Lemonjello's intermittent skullduggery

baltimorechronicle.com 12/26/06

Crime of the Century: Are Bush & Cheney Planning Early Attack on Iran?

...
It now appears that the idea of attacking Iran is again moving forward. ...

From the nation's point of view, of course, an attack on Iran would be an unmitigated disaster. There are no more troops that the U.S. could throw into battle (the Pentagon is scrambling just to find another 20,000 or so bodies that Bush wants to throw into the Iraq quagmire), so an attack would have to be basically that--an attack.

Certainly the forces the Navy is assembling in the Persian Gulf, together with the B-52s and B-1s and B-2s available at Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean and at bases in other countries in the region, are capable of destroying most of Iran's nuclear facilities, as well as its military infrastructure. But in terms of conquering territory, the most the U.S. could hope to do would be to perhaps hold a beachhead on the Straits of Hormuz, where the Persian Gulf links to the Arabian Sea. And even that would be a bloody challenge.

There is no way the U.S. could hope to conquer Iran.

...

Of course, "conquering" Iran is not the point of what Cheney wants to accomplish. I don't see how anyone can be thinking of any Americans on the ground in Iran. We can bomb them like crazy to try to re-trigger their nightmares (look what happened to the city of Bam after a significant earthquake), but when you look at the Vietnam example, no one in the U.S. military can legitimately believe that any kind of durable "victory" can be achieved by only bombing.

And when Cheney says that "the world will need 50 million more barrels of oil" does this not sound obviously wishful and self-serving of oil industry interests? Any such statement of "need" is more clearly seen as a political decision and a question of national technological mobilization to address the non-necessity of a petroleum-based energy future, not the dictate of Cheney as mouthpiece for the Seven Sisters ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seven_S...l_companies%29 ) and today's "supermajor" oil companies ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supermajor ).

[lemonjello]

Israeli nukes

timesonline.co.uk

The Sunday Times January 07, 2007

Revealed: Israel plans nuclear strike on Iran
Uzi Mahnaimi, New York and Sarah Baxter, Washington
ISRAEL has drawn up secret plans to destroy Iran’s uranium enrichment facilities with tactical nuclear weapons.

Two Israeli air force squadrons are training to blow up an Iranian facility using low-yield nuclear “bunker-busters”, according to several Israeli military sources.

The attack would be the first with nuclear weapons since 1945, when the United States dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The Israeli weapons would each have a force equivalent to one-fifteenth of the Hiroshima bomb.

Under the plans, conventional laser-guided bombs would open “tunnels” into the targets. “Mini-nukes” would then immediately be fired into a plant at Natanz, exploding deep underground to reduce the risk of radioactive fallout.

“As soon as the green light is given, it will be one mission, one strike and the Iranian nuclear project will be demolished,” said one of the sources.

The plans, disclosed to The Sunday Times last week, have been prompted in part by the Israeli intelligence service Mossad’s assessment that Iran is on the verge of producing enough enriched uranium to make nuclear weapons within two years.

Israeli military commanders believe conventional strikes may no longer be enough to annihilate increasingly well-defended enrichment facilities. Several have been built beneath at least 70ft of concrete and rock. However, the nuclear-tipped bunker-busters would be used only if a conventional attack was ruled out and if the United States declined to intervene, senior sources said.

Israeli and American officials have met several times to consider military action. Military analysts said the disclosure of the plans could be intended to put pressure on Tehran to halt enrichment, cajole America into action or soften up world opinion in advance of an Israeli attack.

Some analysts warned that Iranian retaliation for such a strike could range from disruption of oil supplies to the West to terrorist attacks against Jewish targets around the world.

Israel has identified three prime targets south of Tehran which are believed to be involved in Iran’s nuclear programme:

# Natanz, where thousands of centrifuges are being installed for uranium enrichment

# A uranium conversion facility near Isfahan where, according to a statement by an Iranian vice-president last week, 250 tons of gas for the enrichment process have been stored in tunnels

# A heavy water reactor at Arak, which may in future produce enough plutonium for a bomb

Israeli officials believe that destroying all three sites would delay Iran’s nuclear programme indefinitely and prevent them from having to live in fear of a “second Holocaust”.

The Israeli government has warned repeatedly that it will never allow nuclear weapons to be made in Iran, whose president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, has declared that “Israel must be wiped off the map”.
...

