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From the Jordan River to the Congo River: Art and Christianity in Central Africa illustrates the unique history through which the religions and political traditions of different populations of Central Africa incorporated their encounter with Christianity over more than five centuries by reinterpreting elements that were alien to them, whether beliefs, rituals and/or objects. These works (crucifixes, statuettes of Saint Antoine, figures inspired from the cult of the Virgin Mary, etc.) thus reveal the artistic and cultural abundance of the region.
25.5 × 19.5 cm • 215 pages • hardback • €39
Joint publication musée du quai Branly - Jacques Chirac / Flammarion 2016


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New 2024 Toyota Sienna Platinum
Vehicle Summary
Ruby Flare Pearl
Nobel Brown Leather
Stock #
Condition New
Exterior Ruby Flare Pearl
Interior Nobel Brown Leather
Engine 2.5L Hybrid Engine
Fuel Type Hybrid
Drivetrain FWD
Transmission Electronically controlled Continuously Variable Transmission (ECVT)
Location Jim Norton Toyota OKC
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subset: commoncrawl


text:
One More Thing: Emergency pizza button is tech's greatest achievement
And Apple still has a lot of money
Better take a seat. A number of things in today's One More Thing may shock you: Google is publicising Google Play! You're never going to be Indiana Jones! Twitter isn't clairvoyant! And Apple's worth a few bob!
We know. Stay calm. Deep breaths. Calm yourselves with thoughts of the emergency pizza button - if you don't want one of these on your fridge then we can't be friends any more.
That's amore – Science and facts have proven that pizza one of the top five foodstuffs known to mankind, so we should all move to Dubai and get ourselves an emergency pizza fridge magnet. Feeling peckish? Just click the button and it'll send your order through to Red Tomato Pizza via your phone using Bluetooth. This is what technology can do for us, friends. This sets us apart from the animals. [Stuff]
Humbug - Apple's stock reached an all-time high of $613.40 per share today (£385), putting the total company value at around $570 billion (£357 billion). Yeah, yeah, we get it, Apple's got a lot of money and it's worth a lot of money and we'll probably have to, for one, welcome it as our new fruity overlord. Whatever. [TNW]
Play dot com – Google Play is now on the Google homepage taskbar, taking you straight over to the book, music, movie, app and game store and removing the need to, you know, Google it. Nice Doodle today, too. [Google]
Indiana Phones - Speaking of Google Play, it's now stocking Temple Run for Android. We're not saying the free game will turn you into Indiana Jones because he was more of a doer than a player - at least, not that kind of player - but, let's face it, it's the closest you're going to get. [The Verge]
Hackers hacked – Remember when Angelina Jolie was a hacker with a bad fringe going by the name of Acid Burn? Ahh, those were the days. Anyway, some actual hackers have been bamboozled by Microsoft which reckons it has nabbed two command servers in the US which hamper the virus spreading ability of the gangs, estimated to have skimmed over $100 million in the past five years (around £63 million). [Yahoo]
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LulzSec reloaded – Thinking of a cool name is often the hardest part of being a hacker so fair play to the new LulzSec for just adopting the existing moniker. New LulzSec (or LulzSec reborn, if you prefer) has already got to work publishing 171,000 MilitarySingle.com users' account information for all to see. Darn those pesky kids. [Neowin]
Harshing the buzz – Twitter buzz isn't a foolproof indicator of how well a movie will do at the box office, a new study has discovered. Yuh-huh, we could have saved everyone a lot of effort and told you that after the great filmic flop that was Scott Pilgrim. [The Register]
Rack off - You know how Apple loves a court case? Good news for it then, as the Aussies are launching a new one against the Cupertino company for advertising the new iPad as "iPad with Wi-Fi + 4G" when it isn't compatible with the country's 4G frequency. Expect the same sort of thing to happen over here before too long. [PhysOrg]
Breaking Rad – Netflix UK has announced that it will be streaming Breaking Bad season 3 from April 1. This is excellent news, despite the fourth series having just aired in the 'States. But Netfilx gives with one hand and takes with the other, as news has reached us that it is no longer planning to revive Terra Nova. Shame. Not to worry, this crystal meth will help us get over it. [PR, Electronista]
Former UK News Editor for TechRadar, it was a perpetual challenge among the TechRadar staff to send Kate (Twitter, Google+) a link to something interesting on the internet that she hasn't already seen. As TechRadar's News Editor (UK), she was constantly on the hunt for top news and intriguing stories to feed your gadget lust. Kate now enjoys life as a renowned music critic – her words can be found in the i Paper, Guardian, GQ, Metro, Evening Standard and Time Out, and she's also the author of 'Amy Winehouse', a biography of the soul star.


text:
Presented Remote Presentations That Rock v2 for the Best of TLE 2009 series
Posted: - Modified: | kaizen, presentation, speakingI presented "Remote Presentations That Rock" as part of the IBM Best of Technical Leadership Exchange series.
What worked well? What can I improve next time?
- The one-slide summary format gave me lots of flexibility.
- I told a few more mini-stories. Yay! Next time, I can sprinkle more examples and anecdotes into my talk.
- Apparently, people remember my hats. =)
- The "Oak" room and some of the other meeting rooms at 120 Bloor are excellent for videos. Well-lit white wall for the win! All you need is to bring in one of the desk lights, and you're good to go.
- A whiteboard is not a bad place to keep notes so that you can refer to them during your talk. Write big.
- Using the text chat for all questions worked out well. Apparently, people are starting to shift to that pattern instead of mixed voice Q&A and text. Good for handling and prioritizing long questions, too!
- One of the organizers suggested puppets. I could do a good presenter – bad presenter thing for fun. <laugh> If I think of the pre-conference time like a silent movie and figure out what to do, that might give people an incentive to come early!
- One of the participants suggested using partially-drawn slides and then drawing on top of them. That might be a great way to do the next version of this talk. Elluminate's drawing tool feels a bit harsh, but maybe Inkscape or the Gimp might be fun to try. Must check whether screensharing introduces too much of a delay.
- Another participant suggested clipping or taping the phone headset cable so that it doesn't create a distracting visual line away. Isn't it so cool that people think of these things?
- I definitely need to keep the equivalent of two bottles of water around. My throat got a bit parched towards the end.
- Lots of good stuff in the text chat. Will reflect on and re-answer questions soon.
You can comment with Disqus or you can e-mail me at email@example.com.


