Strauss-Kahn replace Bin Laden on the stage

The arrest of Strauss-Kahn is a very alarming issue not only for the case in itself but for the ramifications it will have on the global scenario. The issue if guilty or not is going to be debated in court, reactions to this incredible event are much more important at this stage, while some have openly suggested it is a trap others are more cautious.

But what appears is that this event could not have come to a better moment for both France and USA and maybe China too if true that a possible high profile replacement could come from either China, Brasil or India.
Sarkozy got rid of his  opponent to the next presidential elections while for United States this is derailing in the medium term any talks or suggestions of replacing the feeble US Dollar with Special Drawing Rights from the IMF as global reserve currency.
At the same time this is putting extreme pressure on the Euro by effectively removing a key player of the Euro crisis bailout talks.
Strauss-Kahn was supposed to attend a major meeting with Merkel this week in order to find a solution to the now inevitable bankruptcy of Greece and maybe in the coming months of Ireland and Portugal as well.
If there is a conspiracy certainly it has been quite timely in  setting the trap and it could risk precipitating a crisis in the following months, if there is not a conspiracy it is certainly a major blow to recovery and a very strange event indeed. What I would watch rather than his trial in the following months is the media background noise, it seems we are going to forget Bin Laden very soon; a new distraction from more serious crimes has been put on stage.

Osama Bin Laden puzzle

Image by Getty Images via @daylife

The world has changed considerably since 2001 and US enemies are no longer terrorists but real countries with governments and armies, Al Qaeda and Osama Bin Laden have outlived their usefulness as symbolic villains, if the 9/11 events were essential to turn around public opinion on foreign intervention and to obtain enforcement of authocratic laws, the time is approaching for major events to be unleashed in which Al Qaeda and Jihadist from all over the world have no place to be, they could still find their usefulness here and there when some major attack will be staged to rally the population into war but they are no longer the key actors, the conflict is back to the large scale scenario of warring countries and armies and the death of Osama Bin Laden could well be the prelude to the end of the era of terror.

What is surprising of all this story as in a classical slapstick comedy is the return of a long forgotten character  on the scene and the sudden commotion for someone who was forgotten and missing for almost 10 years. Even more interesting is the dumping of his body into the sea, quite an unusual treatment for the biggest villain in American history I would actually have considered to bring him as a trophy in the United States and run him all over for propaganda purpouses well unless the body was for some reason unpresentable to the public.
It has always been surprising how Bin Laden has had the ability to appear always at the eve of a major election or event to provide the american media and their spectators with a convenient scapegoat.
Even more suprising is how many persons talked publicly during this decade of how he was supposed to be dead, I just picked some of the most influential:


- On December 26, 2001, Fox News, citing a Pakistan Observer story, reported that the Afghan Taliban had pronounced Bin Laden dead and buried him in an unmarked grave.

- On January 18, 2002, Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf announced: “I think now, frankly, he is dead.”
- On July 17, 2002, the then-head of counterterrorism at the FBI, Dale Watson, told a conference of law enforcement officials that “I personally think he [Bin Laden] is probably not with us anymore.”
- In October 2002, Afghan President Hamid Karzai told CNN that “I would come to believe that [Bin Laden] probably is dead.

- On November 2, 2007, former Pakistani Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto told Al-Jazeera’s David Frost that Omar Sheikh had killed Osama Bin Laden.

- In May 2009, Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari confirmed that his “counterparts in the American intelligence agencies” hadn’t heard anything from Bin Laden in seven years and confirmed “I don’t think he’s alive.”
Musharraf, the President of Pakistan said by accident three months ago that bin Laden was dead. 


On a different note though in 2003, former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright told Fox News Channel analyst Morton Kondracke she suspected Bush knew the whereabouts of Osama bin Laden and was waiting for the most politically expedient moment to announce his capture.
And if former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright had the nerve to tell us this on public television well we would better to start figuring out what is the real reason and why now.

Osama Bin Laden death and Israel war game scenarios

The Pentagon released few hours ago a 5 page powerpoint presentation showing exclusive details of the Abbottabad compound where bin Laden was supposedly killed.




Quite interesting today is also the narration of the event provided by the Iranian Fars News:

TEHRAN (FNA)- The US has killed the Al-Qaeda leader, Osama Bin Laden, in a bid to prevent any possible leakage of intelligence and information about the US-Al-Qaeda joint terrorist operations, a senior Iranian legislator underscored on Monday.
"The West was fully satisfied with bin Laden's performance during the past years and today… it was obliged to kill him to prevent possible leakage of the priceless intelligence that he had," member of the parliament's National Security and Foreign Policy Commission Javad Jahangirzadeh told FNA on Monday.
He mentioned that the West seeks to rebuild its damaged face in the international community, and reiterated that Bin Laden's survival could endanger the interests of the western countries and disclose their past and future clandestine operations.
Jahangirzadeh warned the world countries that the West has hatched a new plot to find new pretexts for invading and occupying the Muslim countries.
Obama announced on Sunday that bin Laden was killed in a US operation in Pakistan.
Obama said he had directed helicopter-borne US armed forces to launch an attack against a heavily fortified compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan on Sunday acting on a lead that first emerged last August.
"A small team of Americans… killed Osama bin Laden and took custody of his body," Obama said.
Senior US officials said that in addition to bin Laden, three adult males died in the raid, two who were believed to be couriers for the Al-Qaeda leader, and one who was said to be one of his adult sons.

And It appears that Iranian television is getting quite anxious for a possible escalation of the conflict in the Middle East:

From PressTV

A considerable number of Israeli warplanes were seen at al-Asad base in Iraq, reported a source close to prominent Iraqi cleric Muqtada al-Sader's group.
The aircraft reportedly included F-15, F-16, F-18, F-22, and KC-10 jet fighters.
The warplanes carried out their week-long exercises at nights, the same source added.
The drills were reportedly aimed at preparing to strike Iran's air defense systems, disrupt Iran's radars and attack targets deep inside Iran.
Iraqi officials had not been notified of the exercises, which were conducted in collaboration with the US military.
The United States maintains numerous bases in Iraq, and the Baghdad government is not involved in any of the military deployments taking place there.