I am watching the first snow of the season fall as I’m typing this quick update for this past week. There’s so much to write about, and so many important articles and links to provide: Obama’s speech, the new administration continues its assault on transparency and liberties just like the old one, our ever failing foreign policy…and more. However, as always, I’m short in time and not able to cover them all. My part IV on the Makings of a Police State has been taking a backseat every week. It is almost done, but every time I make a resolution to sit down and just finish it, something comes up and gets in the way. This week it ended up being the infamous speech. I know thousands and thousands of people, websites, are covering it, but somehow I am not able to find among them the very few macro conclusions I see. I don’t mean to imply that I expect to see my exact points and conclusions when it comes to political issues like this one, or that my points are the right ones, however, knowing that I am not the only one seeing that the same cycle keeps repeating itself over and over, reading conclusions after conclusions showing up like carbon copies everywhere…well, I guess you get the point. Right?

I’ll start with the announcement of two great additions to our team here at Boiling Frogs Post:

Pepe Escobar & John Stanton Join Boiling Frogs Post

Author and investigative journalist Pepe Escobar is now a member of our investigative news and analysis team. Many of you know Pepe and his great work, whether on Afghanistan and Central Asia, or his muckraking of the Obama presidency and its lack of change on issues and policies that really matter. Some of you know his work through citations and references in my previous writings and updates, and a few of you know that I’ve been a big fan and a follower of his work. Please welcome Pepe Escobar – here is his bio:

Pepe Escobar, born in Brazil, is a roving correspondent for Asia Times and an analyst for The Real News Network.  He is an investigative journalist with three decades of experience in covering politics and conflicts around the globe. He has been a foreign correspondent since 1985, based in London, Milan, Los Angeles, Paris, Singapore, and Bangkok. Since the late 1990s he has specialized in covering stories from the Middle East to Central Asia, including the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. He was in Afghanistan and interviewed the military leader of the anti-Taliban Northern Alliance, Ahmad Shah Masoud, a couple of weeks before his assassination. Mr. Escobar has made frequent visits to Iran and is the author of three must-read books: Globalistan: How the Globalized World is Dissolving into Liquid War, Red Zone Blues: A Snapshot of Baghdad During the Surge, and Obama Does Globalistan.

When you get a chance read the latest by Pepe on Obama’s speech published by Asia Times: Vietnam-Lite Unveiled.

Author, analyst, and a good friend of mine, John Stanton, has joined our contributors, and will be writing on the military industrial complex and oil related revolving doors, foreign lobbies, US Deep State, and Central Asia, under his moniker Dr. Strangelovian. I’ve known John for several years, and I’m truly honored to have him join us and  to present his effective and original analyses here at Boiling Frogs. Here is John’s Bio:

John Stanton is an author and journalist covering the national security arena. He was a senior editor of American Politics Magazine, and has provided national security and political analysis for CBS Evening News, CNN, ABC, and CNN. Mr. Stanton’s commentaries have appeared on Washington Post’s Foreign Policy Magazine, the National, History News Network, NPR, and other media outlets worldwide. He is the author of four books of essays including: Talking Politics with God & the Devil in Washington, DC  and A Power But Not Super. His latest book is titled Inside the US Army Human Terrain System available here. He received his Masters in Political Science with minors in Economics & International Affairs from the University of Detroit Mercy.

Anti-War & Anti-Surge Rally in Washington DC

End US Wars, a new coalition of antiwar organizations, peace and justice advocates, and citizens of conscience are planning a major rally in Washington DC on Saturday, December 12. Here is an excerpt of their statement of purpose from their website:

“We call for active, non-violent non-cooperation with US war policy. As we vigorously oppose a military escalation in Afghanistan, we encourage mass political mobilization and high-profile antiwar.”