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First time here? FAQ
This blog is about exposing the fraud that the Chavez regime represents. It is thus an anti Chavez blog which continues since his death as an anti "chavismo" blog. This blog aim is simply to narrate how the country is falling to pieces, trying to explain some of the events that took place to account for the demise.
What you will not find in this blog
You will not find here detailed explanations about Chavez movement, nor indulgent views on activities of the ill called "Bolivarian Revolution". The blog only will describe chavismo tenets and organization as needed.
You will not find much in this blog about what should be done with the country. Any discussion on the subject is in the author's opinion a waste of time: as long as chavismo dictatorship remains the country will keep becoming worse, further mismanaged, further pillaged by corruption. Any plan we may discuss today to rebuild the country will become moot by the time another semester goes by. The only thing we need to discuss is ways to bring back democracy with as little violence as possible, and perhaps some of the necessary first measures when the time comes.
Another thing you will not find much in this blog is discussion on USA politics, personal stuff, etc.... this is a blog about Venezuela and when personal or non Venezuelan topics are broached it is because they are at least tangentially relevant to Venezuela.
Is this blog objective?
It is an objective blog though it is not neutral. It is important to understand this difference whether you read this blog or any blog or newspaper that come from or is about Venezuela today. Neutrality is impossible and any one who pretends so is either a fraud or utterly naive or worse, a chavista agent.
Has chavismo done any good?
The author considers that all the ills that have been created since 1999, when Chavez took office, cannot be compensated, not even in significant part, by the so called good that came from the regime, according to its propaganda. And even in the few cases where we could speak of "good" coming from the regime, it is uncanny how the regime has found ways to sabotage even the occasional good deed it perpetrated....
What does the author understands about holding a blog on Venezuela today?
In February 2009 a referendum allowed for unlimited reelection. The author has realized in full that we Venezuelans deserve the punishment that is coming our way because we allowed that to happen when we could have stopped Chavez there, bloodlessly. After that referendum Chavez became indeed a president for life with all its implications that this entails about the political future of a country and its demise on democratic principles.
The author has to struggle to keep his business alive in the current situation so it is impossible now to find the time just to write "news", though occasional true reporting appears when time and opportunity allows. Thus what you read here are researched OpEd pieces, interpretations, some actual reporting and the occasional venting off.
In short, this has become a resistance blog. The author assumes that people have done some home work on Venezuela and that there is no need to instruct readers as to why Chavez has been bad news. Readers ought to know these days.
How long has this blog being running?
This blog started as letters of the author to the friends he had left in the US of A where he lived for a decade and a half. The first entries of this blog, posted in January 2003, are some of the letters he wrote in December 2002 during the general strike/lock-out against the beginning of the Chavez regime. The blog has been running continuously since, never stopping to publish for more than a couple of weeks, due to travel or sickness of the author.
Who is Daniel Duquenal?
It is a pen name because the author considers that in a dangerous environment it is best to only compromise himself with his writings, protecting thus friends, relatives and business partners. This has not stopped the author to appear even in international television. Exposure or not, there is already enough in this blog to send him to a political concentration camp, or exile, when the time comes.
In short, the author knows that a pen name is no protection and he is quite certain that the regime can track him down whenever it pleases it, if not already done. After all he has been already pointed out as a US agent by many, including the ex vice president Rangel, in his TV show. Yet, no one ever has presented any proof of that and the author asks politely that if he is in the payroll of any US agency to please forward to him all the checks that he supposedly should have received for his work. Besides an occasional lunch invitation with a foreign press correspondent the author has never received a penny for his labors.
Can anyone else write for VN&V?
Maybe. It has been done in the past and three people at least were regulars for a few months. Unfortunately it seems that it takes a special breed to write consistently now for 11 years. This being said, hat tips or spontaneous submissions are always welcome if they go in the spirit of this blog.
Can this blog eventually end?
Besides the obvious answers of jail or death, the author has no intention to stop writing, though in the future the frequency of texts may lower significantly. Only when democracy comes back can this blog willingly close and the author retire, or start a new blog about the rebuilding of Venezuela.
When chavismo is gone Venezuela will be in a post war era, without having suffered an actual war. The current state of our infrastructure neglected for decades will make it seem that some sort of strange war went by. The fate of post Chavez Venezuela will be for the country to tie its future to foreign partners, just as Western Europe did with the Marshall Plan and the US after WW2, or Eastern Europe did with the European Union when the Berlin Wall fell. That is, we will either fall into Brazil's orbit, or go back to a US integration as in the mid XX century since we will have no capital, money or human, to rebuild on our own. Our only hope of mitigation by third parties will be a renewed friendship with a powerful Colombia or a helpful EU. This also will be very interesting to narrate in a blog, but it is another story.
What do you think about those that still support the regime, and do they read you?
The author thinks that today chavismo is a minority group inside the country. However through their abusive use of power they can blackmail enough voters to sustain thin electoral majorities that cannot be kept for long. Thus those who call themselves chavista today are in fact supporters of a dictatorship or naive souls that do not know better.
You will thus not find either much patience with those who still support Chavez. The author has had more than 15 years to make up his mind about Chavez and his crowd. There is nothing anymore these thugs can do to change the author's mind. Nor change the mind of the regular readers.
The author suspects that his blog is monitored by the regime. Yet rare, very rare is the local or overseas chavista that dares thread these pages. Most people outside Venezuela know better, know that this is not a leftist progressive regime but a dictatorship that uses populist and leftist arguments to justify its hold on power. And the chavistas here live in denial of the crime committed against our future as a nation to bother reading a blog like this.
(February 2014)
5 comments:
- Anonymous11:29 AM
Great blog, thanks, our country needs this kind of writing, though I differ with you in some things. I would hope people like you, with your consistent writing and clarity of mind (though I repeat, I think you are sometimes wrong) would continue to write here once this regime comes to an end hopefully not too long from now and hopefully for something radically better. Will keep reading, best wishes
ReplyDelete Hi, I'm reading this from Australia (though I'm from NZ) Your writing is great, very on the ball. I've read above that you have no interest in 'what should be done' as a feature of this blog. Though I'm left wondering what it is you see as an alternative? that is you say , ''...this is not a leftist progressive regime..." Does that suggest you'd like one? And if so how far would you like nationalisation, and redistribution of wealth et al to go? Cheers Russell
ReplyDeleteRepliesLet me rewrite it in a different way: whatever I would write about future options for Venezuela has very little chance to happen. Why? Because as long as chavismo is in office there is no point in considering pragmatical and doable things that chavismo would not be able to control. After 15 years there is a clear need for regime change and anything that moves towards more democratic forms of government can only be an improvement by itself.
- Anonymous12:23 AM
Thank you for this blog.
I have a great friend, a retired American journalist, who lives in a small village outside Caracas. I used to visit him twice a year and always loved my time there. He and I traveled throughout the country. I was especially enchanted traveling through the Andes and over to Merida. I am saddened by the fact that I can no longer visit. It is nearly impossible (and cost prohibitive) to arrange flights, which are not reliable. Food, services, necessities are difficult or impossible to obtain with any regularity. Given the crime, my friend doesn't feel it is safe these days. My heart is broken.
At the same time, Obama is intent on doing much the same to the U.S. what Chavez has done in Venezuela. And too many Americans are too ignorant to understand what is slowly, gradually, almost imperceptibly happening. All they have to do is look at the past 15 years in Vz. But they don't. They won't.
In any case, I appreciate your updates and long for a day when things might be different in Venezuela.
P.S. I dream about arepas . . . . ;-)
Comments policy:
1) Comments are moderated after the sixth day of publication. It may take up to a day or two for your note to appear then.
2) Your post will appear if you follow the basic polite rules of discourse. I will be ruthless in erasing, as well as those who replied to any off rule comment.


text:
New version of Mac OS X Trojan exploits Word, not Java
Just a few days ago, a new Mac OS X Trojan was spotted in the wild that exploited Java vulnerabilities and required no user interaction to infect your Apple Mac, just like the Flashback Trojan. Kaspersky referred to it as "Backdoor.OSX.SabPub.a" while Sophos called it at "SX/Sabpab-A." Now, both security firms have confirmed a different variant of this new Trojan that infects Macs by exploiting Microsoft Word, not Java.
Sophos detects the malicious Word documents as Troj/DocOSXDr-A and points to the following Microsoft Security Bulletin: MS09-027. Kaspersky meanwhile points to this security bulletin for the same Microsoft Word security hole: CVE-2009-0563.
The new version of the Trojan uses malformed Word documents to open a backdoor for remote hackers to steal information or install further code. Just like many recent variants of Mac-specific Trojans, OS X users may be caught off guard as there is no prompt to enter your username or password when the malicious software installs itself onto your Mac.
On the other hand, while the first discovered version of this Trojan requires no user interaction, this second one does. Instead of just browsing the Web and getting infected, Mac users have to actually download and open the Word document for this second version to work.
Here's what I wrote in my last article:
The good news is this means that this Trojan is not believed to be anything as widespread as Flashback, and if you've downloaded and installed the latest software updates from Apple that patch the Java vulnerabilities (or disabled Java), you're safe. The bad news is these Trojans will just keep coming, likely at an increasing rate. This Trojan further underlines the importance of protecting Macs against malware with an updated anti-virus program as well as the latest security updates.
The first part no longer applies. Updating or uninstalling Java will not do you any good. Instead, you'll need to update Microsoft Office 2004 for Mac and Microsoft Office 2008 for Mac. Thankfully, this security vulnerability is from June 2009, so if you keep your Microsoft software patched, you should be good to go. The last parts still apply.
See also:
- New targeted Mac OS X Trojan requires no user interaction
- Apple releases Flashback removal tool, infections drop to 270,000
- Over 600,000 Macs infected with Flashback Trojan
- Has Flashback malware made you consider installing antivirus on your Mac?
- The scariest thing about the Flashback trojan: I have no idea how to fight it
- How big a security risk is Java? Can you really quit using it?


