Dog Poet Transmitting…….

Remember when you used to walk into a bus kiosk or a subway station and you needed to figure out where you were before you tried to go anywhere? There used to be these maps that had an arrow pointing at a spot, with a little dialogue box next to it that said, “You are here”. I think it’s ‘safe to say’ (poor choice of words) that you are now here. Here is the place we’ve been talking about for a good, long while. This is the place, quite possibly somewhere outside Cairo, where that specific camel finally breaks under the weight of the last, unforgiving straw. This is the place where the most unstable domino, finally tumbles into its neighbor and begins to operate like the Gulf Stream used to.

All over the Arab world, as a precursor to, all over the world period, the psychic locks that have held the populations in stasis have now been broken. We are standing before the walls of a metaphorical Jericho. The sound of magical trumpets fills the air but no one is directly aware of them. They’re hearing something but they can’t identify it. The effect of the sounds, is to open areas of awareness and action that do not depend on the reflection and judgment of the people involved. It’s always like this when the world goes into one of its dramatic change modes. All of a sudden everything is happening, as if it were detailed on a blueprint or in a book and no one questions it because they are in the middle of it. Suddenly, all the things they’ve been feeling, for longer than they can remember, have all come together in a defining moment.

Somewhere in the mystery of this process, which no one can delineate without losing some of the parts, lays the apprehension of the warp and woof, attended by the meaning, but it always slips away like sand through your fingers when you try to understand it. Life is like that. It seems we should have always known where we would wind up by where we were going but we never do. Later on, down the road, in the place where they decide which history we are supposed to remember, they add in the details the way they add the nutritional features and vitamins to the while flour they got removed from, so that the rats and cockroaches wouldn’t eat it. It’s a similar principle. They don’t want any inquisitive vermin rooting around in the evidence so… there shouldn’t be any evidence until they add the evidence later.

Looking at the initial mayhem, prior to the greater contagion, one might opt for the promise of positive change or… an indication of serious shit-storms on the horizon. There’s probably going to be a good amount of both. Whatever the damage done by whatever is taking place, it’s not necessarily going to be worse than what was happening before it burst upon the scene. There’s always a chance that we will be presented with various enduring icons, like Little Georgie Sorrows, hanging from a colored scarf in his closet. There’s an implication that the monsters, which have herded the willing and the stupid to this pass, are going to get theirs.

I keep thinking of Vladimir Putin, rotating a pair of Chinese stress balls in his hand, as he considers what to do about Israel bombing the Domodedovo airport. The fall of Egypt is close to some of the worst news that Israel can get. As we know by now, bad news for Israel is very good news for the rest of the world; to reverse paraphrase Netan-yahoo commenting after 9/11.

So, for myself, in this time of momentous transformation, soon to be joined in concert by Mother Nature, I look for positive signs of human potential, evolving up from all fours into something more observably humanoid. I think of bankers hanging from lampposts and the sacking of Goldman Sachs by an angry mob of thousands; we’ll never know what all those files contained, before Building 7 went down. As history and the moment will both prove, we don’t need no stinking paper. The guilt and culpability are written into the atmosphere. It doesn’t matter what crime you want to prosecute or what injustice you seek to adjust, if you locate an international banker, ...that will do for just about any crime or injustice presently extant.

The idea of the whole boards of directors of BP and Monsanto, doing stationary, facedown, water ballet in the Gulf of Mexico, creates an image that I am reluctant to let go of. The Queen of England and The Pope, chained to the wall of a Newark crack house, as the filmmakers from the San Fernando Valley set up their equipment, makes me wish I had been a little kinkier in my life, so that I could get a greater degree of satisfaction from the event. Oh, look, here come their co-stars. Now that’s impressive. As long as nobody calls PETA, we should be able to get the money shot in one afternoon.

This is why I made the decision to call for quarantine and permanent isolation among their fellows, for these viruses, masquerading in human form. I don’t like violent revolution and I don’t like the show trials being produced by the same people that do American Idol so that, while you are watching the entertainment, they are fabricating the back story that goes with the version of things they want you to live with after the tables are turned and the same people are still sitting there. This time that is not going to happen.

