$24.5 Trillion In US National Debt, $144 Trillion In Unfunded Liabilities In... 2015

From ZeroHedge:



By now everyone has seen and played with the US debt clock via usdebtclock.org whereby anyone who so wishes, can find every little detail about America's current sad fiscal state. The fact that America currently has just under $14 trilllion in national debt should be no surprise to anyone who professes to having an even modest interest in the state of the US economy. Yet a new feature on the "debt clock", namely one which extrapolates future debt at current rates of advancement (instead of one based on the always completely inaccurate CBO estimates), and looks at US debt in the year 2015 will probably make many stop dead in the their tracks. If anyone thought that $14 trillion in 2010 debt is bad, just wait until we hit $24.5 trillion in total US national debt in 2015. And it gets even more surreal: total US Unfunded Liabilities are estimated at $144 trillion, roughly $1.2 million per taxpayer... Was that a pin dropping?


As Zero Hedge has long been predicting, we anticipate roughly $2 trillion in incremental debt per year. Surprisingly we are not far too off from where the "debt clock" sees US leverage in 5 years. At an estimated $24.5 trillion in federal debt, our $2 trillion per year run rate is spot on. Another thing that is spot on: our prediction that the US will need not one but two debt ceiling increases in 2011. And probably 6-8 over the next 5 years.
Some other observations for the US economy in 2015 simply assuming current conditions persist:

• Federal spending will be $3.3 trillion per year, and with federal revenue of $2.3 trillion (this number will be reduced as it also assumes $731 billion in payroll tax, a number which will likely be indefinitely reduced) the result is a budget deficit of $983.7 billion.
• Annual Medicare/Medicaid expenses will be just over $1 trillion
• US population: 326.8 million
• US workforce 131.3 million (and declining)
• Officially unemployed: 19.4 million
• Actual unemployed: 22.3 million
• State/Federal employees: 17.9 million
• People on SSN and other retirees: 72.6 million

And the most critical data:

• Food stamp recipients: 89.7 million
• Foreclosures: 2 million
• Social Security Liability: $19 trillion
• Medicare Liability: $99 trillion
• Total US Unfunded Liabilities: $144 trillion
• Gross Debt to GDP: 143%

Should one of the bolded predictions hit, the travails of Greek and Irish bondholders will be nothing compared to what those unlucky enough to be in possession of US debt in 2015 will have to go through.

h/t Justin
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Stakes Getting Higher in the Game Around Kosovo

From Strategic Culture Foundation, | 20.12.2010

By ISKENDEROV Pyotr 

The PACE plans to discuss the crimes committed by Kosovo separatists at the January session.Moreover, the PACE Legal Affairs Committee is calling “for a series of international and national investigations into evidence of disappearances, organ trafficking, corruption and collusion between organised criminal groups and political circles in Kosovo”. One might get an impression that - for the first time since the 1999 NATO aggression against Yugoslavia - Europe which used to brush off Russia's and Serbia's suggestions that the Hague Tribunal take a closer look at the leaders of the self-proclaimed Kosovo's Liberation Army somehow woke up to the Kosovo reality. So far, two episodes - the publication of former ICTY chief prosecutor Carla del Ponte's book containing revelations that human organ trafficking in Kosovo was sanctioned by Kosovo Liberation Army's top officers and the acquittal of one of those officers Ramush Haradinaj - epitomized the West's unsavory tolerance in the Kosovo case. In fact, even Swiss investigator Dick Marty's report that eventually drew the PACE attention to the rampant organized crime in Kosovo has been barely mentioned over the past several months in the Western media.

Oddly enough, the Kosovo problem is surfacing in the PACE, an organization which has never displayed much compassion for the Serbs. Marty's report about a criminal group from Drenica led by Hashim Thaci and the illicit organ trafficking in Kosovo portrays the picture with utmost clarity. Marty claims that the group continues to operate and even cites the Western democracies support for Thaci in the context.

The charges are not exactly new, and it may be more important at the moment to understand the motivation behind the investigation. Marty's report was voted in by the PACE Legal Affairs Committee unanimously, but the question persists: what explains the timing of the PACE interest in Thaci? The integrity of the Swiss investigator is beyond doubt, but we need to know whether his report will have far-reaching consequences and how far Europe is prepared to go in investigating the crimes as monstrous as the Nazi medical experiments.

PACE's unanticipated realism is likely linked to the collapse of the secret plan the US and the EU attempted to implement during the talks between Belgrade and Pristina last fall. The West hoped to exact at least a de facto recognition of the Kosovo independence from the Serbian president but – facing permanent pressure from the Serbian opposition – even the servile Tadic was unable to sign anyaccords with a figure as notorious as Thaci.Therefore, Pristina needed a facelift to look like a more acceptable partner. This was the purpose of the planned overhaul in the ranks of the Kosovo administration: Kosovo president Fatmir Sejdiu's resignation was supposed to be followed by that of the province's premier Hashim Thaci. Thaci, however, refused to leave, and a further entrenchment of radical Albanian groups in Pristina began to loom on the horizon. The West, preoccupied with convincing Belgrade to cooperate, launched a campaign targeting Thaci in response.

Washington's reaction to the recent elections in Kosovo may be another indication of the US readiness to sacrifice Thaci. Unprecedentedly, US Department of State spokesman M. Toner called the Kosovo electoral commission to probe into the serious abuses which took place during the elections. Washington's hint was that Kosovo would still be regarded as a democracy, but it would have to be a Kosovo without Thaci. The message was promptly picked up in the EU.

Obviously, believing that the international law is about to be re-established in dealing with the Kosovo problem would be overly optimistic. Even if Thaci and his henchmen face justice, the US will do its best to divert the investigation from the broader Kosovo project. Sacrificing Thaci simply means that the stakes in the game around Kosovo are getting higher.

Carbon tax outrage of the day

From EU Referendum: 


A grovelling apology for his crap performance over snow-bound Heathrow comes from Colin Matthews, CEO of BAA, delivered on BBC Radio 4's Today programme. "I'm really disappointed to have disrupted so many thousands of people's Christmas plans," he bleats, adding:

It's absolutely distressing and heart-breaking to have been in the terminals and confronted with individuals, each with their stories of really sad and disappointing outcomes. I couldn't be more sorry, that's the case.

Matthews then warbles, "We are going to have to crawl over the details of what's happened over the last few days as soon as we've got the time to do that." Hey ho! Another fatuous "lessons learned" in the making, a precursor to yet another mess. And will even deputy heads roll?


The point is, of course, that if the born-again climate sceptic Boris Johnson can leven his enthusiasm for warming with a bit of timely populism, then the CEO of the UK's largest airport should have seen it coming. Nor is this a matter of money. Readers will recall in February we reported that cash-strapped Gordon Brown was buying £60,000,000-worth of "carbon credits" for Whitehall and other government offices in the UK, as well as British Nato bases in Europe.


