The private military contractor Blackwater Worldwide has frequently been embroiled in controversy for its activities in Iraq and elsewhere. Last fall, the Iraqi government attempted to revoke Blackwater’s license to work in that country after contractors opened fire at a Baghdad intersection, killing eight civilians.
In an interview with the Associated Press on Monday, Blackwater’s president, Gary Jackson, announced that the firm has already reduced its security contracting and expects to get out of that business almost entirely.
Defense Secretary Robert Gates has also raised questions about the use of private contractors to provide training for US forces, asking, “are we comfortable with this practice, and do we fully understand the implications in terms of quality, responsiveness and sustainability?”
However Blackwater founder and CEO Eric Prince doesn’t believe the US government can do without him. In a drive around Blackwater’s training center in Moyock, NC, Prince acknowledged that “we take a lot of grief for the work we’ve done,” but he also boasted to the Associated Press about his firm’s operations, including “the guys that fly into rough, unimproved strips to do tactical airlift support.”
“You know, we did 11,000 missions last year in Afghanistan,” Prince said. “Our total invoice … was less than the air force is spending on one C-27 aircraft. … It’s a benefit to the US government to go to the outside to do that mission.”
Prince does recognize that his firm’s focus will have to change. “The security business is what it is,” he opined. “I don’t see that growing a lot. I mean, Iraq is getting progressively better. … The experience we’ve had would certainly be a disincentive to any other companies that want to step in and put their entire business at risk.”
However, Prince foresees that “whoever takes over in January, whatever party, the US government is still going to need a lot of this kind of work done. Companies like us are going to be necessary to do the work.” He also noted that “at our core, we’ve always been trainers, and that will continue.”
This video is from The Associated Press, broadcast July 21, 2008.
“There is no longer any doubt as to whether the current administration has committed war crimes. The only question that remains to be answered is whether those who ordered the use of torture will be held to account.”
Should those who ordered war crimes be held to account? With the conclusion of the Bush regime approaching, many people are dubious, even those horrified by Administration actions. They fear a long, divisive ordeal that could tear the country apart. They note that such division could make it far harder for the country to address the many other crises it is facing. They see the upcoming elections as a better way to set the country on a new path.
Many Democrats in particular are proposing to let bygones be bygones and move on to confront the problems of the future, rather than dwelling on the past. The Democratic leadership sees rising gas prices, foreclosures, and health care costs, as well as widespread dissatisfaction with the direction of the country, as playing in their favor. Why risk it all by playing the war crimes blame game? Perhaps some Democratic leaders are also concerned that their own role in enabling or even encouraging war crimes might be exposed.
Meanwhile, the evidence confirming not only a deliberate policy of torture, but of conspiring in an illegal war of aggression and conducting a criminal occupation, continues to pile ever higher. Bush’s own press secretary Scott McClelland has revealed in his book, What Happened, how deliberately the public was misled to foment the attack on Iraq. Philippe Sands’ new book, Torture Team, has shown how the top legal and political leadership fought for a policy of torture–circumventing and misleading top military officials to do so. Jane Mayer’s The Dark Side, reveals that a secret report by the Red Cross–given to the CIA and shared with President Bush and Condoleezza Rice–found that US interrogation methods are “categorically” torture and that the “abuse constituted war crimes, placing the highest officials in the US government in jeopardy of being prosecuted.”
Despite the reluctance to open what many see as a can of worms, there are fresh moves on many fronts to hold top US officials accountable for war crimes.
Courts: US courts have issued a barrage of decisions against the Administration’s claim that they can do anything and still be within the law. The Supreme Court ruled June 12 that the Administration cannot deny habeas corpus rights to Guantánamo detainees. The DC Circuit Court of Appeals on June 30 overturned the Pentagon’s enemy combatant designation of a Chinese Muslim held in Guantánamo for the last six years. A Maine jury in April acquitted the Bangor Six of criminal trespass charges stemming from protesters’ claim that the “Constitution was being violated by the Bush Administration’s involvement in Iraq.”