[lemonjello]

more stuff

baltimorechronicle.com 12/26/06

Crime of the Century: Are Bush & Cheney Planning Early Attack on Iran?

by DAVE LINDORFF

Back on October 9, I wrote in The Nation that it looked like the Bush-Cheney gang, worried about the November election, was gearing up for an unprovoked attack on Iran's nuclear facilities, with a carrier strike group led by the USS Eisenhower being ordered to depart a month early from Norfolk, VA to join the already-on-station USS Enterprise. That article was based on reports from angry sailors based on the Eisenhower who had leaked word of their mission.

There was, thankfully, no attack on Iran before Election Day, but it is starting to look like I may have been right about the plan after all, but wrong about the timing.

As the threat of a catastrophic US election-eve attack on Iran started to look increasingly likely, reports began to trickle out of the Pentagon that the generals and admirals were protesting. They knew that the US military is stretched to the limit in Iraq and Afghanistan, and that a war with Iran would be a disaster of historic proportions. To bolster their blocking efforts, the Iraq Study Group, headed by Republican fixer and former Secretary of State (under Bush Pere) James Baker, which had been slated to release its report on what to do about Iraq in January, 2007, pushed forward its report. Baker, together with co-chair Lee Hamilton, went prematurely public with the group’s conclusion that the Iraq war was a failure, and that the US should be trying to negotiate with Iran, not attack that country. That joint effort appeared to have blocked Bush and Cheney’s war plan, but the reprieve may have only been temporary.

It now appears that the idea of attacking Iran is again moving forward. The Eisenhower strike force, armed with some 800 Tomahawk cruise missiles as well as a fleet of strike aircraft, and already on station in the Arabian Sea for over a month and a half, has moved into the Persian Gulf. A second carrier group, led by the USS Stennis, is set to start steaming toward the Gulf, too, from its base in Washington. Already in position are three expeditionary strike groups and an amphibious warship, all suitable for landing Marines on Iranian beaches. On December 20, the The New York Times, citing Pentagon sources, reported that both Britain and the U.S. are moving additional naval forces into the region "in a display of military resolve toward Iran that will come as the United Nations continues to debate possible sanctions against the country." (We’ve all seen what "displays of force" by the Bush administration actually turn out to be. Besides, to my mind, the most clear sign that Bush and Cheney are going to war with Iran is that the US and the British have sent over minesweepers to the Gulf. Now what would they need minesweepers for except war with Iran? Afghanistan is not near the Gulf and the Taliban is in any case land-locked. Likewise, the U.S. is supposedly on friendly terms with Iraq's government, and the insurgents have no Navy, and precious little coastline to operate from. Iran, on the other hand, could be expected to do a lot of mining of the Gulf if attacked.)

The idea of hitting Iran may make sense from the Bush-Cheney bunker, where the only consideration is not what's good for the country, but what's good for Bush and Cheney. After all, if you’re losing your war in Iraq, and if you have hit bottom politically at home (Bush's public support ratings are now down in the 20s, where Nixon's were just before his resignation, and Cheney's numbers have been in the teens for months), and if the public is clamoring for an end to it all--and maybe for your heads, too--expanding the conflict and putting the nation on a full war footing can look like an attractive even if desperate gambit.

From the nation's point of view, of course, an attack on Iran would be an unmitigated disaster. There are no more troops that the U.S. could throw into battle (the Pentagon is scrambling just to find another 20,000 or so bodies that Bush wants to throw into the Iraq quagmire), so an attack would have to be basically that--an attack.

Certainly the forces the Navy is assembling in the Persian Gulf, together with the B-52s and B-1s and B-2s available at Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean and at bases in other countries in the region, are capable of destroying most of Iran's nuclear facilities, as well as its military infrastructure. But in terms of conquering territory, the most the U.S. could hope to do would be to perhaps hold a beachhead on the Straits of Hormuz, where the Persian Gulf links to the Arabian Sea. And even that would be a bloody challenge.

There is no way the U.S. could hope to conquer Iran.

Nor would the Iranian people rise up and overthrow their theocratic leaders--the same neoconservative fantasy that Bush war-mongers promised ahead of the Iraq invasion, and which they are re-cycling now to justify an attack on Iran. In fact, an attack on Iran, far from sparking a rebellion against the government there, would crush the new wave of reform that was evidenced in last week's local elections in Iran, which dealt a blow to the country’s hardliners. Iran is a proud nation with a history reaching back thousands of years. If attacked, its people can be counted on to rally around their current rulers, and its war-hardened soldiers can be counted on to fight to the death to defend their country.

