Is Bin Laden in Iran?

Osama bin Laden is in Iran, asserts Alan Howell Parrot, the director of The Union for the Conservation of Raptors, who for many years served as a Falconer for the rulers of the United Arab Emirates (UAE), and members of Saudi Royal family. In that capacity he was a regular guest in the seasonal Falconry-hunting camps and had access to all participants. Parrot has been offering evidence of Bin Laden's sighting in Iran since November 2004 to a great number of U.S. government officials at the Department of Defense, the FBI, Senators and even to the former Director of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), Gen. Michael V. Hayden. Government officials who asked to remain nameless confirmed Parrot's contact with the government. Still, no one responded.

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My Comments: I found this article to be more amusing than insightful on the actual whereabouts of bin Laden. Not to mention, the tradition in the Middle East with falconry was also quite fascinating.

Though if it turned out there was more alleged evidence that bin Laden was in fact in Iran, it would serve the USA well as another reason for military action there.

Fledgling colonial power?

Chinese Navy seeks to Expand its Naval Power

YALONG BAY, China — The Chinese military is seeking to project naval power well beyond the Chinese coast, from the oil ports of the Middle East to the shipping lanes of the Pacific, where the United States Navy has long reigned as the dominant force, military officials and analysts say.

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The Next Empire

All across Africa, new tracks are being laid, highways built,ports deepened, commercial contracts signed—all on an unprecedented scale, and led by China, whose appetite for commodities seems insatiable. Do China’s grand designs promise the transformation,at last, of a star-crossed continent? Or merely its exploitation? The author travels deep into the heart of Africa, searching for answers.

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My comments: Obviously China is growing in strength and their ability to project force is growing. As many of the pre-WWI colonial powers knew, a state needs a navy to project their power to the far flung corners of the earth. The first article speaks on this and the second follows up on China's commitments and interests in the former colonies of the European Empires.

However, its worth noting that the USA still stands able to project their will across the world and Russia is rapidly approaching their former strength, not to mention the EU picking up former military and economic interests remaining since the wars of decolonization. During the Cold War this great power rivalry resulted in much strife and suffering for the African nations and I expect that with the re-emergence of a multi-polar world, the plight of Africa will resume. I imagine that the US and likely Russia will seek to undermine the gains of their rivals on the continent, leading to coups and civil wars, not too dissimilar to the current state of central Asia and the Middle East.

Points of interest that caught my attention:

The article portrays China as a state better at capitalism than the West. Their offer of loans for development without strings, such as democratic elections and even more importantly Communist rule, is striking.

China isn't giving up ownership of the railroads they build. This is similar to USA ownership of the Panama Canal or British ownership of Suez in that China's national interests are tied to a physical transportation system outside of China. Should rebellion, civil war or a coup break out in one of the host countries, China will likely pressure the government, old or new, to secure Chinese interests. This may result in troops deployed and, potentially, the setting up of a regime friendly to China.

Chinese settlers are a major facet of this neo-colonialism that deserves close attention. At the moment, the article cites 3,000 Chinese settlers in Mozambique, the numbers are minuscule. But it only took less than 10% white settlers in South Africa to secure power for 90 years and racial tensions have long been the source of strife in colonies. The bit on Zambia a two-thirds of the way through the article seems to prefigure some of the potential conflicts.

Three more spying programs

The Department of Homeland Security is acknowledging the existence of three more government programs charged with spying on American citizens in the aftermath of the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks.

The programs -- Pantheon, Pathfinder and Organizational Shared Space -- used a variety of software tools to gather and analyze information about Americans, according to documents obtained by the Center for Investigative Reporting. The DHS turned over the papers in response to a December 2008 Freedom of Information Act request.

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My comment: And who knows what they're doing now...

Ukraine extends Russian naval base lease

MOSCOW -- Ukraine's new president signed a deal Wednesday that allows Russia's Black Sea Fleet to stay in the country another 25 years, moving to ease a long-standing source of tension and giving Moscow its second foreign policy victory in the former Soviet Union this month.

Viktor Yanukovych and his Russian counterpart, Dmitry Medvedev, announced the breakthrough after a hastily scheduled summit in Kharkiv, Ukraine, saying that Ukraine will extend the lease on the Russian naval base in Sevastopol to 2042 in exchange for a steep discount on purchases of Russian natural gas.

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My comments: There's been speculation as to why the USA has backed off of trying to extend its influence into the Ukraine but the latest renewal of contracts stacks more evidence on the side that Ukraine will return to Russia's sphere of influence.

