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Blackwater is now receiving inquiries from dozens of new clients, mainly shipping companies and shipping insurance companies. All of them want the same thing: for Blackwater mercenaries to guide their freighters and tankers safely past Somalia, through the world’s most dangerous waters, the hunting grounds of bands of pirates armed with Kalashnikovs and grenade launchers, attacking anything that comes into their sights. In their flip-flops and inflatable plastic boats, they look more like small-time crooks, the sort hardly worth the effort of any Coast Guard vessel. And yet, in reality, these pirates are causing huge problems for the naval fleets of major powers — and, of course, for the governments in places like Berlin, Paris and Washington.

Somali pirates have already attacked more than 90 ships this year, three times as many as in 2007. They have managed to hijack 39 freighters, tankers and fishing vessels. At least 14 of them are currently anchored, under heavy guard, off pirate villages along the coast. The ships’ crews have been waiting for months for ransom money to arrive and secure their release. The United Nations estimates that shipping companies have already paid close to $31 million in ransom. More

This from Paul Craig Roberts:

Obama’s election was necessary as the only means Americans had to hold the Republicans accountable for their crimes against the Constitution and human rights, for their violations of US and international laws, for their lies and deceptions, and for their financial chicanery.

Think of how sterile this makes the US political system. When with free, democratic elections, all we can do through our so-called democratic process to rid ourselves of a fascist rogue leader is choose a different face with the same body politic, then rationalize to ourselves that we and our country are redeemed. We’re so accustomed to lies we are willing to consciously deceive ourselves — that’s mutually agreed upon mass psychosis.

Paul Craig Roberts:

But Obama’s advisers are drawn from the same gang of Washington thugs and Wall Street banksters as Bush’s. Richard Holbrooke, son of Russian and German Jews, was an assistant secretary of state and ambassador in the Clinton administration. He implemented the policy to enlarge NATO and to place the military alliance on Russia’s border in contravention of Reagan’s promise to Gorbachev. Holbrooke is also associated with the Clinton administration’s illegal bombing of Serbia, a war crime that killed civilians and Chinese diplomats. If not a neocon himself, Holbrooke is closely allied with them.

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Source: Press TV
Iran is upgrading its naval fleet with a new generation of domestically-built submarines in an attempt to defend its territorial waters. Iran’s Chief Navy Commander, Rear Admiral Habibollah Sayyari, said Saturday that the semi-heavy Qaa’em submarine is equipped with torpedoes and naval mines. According to Rear Adm. Sayyari, the smart long-range Qaa’em submarine is also capable of carrying out both ‘defensive and offensive operations’.

The announcement of the new addition to the Iranian naval fleet comes shortly after reports that a large armada of US and European warships has been deployed to the Persian Gulf in an unprecedented build-up. Shortly after the release of the report in August, Iran warned that its naval forces are monitoring all movements in the Persian Gulf. The Iranian commander said Saturday that Iran is the only regional country capable of developing such sophisticated technology, adding that the Islamic Republic is fully prepared to defend its territorial waters with its self-sufficient military.

Washington and its allies demand Tehran halt its uranium enrichment program despite the country being entitlement to the peaceful application of nuclear technology under the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). Israel, an ally of the US, has long threatened to launch military strikes on Iranian nuclear facilities should the country continue its enrichment activities. Tehran, however, says it is determined to assert its nuclear rights. It has declared that it will not give in to Western pressures and that diplomacy is the only means acceptable in resolving the nuclear dispute.

(Bloomberg) —
Vice President Dick Cheney said Russia’s military action in Georgia and assertiveness elsewhere run the risk of confrontation with the North Atlantic Treaty Organization military alliance. “Our principles are being tested anew,” Cheney said in prepared remarks today at a global security conference in Cernobbio, Italy. “We must meet those tests with candor and resolve and, above all, with unity. Russia has a choice to make, and we in the trans-Atlantic alliance have responsibilities.”

While Cheney made no specific threats of retaliation, his message to Russia was a blunt reminder of the alliance’s mutual defense accord among the 26-member nations against threat from outside forces. Cheney spoke at a global forum, capping a three- day visit with leaders of Azerbaijan, Georgia and Ukraine, U.S. allies in the former Soviet Union. Cheney accused Russia of “bullying others” while using its oil wealth to fuel its own economic progress. “They cannot presume to gather up all the benefits of commerce, consultation and global prestige, while engaging in brute force, threats or other forms of intimidation against sovereign countries.” More

ANKARA/MOSCOW, September 3 (RIA Novosti)
NATO is continuing to strengthen its naval task force in the Black Sea, a Turkish military source said on Wednesday. “A U.S. Pathfinder ship has entered the Black Sea,” the source said on condition of anonymity. USNS Pathfinder (T-AGS 60) is an oceanographic survey ship owned by Military Sealift Command and has a civilian crew and scientists on board. However, a Russian military source told RIA Novosti that ships of the Pathfinder class could be used for reconnaissance and intelligence gathering purposes. “We have reliable information confirming that the [Pathfinder] ship has arrived in the Black Sea primarily to conduct intelligence gathering operations in support of the NATO naval task group currently deployed in the area,” the source said.

