On Friday, as two enormous "Government Sponsored Enterprises" threatened to sink beneath the turbulent waters of a gathering financial maelstrom, the London Financial Times reviewed the nature and history of "Fannie Mae" and "Freddie Mac" and explained their role in the financial system.[1]  --  Since "[b]oth companies have a government charter to increase the amount of affordable housing in the U.S" and "both have a $2.5bn line of credit with the U.S. Treasury, investors have long considered them to have the implicit backing of the federal government," Michael Mackenzie wrote.  --  "Their sheer size, however, has long been seen as constituting a systemic threat for the financial system as their core capital represents around 1.5 per cent of their $5,000bn in total debt exposure.  This degree of leverage places both GSEs in a precarious capital position as the housing market continues to deteriorate and foreclosure rates keep rising."  --  Both Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are "big users of interest rate derivatives in order to protect their portfolios against large changes in market rates.  The GSEs hold $2,300bn in notional derivative contracts with the banking system. . . . In 2004, both companies were caught in an accounting scandal over their use of derivatives and were compelled to reduce the size of their mortgage assets. . . . Both companies have reported hefty losses in recent quarters, hurt by the adverse housing market and losses from derivatives."  --  BACKGROUND:  Derivatives are essentially speculative bets, packaged and sold as securities and held as assets, though they have little in the way of genuine assets to back them.  --  Two years ago, political analyst Kevin Phillips warned of the potential danger of unregulated credit derivatives and hedge funds.  --  Exotic and speculative forms of finance have proliferated in housing, mortgage, and credit-card markets, and have given rise to fear that an enormous “credit bubble” could burst and “yoke middle-class debtors” to “quasi-indentured status."  --  Phillips believes such an event could undermine “world stability” and produce Asian, most likely Chinese, ascendancy (American Theocracy: The Peril and Politics of Radical Religion, Oil, and Borrowed Money in the 21st Century [N.Y.: Viking, 2006], pp. 376-82).  --  In a follow-up volume published several months ago, Phillips described in greater detail how "securitization" increased tenfold from 1995 to 2003, producing enormous profits for a deregulated financial sector (Bad Money: Reckless Finance, Failed Politics, and the Global Crisis of American Capitalism [New York: Viking, 2008], p. 97).  --  According to Phillips, sheer greed and an irrational belief in the "magic of markets" are the only plausible explanations for the general indifference shown by the creators of this system (still inanely referred to as "conservatives" by the mainstream media) to the uncertainty of how securitization would stand up when faced with a major liquidity crisis.  --  Such a major liquidity crisis began in August 2007, a crisis aggravated by arrival of Peak Oil at the same time.  --  Upon the evolution of housing prices over the next several years now depends the fate of banks and the U.S. financial system (ibid., pp. 101-19).  --  On the bright side, Phillips argues that the crisis may contribute to the U.S. "abandoning the hubris of military and financial imperialism" — a positive development, since "both postures represent drags on the American future" (ibid., p. 209; these are the book’s last words)....

"[T]he North Sea [oil industry] is in terminal decline," the Financial Times said Friday in an analytical piece.[1]  --  "[T]he region is one of the fastest-declining oil provinces in the world, according to the International Energy Agency," Ed Crooks wrote....

On Thursday, the Pakistan Daily said Iraq's Nahrainnet news network cited "informed sources close to Iraq's Defense Ministry" saying that increased activity at "U.S. airbases in Nasiriya southeast of Baghdad and Haditha" over the past month is believed to be part of "a joint Israeli-U.S. training, preparation, and coordination to launch an air raid against Iran's nuclear plants," adding that "some aircraft suspected to be Israeli warplanes coming from Jordan, have landed in the U.S. controlled al-Assad airbase near Haditha."[1]  --  The Jerusalem Post reported a denial of this by Iraq's Ministry of Defense and the IDF.[2]  --  The paper noted that Israeli jets at the American bases would only be "five minutes" from Bushehr.  --  "The U.S. military did not comment on the report," AFP noted.[3]  --  AP reported new ominous remarks by Israel Defense Minister (and former Prime Minister) Ehud Barak at a Labor Party meeting on Thursday.[4]  --  Gold and oil prices rose sharply on the news.  --  Rami Khouri of the Beirut Daily Star tried to sum it all up in a column on Saturday as "a display of classic statecraft:  fighting and threatening while simultaneously sending signals of a desire to negotiate and make a deal.  We are witnessing three simultaneous, important developments:  the two loose camps linked to the U.S. and Iran have recognized that their respective power is limited, that the other side will fight back fiercely, and that they are, in fact, roughly evenly matched on the ground throughout the Middle East.  So, they both have to behave like normal countries for a change, fighting and talking at the same time."[5]  --  At Friday prayers, the Ayatollah Mohammad Emami Kashani, a member of the Expediency Council, said that "Iran is ready for negotiation," the Los Angeles Times reported.[6] ...

