December 23, 2012

You are here: Home / Archives for Politics / Imperialism

The Spirit of Revolution

December 12, 2011 By Leave a Comment

17-year-old Andrew Barrows invokes the spirit of the Founding Fathers to question America’s current direction.

I want to start with some quotes from past presidents of the United States Of America, as well as important activists who discussed freedom and oppression.

Those who deny freedom to others, deserve it not for themselves. - Abraham Lincoln (1809-1865)

The will of the people is the only legitimate foundation of any government, and to protect its free expression should be our first object. - Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826)

True individual freedom cannot exist without economic security and independence. People who are hungry and out of a job are the stuff of which dictatorships are made. - Franklin D. Roosevelt (1882-1945)

Freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed.

Martin Luther King Jr. (1929-1968)

The law will never make men free, it is men that have to make the law free. - Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862)

If the freedom of speech is taken away then dumb and silent we may be led, like sheep to the slaughter. - George Washington (1732-1799)

In the long history of the world, only a few generations have been granted the role of defending freedom in its hour of maximum danger. I do not shrink from this responsibility — I welcome it. - John F. Kennedy (1917-1963)

I think to myself, all these people — historical leaders who will be talked about for as long as American history exists, had such wonderful views on freedom, and great ideas about how the country should be run. In fact, they are so wonderful we still talk about them hundreds of years later.

Now I think to myself, all these people — historical leaders who will be talked about for as long as American history exists, had such wonderful views on freedom, and great ideas about how the country should be run. In fact, they are so wonderful we still talk about them hundreds of years later.

I think about the American Revolution, and how many people have fought and died to make America, and what the American Revolution was all about. I constantly ponder the thought of, “I really wonder how past presidents would react to the way America is now.” I can imagine Abraham Lincoln or George Washington being brought back to life to experience modern America for just a day. But I can’t begin to imagine his facial expression when I would tell him:

Yeah, since all of your wonderful truth speaking, caring about the people, and doing what is right and fair to give people extraordinary documents dedicated to freedom…America has really gone down hill…and I mean…really down hill.

Being a president today actually means who’s the best liar on the stage. It is like a highschool talent show. Each person goes on stage and tries to convince the audience to like them, and whoever lies the most wins. They are just puppets who can’t really do anything. Congressional approval is 8% and WE the people don’t actually get a say in what happens. The mega rich call the shots and huge companies actually control what the government does while the middle class and poor get robbed blind.

After I would study his confusion…I would continue…

The Patriot Act

(After explaining what a phone and the Internet is). Gives the government the power to read my emails, my text messages, track my phone, follow me, tap my phone calls, install a tracking device under my car to know my exact location. In short…violate my privacy completely.

Then I would discuss the SOPA/PROTECT IP ACT.

A bill that has been introduced in the Senate and the House and is moving quickly through Congress. It gives the government and corporations the ability to censor the Net, in the name of protecting “creativity”. The law would let the government or corporations censor entire sites — they just have to convince a judge that the site is “dedicated to copyright infringement.”

Next of course, the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA).

The bill grants power to the military to arrest U.S. citizens on American soil and detain them in military prisons forever without offering them the right to legal counsel or even a trial. This isn’t a totally new thing: “dirty bomb” plotter Jose Padilla spent three-and-a-half years as an “enemy combatant” until he was finally charged. But Padilla’s detention was unusual and sparked a huge outcry; the new provisions would standardize his treatment and enable us all to become Jose Padillas.

Than I would probably make him watch this video on YouTube: “A Time-Lapse Map of Every Nuclear Explosion Since 1945″ by Isao Hashimoto

 

 

Than I would explain having a gun, missing fingers, or 7 days of food at your house = YOU ARE A TERRORIST

You know, at this point he would probably be on his knees with a huge headache.

I’m sure eventually he would say something like “Why are the people allowing this to happen? And what happened to people fighting for what is right?”

Than I would explain the Anonymous Internet group and the Occupy movement and protests. I think he would be pretty happy and would get up off his knees.

BUT than I would show him videos of what is happening when people are trying to protest and spread truth. I would start probably with this video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LwKxZfcEj-U&feature=player_embedded

or this video:

 

It’s really hard to choose which video of police attacking innocent protesters expressing their Constitutional rights I would show because, honestly, YouTube is filled with them. So I would probably just let him browse around for a while.

Now at this point I would imagine he would pretty much scream or yell that everything that past Americans had fought for to create has been literally bashed by the people who are supposed to enforce it, and has been turned around and used against the people instead of protecting them.

Than I would get Paul Revere out of my time machine/life regeneration thing and Paul Revere would jump on his horse and ride through the city streets of Boston yelling “The British aren’t coming; they are already here!

“Would our Founding Fathers be disgraced at what America has become? Is everything they fought for now becoming useless?

Would they call for a revolution?

 

Source: https://www.activistpost.com/2011/12/spirit-of-revolution.html#more

Filed Under: Censorship, Corporations, Corruption, Crime, Financial Crisis, Imperialism, Military, Military Industrial Complex, Money, Nuclear, Occupy, Politicians, Protests, Radiation, Revolution, Rights, Science, Social Unrest, Surveillance, Technology, USA, War Tagged With:

Endgame: The Monetary System of Empire

December 12, 2011 By Leave a Comment

What is the nature of the present-day Empire?

 

Filed Under: Imperialism, Money Tagged With: ,

As Chinese President Advises Navy To Prepare For War And Iran Readies Its Missiles, Is $250/barrel Crude Oil Near?

December 12, 2011 By Leave a Comment

Iran’s foreign minister had earlier warned of a $250/bbl Crude Oil in the event of attempting to harm the country. With China preparing for military combat and Iran readying its missiles, $250/bbl does not seem like a distant possibility.

The smell of war

-Yahoo News reported Chinese President Hu Jintao as saying that the Chinese Navy should “make extended preparations for warfare” and urged his navy to prepare for military combat. This follows statements by China’s Major General Zhang Zhaozhong who said that China will not hesitate to protect Iran even with a Third World War in order to safeguard its domestic political needs.

-The Telegraph meanwhile has reported that Gen Mohammed Ali Jaafari, the commander of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards has raised the operational readiness of status of country’s forces, initiating preparations for potential strikes and covert operationswhile also initiating plans to disperse long-range missiles, high explosives, artillery and guards units to key defensive positions

Crude oil aims for the sky

-Iran is the third largest exporter of crude oil in the world. Much bigger than Libya. Problems in Libya had pushed prices to $110 and even though it declined, later on, oil is still at $100/bbl because of the tight physical market. So obviously the loss of oil from a much larger oil exporter like Iran could easily push up prices to scary levels.

-However, the most important reason prices could spike to $250/bbl and even above is the fact that Iran nearly controls the Strait of Homruz through which almost 18% of the world’s daily oil flows from the Middle East. It is the single most important oil waterway in the world. Conflict in the area will result in a loss of millions of barrels of oil which will definitely propel prices to unseen levels.

Cracks in the economy
Even at current prices, $100 oil is terribly expensive. Imagine the case of a $250/bbl scenario! That’s a 150% rise in fuel prices alone together with rising cost of food, consumables and every form of products that requires transportation. And this will happen at a time when personal income will remain stable/unchanged!

In a world where economies are contracting,growth is slowing, unemployment is increasing, public dissent is rising and governments are becoming nearly bankrupt and insolvent, a $250/bbl oil is the last thing the world needs. Combined with the trillions of war dollars (possibly funded by even more debt) that will be spent, a war will easily set back the economy by decades!

 

Source: https://www.commodityonline.com/news/as-chinese-president-advises-navy-to-prepare-for-war-and-iran-readies-its-missiles-is-$250barrel-crude-oil-near-44248-3-1.html

Filed Under: China, Economy, Imperialism, Iran, Military Industrial Complex, Money, Oil, USA

U.S.-China: Arms Race In The Pacific

December 4, 2011 By Leave a Comment

The Chinese Foreign Ministry described the U.S. growing military presence in the Pacific “a return to the Cold War strategy”. The announcement came following an agreement signed between Washington and Canberra to station up to 2,500 U.S. marines in Australia’s northern city of Darwin.