NATO sent at least five warships, including guided missile frigates, into the Black Sea after Russia completed its operation “to force Georgia to peace” on August 12. The operation came as a response to Georgia’s attack on South Ossetia on August 8. Another U.S. warship is expected to arrive in the Black Sea in the next few days, a Russian intelligence source said on Wednesday. Prime Minister Vladimir Putin said on Tuesday that Russia will respond calmly to the presence of NATO warships in the Black Sea. (U.S. Coastguard cutter Dallas enters Sevastopol Harbor - Video) “Our response will be calm, not hysterical, but there will definitely be a response,” Putin said. More

Source: DEBKAfile
Former Russian Black Sea Fleet commander, Adm. Eduard Baltin was quoted by Moscow media as saying Friday, Aug. 29: “Despite the apparent strength of the NATO naval group in the Black Sea… a single salvo from the Moskva missile cruiser and two or three missile boats would be enough to annihilate the entire group. Within 20 minutes, the waters would be clear.” Adm. Baltin added: “We will not strike first, and they do not look like people with suicidal tendencies.”

The Russian Fleet deploys 16 warships in the Black Sea compared with 10 NATO vessels – three American, Polish, German and Spanish frigates, and four Turkish warships, soon to be augmented by another six, including the USS Mount Whitney, which is considered one of the most advanced warships in the world.

In Washington, White House spokeswoman Dana Perino rejected Russian prime minister Vladimir Putin’s assertion that US personnel were in the combat zone during the war in Georgia and “someone in the United States” provoked the conflict to help one of the candidates in the American presidential race. In his first major remark since the Georgian crisis erupted, Putin quoted information provided by the Russian military but offered no evidence. Perino called his allegations “patently false and “not rational.”

Source: Press TV
Russia’s ambassador to NATO has warned that any military interference in the Caucasus conflict will be considered as declaration of war. In an interview with the Russian newspaper Vremya Novostei, Dmitry Rogozin, warned that any NATO attack on the Moscow-backed regions would “mean a declaration of war on Russia.” This is while the Russian President Dmitry Medvedev held talks with the Chinese President Hu Jintao in Tajikistan ahead of the summit of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) which is taking place on Thursday.

Medvedev, “informed his Chinese colleague about the situation in South Ossetia and Abkhazia,” AFP reported. The two men also discussed regional and international issues. The SCO is an intergovernmental organization which was founded in 2001 by the leaders of China, Russia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan. Iran holds an observer status in the SCO. This year’s summit will also be attended by the presidents of the above mentioned nations on August 28.

This Is London.co.uk
Moscow has issued an extraordinary warning to the West that military assistance to Georgia for use against South Ossetia or Abkhazia would be viewed as a “declaration of war” by Russia. The extreme rhetoric from the Kremlin’s envoy to NATO came as President Dmitry Medvedev stressed he will make a military response to US missile defence installations in eastern Europe, sending new shudders across countries whose people were once blighted by the Iron Curtain. And Moscow also emphasised it was closely monitoring what it claims is a build-up of NATO firepower in the Black Sea. The incendiary warning on Western military involvement in Georgia - where NATO nations have long played a role in training and equipping the small state - came in an interview with Dmitry Rogozin, a former nationalist politician who is now ambassador to the North Atlantic Alliance. “If NATO suddenly takes military actions against Abkhazia and South Ossetia, acting solely in support of Tbilisi, this will mean a declaration of war on Russia,” he stated. More

Source: Russian News and Information Agency
INSTANBUL/MOSCOW, August 23 (RIA Novosti) - NATO has sent a Polish frigate and a U.S. destroyer through the Bosporus to boost its presence in the Black Sea, where it is delivering humanitarian cargoes to Georgia, a source in the Turkish navy said. “Two more NATO ships passed through the strait and entered the Black Sea on Friday evening,” the source told RIA Novosti. The deputy head of Russia’s General Staff said the Navy was aware that NATO was strengthening its presence in the sea.