Moreover, while its military may be no match for America's, Iran has many asymmetrical options for retaliation. As the key player in Iraq, with close links to Iraq's Shia factions, Iran's military has trained and armed the Badr Brigades--the largest and best-armed faction in Iraq, and one which to date has stayed out of the fighting against US forces. Iran is also close to the Mahdi Army of Moqtada al Sadr, and could unleash his fanatical troops too, against US forces in Iraq. If this happens, count on American casualty rates leaping to or even surpassing Korea or Vietnam-era levels overnight.

Additionally, Iraq's intelligence services have connections with Shia groups in Saudi Arabia and other oil-producing countries, and can be expected to quickly organize cells to strike at economic and US military targets there.

More seriously, of course, an attack on Iran will jack the price of oil to levels never seen before. Even if the US managed to militarily control the Straits of Hormuz, Iran's hundreds of stockpiled anti-ship missiles, which are buried in bunkers all along the Persian Gulf, would cause insurance rates to soar so high that no tanker could afford to sail that route, effectively cutting off over one quarter of the world’s oil supply. Virtually all of the oil produced in Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Iran, Kuwait and the Arab Emirates would be trapped in the ground. As well, the network of pipelines that bring oil from wellheads to refineries and to storage and pier facilities would be virtually indefensible against Iran-inspired sapper attacks.

Oil industry analysts have talked of oil leaping in price to $200 a barrel or more in the event of a US war with Iran, and given how panicked this country got when oil reached $80 a barrel recently, there's no need to go into detail explaining what $200/barrel oil would do to the U.S. economy--or to the global economy.

...

[lemonjello]

the great game redux

Hmmm. Interesting stuff. I'm not sure what The Independent meant by large-scale operations by foreign oil interests. Maybe they meant large-scale operations by coalition oil interests?

I'm sure this will all work out just fine since rumor has it there are now four US carrier groups running around the area with a real live Admiral to boot. "Barrel of a gun" indeed.

Things just keep getting curiouser and curiouser.

Still on the agenda - Trans Afghan Pipeline.

Compare with this background info about Iraq's oil industry at the Dept of Energy's EIA web site:

http://www.eia.doe.gov/emeu/cabs/Iraq/Oil.html

This text has been revised by the EIA in the last couple of years; I know because I have been re-reading every few months since Dubya's first term and especially after the Iraq invasion began. The text used to say that the 2,300 wells reportedly drilled compares to about 100,000 wells drilled to date in the state of Texas. (Iraq is about the size of the state of California.) This page also used to say that only about 25% of the geography of Iraq has been surveyed for oil using the latest petroleum industry methods. All of this led one to surmise that Iraq was indeed a field ripe for the harvest.

In the next excerpt that follows, notice which nations (China, Russia, and France) had preexisting oil drilling agreements with Hussein's regime. These the same nations who most protested at the time the starting of hostiliites between the U.S. and Iraq. Big surprise! They knew that, after an American invasion of Iraq, those agreements would be subject to "renegotiation at the barrel of a gun."

...


So there are HUGE geopolitical and monetary resources at stake in Iraq, and it's really remarkable, given this, how inept the current American administration has been at conducting the transition to Iraqi home rule since the American invasion.

independent.co.uk

Future of Iraq: The spoils of war
How the West will make a killing on Iraqi oil riches
By Danny Fortson, Andrew Murray-Watson and Tim Webb
Published: 07 January 2007

[snippage]
The huge potential prizes for Western firms will give ammunition to critics who say the Iraq war was fought for oil. They point to statements such as one from Vice-President Dick Cheney, who said in 1999, while he was still chief executive of the oil services company Halliburton, that the world would need an additional 50 million barrels of oil a day by 2010. "So where is the oil going to come from?... The Middle East, with two-thirds of the world's oil and the lowest cost, is still where the prize ultimately lies," he said.

Oil industry executives and analysts say the law, which would permit Western companies to pocket up to three-quarters of profits in the early years, is the only way to get Iraq's oil industry back on its feet after years of sanctions, war and loss of expertise. But it will operate through "production-sharing agreements" (or PSAs) which are highly unusual in the Middle East, where the oil industry in Saudi Arabia and Iran, the world's two largest producers, is state controlled. ...

