It seems seems likely that the IP Pipeline will be built, and US drone strikes in Pakistan will end

It seems more and more likely that the natural gas pipeline from the Iranian Pars natural gas field will by completed on time by the end of 1014.  The Pars natural gas field is the largest in the world.

Proposed IP Pipeline

Iranian processing plan on the Persian Gulf

The South Pars field

It also seems more and pore likely that the US drone strikes on Pakistan territory will end, and that the US will not impose throated sanctions on Pakistan for cooperating with Iran on the pipeline.

Imagine a drone over Aina Haina

The news story below also appears in the Wall Street Journal.

From The Associated Press of Pakistan

Latest News

Pakistan to proceed with Iran gas pipeline: Nawaz Sharif NEW YORK, Sept 26 (APP): Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif has said that Pakistan will proceed with a plan to build a gas pipeline from Iran, despite objections from the United States, and that he plans to raise the issue of American drone strikes in his speech to the United Nations General Assembly. In an interview in New York with The Wall Street Journal, Nawaz Sharif  also spelled out the conditions that Pakistani Taliban would have to accept if his government proceeded with a peace deal with the militant group, demanding that they lay down arms and recognize Pakistan’s constitution. At the same time, he voiced fears that continued US drone attacks would wreck his policy to negotiate with the Pakistani Taliban. Nawaz Sharif hoped to use his visit to the U.N. headquarters in New York for a meeting with Manmohan Singh, the prime minister of India. He said he hoped to restart the peace process with India that he had pursued when he was last in office, in the late 1990s. In the interview Wednesday, Nawaz Sharif acknowledged frictions with the US but said he believed that the issues could be overcome. “President Obama was very kind to call me up immediately after my election and express his desire to work with Pakistan. I also want to work with the United States of America,” he said.

The White House said Thursday that President Barack Obama and Nawaz Sharif will meet on October 23 at the White House, part of what officials said was a broader effort to deepen ties.

Pakistan, the newspaper noted,  has said it wants the US to open its markets to Pakistani products, among other things, while the Obama administration has urged Pakistan to do more to police border territory where Afghan Taliban and al Qaeda militants flourish.  Nawaz Sharif met Iranian President Hasan Rouhani on the sidelines of  the UN General Assembly on Tuesday, where the issue of the pipeline was discussed, in a meeting described as warm by the Pakistani side.  “Pakistan needs gas very badly,” said Nawaz Sharif,” was quoted as saying in the Journal. “We have to run our power plants. We need gas for them. There is an acute shortage of gas in Pakistan, so we have to import gas from somewhere.”

An inadequate supply of gas, used to produce electricity, is one of  the main reasons for the crippling shortage of power in Pakistan.

Nawaz Sharif said Pakistan had a contractual obligation to go ahead with the agreement, or face penalties from Iran of $3 million a day if it is not completed by the end of next year. He said that in Islamabad’s legal opinion, the pipeline wouldn’t trigger the sanctions.

He said that Pakistan would proceed “unless you [the US] give us the gas, or the $3 million a day.”

In his speech on Friday at the U.N., Sharif said he planned to say that American drone strikes in his country were illegal, as they breached Pakistan’s territorial sovereignty. He said that weapon was also counterproductive as it was producing more “terrorists.”

“The more the drones, the more the terrorists get multiplied. You kill one man, his sons, his father, his brothers, they become terrorists. So this is something that is not helpful.”

Nawaz Sharif said he was particularly concerned that drone strikes now could derail his offer of peace talks to the Pakistani Taliban, who operate separately from the Afghan Taliban. The militant group has demanded that Islamabad stop the drone strikes before negotiations begin.

“Once the talks start, then of course, we consider them [drones] as something that has the ability to break the talks, which must be avoided at all costs,” he added. Islamabad offered to open dialogue with the Pakistani Taliban following a conference with all the other parliamentary parties earlier this month.

“They will have to renounce terrorism,” said Nawaz Sharif. “They [Pakistani Taliban] will have to abide by the Constitution of Pakistan.”

“It’s been often said by them that they don’t recognize the constitution of the country,” he said. “But the constitution has to be recognized. If we agree on addressing this terrorism, they will have to be disarmed, lay down their arms.”

Oil magnates, Saudi dictators, Syria, and War

The following Guardian article gives comfort to those of us who have maintained that Oil Magnates and Saudi Dictators are at the root of US Middle East wars, including the coming wars in Syria.  

Those who hold a contrary view are respectfully invited to document an alternative view.

Durell

Syria intervention plan fueled by oil interests, not chemical weapon concern

Massacres of civilians are being exploited for narrow geopolitical competition to control Mideast oil, gas pipelines

U.N. chemical weapons experts visit people affected by an apparent gas attack, at a hospital in the southwestern Damascus suburb of Mouadamiya. Photograph: Stringer/Reuters

On 21 August, hundreds - perhaps over a thousand - people were killed in a chemical weapon attack in Ghouta, Damascus, prompting the US, UK, Israel and France to raise the spectre of military strikes against Bashir al Assad's forces.

