After the fall of Trans World Commodities and its fallout

This article starts off where others have left a few loose ends, like my Red Mafia article, where the great circle of Red Mafia groups starts with a little known individual where we can ask the question: who is it that would contribute to *both* Randy "Duke" Cunningham and Hillary Rodham Clinton? That was even more interesting than: what is the connection between the incomplete Soviet CV Varyag and Hillary Rodham Clinton?

Yes, organized crime does take you in strange directions and one of the loose ends from the Red Mafia article dealt with an individual brought up in this NY Post article on the Shady 'Inn' Crowd, from 15 APR 2007:

YOU never know who owns what these days. Case in point: the Hotel Gansevoort. Arik Kislin, one of seven principals in the trendy, 187-room Meatpacking District inn, once ran a firm with ties to a suspected Moscow hit man, The Post's Dan Mangan reports. In the early 1990s, a Manhattan company called Blonde Management, of which Kislin was chairman, co-sponsored a U.S. visa sought by a Russian named Anton Malevskiy. The FBI believed Malevskiy to be a professional assassin and head of one of Moscow's leading criminal gangs, according to a 1999 article by the Center for Public Integrity, which cited an FBI report. Gansevoort flack Nancy Friedman at first denied Kislin had an ownership role in the hotel or that his name was on its liquor license, despite being told of a state agency document that shows otherwise. When we pressed for an explanation about Kislin's relationship to the hotel, Friedman said she would check with the Gansevoort's owners. But in a subsequent conversation, she suddenly clammed up, telling us, "I don't think there's going to be any response."

Last time it was Arik Kislin, and all the twists and turns of his contacts and his father's contacts and where they went to finally end up with the huge Bank of New York scandal. This time it will be the other Red Mafia suspect Anton Malevskiy and get an idea of what sort of individual Arik Kislin was trying to bring into the US. To do that I will give you a summary of a translated article at the Center for Defense Information, which came from Le Monde on 28 NOV 2002 (it is labeled for personal use only', so it will be more overview than exact quotes). It relates an interview with Dzhalol Khaydarov by Vladimir Ivanidze talking about what decided Khaydarov to break his ties with the Red Mafia in 2000.

As he was getting the OUGKM copper factories up and stable, financially, Anton Malevskiy who worked with Mikhail Chernoy and the Izmailovo group paid a visit. The Chernoy Brothers had built up the third largest aluminum production capacity in the world during the mid-1990's, only to see the structure collapse as the Brothers faced problems with the Reuben Brothers, who were running the most sophisticated set of front companies ever seen on planet Earth with all of them contained in Simon Reuben's head. That all started to come apart from the New York side as the number of transactions being processed by Peter Berlin and his wife Lucy Edwards, along with a corrupt bank manager at BoNY, started to reveal the far flung network of front companies run by Simon Reuben. This would also reveal that front companies in the US, Becs and Benex, were serving as fronts for the Semion Mogilevich YBM Magnex investment and stock market fraud system that he was running. As this started to fall apart for the Chernoys, they faced stiff competition that was buying out sections of their industrial empire. Arik Kislin, at Blond Management, was in the same office space as the Berlin couple, who would be associated with Mogilevich, but also Vyacheslav Ivankov-Yaponchik who was associated with the Solntsevskaya group and its boss Sergey Mikhaylov.

So with Malevskiy coming around, he tried to offer Khaydarov a new position with him, so he wouldn't have to associate directly with the Chernoys. Khaydarov was trying to get in contact with the FSB and MVD, but was warned about that as there had been an agreement between the Yeltsin 'family' and the Izmailovo group of the Chernoys and Roman Abramovitch. At that point in time Abramovitch and Oleg Deripaska held the majority of Izmailovo industries between them, and they were 'fronting' for the political power elite (Abramovitch) and the criminal elite (Deripaska) of Izmailovo, both working together with Yeltsin's 'group'. It is by this combination that entire files and background on criminals would 'disappear' out of the FSB and MVD archives, so as to clean out their past. By working themselves deep into the system, the criminal element becomes nearly impossible to dislodge.

Vladimir Putin, for all of his toughness, was unable to dislodge Mafia "Lieutenants" from some areas, and only if the corruption became too apparent, as with Nicholai Axionenko and the Transportation Ministry, could such a minister be dismissed. It is these 'holdovers' from the Yeltsin 'group' that were run by Abramovitch, who would also run most of the financial holdings for the group. For day-to-day work Vladimir Voloshin ran things, like oversight on Boris Berezovkiy's AVVA financial pyramid scheme, and ensured that the holdings were secured. When he couldn't Abramovitch would step in or Oleg Deripaska or Valentin Yumashev. These can be considered to be the central power of the 'Yeltsin group' as a whole, with associations to the Izmailovo group added on. Notice that Boris Yeltsin, after bringing this group together, had little to do with it and it was the group, itself, that tended to run the criminal and industrial affairs of the group.

I will extract the translation directly on the description of how money was filtered into the system:

[Ivanidze] Concretely, how is the money taken out and collected?

[Khaydarov] There are many possible systems: foreign bank accounts, stock, real estate, offshore! Everyone has their own. I set up between 50 and 100 structures for just one of us! No investigating judge can make head or tail of it. For years, my job was to get all the money to the West and into offshore companies.

[Ivanidze] Who decides to conduct a transaction in a sector or against a company?

[Khaydarov] Mikhail Chernoi, with the head of the sector in question -- Oleg Deripaska for aluminum or Iskander Makhmudov for metals -- with the involvement of local governors, like Eduard Rossel in Ekaterinburg or Aman Tuleev in Kemerovo. Then, each person carries out the plan at his particular level, as each has his own security service. For example, at Russal, you fill find a former KGB counterespionage boss, former first vice presidents of the FSB, and people who have information about state security.

This is the hand of Simon Reuben at work: the man who created 3 companies to pay his rent and had 200 people managing 300 companies across the globe in multiple countries: Dubai, Cypress, Bahamas, Grand Caymans, UK, US, Russia, Hungary, Romania, etc. This is why the BoNY investigation ground to a complete and utter halt: it was too complex to actually diagram out in a coherent manner as it was an incoherent system utilizing a coherent methodology. With multiple individuals creating their *own* groups of accounts, front companies, transfer groups, stock and real estate investment groups, etc. there is no sane or reasonable way to track how money filters through the system, but filter through it does.

By 2000 this was starting to spin apart with some of the financial infrastructure pulled up by the US, and individuals getting caught out of place, 'disappearing', allegedly dying (like Malevskiy having a sky-diving accident in S. Africa) or shifting their financial structures to more reliable systems, like Mogilevich and Firtash. After Michael Chernoy going to Israel to escape criminal prosecution, others would follow him there: Lev Levaev, Yakov Goldovskiy, Arkadi Gaydamak. But even with that, those that remain, Abramovitch, Deripaska, Firtash, Mogilevich, and others, the system itself has grown out in different and more diverse directions. Even with stiff law enforcement capabilities, the entrenched elites are very hard to dislodge and there is no guarantee that doing so will actually get them out of the way.

Now, as Oleg Deripaska is in the news, going through what he has done should prove interesting, as he is one of the richest men in Russia right now. Back over at CDI, there is a cached article from Washington Profile by Dmitry Sidorov, DEC 15 2005, looking at the trip of Aleksandr Voloshin and Oleg Deripaska to Washington. And while foreign relations were a bit on the rough side, near the end of the article comes this bit:

I received several tips from unnamed sources on how Deripaska managed to get into the country, despite the U.S.’s longtime suspicion that the owner of Russian Aluminum (RusAl) has been involved in money laundering operations, among other illegal activities.

One source, who wished to remain anonymous, said that Deripaska’s visa problems were resolved during President Putin’s 16 October meeting with President Bush. In a 55-minute-long conversation at the White House, the two leaders spent about 10 minutes discussing the oligarch.

[..]

If it were Putin and Bush who decided his fate, as my source (a member of the U.S.-Russian business community) stated, then the reason for the U.S.’s change of heart becomes a bit clearer. Namely, the source thinks that the oligarch’s sale of two Russian factories to America’s aluminum giant Alcoa for $257 million could have served as a good bet placed against his visa issue discussion.

This last observation is in complete harmony with an assessment made by a Washington expert who said that after building good relations with Moscow and Washington, Deripaska was able to get the visa and fly to Washington to promote a new image of Russian businessmen not involved in politics.

That's right, President Bush saw into Putin's soul and missed the organized crime ties. At the time Oleg Deripaska was only worth in the neighborhood of $20 billion, so a 1% loss, to him, is what we would call 'pocket change'. He would also marry a daughter of Boris Yeltsin's and start a new company, Basic Element, in an attempt to help cement his place in the Russian pecking order (Source: The Star, 11 MAY 2007). But perhaps it wasn't just President Bush and Vladimir Putin getting along well together. A Human Events article on 18 SEP 2007 by Dr. Rachel Ehrenfeld and Alyssa A. Lappen look at the other way that one can get into the good graces of the powers-that-be in DC:

The U.S. government has denied Deripaska's entry to the country for more than 10 years. In 2005, after paying $560,000 to former Senator Robert Dole and his law firm, Alston & Bird, Deripaska secured a multiple-entry visa and visited the U.S. several times. His visits ended abruptly in July2006, when the U.S. government revoked his visa.

Part of that, the reason Deripaska would have his visa pulled from the US after a court case in the UK brought by Chernoy against Deripaska revealed some of the inner workings of their holdings (Source: Mineweb). And the Human Events article expands on that reason:

The multi-billionaire Deripaska is currently embroiled in hot debate with his London investment bankers, including Goldman Sachs, J.P. Morgan, Deutsche Bank and Credit Suisse. At issue is Rusal's proposed initial public offering (IPO), which Deripaska hopes can raise at least $30 billion on the London Stock Exchange (LSE) and other European markets.

However, Rusal must first resolve the 20% ownership claim of Michael Cherney, an Israeli industrialist who has sued Deripaska in London's High Court for payment of some $6 billion -- and presented substantial evidence, including two 2001 trust agreements, signed by Deripaska, promising to pay.

Meanwhile, Deripaska has secretly circulated in London, Frankfurt and Edinburgh, unregistered and unpublished offering statements for the IPO. All traces of a private meeting on Friday, June 30 at Trinity House in the City of London, for example, were "carefully wiped, except for two umbrellas left behind with the Trinity House porter," wrote John Helmer in Mineweb. on July 3, 2007.

Although the U.K. lacks laws comparable to the U.S. racketeers Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO), Britain's Financial Services Authority has reportedly assigned a special unit to investigate Cherney's High Court evidence against UCRusal. The FSA has yet to provide a detailed response to our inquiry.

Rusal's investment bankers have refused to comment, either declining to answer or ignoring our questions all together. But they are reportedly sniping at one another over the terms of the increasingly problematic Rusal offering.

To succeed, Rusal apparently needs a statement from outgoing Russian president Vladimir Putin, assuring investors that Russia will not repatriate the aluminum giant after the offering. That is highly unlikely considering the Putin's nationalization campaign, which has already lassoed major operations of several international companies, most recently, BP's Kovytka natural gas production field, worth an estimated $20 billion.

Ah, yes, needing to first work out that 20% ownership *and* get a guarantee from an outgoing President that the *next* President won't nationalize your investment. Little things in life, no? Still he had the consolation prize of being the richest man from Russia and a nice visit in London with Abramovich to help cement their #1 and #2 positions (Source: The Guardian (UK), 24 FEB 2007), plus having rebuilt the old Trans World Commodities aluminum business back to being the third largest after Alcoa and Alcan, under its RusAl name. And Abramovich had a 25% share in that, so it must all be going well in the money-making business (Source: Russia Blog, 26 DEC 2006). At the end of April 2007, the final merger of the Tajikistan aluminum company TadAz would be complete, making RusAl the largest aluminum producer in the world (Source: Mineweb, 28 APR 2007). By the end of 2007, the Basic Element group was looking to stand up if it could get a go-ahead from the Russian anti-monopoly bureau, which decided to put off a decision until sometime early this year (Source: Kremlin, Inc, from Dartmouth, 20 DEC 2007).

It is worth taking a look at the Mineweb article of 28 APR 2007, as it gives a bit more of a look at what the Reubens were trying to do so as to get *back* the corporate empire that they had lost to Deripaska:

The terms are all sealed, and the beneficiaries don't talk. Lawyers, public records, and sources close to Deripaska and inside Rusal confirm, however, that the Zhivilo brothers were paid about $65 million; they had controlled the Novokuznetsk smelter before Deripaska, but then failed to win jurisdiction in a US court for their claim. Anatoly Bykov, controlling shareholder of the Krasnoyarsk smelter before his ouster, was paid about $105 million, a sum ordered by an arbitration tribunal and appeals court in Zurich, which Swiss court records corroborate.

The Reuben brothers of London, who ran several trading schemes for the Russian smelters Deripaska operated, claimed $300 million; they received a sum reported to be over $100 million, after an application to a British Virgin Islands court. Details of their June 27, 2005, settlement spilled out when one of Deripaska's companies - called Bluzwed Metals -- went into the High Court in London, arguing that Trans World Metals, the Reubens' vehicle, had violated Clause 11.4 of the secret deal with Deripaska. Deripaska then sought High Court enforcement of the Reubens deal. He got his summary judgement on January 26, 2006, in a ruling by Justice Sir Andrew Morritt. One secret also spilled in the Bluzwed case was the identity of a Lebanese arranger called Joseph Karam - "K" in the court text - whose payoff and indemnity from further claims Bluzwed accused the Reubens of threatening..

Counting the latest Nazarov settlement, Deripaska has been obliged to fork out about half a billion dollars to those claimants with cases strong enough to take to foreign courts and tribunals.

If he manages to list Rusal in a London IPO at a market capitalization of $30 billion, Deripaska's 66% stake would be worth $19.8 billion. Cashing out claims that constitute a serious legal barrier to the IPO saves money, and makes business sense.

Just one UK High Court case remains -- that of Mikhail Chernoy (Michael Cherney). This was filed in the Commercial Court of Queens Bench on November 24, 2006. The sole defendant is Oleg Deripaska, who is accused of breach of trust. Mineweb has reported the details before. There has been no court hearing yet.

Well, Chernoy was on the lam from a number of police agencies, so one could excuse him for not making a good deal before he got to Israel. And Deripaska isn't out of the woods, yet, either:

Pleading that he isn't cash-rich at all, will Deripaska offer Chernoy $2 billion to tear up the March 10, 2001, agreement, and go away? Will Chernoy accept it? Chernoy isn't saying.

Deripaska must play for time, but the clock is ticking against him, so long as the Chernoy agreement of 2001 is an albatross hanging unluckily around his neck. But if the two could agree on staging payments over time, with the bulk to come from Deripaska's dividends from future Rusal earnings, this may constitute a prima facie violation of Deripaska's undertakings to the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD), when he swore he had fully bought out Chernoy years ago. An ERBD loan to Rusal, and a matching credit from the World Bank's International Finance Corporation, depend legally on the truthfulness of Deripaska's covenants.

And there is another potential liability for the owner of the world's most important bauxite, alumina and aluminium combine. Would an ongoing financial obligation between Deripaska and Chernoy complicate Deripaska's relations with the US authorities?

If it can be authenticated, the Chernoy document is serious evidence in the Federal Bureau of Investigation's dossier on Deripaska. Now that the Nazarov case is gone, the pressure is on Deripaska to settle with Chernoy on terms that also resolve his problems with the FBI.

So if he can actually buy off Chernoy, he could make his problems 'go away'. If he can't, even though Chernoy has to legitimize his claim, Deripaska is legitimizing it by not offering the IPO (which he could do with everything *else* cleared out of the way). And if he has to go to court, then that would indicate that he knew of a pre-existing claim against RusAl when he said there weren't any, thus bollixing up his position with the EBRD and FBI. And if Chernoy has some hard feelings, which I do believe is the case, then getting paid money won't be a solution, nor will trying to *get* Chernoy as his brother, Lev, will then rally what he can against Deripaska. That would get blood ugly very, very quickly.

The only other information of note from the article is this, and do remember it was published back in April 2007:

In the latest US newspaper reports, it is disclosed that Deripaska paid $560,000 to the law firm of former Republican Senator Bob Dole to resolve the FBI's ban, and get Deripaska his 2005 visa. Washington sources report that other prominent US law firms, and at least one other prominent Republican Party official, have been retained by Deripaska over the years to surmount the visa ban, and retrieve the black ball. At one point, the source claims, he was offering a sizeable bounty for success. The sources also say there has been a long-running and spirited argument between the White House, the State Department, and the investigation agencies over this issue.

That does put a bit of a different light on the WaPo report of 25 JAN 2008 on Rick Davis, an aide to Sen. McCain, having set up a meeting with Deripaska with Sen. McCain: it was not unknown in Washington, DC circles or in the Republican Party that someone had such high level contacts. But it isn't unusual for organized crime figures from Russia to have high level lawyers connected to politics in the US, as seen from this Moscow Times article of 18 APR 2007 (Source: Ocnus cache) quoting the WSJ:

Billionaire Oleg Deripaska has retained former Senate majority leader Bob Dole since 2003 to lobby the U.S. State Department to grant him a visa, the newspaper said.

Deripaska paid Dole's law firm, Alston & Bird, $300,000 in 2003 for activities involving "U.S. Department of State visa policies and procedures," according to lobby filings with the U.S. Senate.

Deripaska had been denied a U.S. visa for several years, the paper said.

The U.S. Department of State granted Deripaska a visa in 2005, after Dole worked for two years to convince U.S. officials that Deripaska was a legitimate and transparent businessman, the newspaper said. Deripaska paid Dole's firm an additional $260,000 upon receipt of the visa, it said.

[..]

The newspaper also said former FBI chief William Sessions was acting as a lawyer to Semyon Mogilevich, the Ukrainian-born Russian who is on the FBI's most wanted list over his purported organized-crime links.

Sessions is lobbying the U.S. Department of Justice as it investigates charges of racketeering against Mogilevich for involvement in shady energy deals between Russia and Ukraine, the newspaper said.

Yes a $260,000 'bounty' to get the visa! So lovely when fine, upstanding, elderly, retired Senators start shilling for those in organized crime, isn't it? That is only topped by an ex-head of the FBI doing the same. So much for 'law and order'.

One really can't complain too much, however, as 22 FEB 2008 Sun-Sentinal ran a WaPo article to take a look at Davis' view on things:

The work of Davis' firm put him on the opposite side of Eastern European politics from McCain, who has spoken out vigorously against what he sees as Putin's attempts to subvert elections in former Soviet republics such as Ukraine.

Davis' firm provided political advice to a pro-Russian party in Ukraine during the parliamentary elections of 2006. McCain, on the other hand, backed President Viktor Yushchenko, a Western-oriented reformer who led 2004's Orange Revolution, which overturned what he and his allies considered an election stolen by the party helped by Davis's firm.

Makes it all proper and such, right? Having been at opposite ends of the Ukraine deal? In case it has been forgotten, there is something about Yuschenko that would turn out not to be all bright and cheerful, seen in a Moscow News item of 16 APR 2006, The Orange Boomerang:

An experienced politician, Yulia Tymoshenko managed not only to make the "presidential steps" but also ensured that the Ukrainian people remember to whom they owe the real improvement in their living standards. Experts believe that this is the main factor in Yushchenko's declining ratings amid the growing popularity of the "iron lady."

It is true that the Ukrainians' attitude toward their president has also been affected by the latest round of rumors and speculation that the opposition timed for the upcoming parliamentary election: e.g., when he became president, Yushchenko worked hard to hush up the investigation of his purported poisoning; that Boris Berezovsky funded his election campaign in 2004, also writing a version of his inauguration address; and that Yushchenko's mother-in-law traveled from Philadelphia to Kiev for the inauguration ceremony on a charter flight paid for by businessman Dmitry Firtash, the right-hand man of Semen Mogilevich who is on the FBI's wanted list, but recently took part in discussing the Russian-Ukrainian gas agreement in Moscow.

In short, the Orange boomerang that Yushchenko threw at corrupt officials in the form of his "All Felons Will Be Jailed!" calls never hit anyone. As it turns out, only Yushchenko was hit.

Yes, the same Dmitri Firtash that I go over in this entry detailing his dealings only about two levels down from the top. The man who was director of Highrock Holdings, owned by Mogilevich, to buy a major stake in Eural TransGas, the natural gas purchaser/reseller from Turkmenistan to Ukraine via Gazprom's pipelines. The same Firtash who would not disclose that he and another member of Mogilevich's inner cricle, Ivan Fursin, were backing a 50% stake in the company to replace ETG, RusUkrEnergo, because ETG was seen as corrupt. Mind you, ETG was replacing Itera that *also* had these exact, same links. Same Semion Mogilevich that had swindled hundreds of millions from the US and Canada by manipulating the permanent magnets market and then offering deals he had no intention of backing. Viktor Yushchenko would let the ETG to RUE deal go through with 'unknown' Ukrainian backers, all the while his older brother Peter Yuschenko was getting help by Mogilevich and Firtash in buying part ownership in a gas company in Dubai. All of this funded with money from the narcotics trade in the Golden Triangle, prostitution, money laundering, human trafficking, white slavery, bank fraud, securities fraud, and, perhaps, a spot or two of murder and assassination along the way, as well as supplying small amounts of enriched, processed nuclear material to Osama bin Laden.

While we all love the Orange Revolution as a concept and a happening, the actual individuals involved that got into power have a bit of reckoning to do. The good people of the Ukraine are being ill-served by their political class that seems to be out for *themselves* and selling off their land, resources and historical sites for cash on the barrel. Believe it or not this has been going on under 'both sides' of the Orange Revolution. What is this powerful 'difference' I am supposed to see here? That Sen. McCain supports one group of compromised politicians that more or less support the West and his aide supported those that more or less aligns with Russia?

Excuse me for a moment while I review the names of dictators and tyrants that were more aligned with the US during the Cold War that we did damned little to *clean up* and help to hold higher ideals of liberty and democracy: Ferdinand Marcos, Carlos Menem, Zia ul-Haq, Saddam Hussein, Shah of Iran. Remember these were the 'good guys' that were 'for us' and if they were awful they at least were 'on our side'. The Philippines did, finally, deal with Marcos after decades of oppression, Argentina has wavered all over the place, but do note that Menem gave one of the largest international criminals, Monzer al-Kassar, pretty much free reign on the criminal side. President Zia only continued supporting global Islamic extremists, plus the extremely nasty local sort and continued nuclear work begun during the 'democratic' period of Benazir Bhutto's father who also supplied radical Islamic terrorists with cash and training. Pakistan got lovely nuclear devices and started selling the know-how elsewhere. Saddam? Notice how he got all nice about human liberty and democracy? And just how *did* that Shah business turn out, anyways?

Just how many corrupt political movements has the US backed that never did their nation much of any good because they had problems backing the words of liberty with actions? And how many did we back that didn't mouth any such words, but at least they were 'our scoundrel'? And just why is it that the Administration and the FBI have to go at loggerheads over if it is a good idea to let a major organized crime figure into the US?

I don't particularly like Sen. Obama's Chitown mob connections through the Syrian-American Rezko. Truthfully, that stinks to high heaven.

That is only outdone by Sen. Clinton's connections to various Triads, Red Mafia, gun and narcotics groups and your basic 'where the hell did they get the money' sorts like Norman Hsu. The previous President Clinton letting Red China get missile guidance technology and advanced optics is not my idea of a fun time, nor is having an agent that gets his hands on classified CIA data and then helps on trying to get automatic weapons to gangs in Los Angeles. That pretty much makes the stink to high heaven and then piles the source all the way to heaven to make it impossible to get out.

Then having the folks in the Republican Party get a tizzy because this just might be a 'social meeting' between Sen. Squeaky Clean who supported crooked politicians with organized crime backing in Ukraine and then meeting up with a criminal for another organization while overseas in Switzerland... get a grip. It stinks. Not as bad as Obama or Clinton? Yes.

It is a matter of degree, however, not of *kind*.

I, too, wish that the Orange Revolution could actually have found the corrupt politicians and gotten them out of the system. That did not happen, however. I did not close my eyes to the problems with those individuals and who was backing them.

Just as I cannot close my eyes to the problems of each of these candidates running for President of my Nation.

Because Obama backing Odinga, Clinton supporting Kosovo with the al Qaeda backed KLA now taking power, and McCain supporting a politician tied to the Red Don and then meeting up with another Red Mafia oligarch from the same organization which has Mogilevich in it, all are of equal problem in their view of foreign affairs, liberty, and freedom. If you don't like what is being supported by the candidates you *don't* like, then take a look to make sure you aren't getting the same thing from one you *do*. Because they all look equal to me.

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Before the Declaration: Sam Adams and the Rights of the Colonists

As we hear much of the inalienable rights of man, and the Declaration of Independence, it must be regarded that these two phenomena did not show up simultaneously. The Declaration of Independence, itself has roots going back into history and is a culminating document of the rights of individuals, the rights of the state and how the rights of individuals are primary to them, while the rights of the state derive from them. Samuel Adams would have an article published in 1769 and again in 1772 to look at such rights (italics in the original, bold is mine) in an untitled document (Source: Learning American History):

At the revolution, the British constitution was again restor'd to its original principles, declared in the bill of rights; which was afterwards pass'd into a law, and stands as a bulwark to the natural rights of subjects. "To vindicate these rights, says Mr. Blackstone, when actually violated or attack'd, the subjects of England are entitled first to the regular administration and free course of justice in the courts of law—next to the right of petitioning the King and parliament for redress of grievances-and lastly, to the right of having and using arms for self-preservation and defence." These he calls "auxiliary subordinate rights, which serve principally as barriers to protect and maintain inviolate the three great and primary rights of personal security, personal liberty and private property": And that of having arms for their defence he tells us is "a public allowance, under due restrictions, of the natural right of resistance and self preservation, when the sanctions of society and laws are found insufficient to restrain the violence of oppression."

The British constitution is not a singular document, but a series of views giving Parliament primary power in law making, and affording rights under the various laws added in as-needed. With the Magna Carta also goes: Habeas Corpus Act 1679, Bill of Rights for England and Wales 1689, Claim of Right for Scotland 1689, Act of Settlement 1701, Act of Union 1707 which creates Great Britain. After the abrogation of rights under the Magna Carta by Charles I, and the resultant Acts passed after Cromwell's republic during the Restoration, the rights of individuals were more defined and put in as a matter of law. Thus rights are gained by law, not presumed to pre-exist and then law being applied to them to regulate them.

The Declaration would change some of the wording on the rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, and in the US Constitution the stronger views on the inviolability of person and property would be established to be without question save as under due process of law. The right to bear arms is seen not only as a public allowance under the English system, but it goes directly with the natural right of resistance and self preservation, when law is not enough to keep violence of oppression in restraint. Note that these two things are each combined, so that it is not only the violence of oppression from government against society, but also the violence of oppression by other individuals who are insufficiently restrained by law. The individual's right to be armed and counter these things, while having due restrictions, must not be so restrained as to remove them. That is a worry in the English system as Parliament decides on rights via law, so preventing laws that would go against those rights is paramount and the only way to back that up is to be armed.

The Amendment II language on a 'well regulated militia' is in accord with this, and every individual must be able to arm themselves for the defense of self and society under due restrictions by law. Banning weapons is a violation of the right to protect oneself from those actors that will not abide by law or that will use law to oppress individuals or society. Adams then goes on to follow up that view with this (I will use some editing for readability, but leave his text 'as-is' as he now uses both italics and bolding):

-How little do those persons attend to the rights of the constitution, if they know anything about them, who find fault with a late vote of this town, calling upon the inhabitants to provide themselves with arms for their defence at any time; but more especially, when they had reason to fear, there would be a necessity of the means of self preservation against the violence of oppression.

-Every one knows that the exercise of the military power is forever dangerous to civil rights; and we have had recent instances of violences that have been offer'd to private subjects, and the last week, even to a magistrate in the execution of his office!

- Such violences are no more than might have been expected from military troops: A power, which is apt enough at all times to take a wanton lead, even when in the midst of civil society; but more especially so, when they are led to believe that they are become necessary, to awe a spirit of rebellion, and preserve peace and good order. But there are some persons, who would, if possibly they could, perswade the people never to make use of their constitutional rights or terrify them from doing it. No wonder that a resolution of this town to keep arms for its own defence, should be represented as having at bottom a secret intention to oppose the landing of the King's troops: when those very persons, who gave it this colouring, had before represented the people petitioning their Sovereign, as proceeding from a factious and rebellious spirit; and would now insinuate that there is an impropriety in their addressing even a plantation Governor upon public business-Such are the times we are fallen into!

Here is one of those great times in history when an individual now calls attention that the civil right to bear arms is far, far better than military troops. As put forward, military troops are a means of oppression against those having grievances against a sovereign, and yet the natural right of resistance via arms is not only legitimate but necessary for a free people to claim their rights under law. This is oppression at its heart: the ability of the State to cow or overawe or threaten individuals that society, itself, is put under threat from tyrannical rule. Without arms one cannot have civil society nor accountability of the State. To those who would like to give the State the power and capability to ban weapons: you would not have had the American Revolution with that outlook.

Sam Adams would re-iterate these things in his listing of Rights of the Colonists and he would use language drawn not only from Blackstone, but other sources as well (bolding mine, throughout):

Among the Natural Rights of the Colonists are these First. a Right to Life; Secondly to Liberty; thirdly to Property; together with the Right to support and defend them in the best manner they can-Those are evident Branches of, rather than deductions from the Duty of Self Preservation, commonly called the first Law of Nature

Life, liberty, property and the ability to defend them in the best manner possible. Another line from the Declaration would show up from Sam Adams:

All Men have a Right to remain in a State of Nature as long as they please: And in case of intollerable Oppression, Civil or Religious, to leave the Society they belong to, and enter into another.

When Men enter into Society, it is by voluntary consent; and they have a right to demand and insist upon the performance of such conditions, And previous limitations as form an equitable original compact.

A primary right of humans is the right to associate with each other and bring about, voluntarily, society. That society is then safeguarded via a compact, design, or other such statement of what that society is and will do. This is not a right bestowed by government or States, but is an inviolable right of individuals to do this thing. So many gloss over this in the reading of the Declaration of Independence, but the concept is primary for all of mankind: you have the right to form society, set its limits and then discriminate based on those limits set by mutual agreement within society. If you do not like that society and cannot convince your fellow man to change it, you can dissolve that voluntarily made association and go elsewhere and associate with others more to your liking.

In case it has been missed in all the grand splendor of those talking about 'classical liberalism' this is the foundation of that: the right to tell folks that they must adjust to society and its laws. A society does not have to accept those that will not accede to that and the laws may be used in those circumstances. That is voluntary consent between individuals and society and is reciprocal.

Then comes an idea that would be the guiding light of the US Constitution and re-stated in two Amendments:

Every natural Right not expressly given up or from the nature of a Social Compact necessarily ceded remains.

This is a key part of the Constitutional outlook restated in Amendments IX and X, so that the People and States retain all rights not given to the National government. For the Constitution to have a reasoning behind it, this is its underpinning: the People give government very few things to do and very few rights and retain all other rights and responsibilities at a lower level.

So far we have: life, liberty, property, arms to support those three, self-preservation, to live in a natural state of being, to form societies, to defend societies, to leave societies, to recognize mutual consent about forming, defending and leaving societies, to have equal enforcement of the social compact, and to retain all of those rights not ceded of necessity by the social compact in the individual.

Now comes one that will be a surprise to those not paying attention to the founders:

As neither reason requires, nor religeon permits the contrary, every Man living in or out of a state of civil society, has a right peaceably and quietly to worship God according to the dictates of his conscience.

You do have the right to peaceably worship God to your own views inside or outside of civil society. That is an individual right supported by society and comes from the views of Westphalia and from the developed views of the English Common Law over time as Henry VIII had made some definite inroads on it, and by the time of Charles I it had become a sticking point. This is given over to the individual, not the State to choose for individuals. A State may have a religious view, may promulgate holidays, may do many things, save force you to worship as the State dictates. Iraq may have a 'Muslim state' but it is also figuring out how to accommodate both major groups within Islam, a host of sects within those major groups, and then many others like the Yezidis, Syriac Christians, Followers of John the Baptist...quite an interesting thing to see a Muslim country make Christmas a National Holiday.

He then goes on in a more lengthy portion to put in God's place in the law, and then how reasonable men should approach religious differences:

"Just and true liberty, equal and impartial liberty" in matters spiritual and temporal, is a thing that all Men are clearly entitled to, by the eternal and immutable laws of God and nature, as well as by the law of Nations, & all well grounded municipal laws, which must have their foundation in the former.

