As 2006 draws to a close, the world faces new dangers from a collapsing and desperate Bush-Cheney administration gathering itself for its final two years of world destruction.

Middle East powder keg set to blow

The Bush administration is pushing for a major US troop build-up in Iraq, possibly involving up to 50,000 more troops, and gearing up for intensified pacification campaigns aimed at suspected "insurgencies" and "sectarian violence", the two perennial catch phrases used by Western media to characterize massive national resistance to the US occupation. The continued destruction of Iraq, and recent upheavals in Lebanon, Syria and Iran are steps toward a complete territorial and resource conquest of the Middle East, which will be carried out even after Bush-Cheney is gone.

Bush-Cheney is expected to flatly reject the political damage control measures recommended by the Iraq Study Group (ISG), and worsen the holocaust, even as the region sinks deeper into chaos, on the nuclear brink.

It is no surprise that the Bush administration�s refreshed zeal to �stay the course� and escalate mass murder operations comes following Saudi Arabia�s threat to intervene in Iraq, and deals personally agreed to with Dick Cheney on his recent trip to Saudi Arabia. The sudden resignation of Saudi ambassador to the US, Prince Turki (former head of Saudi intelligence) was a related development. The petro-elites are circling the wagons. Perhaps there is a reason why James Baker and other members of the ISG have fallen silent.

Adding to the conundrum, Iraqi President Jalal Talabani and other US puppets have rejected the ISG plan, despite continuing to lobby for some sort of US troop withdrawal schedule, while Prime Minister Al-Maliki, surrounded by US-trained security teams, increasingly fears for his own life.

The world consensus will not come about on Bush-Cheney-Rice�s murderous watch -- or at least not without a fight to the death. Left to the insane Bush, the self-destructing American Empire will be denied the political face that the ISG was intended to restore. It is so bad that archconservative Patrick Buchanan is sounding the alarm, and issuing on-target criticisms. (See Buchanan on the elite "US war over the war".)

Iraq a literal hell

Meanwhile, Iraq has been reduced to a literal hell of daily death, atrocities, disease, lawlessness and exploitation. The nightmarish on the ground realities reported by Dahr Jamail and the Angry Arab News Service continue to be covered up by the Bush administration and the corporate media.

Espionage or coincidence?

There is strong circumstantial evidence that the Litvenenko poisoning in the UK, and the assassination of Lebanon�s Gemayel appear to be connected to Anglo-American covert operations, carried out according to US policy.

Meanwhile back in Washington, the sudden collapse and brain affliction suffered by US Senator Tim Johnson throws Democratic Party plans for congressional dominance and sweeping Democratic influence into doubt. In a spectacular coincidence, Johnson�s collapse revives hopes that the Republicans might retake the US Senate, and block all attempts to slow or stop Bush-Cheney�s war, or expose the administration�s past crimes.

Karl Rove could not have planned a dirty trick any better.

AIG grabs Dubai Ports World

In a major story noticeably missing from mainstream corporate headlines, Dubai Ports World (DPW) has been acquired by American International Group (AIG). Recall that DPW was the focus of a loud outcry across the nation, and the scandal over US port security.

Now US ports are controlled by a worldwide conglomerate that is rooted to narco-trafficking, intelligence, money laundering, war profiteering, and terrorism (also see here). AIG is the former bastion of scandalized super-elite Maurice "Hank" Greenberg.

Where is the outcry, now that the house of Hank Greenberg controls the ports? Where is the outcry, as government-connected elite interests increasingly seize control of the US energy infrastructure?

US ties to narco-regimes exposed

The mainstream Western press has only now begun to report the non-news that Colombian President Alvaro Uribe and his administration are tied to narco-trafficking right-wing paramilitary death squads listed by Washington as terrorist organization.

Uribe�s ties to the CIA, narco-trafficking, paramilitaries and the US government are an exhaustively documented fact, reported by Narco News for many years. In Drugs, Oil and War, Peter Dale Scott notes that Uribe is a �product and an exponent of the paramilitary counterrevolutionary system the United States helped install in Colombia." (Nice to see that it still takes up to ten years for mainstream coverage to catch up on such stories.)

This bad news for the Bush administration (Uribe�s greatest ally) comes in the wake of a mushrooming scandal that has included evidence of vote fraud in 2002 (the election that installed Uribe), assassinations, and the forced expulsion of five Colombian congressional candidates.

At the same time, in Afghanistan, the poppy crop hits an all-time high, and the Taliban surges back to prominence, under US occupation.

A planetary crisis

The concepts of global warming and gas supply crisis have begun leaking into the mass popular consciousness, thanks to softball presentations such as Al Gore�s film An Inconvenient Truth. Yet, there still remains relatively little urgent mobilization or a peaceful, rational policy to deal with the elephant in the living room that is Peak Oil and Gas.

According to geologist Kenneth Deffeyes, author of Beyond Oil: The View from Beyond Hubbert�s Peak, the world oil peak occurred on Thanksgiving 2005.

Now, just over one year into post-Peak, new reports from the scientific community warn that the Artic may melt by 2040, Antarctica is also melting suddenly, and a small nuclear war could cause permanent catastrophic damage to the planet.