Congressional investigation: Rep. John Conyers has recently brought top policy-makers, including former Deputy Assistant Attorney General John Yoo, Vice President Cheney’s Chief of Staff David Addington, and this week former Undersecretary of Defense Douglas Feith and former Attorney General John Ashcroft before a House Judiciary subcommittee and grilled them on their role crafting the Administration’s torture policy.
Senate hearings in June revealed that treatment of Guantánamo captives was modeled on techniques allegedly used by Communist China to force false confessions from US soldiers.
Impeachment: Despite Majority Leader Nancy Pelosi’s instruction to keep impeachment “off the table,” Rep. Dennis Kucinich for the first time brought an impeachment resolution to the House floor that incorporated a devastating, thirty-five article indictment spelling out Bush Administration war crimes and crimes against the Constitution. Now Rep. Conyers has announced that the Judiciary Committee will hold hearings on the charges July 25. Even after the Bush Administration leaves office, the judges it appointed who appear complicit in war crimes–notably torture policy architect Judge Jay S. Bybee–could still be impeached.
Truth commission: In response to General Taguba’s accusations, New York Times Op-Ed columnist Nicholas D. Kristof has just called for the establishment of a truth commission–like that of post-Apartheid South Africa–with subpoena power to investigate the abuses in the aftermath of 9/11 and “lead a process of soul searching and national cleansing.”
International: In May, Vanity Fair magazine published an article by British human rights attorney Philippe Sands, in which he described the reasons Administration lawyers face a real risk of criminal investigations if they stray beyond US borders. The British parliament is about to launch an investigation of Washington’s lying to the British government about its use of its facilities for “extraordinary rendition.” Constitutional lawyer Jonathan Turley recently said, “I think it might in fact be time for the United States to be held internationally to a tribunal. I never thought in my lifetime I would say that.” Colin Powell’s former chief of staff Lawrence Wilkerson publicly advised Feith, Addington, And Albert Gonzales “never to travel outside the U.S., except perhaps to Saudi Arabia and Israel.”
Prosecution: According to a recent Mellman Group survey commissioned by the American Civil Liberties Union, Americans of all political stripes overwhelmingly support the appointment of an independent prosecutor to investigate both the destruction of the CIA’s interrogation tapes and the possible use of torture by the agency. Every segment of the electorate–including majorities of Democrats (82 percent), independents (62 percent), and Republicans (51 percent) — want to hold this administration accountable for its role in the destruction of the torture tapes.
Vincent Bugliosi, the former Los Angeles County Prosecutor who has won twenty-one convictions in murder trials, including Charles Manson’s, has just published The Prosecution of George W. Bush for Murder, which argues that there is overwhelming evidence President Bush took the nation to war in Iraq under false pretenses and must be prosecuted for the consequent deaths of over 4,000 US soldiers.
Dean Lawrence Velvel of the Massachusetts School of Law at Andover is planning a September conference to map out war crimes prosecutions against President Bush and other administration officials. Velvel says that “plans will be laid and necessary organizational structures set up, to pursue the guilty as long as necessary and, if need be, to the ends of the Earth.” Reps. John Conyers, Jerrold Nadler, and Bill Delahunt have called on Attorney General Michael Mukasey to appoint a special counsel to investigate the rendition of Canadian citizen Maher Arar to Syria.
Citizen action: Voters in Brattleboro and Marlboro, Vermont this spring approved a measure that instructs police to arrest President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney for “crimes against our Constitution,” should they venture into those precincts.
All these developments suggest approaches that might be used to hold Bush Administration war criminals accountable. Establishing accountability for US war crimes in the Iraq war era is the sine qua non for initiating a new era on different principles. Here are nine reasons why we must not let bygones be bygones:
1. World peace cannot be achieved without human rights and accountability.
According to Supreme Court Justice Robert Jackson, chief American prosecutor at the Nuremberg Tribunals, “The ultimate step in avoiding periodic wars, which are inevitable in a system of international lawlessness, is to make statesmen responsible to law.” Moving in that direction will be impossible unless such responsibility applies to the statesmen of the world’s most powerful countries, and above all the world’s sole superpower. US support for the war crimes charges like those just brought by the prosecutor of the International Criminal Court against Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir will represent little more than hypocrisy if US Presidents are not held to the same standard.