text:
Analysis Former Soviet states: Battleground for global domination By Rick Rozoff Nov 24, 2009, 00:19
A Europe united under the EU and especially NATO is to be strong enough to contain, isolate and increasingly confront Russia as the central component of U.S. plans for control of Eurasia and the world, but cannot be allowed to conduct an independent foreign policy, particularly in regard to Russia and the Middle East. European NATO allies are to assist Washington in preventing the emergence of �the most dangerous scenario . . . a grand coalition of China, Russia, and perhaps Iran� such as has been adumbrated since in the Shanghai Cooperation Organization.
Four years after the publication of The Grand Chessboard, Brzezinski�s recommended chess move was made: The U.S. and NATO invaded Afghanistan and expanded into Central Asia where Russian, Chinese and Iranian interests converge and where the basis for their regional cooperation existed, and Western military bases were established in the former Soviet republics of Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan, where they remain for the indefinite future.
As the United States escalates its joint war with NATO in Afghanistan and across the Pakistani border, expands military deployments and exercises throughout Africa under the new AFRICOM, and prepares to dispatch troops to newly acquired bases in Colombia as the spearhead for further penetration of that continent, it is simultaneously targeting Eurasia and the heart of that vast land mass, the countries of the former Soviet Union.
Within months of the formal breakup of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics in December of 2001, leading American policy advisers and government officials went to work devising a strategy to insure that the fragmentation was final and irreversible. And to guarantee that the fifteen new nations emerging from the ruins of the Soviet Union would not be allied in even a loose association such as the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) founded in the month of the Soviet Union�s dissolution.
Three of the former Soviet republics, the Baltic states of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, never joined the CIS and in 2004 became full members of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, in all three cases placing the U.S.-led military bloc on Russian borders.
That left 11 other former republics to be weaned from economic, political, infrastructural, transportation and defense sector integration with Russia, integration that was extensively and comprehensively developed for the seventy four years of the USSR�s existence and in many cases for centuries before during the Czarist period.
A change of its socio-economic system and the splintering of the nation with the world�s largest territory only affected U.S. policy toward former Soviet space insofar as it led to Washington and its allies coveting and moving on a vast expanse of Europe and Asia hitherto off limits to it.
Two months after the end of the Soviet Union then U.S. Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Paul Wolfowitz and his deputy in the Pentagon, Lewis Libby, authored what became known as the Defense Planning Guidance document for the years 1994�99. Some accounts attribute the authorship to Libby and Zalmay Khalilzad under Wolfowitz�s tutelage.
Afghan-born Khalilzad is a fellow alumnus of Wolfowitz at the University of Chicago and worked under him in the Ronald Reagan State Department starting in 1984. From 1985-1989 he was the Reagan administration�s special adviser on the proxy war against the Soviet Union in Afghanistan and on the Iran-Iraq war. In the first capacity he coordinated the Mujahideen war against the government of Afghanistan waged from Pakistan along with Deputy Director of the Central Intelligence Agency Robert Gates, now U.S. Secretary of Defense. (Gates has a doctorate degree in Russian and Soviet Studies, as does his former colleague the previous U.S. secretary of state Condoleezza Rice.)
The main recipient of U.S. arms and training within the Mujahideen coalition during those years was Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, whose still extant armed group Hezb-e-Islami assisted in driving American troops out of Camp Keating in Afghanistan�s Nuristan province this October. Hekmatyar remains in Afghanistan heading the Hezb-e-Islami and top U.S. and NATO military commander General Stanley McChrystal in his Commander�s Initial Assessment of September -- which called for a massive increase in American troops for the war -- identified the party as one of three main insurgent forces that as many as 85,000 U.S. and thousands of NATO reinforcements will be required to fight.
The Wolfowitz-Libby-Khalilzad Defense Planning Guidance prototype appeared in the New York Times on March 7, 1992 and to demonstrate that the end of the Soviet Union and the imminent fall of the Afghan government (Hekmatyar and his allies would march into Kabul two months later) affected U.S. policy toward Russia not one jot contained these passages:
�Our first objective is to prevent the re-emergence of a new rival, either on the territory of the former Soviet Union or elsewhere, that poses a threat on the order of that posed formerly by the Soviet Union. This is a dominant consideration underlying the new regional defense strategy and requires that we endeavor to prevent any hostile power from dominating a region whose resources would, under consolidated control, be sufficient to general global power.�
�We continue to recognize that collectively the conventional forces of the states formerly comprising the Soviet Union retain the most military potential in all of Eurasia; and we do not dismiss the risks to stability in Europe from a nationalist backlash in Russia or efforts to reincorporate into Russia the newly independent republics of Ukraine, Belarus, and possibly others. . . . We must, however, be mindful that democratic change in Russia is not irreversible, and that despite its current travails, Russia will remain the strongest military power in Eurasia and the only power in the world with the capability of destroying the United States.�
In its original and revised versions the 46-page Defense Planning Guidance document laid the foundation for what would informally become known as the Wolfowitz Doctrine and later the Bush Doctrine, indistinguishable in any essential manner from the Blair, alternately known as Clinton, Doctrine enunciated in 1999: That the U.S. (with its NATO allies) reserves the unquestioned right to employ military force anywhere in the world at any time for whichever purpose it sees fit and to effect �regime change� overthrows of any governments viewed as being insufficiently subservient to Washington and its regional and global designs.
Five years later, former Carter administration National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski, who launched the Afghan Mujahideen support project in 1978 and worked with Khalilzad at Colombia when the latter was assistant professor of Political Science at the university�s School of International and Public Affairs from 1979 to 1989 and Brzezinski headed the Institute on Communist Affairs, wrote an article called �A Geostrategy for Eurasia.�
It was in essence a precis of his book of the same year, The Grand Chessboard: American Primacy And It�s Geostrategic Imperatives, and was published in Foreign Affairs, the journal of the New York-based Council on Foreign Relations.
The framework for the piece is contained in this paragraph: �America�s status as the world�s premier power is unlikely to be contested by any single challenger for more than a generation. No state is likely to match the United States in the four key dimensions of power -- military, economic, technological, and cultural -- that confer global political clout. Short of American abdication, the only real alternative to American leadership is international anarchy. President Clinton is correct when he says America has become the world�s �indispensable nation.��
Brzezinski identified the subjugation of Eurasia as Washington�s chief global geopolitical objective, with the former Soviet Union as the center of that policy and NATO as the main mechanism to accomplish the strategy.
�Europe is America�s essential geopolitical bridgehead in Eurasia. America�s stake in democratic Europe is enormous. Unlike America�s links with Japan, NATO entrenches American political influence and military power on the Eurasian mainland. With the allied European nations still highly dependent on U.S. protection, any expansion of Europe�s political scope is automatically an expansion of U.S. influence. Conversely, the United States� ability to project influence and power in Eurasia relies on close transatlantic ties.
�A wider Europe and an enlarged NATO will serve the short-term and longer-term interests of U.S. policy. A larger Europe will expand the range of American influence without simultaneously creating a Europe so politically integrated that it could challenge the United States on matters of geopolitical importance, particularly in the Middle East. . . .�
The double emigre -- first from Poland, then from Canada -- advocated a diminished role for nation states, including the U.S., and Washington�s collaboration in building a stronger Europe in furtherance of general Western domination of Eurasia, the Middle East, Africa and the world as a whole.
�In practical terms, all this will eventually require America�s accommodation to a shared leadership in NATO, greater acceptance of France�s concerns over a European role in Africa and the Middle East, and continued support for the European Union�s eastward expansion even as the EU becomes politically and economically more assertive. . . . A new Europe is still taking shape, and if that Europe is to remain part of the �Euro-Atlantic� space, the expansion of NATO is essential.�
While giving lip service to the role of the European Union, he left no doubt as to which organization -- the world�s only military bloc -- is to lead the charge in the conquest of the former Soviet Union as well as the world�s �periphery.� It is NATO.
Already stating in 1997, two years before his native Poland, the Czech Republic and Hungary would become full members of the Alliance, that �Ukraine, provided it has made significant domestic reforms and has become identified as a Central European country, should also be ready for initial negotiations with the EU and NATO,� he added:
�Failure to widen NATO, now that the commitment has been made, would shatter the concept of an expanding Europe and demoralize the Central Europeans. Worse, it could reignite dormant Russian political aspirations in Central Europe. Moreover, it is far from evident that the Russian political elite shares the European desire for a strong American political and military presence in Europe. . . . If a choice must be made between a larger Europe-Atlantic system and a better relationship with Russia, the former must rank higher.�
That a former U.S. foreign policy official and citizen of the country would so blithely determine years before the event which nations would join the European Union went without comment on both sides of the Atlantic. That the nominal geographic location of a nation -- placing Ukraine in Central Europe -- would be assigned by an American was similarly assumed to be Washington�s prerogative evidently.
Despite vapid maunderings about desiring to free post-Soviet Russia from its �imperial past� and �integrating [it] into a cooperative transcontinental system,� Brzezinski presented a blueprint for surrounding the nation with a NATO cordon sanitaire, in truth a wall of military fortifications.
�Russia is more likely to make a break with its imperial past if the newly independent post-Soviet states are vital and stable. Their vitality will temper any residual Russian imperial temptations. Political and economic support for the new states must be an integral part of a broader strategy. . . . Ukraine is a critically important component of such a policy, as is support for such strategically pivotal states as Azerbaijan and Uzbekistan.�
Adding Georgia and Moldova, the three states he singles out became the nucleus of the GUUAM (Georgia, Ukraine, Uzbekistan, Azerbaijan, Moldova) bloc originally created in the same year as Brzezinski�s article and book appeared. (Uzbekistan joined in 1999 and left in 2005.)
GUAM was promoted by the Bill Clinton and Madeleine Albright administration as a vehicle for planned Trans-Eurasian energy projects and to tear apart the Commonwealth of Independent States by luring members apart from Russia toward the European Union, the so-called soft power preliminary stage, and NATO, the hard power culmination of the process.
In the above-quoted article Brzezinski also wrote, in addressing Turkey, that �Regular consultations with Ankara regarding the future of the Caspian Sea basin and Central Asia would foster Turkey�s sense of strategic partnership with the United States. America should also support Turkish aspirations to have a pipeline from Baku, Azerbaijan, to Ceyhan on its own Mediterranean coast serve as a major outlet for the Caspian sea basin energy reserves.�
Eight years later, in 2005, the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline transporting Caspian Sea oil to Europe came online, followed by the Baku-Tbilisi-Erzurum natural gas pipeline and the Kars-Akhalkalaki-Tbilisi-Baku railway, with the Nabucco natural gas pipeline next to be activated. The last-named is already slated to include, in addition to Caspian supplies, gas from Iraq and North Africa.
The book whose foreword Brzezinski�s �A Geostrategy for Eurasia� in a way was, The Grand Chessboard: American Primacy And It�s Geostrategic Imperatives, laid out in greater detail plans that have been expanded upon in the interim.