Analysts draw out attention to a key trend in the growing military confrontation in the Pacific: the stronger the Chinese economy is and the faster it carries out its military reforms, the stronger is the U.S. presence in the Pacific. No doubt, the two super powers are entering a new phase of strategic confrontation.

While the role of the US Navy in the region is rather symbolic as far as the implementation of obligations given to allies is concerned, the US presence in the Strait of Malacca allows them to control the delivery of the Mideast oil to the Pacific region. This strait is also a route to deliver commercial goods from the Pacific to the Middle East. Neither the U.S. has plans to reduce its military personnel in the western part of the Pacific. These are 80,000 troops stationed in Japan and 28,000- in South Korea.

It is worth mentioning that the US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is staying in Myanma these days, which is a first official visit of the top US diplomat to this country since 1955. The visit was organized immediately after the Myanmar authorities showed their intention to start democratic reforms. Analysts say, however, that the main aim of Mrs. Clinton`s visit is to demonstrate it to China that its interests in Myanma differ from those of the U.S.

During his recent visit to the region, the Pentagon`s chief Leon Panetta said that the U.S. was planning to reduce its presence there. He said that his country`s strategy was to offer a counterbalance against China`s ‘affirmative action’ policy, the words used to describe Beijing`s growing territorial disputes with neighbors and its increased military spending. Military expert Viktor Baranets comments:

“China has been intensively increasing its military presence in land and sea areas, and even in space. China bought a Russian aircraft carrier and has already given it its first sea trials, thus evoking great concern in the U.S. Actually, the U.S. presence in the region is weakening gradually and is likely to exist on equal terms with China.

Military analyst Vladimir Yevseev thinks that this competition may trigger armed conflict in the area.

Experts say there is one but very solid reason to avoid this: as the world`s leading economies, China and the US are so dependant on each other that any military conflict between them will result in a global economic catastrophe. Both Beijing and Washington are aware of the consequences. Experts suggest creating an OSCE-style governing body to monitor security in the Pacific. Meanwhile, the sides should resort to all possible tools to avoid the escalation of tensions.

The 2012 Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit will be held in Russia’s Vladivostok. Moscow says that arms race in the Pacific will be among key issues on the agenda.

 

Source: https://english.ruvr.ru/2011/12/02/61376749.html

Filed Under: China, Imperialism, USA, Weapons Tagged With:

War On Drugs Revealed As A Total Hoax

December 1, 2011 By Leave a Comment

Afghanistan is, by far, the largest grower and exporter of opium in the world today, cultivating a 92 percent market share of the global opium trade.

But what may shock many is the fact that the US military has been specifically tasked with guarding Afghan poppy fields, from which opium is derived, in order to protect this multibillion dollar industry that enriches Wall Street, the CIA, MI6, and various other groups that profit big time from this illicit drug trade scheme.

Prior to the tragic events of September 11, 2001, Afghanistan was hardly even a world player in growing poppy, which is used to produce both illegal heroin and pharmaceutical-grade morphine. In fact, the Taliban had been actively destroying poppy fields as part of an effort to rid the country of this harmful plant, as was reported by the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette on February 16, 2001, in a piece entitled Nation’s opium production virtually wiped out.

But after 9/11, the US military-industrial complex quickly invaded Afghanistan and began facilitating the reinstatement of the country’s poppy industry. According to the United Nations Drug Control Program (UNDCP), opium cultivation increased by 657 percent in 2002 after the US military invaded the country under the direction of then-President George W. Bush.

CIA responsible for reinstating opium industry in Afghanistan after 9/11

More recently, The New York Times (NYT) reported that the brother of current Afghan President Hamid Karzai had actually been on the payroll of the CIA for at least eight years prior to this information going public in 2009. Ahmed Wali Karzai was a crucial player in reinstating the country’s opium drug trade, known as Golden Crescent, and the CIA had been financing the endeavor behind the scenes.

“The Golden Crescent drug trade, launched by the CIA in the early 1980s, continues to be protected by US intelligence, in liaison with NATO occupation forces and the British military,” wrote Prof. Michel Chossudovsky in a 2007 report, before it was revealed that Ahmed Wali Karzai was on the CIA payroll. “The proceeds of this lucrative multibillion dollar contraband are deposited in Western banks. Almost the totality of revenues accrue to corporate interests and criminal syndicates outside Afghanistan” (https://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/A…).

But the mainstream media has been peddling a different story to the American public. FOX News, for instance, aired a propaganda piece back in 2010 claiming that military personnel are having to protect the Afghan poppy fields, rather than destroy them, in order to keep the locals happy and to avoid a potential “security risk” — and FOX News reporter Geraldo Rivera can be heard blatantly lying about poppy farmers being financially supported by the Taliban, rather than the CIA and other foreign interests.

So while tens of thousands of Americans continue to be harmed or killed every year by overdoses from drugs originating from this illicit opium trade, and while cultivation of innocuous crops like marijuana and hemp remains illegal in the US, the American military is actively guarding the very poppy fields in Afghanistan that fuel the global drug trade. Something is terribly wrong with this picture.

 

Source: https://flipthepyramid.com/index.php/entry/war-on-drugs-revealed-as-total-hoax

Filed Under: Afghanistan, Banks, Corporations, Corruption, Drugs, Economy, Imperialism, Marijuana, Military Industrial Complex, Money, Propaganda, USA Tagged With: ,

The Senate Just Voted Against The Afghanistan War. Here’s The Good, The Bad, And The Ugly.

December 1, 2011 By Leave a Comment

The Senate just voted against the Afghanistan war. Here’s the good, the bad, and the ugly.

THE GOOD

The U.S. Senate on Wednesday voted by voice vote to pass an amendment that concludes thus:

“Resolved, That it is the sense of the Senate that—1) the President of the United States should expedite the transition of the responsibility for military and security operations to the Government of Afghanistan;2) the President shall devise a plan based on inputs from military commanders, the diplomatic missions in the region, and appropriate members of the cabinet, along with the consultation of Congress, for expediting the drawdown of U.S. combat troops in Afghanistan and accelerating the transfer of security authority to Afghan authorities prior to December 2014; and3) and not later than 90 days after the date of the enactment of this Resolution, the President shall transmit to Congress a plan with a timetable and completion date for the accelerated transition of all military and security operations in Afghanistan to the Government of Afghanistan.”

This would be an extremely weak demand from a peace group, but coming from that seat of militaristic corruption, the U.S. Senate, it stands a good chance of actually being acted on by President Obama, and acted on in a meaningful way, such as withdrawing in 2012 rather than by November 2014 instead of December 2014. It is also vague enough that it can be built on with something stronger in the coming months without any contradiction.This amendment came from Senator Jeff Merkley of Oregon, where Portland has seen a strong Occupy movement. Of course, the whole country has seen a burst of activism. The amendment had bipartisan support. And its rhetorical value, which is most of its value, cannot be undone by a conference committee or a veto.

THE BAD

Three more years of a campaign of mass murder is not an acceptable policy. The Senate has merely asked for something better than the current plan. And the emphasis is on “merely asked.” The Senate is funding the war in the same bill in which it is asking its executive to do its job. The constitutional role of Congress is to make decisions and enforce them with the power of the purse.

Here the Senate is asking the President to decide what to do, but to decide something not quite as bad as his current plan. There is no indication that if the President refuses, funding for a longer war will be cut off. Congress recently stated its opposition to a war in Libya while funding it. Individual senators and House members swore they opposed the War on Iraq while funding it for several years. The President himself did that when he was a senator.

