Monday, March 03, 2008

The Federal Reserve's rescue has failed

The verdict is in. The Fed's emergency rate cuts in January have failed to halt the downward spiral towards a full-blown debt deflation. Much more drastic action will be needed.

  • Read more from Ambrose Evans-Pritchard
  • 'Ninja' loans explode on sub-prime frontline
  • The latest news and views on the credit crisis
  • Yields on two-year US Treasuries plummeted to 1.63pc on Friday in a flight to safety, foretelling financial winter.

    The debt markets are freezing ever deeper, a full eight months into the crunch. Contagion is spreading into the safest pockets of the US credit universe.

    It is hard to imagine a more plain-vanilla outfit than the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, which manages bridges, bus terminals, and airports.

    The authority is a public body, backed by the two states. Yet it had to pay 20pc rates in February after the near closure of the $330bn (£166m) "term-auction" market. It had originally expected to pay 4.3pc, but that was aeons ago in financial time.


    "I never thought I would see anything like this in my life," said James Steele, an HSBC economist in New York.

    No sane mortal needs to know what term-auction means, except that it too became a tool of the US credit alchemists. Banks briefly used the market as laboratory for conjuring long-term loans at Alan Greenspan's giveaway short-term rates. It has come unstuck. Next in line is the $45trillion derivatives market for credit default swaps (CDS).

    Last week, the spreads on high-yield US bonds vaulted to 718 basis points. The iTraxx Crossover index measuring corporate default risk in Europe smashed the 600 barrier. We are now far beyond the August spike.

    Sub-prime debt is plumbing new depths. A-rated securities issued in early 2007 fell to a record 12.72pc of face value on Friday. The BBB tier fetched 10.42pc. The "toxic" tranches are worthless.

    Why won't it end? Because US house prices are in free fall. The Case-Shiller index for the 20 biggest cities dropped 9.1pc year-on-year in December. The annualised rate of fall was 18pc in the fourth quarter, and gathering speed.

    As the graph shows below, US households are only halfway through the tsunami of rate resets - 300 basis points upwards - on teaser loans.

    graph: US households are only halfway through the tsunami of rate resets



    The UK hedge fund Peloton Partners misjudged this fresh leg of the crunch. After an 87pc profit last year betting against sub-prime, it switched sides to play the rebound. Last week it had to liquidate a $2bn fund.

    Like many, Peloton thought Fed rate cuts from 5.25pc to 3pc (with more to come) would end the panic. But this is not a normal downturn, subject to normal recovery. Leverage is too extreme. Bank capital is too eroded. Monetary traction eludes the Fed. An "Austrian" purge is under way.

    UBS says the cost of the credit debacle will reach $600bn. "Leveraged risk is a cancer in this market."

    Try $1trillion, says New York professor Nouriel Roubin. Contagion is moving up the ladder to prime mortgages, commercial property, home equity loans, car loans, credit cards and student loans. We have not even begun Wave Two: the British, Club Med, East European, and Antipodean house busts.

    As the once unthinkable unfolds, the leaders of global finance dither. The Europeans are frozen in the headlights: trembling before a false inflation; cowed by an atavistic Bundesbank; waiting passively for the Atlantic storm to hit.

    Half the eurozone is grinding to a halt. Italy is slipping into recession. Property prices are flat or falling in Ireland, Spain, France, southern Italy and now Germany. French consumer moral is the lowest in 20 years.

    The euro fetches $1.52 (from $0.82 in 2000), beyond the pain threshold for aircraft, cars, luxury goods and textiles. The manufacturing base of southern Europe is largely below water. As Le Figaro wrote last week, the survival of monetary union is in doubt. Yet still, the ECB waits; still the German-bloc governors breathe fire about inflation.

    The Fed is now singing from a different hymn book, warning of the "possibility of some very unfavourable outcomes". Inflation is not one of them.

    "There probably will be some bank failures," said Ben Bernanke. He knows perfectly well that the US price spike is a bogus scare, the tail-end of a food and fuel shock.

    "I expect inflation to come down. I don't think we're anywhere near the situation in the 1970s," he told Congress.

    Indeed not. Real wages are being squeezed. Oil and "Ags" are acting as a tax. December unemployment jumped at the fastest rate in a quarter century.

    The greater risk is slump, says Princetown Professor Paul Krugman. "The Fed is studying the Japanese experience with zero rates very closely. The problem is that if they want to cut rates as aggressively as they did in the early 1990s and 2001, they have to go below zero."

    This means "quantitative easing" as it was called in Japan. As Ben Bernanke spelled out in November 2002, the Fed can inject money by purchasing great chunks of the bond market.

    Section 13 of the Federal Reserve Act allows the bank - in "exigent circumstances" - to lend money to anybody, and take upon itself the credit risk. It has not done so since the 1930s.

    Ultimately the big guns have the means to stop descent into an economic Ice Age. But will they act in time?

    "We are becoming increasingly concerned that the authorities in the world do not get it," said Bernard Connolly, global strategist at Banque AIG.

    "The extent of de-leveraging involves a wholesale destruction of credit. The risk is that the 'shadow banking system' completely collapses," he said.

    For the first time since this Greek tragedy began, I am now really frightened.

    Buffett: U.S. in Recession

    Associated Press
    March 3, 2008

    Billionaire Warren Buffett said Monday that the U.S. economy is essentially in a recession even if it hasn’t met the technical definition of one yet.

    Buffett said in an interview with cable network CNBC the reports he gets from the retail businesses his holding company owns show a significant slowdown in purchases.

    The chairman and CEO of Omaha-based Berkshire Hathaway Inc. said millions of people have also lost equity in their homes because home prices have dropped.

    The technical definition of a recession most economists use is two consecutive quarters of negative growth in the nation’s gross domestic product.

    “I would say, by any commonsense definition, we are in a recession,” Buffett said on CNBC.

    Read entire article

    Afghan opium growth 'hits new high'

    Al Jazeera.net
    Monday, March 3, 2008

    The US has warned that opium production in Afghanistan reaching record levels, undermining efforts to legitimise the economy and supplying the Taliban with funds for weapons.

    The US state department release its report on the issue as Jaap de Hoop Scheffer, Nato's secretary-general, met George Bush in Washington to discuss Afghanistan.

    "Narcotics production in Afghanistan hit historic highs in 2007 for the second straight year," said the report, released on Friday.

    "[The country's] drug trade is undercutting efforts to establish a stable democracy with a licit economic free market in the country."

    Last year more than 93 per cent of the world's opium came from Afghanistan, the report said, while more than 14 per cent of Afghans were involved in poppy production in 2007, up from 12.6 per cent in 2006.

    The report said 2007's crop had an export value of about four billion dollars, more than one-third of Afghanistan's gross domestic product (GDP).

    "The Afghan government must take decisive action against poppy cultivation soon to turn back the drug threat before its further growth and consolidation make it even more difficult to defeat," the annual report added. Full article here.