Official teams investigating U.S.-led air strikes in the mountains on the Afghanistan-Pakistan border have found that they killed at least 64 people, mostly women and children attendign a wedding party, AFP reported Friday.[1]  --  The day before, Des Browne, Britain's defense secretary, speaking in Washington, D.C., said that "Afghanistan poses a greater challenge than Iraq for the United States and its allies and will require a commitment from the international community for a generation," adding that "the next U.S. administration will need to make NATO's transformation from a Cold War organization a priority to help ensure long-term success in Afghanistan.  --  'I have no doubt that it will be a longer haul in Afghanistan,' Browne said in a speech at the Brookings Institution, a Washington-based think tank." ...

An article on the Washington Independent web site claimed Thursday that nothing has been decided yet with regard to the disposal of Iraq oil.[1]  --  "Despite the caricature of the all-powerful oil conglomerate, all this means the oil companies are more beholden to Iraqi's volatile politics than the other way around," Spencer Ackerman wrote.  --  COMMENT:  While this article makes a few valid points, it is disingenuous of the youthful Ackerman (an enthusiastic twenty-something supporter of Barack Obama) not to mention the enormous pressures being brought to bear on Iraqi leaders to agree to production sharing agreements (PSAs) designed to siphon hundreds of billions of dollars of Iraq's oil wealth to Big Oil.  --  (See PLATFORM's Crude Designs (2005), Part One, Two, and Three, for a detailed account of this rarely discussed feature of contemporary geopolitics.)  --  To understand Ackerman's disingenuousness, it is useful to examine the funding of the Washington Independent, started up in January 2008 as a non-partisan non-profit by the equally non-partisan non-profit Center for Independent Media (founded 2006).  --  While technically non-partisan, the Washington Independent has a strong ideological coloration that derived from its supporting foundations, collectively a manifestation of the moneyed interests that dominate American society.  --  This ideological coloring will be apparent from the foundations that fund its operations (though not all of the have allowed themselves to be publicly identified).  --  Among those listed on the Washington Independent's web site are the Arca Foundation (a liberal foundation created in 1952 as the "Nancy Reynolds Bagley Foundation" by a daughter of the founder of the R. J. Reynolds tobacco company and taking its current name in 1968), the Arkay Foundation (located in Carmel, CA), the Bauman Family Foundation (founded by a New York attorney and business man who was a partner in the real-estate development firm of Eugene M. Grant & Co.), the Better World Fund (the public outreach mechanism for the United Nations Foundation), the Bohemian Foundation, the Brett Family Foundation (a family foundation funded by Fort Collins, Colorado, philanthropist Pat Stryker), the Gill Foundation (another Colorado-based foundation promoting democracy and focusing primarily on lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender civil rights), the Open Society Institute (George Soros's foundation), the Park Foundation (established by the late Roy Hampton Park, Sr., of North Carolina, the founder of Park Communications), the Quixote Foundation (a small liberal foundation interested in media reform, among other causes), the Rockefeller Family Foundation (founded in 1913 by John D. Rockefeller), SEIU (Service Employees International Union), the Sunlight Foundation (founded in 2006 by Michael Klein, a securities lawyer whose clients have included the patriarch of Washington's famously feuding Haft family, the founder of Dart Drug Stores, and whose executive director, Ellen S. Miller, is a longtime advocate for disclosure of campaign finances), the Surdna Foundation (founded in 1917 by Republican investor and politician John Andrus), and the Wallace Global Fund (founded in 1995 by the son of Henry A. Wallace, FDR's secretary of agriculture)....

