Wikileaks Pushes Revolution In Europe

Wikileaks is now pumping the new reality of a European Revolution, promoting Twitter hashtags, locations for protests and dates of marches and gatherings on its heavy-traffic website :

2011-05-25 #Europeanrevolution ignites after #spanishrevolution leads the way: massive protests happening now in France, Italy and Greece

As the main camps in Puerta del Sol (Madrid) and Plaza Catalunya (Barcelona) prepare to pack their tents and leave on Sunday, organizers have started to spread their message to the rest of Europe. From the beginning the Internet was abuzz with proposals of a European revolution or a #globalcamp, and for that purpose thousands of blogs and independent websites have been opening, planting the roots of the protests happening now in over twenty cities in France and Italy. Greece has also taken the streets and an estimated 30 thousand people are protesting outside of Athen's Parliament...

Wikileaks is not just releasing classified files and government records once kept hidden anymore, or rattling the doors of the establishment with a war of information.

Now Julian Assange is positioning himself at the centre of a European Uprising, and is purposely creating a new reality where what happened during the Arab Spring unfolds in the capitals of Europe.

More on The European Revolution from the UK Guardian :

A youth-led rebellion is spreading across southern Europe as a new generation of protesters takes possession of squares and parks in cities around Spain, united by a rejection of mainstream politicians and fury over spending cuts.

Protests are also planned in Italy, where the tag #italianrevolution is a trend on Twitter. Plans have been announced for a piazza occupation in Florenceon Thursday night, and for further protests in Italian cities, including Rome and Milan, on Friday.

In Madrid demonstrators have refused to budge from the central Puerta del Sol despite a police charge that dislodged them temporarily on Tuesday night.

Now they have occupied a quarter of the square, covering it with tarpaulins and tents, setting up kitchens, tapping at laptops and settling down to sleep on sofas and armchairs.

Similar scenes were being played out in Barcelona, where protesters held a midday Argentinian-style pan-bashing protest in the Plaza de Catalunya, and in numerous other cities where protesters raised the banner of what they call "the Spanish revolution".

All age groups were present in the protests but the emerging leaders were mostly under 30, part of a generation suffering 45% unemployment. Protesters said they were inspired more by the protests that followed the recent banking crisis in Iceland than by those that have swept through north Africa.

"Spain is not a business. We are not slaves," read one of the hundreds of protest posters glued to the Pueta del Sol's metro station walls.

The Full Story Is Here

What a four mile protest march from the Yemen Revolution looks like :



More On The Yemen Revolution At The Atlantic

The revolutions of the Arab Spring begin with the exchange of information, the defiance of authority and rocks :

Libya = Pentagon Vs China

China's interests in Libya, which supplies 3-5% of its oil, also act as a gateway to its tens of billions of dollars worth of investments across Africa in mining, infrastructure development and oil & gas.

Asia Time's Pepe Escobar :

"The Muslim Brotherhood is a weaponised, ideological arm of Saudi Arabia."

"The problem is there are different Washington agendas, White House, national security agencies, the CIA, the Pentagon."

"The next domino to fall, if we follow the agenda established by the Pentagon is Syria....The Pentagon is basically the Africa agenda, they want to win the war in Libya, install a Africa base in Africa....then there are the dominoes, Libya, Ivory Coast, Eritrea, Zimbawbe, Somalia. So these are the next dominoes to fall, according to the Africa Pentagon agenda. Then later on the big dominoes would the countries where China has substantial interests. Example, Angola, Algeria, Nigera, Equitorial Guinea...."

"China...their counter strategy, if they see they're foundering in Africa....they would renew their ties with South America and Central Asia..."

War On Libya Propaganda Push Falls Apart On Live TV

"This Is Americans Killing Muslims Again, And It Looks Like It's For Oil"

A mainstream media guest goes off script on Libya, and look at the shock of the presenters, no doubt being yelled at in their ear pieces by producers to cut away for a commercial :



Blackwater's worst nightmare, journalist Jeremy Scahill cuts through the bullshit on the War On Libya :

Pentagon, 2001 : "We're Gonna Take Out 7 Countries In 5 Years"

They're a bit behind schedule.