However, it's worth noting the base has only been leased for 25 years, which is an unusually short amount of time. While Ukraine might be gravitating towards Russia, the signing of a 25 year lease rather than something like a 99 year lease indicates that Ukraine is still, somewhat, in control of its future.

For a completely different view, check out La Russophobe's article on the same thing.

Report confirms it was a North Korean torpedo....

Last month’s deadly sinking of a South Korean naval ship was caused by a North Korean torpedo, a news report said today, adding to pressure on the South’s President. Lee Myung Bak, to respond to one of the worst acts of military provocation since the Korean War.

The South Korean defence ministry declined to comment on the claim by the Yonhap news agency, the latest in a series of reports suggesting that the mysterious sinking of the naval corvette, Cheonan, on March 26 was a deliberate and unprovoked attack by North Korea.

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My comments: It's starting to seem unlikely that this event will lead to war. The article indicates that South Korea's President is struggling to come up with a solution to the problem of North Korean aggression.

While it is the political goal of South Korea to unify the peninsula under one, their own, government, I expect that a costly and risky war with a nuclear power is not the preferred mehod of achieving such unification. I suspect that they are hoping for a situation of political collapse that echoes German re-unification in 1989.

Why has the media gone silent over CIA killings of USA citizens?

David Cole, writing in the May 3, 2010, edition of the Nation, notices a curious silence about the Obama administration’s recent decision to green-light the targeted killing of Anwar al-Awlaki, an American citizen hiding in Yemen who has allegedly encouraged and even planned terrorist attacks against Americans. “In our peculiar post-9/11 world,” he writes, “it is apparently less controversial to kill a suspect in cold blood than to hold him in preventive detention.”

It almost (but not quite) looks like an inversion of our World War II–era policy. Some American soldiers at the time thought it less of a hassle, and no doubt more satisfying, to shoot captured Germans than to herd them off battlefields into prisons. That was not, however, what they were ordered to do. Captured enemy combatants were to be treated decently and held until the war ended. It was the right thing to do, even in a war against Nazi Germany. So that’s what they did, at least most of the time.

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Potential Foul Play in Polish Air Disaster?

The Russian government prevented the Polish president's plane from landing four times to divert him from a ceremony to mark the 70th anniversary of the Katyn massacre, according to an MP.

Artur Gorski said the Russians 'came up with some dubious reasons' that the aircraft couldn't land because they feared President Leck Kaczynski's presence would overshadow a similar event hosted by the Russian prime minister a few days before.

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My comments: At this point, the evidence for Russian foul play is scarce but Russian benefits from a leadership disaster in Russia's former satellite state could potentially be high. Though its worth mentioning that Europe and the USA could also benefit from this. More on this as it develops.

Russian supported rebellion in Kyrgyzstan

"Kyrgyzstan’s self-proclaimed new leadership said on Thursday that Russia had helped to oust President Kurmanbek Bakiyev, and that they aimed to close a U.S. airbase that has irritated Moscow.

Their comments set Wednesday’s overthrow of Mr. Bakiyev, who fled the capital Bishkek as crowds stormed government buildings, firmly in the context of superpower rivalry in Central Asia."

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My Comments: Take a look at the map and notice Kyrgyzstan's proximity to the Afghanistan. It's no wonder the US might lure the small nation into its sphere of influence with promises of aid and support in exchange for a small air base for use in operations in Afghanistan.

But lets zoom out for a second.

Kyrgyzstan is also within very close proximity to Russia, a world power and was a former Soviet Republic of the Soviet Union. In placing an air base in Kyrgyzstan the US under the Bush II administration made a threatening move to Russian security, and now Russia is using its growing influence, and a weakened US influence in the region, to claim the territory back.

However, it should be noted that the air base was a transit base, as opposed to a base supporting war aircraft or housing troops and it was primarily used to pour men into Afghanistan. Furthermore, the Obama administration failed to negotiate new terms for the base and it was scheduled for closing in 2009. Apparently, negotiations had been ongoing since 2007.

Russia is on the rise again to secure it's borders. With a Moscow led Economic Union in the works for 2012, including Kazakhstan as a keystone member, Kyrgyzstan's neighbor, and the Obama administration's "reset" of relations with Russia, its no wonder Putin is seeking to re-establish Russian dominance in its former Soviet Republics.

US Foreign Aid and the CIA (part 1)

Like the intelligence arms of other major nations, the American CIA found it crucial to use a multitude of fronts -- institutional disguises and intermediaries -- in order to effectively pursue its covert operations. The CIA actually had some specialization in this tactic from the beginning. The Agency was largely founded and staffed by Wall Street elites who were very familiar with using shell companies to manipulate or hide assets.