“The situation in the Black Sea is escalating. NATO is continuing to build up its naval presence in the area,” Col. Gen. Anatoly Nogovitsyn told reporters Saturday. A Navy officer said Friday that Russia would continue its operations to ensure the security of shipping to and from Georgia’s separatist republic of Abkhazia. “The Black Sea fleet continues to carry out its task of maritime traffic security patrols off the coast of Abkhazia,” Captain Igor Dygalo said.The ORP General Pulaski and the USS McFaul joined two ships from Germany and Spain that entered the sea earlier Friday.

The Turkish navy source expected the NATO presence in the Black Sea to grow to about seven vessels. Nogovitsyn on Friday expressed doubts that NATO vessels needed to be in the Black Sea, and he promised that Russia would respond swiftly to any provocations against its Black Sea Fleet. Tensions between NATO and Russia are high following the recent conflict over Georgia’s breakaway region of South Ossetia.

Russia has informed Norway that it plans to suspend all military ties with NATO, Norway’s Defense Ministry said Wednesday. The report comes a day after NATO foreign ministers said they would make further ties with Russia dependent on Moscow making good on a pledge to pull its troops back to pre-conflict positions in Georgia. However, they stopped short of calling an immediate halt to all cooperation. More

Russia’s envoy to NATO, Dmitry Rogozin, has called off a meeting of the Russia-NATO council due to follow today’s Brussels meeting of the foreign ministers of the 26 members of the alliance to discuss the situation in Georgia. Rogozin also warned of Russia possibly reconsidering its relations with NATO if its members take a biased stand on the Georgia-South Ossetia conflict. He specifically emphasised that if NATO chooses to take such a position, Russia will not be able to maintain the high level and quality of Russia-NATO relations, and the blame for the collapse of the current global security system would fall on Washington and its allies. More

Russia is making it abundantly clear that the US and NATO had both been warned to not push this NATO membership and arming of Georgia. What was the US response? Israel just kept pouring in weapons and preparing the Georgian military (and mercs and advisors) for this war, along with the US. You can bet that is why the KGB (FSB) was in Georgia to see what these greedy Zionist zhids and the US were up to. More

What’s at stake is what former National Security advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski described in his 1997 book “The Grand Chessboard.” He called Eurasia the “center of world power extending from Germany and Poland in the East through Russia and China to the Pacific and including the Middle East and the Indian subcontinent.” He continued: “The most immediate (US) task is to make certain that no state or combination of states gains the capacity to expel the United States from Eurasia or even to diminish significantly its decisive arbitration role.” Dominating that part of the world and its vast energy and other resources is Washington’s goal with NATO and Israel its principal tools to do it: More

US attempts to get Georgia into NATO, coupled with its desire to erect an anti-missile defense shield in Poland and the Czech republic would give it first strike capability towards Russia. Moscow sees this as a national security threat against the sovereignty of Russia. Political economist F William Engdahl believes this is the geopolitical endgame being played out in Georgia. See Video

F_William_Engdahl
The dramatic military attack by the military of the Republic of Georgia on South Ossetia in the last days has brought the world one major step closer to the ultimate horror of the Cold War era—a thermonuclear war between Russia and the United States—by miscalculation. What is playing out in the Caucasus is being reported in US media in an alarmingly misleading light, making Moscow appear the lone aggressor. The question is whether George W. Bush and Dick Cheney are encouraging the unstable Georgian President, Mikhail Saakashvili in order to force the next US President to back the NATO military agenda of the Bush Doctrine. This time Washington may have badly misjudged the possibilities, as it did in Iraq , but this time with possible nuclear consequences.

The underlying issue, as I stressed in my July 11 piece in this space, Georgien, Washington, Moskau: Atomarer geopolitischer Machtpoker, is the fact that since the dissolution of the Warsaw Pact in 1991 one after another former member as well as former states of the USSR have been coaxed and in many cases bribed with false promises by Washington into joining the counter organization, NATO.

Rather than initiate discussions after the 1991 dissolution of the Warsaw Pact about a systematic dissolution of NATO, Washington has systematically converted NATO into what can only be called the military vehicle of an American global imperial rule, linked by a network of military bases from Kosovo to Poland to Turkey to Iraq and Afghanistan. In 1999, former Warsaw Pact members Hungary, Poland and the Czech Republic joined NATO. Bulgaria, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania, and Slovakia followed suit in March 2004. Now Washington is putting immense pressure on the EU members of NATO, especially Germany and France, that they vote in December to admit Georgia and Ukraine.