I quickly checked their list of member organizations and coalitions which is still expanding. I am not a member of any of those groups, but if it is anti-war, non-violent, and non-partisan, it is good for me. I plan to be there and add my voice. In fact, if the weather is cooperative I will take my 16-mo old daughter and make it her first political rally. We have said it many times over here at Boiling Frogs: ‘It ain’t enough to just sit, yak yak yak, and write and blog; we need to take it further; we need to take action(s).’ So I encourage you to participate if you stand against these wars and what’s being committed in your name.

Again here is their website:  http://www.enduswars.org/

Neocons’ Man Chalabi Cozying up to Obama?

I came across this article yesterday. It is still too early to evaluate the depth and implications, but it is certainly worth putting on our radar and watching closely:

Mr. Chalabi, who cultivated neoconservatives and the George W. Bush administration when he was an exile drumming up support against Saddam Hussein, told The Washington Times that he is a big fan of Mr. Obama.

Mr. Chalabi said he would have voted for Mr. Obama in the 2008 presidential election and that his longtime aide, Francis Brooke, who lives in Washington, did.

Security contractors, in coordination with the U.S. military, arrested a close aide to Mr. Chalabi in August 2008. At the time, Mr. Chalabi was suspected of aiding Iranian-backed militias known as “special groups.” Mr. Chalabi denies the charge but makes no secret of his political group’s ties to Iran and that country’s influential Revolutionary Guards.

“We never hid our relationship with the Iranians,” he said. He added that Secretary of State Colin L. Powell was “very [angry] about us having this office in Tehran” before the war. But he said the State Department was paying for the office. “They knew they were funding it. We got an [Office of Foreign Assets Control] exemption; it was not a secret.”

You can read the entire article here. You may want to check out Francis Brooke, Mr. Chalabi’s longtime aide, and see if he’s been receiving any special contracts or Whitehouse invitations…You never know when it comes to our new President; he could have made another change on one of his changes…

Vanity Fair Article: BlackWater Chief & CIA Asset Erik Prince

Considering the level of publicity on Blackwater (Xe) lately and how it’s been collectively declared to be safe and kosher to be treated as a media commodity, that is, after years of damage it inflicted, I suspect many of you have already read the article. In a way, Vanity Fair way that is, it is entertaining, easy to read, in a pretty much staged, simplified, and then staged again way.

Here is an excerpt from the intro:

Erik Prince, recently outed as a participant in a C.I.A. assassination program, has gained notoriety as head of the military-contracting juggernaut Blackwater, a company dogged by a grand-jury investigation, bribery accusations, and the voluntary-manslaughter trial of five ex-employees, set for next month. Lashing back at his critics, the wealthy former navy seal takes the author inside his operation in the U.S. and Afghanistan, revealing the role he’s been playing in America’s war on terror.
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Here is what’s supposed to be the explosive part (I guess for the majority who watch ‘Dancing with the Stars’ it is):

Prince, according to sources with knowledge of his activities, has been working as a C.I.A. asset: in a word, as a spy. While his company was busy gleaning more than $1.5 billion in government contracts between 2001 and 2009—by acting, among other things, as an overseas Praetorian guard for C.I.A. and State Department officials—Prince became a Mr. Fix-It in the war on terror. His access to paramilitary forces, weapons, and aircraft, and his indefatigable ambition—the very attributes that have galvanized his critics—also made him extremely valuable, some say, to U.S. intelligence.

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And here is what I found interesting to be questioned…but of course no question follows:

And up until two months ago [Emphasis Added]—when Prince says the Obama administration pulled the plug—he was still deeply engaged in the dark arts. According to insiders, he was running intelligence-gathering operations from a secret location in the United States, remotely coordinating the movements of spies working undercover in one of the so-called Axis of Evil countries. Their mission: non-disclosable.
…

So, I’m going to go ahead and ask it: Until two months ago? Hmmmm. Doesn’t that make it more or less 9 months of operations sanctioned, granted, paid for, and endorsed by the new administration? Or is it that they don’t count Xe as Blackwater?

Coming Soon…

My reaction to the reaction to Obama’s speech …

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