In regard to Religeon, mutual tolleration in the different professions thereof, is what all good and candid minds in all ages have ever practiced; and both by precept and example inculcated on mankind: And it is now generally agreed among christians that this spirit of toleration in the fullest extent consistent with the being of civil society "is the chief characteristical mark of the true church"2 & In so much that Mr. Lock has asserted, and proved beyond the possibility of contradiction on any solid ground, that such toleration ought to be extended to all whose doctrines are not subversive of society. The only Sects which he thinks ought to be, and which by all wise laws are excluded from such toleration, are those who teach Doctrines subversive of the Civil Government under which they live. The Roman Catholicks or Papists are excluded by reason of such Doctrines as these "that Princes excommunicated may be deposed, and those they call Hereticks may be destroyed without mercy; besides their recognizing the Pope in so absolute a manner, in subversion of Government, by introducing as far as possible into the states, under whose protection they enjoy life, liberty and property, that solecism in politicks, Imperium in imperio3 leading directly to the worst anarchy and confusion, civil discord, war and blood shed-4

When I hear someone say they want religion as it was 'just at the founding as the founders saw it' may I politely say: You are nuts. Folks like Jefferson wouldn't even mince the words as nicely as Sam Adams... mind you Jefferson was not even Orthodox, being a Unitarian, and had some bright things to say about many Protestant sects, also. The reason they followed the Westphalian concept of not having the government inculcate religion, was that they were of various sects, beliefs and outlooks, and a very few had *none* and yet wanted a Nation of *reason* to come about. Adams, Jefferson, and the rest were more than prepared to share a Nation with those they disagreed with on religion, so long as religion was kept out of what was pressed upon them all by common government. Apparently Christianity was something that had multiple different viewpoints, with some very harsh feelings between the various branches and sects.

The founders were wise to hold secular government in common and, while giving an overlook across all Christianity with 'In God We Trust' and other forms of recognition, they wanted no part in actually telling people which sect, group, or cult was actually vested in those words. We do, indeed, trust in that higher power, but heaven help you if you try to push your version of it on others. The Peace of Westphalia and the moves by Henry VIII prior to the 30 Years War all set the stage to try and step away from wars that would see a disturbingly large number of believers *dead* because they fought for their branch of Christianity under the Prince of Peace. That had *not* died down by the founding and the last thing anyone wanted to do was to put in-place the very same sorts of laws that had forced the Puritans and others to leave their homes in the Old World because they could not get equality under the law for their religious views. Apparently I remember a different and diverse set of founders that agreed upon common government to be held apart from religion and only give some obeisance to a generalized societal view of it. As society held no singular view of even Christianity in common, the idea to leave what you believed up to the individual was one that was pressed forward, just as it was in Westphalia so that States with that agreement would *not* practice religious persecution. It didn't stop them, of course, but the slow seeping of that wisdom into how we viewed Nations has changed history.

From there one moves to Sam Adams' views on natural liberty:

The natural liberty of Men by entring into society is abridg'd or restrained so far only as is necessary for the Great end of Society the best good of the whole

In the state of nature, every man is under God, Judge and sole Judge, of his own rights and the injuries done him: By entering into society, he agrees to an Arbiter or indifferent Judge between him and his neighbours; but he no more renounces his original right, than by taking a cause out of the ordinary course of law, and leaving the decision to referees or indifferent Arbitrations. In the last case he must pay the Referees for time and trouble; he should be also willing to pay his Just quota for the support of government, the law and constitution; the end of which is to furnish indifferent and impartial Judges in all cases that may happen, whether civil ecclesiastical, marine or military.

Hmmm... 'The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few'! Lovely how Star Trek tries to address these things. Yes, that firm and fundamental right to associate and create society comes with it a burden to each and every member to then support that society. If one lived solely by their own hands and with no interaction with any others, ever, then living in a state of nature each man is judge of his actions and his rights with no other to intervene. By being in society and having the benefits of society, one incurs the obligation to support society in its means and methods under law. Thus to gain the rights previously mentioned within a society, one needs to support that society as a whole, enter into it voluntarily and understand that the cost of supporting all of it, even if you vehemently disagree with a small subsection of it, must be done. If your conscience moves you from that ability to support due to a small section you disagree with, you are breaking your societal compact and setting your beliefs higher than those of the society around you.

In our modern day we get a segment of society that wishes to push their views upon the whole of society via government, have the ability to complain and protest and give non-support to those areas they dislike which *are* held in common, while claiming that everyone *else* needs to support their views on things they want government to do that are not agreed upon by the whole or even majority of society. Via the Sam Adams view you do have the right to such civil views so long as you support the entirety of the burden placed upon you, even for those things you do not like. To do otherwise is to set oneself up under the law of nature as above society and dictating one's own beliefs to society while refusing to support it. This is why those who want to 'protest' by withholding their taxes have a difficult time getting traction: they have abdicated their responsibility to the entirety of society for the minority of their views. So long as you support the whole, then it is civil discourse to talk about one's problems and differences with what is going on. The moment that greater support stops, or you wish to pick and choose your obligations outside of what your personal religious beliefs tell you for *yourself*, then one acts in an authoritarian manner putting themselves up as judge and arbiter for society for their views. By placing yourself in that 'morally higher position' you have simultaneously isolated yourself from society to dictate to it your wishes. That normally gets shunning, not an audience.

The kicker is: you may even be *right*.

You chose the exact, wrong means to state your disagreements.

Of final note on this passage is that Sam Adams understands the different provinces of the law: civil, ecclesiastical, marine, military. This is fascinating, not for the ecclesiastical mention which is an individual's choice to subject themselves to such law, but for the marine choice. This is the commonly held Admiralty laws, that go along with the high and near seas, and the commerce it engenders. At this point the English law is already a few centuries from The Black Book of the Admiralty, and marine or maritime law has gone through a few iterations on an international scale in France, Spain, Netherlands, Britain, and elsewhere. While we, today, think of this as a minor jurisdiction for contract law, it is still a view that governs trade, commerce, and the sovereignty of a ship at sea to be a part of its Nation until out of the reaches of the sea (which is a direct access affair for the US, requiring the passing of headlands for local law to take hold outside of traffic restrictions and such for common navigation). It is difficult to determine if the listing of these laws are precedential (that is with the earliest being most important) or equality in different provinces, which I think is what he is getting across, which gives each of these its own separate views that can overlap, but only do so when the type of law is crossed. Something like Piracy, depending upon maritime law, also has civil and military views to it and those differences remain with us to this day, based on activity and what is being done (ex. an attack by a Pirate is a military attack, a capture of a Pirate by civil authorities is a civil action, and the predation of commerce is a maritime action which relates to both the civil and military laws).

After that there is a section that will definitely make a few people pause:

"The natural liberty of man is to be free from any superior power on earth, and not to be under the will or legislative authority of man; but only to have the law of nature for his rule."

In the state of nature men may as the Patriarchs did, employ hired servants for the defence of their lives, liberty and property: and they should them reasonable wages. Government was instituted for the purposed of common defence; and those who hold the reins of government have an equitable natural right to an honourable support from the same principle "that the labourer is worth of his hire: but then the same community which they serve, ought to be assessors of their pay: Governors have no right to seek what they please; by this, instead of being content with the station assigned them, that of honourable servants of the society, they would soon become Absolute masters, Despots, and Tyrants. Hence as a private man has a right to say, what wages he will give in his private affairs, so has a Community to determine what they will give and grant of their Substance, for the Administration of publick affairs. and in both cases more are ready generally to offer their Service at the proposed and stipulated price, than are able and willing to perform their duty.

In short it is the greatest absurdity to supposed it in the power of one or any number of men at the entering into society, to renounce their essential natural rights, or the mans of preserving those rights when the great end of civil government from the very nature of its institution is for the support, protection and defence of those very rights: the principal of which as is before observed, are life liberty and property. If men through fear, fraud or mistake, should in terms renounce and give up any essential natural right, the eternal law of reason and the great end of society, would absolutely vacate such renunciation; the right of freedom being the gift of God Almighty, it is not in the power of Man to alienate this gift, and voluntarily become a slave-

Yes, do indeed be wary of those wanting government to do things for you: they are not seeking good ends, but the concentration of power to government and the governors. That is especially true when cloaked in the words of giving succor to the poor - society does have an obligation to the poor and charity is best done by those interested in giving it, not those forced to work at it. When one starts to see the government as the source of that which is good and the source of rights, then one begins to alienate themselves from that gift of freedom. The gift itself, as the Declaration would put it, is self-evident and inalienable.

But only so long as you remember that it is you that are the source of good in society and abide by those things society asks to support it.

Beware those that tell you all the good things government can do for you.

They seek your poverty.

And your submission to them and to government.

That soon gets you back to that right to self-defense against oppression as government can at best only be impartial judge, and never the source of your rights. Forget these things and one is well on the path to putting fetters on themselves and their fellow man by empowering government and forgetting their duty to society as a whole. To utilize one rights incurs an obligation in society to one's conscience and beliefs... and government is very, very poor at handling either.

Sphere: Related Content

Foreign policy team follies

Today we turn to the foreign policy teams of the Presidential candidates and asses who they bring to the table as 'experience' in our troubled times.

From Foreign Policy In Focus, article of 04 FEB 2008, Behind Obama and Clinton:

Contrasting Teams

Senator Clinton’s foreign policy advisors tend to be veterans of President Bill Clinton’s administration, most notably former secretary of state Madeleine Albright and former National Security Adviser Sandy Berger. Her most influential advisor - and her likely choice for Secretary of State - is Richard Holbrooke. Holbrooke served in a number of key roles in her husband’s administration, including U.S. ambassador to the UN and member of the cabinet, special emissary to the Balkans, assistant secretary of state for European and Canadian affairs, and U.S. ambassador to Germany. He also served as President Jimmy Carter’s assistant secretary of state for East Asia in propping up Marcos in the Philippines, supporting Suharto’s repression in East Timor, and backing the generals behind the Kwangju massacre in South Korea.

Senator Barack Obama’s foreign policy advisers, who on average tend to be younger than those of the former first lady, include mainstream strategic analysts who have worked with previous Democratic administrations, such as former national security advisors Zbigniew Brzezinski and Anthony Lake, former assistant secretary of state Susan Rice, and former navy secretary Richard Danzig. They have also included some of the more enlightened and creative members of the Democratic Party establishment, such as Joseph Cirincione and Lawrence Korb of the Center for American Progress, and former counterterrorism czar Richard Clarke. His team also includes the noted human rights scholar and international law advocate Samantha Power - author of a recent New Yorker article on U.S. manipulation of the UN in post-invasion Iraq - and other liberal academics. Some of his advisors, however, have particularly poor records on human rights and international law, such as retired General Merrill McPeak, a backer of Indonesia’s occupation of East Timor, and Dennis Ross, a supporter of Israel’s occupation of the West Bank.

Yes the article is pointing to major flaws in these two candidates!

Now to those on the Left who point to nefarious dealings on the Carlyle Group, The Nation on 01 NOV 2004 in an article James Baker's Double Life, by Naomi Klein will point out that it has not been acting alone in some realms talking about the pre-War Iraqi debt and Kuwaiti claims on Iraq:

This is where the Carlyle/Albright consortium comes in. The premise of its proposal is that Iraq's unpaid debts to Kuwait are not just a financial problem but a political and public relations problem as well. Global public opinion is no longer what it was when Kuwait was promised full reparations. Now the world is focused on reconstructing Iraq and forgiving its debts. If Kuwait is going to get its reparations awards, the cover letter argues, it will need to recast them not as a burden on Iraq but "as a key element in working toward regional stability and reconciliation."

Several parties involved in the consortium emphasized that the proposal concerned only reparations debts. Albright Group spokesperson Jamie Smith said, "We were asked to join a proposal to secure justice for victims of Saddam's invasion of Kuwait and ensure that compensation to Kuwaiti victims--which was endorsed by the US government and the United Nations--be used to promote reconciliation, environmental improvements and investment in Kuwait, Iraq and the region."

In fact, the proposal does not restrict itself to reparations debt. The consortium also asks the government of Kuwait to give the consortium control over $30 billion in defaulted sovereign debts to be used as political leverage to secure reparations claims. Furthermore, most experts on debt restructuring agree that Iraq's debts must be looked at as a whole: There is little point forgiving Iraq's sovereign debts if the country is still going to be saddled with an unmanageable reparations burden. This understanding is reflected in the documents, which repeatedly state that Kuwait's reparations payments are endangered by the moves to forgive Iraq's debts.

'Why, yes, don't have your reparations money put in danger after a dictator that I recommended doing nothing about is deposed and the new government seeks debt forgiveness!' - that is basically how Madeleine Albright is saying via her group. So handy of her to want to profit off of a problem she did nothing to mitigate or end and, indeed, helped continue while she was in office.

Another place she would do nothing about was Liberia during its conflicts of the 1990's, as seen at FrontPage Magazine by Kenneth R. Timmerman on Jesse, Liberia and Blood Diamonds, 25 JUL 2003:

And for good reason. The current crisis was in part the creation of the Rev. Jesse Jackson, a Democratic Party activist who claims to champion the rights of Africans to self-governance. As special envoy for democracy and human rights in Africa, starting in October 1997, Jackson was President Bill Clinton's point man for Africa. It was Jackson who spearheaded Clinton's 10-day African safari in March 1998, at a cost to taxpayers of $42.8 million. And it was Jackson who legitimated Liberian strongman Charles Taylor and his protégé, the machete-wielding militia leader in neighboring Sierra Leone, Cpl. Foday Sankoh. Without Jackson's active intervention, both leaders were headed toward international isolation and sanction. Thanks to Jackson, both retained power to murder another day.

At Jackson's prompting, Clinton made an unprecedented phone call to Taylor from Air Force One while flying over Africa. Until then the United States had shunned Taylor because of his grisly past. Among Taylor's many "accomplishments" were the murder of American Catholic nuns in Liberia and the storming of the U.S. Embassy in Monrovia.

[..]

"Secretary [of State Madeleine] Albright delegated Africa policy to [U.S. Rep. Donald] Payne [of New Jersey] and the Congressional Black Caucus," Sierra Leone's outspoken ambassador to Washington, John Ernest Leigh, told this reporter. A House International Affairs Committee staffer who followed Jackson's meetings with Taylor put it more bluntly: "The whole effort under Clinton was to mainstream Charles Taylor, and Jesse Jackson had a lot to do with it."

[..]

Arriving in Monrovia, Liberia, on May 17, 2000, Jackson declared, "President Taylor has been doing a commendable job negotiating for the release of the hostages. All the hostages should be freed and freed now. There is no basis for delay, there is no basis for negotiations." Jackson's comments would have been laughable were it not for the quantities of innocent blood that had been shed, thanks to his self-serving misbehavior.

By this point, the State Department had suffered enough of Jackson's alleged diplomacy and the failed agreement he had brokered. State Department spokesman Philip Reeker declared on June 5, 2000, that the United States was "not part of that agreement." Jackson summarily was fired as Clinton's special envoy shortly afterward.

But the Clinton State Department is not innocent in this affair. In a series of dispatches and briefing documents stamped "Secret," which the State Department declassified at this reporter's request, it is clear that Assistant Secretary of State Rice, an Albright protégé, and Deputy Assistant Secretary of State Jeter primed Jackson with intelligence, talking points and background papers throughout the entire three-year period he was Clinton's envoy. Indeed, the entire bureaucracy of U.S. diplomacy was put at Jackson's disposal with tragic results.

Do you remember the State Dept. problems of not having personnel wanting to leave cushy jobs in Europe for necessary ones in India? Or on serving on Transition Teams in Iraq? Remember those folks? They are the ones under Madeleine Albright who supported Jesse Jackson's attempt to 'mainstream' a butcher as the conflict spread to neighboring Sierra Leone. Secretary of State Albright couldn't be bothered with piddling affairs in Liberia and hundreds, if not thousands dead... no she left that up to the Congressional Black Caucus to do for her. That is known as 'delegating responsibilities' into the hands of the unprepared. Mind you her staff didn't help things or blow any whistles while the death toll increased in and blood diamonds went out through Energem and Victor Bout. And in case you forgot those, Victor Bout is in the illegal arms and narcotics trade having Russian descent (mentioned various times in relation to Monzer al-Kassar) and helped support the Taliban and Liberian fighters, and Energem... well... that wasn't so long ago. This from back on 31 JUL 2007 The Standard, in Kenya, looked at MP Odinga and his workings as I looked at previously:

Acquisition of the molasses plant

Significantly, Spectre had applied for the same land in a letter of February 18, 1999, but the Government at the time had rejected the request. Titles were prepared in favour of Spectre on February 3, 2002 for a 99-year lease backdated to September 1, 2001.

When the Odinga family started the process that led to the acquisition of the molasses plant in 2001, Raila had already established good business contacts in South Africa. Energem Resources Incorporated, an international firm quoted on the Toronto Stock Exchange, had been looking for an investment opportunity in Kenya for a long time and the Kisumu Molasses Plant was just right.

Soon after taking over the plant from the Government, Raila struck a lucrative deal with Energem, whereby the Canadian firm bought 55 per cent of Kisumu Molasses plant.

The Canadians also ploughed in millions of dollars to rehabilitate the plant and it is today one of the country’s largest manufacturing concerns employing hundreds of people and producing at least 60,000 litres of industrial ethanol for local consumption and export.

There you go, the S. African firm that is outlined in this report from Business TimesOnline (UK) on 30 DEC 2007:

A COMPANY that has just launched itself on the London stock market as a renewable-energy business is the same firm that became embroiled in the “blood diamond” scandals of the 1990s, in which illegally traded diamonds were used to finance civil wars in Africa, The Sunday Times has established.

Energem Resources, with its head office in South Africa and registered office in Canada, used to be known as DiamondWorks. It changed its name in 2004 and gained its London AIM listing last month.

Canaccord Adams, the adviser that piloted it onto London’s Alternative Investment Market (AIM), is headed by Tim Hoare, who sits alongside rock star and champion of Africa Bob Geldof on the board of the television-production company Ten Alps. Hoare has been a board member since March this year.

[..]

There is no suggestion that the present management had any involvement in the blood diamond trade – an industry at one stage reckoned to be worth $1 billion (£500m) a year – in which civil wars, notably in Angola and Sierra Leone, were fuelled by selling the gems to buy arms.

Page 129 of Energem’s 160-page AIM admission document discloses that Energem was “formerly DiamondWorks Ltd”.

And, in a brief corporate history, the document says that in 1997, the company’s main assets were “diamond exploration properties in Sierra Leone and Angola. The Angolan mines were in full production in 1997 and the Sierra Leone mines were in the process of commissioning when civil unrest in both these countries during 1998 effectively halted operations”.

DiamondWorks came close to bankruptcy and was the subject of a reverse takeover in 2001. Its present management team all joined after that rescue. A stake in a Sierra Leone diamond mining concern has been sold.

A spokesman for Energem said this weekend that “all connections with its DiamondWorks days have long-since been severed”.

[..]

In the 1990s, DiamondWorks came under scrutiny in Sierra Leone for using the controversial South African-based mercenary provider Executive Outcomes to secure its diamond mines during the country’s prolonged civil war. The 1990s war, and the diamond trade that sustained it, also came under the Hollywood microscope in the 2006 film Blood Diamond.

In 1997, DiamondWorks’ largest shareholder was Tony Buck-ingham, a former British Army officer who introduced Executive Outcomes into both Sierra Leone and Angola. He was the inspiration behind the London-based mercenary outfit Sandline International. Sandline, which provided mercenaries, military training and arms, was being run by former Scots Guards officer Lieutenant-Colonel Tim Spicer. Sandline and DiamondWorks shared offices in London.

Also linked to DiamondWorks in the 1990s was Simon Mann, the Old Etonian who was later arrested in Zimbabwe accused of attempting to smuggle weapons to Equatorial Guinea to help stage a coup. Mann was DiamondWorks’ chief operations officer. Mann is still in Zimbabwe, trying to resist extradition to Equatorial Guinea.

A certification scheme was set up in 2000 with United Nations backing to stem the flow of blood diamonds from Sierra Leone where rebels used gems to fund the country’s 10-year war.

Energem said this weekend that, as far as it knew, Buckingham was not a shareholder.

The company is concentrating on renewable energy, and wants to farm jatropha, a plant whose seeds can be turned into biofuel.

It is growing jatropha in Mozambique, runs an ethanol plant in Kenya and has oil-refining and storage operations in Nigeria and Malawi.

Energem also has operations in Chad, Democratic Republic of Congo, Zambia and Zimbabwe.

This is how international money laundering goes on, and it was aided by the blind eye of Sec. State Madeleine Albright. Now for those of the 'just say you're sorry and everything will be better' mode of foreign policy, Sec. State Madeleine Albright also tried that... with Iran. Here is how it was received

RFE/RL report of the reaction on 27 March 2000, Volume 3, Number 13, GlobalSecurity.org:

HOSTILE OFFICIAL REACTION TO ALBRIGHT SPEECH. Foreign observers and the Western media have commented extensively about the implications of U.S. Secretary of State Madeline Albright's 17 March speech on Iran, but official commentary from Tehran was fairly restrained initially. Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei's response to the speech on 25 March, however, was openly hostile and seemed to dash hopes for a rapprochement between Iran and the U.S. in the near future. President Mohammad Khatami has remained silent on the subject thus far.

Albright's speech is seen by many in the West as an important step in the restoration of relations between Iran and the U.S. She announced that the U.S. will permit the import of some Iranian goods, facilitate contacts between Americans and Iranians, and increase efforts to settle outstanding legal claims. Albright also acknowledged the impact of the U.S. role in the 1953 ouster of Prime Minister Mohammad Mussadiq, and she admitted that the U.S. supported Iraq in its war with Iran.

Khamenei responded to Albright during a speech in Mashhad. He said that "The Iranian nation and its authorities consider the United States to be their enemy because America's past behavior is full of acts of hostility and treason." Khamenei added that "The U.S. proposal is deceiving and aimed at continuing enmity with Iran." As for Albright's statements about events in 1953 and 1980-1988, they "came too late and can in no way compensate the damages caused to the Iranian nation."

Khamenei's speech seems to put the stamp of finality on the issue, but there were some positive responses from Tehran beforehand. Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Hamid Reza Assefi said America can export grains and medicine to Iran (which it has been doing anyway), IRNA reported. And Expediency Council secretary Mohsen Rezai said the speech was "a new chapter" in the two country's relations, and he predicted major developments in the coming year, IRNA reported.

Mohammad Javad Larijani, of the parliament's Foreign Relations Committee, also welcomed aspects of the speech, but then he complained that "America's acts...are all negative...there has been no change in its policies." Larijani also criticized Albright's statement that Iran's last three elections (October 1998 Assembly of Experts election, February 1999 council elections, and February 2000 parliamentary elections) were increasingly democratic, because it implied that all the other elections were undemocratic. Larijani also complained about Albright's reference to the "Gulf," rather than the "Persian Gulf."

Supreme National Security Council secretary and deputy parliamentary speaker Hassan Rohani told state radio on 18 March that, "On the whole, [Albright] has repeated the same old belligerent policies." Her comments about domestic Iranian politics, he said, constituted "improper interventions in Iran's internal affairs and system." Even the removal of some trade sanctions, Rohani said, is "not at all a positive [step]; it is a negative step, which smacks of another act of intervention by America in the internal affairs of Iran."

State radio said on 19 March that "Albright's speech shows that the U.S.A. is still pursuing its expansionist policies." And the Islamic Revolution Guard Corps said that Albright's comments "are indicative of an intensifying conspiracy by the White House to create a series of crises in Iran," according to state television.

Some of Iran's neighbors, such as Turkey, Pakistan, and Armenia, welcomed the potential regional stability that improved U.S.-Iran relations could bring. Cairo's state-owned "al-Jumhuriyah," however, was less sanguine, warning on 19 March that "the Iranian desire to dominate the region has not withered yet." The Egyptian daily also wondered if Iran's attitude towards the Middle East Peace Process would change.

Officials in the Israeli Prime Minister's office also questioned the wisdom of U.S. actions, telling the 20 March "Jerusalem Post" that "giving the Iranians the carrot does not work, and therefore by trying to encourage Iran with nice words and actions, the U.S. is making a grave mistake." An Israeli Foreign Ministry official, on the other hand, said U.S. actions are a good thing, but "there are many here who do not understand it and are frightened that when dialogue starts, issues we are concerned about will be left aside." (Bill Samii)

Now, that is what happens when 'Realpolitik' or 'pragmatic diplomacy' is used on Iran. And this is even before going into major appeasement mode with North Korea and their blackmailing of continuing nuclear work unless they get enough fuel to keep their economy going... and then backing out on that saying they want more of the agreement is *off* once Clinton leaves office. Albright's folks would call such blackmail a failure of the Bush Administration when the original appeasement was that of the Clinton Administration.

Good going, Madeleine! Blame others for your ineptitude!

Dear, me! All this time and I haven't even touched on Mr. B from the Obama team... but I did a lengthy review of his inabilities under the Carter Administration just a bit ago because he and Hassan Nemazee (for the Clinton team) both showed up in Syria doing a bit of the 'realist kowtow' to Bashar al-Assad. I will extract a passage from that looking at how 'realism' not only didn't handle Iran, but actually made things worse:

Now in case you aren't familiar with these two 'wise heads' of 'realism' that treats the equivalent of gangsters and mafiosos on the transnational scale as mere misguided miscreants who will soon learn the ever-so-wise 'ways of the world', lets do a bit of the old backgrounding on them! That is always fun to see just what they got up to previously so you can know the kind of hot water they will get you into the next time around.

Zbigniew Brzezinski, whom I covered a bit in this post, first got attention as part of the administration of President Carter, heading up the National Security Council side of things. He was the one who told the Shah of Iran that the US would back him 'to the hilt', and that he had no worries about pesky Islamic Imams and such. When the poor Shah got stuck in Mexico after the coup the US, it turned out that, started heading in the direction of Cyrus Vance who wanted to 'come to terms' with the Ayatollah Khomeini. As the Shah needed cancer treatment both Henry Kissinger and Nelson Rockefeller convinced President Carter this would be a good thing to do. After that we get to the condemnation of the US and the entire hostage taking concept. Now as Iran served as a 'buffer State' in the Great Game of Geopolitik between the US and USSR, Brzezinski was quite willing to forego the Shah and deal with the Ayatollah if he cooperated and helped from an Islamic 'Green Belt' buffer between the West and Soviets. But that entire condemnation and hostage thing really demonstrated that wasn't going to happen as the Ayatollah just wasn't going to play by the established rule book and believed that Islam would overcome everything.

Mind you no one in the Carter Administration did a damned thing about the *first* break-in to the US Embassy in Tehran months prior to that, so as to avoid dealing with the Ayatollah. So saying, after the hostage taking - "The United States of America will not yield to international terrorism or to blackmail" - is more than a bit of a lie as the US did, indeed, do nothing about terrorism with the first break-in. So Mr. Brzezinski was more than willing to: 1) forego an ally of the US, 2) try to establish terms to deal with a radical regime that already violated the US Embassy, and 3) wanted to deal with them during that time to continue playing the Great Game, even though the idea was that they wanted no part in it.

So much for 'realism' and the 'worldly experience' of Mr. Brzezinski. He would not be the first to not understand the problems of radical Islam nor the last, but he certainly didn't do very much to stop it, curb it or end it. Appeasement seemed to be on the menu and, apparently, still is. Good guy for Barack Obama, then, and I'm sure that if Syria wants the equivalent of the Sudetenland, that he would figure out a way to give it to them, most likely the place called 'Lebanon'. Appeasers are very good at giving away other folks' land to tyrants.

Yes, he was for the Shah and against the Ayatollah before he was against the Shah and for the Ayatollah, save the Ayatollah wouldn't play 'realism in foreign policy' (like Calvinball, save everyone changes the rules all the time to suit their needs and no one wins) which would require a lovley, radical Islamic set of Nations to serve as a buffer between the US and USSR. Just what we needed, no?

With such luminaries do we get the drift of where these foreign policy teams are heading?

They appear to be putting the exact, same people in place that *caused* the expansion of radical islam, the spread of nuclear weapons technology by appeasing North Korea and not doing a damned thing about Pakistan, and then trying to apologize their way into the good graces of tyrants and dictators with bloody hands.

It is looking at these past actions which make me a bit leery about trying to cast the Clinton team as 'in the Bush mold' as their folks have not shown the wherewithal to actually figure out what the hell they were doing the first time around and then they sent in Sandy 'Big Socks' Berger to destroy the evidence of their inability to actually get bin Laden on the cheap and easy. Their waffling is only able to be contrasted to the Obama team which is multi-culti, do nothing, appeasement outright with no questions asked. Albright at least wanted a diplomatic patina to the work in Liberia and North Korea, while the Obama-ites would just start in on the 'realism kowtow' from Day ONE.

If the Clinton team has the tenacity of pudding the Obama team has one of jello.

These are definitely 'first instincts' teams: ones that back up the first instincts of the candidates involved.

To get the equivalent for Sen. McCain, however, one has to dig back to his first campaign and see what his first jump to a foreign policy team would look like. In a FindArticles archive article from Insight on the News of 13 MAR 2000, we get just what the McCain senior team would look like:

"What's the first thing you would do as president?" the Detroit News recently asked McCain.

"The first thing I would do," the candidate answered, "is call in John Kerry, Bob Kerrey, Joe Biden, Zbigniew Brzezinski, Henry Kissinger, Dick Lugar, Chuck Hagel and several others and say we've got to get foreign-policy, national-security issues back on track."

That statement ricocheted through cyberspace, with Washington national-security experts wondering, "Is McCain nuts?" The formula doesn't compute:

* John Kerry is the very liberal senator from Massachusetts who ran Vietnam Veterans Against the War and whose dogged efforts to save Nicaragua's Marxist regime in the 1980s prompted his hometown paper, the Boston Herald, to refer to him as "the Sandinista ambassador."

* Bob Kerrey, a Nebraska Democratic senator and Clinton/Gore critic, is retiring and won't even be in the Senate when or if McCain makes it to the White House.

* Delaware Sen. Joseph Biden, solidly on the left, is the ranking Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee but won't set its agenda because Sen. Jesse Helms, a North Carolina Republican, still will be the chairman.

* Zbigniew Brzezinski, who was President Carter's national-security adviser, is admired for a toughness toward Moscow that's matched by a puzzling softness toward Beijing.

* Henry Kissinger, architect of President Nixon's premature detente with the Soviet Union and the opening to Communist China, has made millions of dollars consulting with international business while advising U.S. political leaders (see "Lion Dancing With Wolves," April 21, 1997).

* Dick Lugar, the thoughtful, even-handed Indiana Republican senator, has been a key ally of the Clinton administration's failed Russia policies.

* Chuck Hagel, Lugar's eager apprentice, is a first-term Republican senator from Nebraska whom Kissinger wowed on a trip to China. Hagel is formally a member of the McCain camp's "senior foreign-policy team," with a grand total of three (count 'em, three) years' experience in the Washington foreign-policy world. (Hagel is such a Kissinger fan that he told the newspaper The Hill that Kissinger's book Years of Renewal was his "summer reading.")

McCain's anointment of these men left GOP national-security experts scratching their heads. "It shows he has a certain lack of confidence when he has so many people from wholly different environments," a former senior State Department official tells Insight.

That is not only the team of 'realism' but it is the exact, same set of folks who caused the rift with India in the 1970's, did the Mr. B act of following Special Henry K's concept for radical Islamic 'buffer States' and then tops it off with even more Leftist views.

And when Human Events looked at this on 02 APR 2007, what do we see as Sen. McCain's inclinations? Have a look:

At a recent Manhattan fundraiser, Sen. John McCain (R.-Ariz.) was asked whom he is relying on for foreign policy advice in his campaign for the Republican presidential nomination in 2008. He listed Henry Kissinger, Brent Scowcroft, Robert Kagan, George Schultz, Lawrence Eagleburger, William Kristol and Robert Zoellick. “And, you’ll be surprised how often I touch base with that circuit” he told the crowd.

Yes, the drumbeat of 'realism' continues, although, we hope, that the idea of trying to fit radical Islamic States into a 'framework' is left out of things. Bill Kristol denies he is 'advising' McCain, however While Sen. McCain is trying to mix up the 'realists' and the NeoCons, he is leaving out the Traditionalist Security folks who want few interventions and few wars that the Nation is committed to completing.

