The Administration may have been willing to rely on dissident organizations in Iran even when there was reason to believe that the groups had operated against American interests in the past. The use of Baluchi elements, for example, is problematic, Robert Baer, a former C.I.A. clandestine officer who worked for nearly two decades in South Asia and the Middle East, told me. “The Baluchis are Sunni fundamentalists who hate the regime in Tehran, but you can also describe them as Al Qaeda,” Baer told me. “These are guys who cut off the heads of nonbelievers—in this case, it’s Shiite Iranians. The irony is that we’re once again working with Sunni fundamentalists, just as we did in Afghanistan in the nineteen-eighties.” Ramzi Yousef, who was convicted for his role in the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center, and Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, who is considered one of the leading planners of the September 11th attacks, are Baluchi Sunni fundamentalists.

Reuters reports in:

U.S. escalating covert operations against Iran - report

that

U.S. congressional leaders agreed late last year to President George W. Bush’s funding request for a major escalation of covert operations against Iran aimed at destabilizing its leadership, according to a report in The New Yorker magazine published online on Sunday.

The article by reporter Seymour Hersh, from the magazine’s July 7 and 14 issue, centers around a highly classified Presidential Finding signed by Bush which by U.S. law must be made known to Democratic and Republican House and Senate leaders and ranking members of the intelligence committees.

All that fun stuff about us trying to provoke an armed response against Iranian national entities that actually may be connected to al Qaeda as flimsy pretext to invade Iran ‘in their defense’ aside, I find it odd that Reuters did not link to the New Yorker article it was reporting on.

You can find the whole Seymour M. Hersh article on Iran here.

Who knows, Iran may yet become a military four letter work here in the U.S. I hope not.

Faced with a surge in the number of proposed solar power plants, the federal government has placed a moratorium on new solar projects on public land until it studies their environmental impact, which is expected to take about two years.

Absolutely astonishing.

“It doesn’t make any sense,” said Holly Gordon, vice president for legislative and regulatory affairs for Ausra, a solar thermal energy company in Palo Alto, Calif. “The Bureau of Land Management land has some of the best solar resources in the world. This could completely stunt the growth of the industry.”

It makes perfect sense in a dirty-fuel fueled economy whose dirty money has bought dirty politicians.

Honestly, I don’t even know if I’m looking at the right thing. But with the price of food and gas, I can’t be that far off. I couldn’t find a better chart, if anyone knows one, drop me a line.

Oh, another thing, the economy’s weak growth of tenths of a percent in no way matches this explosion in the price of commodities over the last year.

Beware the deceptively smooth exponential curves of growth… they have a way of mirror-reversing on you.

The Royal Bank of Scotland has advised clients to brace for a full-fledged crash in global stock and credit markets over the next three months as inflation paralyses the major central banks.

A report by the bank’s research team warns that the S&P 500 index of Wall Street equities is likely to fall by more than 300 points to around 1050 by September as “all the chickens come home to roost” from the excesses of the global boom, with contagion spreading across Europe and emerging markets.

We might see some reporting on this by DemNow!, but who knows? The Telegraph goes on:

Such a slide on world bourses would amount to one of the worst bear markets over the last century. [emphasis added]

Last time I checked the worst bear market over the last century was the Great Depression. Which also happened to be brought upon us by banks lending money with no standards and people using that money to speculate in housing, commodities and the stock market.

Something else you wont see in American Media anytime soon, despite being about an American bank, Morgan Stanley.

The clash between the European Central Bank and the US Federal Reserve over monetary strategy is causing serious strains in the global financial system and could lead to a replay of Europe’s exchange rate crisis in the 1990s, a team of bankers has warned.

“We see striking similarities between the transatlantic tensions that built up in the early 1990s and those that are accumulating again today. The outcome of the 1992 deadlock was a major currency crisis and a recession in Europe,” said a report by Morgan Stanley’s European experts.

	Jean-Claude Trichet is taking a hard line on rates

Just as then, Washington has slashed rates to bail out the banks and prevent an economic hard-landing, while Frankfurt has stuck to its hawkish line - ignoring angry protests from politicians and squeals of pain from Europe’s export industry.

Indeed, the ECB has let the de facto interest rate - Euribor - rise by over 100 basis points since the credit crisis began.