In an interview, the secretary general of OPEC has said that oil "prices would go unlimited" should conflict cut off the supply of oil from Iran, the New York Times reported Friday.[1]  --  "We really cannot replace Iran’s production — it’s not feasible to replace it," said Abdalla Salem el-Badri, "a former oil executive who has headed the oil industry in Libya and served as deputy prime minister of that country."  --  But at the same time Badri is a Peak Oil skeptic; he insisted "that reserves of oil were plentiful and that worries about scarcity were misplaced," James Kanter reported.  --  He dismissed supply concerns, blaming "speculation on oil markets" based on "current geopolitical tensions" as the chief cause of high prices, also citing "a shortfall in refining capacity and a weak dollar" as well.  --  "Supplies from Russia and Norway and other nations outside the 13-member OPEC will keep growing, helped by technologies like turning gas and coal into liquid fuel and extracting oil from tar sands and shale, he said." ...

For the first time, Russia admitted an incursion in Georgian airspace, one that occurred only "hours before Condoleezza Rice, U.S. secretary of state, visited Tbilisi with a message of support," the Financial Times reported Friday.[1]  --  Stefan Wagstyl called the Russian foreign ministry statement "the latest escalation in a dispute in which Russia has backed South Ossetia and Abkhazia, a second Georgian separatist territory, partly to put pressure on Mikheil Saakashvili, Georgia’s pro-west president, and block Tbilisi’s efforts to join NATO."  --  An account in the Moscow Times gave a fuller picture, noting the "lines separating the Georgian military from separatist forces in South Ossetia and Abkhazia, despite the presence of Russian peacekeepers who operate under the auspices of the Commonwealth of Independent States, according to an agreement signed by all sides in the conflict following two wars in the early 1990s."[2]  --  But neither article even alludes to what is really at stake in Georgia, as well as Afghanistan:  the fabulous oil resources of the Caspian basin.  --  The U.S. has a special interest in Georgia because of the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline.  --  In this context, it is interesting to review an August 2005 Iranian analysis of U.S. policy in the Caucasus region that said that "the U.S. has begun to intervene openly in the Southern Caucasus, favoring certain political parties jostling for power. . . . Since February 2002, U.S. forces have been stationed in the Pankisi Valley of Georgia under the pretext of fighting al-Qaeda terrorists, but not even a single terrorist has been apprehended. . . . The U.S. seeks to control oil and gas exploration in the Caspian Sea and the Caucasus in order to keep out Iran and Russia, which are the two major regional powers. . . . The U.S. has no intention of resolving the chronic crises in the region such as that of Qarabagh and Abkhazia, and merely wants to procrastinate the problems in order to justify its presence and intervention."  --  The U.S. is especially interested in Azerbaijan, where U.S. oil interests invested heavily in the 1990s, and to which the Clinton administration effectively extended the Carter Doctrine (Michael Klare, Blood and Oil: The Dangers and Consequences of America's Growing Petroleum Dependency [Metropolitian Books, 2004], pp. 132-39).  --  Chapter 11 of Jeremy Scahill's book on Blackwater is entitled "Caspian Pipeline Dreams"; Scahill wrote:  "Beginning in July 2004, Blackwater forces were contracted to work in the heart of the oil- and gas-rich Caspian Sea region, where they would quietly train a force modeled after the Navy SEALs and establish a base just north of the Iranian border as part of a major U.S. move in what veteran analysts in the region call the 'Great Game'" (Blackwater: The Rise of the World's Most Powerful Mercenary Army [Nation Books, 2007], p. 167)....