Russia, China Square Up To West Over War On Libya




By Darryl Mason

Despite apparently being almost out of money, the United States, France and the UK have all found the necessary cash to launch a new war on Libya, under the guise of enforcing a UN-mandated No Fly Zone. For the United States alone, the cost of military action against Libya is estimated at more than $100 million per day.

The official American government/media narrative is that Libyan rebels are a rag-tag bunch of freedom fighters trying to take down one of the world's most evil & sadistic tyrants. Well, Gaddafi is now, again, anyway, an evil tyrant, after being feted and praised for planning to open up his country to more western oil deals and development in the past few years by a conga-line of world includes including Bush, Obama, Blair & Sarkozy.



But Libya is not Egypt, or Bahrain, or Tunisia. Libya is an energy, water & resources rich nation with tens of billions in trade, energy and development deals with Russia and China.

Russia's Putin could not speak anymore plainly about what he believes is the real motivation behind the War On Libya :



Russia is, in fact, warning that the attacks on Libya could lead to a wider, world war :

“Any bombing of Libyan territory could provoke a large-scale conflict between the so-called West and the so-called Arab world,” a Russian Parliament leader said commenting on French and British plans to carry out aerial attacks in Libya.

“Any foreign military intervention will give Libya legal grounds to defend itself. We should do our best to avoid this highly dangerous scenario,” said Konstantin Kosachyov, head of the Foreign Affairs Committee of the State Duma, the lower house of the Russian Parliament.

Russian President Dmitry Medvedev warned ground operations by foreign forces will lead them deeper into protracted war :

“You and I understand what ground operations mean: they probably mean the beginning of war, and not civil war but war involving international forces.”

Now China is getting involved :

China's most important political newspaper ratcheted up the country's criticism of Western airstrikes against Libya on Monday, comparing them to the U.S.-led invasions in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The Communist Party's flagship newspaper, The People's Daily, said in a commentary that the United States and its allies are violating international rules and that in places like Iraq "the unspeakable suffering of its people are a mirror and a warning."

"The military attacks on Libya are, following on from the Afghan and Iraq wars, the third time that some countries have launched armed action against sovereign countries," it said.

"No matter what pretext the military actions were under, they should not be at the cost of people's lives and properties. This is not only the moral standard, but also the appeal from the world's people," it continued.

"People have good reason to express misgivings about the consequences that this military action may precipitate," it said.

China is getting very, very involved :



Why is China getting involved?

China's deep involvement with the North African dictatorship has also exposed a vulnerability in the world's second-largest economy.

In Libya, the world's 12th-largest oil exporter, China has emerged as a major investor and financial partner of strongman Moammar Kadafi. China is now the third-largest buyer of Libyan crude behind Italy and France. European and American oil firms have worked in Libya for years, but their governments have long sought to punish Kadafi for terrorist ties. Meanwhile, China has stuck to a hands-off policy it has dubbed "non-interventionism."

Before the Libyan conflict erupted, about 75 Chinese firms reportedly were laboring on an estimated $18 billion worth of contracts there, including construction of rail lines, irrigation systems, and Internet and cellphone networks.

But China's primary interest is energy. State-owned China National Petroleum Corp. has partnered with Libya's national oil company to build hundreds of miles of pipeline and explore for oil and gas offshore.

The world's No. 2 petroleum user, China imports more than half of the 8.3 million barrels it consumes daily. It buys from nations including Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Venezuela, which also supply the United States, the world's top oil consumer. Libyan oil accounts for only about 3% of China's imports, but it won't be easy to replace.