The volume�s preface states, �It is imperative that no Eurasian challenger emerges capable of dominating Eurasia and thus of also challenging America. The formulation of a comprehensive and integrated Eurasian geostrategy is therefore the purpose of this book. . . . Potentially, the most dangerous scenario would be a grand coalition of China, Russia, and perhaps Iran. . . . Averting this contingency, however remote it may be, will require a display of US geostrategic skill on the western, eastern, and southern perimeters of Eurasia simultaneously.�
In pursuance of �America�s role as the first, only, and last truly global superpower,� Brzezinski noted that �the chief geopolitical prize is Eurasia. For half a millennium, world affairs were dominated by Eurasian powers and peoples who fought with one another for regional domination and reached out for global power. Now a non-Eurasian power is preeminent in Eurasia -- and America�s global primacy is directly dependent on how long and how effectively its preponderance on the Eurasian continent is sustained.�
The military fist inside the diplomatic glove is and will remain NATO.
�The emergence of a truly united Europe -- especially if that should occur with constructive American support -- will require significant changes in the structure and processes of the NATO alliance, the principal link between America and Europe. NATO provides not only the main mechanism for the exercise of US influence regarding European matters but the basis for the politically critical American military presence in Western Europe. . . . Eurasia is thus the chessboard on which the struggle for global primacy continues to be played.�
In a section with the heading �The NATO Imperative,� the author reiterated earlier policy demands: �It follows that a wider Europe and an enlarged NATO will serve well both the short-term and the longer-term goals of US policy. A larger Europe will expand the range of American influence � and, through the admission of new Central European members, also increase in the European councils the number of states with a pro-American proclivity � without simultaneously creating a Europe politically so integrated that it could soon challenge the United States on geopolitical matters of high importance to America elsewhere, particularly in the Middle East.�
Western-controlled pipelines traverse the South Caucasus -- Azerbaijan and Georgia -- to drive Russia and Iran out of the European and ultimately world energy markets, with a concomitant U.S. and NATO takeover of the armed forces of both nations. The two countries have also been tapped for increased troop deployments and transport routes for the war in South Asia.
The West is completing the process described by Brzezinski in his 1997 book in which he stated �In effect, by the mid-1990s a bloc, quietly led by Ukraine and comprising Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Azerbaijan and sometimes also Kazakhstan, Georgia and Moldova, had informally emerged to obstruct Russian efforts to use the CIS as the tool for political integration.�
Note, not to obstruct a new �imperial� Russia from exploiting the Commonwealth of Independent States to dominate much less absorb former parts not only of the Soviet Union but of historical Russia, but to integrate -- or rather maintain the integration of -- nations which were within one state until eighteen years ago. At that time, 1991, the Soviet Union precipitately disintegrated into fifteen new nations and four independent �frozen conflict� zones -- Abkhazia, Nagorno-Karabakh, South Ossetia and Transdniester -- and Russia made a 180 degree turn in its political structure and orientation, both domestically and in its foreign policy.
The response to those developments by the U.S. and its NATO cohorts was to scent blood and move in for the kill.
Starting in 1994 NATO recruited all fifteen former Soviet republics into its Partnership for Peace program, which has subsequently prepared ten nations -- all in Eastern Europe, three of them former Soviet republics -- for full membership.
As noted above, in 1997 the West absorbed four and for a period five former Soviet states -- Georgia, Ukraine, Azerbaijan, Moldova and Uzbekistan -- into the GUAM, now Organization for Democracy and Economic Development, format, which has recently been expanded to include Armenia and Belarus with the European Union�s Eastern Partnership initiative. The latter includes half (six of twelve) of the CIS and former CIS nations, all except for Russia and the five Central Asian countries. [1]
Armenian, Azerbaijani, Georgian and Ukrainian troops have been enlisted by the U.S. and NATO for the war in Afghanistan, with Moldova to be the next supplier of soldiers. All five nations also provided forces for the war and occupation in Iraq.
The five Central Asian former Soviet republics -- Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan -- have provided the Pentagon and NATO with bases and transit rights for the war in South Asia and as such are being daily dragged deeper into the Western military nexus. Kazakhstan, for example, sent troops to Iraq and may soon deploy them to Afghanistan.
In recent days the West has stepped up its offensive in several former Soviet states.
GUAM held a meeting of its Parliamentary Assembly in the Georgian capital of Tbilisi on November 9 and the leader of the host nation�s parliamentary majority, David Darchiashvili, said �GUAM has significant potential, as its member states have common interests while the CIS is a union of conflicting interests� and �It is important for GUAM members to have a specific attitude to the EU. GUAM has a potential to develop a common direction with the EU under the policy of the Eastern Partnership.� [2]
Georgian Foreign Minister Grigol Vashadze said at the event that �Our relations are extending, new partners appear. The US, the Czech Republic, Japan and the Baltic states will become GUAM partners soon. They will participate in economic projects with us.� [3]
The Secretary General of the Council of Europe Torbjorn Jagland met with GUAM member states� permanent representatives to the Council of Europe and during the meeting �the Azerbaijani side emphasized the need to intensify the Council of Europe�s efforts in the settlement of �frozen conflicts� in the GUAM area.� [4] The allusion is again to Abkhazia, Nagorno-Karabakh, South Ossetia and Transdniester where several thousand lives were lost in fighting after the breakup of the Soviet Union and, in the case of South Ossetia, where a Georgian invasion of last year triggered a five-day war with Russia.
Later at the NATO Parliamentary Assembly meeting in Edinburgh, Scotland from November 13-17, Azerbaijani member of parliament Zahid Oruj said that �the territories of both Georgia and Azerbaijan were occupied and the Collective Security Treaty Organization�s policy in the region proved that� and he �characterized these steps as an action against NATO.� [5] The Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) is a post-Soviet security bloc consisting of Russia, Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan. Belarus (initially) and Uzbekistan both boycotted the creation of the new CSTO rapid reaction force last month and the Eastern Partnership is designed in part to pull Armenia and Belarus out of the organization. Comparable initiatives are underway in regards to the four Central Asian members states, with the Afghan war the chief mechanism for reorienting them toward NATO.
During the NATO Parliamentary Assembly session, for example, a Turkish parliamentarian said �Armenia�s releasing the occupied Azerbaijani territories [Nagorno Karabakh] will create a security zone in the South Caucasus and pave the way for NATO�s cooperation with this region.�
An Azerbaijani counterpart was even more blunt in stating �NATO should defend Azerbaijan� and stressing �that otherwise, security will not be firm in the region, stability can be violated anytime [and a] new military conflict will be inevitable.� [6]
The day after the NATO session ended the president of Azerbaijan, Ilham Aliyev, revealed the context for NATO �defending Azerbaijan� when he announced that �There is strong support for building the national army. Our army grows stronger. We are holding negotiations but we should be ready to liberate our territories any time from the invaders by military means.� [7]
The same day Daniel Stein, senior assistant to the U.S. Special Envoy for Eurasian Energy, was in Azerbaijan where he confirmed strategic ties with the nation�s government and said that as �global energy security is one of the priorities of US foreign policy, his country supports diversification of energy resources while delivering them to world markets.� [8]
Also on November 18 Stein�s superior, U.S. Special Envoy for Eurasian Energy Richard Morningstar, addressed the European Policy Center, a Brussels-based think-tank, and said �Turkey will become a very strong transit country in transporting the gas of the Caucasus and Central Asia to Europe� -- via Azerbaijan and Georgia -- and �Turkmenistan and Iraq could join in as other suppliers besides Azerbaijan. . . .� [9]
The following day, November 19, a conference on NATO�s New Strategic Concept: Contribution to the Debate from Partners was held in Baku, the capital of Azerbaijan. The host country�s deputy foreign minister, Araz Azimov, stated at the meeting:
�I offer the signing of bilateral agreements between NATO and partner countries to cover security guarantees for partner countries along with the responsibility and commitments of the parties.
�Yes, we (partner countries) are important for NATO in general for the security architecture of the Euro-Atlantic area. Today Azerbaijan�s borders are the borders of Europe.� [10]
On November Azerbaijan hosted an international conference titled Impediments to Security in the South Caucasus: Current Realities and Future Prospects for Regional Development, co-sponsored by Britain�s International Institute for Strategic Studies. Speakers included Ariel Cohen, Senior Research Fellow at the Heritage Foundation, and the Washington, D.C.-based Jamestown Foundation�s President Glenn Howard and Senior Fellow Vladimir Socor.
Socor, a Romanian emigre and former Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty employee, in addressing the Armenian-Azerbaijani conflict over Nagorno Karabakh, �stressed the necessity of an undertaking by NATO of analogous steps in this conflict taken for the settlement of the conflicts in the Balkans and former Yugoslavia.� [11]
Novruz Mammadov, head of the Foreign Relations Department of Azerbaijan�s presidential administration, said that �Azerbaijan is the only country in the post-Soviet space usefully and really cooperating with the West,� and Elnur Aslanov, head of the Political Analysis and Information Department for the President of Azerbaijan, said:
�The Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan, Baku-Tbilisi-Erzurum and Baku-Tbilisi-Kars projects . . . stimulate the development of regional cooperation, and also are important from the security standpoint. . . . Azerbaijan is a reliable partner of the European security architecture . . . the country plays an important role in ensuring European energy security.� [12]
Jamestown Foundation chief Glenn Howard added �that Azerbaijan is an important partner for NATO in terms of energy security,� and backed the nation�s deputy foreign minister�s demand the previous day that NATO must offer Yugoslav war-style support to its Caucasus partners �especially after the war in Georgia last year.�
Howard added:
�NATO can give security guarantees to a country in case of an attack, which is what happened in 1979 in the Persian Gulf -- after the fall of the Shah of Iran the US gave security guarantees to countries through bilateral agreements with those countries. . . . If Azerbaijani troops are going to help in one area, that will lessen the need for NATO troops in this particular area, so that they can be involved in some other area, for example, that helps put more troops in fighting the Taliban. . . .� [13]
Azerbaijan is not the only former Soviet republic the U.S. intends to use to penetrate the Caspian Sea Basin. After leaving Baku the State Department�s Daniel Stein arrived in Turkmenistan where he stated that �The United States offers its mediating mission in Turkmen-Azerbaijan disputes over the Caspian status,� in relation to a border demarcation conflict in a sea that the two nations share with Russia and Iran. He added, �The U.S. and EU member countries try to assure Azerbaijan and Turkmenistan that they should reach an agreement on the division of the Caspian to create real opportunities for Nabucco and other projects.� [14]
The same day U.S. Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for South and Central Asia George Krol was also in the Turkmen capital to deliver an address at the the annual Oil and Gas Conference there and said, �The U.S. considers energy security as a priority issue, and Central Asia is an important region in the global energy map.� [15]
In Azerbaijan�s fellow GUAM member state Moldova, the new government of acting president Mihai Ghimpu, which came to power after April�s so-called Twitter Revolution, announced that it was establishing a national committee to implement an Individual Partnership Action Plan for NATO membership. To indicate the importance the new administration attaches to integration with the bloc, �Minister of Foreign Affairs and European Integration Iurie Leanca has been appointed committee chairman.� [16]
Earlier this month it was reported that the government�s Prosecutor General�s Office had �dropped criminal proceedings against the people accused of masterminding riots in the republic�s capital in April, following the Opposition�s protest against the results of the parliamentary election. . . . After the early parliamentary election on July 29 when the Opposition came to power, most cases were closed� and instead �When the new prosecutor general was appointed, criminal cases were opened against police who took part in driving the protesters from the city center and their arrests.� [17]