I understand that some heads have to roll and I understand that unless you tear something to the ground (Goldman Sachs?) they’ll just Hoseme, Hoseyou, Mubarak the thing into a ‘let’s all play nice now’ scenario, where they go right back to doing business as usual with new faces. You can’t put the fox in charge of the henhouse. The fox is a clever guy. He replicates too. He’s in and out and in and out, so that it looks like sex is what it is that he’s having. What you have to ask yourself is, “Am I having sex with the fox but I am unaware of it? It’s no surprise that they called the enterprise Fox News. It’s all Animal Farm, anthropomorphically speaking.

What’s happening today is like a chapter in a book. Tomorrow (metaphorically speaking), there will be new character development and possibly the more critical aspects, or even the original target might come into the crosshairs.

What is happening now is going to impact on the lives of everyone living. The force is on the move and everyone is going to have to consider what sort of adjustments they are going to make to the force. You might be looking at it like an offensive tackle and you might be looking at it like a defensive end. Heck, you might even be thinking you’re the quarterback, in search of a wide receiver. These are just postures and positions from which one can have a perspective and you may be sure there are any number of people looking at it in very similar ways. It translates into soccer, or Rugby; lawn tennis, badminton, possibly even croquet, with the aforementioned, rolling heads. Alice in Wonderland is not a bad fit for describing the transliteration of The Devic Realm into an active feature of the times. There were all sorts of beautiful landscapes and interesting magical creatures in wonderland. There were very interesting potions (something I might have a little curiosity about) available but, there was also a batshit crazy queen and an executioner with an axe. The point seems to be that they were just a pack of cards anyway. Is that what this is? Are we just a pack of cards?

Its happening right in front of your eyes and it’s no big deal, right? Can you imagine what is going on behind the scenes at the moment? Given that this is a cosmic event, everything TPTB does, will be the wrong thing and work to their disadvantage. Everything they don’t do, will be the right thing, mostly, but they haven't engineered themselves for that yet.

We are officially in operational mode. Don’t forget that all kinds of super-natural potencies and possibilities are also operational too. You’ve going to get the game you are watching. You’re going to get the game you are after. You are going to get the game you are playing, unless you change your game and that’s always an option and the one most people, most consistently forget. It’s a little cliché but, “May the force be with you and may you be with the force” because the alternative makes you something for demonstration purposes only, or does it just go on?. Deepen your love.

End Transmission…….

by Rick Rozoff
Global Research, January 15, 2011

Recent reports in the Russian news media have detailed plans by the U.S. to provide the Mikheil Saakashvili government in Georgia with tens of millions of dollars worth of anti-aircraft and anti-tank weapons.

The Russian government's Itar-Tass news agency and Voice of Russia have confirmed the arms package with officials from the Russian special services and the Joint Staff of the armed forces.

An official from the second source responded to the proposed arms sale by stating: "We deeply regret that the reset of US-Russian relations declared by the administration of Barack Obama does not change anything in Washington's military support for the Georgian leadership, which began the war in the Caucasus in August 2008 and which is continuing to mastermind aggressive plans against the independent states of Abkhazia and South Ossetia." [1]

The Georgian-South Ossetian-Russian war of 2008 was preceded by Georgian artillery barrages against the South Ossetian capital of Tskhinvali on August 1 which killed six people including a Russian peacekeeper stationed there.

That attack occurred within hours of 1,000 U.S. Marines, airborne forces and other troops completing the two-week Immediate Response 2008 North Atlantic Treaty Organization Partnership for Peace exercise in Georgia.

Six days afterward the Saakashvili regime launched an all-out assault against South Ossetia, timed to coincide with the opening ceremony of the Olympic Games in Beijing.

American troops and military equipment remained in the war zone throughout the five days of fighting between Georgia and Russia which began after the latter nation reacted to the deaths of Russian peacekeepers and South Ossetian civilians (who overwhelmingly hold Russian passports) caused by the Georgian onslaught.