Paul McGeough :

Even if Gaddafi is eliminated from the equation - figuratively or literally - a daunting number of what-ifs will remain. What if the internal conflict in Libya is less a democracy uprising that unites the nation and more a tribal civil war? What if the Western intervention gives a leg-up to one side, the rebels, who in time could be no better and no worse that the Gaddafi loyalists - sans Gaddafi?

There is no evidence to support Gaddafi's claims that al-Qaeda and teen drug addicts have fomented the uprising. But there is historical evidence of tribal enmity in Libya that could support the colonel's claim that the revolt is a tribal war of those from the east against those in the west.

What if the country fell back to its pre-Gaddafi iteration of tribal distrust and infighting - and what if one side, in what could become a prolonged conflict, has been armed by the West? We could hardly be surprised if in such a stalemate , the underdog was drawn to or co-opted by al-Qaeda or its ilk.

The War On Libya has only just begun, is barely a few days old in fact, but already the 'coalition of support' is said to be crumbling,

AntiWar's Justin Raimondo :

Barely 24 hours after the first Allied air strikes, President Obama’s high-flying Libyan adventure is losing altitude. The smoke hadn’t cleared from the first air strikes when the head of the Arab League complained that “what happened differs from the no-fly zone objectives. What we want is civilians’ protection, not shelling more civilians.” Russia and China, who abstained at the Security Council, are already getting restless.

There’s trouble on the horizon.

Look How Fast The Global Uprising Spread

An excellent time-lapse of the outbreak and rapid spread of the Global Uprising across half of the world between December 18, 2010 and early March 2011.

In Bahrain, protesters take on the increasingly violent police :



The Saudis decide to send in the troops to kill the protests by killing protesters.

Google's Revolution Machine

A February 22 story that didn't get much attention in the media :

Prime Minister Vladimir Putin's deputy blamed Google Inc in an interview published on Tuesday for stirring up trouble in the revolution that ousted Egyptian leader Hosni Mubarak.

"Look what they have done in Egypt, those highly-placed managers of Google, what manipulations of the energy of the people took place there," Russian Deputy Prime Minister Igor Sechin told the Wall Street Journal.

Such strong comment from one of Putin's most trusted deputies is a clear signal of growing concern among Russian hardliners about the role of the Internet in the unrest which has swept across the Arab world.

Sechin gave no further details on his concerns. Google executive, Wael Ghonim, became an unlikely hero of the uprising in Egypt which led to Mubarak's deposition.

Russia has so far resisted placing restrictions on the Internet, but analysts say there are a group of hardliners close to Putin who would like to impose controls similar to China's.

So Many Countries Under Revolution It's Hard To Keep up

Been very slack here keeping track of the Arab Uprisings that have unleashed so much chaos and so many joyous scenes in the past 3 months.

But Antiwar has an excellent round-up :

• Morocco: Thousands take to the streets of Rabat and Casablanca demanding the king give up many of his powers.
• Algeria: Several injured as police broke up protests in central Algiers.
• Tunisia: Seeks the extradition of their former dictator to charge him with crimes related to the crackdown.
• Libya: Seriously? Too much stuff to mention in a single blurb.
• East Libya: Virtually a separate country at this point.
• Albania: Still facing growing unrest.
• Egypt: Strikes linger despite Mubarak’s ouster.
• Syria: Struggling to buy off growing protests with cash payments.
• Jordan: Eight injured as protests continue.
• Iraq: Protests across the south and in Iraqi Kurdistan.
• Iran: Major police presence, protests planned for later in the week.
• Bahrain: Protesters are still there, despite government crackdowns.
• Pakistan: Threats for revolution if govt releases Raymond Davis.
• China: Govt censors foreign news. Small protest at Beijing McDonalds.

Antiwar is one of the better sites to keep track of these revolutions, and the wars, in some countries, that will result.

The Guardian also has a more detailed round-up here, from February 20.

NATO Troops Fear Being Killed By Stoned Afghans They Trained

This story was published on February 22, but nothing's changed in the past few weeks. If anything, it sounds like the problems with Afghan soldiers gets worse by the day :

....German troops in (Afghanistan) are in a state of near revolt against their commanders.