Then I wrote that, while the rest of the country shivers in the cold, with householders wondering whether they can afford their mounting heating bills – inflated by hidden "carbon taxes" to pay for the carbon emissions produced - bureaucrats in their centrally-heated government offices can keep producing "greenhouse gasses", their emissions paid-for by British taxpayers.


This is the sort thing that should have us marching on Whitehall, stringing up these morons from the nearest lamp posts. £60 million would buy about 400,000 tons of rock salt. As a sum of money, it is more than any one of us will earn in a lifetime, extorted from taxpayers and frittered away.


Yet, no one is responsible. No one is sacked. No one loses their pension. The plebs have a hard time of it, but then they are only plebs - when they've finished suffering, they can pay the bills. Boris the mouth gets a few quid on top of his bunce as Mayor for writing a ball-aching piece in the Daily Failygraph, just to give Louise Gray a break, and the paper writes a soft little whinge. Then everything in the garden is rosy for the slime.


Until the mob kills them.


COMMENT THREAD

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Who’s Who at Weaky-leaks?

By Julie Lévesque | Global Research | December 20, 2010

“In politics, nothing happens by accident. If it happens, you can bet it was planned that way.” –Franklin D. Roosevelt

After the publication of a series of confirmations rather than revelations, there are some crucial unanswered questions regarding the nature and organizational structure of Wikileaks.
Shrouded in secrecy, the now famous whistleblowing site and its director Julian Assange are demanding “transparency” from governments and corporations around the world while failing to provide some basic information pertaining to Wikileaks as an organization.


Who is Julian Assange?
In the introduction to the book Underground: Hacking, Madness and Obsession on the Electronic Frontier (1997), by Julian Assange and Suelette Dreyfus, Assange begins with the following quotes:

“Man is least himself when he talks in his own person. Give him a mask, and he will tell you the truth.” — Oscar Wilde
“What is essential is invisible to the eye.” — Antoine De Saint-Exupery

From the start, Assange states that he undertook the research for the book; however, he fails to mention that he was actually one of the hackers analyzed in the book, going by the name of Mendax, a Latin word for “lying, false…”.
Although we cannot confirm that the above quotes referred to him, they nonetheless suggest that Assange, at the time, was hiding his true identity.
We know very little about the cryptographer Julian Assange. He is indeed very cryptic when it comes to revealing who he is and where he worked prior to the Wikileaks project. On the list of board members published previously by Wikileaks, we can read that Julian Assange:

has “attended 37 schools and 6 universities”, none of which are mentioned by name;
“Australia’s most famous ethical computer hacker”. A court case from 1996 cited abundantly in the mainstream press is available on the Australasian Legal Information Institute. Contrary to all the other cases listed on the afore mentioned link, the full text of Assange’s case is not available;
“in the first prosecution of its type… [he] defended a case in the supreme court for his role as the editor of an activist electronic magazine”. The name of the magazine, the year of the prosecution, the country where it took place are not mentioned;
allegedly founded “’Pickup’ civil rights group for children”. No information about this group seems to be available, other than in reports related to Wikileaks. We don’t know if it still exists, where it is located and what are its activities.
“studied mathematics, philosophy and neuroscience”. We don’t know where he studied or what his credentials are;
“has been a subject of several books and documentaries”. If so, why not mention at least one of them?

One could indeed argue that Assange wishes to remain anonymous in order to protect himself, the whistleblowers and/or the members of his organization. On the other hand, he cannot realistically expect people to trust him blindly if they do not know who he really is. [...]
Who’s Who at Wikileaks? The Members of the Advisory Board
Here are some interesting facts about several members listed in 2008 on the Wikileaks advisory board, including  organizations to which they belong or have links to.
Philip Adams:
Philip Adams, among other things, “held key posts in Australian governmental media administration” (Wikileaks’ Advisory Board, Wikileaks.org, 27 March 2008), chaired the Australia Council and contributed to The Times, The Financial Times in London and The New York Times. Confirmed by several reports,  he is the representative of the International Committee of Index on Censorship. It is worth mentioning that Wikileaks was awarded the 2008 Economist Index on Censorship Freedom of Expression award. (Philip Adams, Milesago.com)
Adams worked as a presenter for ABC (Australia) Radio’s Late Night Live and as columnist for The Australian since the 1960s. The Australian is owned by News Corporation, a property of Rupert Murdoch, member of the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR).
Adams also “chairs the Advisory Board of the Centre for the Mind at Sydney University and the Australian National University”. CFR member Michael Spence also serves on this board and Rupert Murdoch’s son, Lachlan Murdoch, has served as well until 2001. The 2008 Distinguished Fellow of the Center for the Mind was former British Prime Minister Tony Blair, who has faced a slew of accusations for war crimes. Does Adams have conflicting allegiances: serving on the advisory board of the Wikileaks organization whose mandate is to expose war crimes, yet at the same time sitting on another board which honors an accused war criminal.
According to an article in The Australian:

Adams, who has never met Assange, says he quit the board due to ill-health shortly after WikiLeaks was launched and never attended a meeting. “I don’t think the advisory board has done any advisoring,” he quips.

CJ Hinke:
CJ Hinke, “writer, academic, activist, has lived in Thailand since 1989 where he founded Freedom Against Censorship Thailand (FACT) in 2006 to campaign against pervasive censorship in Thai society.” (Wikileaks’ Advisory Board, Wikileaks.org, 27 March 2008) FACT is part of Privacy International, which includes among others on its Steering Committee or advisory board, the American Civil Liberties Union and the Index on Censorship.
In 2009, FACT received funding from the following organizations: the European Parliament, the European Commission framework funding programmes, the Joseph Rowntree Reform Trust, the Open Society Institute, the Open Society Justice Initiative, the American Civil Liberties Union, the Electronic Privacy Information Center, The Fund for Constitutional Government, the Stern Foundation, the Privacy Foundation, the German Marshall Fund, and the University of New South Wales (Sydney).
In the US, Privacy International is “administered through the Fund for Constitutional Government in Washington DC.”(About Privacy International, 16 December 2009).
One of the board members of this fund is Steven Aftergood, who wrote one of the first articles on Wikileaks before the website was even functional. In a report from Technology Daily dated January 4, 2007, it is stated that “Wikileaks recently invited Steven Aftergood, a government secrecy researcher at the Federation of American Scientists [FAS], to serve on its advisory board.”