U.S. military transport aircraft ferried home 2,000 Georgian troops deployed to Iraq - the third largest national contingent after those of the U.S. and Britain at the time - as the fighting was still raging.

Five days after the war ended, Joseph Biden - then senator and chairman of the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, now vice president - rushed to the Georgian capital to support Saakashvili and offer $1 billion in "emergency aid" to the U.S. client.

After returning stateside, Biden, never reticent in respect to high-blown rhetorical excesses, stated:

"I left the country convinced that Russia's invasion of Georgia may be...one of the most significant event[s] to occur in Europe since the end of communism... .[T]he continuing presence of Russian forces in the country has severe implications for the broader region....Russia’s actions in Georgia will have consequences.”

Later in the month the U.S. dispatched the USS McFaul guided missile destroyer (part of the Aegis combat system designed to fire interceptor missiles), USS Mount Whitney (the flagship of the U.S. Sixth Fleet) and a Coast Guard cutter to the Georgian Black Sea coast, immediately south of Abkhazia and not much farther from the Russian shoreline. The heavily armed warships were, if one trusts Washington's account of their mission, engaged in a humanitarian operation. Russian President Dmitry Medvedev accused the U.S. of bringing weapons into Georgia.

The American ships, joined by as many as fifteen other NATO vessels, and Russian opposite numbers deployed to the region were only some ninety miles apart.

Georgia's head of state Mikheil Saakashvili, a graduate of Columbia Law School in New York City, was brought to power seven years ago on the back of an extra-constitutiona l putsch in 2003-2004 that he and his supporters and admirers in the West refer to as the Rose Revolution.

He remains the preeminent American political client in the world along with Kosovo's prime minister and president presumptive Hashim Thaci, recently accused in a report to the Council of Europe of being the ringleader of a grisly crime syndicate that trafficked in narcotics, weapons and human organs extracted from at least 500 ethnic Serbian and other civilians murdered for that purpose. An empire can be judged by the satraps it arms and in other manners indulges.

After Saakashvili' s Pyrrhic attempt to eliminate the two barriers remaining to dragging his country into NATO - unresolved territorial disputes and the presence of foreign troops on its soil (at the time a small number of Russian peacekeepers in South Ossetia and Abkhazia) - with the invasion of South Ossetia and following that an offensive against Abkhazia, the U.S. and NATO hastened to shore up their outpost in the South Caucasus.

In mid-September NATO's Secretary General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer and its North Atlantic Council (the permanent representatives - ambassadors - of all its 26 member states at the time) visited Georgia and, guided by the host country's defense minister, inspected air force and infantry bases.

During the trip, the U.S.-controlled military bloc signed a framework agreement on creating the NATO-Georgia Commission, out of which developed an Annual National Program to further Georgia's integration into the Alliance, an exceptional measure to circumvent the standard stages through which a candidate nation passes to achieve full NATO accession.

The Russian Foreign Ministry responded by issuing a statement that said in part:

"Instead of drawing serious conclusions about the failed attempt by Saakashvili to forcefully resolve the many-year-old conflict [with South Ossetia], NATO has again demonstrated its support towards his [Saakashvili’s] campaign of disinformation, and has promised to rebuild the military infrastructure of this country.” [2]

Washington followed suit in December when then-Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs Matthew Bryza announced a framework agreement on a U.S.-Georgia Charter on Strategic Partnership, which was formalized by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Georgian Foreign Minister Grigol Vashadze in Washington on January 9, 2009.

In October of 2008 Washington deployed the destroyer USS Mason to Georgia for training exercises and in the same month the Georgian defense minister met with U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates on the sidelines of a NATO defense chiefs meeting in Hungary, after which it was announced that "U.S. military assistance will be aimed at strengthening Georgian air defenses." [3]

At the same time the Pentagon sent "an assessment team to Georgia to determine what role the US should play in rebuilding that country’s military after its military conflict with Russia last August.