    Fox Cameraman Kicked Off Public Property In Detroit

    You Tube
    Monday, March 3, 2008

    A FOX 2 photographer has a confrontation with a member of Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick's security team. He was following the rules when he was approached by an overbearing officer, and it was all caught on tape. FOX 2's Taryn Asher reports from Detroit with more on the story.

    ******************

    poster comments: PLEASE START GETTING ANGRY!!! PLEASE!!!

    Thanks

    Military wins round for mandatory anthrax vaccination

    • Story Highlights
    • Federal judge: FDA's vaccine approval process was adequate
    • Eight plaintiffs sue to make military's mandatory inoculation optional
    • Mailed anthrax fatally poisoned five people in U.S. in late 2001
    • Inhaling anthrax has fatality rate of 45 percent to 90 percent
    *********************Poster Comments****************************
    Dont forget even the History Channel now admits the anthrax attacks (in late 2001) were an inside job
    See for yourself, if you dont believe me:

    *****************************************************************
    From Bill Mears
    CNN

    WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Eight members of the military who objected to getting a mandatory anthrax vaccination lost another round in federal court Friday.

    A District of Columbia federal judge dismissed a lawsuit from service members who claim the federal government is forcing them to take an unproven and potentially ineffective drug to stop the deadly bacteria.

    The ruling was the latest in a long-running legal fight over the vaccine.

    In 2001 -- shortly after the September 11 terrorist attacks -- anthrax poisoning killed five people in the United States.

    The material was sent through the mail, along with threats, to various media outlets and government officials, including members of Congress and the Supreme Court. No arrests have been made.

    Several other scares have occurred since then, and anthrax was reported as one of the weapons of mass destruction that Iraq was alleged to be hiding before the 2003 U.S.-led invasion.

    The military, concerned that anthrax or other biological agents could be used against troops by terrorists or insurgents in global conflicts, began a mandatory inoculation program in 1998.

    The eight plaintiffs, fearing side effects, wanted to make the vaccine optional.

    The Pentagon program was suspended four years ago after a federal court found the Food and Drug Administration's approval process to be improper.

    The mandatory inoculations resumed after revised protocols found the vaccine to be safe.

    On Friday, U.S. District Judge Rosemary Collyer ruled the FDA's revised approval process was appropriate.

    "The FDA applied its expertise and found the vaccine is effective," Collyer wrote. "The FDA did not act arbitrarily or capriciously. ... The court will not substitute its own judgment when the FDA made no clear error in judgment."

    The vaccine -- marketed by the trade name BioTrax -- is licensed to be given in a six-dose regimen over nearly 20 months.

    "Force protection is the No. 1 priority for the Defense Department," Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman said in reaction to the judge's ruling.

    "The safety and efficacy of the vaccine has been well documented and this nation owes its service members that are going into harm's way the best possible protection this country can afford them to be able to operate in any number of environments."

    Anthrax, one of the most dangerous biological agents, is a bacterial disease whose spores can cause infection through inhalation, ingestion or skin contact.

    Antibiotics are used when symptoms are detected, but inhalation anthrax has an estimated fatality rate of 45 percent to 90 percent, according to the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Collyer cited those figures in her ruling.

    The eight plaintiffs were Thomas Rempfer, Joshua Cohen, Gareth Harris, Kevin Ferrara, Shameka Edwards, Eric Gearhart, Michael Palmer, and James Hailstone. There was no initial reaction from their attorney.





    Find this article at:
    http://www.cnn.com/2008/US/02/29/anthrax.military

    Dollar Wallows Near Record Lows


    BERLIN (AP) -- The dollar opened the week trading near all-time lows set last week as investors awaited new data on U.S. manufacturing and construction.

    The euro purchased as much as $1.5237 in early European trading Monday, just below the $1.5238 intraday high it hit on Friday. It fell back slightly to $1.5192, just down from the $1.5194 it bought in New York late Friday.

    The British pound fell slightly to $1.9834 from $1.9883 in New York, while the dollar slipped to purchase 102.91 Japanese yen from 103.96 yen on Friday.

    Speculation was growing among traders that the U.S. Federal Reserve could cut rates by as much as 75 basis points at this month's meeting, said James Hughes, an analyst at CMC Markets.

    Lower interest rates can jump-start a nation's economy, but can weigh on its currency as traders transfer funds to countries where they can earn higher returns.

    Investors will also try to determine whether their recent pessimism has been well-founded or overwrought in a report from the Institute for Supply Management on U.S. manufacturing in February.

    Traders were looking ahead to a "flurry of start-of-the-month data" this week for direction, Hughes said.

    "Essentially what traders will be left looking for are signals to underline that the ECB cannot afford to cut interest rates any further whilst the Fed will be presumably forced into further softening of policy in an attempt to stave off recession," he said.

    U.S. launches missile strike in Somalia

    KISMAYU, Somalia (Reuters) - Two U.S. missiles hit a house in southern Somalia on Monday, according to local officials, in a strike Washington said was directed at "known terrorists".

    It was the fourth U.S. air strike in 14 months on Somalia, where Washington believes local Islamist insurgents are giving shelter to wanted al Qaeda figures.

    "We launched a deliberate strike against a suspected bed-down of known terrorists," a senior U.S. official, who declined to be named, told Reuters in Washington.

    Residents of Dobley, a remote Somali town 220 km (140 miles) from the southern port city of Kismayu on the Kenyan border, believed the missiles were targeting senior Islamist leaders meeting nearby.

    Dobley district commissioner Ali Hussein Nur said six people were killed, but a local politician who had visited the scene and who asked not to be named, said only three people were wounded.

    The U.S. official said it was too early to know what damage had been inflicted, or whether any people were injured or killed. The official declined to give details on the type of weapon used.

    The Somali politician said Sheikh Hassan Turki, a local militant cleric, and other leaders from a militant Islamist group from Mogadishu were meeting in the vicinity. The Islamists have been waging a bloody insurgency against Somali government forces.

    ASSESSING DAMAGE

    "The town is very tense. People have started fleeing because they fear there might be more attacks," he said.

    A man in Kismayu, who said the house belonged to him, told Reuters his daughter had been wounded and four of his cows killed in the attack.

    "We do not know whether the missiles were fired by the American AC-130 plane which is still flying over the city. All we know is they dropped from the sky," Mohamed Nurie Salad told Reuters in Kismayu.

    He said he was returning to Dobley to assess the damage, which he had been told about over the telephone.

    On January 8, 2007, a U.S. AC-130 gunship struck Islamists in southern Somalia in Washington's first overt military action there since pulling out of a U.N.-backed peacekeeping mission in 1994 after the "Black Hawk Down" incident.

    That attack, and another with the same kind of airplane shortly thereafter, struck Islamists fleeing from Ethiopian and Somali troops who cornered them in southern Somalia during a two-week war to rout the militant movement.