On the same day that the Jamestown Foundation�s Glenn Howard and Vladimir Socor were in Azerbaijan advocating NATO intervention in the South Caucasus, U.S. Vice President Joseph Biden held a phone conversation with Georgian president and former U.S. resident Mikheil Saakashvili in which the first �reiterated the United States� �strong support� for Georgia�s sovereignty and territorial integrity� and �underscored the importance of sustaining the commitment to democratic reform to fulfill the promise of the Rose Revolution.� [18]
Also on November 20 a major Russian news source reported that Washington had shipped nearly $80 million in weapons to Georgia in 2008 and plans to supply more in the future.
�Despite the economic crisis, Georgia is increasing expenditure on arms purchases in the U.S.,� although �Independent sources say[ing] Georgia�s unemployment stands at about one-third of its able-bodied population.� [19]
On the same day a delegation from the Pentagon was in the Georgian capital to meet with Temur Iakobashvili, the nation�s State Reintegration Minister -- for �reintegration� read forcible incorporation of Abkhazia and South Ossetia -- and the Georgian official announced �We introduced to the guests our plan to ensure security in the occupied territories. We also talked about the role the U.S. will play in assisting the ensuring of regional security.� [20]
The U.S. Defense Department representatives, including Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Russia/Ukraine/Eurasia Celeste Wallander, met with Georgian Defense Minister Bacho Akhalaia �to hold consultations on defence cooperation issues concerning the two countries,� and �Wallander personally inspected ongoing military trainings aimed at the preparation of the 31st Battalion of the GAF [Georgian Armed Forces] for participation in the ISAF operation in Afghanistan. The sides evaluated the US assistance provided during 2009 and considered in detail future cooperation prospects for 2010/2011.
�Under the visit�s agenda the high-ranking US official met with the Security Council Secretary, Eka Tkeshelashvili, State Minister for Reintegration Temur Iakobashvili and Defence and Security Committee members of parliament.� [21] The inspection mentioned above was of training following that conducted by U.S. Marines. The first contingent of new Georgian troops thus prepared was sent to Afghanistan four days before.
Two days earlier NATO spokesman James Appathurai announced that the Alliance was forging ahead with plans for both Georgia�s and Ukraine�s full membership and that �assessments would be made at a meeting of the NATO-Ukraine and NATO-Georgia Commissions to be held in Brussels in early December at the level of NATO foreign ministers.� [22]
Also on November 18 Georgian Vice Premier and State Minister for Euro-Atlantic Integration Giorgi Baramidze met with NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen in Brussels. �The Georgian delegation also included Deputy Foreign Minister Giga Bokeria and Deputy Defense Minister Nikoloz Vashakidze. A meeting of the NATO-Georgia Commission at the ambassadorial level was also held in Brussels.� [23]
The day preceding the meeting, U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Michael Posner and Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs Tina Kaidanow were in Georgia to convene �working meetings with Georgian authorities within the Strategic Partnership Charter.
�The delegation will monitor the implementation of the U.S.-Georgia Strategic Partnership Plan� inaugurated in January of this year, less than four months after the war with Russia. [24]
The prior week Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov accused Western and allied nations of continuing to arm Georgia, stating �I hope many take lessons from last year�s August events. But I have to say that according to the reports of various sources, some countries are sending arms and ammunition demanded by the Georgian leadership via different complicated schemes.� [25]
Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Grigory Karasin warned on the same day that �[Georgian] military drones have started flying over South Ossetia and Abkhazia� [26} and the day before Nikolay Makarov, Chief of the General Staff, said �Georgia is getting large amounts of weapons supplied from abroad� and �Georgian military potential is currently higher than last August.� [27]
Makarov�s contention was confirmed by Georgian Defense Minister Bacho Akhalaia on November 14 when he said �the country�s defense capabilities are now better than they were a year ago and they are further improving.�
The defense chief added, �a strong army will be one of our key priorities until the last occupant leaves our territories.� [28] The �occupants� in question are Russian troops in Abkhazia and South Ossetia.
Azerbaijan is not the only South Caucasus NATO partner preparing for war.
Regarding the recently concluded two-week Immediate Response 2009 exercises run by the U.S. Marine Corps in Georgia, a leading Russian news site wrote �Perhaps, the exercises were aimed at issuing a warning to Russia.� [29]
On November 13 the Russian General Staff revealed that �Russian secret services have declassified information about Georgia�s plans to start forming its special forces in a move that will be implemented in close cooperation with Turkey,� and �voiced concern about Georgia�s ongoing push for muscle-flexing amid efforts by Israel, Ukraine and NATO countries to re-arm the Saakashvili regime.� [30]
In Ukraine, on November 19 Deputy Foreign Minister Kostiantyn Yeliseyev said of American ambassador to Georgia and ambassador designate to Ukraine John Tefft that �The U.S. Senate [Foreign Relations] Committee has approved his candidacy and we are expecting him to arrive soon.� [31] In time for January�s presidential election. Incumbent president and U.S. client Viktor Yushchenko is running dead last among serious candidates and his poll ratings are never higher than 3.5%. Tefft�s task is to engineer some variant of the 2004 �Orange Revolution.�
Yushchenko is a die-hard, intractable, unrelenting advocate of forcing his nation into NATO despite overwhelming popular opposition and for evicting the Russian Black Sea Fleet from the Crimea.
On November 16 NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen addressed High-Level NATO-Ukraine Consultations at the Alliance�s headquarters in Brussels and said:
�In 2008 at the Bucharest Summit NATO Heads of State and Government welcomed Ukraine�s aspirations for membership in NATO and agreed that Ukraine will become a member of the Alliance. To reflect this spirit of deepening cooperation, Ukraine has developed its first Annual National Programme which outlines the steps it intends to take to accelerate internal reform and alignment with Euro-Atlantic standards.� [32]
The same day Reuters revealed that �Poland and Lithuania want to forge military cooperation with Ukraine to try to bring the former Soviet republic closer to NATO.� Poland�s Deputy Defense Minister Stanislaw Komorowski was quoted as saying of the initiative, �This reflects our support for Ukraine. We want to tie Ukraine closer to Western structures, including military ones.� [33]
The agreement was reached at talks in Brussels attended by Ukraine�s acting Defense Minister Valery Ivashchenko, Lithuania�s Minister of National Defense Rasa Jukneviciene and Poland�s Komorowski.
The combined military unit will be stationed in Poland and include as many as 5,000 troops. The joint buildup on Russia�s western and northwestern borders �may have a political objective. It is meant to set up an alternative center of military consolidation for West European projects, a center which could embrace former Soviet republics (above all Ukraine), now outside NATO. There is no doubt who will control this process, considering U.S. influence in Poland and the Baltics.� [34]
On the same day that the Polish, Lithuanian and Ukrainian defense chiefs reached the agreement, Poland hosted multinational military exercises codenamed Common Challenge 09 with �2,500 troops from Germany, Slovakia, Lithuania, Latvia and Poland -- forming the so-called EU Combat Group. . . . Common Challenge is being held for the first time in Poland. Exercises are conducted simultaneously in Poznan, western Poland, and the nearby military range in Wedrzyn.� [35]
In a complementary development, The Times of London published an interview with Italian Foreign Minister Franco Frattini on November 15 in which he �said Italy would push for the creation of a European Army after the �new Europe� takes shape at this week�s crucial November 19 EU summit following the adoption of the Lisbon Treaty.� [36] A commentary from Russia, which of course will not be included in the plans, mentioned that �NATO has been actively discussing the possibility of establishing a joint European army for a long time� and that Frattini had �reiterated the need for deploying a joint naval fleet or air force in the Mediterranean or other areas crucial to European security.� [37]
In a Wall Street Journal report titled �Central Europe Ready To Send More Soldiers To Afghanistan,� Polish Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski, again emphasizing the connection between war zone training in Afghanistan and preparation for action much closer to home, was quoted as saying �The credibility of NATO will be decided in Afghanistan. If NATO can be successful with what was a success in the Balkans and Iraq, its deterrent potential will rise, and it is in Poland�s national interest.� [38]
On November 18 the ambassadors from all 28 NATO member states gathered in Brussels commented on Belarusian-Russian military exercises conducted months earlier, Operation West, and �expressed concerns about the large scale of the exercises and a scenario that envisioned an attack from the West. . . .� [39]
Sikorski�s allusion to so-called NATO deterrent potential is, then, clearly in reference to Russia.
On November 17 the European Union�s Special Representative for the South Caucasus Peter Semneby announced that the first foreign ministers meeting of the Eastern Partnership program will be held next month. He said that �The Eastern Partnership will be under the jurisdiction of a new representative for foreign affairs and security. The appointment will come after the Lisbon summit,� [40] as will the creation of the new European Army Italian Foreign Minister Frattini spoke of earlier.
Participants will include the foreign ministers of Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Georgia, Moldova and Ukraine, half -- six of twelve -- of the members or former members of the Commonwealth of Independent States and all those in Europe and the Caucasus except for Russia, which is not invited.
Comparable efforts to pull the five Central Asian CIS members -- Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan -- away from cooperation with Russia through a combination of an analogous EU partnership, energy project agreements and involvement in the Afghan war are also proceeding apace.
The eighteen-year-old project of Paul Wolfowitz, Zbigniew Brzezinski et al. to destroy the post-Soviet Commonwealth of Independent States and effect a cordon sanitaire around Russia, enclosing it with NATO member states and partners, has continued uninterruptedly since 1991.
Washington will not tolerate rivals and will ruthlessly attempt to eliminate even the potential of any nation to challenge it globally or regionally. In any region of the world. Russia, because of what it was, what it is, where it is and what it has -- massive reserves of oil and natural gas, a developed nuclear industry and the world�s only effective strategic triad outside the U.S. -- is and will remain the main focus of efforts by the United States and NATO to rid themselves of impediments to achieving uncontested global domination.
Carthage must be destroyed is the West�s policy toward the former Soviet Union. NOTES
1) Eastern Partnership: The West�s Final Assault On the Former Soviet Union, Stop NATO, February 13, 2009 2) Georgia Online, November 9, 2009 3) Azeri Press Agency, November 10, 2009 4) Azeri Press Agency, November 12, 2009 5) Azeri Press Agency, November 17, 2009 6) Azeri Press Agency, November 16, 2009 7) Azertag, November 18, 2009 8) Azeri Press Agency, November 18, 2009 9) Azeri Press Agency, November 18, 2009 10) Azerbaijan Business Center, November 19, 2009 11) Azertag, November 20, 2009 12) Ibid 13) Ibid 14) Azeri Press Agency, November 18, 2009 15) Trend News Agency, November 18, 2009 16) Focus News Agency, November 11, 2009 17) Itar-Tass, November 12, 2009 18) Civil Georgia, November 20, 2009 19) Voice of Russia, November 20, 2009 20) Trend News Agency, November 20, 2009 21) Georgia Ministry of Defence, November 20, 2009 22) Rustavi2, November 19, 2009 23) Civil Georgia, November 18, 2009 24) Rustavi2, November 17, 2009 25) Azeri Press Agency, November 11, 2009 26) Russian Information Agency Novosti, November 11, 2009 27) Voice of Russia, November 10, 2009 28) Civil Georgia, November 14, 2009 29) Voice of Russia, November 9, 2009 30) Voice of Russia, November 13, 2009 31) Interfax-Ukraine, November 19, 2009 32) NATO, November 16, 2009 33) Reuters, November 16, 2009 34) Russian Information Agency Novosti, November 18, 2009 35) Polish Radio, November 16, 2009 36) Russian Information Agency Novosti, November 17, 2009 37) Ibid 38) Wall Street Journal, November 12, 2009 39) Reuters, November 18, 2009 40) Azertag, November 17, 2009
� Copyright Rick Rozoff, Stop NATO, 2009
The url address of this article is: www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=viewArticle&code=ROZ20091123&articleId=16243