Compare with this background info about Iraq's oil industry at the Dept of Energy's EIA web site:

http://www.eia.doe.gov/emeu/cabs/Iraq/Oil.html

//
According to Tariq Shafiq, a founding Vice President of the Iraq National Oil Company (INOC), Iraq's oil development and production costs are among the lowest in the world, ranging from as low as $750 million for each additional million bbl/d day in Kirkuk, to $1.6 billion per million bbl/d near Rumaila, and as high as $3 billion per million bbl/d for smaller fields in the northwestern part of the country. In contrast, Cambridge Energy Research Associates (CERA) estimates an average cost for Iraqi oil development of $3.5 billion per million bbl/d for the country as a whole, which is higher than Tariq Shafiq's estimates, but still relatively low by world standards. Either way, Iraq is considered a highly attractive oil prospect, with only 17 of 80 discovered fields having been developed, and few deep wells compared to its neighbors. Overall, only about 2,300 wells reportedly have been drilled in Iraq (of which about 1,600 are actually producing oil).
//

This text has been revised by the EIA in the last couple of years; I know because I have been re-reading every few months since Dubya's first term and especially after the Iraq invasion began. The text used to say that the 2,300 wells reportedly drilled compares to about 100,000 wells drilled to date in the state of Texas. (Iraq is about the size of the state of California.) This page also used to say that only about 25% of the geography of Iraq has been surveyed for oil using the latest petroleum industry methods. All of this led one to surmise that Iraq was indeed a field ripe for the harvest.

In the next excerpt that follows, notice which nations (China, Russia, and France) had preexisting oil drilling agreements with Hussein's regime. These the same nations who most protested at the time the starting of hostiliites between the U.S. and Iraq. Big surprise! They knew that, after an American invasion of Iraq, those agreements would be subject to "renegotiation at the barrel of a gun."

//
Prior to the toppling of Iraq's Ba'athist regime, Iraq reportedly had negotiated several multi-billion dollar deals with foreign oil companies mainly from China, France, and Russia. Deutsche Bank estimated that $38 billion worth of contracts were signed on new fields -- "greenfield" development -- with potential production capacity of 4.7 million bbl/d if all the deals came to fruition (which Deutsche Bank believed was highly unlikely). Now, the legal status of these agreements is up in the air, increasing the uncertainty level for companies interested in doing business with Iraq. Besides legal/constitutional issues, companies are also looking for a relatively stable security situation, a functioning government, and other conditions to be in place before they move heavily into the country. In May 2006, Iraq’s new Oil Minister, al-Shahristani, announced his intention to promote transparency throughout the country’s oil industry. In addition, al-Shahristani plans to formulate an investment law with a legal and regulatory framework that is conducive to multinational oil companies. ...

Russia, which is owed billions of dollars by Iraq for past arms deliveries, has a strong interest in Iraqi oil development. This includes a $3.7 billion, 23-year deal to rehabilitate Iraqi oilfields, particularly the 11-15 billion barrel West Qurna field (located west of Basra near the Rumaila field). West Qurna is believed to have production potential of 800,000-1 million bbl/d, but is currently producing only 180,000 bbl/d. In mid-December 2002, the Iraqi Oil Ministry had announced that it was severing its contract with the Lukoil consortium on West Qurna due to "fail[ure] to comply" with contract stipulations. Specifically, the Iraqis had cited Lukoil's failure to invest a required $200 million over three years. During the summer of 2004, Lukoil began training Iraqi oil specialists at facilities in western Siberia, an initiative reportedly aimed at saving Lukoil's West Qurna contract. In February 2006, Lukoil announced its desire to renew work on West Qurna and the company hopes negotiations with the new Iraqi government will allow for that work to begin.
//

And notice the geography (esp. the proximity to Iran, etc.) at play for these discoveries and ongoing field developments:

//
In January 2005, Iraq awarded contracts to several companies (Anadarko, Dome, and Vitol) to evaluate the 50,000 bbl/d Subba-Luhais in southern Iraq, which has an estimated 2 billion barrels of oil reserves. In December 2005, Iraq awarded a $200 million development contract to Ireland’s Petrel, with the goal of increasing production at the fields from 50,000 bbl/d to 150,000 bbl/d. In January 2006, Petrel formed a 50:50 joint venture with Iraq’s Makman Oil and Gas to carry out the engineering and construction on the fields. Petrel has indicated that the project is proceeding according to plan and could be completed in 2008. Petrel also signed a deal to conduct a technical study of the Merjan block in western Iraq.