    On June 21, a U.S. Navy ship fired missiles at Islamist fighters and foreign jihadists hiding in the mountains in the northern Puntland region.

    The United States accuses Somali Islamist insurgents of harboring al Qaeda fugitives responsible for planning and executing the 1998 U.S. embassy bombings in Kenya and Tanzania.

    It provided intelligence and some military support to Ethiopia's intervention to help the Somali interim government in late 2006.

    The Horn of Africa country has had no central government since a dictator was overthrown in 1991. An interim government formed in 2004 is struggling to assert its authority and is battling the Islamists in the capital Mogadishu.

    Violence spirals as Pakistan awaits new government

    ISLAMABAD (Reuters) - A spate of suicide attacks by Islamist militants could spark a war of revenge among ethnic Pashtun tribesmen in Pakistan's northwest just as moderate, secular political parties appear poised for power, analysts say.

    The region is already regarded as the main battleground in the fight against the Taliban and al Qaeda, and the stakes are raised because of Pakistan's status as a nuclear-armed state.

    The militants want to destabilize President Pervez Musharraf, and convince Pakistanis his alliance with the United States is the root cause of conflict in the area.

    For their part, Pakistan's Western allies want its new prime minister and government, once they emerge from the hung parliament returned by voters in an election on February 18, to provide the democratic legitimacy for the war on terrorism that Musharraf has been unable to engender.

    "You may not question President Pervez Musharraf's policy on terrorism, you may say it's all right but the point is nobody is ready to own this policy," said Talat Masood, a former general and security analyst.

    "The greatest advantage of the civilian government will be that the policy will be owned by the people of Pakistan."

    Well over 500 people have been killed in militant-related violence so far this year, but the campaign of suicide attacks began after troops stormed the Red Mosque in Islamabad to put down a militant student movement in the heart of the capital.

    While the remote Waziristan region has seen the worst of the violence over the past few years, in recent months hitherto dormant tribal areas have erupted in violence.

    At least 40 people were killed on Friday in a suicide attack in the Swat district of North West Frontier Province (NWFP) during the funeral of a policeman hours after he was killed in a roadside attack.

    On Sunday, another 40 people died and scores were wounded when a young bomber blew himself up as hundreds of tribesmen left a jirga, or council, that had discussed how to restore peace in Darra Adam Kheil, a tribal region near Peshawar, the NWFP capital.

    The army has been fighting militants in Swat since October, and just last week had claimed it had cleared all but a few pockets of resistance.

    SOCIETY'S DESCENT

    But attacks like a roadside bomb that killed 13 members of a wedding party, including the bride, on February 22, again in Swat, demonstrated the insecurity ordinary families are encountering.

    Analysts noted a "dangerous trend" towards attacks that struck at the heart of Pashtun society.

    "These are direct attacks on Pashtun society," said Mahmood Shah, a former security chief for the tribal areas.

    "All institutions, which represent Pashtun society, the mosque, a wedding, a funeral or a jirga, they have all been targeted.

    "They want to bomb the entire Pashtun society into submission."

    Pashtuns, whose lands straddle both sides of the border between Pakistan and Afghanistan, live to a code of honor, commonly known as Pashtunwali, that calls on menfolk to take revenge if a family member is killed.

    The attacks on the funeral and the jirga could trigger inter-tribal feuds, in a region where guns are commonly referred to as "Pashtun jewellery".

    "This situation could ignite tribal enmities. This will create a very explosive and dangerous situation for the government," said Rahimullah Yusufzai, a newspaper editor and an expert on Pashtun affairs.

    The escalating violence has raised concern among Western countries about the stability of the nuclear-armed state amid the growing unpopularity of U.S. ally Musharraf.

    The recent attacks came as winners of the February 18 elections were negotiating to cobble together a coalition government.

    There have been a spate of attacks in the run-up to elections but polling day passed off with far less violence than feared.

    The Pakistan People's Party (PPP) of Benazir Bhutto, the country's most liberal politician who was killed in an attack blamed on al Qaeda-linked militants on December 27, emerged as the largest group in the National Assembly, dealing a humiliating defeat to Musharraf's allies.

    A moderate Pashtun party, the Awami National Party, won the most seats in the NWFP assembly by trouncing Islamist parties and is likely to lead the provincial government in a coalition with the PPP, but if they fail to quell the violence voters will soon become disenchanted, analysts said.

    Saudi says arrests Qaeda suspects planning attacks

    RIYADH (Reuters) - Saudi Arabia said on Monday it has arrested 28 people suspected of seeking to regroup al Qaeda's wing in the oil-exporting kingdom to carry out a "terror campaign".

    The suspects were using a recording from al Qaeda's second-in command Ayman al-Zawahri to help raise money from ordinary Saudis, the official Saudi Press Agency reported, citing a ministry of interior source.

    British MPs Warn Against U.S. Attack On Iran


    UK Press

    A military strike against Iran is unlikely to succeed and could provoke a violent backlash across the region, MPs have warned.

    The Commons foreign affairs committee urged the Government to use its influence with Washington to persuade the US administration to "engage" diplomatically with the Iranians over their controversial nuclear programme.

    In its report, the committee acknowledged that Tehran had suspended work on developing a nuclear weapon in 2003, making American military action less likely.

    "We remain of the view that such a military strike would be unlikely to succeed and could provoke an extremely violent backlash across the region," it said.

    However, the committee also warned that existing international sanctions were "not sufficiently robust" to persuade Iran to suspend uranium enrichment - a key step in acquiring a nuclear bomb.

    If Tehran were to launch a crash weapons programme, there was a "strong possibility" that it could achieve a "breakout nuclear capability" by 2015, it said.

    The committee said that best chance of achieving a peaceful resolution was a change of policy by the US to "engage directly" with the Iranians.

    "We recommend that the Government urges Washington to consider offering a credible security guarantee to Iran if the Iranian government in turn will offer an equally credible and verifiable guarantee that it will not enter into a nuclear weapons programme and improves its co-operation with the international community in other areas," the report said.

    It cautioned that further international sanctions against Iran were unlikely to be effective, and could inadvertently help the country's hard-line President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad by providing a "scapegoat" for his economic failings.

    Cyber Storm II

    Ben Bain
    Federal Computer Week

    March 2, 2008

    The Homeland Security Department is getting ready to lead foreign governments, corporations, states and federal agencies on a second round of cyber war games.

    During the second week of March, nine states, four foreign governments, 18 federal agencies and 40 private companies will participate in Cyber Storm II — a weeklong simulation designed to better prepare the players for cyberattacks. DHS, FBI and the Defense Department are among the federal agencies that will participate.

