodstream to shred internal organs, will no longer be a war crime.
As Rabbi Yaacov Perrin memorably put it on page 1 of the New York Times of February 28, 1994 "One million Arabs are not worth a Jewish fingernail."
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With both Posse Comitatus (forbidding use of the military against the US population) and Habeas Corpus (forbidding arrest and imprisonment without charge and trial) essentially suspended by the Bush administration, the arrival of the First Brigade of the Third Infantry Division, three to four thousand soldiers, from Iraq in the USA for crowd control on October 1, 2008 may be a reason for serious concern, especially since the removal of governments was successfully accomplished by the crowds at Bangkok Airport in Thailand, at Reykjavik in Iceland, and is in progress at Athens in Greece and currently in France.
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The Homeland Security introduction at the Inauguration of the measures which make airports a nightmare resulted in several hundred invitees missing the ceremony. (They actually didn't miss that much as the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court flubbed the oath, getting the wording wrong - he was appointed as a fan of George Bush, after all, not for any skill in legal memory - and Obama's oath of office had to be re-done the next day in private.) The same measures at the Superbowl on Sunday February 1, 2009, although no hint of an attack made them necessary, suggest a significant tightening of controls on the civilian population in the USA.
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No one has yet made clear the full extent of the coming disaster, though it can easily be calculated without undue strain on mathematical skills from the UN report that an entire second planet earth - which we do not have - is required to maintain world living standards at their present level.

That means, if dividing by two can be managed without difficulty, that overall world standards of living will halve. The double whammy for the US is that with five per cent of the population it can not continue to consume thirty per cent of world resources as it has done in the past; no one will stand for it, and the US has lost the power to buy, borrow, or steal the power to insist on it, and can no longer maintain the military power to force acquiescence. (Even space transport to the space station will be done by the Russians kindly ferrying the Americans up. NASA no longer has the shuttle, says the last news report of January 2009.) So in addition to the general halving of living standards, the US will have to make a very severe additional reduction in consumption of resources, perhaps by as much as five sixths. (That doesn't mean that American ingenuity can not figure out a way to dramatically increase resources; it's best placed of all perhaps to do that. It's just that it had better get it done fairly sharpish, to avoid living at around one tenth of its previous level.)