AFP reported Wednesday that "The United States has played down any prospects of war with Iran or any immediate dangers from its nuclear drive but warned that the world was ready to confront its 'provocative' policies."[1]  --  But "[t]he confrontation between Iran and the United States seemed to sharpen on Thursday as Iran said it tested missiles for a second day and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said the United States would defend its allies and protect its interests against an attack," the New York Times reported.[2]  -- Michael Schwirtz and William J. Broad quoted Charles P. Vick, an Iranian rocket program expert at GlobalSecurity.org, who said of Iran's missile tests:  "It’s basically a demonstration of all the weapon systems they bought from Russia, China, or North Korea over the last decade."  --  According an overview by the Federation of American Scientists produced several years ago, "Most of the Iranian missile development industry is located in Karaj, outside Tehran. Iran's missile infrastructure also includes a Chinese-built missile plant near Semnan, larger North Korean-built plants at Isfahan and Sirjan which can produce liquid fuels and some structural components, and missile test facilities at Shahroud and the Shahid Hemat Industrial Group research facility just south of Tehran.  Historically Iranian missile 'production' consists primarily of assembling imported ballistic missile kits.  --  In an effort to decrease their dependence on foreign entities, Iran is seeking to develop an indigenous missile and weapons production capability infrastructure.  Iran's ballistic missile production facilities program is located in two underground tunnels between (Kuh-e-parbl) Bandar Abbas and Bushehr.   It began to become a reality as early as 1996.  However, the Scud B/Shahab 1 system is now said to be in production using a significant portion of locally manufactured components.  --  Current Iranian missile inventories are very speculative . . ."  --  GlobalSecurity.org says:  "Progress on indigenous missile production is often reported by one source or another in Teheran, perhaps falsely, to demonstrate that Iran is a growing power against Israel and to intimidate its other enemies in the region.  However, Iran continues to rely primarily on limited North Korean missile production capacity."  --  UPI reported Thursday that Iran was exaggerating the purport of its activities Thursday:  "Iranian media reported the country's military conducted a second day of test-firing missiles, but the U.S. military official told CNN U.S. radar and satellite imagery don't support the claim. . . . [T]he source talking to CNN said one missile failed to launch and the Iranians fired it the following day."[3]  --  But Iran's announcement, combined with "the apparent end of a cease-fire in Nigeria," was enough to push oil prices back over $140 a barrel, CNN Money reported.[4] ...

A five-minute Real News segment posted Thursday showed a dramatic Jul. 9 confrontation between Rep. John Conyers (D-MI 14th), the chair of the House Judiciary Committee, and about twenty members of Veterans For Peace in which Conyers reneged on a promise last month to present a decision on whether he will bring articles of impeachment before the committee.[1]  --  Conyers portrayed himself as genuinely undecided, but VFP members denounced what they perceived as stalling tactics.  --  BACKGROUND:  With Elizabeth Holtzman, Conyers prepared in early 2006, before Conyers took over the chairmanship of the Judiciary Committee, a volume arguing in favor of impeachment.   --  Entitled The Constitution in Crisis: The High Crimes of the Bush Administration and a Blueprint for Impeachment (Skyhorse, 2007), the book has received little media attention.  --  Impeachment is the prerogative of the Judiciary Committee of the House of Representatives ("The House of Representatives . . . shall have the sole Power of Impeachment" —U.S. Constitution, Article I, Section 2, Clause 5).  --  Elizabeth Holtzman, who served on the House Judiciary Committee that prepared articles of impeachment against President Richard M. Nixon, called for the president's impeachment on Jan. 11, 2006, in the aftermath of the revelation of presidential violations of the FISA law....

The New York Times reported in a front-page story Thursday that "American military and intelligence officials say there has been an increase in recent months in the number of foreign fighters who have traveled to Pakistan’s tribal areas to join with militants there," making "Pakistan, not Iraq, the preferred destination for some Sunni extremists from the Middle East, North Africa, and Central Asia."[1]  --  Officials say many of them are "Uzbeks, North Africans, and Arabs from Persian Gulf states."  --  A "senior administration official" said that given the political situation in Pakistan, little is likely to change anytime soon.  --  "There’s no apparent solution at hand.  The next six months look like they’ll be a lot like the past six months.”  --  "Several American officials expressed exasperation that small elements of the Frontier Corps paramilitary force, the Pakistani Army, and Pakistan’s leading military intelligence agency — Inter-Services Intelligence, or the ISI — were turning a blind eye to militants launching cross-border attacks, if not supporting them outright.  --  'Right now, the Pakistanis are in a muddle over how to use the tribal leaders, Frontier Corps paramilitary forces and the Pakistani Army to deal with the situation,' said a senior allied military officer who has served in the region.  'To complicate matters, U.S.-Pakistani relations are currently toxic.'"  --  Eric Schmitt connected the shifting of a U.S. aircraft carrier from the Persian Gulf to the Arabian Sea to these developments:  "The Pentagon moved the aircraft carrier Abraham Lincoln to the Arabian Sea from the Persian Gulf in recent days, shortening the time that the carrier’s nearly four dozen FA-18 Hornet and Super Hornet strike planes must fly to support combat in Afghanistan."  --  COMMENT:  Given the report on Tuesday in the Houston Chroncle that "American commandos are poised to stage 'hot pursuit' raids into Pakistan's loosely governed tribal areas . . . in response to Pakistan's failure to disrupt terrorist training camps and cross-border attacks from a region known as 'the Federally Administered Tribal Areas,' a remote, mountainous border area" of Pakistan,[2] the prominently placed New York Times article would appear to be preparation of the 'information space' for this military escalation.  --  It is also an indication of the degree to which the Iraq war has already morphed into a regional Middle East conflict....