2. The rule of law is central to our democracy.
Most Americans believe that even the highest officials are bound by law. If we send mentally-disabled juveniles to prison as adults, but let government officials who authorize torture and launch illegal wars go scot-free, we destroy the very basis of the rule of law.
3. We must not allow precedents to be set that promote war crimes.
Executive action unchallenged by Congress changes the way our law is interpreted. According to Robert Borosage, writing for Huffington Post, “If Bush’s extreme assertions of power are not challenged by the Congress, they end up not simply creating new law, they could end up rewriting the Constitution itself.”
4. We must restore the principles of democracy to our government.
The claim that the President, as commander-in-chief, can exercise the unlimited powers of a king or dictator strikes at the very heart of our democracy. As Supreme Court Justice Robert Jackson put it, we, as citizens, would “submit ourselves to rules only if under rules.” Countries like Chile can attest that the restoration of democracy and the rule of law requires more than voting a new party into office–it requires a rejection of impunity for the criminal acts of government officials.
5. We must forestall an imperialist resurgence.
When they are out of office, the advocates of imperial expansion and global domination have proven brilliant at lying in wait to undermine and destroy their opponents.
They did it to destroy the presidencies of Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton. They’ll do it again to an Obama Administration unless their machinations are exposed and discredited first.
6. We must have national consensus on the real reasons for the Bush Administration’s failures.
Republicans are preparing to dominate future decades of American politics by blaming the failure of the Iraq war on those who “sent a signal” that the US would not “stay the course” whatever the cost. Establishing the real reasons for the failure of the US in Iraq–the criminal and anti-democratic character of the war–is the necessary condition for defeating that effort.
7. We must restore America’s damaged reputation abroad.
The world has watched as the United States–the self-proclaimed steward of democracy–has systematically broken the letter and spirit of its Constitution, violated international treaties, and ignored basic moral tenets of humanity. As former Navy General Counsel Alberto Mora recently pointed out to the Senate Armed Services Committee, our nation’s “policy of cruelty” has violated our “overarching foreign policy interests and our national security.” To establish international legitimacy, we must demonstrate that we are capable of holding our leaders to account.
8. We must lay the basis for major change in US foreign policy.
Real security in the era of global warming and nuclear proliferation must be based on international cooperation. But genuine cooperation requires that the US entirely repudiate the course of the past eight years. The American people must understand why international cooperation rather than pursuit of global domination is necessary to their own security. And other countries must be convinced that we really mean it.
9. We must deter future US war crimes.
The specter of more war crimes haunts our future. Rumors continue to circulate about an American or American-backed Israeli attack on Iran. A recently introduced House resolution promoted by AIPAC “demands” that the President initiate what is effectively a blockade against Iran–an act seen by some as tantamount to a declaration of war. Nothing could provide a greater deterrent to such future war crimes than establishing accountability for those of the past.
Holding war criminals accountable will require placing the long-term well-being of our country and the world ahead of short-term political advantage. As Rep. Wexler put it, “We owe it to the American people and history to pursue the wrongdoing of this Administration whether or not it helps us politically or in the next election. Our actions will properly define the Bush Administration in the eyes of history and that is the true test.”
A congressional investigation has found that US Vice President Dick Cheney’s office backed efforts by ExxonMobil and other oil industry players to scupper support among several top Bush Administration officials for using the US’s Clean Air Act to limit greenhouse gas emissions.
The report released by Congress’s Select Committee on Energy Independent and Global Warming on Friday, found that several top officials in the White House backed an Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) finding that carbon emissions from cars, power plants and refineries endangered public health and should be regulated under the Act.