"After the assessment, Pentagon officials will review how the United States will be able to support the reconstruction of Georgia, including armed forces aid." [4]

Toward the end of the month a delegation headed by Frank Boland, head of Force Planning for the NATO Defense Policy and Planning Directorate, visited Georgia to meet with the country's top defense and military officials and prepare the nation for the next stage of NATO integration.

The month before, only weeks after the war had ended, Under Secretary of Defense for Policy Eric Edelman told the Senate Armed Services Committee that "Georgia, like any sovereign country, should have the ability to defend itself and deter renewed aggression, and there should be not be any question about whether Georgia is entitled to military assistance from the United States or, indeed, from NATO or any of the NATO allies.”

President George Bush supported Biden's call for $1 billion worth of non-military aid to Georgia, which at the time was remarked would "dwarf the 63 million dollars that Washington provided to Georgia last year. Excluding Iraq, the infusion would make Georgia one of the largest recipients of American foreign aid after Israel and Egypt." [5] Georgia has a population of 4.6 million, Egypt of 80 million.

Until now, however, the U.S. has been cautious about rebuilding and upgrading Georgia's military arsenal or at least acknowledging that it is doing so. If recent reports prove true, Georgia is to receive a large quantity of high-tech weapons from the U.S., including surface-to-air missile complexes, Stinger and other portable surface-to-air missiles, Javelin third generation guided missiles and Hellfire air-to-surface missiles, the latter two designed for penetrating armor.

Three weeks ago South Ossetian President Eduard Kokoity warned that "Georgia only pays lip service to peace, continues to rearm and refuses to sign non-aggression pacts that can avert another South Caucasus war." [6]

According to Russian military expert Victor Baranets, "Georgia is buying anti-missile and anti-tank weapons because the 2008 war showed that these are weak points of the Georgian army." [7]

In short, the U.S. will provide precisely the weapons Tbilisi needs for a new assault against South Ossetia and a new war with Russia.

Saakashvili is now in Washington, where "the purchase of weapons will be the main topic of his talks with American leaders." His trip is centered on attending a memorial to the late White House Afghanistan- Pakistan special representative Richard Holbrooke in Washington, D.C. on December 14 at which President Barack Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton will pay tribute to the deceased.

On January 12 Saakashvili became the first foreign leader to meet with the new speaker of the House of Representatives, John Boehner. The latter released a statement after the meeting which said:

"The American people will continue to stand with others struggling for democracy over the forces of despotism, dignity over degradation, and freedom over subjugation. " [8] His statement also expressed appreciation to Georgia for supplying the Pentagon with 2,000 troops for the war in Iraq and 1,000 so far for that in Afghanistan.

The Georgian leader met with other lawmakers, including Senator Joseph Lieberman, upon whom he bestowed the St. George's Victory Order. Saakashvili announced last month that he - not the mayor of Tbilisi - would named a street in his nation's capital after Holbrooke, a "trusted friend and confidant" who co-authored a piece in the Washington Post during the 2008 war denouncing what he termed the "full-scale Russian invasion of Georgia."

While Washington's favorite foreign head of state is being hailed and regaled with attention and praise in the capital, his foreign minister referred to a recent agreement between Abkhazia and Russia as "fascism." [9]

The day before he arrived in the U.S., Saakashvili said in an interview to a Ukrainian television station:

"As for NATO, I am absolutely convinced that this is just a matter of time."
"Nobody can ensure their security on their own, especially small countries, but I think this concerns Ukraine as well," he added.

After seven years of mercurial, megalomaniacal, adventurist, dictatorial and murderous rule [10], Saakashvili remains the Washington political establishment' s pampered darling ne plus ultra.

At the NATO summit in November of last year, President Obama met privately with him the day before the NATO-Russia Council meeting with President Medvedev occurred.