The latest episode is merely one more horrific event in a conflict that has increasingly taken on genocidal characteristics. The case for action at first glance is indisputable. The UN now confirms a death toll over 100,000 people, the vast majority of whom have been killed by Assad's troops. An estimated 4.5 million people have been displaced from their homes. International observers have overwhelmingly confirmed Assad's complicity in the preponderance of war crimes and crimes against humanity against the Syrian people. The illegitimacy of his regime, and the legitimacy of the uprising, is clear.

Experts are unanimous that the shocking footage of civilians, including children, suffering the effects of some sort of chemical attack, is real - but remain divided on whether it involved military-grade chemical weapons associated with Assad's arsenal, or were a more amateur concoction potentially linked to the rebels.

Whatever the case, few recall that US agitation against Syria began long before recent atrocities, in the context of wider operations targeting Iranian influence across the Middle East.

In May 2007, a presidential finding revealed that Bush had authorised CIA operations against Iran. Anti-Syria operations were also in full swing around this time as part of this covert programme, according to Seymour Hersh in the New Yorker. A range of US government and intelligence sources told him that the Bush administration had "cooperated with Saudi Arabia's government, which is Sunni, in clandestine operations" intended to weaken the Shi'ite Hezbollah in Lebanon. "The US has also taken part in clandestine operations aimed at Iran and its ally Syria," wrote Hersh, "a byproduct" of which is "the bolstering of Sunni extremist groups" hostile to the United States and "sympathetic to al-Qaeda." He noted that "the Saudi government, with Washington's approval, would provide funds and logistical aid to weaken the government of President Bashir Assad, of Syria," with a view to pressure him to be "more conciliatory and open to negotiations" with Israel. One faction receiving covert US "political and financial support" through the Saudis was the exiled Syrian Muslim Brotherhood.

According to former French foreign minister Roland Dumas, Britain had planned covert action in Syria as early as 2009: "I was in England two years before the violence in Syria on other business", he told French television:

"I met with top British officials, who confessed to me that they were preparing something in Syria. This was in Britain not in America. Britain was preparing gunmen to invade Syria."

The 2011 uprisings, it would seem - triggered by a confluence of domestic energy shortages and climate-induced droughts which led to massive food price hikes - came at an opportune moment that was quickly exploited. Leaked emails from the private intelligence firm Stratfor including notes from a meeting with Pentagon officials confirmed US-UK training of Syrian opposition forces since 2011 aimed at eliciting "collapse" of Assad's regime "from within."

So what was this unfolding strategy to undermine Syria and Iran all about? According to retired NATO Secretary General Wesley Clark, a memo from the Office of the US Secretary of Defense just a few weeks after 9/11 revealed plans to "attack and destroy the governments in 7 countries in five years", starting with Iraq and moving on to "Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and Iran." In a subsequent interview, Clark argues that this strategy is fundamentally about control of the region's vast oil and gas resources.

Much of the strategy currently at play was candidly described in a 2008 US Army-funded RAND report, Unfolding the Future of the Long War (pdf). The report noted that "the economies of the industrialized states will continue to rely heavily on oil, thus making it a strategically important resource." As most oil will be produced in the Middle East, the US has "motive for maintaining stability in and good relations with Middle Eastern states":

"The geographic area of proven oil reserves coincides with the power base of much of the Salafi-jihadist network. This creates a linkage between oil supplies and the long war that is not easily broken or simply characterized... For the foreseeable future, world oil production growth and total output will be dominated by Persian Gulf resources... The region will therefore remain a strategic priority, and this priority will interact strongly with that of prosecuting the long war."

In this context, the report identified several potential trajectories for regional policy focused on protecting access to Gulf oil supplies, among which the following are most salient:

"Divide and Rule focuses on exploiting fault lines between the various Salafi-jihadist groups to turn them against each other and dissipate their energy on internal conflicts. This strategy relies heavily on covert action, information operations (IO), unconventional warfare, and support to indigenous security forces... the United States and its local allies could use the nationalist jihadists to launch proxy IO campaigns to discredit the transnational jihadists in the eyes of the local populace... US leaders could also choose to capitalize on the 'Sustained Shia-Sunni Conflict' trajectory by taking the side of the conservative Sunni regimes against Shiite empowerment movements in the Muslim world.... possibly supporting authoritative Sunni governments against a continuingly hostile Iran."