There is also no indication of whether a new president, should we have one, would be bound by the current president’s plan. Also missing is any requirement that all U.S. forces depart, as opposed to, say, remaining as “trainers”. What would help would be a pivot from this bill to a better one in the House. The Senate has now opposed endless war in Afghanistan. In the House there is a bill with 64 cosponsors that would end the war by ceasing to fund it. That bill, HR 780, would be a serious step forward. And it need only pass the House if those who vote for it follow through by voting against all war funding.

THE UGLY

The Merkley amendment is not helped by the assorted whereas clauses that precede the concluding resolution:

“Whereas, after al Qaeda attacked the United States on September 11, 2001, the United States rightly sought to bring to justice those who attacked us, to eliminate al Qaeda’s safe havens and training camps in Afghanistan, and to remove the terrorist-allied Taliban government;”

Really? This is your antiwar statement? The majority of people in the United States tell pollsters they disagree with this, and they have good reason. “Bringing justice” by bombing people is not just. Overturning foreign governments by force, even horrible ones, is not benefitting the world.

“Whereas, the Afghanistan War is now the longest in American history; “Whereas, United States’ troops, intelligence personnel and diplomatic corps have skillfully achieved these objectives, culminating in the death of Osama bin Laden;”

Really? Skillfully? Ten years to extrajudicially murder one man, at a cost of hundreds of billions of dollars, many thousands of innocent lives, a further devastated nation, and increased hostility toward our own? I’d hate to have seen that done less skillfully.

“Whereas, national security experts, including Secretary of Defense Leon E. Panetta, have noted that al Qaeda’s presence in Afghanistan has been greatly diminished;“Whereas, over the past ten years the United States’ mission has evolved to include a prolonged nation-building effort, including the creation of a strong central government, a national police force and army, and effective civic institutions;”

You’re joking, right?

“Whereas, such nation-building efforts in Afghanistan are undermined by corruption, high illiteracy, and a historic aversion to a strong central government;”

Is that a retraction?

“Whereas, members of the United States military have served in Afghanistan valiantly and with honor, and many have sacrificed their lives and health in service to their country;”

Honor? Invading someone else’s country? Kicking in doors? Imprisoning? Murdering? Cutting off fingers as trophies? Where is the honor in this?

“Whereas, the United States is now spending nearly $10 billion a month in Afghanistan at a time when at home there is high unemployment, a flood of foreclosures, a record deficit, and a debt that is over $15 trillion and growing;”

There are the same problems and much worse in Afghanistan. The question isn’t where you spend the money, but on what you spend the money.

“Whereas, the United States has now accomplished its original objectives in Afghanistan;”

The pipeline is up and running? The bases are permanent? The natural resources have been exhausted? The nuclear weapons are positioned? The campaign funders have satisfied their need for profits? The troops have begun moving into Iran?

“Whereas, the continued concentration of American and NATO military forces in one region, when terrorist forces are located in many parts of the world, is not an efficient use of resources; “Whereas, the battle against terrorism is best served by using our troops and resources in a counter-terrorism strategy against terrorist forces wherever they may locate and train;”

Are you f—ing serious? The best defense against terrorism isn’t ceasing to kill people and occupy their countries? The best approach is to use troops to provoke yet more hostility but to do so in multiple places?

“Whereas, the United States will continue to support the development of Afghanistan with a strong diplomatic and counterterrorism presence in the region;”

What about withdrawal and reparations?

Source: https://www.washingtonsblog.com

Filed Under: Afghanistan, Corporations, Corruption, Crime, Health, Imperialism, Military Industrial Complex, Money, Politicians, Politics, Propaganda, Terrorism, USA, Weapons

UN Report on Syria: Based on Witness Accounts … OUTSIDE of Syria

November 30, 2011 By Leave a Comment

Wall Street and London’s media machine eagerly churned out headlines like BBC’s “Syria security forces ‘commit crimes against humanity‘” announcing the conclusions of a recent UN Human Rights Council report regarding the ongoing violence in Syria.

However, even upon reading the BBC article it is soon discovered that, “the investigation team members say they were denied entry into Syria itself,” and that the entirety of their “evidence” is garnered solely from interviews with “223 victims, witnesses and also army defectors to investigate alleged human rights violations.”

BBC’s article raises immediate suspicion over the veracity of the report, as “victims, witnesses, and defectors,” interviewed outside of Syria is not evidence, but rather more hearsay by groups of people with a vested interest in painting the Syrian government in the worst light possible.

However, upon actually reading the full text of the UN Human Rights Council report, we see just exactly “how” the report was compiled.

Under a section titled, “Methods of Work” we find a shocking admission of the utter lack of substance and immense conflict of interest behind the UN’s predetermined conclusion, that Syria is guilty of “crimes against humanity” and that the UN Security Council must act.

The report states:

First-hand information was collected through interviews with victims and witnesses of events in the Syrian Arab Republic.The interviewing process began in Geneva on 26 September 2011. Overall, 223 victims and/or witnesses, including personnel who defected from the military and the security forces, were interviewed.

A public call was made to all interested persons and organizations to submit relevant information and documentation that would help the commission implement its mandate. It held meetings with Member States from all regional groups, regional organizations, including the League of Arab States and the Organization of Islamic Cooperation, non-governmental organizations, human rights defenders, journalists and experts. Reports, scholarly analyses and media accounts, as well as audio and visual material, were also duly considered.

The information collected is stored in a secure database governed by United Nations rules on confidentiality

Quite obviously this is not an investigation, nor is the information provided within the report “evidence” by any stretch of the imagination. The report would go on to admit that it received no cooperation from the Syrian government meaning that this publication by the UN is but a one-sided exercise to provide the worst possible image of the Syrian government as told by opposition groups now on record fully armed, foreign-backed, and trying to seize power by force.

The inclusion of “non-governmental organizations” (NGOs) should also raise immediate concerns. While the report is entirely negligent in listing any of these contributing NGOs, it is more than likely they include the US government and corporate-funded army of sedition emanating out of the National Endowment for Democracy, Geroge Soros’ Open Society Institute, and their myriad of subsidiaries. It has been these very NGOs supplying a steady stream of similarly baseless “witness accounts” since the unrest began earlier this year, as they’ve done in Libya, Belarus, Tunisia,Thailand, and beyond.

“Alleged” is used throughout the report in various forms further illustrating the tenuous nature of the UN Human Rights Council’s “evidence” while all of the testimony, those who gave it, and apparently the NGOs involved in compiling the UN report are conveniently kept “confidential.” This may be because the United Nations believes that its reputation coupled with global faith in its work is all that is necessary to lend their report the legitimacy it needs to bring Syria one step closer to NATO inflicted genocide.

However, considering Iraq and more recently Libya, and the UN’s complicit role in facilitating genocide in both nations based on similarly tenuous “human rights” reports, a clear pattern emerges. Human rights activists, their Wall Street and London-funded NGOs, and the disingenuous UN are merely dressing up with humanitarian concerns an otherwise naked campaign of military conquest.

In Part 1 & 2 of the video: “Lies behind the “Humanitarian War” in Libya.” The outrageous, confirmed, confessed “humanitarian-based” lies used with UN complicity to justify NATO’s invasion by proxy of Libya. Libya is now run by a corporate-backed proxy Abdurrahim el-Keib, formally of the British Petroleum (BP), Shell, France’s Total, Japan Oil Development Company, and Abu Dhabi National Oil Company-sponsored Petroleum Institute.

It has been pointed out in April’s “Globalists Coming Full Circle,” and more recently in Salon’s “Wes Clark and the neocon dream” that the unrest unhinging the Middle East, North Africa, and slowly creeping toward Moscow and Beijing, is part of a plan 20 years in the making. Those behind it just so happen to populate the boards of the faux-humanitarian front, National Endowment for Democracy (NED), have affiliations with the so-called “liberal” George Soros and his Open Society Institute, and have signed their names to Hitlerian declarations of world conquest within the notorious “Project for a New American Century.”

You’re not expected to read the report, let alone research the authors.