Needless to say, the domination of the 'Old Guard' in foreign policy who are the ones who's inability to deal with transnational terrorism, international organized crime, and non-rational National leadership allowed the likes of FARC, Hezbollah, al Qaeda, ETA, PLO, LTTE, Shining Path, and myriads of other non-State warmaking groups to flourish. Appeasement in Iran has not worked, nor has 'constructive engagement', nor sending cakes with envoys, nor trying to work with their neighbors to isolate them. Killing competent agents of terrorist organizations does not deal with the adaptable and competent structures they have created, nor their empowerment by organized crime to distribute fanaticism with weapons on the cheap. And organized crime, itself, has now co-opted the previous Cold War foe and is in a 1/3 ownership position of most of the heavy industries in Russia and its spun-off independent Republics, especially along the southern tier of Russia. These individuals do not address the economic structural instabilities in China and the impact of foreign trade on them, or on America, beyond pointing to cheaper goods. Trying to safeguard US jobs, from the Left or Right, cannot be done if China falls into any form of disorganization and becomes a multi-ethnic, multi-religious flashpoint in Asia.

This is the 'Old Guard' preaching about the Maginot Line, while ignoring the development of the Tank and not even addressing the problems of creating such a defensive arrangement that could stop such things. They are internationalists talking about the good of trade and not that the goods from trade wind up in the hands of some of the most vicious individuals on the planet seeking to destroy Nations and all trade to bring it under their domain... even if not successful, the death toll from that has been widespread, endemic and growing over time. While the current Bush Administration has tried to deal with this, it has failed to do so in Pakistan and the lower tier of ex-Russian Republics and is fighting a bare holding action against some of these forces in Somalia. The widespread and endemic organized crime trade has not been addressed at all, nor the banking that has been penetrated by it via the great and good wealth generated in Russia to just *buy the banks they need*. You cannot clean up the banking system when criminal groups hold controlling interests in banks that are part of a wider network of related businesses. If one man can thwart the best law enforcement the US and UK treasuries and INTEL groups can muster, and make a penetration of the US banking system impenetrable, then what chance do they have when the actual banks, themselves, are fully compromised from top to bottom?

None of these foreign policy teams has the demonstrated knowledge and capability or even understanding of these operations to promulgate an effective US policy towards them. In the over three decades since the 'French Connection' takedown, not only has the drug trade not been hampered, it has expanded multifold in size and profitability. Yet each of these groups has their advisors that see all problems as 'law enforcement' ones, and wish, heartily, that the 9/10 world would re-appear. The 'NeoCons' have some understanding that this will not happen, but they have yet to expand beyond looking at military and foreign policy conflict to examine the harder things needing to be done to safeguard the US. For all the talk of 'change' by Obama or 'third way' routes by Clinton, they are offering nostrums for wishing the world would be safer and forgetting that appeasement to those seeking to end the US and liberty does not work. And the ice-laden McCain group has put forward no way to deal with the endemic problems beyond the same-old, same-old that got 3,000 killed one bright September morn.

Sen. Hillary Clinton is running to be Chief Nanny and Scold.

Sen. Barack Obama is running to be Chief of Hope and Feeling Good.

Sen. John McCain wants to be Commander-in-Chief, but not President.

This is why Americans do not like to elect Senators as President: they don't know what the hell the job is.

America cannot do well on a 1/4 President, because all of the duties are necessary to succeed - Head of State, Head of Government, Commander of the Armies and the Navies, and Final Pardoner. Being serious about just one part of that is not an option in today's world and is not more survivable than 0/4.

No matter who is chosen, the American People will have to work damned hard to keep that individual on track to keep the Nation safe and have it survive... for the test of democracy is not the candidates running for office, not the election, but ensuring that they carry out their duties to all of the People, which means: YOU. Our two party failure has ensured that individuals unready for the job and unwilling to learn are being selected, and even if not voting the responsibility to hold them accountable rests with all of us, in the Nation as a whole. We have not done that for decades and we now live with our inattentiveness by having unrepresentative and unprepared political leaders who reflect that laxitude. And when representative democracy fails, it is not the fault of those in government - they only exploit the weaknesses presented to them. Those failures are the fault and full responsibility of all of the People.

And right now a 'do nothing' and 'hold the course' solution is looking very nice.

Let us be lucky enough to get that, and leave 'change' and 'outreach' until we at least can figure out what we might actually need to survive this new century, as the snake oil of the last century has nearly gotten us killed for our lack of efforts.

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Those Benchmarks, remember those?

As I see them as follows augmenting based on White House assessment of SEP 2007 but updated for the happenings of the last few months:

(i) Forming a Constitutional Review Committee and then completing the constitutional review.

Satisfactory.

(ii) Enacting and implementing legislation on de-Ba’athification reform.

Law passed by Iraqi Parliament.  Implementation follows in budget.

Complete.

(iii) Enacting and implementing legislation to ensure the equitable distribution of hydrocarbon resources to the people of Iraq without regard to the sect or ethnicity of recipients, and enacting and implementing legislation to ensure that the energy resources of Iraq benefit Sunni Arabs, Shi’a Arabs, Kurds, and other Iraqi citizens in an equitable manner.

Law passed by Iraqi Parliament.  Implemented in budget.

Complete.

(iv) Enacting and implementing legislation on procedures to form semi-autonomous regions.

Complete.

(v) Enacting and implementing legislation establishing an Independent High Electoral Commission, provincial elections law, provincial council authorities, and a date for provincial elections.

Laws passed by Iraqi Parliament, elections scheduled.

Complete.

(vi) Enacting and implementing legislation addressing amnesty.

Law passed by Iraqi Parliament.  Implementation follows in budget.

Complete.

(vii) Enacting and implementing legislation establishing a strong militia disarmament program to ensure that such security forces are accountable only to the central government and loyal to the constitution of Iraq.

With the recent progress in laws passed on de-Ba'athification, elections, autonomy and amnesty, the Iraqi Parliament has this to do next.  With militias now being shifted into Concerned Local Citizens groups and those being processed to ensure that insurgents and criminals are not present, this is moving well on the non-legislative areas.  Final agreements will be done in accordance with new Iraqi laws, and many groups have processed through into regular Army and Police Forces or will become Provincial or Local police forces.  Final and official laws need to be drafted and implemented, but the framework is now present and working for that to happen.

Satisfactory.

(viii) Establishing supporting political, media, economic, and services committees in support of the Baghdad Security Plan.

Baghdad is 75% secured fully with the remaining portions partially secured.  All local governments are in agreement on the need to secure those areas and progress continues on the rest.  Necessary mechanisms are in place and agreed-upon for this to happen.  Time to build infrastructure is in a timeframe of years, not months or weeks, which includes the standing up of Concerned Local Citizens and processing those to Army or Police (local, city, provincial).  The legal infrastructure is in place for this to happen and it is proceeding.

Satisfactory.

(ix) Providing three trained and ready Iraqi brigades to support Baghdad operations.

Satisfactory.

(x) Providing Iraqi commanders with all authorities to execute this plan and to make tactical and operational decisions in consultation with U.S. Commanders, without political intervention to include the authority to pursue all extremists including Sunni insurgents and Shiite militias.

Iraqi units will take years to build up a logistics system and NCO corps that is reliable, as well as Officer Corps that has necessary breadth, depth and experience in operations.  Currently the bulk of Iraqi forces now are in a self-determining mode with logistical assist from the US and operation assistance as needed.

An Iraqi Air Force is standing up with cargo aircraft and trained pilots.  It is currently awaiting necessary COIN aircraft for flexibility in security operations to reduce dependence upon Coalition forces.

Satisfactory.

(xi) Ensuring that Iraqi Security Forces are providing even-handed enforcement of the law.

Currently Iraqi Security Forces (local, provincial and national) are going through different stages of turn-over via Coalition readiness teams.  As different parts of Iraq are in need of different levels of oversight and assistance, this will continue to be an uneven metric for at least two more years.  Already a number of local police operations are now done indigenously, with only overwatch by Coalition transition teams and are effectively self-sustaining.

Satisfactory.

(xii) Ensuring that, as President Bush quoted Prime Minister Maliki as saying, “the Baghdad Security Plan will not provide a safe haven for any outlaws, regardless of [their] sectarian or political affiliation.”

With the de-Ba'athification laws and amnesty laws, all of those still armed and attacking in Baghdad are either insurgents, criminals or both.  They are targeted equally and effectively by the Iraqi Army and Iraqi Security Forces without discrimination.  Smaller pockets of outlaws are still being identified as part of the over-all security plan and are being eliminated either via kinetic or non-kinetic operations.

Satisfactory.

(xiv) Establishing all of the planned joint security stations in neighborhoods across Baghdad.

Satisfactory.

(xv) Increasing the number of Iraqi Security Forces units capable of operating independently.

While there will be a need to continue recruitment and training, the number, quality and capability of all Iraqi Security Forces is increasing.  The Inspector General system is in place and operating, with numerous insurgents and law breakers within the Security Forces having been identified, arrested and prosecuted.

Satisfactory.

(xvi) Ensuring that the rights of minority political parties in the Iraqi legislature are protected.

Iraq currently has a large variety and number of political parties and they all have access to the election process and have their rights protected.

Satisfactory.

(xvii) Allocating and spending $10 billion in Iraqi revenues for reconstruction projects, including delivery of essential services, on an equitable basis.

With increased oil revenue the Iraqi Government is now delivering the bulk of money for reconstruction projects and they are being implemented in an even-handed way.  Iraqi spending now far outweighs Coalition contributions and the greatest need is in oversight and accountability of funding for Iraqi funds spent in Iraq.  The Coalition is working with the Iraqi government to ensure that proper accounting measures are put into place to adhere to Iraqi laws in this area.

Satisfactory.

(xviii) Ensuring that Iraq’s political authorities are not undermining or making false accusations against members of the ISF.

The Inspectors General system across the Iraqi government is still being stood up.  Those pertaining to the Iraqi Army and Security Forces are moving quickly and effectively to find and root out corruption and insurgents, along with criminal elements that find their way inside the Security Forces.  This will continue to be a work in progress, but the number and quality of investigations and prosecutions with convictions indicates a working system is being created and implemented.

Satisfactory.

 

As I see it there are 5 completed areas of legislation that have been addressed by the Iraqi Parliament.  The other 13 areas are in various stages of progress, but all indications show that plans, implementation and accountability are in place to properly scale each for Iraq.

The Democratic Party coming into power in 2006 had set 6 benchmarks for themselves and have not accomplished a single one, with the first being the most important:

1) Honest Leadership and Open Government

Iraq is, apparently, doing much better with two major ethnicities and a host of minor ones, tribal governments, multiple parties, two major religious sects and a host of minor ones, and having to work their way out of decades of dictatorship and come to means to work things out according the rule of law inside their Nation.

The US Congress can't find anyone that will actually lead it in an honest fashion nor promulgate openness in appropriations, oversight, or even keep to its Oath of Office.  Unlike Iraq, the US Congress cannot even pass a budget on time nor pass any major legislation with regards to US security.

It is a failure.

Perhaps they should all retreat over the horizon to Antarctica and 'chill out' in an environment that encourages things to move faster than they do as racing against glaciers just might be more their speed of things.  But that just might require them to get off of their legislative butts for something more than pontification and holding hearings on steroids in professional sports.  Or anything to do with professional sports, really, as they are the ones that Authorized the Use of Force in Iraq.

A more frivolous government I cannot name.

And the only ones more closed and dishonest are dictatorships and Communist.

Thank you for all of those wanting benchmarks!  You are showing Iraqis to be better at this 'democracy' concept than the US.  And how inadequate those who called for them are.

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The 'realists' put their foot in it, again

Yes, the folks that we *wish* would stay out of foreign policy, the lovely 'realists' are back at it again, hoping to woo their way into the good graces of the son of a dictator they all deemed 'necessary', although necessary for *what* they have never explained:

What in the world are advisers to both Senators Obama and Clinton doing in Syria in the middle of a presidential campaign — and why are the two campaigns so unforthcoming about the details of the visits? The same week that a terrorist mastermind harbored by the Baathist regime in Damascus was assassinated by a car bomb, both one of Mr. Obama's foreign policy counselors, Zbigniew Brzezinski, a long-time critic of Israel, and one of Mrs. Clinton's national finance chairs, Hassan Nemazee, were meeting with President Assad.

That from the NY Sun of 15 FEB 2008 Editorial. These two individuals are part of the problem I discussed in The End of the Unreal 'Realists' as follows:

Today, my friends, we are gathered together to pay our final respects to 'Realpolitik' and 'realistic diplomacy' and 'pramatic geostrategic statesmanship'. While they still have nodding practitioners advocating these things, like Brent Scowcroft, Zbigniew Brzezinski, Henry Kissinger, and James A. Baker III, they have all grown old and set in their ways of viewing the world and that viewpoint is as arthritic as the Soviet Union was just before its completely unexpected collapse. Each of these men and all of their Foreign Policy outlooks have had to live in the environment in which a Rational Opposition Nation State was the nemesis of the United States. That being the Soviet Union and its various, nefarious allies, we must also see that as that Nation disappeared from the face of the Earth so did the underpinnings of all diplomacy that grew up in the immediate post-WWII era. The Cold War did not end with a thaw and melting of the USSR, but its sudden sublimation from solid to gaseous form almost overnight. None of them could have ever predicted that, and the leaden viewpoint on HOW Nation States act and move has proven to be deeply out of touch with the actual reality of the world.

It is to be admitted that there were good aspects to such diplomatic and Foreign Policy underpinnings: it opposed a Nation set to undermine Individualism and turn it into Collectivism. Many treaties and signings and 'detente initiatives' and 'bold steps' to nowhere were taken from 1945 to 1991, and they all consisted of ensuring that a 'Balance of Power', sometimes referred to 'Balance of Terror' or 'Mutually Assured Destruction' was set in place so as to LOCK that attitude in forevermore. Luckily for the world, they failed in that doing and when the Great Enemy of Freedom went up in a puff of smoke, so did ALL of those wonderful conceptions of the world that saw Rational States as the supreme actor in World Affairs.

Even during the major reign of these huge thinkers on All Things of Import in Foreign Policy, NONE of them could address the uprising of Islamic Fundamentalism turning into IslamoFascism in Iran. They did seek a 'containment' sidelight, but when Iran created a non-Nation State surrogate to promulgate its power and foreign policy and religious outlook in the form of Hezbollah, these Great Thinkers of Nuanced Thought Came Up With: ZERO.

Yes, they IGNORED IT.

[..]

And now with the Great Ship of Realpolitik and Geostrategy taking on water faster than any pump made can get rid of it, the last breath of wind is being exhaled to try and make this oh-so-wonderful line of thinking to have some meaning in the world. Perhaps a slight gust can get it to a sandbar, although it does appear to be foundering in the middle of an Ocean beset by everlasting calm. A Sargasso of Certitude that if we wish for Rational Nations then LO!, they shall appear.

Perhaps these Great Thinkers on All Things Realpolitik could answer the Question of Iran and Syria: What makes them so Rational when they have staged Acts of War against the US? Even the USSR had grave misgivings about doing something like that, and that was, supposedly, a Mighty Nation that proved to be a lump of iodine under the mid-day sun. Are they hoping, mayhap, that Iran and Syria will just evaporate in a year or so and turn to 'Realism'? Could any of these Great and Wise Solons of Sophisticated Sophistry of Diplmatic Jargon please tell the World exactly Why They Think This?

Really, we, the unsophisticated peons of plebecite would love to know exactly why, when they were all whispering to the Mighties in Power that they did NOT handle this mess when it started? If these Nations that have attacked us with foul means and then spread further such means across the Middle East and even across the World, just Why did these, the Great Old Wise Heads of Cold War Past, not do a DAMNED THING THAT WORKED?

There, that should help jiggle a few memories loose! Yes, the old 'balance of power' and deterrence' group that never, ever, not once, figure out how to work with non-sane, non-rational Nations that didn't see awesome nuclear devices as a detriment to their trying to get their way. Just the opposite for a few of them as it would be cause of the supernatural to intervene and for them to be saved and get their way forevermore whilst punishing those that tried to actual *defend themselves*. These great Solons of Superpowerific outlooks didn't get the clue that some leaders of organizations just wouldn't let themselves be intimidated by the high and mighty thermonuclear blast as that was a good and just cause to die in, fighting those that had them.

So when Brzezinski and Nemazee show up representing the Obama and Clinton campaigns, although they would put forward that, really, it was all for the RAND corporation and blame them, one does have to do a bit of head scratching on just what they hope to accomplish. Perhaps some nice Syrian chemical weapons berating? No, that would be far too much for these folks, with their high and mighty views of the world. Might shake up the apple cart. Lets, instead, pretend that Syria is led by a sane and rational world actor who really, and for true, wants global peace and stability. Don't mind the support for Hezbollah, al Qaeda, international arms trade, narcotics trade, training other terrorist organizations, having IRBMs, perhaps a bit of a surreptitious bioweapons program and a set of nuclear processing facilities it bought from the Swedes on false pretenses. Really, now, doesn't every Nation need these things?

And just overlook their threats to Spain, US and Iraq, too.

Now in case you aren't familiar with these two 'wise heads' of 'realism' that treats the equivalent of gangsters and mafiosos on the transnational scale as mere misguided miscreants who will soon learn the ever-so-wise 'ways of the world', lets do a bit of the old backgrounding on them! That is always fun to see just what they got up to previously so you can know the kind of hot water they will get you into the next time around.

Zbigniew Brzezinski, whom I covered a bit in this post, first got attention as part of the administration of President Carter, heading up the National Security Council side of things. He was the one who told the Shah of Iran that the US would back him 'to the hilt', and that he had no worries about pesky Islamic Imams and such. When the poor Shah got stuck in Mexico after the coup the US, it turned out that, started heading in the direction of Cyrus Vance who wanted to 'come to terms' with the Ayatollah Khomeini. As the Shah needed cancer treatment both Henry Kissinger and Nelson Rockefeller convinced President Carter this would be a good thing to do. After that we get to the condemnation of the US and the entire hostage taking concept. Now as Iran served as a 'buffer State' in the Great Game of Geopolitik between the US and USSR, Brzezinski was quite willing to forego the Shah and deal with the Ayatollah if he cooperated and helped from an Islamic 'Green Belt' buffer between the West and Soviets. But that entire condemnation and hostage thing really demonstrated that wasn't going to happen as the Ayatollah just wasn't going to play by the established rule book and believed that Islam would overcome everything.

Mind you no one in the Carter Administration did a damned thing about the *first* break-in to the US Embassy in Tehran months prior to that, so as to avoid dealing with the Ayatollah. So saying, after the hostage taking - "The United States of America will not yield to international terrorism or to blackmail" - is more than a bit of a lie as the US did, indeed, do nothing about terrorism with the first break-in. So Mr. Brzezinski was more than willing to: 1) forego an ally of the US, 2) try to establish terms to deal with a radical regime that already violated the US Embassy, and 3) wanted to deal with them during that time to continue playing the Great Game, even though the idea was that they wanted no part in it.

So much for 'realism' and the 'worldly experience' of Mr. Brzezinski. He would not be the first to not understand the problems of radical Islam nor the last, but he certainly didn't do very much to stop it, curb it or end it. Appeasement seemed to be on the menu and, apparently, still is. Good guy for Barack Obama, then, and I'm sure that if Syria wants the equivalent of the Sudetenland, that he would figure out a way to give it to them, most likely the place called 'Lebanon'. Appeasers are very good at giving away other folks' land to tyrants.

Hassan Nemazee (he gets a mention in a larger post on HRC) is associated with the Clinton Administration, which had his ties come out as he was to be the Ambassador to Argentina. A lovely article from Forbes in 1999 starts on his background and we quickly run across one of the prime reasons he was considered for the job:

If Nemazee, 49, is destined to be confirmed by the Senate, he at least fits the part of an ambassador. This polished socialite has a Harvard degree, a position on one of the university's prestigious visiting committees and a lot of well-connected friends. In November 1995 he hosted a dinner featuring Al Gore, raising $250,000 for the Democratic National Committee. Over the past four years Nemazee and his family have given more than $150,000 to Democratic politicians and the DNC. Six of Nemazee's friends and relatives have given $10,000 apiece -- the maximum allowable per year -- to Bill Clinton's legal defense fund.

Yes he *paid for it*. And how did he get that money?

Nemazee was born in Washington, D.C., the son of an Iranian shipping magnate then serving as the commercial attach to the U.S. for the Shah's government. After college he formed a joint venture in Iran with insurer American International Group to sell life insurance, but the business fell victim to the Iranian revolution. Nemazee, on a business trip to the U.S. when the Shah was overthrown, escaped with his wife and a fair amount of wealth outside of his homeland, including property in the Washington area that his father had given him.

Your basic wealthy individual whose father had a large business in Iran and his son escaped with his family and some of the cash, to live in Washington. After that comes some wheeling and dealing, getting $4 million from his father who had Alzheimer's, taking out a mortgage for a few hundred thousand more than the place was worth and then being your basic advisors to Ivan Boesky of venture capital infamy. Add in a bit of shading on some other deals, lying about his ethnicity and generally doing shady work in investing, he becomes quite rich and then advocates that the US mend its ties with Iran so he can get the family business back.

Part of that climb was to be at White House 'coffees' which the Clinton held to get such business people into their good graces for further financial backing for various things. This would allow the Clintons to glad-hand these businessmen, introduce them to the powerful Democrats and get a 'piece of the action'. This would pay off to get Nemazee into the world of big special events, like the 2004 Asia Society meeting. The Asia Society, at which Mr. Nemazee would become a trustee, would also host presidential hopeful Gov. Bill Richardson on 18 APR 2007.

You see Hassan Nemazee is not only seeking a bit of 'realism' in diplomacy, but he wants to use that 'realism' to make some money, too. That is how you use your connections with powerful politicians to get into the RAND corporation to then continue your work to get the family business back. Kenneth Timmerman had this in a 02 MAR 2004 FrontPage Magazine article about Mr. Nemazee and others backing of Sen. John Kerry's presidential bid:

Among Sen. John Kerry's top fund-raisers are three Iranian-Americans who have been pushing for dramatic changes in U.S. policy toward the Islamic Republic of Iran.

Most prominent among them is Hassan Nemazee, 54, an investment banker based in New York. Nominated to become U.S. ambassador to Argentina by President Bill Clinton in 1999, Nemazee eventually withdrew his nomination after a former partner raised allegations of business improprieties.

Nemazee was a major Clinton donor, giving $80,000 to the Democratic National Committee (DNC) during the 1996 election cycle and attending at least one of the famous White House fund-raising coffees.

In 2001, at the invitation of Mobil Oil Chairman Lucio Noto, whom he counts as a "personal friend," Nemazee joined the board of the American-Iranian Council (AIC), a U.S. lobbying group that consistently has supported lifting U.S. sanctions on Iran and accommodating the Tehran regime. Nemazee tells Insight he "now regrets" having joined the AIC board and resigned his position after 12 months when he was vilified by Iranian exile groups.

[..]

The Kerry camp has identified Nemazee as having raised more than $100,000 for the senator's campaign.

A Nemazee friend in Silicon Valley, Faraj Aalaei, has raised between $50,000 and $100,000 for the Kerry campaign. Aalaei has worked in the telecommunications industry for 22 years and is the chief executive officer of Centillium Communications, a publicly traded company.

So, perhaps a bit more than just his own business, as Exxon/Mobile stands to make boodles of cash if Iran can be re-opened to foreign investors. Mind you landing a position at the Council on Foreign Relations on the Board of Advisors would also help things out no end, in the 'nonpartisan' world of high finance where one just might have their own partisan views on things.

Mr. Nemazee is also involved with Alan Quasha, a man first known as the one who bailed out George W. Bush's failing company Spectrum 7 and folded it into Harken Energy, and then went on to back Hillary Clinton this year, as seen in this article by Russ Baker & Adam Federman in The Nation 05 NOV 2007 issue:

Another strong link between Quasha and Clinton is Quasha's business partner, Hassan Nemazee, a top Hillary fundraiser who was trotted out to defend her during the Hsu episode--in which the clothing manufacturer was unmasked as a swindler who seemingly funneled illegal contributions through "donors" of modest means.

[..]

Ideology does not seem to be the principal issue driving either Quasha or Nemazee. Nemazee backed the likes of archconservative Republican senators Jesse Helms, Sam Brownback and Al D'Amato before moving aggressively into the Democratic camp. Quasha, frequently identified as a Republican fundraiser, gave to both Bush and Al Gore in 2000 and so far in the 2008 race has given to Republicans Mitt Romney and Rudy Giuliani as well as Democrats Barack Obama and Chris Dodd, in addition to Hillary Clinton. But Quasha's concerted efforts to get into Clinton's inner circle are reminiscent of his relationship with a pre-Governor Bush.

[..]

As his co-chair in the private firm, Quasha chose his old friend Nemazee, a fellow Harken investor. By the time of the Carret acquisition, Nemazee, a founding member of the Iranian-American Political Action Committee whose family was close with the late Shah of Iran, had become a significant fundraiser for the Clintons and the Democratic Party. In 1995 he raised money for the DNC. In 1998, in the midst of the Lewinsky affair, Nemazee collected $60,000 for Bill Clinton's legal defense fund in $10,000 increments from relatives and friends. Clinton subsequently nominated Nemazee as ambassador to Argentina but withdrew the nomination after an article in Forbes raised questions about Nemazee's business dealings in the 1980s and '90s--which noted that the American-born Nemazee magically became "Hispanic" by acquiring Venezuelan citizenship because of a requirement that certain California public pension funds be run by minorities.

Failure to be named ambassador did not, however, hamper Nemazee's rise within the Democratic Party. By 2004 he was New York finance chair for John Kerry's campaign, and in 2006 he served under Senator Chuck Schumer as the national finance chair of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee (DSCC)--a period during which the committee raised about $25 million more than its Republican counterpart. This past March Nemazee, at the behest of McAuliffe, threw a dinner for Hillary at Manhattan's swank Cipriani restaurant, which featured Bill Clinton and raised more than $500,000.

Mr. Nemazee and his wife would actively campaign for Hillary Clinton, seen in this 18 DEC 2007 article by Jason Horowitz at The New York Observer, that looks at cash bundlers bundling up to knock doors in Iowa:

The dreary work of campaign field operations—knocking on doors, chatting up old people and cold calling for a candidate—is often carried out by eager college students wanting to make their first inroads into politics.

That was not the case on Ridgewood Street in Ames on Dec. 15, when some of Hillary Clinton’s richest and most influential bundlers and donors—Hassan and Sheila Nemazee, Alan and Susan Patricof, and the former ambassador to Norway, Robin Duke—braved the icy elements and doorman-less ingresses of Iowa to proselytize for their good friend Hillary.

“Number-one convert!” shouted Mr. Nemazee, a multimillionaire investment banker who served as John Kerry’s New York finance chair in 2004. “I moved them from an Edwards to a Hillary.”

Mr. Nemazee, wearing iron-creased jeans, comfortable brown shoes, a blue winter coat and a red baseball cap emblazoned with a Ferrari stallion, was stepping cautiously along an ice-paved walk.

Nothing says 'big town millionaire slumming it' like pressed jeans! Actually, with all the swindles, bribery, corruption and influence buying, its actually very nice to see some of these rich folks get out and try to figure out what to do on the campaign trail. And if Hillary had to use her big cash donors to canvas for her in Iowa... well that does say *something* about the campaign. Still that didn't work out so well and Mr. Nemazee is doing his best at damage control from the financial side, seen in this NYT 11 FEB 2008 article at MSNBC by Patrick Healy:

Hassan Nemazee, another national finance chairman for Mrs. Clinton, said he was also telling his network of allies not to get caught up in the headlines about Mr. Obama’s success this month.

“I’m telling donors and supporters, don’t be overly concerned about what goes on in the remainder of the month of February because these are not states teed up well for us,” said Hassan Nemazee, one of Mrs. Clinton’s national finance chairmen.

Asked if that message was sinking in, Mr. Nemazee pointed to the campaign’s announcement that Mrs. Clinton has raised $10 million online so far this month, and is on pace to raise more than $20 million in February.

“I predict for you we will have our best single fund-raising month in February, and that’s significant,” he said.

Money sure does help if you hadn't planned on a real primary struggle, that's for sure. And even after leaving the American Iranian Council, one is left with the feeling that not only Mr. Nemazee but other Iranian American businessmen are also seeking to influence policy. Judicial Watch looks at the donations of Nemazee and others in 2006 who donated to the Clinton campaign and their pro-Iranian views.

And Syria, being closely tied with Iran and Hezbollah, really isn't a place that is all too friendly to the US. Just the opposite, in fact, for a few decades and quite hostile towards Lebanon and Israel, too. So while the diplomatic 'realists' are trying to find a way to turn Bashar Al-Assad and regime in Iran into some sort of relatively sane entities they can deal with, the likes of Hassan Nemazee doesn't need to do even that so long as they can do business with regimes looking to gain WMDs or, in the case of Syria, expand their arsenal of weapons.

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Ending Mugniyah and missing the point

From the period of its stand-up in 1982 to the present, there has been no more effective organizer for Hezbollah than Imad Mugniyah.  From the US Embassy bombings in '83 and '84, the Marine Barracks bombing in '83 and the TWA highjacking he left an early calling card for the US in Lebanon:  get out and stay out. Additionally Hezbollah would set up shop in Kuwait via the Al-Dawa group (one of its first expansions in the 1980's), which would serve as the first group to attack outside of Lebanon and would involve Mugniyah's brother-in-law Mustafa Yousef Badreddin, although the exact nature and role Imad Mugniyah would play in that is still unclear, the close familial contact does indicate a connection of some sort between the two, beyond organizational identification.  But later events (the TWA hijacking) would demonstrate that Mugniyah had some control on this organization by 1985.

In any event, from there he would consolidate Hezbollah operations first in Lebanon, gaining a local leadership position, and then move to head up the External Security Organization of Hezbollah.  This operation was critical to expanding Hezbollah's reach beyond Lebanon into other parts of the world.  His early work with other terrorist organizations like HAMAS, IRA and PLO would set him up to be tapped into the ESO slot for two of the largest expansions of Hezbollah operations outside of the Middle East:  the Balkans and South America.  These operations ran along dual tracks in the late 1980's with the worsening position of the former Yugoslav Republics suffering their normal bouts of ethnic tensions, religious rivalries and political factioning.  Early operations there helped to expand Iranian presence and put a small foothold in Bosnia-Herzegovina that still is there to this day.  The other track I have looked at from the side of organized crime, arms shipments and narcotics traffickers and that was with the Syrian luminary of those things, Monzer al-Kassar.

This match of methodical and vicious terrorist, with methodical and ruthless transnational criminal made for a deadly and potent combination that would bring Carlos Menem into the fold for a period of time that would allow al-Kassar and Mugniyah to set up operations in South America.  al-Kassar came to that by way of his credentials, having worked with North, Hakim and Secord during the Reagan Administration and his facility with weapons procurement.  His affability and ability to deceive others on his background opened up the potential for IRBM and nuclear technology to flow from Argentina to Syria.  When the Reagan/Bush Administrations made their displeasure known, and Menem backed down, Kassar had already set himself up with control of airports and overland routes, as well as sea ports via having the inspectors answerable to his operatives.

To strike back at the US and Israel asymmetrically, he brought in Imad Mugniyah to create and carry out plans not only for the AMIA Jewish Center bombing in Argentina, but to establish a network of agents, mosques and contacts that interoperated with al-Kassar's powerbase.  Together these two would not only bring in radical Islam to South America, via immigrant populations, but would also utilize those contacts to ship South American arms illegally to the Balkans even when it was under UN embargo.  To their contacts al-Kassar added the heavy weapons and equipment dealer Bernard Lasnaud (Lasnosky) who would deal with Islamists, Communist terrorists and, generally, anyone who had serious money to spend on helicopters, artillery and aircraft.  Throughout the early 1990's those arms shipments would go into the hands of Iranian and Hezbollah operatives in the Balkans and set up terrorist training facilities in the region. 