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A cocktail olive repeatedly vanishes and appears under a bartender's jigger. The killer conclusion is the surprise production of two - count 'em folks - two wine corks! Your audiences will blow their cork when they see it!
Jiggernaut comes complete with a real bar jigger, artificial olives, corks, fully illustrated instructions with Mark's terrific comedy patter, AND an online video that teaches the whole routine. It resets immediately and fits handily in one pocket - without that unsightly lemon-lime bulge!


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Inno Sense Swivel Mullen - Soft
Regular price $181.24/
Shipping calculated at checkout.
Mouthpiece Thickness: 1.8 cm
The Inno Sense bits come in three different models: soft, medium & hard. The mouthpieces are available in the versions; flexi, mullen and port. Bits from the Inno Sense line can be used for every horse and particularly suitable for young horses and/or horses with a sensitive mouth. The synthetic material is FDA approved, which means the material does not contain plasticizers and is non-toxic to people and animals. In addition, the flexi- and mullen model of the Inno Sense Bits line are solid because of the application of a core of stainless steel. Horses that are ridden with an Inno Sense Bit follow the hand easily and accept the bit smoothly.


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Twenty reasons why it's kicking off in cyberspace
In a cross-post from Deterritorial Support Group, its Ebaumsworld Division discuss 'political hacktivism' and why it's all kicking off in cyberspace.
In February the Newsnight economics editor Paul Mason very succinctly laid out the radically different nature of recent popular uprisings across North Africa, the Middle East and Europe compared to earlier political movements, and the economic and sociological reasons behind it. This incisive blogpost rang true for many of those involved in those social movements, articulating, as it did, a new sentiment and new political priorities amongst those populations. The short article sketched out a more cohesive image which the media in general was missing, partly through structural failings, but largely because events were unfolding at speed and trying to drag the chaotic events into an understandable analysis was difficult.
Running alongside the (still unfolding) Arab Spring, informing and shaping and being shaped in turn by those events, was a developing online conflict with major similarities; young, optimistic graduates who saw societies in more generalised terms of 'power', highly networked, informal and decentralised decision making processes and a deep cynicism and mistrust of traditional power elites and political ideologies. In the last month especially we've seen a series of events and developments that are changing the game of cyber-war (and cyber-class-war).
So what's going on in cyberspace? What we're seeing is a significant escalation in serious geo-political combat, and the mainstream press has failed in its coverage so far. Perhaps years of rehashing press releases have left many hacks without the critical journalistic capabilities to monitor, study, explain and contextualise the recent events of the cyber-war, leaving the majority of the populace completely in the dark as to what's happening, and how governments and (unelected) transnational organisations are investing significant resources in an attempt to limit online freedoms.
Make no mistake - this is not a minor struggle between state nerds and rogue geeks - this is the battlefield of the 21st Century, with the terms and conditions of war being configured before our very eyes. Given the significant economic disruption online activism and hacking can cause, and the power online tools have to agitate, plan and execute IRL activism, the current increase in tensions between hackers and the capital/state partnership is every bit as significant as the continuing developments of the Arab Spring, with which the online activist movements are inextricably linked. Below we have laid out a brief overview of recent events. This list is necessarily partial, given the complexity, history and depth of the situation, and we are by no means experts in the field; we would recommend people use it as a jumping off point to help get more educated (we have heavily hyperlinked the text FYI). Get googling.
1. At the heart of it is a newly politicised generation of hackers who have moved from a lulz-based psychic-economy to an engaged, socially-aware and politically active attitude towards world events, primarily as a reaction to the way governments and multinationals dealt with the fallout of Wikileaks. The 'politicisation of 4chan' and the birth of Anonymous have set the stage for a practice of socially-engaged hacktivism of a form and scale we've not seen before.
2. This new 'political hacktivist' class are digital natives and have become evangelised by passing through the immoral free-for-all of 4chan, to the development of a political critique and political programme through Anonymous.
"this is the digital natives striking back here
people that live, eat, breathe and sleep on the internet"
(quoting from the lulzsec irc channel 6 June)
Digital natives are radicalised primarily by the threat to their internet freedom, with the continued shift in policy by global governments against the assumed freedoms of the net (laid out in the past). A natural by-product will be the continued radicalism of youth online.
3. Much like the IRL uprisings in Africa, Middle East and Europe, there's a generational aspect to the way this conflict is playing out– although, like those uprisings, this is as much a symptom as a cause. A generation bought up on MTV, fed an endless stream of sophisticated advertising, naturally trained in memetic exchange, are going to know how to fight an infowar much more instinctively, and hence at greater speed and adaptability. An IRL manifestation being the role of the "citizen journalist" in the age of old media's death rattle.
4. For net natives, there's a definite sense of an international, borderless identity, whereby on a day-to-day level national borders hold less and less meaning. If your interactions with a fellow computer users are the same whether they live in London, Texas or Cairo, the narratives of national difference start to break down. Instead, they define according to their roles and activities online, and their values and political beliefs: a new, international class of immateriality, with all the repercussions of online solidarity that holds.
5. This erosion of borders has manifested itself strongly in the way newly radicalised hacktivists related to the unfolding events of the Arab Spring. As Paul Mason points out in his blogpost 'People have a better understanding of power. The activists have read their Chomsky and their Hardt-Negri, but the ideas therein have become mimetic: young people believe the issues are no longer class and economics but simply power.' This highly problematic retreat from a fundamentally economic analysis has, despite its problems, enabled a casual ease with which the issue of international solidarity is approached.
6. There is a growing understanding of the infrastructure and fabric of the internet as a whole by a younger generation that grew up believing that decentralised infrastructure / free speech and the free sovereignity of the net was a given. That pioneer generation is now finding out that those ideals were only utopian notions afforded to them as result of governments' slow ability to act and control the flow of data. As an (admittedly simplistic) example, whole organising infrastructures of UK activist and student groups were shut down wholesale during the recent purge of facebook groups.
7. There is an intensity of feedback that fuels the fire. Realtime results can be measured by everyone on the global stage, leading to a fueling of the ego of a close-knit group of hackers who are dropping the share price of a multi-billion pound corporation like Sony because it dared to assault the hacker ethic, one hack at a time.
This is sometimes matched by morale-boosting donations, such as with LulzSec, who after their Sony hack on 6 June received upwards of $7000 in bitcoins.
Not since the etoy.com saga of 1990s has the ability existed for real time participation in the dropping of a corporations share price been so readily available.
8. We are seeing the splintering of "hackers group" Anonymous into multiple manifestations that display a more comprehensive understanding of hacking techniques (although in many cases exploiting relatively low level techniques such as SQL injections; we're certainly yet to see the use of computer science III).
These emergent groups are able to carry out sustained and targeted attacks under a rebrand of sorts, a multiplicity of approach that cannot be assigned entirely to the collective identity of Anonymous. This often allows group to act without the need to deal with moralfaggotry.
9. Anonymous is breaking apart but only in the sense that the media's depiction of a grand narrative for the "hacking movement" ever held any truth. Anonymous as a group has always been inherently pluralistic with a healthy but constant wave of fail raids.
What creates this logical divergence from a single hive mind is the shift from a necessity for op in botnet assemblies, facilitated through the use of LOIC (Low Orbit Ion Cannon), with the DDoS now relegated to just another tool in a growing arsenal of a disparate emergent hackers movement.
10. The continued evolution of Operation Payback demonstrates both the power of this hacktivism, and how underdeveloped defence systems are. Op Payback was launched back in September 2010 as a reaction to the hiring of Aiplex Software by Bollywood movie rights holders, for the purpose of DDoSin' The Pirate Bay for copyright infringment. During the first wave of attacks a large number of anons originating from 4chan targeted RIAA, MPAA and ACS:LAW in a revenge attack in defence of internet sovereignty.
The operation evolved into a targeted attack on a series of laws firms who had targeted file sharers with legal threats. ACS:LAW was the worst hit when their database was leaked online leading to the demise of the company.
These attacks continued, targeting, amongst others, Sarah Palin and Gene Simmons.
With the advent of the Wikileaks Cablegate saga we saw an escalation of Op Payback, in defence of the organisation with the creation of hundreds of mirrors for the site, the alternative dissemination of leaks and the attack on those that had withdrawn services to the organisation as a result of state pressure.
The operation has again shifted gears with it now focusing on the PROTECT IP Bill.
11. Beyond Anonymous and hacktivism there exists a greater threat, and despite the reaction of Anonymous to the rhetoric of the Pentagon, much of the new mantra being espoused by governments globally relates to the first age of real cyber warfare. With entire parts of infrastructure now plugged into the network, there exists a real threat and possibility for hacker/cyberattack based offensives across borders. We saw this during the South Ossetia War in 2008, when Georgia suffered extensive damage from cyberattack, or in the ongoing standoff between Iran and the US/Israel, where the US/Israel succeeded in feeding Stuxnet, a worm, into the Iranian nuclear programme infrastructure.
12. Governments are responding with a conscious and concerted effort to reframe cyber activity and activism as criminality against state and capital, which, no doubt, will soon be upgraded to a form of terrorism. This bears analogies to similar reframing of narratives around workers' movements throughout the 19th and 20th Century, not least the 'strategy of tension' in Italy in the 1970s.
The eG8 summit, held at the end of May, was part of this restructuring of the official relationship between State and Net. Nicholas Sarkozy spoke to attendees (including Mark Zuckerberg) on the cultural repercussions of Facebook et al, but his speech betrayed a more pointed message for those who seek IRL change through virtual means, as reported on IPtegrity-
'The Internet is 'not a parallel universe stripped of morals and all of
the fundamental principles which govern society in democratic countries,' he said.
'Don't let the technology that you have forged…the revolution that have started [sic] … carry along the bad things without any brakes, don't let it become an instrument in the hands of thow [sic] who would attack our security and therefore our liberty and our integrity.'
13. The Pentagon have declared cyberterrorism and cyberattacks as a conventional attack of war, with the right for reprisals.
14. NATO have also begun to redefine the parameters of war in relation to cyber attacks and acts of 'cyberterrorism', declaring conventional retalliation to acts of 'cyberwarfare' to be legitimate. The Information and National Security subsection of the NATO Spring Report this year is focused very specifically on Cablegate and Anonymous as known identities. This is the first time a NATO report has cited the existence of Anonymous.
'Observers note that Anonymous is becoming more and more sophisticated and could potentially hack into sensitive government, military, and corporate files.'
In the same paragraph it is suggested that 'It remains to be seen how much time Anonymous has for pursuing such paths. The longer these attacks persist the more likely countermeasures will be developed, implemented, the groups will beinfiltrated and perpetrators persecuted.'
15. Anonymous reacted directly to the Spring Report and 'declared war on NATO'. Perhaps you may think this is the idle threat of basement dwellers, but NATO certainly don't. Things are changing at unprecedented speed in the infowar.
16. Anonymous have started to engage in more active outreach programmes, such as bootcamp training. This is of particular importance for the generation that grew up online or politicised through anonymous and 4chan, many who were drawn to the 'movement' with more radical inclinations and have had the time now to develop a deeper understanding of hacking tools etc… or at very least become adept skiddys.
Much of this is basic advice for how to look after yourself online, a form of practical mutual aid analogous to the protest handbooks distributed by Anonymous during the North African uprisings; rather than advice on how to build a shield to protect yourself against watercannon, these 'bootcamps' feature advice on how to use proxies and encrypt data, for example.
17. Governments worldwide are now entering a race to mass-recruit cyberwarriors in order to bolster cyberdefense, with UK security services launching the 'Cyber Security Challenge' as an attempt to create an army of white hats.
18. Lulzsec is the fastest growing and most prolific hacking group the internet has seen in recent years, having single-handedly declared war by attacking an FBI affiliated website Infragard.
Lulzsec's twitter account has jumped from hundreds to 75,000 followers. Lulzsec is fundamentally representative of the evolution loosely drawn out in previous points. They appear to descend if only in lulzy rhetoric from the likes of Goatse Security, the GNAA and Gnosis.
19. Despite the enormous presumed weighting in favour of the authorities, hackers still hold primacy, and that's what gives the situation such political potency. When the white hat security firm HBGary Federal attempted to create an expose of the true face of Anonymous they were swiftly shut down by a sustained assault by anonymous that clearly demonstrated their abilities, illustrating the inherent security flaws created by human complacency.
20.Hackers are upping their game to match the rhetoric used against them; indeed, in the past few years security breaches have shown the potential weaknesses in systems that could, in future, be exploited as part of war. Today, however, hackers are, essentially, exploiting those breaches. When a group makes a 'significant and tenacious' attack on a lynchpin of the military-industrial complex like Lockheed Martin, talks of 'potential' cyberwar become a thing of the past. We have arrived, we are deep within the first cyberwar.
As a hacker wrote in early June, 'We all know that cyberspace has come to an intense moment of confrontation; it will become more and more difficult to focus on the very reasons of the conflict opening, as the fog of war is rising.' We are no experts in the field, but given the increased tempo and ever thicker 'fog of war' we felt these events and organisations need wider discussion. Developing a general public understanding of these issues is vital if we are to prevent governments manipulating our understanding of events in order to suppress the sovereignty of the internet.The hacker cause, if such a thing can be pinned down, must surely be opening up the free flow of all information as widely as possible.
The mainstream media are proving incapable or unwilling to contextualise, to bring light to complicated, discreet and hidden worlds and languages; whilst they dither on the Assange personality cult, and whether it's possible to be both a liberal messiah and a rapist simultaneously, governments are writing the script for the next decade of online repression. Equally, those currently engaged in online skirmishes should at least heed examples from the past.
We must educate ourselves, but beyond this we must engage practically in the application of the tools we currently have. As the events unfolding begin to accelerate at a pace not unlike the Arab Spring, we should look to the technologies and networks that are being developed such as diaspora, a p2p DNS,flattr and bitcoin. There is a necessity now to understand the implication of such projects and the pursuit of their pragmatic ideals, so that we can begin to push the current trajectory of the net away from ever-increasing control and surveillance and towards a liberatory project of free information exchange.
Knowledge is free.
We are Legion. We do not forgive. We do not forget. Expect us.
DSG: Ebaumsworld Division