Without a doubt, the UN has compiled a tenuous and transparent fabrication of such little substance, those involved in writing it, Paulo Pinheiro, Yakin Ertürk, and Karen Koning AbuZayd, are clearly conspiring to justify an otherwise unjustifiable escalation in Syria’s current unrest. If they did indeed have evidence of Syrian brutality, they surely would have included it in their report and the voices at the BBC, on CNN, in Reuters and beyond would ceaselessly air it. Instead, the impact of the report solely depends on people trusting the legitimacy of the UN and not bothering to even objectively read it. It equally depends on members of the media, including the disingenuous hand-wringing “humanitarians” amongst NED’s vast global network to keep their heads down and not expose this willful duplicity.

The impact of the UN’s report also depends on people not bothering to research the associations of those who compiled it. Should they, they will find that Karen Koning AbuZayd is concurrently a member of the Washington D.C. based Middle East Policy Council, along side current and former associates of Exxon, the US military, the CIA, the Saudi Binladin Group, the US-Qatari Business Council and both former and current members of the US government. It is more than just a coincidence that the UN Human Rights Council report has given the US exactly what it wanted to hear regarding Syria, and one of those compiling the report just so happens to sit amongst an organization full of corporate-financier interests clamoring to despoil the Middle Eastern republic. Clearly, claims that the UN is merely a tool of corporate fascists on Wall Street and within the City of London represent a truth that confronts anyone who researches any of the claims coming out of the UN.

Indeed with this tissue of lies and the associations of the liars peddling them, the UN is truly a disingenuous tool of the world’s elite, used to strip the freedom and humanity of its enemies while simultaneously claiming to uphold such values in the process. The Syrian people are facing a criminal conspiracy of vast proportions in a world increasingly devoid of empathy, intelligence, or courage. Like the Libyans who fought for the better part of a year against the militant aggression of global corporate fascism, the Syrians will soon be fighting too.

For those indeed repulsed by what has transpired in Libya and what is facing Syria at the hands of the global elite, it should be obvious that the corporations, banks, and institutions involved need to be exposed, boycotted, and promptly replaced. It was Libya yesterday, Syria today, and inevitably you tomorrow.

Collectively after World War II we said, “never again,” regarding fascism and the rise of Adolf Hitler’s Germany, yet here we are . . . again.

Source: https://www.activistpost.com/2011/11/un-report-on-syria-based-on-witness.html

Filed Under: Corporations, Corruption, Human Rights, Imperialism, Media, Military Industrial Complex, Money, Prison, Syria, Torture, United Nations, USA Tagged With:

‘Occupy Together’: The Movement Grows to Stop Bankers’ World War III

November 30, 2011 By 1 Comment

Over the past two weeks the ravaged North African nation of Libya and the burgeoning ‘Occupy …’ movement have been much in the news through both billions-dollar Corporate Stream Media (CSM) and through genuinely alternative Internet channels.

A revealing number of factors connect the now war-torn Libyan Arab Jamahiriya (“State of the Masses”) and its ‘Green Revolution’, both nurtured by the Jamahiriya’s unofficial leader Muammar Qadddafi, with principles and aspirations expressed by many in the ‘Occupy …’ movement.

Before its devastation under bombing by the North American Treaty Organization (NATO), Libya had many of the social programs and remedies that many in the ‘Occupy’ movements call for.

That is, Libya’s Jamahiriya was pretty much the real deal as a counter and threat to the greed and ‘GLOBAL’ agenda (please see the ‘Robin Hood Tax’ below) of the thieving, totalitarian financiers whom the ‘Occupy’ movement opposes. How the Jamahiriya was treated by those financiers’ war-machine and their Corporate Stream Media, fed by organizations such as CANVAS (again please see below) should be a lesson to us all.

Libya Rally

Let’s first look at what’s been done in Libya this year and over the four preceding decades. On October 31, 2011, NATO ostensibly ended its campaign of aerial and ground attacks in Libya, 11 days after the murder of the Jamahiriya’s unofficial leader, Muammar Qaddafi.

NATO’s overt campaign began more than seven months ago, March 19, with the launch of 110 United States’ Tomahawk missiles against military and civilian targets in the nation of about 6.7 million. According to Libya’s new, NATO-backed, ostensible Government, the National Transitional Council (NTC), by mid-September the war against the Libyan Arab Jamahiriya had caused more than 30,000 civilian deaths; other estimates double this number of civilians killed. (1) NATO’s own count of its aerial bombing is more than 26,000 sorties (a sortie is each aircraft in a mission) and more than ’9600 strike missions’, each mission delivering ‘an average of four bombs per attack’. Effects on Libyan civilians can be seen in several videos online, as they lament the NATO bombings and delebrate and their Jamahiriya government.

NATO’s bombing reached Libya’s “great man-made river”, ‘the world’s largest irrigation project’, in July. Its devastation of both Libya’s standard of living (the highest in North Africa) and of Libya’s direct democracy through the Jamahiriya’s 34-years-standing ‘Basic People’s Congresses’ intensified with British and Qatari soldiers’ and NTC forces’ attack of Tripoli in late August.

For a summary of Libya before NATO’s devastations, you can check out one of many pro-Jamahiriya videos on YouTube, ‘Shocking Truth About Gaddafi–what you don’t know’, 7:24 in length. It gives an overview of ‘Green Revolution’ accomplishments since 1969. It’s at https://www.youtube.com/watch?NR=1&v=aXQxTv3nB14

In relation to ‘Occupy Wall Street’, we should bear in mind that the entirety of NATO’s overt campaign in Libya, as demanded by President Barack Obama of the United States, President Nikolas Sarkozy of France, and Prime Minister David Cameron of Britain, gained credibility through lies put forth in February 2011 onFacebook and Twitter accounts ostensibly belonging to activists guided by a group based in Belgrade in the former Yugoslavia, CANVAS, a group preceded by its members’ earlier, more well-known Otpor, and that Otpor/CANVAS methods of protest and clenched-fist logos figure prominently in the ‘Occupy …’ movement.

Another excellent video, ‘US Orchestrates Regime Change in Libya Using Social Media’, shows how this Big Lie through ‘social media’ plays.

The most famous killing in the Libyan war is that of Muammar Qaddafi, author of the ‘Green Book’ of the Jamahiriya and founder of Libya’s ‘Green Revolution.’ Scores of Internet postings repeat footage of the 69-year-old, reeling and unarmed, as he’s beaten, reviled and perhaps sodomized by NTC fighters on October 20. The mob’s ‘capture’ of Qaddafi came after his convoy was attacked by a French fighter-jet and U.S. drone, as an excellent summary by Martin Iqbal of NATO involvement in the invasion of Libya relates. It’s available on the website theempirestrikesblack.com.

A further horror followed the mob’s beating of Muammar Qaddafi. U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton learned of the leader’s death during her stop in Afghanistan, two days after she’d visited Libya. Sitting before a Cable News Network (CNN) interviewer, the Secretary of State said, “We came, we saw, he died“, laughed, and clapped her hands.

The two Two Comments (most approved by viewers’ votes) on this Youtube clip of Hillary Clinton’s hand-clapping response, seen by 196,100 viewers as of October 31, 2011, are ‘A Demon’ and ‘wow, she truly is a disgusting pig.’ (13) Another video of the Secretary of State’s response, from the channel PlanetEarthAwakens01, features these two comments: ‘evil at the helm of the country. I understand why Americans are on strike’ and ‘Power to the people!! I am 99%’ (14)

Hidden Connections

What do horrors of and from NATO’s attack on Libya have to do with the burgeoning, wonderfully rebellious, creative and staunch movement that began with the encampment of ‘Occupy Wall Street’ in Lower Manhattan on September 17? What does Libya’s Jamahiriya, that ‘State of the Masses’ and its ‘Green Revolution’. have to do with the ‘Occupy …’ movement?