Just as then, the dollar has plummeted far enough to cause worldwide alarm. In August 1992 it fell to 1.35 against the Deutsche Mark: this time it has fallen even further to the equivalent of 1.25. It is potentially worse for Europe this time because the yen and yuan have also fallen to near record lows. So has sterling.

Though I do believe that the Euribor is actually Europe’s version of Libor, so that would make it the European interbank overnight rate - or the rate banks charge one another for overnight loans.

In any case, fun stuff.

This sounds like insanity to me - prices on everything are steadily climbing, the housing sector is in the toilet and about to be flushed, and the US is patting itself on the back for making steel pipes from China that are used heavily in house building more than 100% more expensive, to protect American steel interested from Chinese Government Subsidies (all caps because they’re damned scary, right?)

Nevermind that we subsidize the shit out of things. The Iraq war can be seen as a major subsidy for the US military-industrial complex (our Defense budget hasn’t balooned to 3/4th of a trillion dollars for no reason), we subsidize corn growing, ethanol, and oil, YES OIL, the commodity that has nearly sextupled in price since Bush took office.  (By the way, if you want to make money is a sleazy way, the flooding in Iowa has decimated their corn and soybean fields - load up on futures in those two crop - you’ll hate yourself in the morning but will probably make some money. I am not going to do this.) Now for a bit of Shedlockian commentary on this subject, since he knows more than I:

We have tariffs, on agricultural products, ethanol, and scores of other items already. We have bills that restrict the importation of drugs from Canada and Mexico. Those tariffs are increasing the prices consumers (and businesses) have to pay.

The bill effectively says “prices are not high enough, let’s raise them”. It will not save a single job. It will crush imports of these products and that means fewer doc jobs and transportation jobs. It will cause prices to rise for those that need pipes or fencing.

Steel makers will misguidedly cheer this bill, but fence installers sure won’t. Consumers and businesses are being squeezed. No one anywhere can afford higher prices. For every steel making job we save (I doubt any), we will lose 10 times as many fence installing and doc unloading jobs.

Higher Prices = Less Demand. The economy and jobs are already weakening and this will increase that weakness.

I‘m not sure why he’s calling dock workers doc workers - at first I was like “why are doctors gonna be hurt by this?” but then I realized. And he goes on to the probably Chinese response:

The question is whether or not China retaliates. If the US demands higher prices, China could simply voluntarily tax all goods to the US with an export tax and make a statement “You want higher prices, here, you can have them”. At least that way, China keeps the money instead of the US collecting a tariff.

He goes on to describe how the Smoot-Hawley Act of 1929, and how it didn’t cause the Great Depression, but it did serve to further kick us while we were down - foreign governments just raised the prices on their goods, and Canada imposed a 30% tariff on all imported US goods, which kicked imports down by 2/3rds.

This current tariff is nothing more than pandering for political popularity, and will cause nothing more than economic strife.

I think, really, the best thing about this image is the fact that Bush looks might uncomfortable in front of that banner.

This  was supposed to be posted last week, but due to issues with webserver/wordpress/file permissions issues, image uploading wasn’t working. I think I have fixed it (at least enough to get images working with some backend hacking each time). Click on the image for some Shedlockian commentary on the quote contained therein.

Of course, this isn’t really topical any more since the DOW’s now down over 700 points from that peak you can see beginning the morning of the 6th. Oh, and that should read 14,000 all time high - I must have had some of Mr. Lee’s.

President Bush asserted executive privilege Friday to withhold documents from a congressional investigation into whether he pressured the Environmental Protection Agency to weaken decisions on smog and greenhouse gases.

Which, judging from  other instances of the use of executive privilege in this Administration, is basically an admission of guilt.

Poppy is a labour intensive crop, so even landless labourers get some small share of the profits.

It is more effective than aid at reaching the poor, one development worker told me.

This year in Nangarhar, growing poppies is not an option.

In Juma Khan’s district, farmers have been arrested for breaking the ban.

Some men spoke about joining the Taleban to make money, they pay their fighters £70 ($140) a month, or the Afghan National Army who pay rather less. [emphasis added]

But you’ll not be hearing about this in mainstream American press.