VENEZUELA
NEWS
BULLETIN
PRÁXIS AND THEORY AND
EMANCIPATION
Cosmos AND
Einai
AND Nothing
SEE -- VER
In
Times of Universal Deceit, Telling
the Truth will be a Revolutionary Act.
(George
Orwell)
No.
1218
July 27, 2006
BIENVENIDOS!!
WELCOME!! WILLKOMMEN!!
| 16-25 C |  |
| Weather | ||
| Merida* | ||
En cuanto a la visita de Presidente
Chávez a Vietnam
**** United States-Israeli UN Resolution hypocrisy...
By: Stephen Lendman.
**** Spotting a successful suicide bomber: a paradox, a conundrum ... for what?
VHeadline.com Editor & Publisher Roy S. Carson
**** Esta es la única manera real y verdadera de
desearle un Felíz Cumpleaños a un Presidente del Pueblo
Por: Franz J. T. Lee.
Letters to the Editor
**** "You put a wonderful human face on this most
magnificent man"
(Mary MacElveen).
**** This is the only real, true way to say Happy Birthday to a People's President
By: Franz J.T. Lee*** Venezuela Eyes Foreign Donations With New Law
*** Bush Told to Plan for Chávez Oil Shock
By Andy Webb-Vidal****
USA expresses concern over Russia's plan to sell fighter jets
to Venezuela
By: Xinhuanet.
*** Venezuela's President tours Kalashnikov
factory; meets regional Russians.
| Ultimos artículos |   |
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Publicado: Lunes,
31 de Julio de 2006
Articulo por: AP
(AP) - LA HABANA (AP) _ El presidente cubano Fidel Castro dejó de manera provisional su cargo en la noche del lunes a su hermano Raúl Castro, luego de someterse a una cirugía intestinal, señaló un mensaje firmado por el propio mandatario y leído por la televisión cubana.
Castro, quien está a punto de cumplir 80 años, indicó que durante varias semanas se mantendrá alejado tanto de sus funciones de gobierno como de líder del Partido Comunista.
http://espanol.news.yahoo.com/s/060801/1/1fasf.html
http://espanol.vheadline.com/readnews.asp?id=64813
BREAKING
NEWS: FIDEL CASTRO HAD INTESTINES BLEEDING, IS BEING OPERATED,
DELEGATED CUBA´S PRESIDENCY TO HIS BROTHER RAUL CASTRO ...
"Hence,
let us
wish our President Hugo Chavez Frias many happy returns, and we should
not forget the reality of the brutal world in which we toil, where the
life of our other Comandante Fidel Castro Ruz was already threatened by
the CIA, 600 times within 45 years, and they wish him dead at every
possible opportunity." (Franz J. T. Lee).
TOP STORY AT THIS HOUR!
Sunday, July 30, 2006
Stephen
Lendman: United States-Israeli UN Resolution hypocrisy... It's also voted against dozens of
others overwhelmingly supported by the rest of the world in the UN
General Assembly. By its actions and with 6% of the world's
population, the US has thus arrogantly ignored the will of nearly the
other 94% to support its client state even when Israel had committed
war crimes or crimes against humanity the rest of the world demanded it
be held to account for. In the words of one UK observer using a
baseball analogy: "Only the USA could have a World Series and not
invite the rest of the world."