Let’s try a quick overview of ‘Occupy …’ The movement that’s become ‘Occupy Together’ and ‘Occupy Everything’ now has more than 1000 offshoots across the modern, industrial world. It represents a decades-overdue protest by working-class and middle-class people, the ’99%’, against their exploitation, marginalization and impoverishment under a broken-down system of financial and technological tyranny that enriches a relative few, the “1%’, as its debt-swelling, Bank-feeding national Governments rob hundreds of millions across the Western world of homes, jobs, education, health-care, and dignity. Individuals’ statements from their struggling in the United States are eloquent.(15)

On March 12, 2011, a collaboration between David DeGraw’s ampedstatus.org and a sub-group of Anonymous “hactivists” ‘announced their first operation’ by posting a video on Youtube. The announcement began: ‘We are a decentralized non-violent resistance movement, which seeks to restore the rule of law and fight back against the organized criminal class.’ It continued: ‘Above all, we aim to break up the global banking cartel centered at the Federal Reserve, International Monetary Fund, Bank of International Settlements and World Bank…. Until our demands are met and a rule of law is restored, we will engage in a relentless campaign of non-violent, peaceful, civil disobedience. ‘ (16)

To me, participants in the ‘Occupy …’ movement compose the brightest hope that’s arisen in the Western world since 1967. Their courage and fellow-feeling, their principles of a voice for all through their Popular General Assemblies, their industry and organization, and their refusal to buckle under repression from Police and other forces, invalidate memes spread by billions-dollar Corporate Stream Media (CSM) over the past 30 years.

Young people in the West are NOT apathetic. Working-class people are NOT beaten down. Masses of us SEE and RESIST our plight under a Ruling Few. Resistance is essential and we can become our own government. (17)

The courage, compassion and resourcefulness of participants in the ‘Occupy …’ camps remind me of what natives and more than a million volunteers to post-flood New Orleans since September 2005 have accomplished in this city.

Everyday people, the ’99%’, can, if given tools of the 21st century, act far more effectively and sensitively to solve problems in their local environments than can centralized Governments that are bought and bent, one way or another, toward serving supranational Corporations’ global interests. Direct democracy is especially preferable to Government under unaccountable private Central Banks such as the United States’ Federal Reserve System (18)

A similar understanding animated Muammar Qaddafi when the ‘Basic People’s Congresses’ formed for direct democracy through local councils during 1977 in Libya’s ‘Green Revolution.’ Such understanding was moving Muammar Qaddafi toward even more radical surrender of State power and sharing of wealth in the years just before NATO’s invasion of Libya.

According to the United States’ Congressional Research Service on February 18, 2011: ‘In March 2008, [Colonel Qaddafi] announced his intention to dissolve most government administrative bodies and institute a Wealth Distribution Program whereby state oil revenues would be distributed to citizens on a monthly basis for them to administer personally, in cooperation, and via local committees.’ (19) (20)

Other aspects of the ‘Occupy …’ movement are less promising than the courage, insight and creativity shown by majorities of people in their camps.

Origins and graphics of ‘Occupy Wall Street’ link to a well-funded group of self-described “revolutionaries” who are based in Belgrade, belonging first to Otpor(Resistance) and then to CANVAS (the Center for Applied Non-Violent Actions and Strategies. For 12 years Otpor and then CANVAS has served interests of the supranational financial tyranny that early statements of ‘OWS’ determinedly oppose.

Otpor began in Serbia in 1999 as students grouping against the regime and re-election of Slobodan Milosevic. According to the New York Times, Otporreceived training from retired U.S. Army Colonel Robert Helvey and substantial funding from the more than $30 million thrown against Milosevic by the United States Agency for International Aid (USAID) and the U.S-based non-governmental organizations (NGOs) Freedom House, the National Endowment for Democracy, and the International Republican Institute. Otpor also learned methodology from books written by Gene Sharp, a Harvard professor who founded the Albert Einstein Institution that retired Colonel Helvey later served as President. (21) Financier George Soros funded the publication and distribution of Sharp’s From Dictatorship to Democracy in 1993, as noted in the 27-minue documentary “The Revolution Business” by Journeyman Pictures (22).

NATO’s campaign against post-Yugoslavia Serbia in the latter 1990s was also called by it and the United Nations ‘humanitarian intervention.’ Its bombing during these years also struck non-military targets, including the Chinese Embassy in Belgrade, and killed thousands of civilians. (23)

The former Yugoslavia has another parallel with NATO-ravaged Libya. In 1990 the Yugoslavia of which Serbia was then part controlled its finances through a State-owned Central Bank. It was one of eight nations on Earth with State-owned Central Banks. Cuba, Iran, Iraq, Libya, North Korea, Syria, and the Sudan were the other seven nations and all eight nations were on the United States Clinton Administration’s list of ‘Rogue States.’ Four have since been invaded by Anglo-American forces (Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Yugoslavia) and the remaining four are threatened with such attack (Cuba, Iran, Syria, the Sudan). (24)

A brief but far-ranging article by Ellen Brown from last April, published ontruthout.org, asks ‘Libya: All About Oil, or All About Banking?” It notes that Libya’s ‘rebel’ National Transitional Council declared its own private Central Bank, allowing seizure of Libyan resources and savings, after less than one month of inconclusive fighting on the ground. The article is at https://truth-out.org/libya-all-about-oil-or-all-about-banking/1302678000.

Otpor’s reach became international and in 2003 it grew into CANVAS, the Center for Applied Non-Violent Actions And Strategies. It received more funding from the International Republican Institute, Freedom House, the NED, and George Soros’ Open Society Institute. Its leaders guided activists in regions of the former Soviet Union–Georgia s ‘Rose Revolution’ of 2003 and Ukraine’s ‘Orange Revolution’ of 2004. A thorough study of Otpor/CANVAS work in the former Soviet Union, written by Jonathan Mowat in 2005,refers in its title to covert dynamics that he sees: ‘Coup d’état in Disguise: Washington’s New World Order “Democratization” Template’. (25)

Contrary of CANVAS slogans, the ‘Color ‘Revolutions’ in Georgia and Ukraine did NOT result in anything like more power to their places’ people. They resulted in Governments as corrupt as their predecessors. They also resulted in much less local and national control of resources and infrastructure under ‘Shock’ programs stipulated by the International Monetary Fund for loans. In 2011 Ukraine asked the International Monetary Fund to let it ‘delay raising household gas prices’, a price-increase that was part of IMF conditions for a $15.15 billion loan, while Georgia was asking the IMF for another loan

Said ‘Shock’ programs to poor and struggling societies were initially authored by a Harvard-educated economist, Jeffrey Sachs. Jeffrey Sachs continues to fill many roles. The 56-year-old is now Professor in two Schools at Columbia University, Director of the Earth Institute, Special Adviser to United Nations Secretary Ban Ki-Moon, a Commissioner of the Broadband Commission for Digital Development, and a partner with George Soros in Millennium Villages and in the Institute for New Economic Thinking (26)

Jeffrey Sachs twice addressed ‘Occupy Wall Street’ in October 2011, soon after release of his latest book, The Price of Civilization, offering praise and advice. He implausibly included himself among the working-class and needy by repeating “We are the the 99%.” (27)

On October 24, 2011 Canadian publication Adbusters, a publicizing sponsor of ’Occupy Wall Street’ since last Summer, urged ‘OWS’ and the ‘Occupy’ movement as a whole to endorse a ‘Robin Hood Tax’ of 0.05% on strictly speculative financial transactions and to do so by time of the G20 meeting of 20 major industrial nations this coming weekend.

The ‘Robin Hood Tax’ is as yet a vague though slickly packaged creation. Its British website declares it ‘A tax on Banks that would give billions to tackle poverty and climate change, here and abroad.’ Another statement on this site says: ‘Turning A GLOBAL CRISIS into A GLOBAL OPPORTUNITY’. Among the Robin Hood Tax’s existing endorsers are President Nikolas Sarkozy of France, Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany, the Pope, the Archbishop of Canterbury, Lord Adair Turner (Chairman of Britain’s Financial Services Authority and the International Committee on Climate Change), Paul Krugman of the Nobel Prize and New York Times, Bill Gates, Jeffrey Sachs, George Soros, and (yet another multi-billionaire beneficiary of partnerships with the Rockefeller and Rothschild families) Warren Buffet.