The reason? The danger they face training Afghan soldiers who, in the words of one German trooper quoted by the magazine, "consider us to be infidels who don't belong in their country."

The reason for this angst is the attack last Friday by an Afghan soldier being trained by the Germans that killed three Bundeswehr soldiers and injured six others, some of them critically. The 26-year-old Afghan attacker, who Spiegel reported is believed to be a Taliban sympathizer, was killed in a hail of return fire from the Germans' comrades.

With German morale at "rock bottom," the publication said, many Germans soldiers are "now refusing to go on further patrols or missions with Afghan troops."

Afghan trainees that don't owe their true allegiance to the Taliban, the German soldiers also report, are as likely to be ripped to the eyelids on hashish. "Many of our Afghan comrades wander around here completely stoned," said another soldier quoted in the story. "It is impossible to tell if they are fit for duty or not."

Afghans know NATO troops won't be in there country forever, they know they just have to wait them out. In the meantime, they get trained & paid & housed, turn up for work stoned & don't even bother to suppress their resentment towards their invaders.

More On This From Speigel Online Here

Libya, Get Ready To Be Fallujahed

A few days ago, EOTAD published a list of 14 Potential Justifications For An Invasion Of Libya By The US. Many of these are already getting a good work by US State Department officials and, interestingly, some of the same old NeoCons who chanted a reluctant America into War On Iraq eight years ago.

The List :

#1 "We Can't Stand Aside And Watch Gaddafi Kill His Own People"

#2 "It Would Just Be A Humanitarian Mission"

#3 "Libya Is Torturing Prisoners"

#4 "The Libyan Rebels Will Not Be Able To Take Down Gaddhafi With Our Help"

#5 "U.S. Interests Are Being Threatened"

#6 "Gaddafi Is Crazy"

#7 "Gaddafi Has Weapons Of Mass Destruction"

#8 "Gaddafi Will Use Chemical Weapons If We Don't Stop Him"

#9 "Gaddafi Has "1,000 Metric Tons Of Uranium Yellowcake"

#10 "European Energy Companies Are Deeply Invested In Libyan Oil And Gas Fields"

#11 "Millions of Dollars Worth Of Infrastructure Will Be Destroyed If We Don't Intervene"

#12 "The Crisis In Libya Is Bad For The Global Economy"

#13 "Someone Has To Protect The Oil"

#14 "We Have Got To Go Into Libya To Keep Al-Qaeda From Getting A Foothold"

If an invasion is on the immediate horizon, they'll have to work hard and fast. A recent poll claimed 67% of Americans wanted their military to stay the hell out of Libya.

The special forces of the US, the UK, Germany and others are already inside Libya, but my prediction is an (official) US/NATO invasion of Libya will begin March 11. All the big, long range world changing events seem to happen on the 11th of the month.

Game Change : Iran Enters The Med

The world really is undergoing monumental change at this moment in time, a conga-line of political convulsions wrought of saying Fuck You to police state intimidation and violence, food shortages, unemployment, the poor finally rising up against its most priviledged, with repercussions spreading like cracks in ice across the most oil-rich lands in the world, only a few weeks after Wikileaks revealed Saudi Arabia may have overestimated their untapped oil wealth by a few hundred billion barrels.

Egypt, Yemen, Bahrain, Jordan, Tunisia, Libya...a decade from now, once the old royals and dictators are all gone, these countries and former kingdoms could be united into an Arab Union. Nobody knows what happens next. Flux is the state of reality.

For today, the most monumental news is the passage of Iranian warships through the Suez canal, and into the Mediterranean for the first time in three decades, and there was nothing Israel or the United States could do to stop them.

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad tries to revamp Obama Changism for international consumption :

“Today, we witness that humanity is striving to realize the truth and the world is on the threshold of an enormous change.

“Achieving justice is rapidly turning into a global objective.

