Archive for Richard Cochrane

“Iran has an undercover presence in the six GCC countries,” Assadi, who defected in 2001 and now lives in Sweden, said..

ABU DHABI — An Iranian defector and former ambassador said Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps has formed sleeper and operational cells in Gulf Cooperation Council states. The former ambassador, Adil Assadi, said some of the cells, consisting of Iranian laborers and foreign Shi’ite nationals, were formed soon after the Islamic revolution in Teheran in 1979.

“Iran has an undercover presence in the six GCC countries,” Assadi, who defected in 2001 and now lives in Sweden, said. “They used to send them through a third country with a recommendation to the immigration authorities not to stamp their passports on entering and leaving the country.”

In a recent interview with the Abu Dhabi-based Gulf News, Assadi confirmed assertions by officials in Bahrain, Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates of a growing Iranian presence in GCC states. Kuwait has assessed that IRGC maintains 30,000 operatives in the sheikdom.

“The [Iranian] Foreign Affairs Ministry and its institutions exist just to provide cover for their work and offer them diplomatic immunity,” Assadi said. “I stood at a crossroads: Either I had to agree to what the Revolutionary Guards and intelligence agencies used to do under the name of diplomacy, or leave office, which is what I opted for.”

Assadi said IRGC recruits operatives to collect intelligence in Iraq and GCC countries. Another group was said to have been trained by IRGC to conduct attacks in neighboring states.

“I think Teheran has enough manpower to destabilize the GCC countries, which is bad news,” Assadi said. “The good news is that Arab governments and people have become more alert about Iranian plots against the region after they were exposed in Iraq. Their role in Iraq was very successful from an Iranian point of view, but it severely damaged their prospective activities in other GCC countries.”

GCC officials have confirmed Assadi’s assertions. They said Iran increased its intelligence presence in such countries as Bahrain, Kuwait and the UAE in 2007.

“Iran has often had an ambivalent attitude towards the Gulf states, claiming to offer support and friendship, but at the same time, adopting antagonistic attitudes and seeking to interfere in domestic security issues,” Adel Al Mouawad, a member of the Bahrain parliament’s Defense Committee said. “Our countries urgently need to work together to address increasingly ominous menaces to destabilize them.”

Officials said Iran stationed an IRGC colonel in Kuwait to oversee surveillance operations in the GCC state, which contains at least 15,000 U.S. troops. They said the IRGC officer relayed an $8,000 bribe to a senior Kuwaiti security official to ensure that the Iranian could remain in the country.

“We have no reason to doubt that such networks will be used to destabilize the country as part of the Iranian plan to burn the Gulf in case of war,” Nasser Al Duweila, chairman of the Kuwaiti parliament’s Legislative Committee, said. “The GCC should have a strong and unified stance to clarify their position regarding a looming war in the region and convey it clearly to Teheran.”

The United Arab Emirates has acknowledged an Iranian intelligence network. Officials said the UAE was monitoring its huge Iranian community in Dubai.

“My advice to them is to keep their agents sleepy because it is not in the interests of Iranians in the region to destabilize their host countries,” UAE Lt. Gen. Dahi Khalfan Tamim, commander of Dubai police, said.

This has has much to do with with Iran that before the end of his year will have a nuclear weapon.

As predicted here the Israel defense forces entered GAZA on Saturday. At least 30 Hamas gunmen were reported killed as Israeli Defense Force troops swept into the northern Gaza Strip on Saturday night, encountering fierce resistance from Hamas forces entrenched in fortifications just over the border. Dozens more Hamas fighters have been killed but no number has been released at this writing.

An IDF soldier was killed and 32 have been wounded as fighting continues in the Gaza Strip.  

According to dispatches from the Jerusalem Post soldiers from the Armored Corps - 150 tabnks are reported near Gaza City, Engineering Corps, and Paratroopers, Givati, Golani brigades were participating in the fighting, with at least four brigades’ worth of troops inside the Gaza Strip. Israeli Airforce warplance continued to strike targets in Gaza.

Before the ground incursion began, IDF artillery, for the first time in several years, began pounding open areas in northern Gaza to “soften up” the area and destroy land mines and Hamas fortifications

Engineers are likely clearing bobby traps and land mines under the protection of others brigades so armor could move in with impunity.

One of the major aims of the operation was also to deliver a serious blow to the Hamas military wing, which the IDF estimated had not been severely weakened under the air campaign and deny Hamas sites where most of the rocket launches have taken place.