On Wednesday the U.S. national eecurity state achieved "a major expansion" in "the government's surveillance powers" with the 69-28 Senate approval of "the biggest revamping of federal surveillance law in thirty years" in a law that includes "legal immunity for the phone companies that cooperated in the National Security Agency wiretapping program he approved after the Sept. 11 attacks."[1]  --  (The vote three weeks ago in the House on the measure was a similar 293-129.)  --  "Even as his political stature has waned, Mr. Bush has managed to maintain his dominance on national security issues in a Democratic-led Congress," Eric Licthblau said.  --  The bill "also expands the government’s power to invoke emergency wiretapping procedures.  While the N.S.A. would be allowed to seek court orders for broad groups of foreign targets, the law creates a new seven-day period for directing wiretaps at foreigners without a court order in 'exigent' circumstances if government officials assert that important national security information would be lost.  The law also expands to seven days, from three, the period for emergency wiretaps on Americans without a court order if the attorney general certifies there is probable cause to believe the target is linked to terrorism.  --  Democrats pointed to some concessions they had won.  The final bill includes a reaffirmation that the FISA law is the 'exclusive' means of conducting intelligence wiretaps — a provision that Representative Nancy Pelosi of California, the House speaker, and other Democrats insisted would prevent Mr. Bush or any future president from evading court scrutiny in the way they say that the N.S.A. program did."  --  However, since the president and his agents committed with impunity acts that are felonies under the previous law and these same Democrats have now condoned his actions, their insistence inspires little confidence.  --  Critics charged the law violates the separation of powers:  "'The law itself is a massive intrusion into the due process rights of all of the phone subscribers who would be a part of the suit.  It is a violation of the separation of powers.  It’s presidential election-year cowardice. The Democrats are afraid of looking weak on national security.'"  --  Calling the bill a plain violation of the Fourth Amendment, Jameel Jaffer, director of the ACLU National Security Project, said the ACLU would "challenge this bill as soon as President Bush signs it into law."[2]  --  The Electronic Frontier Foundation, which represents plaintiffs in lawsuits against the phone companies, also promised to fight the bill in court, Nick Juliano reported....

Iran test-fired "at least seven medium- and long-range missiles, including a Shahab-3 . . . in a desert area at 8:00 a.m. local time," the Financial Times of London reported Wednesday.[1]  --  The Los Angeles Times said Tehran put at nine the number of missiles fired, and said the exercise, "staged by Iran's Revolutionary Guards near the strategic oil shipping lanes in the Strait of Hormuz," included "at least one [missile] capable of striking Israel and other American interests in the Middle East."[2]  --  Bloomberg News said the U.S. claimed the test "violates United Nations Security Council resolutions and further isolates it from the rest of the world."[3]  --  Ladane Nasseri noted that on Jul. 7 "the U.S. Fifth Fleet ran a maneuver of warships to practice protecting oil rigs in the Persian Gulf."  --  "The U.S. and its allies say Iran is using its atomic program to develop nuclear weapons," Nasseri said (although a U.S. national intelligence estimate made public on Dec. 3, 2007 said the oppposite).  --  An Israeli academic said the missiles were "based on old North Korean technology."  --  The Washington Post noted that the range of the Shahab-3 "has been known for several years," and that "Top leaders from all three countries play down the chance of a military confrontation and say they are committed to a diplomatic solution to their disagreements, particularly the nuclear issue."[4]  --  In a discussion posted on the web site of the Washington Post, Jon Wolfsthal of CSIS said that "[Iran] has signed onto the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty and promised to put all nuclear activities under inspection.  It has now been determined that for over 20 years, Iran lied about its activities and violated its obligations to put activities under inspection."[5]  --  In fact, as Vladimir Putin told Le Monde (Paris) about a month ago, "[F]ormally Iran hasn’t violated any rules.  It even has the right to carry out enrichment.  It only takes a quick glance at the relevant documents to confirm this.  There were some claims that Iran hadn’t revealed all its programs to the IAEA.  This is what we need to clear up.  But to a large extent Iran has revealed its nuclear programs.  I repeat there is no official basis for legal claims against Iran"  — an easily verifiable fact that is systematically excluded from U.S. mainstream media.  --  Wolfsthal made a number of other false assertions in the course of his online chat that are corrected below....

