Neocons Sabotaged Iran

* "How Neocons Sabotaged Iran's Help on al-Qaeda: The United States and Iran were on a course to work closely together on the war against al-Qaeda and its Taliban sponsors in Afghanistan in late 2001 and early 2002 – until Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld stepped in to scuttle that cooperation, according to officials who were involved at the time." (link)
(via scott)

* "Australia is the world biggest seller of black coal, and also uses this product to generate much of the nation's electric power. Indeed Australia coal is said to account for 10% of all the world's Greenhouse gases, making Australia, in a sense, a true rogue nation, and a major source of the world's climatic change problem... Just as Bush's Republicans have launched a War on Science, Howard and his minions have set out to silence the CSIRO experts, in the interests of the powerful Coal lobby, who are major contributors to his ruling Liberal Party." (link)
yay, us.

* "Marina Nevskaya and Alexander Koulakovsky, two executives of the Russian energy company Naftasib with close ties to the Russian government and security services, appear to have funneled at least ($3.4m) to three DC GOP lobbyists between 1997 and 2004... The question of the hour, of course, is just what the Russians were after, especially since, in every case, Naftasib's true role as the source of the money remained hidden." (link)

* laura has a new piece out in Prospect about the genesis of the niger forgeries (and she got to visit Rome. lucky woman.) She seems to think that the forgeries were created by SISMI, perhaps for the purpose of an internal sting... its all still murky (and dont forget that larisa puts Ledeen at Panorama at the same time)

* Laura:

"Something strange is happening in Italy. For months, the Berlusconi-linked press there has been pushing back on revelations emerging from the Niger forgeries scandal, trying to point away from the evidence that the Italian military intelligence organization Sismi was involved at some level in the scheme. But in the past few days, Milan paper Il Giornale, owned by Paolo Berlusconi (the baby brother of Italian prime minister -- up for reelection in April), has been publishing selections from the leaked transcripts of those interviewed about the case by a Rome prosecutor, Franco Ionta."