    The exercise will be the culmination of more than 18 months of planning, led by DHS’ National Cyber Security Division, to design a series of simulations that will test the players’ abilities to respond to cyberattacks on information technology, communications, chemical and transportation infrastructure. The first Cyber Storm exercise, in 2006, focused on air transportation.

    Cyber Storm II participants have been broken into two teams: planners and players. The players have not seen any of the scenarios they will have to mitigate.

    A source familiar with the planning of the exercise said that this year’s simulation exercises could include elements of organized crime, terrorism or a hacking attempt driven by political goals.

    “We are looking at a more sophisticated scenario this time around,” he said. “It’s going to be quite an event.”

    The exercise will take place in Washington, but will also be played out virtually by thousands of people worldwide. Australia, along with the United Kingdom, New Zealand, Canada and the United States, is planning a simultaneous cyber simulation exercise that will include its military.

    Each of Cyber Storm II’s participants will have their own goals and challenges designed to bolster their own abilities. The private-sector participant list includes giants such as Dow Chemical, Microsoft, McAfee, Cisco and Nova Chemicals, among others, the source said.

    “The exercise is very much deliberately intended to overload people,” the source said. “We don’t do these things to pat ourselves on the back.”

    The exercise stresses confidentiality and afterward DHS will hold an after-session and produce a general lessons-learned document. Participants are encouraged but not required to do the same.

    President Bush requested an additional $83.1 million for the U.S. Computer Emergency Readiness Team for fiscal 2009 and has recently made headlines with the issuance of its classified cyber initiative.

    Lawmakers have grown increasingly concerned with the job DHS is doing in thwarting cyberattacks, which have increased exponentially in recent years. Congressional staff will be observing the event.

    Putin’s Handpicked Successor Wins Amid Election Irregularities


    Swissinfo
    March 2, 2008

    As Dmitry Medvedev headed for victory in the Russian presidential election on Sunday, election observers noted a certain number of irregularities.

    Swiss parliamentarian Andreas Gross, head of the Council of Europe’s monitoring mission, is due to present his report on Monday, and will not comment until then. He spent election day listening to people in the field and monitoring the voting.

    However, one monitor told Reuters news agency that voters’ ballots had been visible to election officials in three polling stations he had visited.

    An independent Russian organisation, Golos, told the agency it had seen evidence of fraud all over the country.

    First exit polls on Sunday evening gave Medvedev, currently Russia’s first deputy prime minister, and the candidate favoured by outgoing president, Vladimir Putin, nearly 70 per cent of the vote.

    Pre-election concern

    The run-up to the election had already aroused concern.

    Following a two-day pre-electoral trip to Moscow in February, the Council of Europe mission highlighted the limited number of candidates.

    In addition to Medvedev, three other men were in the running to take over from Putin, who is stepping down at the end of two four-year terms. But Medvedev was always widely expected to win.

    “It is much too difficult to be a candidate in Russia and the obstacles are too high. This was done on purpose by legislative reforms which limit access to political power,” Gross told swissinfo ahead of his current trip to Russia.

    Coverage of Medvedev has also dominated prime time television – the key to reaching the population, added Gross.

    The 25-member observer mission from the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe has been in Russia since Wednesday.

    It is the only group of European election monitors in the country. The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) decided against sending its observers last month, citing too many restrictions by Moscow. Russia has called the move “unacceptable”.

    Gross said that the OSCE’s work normally formed the basis of his team’s short-term work.

    “But in these elections the long term is so easy to understand that we will be able to fulfil our task even though the OSCE’s observers won’t be there,” he said.

    Others will be present, explained Gross. “We are the only observers with a democratic standard because the other ones come from China or from former Soviet Union countries that are not so reliable when it comes to democracy,” he said

    Gross, a member of the centre-left Social Democratic Party, has carried out 45 election observations in the past 12 years, including the Russian parliamentary poll last December, which was declared unfair by European monitors.

    Foregone conclusion?

    Polls suggested that there would not be much doubt about the winner.

    “[One] showed that 80 per cent of the Russian people were ready to accept the man Putin chooses as his successor. This is quite extraordinary because the logic of a term limit is that you have to reshuffle the political power redistribution,” said Gross.

    On the other hand, Gross told swissinfo, credit had to be given to Putin for not changing the Russian constitution to allow him a third term as president. This would have been possible because he has a constitutional majority in parliament.

    Putin also did not choose a hardliner, but the more moderate and “civilised” Medvedev, Gross said.

    “But on the other hand the fact that the majority of people is ready to choose who Putin proposes shows the real problem of the development of democratic mentality in a society,” warned the Swiss parliamentarian.

    “This problem was increased by the legislation which prevented, for instance, the former Prime Minister [Mikhail Kasyanov] from being a candidate in order to be real competition for Putin’s choice and to give the people a choice,” added Gross.

    The United Nations Contributed to the Establishment of a Mafia-State in Kosovo

    by Michel Chossudovsky
    Global Research, March 1, 2008


    International Tribunal for U.S./NATO War Crimes in Yugoslavia - 2000-06-10

    The EU, the US, NATO and the UN Mission in Kosovo bear responsibility in the criminalization of Kosovo State institutions.

    The following article, written in March 2000, focusses on the formation of a Kosovar Mafia State integrated by former members of the KLA.

    With the February 2008 declaration of Independence, this process has reached its completion. Kosovo is not a mafia state in its own right, it is a US/EU protectorate under NATO military rule. The government of Kosovo, which has extensive links to organized crime, serves the interests of the US-NATO occupation.

    THE UNITED NATIONS APPOINTS AN ALLEGED WAR CRIMINAL IN KOSOVO

    By Professor Michel Chossudovsky

    Professor Michel Chossudovsky (Canada), an expert historian and economist who has taken part in many international forums on the Balkans, showed the criminal role of the so-called Kosovo Liberation Army and its ties to U.S. and German intelligence services, ties to NATO and the United Nations Rep. Bernard Kouchner. Michel Chossudovsky, professor of economics, University of Ottawa, author of a forthcoming book entitled "War, Globalization and the New World Order"

    The United Nations in a recent [2000] report submitted to Secretary General Kofi Annan now concedes that the Kosovo Protection Force (KPC) (inaugurated under UN auspices in September 1999) has been involved in "criminal activities-killings, ill-treatment/torture, illegal policing, abuse of authority, intimidation, breaches of political neutrality and hate speech"1.

    And in a cruel irony, "the United Nations is paying the salaries of many of the gangsters."2 The Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) --known for its connections to organized crime and the Balkans narcotics traffic was officially dissolved and transformed into the Kosovo Protection Corps (KPC) modelled on the US National Guard. Funded by US military aid, the KPC is trained by Military Professional Resources Inc (MPRI), a mercenary outfit based in Alexandria, Virginia.