“While the global arrogance is hatching complex, satanic plots, the people are awaking and, God willing, the time has come for the extinction of the arrogant powers.

“When the oppressed people of the world rise for justice and monotheism, the grounds will be prepared for the righteous to rule the world.”

Meanwhile, in Tehran, the police state crackdown on youth protests continues....

Victorious Iraq Resistance Fighters To US : 'Get Out'

So here we are almost eight years after the illegal War On Iraq began and the Iraqi government wants to make sure the United States under Obama will stick to its deal :

Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki ruled out the presence of any U.S. troops in Iraq after the end of 2011, saying his new government and the country's security forces were capable of confronting any remaining threats to Iraq's security, sovereignty and unity.

A majority of Iraqis—and some Iraqi and U.S. officials—have assumed the U.S. troop presence would eventually be extended, especially after the long government limbo. But Mr. Maliki was eager to draw a line in his most definitive remarks on the subject. "The last American soldier will leave Iraq" as agreed, he said, speaking at his office in a leafy section of Baghdad's protected Green Zone.

And the man who helped deliver Maliki his new power to turf out US troops, if it is decided they will try and stay beyond 2011, is the very same man the Bush administration spent years trying to destroy :

"This agreement is not subject to extension, not subject to alteration. It is sealed." Mr. Maliki's new majority depends partly on followers of anti-American cleric Moqtada al-Sadr.

And the Iraqi resistance fighters, known in the Western media as terrorists and insurgents, are
now a solid part of the Maliki government's power base :

"The militias are now part of the government and have entered the political process," said Mr. Maliki. The Sadr contingent, he added, "is moving in a satisfactory direction of taking part in the government, renouncing violence and abandoning military activity, and that's why we welcome it."

And :

(Maliki) said full withdrawal of U.S. troops also will remove a prime motivator of insurgents—both the Shiite fighters tied to militia groups and Iran, and Sunnis linked to Mr. Hussein's ousted Baath party.

The Full Story Is Here

Iraqis resisted, primarily, United States and British forces for seven years, and it's hard not see that their resistance, in the end, resulted in a victory, voices in the government, real government power, the kind of victory President Bush promised would never be allowed to happen.

In the end, Iraq's resistance fighters beat back and beat down the most powerful military in the world, ground them down in fact, until the United States were forced to pay them tens of millions of dollars not to kill American soldiers, until the United States stepped back and allowed them to have a say in the democratic future of their country.

That, of course, is the truth of the end of the War On Iraq.

The United States lost.

Iraqis won.

The resistance, as brutal, deadly, inhuman as it was, worked.

Deputy British PM : "The Iraq War Was Illegal"

By Darryl Mason

So here we are, seven years later, trillions of dollars gone, more than 5200 coalition soldiers dead, more than 300,000 wounded and hundreds of thousands of Iraqis killed or disabled.

From the UK Independent :

Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg today restated his view that the Iraq War was illegal, saying: "I don't think the legality of that invasion has been proven."

Apart from questions over the legality of the conflict, Mr Clegg said the wisdom of the 2003 invasion "certainly hasn't been proven at all".

"You can turn it on its head - I don't think the legality of that invasion has been proven. The wisdom of it certainly hasn't been proven at all."

What will they say about this age of senseless war on some of the world's poorest people 300 years from now?

"In the second year of the 21st century, the dying meganation of the United States launched an illegal war on Iraq, in a desperate attempt to stop the Iraqi dictator Sadddam Hussein selling oil in Euros instead of US dollars. The war claimed more than one million American lives, in the warzone, and back home. The War On Iraq, and the decades of rehabilitation for the millions of Americans who were recruited by war corporations, finally bankrupted the United States, economically and spiritually, leading to its break up."

In early 2003, 10 million people around the world, at tens of thousands of protests, chanted that the Iraq War was illegal, that there were no weapons of mass destruction, that the war was wrong and would bring death and suffering to the people of Iraq.