"[O]il- and gas-rich national energy companies have taken the driver’s seat and are exploiting their new-found power" in an era of soaring prices, the Financial Times said on Wednesday.[1]  --  Though American political analysts are often content to treat "oil companies" as a coherent conglomeration with comparable interests, "oil groups" and "national oil companies" are distinctly different.  --  Carola Hoyos concentrates her attention on Paolo Scaroni, the CEO of Eni, the Italian oil company, who has become a controversial figure in oil circles by accepting the principle that "it is their oil."  --  Exxon Mobil on the other hand, often seems disinclined to accept this principle....

On Wednesday, the Financial Times of London introduced a long piece analyzing Israel's "dysfunctional politics" by reporting that a Knesset member in the Labor Party who is a former head of Mossad, Danny Yatom, announced his decision to retire from politics last week, saying:  "The leadership in Israel has made political survival its only goal.  Moral and ethical codes that were once fundamental have been eroded. . . . As a Knesset member in a coalition party, I feel as though I am a partner in the deterioration when I vote in favor of the government.”[1]  --  "[A] growing number of Israelis believe that the country faces not so much another coalition collapse but something larger:  a full-blown crisis in the country’s political system that is sapping the ability of political leaders to tackle crucial challenges — from reaching a peace deal with the Palestinians to facing down the threat of an increasingly hostile Iran," Tobias Buck wrote.  --  "The three symptoms of the country’s political malaise are easy to identify:  exceedingly low levels of trust in politicians and democratic institutions, the chronic instability of Israeli governments, and the fragmentation of parliament and political life in general."  --  Buck argues that Israel's "pure system of proportional representation with only a small threshold required to enter parliament" produces "a highly fragmented parliament" with thirteen parties, the largest holding fewer than one quarter of the seats.  --  "Even a combination of the three biggest parties — spanning the political left, right, and center and boasting the current prime minister and two of his predecessors — would fall one deputy short of a majority in the Knesset."   --  Gideon Doron, a professor of political science at Tel Aviv University, "compares Israel’s current situation with France’s tumultuous Fourth Republic, which saw more than twenty prime ministers come and go between 1946 and 1958.  That period ended with the return of Charles de Gaulle and the creation of a strong presidency to guarantee political stability.  'The Fourth Republic was muddling through from one crisis to the next — just like we are doing now.  Maybe we should move to a presidential system, like in France,' Prof. Doron says.  For such a change to happen, however, Israel would have to experience a huge crisis, like the Algerian war that put paid to France’s Fourth Republic, he adds.  Anything less dramatic will not be enough:  'We are no longer impressed by small crises.'” ...

The United Arab Emirates, Egypt, and Algeria may soon be getting nuclear reactors for the production of electricity if the plans of French supermajor Total and Italy's Eni are realized, the Financial Times reported Wednesday.[1]  --  "The strategy has its critics, not least those concerned at the spread of nuclear power in such a volatile region," wrote Carola Hoyos.  --  "However, oil industry sources said Total had the full support of the French government.  The oil company's new-found interest fits well with France's ambitions to advance its nuclear technology internationally." ...

"[A] number of independent observers, citing a barrage of advantages, believe a landslide for the Democratic candidate is a growing possibility," the Financial Times reported Wednesday.[1]  --  "Even those who believe the race will be as narrowly settled as the last two agree that the Republican party faces a probable meltdown in all the other elections that will be staged in November," Edward Luce said....