The White House officials backing the finding included Deputy Chief of Staff Joel Kaplan, Susan Dudley of the Office of Management and Budget and James Connaughton, chief of the Council on Environmental Quality, the report said.
The Congressional committee, headed by Massachusetts Democrat Congressman Edward Markey, is investigating the Bush administration’s response to the US Supreme Court finding last year that the EPA does have the authority to regulate greenhouse gas emissions under the Clear Air Act.
In the report released last week, it accused the Bush Administration of “doing the bidding” of ExxonMobil and the oil industry.
It found that, following the Supreme Court decision, a plan was approved by EPA Administrator Stephen Johnson which recognised the threat posed by greenhouse gas and proposed regulating vehicle and industrial emissions. The plan had the backing of several Cabinet members and government officers including the office of the US President George W. Bush’s Chief of Staff, the report said.
However, between December 2007 and early 2008, the Chief of Staff’s office changes its position and abandoned the proposals “in response to heavy lobbying from oil industry representatives and at least one senior adviser to Vice President Dick Cheney, all of whom argued that regulations to reduce greenhouse gas emissions would tarnish the President’s anti-regulatory legacy and therefore should be best left to the next President,” the report said.
The report found that the EPA plan was actively opposed by ExxonMobil, the American Petroleum Institute and the National Petrochemicals and Refiners Association, with the support of Cheney adviser Chase Hutto. It found that the oil industry arguments began to prevail in discussion on how the administration should respond to the Supreme Court finding.
By April 2008 , the report said, Bush was able to announce in a speech that ““the Clean Air Act, the Endangered Species Act, and the National Environmental Policy Act were never meant to regulate global climate change”, and insist that tackling greenhouse gas emissions was the task of Congress.
The EPA announced earlier this month that it would not regulate greenhouse gas emissions from vehicles, refineries or industrial plants directly.
Cheney spokeswoman Megan Mitchell denied the report’s finding that the vice president’s office had a role in backing the oil industry’s opposition to the EPA plan. “Frankly, that’s ridiculous,” she told the Los Angeles Times yesterday.
Meanwhile, Congressman Markey, who headed the investigation, said in a statement: “The fact that they can, with near unanimity, completely switch positions on global warming to please the oil industry is shocking, and yet disappointingly predictable.”
ANCHORAGE, Alaska (Reuters) - Think you’re feeling pain at the gas pump? Consider the residents of Lime Village, Alaska, an isolated Denaina Athabascan Indian community where gasoline prices have hit $8.55 a gallon.
The price is severely curtailing movement around the interior Alaska village, where four-wheelers are sitting idle, said Ursula Graham, administrator for the Lime Village Traditional Council.
“Nobody’s going on joy rides, that’s for sure,” Graham said.
Alaska, despite its status as a major crude oil producer, has the highest average gasoline prices of all U.S. states, according to the American Automobile Association. Alaska prices averaged $4.65 a gallon for regular gasoline on Friday, compared with a national average of $4.10, according to AAA.
Neal Fried, an economist with the Alaska department of labor, said the ironic situation reflects the hard reality that the state’s small population hinders economies of scale and market competition.
“Even if you take all of Alaska into account, it’s a pretty small marketplace,” he said.
High oil prices have helped the state government, which relies on oil taxes, royalties and fees for at least 80 percent of its general operating revenue. Alaska reaped more than $10 billion in oil revenue in the just-completed fiscal year, double the oil revenue of the previous fiscal year.
Fried noted that North Slope oil development is bustling, which would not be the case if oil were $30 a barrel.
“There are more people working on the Slope than we’ve ever counted before,” he said.
But high fuel prices pinch individual Alaskans, especially in rural areas with no outside road access, where shipments of petroleum products require extraordinary and costly efforts.