Last July Secretary of State Hillary Clinton visited Georgia as Saakashvili' s guest and lambasted Russia for "occupying" Abkhazia and South Ossetia, described as Georgian territories although neither has ever been part of an independent Georgia. In her own words: "We, the United States, was appalled, and totally rejected the invasion and occupation of Georgian territory. I was in the Senate at the time, and, along with my colleagues and the prior Administration, made that view very clear. We continue to speak out, as I have on this trip, against the continuing occupation." [11]

At a joint press conference with Georgian Prime Minister Nikoloz Gilauri ahead of the second omnibus meeting of the U.S.-Georgia Charter on Strategic Partnership in October, she stated:

"The relationship between Georgia and the United States stands on a foundation of shared values and common interests... .The United States will not waver in its support for Georgia’s sovereignty and territorial integrity. That support is a core principle of our Charter on Strategic Partnership, and it is fundamental to our bilateral relationship. "

"The United States remains committed to Georgia’s aspirations for membership in NATO, as reflected in the Alliance’s decisions in Bucharest and Strasbourg-Kehl. We strongly support Georgia’s efforts related to its Annual National Program, which promotes defense reform and guides cooperation with NATO. And we continue to support Georgia’s efforts on defense reform and improving defense capabilities, including NATO interoperability and Georgia’s contributions to ISAF operations in Afghanistan. "

"We continue to call on Russia to end its occupation of Georgian territory, withdraw its forces, and abide by its other commitments under the 2008 ceasefire agreements." [12]

Her comments led the government of Abkhazia to challenge her to acknowledge countries like Afghanistan and Iraq as American-occupied territories.

Later in the month a NATO delegation inspected the Krtsanisi National Training Center and its Simulation Training Center - built by the U.S. - in Georgia (where U.S. Marines have trained Georgian soldiers and where three Georgian soldiers were killed and thirteen wounded in an explosion this month) as part of NATO Days events in the nation.

Also in October, Italian Admiral Giampaolo Di Paola, chairman of the NATO Military Committee, visited the Krtsanisi National Training Center and the simulation facility to view training exercises of the Georgian battalion that would replace one serving under NATO command in Afghanistan. He also toured the newly established NATO Liaison Office in the Georgian capital.

In November Assistant Secretary of State for European Affairs Phillip Gordon told BBC: "We...recognize Georgia's sovereignty and integrity. We are absolutely clear with Russia, we disagree on Georgia. [W]e want to see an end to Russian occupation and...we stand by Georgia`s sovereignty and territorial integrity." [13]

At the same time Georgian Deputy Minister of Defense Nikoloz Vashakidze was sequestered with top U.S. officials in closed-door meetings at the Pentagon. The "negotiations were held within the framework agreement on cooperation in the defence sector between the US and Georgia." [14]

As the Georgian deputy defense chief was in Washington, South Ossetian First Deputy Foreign Minister Alan Pliev warned:

"We are concerned about Georgia's intention to increase its military capacities. Now Georgia is planning to buy a number of Merkava 4 Israeli tanks, which are clearly not meant for defensive action.

"The activation of the Georgian Defense Ministry, increased flights of Georgian drones near the borders of South Ossetia, as well as the
maniacal opposition to signing a non-aggression agreement give rise to the reasonable assumption of a newly designed bloody venture by Georgian authorities. " [15]

The official also stated that due to assistance from the U.S. and other NATO states the military-technical capacity of the Georgian armed forces currently exceeds that at the start of the war in 2008.

On November 16 the NATO Parliamentary Assembly met in Poland and passed a resolution referring to Abkhazia and South Ossetia as "occupied territories. "

The Abkhazian Foreign Ministry issued a statement in response which included the following:

"The Abkhazian party considers this biased interpretation of the events yet another manifestation of NATO's pro-Georgian position.