This gave Imad Mugniyah the operations skills and contacts to further spread Hezbollah's contacts and he would follow al-Kassar's lead with the South American FARC organization.  It is during this period of the early 1990's that FARC is cited as working with and being supplied via Hezbollah, augmenting its pre-existing contacts with ETA, IRA and PLO.  The al-Kassar family, by controlling the Bekaa Valley drug trade was an integral part of Syria's ability to train agents and terrorists there from around the world (including folks like the Baader-Meinhof gang, Shining Path and Japanese Red Army, beyond standard Islamic groups like Abu Sayyaf), and Hezbollah utilized that and the FARC personnel who trained there to cement contacts with the narco-syndicate organizations of FARC and al-Kassar.  Grabbing any substantial fraction of the drug trade going through the Balkans would allow Hezbollah to gain a steady, non-Iranian based income source.  Likewise local distribution networks as wholesalers in South America for FARC would also put Hezbollah into a similar cash flow there.  al-Kassar would work to coordinate the various criminal elements including the Cali and Medellin Cartels so as to properly understand market sharing and cooperation, so that there would be integrated overlap in distribution to North America and Europe.

In the Balkans the primary organized crime families, already working with Algerian terrorist groups would likewise have their market reach expanded via Hezbollah.  In that cooperation, Imad Mugniyah would have contact with some Algerian terrorist organizations in Albania via the more well known GIA, but Hezbollah would also have its own organization there, too.  Yes, these are all through the reach of Imad Mugniyah and his now extensive operative network which, for Hezbollah, was now stretching into Europe and, with Algerian and Albanian help, into Canada and the US (particularly Montreal, Toronto, Vancouver, Los Angeles and North Carolina), each of which would act in coordination to deliver drugs, commit bank and credit card fraud, sell grey and black market goods from the far east, smuggling and commit tax evasion.  Thus when a Hezbollah operative is picked up driving three tons of pseudoephedrine from Canada to Mexico for processing by drug gangs in Mexico to methamphetamines, one should not be surprised to see the long arm of Hezbollah at work.

al Qaeda would look towards Hezbollah early on with contacts in the Sudan forming by an outreach between bin Laden, Zawahiri and Turabi to Hezbollah and Mugniyah.  Here the plans and commercial contacts of Mugniyah would start to work some magic, that would allow al Qaeda to understand how to create a dispersed operation for income and actual attacks, and start the flow of goods into Somalia in the late 1990's using those same contacts of Monzer al-Kassar and, now, Italian Mafia to ship drugs into Somalia in containers of toxic waste.  Even with al Qaeda having to shift its operational HQ multiple times (Sudan, Egypt, Afghanistan) the ability to deliver recruits to be trained in each of those Nations allowed al Qaeda to grow, particularly as the Taliban took control of Afghanistan.  Later al Qaeda would make the acquaintance of Viktor Bout, notorious arms dealer from Russia, either via the Syrian side of things (via the business dealings with al-Kassar) or via missed arms drop-off meant for the terrorist Gulbuddin Hekmatyar in Afghanistan.

Imad Mugniyah would offer the ability to train al Qaeda personnel in Sudan, the Bekaa or in FARClandia in Colombia.  That latter set of introductions would allow al Qaeda to get some  much needed contacts to also augment the ones Mugniyah had in the Balkans.  By utilizing that part of the drug trade that was more associated with Sunni Islam in Kosovo, al Qaeda recognized an opportunity to get its own foothold for training outside of Bosnia.  Mugniyah's contacts with al-Kassar would also allow al Qaeda to get in contact with the Red Mafia from Russia in the form of the Red Don, Semion Mogilevich.  Mogilevich had demonstrated ability to delivery arms, equipment, narcotics (from China and the Golden Triangle), human trafficking, explosives and the one thing that no other supplier could get to - radioactive material that had been processed.  From its early days in Egypt then in the Sudan, al Qaeda was working to make deals to get its hands on radioactive material and this was something that Pakistan was not going to provide to terrorists.  Mogilevich, having his hands in the energy industry in Turkmenistan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, and Tajikistan, also had access to nuclear materials via those routes in the left over Soviet facilities or through his wider contacts in other criminal organizations based in Moscow.  This is one of the few places that Mugniyah would need to cede initial regional outlook to al Qaeda as Hezbollah was not immediately prepared to deal with an area called Chechnya.  Over time Iran would help Hezbollah establish its own groups there, but al Qaeda, already cooperating with Hekmatyar, had an 'easy in' with supplying fighters and arming them via Mogilevich.

That said, al Qaeda and Hezbollah were more than willing to cooperate in the US Embassy Bombings of Kenya and Tanzania, the USS Cole bombing and even go to the extent of sharing network contacts in the drug running business.  Further the earlier cooperation had led towards extension of both networks into Saudi Arabia (as seen in the Khobar Towers attack) and into Yemen not only for the USS Cole attack but for funding and recruitment.  al Qaeda would extend its contact network into Kenya post-bombing, to include Islamic charity front organizations and would later stage attacks on a Jewish owned hotel and attempt to use a SAM to shoot down an Israeli airliner.  Somalia, itself, continues to suffer problems from radical Islamic groups, although the Islamic Courts have been forced out with cooperation between the US, Ethiopia, Kenya and the provisional government in Somalia.  Those fleeing from this went to Eritrea and Yemen, with a few winding up in Saudi Arabia.

By the 9/11 attack, al Qaeda and Hezbollah had shared resources and even operational capability on commonly held targets, while differing with each other on some other targets (mainly al Qaeda's willingness to work with Saddam Hussein).  By the 2003 ouster of Saddam from power and the fall of Iraq, these two networks led by Mugniyah and bin Laden would share resources, again, in staging a two front insurgency into Iraq from Syria and Iran.  They both would be aided in this by the man who would be #1 on the most wanted list in Iraq for supplying the insurgency: Monzer al-Kassar.  Together these organizations brought in men, training, arms, money and expertise in not only recruitment and training, but in how to form a criminal network to support terrorism while under seige by hostile forces.  Iran would utilize Mugniyah's skills for the Kazali (and other) southern networks and Syria would use al-Kassar's skills in the north of Iraq.  These two networks interoperated along the river valleys and then across Iraq, making the very first moves to bring control to Iraq post-2003 a north-south one.  The expansion of operations, particularly the riverine work in 2005, started to address this sophisticated set-up and the 'surge' campaign of 2007 addressed it directly with a pre-surge attack on the criminal organizations.

Throughout this the MSM and even most of the on-line media have ignored the work of the multiple operations going on by the likes of Imad Mugniyah.  Part of this is the complexity of the multi-organizational cooperation and partly it is through enforced and often partisan ignorance.  These are not 'quick and easy' story lines, nor things that can be wrapped up in a single article: events along a multi-year timespan do not make good 'copy' nor compelling viewing,while simplistic events *do*.  Thus the warned about melding of organized crime and terrorism not only went unnoticed by the population at large, but by the lawmakers who have been hearing about it for over a decade.  If lawmakers are unwilling to spend the effort to get to the bottom of BCCI and its international implications on US actors and agents, then how are they to demonstrate interest in something like the Taba banking arrangement or even more informal hawala payment systems that allow terrorism to flourish on the small scale?  These things were not unknown in the realm of law enforcement or treasury areas, and yet they went unaddressed even *after* having Interpol demonstrate the problems this was causing on a global scale and the impacts it was having on the US *before* 9/11.

While the ending of Imad Mugniyah is some cause for celebration, the actual hard work of pulling up the systems that he put in place has not only not begun in the US, but it has only started in the one area vital to the armed forces where it is present:  Iraq.  The borders of Iraq de-limit the scope and breadth of attacking these criminal networks that enhance and support organized crime far beyond the Middle East, and stretching all the way to small time crime in Ontario, Quebec, California, Washington State and North Carolina.  To date no one has found how complete cars are stolen, trans-shipped to the Middle East to show up in al Qaeda bomb shops in Iraq.  If we can't get law enforcement and our export system interested on the large scale like the Bank of New York scandal, then getting it interested in such a simple thing like stolen cars aimed at killing our servicemen seems far-fetched.  Without a foreign policy set up to approach these things across the scale, the ending of an Imad Mugniyah, and the pick-up of al-Kassar last year and the Red Don this year has ignored that their networks which they organized to work *without them* continue unabated.  For Mogilevich the Dmitry Firtash network of semi-legitimate businesses still serves as a facade to the larger system that got Firtash into business and the investments of Mogilevich to establish a large scale money laundering enterprise based on the energy business.  Likewise the bureaucratic system set up by Mugniyah to run charities and criminal operations were made to work in the eventuality of his sudden demise or capture, the latter of which would at least offer a chance to start unraveling them.  And for al-Kassar, his family has a long and established line in Syria and his associates and family members are well versed in picking up those loose-ends he left behind and in pressuring Syria to get him *back*.

In all the adulation of the end of Mugniyah, we miss the larger and nastier point that he was one of many capable individuals who have set up organizations with forethought: they can be taken out, but the systems they made will continue onwards.  It is very handy to take out such a skilled individual in a permanent fashion, as the likes of al-Kassar and Mogilevich are so skilled that they have yet to pay for their crimes because of their ability to use the law's loopholes to ensure they are not easily fingered with *anything*.  Considering that something a bit less difficult, like the Gambino Family in the US has been around and will continue to be around even after the recent spate of arrests, how does one address a system like Hezbollah that has the support of Iran and Syria or the al-Kassar family that stretches its syndicate across four continents?  And as Russia has moved into a 1/3 sharing arrangement for its industry between State, Private and Criminal investment, with the criminal part doing its hardest to *also* be in the private sector, what, exactly, is the long term solution to those crime groups that support terrorism from China to the US?

I am very, very glad that Imad Mugniyah finally met his end.

I am not convinced, however, that we actually understand the deep and complex threat that he was a part of that will continue to expand until it is addressed across all fronts of military, economic, law enforcement and foreign policy, with a strong and hefty back-up on law enforcement and border policing, coupled with shipment inspection at home.  Until we take them as seriously as the other organizations that have done this in the past, not only will the threat not be stopped, but it will continue its advances until civil society becomes threatened on a global scale.  If it has taken decades to see the equivalent of one skilled crime boss go down, what does this tell us about our ability to address the multiple 'families' of terrorism that all work together to delineate territory, share resources and kill wantonly without fear of reprisal?

Removing Imad Mugniyah is a very good thing.

It is, unfortunately, not even starting to get at the problem itself.

As a society and a Nation if we cannot get away from the 'sound-bite' culture driving our view of the world, then this will slowly erode us until it will be too late to address it.  It is *already* here.  And I have yet to hear any substantial proposals on how to roll it back and address it from either the Left or the Right.  The Left wishes to give up to it and society with it, by wishing there just weren't such nasty people in the world.  The Right is just looking for a lovely economy and doesn't want to put that at risk doing the things necessary to defend it.

Neither one of these is realistic nor sustainable in even the short term.  Both are lethal in the long term because neither address the threat nor deal with it.

Too bad our Presidential candidates won't address these things.

We may not get the leadership we need, but we will get the one we *deserve* at this rate.

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The Presidential race at the cusp

This election year, before the race is decided on the Democratic Party side, is shaping up to be a race continuing historic trends in the US electorate.  Consider the widely viewed CW on each of the candidates, not what the CW says about their chances to win, but their supporters.

Hillary Rodham Clinton (D) - Her base of support has been increasingly white. middle to lower class, and hispanic, thus drawing on the 'Identity Politics' that the Democrats have inflicted on the population.  Currently she is losing on that base and, with help of her husband, is creating more of her historical negatives which, at best, never reached beyond 47% Nationwide.  Her popularity as a campaigner has drifted that downwards towards 43% and, perhaps lower.

Barack Hussein Obama (D) - His base is characterized as black, young affluent whites, and college educated.  By pressing forward no program or policy, he remains a cipher, and each time he utters an idea that does have some basis in reality, like the need to attack Pakistan, his base shudders.  His fragile coalition depends on platitudes and having a greatly disliked opponent and saying *nothing* that will damage his nascent base.

Thus the Democratic side is breaking into distinct factions between race and class with the shares apportioned between them.  Minorities are over-represented in the Democratic Party and, thus, hold a higher sway there than in the electorate at large.  The class breakout has always tended towards poor to middle class with a very small 'intellectual elite', making up less than 1/3 of the entire party.  Hillary Clinton, then gets white middle class-poor (15%), hispanics (~18%) and a smattering of party apparatchiks beholden to the Clintons (~5-10%) for a rough total of 43% of the Democratic Base.  Flipping those numbers Obama gets the black vote (10-15%), upper class whites (25%) and a smattering of the 'new' party machine from Soros and other rich fundees who seek to replace the Clinton apparatchiks (~5-10%) for ~50%.  Thus the break-out and edge go to Obama in the race

John McCain (R) - While being the presumptive nominee, John McCain is facing problems within the Republican Party.  I looked at the Three Factions of the Republican Party and how the McCain nomination is splitting one faction (Social Cons or SoCons) down their amalgamation lines between Christian Right and Traditionalist Conservatives. 

John McCain's problems are coming from the Traditionalist Conservatives with more than a few Fiscal Conservatives (FiCons) joining in that demurral. 

Even among SecCons (Security Conservatives) there is some whispering between the NeoCons and more traditional faction that grew up around Ronald Reagan, seeing limited engagement as key to stressing US power by using it rarely.  While this is the smallest overall faction (say 15% of the whole) the breaking of the NeoCons and Traditionalist Hawks (those that remember a strong defense and use it sparingly) splits it into 10%/5%.  That last 5% remembers the 'peace dividend' and working against it, to keep the Armed Forces up to size and speed as we did not know *what* the post-Cold War world would look like.

FiCons, however, may applaud McCain's 'anti-earmark' views, but have great problem with the 'budget busting' programs he signed on to not only in the last 10 years, but going to his first years in office.  Nor has John McCain carried through with those FiCon views of restricting spending.  Increasing the size of government is seen as a negative when not coupled by methodology to slow government growth: either by direct cuts to government or creating a fiscal atmosphere where the economny outgrows the government.  John McCain's record is breaking the FiCons (perhaps as much as 45%) into a 35% support base that will follow any Liberal views so long as it can get economic growth higher and 10% that have seen only continued growth in the budget and John McCain offering no leadership from the Senate on actually cutting things other than DoD.

Amongst the Christian Right, John McCain is also seeing some problems crop up as his ability to work with Liberals seeking to try and regulate morality is not only not a *plus* but a negative.  Thus out of the remaining 40%, this group has about half of that (20%), which has been represented by the Big Government views of Mike Huckabee.  He has been fighting it out for McCain's FiCons and trying to get any Traditionalist support that he could.  Here that worrying problem of working with Kennedy, Feingold and Lieberman, will damage some chances for McCain.  That could be as bad as 10%/10% on the pro/anti view.

Traditionalist Conservatism is the largest problem for John McCain as the views held there of small and restricted government, low taxation to remove burden from individuals (not necessarily businesses which is a FiCon view) and the expansion of government regulation with John McCain helping that, brings this group into stark relief.  Mitt Romney using a FiCon form of Traditionalism gathered this 20% to him and found his outreach to Traditionalist Hawks gaining some ground which made the FiCons a three-way draw with those that have no SoCon views. 

Thus there is a solid 45-55% backing of McCain from the Rockefeller Conservatives, NeoCons and some Christian SoCons.

The solid party backing that can be expeted, per candidate (looking at either of the Democrats winning their nomination):

Hillary Rodham Clinton (D) - 45%

Barack Obama (D) - 55%

John McCain (R) - 45%

That leaves the Independents - those that are voting, that is, and more on that in a bit.  Here each party has garnered 10-20% support base over the years and the final 10-30% coming in as 'tie breakers'.  This section of the population has enjoyed 'split government' and since the 1980's and tends to vote in a way to break up single party alignment of the Executive and Legislative branches.  If the 2006 Legislative elections are any key, here, they point to a continued division by electing a Republican for President.  If that is not predictive, however, a Democrat, even with so many Republicans retiring this year, faces a social conservative backlash in their own party, as seen by the 2006 Freshman class.  Winning a majority has not only not *helped* the Democratic Party, but has actually hurt it through incompetent leadership in the House and Senate.

The final key to looking at the electorate is throwing away the idea of a '50/50' Nation.  Historical trends, as I have examined, point to another concept entirely - that of a 30/30/30/10 Nation or even a 30/30/40 Nation with the first two 30% being the two parties.

The above taken from US Census datasets.

These trends start with the entry of the 1946 'baby boom' nearing voting age (prior to the Amendment moving it down to 18) and there was already a downward trend in voting participation in the US prior to that.  The post-1968 Democratic Convention is most telling as a political turning point in voter participation in Presidential Election cycles and in their confluence during the Watergate years. Both of these graphs demonstrate the concept of 'regression towards the mean' where a mean, average slope is held across temporary ups and downs in the actual data points.

For that mean slope to be held to, the expected participation rate of the 2008 Presidential year is not one that will outdo either of the past few elections and possibly exceeding the downward trend seen in 1996.  By putting the two parties at 30% each of the population overall (including leaning independents) there is substance and backing to the concept that a minimum of 40% will not show up this year and may, actually get to 50%.

This is an artifact of the two party system which endeavors to have victors turn-off so many of those that do not *win* and make them non-voters.  That did not work well past 1968, however, as the solid Democratic post-War majority fizzled out in the early 1980's as more voters walked from the Democrats than the Republicans.  While one could still 'win elections' it was only amongst those committed to participate and that commitment has been the target for almost 40 years.

For the Democratic candidates, then, there is a serious move to shift emphasis away from white blue collar to middle class voters and hispanic voters to black poor and middle class voters and white elite upper class voters.  Even as much as a 20% drop in the 'losing' side means a 2-5% drop in the turnout of the electorate coupled with some slight drop amongst the hardcore independents that sometimes lean Democratic.  That, alone, will move the next Election to 56-53% turnout.

On the Republican side, the Party that promised so much to its Conservatives is in the hard bind of having had control of Congress for over a decade and simultaneous control of the Executive for 8 of those years and accomplishing *none* of the goals it had set out to do in 1994 and, before that, with Ronald Reagan in the 1980 election.  Welfare reform was only garnered by waging a public campaign to restrict it and demonstrate valid reason for it that appealed to a broad spectrum of Americans... and it was accomplished with a Democratic President.  Since then the Party has broken its agreement to work for those things it set out to do, leaving it, now, with much of its pre-Reagan base of a 45-55% John McCain.

These Traditionalist Republicans, ranging across from the Social through the Fiscal and Security side will see the Democratic Party as an anathema, and John McCain no better than, say, Sam Nunn.  Unfairly to some degree and most will hold their noses and vote for McCain, but many will *not*.  Even a 2% walkout along with similar affiliated hardcore (unleaning) independents will lower the election turnout to 56% and possibly lower if John McCain cannot explain his past work on 'budget busting' appropriations, helping to over-ride Reagan's vetoes, his actual views of the structure of DoD and his work to remove personal liberty via Campaign Finance Reform.  Many Conservatives will be paying attention to this as the 'Straight Talk Express' has not talked in any way 'Straight' about the Moderate to Liberal views of their candidate.

Together the two parties, then, are looking to drop voter participation by a  minimum of 4% and up to 10% depending on the campaign on each side.   This then puts the election within the traditional mean range of 48-54%.  As there is no feeling of a 'landslide' about to happen or an incredibly weak President going to be replaced by anything better (and in incumbency rate in Congress guaranteeing nothing will happen there of major import) that puts a close fought election victory in the 24%-27% range... slowly whittling down to those committed to party, personality and the ideologies the second bring to the first via elections.

How do you choose amongst politicians:  I look at their record, the historical context of that record, what they say about that record and if it jibes with the first parts, and when they have no record, they need to be put in the brine for a bit more seasoning at a lower level or have some demonstrated and absolutely compelling capability beyond that to take on Executive responsibilities.

They must...

Do as they Say.

Say what they Mean.

Mean what they Do.

Then I will look at ideologies... when those first three fail, then I am stuck with ideologies and the worrying view is that they won't carry through, won't mean it or apply themselves to it to get the job done.  And the days of running away *from* your record is over.  And that is what all three of these candidates wish to do... plus none can actually adhere to the basics of Doing, Saying and Meaning.  Of course we run those folks out, first, as they are dubbed 'unelectable' or have no 'fire in their belly' or just aren't 'good candidates'.  Which is why many of your Fellow Americans will not be voting this year.

Look at the numbers.

This is what we have bought with 'two party politics'.

Sphere: Related Content

Where is the international law with: NAFTA?

From the North American Free Trade Agreement, highlighting via bold italics, mine.

Chapter Twelve: Cross-Border Trade in Services

Article 102: Objectives

1. The objectives of this Agreement, as elaborated more specifically through its principles and rules, including national treatment, most-favored-nation treatment and transparency, are to:
a) eliminate barriers to trade in, and facilitate the cross-border movement of, goods and services between the territories of the Parties;

b) promote conditions of fair competition in the free trade area;

c) increase substantially investment opportunities in the territories of the Parties;

d) provide adequate and effective protection and enforcement of intellectual property rights in each Party's territory;

e) create effective procedures for the implementation and application of this Agreement, for its joint administration and for the resolution of disputes; and

f) establish a framework for further trilateral, regional and multilateral cooperation to expand and enhance the benefits of this Agreement.

2. The Parties shall interpret and apply the provisions of this Agreement in the light of its objectives set out in paragraph 1 and in accordance with applicable rules of international law.

Article 1201: Scope and Coverage

[..]

3. Nothing in this Chapter shall be construed to:

(a) impose any obligation on a Party with respect to a national of another Party seeking access to its employment market, or employed on a permanent basis in its territory, or to confer any right on that national with respect to that access or employment; or

(b) prevent a Party from providing a service or performing a function such as law enforcement, correctional services, income security or insurance, social security or insurance, social welfare, public education, public training, health, and child care, in a manner that is not inconsistent with this Chapter.

[..]

Chapter Sixteen: Temporary Entry for Business Persons

Article 1601: General Principles

Further to Article 102 (Objectives), this Chapter reflects the preferential trading relationship between the Parties, the desirability of facilitating temporary entry on a reciprocal basis and of establishing transparent criteria and procedures for temporary entry, and the need to ensure border security and to protect the domestic labor force and permanent employment in their respective territories.

[..]

Article 1603: Grant of Temporary Entry

1. Each Party shall grant temporary entry to business persons who are otherwise qualified for entry under applicable measures relating to public health and safety and national security, in accordance with this Chapter, including the provisions of Annex 1603.

2. A Party may refuse to issue an immigration document authorizing employment to a business person where the temporary entry of that person might affect adversely:

(a) the settlement of any labor dispute that is in progress at the place or intended place of employment; or

(b) the employment of any person who is involved in such dispute.

3. When a Party refuses pursuant to paragraph 2 to issue an immigration document authorizing employment, it shall:

(a) inform in writing the business person of the reasons for the refusal; and

(b) promptly notify in writing the Party whose business person has been refused entry of the reasons for the refusal.

4. Each Party shall limit any fees for processing applications for temporary entry of business persons to the approximate cost of services rendered.

Article 1604: Provision of Information

1. Further to Article 1802 (Publication), each Party shall:

(a) provide to the other Parties such materials as will enable them to become acquainted with its measures relating to this Chapter; and

(b) no later than one year after the date of entry into force of this Agreement, prepare, publish and make available in its own territory, and in the territories of the other Parties, explanatory material in a consolidated document regarding the requirements for temporary entry under this Chapter in such a manner as will enable business persons of the other Parties to become acquainted with them.

2. Subject to Annex 1604.2, each Party shall collect and maintain, and make available to the other Parties in accordance with its domestic law, data respecting the granting of temporary entry under this Chapter to business persons of the other Parties who have been issued immigration documentation, including data specific to each occupation, profession or activity.

[..]

Article 2205: Withdrawal

A Party may withdraw from this Agreement six months after it provides written notice of withdrawal to the other Parties. If a Party withdraws, the Agreement shall remain in force for the remaining Parties.

Side Agreement on Labor, available here.

One of the fascinating things about NAFTA is that it was sold to help all the people in the US, Canada and Mexico. Not only the main agreement, but the labor side agreements agree to establish better working conditions, better pay, and so on, to help get fundamental workers rights established, mostly in Mexico. This, notably, has not happened.

What has happened is an increase in *trade* but not an increase in working conditions south of the border. In fact, not only has poverty not decreased in Mexico, it has increased. Harold Meyerson's column in the WaPo of 08 FEB 2006 looks at this phenomena:

The North American Free Trade Agreement was sold, of course, as a boon to the citizens of the United States, Canada and Mexico -- guaranteed both to raise incomes and lower prices, however improbably, throughout the continent. Bipartisan elites promised that it would stanch the flow of illegal immigrants, too. "There will be less illegal immigration because more Mexicans will be able to support their children by staying home," said President Bill Clinton as he was building support for the measure in the spring of 1993.

But NAFTA, which took effect in 1994, could not have been more precisely crafted to increase immigration -- chiefly because of its devastating effect on Mexican agriculture. As liberal economist Jeff Faux points out in "The Global Class War," his just-published indictment of the actual workings of the new economy, Mexico had been home to a poor agrarian sector for generations, which the government helped sustain through price supports on corn and beans. NAFTA, though, put those farmers in direct competition with incomparably more efficient U.S. agribusinesses. It proved to be no contest: From 1993 through 2002, at least 2 million Mexican farmers were driven off their land.

The experience of Mexican industrial workers under NAFTA hasn't been a whole lot better. With the passage of NAFTA, the maquiladoras on the border boomed. But the raison d'etre for these factories was to produce exports at the lowest wages possible, and with the Mexican government determined to keep its workers from unionizing, the NAFTA boom for Mexican workers never materialized. In the pre-NAFTA days of 1975, Faux documents, Mexican wages came to 23 percent of U.S. wages; in 1993-94, just before NAFTA, they amounted to 15 percent; and by 2002 they had sunk to a mere 12 percent.

The official Mexican poverty rate rose from 45.6 percent in 1994 to 50.3 percent in 2000. And that was before competition from China began to shutter the maquiladoras and reduce Mexican wages even more.

One of the thing the *free trade* folks don't tend to address is that localized agriculture, even subsistence agriculture provides a total of two necessities: food and cash. By putting poor, rural and inefficient farmers in direct, head-to-head competition with combine driven, 'green revolution' US agribusiness, that has seen the greatest productivity per person for agricultural goods on the planet, NAFTA wiped out not only cash income that could be garnered from poor Mexican farmers, but, soon, the ability to keep a roof over one's head by selling crops would dry up which meant that the *farming* went with it.

To Jacksonians, the idea that a Nation can support its poorest and most local folks trying to scratch a living for themselves while the rest of the economy works damned hard to better things all the way around is important. Even worse is when an industrial powerhouse utilizes its purchasing capability to deprive the poorest of work and food, there is seen a marked deterioration in the standard of living, ability to find work and, finally, the deterioration of society as this basis of it is no longer supported. I don't believe that this is what the 'free trade' concept was supposed to do, but that is a highly elitist concept based in a society with a high standard of living and thriving industries. That is an internal bias of economics that we tend to ignore in the US: we are rich.

Even worse, is that when an item of food is found to have more profitable utility going towards a non-food resource, say bio-fuels, the cost for that food skyrockets. If you are in a country that has just had its agricultural sector decimated by 'free trade' and no longer have support internally, then the sudden jump in cost of external food being bought up by industry is a huge shockwave to go through a people and their economy. The MIT Technology Review looks at this on 13 FEB 2007 in an article by Brittany Sauser on the effects of ethanol production in Mexico:

The recent rise in corn prices--almost 70 percent in the past six months--caused by the increased demand for ethanol biofuel has come much sooner than many agriculture economists had expected.

According to the United States Department of Agriculture, this year the country is going to use 18 to 20 percent of its total corn crop for the production of ethanol, and by next year that will jump to 25 percent. And that increase, says Marshall Martin, an agriculture economist at Purdue University, "is the main driver behind the price increase for corn."

The jump in corn prices is already affecting the cost of food. The most notable example: in Mexico, which gets much of its corn from the United States, the price of corn tortillas has doubled in the past year, according to press reports, setting off large protest marches in Mexico City. It's almost certain that most of the rise in corn prices is due to the U.S. ethanol policy, says David Victor, director of the Program on Energy and Sustainable Development at Stanford University.

So much for 'sustainable energy' involving a food crop.

Now that Mexico has had to shift away from sustainable, even if subsistence, agriculture to one of relying on cheap food from the US, the sudden economic turnaround for ethanol production has capped the effect of demoralizing the poor Mexican farmer, forcing them into poverty or even off of their land, and then whipsawing the entire population with increased food prices. Do note that when an impoverished people forced into further poverty and causing farming to become marginal for life sustainment, you are setting up conditions similar to those prior to many social upheavals, dating back to peasant revolts in the Middle Ages all the way to Russia in 1917 and numerous other revolutionary scenarios in Latin America and Africa.

'Free trade' capitalism causing Socialism? Yes, because the economic basis for Mexico was not there to sustain a 'free trade' environment and the result is millions flooding north to get *any* kind of job they could in direct and absolute contravention to international law and NAFTA itself. Yet, because this has been such a boon for the US, we have decided that giving away National Sovereignty for a good economy is well worth it, so we do *not* enforce international law or the treaty doing this by repudiating the treaty. It is doing well for the US even if we are having to sustain another Nation because they are going down the tubes because of their infrastructure problems.

The board set up to measure such things on the labor side, the NAALC, came out with their 2007 final summary up to 2006, and it has a few very interesting charts in it. One is quite traditional and shows the GDP percentage breakout of the US economy, which demonstrates our shift from manufacturing to services, pretty staid stuff, given the size of the economy from 1998-2002:

The drop from manufacturing as a percent of the economy (15.4% to 12.9%) is joined by decreases in Mining, Utilities, Wholesale and Transportation. The Services sector has picked up in IT, Financial Services and Rental/Leasing, along with Health Care and other social services with only Business Services suffering a decrement. This is something most Americans are familiar with as the economy is now one where Services dominates Manufacturing and Agriculture, completing a trend that had been going on since the 1970's.

Mexico, from the signing of NAFTA to 2002 looks very different:

That 1.2% drop in Farming, Forestry and Fishing is an indicator of a Nation gaining dependence on other sources of income. Even worse is Manufacturing going downwards by 0.6% over that period of time, the traditional interior Service of Hotels dropping by 1.7%, and Real Estate dropping 2.3%. That over 5% drop is seen getting picked up in the Services sector in Communications by 1.3% and a whopping 3.6% in Community, Social and Personal Services. That is an economy shifting from subsistence farming, moving to the cities and then looking for handouts from local communities and governments. And as the jobs in traditional sectors that led out of farming, via manufacturing and traditional services in hotels and real estate are becoming less important, there has been a societal cut-off going on.

Beyond the unrest seen due to higher food prices, there is one, other, traditional services that can *always* expand, but at a very, very high societal cost: organized crime. In 2003 the Library of Congress made a report on the Organized Crime situation in Mexico looking at 1999-2002 and the Key Findings are as follows:

Mexico’s drug trafficking and alien smuggling networks have expanded their criminal activities aimed at the United States by capitalizing on the explosive growth of transborder commerce under NAFTA and the attendant growth in human and merchandise traffic between Mexico and the United States. The growth in trans-border commerce, as manifested in soaring levels of overland passenger and commercial vehicle traffic, has provided an ever-expanding “haystack” in which the “needles” of illicit narcotics and illegal aliens can be more easily concealed.

In the wake of the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks on the United States, increased border security measures temporarily heightened the risks of interdiction for Mexican drug traffickers and alien smugglers. This heightened level of risk forced smugglers to increase their reliance on sophisticated counter-detection measures, such as border tunnels, multiple repackaging of drug shipments, containerization, and rail transport.

Mexico’s three major drug cartels are being superseded by a half-dozen smaller, corporate style, trafficking networks. In a process that mirrors the post-cartel reconstitution of drug trafficking networks in Colombia, this “new generation” of Mexican drug traffickers is less prone to violence and more likely to employ sophisticated technologies and cooperative strategies. The processes that are driving Mexican drug trafficking organizations toward establishing cooperative networks of increasing sophistication and decreasing visibility are likely to intensify in the post- September 11 environment. As a result, Mexican drug trafficking networks are likely to emulate their Colombian counterparts by investing heavily in counterintelligence, expanding and diversifying their legitimate enterprises, and concealing transnational partnerships that could attract undue attention from U.S. intelligence and law enforcement agencies.

Alien smuggling from Mexico to the United States is a US$300 million-a-year business, second only to Mexico’s illicit drug trade in terms of revenues from criminal activities. Between 100 and 300 human smuggling rings operate in Mexico, many of which are loosely coupled with one or more of a half-dozen core human smuggling networks that have extensive transnational contacts.