DOG SLEDS
Fuel that goes to Lime Village is sent 1,800 miles by barge from Anchorage to the southwestern Alaska hub of Bethel, transferred to another barge for a trip up then Kuskokwim River and then flown by small plane to its final destination. Of a representative sample of Alaska communities, Lime Village had the highest fuel prices, according to a recent University of Alaska Anchorage study.
Gov. Sarah Palin has proposed using some of Alaska’s fat budget surplus to send one-time $1,200 energy-relief checks to all state residents, to suspend the state’s 8 cent-per-gallon gasoline tax and other measures for immediate assistance.
The legislature is considering her request in an ongoing special session.
Meanwhile, in Lime Village, boat trips on the Stony River are fewer and more carefully planned. Villagers combine tasks such as checking fish nets and collecting firewood, Graham said.
One man even moved his fish camp, smokehouse and all, from an outer area to the midst of the village so that he could avoid the boat trip entirely.
Residents like the idea of a $1,200 payment from the state, Graham said. But long-term solutions remain elusive.
“Going back to dog teams is an option,” she said. “It’s kind of a joke, but not a joke.”
(Reporting by Yereth Rosen; Editing by David Gregorio)
Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-OH), who has figured prominently in recent political news for his attempts to begin impeachment hearings against President George W. Bush, today announced that the congressional subcommittee he chairs will look into reports of peace groups being surveilled by police and private investigators.
“[M]ost people would be upset to know that police were spying on lawful citizens and infiltrating peaceful organizations, rather than chasing down real criminals,” said Kucinich in a press release delivered to RAW STORY. “At a minimum, such police spying is clearly a waste of taxpayer dollars and a diversion from the mission of protecting and serving the people.
“I want the subcommittee to determine how widespread these activities are and who ordered them,” the Ohio Democrat and former presidential candidate said.
Kucinich chairs the House Domestic Policy Subcommittee of the Oversight and Government Reform Committee.
The press release referred to reports that Maryland state police officers infiltrated peace and anti-death penalty groups and that private investigators working on behalf of “several large corporations” had surveilled environmental groups.
Such surveillance is apparently not limited to law enforcement and private investigators. In January 2007, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) released a report showing “widespread Pentagon surveillance of peace activists.”
Among the seemingly innumerable scandal-worthy stories which have so marked the war in Iraq is one growing tragedy which has been largely ignored: shoddy electrical work by U.S. contractors at military bases leading to numerous electrical fires, troops receiving painful shocks, and even death by electrocution.
In January 2008, Staff Sgt. Ryan Maseth, a 24-year-old weapons expert, was electrocuted while showering in Baghdad’s green zone. According to a criminal investigation by the Army, an electrical water pump on the building’s roof shorted out from not being properly grounded when installed. On March 19 his parents sued the contractor, KBR Inc., for Sgt. Maseth’s death.
According to the Pittsburgh-Post Gazette:
“The Defense Contract Management Agency, we believe, authorized [the contractor] to the tune of millions of dollars to make the repairs. And they never made the repairs,” Mr. Cavanaugh said. “And we don’t know why. A simple repair — just ground the building — and Ryan would be alive today.”
On July 1, New York Times Investigative Reporter James Risen, author of the 2006 book “State of War: The Secret History of the CIA and the Bush Administration,” took up the subject. According to Risen, General David Petraeus stated to Congress that 13 Americans had been electrocuted since the invasion of Iraq: 12 soldiers and one contractor.
As recently as July 11, KBR Inc. electricians told a Senate panel tasked to investigate the deaths that their employer used inexperienced, non-English speaking workers to install electrical systems. Many experienced contractors, they claimed, were dismissed after raising cautions over the work.
According to the Associated Press:
“Time and again we heard, `This is not the states, OSHA doesn’t apply here. If you don’t like it you can go home,’” said Debbie Crawford, a journeyman electrician with 30 years experience.
Army Times reports that the shoddy wiring and electrical risks have brought about the deaths of 11 service members and two U.S. civilians.
However, a follow-up report by James Risen in the New York Times on July 18 states that the problem is far worse than General Petraeus stated, and the military has known about the systemic problems since 2004.