Tuesday saw the biggest drop in the price of oil since the beginning of "the first Gulf war" in January 1991, when the per-barrel price fell by more than $10, the Financial Times reported early Wednesday.[1]  --  On Tuesday, "NYMEX August West Texas Intermediate lost $5.34 to $136.04 a barrel, having shot to a record $145.85 on Friday," Robert Cookson said.  --  "Traders put the move down to suspicions that the dollar, in which oil is priced, had overcome its period of weakness, as well as a perceived easing of tensions in the Middle East," with reassuring comments coming from Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, he said.  --  In addition, "[m]arket concern over Hurricane Bertha receded, with computer models indicating it would steer clear of the oil-rich Gulf of Mexico."  --  Most other commodity prices also declined.  --  Bloomberg News took a different interpretive tack, attributing the decline above all to "signs that the global economy may slow."[2]  --  Mark Shenk quoted Michael Lynch, president of Strategic Energy & Economic Research in Winchester, Massachusetts, who said:  "All the bad economic news is making people take a second look at commodities.  Commodities were purchased as a hedge against inflation.  A global recession is looking more likely, and it's the greatest weapon in the fight against inflation."  --  Market Watch asked "Have commodities peaked?" and one expert said that "It's certainly possible."[3]  --  "But whether or not oil and other commodities are experiencing just another correction in a bull market, or a lasting reversal, remains an open question," said Mark Godt.  "Many market strategists simply point out that no market can keep rising to new records in a straight line." ...

Under a U.S.-Czech agreement signed Tuesday in the teeth of popular opposition to the plan, a "radar base" will be built in the former Soviet bloc country "as part of a planned extension of the U.S. missile defense shield to central Europe" that will, it is claimed, "defend it and its European allies against missile attacks from a foe such as Iran," the Financial Times of London reported.[1]  --  Jan Cienski said the agreement "points to intelligence suggesting Tehran could develop a long-range missile capable of striking its soil by 2015."  --  But U.S.-Polish talks about placing ten missile interceptors on Polish soil are "still in crisis following Warsaw’s rejection last week of the terms offered by Washington."  --  Last week "U.S. negotiators thought they had the outline of a deal that Rice could seal during a three-day trip to Eastern Europe," AP reported. [2] --  "Warsaw rebuffed that tentative deal Friday, in strong language that U.S. diplomats said came as a surprise."  --  But how the Czech agreement will get through parliament is a mystery, Anne Gearan wrote:  "The three-party governing coalition enjoys the support of only half of the 200 lawmakers in the Czech parliament's lower chamber, not enough to ratify any deal.  About two-thirds of Czechs say they oppose the missile defense deal, according to a number of polls."  --  Reuters quoted one of the "protesters in the Czech capital [who] unfurled a huge banner shaped like a bull's-eye" who said, "We believe that this could start another arms race."[3]  --  The Times of London observed that Tuesday's signing "seemed to bury" the idea advanced by U.S. President George W. Bush at the 2007 G8 meeting in German that the radar base for the missile defense shield could be based in Azerbaijan.[4]  --  COMMENT:  Although they mention opposition to the missile defense of shield, none of these articles explains the arguments on which that opposition is based.  --  These were brought out in March in a hearing of the House National Security and Foreign Affairs Subcommittee that was described by Nation editor Katrina vanden Heuvel in a piece entitled "Missile Defense: Longest-Running Scam Exposed."[5]  --  (For the three hearings the subcommittee has held, see here.)  --  In his opening statement, Rep. John Tierney (D-MA 6th), the chair of the subcommittee, "pointed out that we have spent over $120 billion on missile defense in the past 25 years; that the annual budget is expected to double by 2013 to $19 billion; and that the current $10 billion per year is equal to one-third of the Homeland Security budget, roughly equal to the State Department budget, greater than the FEMA budget, 20 times greater than public diplomacy expenditures, and 30 times greater than Peace Corps."  --  Dr. Stephen Flynn, Senior Fellow for National Security Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations and a retired Coast Guard Commander, testified "that the 'non-missile risk' — smuggling a weapon of mass destruction into the U.S. by ship, train, truck, or private jet — is 'far greater than the ballistic missile threat,'" yet "[t]he combined budgets for funding all the domestic and international port of entry interdiction efforts . . . is equal to roughly one-half of the annual budget for developing missile defense.  Nowhere in the U.S. government has there been or is there now an evaluation of whether that represents an appropriate balance."  --  Joseph Cirincione, author of Bomb Scare: The History and Future of Nuclear Weapons, who worked the House Armed Services Committee and the National Security Subcommittee during the Cold War, said:  “I have known ballistic missile threats, I have researched ballistic missile threats.  Mr. Chairman, this is not a serious ballistic missile threat that we face today."  --  Cirincione called missile defense "the longest running scam in the history of the Department of Defense,” adding:  “This is an enormous waste of money, and if you leave this decision to the Joint Chiefs they won’t spend anything near what this Administration is requesting.”  --  A Raytheon executive told Defense News last week:  "Internationally, the market is very bright."[6]  --  Back in July 2001, Paul Loeb recalled in a Christian Science Monitor piece entitled "The Money Defense Shield" the moment when, after a talk, a Lockheed employee at the company's Missile & Space Division in Sunnyvale, CA, had the audacity to say:  "Let's get real.  We all know that if anyone ever attacks America, the bomb is going to be delivered by a suitcase, a car, a truck, or in a boat.  It's not going to come from a missile, because you can track where a missile comes from and retaliate.  We all know that we're lobbying for these programs because they make us money.  We don't care whether they'll ever work, or even be useful.  We care that the dollars come our way."[7] ...