In January 2005, Iraq's State Company for Oil Projects (SCOP) awarded a $150 million contract -- the first post-Saddam era upstream deal -- to Turkey's Avrasya Technology Engineering, for development of the Khurmala dome. Khurmala development is aimed at increasing production at the field from 35,000 bbl/d to 100,000 bbl/d, helping to compensate for declines in output at the mature Kirkuk field. As of June 2006, it is unclear as to whether any work on the project has taken place.

In addition to Khurmala, SCOP reportedly granted a $180 million contract to Canada's OGI Group in March 2005 to help develop the Hamrin field, located southwest of Kirkuk. Hamrin has estimated production potential of 60,000 bbl/d or higher. OGI originally estimated the development work to take 18 months to complete; however, as of June 2006, OGI had made little progress due to security concerns in the region.

Another large oilfield slated for development is Majnoon, discovered by Braspetro of Brazil in 1975, and containing reserves of 11-30 billion barrels of 28º - 35º API oil. Majnoon is located 30 miles north of Basra on the Iranian border. In the 1990s, French company Elf Aquitaine (now merged with Total) negotiated on a possible $4 billion deal with Iraq on development rights for Majnoon. In 1999, however, TotalFinaElf declined to sign a 23-year production sharing agreement (PSA) with Iraq on Majnoon. Following this, the field reportedly was brought onstream (under a "national effort" program begun in 1999) in late 2003 at 50,000 bbl/d. Future development on Majnoon ultimately could lead to production of 600,000 bbl/d or more at an estimated (according to Deutsche Bank) cost of $4 billion. In the short term, there is work underway to increase Majnoon production capacity to 100,000 bbl/d from the current 50,000 bbl/d (June, 2006).

In early June 2003, China's National Petroleum Company (CNPC) refuted a comment by Thamir Ghadban that CNPC's contract on the 90,000-bbl/d al-Ahdab development was now "void by mutual agreement." CNPC agreed in 1997 to spend $1.3 billion on Al-Ahdab, located in southern Iraq, but CNPC made no progress while sanctions remained in place. Iraq’s new government will have to clarify the validity of CNPC’s contract before the company can proceed.

The 4.5-billion-barrel Halfaya field is the final large development in southern Iraq. Prior to the war, several companies (BHP, CNPC, Agip/ENI) reportedly had shown interest in Halfaya, which ultimately could yield 200,000-300,000 bbl/d in output at a possible cost of $2 billion. In January 2005, a consortium of Shell, BHP Billiton, and Tigris Petroleum signed a deal with Iraq's oil ministry to increase output from the Missan area, which included Halfayah. Smaller fields with under 2 billion barrels in reserves also have received interest from foreign oil companies. These fields included Nasiriya (Eni, Repsol), Tuba (Japan’s AOC signed an MoU on the field in June 2005), Ratawi (Shell, Petronas, CanOxy), Gharaf (TPAO, Japex), Amara (PetroVietnam), and Noor (Syria).

On December 1, 2005, the Kurdistan Regional Government announced that Norway’s DNO was drilling for oil at the Tawke well in the Kurdish region, near the Turkish border. According to Middle East Oil and Gas Monitor, the Kurds believe they were authorized to sign the deal (a Production Sharing Agreement, or PSA) without the central government’s permission “[b]ased on a disputed clause in the constitution.” As of June 2006, DNO has determined from test results that its oil reservoir contains 100 million barrels of recoverable reserves. DNO now plans to install production facilities with the intention of bringing first oil onstream in the first quarter of 2007. In addition to DNO, the Kurds reportedly have signed separate deals with Heritage Oil (Canada), Al-Aabar Petroleum (UAE), and PetroPrime (Turkey).
//

So there are HUGE geopolitical and monetary resources at stake in Iraq, and it's really remarkable, given this, how inept the current American administration has been at conducting the transition to Iraqi home rule since the American invasion.

[lemonjello]

Interesting site. If you're trying to compare Fred to that guy, it's apples and oranges. BTW Fred has some books on Amazon as well, here's the author bio for one -

About the Author
Fred Reed is a part-time sociopath, former Marine, and lifelong keyboard mercenary who lives in Mexico and should not be allowed to associate with your children.

Fred may be the antithesis to academics like your "Domhoff". I find him humorous.