And they were right.

But our leaders, at least in most Western nations, pretended they knew nothing of what the protesters shouted, and they did as they always do, and started another war against the will of the people.

That's it. No country will ever fight another Trillion Dollar War.

The next time they will probably just for nukes instead.

It's so much cheaper.

And quicker.

For now, the three biggest chearleaders of the War On Iraq - US President Bush, UK Prime Minister Tony Blair and Australian Prime Minister John Howard - walk free, write books and refuse to deny the war was illegal, they say instead, in perfect imitation of each other, "it was the right thing to do."

But the truth is, in the end, the Iraq insurgency won. They fought the world's most powerful war machine to a standstill, with machine guns and improvised bombs. The insurgency only stopped killing dozens of soldiers a month when they were paid cash to lay down their arms.

The greatest lesson of the Iraq War was learned decades ago, but the myth of Military Victory has kept the truth hidden, behind million dollar recruitment ads, and hundred million dollar movies promoting the military and war. Insurgencies are hard to defeat. All but impossible to defeat in a city of millions, like Baghdad, unless you are willing to sacrifice vast numbers of your own troops.

Or, by 2020, vast numbers of your expensive war robots.

The Beginning Of The End Of The War On Afghanistan

'Reformed' Taliban will include 'reformed' Al Qaeda, and whoever else has to paid off to stop killing NATO troops :

Backing Afghan President Hamid Karzai's efforts to 'reach out' to the Taliban through the peace jirga, President Obama's Special Envoy to Afghanistan and Pakistan Richard Holbrooke has said that Washington accepts that the final political solution in the war ravaged country could involve 'reformed' Taliban in the government if certain "red lines" are respected.

"The door is open...." he said.

"Let me be clear on one thing, everybody understands that this war will not end in a clear-cut military victory. It's not going to end on the deck of a battleship like World War II, or Dayton, Ohio, like the Bosnian war."

He also noted that while it was impossible to negotiate with Al-Qaeda, the case was different with the Taliban.

"It's going to have some different ending from that, some form of political settlements are necessary ... you can't have a settlement with Al Qaeda, you can't talk to them, you can't negotiate with them, it's out of the question. But it is possible to talk to the Taliban leaders," Holbrooke said.

Read The Full Story Here

UAE & Saudi Navies In Sea Battle Over Disputed Waters

Two US allies come to blows in the Persian Gulf, shaking the confidence of diplomats :

The United Arab Emirates navy is thought to have opened fire on a small patrol vessel from Saudi Arabia after a dispute over water boundaries.

According to one report, two Saudi sailors were injured in the alleged bombardment.

The Saudi vessel was forced to surrender, and its sailors were delivered into custody in Abu Dhabi for several days, before being released and handed over to the Saudi embassy earlier this week.

The incident has shocked diplomats who hope the countries, both key American allies, will help implement the West's strategy to constrain Iran's nuclear and military ambitions.

The clash happened in disputed waters between the coasts of Saudi Arabia, Abu Dhabi and the peninsula on which the gas-rich state of Qatar sits.

....the UAE, despite its small size, is the fourth largest purchaser of weaponry on the international market in the world.

Western governments are exasperated that the two countries are unable to co-operate because of a series of long-running border disputes, largely influenced by oil reserves.

Saudi Arabia is the world's largest oil producer, while Abu Dhabi, though ranking only number four in OPEC, is by some counts the richest city per head of population in the world.

The Gulf is the shipping route for 40 per cent of the world's oil trade.

Rumsfeld Blamed For Bin Laden's Escape In Tora Bora

A US Senate report reveals that in late 2001, in the Tora Bora mountains of Afghanistan, Osama Bin Laden was cornered by US forces, who had "massive force" at their disposal.

The idiot US defence secretary apparently concluded that a show of force could trigger a 'backlash' and was not completely confident the intelligence was correct. This is the same guy who thought Osama Bin Laden was living inside a hollowed out mountain complex like something out of a James Bond movie.