The Robin Hood Tax has a projected ‘GLOBAL’ yield of $1.3 trillion. Non-endorsers of it ask: to what and whom will it ‘give billions’? The World Bank is one supposed administrator. Given its endorsers and its ‘GLOBAL’ framing, isn’t this ‘Robin Hood Tax’ most likely to be one more dodge and snare toward gulling and fleecing masses, small businesses and working-class people, through a tax that goes somewhere far away from local administration and needs? (28)

Adbusters was a secondary initiator of ‘Occupy Wall Street’, according to earlier ‘OWS’ organizer David DeGraw of ampedstatus.org. (29) Adbusters is a relatively small recipient and funder within a supranational chain of obliging donations between very wealthy Foundations. Between 1996-2003 the Canada-basedAdbusters received $334,217 from the U.S.-based Tides Foundation (30). On its side, up the chain of tax-evading exchange, the Tides Foundation, a far more endowed non-profit, received $23.988,039 from George Soros’ Open Society Institute alone between 1997-2005. At the end of 2003 the net worth of the 501c3Tides Foundation was $145,439,750. (31)

Let’s return to the “revolutionaries” from Belgrade. After Georgia and Ukraine, the clenched-fist logo of Otpor/CANVAS showed up in CANVAS-advised opposition to the democratically elected Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela, as Venezuela’s President Hugo Chavez displayed in a 2007 TV broadcast. (32)

Otpor/CANVAS went on to guide activists in Tunisia’s ‘Jasmine Revolution’ and Egypt’s ‘Lotus Revolution’ of late 2010 and early 2011 (33).

Where do these ‘Color Revolutions’ of the MENA (MIddle East North Africa) region stand now? Their currently dominant results In Egypt and Tunisia are not promising for direct democracy or freedom or prosperity for their places’ people.

Martial law continues in Egypt under the NATO-approved successor to Hosni Mobarak, 76-year-old Field Marshal Mohamed Hussein Tantawi. ‘Egypt’s Military Expands Power, Raises Alarms’, says the New York Times on October 14, 2011. (34) Tunisia’s elections of October 2011 produced decisive victory for the Islamist party led by Rachid al-Ghahannuchi, who has previous declared a fatwa that all Muslims should summarily kill all Israelis in Israel. ( (35)

In short, Egypt and Tunisia now appear more inclined to instability and civil and external warfare than they were one year ago. Thus their statuses more serve the interests of the supranational Banks that finance warfare and that seek more of global control for their super-exploitative but irremediably debt-ridden system. These Banks and their partners in nations’ private Central Banks and their overseeing Bank of International Settlements seek cover from their manifold failings through ‘GLOBAL’ measures such as the Robin Hood Tax. They’re absolutely inimical to people’s general well-being everywhere.

Occupy Melbourne

Returning once more to our Belgrade-based “revolutionaries”, Otpor/CANVASalso trained activists in the anti-Qaddafi Libyan Youth Movement as to uses of ‘social media’. (36)

As observed above, lies broadcast through impossibly located and obviously falseFacebook and Twitter accounts claim to report Government massacres in Benghazi and Tripoli that never happened. These non-existent “crimes against humanity” by “the dictator Qaddafi” then became a much-amplified Big Lie through the services of CNN, al Jazeera, Fox News, et cetera of the Corporate Stream Media. Thus the Jamahiriya ‘State of the Masses’ and its assets (oil, gold, water, a State-owned Central Bank) were set up for United Nations’ ‘humanitarian intervention’ and NATO strikes. (37)

The Example of Libya’s ‘Green Revolution’

Here are factors that connect aspirations of many in the ‘Occupy …’ movement with accomplishments of Libya’s Jamahiriya.

Libya’s ‘Green Revolution’ began with Muammar Qaddafi’s seizing power with a coup against King Idris in 1969. According to Michel Chossudovsky, the reliable editor of globalresearch.ca, in his article of September 21, 2011, ‘Destroying a Country’s Standard of Living: What Libya Had Achieved, What Has Been Destroyed’, by 2010 Libya had the following benefits and standards.

•Free education from kindergarten-age through University for all of its citizens

•Free health-care for all its citizens

•National literacy of above 89% and rising–99.9% among youth

•A teacher to student ratio of one to seventeen in primary Schools

•Nutrition per individual of more than 3000 calories per day. (38)

Libya’s Jamahiriya also provided:

•Free farmland. equipment and seeds to any citizen committed to farming the apportioned land

•$50,000 toward housing for any newly married couple

•Free electricity

•Free water (much of it through the ‘World’s Largest Man-made River’)

•Guaranteed employment and housing (no urban homelessness

•Women with the right to drive a car and divorce a husband and receive connubial property after divorce.

Libyans in the Jamahiriya ‘State of the Masses’) also enjoyed:

•34 years of direct democracy through ‘Basic People’s Congresses’ of local popular councils

•The prospect of even more radical (“to the roots”) democracy through a proposal by tribesman Muammar Qaddafi in 2008 that would further reduce centralized Government control and more empower its people through direct deposit of oil revenues. Qaddafi’s proposal was described thus by United States’Congressional Research Service on February 18, 2011: ‘In March 2008, [Colonel Qaddafi] announced his intention to dissolve most government administrative bodies and institute a Wealth Distribution Program whereby state oil revenues would be distributed to citizens on a monthly basis for them to administer personally, in cooperation, and via local committees. Citing popular criticism of government performance in a long, wide ranging speech, [he] repeatedly stated that the traditional state would soon be “dead” in Libya and that direct rule by citizens would be accomplished through the distribution of oil revenues. (39)

Perhaps most important as regards Libyan people’s well-being and their freedom from debt, Libya had:

•A Central Bank that was 100% owned and controlled by its Jamahiriya government and that observed State and Islamic law by offering interest-free loans to its people

•144 tons of gold.

Source:

https://www.puppetgov.com/2011/11/09/occupy-together-movement-grows-stop-bankers-world-war-iii-3

Filed Under: Imperialism, Income Inequality, Libya, Media, Military, Occupy, Propaganda, Symbolism, Tyranny, USA, Weapons

American Interventionism: Protecting the Profit Machine

November 29, 2011 By 1 Comment

Why America is really so concerned about the push for democracy in the Middle East.

America is the spawn of empire building and from the start has itself engaged heavily in that activity. In nearly all cases it has shown a preference for bribery, coercion, intimidation and force over diplomacy and cooperation.

As a nation founded on invasion, occupation and genocide, America has maintained its empire by those means to this day.

Although Spain began the slaughter with the voyages of Columbus, the British colonies that became the United States continued it with a vengeance.

On October 26, 1606, King James I of England granted a royal charter to establish The London Company, a for-profit, joint stock venture that was also known as the Charter of the Virginia Company of London. The company’s purpose was the colonization, for profit, of North America.

From the Start; Murdering the Real Americans

In 1607 the British arrived in Jamestown and, shortly thereafter, began the calculated extermination of the indigenous population. By 1890 an estimated 90,000,000 people, in North, Central and South America had been systematically slaughtered in the fulfillment of Manifest Destiny.

The overt genocide in North America was curtailed after the infamous massacre at Wounded Knee in 1890.

I did not know then how much was ended. When I look back now from this high hill of my old age, I can still see the butchered women and children lying heaped and scattered all along the crooked gulch as plain as when I saw them with eyes still young. And I can see that something else died there in the bloody mud, and was buried in the blizzard. A people’s dream died there. It was a beautiful dream. And I, to whom so great a vision was given in my youth, — you see me now a pitiful old man who has done nothing, for the nation’s hoop is broken and scattered. There is no center any longer, and the sacred tree is dead. - Black Elk, Oglala Holy Man on the aftermath of the Massacre at Wounded Knee, South Dakota, December, 1890. The United States Army Seventh Cavalry used Gatling guns to slaughter 300 helpless Lakota children, men and women.