The Israeli record
on UN resolutions over that same period is far worse. With full US support for its actions, it's
flagrantly and with little or no pretense routinely ignored over five
dozen UN Resolutions condemning or censuring it for its actions against
the Palestinians or other Arab people, deploring it for committing
them, or demanding, calling on or urging the Jewish state to end them. Israel never did or intends to up to the
present, including the mass slaughter and destruction it's now
inflicting on the people of Lebanon and the Palestinians in their
Territories that Israel illegally occupies and attacks whenever it
wishes. It does so with impunity using any contrived pretext it
can
get away with to deny the Palestinians any chance ever for a viable
sovereign independent state and to avoid a political solution with them
it won't ever tolerate. UN Resolutions as
examples of US and Israeli hypocrisy Consider now three UN Resolutions
as examples of gross hypocrisy ... one Israel and its US paymaster and
benefactor support and two others both countries do not so they ignore
them. In September, 2004, the Security Council passed
UN Resolution 1559, co-sponsored by the US and France, that called on
Syria to withdraw its military forces from Lebanon and stop intervening
in the Lebanese political process. It also demanded all Lebanese
and
non-Lebanese militias (aimed mainly at Hezbollah, of course)
disarm and disband (meaning surrender). Following the assassination of former Lebanese
Prime Minister, Rafik Hariri, in February, 2005, Syria bowed to
international pressure and complied fully with the resolution by
April. In so doing, it ended its 29-year occupation of the part
of the
country it controlled which excluded the rest in the South under
Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) control that Israel maintained after its
invasion of Southern Lebanon in 1978 and again in 1982. Hezbollah's military resistance wing did not
comply. Had it done so, it would have left itself and the Shia
third
of the Lebanese population dependent on it defenseless against the
Israelis. The Lebanese government and its small and weak security
forces had no power to force Hezbollah's compliance and were unable to
do it. Hezbollah was born out of the Israeli invasion
of Lebanon in 1982 and the oppressive occupation that followed.
It was
a popular resistance movement, much like and in the same spirit as the
French Resistance freedom fighters the Nazis called 'terrorists,'
formed to resist their illegal occupiers and expel them. Ever since, it's continued as an effective
resistance force against the Israelis that finally withdrew from
Lebanon in May, 2000 but maintained its occupation of the 25 square
kilometer area of South Lebanon known as Shebaa Farms it never
relinquished after seizing it in the 1967 war. Hezbollah, the Lebanese people and its
government demand Israel give it back as well as cease its frequent
hostile cross-border incursions, unjustifiable abductions, repeated
violations of the country's airspace as well as end its current brutal
assault and invasion of their country once again. To continue being an effective
resistance force, Hezbollah remained armed, has every right to do so in
its own self-defense whatever resolutions the UN passes, and will
continue resisting Israeli oppression until it ends. Now consider UN
Resolutions 465 and 476. The UN Security Council unanimously adopted UN
Resolution 465 in March, 1980 that addressed Israel's illegal
occupation of the Palestinian territories of the West Bank, Gaza, East
Jerusalem and the Syrian Golan Heights. Among other provisions in
it,
it condemned Israel's policy of "setting parts of its population and
new Immigrants in those territories (and said doing so constituted)
a flagrant violation of the fourth Geneva Convention relative to the
protection of civilian persons in time of war and also constitute a
serious obstruction to achieving a comprehensive, just and lasting
peace in the Middle East." It called on the government of Israel
to
"dismantle the existing settlements and in particular to cease....the
establishment, construction and planning of (new) settlements in the
Arab territories since 1967, including Jerusalem." In the last 26 years, Israel has
flagrantly violated this resolution and still continues to build new
settlements illegally in the Palestinian Occupied Territories. The US supports and funds the Israeli
government enabling it to do it, and the UN and world community have
taken no action to bring Israel into compliance which it could do by
imposing sanctions severe enough to force Israel to stop new settlement
construction, dismantle the existing ones and make restitution to the
Palestinians and Syrians for the harm caused them. The Security Council also passed Resolution 476
in June, 1980 ... like Resolution 465, it, too, reaffirms the necessity
to end the Israeli occupation of Arab territories ongoing since the
1967 war. It went on to condemn Israel for its continued refusal
to do
it or to comply with the relevant Security Council and General Assembly
resolutions demanding it does. It repeated provisions detailed in
Resolution 465 and reaffirmed its determination in the event of Israeli
non-compliance to examine practical ways to get it to do so. Israel never complied, and
the UN never took action to see that it did. Also, by its reinvasion of Lebanon now and its
unending occupation of the Shebaa Farms area it's held since 1967,
Israel is also in violation of UN resolution 425 and nine additional
ones demanding the withdrawal of its forces from South Lebanon.
