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• WayneMadsenReport "The London luncheon for McCain will place the GOP candidate amid the very same syndicates that have tainted and infiltrated the Bush-Cheney administration. Lord Rothschild lords over a number of European companies and entities, including the umbrella RIT, Ltd. (formerly Rothschild Investment Trust), which is invested in Lukoil, The Economist, Atticus International, Royal Dutch Shell, and Getty Images. The Rothschild Foundation built the Israeli Knesset building and the Israeli Supreme Court, the latter known for its unique design of a pyramid with an eye atop of it that juts through its roof.  Lord Rothschild also received the shares in the Yukos oil company of jailed Russian oligarch Mikhail Khodorkovsky, shortly before his arrest for tax evasion. Rothschild is close to wanted Russian tycoon Boris Berezovsky, Henry Kissinger, and Rupert Murdoch.  The Rothschild connection to EADS, as reported by The Independent (UK), is through Diligence, a business intelligence firm chaired by former Conservative Party leader Michael Howard and founded in 2000 by ex-MI5 and Special Boat Service agent Nick Day and former CIA agent Mike Baker. Former Senior Bush chief arms control negotiator and Assistant Secretary of State Richard Burt was also a major force in the formation of Diligence. A Nathaniel Rothschild investment firm called JNR was reported by The Independent on February 18, 2007, to be involved in acquiring a stake in Diligence from a South American private equity firm. Diligence also attracted investments from the Republican lobbying firm Barbour [Mississippi Governor Haley Barbour], Griffith & Rogers. Diligence counts former CIA and FBI director William Webster and Carlyle Group managing director Edward Mathias among its advisory board members, along with Howard. Last, but not least, Diligence's clients have included Halliburton, Dick Cheney's old firm.  The link between Diligence and EADS is through Burt, who, in addition to being a major player in Diligence, is a member of EADS North America's Board of Directors, an international director of Barbour, Griffiths & Rogers, and an adviser to the Carlyle Group. The Chairman of EADS North America's Board is Ralph Crosby, Jr., former President of the Integrated Systems Sector of Northrop Grumman, EADS's tanker contractor partner. Significantly, another EADS North America board member is retired Admiral T. Joseph Lopez, a close confidante of Cheney when he was Secretary of Defense, later the Commander Naval Forces Europe/Commander-in-Chief Allied Forces Southern Europe, and then appointed by Cheney, after his retirement, to be Senior Vice President and Global Director of U.S. and Foreign Government Operations for Kellogg Brown & Root, the division of the Halliburton.  The McCain-EADS-Diligence-Rothschild connections have taken advantage of the emaciation of the 1933 Buy America Act, designed by President Herbert Hoover to force the federal government to buy from American firms to help propel the country out of the depths of the Great Depression. McCain and his foreign cronies have facilitated federal contracts with foreign firms to replenish McCain's campaign coffers. Currently, 45 countries are exempt from the Buy American Act. They include France (home of Airbus), the United Kingdom (base for McCain's Rothschild friends), Israel, Singapore, Italy, Belgium, Japan, Aruba, Switzerland, Sweden, Egypt, Bulgaria, Hungary, Slovenia, Ireland, Estonia, and the Czech Republic." full story

The greenback's recent volatility and the yawning US trade deficit, "are definitely causing concern with regard to its reserve currency status," he said. "The international community can hardly be satisfied with this instability."  Kudrin's intervention coincided with another meeting, also in Washington, of finance ministers and central bankers from the Group of Seven - which doesn't include Russia.

Top of the agenda: the effect of ever-rising oil prices on inflation and interest rates.  G7 countries are worried the spiraling price of crude - which closed at $72.79 a barrel on Friday and which has now trebled in three years - could inflict real economic damage. The US Federal Reserve, in particular, has been forced to take drastic action - raising interest rates 15 times since June 2004 to keep inflation in check.

Given that fragility, it is significant that Kudrin is now wondering aloud if the long-standing dollar hegemony can last. For him to do so is to highlight that America is vulnerable should that status be lost. That's because Russia, with its awesome oil and gas reserves, could kick-start a challenge to the dollar's supremacy.  Most nations stockpile their foreign exchange holdings in dollars. The US currency accounts for more than two thirds of all central bank reserves worldwide.

This reserve status means that the dollar is constantly in demand, whatever the underlying strength of the US economy.  And now, with massive trade and budget deficits to finance, America is increasingly reliant on that status. The unprecedented weight of US liabilities means a threat to the dollar's dominance could result in a currency collapse, plunging the world's largest economy into recession.

That won't happen immediately. The dollar has sat astride the globe for some time now - in fact, for most of the last century. But this statement from Russia - a country of growing financial and strategic significance - still caused the dollar to slide. It also fuelled speculation that central banks could increasingly diversify their holdings away from dollars.