Ben Laurie:

“’WikiLeaks allegedly has an advisory board, and allegedly I’m a member of it… I don’t know who runs it…’ Laurie says his only substantive interaction with the group was when Assange approached him to help design a system that would protect leakers’ anonymity.” (David Kushner, Inside Wikileaks’ Leak Factory, Mother Jones, 6 April, 2010)

This article appeared in Mother Jones in April 2010. An article of the New York Daily News dated December 2010  quotes Ben Laurie as follows: “‘Julian’s a smart guy and this is an interesting tactic,’ said Ben Laurie, a London-based computer security expert who has advised WikiLeaks.”
Despite his denial of being an advisor to Wikileaks, his name still appears on the list of advisory board members, according to reports. It is also worth noting that Ben Laurie is a “Director of Security for The Bunker Secure Hosting, where he has worked since 1984 and is responsible for security, cryptography and network design.”He is also a Director of Open Rights Group, funded by the Joseph Rowntree Reform Trust Ltd and the Open Society Foundation.


Chinese and Tibetan Dissidents on the Advisory Board
Tashi Namgyal Khamsitsang:
Tashi Namgyal Khamsitsang, a “Tibetan exile & activist” is a former President of the Washington Tibet Association, and was a member of the Tibetan Government-in-Exile. In July of this year he was appointed by the Governor of Washington State to the State Commission on Asian Pacific American Affairs. (A Tibetan Appointed to the Washington State Commission on Asian Pacific American Affairs, Tibetan Association of Washington, 17 July 2010)


Wang Youcai:
Wang Youcai co-founded the Chinese Democracy Party and is another leader of the Tienanmen Square protests. Imprisoned for “conspiring to overthrow the Government of China… he was exiled in 2004 under international political pressure, especially from the United States. He is also a “member of Chinese Constitutional Democratic Transition Research and a member of the Coordinative Service Platform of the China Democracy Party” (Wikileaks’ Advisory Board, Wikileaks.org, 27 March 2008)


Xiao Qiang:
Xiao Qiang, is one of the Chinese dissidents listed on the Wikileaks board. He “ is the Director of the Berkeley China Internet Project…[He] became a full time human rights activist after the Tienanmen Massacre in 1989… and is currently vice-chair of the Steering Committee of the World Movement for Democracy”, according to Wikileaks’ description. He received the MacArthur Fellowship from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation in 2001 and is a commentator for Radio Free Asia. (Wikilieaks’ Avisory Board, Wikileaks.org, 27 March 2008)
Xiao Qiang is also the “founder and publisher of China Digital Times” (Biographies, National Endowment for Democracy), which is a grantee of the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) (Directives from China’s Ministry of Truth on Liu Xiaobo winning Nobel, Democracy Digest, October 8, 2010).
The Steering Committee of the World Movement for Democracy is an initiative of the Washington, DC-based NED. (World Movement for Democracy). In 2008, Xiao Qiang was part of a discussion panel titled “Law Rights and Democracy in China: Perspectives and Leading Advocates”, held by NED before the Democracy Award Ceremony. (2008 NED Democracy Award Honors Heroes of Human Rights and Democracy in China, National Endowment for Democracy, June 17, 2008).
Radio Free Asia is funded by the Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG) which describes itself as a body that “encompasses all U.S. civilian international broadcasting, including the Voice of America (VOA), Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL), Radio Free Asia (RFA), Radio and TV Martí, and the Middle East Broadcasting Networks (MBN)—Radio Sawa and Alhurra Television.” Eight of its nine members are appointed by the President and confirmed by the U.S. Senate; the ninth is the Secretary of State, who serves ex officio”. (Broadcasting Board of Governors)
RFE/RL no longer hides its covert origins: “Initially, both RFE and RL were funded principally by the U.S. Congress through the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA)… In 1971, all CIA involvement ended and thereafter RFE and RL were funded by Congressional appropriation through the Board for International Broadcasting (BIB) and after 1995 the Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG). (A Brief History of RFE/RL)
Interestingly, in a report from 2002, the CFR suggested “creating a Public Diplomacy Coordinating Structure (PDCS) to help define communications strategies and streamline public diplomacy structures. ‘In many ways, the PDCS would be similar to the National Security Council’… PDCS members would include the secretaries of State, Defense, Treasury and Commerce, as well as the director of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and BBG chairman”, a suggestion officially objected by the BBG “to preserve the journalistic integrity.” (BBG Expresses Concern With Report Recommendations on U.S. International Braodcasting, 31 July 2002)


Wang Dan:
Among the Chinese dissidents once listed on the board is Wang Dan. He was a leader of the Tienanmen Square democracy movement, which “earned him the top spot on China’s list of ‘21 Most Wanted Beijing Student Leaders’.” He was imprisoned for his subversive activities and “exiled in 1998 under international political pressure to the United States.” (Wikilieaks’ Avisory Board, Wikileaks.org, 27 March 2008)
He is chairman of the Chinese Constitutional Reform Association, and sits on the editorial board of Beijing Spring, a magazine funded by NED, the “chief democracy-promoting foundation” according to an article by Judith Miller in The New York Times. One of the founders of NED was quoted as saying “A lot of what we [NED] do today was done covertly 25 years ago by the CIA.” (quoted in William Blum, Rogue State: A Guide to the World’s Only Superpower, 2000, p. 180).
In 1998, Wang Dan was granted the NED’s Democracy Award “for representing a peaceful alternative to achieve democracy and for [his] courage and steadfastness in the cause of democracy”. (1998 Democracy Award honors Heroes of Human Rights and Democracy in China, National Endowment for Democracy)


The Battle for “Transparency”
In 2007, Wikileaks described itself as an “uncensorable Wikipedia for untraceable mass document leaking and analysis.” Its priority? “[E]xposing oppressive regimes in Asia, the former Soviet bloc, Sub-Saharan Africa and the Middle East.” Like the advisory board member list, this description no longer appears on Wikileaks’ website. The organization also claimed to be “founded by Chinese dissidents, journalists, mathematicians and startup company technologists, from the US, Taiwan, Europe, Australia and South Africa.” (Wikileaks.org, 17 December 2007)
In the currently available description, the reference to the Chinese dissidents and the origins of the other members has been removed. Wikileaks rather puts the emphasis on not being a covert operation.
Assange encourages blind faith in Wikileaks as he puts a lot of emphasis on the trustworthiness of his opaque organization. In the words of Assange:

“Once something starts going around and being considered trustworthy in a particular arena, and you meet someone and they say ‘I heard this is trustworthy,’ then all of a sudden it reconfirms your suspicion that the thing is trustworthy. So that’s why brand is so important, just as it is with anything you have to trust.”(Andy Greenberg, An Interview with Wikileaks’ Julian Assange, Forbes, 29 October, 2010, emphasis added)