"NATO is an organization that has been contributing to the intensive militarization of Georgia for many years, stirring up the revanchist mindset of the Georgian leadership, which led to the August 2008 bloodshed in South Ossetia." [16]

At their meeting during the Lisbon NATO summit, Obama "thanked his Georgian counterpart Mikheil Saakashvili for his country's participation in NATO-led international peace efforts in Afghanistan and reaffirmed the United States' support of Georgia's territorial integrity." [17]

Saakashvili offered more troops for the war in Afghanistan, pledged that his nation's contingent would remain there as long as NATO does, confirmed that Obama backed his country becoming a full NATO member ("President Obama has supported Georgia's course that will lead it to joining NATO") and said that the NATO summit declaration cleared the way for Georgia to join the military bloc without the customary Membership Action Plan requirement.

The Lisbon summit declaration affirms that NATO will "continue and develop the partnerships with Ukraine and Georgia within the NATO-Ukraine and NATO-Georgia Commissions, based on the NATO decision at the Bucharest summit 2008, and taking into account the Euro-Atlantic orientation or aspiration of each of the countries."

On December 1, at the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) summit in Kazakhstan, during which she met privately with Saakashvili, Hillary Clinton advocated "a meaningful OSCE presence in Georgia." In 1998 and until NATO's war against Yugoslavia commenced in March of the following year her husband's administration employed the OSCE's Kosovo Verification Mission, under the control of the notorious William Walker, to set the stage for the 78-day bombing of Yugoslavia and the wresting of Kosovo from Serbia. [18]

Also early last month, the NATO-Georgia Commission met in Brussels and Georgian Deputy Foreign Minister and Secretary of the National Security Council Giga Bokeria, representing his country at the meeting, stated:

"The resolution of the summit says that NATO continues to assist Georgia in carrying out reforms, recognizes its territorial integrity and sovereignty, and calls on Russia to abolish the decision in connection with recognition of the independence of Abkhazia and South Ossetia."

Afterwards, "issues of cooperation between Georgia and NATO were discussed at the headquarters of the Alliance, at a meeting of the Georgian National Security Council's Secretary Gigi Bokeria and the NATO Deputy Secretary General.

"The NATO Secretary General's Special Representative for the South Caucasus James Appathurai attended the meeting in his new status." [19]

As a footnote, "In 2003, after a visit to Serbia to study peaceful revolution techniques, Bokeria helped bring Serb activists from the youth movement Otpor to Georgia to train students in the same techniques. As a result, the youth movement 'Kmara' was established, which played a leading role in the November 2003 Rose Revolution." [20]

On December 3 the U.S. ambassador to Georgia, John Bass, was quoted as affirming: "The United States remains firmly committed to Georgia's sovereignty and territorial integrity. We enjoy a strong defense relationship, defense cooperation, and we're currently working closely with the Ministry of Defense and other Ministries in Georgia to improve Georgia's ability to defend itself." [21]

Three days later Bass visited the Krtsanisi National Training Center and "also took a tour of the Simulation Center and attended model exercises on the ground." [22]

The American envoy is routinely present at send-off and welcoming ceremonies for U.S. Marine Corps-trained Georgian troops deployed to Afghanistan.

In fact the Pentagon instituted the Georgia Train and Equip Program in 2002, first under Green Beret, then Marine, control in 2002 and later the Georgian Sustainment and Stability Operations Program three years later.

While still commandant of the U.S. Marine Corps, General James Conway visited Georgia in August of 2009 to inaugurate the latest Marine training of the host country's armed forces. At the time Associated Press reported that when asked if the preparation could be applied "to the possibility of another war with Russia," he answered, "In general, yes."

Last September Saakashvili addressed cadets graduating from a new training center at the Kutaisi Military Base and stated:

"[S]omeone may say: 'we have so many problems, our territories are occupied and there is no time now for going somewhere else to fight.' But because of these very same problems that we have, we need huge combat experience.. .and that [Afghan mission] is a unique combat and war school." [23]

On December 9 Associated Press, reporting on an interview with Georgian Vice Prime Minister Giorgi Baramidze, stated he was "raising the issue [of a "road map" to full NATO membership] in Washington this week with the Obama administration. " He further "said Georgia already behaves as if it were a member of NATO."