Kudrin's statement followed news that Sweden has cut its dollar holdings, from 37 per cent of central bank reserves to 20 per cent, with the euro's share rising to 50 per cent. Central banks in some Gulf states have also lately mooted a shift into the euro. Such sentiments helped push the dollar to a seven-month low against the single currency last week.  But Russia's intervention will have raised eyebrows in Washington because the backbone of the dollar's reserve currency status - the main guarantee that status continues -is the fact that oil is traded in dollars. And that is something the likes of Kudrin can directly affect.

For historic reasons, the dollar remains the world's "petrocurrency" - the only currency for the settlement of oil contracts on world markets. That makes the EU and Russia dependent on it. But with central banks switching to euros, the logical next step would be for fuel-exporting countries to start quoting oil prices in euros too.  The EU is Russia's main trading partner. More than two thirds of Russia's oil and gas is exported to the EU. That makes Russia a strong candidate to become the first major oil exporter to start trading in euros. Such a scenario, in recent years, has become theoretically possible. But now, with these latest comments, Kudrin has thrust that possibility into the open.

The G7 meeting was dominated, of course, by concern over Iran's nuclear programme. The threat of military action against Iran, itself a major crude exporter, is one reason oil prices are now testing record highs.  It is worth noting that Tehran has ongoing plans to set up an oil trading exchange to compete with New York's NYMEX and with London's International Petroleum Exchange. In the light of Kudrin's comments, it is significant that the Iranians want to run their oil bourse in euros, not dollars.  Were the Iranians to establish a Middle-East based euro-only oil exchange, the dollar's unique petrocurrency status could unravel. That, in turn, would threaten its broader dominance - which, given America's groaning twin deficit, could seriously hurt the US economy.

Some cite this as the real reason the US wants to attack Iran: to protect the dollar's unique position. I wouldn't go that far, but the prospect of a non-dollar oil exchange in Tehran is certainly an aggravating factor.  The opening of Iran's new oil exchange has recently been delayed. But, having spoken with numerous officials in Tehran, and western consultants who've been working with the Iranians for several years, I think it will go ahead. The exchange entity has already been legally incorporated in Iran and a site purchased to house administrative and regulatory staff.

The reality is that as long as most of Opec's oil - read Saudi Arabia - is priced in dollars, the US currency will retain its hegemony. But the opening of an oil bourse in Tehran, which now looks likely, will signal at least tacit Saudi consent for euro-based oil trading. The US knows this, which is why it is nervous about the dollar's status being questioned.  From the G7's fringe, Kudrin has now touched this raw nerve. This weekend's meetings have been dominated by questions of global financial imbalance - in particular, America's huge deficits.

Kudrin's missive comes as central bankers, and currency dealers, start to conclude the only way to resolve the massive US external deficit is a somewhat weaker US currency. As the IMF itself warned yesterday, a "substantial" dollar decline may be needed.  One way to bring that about would be for the euro to enter the global oil trading system. This is unlikely to happen soon. It might not happen at all. But the idea is now not only realistic but firmly on the table in Washington. Perhaps not with love, but it was placed there by the Russians.

Liam Halligan is Economics Correspondent at Channel 4 News

by an internet researcher

French filmmaker Mathieu Verboud is set to release a new documentary for European television this fall, which will reveal important new insights into the case of former FBI translator and president of the National Security Whistleblower’s Coalition Sibel Edmonds.  Edmonds, a Turkish-American whose wrongful termination lawsuit was suppressed by the government’s invocation of the all-too-common “state secrets privilege”, reported to her superiors espionage and deliberate mistranslations on the part of fellow Turkish translator, Melek Can Dickerson.   It seems Ms. Dickerson had relationships with targets of FBI investigation working at the Turkish Embassy and the American Turkish Council, a fact which meant that anything she translated was likely to be false.  However, instead of receiving a promotion for bringing Ms. Dickerson’s’ espionage to the attention of her bosses, Edmonds was fired after she went in frustration to the U.S. Senate.  The FBI refused to investigate Edmonds’ claims, at least in part, because the contract linguist had discovered quite a messy scandal: the content of the mistranslated documents revealed that some very powerful people in the U.S. government, including House Speaker Dennis Hastert, were connected to foreign organized crime.  Even worse, these foreign criminals connected to the high and mighty in the U.S. were also connected internationally, through the heroin trade and associated money laundering, to international terrorist organizations like al Qaeda. 

