sovereign tea

* raymcgovern "What seems clear is that because of the U.S./U.K. attack on Iraq, China and Russia intend to give each other meaningful political support if Washington embarks on a new military adventure—against Iran, for example. That same assurance of mutual support and cooperation could also serve to embolden the Russians or Chinese for adventurism of their own—vis-à-vis Taiwan, for example, or Ukraine—taking advantage of the fact that the United States is pinned down in and preoccupied with Iraq." go read
http://www.commondreams.org/views04/1217-25.htm

* this might be a good time for me to update news re my lil xmas contribution from last year when i played around at the margin of that lil game where pennies are placed in the xmas pudding. given my propensity to inject peace/politics into everything these days (including, dog forbid, xmas) - i substituted pennies for chits which nominated certain regions of the world whose invasion/takeover might signal further deterioration and concern to world peace/stability (not that im a statusquo junky, per se) - as the major powers might take the opportunity provided by the ams': 1) demonstrated contempt for int'l law, 2) new military constraints, and 3) explicit trashing of any moral pretense, to begin mopping up 'renegade' provinces. the chits were to be replaced if/when such invasions took place. the hope was that we could keep re-using the chits adinfinitum. there were 4 of us for xmas dinner last year - so i had four chits as proxies for my concerns - one each for chechnya, taiwan, easttimor and i kinda cheated on the final one - bundling saudiarabia, iran and syria onto a single chit. the good news is that as of writing, it seems we'll be able to re-use all of them.

heres an update on those regions anyways:

saudi - the obl boogieman parently released a statement last week about toppling the saudi regime. i havent looked closely at it - but its not new news that obl's main goal is regime change there, and wants the ams outta there. regardless of who made the latest audio tape, it looks like saudi might be increasingly in play over the next 12 months.

iran - my concerns about iran are well (or badly) documented. unfortunately iran looks like iraq redux - it is almost beyond belief that the ams are using the exact same script - i guess it worked sufficiently well last time - at least in getting 'us' *into* iraq, if nothing else. bolton and feith and leeden and pletka and these guys seem, extraordinarily, to have as much power as they did 12 months ago - and their plans are in plain view for all to see. c.powell is shamelessly whoring himself, even on the way out, quoting 'walk-in' intelligence and dodgy satellite pix and listening to terrorist orgs like the mek to garner support. meanwhile the ams have sold 500 'bunkerbusting' bombs (nukes) to the israelis, and are conducting iraninvasion war-games and such-like. the oft-touted plan is to conduct 'surgical' air strikes - blowing up the nuke plants and then leaving. one problem with that is that they might hurt a bunch of iranians along the way... the idea of a groundinvasion seems logistically near impossible.

the logic basis for attacking iran seems to be that 'we cant let em have nuke weapons - cos then they'll atack us - therefore we need to strike pre-emptively' - the problem with that logic seems to be that the iranians dont really have any nuke weapon program, and even if they did its not obvious why they'd use it, and even if they had a nukeweapon program and it got blown up, it would only take 2-3 years to rebuild it anyway - so its not exactly obvious what would be achieved.

the jihadmin are at least trying to get some pretense of legal cover for the attack - which is why they hate the uk/fr/ger efforts to get a deal - bolton wants iran taken to the sec.council to get some sort of trigger, it seems they will then use whatever wording the sc comes up with and find a way to bend that so that 34 can then (pretend to) say 'we were enforcing the will of the UN' - remember the 'serious consequences' nonsense re iraq? remember the 1441 nonsense 'saddam refused to disarm' and saddams 12000 pg documentation of the disarming which the ams intercepted b4 the UN could see it, after it was heavily redacted?

meanwhile of course, the jihadmin are dual-tracking the process - looking for some pretense of UN cover while simultaneously underming the UN and the iaea - trashing kofi and elbaradei. they are spying on elbaradei, looking for snippets of any tapped phonecalls to the iranians to undermine him, one imagines that any comment taken outta context or whatever could provide them with the cover they think they need and use that as a trigger. and the third track is the israelis making noises about the irans hidden program, outside the purview of the program that the iaea is monitoring.