On the same day a bill crafted and introduced by Senators Jeanne Shaheen and Lindsey Graham, co-chairs of the Atlantic Council Task Force on Georgia, called "A resolution expressing the sense of the Senate with respect to the territorial integrity of Georgia and the situation within Georgia's internationally recognized borders," was presented to the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations. It refers to Abkhazia and South Ossetia as Georgian territories "occupied by the Russian Federation."

The next day Shaheen's and Graham's colleague Senator John McCain spoke at a conference titled "Forging a Transatlantic Consensus on Russia" at the Johns Hopkins Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies at which he demanded the resumption and increase of arms sales to Georgia, stating:

"For two years, mostly out of deference to Russia, defensive arms sales have not been authorized for Georgia. This has to change. At a minimum we should provide Georgia with early warning radars and other basic capabilities to strengthen its defenses.

"Our allies in central and eastern Europe view Georgia as a test case of whether the United States will stand by them or not. Russia views Georgia as a test case, too - of how much it can get away with in Georgia, and if there then elsewhere. It is the policy of our government to support Georgia's aspiration to join NATO." [24]

Afterward, Robert Pszczel, the new director of the NATO Information Office in Moscow and formerly acting NATO Deputy Spokesman, confirmed that "NATO will continue its Eastward enlargement policy" and that "The NATO-Georgia Commission continues its work." [25]

In mid-December U.S. Deputy Defense Secretary Alexander Vershbow and Georgia's Vice Prime Minister and State Minister for Euro-Atlantic Integration Giorgi Baramidze met in Washington to plan Georgia's NATO accession. The Georgian official stated afterward that "Meeting with Vershbow is very important, as he is actively engaged in the issues of NATO enlargement, as well as personally ensuring Georgia's accession into the alliance." [26]

Baramidze, who studied at Georgetown University and was the country's defense minister in 2004, also met with members of the U.S. Senate on the bill discussed above.
....
U.S. troops were in Georgia during the five-day war with Russia in 2008 and later in the same month American warships were docked in the country's ports as ships from the Russian Black Sea Fleet were deployed within firing range.

Never before have military forces from the world's two major nuclear powers been on opposing sides of a battle line during wartime.

By increasing the provision of sophisticated weaponry to Georgia, Washington is taunting Russia on its southern border and running the risk of a military conflict that may draw it into a direct confrontation with its main nuclear rival.

by Michael Levine
Global Research, January 13, 2011

When Nixon first declared war on drugs in 1971, there were fewer than 500,000 hard-core addicts in the nation, most of whom were addicted to heroin. Three decades later, despite the expenditure of $1 trillion in tax dollars, the number of hard-core addicts is shortly expected to exceed five million. Our nation has become the supermarket of the drug world, with a wider variety and bigger supply of drugs at cheaper prices than ever before. The problem now not only affects every town on the map, but it is difficult to find a family anywhere that is not somehow affected.

The Chang Mai factory the CIA prevented me from destroying was the source of massive amounts of heroin being smuggled into the US in the bodies and body bags of GIs killed in Vietnam.

My unit, the Hard Narcotics Smuggling Squad, was charged with investigating all heroin and cocaine smuggling through the Port of New York. My unit became involved in investigating every major smuggling operation known to law enforcement. We could not avoid witnessing the CIA protecting major drug dealers. Not a single important source in Southeast Asia was ever indicted by US law enforcement. This was no accident. Case after case was killed by CIA and State Department intervention and there wasn’t a damned thing we could do about it. CIA-owned airlines like Air America were being used to ferry drugs throughout Southeast Asia, allegedly to support our “allies.” CIA banking operations were used to launder drug money.

In 1972, I was assigned to assist in a major international drug case involving top Panamanian government officials who were using diplomatic passports to smuggle large quantities of heroin and other drugs into the US. The name Manuel Noriega surfaced prominently in the investigation. Surfacing right behind Noriega was the CIA to protect him from US law enforcement. As head of the CIA, Bush authorized a salary for Manuel Noriega as a CIA asset, while the dictator was listed in as many as 40 DEA computer files as a drug dealer.