Since the invasion, over 283 electrical fires on US bases have been reported, along with two deaths in 2006 at a base in Tikrit, the death of Sgt. Maseth, and innumerable painful shocks dealt to Americans.
A log of complaints compiled early in 2008 found soldiers living in just one Baghdad building complex were complaining of painful electrical shocks ‘on an almost daily basis.’
In public statements, Pentagon officials have not addressed the scope of the hazards, instead mostly focusing on the circumstances surrounding the death of Sergeant Maseth, who lived near Pittsburgh.
But the internal documents, including dozens of memos, e-mail messages and reports from the Army, the Defense Contract Management Agency and other agencies, show that electrical problems were widely recognized as a major safety threat among Pentagon contracting experts. It is impossible to determine the exact number of the resulting deaths and injuries because no single document tallies them up. (The records were compiled for Congressional and Pentagon investigators and obtained independently by The Times.)
The 2007 safety survey was ordered by the top official in Iraq for the Defense Contract Management Agency, which oversees contractors, after the October 2006 electrical fire that killed two soldiers near Tikrit. Paul Dickinson, a Pentagon safety specialist who wrote the report, confirmed its findings, but did not elaborate.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/18/world/middleeast/18contractors.html
The House has sent articles of impeachment against George Bush to the House Judiciary Committee, however Speaker Nancy Pelosi now says that an actual impeachment VOTE isn’t on the table. On Wednesday’s Countdown, Jonathan Turley gives his expert analysis on this epic fail as well as the latest attempt by the president to obstruct Congressional oversight by claiming executive privilege in the CIA/Plame leak investigation.
As for Bush’s executive privilege claims, Turley goes right for the jugular. Attorney General Michael Mukasey all but begged the president not to make him testify about Dick Cheney’s role in the Plame case and has ignored a subpoena to appear to testify about the matter before Congress — which Turley says should prompt Congress to charge him with Inherent Contempt. That’s not likely to happen, and as Jonathan points out, Democrats who voted for Mukasey are now getting what they paid for:
“…This is why, when Senators Shumer and Feinstein saved Mukasey’s confirmation, this is what they purchased. And, what Congress needs to do, the only thing they can do, is bring back Inherent Contempt and to say they’re going to start to exercise contempt on their own, that the deal is off. Attorney General Mukasey has broken a very long standing promise to be a faithful broker, to bring these cases to the grand jury - he won’t. And Congress has a right to now say we’re going back to doing this stuff ourselves.”
A federal court has issued two rulings, the New York Times reports: One favoring President Bush’s indefinite detentions of “enemy combatants,” and another granting one of said “enemy combatants” the opportunity to challenge his detention in court.
The court effectively ruled that President Bush has the same right to indefinitely detain a civilian on American soil as he does an enemy soldier on a battlefield.
Ali al-Marri, the only “enemy combatant” to be held in the continental United States, is in military custody in Charleston, South Carolina. He was arrested in Peoria, Illinois on December 12, 2001 on charges of credit card fraud and lying to federal agents before being sent to Charleston in 2003. A 5-4 majority of the United States Court of Appeals, Fourth Circuit, said that a sworn statement from an intelligence official as the government’s sole testimony in an earlier proceeding was “inadequate.” The official, Jeffrey N. Rapp, said that al-Marri was an al-Qaeda sleeper agent whose objective in the United States was to “commit mass murder and disrupt the banking system.”
The other ruling effectively reverses an earlier ruling by a three-judge panel with the same court that ordered that al-Marri be either charged with a crime or released.
Justice Department spokesman Brian Roehrkasse, saying that al-Marri had “already received all the process he was due,” added that the decision recognize the president’s authority to “capture and detain [al-Qaeda] agents who, like the 9/11 hijackers, come to this country to commit or facilitate warlike acts against American civilians.”
“This decision,” countered Jonathan L. Hafetz, counsel for al-Marri, means the president can pick up any person in the country–citizen or legal resident–and lock them up for years without the most basic safeguard in the Constitution, the right to a criminal trial.”