The specific conflict between Georgia and South Ossetia and Abkhazia has its roots in the following. First, the Southern Ossetes, who until 1990 formed an autonomous region of the Georgian Soviet republic, seek to unite in one state with their co-ethnics in North Ossetia, an autonomous republic of the Russian Soviet republic and now the Russian Federation. There is an historically grounded Ossete fear of violent Georgian nationalism and the experience of Georgian hatred of ethnic minorities under then Georgian leader Zviad Gamsakhurdia, which the Ossetes see again under Georgian President, Mikhel Saakashvili. Saakashvili was brought to power with US financing and US covert regime change activities in December 2003 in what was called the Rose Revolution. Now the thorns of that rose are causing blood to spill.

Abkhazia and South Ossetia—the first a traditional Black Sea resort area, the second an impoverished, sparsely populated region that borders Russia to the north—each has its own language, culture, history. When the Soviet Union collapsed, both regions sought to separate themselves from Georgia in bloody conflicts - South Ossetia in 1990-1, Abkhazia in 1992-4. More

Mark Almond
Devoted to achieving Nato entry for Georgia, Saakashvili has sent troops to Iraq and Afghanistan - and so clearly felt he had American backing. The streets of the Georgian capital are plastered with posters of George W Bush alongside his Georgian protege. George W Bush avenue leads to Tbilisi airport. But he has ignored Kissinger’s dictum: “Great powers don’t commit suicide for their allies.” Perhaps his neoconservative allies in Washington have forgotten it, too. Let’s hope not.

Like Galtieri in 1982, Saakashvili faces a domestic economic crisis and public disillusionment. In the years since the so-called Rose revolution, the cronyism and poverty that characterised the Shevardnadze era have not gone away. Allegations of corruption and favouritism towards his mother’s clan, together with claims of election fraud, led to mass demonstrations against Saakashvili last November. His ruthless security forces - trained, equipped and subsidised by the west - thrashed the protesters. Lashing out at the Georgians’ common enemy in South Ossetia would certainly rally them around the president, at least in the short term. More

The victims, of course, are the civilians of Georgia and its breakaway South Ossetia region, caught in the escalating battle between the Georgian military and South Ossetian separatists and their more powerful Russian backer. Hundreds are alleged to have been killed in two days of heavy fighting that has shown no sign of abating by late Saturday, and thousands more are confronting the resulting humanitarian crisis. But the battle that began to rage in Georgia as world leaders were treated to the pyrotechnics of the Beijing Olympics’ opening ceremony may be the most serious challenge to the post-Cold War balance of power since the collapse of the Soviet Union.

Georgia and South Ossetia have been squared off in an uneasy peace for more than a decade, now, since the region broke away from Georgia in the early ’90s, following its independence from the Soviet Union. After a protracted war that killed around 1,000 people and displaced thousands more ethnic Georgians from the territory, Georgia was compelled to sign a cease-fire agreement that left South Ossetia — a tiny mountainous territory a few football fields smaller than Rhode Island — effectively autonomous, but unable to secure recognition by the international community. Still, Russia has protected the region, providing finance, military protection and even passports, and has used South Ossetia’s secession, together with that of Abkhazia, another breakaway region of Georgia, as leverage against Tblisi’s desire to join NATO. Moscow sees Georgia’s move towards NATO as part of a strategy of hostile encirclement of Russia by Western powers, and when the Western alliance enabled Kosovo’s secession from Serbia earlier this year despite the fact that its independence is not recognized by the United Nations, many analysts expected Russia to retaliate by further stoking the fires of secession in Georgia. More

Dmitry Rogozin, Russia’s ambassador to NATO, stated Saturday that Russia was not at war with Georgia. The official said that there would be no cease-fire until Georgia withdrew its troops from South Ossetia. Rogozin urged NATO not to interfere in the conflict and added that Russia entered S.Ossetia to protect its nationals. “We do not consider ourselves in a state of war. We are just (keeping) the peace and helping our peacekeepers and the civilian population,” he said. Dmitry Rogozin added that Georgia’s President cannot even imagine what it would be like to be at war with Russia. More

Photo azrainman
(Bloomberg) – Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin compared the U.S. to a “frightening monster” and urged France to distance itself from its American ally. “How can one be such a shining example of democracy at home and a frightening monster abroad?” Putin said in an interview with French newspaper Le Monde transmitted live to journalists in Paris yesterday.

Putin, speaking the day after meeting French President Nicolas Sarkozy, said the U.S. was creating “new Berlin Walls” in Europe by pushing the North Atlantic Treaty Organization to expand into ex-Soviet states Georgia and Ukraine.

Under Putin’s eight-year presidency, Russia clashed with the U.S. and the European Union over matters such as NATO expansion and a planned U.S. missile-defense system in eastern Europe. Putin, who has threatened to point missiles at Ukraine should it host missile bases as a NATO member, said expanding the military alliance deeper into former Soviet territory risked a return to Cold War competition. More