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1. A Growing Trend of Leaving America : Jay Tolson, US News

2. Can This Planet Be Saved? : Paul Krugman, NYT

3. Afghanistan: Shoals Ahead for President Obama : Immanuel Wallerstein, Agence Global

4. Wrong on Afghanistan : Patrick Seale, Agence Global

5. Beware: ‘Machine Zone’ Ahead : Natasha Dow Schüll, Washington Post

6. Ultimatum to the GOP : Robert D. Novak, Washington Post

7. Disaster Capitalism, State of Extortion : Naomi Klein, The Nation



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The World’s Foremost Terrorist - The US Government

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By Karl Schwarz

amterr.jpg This article will explain to you why the Totally Screwed-Up US Strategic Plan for the Caspian Basin has backfired and created a “megatrend” against America that may well be the doom of our nation.

Any country willing to spend 30 years lying, conniving and scheming - and blow over $3 trillion (reported) on nothing -  is pretty damned stupid or desperate. In the  case of American policy, I submit, both apply…and we can, with no effort, add in DELUSIONAL.

There is nothing that George W Bush, McCain or Obama can do to change the tide now…for it has turned into a tsunami against America. The Grand Chessboard game is over, finished, and the US has lost in a rout. Our nation has blown through trillions of dollars (of new debt) with little to nothing accomplished to pursue a bogus, contrived war that was designed to take over in excess of $15 trillion in Caspian Basin oil and natural gas. The sheer cost of the failed ‘war’ and scheme to take over the Caspian Basin has ruined the value of the dollar, buried the US in debt and a myriad of ancillary problems, skyrocketed the cost of oil, utilities, food, and shredded the reputation of the United States around the world.  By any measure, it is a catastrophe.

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Of Terrorists and their proponents

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By Huzaima Bukhari and Dr. Ikramul Haq

terrorism.gifThe likely threat of military attack by the US and its allies in the tribal areas of Pakistan using the pretext of potential strike like 9/11 and increasing activities of the Taliban is creating fear and panic amongst masses. The main agenda behind this bizarre scheme is to push the armed forces of Pakistan to the wall, get the control of nuclear arsenals and use bogey of ‘Islamic terrorism’ for the containment of China. George W. Bush Jr., now lame-duck President, before leaving the Oval, wants to ensure that the new man taking his place should have no option but to remain engaged in wars in various parts of the world.

Before one tries to understand the recent US military and propaganda outbursts against the Taliban, one must turn one’s mental clock back three decades or so, and recollect the legacy of Bush Senior. It was George Herbert Walker Bush’s ‘New World Order’ that led to the biggest and worldwide economic chaos during the Gulf War. As Vice-President and President, Bush was an unfortunate instance of ‘collateral damage’, or a ‘necessary evil’, flowing from his more primary geopolitical mission: to usher in the post-nation-state “one world order”, first spelled out in the mid-1970s Trilateral Commission studies of Samuel Huntington and Zbigniew Brzezinski, and first unleashed by the 1977-81 ‘All Trilat’ Jimmy Carter administration.

George Bush remarkable feats include inter alia amongst others:

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Son of a Lion

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pust.jpgAustralian filmmaker Benjamin Gilmour’s debut movie, Son of a Lion, tells the story of a young Pashtun boy who wants to escape working in his father’s weapons workshop and go to school. Gilmour speaks to Spiegel Online about his attempt to combat negative stereotypes about the Pashtun people.

For most people in the West, Pakistan’s remote tribal region bordering Afghanistan held little interest - until Osama bin Laden and his fellow Al-Qaeda fanatics decided to hole up there. The tough terrain and the Pashtun people’s tribal code of hospitality has provided them with protection ever since the US-led invasion of Afghanistan over six years ago.

Australian filmmaker Benjamin Gilmour visited the region before the Sept. 11, 2001 terror attacks and was captivated by the local Pashtun people. Horrified by the post-9/11 negative images of the tribal areas in the Western media, he decided to go back secretly and make a film about the people that showed them in their true light. He and his local assistant director managed to shoot a story about a young 11-year-old boy who dreams of escaping his father’s weapons workshop and going to school. The simple story, which was co-written by the local people in the village of Darra Adam Khel, is a delicate portrait of a father-and-son relationship, which portrays the local people as well-informed about politics and far from supporters of the Taliban.

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1. U.S. Perpetuates Mass Killings In Iraq : Peter Phillips, Dissident Voice

2. America’s Most Dangerous Criminal : By Allen L. Roland, from his weblog

3. American Banks Fear Failure : The Economist

4. US Faces Global Funding Crisis : U.K. Telegraph

5. Public Debt Limit Enters Housing Debate : Wall Street Journal



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Taliban breached NATO base in deadly clash

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By Carlotta Gall and Eric Schmitt - International Herald Tribune

taliban_fighters_attending_funeral-2.jpgJuly 15, 2008-The Taliban insurgents who attacked a remote American-run outpost near the Pakistan border on Sunday numbered nearly 200 fighters, almost three times the size of the allied force, and some breached the NATO compound in a coordinated assault that took the defenders by surprise, Western officials said Monday.