Okay, take a deep breath and take a step back: it’s not a pretty picture.  According to what we know so far from Sibel Edmonds’ many interviews and from the groundbreaking story on her case from Vanity Fair, “An Inconvenient Patriot” , Edmonds found that within the U.S. a nest of Turkish spies, some working at the Turkish embassy, others affiliated with namely the Assembly of Turkish American Associations (ATAA), the American Turkish Associations (ATA) and the American Turkish Council (ATC), were involved in espionage, bribery, illegal lobbying, drug trafficking and the infiltration of U.S nuclear research labs.  Separately, from a former CIA Counterterrorism official, Phillip Giraldi, who himself was once based in Turkey, we know that some arms sales meant for Turkey and Israel were actually meant for resale to countries like China and India- and perhaps even to international terrorists- using fake end-user certificates.  So we have Turkish nationals at the Embassy and NGOs stealing U.S. secrets for sale to the highest bidder, re-selling arms meant for Turkey, bringing in drugs from Europe, and pouring money into bribes and lobbying activities. 

To understand how these activities fit together- Americans must first understand what Europeans call the Turkish ‘deep state’.  In 1996, a car crash in a town called Susurluk revealed “link between politics, organized crime and the bureaucracy” in Turkey.  As it turns out, its crippled economy in the 1990s meant Turkey had become the European equivalent of Colombia- a state almost completely dependent on the Turkish mafia and by extension, the Southwest Asian Heroin trade.  Which is where the Turkish ‘deep state’ comes in- it becomes very difficult to determine where the ‘government’ ends and the ‘mafia’ begins.  What we do know from Sibel Edmonds and other sources is this: Turkey’s secular establishment, including the Turkish military and intelligence services (MIT), as well as political parties associated with former Prime Minister Tansu Ciller, appear to have been more connected to the Turkish mafia than the Turkish Islamic Parties that Washington abhors.  Furthermore, it appears from reading into some of Edmonds’ statements that the Turkish mafia was partnered with Osama Bin Laden’s al Qaeda network in the drug trade- meaning Turkey’s secular establishment was more connected to al Qaeda- pre/9-11- than were the Islamists in Turkey.  Which is quite ironic, to say the least. 

If you think this story sounds too convoluted to be true, and you feel the instinct to dismiss Edmonds’ claims, think again.  Every investigation into the whistleblower’s charges- from the Senate Judiciary Committee to the Department of Justice’s Inspector General Report, has found that Edmonds’ story is corroborated within the FBI, which means her translations, not those of Melek Can Dickerson, were the correct ones.  This also means that the aforementioned Turkish organizations, and certain Turkish diplomats, were indeed under FBI investigation.  And all this put together means that people like Dennis Hastert probably were- and perhaps still are- on the payroll of Turkish ‘deep state’ interests.

A recent article published in the U.K. Guardian about the well-connected Kurdish Baybasin clan also gives important backing to the former translator’s story.  The article details how Europe’s “Pablo Escobar”, Huseyin Baybasin, has “alleged that he had received the assistance of Turkish embassies and consulates while moving huge consignments of drugs around Europe, and that Turkish army officers serving with NATO in Belgium were also involved." This information, of course, dovetails most precisely with what Sibel Edmonds has been hinting at for over 3 years now; that targets of FBI investigations linked with the Turkish embassy and Turkish organizations were involved in narcotics trafficking.  It is clear the Baybasin gang and the secular factions in Turkey had a seemingly symbiotic relationship, with the government providing the traffickers diplomatic passports and thus free reign to travel around the world without fear of prosecution.  Also involved in the scandalous Turkish drug running are the very notorious, Pope-killing Grey Wolves, a fascist organization connected to human rights abuses in Turkey.

As for who else besides Hastert might have been on the payroll of Mr. Baybasin and friends- we turn next to the Executive Branch.  In an interview with Chris Deliso of antiwar.com, Edmonds hinted at key roles played by some powerful unelected officials-important Neoconservatives like Marc Grossman of the State Department, and Richard Perle and Douglas Feith, formerly of the Defense Department.   If we hit the rewind button and go back to a CBS 60 Minutes’ interview in October, 2002, we remember the ex-contract linguist stated that Turkish targets of FBI investigation had spies inside the U.S. State Department and at the Pentagon in order to “obtain the United States military and intelligence secrets.”   It doesn’t take a genius to conclude that Grossman, Feith and Perle might have been the persons to whom she was referring in 2002.  Furthermore, the language specialist has repeatedly stated in past interviews that investigations into pre-9/11 terrorist financing activities were blocked “per State Department request”, leaving open the question whether it was Mr. Grossman, then Undersecretary of State for European Affairs, who actively hindered investigations into the Turkey-Bin Laden link. 