In other words, Rumsfeld let Osama Bin Laden get away :

The report by the Senate Foreign Relations Committee asserts that the failure to kill or capture bin Laden in December 2001, three months after the September 11 attacks, has had lasting and disastrous consequences. Bin Laden's escape laid the foundation for today's reinvigorated Afghan insurgency and inflamed the internal strife now endangering Pakistan, it says.

In an introduction to the report, which will be published on Monday, Senator John Kerry, chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, writes: "When we went to war less than a month after the attacks of September 11, the objective was to destroy Al Qaeda and kill or capture its leader, Osama bin Laden and other senior figures ... Our inability to finish the job in late 2001 has contributed to a conflict today that endangers not just our troops and those of our allies, but the stability of a volatile and vital region."

The report, entitled: "Tora Bora revisited: how we failed to get Bin Laden and why it matters today" will offer some support to President Obama as he prepares to announce this week that he is to send another 30,000 troops to Afghanistan.

Senator Kerry, the 2004 Democratic presidential candidate, has argued for some time that the Bush administration missed a chance to get the al-Qaeda leader and his top deputies when they were holed up in the forbidding, mountainous area of eastern Afghanistan only three months after September 11. He commissioned the report as Mr Obama was trying to decide whether he should boost troop numbers in Afghanistan.

The report lays the blame for the state of Afghanistan and Pakistan today at the feet of the military leaders who served former President Bush, notably Donald Rumsfeld, the then Defence Secretary, and his most senior military commander General Tommy Franks.

"Removing the al-Qaeda leader from the battlefield eight years ago would not have eliminated the worldwide extremist threat," the report says. "But the decisions that opened the door for his escape to Pakistan allowed bin Laden to emerge as a potent symbolic figure who continues to attract a steady flow of money and inspire fanatics worldwide. The failure to finish the job represents a lost opportunity that forever altered the course of the conflict in Afghanistan and the future of international terrorism."

It states categorically that bin Laden was hiding in Tora Bora when the US had the means to mount a rapid assault with several thousand troops. A review of existing literature, unclassified Government records and interviews with central participants "removes any lingering doubts and makes it clear that Osama bin Laden was within our grasp at Tora Bora" it adds.

"Cornered in some of the most fobidding terrain on earth, he and several hundred of his men endured relentless pounding by American aircraft, as many as 100 air strikes a day," it says. "Bin Laden expected to die," it claims. "His last will and testament, written on December 14, reflected his fatalism. He instructed his wives not to remarry and apologised to his children for devoting himself to jihad."

But the expected final attack never came. "Requests were turned down for US troops to block the mountain paths leading to sanctuary a few miles away in Pakistan," it says. "The vast array of American military power, from sniper teams to the most mobile divisions of the Marine Corps and the Army was kept on the sidelines."

Instead of a massive attack, fewer than 100 US commandos, working with Afghan militias, tried to capitalise on air strikes and track down their prey it says.

"On or around December 16, two days after writing his will, bin Laden and an entourage of bodyguards walked unmolested out of Tora Bora and disappeared into Pakistan's unregulated tribal area. Most analysts say he is still there today.

"The decision not to deploy American fores to go after bin Laden or block his escape was made by Secretary of Defence Donald Rumsfeld and his top commander, General Tommy Franks."

It stresses that there were more than enough US troops in Afghanistan to capture the terror leader and although the ensuing battle would be difficult and dangerous, "commanders on the scene and elsewhere in Afghanistan argued that the risks were worth the reward."

At the time, Mr Rumsfeld expressed concern that a large US troop presence might fuel a backlash and he and some others said the evidence was not conclusive about bin Laden's location.

I'm going quiet here for the moment.

As always, all the latest Fourth World War related news can be found on these two excellent sites :

AntiWar

Information Clearing House


Good Luck, Iraq.

God Help Afghanistan.