Although efforts at limited, selective genocide have continued, they have become much more clandestine.

Lee Brightman, United Native Americans President, estimates that of the Native population of 800,000 (in the US), as many as 42% of the women of childbearing age and 10% of the men…have been sterilized… The first official inquiry into the sterilization of Native women…by Dr. Connie Uri…reported that 25,000 Indian women had been permanently sterilized within Indian Health Services facilities alone through 1975…

No one actually knows how many native women were sterilized during the seventies. You may rest assured that the eugenics movement, although out of sight, is not extinct.

Motivation for Mass Murder

Throughout most of American history, the primary motivation for innumerable annexations, invasions, occupations, coups, assassinations and the installation of genocidal dictators has been to advance the agenda of capitalist globalization and to protect the privatized profit machine wherever footholds have been established.

Whatever the nature of the “business” that has entrenched itself in any sovereign nation, it can count upon the protection of its private security company; the U.S. government.

Chiquita Banana Republic?

Jacobo Arbenz became the democratically elected president of Guatemala in 1951, winning 65% of the vote. In 1952 Arbenz announced an Agrarian Reform Program which threatened to nationalize the United Fruit Company (Chiquita Banana). Faced with the reforms of a socialist democracy, the corporation sought American intervention.

The democratically elected, progressive government of Guatemala was overthrown in 1954 by a CIA-organized and funded coup. The pretense for this assault on democracy was the alleged, ubiquitous threat of Soviet takeover when, in fact, Russia had no interest in the country. They did not even maintain diplomatic relations.

This act of U.S. terrorism resulted in one of the most inhumane chapters of the 20th century. A forty year reign of terror ensued, eight years of which was supported by the Reagan administration. This was a period of torture, military-government death squads, mass executions, disappearances and inconceivable cruelty resulting in the extermination of at least 200,000 civilians.

In 1982 Reagan went to visit General Efrain Rios Montt, possibly the worst of the military dictators, who had slaughtered the Guatemalan Indians and peasants indiscriminately. Montts’ actions had won him global condemnation. After meeting with the butcher, Reagan stated that the general was getting “a bad deal”.

This is but a single example among many. To gain further knowledge, try What Uncle Sam Really Wants by Noam Chomsky and Killing Hope: U.S. Military and C.I.A. Interventions since World War II by William Blum.

Ronnie Strikes a Blow for “Democracy”

In Nicaragua the proxy army of Ronald Reagan, AKA the Contras, was formed from the vicious National Guard of Somoza, a mercilessly repressive, U.S.-friendly dictator.

From 1981-1989 the Contras waged all-out war, on behalf of Washington, against the Sandinistas. Their goal was to destroy progressive government social and economic programs, which were not favorable to the capitalist “free market” agenda.

The civilian death toll was well over 13,000.

John Stockwell, 13-year veteran of the CIA and former U.S. Marine Corps major, had this to say about the American method of “spreading democracy”.

They go into villages. They haul out families. With the children forced to watch, they castrate the father. They peel the skin off his face. They put a grenade in his mouth, and pull the pin. With the children forced to watch, they gang-rape the mother, and slash her breasts off. And sometimes, for variety, they make the parents watch while they do these things to the children.

These are the activities done by the Contras. The Contras are the people President Reagan called ‘freedom fighters.’ He said: ‘they are the moral equivalent of our founding fathers’.

The Addicted Empire

Venezuela is the largest oil producer in South America.

In 2002, a U.S. backed coup in Venezuela became a U.S. back-fired coup. The democratically elected Hugo Chavez was temporarily ousted and replaced by the Bush-approved businessman Pedro Carmona. The outraged response from the people of Venezuela, including most of the military, was so overwhelming that the U.S. puppet was forced to give up his stolen prize after less than 48 hours. He fled Venezuela after he was placed under house arrest pending trial for his part in the failed coup, sought and was granted asylum by Colombia and later turned up in Miami. (emphasis added)

The American instigators/enablers of this recent “intervention” were appointees to the Bush administration whose careers were established orchestrating the dirty wars of Ronald Reagan.

The reason this coup was attempted and why Chavez has a target painted on his back by America can be summed up in a single word: oil. That’s probably the single most important commodity on Earth today, though water may soon overtake it, but that’s another discussion. America’s petroleum industry wants global control of oil production and the profits from it. They don’t want to share those profits with the People of Venezuela or anyone else, but that’s exactly what they’ve been forced to do by the Chavez government.

Since Venezuela is a democracy — in fact, and not in name only like the U.S. — there is a much stronger social component. That is to say, the government attempts to act in the best interests of the majority of the citizens rather than in service of powerful special interests.

The social democracy of Venezuela is hindering the capitalist profit machine in its impossible quest for infinite growth. That the filthy peasants of some back-water Third World country should have their lives improved at the expense oil company stockholders and billionaire CEOs is simply unacceptable.

The U.S. is attempting to do in Venezuela what it did when it came to the rescue of the United Fruit Company in Guatemala. Hugo Chavez is a marked man. I’m surprised he’s still alive. Then again, look how many assassination attempts Fidel Castro has survived.

Go East Young Empire!

The U.S. planned an invasion of Afghanistan well before the conveniently timed “attack” of September 11th. There are strong economic and strategic interests, centered on the control of oil reserves in Central Asia, which are the true motivation for the occupation of Afghanistan.

The U.S. is eying those reserves in the Caspian and Central Asia as an alternative to oil from the unstable Persian Gulf region. Afghanistan is the preferred gateway to and delivery route for the oil, for which American oil companies have acquired rights to as much as 75 percent. Big Oil wants a pipeline through Afghanistan to the Pakistani port of Karachi on the Arabian Sea.

It seems apparent however, that there is little enthusiasm for such a project from whatever powers may be in Afghanistan. In order for the pipeline to become a reality, an obedient puppet regime, enabling U.S. remote control of the country, is required.

The slaughter taking place in Afghanistan has little to do with “the war on terror”, which is nothing more than a pretext for escalating American aggression, and much to do with advancing the agenda of the capitalist profit machine. It’s simply a variation on a theme.

Don’t Mess With the Dollar!

Saddam Hussein made a fatal error when he became the first OPEC member to demand payment for oil in euros rather than dollars. A shift from petrodollar to petroeuro would have a catastrophic effect on the American economy.

Continued American control of Iraqi oil is the reason for the illegal invasion and occupation of that sovereign nation. Anyone who was paying the least attention knew long before the attack was launched; there were no weapons of mass destruction and no connection with Al Qaeda.

One of the first things done after the invasion was to put Iraq back on the petro-dollar. America was largely in control of the inputs and outputs of Iraqi throughout the 1990s. Payment for the oil was in petrodollars, and there was no invasion. No sooner was the switch made to petroeuros than incontrovertible evidence of imminent danger from Saddam’s awesome military might and close ties with Al Qaeda were discovered (invented) and used as a pretext for invasion and occupation.

Once again the capitalist enforcer, U.S. military might, was brought in to ensure that “business as usual” would not be interrupted. In the years following the illegal invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, with the loss of hundreds of thousands of lives, big oil is making the highest profits of any industryin the history of the world.

War profiteering and weapons sales have also been very profitable.

The Peasants are Revolting!

At least that’s how the globalist elite feel.

Suddenly, as if some multi-lingual epiphany has simultaneously struck in several places, commonpeople in the Middle East and elsewhere are getting uppity. They are demanding democracy and insisting that their human rights be recognized. They are taking inspiration from each other and, hopefully, a chain reaction has begun that will lead to a better world for all.

Even in America, lowly, insignificant, middle-class blue collar laborers are emerging from a long sleep of indoctrinated complacency and demanding their civil liberties be returned and their human rights honored. Could things get any worse for our masters?

I certainly hope so. Imagine if you will, several OPEC nations suddenly being transformed from capitalist-friendly monarchies and dictatorships into social democracies like those that are beginning to emerge in Central and South America.