A variety of Russian criminal organizations, operating through dozens of small cells, are engaged in a wide range of illegal activities in Mexico. Some Russian criminal organizations based in southern California have entered into drug trafficking partnerships with Mexican drug cartels.

Asian criminal organizations are active in Mexico as partners with domestic alien smuggling and human trafficking rings, as suppliers of primary materials for narcotics to Mexican drug traffickers, and as wholesalers and retailers of counterfeit merchandise and pirated intellectual property.

During the late 1990s, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) established a clandestine arms smuggling and drug trafficking partnership with the Tijuana-based Arellano Felix Organization (AFO).

Since the mid-1990s, Mexico, at the request of the Spanish government, has deported scores of terrorists belonging to the Basque separatist group, Fatherland and Liberty (ETA).

Statements by high-ranking Mexican officials prior to and following the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks indicate that one or more Islamic extremist organizations has sought to establish a presence in Mexico.

The Red Mafia, Triads, Yakuza, Korean Mafia, Colombian cartels, FARC, ETA and some others, like Hezbollah, operating in/through/around Mexico and with their drug gangs. This, as they say, is not a pleasant thought, that 'free trade' is now going to rev up transnational organized crime *and* terrorism. The report then goes through 13 Polydrug Trafficking Organizations, 6 Northern Border Smuggling Gangs, 12 Alien Smuggling Networks, the Foreign Transnational Criminal Organizations, 9 Domestic Terrorist Organizations, and the known Foreign Terrorist Organizations mentioned above.

I thought the idea was to make things better?

Since the level of official corruption (political, police and military) is so high in Mexico, they have a definite problem clamping down on *any* of these problems. A Sign On San Diego article from the Union-Tribune 05 JAN 2008, looks at two murder victims found in Tijuana and how the new Mayor is already corrupt based on his past history with criminal organizations. The same site reported from the Union-Tribune on 18 JAN 2008 of 6 dead in a shootout featuring automatic weapons between cartel members. Even with Federal, Provincial and Local police acting together, they are having a hard time of battling the heavily armed cartels. The Chicago Tribune of 07 FEB 2008 reports on Mexican President Calderon's appeal for COIN funds to help battle this problem, to the tune of $1.4 billion. Here is part of the NAFTA agreement showing up in spades:

MEXICO CITY – In his first year in office, Mexican President Felipe Calderon has gone beyond his predecessors in declaring war against drug traffickers and organized crime, dispatching tens of thousands of troops to lead the charge.

But the enemy isn't going down without a fight. After months of improvement in security, January saw a surge in drug-related violence, including bloody battles with Mexican forces along the U.S. border. Law-enforcement officials call it a counterattack against Calderon's offensive.

In an interview Wednesday ahead of his first presidential visit to the U.S., Calderon appealed for approval of a $1.4 billion U.S. aid package proposed by President Bush to give Mexico's anti-drug battle a boost with aircraft, surveillance equipment and police training. The package has stalled in Congress.

[..]

In a wide-ranging discussion at the Los Pinos presidential compound with the Tribune and Hoy, a daily, Spanish-language newspaper owned by Tribune Co., Calderon said Mexican police and military have felt the brunt of the drug war's casualties.

But his diplomats are stressing to U.S. lawmakers that it "is affecting Americans, that it is affecting the children of those congressmen … and requires the cooperation of everyone to resolve it," he said. "It is a problem that we share as neighbors."

The Calderon administration has claimed its share of successes, including the detention of about 20,000 people linked to organized crime and an operation in October that netted 23.5 tons of cocaine, which the government trumpets as a world record.

[..]

But U.S. law-enforcement officials and security analysts say the successes have come with a price. Mexico suffered 235 drug-related murders in January, up more than 50 percent from January 2007, according to El Universal newspaper Reforma newspaper, which also tracks crime data, put the number of drug-related murders in 2007 at 2,275, a 15-percent jump from 2006.

When you are pulling in 20,000 people, you do *not* have a minor problem on your hands. In Iraq that might account for nearly 1/3 the entire insurgency. Spread over 5 years. So 20,000 people in a couple of months is not only worrying: it is frightening. And as these are criminal organizations making contacts with exterior Transnational Criminal and Terrorist operations, they have resources of their own to draw upon in the way of equipment and training. And the number being killed are those, now, seen in COIN, not just standard organized crime.

And what made this possible?

A lot of poor people seeing their chances of getting into the service sector cut off and no longer able to grow their own crops and gain some modicum of profit. Narcotics and human trafficking are far more lucrative than mere corn and rice. And as part of the COIN problem one of the things that needs to get shut down is the funding and supply sources for organized crime... and that money comes from the northern border region.

The United States.

Thank you to the vaunted two-party system for making one, lovely, possible future one in which the next COIN work we will have to do will be across our southern border... and a series of fences built not to keep the illegals *out* of the US, but to regulate US money flowing *into* Mexico that is fueling their organized crime and narcotics groups.

Perhaps it is time to re-think NAFTA before we do the exact, same thing to other parts of the world unprepared for 'free trade' because they have corrupt governments, police, military and court systems. Might be a good idea to review the basis of 'free trade' as it has things not noteworthy in most of the world: accountable governments, liberty, freedom, anti-corruption organizations in civil, political, law enforcement and military realms, and the ability to go after organized crime and terrorism. Otherwise we are asking for the much larger job of when these Nations slowly sink into a miasma of organized crime wars and terrorists roaming around.

This does mean supporting liberty, freedom and accountable governments before 'free trade'.

But then getting the 'free trade' first usually means you have a lot of trouble getting the rule of law if it wasn't there to start with.

Sphere: Related Content

Natural gas, crime and destruction

This should look familiar from GDF : Centragas:

Centragas

• Centragas AG is a holding company which holds a 50% interest in RosUkrEnergo (RUE), a Swiss gas distribution company

• Centragas Holding AG was incorporated in Vienna in July 2004

• RUE is a 50/50 joint venture between Centragas and Russian energy company Gazprom

• RUE currently supplies circa 55 billion cubic metres of gas per year to Ukraine from the Central Asian countries of Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan

• In 2007, RUE is supplying gas to Ukraine at a price of $130 per tcm which is substantially below the contracted and spot prices elsewhere in Europe.

• Centragas, via RUE, holds 25% in UkrGasEnergo, a Ukrainian domestic gas distribution company

• Also RUE currently exports circa 11 billion cubic metres of gas to Central and Western European countries, notably Hungary and Poland

• RUE reported turnover in 2006 of $7.1 billion

• Centragas AG is headquarted in Vienna and is headed by CEO David Brown

• Centragas AG is 90% owned by GDF

GDF Group DF is The Firtash Group of Companies. To those of you who may recall, he is an individual seen as 'the right hand man' of Semion Mogilevich, or the Red Don (on the FBI Most Wanted list for dealings in the US and Canada for stock and banking fraud). I went over some of the outlines of the Red Mafia in an article some time ago, and it is proving interesting to see where those connections lead to. As can be seen the extended holdings of the Firtash Group via Centragas include a presence in Turkmenistan, which has recently shut off natural gas supplies to Iran. With that I looked at the Shockwaves of 5%, which is the amount of natural gas that Turkmenistan has in the Iranian natural gas market. And the dealings to get RosUkrEnergo are being looked at by the US (Source: St. Petersburg Times, Russia, 25 APR 2006), which has led to his arrest in Moscow (Source: Times Online, UK, 25 JAN 2008):

State television showed footage of the alleged mobster as police held him and bodyguards against their luxury cars. They also broadcast film of the rarely photographed figure in custody, wearing jeans, a cap and leather jacket.

“Sergei Schneider has been arrested. He is better known as Semyon Mogilevich. He has several names, several nationalities and has been wanted for more than 15 years,” said Anzhela Kastuyeva, a Moscow police spokeswoman.

The arrest was made in connection with an investigation into an alleged $2 million tax evasion scheme run in connection with Arbat Prestige, a successful chain of Russian cosmetic stores. Vladimir Nekrasov, the owner of Arbat-Prestizh, was arrested in the same raid.

Monya Elson, a known associate of Mr Mogilevich, claimed in an interview given ten years ago that the Ukrainian was “the most powerful mobster in the world”.

An investigation by US newspaper the Village Voice, which apparently brought a death threat for its author, cited classified FBI and Mossad documents claiming that he was responsible for trafficking nuclear materials, drugs, prostitutes, precious gems, and stolen art. He was also said to have run a series of contract hit squads operating in the US and Europe.

Mr Elson claimed Mr Mogilevich, who was born in the Ukraine, controlled everything going in and out of Moscow's Sheremetyevo International Airport, which he called a ''smugglers' paradise”.

It is interesting that the arrest is only a few weeks after Turkmenistan had 'technical difficulties' in supplying natural gas to Iran. Surely the cosmetics business is just a sidelight to one of the richest criminals on the planet (Source: BBC Panorama transcript "The Billion Dollar Don"). But, like with Al Capone, it isn't the criminal activities but the *taxes* that get you. The Business Spectator on 31 JAN 2008 has this on the connection between Mogilevich, RUE and Firtash:

RosUkrEnergo

Investors have long been puzzled by RosUkrEnergo, which won its monopoly in January 2006 after Russia cut off the gas to Ukraine in a price dispute that disrupted supplies to Europe, questioning why the joint venture is needed.

Ukrainian premier Tymoshenko has resumed a campaign against RosUkrEnergo amid stormy negotiations about debts owed to the firm by Ukraine's state energy firm Naftogaz.

Some analysts have speculated that the Kremlin, facing an election in March which Gazprom chairman Dmitry Medvedev is likely to win, may have decided that RosUkrEnergo's current structure and remit may no longer suit Moscow's needs.

RosUkrEnergo's Ukrainian half is largely controlled by Ukrainian businessman Dmitry Firtash, who said last week he was in no way connected with Mr Mogilevich.

And from Forbes in 2006 we get this view of Gazprom:

Whatever Gazprom turns out to be, it is today a formidable force. Though still inefficient and scandal-prone, the company provides most of the gas to former Soviet states and to central Europe, as well as 25% of the needs of western Europe. Since Miller took over in 2001, the company has increased earnings from $440 million to $7.5 billion, on $42 billion in sales. It has announced one deal after another and is discussing a pipeline to Japan and a joint venture in Iran. By 2010 it expects to send gas in liquefied state from reserves near the Barents Sea to ports in the U.S. And the company is looking eastward, too, with plans to build pipelines to China. In a decade, executives insist, Gazprom's market cap will exceed $1 trillion.

Despite his title Miller is the second-most-important figure involved with Gazprom. Number one is the 53-year-old president of the Russian Federation, Vladimir V. Putin, who takes center stage at the Group of 8 summit beginning July 15 on his home turf in St. Petersburg. He has made energy security, a subject he has long pondered, the theme of the gathering. Nine years ago, in a late-life Ph.D. dissertation, he laid out his plans for management of the country's natural resources. And when he assumed the presidency from Boris Yeltsin in 2000, he started consolidating the Kremlin's power over the nation's most valuable asset--its rich store of oil, gas and other resources. Putin has seized control of large sectors of the economy, including stakes in autos, aviation, metals and mining. As chief executive of Russia Inc., he is creating a post-Soviet, post-Yeltsin superpower whose strength comes not from warheads but from commodities.

Putin has put his stamp in particular on the nation's largest company and crown jewel, Gazprom, where he packed the board with friends from his hometown St. Petersburg, including Dmitry Medvedev, simultaneously chairman of the Gazprom board and Putin's first deputy prime minister, and installed Miller, then an unknown technocrat with little direct experience in the gas industry. Last year the government paid $7.1 billion to Gazprom subsidiaries for an additional 10.7% stake in Gazprom, giving the Kremlin a majority stake in the company. Putin's interest in energy is perhaps not just geopolitical; there are rumors he will take over Gazprom himself in 2008 when his second term is over and he is supposed to step down.

From Israel News of 27 JAN 2008, there is a small bit of insight into how Mogilevich got the money to do the RUE/Gazprom deal into Ukraine:

Israeli links

In the 1990's, Mogilevich was considered to be one of the main targets of Israeli intelligence, who worked closely with international police in investigating and locating Mogilevich.

Israel was recently connected with the mafia boss, however, in an affair first revealed by the Moscow Times newspaper in 2003. The paper published a report claiming that companies founded by Mogilevich in Hungary and in Romania were connected with a money-laundering scheme in a big gas deal, which was intended for Poland but was carried out with a Russian energy holding company.

Backtracking a bit to Turkmenistan, the question of how Firtash got ahold of things there is seen in this bit in Moscow News on 29 DEC 2006, when the politics of Turkmenistan where in flux and Russia wanted to see Gurbankuly Berdymuhammedov become President there:

Unexpectedly for many, the heir apparent became politically active in summer 2006 when his father the president made him the head of the Turkmen official delegation at trade and economic talks with the United Arab Emirates. The mother Muza Alexandrovna Niyazova received the order from Ashkhabad to see to the son's political education and concentrated on it. It was not difficult at all, considering that the family was not exactly impoverished and that the atmosphere of the good old Vienna facilitated studies. Tutors in the Turkmen language, international law, and political scientists were found for the heir apparent. Active consultations with partners in Israel began in August.

Eural TG is the main communications line to Murat Niyazov's inner circle. One Dmitry Firtash is the key figure there. It was Firtash who "represented" Eural TG in Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, and Kazakhstan and who became a beneficiary of RosUkroEnergo when it was established and took over Turkmen gas export to Europe. Known for his closeness to the Niyazovs, Firtash was even involved in the Orange Revolution in Ukraine. He financed the trip of the Ukrainian president's family from the United States to the inauguration ceremony in Kiev.

Establishment of the Vienna Headquarters comprising numerous pro-Western aides and advisors leads to the conclusion that Murat Niyazov is Western democracies' key project in Turkmenistan now. In the meantime, the People's Council complicated things enormously. It amended the Constitution and removed from it the provision that banned participation in the race for acting presidents. The forum even compiled a list of six candidates for president, one of them Berdymuhammedov. The president must be at least 55, he must speak the state language and live in Turkmenistan for at least a decade preceding the election. It does not take a genius to guess who meets and these fair requirements and who will therefore be elected the president on February 11, 2007.

Firtash, by situating himself in a position to be in contact with the Niyazov's, was able to facilitate not only the Russian agenda of Putin but his own of getting his company to have a foothold in the Turkmenistan gas market, all to the approval of the West. This would put Firtash into a position of consolidating holdings and thus needing to create the DF group. The Ukrainian magazine Zerkalo Nedali would have an article on 06-12 OCT 2007 by Alla Yeremenko trying to figure out just who owns *what* in Ukraine:

The first thing is that the debt might arise during the sale of gas to municipal heating enterprises. But this question has never been directly related to Gazprom before, since Naftogaz is buying gas not directly from the Russian monopoly but from UkrGazEnergo. However, if there was a debt it wouldn’t be that big. And UkrGazEnergo along with RUE, the co-owner of which is Gazprom, would be responsible for this debt anyway.

Theoretically, there could be a debt for gas in the underground storage facilities. According to Yuriy Boyko, there is a record for the last year's amount of gas in underground storage – around 32 billion cubic meters. But, at the same time, Yevheny Bakulin, the head of national stock company Naftogaz, says that there is only 5-6 billion cubic meters of gas that belongs to Naftogaz. All the rest of the gas in the underground storage facilities belongs to UkrGazEnergo, RUE and Gazprom. Which of these companies should pay for the gas in underground storage? It is obvious that this question is not related to Ukraine.

And why doesn’t Gazprom ask its “Ukrainian colleague” Dmitry Firtash, who holds 45% of RUE and a part of UkrGazEnergo, about the debt? Especially since his recent purchases in Ukraine are for a sum of money equal to the Ukrainian debt announced by Gazprom.

According to our sources, Dmitry Firtash bought shares in 6 OblGaz’s from Oleg Bahmatyuk for USD 108 million. He also bought the shares in Mandarin Plaza shopping center for USD 300 million. He paid almost the same amount of money for the big packet of shares in so-called business centre Parus, and around USD 200 million for a piece of land in the Obolon housing district.

It is well-known that D. Firtash is transforming his assets into a new company – DF (Group of Dmitry Firtash, GDF). He also is the owner of Hungarian gas-trader Emfesz, the annual turnover of which was more than USD 779 million last year.

Besides the gas business, Dmitry Firtash is the owner of shares in chemical industries in Europe, the Russian Federation, Ukraine, Estonia and Tajikistan through the Ostchem chemical holding.

According to Wprost magazine, cable TV channels K1, K2 and Megasport as well as the Kyiv basketball club belong to Firtash too.

So, “Ukrainian colleague” of Gazprom is a wealthy person and is able to answer for the debts of his firms and even of his partners. Why should Ukraine be claimed responsible?

How did Firtash get into so many companies? That appears to be bound up in the earlier deals that would create Gazprom as the giant it is now. Hans over at Dartmouth would go through the creation of Gazprom and trace out its lineage in an article on RosUkrEnergo on 26 OCT 2007. RUE was born in talks between Russia and Ukraine in 2004 between Putin and Kuchma and would replace Eural TransGas, and Gazprom would own 50% of that through Gazprombank-owned firm ArosGas Holding AG. The *other* 50% was owned by CentraGas Holding AG which was controlled by Raiffeisen Investment, on behalf of individuals 'yet to be named' in Ukraine. The Ukrainian company, Naftogaz disclaims any involvement with the stand-up of RUE. It would turn out that the 50% share of RUE would be owned by Dmitri Firtash (45%) and Ivan Fursin (5%) due to their ownership of Centragas (90%/10% respectively). [There is a lovely pdf file at Globalpolicy.org that goes through the particulars on the RUE stand-up and the actors involved.]

Ivan Fursin, the relatively quiet individual in all of this, owns a movie theater and bank in Odessa and runs two Firtash companies out of Cypress: Highrock Holdings and Arcadea Investment Fund Ltd. In a Hudson Institute report on Ukraine and its energy security in 2006, the ownership is straightened out a bit:

Finally, on April 26, Gazprom-owned newspaper Izvestia announced that Dmytro Firtash and Ivan Fursin, two Ukrainian businessmen, are the owners of RosUkrEnergo. Holding company Centragas confirmed Izvestia’s report in a statement, saying Firtash owned a 90 percent stake in Centragas, and Ivan Fursin a 10 percent stake. Firtash is director of the Cyprus based investment company Highrock Holdings, as well as board chairman of Estonian fertilizer factory Nitrofert, according to Global Witness. Fursin owns an Odesa bank and a movie theater, and, as the Russian newspaper Izvestia reported, is also president of a branch of Highrock Holdings. The newspaper also reported that Highrock was owned by Mogilevich.

In a parliamentary debate earlier this year it was alleged that Mogilevich, a reputed organized crime boss who is on the FBI’s “most wanted” list on charges of being involved in a stock fraud, was involved in the company. Firtash was previously involved in two other gas trading firms with Zeev Gordon, an Israeli lawyer who also represents Mogilevich. Mogilevich denied any involvement in RUE; Gordon said he had not met Firtash through Mogilevich; finally, Firtash insists while he met with Mogilevich, he never had any business dealings with him. Firtash’s background was probed by Austria’s Raiffeisen Bank, which subsequently cleared him of wrongdoing. However, this verdict was not quite as important as that of the court of public opinion, in which numerous doubts still remain.

It isn't what you know, its who you know and what they are involved in... and when you start to get a constellation of individuals showing up again and again, you begin to suspect a connection between them. If you want the original Izveztia article, it is held at the American Business Center website in Odessa.

As Firtash goes back with Mogilevich to the YBM Magnex deals in the US and Canada, Firtash has needed, in turn, a Western face to help do business, and that comes from one individual, as seen in the Dartmouth post on RUE:

Robert Shetler-Jones
Shetler-Jones entered the Ukrainian business world at the age of 22, when he founded a consulting firm in 1991. He apparently met Firtash through the other partial owner of Centrgaz, Ivan Fursin (see above), and facilitated the cooperation between Firtash, the British-registered JKX Oil and Gas, and Eural-Trans-Gas. He is the managing director of RSJ Erste, which controls various Ukrainian, German and Italian chemical factories. (RSJ Erste is a subsidiary of Firtash’s GDF company, and was in the running in the recent re-privatization of the Krivorozhstal steel works.) In general, Shetler-Jones is seen as Firtash’s “Western” partner. He was removed from the direct management of RUE around June of 2005, following the “transition period” during which he was ostensibly installed to help guide the firm. Since then, however, he has apparently been reinstated and now continues to serve in a leadership position. (He also has been staying involved in Ukraine-Europe energy relations, particularly through his consulting firm Scythian Ltd.)

Yes, more companies than any one individual can keep track of, unless he is Simon Reubens! Some of this did start to hit the fan in 2005, as seen in this RFE/RL report of 05 JUL 2005:

In an interview with the newspaper "Zerkalo tyzhnya" published on 18 June, Turchynov said the SBU has been investigating the activities of two companies -- Eural Trans Gas and its successor, RosUkrEnergo -- which acted as the "operators" of Turkmen gas to Ukraine. Investigators are also probing any role that might have been played in their operations by the management of Naftohaz Ukrayiny, the Ukrainian state-owned energy monopoly.

Russia's Gazprom and Naftohaz Ukrayiny are closely linked to the activities of the two offshore companies under investigation. Turchynov charged that former high-level officials in Ukraine, together with Russia's current leaders, knew of and approved these illicit schemes, Interfax reported.

Also on 18 June, Ukrainian Gas Bank head Vadym Lyashko was arrested as he allegedly was preparing to flee the country, Ukraine's Channel 5 television reported. The Ukrainian Gas Bank was recently investigated for allegedly laundering $59 million for the Ukrainian Transportation Ministry during the administration of former President Leonid Kuchma. The bank is closely linked to Naftohaz Ukrayiny.

Lyashko's arrest and Turchynov's announcement were long-awaited steps in the realization of President Viktor Yushchenko's and Prime Minister Yuliya Tymoshenko's promise to close down highly suspect schemes in the gas-transportation business that are alleged to be have drained the Ukrainian state treasury of $1.2 billion since 2003.

[..]

Eural Trans Gas, according to the registration document filed with the Budapest business court, was of curious origin. It listed its place of business as the small village of Csabadi, outside of Budapest, and named three previously unknown Romanians as its principals.

Eural, according to a 2003 interview with Eural Director Andreas Knopp in "The Kyiv Post," was closely linked to Dmytro Firtash, a Ukrainian businessman with interests in Moldova and Turkmenistan and the owner of a number of companies in Ukraine. According to court documents provided by the Itera International group of companies, Firtash's Israeli-registered company, Highrock Properties Ltd., is being sued by Itera, which accuses him of owing them $28 million.

Hermitage Capital Management, an investment fund in Russia that campaigns for minority shareholder rights, published its report on Eural Trans Gas and Gazprom in 2003. This forced Gazprom and Naftohaz to take steps to distance themselves from Eural, a company they helped create. Eural was sold in 2004 to a group of investors and came to be headed by Cedric Brown, the former head of British Gas. Another prominent player in Eural became Robert Shetler Jones, although his exact role was not clear. He was described in "The Kyiv Post" on 16 June as a consultant to another investor in Eural, the British publicly traded firm JKX Oil and Gas, a company with substantial oil-drilling assets in Ukraine's Poltava region.

Despite these changes of ownership, Eural Trans Gas was finally replaced by RUE, which began operations on 1 January 2005.

[..]

Despite Gazprom's explanations, there was considerable speculation in the press as to the role of Raiffeisen Investment and its exact relationship, if any, to Raiffeisen Bank. Gazprom spokesmen never clarified the relationship, merely repeating that RUE is a "fully transparent" structure.

On 6 August 2004 Interfax reported: "In late July 2004, 100 percent subsidiaries of Russia's Gazprombank and Austria's Raiffeisen Bank created the RosUkrEnergoprom company for the supply of Turkmen gas to the Ukrainian market. The company, shared by the parties 50-50, will be registered in Switzerland. RosUkrEnergoprom will purchase Turkmen gas for the Ukrainian market and act as operator of the gas purchased and investor in the development of the gas-transport infrastructure required for securing the transit. The company will be run by a coordination committee including representatives of the leading officials of Gazprom, Naftohaz Ukrayiny, Gazprombank, and Raiffeisen Bank."

Research has shown that Raiffeisen Investments has no direct management connection to Raiffeisen Bank, although both companies are owned by the Austrian RZB Group.

Furthermore, Raiffeisen Investment is not ARosgas AG's partner in RUE. According to an interview with "The Kyiv Post" on 16 June, Raiffeisen Investment spokesman Wolfgang Putschek stated that the company only manages the portfolio for "a group of Ukrainian businessmen who have worked in the gas industry" and is paid a commission for managing that portfolio. When asked to name the "Ukrainian businessmen," the spokesman declined to do so, citing confidentiality agreements.

Apparently, the "Ukrainian businessmen" whose portfolio's were being managed by Raiffeisen Investment were acting as private individuals, while ARosgas was clearly connected to the Russian state and collected nearly $478 million annually for Gazprom, according to Hermitage Capital Management, a Moscow-based investment company.

The total fee paid to RUE by the Ukrainian state for transporting gas from Turkmenistan, in Gazprom's pipeline, to Ukraine is reputed to be close to $1 billion per year, paid to RUE in the form of 13 billion cubic meters of gas, which it then sells in the West through a variety of agents. This is the same fee that Ukraine paid Eural Trans Gas, according to a contract signed in Moscow in December 2002 that has been made available to RFE/RL.

Asked by Ukrainian journalists at a press conference earlier this year if Naftohaz Ukrayiny is a principal in RUE, Naftohaz Ukrayiny head Oleksiy Ivchenko replied that it is not and that Naftohaz was seeking to buy into RUE so as to have some say in its management and to receive the $478 million the unnamed businessmen are reputed to collect yearly.

Apparently the former management of Naftohaz, headed by Kuchma loyalist Yuriy Boyko, renounced its right to be a principal in RUE and reclaim the $478 million that Ukraine paid RUE for its services, giving its consent instead to a group of unnamed private "Ukrainian businessmen" to collect this money. Boyko, however, rejects any allegations of wrongdoing.

Prime Minister Tymoshenko has stated that as a consequence of the Eural Trans Gas and RUE, schemes, Ukraine lost more than $1 billion, Interfax reported on 15 June.

So $478 million/year is being collected by unnamed Ukrainian businessmen which would turn out to be Firtash and Fursin. Mind you that is transactional cash, but even a small amount of interest on it turns into decent walking around pocket money. Pocket money aided by many backers, to be sure, and one of those helpers was Mr. Shetler-Jones of the JKX firm. The Financial Times had an article looking at this from 29 APR 2006 (Cached at zawya) looking at the UK angle of this deal:

Dmytro Firtash, the Ukrainian trader who has emerged as a key player in the European natural gas market, was unfamiliar to most western business people until this week. But a small group of British businessmen have known him well for years.

When he appeared last year at a Mansion House dinner at which the Queen presented an award to Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko, the 40 year old Mr Firtash sat at a table hosted not by Ukrainians, but by JKX Oil and Gas, a British AIM-quoted company with interests in Ukraine.

Its chairman is Lord Peter Fraser, a former Tory trade minister, and the chief executive is Paul Davies, an oil man with extensive experience in the former Soviet Union. Mr Firtash is one of the company's biggest shareholders, controlling a 9.7 per cent stake through a holding company called Benam.

Few people beyond JKX's immediate circle were aware of Mr Firtash's significance. This week he was identified as a key shareholder in RosUkrEnergo, a trading company bringing gas from central Asia to Europe.

Half of RosUkrEnergo belongs to Gazprom, the Russian gas giant. The other half is split between Mr Firtash, with 45 per cent, and Ivan Fursin, a Ukrainian banker and associate of Mr Firtash, with 5 per cent.

Mr Firtash established his fortune by supplying food and other goods to Turkmenistan in exchange for gas for Ukraine in the 1990s.

Among his earliest contacts with British business people was Robert Shetler-Jones, whom he met through Mr Fursin. Mr Shetler-Jones lived in Kiev in the early 1990s and later in Moscow, working for a series of property companies.

Mr Shetler-Jones's contacts included Viscount Raymond Asquith, a member of JKX's board who had worked as a diplomat at the British embassy in Kiev. The contacts between Mr Firtash and Mr Shetler-Jones culminated in 2003 in a complex deal that brought together Mr Firtash and JKX.

Benam bought a stake in JKX, which acquired a small stake in Eural Trans Gas, at that time Mr Firtash's main gas-trading company. JKX credited Benam with helping it secure Ukrainian permission to export gas.

Personal loyalties seem to have mattered to both men. Mr Shetler-Jones sat next to Mr Firtash in this week's FT interview. Mr Firtash referred to the secrecy that until this week surrounded his background. He said: "I once asked Robert, 'Aren't you afraid I could embarrass you?' He said, 'No, I know you very well'."

Benam Holdings of Cyprus (Manta page here) is one of those little companies that looks to be about one piece of paper thick. This is where Eural Trans-Gas hits the big time, and it, apparently, didn't exist much before the RUE deal *either*. From the St. Petersburg Times, Russia, comes an article from 02 DEC 2003 to look at just what three Romanians in that little town in Hungary can do with just the right connections... or the right connections coming to them:

MOSCOW - "Three Romanians with no business experience and an Israeli with alleged mob ties register a trading company in a Hungarian village. Before the company is even legally formed it is granted the rights to transport billions of dollars' worth of natural gas from Central Asia, across Russia, to Ukraine."

These shareholders are, at least on paper: an actress hoping to earn money to pay her phone bill, a nurse, a computer programmer, and an alleged associate of a Ukrainian-born crime lord who is on the FBI's "most wanted" list for money laundering, racketeering and fraud.

Linked to the same mobster, according to the Russian government, is the head of the new company, Eural Trans Gas, which stands to gain about $1 billion a year in pre-tax profits that could have gone to Gazprom.

[..]

Not only has the world's biggest gas company let the little Hungarian operation take over a lucrative export channel over which it had pledged to regain control, it has also supported it with almost $300 million in loans and guarantees.

The gas giant, according to its own financial statement for the first half of 2003, is the guarantor of a $227 million loan to Eural TG from state-owned Vneshekonombank. On top of that, Gazprombank, which is 100 percent owned by Gazprom, loaded another $70 million to the company, according to a list of the bank's 10 biggest borrowers obtained by The Moscow Times.

Investors thought Gazprom management had put an end to such practices. When President Vladimir Putin put a loyal lieutenant, Alexei Miller, at the helm of the gas monopoly back in 2001, Miller vowed to liquidate the murky schemes used by former management to siphon off up to $3 billion a year from the company.

Miller regained most of those lost assets and eliminated a lot of the murky trading deals that mainly benefited Itera, an octopus-like structure based in Florida and widely believed to be tied to the old management team.

But Miller failed to retrieve one of the biggest channels - the sale of gas from Turkmenistan to Ukraine. Instead of wresting it back from Itera, as he said he would, it has been turned over to Eural TG.

[..]

Putin's crackdown on corruption and the jailing of Yukos founder Mikhail Khodorkovsky on charges of fraud and tax evasion to the tune of $1 billion are seen as part of a Kremlin campaign to gain greater control over the oil industry.

"The creation of Eural Trans Gas is comparable to what Gazprom did with Itera, which ultimately led to Putin's dismissal of the previous management team," says Vadim Kleiner, Hermitage's director of research.

Others say turning over the Turkmen-Ukrainian operation to Eural TG is even more outrageous than letting Itera take over Gazprom markets in the former Soviet Union.

"This would not be the first time Gazprom has created its own competitor," says Valery Nesterov, energy analyst at Troika Dialog. "But at least Itera is more solid, has its own reserves and extracts gas. Eural TG is just a trading firm that at best can be called shady."

According to a copy of company documents obtained by The Moscow Times, Eural TG was launched with just $12,000 in start-up capital.

Yes, with just $12k you too can join the world of international gas trading and suddenly get control over billions of dollars in revenue! Now out of investors including a struggling actress, a nurse, a computer programmer and a man linked with international organized crime stretching from the US and Canada all the way heading east across Morocco, Spain, Hungary, Romania all the way to the Golden Triangle and China, which of these apparently has financial clout?

Wouldn't you like to be in a minority holding position with a company headed by Semion Mogilevich and having $1 billion in natural gas revenue passing through it and over $300 million in loans from Russian banks? Such a deal! Hope the poor actress got her phone bills paid up...