    The KPC was slated by the United Nations to become --in the words of UNMIK Special Representative Bernard Kouchner [now France's Minister of Foreign Affairs] "a civilian, disciplined, uniformed and multi-ethnic emergency response... with a mandate to "providing humanitarian assistance... and contributing to rebuilding infrastructure and communities...."3

    Shift in military labels. KLA Commander Agim Ceku was appointed Chief of Staff of Kosovo’s newly created Armed Forces. In the words of Bernard Kouchner during the inauguration ceremony: I look to him [Agim Ceku] to lead the new members of the Corps in the footsteps of Cincinnatus, the model citizen-soldier of ancient Rome -- who left his plow standing in the field to answer the call to arms & and at the end of the war refused all honors in order to return to his civic duties.4

    Barely a few weeks later, the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) announced it was "investigating Ceku for alleged war crimes committed against ethnic Serbs in Croatia between 1993 and 1995." 5 The information, however, was known to military and intelligence analysts well in advance of Ceku’s appointment. It had been withheld from public opinion by the ICTY during the mandate of Chief Prosecutor Louise Arbour. Jane Defence Weekly (10 May 1999) had confirmed that Ceku had "masterminded the successful HV [Croatian] offensive at Medak [in 1993] and in 1995 was one of the key planners of the successful Operation 'Storm ". United Nations Special Representative Dr. Bernard Kouchner (who is a 1999 Nobel Peace Laureate for his role as co-founder of Doctors without Borders) must have known.

    The UN and NATO had access to the files of the ICTY. The Tribunal’s Chief Prosecutor knew and had the responsibility under the statutes of the ICTY of reporting the matter to the UN Secretary General. In a cruel irony, the United Nations had casually proceeded with the appointment of an individual who according to the files of a United Nations body (namely the ICTY) was an alleged war criminal. Surely some questions should have been asked.

    When the information was released barely a few weeks after Ceku’s appointment: "a diplomat close to Bernard Kouchner the UN special representative [declared] "If we lose him {Agim Ceku] it will be a disaster," ... "When you get to the second level of the TMK [Kosovo Protection Corps], you're down to a bunch of local thugs."... 6 "American diplomats... have suggested any indictment of Ceku would most likely be "sealed" and thereby kept out of the public domain... "[T]he NATO-led peacekeeping force, could not contemplate a public relations disaster with the Albanians by arresting Ceku".7 According to the Sunday Times (London), "[t]he possibility that Ceku, a respected figure in Kosovo, could be accused of war crimes, [had] sent shivers through the international community... "8.

    Meanwhile, the ICTY had reassured public opinion that the "[T]he court's inquiries ... relate[d] to atrocities committed in Krajina, ... between 1993 and 1995"... Ceku's record in Kosovo itself is not thought to be in question, although the office of Carla del Ponte, the new chief prosecutor, said an investigation into his activities with the KLA could not be ruled out..."9

    War Criminals call the Shots

    Visibly what was shaping up in the wake of the bombings in Kosovo was the continuity of NATO’s operation in the Balkans as well as its reliance on war criminals in its "peace-keeping" undertakings. Military personnel and UN bureaucrats previously stationed in Croatia and Bosnia had been routinely reassigned to Kosovo.

    Lieutenant General Mike Jackson was posted to Kosovo as KFOR Commander following his earlier stint in Bosnia Herzegovina and Croatia. In the immediate wake of the 1995 ethnic massacres in Krajina (for which Agim Ceku is under investigation by the ICTY), General Michael Jackson was put in charge as IFOR commander, for organising the return of Serbs "to lands taken by Croatian HVO forces in the 1995 Krajina offensive".10

    And in this capacity Jackson had "urged that the resettlement [of Krajina Serbs] not [be] rushed to avoid tension [with the Croatians]" while also warning returning Serbs "of the extent of the [land] mine threat."11. In retrospect, recalling the events of early 1996, very few Krajina Serbs were allowed to return to their homes under the protection of the United Nations. According to "Veritas" (a Belgrade based organization of Serbian refugees from Croatia), some 10,000-15,000 Serbs were able to resettle in Croatia. Jackson’s experience in "ethnic warfare," however predates the Balkans. From his earlier posting In Northern Ireland as a young captain, Jackson was second in command in the "Bloody Sunday" massacre of civilians in Derry in 1972.

    Under the orders of Lieutenant Coronel Derek Wilford, Captain Jackson and thirteen other soldiers of the parachute regiment opened fire "on a peaceful protest by the Northern Ireland civil rights association opposing discrimination against Catholics. In just 30 minutes, 13 people were shot dead and a further 13 injured. Those who died were killed by a single bullet to the head or body, indicating that they had been deliberately targeted. No weapons were found on any of the deceased."12 Jackson's role in "Bloody Sunday" "did not hinder his Military career." 13 From his early stint in Northern Ireland, he had been reassigned under United Nations auspices to the theatre of ethnic warfare first to Bosnia and Croatia and then to Kosovo...

    In Kosovo, the conduct of senior military officers conforms to the Croatian and Bosnian patterns, the same key individuals were reassigned to "peace-keeping" roles in Kosovo. While General Jackson displayed token efforts to protect Serb and Roma civilians, those who fled Kosovo during his mandate were not encouraged to return under UN protection... In post-war Kosovo, the massacres of civilians was carried out by the KLA (and subsequently by the KPC) under the auspices of NATO and the UN. It was accepted by the "international community" as a "fait accompli".

    The Installation of a Mafia State

    While calling for the installation of democracy based on "transparency" and "good governance", the US and its allies have installed in Kosovo a self proclaimed civilian paramilitary government with links to organised crime. The outcome is the outright "criminalisation" of State institutions in Kosovo and the establishment of what is best described as a "Mafia State". The complicity of NATO and the Alliance governments (namely their relentless support to the KLA provisional government) points to the de facto "criminalisation" of KFOR and of the UN peace-keeping apparatus in Kosovo.

    The donor agencies, the United Nations and Western governments in providing financial support to the KPC are, in this regard, also "accessories" to this criminalisation of State institutions. Through the intermediation of a paramilitary group (created and financed by Washington and Bonn), NATO and the UN bear the burden of responsibility for the massacres of civilians and the prevailing reign of terror in Kosovo.

    NOTES

    1. Quoted in John Sweeney and Jen Holsoe, Kosovo Disaster Response Service Stands Accused of Murder and Torture, the Observer, 12 March 2000.
    2. Ibid.
    3. Statement by Bernard Kouchner, 21 September 1999 on the occasion of the inauguration of the KPC, see
    http://www.un.org/peace/kosovo/pages/kosovo5.htm )
    4. Ibid
    5, AFP, 13 October 1999
    6. Tom Walker, "Kosovo Defence Chief Accused of War Crimes, Sunday Times, 10 October 1999.
    7. Ibid
    8. Ibid
    9. Ibid
    10. Jane Defense Weekly, Vol 23, No. 7, 14 February 1996.
    11. Ibid
    12. Julie Hyland, "Head of NATO Force in Kosovo was Second-in-command at "Bloody Sunday" Massacre in Ireland", World Socialist Website, 19 June 1999.
    13. Ibid.