“People should understand that WikiLeaks has proven to be arguably the most trustworthy new source that exists, because we publish primary source material and analysis based on that primary source material,” Assange told CNN. “Other organizations, with some exceptions, simply are not trustworthy.”(The secret life of Julian Assange, CNN, 2 December 2010, emphasis added)
While Wikileaks no longer discloses the names of the members of its advisory board, nor does it reveal its sources of funding, we have to trust it because according to its founder Julian Assange, it “has proven to be the most trustworthy news source that exists”.
Moreover, if we follow Assange’s assertion that there are only a few media organizations which can be considered trustworthy, we must assume that those are the ones which were selected by Wikileaks to act as “partners” in the release and editing of the leaks, including The New York Times, Der Spiegel, The Guardian, El Paìs, Le Monde.
Yet The New York Times, which employs members of the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) including Wikileaks’ collaborator David E. Sanger, has proven more than once to be a propaganda tool for the US government, the most infamous example being the Iraqi WMD narrative promoted by Pulitzer Prize winner Judith Miller.
In an interview, Assange indicates that Wikileaks chose a variety of media to avoid the use of leaks for propaganda purposes.  It is important to note that although these media might be owned by different groups and have different editorial policies, they are without exception news entities controlled by major Western media corporations.
A much better way to avoid the use of leaks for disinformation purposes would have been to work with media from different regions of the world (e.g. Asia, Latin America, Middle East) as well as establish partnership agreements with the alternative media. By working primarily with media organizations from NATO countries, Wikileaks has chosen to submit its leaks to one single “worldview”, that of the West.
As a few critics of Wikileaks have noted, the Wikileaks project brings to mind the “recommendations” of Cass Sunstein, heads the Obama White House’s Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs. Sunstein is the author of an authoritative Harvard Law School essay entitled “Conspiracy Theories: Causes and Cures”. As outlined by Daniel Tencer in Obama Staffer Calls for “Cognitive Infiltration” of ” 9/11 Conspiracy Groups”:

Sunstein “argued that the government should stealthily infiltrate groups that pose alternative theories on historical events via ‘chat rooms, online social networks, or even real-space groups and attempt to undermine’ those groups”.
Sunstein means that people who believe in conspiracy theories have a limited number of sources of information that they trust. Therefore, Sunstein argued in the article, it would not work to simply refute the conspiracy theories in public — the very sources that conspiracy theorists believe would have to be infiltrated.
Sunstein, whose article focuses largely on the 9/11 conspiracy theories, suggests that the government “enlist nongovernmental officials in the effort to rebut the theories. It mightensure that credible independent experts offer the rebuttal, rather than government officials themselves. There is a tradeoff between credibility and control, however. The price of credibility is that government cannot be seen to control the independent experts.” (emphasis added)

Links to The Intelligence Community
Wikleaks feels the need to reassure public opinion that it has no contacts with the intelligence community. Ironically, it also sees the need to define the activities of the intelligence agencies and compare them to those of Wikileaks:

“1.5 The people behind WikiLeaks
WikiLeaks is a project of the Sunshine Press. It’s probably pretty clear by now that WikiLeaks is not a front for any intelligence agency or government despite a rumour to that effect. This rumour was started early in WikiLeaks’ existence, possibly by the intelligence agencies themselves. WikiLeaks is an independent global group of people with a long standing dedication to the idea of a free press and the improved transparency in society that comes from this. The group includes accredited journalists, software programmers, network engineers, mathematicians and others.
To determine the truth of our statements on this, simply look at the evidence. By definition, intelligence agencies want to hoard information. By contrast, WikiLeaks has shown that it wants to do just the opposite. Our track record shows we go to great lengths to bring the truth to the world without fear or favour.” (Wikileaks.org, emphasis added)
“Is Wikileaks a CIA front?
Wikileaks is not a front for the CIA, MI6, FSB or any other agency. Quite the opposite actually. […] By definition spy agencies want to hide information. We want to get it out to the public.” (Wikileaks.org, 17, December 2007, emphasis added)

Quite true. But by definition, a covert operation always pretends to be something it is not, and never claims to be what it is.


Wikileaks’ Entourage. Who Supports Wikileaks?
The people gravitating around Wikileaks have connections and/or are affiliated to a number of establishment organizations, major corporate foundations and charities. In the Wikileaks’ leak published by John Young, a correspondence dated January 4, 2007, points to Wikileaks’ exchange with Freedom House:

“We are looking for one or two initial advisory board member from FH who may advise on the following:
1. the needs of FH as consumer of leaks exposing business andpolitical corruption
2. the needs for sources of leaks as experienced by FH
3. FH recommendations for other advisory board members
4. general advice on funding, coallition building and decentralised operations and political framing
These positions will initially be unpaid, but we feel the role may be of significant interest to FH.”

The request for funding from various organizations triggered some doubt among Wikileaks collaborators.
John Young became  very sceptical concerning the Wikileaks project specifically with regard to the initial fund-raising goal of 5 million dollars, the contacts with elite organizations including Freedom House and the National Endowment for Democracy and the alleged millions of documents:

“Announcing a $5 million fund-raising goal by July will kill this effort. It makes WL appear to be a Wall Street scam.
This amount could not be needed so soon except for suspect purposes.
I’d say the same about the alleged 1.1 million documents ready for leaking. Way too many to be believable without evidence. I don’t believe the number. So far, one document, of highly suspect provenance.”

Young finally quit the organization on January 7, 2007. His final words: “Wikileaks is a fraud… working for the enemy”.
Four years after its creation, we still don’t know who funds the whistleblower site.


Wikileaks, Hackers, and “The First Cyberwar”
The shady circumstances around Julian Assange’s arrest for “sex crimes” have triggered what some mainstream media have called the “first cyberwar”. The Guardian for instance, another Wikileaks partner, warns us with this shocking title: “WikiLeaks backlash: The first global cyber war has begun, claim hackers”.
Some people suspect that this is a false flag operation intended to control the Internet.
It is no secret that hackers are often recruited by governmental authorities for cyber security purposes. Peiter Zatko a.k.a. “Mudge” is one of them. Here is an excerpt of a Forbes interview with Assange regarding his connection to Peiter Zatko:

Assange:Yeah, I know Mudge. He’s a very sharp guy.
Greenberg: Mudge is now leading a project at the Pentagon’s Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency to find a technology that can stop leaks, which seems pretty relative [sic] to your organization. Can you tell me about your past relationship with Mudge?
Assange: Well, I… no comment.
Greenberg: Were you part of the same scene of hackers? When you were a computer hacker, you must have known him well.
Assange: We were in the same milieu. I spoke with everyone in that milieu.
Greenberg: What do you think of his current work to prevent digital leaks inside of organizations, a project called Cyber Insider Threat or Cinder?
Assange: I know nothing about it.

