Some home truths......

Some home truths....


Blair / Bush overheard conversation at G8 summit ( An Unguarded Moment )

An excerpt from a piece about the arms company: The Carlyle Group

William Conway, managing director and co-founder of the Carlyle Group, was talking recently about the media coverage of his bank and the cast of ex-Presidents and former officials, including George H.W. Bush, James Baker III and Frank Carlucci, on its payroll. "One of the words that has recently cropped up as an adjective around us--and I love this adjective--is the 'secretive' Carlyle Group," he said in an interview in his offices overlooking Pennsylvania Avenue in downtown Washington. "What's the secret? I don't think we have many secrets. The reality is, we're a group of businessmen who have made an enormous amount of money for our investors by making good investments over the past fifteen years."

To give Conway his due, Carlyle has done exceedingly well for the 435 pension funds, banks and investment funds--40 percent from overseas--that have entrusted their money to one of the world's largest private equity funds. Under the leadership of Carlucci, a former CIA deputy director who was Defense Secretary in the Reagan Administration, Carlyle has become the nation's eleventh-largest defense contractor, a major arms exporter to Saudi Arabia and Turkey, one of the biggest foreign investors in South Korea and Taiwan, and a key player in global telecommunications, wireless, real estate and healthcare markets. Since 1987 it has invested $6.4 billion in 233 transactions, with a rate of return of 36 percent on its completed investments. Carlyle currently has $12.5 billion invested.

"Their basic nature is not to be a long-term investor but buy low and sell high," said Philip Finnegan, an analyst with the Teal Group, a Beltway company that tracks the aerospace industry. "They always look for an exit strategy in whatever they buy. They have a sense of the stability of the business because of the accumulated expertise they have."


HOW THE CARLYSLE SYSTEM WORKS

A good analogy to the Carlyle system is a Japanese tradition known as amakudari (literally, "descent from heaven"). Under this system, senior officials from Japanese ministries retire, only to be instantly hired as senior advisers by the companies and industry groups they were paid to regulate. "What we're really talking about is a systematic merging of the private and public sectors to the point where the distinctions get lost," said Chalmers Johnson, president of the Japan Policy Research Institute and author of two acclaimed books on the Japanese system of governance. "The Carlyle Group is a perfect example. It's the use of former government officials for their access to government bureaucracies to determine contractual relations. It's inside knowledge--knowing where the government is going to spend money and then investing in it."
Taken from: Crony Capitalism Goes Global

Another interesting documentary to watch is :Exposed : The Carlyle Group




There is of course another way of explaining the current Israel / Lebanon Standoff :

Hezbollah Finances: Funding the Party of God

Iran: State Sponsorship of Hezbollah

Iran is believed to fund Hezbollah to the tune of at least $100 million per year. Recently, Western diplomats and analysts in Lebanon estimated Hezbollah receives closer to $200 million a year from Iran. (10) The increase is likely due to Iran’s keen interest in undermining prospects for Israeli-Palestinian peace (and, in general, further destabilizing the Israeli-Palestinian conflict), and Hezbollah’s growing role as Iran’s proxy to achieve this goal. Hezbollah success in funding and training Palestinian groups—not just the Iran’s interest in it—may well explain the increase in funding since Iran is known to employ a results-oriented approach to determining the level of funding it is willing to provide terrorist groups. As a U.S. court noted in Weinstein v. Iran, the period of 1995-1996 “was a peak period for Iranian economic support of Hamas because Iran typically paid for results, and Hamas was providing results by committing numerous bus bombings such as the one on February 25, 1996.” (11) Iranian funding to terrorist groups like Hamas and Islamic Jihad (most often funneled via Hezbollah) increases when they carry out successful attacks and decreases when they fail, are thwarted or are postponed due to ceasefires or other political considerations.