    Markets Fall on Drumbeat of Grim Reports

    An outpouring of negative economic and financial reports soured the mood on Wall Street Friday as banks and other lenders further tightened credit in their struggle to contain damage from losses on mortgages, business loans and related debt.

    Shares sank, and investors fled to the safety of Treasuries as the Standard & Poor’s 500-stock index fell 2.71 percent and the Dow Jones industrial average dropped 315.79 points, or 2.51 percent, to 12,266.39. Both indexes capped their worst four months since 2002.

    Prices of municipal bonds, bank loans and high-yield debt all fell as well.

    The markets for ultrasafe debt backed by the federal government and other nations were alone in posting gains. Some commodities, including gold, were also up.

    “The drumbeat of economic news has been unrelentingly bad,” said Edward Yardeni, a normally upbeat investment strategist. “The recession scenario is looking more and more credible.”

    Like so many days since the credit troubles erupted in August, Friday dawned on the East Coast with ominous financial signals. A.I.G., the large insurer, had reported its worst loss ever the evening before. Reports out of London overnight suggested that a large hedge fund, Peloton Partners, was being forced to sell nearly $2 billion in mortgage-related securities after it lost the backing of its lenders.

    By the time traders in New York were at their desks, economic reports issued in Washington showed consumer spending was flat in January after adjusting for inflation. Then a bellwether report on Midwestern business activity unexpectedly fell to its lowest level in more than six years, and a survey showed consumer confidence declined to a 16-year low.

    If that was not pessimistic enough, Wall Street’s attention was soon riveted by a report from analysts at UBS that estimated losses to the financial system from securities backed by mortgages and other debts would total $600 billion. Until recently, many analysts had been forecasting losses in the neighborhood of $400 billion — a figure that the dwindling band of optimists in the financial markets once dismissed as vastly overblown.

    “There is not any one news item that I can point to,” said Douglas Peta, chief investment strategist at J. W. Seligman & Company in New York. “We know that there is paper out there that we can’t trust. We don’t know exactly who owns it and how much. And we don’t know how they are valuing it.”

    The S.& P. fell 37.05 points, to 1,330.63, and the Nasdaq composite index declined 60.09 points, or 2.58 percent, to 2,271.48.

    For Mr. Peta and many others, the current turmoil in the financial system is at its core a crisis of faith and confidence.

    Problems are now appearing even in markets that were considered to be safe and staid like municipal bonds.

    Adding to the worries, hedge funds that borrowed billions of dollars through complicated transactions to invest in tax-exempt debt have been forced in the last few days to sell securities to meet margin calls from their banks, said Douglas A. Dachille, chief executive of First Principles Capital Management, a bond firm based in New York.

    An index that tracks the municipal bond market fell sharply in February. The yield, which moves in the opposite direction of the price, has jumped to 5.42 percent, from 4.81 percent at the start of February, according to The Bond Buyer, which compiles an index of 40 municipal bonds.

    “I have never seen anything like this in the 15 to 20 years that I have been involved in muni investing,” said Mr. Dachille, who said he was encouraging clients to buy at these prices.

    The problems in the municipal bond market highlight the increasing reluctance of banks to lend. Burned by their laxity during the housing boom and large losses from securities that were backed by subprime mortgages, lenders are tightening up and shutting out any borrower with a taint, real or perceived.

    For their part, lenders and investors are reluctant to stake their dwindling capital on new ventures or to roll over debts that are coming due because they are unsure if they will get their money back. Defaults and losses continue to rise in many corners of the credit market.

    In January, 23.4 percent of outstanding subprime mortgages were either 60 days’ delinquent, in foreclosure or had already had the home repossessed, up 9 percent from December, according to Rod Dubitsky and other analysts at Credit Suisse.

    He noted that in California, which is suffering more than most states, mortgage companies are holding 10 times the number of foreclosed homes as they were at the start of last year, because more borrowers are falling behind and it is taking longer to sell homes given the glut of properties on the market.

    The debacle in the housing market has taken a toll on the broader economy, and in particular on consumer spending, which accounts for about 70 percent of overall economic activity. For the second consecutive month, spending was flat in January when adjusted for inflation, the Commerce Department said on Friday.

    “You can almost draw it out in a diagram,” said Bernard Baumohl, managing director at the Economic Outlook Group in Princeton, N.J. “With home prices going down, consumers cut back on spending. If consumers cut back on spending, the economy weakens further. If the economy weakens further, fewer people are able to afford mortgages so home foreclosures increase.”

    On a nominal basis, Americans spent more in January, as spending outlays increased 0.4 percent after rising 0.3 percent in December. But, on average, the products they bought went up in price equally fast, too. In January, prices were up 3.7 percent from a year ago, the fastest rate of growth in more than two years.

    Much of the increase comes from the cost of food and gasoline, which has risen sharply in recent months. But prices have risen across the board for products ranging from clothes and medicine to computers and washing machines. Excluding energy and food, prices are up 2.2 percent from January 2007.

    Rising prices are leaving many Americans financially exposed.

    “We know that incomes are growing more slowly, and they’re growing more slowly because of a weakening job market,” said Jared Bernstein, a senior economist at the Economic Policy Institute in Washington.

    Still, other economists note that most Americans should be able to weather the problems in the housing market if they keep their jobs. While the unemployment rate has been creeping up, it remains relatively low at 4.9 percent. But the number of jobless claims has moved up in recent weeks and is flirting with the kind of numbers that often signal a recession is imminent. The Labor Department will next publish the closely watched monthly employment report on Friday.

    “From here,” said Jane Caron, chief economic strategist at Dwight Asset Management, a bond trading firm, “the key thing to watch is what happens on the employment front.”

    Meacher: This War on Terrorism is Bogus

    ukwatch.net
    March 2, 2008

    Massive attention has now been given – and rightly so – to the reasons why Britain went to war against Iraq. But far too little attention has focused on why the US went to war, and that throws light on British motives too. The conventional explanation is that after the Twin Towers were hit, retaliation against al-Qaida bases in Afghanistan was a natural first step in launching a global war against terrorism. Then, because Saddam Hussein was alleged by the US and UK governments to retain weapons of mass destruction, the war could be extended to Iraq as well. However this theory does not fit all the facts. The truth may be a great deal murkier.

    We now know that a blueprint for the creation of a global Pax Americana was drawn up for Dick Cheney (now vice-president), Donald Rumsfeld (defence secretary), Paul Wolfowitz (Rumsfeld’s deputy), Jeb Bush (George Bush’s younger brother) and Lewis Libby (Cheney’s chief of staff). The document, entitled Rebuilding America’s Defences, was written in September 2000 by the neoconservative think tank, Project for the New American Century (PNAC).