the cool thing about the wargaming wrt the iranians is that wargames were also conducted in advance of the iraqi invasion - except the egadmin ignored the fact that they 'lost' the wargames - and proceeded anyway. one imagines that the iranians are also conducting their own games - and they might not respond exactly the way they are 'sposed' to. and one expects they might get all extra-territorial in their response - and that could get messy.

the nice thing about the fact that it wouldnt make sense for the iranians to use a nuke other than in defense is the eternal canard that 'they might give weapons to terrorists' - which is of course difficult to counter - regardless of whether it makes any sense or not. the terrorists are coming. the terrorists are coming. the terrorists are coming. the terrorists are coming.

the good news for the iranians is that the oil price means that they are swimming in money which has meant that their ability to finance the military has gone thru the roof.

syria - the noise re syria hasnt quietened down any either. twas nice to see stoopid 34 suggesting that its unhelpful that syria and iran are meddling in iraq - what with it being a sovereign country and all. we also keep hearing this stupid noise about foreign insurgents in iraq coming across the border from syria and iran - and the safe haven nonsense - parently that means that syria/iran are guilty/complicit of all the bad things in iraq - and they should do more to close the borders and all these other impossible demands (and impossible to prove) - all providing a pretext for extra-sovereign actions, whenever such pretexts are required.

ok - so thats my first chit. not much good news anywhere there.


chechnya - there hasnt been much news re chechnya - so thats a good thing - apart from being blamed for beslan and planes blowing up and things, of course, 'chechnya' was just a proxy for russia's behavior - and the news hasnt been great there either. russia has of course repeatedly claimed during the year that it has the right to pre-emptive strikes, which isnt great news, but as she rightly claims 'there are precedents for that'. the news from georgia isnt great, and theres also the ukraine thing - russia is of course blamed for meddling there, which is probably true, as is the fact that the west looks at least as complicit as the russians. "Defense Minister Ivanov made it clear that Russia "reserves the right to carry out preventive strikes with conventional weaponry on terror bases anywhere they are found in the world." Indeed, it may be a short step to applying the "terrorist" label to those wearing orange in Kiev."

and then theres the nationalising of yukos and a few other companies - which isnt territorial per se, but is similar in effect in many ways - resources being resources and all that.

* taiwan/china - i havent been following taiwan closely - we had the democracysham earlier in the year(?), and a recent bout of elections there with 'very surprising' results - with the pro-independence guy getting slammed. im kinda tired of surprising election results. theres also been a bunch of wargames there this year - with the amnavy putting a bunch of their boats in the region, and the chinese running invasion exercises on a nearby island as practise in case they ever need to invade taiwan. not particularly comforting.

* easttimor. just to show how the prediction bizness can throw up surprises, i included e.timor in the list cos i thought that praps the indonesians might try to re-annex e.timor - after australia altruistically helped liberate it. turns out the biggest threat to e.timor is actually australia. who'da thunk? in a fabulously under-reported story, its actually oz which is stealing easttimor's territory - for those of you wondering why australia would steal territory from the (2nd?) poorest country in the world, well, surprisingly, it has something to do with oil... ya see, it turns out that intl law somehow draws a line halfway between 2 countries to identify who owns the resources under the sea. in an egregiously shameless move, oz decided to redraw the national boundary with e.timor such that the edge of the territory shifted from the shore to the edge of the continental plate - coincidentally, this meant that oil which was previously on e.timors side of the dividing line, is now on oz's side of the dividing line, luckily for oz. sweet. its not obvious whether indonesia would have allowed such shenanigans if oz hadnt liberated etimor.... etimor isnt very happy about it, but they dont have much of a military. kinda makes u wonder...

not much other dramatic news from indonesia - some problems in acceh which is looking to seccede. and oz foreignminister alexanderdowner (who is being touted to head up the iaea when elbaradei gets sacrificed) saying that he thinks itd be reasonable if the indonesians launched pre-emptive attacks against australia, and separately oz claiming pre-emptive strike rights in the region.


anways, there are only 3 of us for xmas this year - i might have to have 2nd helpings of xmas pud to ensure that each of the four chits gets kept in circulation. or maybe therell be an xmas invasion somewhere and one of chits can be retired.


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How can 59,054,087 Americans be so dumb?
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