The
net effect of UN action - many relevant and high-sounding words
and
speeches amounting to nothing, at least when it concerns Israel. The Hypocrisy of
the US Congress Now consider a further gross
hypocrisy. On
July 20, the US House of Representatives voted overwhelmingly 410 - 8
to unconditionally endorse Israel's illegal aggression against the
Palestinians and people of Lebanon. Earlier in the week, the US
Senate
passed a similar resolution by voice vote, but added a worthless and
outrageous clause that "urges all sides to protect innocent civilian
life and infrastructure." The House version showed no such
disingenuous delicacy, and in language Orwell would love, actually
praised Israel for "minimizing civilian loss" ignoring the obvious
evidence to the contrary. Along with its arrogance, the Congressional
resolution violated the UN Charter by unjustifiably claiming Israel has
the right of self-defense guaranteed it under Article 51 and thus has
the right to destroy Lebanon's infrastructure and kill innocent
civilians to do it. Once again, Orwell would approve. These House
and
Senate resolutions are compelling evidence of both parties'
unconditional support for Israel whatever it does and the Bush
administration's utter contempt for all international laws and norms
and its unconditional endorsement of Israel when it violates them. The Congressional resolution also unjustifiably
accused, and by implication condemned, Lebanon for failing to observe
UN Resolution 1559 by not disbanding and disarming Hezbollah and
allowing it instead to amass thousands of rockets and other
weapons.
It also criticized the legitimate integration of Hezbollah into the
Lebanese government where it's represented by 11 democratically elected
lawmakers in the Parliament and two ministers in the country's cabinet. For Lebanon's failure to enforce UN Resolution
1559, including provisions not even in it, the US Congress, in effect,
gave Israel its approval to destroy the country and kill many hundreds
of its people. At the same time, Israel never complied with UN
Resolutions 465 and 476 demanding it withdraw from the Occupied
Territories and Golan Heights it holds illegally, UN Resolution 425 and
nine others making the same demand it remove its forces from all
Lebanese territory, and all the dozens of other UN resolutions Israel
routinely violates or disregards. The US Congress, UN, world leaders and most
Arab states remain committed to Israel overtly or tacitly. They've done
it despite Israel's many violations including the crime of aggression
in its ongoing brutal assaults on Lebanon and the Occupied Territories
that it falsely and disingenuously claims to be a justifiable response
to the capture (not kidnapping) of three of its soldiers, a
minor provocation at most. At the same time, the Congress and world
leaders remain silent refusing to condemn Israel for its failure to
comply with UN Resolutions 465, 476, 425, nine similar ones. and all
the other UN resolutions against it for the past half century. The message is clear.
When it comes to the UN, the US runs the show, and no substantive or
significant action can be taken with teeth unless it approves ...
especially when it applies to Israel, in part, because of the power of
the Israeli lobby in the US. Also, all actions of a valued US
client
state are quite acceptable, even when they violate the UN Charter and
international law, so long as they serve Washington's interests. In the kind of world Orwell understood,
Israel's mass killing and destruction is in the US's imperial interest,
especially in the strategically important Middle East where oil is
central to all else, so its scorched-earth policy is quite acceptable
and may go on unabated and end only when the two allies decide to stop
it. It doesn't matter what the law is
or that the innocent are paying the supreme price for its violation. Peacekeeping Hypocrisy
A brief word about still more
hypocrisy... The US, UK and Israel have called for a
robust international military force (Israel appears to want a NATO
run one)
to serve as "peacekeepers" in South Lebanon once Israel ceases its
aggression and allows it to come in. No one is considering the
wishes
of Hezbollah, the people of South Lebanon it serves or the Lebanese
government. It's also un-discussed publicly what Israel
really has in mind, how oppressive the Christian South Lebanon Army
(SLA) was when it acted as Israel's occupying enforcer after 1978 or
how ineffective the current UN Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) has
been since it was first put in place in 1978 and never succeeded in
establishing peace or security. So what's really going
on? After just days on the ground inside Lebanon,
the IDF is finding the going very rough. It's already admitted to
taking significant losses with dozens of its soldiers killed and
hundreds more injured in intense fighting with a determined and
resilient Hezbollah force as committed now to expelling an invading
Israeli force as it was in the 1980s and 1990s when it succeeded in
doing it. Clearly the IDF is struggling and taking more
losses than it's willing to continue sustaining. So it wants
instead
to have a proxy army it can control come into South Lebanon, again act
as its enforcers, engage Hezbollah in confrontation if necessary and
have it do its killing and dying for it. Will Hezbollah and the people
of
South Lebanon now allow it in when they were unwilling to accept their
SLA and UNIFIL occupiers in the past? Once the fighting ends, the IDF
likely will withdraw and an occupying force acceptable to Israel will
move in to serve in its place. It will be as unwelcome as the
others
that preceded it and eventually it will be driven out. But before it is,
many more will die and suffer, and the long struggle of the Lebanese
people and Palestinians as well in the Occupied Territories will go on
unresolved. Stephen Lendman http://www.vheadline.com/readnews.asp?id=64701
VHeadline.com commentarist
Stephen Lendman writes: Two
nations stand out above all others as notorious serial abusers of UN
resolutions ... the US and Israel. Over the last half century, the US
has used its Security Council veto many dozens of times to prevent any
resolutions from passing condemning Israel for its abusive or hostile
actions or that were inimical to Israeli interests.
lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net
Spotting a successful suicide bomber: a paradox, a conundrum ... for what?
VHeadline.com Editor & Publisher Roy S. Carson writes: Spotting a successful suicide bomber is a paradox often reserved for intelligence services sent to sift through the latest stench of exploded guts and assorted body parts; seen as a conundrum for psychiatric researchers worldwide attempting to probe the whys and wherefores of the ultimate act of self-destruction ... for what?
British spooks have wracked their brains for just over a year attempting to understand why a seemingly innocuous group of young men chose to converge on the London underground network to end their own existences in a 7/7/2005 atrocity which, while causing immediate mayhem to a busy city, only served to steel British stiff upper lips in grim determination never to surrender ... to what?
The WHAT lurks out there in the vast uncertainty of everyday grassroots life, deep-rooted frustrations and unfulfilled ambitions that could be catalysts to the raison d'etre of shaking off one's mortal coil in the insanity of a bomb blast in an impersonal crowd of unknowns.
By definition a successful suicide bomber is an unstoppable self-destruct who, had s/he been even marginally less successful, would have survived (even momentarily) to see the ultimate futility and tragic consequences.
Do successful suicide bombers really imagine that what they do will influence the blowhards of international politics to modify their own heinous criminality ... fat chance?
All that's left behind are mangled corpses, severed limbs and lasting traumas for which the likes of Bush and Blair care not a jot or tittle as they conveniently conspire to greedy manipulation of the world's resources.
The history books condemn Genghis Khan and scores of blood thirsty conquerors for the savagery of what they did, but little is learned by modern leaders as they pile more and more pitiful corpses of their own soldiers on the mounds of the innocent dead, men, women and children who momentarily find themselves in the 'collateral damage' vicinity of their rain of 'smart' bombs and lethal missiles.
Yet the world's intelligence services, with varying competence and incompetence, continue to seek out potential 'threats' where the primary cause is more properly laid at the threshold of their political masters against whom those labeled 'terrorists' are simply a reaction to the legal terrorism of a government apparatus beyond democratic control.
Be mindful of the fact that what is now the Israeli government is the update descendant of 'terrorists' against British rule in Palestine, every bit as much as American 'terrorists' committed acts of 'terrorism' against the rule of King George in Boston harbor so many years before ... even Venezuela's own Simon Bolivar was the ultimate 'terrorist' to the Spanish throne when he sought liberty and independence for the South American continent at the threshold of the 1800s.
Yet this is why democracy was invented ... not as a means to the subjugation of often disaffected minorities' to a numerical majority's demands but rather to the successful coexistence of consensus in which each citizen's participation is a vital key to culling the dictatorial ambitions of some who, self-deluded believe that their Truth is the only Truth and that the rest of us had better believe and do as we're told (not necessarily synonymous with what the 'Truth-teller' himself does or says!) ... or else!
Perhaps it is this that is the ultimate motivation for the successful suicide bomber inasmuch as having been routed in his or her conviction of the supremacy of his/her own version of the Truth, the reality of participatory democracy is simply too much of a personal burden to contemplate and thus an already superficially sick mind goes into self-destruct believing that martyrdom will be the final fulfillment of the lunacy.
Roy S. Carson
Editor@VHeadline.com
Por:
Franz J. T. Lee | Latest |   |
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Published: Friday, July 28, 2006
Bylined to: Franz J.T. Lee
This is the only real, true way to say Happy Birthday to a People's President
University of Los Andes (ULA)
professor Franz J. T. Lee writes: In
1985, in San Cristobal, Tachira, in the "Círculo Militar," the
University of The Andes, founded a special center of investigation to study a
possible Latin American Integration and the current border conflicts.