    The plan shows Bush’s cabinet intended to take military control of the Gulf region whether or not Saddam Hussein was in power. It says “while the unresolved conflict with Iraq provides the immediate justification, the need for a substantial American force presence in the Gulf transcends the issue of the regime of Saddam Hussein.”

    The PNAC blueprint supports an earlier document attributed to Wolfowitz and Libby which said the US must “discourage advanced industrial nations from challenging our leadership or even aspiring to a larger regional or global role”. It refers to key allies such as the UK as “the most effective and efficient means of exercising American global leadership”. It describes peacekeeping missions as “demanding American political leadership rather than that of the UN”. It says “even should Saddam pass from the scene”, US bases in Saudi Arabia and Kuwait will remain permanently… as “Iran may well prove as large a threat to US interests as Iraq has”. It spotlights China for “regime change”, saying “it is time to increase the presence of American forces in SE Asia”.

    The document also calls for the creation of “US space forces” to dominate space, and the total control of cyberspace to prevent “enemies” using the internet against the US. It also hints that the US may consider developing biological weapons “that can target specific genotypes [and] may transform biological warfare from the realm of terror to a politically useful tool”.

    Finally – written a year before 9/11 – it pinpoints North Korea, Syria and Iran as dangerous regimes, and says their existence justifies the creation of a “worldwide command and control system”. This is a blueprint for US world domination. But before it is dismissed as an agenda for rightwing fantasists, it is clear it provides a much better explanation of what actually happened before, during and after 9/11 than the global war on terrorism thesis. This can be seen in several ways.

    First, it is clear the US authorities did little or nothing to pre-empt the events of 9/11. It is known that at least 11 countries provided advance warning to the US of the 9/11 attacks. Two senior Mossad experts were sent to Washington in August 2001 to alert the CIA and FBI to a cell of 200 terrorists said to be preparing a big operation (Daily Telegraph, September 16 2001). The list they provided included the names of four of the 9/11 hijackers, none of whom was arrested.

    It had been known as early as 1996 that there were plans to hit Washington targets with aeroplanes. Then in 1999 a US national intelligence council report noted that “al-Qaida suicide bombers could crash-land an aircraft packed with high explosives into the Pentagon, the headquarters of the CIA, or the White House”.

    Fifteen of the 9/11 hijackers obtained their visas in Saudi Arabia. Michael Springman, the former head of the American visa bureau in Jeddah, has stated that since 1987 the CIA had been illicitly issuing visas to unqualified applicants from the Middle East and bringing them to the US for training in terrorism for the Afghan war in collaboration with Bin Laden (BBC, November 6 2001). It seems this operation continued after the Afghan war for other purposes. It is also reported that five of the hijackers received training at secure US military installations in the 1990s (Newsweek, September 15 2001).

    Instructive leads prior to 9/11 were not followed up. French Moroccan flight student Zacarias Moussaoui (now thought to be the 20th hijacker) was arrested in August 2001 after an instructor reported he showed a suspicious interest in learning how to steer large airliners. When US agents learned from French intelligence he had radical Islamist ties, they sought a warrant to search his computer, which contained clues to the September 11 mission (Times, November 3 2001). But they were turned down by the FBI. One agent wrote, a month before 9/11, that Moussaoui might be planning to crash into the Twin Towers (Newsweek, May 20 2002).

    All of this makes it all the more astonishing – on the war on terrorism perspective – that there was such slow reaction on September 11 itself. The first hijacking was suspected at not later than 8.20am, and the last hijacked aircraft crashed in Pennsylvania at 10.06am. Not a single fighter plane was scrambled to investigate from the US Andrews airforce base, just 10 miles from Washington DC, until after the third plane had hit the Pentagon at 9.38 am. Why not? There were standard FAA intercept procedures for hijacked aircraft before 9/11. Between September 2000 and June 2001 the US military launched fighter aircraft on 67 occasions to chase suspicious aircraft (AP, August 13 2002). It is a US legal requirement that once an aircraft has moved significantly off its flight plan, fighter planes are sent up to investigate.

    Was this inaction simply the result of key people disregarding, or being ignorant of, the evidence? Or could US air security operations have been deliberately stood down on September 11? If so, why, and on whose authority? The former US federal crimes prosecutor, John Loftus, has said: “The information provided by European intelligence services prior to 9/11 was so extensive that it is no longer possible for either the CIA or FBI to assert a defence of incompetence.”

    Nor is the US response after 9/11 any better. No serious attempt has ever been made to catch Bin Laden. In late September and early October 2001, leaders of Pakistan’s two Islamist parties negotiated Bin Laden’s extradition to Pakistan to stand trial for 9/11. However, a US official said, significantly, that “casting our objectives too narrowly” risked “a premature collapse of the international effort if by some lucky chance Mr Bin Laden was captured”. The US chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, General Myers, went so far as to say that “the goal has never been to get Bin Laden” (AP, April 5 2002). The whistleblowing FBI agent Robert Wright told ABC News (December 19 2002) that FBI headquarters wanted no arrests. And in November 2001 the US airforce complained it had had al-Qaida and Taliban leaders in its sights as many as 10 times over the previous six weeks, but had been unable to attack because they did not receive permission quickly enough (Time Magazine, May 13 2002). None of this assembled evidence, all of which comes from sources already in the public domain, is compatible with the idea of a real, determined war on terrorism.

    The catalogue of evidence does, however, fall into place when set against the PNAC blueprint. From this it seems that the so-called “war on terrorism” is being used largely as bogus cover for achieving wider US strategic geopolitical objectives. Indeed Tony Blair himself hinted at this when he said to the Commons liaison committee: “To be truthful about it, there was no way we could have got the public consent to have suddenly launched a campaign on Afghanistan but for what happened on September 11” (Times, July 17 2002). Similarly Rumsfeld was so determined to obtain a rationale for an attack on Iraq that on 10 separate occasions he asked the CIA to find evidence linking Iraq to 9/11; the CIA repeatedly came back empty-handed (Time Magazine, May 13 2002).

    In fact, 9/11 offered an extremely convenient pretext to put the PNAC plan into action. The evidence again is quite clear that plans for military action against Afghanistan and Iraq were in hand well before 9/11. A report prepared for the US government from the Baker Institute of Public Policy stated in April 2001 that “the US remains a prisoner of its energy dilemma. Iraq remains a destabilising influence to… the flow of oil to international markets from the Middle East”. Submitted to Vice-President Cheney’s energy task group, the report recommended that because this was an unacceptable risk to the US, “military intervention” was necessary (Sunday Herald, October 6 2002).