The IDF will not enter Gaza City or the refugee camps, defense officials said, and it was likely that on Monday - when French President Nicolas Sarkozy arrives and the international pressure is expected to escalate - Israel would begin scaling back the operations. Before that Israel will gain as much ground that it can most easily hold to deny Hamas rocket launch sites.

Israeli sources predict a “lengthy” operation, and warned that there will likely be Israeli casualties.

At least 80 rockets pounded southern Israel so far this weekend scoring direct hits on homes.

Perhaps the most bizarre weekend event happened Sunday morning  when U. S. Senate Majority leader Harry Reid (D) Nevada called the Israel-Hamas fighting a “civil war” during his ramblings on NBC’s MEET THE PRESS. On the same program Andrea Mitchell said the U. S. and Israel are “isolated” from other who has called for a ceasefire.

Members of the U. S. ARMY Corp of Engineers are quietly in Egypt advising it what can be done about the tunnel network that has defacto implicated it in Iran’s arming of Hamas from its territory.

It is apparent to most that the timing of Israel’s GAZA invasion involving both the unswerving support by the outgoing Bush administration and has much to do with with Iran that before the end of his year will have a nuclear weapon.

(O)ptimism remains in predictably short supply. So let’s face the facts and let realism be our guide.

At this time of year there is no dearth of opinions and predictions. Among the more erudite is World Tribune writer and U.N. correspondent for diplomatic and defense issues John J. Metzler whose perspectives are particularly worthwhile..

I have edited for brevity, added a few comments and summarized his view below:

He says “Given the financial meltdown and the global economic doldrums, optimism remains in predictably short supply. So let’s face the facts and let realism be our guide in viewing some key issues” including:

Global Economy: The Autumn 2008 Financial meltdown has done irreparable damage to the USA and the world in general. The individual Wall Street crooks who in many cases created this crisis should be unceremoniously indicted, prosecuted, and punished if guilty. The economy has drifted into rocky shoals not seen since the late 1970’s. This was not a failure of free market capitalism as is so glibly stated, but the long-looming outcome of casino capitalism, fueled by play money, and marinated in a cozy relationship of gazillionaries with politicians.

Now we are stuck with the results—and the bill. The new Democrat answer will be a repackaged “New Deal” which will probably, as in FDR’s case in the 1930’s, make matters worse. Massive profligate big government spending is certain to stoke inflationary embers and deepen the public debt. The good news is that petroleum prices have significantly fallen over last summer’s highs. Equally the American unemployment numbers are far below Europe’s.

East Asia: The story is China and China. The tough hurdles ahead are economic. Slowdown in the West (read where Chinese exports flood) means factory closings and massive unemployment on the Mainland.

There’s no great social net to help workers either, so there’s a large mass of unemployed and rootless labor shifting around China. Citizens who were duly impressed, and politically bought-off by the People’s Republic’s economic (or at least statistical) achievements, may now look to the political sorcerers. China’s ruling Communist Party (CCP) will have to confront this dilemma and find scapegoats.

Which brings us to the other China; shall Beijing use the economic downturn to stoke nationalism and bully tactics? The Republic of China on Taiwan is being maneuvered into a situation which threatens its freedom and sovereignty in not daring to displease the dragon.

South Asia: Afghanistan and Pakistan are fertile grounds for destabilization. The recent terror attacks in India, growing violence in Afghanistan, and tensions in divided Kashmir, fought over by both nuclear-armed Pakistan and India, remains a political tinderbox and cause for Islamic jihadis with regional implications.

Middle East: Iraq, now far better off after the U.S. military surge, has room to build and improve. Yet Hamas violent incitements in Gaza will keep the pot boiling with Israel. In Lebanon Hizbullah, via Iran’s hidden hand, is poised for serious mischief. The Islamic Republic of Iran will “celebrate” the 30th anniversary of the shroud of political gloom which the mullahs pulled over once proud Persia. They will revel in their nuclear gains, and spitefully show the West that they got away with it.

Vice Preisdent-elect Biden’s warning that its time to “get used” to a nuclear armed Iran is sad and fatally dangerous.

Russia: Despite the neo-imperial impulses by Vladimir Putin, the good news is that the petrodollars flowing into Kremlin coffers are dwindling and cutting Russia’s global clout. But watch Ukraine; it can certainly be bullied by the Bear over natural gas supplies, and moreover through political subversion from Russia. While Georgia’s Summer war was a tragic surprise, the chess piece on the board Putin covets remains Ukraine.

Latin America: Despite the danger of Hugo Chavez, the good news is oil prices are down which diminishes Venezuela’s role. Cuba celebrates the 50th anniversary of Castro’s takeover; ushering in 50 years of dictatorship. Despite this, major democratic gains have been consolidated throughout most of Latin America, including Columbia.