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Our Coats of Arms bottle stopper is a perfect addition to your dinner parties or as a thoughtful gift to showcase your heritage.
It boasts a full colour family crest that is inset into the top of the bottle stopper and is protected by a clear resin dome that's resistant to both water and scratches.
Crafted from durable stainless steel and complete with a rubber bung, it is suitable for most wine or spirit bottles and will keep the contents of your bottle fresh.
The overall measurements are 90 x 33 mm (3 ¾ x 1 ¼ inches).
Please note this item is not dishwasher-safe and is recommended for hand washing only.
Details Coming Soon
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This is the Office of the Secretary of Commerce.
mproves the health of American women by advancing a comprehensive women's health agenda throughout HHS.
The Official Congressional Directory (also known as Congressional Directory) is the official directory of the United States Congress, prepared by the Joint Committee on Printing (JCP) and published by the United States Government Publishing Office (GPO) since 1888.
It presents short biographies of each member of the Senate and House, listed by state or district, and additional data, such as committee memberships, terms of service, administrative assistants and/or secretaries, and room numbers. Also includes maps of Congressional districts, a directory of officials of executive agencies, addresses, telephone and fax numbers, website addresses, and other information. In addition, it lists officials of the Federal Judiciary, military establishments, and other Federal departments and agencies, including D.C. government officials, governors of states and territories, foreign diplomats, and members of the press, radio, and television galleries.
Per federal statute (44 USC 721) the Directory is published and distributed during the first session of each new Congress. It is a designated essential title distributed to Federal depository libraries and the current edition is available for purchase from GPO.