Convicted in Iran of spying for Israel and sentenced to death, Ali Ashtari was interviewed on Iranian TV Monday, YNet reported Tuesday.[1]  --  Ali Ashtari described how he communicated with Mossad and how he used his position as computer salesman to but devices, said Dudi Cohen, who expressed surprise that Ashtari did not seem to have been tortured or abused:  "Throughout the interview Ashtari is calm and composed — though one might expect someone convicted of an offense as grievous as spying for Israel to undergo physical or psychological torture, and that some sign of this would be apparent in his demeanor."  --  The Washington Post said last week that the Ashtari case "was the country's first known conviction for espionage linked to Israel in almost a decade."[2]  --  A Jun. 29 AFP piece noted that Ashtari "still has time to appeal the verdict with a higher court," and quoted an unnamed Iranian intelligence official who said that "some of our research projects have failed because of the use of this equipment.  In some cases, failures are irreversible and big."[3]  --  The French version of the AFP article included these sentences, omitted from the English version posted on the web:  "In May 2007 the American TV network CBS referred to operations to sabotage Iran's nuclear program by Western intelligence agencies that arranged to furnish defective equipment to Iran.  The head of Iran's atomic program, Gholamreza Aghazadeh, said in January 2007 that electrical equipment imported from Turkey had been "trafficked" and had been the cause for the destruction of fifty uranium-enriching centrifuges in Natanz in 2006."  --  The Fars News Agency reported on Jun. 30 that Ashtari was arrested in 2007, 18 months ago, though his case was made public only on Saturday.[4]  --  The three Mossad agents — Jacques, Charles, and Tony — "apparently presented themselves as bankers who worked for the Fortis Bank (a Belgium bank ranked among Europe's top 20 financial institutions), and told him they were interested in exploring a business venture.  --  The three offered him an unofficial loan — 'which struck me as odd' — and proceeded to give him a laptop —'which could send and receive encrypted email' — as well as two DSL (Digital Subscriber Line) devices with a satellite hookup, 'to give to my Iranian clients.  I think those were wired.'  --  According to court records, Ashtari then said that the Mossad gave him $50,000 as a business loan, 'to buy merchandise to sell in Iran,' and paid for all of his travel expenses."  --  The FNA account is accompanied by photographs of the trial and of the some evidence used against Ashtari....

The "deadliest attack [in Kabul] since the 2001 fall of the Taliban" took 41 lives and wounded 150 on Monday when a "suicide bomber rammed an explosives-laden car into the Indian embassy," AFP reported.[1]  --  A spokesman for the Taliban, which has been sponsoring a wave of suicide attacks, denied responsibility.  --  "Many of the dead were Afghans collecting Indian visas."  --  The blast occurred when the car rammed a vehicle carrying the Indian embassy's military attaché and a political counsellor as it was entering the embassy compound gates.  --  Two other Indian officials were killed, the New York Times reported.[2]  --  "There have been a number of attacks in Afghanistan in recent months notable for their increased sophistication and deadliness," Abdul Waheed Wafa and Alan Cowell noted.  --  The Indian embassy is located "in what is supposed to be one of the best-guarded neighborhoods of the city, protected by police roadblocks.  But the bomber managed to get through, and rammed a car laden with explosives into the embassy gates."  --  Time said the dead included "a brigadier general, R.D. Mehta, who had started his post just five months ago and a foreign service officer, V.V. Rao, whose two-year tour of duty in Kabul was about to end.  The bombing is likely to have regional ramifications," because "[m]any foreign policy hawks in India believe Pakistani intelligence operatives might be targeting India's interests."[3]  --  "The U.N. sent an e-mail to its staff advising them to stay off Kabul's roads because of reports that a second suicide car bomber was in the city," AP's Amir Shah reported.[4] ...