One little suggestion: read Domhoff's "Who Rules America?" Available at Amazon.com:

http://tinyurl.com/yevge8

Author's web site:
http://sociology.ucsc.edu/whorulesamerica/

Your "Fred" sounds about 40 years behind the curve

One little suggestion: read Domhoff's "Who Rules America?" Available at Amazon.com:

http://tinyurl.com/yevge8

Author's web site:

http://sociology.ucsc.edu/whorulesamerica/

[lemonjello]

Whoop der it is

independent.co.uk

Future of Iraq: The spoils of war
How the West will make a killing on Iraqi oil riches
By Danny Fortson, Andrew Murray-Watson and Tim Webb
Published: 07 January 2007

Iraq's massive oil reserves, the third-largest in the world, are about to be thrown open for large-scale exploitation by Western oil companies under a controversial law which is expected to come before the Iraqi parliament within days.

The US government has been involved in drawing up the law, a draft of which has been seen by The Independent on Sunday. It would give big oil companies such as BP, Shell and Exxon 30-year contracts to extract Iraqi crude and allow the first large-scale operation of foreign oil interests in the country since the industry was nationalised in 1972.

The huge potential prizes for Western firms will give ammunition to critics who say the Iraq war was fought for oil. They point to statements such as one from Vice-President Dick Cheney, who said in 1999, while he was still chief executive of the oil services company Halliburton, that the world would need an additional 50 million barrels of oil a day by 2010. "So where is the oil going to come from?... The Middle East, with two-thirds of the world's oil and the lowest cost, is still where the prize ultimately lies," he said.

Oil industry executives and analysts say the law, which would permit Western companies to pocket up to three-quarters of profits in the early years, is the only way to get Iraq's oil industry back on its feet after years of sanctions, war and loss of expertise. But it will operate through "production-sharing agreements" (or PSAs) which are highly unusual in the Middle East, where the oil industry in Saudi Arabia and Iran, the world's two largest producers, is state controlled. ...

[lemonjello]

snicker

nakedshorts.typepad.com

Goldman Sachs takes US Treasury private

Feb 19, 2007: US Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, standing beside Federal Reserve Board chairman Ben Bernanke and President George W. Bush, announced this morning that Goldman Sachs-led consortium would take the US Treasury private in a leveraged buyout. Goldman Sachs will assume $8 trillion in renminbi-denominated debt in the transaction; Bernanke will become chairman of an advisory board that will meet up to several times a year, and issue statements.

President Bush said that deal had his approval, and he was happy that he would be allowed to remain in the White House for the balance of his term. “It’s unfortunate that my successor will have to find new accommodation,” Bush said after Paulson confirmed that, in an early debt-reduction transaction, a Donald Trump-led consortium of Arab investors will redevelop the historic building as a shopping mall-condominium.

Paulson said that the deal had come together quickly since a disastrous trip to China last December, when his hosts had made it clear that they were not prepared to continue slaking US demand for manufactured goods unless it saw evidence of firm measures to reform economic practices and instill fiscal discipline.

“We believe that this transaction will quickly restore the confidence of our trading partners and is consistent with Goldman Sachs’ long tradition of serving the nation in its hour of need,” Paulson said. Conceding that the debt structure was “complex,” Paulson said that a consortium of European hedge funds would provide credit protection facilities under a revolving-tranche collateralized multilateral hybrid structured swap with ‘covenant-light’ facilitation.

[lemonjello]

Fred again

http://fredoneverything.net/FOE_Frame_Column.htm

Ivy Blindness

A Foray into Psycho-political Ophthalmology



January 1, 2007



It occurs to me that a surfeit of money, and the associated life within an invisible plastic bubble that seems to accompany it, may explain much of our curious political lunges. I have nothing against money (you can test this by sending me a lot) or people who have it. But it has side effects.

Two incidents come to mind, of no shattering import but serving as windsocks. First, a politician I barely know, but of import in the making of national policy, told me recently that he had never been in Washington’s subway, though he lives in Washington. Second, there was the astonishment of the senior Bush on observing the technology of a checkout line in a supermarket, into none of which had he apparently been. He didn’t know how to buy groceries.

I wondered: How much of the dysfunction of national policy can be explained by our rulers’ never having been in the subway? Never having encountered the world in which the rest of us, here and abroad, live? Sure, things other than insular innocence play a part: ambition, greed, idealism, vanity, good intentions, bad intentions. But…how do you manage a world you haven’t seen?