Humanitarian: The United Nations is simply overwhelmed with disasters ranging from famines, both natural and self-inflicted as in Zimbabwe, as well as civil wars which haunt the African continent. Sudan’s ongoing Darfur tragedy, the horrors of the Congo, and the lawlessness of Somalia are but a few cases.

American Administration: All eyes are on Washington. Domestic political optimism and global giddiness remains high on the verge of the Age of Obama. While many media pundits assume the new president can walk on water; possible for Canadian politicians in winter but decidedly more difficult on the Potomac in Washington, a brewing crisis of expectations will bedevil Barack Obama. Internecine battles inside his own Democrat dominated Congress and administration will hamper him as much as gathering political gales internationally.

The Congressional election in November 2010 will be a bellwether for Obama and his political executioners will be logged in by Christmas.

In the midst of all this, Happy New Year 2009!

Israel Goes on High Alert

According to a report by Agence France Presse. On Friday Hamas ordered a “day of wrath” against Israel over the killing of a senior commander. “Israeli Police have been placed on a heightened state of alert throughout the country, just under the maximum level that is in effect in war time,” police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld told AFP. The police re stationed around likely terror targets across the nation.

The army also locked down the West Bank for 48 hours, with movement in and out of the territory prohibited except for emergencies and special cases.

According to AFP Hamas called a “day of wrath” after an Israeli air strike killed Nizar Rayan, a firebrand hardliner, and several of his wives and children. At least 422 Palestinians have now been killed in Israel’s seven-day-old blitz.

With Israeli tanks and troops massed for a threatened ground offensive around Gaza and no ceasefire in sight, the army allowed foreigners to leave the battered enclave. Fox News reported around noon EST that a go ahead to invade Gaza has been given but that has not been officially confirmed.

Israeli warplanes pounded Gaza for a seventh day, carrying out some 20 strikes overnight, bombing rocket launching sites and Hamas buildings, official sources said..

The Islamist movement kept firing back, sending a handful of rockets slamming into Israeli territory overnight without causing casualties.

Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni reiterated that Israel does not think the time is yet ripe for a truce after talks in Paris on Thursday with President Nicolas Sarkozy and other French leaders.

Otherwise peace moves are stalled at the UN Security Council even though UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon said the conflict had become “a dramatic crisis.” President Bush called the U. N. Secretary-General to the White House for consultations.

AFP reports, “The majority of the Israeli public is supporting the Gaza offensive, with some 95 percent of Jewish residents backing the strikes according to a survey published on Friday in the Maariv daily. Maariv (Hebrew: מַעֲרִיב‎, lit. Evening) is a popular middle-market daily newspaper published in Israel,.’

Caldera Blew Its Top In Atom Bomb Sized Blast 640,000 Years Ago - Landslide After 1959 Quake Killed 28.

Seventy thousand years ago was the last time Yellowstone’s volcano erupted. In the last few days swarms of tremors have been detected there – up to 250 small earthquakes. No one’s predicting Yellowstone is about to blow its top but scientists are interested, since a eruption is always possible.

Such swarms are frequent in Yellowstone but it is unusual to have them occur over several days, says University of Utah geologist Robert Smith. Smith directs the Yellowstone Seismic Network, which operates seismic stations around the park. He said the quakes have ranged in strength from barely detectable to one of magnitude 3.8 that happened Saturday. A magnitude 4 quake is capable of producing moderate damage.

“This is an active volcanic and tectonic area, and these are the kinds of things we have to pay attention to,” Smith said. “We might be seeing something precursory.

Yellowstone is the caldera of a volcano that last erupted 70,000 years ago. Yellowstone remains very geologically active — and its famous geysers and hot springs are a reminder that a pool of magma still exists five to 10 miles underground. “That’s just the surface manifestation of the enormous amount of heat that’s being released through the system.”

A caldera is a cauldron-like volcanic feature usually formed by the collapse of land following a volcanic eruption. They are sometimes confused with volcanic craters. The word comes from Spanish caldera, and this from Latin CALDARIA, meaning “cooking pot”. In some texts the English term cauldron is also used.

Yellowstone has had significant earthquakes as well as minor ones in recent decades. In 1959, a magnitude 7.5 quake near Hebgen Lake just west of the park triggered a landslide that killed 28 people. Yellowstone Caldera last erupted some 640,000 years ago, it released about 1,000 km³ of dense rock equivalent (DRE) material, covering a substantial part of North America in up to two metres of debris. By comparison, when Mount St. Helens erupted in 1980, it released ~1.2 km³ (DRE) of ejecta.