Peiter Zatko is an expert  in cyber warfare. He worked for BBN Technolgies (a subsidiary of Raytheon) with engineers “who perform leading edge research and development to protect Department of Defense data… Mr.Zatko is focused on anticipating and protecting against the next generation of information and network security threats to government and commercial networks.” (Peiter “Mudge” Zatko, Information Security Expert Who Warned that Hackers “Could Take Down the Internet in 30 Minutes” Returns to BBN Technologies, Business Wire, 1 February 2005, emphasis added)
In another Forbes interview, we learn that Mr. Zatko is “a lead cybersecurity researcher at the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency [DARPA], the mad-scientist wing of the Pentagon.” His project “aims to rid the world of digital leaks”. (Forbes, emphasis added)
There also seems to be a connection between Zatko and former hacker Jacob Appelbaum, a Wikileaks spokesperson. Zatko and Appelbaum were purportedly part of a hacker group called Cult of the Dead Cow.
Appelbaum currently works for the Tor Project, a United States Naval Research Laboratory initiative. The sponsors of that project listed on its website are:
NLnet Foundation (2008-2009), Naval Research Laboratory (2006-2010), an anonymous North American ISP (2009-2010), provided up to $100k. Google (2008-2009), Google Summer of Code (2007-2009), Human Rights Watch, Torfox (2009) and Shinjiru Technology (2009-2010) gave in turn up to $50k.
Past sponsors includes: Electronic Frontier Foundation (2004-2005), DARPA and ONR via Naval Research Laboratory (2001-2006), Cyber-TA project (2006-2008), Bell Security Solutions Inc (2006), Omidyar Network Enzyme Grant (2006), NSF via Rice University (2006-2007).
Zatko and Assange know each other. Jacob Appelbaum also played a role at Wikileaks.
The various connections tell us something regarding Assange’s entourage. They do not, however, provide us with evidence that people within these various organizations were supportive of the Wikileaks project.


Recent Developments: The Role of the Frontline Club
Over the last seven months, the London based Frontline Club has served as de facto U.K “headquarters” for Wikileaks. The Frontline Club is an initiative of Henry Vaughan Lockhart Smith, a former British Grenadier Guards captain. According to NATO, Vaughan Smith became an “independent video journalist [...] who always hated war, but remained [...] soldier-friendly”. (Across the Wire, New media: Weapons of mass communication, NATO Review, February 2008)
Upon his release from bail, Julian Assange was provided refuge at Vaughan Smith’s Ellingham Manor in Norfolk.
The Frontline Club is an establishment media outfit. Vaughan Smith writes for the NATO Review. (See NATO Web TV Channel and NATO Nations: Accurate, Reliable and Convenient). His relationship to NATO goes back to 1998 when he worked as a video journalist in Kosovo. In 2010, he was “embedded with a platoon from the British Grenadier Guards” during Operation Moshtarak in Afghanistan’s Helmand Province. (PBS NewsHour, February 19, 2010). According to the New York Times, The Frontline Club ”has received financing for its events from the Open Society Institute”. (In London, a Haven and a Forum for War Reporters – New York Times, 28 August 2006)


Concluding Remarks: The Cyber Warfare Narrative
Wikileaks is now being used by the authorities, particularly in the US, to promote the cyber warfare narrative, which could dramatically change the Internet and suppress the freedom of expression Wikileaks claims to defend.
Peter Kornbluh, analyst at The National Security Archive, argues that “there’s going to be a lot of screaming about Wikileaks and the new federal law to penalize, sanction, and put the boot down on organizations like Wikileaks, so that their reactions can be deemed illegal.”
Ultimately, Wikileaks could spark off, intentionally or not, entirely new rules and regulations.
__________-


Related:
Assange Fever
A Missing Wikileak: All roads lead to Tel Aviv

WikiLeaks: A Very Short Coincidence Theory

It is surely just a coincidence that the law firm – Finers Stephens Innocent – which represents Julian Assange and set up the Julian Assange Defense Fund is also legal adviser to the Rothschild Waddesdon Trust; that thepartially Rothschild-owned Economist gave Assange its 2008 Freedom of Expression Award; that Lord Rothschild is deputy chairman of BSkyB, whose warmongering chairman, Rupert Murdoch, and his propagandist father were lauded as fearless advocates of the truth by the WikiLeaks founder in an op-ed in the Murdoch-ownedThe Australian; that the only world leader “undoubtedly delighted” by the leaks, Benjamin Netanyahu – who often stays with Murdoch in London and has the award-winning pro-Israel media magnate on his “list of millionaires” (i.e. potential donors) – was singled out by Assange as a believer in diplomatic transparency; and that WikiLeaks has provided an unexpected “diplomatic coup” for the criminal state which was first promised to British Zionists in an enigmatic 1917 letter to an earlier Lord Rothschild.
These intriguing connections, which might appear suspicious to those suffering from the “crippled epistemology” associated with anti-Semitic conspiracy theorists, are undoubtedly coincidental.

NATO Trains Afghan Army To Guard Asian Pipeline

By Rick Rozoff
Stop NATO - December 19, 2010


On December 11 the presidents of Afghanistan, Pakistan and Turkmenistan and the energy minister of India met in the Turkmen capital of Ashgabat to bring to fruition fifteen years of planning by interests in the United States to bring natural gas from the Caspian Sea to the energy-needy nations of South and East Asia.


Presidents Hamid Karzai, Asif Ali Zardari and Gurbangulu Berdimuhammedov along with Indian Union Petroleum and Natural Gas Minister Murli Deora signed agreements – an Inter-Government Agreement and the Gas Pipeline Transmission Agreement – to construct a natural gas pipeline from Turkmenistan through Afghanistan and Pakistan to India. The initials of the first three countries involved lend themselves to the project’s acronym: TAP, now known as TAPI.


The Inter-Government Agreement “enjoins the four governments to provide all support including security for the pipeline.” [1]
The next day, Wahidullah Shahrani, Afghanistan’s Minister of Mines and Industries, confirmed that “Afghanistan will deploy about 7,000 troops to secure a major transnational gas pipeline slated to run through some of the most dangerous parts of the war-torn country.” [2]
Speaking at a press conference in the Afghan capital, Shahrani added: “This huge project is very important for Afghanistan. Five thousand to seven thousand security forces will be deployed to safeguard the pipeline route….We will also keep an eye on the security situation….If more troops are needed, we will take action.” [3]