Instead of going to the infamous Yankee "School of the Americas," for military students a Master's Degree was offered directly at the "Centro de Estudios de Fronteras e Integracion Jose Manuel Briceno Monzillo" (CEFI).
Together with other colleagues, I had the honor to teach the group around President Hugo Chavez Frias and Francisco Arias Cardenas about the historic background of the Essequibo problem, a territory in reclamation, currently forming an integral part of Guyana. (See: Franz J. T. Lee, La Evolución e Involución del "Socialismo Cooperativista" en Guyana, Escuela de Ciencias Políticas, Universidad de Los Andes, Mérida, 1987.)
This was my earliest indirect revolutionary contact and relation with the future President of Venezuela Hugo Chavez Frias.
In fact, to my greatest surprise, many of these military students had an excellent knowledge about history, political economy and socialism, and, very soon, I was giving them a scientific and philosophic introduction to revolutionary Marxism ... which was most daring in those puntofijista days.
This was very easy, because the majority of them came from a humble background, had experience about the oppression and misery of the absolute majority of the Venezuelan population, who were sighing under the yoke of neo-liberal exploitative and oppressive mechanisms.
I realized that this was a completely new generation of members of the Venezuelan military ... even different from other armed forces in Latin America. They related their experiences to us, and it became very clear to me that something revolutionary was cooking somewhere.
Certainly, President Chavez knows about my revolutionary existence ... and about our socialist "work" in Merida where with a Cuban comrade, I am assessing and guiding a group of 200 students of the "Frente Francisco de Miranda" (decisive as reserves for the defense of the country) ... on their way to Cuba, for socialist cooperative training ... informing them about revolutionary praxis and theory, and about the trans-historic international context of the Bolivarian Revolution.
As Che Guevara said, the duty of a revolutionary is to make the revolution. In this case, the best way to say: Happy Birthday, Chavez! ... is to make, think and surpass the Bolivarian Revolution, of, by and for ourselves.
I have already dedicated my latest work: "Venezuela: De la Revolucion Bolivariana a la Emancipacion Humana (IMMECA, Merida, Dec. 2005)" as birthday present, a priori, to our comandante. In fact, publicly, Chavez has himself thanked me for it already.
The next scientific and philosophic contribution to the Bolivarian Revolution is already on its way, planned to appear in September this year: Franz J. T. Lee & Jutta Schmitt, Venezuela: sobrepasando el Rubicón, IMMECA, Merida.)
Three years ago, we launched our "Mision Marx y Engels"; many comrades have been reaping theoretical fruits from this project, the abovementioned works are the creative results of this campaign of revolutionary politicization, launched by our Bolivarian Circle of Studies, El Momoy, Chiguara.
Once more, the only real, true way to say Happy Birthday to a People's President, to a President of the People: Is to be a shining star, a vanguard of the working masses, an emancipatory paradigm against political corruption and treachery, against global fascism. No matter how humanist, how humane, how human, how religious we may be, it is a verified historical truth that the corporate vampires will not step down from their imperialist golden oil thrones freely, peacefully.
In the liberatory spirit of Frantz Fanon, we will have to topple them, throne and all, "chavistas without Chavez" and all.
President Chavez: Please sound our "Diana" immediately again!
Hence, let us wish our President Hugo Chavez Frias many happy returns, and we should not forget the reality of the brutal world in which we toil, where the life of our other Comandante Fidel Castro Ruz was already threatened by the CIA, 600 times within 45 years, and they wish him dead at every possible opportunity.
It seems that Bush has never heard anything about Phoenix, even if the USA itself has a city called by that name.
Hence, in conclusion, long live the spirit of CEFI, where a group of conscientious students, and excellent professors twenty years ago were yearning for class consciousness, for "con ciencia," and are now making world history!
Franz J. T. Lee
franz@vheadline.com
The War on Lebanon and the Battle for Oil
by Michel
Chossudovsky
GlobalResearch.
Wednesday July 26, 2006
http://tinyurl.com/e6lhr
In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes.
[Great analysis from Michel Chossudovsky showing the need for Israel to militarily protect the Eastern Mediterranean potion of the Baku-Ceyhan pipeline, which was inaugurated the same day Israel invaded Lebanon.