Exploring different scenarios for this trajectory, the report speculated that the US may concentrate "on shoring up the traditional Sunni regimes in Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and Pakistan as a way of containing Iranian power and influence in the Middle East and Persian Gulf." Noting that this could actually empower al-Qaeda jihadists, the report concluded that doing so might work in western interests by bogging down jihadi activity with internal sectarian rivalry rather than targeting the US:

"One of the oddities of this long war trajectory is that it may actually reduce the al-Qaeda threat to US interests in the short term. The upsurge in Shia identity and confidence seen here would certainly cause serious concern in the Salafi-jihadist community in the Muslim world, including the senior leadership of al-Qaeda. As a result, it is very likely that al-Qaeda might focus its efforts on targeting Iranian interests throughout the Middle East and Persian Gulf while simultaneously cutting back on anti-American and anti-Western operations."

The RAND document contextualised this disturbing strategy with surprisingly prescient recognition of the increasing vulnerability of the US's key allies and enemies - Saudi Arabia, the Gulf states, Egypt, Syria, Iran - to a range of converging crises: rapidly rising populations, a 'youth bulge', internal economic inequalities, political frustrations, sectarian tensions, and environmentally-linked water shortages, all of which could destabilise these countries from within or exacerbate inter-state conflicts.

The report noted especially that Syria is among several "downstream countries that are becoming increasingly water scarce as their populations grow", increasing a risk of conflict. Thus, although the RAND document fell far short of recognising the prospect of an 'Arab Spring', it illustrates that three years before the 2011 uprisings, US defence officials were alive to the region's growing instabilities, and concerned by the potential consequences for stability of Gulf oil.

These strategic concerns, motivated by fear of expanding Iranian influence, impacted Syria primarily in relation to pipeline geopolitics. In 2009 - the same year former French foreign minister Dumas alleges the British began planning operations in Syria - Assad refused to sign a proposed agreement with Qatar that would run a pipeline from the latter's North field, contiguous with Iran's South Pars field, through Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Syria and on to Turkey, with a view to supply European markets - albeit crucially bypassing Russia. Assad's rationale was "to protect the interests of [his] Russian ally, which is Europe's top supplier of natural gas."

Instead, the following year, Assad pursued negotiations for an alternative $10 billion pipeline plan with Iran, across Iraq to Syria, that would also potentially allow Iran to supply gas to Europe from its South Pars field shared with Qatar. The Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) for the project was signed in July 2012 - just as Syria's civil war was spreading to Damascus and Aleppo - and earlier this year Iraq signed a framework agreement for construction of the gas pipelines.

The Iran-Iraq-Syria pipeline plan was a "direct slap in the face" to Qatar's plans. No wonder Saudi Prince Bandar bin Sultan, in a failed attempt to bribe Russia to switch sides, told President Vladmir Putin that "whatever regime comes after" Assad, it will be "completely" in Saudi Arabia's hands and will "not sign any agreement allowing any Gulf country to transport its gas across Syria to Europe and compete with Russian gas exports", according to diplomatic sources. When Putin refused, the Prince vowed military action.

It would seem that contradictory self-serving Saudi and Qatari oil interests are pulling the strings of an equally self-serving oil-focused US policy in Syria, if not the wider region. It is this - the problem of establishing a pliable opposition which the US and its oil allies feel confident will play ball, pipeline-style, in a post-Assad Syria - that will determine the nature of any prospective intervention: not concern for Syrian life.

What is beyond doubt is that Assad is a war criminal whose government deserves to be overthrown. The question is by whom, and for what interests?

Dr Nafeez Ahmed is executive director of the Institute for Policy Research & Development and author of A User's Guide to the Crisis of Civilisation: And How to Save It among other books. Follow him on Twitter @nafeezahmed

A more detailed in-depth special report based on this article is available at the author's website here.

Make solitary confinement rare, humane, and subject to judicial review

State and federal prison officials and the private citizens who run public prisons for a profit continue to lock men up in tiny, concrete or steel cells, 23 hours a day, for an indefinite period:  that is, you can’t say how many days or weeks or months or years you will be so closely confined with no human contact, and can’t find out.  You could be freed in the ext hour; you may have to wait until death trumps government’s power over you.  Every approaching footstep may bring a reprieve; every departing footstep dashes hope.  Maddening.  Literally maddening.  And this is not the most degrading, maddening thing about solitary confinement.

California’s Pelican Bay solitary confinement cell and exercise yard

The United Sates uses solitary confinement more than any other democracy:  American exceptionalism at its worst.  The U.S. currently holds more than 60,000 in isolation for indefinite periods.

The  punishment is cruel and unusual.  The technical problem is that a mentally-defective U.S. Supreme Court majority, a majority that lacks a normal sense of human decency, has decided that solitary confinement for arbitrary periods is not “punishment" but an administrative process for which there is no judicial review nor Constitutional protection.

The use of solitary confinement can be ended by prison officials, by governors, by President Obama, by act of state legislators and state governors, and by an act of congress.