Four days later U.S. Army Colonel John Ferrari, Deputy Commander of Programs for the NATO Training Mission – Afghanistan, was quoted on the U.S. Defense Department’s website stating:
“Our mission is to help the government of Afghanistan generate and sustain the Afghan army and police, all the way from the ministerial systems – essentially, their version of the Pentagon – through their operational commands, down to the individual units.” [4]
Colonel Ferrari disclosed at the same time that in the next few days the U.S. Army “will finally award a much-delayed $1.6 billion contract for a private security firm to supplement [the] NATO training command’s efforts to professionalize Afghan cops.” The lucrative bid, according to an American news source, “touched off a bureaucratic tempest between Blackwater/Xe Services and DynCorp, which held an old contract for the same job….” [5]
On the same day North Atlantic Treaty Organization Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen endorsed the U.S.’s Afghanistan and Pakistan Annual Review released on December 15 and stated:
“We will continue to train Afghan forces so they can provide security for the Afghan people.
“[A]s the long-term partnership that President Karzai and I signed at Lisbon demonstrates, our commitment to Afghanistan will continue well beyond 2014. NATO will also remain engaged with Pakistan….
“I welcome the release today of the United States’ annual review on Afghanistan and Pakistan. It builds on the decisions on Afghanistan that NATO Allies and Partners took at our summit in Lisbon.” [6]


What the Pentagon and NATO are training Afghan troops for is in part to ensure that the 1,700-kilometer (1,050-mile) TAPI pipeline running from the former Soviet republic of Turkmenistan to India – with transshipment to nations like Japan, South Korea and China in the offing – will function unimpeded.


The pipeline is to be started in 2012, completed two years later and provide 33 billion cubic meters (over one trillion cubic feet) of Turkmen gas to Pakistan, India and Afghanistan. According to the recently signed agreement, India and Pakistan will each receive 14 billion and Afghanistan 5 billion cubic meters of natural gas a year.


The undertaking is being financed by the Asian Development Bank in which the U.S. and Japan each hold 552,210 shares, the largest proportion of shares among its 67 members at 12.756 percent apiece.
The pipeline will run from Turkmenistan’s Dovletabat (also Dovletabad and Dauletabad) field along the 350-mile Herat-Kandahar Highway in Afghanistan to the capital of Pakistan’s Balochistan province, Quetta, to the Fazlaka region on the Indian-Pakistani border.


Five years ago the Asian Development Bank estimated gross natural gas reserves at Dovletabat to be 49.5 trillion cubic feet (1.4 trillion cubic meters). Turkmenistan also intends to include the new Southern Yoloten-Osman field, where government geologists estimate there are over 21 trillion cubic meters of gas, to fill the TAPI pipeline.


The inauguration of TAPI is the realization of plans going back to four years after the collapse of the Soviet Union, 1995, the year before the Taliban consolidated control of Afghanistan. One of its prime movers was the Union Oil Company of California (Unocal), which merged with and became a subsidiary of Chevron in the same year.


Former Secretary of State and NATO Supreme Allied Commander Alexander Haig visited Turkmenistan in 1992, immediately after it became an independent state for the first time, after which he became “an unofficial adviser and confident” to President Saparmurat Niyazov, “screening foreign companies and helping arrange a Niyazov visit to Washington in 1993.” [7]
Haig’s dealings, which would later be augmented by the likes of Henry Kissinger and Zalmay Khalilzad, were part of U.S. strategy in the Caspian Sea region, which was to:
“Tap the Caspian mother lodes while giving as little leverage as possible to Russia in the north and Iran in the south.
“Across the Caspian, Azerbaijan had already enlisted U.S. oil companies and pulled the Clinton administration into a crusade to build pipelines that would skirt Russia on the way to the Black Sea and the Mediterranean. In Kazakhstan, the Clinton administration [risked] provoking Moscow again by promoting pipelines that would carry Kazakh oil to western markets without Russian interference.”


In 1995 the White House blocked a deal between ConocoPhillips and Iran for the transiting of gas from Turkmenistan through the first country. “To State Department strategists, the perfect pipeline out of Dauletabad lay in a different direction: from Turkmenistan across Afghanistan to Pakistan, connecting the gas resources of Central Asia to the surging economies of South Asia. Such a line would deprive Iran of transit fees for Turkmen gas crossing its territory while capturing the South Asian gas market coveted by Iran.” [8]


In the same year the president of Unocal, John Imle, “wooed Niyazov and Benazir Bhutto, then prime minister of Pakistan…with a vision of a Unocal pipeline” running from Turkmenistan to Pakistan. According to the Washington Post three years after the fact: “A Unocal link had strong appeal for Niyazov. Afghanistan was in turmoil. A big American oil company could draw on the political muscle of the United States….” [9]


Later in the year President Niyazov announced the selection of Unocal to construct the pipeline, which Henry Kissinger – at the time a Unocal consultant – deemed “the triumph of hope over experience.” (Afghan-born Zalmay Khalilzad, while Director of the Strategy, Doctrine, and Force Structure at the RAND Corporation, consulted for Cambridge Energy Research Associates, which at the time was conducting a risk analysis for Unocal on what is now the Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan-India gas pipeline. He later became U.S. ambassador to Afghanistan after the invasion of 2001, then ambassador to Iraq and the United Nations.}


Unocal opened an office in Kandahar, which the media unfailingly recall is the “spiritual birthplace of the Taliban,” in 1996 as the latter were completing their conquest of Afghanistan.


In 1997 a senior Taliban delegation arrived in the U.S. to meet with Unocal officials. At the time a Unocal spokesman said “the Taleban were expected to spend several days at the company’s headquarters in Sugarland, Texas” and it was confirmed that “Unocal says it has agreements both with Turkmenistan to sell its gas and with Pakistan to buy it.” [10]


After last week’s agreement was signed in Turkmenistan to complete 15 years of U.S. plans, the BBC reported that “The pipeline will have to cross Taliban-controlled regions and Pakistan’s troubled border region. The US has also encouraged the project as an alternative to a proposed Iranian pipeline to India and Pakistan.” [11]


In fact TAPI is the American alternative to what until then-Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice pressured – in fact blackmailed – Pakistan and India in 2005 to kill the project was referred to as the peace pipeline: One which was to transport Caspian Sea Basin natural gas from Iran to Pakistan and India (the IPI pipeline) and from there to China. The joint endeavor would indeed have promoted cooperation and peace not only between Pakistan and India but between India and China as well.


Washington – the White House, the State Department and Congress – linked India’s agreeing to abandon the IPI project and cooperate with the U.S. punishing Iran in the United Nations Security Council over its civilian nuclear power program with actualizing the provisions of the framework agreement signed by President George W. Bush and Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on July 18, 2005 on full nuclear collaboration. The U.S.-India Civil Nuclear Cooperation Initiative.