I grew up mostly in the South of small towns surrounded by woods. In such places you learn about school-yard fights, in particular that you need either to avoid them or win them, and about hunting rats at the dump with a .410, and working late shift at an Esso station on a lonely highway, and that country boys from poor families don’t think like nice suburban people. You still have to deal with them.

Most of us have learned these things, though in different ways and places. A high school in Brooklyn or Casper is different from mine in Virginia, yet very much the same. The young find themselves with a slice of humanity, not all of it agreeable, and have to figure it out on their own. When you learn a high school in Brooklyn, in a sense you learn the United States. I wonder what you learn going to Andover with your chauffeur.

There are experiences, of which few have had all but most have had some, by which people learn how life works. The very rich do not seem to have these. I wonder whether they really know where they live.

During the sixties, I spent time on the big roads, thumbing from coast to coast and from wherever to wherever else. So did countless other kids. (This isn’t a column about how special I am, but about how special I’m not.) We learned much about truck stops at three in the morning, about taking care of ourselves on a deserted road at dusk with rain coming on, about the wild variety of people that make up a country and, particularly, about people without a lot of money.

We also learned that there are men who will beat you senseless with a pool cue just because they don’t like your looks, and no, they won’t listen to reason. Life is not an embassy party.

Do the delicate flowers of National Review know these things? Has George Bush even been on the road? Have they seen America from a dying coal camp in West Virginia? A great deal of money is a good thing, or at least one I would like to try. But I suspect it isolates you from the world beyond Yale.

The military is another such adventure, common among the generation which now manages the country. Literally millions passed through the military, many of them through the war of their time. In the enlisted military you come to know…many things. You learn how armies work and think, meet black kids from the slums of Chicago and white kids from shadowed valleys of Tennessee, learn what it is to be hungry and exhausted and never able to sleep. You see what a war really is, and what people look like who have been badly hit.

In the White House they don’t know these things, or at the slick policy-shop magazines manned by bright Fauntleroys. I am not sure what they do know, other than board rooms and good hotels.

There is the simple matter of working for a living other in an ermine-lined sinecure. Tending bar, for example, driving an eighteen-wheeler, working summers in a saw mill, or doing construction. Starting your own business without daddy’s millions. When you know the woman pushing seventy who is waitressing long hours with swollen ankles—“I’m too tired to work, and too poor to quit”—you might change your ideas about, well, lots of things. Some folk don’t have silver tea services.

Who in the White House understands any of this?

There is travel of the sort that shows you the planet as it is. If you look in the back streets of Asia and South America, or of Europe for that matter, you will find people, mostly from their late teens to early thirties, who are traveling on a low budget. Sometimes they stay in one place for six months or a year and work on the language. Sometimes they keep moving, backpacking it, grabbing the tramp freighters or rattletrap goat-and-chicken buses. Many are well educated. Not infrequently they are professionals who don’t want the Hilton.

On the third-class buses in Michoacan, in the ramshackle motor launches in the pampas of Bolivia, they learn…it’s hard to say exactly what. A sense of humanity, perhaps, that people in other countries are not dinks, slopes, sand-niggers, zipperheads, spics, dot-niggers, or gooks. They learn, however strange it may seem from Crawford, Texas, that the Laos, Thais, Mexicans and Colombians actually like their countries and cultures, and fiercely resent meddling. This latter has consequences. Consult your newspaper.

They don’t know these things in the White House, or at the rattling little policy magazines. I watch as if contemplating idiot children as the current administration consistently and needlessly infuriates other countries by its moral lectures to sovereign states, as it miscalculates over and over the reactions of other nations, as it publicly announces that it is seeking “regime change” here and there. The effect of course is to make people rally around the regime. But in the White House they have no idea.

How could they? They have never been in the real world. How many speak—I’ll be kind and say “another language” instead of “any language”?

Again in that strange real world where most of us live, there are the street trades—police, fire, and ambulance. Granted, these are accessible only to their practitioners and to the occasional reporter. Here you see another United States, that of the huge hermetic slums, and how they work and their intractable misery. You see the ghastly car wrecks and the paramedics who try desperately to get to shock-trauma with something other than a corpse. Have those who set policy for society seen this? Have they seen anything?