Then there are the recurring payments in the deal. Recurring payments? Why, yes, if you get gas at below market prices and sell them at market prices you get to keep the difference. Standard capitalism of 'buy low, sell high', save that the buyer is the seller and the seller the buyer... don't believe that? Read on:

In return for its services, Ukraine is obliged to pay Eural TG 38 percent of the value of the deal, or 13.7 bcm in gas, according to Naftogaz Ukrainy, the Ukrainian gas monopoly that is paying Eural TG under the deal.

Now that Eural TG is beginning to export gas from Ukraine - it already has one contract under its belt to sell Poland 2 bcm by July 2004 - it is on track to post a pre-tax profit of more than $1 billion a year if it can export the rest of the gas Ukraine pays it, even after paying Gazprom $450 million in annual fees for the use of its pipeline network.

Gazprom says it was forced to give up the trade deal and bow to the wishes of its Ukrainian counterpart, which, it says, insisted that if Itera had to be replaced, the new agent had to be Eural TG.

Gazprom says its $227 million loan guarantee is designed to give it leverage over Eural TG's trading deals because it is collateralized with the gas Eural TG is being paid with.

But Naftogaz Ukrainy says that Eural TG is Gazprom's creation all the way. "All the agreements with Eural Trans Gas were made by Gazprom," says Naftogaz spokesman Konstantin Borodin. "It is a contractor for Gazprom."

So by getting 38% of the gas, and after paying off Gazprom for pipeline usage, you get $1 billion in profit per year *every year*. Ukraine buys it, it goes through Gazprom pipes thus selling it to Eural Trans-Gas, and then re-buys a portion of it after giving that 38% to Eural Trans-Gas. Ukraine buys it, sells it, buys and ETG gets the middle man on each of those transactions. Only a mobster could think up such a crooked deal that even the Russians get swindled by it! How? They are buying it from Turkmentistan in the *first place* from ETG to sell to Ukraine, then getting only transport cost back on the re-sale of it via Eural Trans-Gas. Someone is making a mint, here, and it isn't Gazprom, Russia or Ukraine... thus leaving Eural Trans-Gas.

And even if that is not the way it works, trying to figure it out has surely vexed the Russians and Ukrainians no end... it was set up to be hard to track and that is the point of it: obfuscation via complexity.

This is where Highrock Holdings, Furtash and Fursin come in as the money comes through *them* from Semion Mogilevich, the owner and backer of Highrock Holdings. Here is how that bit of it works:

None of these allegations could be confirmed independently, but a copy of a letter written to Interpol by Russian Interior Ministry Major General A. P. Mordovets links the head of Eural TG, former Hungarian Education Minister Andras Knopp, to Mogilevich. Mordovets told Interpol in the letter, a copy of which was obtained by The Moscow Times, that Knopp helped Mogilevich create a cigarette smuggling ring in the 1990s.

The letter, which was written in 1998 when Knopp was a vice president at major German cigarette maker Reemtsma, says Knopp supported Mogilevich's appeal for Hungarian citizenship. It says Mogilevich introduced Knopp to members of the Russian government responsible for the cigarette business. It alleges Mogilevich "threatened to kill" an individual who was disrupting their smuggling operation.

German investigators began looking into Reemstma's possible involvement in cigarette smuggling in 2000, but no charges were ever filed.

"Knopp's assistant said he could not be reached for comment, but in an interview with the Kyiv Post earlier this year, Knopp confirmed Eural TG did business with Mogilevich-linked Highrock Properties. He denied, however, any ties with Mogilevich himself."

Ah, 'plausible deniability'! Remember the Clintons didn't develop *all* of that sort of thing... and it is just this sort of deal of 'its not what you know, but who you know' that creates 'plausible deniability' by going through intermediaries and, since it is through intermediaries like Reemstma from Germany, that you can say ETG has only dealt with Highrock but not Mogilevich with respect to ETG and say *nothing* about ever having dealt with him on any matters. That is 'plausible deniability' at its finest: its not what you say but what you *don't* that matters.

The article also goes on to demonstrate how the Russian Mafia is unlike its Sicilian/Italian counterparts: the others who signed up to create ETG are still in poverty. The actress did, however get $34/month for her phone bill. So while the 'Family' approach to the mafia concept 'takes care of its own' and those who help it, the Russian one has no such high ideals: just the cash or your life.

And Gazprom was looking to *fix this* buy buying ETG and the Mogilevich response was: nuh-uh. Not outright, but how about we form a new 'partnership' and create RUE? This would bring in JKX and Benam, but things would not look brighter or better even if Gazprom got its 50% share:

In an ironic twist, Gazprom's funding of Eural TG may just fatten it up for a Western rival eyeing a way to break into Gazprom's monopoly on exports to Europe from the former Soviet Union.

British-based JKX Oil & Gas, which already has stakes in a number of Ukrainian oil ventures, has been trying to buy part of Eural TG together with a company called Benam Holdings since July, according to JKX.

JKX company has several heavy hitters behind it, including former British Trade and Industry Minister Peter Fraser and controversial Swiss tycoon Bruce Rappoport, who has close ties to the Israeli government.

JKX, for now, says it cannot say what Benam Holdings is. A web search for the company also came up with no results. Like Gazprom and Naftogaz, JKX says it is not worried about Eural TG's ownership structure, adding that any future deal will be conducted in the interests of its own shareholders.

Does the word 'snookered' come to mind here? Isn't this the exact, same thing that went on with ETG and 'can't tell you the interests behind it' sort of deal? Gazprom got hit hard on Itera, fell for it again with ETG and now, with forming RUE to get 50% of what it buys, will get it one more time from Mogilevich, Furtash and Fursin. What a sweet deal! Just give them $1 billion per year for a couple of years and they will let you in on half the action!

The reason that an intermediary company is wanted, in the first place, is that Russian gas is expensive, while that of the surrounding post-Soviet Nations of central asia is inexpensive. Euromonitor steps through this on 11 JAN 2006, and looks at how the deal does and does not work for the parties involved. Additionally Gazprom hoped that an independently financed company would be able to get payments more readily than a State owned firm. This works well when things are going well on the supply side, but recently that has changed as the problems, particularly in Turkmenistan, have caused RUE to utilize more expensive Russian gas thus effectively doubling the price of it to Ukraine. From that Russia also hoped to expand its presence in Europe to Slovakia and Poland through the Hungarian firm EMFESZ:

The figure of Dmytro Firtash is interesting in the whole story and it is related also to Slovakia. Since he is a partner in companies trading with or partly owned by Gazprom, mutual contacts between Firtash and the highest representatives of Gazprom must be above-standard.

The mechanism of RUE company enables to carry out Russian foreign energy strategy of expansion to European market through majority share of Russian state in Gazprom. RUE is already active on Hungarian and Polish markets via business organization EMFESZ, and Slovakia is mentioned as well. So far the Office for Regulation of Network Industries of Slovak Republic has no information on any companies interested in entering our gas market, yet the fact is that it does not have to be informed about it according to current legislation, because the entering should be based on a contract with an existing operator. SPP (Slovak natural gas industry) has not made a statement in relation to the issue so far.

EMFESZ is a Hungarian company trading with gas, and with the 2.8 billion cubic meters it is one of the biggest gas suppliers in the country. The official owner is Mabofi Holding seated in Cyprus . EMFESZ was founded in 2003 by Ukrainian enterpriser Dmytro Firtash, who – according to Hungarian press – is also the actual owner. In April 2006, the company by means of EMFESZ NG Polska signed contracts for supplies of 2.5 billion cubic meters of gas to Poland, and thus as the first company it took the chance to enter the up-to-then monopoly sphere of gas supplying (TPA – third party access) of industrial enterprises. EMFESZ became a regional partner of RUE, it is the only company which sells gas obtained from RUE in Hungary and which has a 10-year contract of gas deliveries signed with RUE. In the future, the company plans to enter the development of infrastructure actively by means of building their own gas pipeline from Ukraine to Hungary, as well as being active in construction of reservoirs. In the beginning of March Firtash announced that he was planning to place 25-35 % of EMFESZ shares in the stock market in Budapest, but at the same time he mentioned that a certain part would be sold to RUE company, which he owns together with Gazprom.

Beyond that, Russia has caused some artificial crises with gas supplies to Ukraine, like in JAN 2006. This was meant as pressure to Ukraine to pay more and to force a renegotiation of the previous deals made to stand up RUE. Going through that crisis the previous head of Naftohaz Ukrayiny, Oleksiy Ivchenko was interviewed by the BBC for a report published 12 NOV 2007 (Source: Zibb file cache), and he offers this perspective on the role of Firtash:

[Nayem] Is there a possibility of getting rid of RosUkrEnergo now?

[Ivchenko] Yes, it has always been there, and this should be done! But it should be understood that the Ukrainian side will be unable to do so on its own, neither technically, nor judicially, nor politically. It is just the will of the Russian side! I shall admit that if RosUkrEnergo becomes unprofitable for the Russian side for some reasons, then everything is possible... [ellipsis as published]

[Nayem] But why can RosUkrEnergo become unprofitable?

[Ivchenko] Well... [ellipsis as published] why were Itera and EuralTransGas unprofitable?

[Nayem] Let us say, EuralTransGaz was removed because of a scandal over relations with [alleged criminal Semen] Mogilevich... [ellipsis as published]

[Ivchenko] Yes, but RosUkrEnergo can be removed exactly the same way, as there are also numerous scandals surrounding it... [ellipsis as published] It is also unprofitable.

[Nayem] Do you believe that Firtash is an independent figure?

[Ivchenko] I don't believe so.

[Nayem] Do you think Firtash is linked to Mogilevich?

[Ivchenko] I don't know. I know Firtash very little. I think he is being backed by top-ranking officials from the Russian side. If it is not like this, then I think they are top-ranking officials from both Russian and Ukrainian sides.

If it is not like this, then explain me the following thing. We had a debt of 2bn dollars owing to Gazprom. Our senior officials [recently] inappropriately announced that this was state debt. All right. I believe that it is not Ukraine's debt. Formally, it is RosUkrEnergo's debt owed to Gazprom.

Then I have a question: what was [incumbent] fuel and energy minister [Yuriy Boyko] doing in Moscow, and what was [incumbent] prime minister [Viktor Yanukovych] doing there? On whose behalf were they speaking there? Did they recognize the debt and did they think over its repayment? On whose behalf?! On behalf of RosUkrEnergo?! I don't understand... [ellipsis as published]

This debt is no accident. Now, attention! A debt with exactly the same structure and origin was run up prior to 2005. And those who did this were the very same people... [ellipsis as published] This debt was formed for a second time with only purpose in mind: so as to hand over the gas transport system. But the [Orange] revolution prevented them from doing this in 2005. And this year it was due to the results of the parliamentary election [on 30 September].

Firtash, for all of his holdings, is seen from the inside by Oleksiy Ivchanko as someone who is not an independent actor but one who, at least on the gas deals, is following someone else's orders. It is time to sort out a few things on the side of who owns what, and get some firmer associations down. For that the Red Orbit site has a 09 AUG 2007 article from the Hungarian newspaper Vilaggazdasag:

Who is Firtash, the owner of 90 per cent of Centragas AG? The FBI in the US as well as the Ukrainian secret service has already tried to find the answer to this question. The primary interests of the Americans pertained to the kinds of common interests Firtash and Semion Mogilevich have, the latter believed to be a Russian Mafioso sought by the FBI, and whether Firtash is laundering money. Kiev was interested mainly in the way Firtash is linked to the Russians and to the rest of the members of the new Ukrainian elite in the post- Kuchma era, as well as in the identity of additional owners of the firm. It was revealed that the names of Mogilevich and Firtash appear together among the owners of several companies, and that Firtash, the Ukrainian businessman -who participated in the highest- level Russian-Ukrainian negotiations during last year's natural gas crisis and has also negotiated with Yushchenko -maintains three offices in Moscow, in the real centre of his economic interests.

[..]

Well-informed analysts in Vienna suspect that anyone who does business with Firtash is actually doing business with Gazprom. At this time Firtash gave an Austrian character to his most important firms, thus to Centragas and to Mabofi Holding, the company that directed EMFESZ from Cyprus so far, and further, its chemical industry, gas pipeline construction and real estate firms. One cannot tell however, between exactly who EMFESZ is acting as an intermediary; one cannot tell whether the telephone numbers shown on the websites of its businesses actually ring in the offices of Raiffeisen Investment AG?

Beyond this the Financial Times reported on Dimitry Firtash and reviewed the information it had published previously on the questions it had asked him. On 13 JUL 2006 they came out with a report by Tom Warner on the involvement of Firtash and Mogilevich over the years:

In an April interview, the Financial Times asked Dmytro Firtash about evidence from official records in Russia, Israel and Cyprus of his connections to associates of Semyon Mogilevich, an alleged crime boss. Here are his explanations and, where available, those of others involved.

■June 2003 Mr Firtash replaced Galina Telesh (a woman with whom an Israeli police report said Mr Mogilevich had been in a relationship since the early 1990s) as director of the Cyprus-registered Agatheas Trading. Later, Agatheas became direct one-third owner of Highrock Holding, another Cyprus-registered company, where Mr Firtash had been director since 2001.

According to a Hungarian intelligence report obtained by the FT, Ms Telesh and Mr Mogilevich were married in 1995.

Mr Firtash accepted that Ms Telesh beneficially owned one-third of Highrock’s shares until June 2003.

However, Mr Firtash said he never knew Ms Telesh. He said his partner in Highrock was Igor Makarov, president of Itera, a Russian gas trader. Mr Firtash said his involvement as director and one-third owner of Highrock was set up by Yelena Yargina, his lawyer, while ownership of the remainder was arranged by Itera’s lawyers. “Yelena worked with Itera’s lawyers. “We don’t know about this,” Mr Firtash said.

Mr Firtash said that after he fell out with Mr Makarov in late 2002, he took full control of Highrock and “cleaned it up”, which eventually led to him taking over as director and owner of Agatheas in June 2003.

Mr Makarov, however, who replied to written questions through a spokesman, said neither he nor Itera had ever had any economic interest in Highrock or undertaken any role in setting up Highrock or its parent companies.

The FT asked Mr Firtash to provide evidence that Mr Makarov was involved in Highrock and was later shown part of a report by Kroll, the private investigator, which said Highrock was jointly established by Itera and Mr Firtash. However, the part of the report seen by the FT did not explain why Kroll believed Itera was involved in Highrock. Mr Firtash said his bank, Raiffeisen, commissioned the Kroll report.

■November 2002 Igor Fisherman, one of three associates indicted with Mr Mogilevich in the US in April 2003, registered a car with Moscow traffic police and gave as his personal contact a telephone number that rang to Highrock’s offices in Moscow, at Novy Arbat 14.

Mr Firtash said Mr Fisherman never worked at Novy Arbat 14 or came into the office. “I don’t know why he gave that telephone number, but I can say for certain he didn’t sit there and didn’t work there.”

■March 2002 Elmstad Trading, another Cyprus-registered company owned by Mr Firtash, transferred ownership in a Russian company called Rinvey in three roughly equal parts to Ms Telesh, Ms Yargina and Olga Zhunzhurova, who is Mr Fisherman’s wife, according to the US indictment. Rinvey then acquired stakes in Moscow perfume retailers. Ms Yargina co-owned Rinvey until April 2003 and continued to work for Mr Firtash throughout this period.

Mr Firtash acknowledged that Ms Yargina had joined Rinvey at his direction but he said he could not remember why he had asked her to do so. He said he had no involvement in Rinvey, its business and no ties to its other owners. “It’s not my business. It’s obvious I couldn’t do that business,” he said.

Mr Firtash said he asked Ms Yargina to end her involvement with Rinvey “when we were cleaning up”. He said she still works for him.

■November 2001 An Israeli lawyer called Zeev Gordon helped set up a Highrock subsidiary in Israel called Highrock Properties. From December 2002 until early 2004, Mr Gordon was nominal (paper) owner of one-quarter of Eural Trans Gas, a company beneficially owned by Mr Firtash. Mr Gordon told the FT he counted Mr Mogilevich as a client and a friend.

Mr Firtash said his relationship with Mr Gordon had nothing to do with Mr Gordon’s relationship with Mr Mogilevich. Mr Firtash said Mr Gordon had many Russian- speaking clients: “When I asked Gordon, ‘Why do you have to work with Mogilevich?’ he said ‘Listen Dima, it’s my business, just like you trade in gas. I’m a criminal lawyer’.”

Mr Gordon said in a telephone interview he had been asked by Mr Firtash to help with Highrock and Eural, that Mr Mogilevich denied any involvement in Eural Trans Gas or RosUkrEnergo and that he did not know whether Mr Mogilevich was involved in Highrock.

Yes, 'plausible deniability' just happening to share common ownership with an organized crime figure and his entourage! Purely coincidental that this happens over and over, I'm sure. And it is Novy Arbat that Mogilevich was picked up for, so it is not out of the range of the possible that Mr. Firtash will also have to answer a few questions on his work with the firm. It is also interesting to note that while doing barter trades in Turkmenistan, Mr. Firtash created 'single use companies' and would never claim ownership of them, which is not a way to deal with things in a transparent fashion.

Now for some of the stranger outward bound associations that Semion Mogilevich gets attached to... like, what is his connection to the 2002 Salt Lake City Olympics? Well, if you remember the figure-skating being *fixed* by a mafia member, you are hitting in the right ballpark. From The Komisar Scoop of 06 AUG 2002, we have this connection show up:

For Alimzhan Tokhtakhunov, 53, called Taivanchik (the Taiwanese) because of his Asian features, the plot to get an Olympic gold medal for Russia’s top figure-skaters was small-time.

The Russian mafia don who was arrested July 31 for fixing skating contests at the Salt Lake City summer Olympics reminds one of Al Capone, who was put away for tax evasion, because the government couldn’t get enough evidence against him for murder, extortion and criminal racketeering.

The Russian was caught by Italian financial police tapping his phones in a money-laundering investigation. They informed the U.S., which last month secretly indicted him on charges he bribed skating judges. The U.S. now has moved to extradite him. He could get up to 10 years in U.S. prison and $500,000 in fines if convicted of the current charges: conspiracy to commit bribery and conspiracy to commit wire fraud related to a sports event. It’s a chance to lock up a man who is guilty of a lot more than simply sports competition fraud.

[..]

The FBI had cited him in an August 1996 report prepared by its Intelligence Section, Organizational Intelligence Unit, and entitled “Semion Mogilevich Organization.” The report, excerpts of which these reporters obtained, said, “The Mogilevich Organization is tied to two other major OC [organized crime] groups - the Vyacheslav Ivankov Organization and the Solntsevskaya Organization - and also to Euroasian crime figures Monya Elson and Alimzhan Tokhtakhounov. Their operations and contacts overlap in some instances, as evidenced by meetings, joint investments, and silent partnerships in firms engaged in OC activity.” (In 1995, the FBI would arrest Ivankov for extortion in New York; he was convicted and sent to federal prison for 9 years and 7 months.)

Czech police reports said that Tokhtakhounov controlled Russian crime groups active in Western Europe and acted as intermediary for newly arrived criminal bosses. The Czech police rap sheet on him includes:

1991: Departure from the USSR for Germany where he organized illegal arms deals partly from the stock of the Soviet Army;

1992: A search of his house turns up the business card of known Russian mobster Semion Mogilevich;

1993: He moves to Paris to escape German police inquiries;

1994: He meets with Ivankov and other major Russian crime leaders in Vienna to discuss division of interests in Moscow casinos; in July, he hosts representatives of Russian and Uzbek organized crime groups on his yacht Saravona in the Mediterranean Sea.

In October, Tokhtakhunov meets in Tel Aviv with Mogilevich, Gigori Loutchansky, Solntsevo mafia boss Sergei Mikhailov, and a representative of Ukrainian president Leonid Kuchma, believed by western intelligence to be involved in illegal arms trafficking. They discussed dividing spheres of influence in the export of strategic raw materials.

He represents an export division of the Association of the 21st Century, Moscow, one of whose heads is alleged crime leader Yossif Kobzon.

1995: In April, failing to get a visa extension, he is deported from France.

1996-97: Western authorities suspect him of involvement of trafficking in drugs, arms and antiquities and of participation in extortion. His Israeli citizenship is cancelled when it is proved that he obtained it illegally, through a false marriage on the basis of false documents.

Among his contacts, Czech police listed Arkady Gaydamak, object of an international arrest warrant for illegal sale of weapons to Angola.

[..]

Di Nicholas in his letter said Loutchansky, “a leader of the Russian Mafia,” controls the French company Kama Trade, a laundering-network centerpiece. He said it linked to Nordex, which Loutchansky founded in Vienna in 1989 at the behest of the Communist “Old Guard” to move cash from looted state and party assets and later from crime activities. Loutchansky said through his London attorney that he had won libel actions against such charges. “It is completely untrue that I have been involved in the mafia, in money laundering or in any other criminal activity,” he said.

The prosecutor said Mogilevich, based in Budapest, was a source of dirty money from drug trafficking, prostitution, illegal commerce of precious objects and art, extortion and money laundering. He said Mogilevich is active in Los Angeles, Miami, Philadelphia and St. Diego as well as Moscow, Prague and Tel Aviv. British authorities identified $200 million that companies or individuals linked to Mogilevich shipped through the London office of BoNY in 1998-99.

The 1996 FBI report said Mogilevich was involved in “weapons trafficking, nuclear materials trafficking, prostitution, drug trafficking, dealing in precious gems, and money laundering.” It said he was active in the U.S., as well as the Czech Republic, Austria, Russia, the Ukraine, the U.K. France, Slovakia, and Israel. The FBI said the center of his financial operations was Arigon Ltd, registered in the Channel Islands and using banks in New York, Geneva, London and Stockholm. Front companies in the U.S. were FNJ Trade Management Corp. in Los Angeles and YBM Magnex in Newtown, Pa.

Yes, how a simple Mafioso can lead to such Big Mafioso via figure skating is really quite amazing. The recently arrested Mogilevich also had dealings with al Qaeda, as seen in this Security Affairs article of Fall 2005 - #9 by Jason Freier (webarchive cache here):

Mogilevich’s activities tell a similar story. Just before the attacks of 2001, the Ukrainian mobster emerged at the center of a European investigation into the arrest of an al-Qaeda-linked group in Paris. When apprehended in August 2001, the group had in its possession a suitcase containing uranium-235.15 Subsequent investigations into the incident have determined that the group attained the uranium via Mogilevich’s Ukraine-Marbella route-a transit corridor that, prior to September 11th, had been a favorite among transnational criminals and terrorists entering Europe from the Maghreb.16

Patterns of interaction

In its study of the subject, the U.S. Library of Congress found three broad patterns connecting terrorism and transnational crime in Europe.

1. Alliances for mutual benefit, in which terrorists enter agreements with transnational criminals solely to gain funding, without engaging directly in commercial activities or compromising their ideologically based mission;
2. Direct involvement of terror groups in organized crime, removing the middleman but maintaining the ideological premise of their strategy, and;
3. The replacement of ideology by profit as the main motive for operations.17

Al-Qaeda’s dealings with Mogilevich in Spanish Morocco and Bout in Liberia fall into the first category. In these instances, the cooperation has been based upon nothing more than mutual benefit, with neither group compromising its primary mission. The weapons traffickers, in short, view the terrorists as little more than clients, and business is business.

From the sublime to the supremely deadly in one shot, so to speak. When looking at someone like Dmitry Firtash, it is wise to remember that the money in the machine drives the entire affair, and there is a lot of money that shifts in the natural gas and other businesses that he is involved in. Thus, even as an intermediary to someone like Mogilevich makes him a very important person because of the extent of things that criminal enterprise is associated with.

When that pattern of companies having backers that don't want to be known appears time and again, this becomes an indicator that something needs to be looked at. Russia got hit by that *twice* with ETG and RUE, both, most likely, representing the exact, same individual behind Itera. This does not even begin to touch the extended holdings of Firtash or Mogilevich which stretch, cumulatively, all the way to China for Mogilevich and down to the nitty-gritty of real estate in Kiev for Firtash.

I thank my commentator cui-b0no for the posted information on Kiev, and I have been discussing with him the destruction of Kiev's historic buildings that have been surreptitiously destroyed by the likes of DF Group and others that now see 'development' ahead of preserving those things the city has designated as part of the cultural heritage of Kiev. How this happens on the small scale is *exactly* the same as on the large: corrupt officials willing to take money and look the other way while things go on. It doesn't matter if those individuals are running nuclear processing facilities or simple council members in a city, the basics are just the same.... save that the latter destroys our past and those things that connect us to it, while the former puts our future at risk. To those dealing in 'just the cash' without respect to ideology, trafficking in humans, compromised building permits, small arms and nuclear material is all equal.

When looking at the increasing economic savvy of groups like Hezbollah to compromise both 'white' and 'black' markets, the idea is that their existing power structure would not only be legitimized but expanded if something as simple as narcotics are made legal. M. Simon, also a wonderful commenter, put forward that moving such into the 'white world' was of benefit, while I put forward that it allows them to then expand further via laundering their funds to even more illicit and lucrative schemes. Russia, and the surrounding Nations coming out of the Communist Block, are the case in point, here: those running criminal enterprises have compromised large scale businesses to craft a unique and deadly system of laundering funds from some of the most profitable enterprises that one can work in. The reason that they are restricted by Nation States is that the outcomes of letting things like human slavery, narcotics trafficking and nuclear material sales go unchecked is a future made worse, not better, for the 'white world' investment in industry. With the ability to swindle $1 billion/year from a large scale gas transaction and then shift those funds across the board from real estate to other forms of trafficking, these Mafioso are not, necessarily, making a better life for those around them or the world at large.

They *are* making money, however, and truly willing to do whatever it takes to get more of that and the power that comes with it. These are not Carnegies or Rockefellers, nor even something remotely close the Gambino Family. These are ruthless thugs willing to put on suits to further some of the worst crimes imaginable on the face of the planet, and giving them legitimacy when they are willing to operate outside all bounds of Nation and law and, in fact, see themselves *above the law* puts them in a category very close to terrorism. They are not conducting Private War, but they sure, as hell, are supporting it on a global basis. This is not heading towards securing human liberty, but towards endangering it. While I do agree that things like drug use should be up to an individual to decide for themselves, I do start to draw the line at those supporting Private War through the promulgation of profits from such activities into illicit venues. As Russia and the surrounding ex-Communist Block Nations are proving: you can have lots of industrial support and still not be supporting society at *all*.

Playing upon personal vice that harms no one, is one thing.

Providing those seeking to bring down society and Nations with the means to do so is something thoroughly different.

And, currently, we are having a hard time convincing anyone that there is a difference between the two until some large number of people get killed... and then the idea is to look the other way and blame ourselves for the destructive hearts of others who are seeking our end. There is a reason I support the Law of Nations view to address this just like it did Piracy: it goes after those who support Private War as well as those who wage it. It is yet another tool in our National toolkit if we dare to find and use it.

So that we can address both those seeking to destroy our past, and our future.

Sphere: Related Content

The two party trainwreck

I have noticed, of late, that the two party system of America is starting to find itself on the same track in a head-on collision. To most this is a very worrying spectacle as the Democratic Party factions, ethnic groups, big money backers and such, head down a road towards huge tax increases, socialized medicine and putting their nose into everyone's lives to tell you exactly how to live the *right way*. Well, far be it from me to complain if blacks are set against women and hispanics, if old are set against young, and those wanting free goodies will find themselves, soon, very soon, trying to explain to a bureaucrat why they need their daily medication and then finding they will not be given enough of it. And those who *don't* want the free goodies, but want to remove the borders will soon find those on the low end of the economic spectrum fighting them because their jobs have gone to low cost, illegal immigrants!

Just like the Republicans want to do!

The Republican Party has finally decided that it can do without concepts of small government and has decided to attack its own business factions with the security faction, which is aided by the Christian faction wanting big government largesse for everything social. Just like the Left! And since there is common accord to removing the borders, removing sovereignty and needing to expand the government endlessly, we will see the specter of wanting to prohibit gambling, booze and other societal no-no's just like was done in the early era when government found it could issue tax stamps for marijuana and then not PRINT ANY. Making just asking for the stamp for trade, and thus having possession of the actual substance, a CRIME. Lets do *that* to 'internet gambling' then 'sexually explicit sites' and then hand over all that need for enforcement to the thought police (which will be a bipartisan group of schizophrenics swinging between finding those wanting the soon to be outlawed cheeseburgers from the Left with the porn criminals outlawed on the Right).

In case the D and the R party fanatics have missed this, you are both asking for the EXACT SAME THINGS.

Your candidates for President are seeking to liquidate society in the name of government.

Is this a cause for worry, as the federal budget will swell by another trillion or two in the next four years? You betchya!

Are there any choices between the 'progressives' give human rights out without accountability Left and the give up sovereignty and Nation and look at those outlaws of Nations as mere criminals and give them sanctuary within the law? No, not a single dime's worth of difference.

If you push *Iraq* up, I will point out and have been saying for nearly two years, that the trendlines for that conflict have been going well and the US has performed the impossible of getting through a COIN 'half-life' faster than any other Nation in history, bar none save those regimes that just executed everyone it didn't like. If the US goes to hell in 2009-2010 because of the asinine things the two parties want *done* to the Nation, Iraq has a very good chance of surviving... even odds by the time the US election rolls around.

Do I want to see the Iraqis deserted? NO I DO NOT.

Will John McCain bring in hundreds of terrorists into the US judicial system so their lawyers get access to classified data for civil criminal trials or are *set free*? Yes, yes they will just like the D party. If you think Lynne Stewart with the Blind Sheikh was a problem, imagine tens if not hundreds of lawyers paid for by CAIR and other groups getting access to that kind of data. I would, in truth, dearly like the US to survive the next four years, but the two parties seem to have chosen airy and impossible ideals that are contrary to cold, hard facts on the ground. In doing that Sen. John McCain will go contrary to the one man in his party who matters: Abraham Lincoln and how he viewed the activity we call 'terrorism'. The concept of 'summary judgement as highway robbers or pirates' on the battlefield of those days had one meaning and one meaning only: execution. Today that would mean just put them in jail for LIFE. We are a hell of a lot more civilized than poor old Honest Abe, but can you find a Republican that will actually back one of their FOUNDERS?

Hell, no.

So much for 'conservative'.

It will be a very, very interesting trainwreck to watch, as both parties so confuse government and society that they think government *creates* society, not the other way around.

If you have had it up to here (gesturing somewhere above the forehead but below the ceiling) with government trying to do *good* instead of just enforce the laws, I have a grand suggestion that will also tie up the legal system no end: help to start a Class Action Lawsuit against Social Security demanding that individual citizens have complete access to their 'contributed' funds at any time. Point out any and all cases of disability where bureaucrats have over-ridden doctors, and also point out that government was not set up to provide for our retirement nor to MANDATE an age to retire at: that, too, is a civil liberty reserved for the People under Amendments IX and X. Yes, make it a Civil Rights suit at the EXACT, SAME TIME.

Together those two (and some minimal payment to lawyers like 0.1% of all Social Security funds 'held' by the government) will sop up every ambulance chaser, civil rights activists and throw the largest monkey wrench in the two party system as *both* use this to threaten and cajole older Americans to the point where threatening anything like *accountability* to the system will bring the two parties *together* and demonstrate that they are, now, one single party. Plus, as an upside, you just might get your hands back ON your money.

What? You say the money isn't there? That this isn't a 'trust fund' nor 'insurance' but a cash redistribution system.... just like some marvelous 'health insurance' concept would be?

Good.

So while the trainwreck is starting to rev up, it is time for all good patriots to make sure they are in a safe community, stock up on ammo and see about calling their lawyer. If these twits want to use the legal system for terrorists, then it should be very amenable to getting OUR MONEY BACK. And as the two parties of Incumbistan pull out sob stories, the other side, being the people, can bring out stories of payments refused, forgotten or over-ridden by bureaucrats.

And if the government goes insolvent because of that? Well, it will have to start prioritizing things, now wouldn't it? And see if it could find any lawyers left that are *not* tied up with the massive dual lawsuits. Remember, just *one* has to win to get your money back from the government... and those who *want* to stay with a government run system *can* and those who *don't* would not have to pay for it. For Liberty is YOU deciding what to do with YOUR money for health, well being, retirement, investing and savings.

Or squandering it on that home theater set-up you have been aching for.

That is the basis of Liberty: you decide and *live* with your decisions.

Government bailing out idiots who cannot figure out an 'adjustable rate home mortgage' deserve exactly what is coming to them. Ditto on 'economic stimulus'. You want 'stimulus'? Then let folks get their money back from Social Security and do as they please with it and end the automatic 'deduction' from payroll.