The pipeline completely bypasses Russia, having been built south of the Caspian Consortium Pipeline. Will this pipeline ever be safe from attack? Fighting Hezbollah in Southern Lebanon now is an attempt to lay the groundwork for protecting a critical Caspian oil pipeline for Israel that is outside of Russian control. Currently Russia supplies Israel with a lot of natural gas and oil.
Follow the hydrocarbons. - MK]
Is there a relationship between the bombing of Lebanon and the inauguration of the World's largest strategic pipeline, which will channel more a million barrels of oil a day to Western markets?
Virtually unnoticed, the inauguration of the Ceyhan-Tblisi-Baku (BTC) oil pipeline, which links the Caspian sea to the Eastern Mediterranean, took place on the 13th of July, at the very outset of the Israeli sponsored bombings of Lebanon.
One day before the Israeli air strikes, the main partners and shareholders of the BTC pipeline project, including several heads of State and oil company executives were in attendance at the port of Ceyhan. They were then rushed off for an inauguration reception in Istanbul, hosted by Turkey's President Ahmet Necdet Sezer in the plush surroundings of the Çýraðan Palace.
Also in attendance was British Petroleum's (BP) CEO, Lord Browne together with senior government officials from Britain, the US and Israel. BP leads the BTC pipeline consortium. Other major Western shareholders include Chevron, Conoco-Phillips, France's Total and Italy's ENI. (see Annex)
Israel's Minister of Energy and Infrastructure Binyamin Ben-Eliezer was present at the venue together with a delegation of top Israeli oil officials.
The BTC pipeline totally bypasses the territory of the Russian Federation. It transits through the former Soviet republics of Azerbaijan and Georgia, both of which have become US "protectorates", firmly integrated into a military alliance with the US and NATO. Moreover, both Azerbaijan and Georgia have longstanding military cooperation agreements with Israel. In 2005, Georgian companies received some $24 million in military contracts funded out of U.S. military assistance to Israel under the so-called "Foreign Military Financing (FMF) program"
Israel has a stake in the Azeri oil fields, from which it imports some twenty percent of its oil. The opening of the pipeline will substantially enhance Israeli oil imports from the Caspian sea basin.
But there is another dimension which directly relates to the war on Lebanon. Whereas Russia has been weakened, Israel is slated to play a major strategic role in "protecting" the Eastern Mediterranean transport and pipeline corridors out of Ceyhan.
Militarization of the Eastern Mediterranean
The bombing of Lebanon is part of a carefully planned and coordinated military road map. The extension of the war into Syria and Iran has already been contemplated by US and Israeli military planners. This broader military agenda is intimately related to strategic oil and oil pipelines. It is supported by the Western oil giants which control the pipeline corridors. In the context of the war on Lebanon, it seeks Israeli territorial control over the East Mediterranean coastline.
In this context, the BTC pipeline dominated by British Petroleum, has dramatically changed the geopolitics of the Eastern Mediterranean, which is now linked , through an energy corridor, to the Caspian sea basin:
"[The BTC pipeline] considerably changes the status of the region's countries and cements a new pro-West alliance. Having taken the pipeline to the Mediterranean, Washington has practically set up a new bloc with Azerbaijan, Georgia, Turkey and Israel, " (Komerzant, Moscow, 14 July 2006)
Israel is now part of the Anglo-American military axis, which serves the interests of the Western oil giants in the Middle East and Central Asia.
While the official reports state that the BTC pipeline will "channel oil to Western markets", what is rarely acknowledged is that part of the oil from the Caspian sea would be directly channeled towards Israel. In this regard, an underwater Israeli-Turkish pipeline project has been envisaged which would link Ceyhan to the Israeli port of Ashkelon and from there through Israel's main pipeline system, to the Red Sea.
The objective of Israel is not only to acquire Caspian sea oil for its own consumption needs but also to play a key role in re-exporting Caspian sea oil back to the Asian markets through the Red Sea port of Eilat. The strategic implications of this re-routing of Caspian sea oil are farreaching.
In April 2006, Israel and Turkey announced plans for four underwater pipelines, which would bypass Syrian and Lebanese territory.