A rich friend once invited me to his house in the West End of Richmond, Virginia. At supper when you wanted the mashed potatoes, you didn’t say, “Pass the potatoes, please.” No. You rang a little bell and a black guy came out and held the bowl while you scooped potatoes. It was hugely embarrassing. I suspect that he felt like a fool. I know I did. I wanted to scream, “What’s wrong with these people?” and go have a beer with the black guy.

It doesn’t matter whether an investment banker has seen a barracks or a pair of work gloves. It bothers me to have policy made, and wars started, by those who have never seen the country they rule, or the world they play with, who have never had to make a living, to carry a rifle or worry about snipers, who have never run the back alleys of Taipei or anywhere else and, god help us, can’t serve their own potatoes.

[lemonjello]

Contrary indicator?

Here's some interesting data on the QQQQs. Highest short interest this year. As you can see these people have been mostly wrong this year. The futs are pointing up for the NDX and down for the Dow and SPX. Wouldn't be surprised to see another blast higher on the NDX to at least blow out all these shorts if they haven't covered yet.

Settlement Date Short interest Avg Daily Volume Days to Cover
Dec. 15, 2006 190,431,284 103,814,588 1.83
Nov. 15, 2006 186,235,439 118,276,177 1.57
Oct. 13, 2006 161,363,718 109,983,120 1.47
Sep. 15, 2006 158,845,598 99,445,475 1.60
Aug. 15, 2006 146,676,823 118,961,780 1.23
Jul. 14, 2006 124,196,452 115,357,331 1.08
Jun. 15, 2006 149,925,834 157,963,660 1.00
May 15, 2006 122,248,026 98,523,374 1.24
Apr. 13, 2006 147,564,650 88,752,588 1.66
Mar. 15, 2006 144,676,455 91,683,763 1.58
Feb. 15, 2006 149,039,242 98,336,944 1.52
Jan. 13, 2006 172,102,591 73,380,036 2.35

[lemonjello]

Let them eat cake

Anyone think this may be a little, um, excessive? That's about $650,000 per translator.

Let's see - 40 million US citizens have no health insurance and how much money has been funneled into Iraq? Maybe the uninsured should have just bought some Halliburton stock.


worldtribune.com

U.S. to pay $4.6 billion
for translators in Iraq

SPECIAL TO WORLD TRIBUNE.COM
Friday, December 22, 2006

WASHINGTON — The U.S. Army has launched an effort to recruit thousands of translators to facilitate training of Iraqi security forces.

The army has awarded a contract for management of translation and interpretation services in Iraq to Global Linguistic Solutions. GLS, a joint venture of DynCorp International and McNeil Technologies, has received a five-year contract, with a maximum value of $4.645 billion.

"The ability to communicate effectively with the Iraqi people is critical to a successful outcome in Iraq, and we are very aware of the trust that has been placed in us," DynCorp chief executive officer Herbert Lanese said.

Dyncorp bested L-3 Communications for the army contract. In 2005, L-3 acquired Titan Corp. a leading supplier of linguists to the U.S. Army Intelligence and Security Command, or ISC, Middle East Newsline reported.

The GLS contract, awarded by ISC, would begin in March 2007. Under the award, GLS would provide foreign-language interpretation and translation services to the army and other U.S. government agencies in Iraq.

Executives said this would include supplying translators for embedding with U.S. forces. They said GLS would employ up to 6,000 Iraqi translators and up to 1,000 U.S. citizens. The Americans, with native ability to speak the Iraqi dialect, would acquire security clearances.

DI has recruited 2,500 employees, including linguists, in Iraq. Executives said McNeil would focus on acquiring linguists. The president of GLS, [Ret.] Maj. Gen. James Marks, was responsible for the Iraq Language Program in 2003 as the chief of intelligence for the Coalition Forces Land Component Command.

[lemonjello]

And the curtains on Cramer's brain

You've heard of Cramer before, right?

It's interesting to hear that what was suspected (and quasi illegal) is really happening on a regular basis. He must have had too much eggnog before that interview or he's feeling safe with his buddy Spitzer as NY governor elect.

Now, if he would go into the offshore hedge funds a bit...

.....unless conceitedness and moral perversion are things you don't want to witness at Christmas time.

[spikefader]

Cramer pulls back the curtain on himself...

This is a must watch

.....unless conceitedness and moral perversion are things you don't want to witness at Christmas time.

[lemonjello]

Cramer pulls back the curtain on hedgies

This is a must watch before they pull it -

http://tinyurl.com/yxluuz