… many try to catch the falling knife - some predict 15% gains in 2009.

After months of tortuous trading, Wall Street rang out its worst year since the Great Depression New Year’s Eve leaving shareholders $6.9 trillion the poorer and has begun the 2009 trading year quietly. .

The losses in 2008 were so broad and deep that every sector in the Standard & Poor’s 500-stock index took a double-digit hit, and the financial sector lost more than half of its value. The Dow Jones industrial average, an index of 30 blue-chip stocks, and the S&P, a broader index watched by market professionals, were down 34 percent and 38 percent, respectively, their deepest losses since the 1930s. The tech-heavy Nasdaq composite index was down 41 percent, its worst year since the exchange was created in 1971.

Overseas, the year was just as dismal. In Germany, stocks were down 40 percent, in Japan, 42 percent, in Brazil, 41 percent. Taken together, all of the world’s stocks lost 48 percent last year.

Traders endured unprecedented turmoil last year as Lehman Brothers, an icon of the financial industry, teetered then collapsed, while other firms were saved by government intervention or disappeared into the arms of competitors. By the end of 2008, the Dow had set new records for its three largest single-day point gains and two steepest point losses after swinging hundreds of points an hour during some sessions.

Investors now have turned from the wreckage of the past year to focus on the prospects for President-elect Barack Obama’s proposed stimulus package to revive the economy, analysts said. The Dow closed yesterday up 1.3 percent, or 108 points, at 8776.39, while the S&P climbed 1.4 percent, or 12.61 points, to close at 903.25. The Nasdaq was up 1.7 percent, or 26.33 points, at 1577.03.

The year ended with relatively positive economic news, though analysts said it will have limited impact. The Labor Department said jobless claims fell by 94,000 last week to a seasonally adjusted 492,000, a bigger drop than expected, but unemployment remains historically high. And rates for a 30-year, fixed-rate mortgage fell to 5.1 percent this week from 5.14 percent the week before — the lowest since Freddie Mac began tracking that data in 1971. But the housing market remains weak and home values have plummeted.

With the economy expected to sour further during the first half of the year and poor corporate earnings likely to pile up as businesses account for the losses from the financial crisis and housing downturn, a stock market recovery will be bumpy, analysts said.

It has traditionally taken about five years for stocks to recover from a “mega-meltdown,” said Sam Stovall, chief investment strategist for Standard & Poor’s Equity Research. If the S&P does not revisit the low levels it reached in November, it could gain 15 percent in 2009, making a dent in 2008’s losses, he said.

But “if we find the recession is deeper and longer than we currently expect, if there are more financial land mines that are unanticipated, there is no guarantee” stocks will not collapse again, Stovall said.

The market’s volatility spilled into traditionally stable parts of the economy, increasing demand for government bonds, for example. The yield for one-month Treasury bills started at about 2.6 percent in 2008, but unprecedented demand pushed it into negative territory before it finished at 0.01 percent yesterday. The smaller yields mean that investors were willing to earn little on the bonds, and when the yields plunged into the red, do without any return and pay the Treasury Department to keep their money safe from market turbulence.

Skittishness could also be seen in the market for crude oil. After surging to $147 a barrel in the summer, prices began a precipitous slide as economic concerns spread and demand dropped. The price climbed 14 percent to $44.60 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange just before the New Year but has fallen about 70 percent from its peak and finished down about 50 percent for the year.

The fall in crude was faster and deeper than expected, analysts said, and prices could still plummet to $25 a barrel bringing per gallon gasoline prices to und4ra dollar per gallon.

“This (2008) is a year that people will go back and look back and study for the next 100 years,” said Phil Flynn, oil analyst at Alaron Trading in Chicago.

50th Anniversary of Castro’s Coup Show Decrepit, Failing Cuba

January 1, 2009 marks the 50^th Anniversary of Castro’s 1958 Cuban coup points out a paper released today by the Brookings Institution. Cuba is decrepit; its leaders are ill, dead or nearly so it rightly says…

“Everything that needs to be said has been said on Cuba,” opines Brookings’ writers.