At the very least break out the popcorn and watch as both parties justify bigger government, more intrusive government, higher taxes, more bureaucrats that you will have to answer to and see just how many terror attacks we will get once the treasure mine of data is handed over to terrorist supporting lawyers.

Worried about Iraq? Yes.

Damned worried about the US? Oh, yes, very much so.

Iraq just might make it through without us... they may *have to* at this point no matter *who wins the Presidency*.

Safe community for yourself and loved ones, security for same, lawyers and popcorn.

Because I remember the last time this happened and what happened after that:

Some writers have so confounded society with government,
as to leave little or no distinction between them;
whereas they are not only different, but have different origins.
Society is produced by our wants, and government by our wickedness;
the former promotes our POSITIVELY by uniting our affections,
the latter NEGATIVELY by restraining our vices. The one
encourages intercourse, the other creates distinctions.
The first a patron, the last a punisher.

Do you?

Sphere: Related Content

Some unsolicited advice for the Democratic nominee

Just as I have given advice to the Republican party on how they could have made the past couple of years a fruitful exercise, the other party gets its chance.

Fair is fair, after all.

Now, lets say that you were in the shoes of the winner of the Democratic primaries and you had to face Sen. McCain.  What are the easiest ways to attack his record, gain MSM glamour and befuddle the population? 

First you need to firm up the few traditional lines that can garner independent support, so first up is the old, tried and true, abortion question.  No matter if it is Obama or Clinton this is an easy one to do.  By casting Sen. McCain in the mold of nasty big government out to restrict 'rights', you can cast yourself in the 'pro-liberty' and 'pro-rights' light that the MSM so adores shining on those taking up the right to choose.  Sen. McCain will have the choice of either waffling (and then it is time for a lovely ad campaign of what Sen. McCain said before and now) or firming up his stance and getting a few more conservative voters... which you will not be getting anyways.  In doing that, while he will be showing his 'character' you have already cast Sen. McCain as a restricter of rights and kowtowing to conservatives on this issue.  Instant pick-up of independents that may have been waffling on decisions!  You can then pile on with the McCain-Feingold law and point out how ill-advised it was and that the SCOTUS has struck down major portions of it as unconstitutional.  There is nothing like having a lawmaker in your sights that has pressed for unconstitutional laws to be passed on free speech.

Second is to hit at fiscal policy.  You can, as Obama has already done, laud Sen. McCain's votes to not implement tax cuts and to make cutting taxes harder, if not impossible, and then show his *lack* of 'character' by waffling to conservatives on the issue.  By putting forward a 'sensible policy' of taxing to cover expenditures (never mind you are about to add 50% on to the federal budget with a 'health care initiative') Sen. McCain can rightly and easily be painted into the fiscally clueless and uncertain of what economics actually *is*.

Third you, as the candidate, have to be prepared to actually alienate the flagging anti-war protestors, but also leave an 'out' so that you don't do so totally.  By being utterly venal and yet looking like you are willing to 'give the Iraqis one last chance' before pulling out, you can absolutely and utterly blindside Sen. McCain.  How do you do this?  Looking at Iraq in an objective manner, the Parliament has already passed a major 'benchmark' and shown signs of understanding that it needs to get its act together.  The armed forces have al Qaeda on the run and the Iraqi Army will have run a major operation with no coalition help to speak of in Mosul.  Thus you can invent a few benchmarks that are pretty sure to be passed but have not passed *yet*.  Which ones you use depends on the timing of the election, but currently good ones would be:

1. Provincial election laws - These are necessary to get fully functioning Provinces with democratically elected governments.  There is a damned good chance that by mid-2009 this will be done, so an easy one to pick up.
2. Provincial elections - After the laws come the elections and you can come out in support of 'democratic ideals' and say that your Administration will even help to stand them up and run them!  The elections will be soon after the laws are in place, say 3-6 months.
3. Petroleum profit sharing agreement - The government is already doing this programmatically, and saying that the Iraqi Parliament will have a year or something to pass this, which will most likely come around the time of the Provincial elections, you get a pure winner.

The point is not to give any credit to the Republicans and you can tar Sen. McCain with the tropes of a 'poorly run Republican war' and that Sen. McCain only wants 'more of the same' while you are offering a final chance to Iraq and to help them 'close the deal' which Republicans just haven't been able to do with this conflict that has taken longer than WWII.  You explain that you are holding an 'olive branch' across the aisle to give the Republicans a 'graceful exit' when asked about your *own* past positions and the MSM will eat that up like 5 year olds in a candy store with their mom's credit card in hand.  Plus, since all of these are things that are expected to happen relatively soon, you can show yourself to be 'knowledgeable' about the situation (even if you don't know the differences between Basra and Anbar) and putting forward that *you* will do something the Republicans just haven't been able to do.  For Sen. McCain to respond he will have to hew to his line and the moment he does so you can say that his continuous calling for 'more troops' makes him sound like a French general from WWI where just a few more troops in a frontal assault will win the day *this time*.  You will offer diplomacy a few economic carrots, some easy to get benchmarks and then be able to both *declare victory* in your term in office which you will have *predicted* and shown that a Democrat is more capable than a Republican in this 'Nation building' area.  And since you still live the absolute and total withdrawal option *open* and can always wiggle once in office, you shouldn't lose too many of the anti-war twits. 

Who are they going to vote for?  McCain?  Not much to lose there and well off-set by independents.  Plus you get the sweet deal of effectively removing Iraq as a 'plus' for Sen. McCain and making him look as a tired supporter of a tired policy, while you offer something 'new' and 'fresh'.  And can you imagine how whiny Sen. McCain will sound if he tries to *protest* these relatively fair characterizations of him and the policy that has been going on?  And if he tries to tack LEFT you can undercut him by pulling up past quotes, votes and such so that no matter how much he tries to show he had a 'different way' he just sounds like a complainer that can't even figure out what his current job is (not that you ever bothered to figure it out either).

No matter which way Sen. McCain turns as a candidate to show 'skill, experience, and character', you can easily find his support for things to the contrary either in his past (like his early vote not to cut earmarks when he was a Representative) or question his ability to actually form a policy decision that is not contradicted by his previous record (like his work to cut the DoD to get a 'peace dividend' and then complain that more troops aren't available for Iraq after they had already been cut out of the armed forces with his *help*).  And since you have NO record to speak of, you can pretty well make any noises about 'control of defense spending' while 'protecting America' with something like a few more base closings or somesuch.  The more Sen. McCain hems and haws about 'different era' or 'different times', the more he begins to look like a fossil in the Senate... which he is.

This is a no-lose proposition! 

Any point he brings up has almost certainly been contradicted by his previous actions or his attempts to kiss-up to conservatives in the Republican party.  You, as the nominee running against him and relatively free of such things, can be assured of no effective counter attacks and each of your attacks, no matter how minor, being played up by the MSM and showing how effective a campaigner and leader you are.  And each one of those attacks will be a tweak to the Republican party to point out how incapable and incompetent they are in choosing candidates that have so badly managed their political positions over time that they stand for nothing save themselves.

Of course, you are doing the exact, same thing, but don't have the baggage to contend with, yet.  Lucky, you!

And as al Qaeda makes it a point to wait until a new President is *elected* before attacking (look at Clinton in '93 and Bush in '01), you can rest assured that they will do nothing to bobble your plans by actually attacking during the campaign.

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The Three Factions of the Republican Party

While the Democratic Party has been endeavoring to factionalize its supporters over the past 30 years, amongst various racial, ethnic and social lines, and using the bonanza of government programs to pay off each in turn, the Republicans coalesced on a Cold War concept of uniting various strands of conservatism that started with Barry Goldwater and reached a peak with Ronald Reagan. Just as the Democratic Party has been working to factionalize itself, and the US population, the Republicans have slowly been decohering along differential lines in its three main strains. Today those three main strains are apparent at first glance at the leader board:

1) Security Conservatives (aka NeoCons or MilCons) - This faction represents the concept of American strength abroad as represented by its armed forces. Traditionally this has been the 'glue' that held the Republican Party together during the last stages of the Cold War, and has been one to justify expenses for the armed forces in securing the Nation abroad against attack. This faction has traditionally lacked three things to give it broader appeal within the Republican Party, on its own:

• Fiscal Policy - The ability to tax and spend has led this faction as the main deficit groups in the last stages of the Cold War only to be outdone by Democratically emplaced 'entitlements'.
• Social Policy - A tin ear has been turned, repeatedly, to the Social Conservatives inside the party in the justification that if you can't defend the Nation then there will be no society to defend.
• Domestic Policy - Here the SecCons fail greatly either assenting to liberal 'entitlements' so as to appease those groups or seeking Moderate or Liberal solutions to social problems so as to return concentration to Security.

Taken as a whole, this set of views plays out as: Security Hawks, Social Moderate to Liberal, and Fiscally Liberal.

2) Fiscal Conservatives - This group has represented the old 'Rockefeller Republicans' and big business faction in the Republican Party. Their money still holds sway in the party and they utilize that to push tax reform forward, but put little effort in following up concepts of minimizing government. So long as government 'growth' is moderate, the need to cut back on it is minimized. Additionally this group does not respect the need to enforce trade law abroad or security at home or abroad as its goal is the expansion of trade and wealth, not enforcing security. Thus it gets three main problems that does not allow it wider appeal:

• Social Policy - Like the SecCons this tends towards Moderate to Liberal, on the justification that society produces business and government is put in place to ensure that society governs the Nation. Further, expansion of trade is given as a problematic point of expanding liberty while, in fact, it just expands trade and not social ideals.
• Security Policy - As the military is a fixed asset concept, it needs only maintenance costs and is far too expensive to use abroad. A sound economy is driven by a large workforce, thus security is not a concern either at home or abroad to Fiscal Conservatives.
• Domestic Policy - The FiCons oppose expansion of 'entitlements' beyond the limits of what the economy can provide and would, generally, prefer more money to stay at home for investment rather than squandered by government. That said reduced security at home means seeking socially Moderate or Liberal plans to appease factions of the population.

Taken as a whole this group is: Fiscally Conservative, Socially Moderate to Liberal, and Security Moderate to Liberal.

3) Social Conservatives - This group represents the Socially Conservative section of society that falls into the categories of Christian Conservatives, or those adhering to the general precepts of Christianity in a fundamentalist form, and Traditionalist Conservatives who view government as the problem to society, not a solution to social ills. These two groups are having the largest shake-out at this time as the Christian Social Conservatives are making a play for big government ideals and taxation while the Traditionalist Conservatives are finding they cannot support those views and are walking elsewhere this election. The peace made between these groups in the late 1970's has held for decades, but the candidate choices are rending the Christian Conservatives from the Traditionalist Conservatives. These splits may be the ones that determine the course of the Republican Party as the Traditionalist Conservatives are, literally, threatening to walk out of the Party. Here is the schism going on:

• Social Policy - Christian Conservatives are pressing not only for a SoCon policy, but one that shifts beyond the accords made at the founding, such as separation of Church and State so as to have a Westphalian Nation that abides by that greatest of all Peace Treaties. Traditionalist Conservatives, adhering to values of hearth and home and keeping government *out* want nothing to do with Christian SoCons seeking big government backing for social policy. By putting forward and solidly backing a pro-interventionist, pro-big government candidate, Christian SoCons are walking out on the Traditionalists.
• Fiscal Policy - As with Social Policy, the Fiscal Policy of the Christian SoCons is now one that, to Traditionalists, is indistinguishable from Liberal ones. While there is some commonality with FiCons, the Traditionalists do not support expansive trade regimes without some societal backing and evidence that the message of liberty gets through via trade. To date the FiCons cannot show that, and their backing of non-national groups offends Traditionalists. Christian SoCons do seek some common cause with the SecCons, as their fiscal views on spending, although not on programmatics, tend to run together. If SecCons move towards a more Christian Conservative view, but keep the expansive taxing and spending systems so that military provisions are made, there can be some accord here, although SecCons have not had much to do with Christian SoCons due to larger problems of selling policy Nationally.
• Security Policy - Here there is some accord to SecCons, but there are limits that Traditionalists see on the use of force by the Nation. Traditionalists do not hew to an expansionist military policy and prefer policing and ensuring that few wars are had and that they are completed. Christian SoCons also see the need for few wars, due to matters of faith, but for protection of home via policing, this is only done in social enforcement venues. Of the splits over immigration, that of Christian SoCons and Traditionalist SoCons is the greatest as the Christians view those coming in as potential converts while the Traditionalists see them as not only law breakers but general scofflaws. This basic accord that had been going on here to generally look for a 'solution' has come to nothing for two decades.

This group, by being in a schismatic mode is splitting along Fiscal and Security lines with the Christians, by and large, ending up on the Liberal end of Fiscal and Security issues and the Traditionalists ending up in the Conservative end of Security and Fiscal issues.

What is fascinating is that the SoCon schism is now putting an earthquake through the SecCons and FiCons as a basic and fundamental rift is opening inside the Republican Party. From 2006-2007 the drive by SecCons and FiCons to actually get an amnesty going has so offended the Traditionalist values of law and order, that this ideal is now coalescing an admixture not seen before in the Republican Party and it, currently, has no representative as the party itself is in flux. Each of the major candidates, at this point in time, represent these factions, but are now caught in the seismic upheaval first felt as an earthquake and soon to produce a rift.

Decades of being in government and even having control of the White House and both Houses of Congress for *years* and then coming up with policy anathema to the law and order Traditionalists are sending the basic message out: What good is this party if it will NOT KEEP ITS WORD?

The SecCons, FiCons and Christian SoCons are hemming and hawing, trying to say that its about candidates. The fissures are not candidate driven solely, and these candidates represent the problems that Conservatives have had nearly 30 years to work out, and have not done so. The topping on it to the Traditionalists is the huge current size of government, expansionist social programs, lax border security and not enforcing the laws of the land. The Traditionalists understand the need for wars to punish enemies, but then seek to expand liberty thereafter not by making those enemies dependant but by teaching them how to be free. The Traditionalists have seen the other parts of the Party mouth these concepts for nearly a generation and the few tax 'reductions' and the limiting of welfare are their only scanty leavings as the government has continued to expand and erode society.

What has been interesting to see is that the Traditionalist SoCons have made some inroads into the FiCons and SecCons, even getting the message across to a number of Christian SoCons that placing the values of charity and forgiveness at home and *not* in the government is essential to society. That bit of work done for these decades has gotten stronger purchase even as the candidates, in Incumbistanian tradition, have remained the same. The Traditionalists may be seen as fed up with Incumbistan and its backers.

To get a 'unity candidate' the actual factions must unify around something, and the Traditionalist voters are not seeing that their support of the Party has gotten them anything save more and bigger government trying to do 'good' which, to them, means doing only a few things 'well' and leaving the rest up to the People. As that has not happened for 30 years, it is unlikely to happen *now* as each faction has become entrenched in its views. The other factions should worry a bit, however, as the Traditionalists are the faction of Washington, Jefferson, Franklin and Paine. They formed a Nation and their followers aim to *keep it*. Thrusting them out of the Republican Party may very well spell the end of two-party politics in America.

And the start of something wholly different.

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America's other Army

From Strategypage - America's Secret Army

Most American men are unaware that they are in the army, or, as described by the Militia Act of 1903 (popularly known as the Dick Act), the unorganized militia. The main purpose of the Dick Act was to sort out over a century of confusion over the relationship between the state militias (now known as the National Guard) and the federal forces. The 1903 law was the first of many laws hammered out to create the system now in use. But in the last century, not much attention has been paid to the little known "unorganized militia" angle. This force contained every able-bodied adult male who was not a part of the organized militia. The 1903 law legalized the right not to be part of the organized militia, because a 1792 law had mandated that every adult male be part of the militia. The problem was, most men didn't want to be bothered. To deal with this, state governors created two classes of militia; paid (who trained and were armed and organized into units) and unorganized (everyone else.)

The militia is a state institution, and predates the founding of the United States. It harkens back to the ancient tribal practice, where every able bodied male turned out to defend the tribe. During the colonial period, this really only meant anything in frontier areas, where hostile Indians sometimes required the use an armed militia force. In the late 18th century, only about ten percent of American families possessed a firearm, usually a musket or shotgun. Weapon ownership was much more common on the frontier, and in more settled areas, men with muskets often joined the organized militia more to be with their hunting buddies, than to prepare for war. The urban militia was sometimes used as a paramilitary force, when there was civil disorder or some kind of natural disaster. During the American Revolution, the militia served mainly as a police force, especially since about a third of the population were loyalists.

Currently, the "unorganized militia" is expected to come up when the Supreme Court again considers the laws pertaining to the right to possess firearms. Many localities have outlawed or regulated that right, which is guaranteed (but not precisely spelled out) in the Constitution. Nevertheless, if you are an adult American male between the ages of 17 and 45, you are part of the militia, whether you knew it or not, whether or not you want to be, and whether or not you are armed. Just so you know.

This is fully in line with my view of the rights of the citizens and the States as seen in multiple previous posts. In the first of those I looked directly at the issue of these two pieces of the Constitution. While everyone with weapons looks at Amendment II, it is the Article I, Section 10 escape clause that allows the mustering of the militia by the States when invaded or in imminent Danger that will not admit delay. Perhaps of all the 'civil rights' we have and the least *used* or supported by the population, the right to defense of the State is one that gets forgotten.

Almost completely these days.

In that forgetting, however, we forget one of the deepest roots of our democracy, which goes back, not to the Greek but to the Nordic lands, and their views of exactly who would rule and how accountability was meted out. That was via the traditional form of democracy known as the Thing (or ting) done at the local level and then the Althing done at a proto-National level. A Thing was a social gathering (usually to renew ties during spring) and it was also a 'settling of accounts' under the law. In Sweden, and elsewhere in the Nordic climes, the King soon came to realize that the crown may rest upon his head, but only by the assent of the Althing. While still aristocratic in nature, the Things allowed, at the lowest level, for local Chieftans and lawgivers to reconcile the community with the rest of its neighbors and the King and State as a whole. The power of the Thing was the community that backed it: every able bodied man.

This, in its rawest of forms, is the ability to put government in check by the People. The fealty of a given ruler or King would be *to* that assembly and the King would need to act in accord with it to continue ruling. That basic of all pacts between rulers and the ruled would migrate through the British Isles and mix with other forms of local governing via the Scots and Irish and infuse itself more southwards into England. The Nordic rulers of England would change that common view into the Common Law, and the fealty of a King to the Assembly or Parliament is the exact, same as the King to the Althing. In the US the local Chieftans would be represented by the individual State and the ruling group would be the federal government. That same tie via the Common Law which itself comes from the Norse exists, to this day, in the unorganized militia language, which the States may call upon to defend the State when the federal government is not able or not *willing* to respond to invasion or Danger.

While ancient it is a sacred bond and perhaps the most sacred to any people who consider themselves to be free: they can hold government absolutely accountable to themselves and dissolve that government whenever they want and that is backed by force of arms at the very last and yet most important times when governments seek to remove freedom from their People.

If you try to wish this away or regulate all arms out of the hand of individuals, you no longer have a free society: you have a tyranny.

Even worse, if you try to suppress the teaching of arms along with removing them, you then encounter the ancient martial arts that unarmed individuals may perform. Any move to stop all teaching of arms is something that can and will be resisted as it is uncivilized to wish for government that is unhindered by any limit or any accountability. Remove the last limit and then government may do as it pleases as the People have become slaves.

In an era where individuals practice Private War and keep such war-making in the shadows until they strike, unlike civilized armies and Nations, the only defense the population can ever be assured of is: themselves. That, too, is backed by the Law and the Constitution, not only given in the language, above, but in the English Common Law before the United States was even formed, and also within the Law of Nations... not that you will ever be taught these things in school.

There appears to be some work going on the last couple of generations to help Americans forget what it means to have and hold Freedom by using their Liberty to safeguard it. Let us hope that we do not have to put that faulty memory to the test any time soon, as we just might fail the test of 1776 these days... because grasping and holding freedom is ancient.

And necessary.

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Not like 'Scoop' Jackson in my book

Remarks by Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz on receiving the Henry M. "Scoop" Jackson distinguished service award in 2002 (JINSA Online -- 2002 Jackson Award Remarks - Defending the 'Ancient Dream of Freedom' ):

In the Middle East, Scoop Jackson saw the evils of terrorism written in blood on streets. Indeed, he could say with justification that he recognized the problem of terrorism long before others. In July 1979 in Jerusalem, Scoop said: "I believe that international terrorism is a modern form of warfare against liberal democracies. I believe that the ultimate but seldom stated goal of these terrorists is to destroy the very fabric of democracy. I believe," Senator Jackson went on, "that it is both wrong and foolhardy for any democratic state to consider international terrorism to be 'someone else's' problem.... Liberal democracies must acknowledge that international terrorism is a 'collective problem.'"

[..]

Scoop rejected the labels that people tried to attach to him. I think I know how he feels. [Laughter] "I'm not a hawk or a dove," he once said. "I just don't want my country to be a pigeon." [Laughter]

And Sen. McCain on Henry 'Scoop' Jackson with Larry King on 12 OCT 2002:

KING: Your whole family was military.
MCCAIN: Yes. Sure.
KING: Grandfather, father.
MCCAIN: Yes.
KING: What took you into political realm?
MCCAIN: Well, my injuries from the Vietnam War curtailed my career. I may have, may have been an admiral, but I would not have been able to be eligible for the higher levels...
KING: Because of the injury?
MCCAIN: Yeah.
KING: Would your goal have been (UNINTELLIGIBLE) four-star?
MCCAIN: Follow in -- sure, it would have been to follow in my father and grandfather's footsteps. And I worked in the Navy Senate liaison office, a little office in the basement of the Russell building, and I got to be friends with people like Bill Cohen (ph) and Gary Hart, John Towers (ph), Scoop Jackson (ph).
KING: All kinds of political venues.
MCCAIN: Yeah, yeah. They had one thing in common, and that was national security and defense issues. That's how I came in contact -- I traveled with them, I got to know them, and I got to respect and admire them.
KING: Was Scoop Jackson (ph) too?
MCCAIN: Oh, Scoop Jackson (ph) was a genius (ph).
KING: Now, there was a liberal who was a hawk in, militarily, liberal in every other aspect.
MCCAIN: Yeah. I think you could argue that during a period of time when a great self-doubt in America, following the Vietnam War, Scoop Jackson (ph) was a steadfast Cold warrior, and I mean that in the finest sense. He was also one of the strongest supporters of the state of Israel when they were threatened, and a civil rights advocate. I also admired him because he had a great world view. Scoop Jackson (ph) had a great view of...
KING: Would he have been a good president?
MCCAIN: Yeah, you know, but Scoop (ph) could never -- his problem was that he had trouble relating. In other words, he was a great thinker, a great man personally, incredibly attractive, but he didn't do well with crowds.

Scoop Jackson would have a large influence on the Republican party via Jeane Kirkpatrick, Bill Bennet and Paul Wolfowitz... what some call 'neocons' of one sort or another. And as some have pointed to Sen. McCain falling into the Scoop Jackson mode one must ask: in what way is that? Sen. Jackson had a moral stance of America at heart, but it was of Americans: he was a backer of Big Labor and Big Government, but only in those ways he thought either could positively benefit Americans. While taking a hard stance against the USSR he would not do so with China, and demonstrate a quixotic understanding of Communist totalitarianism: there were Communists he opposed and those that he would endure. Sen. McCain has voted for Big Government in ways that Sen. Jackson would approve of, also: in the Clean Water Bill, 1984 Civil Rights Act, and support of the Legal Services Corporation. Unlike Sen. Jackson, Sen. McCain had some problems calling a tyrant a tyrant in the form of Manuel Noriega. And while Sen. McCain talks a good game on military affairs, Sen. Jackson understood that Presidents must be limited in the discretionary use of the armed forces, especially in non-vital areas like 'peace keeping' where no US vital interest is at stake. There Sen. McCain differs in seeing no problem with granting a President that use, while Sen. Jackson understood that the military must be backed to the hilt when exposed to danger and when Presidents do that in a way to hurt the military, then there must be accountability by Congress for 'discretionary' deployments. Here the problems in Bosnia and Congress being unwilling to fund that OR hold President Clinton accountable would lead to two US Army Divisions falling to the lowest readiness level ever seen since Vietnam in 1999.

So while Sen. McCain may aspire to the socially liberal areas of Sen. Jackson, those dealing with military affairs fall short. Sen. Jackson was more than willing to see money spent to defend the Nation and, as he died, the existential threat of terrorism would be striking home in Beirut. This would not lead anyone concerned about such a threat to see a 'peace dividend' unlike Sen. McCain who was more than willing to cash in on that. Sen. Jackson, however, a staunch advocate and ally of Big Labor might have had some problems with NAFTA, but would have voted with McCain on the 1983 bill not to limit earmarks, of which he was a fan. On something like the Chemical Weapons Convention, Sen. Jackson had demonstrated that he put sovereignty and defense above treaties, and would likely have voted against that as an unconstitutional constraint on the US while Sen. McCain would vote for it.

It really isn't fair to Sen. Jackson to compare Sen. McCain's liberal views to his: Sen. Jackson took a principled stand for the Nation that, while liberal, is understandable and supporting the Nation and its sovereignty. Sen. McCain obviously does not have those interests at heart, or is willing to vote for things that are unconstitutional so he can show how 'good' he is on those issues, if only the pesky constitution didn't get in the way of them.

My own Jacksonian views hew more to the rough and pioneering ones of Andrew Jackson, moderated by some of those views of Theodore Roosevelt and only on those of defense and sovereignty of 'Scoop' Jackson, though much tougher on China but with equal views on terrorism. Apparently Ronald Reagan was able to make the 'sale' of small government and less intrusion of government so that the population could get equal protection under the law, just as Republicans were ready to demonstrate that they would not govern that way. I can, actually, understand those that would seek to enforce sovereignty, defend the Nation and its workers from the border on outwards against hostile arms and predatory trade, see terrorism as an existential threat and recognize the need to confront *that* across the board. Growing up in the Rust Belt, I got to see, first hand, the problems of Big Labor and reduced industrial production and efficiency and how that hurt the US. So I really can't say that I would support such Big Labor views, although I do understand where they grow from: the time to prune the views down and let Big Labor stand on its own without federal help is long past. Just as it is for Big Business. Just as President Jackson put it in the Bank Veto message of 10 JUL 1832:

It is to be regretted that the rich and powerful too often bend the acts of government to their selfish purposes. Distinctions in society will always exist under every just government. Equality of talents, of education, or of wealth can not be produced by human institutions. In the full enjoyment of the gifts of Heaven and the fruits of superior industry, economy, and virtue, every man is equally entitled to protection by law; but when the laws undertake to add to these natural and just advantages artificial distinctions, to grant titles, gratuities, and exclusive privileges, to make the rich richer and the potent more powerful, the humble members of society the farmers, mechanics, and laborers who have neither the time nor the means of securing like favors to themselves, have a right to complain of the injustice of their Government. There are no necessary evils in government. Its evils exist only in its abuses. If it would confine itself to equal protection, and, as Heaven does its rains, shower its favors alike on the high and the low, the rich and the poor, it would be an unqualified blessing. In the act before me there seems to be a wide and unnecessary departure from these just principles.

Nor is our Government to be maintained or our Union preserved by invasions of the rights and powers of the several States. In thus attempting to make our General Government strong we make it weak. Its true strength consists in leaving individuals and States as much as possible to themselves in making itself felt, not in its power, but in its beneficence; not in its control, but in its protection; not in binding the States more closely to the center, but leaving each to move unobstructed in its proper orbit.

Experience should teach us wisdom. Most of the difficulties our Government now encounters and most of the dangers which impend over our Union have sprung from an abandonment of the legitimate objects of Government by our national legislation, and the adoption of such principles as are embodied in this act. Many of our rich men have not been content with equal protection and equal benefits, but have besought us to make them richer by act of Congress. By attempting to gratify their desires we have in the results of our legislation arrayed section against section, interest against interest, and man against man, in a fearful commotion which threatens to shake the foundations of our Union. It is time to pause in our career to review our principles, and if possible revive that devoted patriotism and spirit of compromise which distinguished the sages of the Revolution and the fathers of our Union. If we can not at once, in justice to interests vested under improvident legislation, make our Government what it ought to be, we can at least take a stand against all new grants of monopolies and exclusive privileges, against any prostitution of our Government to the advancement of the few at the expense of the many, and in favor of compromise and gradual reform in our code of laws and system of political economy....

Too bad Sen. McCain never sought hard ethics reform in Congress to sideline those taking money from the rich and powerful business and lobbying groups. Because setting rules, there, appears to be harder than removing the right to free speech by the People. It is much easier to secure the vested interests of the rich and powerful and quash the rights of the relatively middle class and poor, apparently.

If you are a reformer.

And that is something that Sen. Jackson never sought to do, going after the rights of the People. Perhaps a bit nasty in the Army-McCarthy hearings, but then that *was* against his fellow Congrescritters Upon the Hill. Something Sen. McCain cannot and will not do.

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America's stance in the world and the next President

Today the US is in a time of change not only internally, but externally. Many of the forces of politics, religion and economics will be outside of those that have been handled in the post-Cold War era or previously during the Cold War. Many of these items are familiar, but have been 'back-burnered' during this political campaign season and for much of the past 15 years beyond that. Those pots, shoved off to the side on steady heat, have started to boil over badly, and America, as she ever has, now comes to some fateful decisions about the concepts of liberty, freedom and democracy in an ever changing world.

Back Burner #1 - Transnational Institutions

The basic Cold War and post-Cold War economic accords (G8, WTO, NAFTA) have demonstrated that in a complex global situation, that putting third parties into play where stakes go beyond simple talks, have made the world a worse and deadlier place. If Nations do not abide by these organizational decrees, they abrogate them, and each of these treaty concepts has major faults and Nations within them unwilling to do anything to reach agreement on their problems. Some of these problems include:

1. Russia - In the post-Soviet world the chaos in Russia put in place an industrial concept that has devolved into one of the most worrying and corrosive the West has seen. While the USSR was an ideological and nuclear threat, current day Russia serves as a means for tripartite industrial ownership between the State, Private Business and Organized Crime. Almost directly 1/3 to each in many cases. This causes a major problem with banking and finance as industries are used to launder money from the drug trade, international human trafficking, international prostitution, regional pedophilia rings, and arms shipments to embargoed Nations, terrorists and organized crime groups. None of the major trade treaty organizations holds Russia to account for this, nor for lax banking that puts these funds into the global monetary system for further downstream transactions for illegal groups. These organizations could not properly handle or address BCCI, and are still trying to puzzle out the penetration Bank of New York money transfer system by the Red Mafia, more than 8 years after it was discovered.
2. China - While a large trade partner due to its size, China has a problem of using unstructured debt to keep its industries running. These debts are, finally, backed by the State and it has little means to spread out the risk of those debts beyond its own, internal, banking institutions. The most conservative estimate of the amount of GDP that China has resting on this is 30% and some analysts go as high as 60%. This unstructured debt when applied at the 10% range to Japan and the 12-15% to the other 1980's 'Asian Tiger' economies caused a major economic recession lasting a decade or more in each of them. Because China does not float its exchange rate and does not open its books for auditing, the exact nature and depth of this problem can only be seen on a magnitude scale of social impact. Beijing currently loses $2 billion/year on pollution inside that city *itself*, due to unsafe drinking water, disease, chemical contamination, sickness and early death. Further, as China has not implemented modernization of agriculture, it still exists on an extremely poor peasantry living below the poverty line (estimates range from 25% to 40%). By being exempted from emissions testing of any sort, China now produces more sulfur dioxide than the US and is quickly moving to overtake carbon dioxide output which are worrying to some environmental groups, but those effluents along with industrial particulates create localized environments that regularly see cities enveloped in noxious smog.
3. Mexico - While given the benefits of free trade with the US and Canada, Mexico also agreed to curb and end the northward flow of individuals going to the US and Canada illegally. They have not only not abided by that treaty, but they have done nothing, as a Nation, to address the concerns of poverty and lack of good jobs in Mexico to alleviate the need to migrate to get jobs. Mexico's air pollution, while not as bad as China's, is also felt across the Southwestern US in the form of haze and air pollution which makes determining the native produced pollutants somewhat difficult. Also, Mexico has done nothing to remove the ability of organized crime to move drugs, particularly methamphetamines, across the border and has been suffering something that is starting to look like a low end insurgency heading towards a civil war in the northern provinces adjacent to the US. Those gangs are not only 'up-arming' with automatic weapons, but they are cooperating with human traffickers from the Middle East to smuggle individuals across the border from other Nations unaccountably along with their own people. This violence has not been addressed by the Mexican Federal Police or military as both institutions are highly corrupt and willing to take bribes and 'look the other way' while the laws of Mexico are violated. NAFTA, as a treaty, is predicated on Mexico doing the exact opposite of these things, and yet it is still touted as a 'good thing' even as Mexico slowly slides into chaos about those things it promised to address and has not done so.