Some of this financial support comes in the form of cash funds, while much is believed to come in the form of material goods such as weapons. Iranian cargo planes deliver sophisticated weaponry, from rockets to small arms, to Hezbollah in regular flights to Damascus from Tehran. These weapons are offloaded in Syria and trucked to Hezbollah camps in Lebanon’s Beka’a Valley. In the wake of the death of Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat, Hezbollah reportedly received an additional $22 million from Iranian intelligence to support Palestinian terrorist groups and foment instability. (12)

Iran also funnels money to Hezbollah through purportedly private charities closely affiliated with the revolutionary elite led by Supreme Leader Khomeoni that controls such key Iranian institutions as the intelligence and security services, the judiciary, and the revolutionary council. Mohammed Raad, leader of Hezbollah’s “Loyalty to the Resistance Bloc” in the Lebanese parliament, readily accedes that the group receives funds from Iran, but maintains these are only for “health care, education and support of war widows.” (13)

Beyond this tangible support, however, Iran also provides Hezbollah less quantifiable financial support through the training and logistical operation support it provides the group. Indeed, the most significant modus operandi that runs through all Hezbollah global activities—financial, logistical and operational—is that at some level all Hezbollah networks are overseen by and are in contact with senior Hezbollah and/or Iranian officials.

For example, Hezbollah operatives in Charlotte, North Carolina, responded directly to Sheikh Abbas Haraki, a senior Hezbollah military commander in South Beirut. At the same time, Hezbolllah procurement agents in Canada who coordinated with the Charlotte cell worked directly with Haj Hasan Hilu Laqis, Hezbollah’s chief procurement officer who operates closely with Iranian intelligence. (14)

In Southeast Asia, members of the Hezbollah network behind a failed truck-bombing targeting the Israeli embassy in Bangkok in 1994, as well as a series of other terrorist plots in the region throughout the 1990s, were intimately tied to Iranian intelligence agents. Comprised almost entirely of local sunni Muslims, the network was led by Pandu Yudhawitna who was himself recruited by Iranian intelligence officers stationed in Malaysia in the early 1980s. (15)

Other examples include senior Hezbollah operatives and Iranian agents involved in the 1996 Khobar Towers bombing in Saudi Arabia, in Hezbollah's efforts to smuggle weapons to Palestinian terrorists through Jordan since 2000, in Hezbollah operations in South America (including the 1992 and 1994 bombings), and in the recruitment of Shi’a students in Uganda. (16) Throughout these and many other cases, a key common thread is the direct contact each cell maintains to senior Hezbollah and/or Iranian intelligence operatives.

Perhaps the best documented example of the operational relationship Iran maintains with Hezbollah is Tehran’s role in the Jewish community center (Asociacion Mutual Israelita Argentina , or AMIA) bombing. According to Abdolghassem Mesbahi, a high-level Iranian defector, the decision to bomb the AMIA building was made at a meeting of senior Iranian decision makers on August 14, 1993. (17) The meeting reportedly included the Supreme Leader Ali Hoseini Khamenei, former President Ali Akbar Hashemi, Rafsanjani, former Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Vlayati, the Head of Intelligence and Security in Khamenei’s Bureau, Mohammed Hjazi, former Intelligence Minister Ali Fallahian, and Iranian secret service agent Mohsen Rabbani. (18) According to Argentinean court documents, the Argentinean intelligence service (SIDE) believes that Khameini issued a fatwa concerning AMIA. This fatwa was then handed down from Fallahian to Imad Mughniyeh, the “special operations” chief of Hezbollah. Mughniyeh worked in conjunction with Rabbani, who was able to help orchestrate the plan for the bombing clandestinely under the guise of heading the Iranian Cultural Bureau at the Iranian Embassy in Buenos Aires. (19) Rabbani attempted to buy a Renault-Trafic model van, the same model that was used in the bombing, and is suspected of being involved with several commercial activities through fictitious or undercover enterprises on behalf of Iranian intelligence. (20) Investigators also uncovered records of phone calls between the Iranian embassy in Buenos Aires and suspected Hezbollah operatives in the triborder area who operated out of a mosque and a travel agency there. (21)

According to expert opinions included in the Argentinean court document, it is well known that Hezbollah operatives often receive training in Iran. (22) In addition, Hezbollah prefers outside operatives to local contacts when running its major operations in other countries. These operatives generally are more trustworthy and better trained. (23) The terrorists that conducted the AMIA bombing would have had greater difficulty operating without the operational support of Iran, which reportedly included the bribing of then Argentinean President Carlos Menem with a payment of $10 million dollars to keep Iran’s involvement quiet. (24)