The CIA and the Department of State were protecting more and more politically powerful drug traffickers around the world: the Mujihadeen in Afghanistan, the Bolivian cocaine cartels, the top levels of Mexican government, Nicaraguan Contras, Colombian drug dealers and politicians, and others. Media’s duties, as I experienced firsthand, were twofold: first, to keep quiet about the gush of drugs that was allowed to flow unimpeded into the US; second, to divert the public’s attention by shilling them into believing the drug war was legitimate by falsely presenting the few trickles we were permitted to indict as though they were major “victories,” when in fact we were doing nothing more than getting rid of the inefficient competitors of CIA assets.

On July 17, 1980, drug traffickers actually took control of a nation. Bolivia at the time [was] the source of virtually 100% of the cocaine entering the US. CIA-recruited mercenaries and drug traffickers unseated Bolivia’s democratically elected president, a leftist whom the US government didn’t want in power. Immediately after the coup, cocaine production increased massively, until it soon outstripped supply. This was the true beginning of the crack “plague.”

The CIA along with the State and Justice Departments had to combine forces to protect their drug-dealing assets by destroying a DEA investigation. How do I know? I was the inside source. I sat down at my desk in the American embassy and wrote the kind of letter that I never myself imagined ever writing. I detailed three pages typewritten on official US embassy stationary—enough evidence of my charges to feed a wolf pack of investigative journalists. I also expressed my willingness to be a quotable source. I addressed it directly to Strasser and Rohter, care of Newsweek. Two sleepless weeks later, I was still sitting in my embassy office staring at the phone. Three weeks later, it rang. It was DEA’s internal security. They were calling me to notify me that I was under investigation. I had been falsely accused of everything from black-marketing to having sex with a married female DEA agent. The investigation would wreak havoc with my life for the next four years.

In one glaring case, an associate of mine was sent into Honduras to open a DEA office in Tegucigalpa. Within months he had documented as much as 50 tons of cocaine being smuggled into the US by Honduran military people who were supporting the Contras. This was enough cocaine to fill a third of US demand. What was the DEA response? They closed the office.

Sometime in 1990, US Customs intercepted a ton of cocaine being smuggled through Miami International Airport. A Customs and DEA investigation quickly revealed that the smugglers were the Venezuelan National Guard headed by General Guillen, a CIA “asset” who claimed that he had been operating under CIA orders and protection. The CIA soon admitted that this was true. If the CIA is good at anything, it is the complete control of American mass media. So secure are they in their ability to manipulate the mass media that they even brag about it in their own in-house memos. The New York Times had the story almost immediately in 1990 and did not print it until 1993. It finally became news that was “fit to print” when the Times learned that 60 Minutes also had the story and was actually going to run it. The highlight of the 60 Minutes piece is when the administrator of the DEA, Federal Judge Robert Bonner, tells Mike Wallace, “There is no other way to put it, Mike, [what the CIA did] is drug smuggling. It’s illegal [author's emphasis].”

The fact is – and you can read it yourself in the federal court records – that seven months before the attempt to blow up the World Trade Center in 1993, the FBI had a paid informant, Emad Salem, who had infiltrated the bombers and had told the FBI of their plans to blow up the twin towers. Without notifying the NYPD or anyone else, an FBI supervisor “fired” Salem, who was making $500 a week for his work. After the bomb went off, the FBI hired Salem back and paid him $1.5 million to help them track down the bombers. But that’s not all the FBI missed. When they finally did catch the actual bomber, Ramzi Yousef (a man trained with CIA funds during the Russia-Afghanistan war), the FBI found information on his personal computer about plans to use hijacked American jetliners as fuel-laden missiles. The FBI ignored this information, too.

Michael Levine is a 25-year veteran of the DEA turned best-selling author and journalist. His articles and interviews on the drug war have been published in numerous national newspapers and magazines, including the New York Times, Los Angeles Times, USA Today, and Esquire.

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