Other Nations in non-accord with their agreements can be found in many Nations on this planet and the idea of *extending* these agreements that have proven, and demonstrably so, not to *work* as intended is questionable in the extreme. The concepts of the modern political Left and Right on these things is horrific, as neither wants to view these as problems or, even worse, as ways to further eradicate the things the US was founded upon.

The Left, while schizophrenic on globalization, is willing to take up any cause that opposes industrialization in a strange form of Luddite view: that any advancement for industry is a threat to local society. Strange that they would say that as it is the concept of making a better life to change local culture, by locals, that drives industrialization. Anything that causes any hardship when done by an external or global company, is instantly demonized as some form of 'social imperialism' even though no troops, no constabulary and no political enforcement secret service ever shows up by those companies to do those things. These people want to have their culture changed as they see oppressive poverty as a problem for having families and passing their social traditions onwards and promulgating them as worthy to have. Those that agree to such jobs are not *blind* to the modern world and trying to decide that for them is authoritarian at base and trying to implement it totalitarian and imperial in outcome.

The Right, even worse, plays up the material benefits and then walks away from the basis of keeping and sustaining them which is *not just a job*. These things are kept when government can no longer take them from an individual who has done legal work for legal pay for legal purchases. And yet in many regions of the world, including China, the ability to actually do that and *speak ones mind* is at permanent peril. What is offered by those on the Right seeking free trade and putting forth that it is making us more wealthy, is that they are ignoring the other half of the agreement and that those in peril of bondage due to their beliefs cannot trade freely. What remuneration we get from those individuals and companies is handing out goods to bribe the populace of these regimes to *not* seek their own liberty so as to secure their freedom and just assent to their lack of same. If the Left is disingenuous on the good that Walmart can do, the Right is disingenuous on the actual cost in human liberty that goes into making those goods we buy.

These two views of the Left and Right cannot and will not survive for much longer as we perpetuate tyrannical regimes, do not spread the word of liberty and do not seek to make deep and culturally meaningful agreements with those that are securing and have SECURED their liberty via democracy. This bitter, noxious, two-part poison that has infused the lifeblood of America and much of her trade relations is slowly disintegrating those things that those backers had purported to *back*. The era of 'globalization' and 'internationalization' of trade along Cold War ideological lines was crumbling before that chilly conflict ended. As that permafrost melts we find ourselves not to be on rock, but sinking in mud of our own devising. So far we have no leadership that will stand up and say to an odious regime that it *is* odious and contrary to our principles of human liberty as the source of securing human freedom. The Left wants freedom showered like party gifts, with strings to pull them back, and the Right wants nothing to do with supporting liberty to create freedom, just the cash, thank you very much.

This is not a 'root cause' of problems anywhere in the world except in the US, and is mere fertilizer strewn on the noxious weeds attacking the foundations of our understanding of human liberty and freedom. Freedoms are inalienable rights in each of us created, that is self-evident. To secure these rights we must have liberty and back that up so as to sustain those rights and keep them. Liberty is that which allows us to keep the value of our own toil and profit from it so that we may use such to do better for ourselves and our children. It is not in the buying and selling of goods, but the ability to create, buy and sell and then use our own determination on what we will make, who we will sell to, and what we will purchase and then voice those opinions and not have them repressed that allows freedom to be given voice from the that underpinning of human liberty.

Back Burner #2 - Foreign Policy

Those seeking to transnationalize the world and put more of it under bureaucratic restraint are aiming for what the Sun Emperors of China had: an entrenched bureaucracy to enforce Imperial will. Save that done on a global basis, such a bureaucracy is tyranny by its very existence. Those who want a 'world without borders' or 'uninhibited free trade' ignore the fact that people exercising liberty can, should and DO the very opposite of those things because we all do not think alike on this planet even down to what 'free trade' means. We form Nations so as to protect our differences and the goal of the US is *not* to homogenize humanity against its will, but to show how we, as free people sustaining liberty, can achieve better things in life by exercising our liberty *freely*. This does require us *not* to make money off of captive populations, nor to invest in tyrannical regimes or their Nations, if we mean what we say then that must be backed by those actual actions that will directly give voice to them. Whenever you hear the 'yes, but can't we do...' you are hearing the voice of someone unwilling to give up material gains for liberty, who is unwilling to deny repressive regimes for temporary ideological fulfillment and who does not actually believe that liberty is worth having, so the part after but usually comes with someway to do the exact opposite and sell our ideal of liberty down the river for immediate gratification.

Even without establishing this first area, the next President has much more than just globalized economic problems causing instability due to a lack of liberty. Beyond that are ethnic, cultural and religious problems that are now seen on a religious scale bringing back the ills of warfare of old under new guises, and yet still recognizable under the face paint. Our stance in various parts of the world, while strong in those areas that we are militarily active, is weakest in those areas undergoing strife and tensions that threaten to liquidate Nations.

The list of 'weak States' must now be headed up by Pakistan, which is multi-cultural, multi-religious and has multiple ethnic groups inside it. That is a common theme amongst the 'weak States' threatening global stability and is characteristic of: Kenya, Somalia, Sudan, The Balkans (Kosovo, Bosnia), Lebanon, the Caucuses region (Chechnya, Georgia, Armenia, Azerbaijan), the southern tier of ex-Soviet Republics (Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan). Even worse are States that are succumbing to the end life of tyrannical regimes or slowly fraying internally: Iran, Turkey, Cuba, North Korea, Burma. Finally there are the 'lawless areas' or troubled ethnic areas that coincide with some of the previous areas: Chechnya (Russia, Georgia), North Warziristan (Pakistan, Afghanistan, China, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan), Kashmir (India, China, Pakistan), Kurdish regions (Turkey, Iran, Syria), Triborder Area in South America (Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay, Bolivia, Uruguay), Venezuela, Columbia ("FARClandia" supported by narcotics and Venezuela).

Note that a mixture of these are purely anti-US, some are anti-Western and many have the overlay of religious conflict added in. Thus the concept of DIME (Diplomatic, Information, Military, Economic) comes severely lacking in religious outlook (ex. Westphalian Nation concepts of freedom of religion) or even being able to provide outlooks on liberty and freedom. The old Cold War and post-Cold War DIME views must give way as they are neutral vectors used by those that support liberty and those that erode it. Without a bias towards liberty, freedom, democracy and toleration of religion, there is no way to properly cast these vectors as positive towards those things on their own. That highly didactic, minimalist and reductionist mode of thought has proven to need societal and social input to even begin to work on Counter-Insurgency (COIN), which means that professing views merely to support these tools is not enough to meet larger US goals towards securing our own freedom and liberty by ensuring that others have a good example of how to *use* it.

To do that, however, requires stating that the US is not only different from other Nations, but puts forward that these differences are not only substantial, but substantive. There is more than just difference, there is backing for those differences for the Nation that must go beyond partisan political ideology at home and shift towards the founding ideals of the US as held in common by all citizens. That understanding that foreign policy is not the play ground of economists, ideologues, or 'schools of diplomacy' must be stated and clearly for the US to have a reasoned statement of what and who we are as a diverse people. If we cannot come together and support those seeking liberty, then we have no business cutting business deals with them or offering them 'Peace Corps' help or other forms of help from this Nation. Something this basic across the political sphere has been absent in the US for decades, and multiple individuals from Congress feel that there is some 'right' to them practicing some version of foreign policy without assent from the Executive. Yet, these spheres are absolutely different and the SCOTUS has backed that: Congress gets no ability to perform foreign policy, outside of the Senate consent treaties, Congressional regularization of treaties, Law of Nations punishment and high seas regulation powers, without the assent of the Executive and even that is not blanket and cannot be so due to the separation of powers.

Back Burner #3 - The Return of Private War

Understanding these threats militarily requires a recognition of the different actors and types of conflicts involved. From purely separatists/Nationalist (as in Sri Lanka) to ideological (FARC in Columbia) to Ethnic (the multiple ethnicities crossing through the India to Kazakhstan area) to the religious (globally in the form of al Qaeda and Hezbollah, and locally via affiliates of these organizations) to actual Nation State threats from China, Russia, Iran, North Korea. This is not a pleasing thing to see after the stability of Nation State warfare of the early and middle 20th century, and by the late 20th century no concept was put forth to address non-State actors taking up arms illegitimately in contravention of all known understandings of the Nation State system. The attempts to address them by purely civil means (police and international law enforcement) failed, dismally and has been doing so for decades.

Further the policy of using such actors by Nation States has proven harmful to those exact, same backers (the Taliban and al Qaeda in Afghanistan) and actually spread those groups as their noxious outlooks seemed victorious. That said the most money poured into such groups comes from Saudi Arabia and Iran, and not the US or Russia or China. And as the international banking system is not set up to deal with this effectively and has, via the lack of economic understanding, actually helped these organizations to spread, the purely civil side cannot and should not be seen as the only means to address these individuals who are placing themselves outside the framework of Nation States as outlaws. Such outlaws are not only on the run from the law, they place themselves outside the protection of the law by breaking the fundamental, civil agreements of citizens amongst Nations to have Nations.

To address the necessary military aspects of those who wage war unaccountably requires that the US actually comes to understand what non-State actors actually means and that the military be shifted from a purely Nation State conflict organization to one of more flexible means and responses. To a degree this does require an expansion of the regular forces of the Union, and that the ability to go to friendly Nations besieged by such lawlessness be brought to the forefront. As seen in Iraq and Afghanistan, this requires a State Department presence that understands that dangerous situations are the byproduct of failures in Nations and diplomacy. No longer can the US State Dept. put out ideological tracts from any 'school' of outlook be it Arab, economic or quasi-socialist. Diplomats and diplomatic staff must shift from 19th century digs in fine quarters and prepare for the 'rough and ready' diplomacy of tents, lawless territory and working to bring ideologically and religiously diverse groups together in a fashion so as to promote not only peace, but liberty.

Similarly the US Treasury Department also needs an overhaul and the ability to deploy with mixed forces and to help identify and track down the financial and criminal networks that supply these groups using Private War to attack Nations illegally. This requires more detailed work than has previously been asked of the Treasury Department, and yet this is absolutely vital in finding and rooting out the economic links these groups have forged so as to bring threats to civilians globally, be it via terrorism or organized crime.

The Commerce Department and Department of Agriculture get little view in these conflicts, and yet they hold the exact specialties needed to identify underlying economic and supply needs and how to begin addressing them. While the Army Corps of Engineers does fine work, the backing by individuals who can work for the long haul with local government to ensure local projects are continued to completion is vital and necessary, all the while emphasizing local finances and expenditures. The US can no longer be seen as a global 'Sugar Daddy' and what funds we now ill use for 'subsidies' and 'price supports' needs to be shifted to those things helping long term National survival. The job of identifying the right kinds of work, industry and crops to go with areas that are desperately poor is essential, and demonstrating how local organizations and Nations can do this on their own is a price beyond any money. By doing that and showing that a small investment in the people in a region can pay large dividends in self-support and peace also means the US cannot and will not pay for these things. There is a difference between small amounts of 'seed cash' and continued advancement of funds indefinitely, and the former brings self-reliance and a helping hand to stand up while the latter encourages graft and corruption. By demonstrating how to do these things and adjusting for local circumstances after learning them the US brings forth that demonstration of liberty that no amount of funds or worldly goods can do: by demonstrating liberty and how to protect it, others see that while difficult it can be done and is worth the time and effort.

A set of armed forces that promulgate this small scale work all the way up to main force battlefield against a large Nation (China say or Russia or India or Brazil) means that there must be a shift in training to not only the battlefield raw power of the US armed forces, but the fine grained work necessary to ensure that an area dug up by the raw power is then smoothed down into a productive realm once more. The high degree of skills necessary for this is something the modern all-volunteer force is set up for, having so many with college education in it the actual mental acumen and combat skills should be retained in those parts of the government needed for this by offering signing bonuses, good career advancement and challenging jobs in their fields of expertise. Shifting from Citizen soldier to Citizen employee helping the overall external military and economic needs of the US is one that has been lost for decades by the US government. Veterans preferences are not enough, and the actual recruitment for those skill sets requires a re-alignment of both combat and civilian organizations to allow transitional roles to be developed.

Back Burner #4 - Military Transition

Force doctrine to follow this breaks into multiple sections: Grand Strategic, Regional, and Theater. There has been by the problematical role from the Key West agreement for Close Air Support given to the Air Force in addition to its air supremacy and domination role along with its strategic and global role for air transport. The post-20th century era, however, now has a predominant infrastructure that is no longer terrestrial or air based: satellites. Used for INTEL, communications, strategic asset tracking and other purposes, the infrastructure of even hardened military satellites is not robust enough to stand up to relatively low cost orbital interdiction. Additionally lasers and particle beam weapons from ground sources are threats that are beyond the bounds of normal work by the armed forces and yet have slowly developed into a low cost anti-satellite technology. The 21st century and onwards can no longer afford the post-WWII and Cold War military role differentiation and the time to shift roles, including CAS, is overdue.

As so much critical strategic infrastructure for guided munitions is now in orbit, and the effectiveness of smaller forces is based on that, these assets can no longer be left vulnerable to cheap ASAT systems. On orbital ASATs the following Nations can readily make and deploy such systems, even hasty ones such as ball bearings in an opposite or intersecting orbit: United States, UK, France, Russia, China, Japan, Iran, North Korea, Syria, Pakistan, India. The list of Nations able to field lasers and particle beams is currently small, but that is due to actually building such systems in an open way and lasers, in particular, are amenable to to cheap industrial accumulation of lesser systems. Additionally a single low yield nuclear device could devastate not only satellites but ground based systems by electromagnetic pulse and yet do little if any ground based damage. Done at the proper level the ionosphere could be so charged as to remove long distance communications and make communications with surviving orbital vehicles difficult, if not impossible. As so much of the global infrastructure now relies on such systems, the harm that can be done by small, but technically competent rogue States (ex. North Korea) is immense.

That first line of defense, then, must go to the US Air Force and transition it to an Aerospace Force giving it the strategic over watch and satellite protection role. This infrastructure would be hasty and unmanned at first, but would necessitate manned ventures and permanent basing with independent power and food supplies. That protection role is paramount to the US and the global economy, and the ability to interdict ASAT weapons as well as help design more robust satellites would be a prime focus.

That said there is the 'cleaning of the spaceways' of the typical debris that has built up in Low Earth Orbit so as to remove potential dangers from lift vehicles and other 'space junk' from useful orbits. This is not a typical USAF sort of job and more properly flows to the arm that understands the necessity of safe passage through international realms: the US Navy. By doing this and getting Congressional language and understanding that its 'high seas' power is generically applicable to the freedom of navigation in space (as it has done so to the edge of the atmosphere and core of the planet under extensions of the high seas powers), this ensures that proper oversight and regulation for such operations is performed. As with aircraft carriers there are some mixing of roles in this, but the differentiation shifts to the USAF providing base operations and ready response transport, and the USN providing heavier lifting work and ensuring the safety of space transport itself, not just orbital work.

To properly redistribute the powers amongst the armed forces, the USAF would still retain its strategic, regional and theater air dominance and superiority roles. Getting and maintaining air dominance becomes a prime job in the atmosphere. That said CAS work devolves back to the ground forces of the US Army and Marine Corps for all non-superiority and dominance roles. The purely tactical INTEL and CAS roles belong with those forces most effected by it, which are the ground forces. This will require an amount of airspace deconfliction by the USAF, but its additional working territory (e.g. space) gives it opportunity to put new assets into place for long-term work without needing to stress aircrews on current platforms (ex. AWACS).

On the sea-based side of things, the current generation of Carrier Battlegroup has demonstrated that multi-ship contingents with air superiority and domination make for an effective means of delivering not only firepower but humanitarian aid. In the tradition of the Great White Fleet, the US Navy has demonstrated that it was worth its weight in gold during the 2004 Tsunami rescue period and more than that in giving mobile air cover to help not only in Afghanistan, Iraq, but also in one of the other fronts of the GWOT, Somalia. The mostly unheralded work of the US Navy is a vital backbone to protecting our commerce and ensuring open sea lanes for global commerce. The transformative technologies of the last decade are pointing a way to a new type of sea based combat group, however: the shift to unmanned and often unpiloted drones for recon, surveillance and even some CAS. For the immediate future, the move of stealth aircraft onto aircraft carriers will give a much needed capability in the air dominance and superiority realm, but the shift to UAV/UCAV over the next 20 years will also see carriers utilized for those missions. At some point in the next 5 years or so there will be a serious look at shifting some fleet support to a new, smaller and stealthier carrier platform for UAV/UCAV work. These ships will be much closer to the escort or 'Jeep' carriers of WWII in size and much smaller in crew due to automation. Such ships may also serve with Short Take Off and Landing aircraft or rotary aircraft, but the primary purpose of such ships are to provide constant surveillance and INTEL for both ships and land based units. A shift of AEGIS functions to such vessels would be natural, so as to provide air support and defense capability in addition to the ISR role.

Surface combatant ships are also going to transform and the US Navy will need to be budgeted for the slow retirement of older craft and bringing newer, stealthier and more powerful ships into service. Here the DDX concept and the railgun give such vessels the ability to reach 200 miles inland in seconds at extremely low cost. Serving as escorts for the new carriers, a shift towards a smaller and more lightweight carrier group as an auxiliary to today's carrier battlegroup would allow for a more flexible sea-based posture to be had while actually delivering the same amount of firepower. Because these ships will be smaller, stealthy and have a smaller crew size, they will be seen as less threatening on patrol while being as effective as their larger counterparts. There have also been views towards a 'modular destroyer platform' with sections inside the hull that can be replaced quickly at a shipyard and swap out functions and capabilities. Primary capabilities would include: Anti-Submarine Warfare (ASW), minesweeping/detection, ground combatant support, close-in defense against surface directed missiles, missile launching platforms, and search and rescue. By having multiple internal hull sections available and swapping them out over a week or so, such vessels could serve a small but vital role for the new world of mixed mode warfare.

Submersible technology, as with air and ground, is slowly shifting to the unmanned/unpiloted vehicle which may first show up in ASW as a means for putting out a distributed sensor network, but will also serve with standard manned platforms. It is unlikely that these vessels will have a first primary purpose of combat, although precision delivery of ordinance may become an intermediate generation concept to develop. The nuclear missile submarine, however, still serves as the basis for final deterrence against enemy Nations and as a 'last line of defense' against nuclear sneak attack taking out other forms of warfare. That being said, a next generation of these ships incorporating newer concepts of missile delivery should be built along with adding more stealth capability and less noisy power generation facilities.

The manned attack submarine is also a necessary part of the defense network at sea, and this will need augmenting via unmanned/unpiloted devices as two of the oldest forms of submarine platforms, mines and diesel-electric subs, have proven to be vexing to all advances in technology. Advances in mine and diesel-electric sub detection are still needed as these are both palpable threats not only for surface combatants but submersible ones as well. Of all the 1980's views on sea based warfare, this is the one that has stubbornly resisted high technology, physics and the applied sciences.

For ground-based warfare, there is a revolution going on via the integration of technology, materials sciences and cybernetics, along with non-traditional skills of forensics and police hostile network determination. These last have been demonstrated as useful tools for COIN, along with localization and familiarization so that troops shift from roles as 'outsiders' in conflicts and become something a bit more akin to friendly, armed foreign tourists to local eyes. What will not be seen is the time, effort and determined coordination across the arrays of forces from individual soldier to distant fleet unit for fire support, ISR and weapons system deconfliction in hostile areas. While much of this is locally based via technology, it all fits within the global basis of the satellite positioning and comms network. Without that system for coordination, nothing like current effectiveness can be achieved no matter what the field situation is: from hostile main force battlefield to COIN transitional work to final support and sustainment work. The large scale coordination, however, being passed over to Theater and Global commands, leaves the tactical command systems freed up to incorporate more information and knowledge across the battlespace. Using Metcalf's Law of networking, each node added to the network that contributes information, data sieving, or analysis will increase the effectiveness of that network exponentially. Precision guided munitions are no good if they cannot be sent to the proper target and that requires a human based analysis capability stretching up from the shooter to the global analysis areas, each lending their expertise to the entire system.

That system will see the ordinary soldier fielding more lightweight, yet effective body armor with sensors attached to it. Of all the problems a soldier has, that of supplying energy to devices is a large one, but also having them be effective in degraded or shutdown modes requires skill and forethought on the part of designers and testers. While much of the Offensive Individual Combat Weapon system has been put on *hold* we are also seeing that evolutionary weapons in the carbine arena are pointing out that purpose built weapons do better than a 'one-size fits all' with swapping pieces in and out to change things. The WWII M-2 machine gun, fielded as crew carried weapons, ship based weapons, put into aircraft and, basically, giving firepower that was reliable still, to this day, serves that purpose. Good designs are amenable to new technology, but it takes a thorough view of what a weapon *ought to do* to make a good weapon. So while the OICW sounds good on paper, the ability to deliver the stopping power needed to the soldier has sidelined it while older and reliable weapons are still used.

What is changing, however, is the view of ground vehicles, and this, with the UGV, is heading towards unmanned/unpiloted devices that are now being tested out for service. The UGV is meant for rough terrain across unsecured territory to deliver weapons, supplies and other goods to soldiers in the field and allow for evacuation of wounded soldiers via that same means. At the same time this is happening, the Non-Line Of Sight Cannon is also being produced to replace the Paladin, and it features autoloaders, multiple shells on target within a half second, diesel/electric power plant and automated defense system capable of knocking out RPGs, shoulder fired missiles and, infantry performing close assault on such vehicles. Small, fast and stealthy is the concept along with a smaller crew size, this vehicle along with the UGV may see a hybrid generation to follow. The only vehicle likely to outlast the next few Presidents is the M1A1 Abrams tank, which is being up graded again, so that it is starting to look more like a starship from the inside. Currently a 'next gen' tank is not on the drawing boards, and for good reason: the M1A1 has produced a very good and upgradeable platform over the past 20 years.

Back Burner #5 - Meeting Omnipresent Threats

By basing the foundation of the US in 18th century terms, the understanding of the role of the Nation in the defense of the People views this not as a system in which the Nation, alone defends the People. The US Constitution is an explicit rendering of three main areas of understanding about the Nation, beyond philosophy. These areas of understanding are ones that impact the day-to-day affairs of Nations of that era and continue to do so to this day. That most ancient of rights, that of citizenry based self-defense against those that are not Nations, is not a new concept or even a radical one. It dates back to the earliest eras of mankind and the formation of the first towns and cities. Recognizing this the founders placed two critical components in the Constitution, to ensure that the Nation would rely upon its citizens for defense as they are the ones speaking of their responsibilities to have a Nation in the preamble. The first comes second, and is also the State's right to self-defense, given in Article I, Section 10 and the negation of restrictions in case of invasion or imminent danger that will not admit delay. Coming, as it does, on a broad set of restriction on troops, warcraft and foreign agreements, this single clause puts the States final defense outside the hands of the National government. The States are not to form permanent armies, but are allowed to form permanent and ready commitment by its citizens to practice the arts of war, as citizens, in the from of ready volunteers. At one point in US history it was not unknown that every 'armed, able bodied man' come to the defense of his society, and that is enshrined as a basic right in the absence of National protection.

The second part, and far more contentious by those wishing to mis-state it, is the Letters of Marque and Reprisals language, that allows Congress to duly authorize private citizens to be armed to defend the Nation and receive recompense if they properly carry out such activities as warranted by Congress and given by the President. While heading into conflict these are citizens that risk their money, their well being and their lives to step in, via warrant and call, to go after those that have attacked the Nation or that Congress duly wishes to serve notice to on their displeasure of things done to harm the well-being of the Nation. These are not mercenaries: they get no fee up front and their loyalty is given to the Nation, and they take up risks because they *want to do so*. Nor are these Pirates as these individuals fall under military jurisdiction and turning on the Nation makes you an instant enemy of it with the greatest charge given in the Constitution being Treason. In older times these individuals worked for 'prize capture' money from those vessels captured and brought in to official US designated ports or by extension, government personnel authorized to validate such things. The Nation not only looks to its final defenses, then, from citizens, but sees that voluntary activities seeking proper warrant, recognition and accountability shall be deemed worthy, if Congress so desires, to come under the command of all forces or otherwise carry out National directives against those harming the Nation.

Together these two things separate and give distinction between the Law of Nature, in which there are only individuals and nothing higher than warlords, and the Law of Nations, in which citizens give up certain rights to their Nation so as to have a Nation to act on their behalf. It is that Law of Nations given form by multiple generations and compiled by Emmerich de Vattel into the book, Law of Nations, that gets special mention in the US Constitution in Article I, Section 8, to give Congress the power to enact laws based on this view. The views of de Vattel, and prior to him Hugo Grotius on the Law of War, that form and give substance to not only the high crimes against Nations but against all Nations that those taking up Private War are due. As the basis of US law still rests upon the English Common Law and its views up to the founding, and then is explicitly changed via specific enactments under the Constitution, the views of that law are also present in the realm of Private War and that is given before the founding by William Blackstone's Commentaries on the English Law, which does get some modification by the US view of the Admiralty powers and their jurisdiction, but otherwise remains in accord with that Common Law view.

By the late 19th and early 20th century the idea that those waging Private War against Nations would be a threat to civilization seemed like a far distant thing, and yet by the time the 20th century was well past the half-way mark, those who did this and caused strife against all Nations because they would not bow down to the wishes of these few, would hand the world slowly mounting death tolls that did not respect: race, religion, borders, individuality, liberty or freedom. By so thinking that warfare could never be practiced by dedicated individuals to much societal harm, those that did so were given refuge in the lands of the weak and the minds of the timid. In hiding behind treaties and not enforcing them so as to ensure that these individuals and groups operating outside the protection of the law were brought to heel and ended, the world has been made a worse place and one degenerating into transnational lawlessness.

History has seen this before when the Bronze Age Cultures of the Aegean fell, and nearly took down all civilizations surrounding the Mediterranean with them, and the centuries of the Dark Ages that followed would barely remember the greatness of that civilization at its pinnacle. Likewise the Roman Empire would decay, collapse and then resist in the East while the West went to barbarism until even the East would fall, too. Between those the Empires in China, Nile, Fertile Crescent would come and go each achieving greatness until they, in turn, met their ends at unaddressed barbarism and faltering rule. Those clear warning signs of lawless lands, unaccountable warlords and killing without fear are those same signposts appearing again, and like those previous eras we find ours of governments that govern, not rule, rotting before their onslaught. By not accepting that democracy rests upon the might of the People to arm themselves and accountably go after those that place themselves outside all law by their words, deeds and intent, and by trying to *make* law to cover those destroying all law, we drift into foolishness insisting that a right to 'health care' trumps the right to survive as a culture, People and Nation.

Back Burner #6 - Supporting Friends, Allies and the Law of Nations

Of all the things let go by modern politics, it is the idea that the goodness of trade obviates the strengthening of Nations and the culture that gives rise to democracy via liberty. We, as a Nation, open doors to 'free trade' with those that have little interest in our well being while snubbing those that have stood by us for decades if not longer. Where are the lovely 'free trade' agreements with Britain, Australia, Japan, Israel, Poland and those Nations that have supported us in war and peace unstintingly or waited in the shackles of Communism so that they could free themselves to join us? Where is the magnificence of our openness with THEM? America, to be serious about confronting tyranny, needs to open its doors to those that have left the shackles of tyrannical and despotic rule behind them to embrace liberty, democracy and freedom. Further we should be working hard with those Nations that have been by us through thick and thin, war and peace and have demonstrated fealty to the US and its People by their actions over long periods of time. Free trade with Canada, I can see, even with the minor disagreements between our Nations we have been through two world wars together and they support us dearly in Afghanistan. This goes for the UK, Australia and within the limits of the Constitution we helped to give them, Japan. Where are the 'free trade' agreements with them and the open movement of their peoples and the acceptance of these, our stalwart friends and allies? These Nations have kept treaties with us for generations while Mexico was disgracing their signature on NAFTA within days of its signing.

That is not 'conservative' that is asinine.

While the US stood tall to confront the USSR there was one Nation and one Nation only that struck the hard and fast blows to 'The Worker's Paradise' and called it for the fraud it was in the way the US and the West could not do: Poland. Those hammerblows on the rotten edifice of International Communism brought its long lasting decay into sudden, final collapse. Where is our 'free trade' treaty with THEM? Why do we seek Nations that have little reason to like us to run our ports and not a stalwart and trustworthy people who kept faith with the US, liberty and democracy for decades under the lash of Communism? Where is the great heart of capitalism when you need? Too busy kissing up to Mexico for cheap oil while we should be giving deep and hard thanks and fealty to a Nation that stood by our ideals while we FORGOT THEM? These Eastern European Nations have demonstrated far more in the knowing and support of liberty, democracy, freedom and capitalism than the US has seen from its two parties in decades. Are we so miserly with our understanding that we can only make treaties with those that don't like us and won't stand by them while those who would and willingly stand by us are left in the cold?

There is a deep and abiding problem in US politics when the 'Right' will not work to cement ties with those that work towards liberty and, instead, seek exploitive ties to those in poor areas of the world so as create minimal jobs and no liberty in that doing. Supporting capitalism is not supporting liberty: supporting the ability of people to prosper by their own hands is liberty and working with regimes that have no interest in that is destroying liberty, not building it. This credo, invoked by President Wilson for the Middle East has had over 90 years to work there, over 30 years in China, failed in less than a decade in the Balkans and has, generally, only worked with those that ALREADY supported liberty and freedom to start with.

On the 'Left' when the problems with 'our friends overseas' not liking what we do, they mean those that disagree with us and would see the US falter and fail. They do not mean our friends and allies that we should be working with who have come out of tyranny and who have worked with us for decades to sustain a better world. Somehow the criticism of socialist and tyrannical governments now means more to the 'Left' than the support of our friends and allies who *help* the US unstintingly. Those former really don't matter much in how we work in the world as they are not doing the hard work of liberty creation *with us* and are, instead, sapping the liberty of their people when they are not outright stealing it. When those Nations criticize the US, that is a *good thing* because they see their theft of liberty and freedom of their peoples threatened by those who are willing to stand up on their own and step forward to create, support and sustain individual liberty.

Some Nations, like France, are learning that you cannot buy off those seeking to wage Private War and balkanize their Nations. By not creating ethnic and cultural assimilation the French are slowly losing France on the inside and they are finally starting to realize this. Because those waging puritanical and tyrannical Private War follow a cultural ethos where being *nice* is seen as a weakness and disdained, those very same socialist entities are handing the knives over to those which will carve them up and doing so freely and with eyes completely open. Those barbarians, as in the days of the decline of the Roman Empire, now might seem like a 'solution', albeit one that will have a death toll that is unimaginable, decreased standards of living and an end to human liberty, but at least the question of 'what shall we do' will be answered for those doing the asking.

This latter is the end of the transnational, multi-culti, 'pit one group against another' ethos of the 'Left' and 'Right'. Across Europe we, in America, see the wages of being 'too nice' and not holding to personal accountability so that cultures and the rule of law can be sustained. At home we see this eroded by those wanting to erase our borders, remove democracy from our people, and impose government from Congress that will be so 'open' in its feelings that anyone, from any land, that somehow gets to our shores can vote themselves into power if there are enough of them. This is *not* classical liberalism and the rule of law along with the Law of Nations that were CREATED by classical liberals to SAFEGUARD Nations and peoples. This is cultural abdication and ritualistic destruction of Nations for a temporary 'feel good' while the actual government declines into rulership and despotism. Classical liberals would look at such and call it 'decadent' as in: decaying and rotting from the inside. To survive these times when Nations will be committing some ritualized form of socialist ethnic suicide by letting others destroy their Nations, the US faces a destructive force that will seek to grasp at the worst possible weapons and turn them on those that support Nations and differences amongst Nations. And weakly submitting to that will kill liberty, freedom and America. If we cannot enforce the rule of law at home and the Law of Nations to hold Nations accountable for their actions, and put non-Nation State actors up to the same level as Nations, what results is *not* an era of liberty and freedom, but an era of warlordism decaying into imperial rule.

If we are lucky.

And the worst of all Dark Ages if we are not.

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