In this context, a front is an organization of some kind whose public mission has no official relationship to US intelligence. Secretly, however, the CIA will use the front as cover to accomplish clandestine objectives. Note that several organizations hosting a CIA presence may be legitimate, fairly independent, and generally unaware of the fact. Whereas front businesses which the CIA virtually owns are what the US Senate Church Committee exposed as 'proprietaries', such as the most infamous example from the Vietnam era: the drug-smuggling Air America company (for an introduction to the CIA-drug connection, refer to this or this, or dozens of other articles and books). A more recent example of a CIA proprietary front is the firm Brewster-Jennings & Associates, which was exposed in 2003 during the Plame-Yellowcake Affair.

Since its inception with the signing of the National Security Act of 1947, the CIA has used thousands of fronts right to the present day. As a matter of course, the organizations selected to be fronts naturally have activities in foreign countries. They include various corporations, diplomatic embassies, other agencies of the federal government, non-profit charities, private NGOs, media organizations, and so forth.

A large bureaucratic organization long-suspected and finally proven to act as a CIA front is USAID, or the United States Agency for International Development. Run by the State Department, USAID is the main federal entity responsible for dispensing foreign aid.

Each year, USAID allocates billions of dollars in funding to selected nations across the globe. To most American taxpayers, it is an organization to be proud of. Indeed, many of its projects have produced positive humanitarian results and local employment, even if the projects are considered diplomatic rewards and instruments of US foreign policy. Nonetheless, a handful of the projects and a very small number of the personnel are in fact CIA-related, with missions far outside of the official mandate of USAID. These missions are launched to forward the blunt geopolitical interests of the US government (and undoubtedly to forward the special interests that influence that government). The missions have involved instances of corruption, subversion, espionage, and horrible violence. Some will be described here, and other modern examples will be described in Part Two.

Skeptics of the theorized CIA-USAID connection fell silent when, in 2007, the Agency itself released thousands of top secret documents -- the "Family Jewels", as they are called -- which included descriptions of its close working relationship with USAID. This admission is fascinating. While partially censored, the primary documents plainly show that CIA officers had worked abroad under USAID cover. The Office of Public Safety (OPS), a USAID bureau disbanded in 1974 by Congress for its inappropriate activities, served as a front for training and arming foreign police in counterinsurgency methods.

The formerly top secret documents show that, between 1963 and 1974, thousands of police officers and troops were trained by the OPS arm of USAID. In turn, the recipients then trained hundreds of thousands of others in total. It doesn't sound too heinous until we learn that the countries receiving the weapons and counter-insurgency training were very repressive police states in the process of cracking down hard on their own citizens, unions, and rebel groups. Training involved spying, torture, explosives, assassination, riot-control, and so forth.

Wikipedia has a toned-down yet still informative article on the matter. Excerpts:

The United States has a long history of providing police aid to Latin American countries. In the 1960s the U.S. Agency for International Development's (USAID) Office of Public Safety (OPS) provided Latin American police forces with millions of dollars worth of weapons and trained thousands of Latin American police officers. In the late 1960s, such programs came under media and congressional scrutiny because the U.S.-provided equipment and personnel were linked to cases of torture, murder and "disappearances" in Argentina, Brazil, and Uruguay.

In Washington, D.C., the Office of Public Safety had remained immune to public embarrassment as it went about two of its chief functions: allowing the CIA to plant men with the local police in sensitive places around the world; and after careful observation on their home territory, bringing to the United States prime candidates for enrollment as CIA employees.

The OPS had formed a million policemen in the Third World. Ten thousands of them had undertook training courses in the US. $150 millions' worth in material had been sent to foreign police forces.

The massive training-arming program in Central and South America led to a hemispheric-wide human rights disaster. It escalated rapidly to the death squad era of Operation Condor. The destructive, multi-faceted operation was ultimately supervised by leaders in the CIA and US National Security Council, especially the-then Secretary of State, Henry Kissinger.

OPS police-training teams and 'aid projects' were not only sent to several repressive nations in Latin America, but also to South Vietnam, Iran, Taiwan, Greece, and others. According to award-winning journalist John Pilger, apparently USAID funds were even spent by the millions to assist the Thais and genocidal Khmer Rouge in building roads to lucrative gem mines.

Basically everywhere the US was propping up a repressive, corrupt client-state in the name of anti-communism, the USAID-CIA connection could be found. Some of the most brutal pages of Cold War history can be found in the Phoenix program in South Vietnam and the crack-downs of SAVAK, the secret police of then US ally, the Shah of Iran.