“The Americans had, so far, largely ignored India’s ties with Iran, which grew impressively during the late 1990s….The tipping point came when both sides, along with Pakistan, began seriously to consider the construction of the 2,600-km Iran-Pakistan-India gas pipeline. U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice for the first time publicly aired her concerns about the prospective deal during her visit to New Delhi in March 2005.” [12]


Also in 2005 Assistant Secretary of State for Economic and Business Affairs E. Anthony Wayne told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee:
“Both Chinese and Indian firms have reportedly been involved in oil and gas-sector deals in Iran that raise concerns under US law and policy.
“For example, Indian and Pakistani officials are engaged in detailed discussions on the technical, financial and legal aspects of building a USD 4 billion pipeline that would bring Iranian natural gas to Pakistan and India, a project that Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has said also raises US
concerns.” [13]


India formally withdrew from the project in 2009 and in January of this year Washington prevailed upon Pakistan to abandon the pipeline in exchange for the U.S. constructing a liquefied natural gas terminal and arranging the supply of electricity from Tajikistan through Afghanistan.


“With the Asian Development Bank backing the TAPI project unlike the IPI pipeline” currently:
“Besides putting the IPI pipeline in cold storage, the TAPI pipeline could also push back moves to bring Turkmenistan gas via northern Iran. Talks were held earlier in this respect on exchanging it with Iranian gas, which would have been sent to India and other countries from an under-sea pipeline. This pipeline would have been one of the branches of a Middle East natural gas gathering system.” [14]


Last month Turkmenistan was also recruited to supply natural gas for the Nabucco pipeline running in the opposite direction, west through Azerbaijan and Georgia to Europe, to further U.S. strategy to squeeze Russia out of that market.
“Turkmen Deputy Prime Minister Baymyrad Hoyamuhamedov said the country would supply natural gas for the planned Nabucco pipeline. Hence, EU countries would no longer have to worry about uncertain natural gas supplies.” Which means “the European bloc will have to rely less on Russia for its growing gas requirement.”
“The pledge also means the construction of the planned 2046-mile pipeline can go ahead as uncertainty over its gas supplies had caused delay. Nabucco will transport gas from the Caspian region and the Middle East across Turkey into Europe.
“At present, Turkmenistan sells natural gas to Iran, China and Russia.” [15]
In fact, in late November the Turkmen government pledged to “provide up to 40 billion cubic meters of natural gas per year, more than the planned capacity of Nabucco which is 31 billion per year.” [16]
As such Nabucco will be “drawing gas from Turkmenistan in addition to Azerbaijan and Iraqi Kurdistan” in what Christian Dolezal, spokesperson for the Nabucco Consortium (Nabucco Gas Pipeline International GmbH), called a “remarkable step.”


“Dolezal said the first gas supplies for Nabucco are expected to come from Azerbaijan – about 8 billion cubic meters per year at first, of which 6 billion could come from the Shah Deniz 2 field. Another 10 billion cubic meters are expected from Iraqi Kurdistan, and the consortium is awaiting the outcome of talks with the Iraqi government.
“The construction of the Nabucco gas transit pipeline will start in 2012, and the first natural gas deliveries through it should be a fact in 2015….” [17]
The Nabucco pipeline will supplement previous Western-initiated projects like the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan oil and the Baku-Tbilisi-Erzurum natural gas pipelines beginning in Azerbaijan and proceeding westward through Georgia to Turkey.


A previous article in this series detailed that the overall strategy is “not limited to efforts to muscle into nations and regions rich in oil and natural gas (and uranium), nor to employing fair means or foul, peaceful or otherwise, to seize the commanding heights of the international energy market.
“The overarching objective is to control the ownership, transport and consumption of energy worldwide. To determine who receives oil and natural gas, through which routes and at which prices. And to dictate what the political and military quid pro quo will be for being invited to join a U.S.-dominated international energy transportation and accessibility network.
“Azerbaijan and Georgia are salient examples. The last two-named nations have increased their military budgets by well over 1,000 percent in the first case and by over 3,000 percent in the second in the span of a few years.


“In the Caspian Sea Basin and its neighborhood, which takes in the Afghanistan-Pakistan war theater and the turbulent and explosive Caucasus, Azerbaijan last week marked the fifteenth anniversary of what was called the Contract of the Century in 1994, engineered by the United States and Britain to open up the Caspian region to Western energy companies.


“The intent of all of them is to prevent Iran from exporting hydrocarbons to Europe and to expel Russia entirely from its previous contracts to provide Europe with natural gas and Caspian oil. Russia currently supplies the European Union with 30 percent of its gas, but the West – the U.S. and its EU allies – is well on its way to replacing Russian oil and gas with supplies from Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan via Azerbaijan and from Iraq and North Africa through Turkey where all of the three pipelines [Nabucco, Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan and Baku-Tbilisi-Erzurum] end.” [18]


In addition to transforming Azerbaijan and Georgia into U.S. and NATO outposts in the South Caucasus and on the Caspian Sea – Azerbaijan borders both Iran and Russia and Georgia borders Russia – Washington and its North Atlantic military bloc are increasing military ties with the other Caspian coastal states, Turkmenistan and Kazakhstan.


The expanding American and NATO role in Central and South Asia – in Afghanistan, Kyrgyzstan, Pakistan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan – is inextricably connected with NATO nations’ Eurasian energy strategies.


In 2008 Matthew Bryza, then-Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs, delivered an address which contained these assertions:
“The East-West Corridor we had been building from Turkey and the Black Sea through Georgia and Azerbaijan and across the Caspian became the strategic air corridor, and the lifeline, into Afghanistan allowing the United States and our coalition partners to conduct Operation Enduring Freedom.”


“Our goal is to develop a ‘Southern Corridor’ of energy infrastructure to transport Caspian and Iraqi oil and gas to Turkey and Europe. The Turkey-Greece-Italy (TGI) and Nabucco natural gas pipelines are key elements of the Southern Corridor.”
“Potential gas supplies in Turkmenistan and Iraq can provide the crucial additional volumes beyond those in Azerbaijan to realize the Southern Corridor.


“Washington and [Turkey] are working together with Baghdad to help Iraq develop its own large natural gas reserves for both domestic consumption and for export to Turkey and the EU.” [19]


The U.S. and Britain led NATO Partnership for Peace military exercises in Kazakhstan, from where the West plans to construct a pipeline under the Caspian Sea to Azerbaijan, last August, and the country has recently agreed to allow overflights to the U.S. and NATO for the war in Afghanistan. [20]
In August it was disclosed that U.S. military equipment is being transferred from Iraq to Afghanistan “via Turkey, Azerbaijan, the Caspian Sea and Turkmenistan.” [21]


Despite its formal status of neutrality, Turkmenistan has allowed the transit of American and NATO “armored vehicles, combat helicopters and crates of ammunition” to the Afghanistan-Pakistan war theater.
In addition, the U.S. “has gained access to use almost all the military airfields of Turkmenistan, including the airport in Nebit-Dag near the Iranian border” and “An American military contingent is located in Ashgabat to oversee the operations related to refueling of military airplanes. NATO is also trying to open up a land corridor to bring freight by road and rail….” [22]


The second station of the soon-to-be-launched Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan-India pipeline is Herat, the capital city of the Afghan province of the same name which borders eastern Iran.
From there it will head to Kandahar, where the U.S. and NATO have been conducting what the Western press refers to as the “battle for Kandahar” since August in an attempt to clear the area of Taliban fighters and sympathizers.
The pipeline will then proceed to Quetta, the capital of Balochistan.
The U.S. and NATO have expanded the Afghan war into Pakistan’s Federally Administered Tribal Areas and increasingly into Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. It has also launched attacks inside Balochistan and has pressured the Pakistani government to permit them to conduct full-scale military operations in the province.