Today, on C-SPAN’s Washington Journal, Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D-NY), who has held several hearings on the Bush administration’s torture program, said that President Bush has committed “impeachable offenses”:
NADLER: If we had a just system and it weren’t overly political, the president would be impeached. I think he has committed impeachable offenses.
Yesterday, House Judiciary Committee chairman John Conyers (D-MI) said that he may allow Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-OH) to present his impeachment articles against Bush before the August recess. “We’re not doing impeachment, but he can talk about it,” he said.
French President Nicolas Sarkozy said the grouping “will build peace in the Mediterranean together, like yesterday we built peace in Europe”.
The Hour of Truth: The Euromediterranean Project To Become the Mediterranean Union
March 4th 2008 - the above story appeared on a blog in Europe. They warned the Irish not to buy into the plan. Ireland voted down the opportunity to join,… then the real pressure started!
On an Ancient Sea, Europe Dreams and Schemes The “Ancient Sea…” article above is from the New York Times
August 5th 2007
“The latest example comes from France’s new president, Nicolas Sarkozy, whose efforts to move Europe, not to mention French arms industries, closer to northern Africa are being presented within a vision of a new union of nations along the Mediterranean.”
(I recieved an email asking if the launch of the Mediterranean Union signed a few days ago might be the start of the 7 year tribulation? - Then I was forwarded this email from a friend comparing two maps that detail the Roman empire and the plans for Europe now. Seems that history is a broken record, broken record, broken record)
Map of The Roman Empire
This map shows the extent of the Roman Empire at three times in history: at the death of Caesar (44 B.C.E.), at the death of Augustus (14 C.E.), and at the death of Marcus Aurelius (180 C.E.). The gains are cumulative: this means that Aurelius’ empire included the areas that were in Caesar’s and Augustus’ realm, not just the areas colored red.
Caesar re-founded Corinth in 44 C.E., when the Roman Empire had spread to the darker orange color. This area plus the green area gives an idea of the extent of the Roman Empire during the time of Paul.
The Mediterranean Union: Dividing the Middle East and North Africa - By Mahdi Darius Nazemroaya
The Middle East and North Africa are in the process of being divided into spheres of influence between the European Union and the United States. Essentially the division of the Middle East and North Africa are between Franco-German and Anglo-American interests. There is a unified stance within NATO in regards to this re-division.
While on the surface Iraq falls within the Anglo-American orbit, the Eastern Mediterranean and its gas resources have been set to fall into the Franco-German orbit. In fact the Mediterranean region as a whole, from Morocco and gas-rich Algeria to the Levant is coveted by Franco-German interests, but there is more to this complex picture than meets the eye.
Unknown to the global public, several milestone decisions have been made to end Franco-German and Anglo-American squabbling that will ultimately call for joint management of the spoils of war. Franco-German and Anglo-American interests are converging into one. The reality of the situation is that the area ranging from Mauritania to the Persian Gulf and Afghanistan will be shared by America, Britain, France, Germany, and their allies.
These spheres of influence are really spheres of responsibility in a long campaign to restructure the Middle East and North Africa. The services agreement between Total S.A. and Chevron to jointly develop Iraqi energy reserves, NATO agreements in the Persian Gulf, and the establishment of a permanent French military base in the U.A.E. are all results of these objectives. Militant globalization and force is at work from Iraq and Lebanon to the Maghreb.
Redrawing European Security Borders: The Road to Redrawing the Map of the Middle East
“The politics [foreign policy] of a state are in its geography.”
— Napoleon Bonaparte I, Emperor of the French, King of Italy, Protector of the Confederation of the Rhine, and Mediator of the Helvetic (Swiss) Confederation
My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge: because thou hast rejected knowledge, I will also reject thee, that thou shalt be no priest to me: seeing thou hast forgotten the law of thy God, I will also forget thy children. Hosea 4:6