It's Official : Bring On The 'New World Order'

China, Russia Leaders Shred United States Over Economic Armageddon

There were more than a few so-called conspiracy websites and books in the mid-1990s that claimed the 'New World Order', where the US no longer called the shots, would not rise to reality as a result of war, but of a world economic collapse on a scale not seen since the days of the Great Depression. How right they were.

The leaders of China, Russia, and many other countries, are now demanding world economies and globalisation be restructured to reflect the 'New World Order', or 'New Global Order', that will be the long-term result of the economic armageddon staining and straining these days.

But few leaders have talked so openly about the who and the what and the why of this new order as the British prime minister, Gordon Brown :

Prime Minister Gordon Brown said Monday the financial crisis must not be an excuse to retreat into protectionism and instead be viewed as the "difficult birth-pangs of a new global order".

Yesterday's data confirmed Friday that Britain is in recession. Days earlier, the government unveiled a new package of measures to help the flow of credit in the economy, but Brown has argued global action is needed for a quick recovery.

He will warn Monday that the crisis has given the world a choice: "We could allow this crisis to start a retreat from globalisation. As some want, we could close our markets -- for capital, financial services, trade and for labour -- and therefore reduce the risks of globalisation.

"But that would reduce global growth, deny us the benefits of global trade and confine millions to global poverty.

"Or we could view the threats and challenges we face today as the difficult birth-pangs of a new global order -- and our task now as nothing less than making the transition through a new internationalism to the benefits of an expanding global society."

Who are the 'some' that Brown talks of who want a retreat from globalisation? Is he talking about a country, or a union of nations, or is he talking about another entity, perhaps a coalition of banking interests who now feel they are under attack, and probably are?

The leaders of China and Russia know exactly which country is responsible for the still spreading financial chaos and destruction :

Chinese and Russian leaders Wen Jiabao and Vladimir Putin have blamed the United States for causing the global economic crisis on a gloomy first day of the Davos forum.

Both called for a new attitude by President Barack Obama, while deepening pessimism over the future of the global economy enshrouded the World Economic Forum.

Chinese Premier Wen said America's voracious appetite for debt and "blind pursuit of profit" had led to the worst recession since the Great Depression which has rocked the 2,500 strong political and business elite gathered in the Swiss mountain resort.

Prime Minister Putin said the disappearance of some Wall Street titans over the past six months testified to the errors committed.

Premier Wen blamed the crisis on "inappropriate macroeconomic policies of some economies" and "prolonged low savings and high consumption," in a lightly veiled attack on the United States.

He blasted the "excessive expansion of financial institutions in blind pursuit of profit and the lack of self-discipline among financial institutions and ratings agencies" while the "failure" of regulators had allowed the spread of toxic derivatives.

Premier Wen said the crisis had posed "severe challenges" for China and that it needed 8.0 per cent growth in 2009 to maintain social stability while the International Monetary Fund predicted 6.7 per cent for this year.

The Chinese leader called for faster reform of international financial institutions and for a "new world order" for the economy.

The Russian Prime Minister followed him to the podium and said the crisis had been a "perfect storm".

He also took aim at US banks and the outgoing US administration.

"Although the crisis was simply hanging in the air, the majority strove to get their share of the pie, be it one dollar or one billion, and did not want to notice the rising wave," he said.

Prime Minister Putin insisted that he would not join critics of the United States, but added: "I just want to remind you that just a year ago, American delegates speaking from this rostrum emphasised the US economy's fundamental stability and its cloudless prospects."

Condoleezza Rice, when US secretary of state, gave a speech in Davos last year saying the US economy was safe.

"Today investment banks, the pride of Wall Street, have virtually ceased to exist. In just 12 months they have posted losses exceeding the profits they made in the last 25 years. This example alone reflects the real situation better than any criticism," said Prime Minister Putin.

"In meeting the international financial crisis, it is imperative for the two countries to enhance cooperation, that is my message to the US administration," Premier Wen said.