The attackers were driven back in a pitched four-hour battle, and appeared to suffer scores of dead and wounded of their own, but the toll they inflicted was sobering. The base and a nearby observation post were manned by just 45 American troops and 25 Afghan soldiers, two senior allied officials said, asking for anonymity while an investigation is under way.

With 9 Americans dead and at least 15 injured, that means that one in five of the American defenders was killed and nearly half the remainder were wounded. Four Afghan soldiers were also injured.

American and Afghan forces started building the makeshift base just last week and its defenses were not fully in place, said one senior allied official. In some places, troops were using their vehicles as barriers against insurgents.

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It’s the Oil, stupid!

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By Noam Chomsky

Anwaar’s Note: If wishes were horses, I would be Chomsky. More people would listen to me than they are doing now. After this, please do read my Hydro Carbon Law for Dummies written way back in March 2007.

iraqoilfields.jpg The deal just taking shape between Iraq’s Oil Ministry and four Western oil companies raises critical questions about the nature of the US invasion and occupation of Iraq - questions that should certainly be addressed by presidential candidates and seriously discussed in the United States, and of course in occupied Iraq, where it appears that the population has little if any role in determining the future of their country.

Negotiations are under way for Exxon Mobil, Shell, Total and BP - the original partners decades ago in the Iraq Petroleum Company, now joined by Chevron and other smaller oil companies - to renew the oil concession they lost to nationalisation during the years when the oil producers took over their own resources. The no-bid contracts, apparently written by the oil corporations with the help of U.S. officials, prevailed over offers from more than 40 other companies, including companies in China, India and Russia.

“There was suspicion among many in the Arab world and among parts of the American public that the United States had gone to war in Iraq precisely to secure the oil wealth these contracts seek to extract,” Andrew E. Kramer wrote in The New York Times.

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1. The Truth Commission : By Nicholas D. Kristof : The NYT

2. War on Iran: The Perfect Storm From Hell‏ : By Timothy Alexander, Rense.com

3. Anxious in America : By Thomas L. Friedman : The NYT

4. America, its Time for some Serious Wakeup Calls : By D.L. Dewey, Dewey’s World

5. Why Gentile Americans Back the Jewish State : By Walter Russell Mead, Martinfrost.ws



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1. Preparing the Battlefield : By Seymour Hersh, The New Yorker

2. Coded prejudice is cloaked dagger : By Dahleen Glanton, Chicago Tribune

3. Gloom and Doom? Nah; Just for the U.S. : Interview with Peter D. Schiff, Barron’s

4. China Inspired Interrogations at Guantánamo : By Scott Shane, The NYT

5. Amid policy disputes, Qaeda grows in Pakistan : By Mark Mazzetti and David Rohde - The IHT



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Welcome to the Badlands

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What must never, repeat never, be done is to negotiate a treaty with these elements from a weaker position. A Pathan despises weakness as much in himself as in any one else. Such treaties are not worth the paper these are written on.

By Anwaar Hussain

oie_talibanselected4.jpgThe badlands were not always badlands.

The Federally Administered Tribal Areas of Pakistan, or FATA as these are more commonly known, are an amazing place with a fascinating history. This unique region of pine-scented vales, tall mountains, deep gorges, harsh topography and even harsher demography has traveled a tortuous path throughout its known history.

Starting from 500 BC to date, the region which includes Afghanistan and the North-West Frontier of Pakistan has seen perhaps more invasions in the course of history than any other country in Asia, or indeed in the world. However, during most of this period when the plains surrounding this region had been dominated by great powers of the times, these hill tracts and the tribes that inhabited these remained fiercely independent.

The people of Pakistan’s North-West Frontier Province (NWFP) and FATA as well as the adjacent eastern regions of Afghanistan are overwhelmingly Pathan, or Pashtun as they are alternatively called, with a total population of around 40 million. About 18 million of these are living on the Pakistani side. Within the NWFP province, geographically, FATA runs north to south, forming a 1,200-kilometer wedge between Afghanistan and the settled areas of the NWFP. The Durand Line supposedly divided Pathan tribes between British India and Afghanistan in 1893. Supposedly because the line has never been effectively able to divide these tribes and since then this delineation has been viewed with great contempt and bitterness by Pathans on both sides of the line.

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Anwaar’s articles appear simultaneously here at Truth Spring and at Soul Vibes in The Pakistan Tribune.


US loses its status as economic world power
DAVOS, Switzerland, 2008
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