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Let the mural-making begin
After finally getting approval from the Board of Architectural Review, which rejected his first boldly-colored design, Ross McDermott, director of the Charlottesville Mural Project, starts painting on the side of One Meatball Place in the 500 block of West Main. The new mural splashes geometric shapes and animals, but leaves some of the '70s roses visible. Photographed October 11.
Post-publication clarification: While McDermott did the paint work, the designer of the mural is named Matt Pamer.


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(NIH) - 9/3/2012 - A protein known as galectin-3 can identify people at higher risk of heart failure, according to new research supported by the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (NHLBI), part of the National Institutes of Health. This research is based on work from the NHLBI's Framingham Heart Study, which began in 1948 and has been the leading source of research findings about heart disease risk factors.
"Galectin-3, a Marker of Cardiac Fibrosis, Predicts Incident Heart Failure in the Community," was published online on August 29 in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology and will be published in the October 2 print issue.
Heart failure occurs when the heart cannot fill with enough blood and/or pump enough blood to meet the body's needs. Galactin-3 has recently been associated with cardiac fibrosis, a condition in which scar tissue replaces heart muscle, and cardiac fibrosis plays an important role in the development of heart failure.
Heart failure carries enormous risk for death or a lifetime of disability and often there are few warning signs of impending heart failure. Measuring levels of galectin-3 in the blood may offer a way to identify high-risk individuals who could benefit from treatments to prevent debilitating heart failure and death. Early identification of predisposed individuals would allow treatment to begin long before heart failure develops and could help people at high risk for heart failure to live longer, more active lives.
Galectin-3 levels were measured in 1996-1998 as part of a routine examination of 3,353 participants enrolled in the Offspring Cohort of the Framingham Heart Study. At the time of measurement the average age of the participants was 59 years old. During an average follow-up of 11 years, 166 participants (5.1 percent) had a first heart failure event. Among the 25 percent of people with the highest galectin-3 levels (ranging from 15.4 to 52.1 nanograms per milliliter) the annual rate of heart failure was 12 per 1,000 people compared with 3 per 1,000 people for the 25 percent of participants with the lowest galectin-3 levels (ranging from 3.9 to 12 nanograms per milliliter). Fifty-three percent of participants were women.
Spironolactone and other related drugs believed to counteract cardiac fibrosis have been shown to improve outcomes in heart failure patients. Future research will be needed to determine whether treatment with these or other drugs can benefit healthy patients with elevated galectin-3 levels.
Source: National Institutes of Health


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Robert Pattinson Follows Kristen Stewart Breakup With 'The Daily Show' Appearance
Everyone loves the first major interview following a public and embarrassing celebrity moment. Some people can laugh at the humor of the situation, as Fred Willard did on David Letterman following his recent public masturbation arrest, but will Robert Pattinson let his icy vampire exterior warm during his first major public appearance following Kristen Stewart's embarrassing affair? Who will be th


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This time, I put together something a little less whimsical -- an old twisted oak tree for the wall. This is actually version number one (aka my trial version) as I intend to make another one about 3 feet tall. This one is only about 18", but the process will be basically the same.
Obviously, the paper rolls were used for the leaves, and I also used paper grocery bags for the trunk. Follow along and I'll show you how...
Begin by cutting a grocery bag into strips about 6" wide. Dip the strips in water and let them soak for a few minutes. Remove them from the water and let them drip. Then, starting from one corner, begin twisting the strips tightly.
Align the strips into a bundle, then begin arranging the roots and branches. I placed mine on an old bulletin board and pinned the branches and roots in place until they dried. Drying took a good 24 hours (which was tough for me because I'm just not a very patient person!)
Once dry, the branches and roots are very stiff. However, if you decide to make a particularly large version, you can incorporate some additional support by including a piece of wire while twisting the strips. After they dried, I just glued them together.
The branches and roots can still be shaped a bit. I have a few protruding from the front to create a 3-dimensional effect.
Since this was my trial version, I wasn't being particularly careful about the printing on the grocery bags, and I ended up with some of the print showing. I also discovered that different bags ended up having a different color when dry. So I decided to coat the trunk with a layer of stain to make it all blend better.
When the stain dried, it was time to start applying the leaves. I lightly flattened my paper rolls and cut them into 1/2" strips. I thought about painting the leaves green, or a mixed of fall colors, but decided to leave that for version two. I applied the leaves to the branches in a random pattern, making sure to continue the 3-dimensional design.
There you have it! Not bad for a trial, I think.
For my larger version, I think I'll proportion the branches a little bigger than the roots. Plus, it would probably be good to add the wire inserts, just in case the limbs start to droop after a little time. And I'd love to experiment with different leaf colors. I suspect coloring the roll before cutting them is the way to go for that.
This is really quite easy to do, and super inexpensive! The hardest part for me was waiting for the wet paper to dry.
What do you think? Let me know if you give this a try!
And be sure to check out the endless list of inspirational ideas at my home page childmade.com.
I'll be linking to some of the fabulous link parties listed on the right sidebar ... but really, that's a LOT of parties! I probably won't get to them all, but you should stop in and visit a few yourself. While you're at it, stop by my home page and add a few links there too!


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When you're staring down the barrel of a new diet, your portions are one of the most difficult things to measure and keep track of. Your kitchen scale may be great in the comfort of your home, but it's not practical to carry with you all day. Instead, just get to know the rough estimates with your hand.
If the idea looks familiar, that may be because earlier this month Melanie walked through the basics of this idea, highlighting its usefulness for cooks. This morning, while signing up for Weight Watchers (yeah, that's right, Weight Watchers—I've used it before, and it works really well if game mechanics work on you, and even if you're not looking to lose a lot of weight, it's good at keeping you healthier), I stumbled onto the handy cheatsheet in the image above.
1 cup = your fist
1 ounce = the meaty part of your thumb
1 tablespoon = your thumb, minus the meaty part
1 teaspoon = the tip of your index finger
1 inch = the middle section of your index finger
1-2 ounces of a food like nuts or pretzels = your cupped hand
3 ounces of meat, fish, or poultry = the palm of your hand
Obviously these are rough estimates, and their accuracy will vary based on the size of your hand, but it's not a bad starting point. If you happen to have a kitchen scale at home, you could use that and some measuring spoons to determine just how well these measurements work with your hand and set your own baselines if any of the measurements are considerably off. As I said, Mel covered these basics a couple weeks back, but I found the Weight Watchers diagram very helpful.