Perle and Feith are an interesting case in this hidden scandal.   Their consultancy, International Advisors (IA), has done extensive work for the Republic of Turkey, though it is questionable who is paying the invoices.  Ms. Edmonds rhetorically asked the question of Phoenix radio personality Charles Goyette in January 2006, “For what [were they paid]?  One could imagine, hypothetically, that passing state secrets might be one “service” provided to the Turkish mafia/government by IA.  But would Perle and Feith have gone beyond that?  Would they have introduced the Turkish mafia types to Denny Hastert, and counseled “deep state” interests in how to skirt U.S. campaign finance laws?  After all, the Turks were reported to have made their initial payments from 1996-1998 through “unitemized (less than $200) contributions”, after which they allegedly delivered suitcases of cash to the Speaker’s front door.  Someone had to teach them the intricacies of campaign finance law: was it IA?  What we do know is that Perle was a key architect of the Israeli/Turkish alliance forged in the late 90s, and that Edmonds case also is connected to the AIPAC spy scandal- leaving lots of room for speculation on how the rest of the story pans out.

As messy and ugly as this, for lack of a better phrase, “Turkish DeepState Gate” scandal appears, the consequences of continuing to do nothing about it- of allowing the government’s outrageous use of ‘state secrets’ to insure Dennis Hastert, Richard Perle, Douglas Feith, Marc Grossman and others are never investigated, could be horrific.  Ms. Edmonds plans to take petitions to the Senate Judiciary Committee in the coming months to finally force full and open hearings on her case.  She will try to do the type of lobbying that does not involve foreign bribery or ill-gotten gains.  This will be the simple type of petitioning guaranteed of every citizen in the Constitution under the First Amendment, a long forgotten portion of the Bill of Rights.  Americans aware of the situation can only hope, and do everything in their power to insure, that Ms. Edmonds’ type of lobbying prevails. 

Aug 19: buzz: likely to propel re-examination of the Iraq War into the headlines, for fall presidential campaign, Hadley encouraged participation, interviews with Bush, Cheney, Rice, Gates, ... publisher: Simon & Schuster, Amazon, Alice Mayhew, and see CBS, Viacom, 496 pages, 900,000, red, white, blue, gold cover, administration infighting, will be best seller, he'll be on 60 minutes, Sept 7, How does Woodward, Miller, Cheney, Libby fit with declassifying classified information to hype the war?.. Woodward was leaked Plame info in June 03, but sat on it for years, ... John Bolton, Marc Grossman are the neo-con links to Turkey, and Plame / Edmonds working on uncovering WMD proliferation, black market activities of Bushco.

Seymour Hersh, on Chain of Command  NYTimes  "We now have two major accounts of the road to war in Iraq, Hersh's ''Chain of Command'' and Bob Woodward's ''Plan of Attack.'' Hersh is the anti-Woodward. Woodward is official scribe to the inner sanctum, and his access -- to Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld and Powell -- gives his account real authority, but at a price. In Woodward's world, everything is what the principals say it is. In Hersh's world, by contrast, nothing the policy elites say is true actually is.

SourceWatch  Lt. Gen. David H. Petraeus is "the top American military commander in Iraq, part of a broad revamping of the military team that will carry out the administration's new Iraq 'surge' strategy." [1][2] Petraeus replaced Gen. George W. Casey, Jr., who was confirmed February 6, 2007, by the U.S. Senate, as Army Chief of Staff.   ...   Petraeus, who has "served two previous tours in Iraq", "sees the need for additional troops in Baghdad." He "helped oversee the drafting of the military’s comprehensive new" Counterinsurgency Field Manual published December 2006. [3]   ...   On September 8, 2005, Lt. Gen. Petraeus left Iraq "after handing off command" of the Multi-National Security Transition Command-Iraq, which he had commanded for 15 months. [4] He most recently served as Commander of the U.S. Army Combine Arms Center at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas. [5]

New York Sun Aug 26  ".... speculation is surging that it will portray the latest phase of the war in Iraq as a success, credited to the recently departed commander of forces there, General David Petraeus.   ...    one source familiar with an early draft said Mr. Woodward had extensive access to General Petraeus and his deputies, known in the military as the "Jedi Council." Mr. Woodward also interviewed the head of the Anbar Awakening, Sheik Ahmad al-Rishawi, who took over the Sunni Arab uprising against Al Qaeda in Iraq after his brother was assassinated last September."

Examiner "Woodward is also known for his Pulitzer Prize -winning reporting with fellow Washington Post writer Carl Bernstein . In the 1970s, they collaborated on the groundbreaking stories of the Watergate scandal that helped bring down  Richard Nixon and on two best sellers about the Nixon administration, "All the President's Men" and "The Final Days."  he can pry the facts from the most unlikely sources.