In October NATO helicopters crossed 200 meters into Balochistan.
In the same month it was reported that “US officials may be eying a repeat of the cross-border incident by seeking raids into Balochistan.”
“US military officials [are] advocating crossing the border with US forces and expanding the war formally into Pakistan.” [23]
Last month the U.S. Defense Department presented a report to Congress revealing that “Pakistan Army General Headquarters recently approved an ODRP and Coalition presence at the PAKMIL 12 Corps HQ in Quetta, Balochistan.” [24]
ODRP stands for the Pentagon’s Office of Defense Representative, Pakistan and Coalition is a reference to NATO’s International Security Assistance Force.


A U.S. military buildup in Balochistan presents a direct threat to Iran, whose province of Sistan and Baluchistan borders the Pakistani province, the largest provinces in the respective nations. The U.S. is accused of supporting separatist elements in the Iranian territory and could exploit Baloch agents on the Pakistani side of the border in an attempt to destabilize Iran.


Three years ago China completed a port in Gwadar on Balochistan’s Arabian Sea coastline, which is to be expanded into a deep-sea port and naval base with Chinese technical and financial assistance.
China also intends to turn the port into an energy transit center for oil and natural gas originating from Iran and other parts of the Middle East as well as Africa and plans to construct an oil pipeline from Gwadar to China’s Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region.


The TAPI and related pipeline projects will not only adversely affect Iran and Russia.
Turkmen gas that had formerly flowed through Russia and Iran will now be diverted via the TAPI and Nabucco pipelines – as many as 73 billion cubic meters – strengthening the West’s influence in the region in a number of spheres, including in regards to energy, transport, financial and economic, political and military matters.
….
The NATO Training Mission – Afghanistan (NTM-A) was launched at the military bloc’s sixtieth anniversary summit in Strasbourg, France and Kehl, Germany last year, and after this year’s summit in Portugal thousands of new trainers have been pledged by NATO member states.
According to the NATO website,
“NTM-A brings together efforts to train the Afghan National Security Forces (ANSF) with the aim of increasing coherence and effectiveness among all contributors. Support to the ANSF including the building of an Afghan institutional training base for both the Afghan National Army (ANA) and Afghan National Police (ANP) and coordinating international efforts to train, equip and sustain these forces.
“The NATO Training Mission Afghanistan (NTM-A) operates under a dual-hatted command, with one commander for both the US-led Combined Security Transition Command- Afghanistan (CSTC-A) and the NATO Training Mission – Afghanistan. The mission provides a higher-level training for the Afghan National Army (ANA), including defense colleges and academies, as well as being responsible for doctrine development, and training and advising Afghan National Police (ANP).” [25]


The NATO Training Mission – Afghanistan is modeled after the NATO Training Mission – Iraq [26], established by a decision made at the 2004 NATO summit in Istanbul, Turkey. Its first commander was General David Petraeus, now in charge of over 150,000 U.S. and NATO troops in Afghanistan.
The NATO Training Mission – Iraq is the model for building from the top down the armed forces of a conquered and subjugated nation by the Western alliance, including training military and security forces to guard the country’s energy infrastructure.
In Iraq and now even more so in Afghanistan, NATO is assisting the U.S. in achieving vital geopolitical objectives in strategically vital parts of the world.


1) The Hindu, December 13, 2010
2) Daily Times, December 12, 2010/Asian News International, December 13, 2010
3) Agence France-Presse, December 13, 2010
4) NATO Training Mission Meets Procurement, Training Goals
U.S. Department of Defense, December 16, 2010
5) Spencer Ackerman, Army Set to Award Mega-Contract to Train Afghan Cops
Danger Room, December 16, 2010
http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2010/12/army-set-to-award-mega-contract-to-train-afghan-cops
6) North Atlantic Treaty Organization, December 16, 2010
7) David B. Ottaway and Dan Morgan, Gas Pipeline Bounces Between Agenda]
Washington Post, October 5, 1998
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/inatl/europe/caspian100598.htm
8) Ibid
9) Ibid
10) Taleban in Texas for talks on gas pipeline
BBC News, December 4, 1997
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/world/west_asia/37021.stm
11) BBC News, December 11, 2010
12) The Hindu, August 25, 2005
13) Press Trust of India, July 27, 2005
14) The Hindu, December 13, 2010
15) Industrial Fuels and Power, November 22, 2010
16) Nabucco Spokesman: Turkmenistan Natural Gas Promise ‘Remarkable’
Sofia News Agency, November 25, 2010
http://www.novinite.com/view_news.php?id=122557
17) Ibid
18) West Using Its Military Might To Control World Energy Resources:
Pentagon’s Global Mission To Secure Oil And Gas Supplies
Stop NATO, September 22, 2009
http://rickrozoff.wordpress.com/2009/09/22/west-using-its-military-might-to-control-world-energy-resources
19) U.S. Department of State, June 24, 2008
http://www.state.gov/p/eur/rls/rm/106232.htm
20) Kazakhstan: U.S., NATO Seek Military Outpost Between Russia And China
Stop NATO, April 14, 2010
http://rickrozoff.wordpress.com/2010/04/15/kazakhstan-u-s-nato-seek-military-outpost-between-russia-and-china
21) Azeri Press Agency, August 20, 2010
22) Catherine A. Fitzpatrick, Is the U.S. Violating Turkmenistan’s Neutrality
with the NDN?
EurasiaNet, August 1, 2010
http://www.eurasianet.org/node/61652
23) Asian News International, October 15, 2010
24) Report on Progress Toward Security and Stability in Afghanistan
November 2010
http://www.defense.gov/pubs/November_1230_Report_FINAL.pdf
25) North Atlantic Treaty Organization
http://www.nato.int/cps/en/natolive/news_52802.htm
26) Iraq: NATO Assists In Building New Middle East Proxy Army
Stop NATO, August 13, 2010
http://rickrozoff.wordpress.com/2010/08/14/iraq-nato-assists-in-building-new-middle-east-proxy-army
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Related:
TAPI Pipeline - The Real Reason for 4 More Years of War