Please telephone and email Senator Brian Schatz (1-202-224-3934; brian_schatz@schatz.senate.gov) and telephone Senator Mazie Hirono (1-202-224-636), whose staff prefers phone calls, asking them to introduce legislation to make solitary confinement rare, humane, and subject to immediate judicial review.  Senator Hirono is a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee’s Subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights and Human Rights, which would have jurisdiction over any bill.   Ask the senators to make the same request directly to the president.

If you live outside Hawaii where we have reasonable Members of Congress, and also have a reasonable U S. senator, make the same phone call and send the same email to her or him.

July 16, 2013 The New York Times 

When Prisoners ProtestBy WILBERT RIDEAU 

THERE aren’t many protests in prison. In a world where authorities exercise absolute power and demand abject obedience, prisoners are almost always going to be on the losing side, and they know it. 

The typical inmate doesn’t want trouble. He has little to gain and too much to lose: his job, his visits, his recreation time, his phone privileges, his right to buy tuna, ramen and stale bread at inflated prices in the commissary. The ways even a bystander to the most peaceful protest can be punished are limited only by the imagination of the authorities. Besides, logistics are difficult: men from cellblock X can’t just stroll down to see the inmates in cellblock Y. Strategizing must be done furtively, usually through intermediaries, any one of whom might snitch. 

And yet, sometimes things get so bad that prisoners feel compelled to protest, with work stoppages, riots or hunger strikes. On July 8, some 30,000 inmates in the custody of the California Department of Corrections went on a hunger strike to demand improvements in prison conditions. Their biggest complaint was the runaway use of solitary confinement, the fact that thousands of prisoners are consigned to this cruelty indefinitely, some for decades. 

I know something about solitary confinement, because I’ve been there. I spent a total of 12 years in various solitary confinement cells. And I can tell you that isolating a human being for years in a barren cell the size of a small bathroom is the cruelest thing you can do to a person. 

Deprived of all human contact, you lose your feeling of connectedness to the world. You lose your ability to make small talk, even with the guard who shoves your meal through the slot in the door. You live entirely in your head, for there is nothing else. You talk to yourself, answer yourself. You become paranoid, depressed, sleepless. To ward off madness, you must give your mind something to do. In 1970, I counted the 358 rivets that held my steel cell together, over and over. Every time the walls seemed to be closing in on me, I counted them again, to give my mind something to fasten on to. 

There are men like Thomas Silverstein, in the federal prison system, who has been in solitary 30 years, and Albert Woodfox and Herman Wallace, who have been in Louisiana cells for some 40 years each. These men become examples of abuse of power and sometimes a rallying point for their fellow prisoners, who know they could one day face the same fate. 

The prison protests in California are on an unprecedented scale; amazingly, they involved, at their peak, about two-thirds of the state’s penal facilities. At the beginning of this week, more than 2,500 inmates were still refusing food. 

If prison authorities do not understand why thousands of inmates not directly affected by solitary confinement would join the protests, at great risk to themselves, they have only themselves to blame. They are victims of their own censorship. 

If they were to listen to the inmates, they would understand that protests are almost always the product of what prisoners perceive to be officials’ abuse of arbitrary power. They are generally done by men made desperate by the lack of options to address their grievances. At the heart of the problem is a lack of open communications and freedom of expression. 

As a practical matter this is easy to resolve: institute mechanisms for authorities to meet regularly with inmates to discuss their problems without fear of reprisal. But this goes against entrenched attitudes, and too many officials see it as a surrender of their authority. 

Too bad, because making responsible inmates partners in managing prison problems has worked extremely well in the Louisiana State Penitentiary, where the warden and sub-wardens have, for decades, regularly met with inmate leaders to discuss problems. It has gone from being one of the bloodiest to one of the safest maximum security prisons in America. 

And if prison officials actually listened to inmates, they would find that their demands are often reasonable. It goes without saying that some inmates must be isolated for security reasons. And the California protesters acknowledge as much. They don’t demand a total end to the use of solitary confinement, but only reasonable limits to who is locked up and for how long, as well as some simple improvements like more educational and rehabilitative programming for those in solitary. 

Why should you be concerned about the inhumane conditions of prolonged solitary confinement, with all the social, emotional and mental deterioration that it entails? Well, every year men from California’s Pelican Bay and other supermax prisons around the nation are released directly from the vacuum of their cells into free society, to live and work among you and your loved ones. As a matter of self-preservation, maybe we should all join the prisoners’ request for rehabilitative opportunities that will improve the mental health of those in solitary. 

Wilbert Rideau, who served nearly 44 years for manslaughter, mostly at the Louisiana State Penitentiary, is a journalist and the author of the memoir “In the Place of Justice: A Story of Punishment and Deliverance.”