.”Too much time-a half-century-and too much change on both sides of the Florida Straits has passed. Why add another word, another admonition to change U.S. policy, or another plea for a democratic Cuba? Is there anything new that will convince Miami and Havana that it is time to end this feud?”" For the tenth time since Fidel Castro rode into Havana, a new American administration is rolling into Washington, and Miami and Havana are again full of hope and fear in equal measures. Indeed they have reason. Cuba rhetoric did not dominate the presidential debate in Florida and Raul-not Fidel-Castro holds power. President-elect Obama’s campaign promise to lift restrictions on Cuban-American travel and remittances would be a welcome New Year’s gift to separated families. And, Raul Castro has offered up several olive branches. Although no longer wrapped in the usual rhetoric, they are heavy with demands for the return of Guantanamo Bay and Cuba’s “Five Heroes.”

But if past is prologue, a change of American administrations is not enough to change the dynamic between the United States and Cuba. Cuba who found succor from the old Soviet Union is once again courting the ruble crowd; hosting Russian warships and flirting with Hugh Chaves, Venezuela’s current nutcase.

Brookings recounts the mishmash of Cuban American relations as follows with my own clarification and addition:.

• President Kennedy adopted and modified a scheme for invading Cuba from the Eisenhower administration taking care to buy up as many Cubvan cigars as he could find before shutting off relations.

That Bay of Pigs fiasco gave the Soviet Union an excuse to protect its newest client in the Americas, resulting in a confrontation between the United States and the Soviet Union that brought us to the brink of nuclear war over the Cuban Missile Crisis.

• Bill Clinton thought he could balance domestic politics while unraveling the embargo, but Fidel Castro sunk his good intentions with two made-in-Cuba crises: the shoot down of the Brothers’ to the Rescue aircraft and turning little Elian Gonzalez-the Cuban child returned by U.S. courts to his father-into a Cuban hero and a Cuban-American disaster. Another fiasco for feel good grouping.

• When George W. Bush took office he initially continued the liberal travel polices of the Clinton administration and even flirted with the idea that greater contact, outreach, and bilateral talks might promote change in Cuba. But Jeb Bush’s re-election campaign intervened.

Florida’s powerful Cuban Liberty Council demanded that the Bush administration increase Cuba’s isolation and return to the politics of regime change-revolution not evolution. The resulting hard-line politics of the Bush administration cutoff its access, thereby aiding a smooth succession to what has become a split presidency in which both Castro brothers rule.

• Enter Obama and his more than ample hyperbole. When push comes to shove and Jeb Bush is running to keep the swing seat in the U. S. Senate in Republican hands all that high-faluten high-horseness will desolve into partisan politics.

But, before that Russia is going to play a trump card like the Soviet’s did with JFK and get things it wants in exchange for U. S. concessions like Kennedy taking U. S. nukes out of Turkey in 1963 it will be Obama blocking the Missile shield in Europe and more.

The Czechs are used to getting the wet willie in their ear by American Presidents since FDR backed Neville Chamberlin at Munich and ceded it to Hitler, and Truman left them peering over the Iron Curtain for half century. But, to their credit they saw this one coming and are sitting on an OK of their part of the shield until they see which way Barack’s banner blows.

Cuba’s “friends”-Venezuela, Brazil, Mexico, China, Spain, and again Russia-are extending credit based on grabbing up some of its vast offshore crude oil reserves and most of them just to stick their finger in the USA’s eye not friendshipwith or trust of trhe Castro boys. They’d be there now had not crude oil prices collapsed.

Brooking thinks, “U.S. sanctions now serve more to punish the Cuban people and harm our image than hurt the Cuban government. Our influence is at its nadir having been drained away by Venezuelan oil subsidies to Chavez’s regional acolytes, the potential of Cuban deep-sea oil, and our adventures in the Middle East.”Brookings writers ask, “How many times has it been said that if we hope to help give Cubans a voice in their future we will have to jettison our policy of regime change and engage the Cuban government? But this is a family feud in which the protagonists are shouting, not listening nor understanding that there is no victory, no winners, and only losers between the protagonists who share a common heritage.”

The papers conclusiion advances the thought that, ” a changed world offers opportunities to those Cuban Americans and Cubans bold enough to bury the past and build a future friendship among all Cubans and Americans. ”

Logic notwithstanding here’s my own simplistic syllogism– I ask what does the U. S. gets, except for a few cigars, in kissing the Castros’ wrinkled butts now? The Castros and their henchmen are enfeebled and dying out. So, be patient, send lillies, and act decisively to promote and support a genuine Cuban democratic republic there permanently removing Russia’s local toy isolating and hopefully engineering the  removal of the America’s biggest nincompoop — Hugo Chavez.

Admittedly that will take a lot more than president-elect Obama’s Rodney King diplomatic philosophy; or Hillary’s waddling her way toward the White House in 2012 as a pretend Secretary of State while Obama spends a lot of time watching his back front and both sides.