    Similar evidence exists in regard to Afghanistan. The BBC reported (September 18 2001) that Niaz Niak, a former Pakistan foreign secretary, was told by senior American officials at a meeting in Berlin in mid-July 2001 that “military action against Afghanistan would go ahead by the middle of October”. Until July 2001 the US government saw the Taliban regime as a source of stability in Central Asia that would enable the construction of hydrocarbon pipelines from the oil and gas fields in Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, through Afghanistan and Pakistan, to the Indian Ocean. But, confronted with the Taliban’s refusal to accept US conditions, the US representatives told them “either you accept our offer of a carpet of gold, or we bury you under a carpet of bombs” (Inter Press Service, November 15 2001).

    Given this background, it is not surprising that some have seen the US failure to avert the 9/11 attacks as creating an invaluable pretext for attacking Afghanistan in a war that had clearly already been well planned in advance. There is a possible precedent for this. The US national archives reveal that President Roosevelt used exactly this approach in relation to Pearl Harbor on December 7 1941. Some advance warning of the attacks was received, but the information never reached the US fleet. The ensuing national outrage persuaded a reluctant US public to join the second world war. Similarly the PNAC blueprint of September 2000 states that the process of transforming the US into “tomorrow’s dominant force” is likely to be a long one in the absence of “some catastrophic and catalyzing event – like a new Pearl Harbor”. The 9/11 attacks allowed the US to press the “go” button for a strategy in accordance with the PNAC agenda which it would otherwise have been politically impossible to implement.

    The overriding motivation for this political smokescreen is that the US and the UK are beginning to run out of secure hydrocarbon energy supplies. By 2010 the Muslim world will control as much as 60% of the world’s oil production and, even more importantly, 95% of remaining global oil export capacity. As demand is increasing, so supply is decreasing, continually since the 1960s.

    This is leading to increasing dependence on foreign oil supplies for both the US and the UK. The US, which in 1990 produced domestically 57% of its total energy demand, is predicted to produce only 39% of its needs by 2010. A DTI minister has admitted that the UK could be facing “severe” gas shortages by 2005. The UK government has confirmed that 70% of our electricity will come from gas by 2020, and 90% of that will be imported. In that context it should be noted that Iraq has 110 trillion cubic feet of gas reserves in addition to its oil.

    A report from the commission on America’s national interests in July 2000 noted that the most promising new source of world supplies was the Caspian region, and this would relieve US dependence on Saudi Arabia. To diversify supply routes from the Caspian, one pipeline would run westward via Azerbaijan and Georgia to the Turkish port of Ceyhan. Another would extend eastwards through Afghanistan and Pakistan and terminate near the Indian border. This would rescue Enron’s beleaguered power plant at Dabhol on India’s west coast, in which Enron had sunk $3bn investment and whose economic survival was dependent on access to cheap gas.

    Nor has the UK been disinterested in this scramble for the remaining world supplies of hydrocarbons, and this may partly explain British participation in US military actions. Lord Browne, chief executive of BP, warned Washington not to carve up Iraq for its own oil companies in the aftermath of war (Guardian, October 30 2002). And when a British foreign minister met Gadaffi in his desert tent in August 2002, it was said that “the UK does not want to lose out to other European nations already jostling for advantage when it comes to potentially lucrative oil contracts” with Libya (BBC Online, August 10 2002).

    The conclusion of all this analysis must surely be that the “global war on terrorism” has the hallmarks of a political myth propagated to pave the way for a wholly different agenda – the US goal of world hegemony, built around securing by force command over the oil supplies required to drive the whole project. Is collusion in this myth and junior participation in this project really a proper aspiration for British foreign policy? If there was ever need to justify a more objective British stance, driven by our own independent goals, this whole depressing saga surely provides all the evidence needed for a radical change of course.

    Desperate Smear Campaign Follows Actress’ 9/11 Comments


    Paul Joseph Watson
    Prison Planet
    Sunday, March 2, 2008

    Oscar-winning French actress Marion Cotillard’s comments regarding her doubts about the official 9/11 story have already provoked an international media smear campaign despite the fact that she is merely echoing a plethora of other highly respected public figures in questioning the establishment position.

    During a French television interview, Cotillard said the public had been lied to about the terror attacks and highlighted the bizarre collapse of the twin towers in comparison with other buildings, specifically Madrid’s Windsor Building, which burned intensely for over 24 hours yet did not implode like the WTC.

    "We see other towers of the same kind being hit by planes. Are they burned? They [sic] was a tower, I believe it was in Spain, which burnt for 24 hours. It never collapsed. None of these towers collapsed. And there [in New York], in a few minutes, the whole thing collapsed," said Cotillard.

    Hours after the comments were picked up by news outlets across the world, a reactionary media smear campaign was initiated, despite the fact that Cotillard actually made the statements over a year ago, and we were told that Cotillard’s future Hollywood success was apparently "in jeopardy".

    Quite how expressing an opinion that matches with hundreds of other professors, scientists, former presidents, high government officials and intelligence veterans puts someone’s career "in jeopardy" is not explained in the myriad of ad hominem hit pieces that have already surfaced over the course of today.

    The Parliament of Japan, the former President of Italy, widely-respected CIA veteran Robert Baer and even American music icon Willie Nelson have all questioned 9/11 in recent months.

    Since the attacks, a top former member of Tony Blair’s cabinet, Germany’s Secretary of Defense and the founder of Reagonomics have all slammed the official story - along with a cacophony of former government, military, intelligence and political professionals.

    The Hollywood Today website cites the comments of 9/11 first responder "Mike Lennon" who calls the comments “ignorant and despicable” and encourages people to picket Cotillard’s upcoming movie with Johnny Depp.

    To assert that questioning the official 9/11 story is harmful to the victims is a tired old propaganda ruse that has been tried on many occasions in the past by establishment media hacks.

    The fact is that the majority of victim’s family members doubt the official story and have been pushing for a new investigation for years - as attested to by Bill Doyle, head of the largest victim’s family support group.

    In addition, 9/11 firemen and first responders were themselves the victims of an admitted government cover-up in the very hours after 9/11 when they were told that the toxic asbestos-laden air was safe to breathe - an official lie that has cost the heroes of 9/11 at best lifelong debilitating illnesses and at worst their lives.

    The media’s attempt to make an example out of Cotillard by digging up year-old comments in an organized smear attack campaign smacks of total desperation as the gatekeepers try to act as the little Dutch boy and block up the holes of the gaping official 9/11 story.

    Watch this space tomorrow for an extended report.

    FLASHBACK: Ex-Italian President: Intel Agencies Know 9/11 An Inside Job

    FLASHBACK: Member of Japanese Diet Doubts Official 9/11 Fairy Tale

    FLASHBACK: Former German Defense Minister Confirms CIA Involvement in 9/11

    FLASHBACK: Michael Meacher: This war on terrorism is bogus

    FLASHBACK: Robert Baer Says Evidence Points To 911 Inside Job

    FLASHBACK: Former Reagan Treasury Secretary Questions Twin Towers Collapse

    Hundreds of military, political, and intelligence professionals question 9/11