"Turkey and Israel are negotiating the construction of a multi-million-dollar energy and water project that will transport water, electricity, natural gas and oil by pipelines to Israel, with the oil to be sent onward from Israel to the Far East,
The new Turkish-Israeli proposal under discussion would see the transfer of water, electricity, natural gas and oil to Israel via four underwater pipelines.
“Baku oil can be transported to Ashkelon via this new pipeline and to India and the Far East.[via the Red sea]"
"Ceyhan and the Mediterranean port of Ashkelon are situated only 400 km apart. Oil can be transported to the city in tankers or via specially constructed under-water pipeline. From Ashkelon the oil can be pumped through already existing pipeline to the port of Eilat at the Red Sea; and from there it can be transported to India and other Asian countries in tankers. (REGNUM )
Water for Israel
Also involved in this project is a pipeline to bring water to Israel, pumping water from upstream resources of the Tigris and Euphrates river system in Anatolia. This has been a long-run strategic objective of Israel to the detriment of Syria and Iraq. Israel's agenda with regard to water is supported by the military cooperation agreement between Tel Aviv and Ankara.
The Re-routing of Central Asian Oil
Diverting Central Asian oil and gas to the Eastern Mediterranean (under Israeli military protection), for re-export to Asia, serves to undermine the inter-Asian energy market, which is based on the development of direct pipeline corridors linking Central Asia and Russia to South Asia, China and the Far East.
Ultimately, this design is intended to weaken Russia's role in Central Asia and cut off China from Central Asian oil resources. It is also intended to isolate Iran.
Meanwhile, Israel has emerged as a new powerful player in the global energy market.
War and Oil Pipelines
Prior to the bombing of Lebanon, Israel and Turkey had announced the underwater pipeline routes, which bypassed Syria and Lebanon. These underwater pipeline routes did not overtly encroach on the territorial sovereignty of Lebanon and Syria.
On the other hand, the development of alternative land based corridors (for oil and water) through Lebanon and Syria would require Israeli-Turkish territorial control over the Eastern Mediterranean coastline through Lebanon and Syria.
The implementation of this project requires the militarisation of the East Mediterranean coastline, sea ways and land routes, extending from the port of Ceyhan across Syria and Lebanon to the Lebanese-Israeli border.
Is this not one of the hidden objectives of the war on Lebanon? Open up a space which enables Israel to control a vast territory extending from the Lebanese border through Syria to Turkey.
"The Long War"
Israeli Prime minister Ehud Olmert has stated that the Israeli offensive against Lebanon would "last a very long time". Meanwhile, the US has speeded up weapons shipments to Israel.
There are strategic objectives underlying the "Long War" which are tied to oil and oil pipelines.
The air campaign against Lebanon is inextricably related to US-Israeli strategic objectives in the broader Middle East including Syria and Iran. In recent developments, Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice stated that the main purpose of her mission to the Middle East was not to push for a ceasefire in Lebanon, but rather to isolate Syria and Iran. (Daily Telegraph, 22 July 2006)
At this particular juncture, the replenishing of Israeli stockpiles of US produced WMDs points to an escalation of the war both within and beyond the borders of Lebanon.
Venezuela Eyes Foreign Donations With New Law
[The game of chess between Caracas and Washington continues. The Venezuelan Congress is considering imposing limitations on foreign donations to opposition political parties. Undemocratic? Maybe. But what would you do if placed in Chavez' s shoes?
The U.S. already attempted to overthrow his democratically elected rule, and Washington continues to escalate its saber rattling toward Venezuela, Cuba and Bolivia. With the fear of Venezuela cutting off oil to the U.S., it must be assumed by Chavez that the U.S. is plotting regime change in Venezuela. But can they pull it off? -MK]
Venezuela Eyes Foreign Donations With New Law
by Brian
Ellsworth
Reuters
Caracas
Thursday, July 13, 2006
http://tinyurl.com/zpm6e
In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes.
When the White House released a report this week recommending a multimillion dollar aid package to opposition groups in communist Cuba, one of the angriest reactions came not from Havana but from Caracas.
President Hugo Chavez, a close ally of Cuba's Fidel Castro, responded by saying Castro was "stronger than ever" and calling the U.S. an "obscene, immoral and genocidal empire."
But when it comes to foreign financing for Venezuela's opposition groups, the world's No. 5 oil exp