Iran has also supported Hezbollah’s involvement in the Palestinian-Israeli conflict and support of Palestinian militants. U.S. officials contend that, shortly after Palestinian violence erupted in September 2000, Iran assigned Imad Mughniyeh, Hezbollah's international operations commander, to help Palestinian militant groups, specifically Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ). (25) According to a former Clinton administration official, "Mugniyeh got orders from Tehran to work with Hamas." (26) In fact, in the March 27, 2002, "Passover massacre" suicide bombing, Hamas relied on the guidance of a Hezbollah expert to build an extra-potent bomb. (27)

Iran has also demonstrated consistent financial and logistical support of Hezbollah and other terrorist groups by establishing terrorist training programs and camps. As of August 2002, Iran was reported to have financed and established terrorist training camps in the Syrian-controlled Beka'a Valley to train Hezbollah, Hamas, PIJ and PFLP-GC terrorists to use rockets such as the short range Fajr-5 missile and the SA-7 anti-aircraft rocket. (28) The camps, including one in Khuraj near the Syrian border, were reported to be under the command of Iranian Republican Guard Corps (IRGC) General Ali Reza Tamzar, commander of IRGC activity in the Beka'a Valley. (29) According to a "Western intelligence agency" report, which puts the cost of the Iranian program at $50 million, Tamzar's IRGC detachment also trains the Lebanese and Palestinian terrorists to carry out "underwater suicide operations." (30) The Iranian terrorist training program was the result of a secret meeting held in the Tehran suburb of Darjah on June 1, 2002, in advance of a two-day conference in support of the Palestinian Intifada held in Tehran on June 1-2, 2002.

Beyond training and arming Hezbollah, Iran bankrolls the group’s well-oiled propaganda machine as well. Al-Manar is the official television mouthpiece of Hezbollah. Called the “station of resistance”—it serves as Hezbollah’s tool to reach the entire Arab Muslim world to disseminate propaganda and promote terrorist activity.

At the time of al-Manar’s founding in 1991, the station reportedly received seed money from Iran (31) and had a running budget of $1 million. By 2002 its annual budget had grown to approximately $15 million. (32) Middle East analysts and journalists maintain that most of this funding comes from Iran. (33)

Avi Jorisch, author of Beacon of Hatred: Inside Hezbollah’s al-Manar Television, writes that “Iran provides an estimated $100-200 million per year to Hezbollah, which in turn transfers money to al-Manar, making Iranian funding of the station indirect.” (34) This was confirmed by former al-Manar program director Sheikh Nasir al-Akhdar who asserted that al-Manar receives a large portion of its budget through subsidies offered by Hezbollah. (35)

Taken from : Hezbollah Finances : Funding The Party of God





What the politicians want us to forget about:

The Jerusalem Post reported on April 9, 1998 that Iran had purchased four tactical nuclear weapons from Russian smugglers for $25 million in the early 1990s, that the weapons had been obtained from Kazakhstan in 1991, and that Argentine technicians were helping to activate the weapon.

* It quoted what it claimed was an Iranian report, dated December 26, 1991, of a meeting between Brigadier General Rahim Safavi, the Deputy Commander of the Revolutionary Guards and Reza Amrohalli, then head of the Iranian atomic energy organization.
* It also quoted a second document -- dated January 2, 1992 --- saying the Iranians were awaiting the arrival of Russian technicians to show them how to disarm the protection systems that would otherwise inactivate the weapons if anyone attempted to use them.
* The documents implied the weapons were flawed by did not indicate whether Iran had succeeded in activating them.
* The US intelligence community denied any evidence that such a transfer had taken place.

Taken from : The Green Party of Iran Webpage






So At the moment is it a) The Continuation of the Cold War By Russia using third parties (Iran)

or b) is it Merely an Arms Dealer stirring up trouble between different countries to make a fortune for its Pension Funds?


I'm just supplying the facts - What's happening ? THATS FOR YOU TO DECIDE