Envision the peoples of Third World countries all over Earth coming to the understanding that the internal strife in their societies, which is often fomented and exaggerated by outside forces, is allowing those same forces to steal their resources and heritage, destroy their culture and environment and deprive them of their dignity, integrity and humanity.

It’s one thing for America and its “allies” to bring in the enforcers and abort one or two isolated, nascent, “socialist” experiments. It would be quite another to deal with a global flare-up of societies, especially those in oil producing nations, suddenly awakened and enraged by the injustices they have endured for centuries at the hands of a cadre of parasitic, psychopathic, self-proclaimed rulers.

“It’s the end of the world as we know it and I feel fine!” - R.E.M.

Could it be possible that we are about to witness, even participate in, a global, societal sea change? Is there a chance that homo sapiens are beginning to access their species consciousness, awakening their potential to embrace the reality of a single human family?

Perhaps the would-be rulers of the world have finally pushed too far, hard and wide in their quest for supremacy over all. Their actions, made so highly visible today by the nearly instantaneous global spread of information, may become the catalyst that will initiate the disintegration of their dystopian dream. Their lust for power and control and the ruthless pursuit of them may be about to backfire.

The technological ”shrinking” of our world, the sudden ability of practically everyone to know what is happening, almost everywhere, nearly in real time, is making us all more aware of each other and our shared humanity than ever before in history. That awareness also brings the recognition of the injustice, oppression and exploitation we are all being subjected to.

If sufficient numbers of people realize they ultimately share the same goal; if they instinctively work toward that single, identical purpose, however independently, nothing will stop them from achieving it.

If it’s true that the darkest hour is just before dawn, then the sun is just about to rise.

Filed Under: Imperialism, Money, Native American Indians, USA, Violence, War Tagged With: ,

Flashback: Could El-Baradei have halted the Iraq invasion?

November 28, 2011 By Leave a Comment

Latent indications of remorse suggest there is more to the role of some in paving the way for the invasion of Iraq than at first meets the eye, writes Abdallah El-Ashaal.

In the second week of August, Mohamed El-Baradei announced that he regreted his silence over the US invasion of Iraq. Although it is perhaps odd that the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) should make such an admission at this time, it will be useful to register a couple of observations on this quite serious matter for future reference.

First, El-Baradei along with at least all of the permanent members of the Security Council knew that Washington was determined to invade Iraq and that it was searching for any evidence or circumstances to support this resolve. The practical beginning for the invasion plan was Security Council Resolution 1441 of 2002 calling for inspections of Iraq for nuclear weapons and other weapons of mass destruction. That same year, just as the Arab Peace Initiative was announced from Beirut, Israeli prime minister Ariel Sharon set about quashing the second Palestinian Intifada. Also in that year, in October, US Congress passed a bill that effectively obliged the US administration to recognise Jerusalem as the eternal capital of Israel. So everyone knew what was in Washington’s mind at the time and that it saw the passage of the inspections resolution as the first step towards the acquisition of international cover for its plans. Nothing could underscore this point more than the remark by then French foreign minister Dominique de Villepin in the Security Council that the resolution did not give Washington licence to invade Iraq.

In spite of the fact — or perhaps because of the fact — that the Bush administration was so clearly chomping at the bit to launch an invasion and grasping for the said resolution, in accordance with which the UN inspections team would be authorised to inspect every inch of Iraqi territory, and would sniff out the evidence it needed, UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan affirmed that the resolution would give a new impetus to the quest for a peaceful solution to the Iraqi question in an increasingly perilous world. At the time that the resolution was still under debate, he said that the resolution offered a model of the type of multilateral diplomacy that served the cause of peace and security, he stressed and he urged the Iraqi leadership to seize the opportunity to end the isolation and suffering of the Iraqi people. He simultaneously cautioned Iraq against the folly of not cooperating with the plea to disarm peacefully and warned that if Iraq continued in its defiance the Security Council would have to assume its enforcing responsibilities. At this point, the French foreign minister insisted the resolution be worded in such a way as not to sanction the immediate recourse to force. Indeed, it was reformulated so as to require a second resolution that could, if need be, authorise the use of force based on the findings submitted to the Security Council by the inspections team.

China and Russia, for their part, insisted that the issuance of a second resolution on Iraq must be contingent upon proof of Iraqi violations as explicitly stated in the findings submitted by the UN inspections team. At this point, US Secretary of State General Colin Powell, who would subsequently express deep remorse over the part he played in this drama, opened the door to his country circumventing UN restrictions. He said that the resolution could not prevent any member from acting in self-defence against Iraq or to compel Iraq to implement UN resolutions intended to protect international peace and security. Powell thus stated that while the Security Council resolution may not give anyone a licence to use force it could not prevent anyone from using force. Perhaps it was such brazenness that prompted Kofi Annan to give voice to his conscience and publicly declare, after the invasion, yet despite of Washington’s threat to expose the part his son played in the Oil-for-Food programme, that the US had used illegal force against Iraq.

The foregoing account has but one implication: everyone colluded in the invasion of Iraq. It was as though this invasion was the prerequisite for the prevalence of world peace. Meanwhile, the Arabs colluded by silence, which stemmed from the failure to draw the line between, on the one hand, their exasperation with the Saddam regime and frustration at their inability to restrain it and bring it back to its senses and, on the other, the future and wellbeing of a great people. This silence too helped clear the way for disaster.

My second observation is that by 5 February 2003, when the Security Council was discussing the report submitted by UNMOVIC, the UN inspections team, the US had already amassed its forces to the accompaniment of intensive diplomatic manoeuvres and a massive propaganda campaign. After the Security Council concluded its session that day with the finding that the inspection team had so far found no evidence of weapons of mass destruction, Mohamed El-Baradei reiterated the belief of his predecessor — and the chief of UNMOVIC — that Iraq had no weapons of mass destruction and that the assumption that such weapons existed in that country was groundless.

Shortly after Resolution 1441 was passed in 2002, El-Baradei published an article in Al-Hayat stating that Iraq had to abide by the provisions of the resolution because this would deprive Washington of the pretext for invading it. The article meshed with an international and Arab campaign that attempted to drive home the same message. Two days later, an article of mine appeared in Al-Hayat beneath the headline “After the inspections what comes next?” Contrary to the general tide, I held that the inspections resolution was part of the process of preparing the groundwork for the invasion and that to promote it was to collude in the act of invasion. Why, after that famous Security Council session of 5 February, did El-Baradei threaten to resign if Washington went ahead and invaded Iraq? He had just submitted a report refuting the existence of weapons of mass destruction, and thus had acted totally within his jurisdiction and in accordance with his duties. But to resign? After all, it was obvious that his presence or absence as IAEA chief would have no impact on a decision that had been taken years earlier. The threat could only have meant one thing: El-Baradei had given something of crucial importance to making the invasion possible. Subsequent reports indicated that El-Baradei’s report had reassured Washington that the invasion would be safe. Some went so far as to state that El-Baradei’s team had placed identifying marks on strategic targets and helped recruit agents on the ground to facilitate the invasion.

Between that day in 2003 when he threatened to resign and his proclamation of remorse in 2009 is a minefield. It is not enough for El-Baradei to apologise for his role, over which speculation and conjecture are now more rife than ever. He must clear his conscience and record for history exactly what part he played in the invasion and destruction of a great nation and the tragedy of a people who still have no clear sight of a brighter future. As he is summoning up his reminiscences, we would also hope that El-Baradei would clarify the circumstances surrounding how he and the IAEA were jointly awarded a special Nobel Peace Prize, given the modest and, indeed, negative record of that agency in preventing the proliferation of nuclear weapons.

While he is at it, could he also please explain why the US nominated him as IAEA chief over the Egyptian nominee for that post at the time?

Source: https://uruknet.info/?p=m83429

Filed Under: Corruption, Imperialism, Iraq, Military Industrial Complex, War Tagged With:
« Older Posts