‘Death And After In Iraq’
December 13, 2011 By Leave a Comment
Jess Goodell enlisted in the Marines immediately after she graduated from high school in 2001. She volunteered three years later to serve in the Marine Corps’ first officially declared Mortuary Affairs unit, at Camp Al Taqaddum in Iraq. Her job, for eight months, was to collect and catalog the bodies and personal effects of dead Marines. She put the remains of young Marines in body bags and placed the bags in metal boxes. Before being shipped to Dover Air Force Base, the boxes were stored, often for days, in a refrigerated unit known as a “reefer.” The work she did was called “processing.” 
“We went through everything,” she said when I reached her by phone in Buffalo, N.Y., where she is about to become a student in a Ph.D. program in counseling at the University of Buffalo. “We would get everything that the body had on it when the Marine died. Everyone had a copy of The Rules of Engagement in their left breast pocket. You found notes that people had written to each other. You found lists. Lists were common, the things they wanted to do when they got home or food they wanted to eat. The most difficult was pictures. Everyone had a picture of their wife or their kids or their family. And then you had the younger kids who might be 18 years old and they had prom pictures or pictures next to what I imagine were their first cars. Everyone had a spoon in their flak jacket. There were pens and trash and wrappers and MRE food. All of it would get sent back [to the Marines’ homes].
“We all had the idea that at any point this could be us on the table,” she said. “I think Marines thought that we went over there to die. And so people wrote letters saying ‘If I die I want you to know I love you.’ ‘I want my car to go to my younger brother.’ Things like that. They carried those letters on their bodies. We had a Marine that we processed and going through his wallet he had a picture of a sonogram of a fetus his wife had sent him. And a lot of Marines had tattooed their vital information under an armpit. It was called a meat tag.”
The unit processed about half a dozen suicides. The suicide notes, she said, almost always cited hazing. Women, she said, were constantly harassed, especially sexually, but it often did not match the systematic punishment and humiliation meted out to men who were deemed to be inadequate Marines.
She said that Marines who were overweight or unable to do the physical training were subjected to withering verbal and physical abuse. They were called “fat nasties” and “shit bags.”
The harassed Marines would be assigned to other individual Marines and become their slaves. They would be sent on punishing runs in which many of them vomited. They would be forced to bear-crawl—walk on all fours—the length of a football field and back. This would be followed by sets of monkey fuckers—bending down, grabbing the ankles, crouching down like a baseball catcher and then standing up again—followed by a series of other exercises that went on until the Marines collapsed.
“They make these Marines do what they call ‘bitch’ work,” Goodell said. “They are assigned to be someone else’s ‘bitch’ for the day. We had a guy in our platoon, not in Iraq but in California, and he was overweight. He was on remedial PT, which meant he went to extra physical training. When he came to work he was rotated. One day he was with this corporal or this sergeant. One day he was sent to me. I had him for an hour. I remember sending him outside and making him carry things. It was very common for them to dig a hole and fill it back up with sand or carry sandbags up to the top of a hill and then carry them down again.”
The unit was sent to collect the bodies of the Marines who killed themselves, usually by putting rifles under their chins and pulling the trigger.
“We had a Marine who was in a port-a-john when he blew his face off,” she said. “We had another Marine who shot himself through the neck. Often they would do it in the corner of a bunker or an abandoned building. We had a couple that did it in port-a-johns. We had to go in and peel and pull off chunks of flesh and brain tissue that had sprayed the walls. Those were the most frustrating bodies to get. On those bodies we were also on cleanup crew. It was gross. We sent the suicide notes home with the bodies.
“We had the paperwork to do fingerprinting, but we started getting bodies in which there weren’t any hands or we would get bodies that were just meat,” said Goodell, who in May will publish a memoir called “Shade It Black: Death and After in Iraq.” The book title refers to the form that required those in the mortuary unit to shade in black the body parts that were missing from a corpse. “Very quickly it became irrelevant to have a fingerprinting page to fill out. By the time we would get a body it might have been a while and rigor mortis had already set in. Their hands were usually clenched as if they were still holding their rifle. We could not unbend the fingers easily.”
The unit was also sent to collect Marines killed by improvised explosive devices (IEDs). The members would arrive on the scene and don white plastic suits, gloves and face masks.
“One of the first convoys we went to was one where the Army had been traveling over a bridge and an IED had exploded,” she said. “It had literally shot a seven-ton truck over the side and down into a ravine. Marines were already going down into the ravine. We were just getting out of our vehicles. We were putting on our gloves and putting coverings over our boots. I was with a Marine named Pineda. I was coming around the Humvee and there was a spot on the ground that was a circle. I looked at it and thought something must have exploded here or near here. I went over to look at it. I looked in and saw a boot. Then I noticed the boot had a foot in it. I almost lost my lunch.
“In the seven-ton truck the [body of the] assistant driver, who was in the passenger seat, was trapped in the vehicle,” she said. “All of his body was in the vehicle. We had to crawl in there to get it out. It was charred. Pineda and I pulled the burnt upper torso from the truck. Then we removed a leg. Some of the remains had to be scooped up by putting out hands together as though we were cupping water. That was very common. A lot of the deaths were from IEDs or explosions. You might have an upper torso but you need to scoop the rest of the remains into a body bag. It was very common to have body bags that when you picked them up they would sink in the middle because they were filled with flesh. The contents did not resemble a human body.”
The members of the mortuary unit were shunned by the other Marines. The stench of dead flesh clung to their uniforms, hair, skin and fingers. Two members of the mortuary unit began to disintegrate psychologically. One began to take a box of Nyquil tablets every day and drink large quantities of cold medicine. He was eventually medevaced out of Iraq.
“Our cammies would be stained with blood or with brains,” she said. “When you scoop up the meat it often would get on the cuffs of our shirts. You could smell it, even after you took off your gloves. We weren’t washing our cammies everyday. Your cuff comes to your face when you eat. Physically we were stained with remains. We had a constant smell like rotten meat, which I guess is what it was since often the bodies had been in the sun and the heat for a long time. The flesh had gone bad. The skin on a body in the hot sun slides off. The skin detaches itself from the layer beneath and slides around on itself.
“Our platoon was to the Marines what the Marines are to much of America: We did things that had to be done but that no one wanted to know about,” she said. “The other Marines knew what we did, but they did not want to think it could happen to them. I had one female Marine in my tent who would talk to me. The rest would not give me the time of day. The Marines in Mortuary Affairs knew that any day could be our day. Other Marines, who have to go out on the convoys, who have to get up the next day, have to get on with life.”
Her unit once had to recover two Marines who had drowned in a lake. It appeared one had leapt in to save the other. The bodies, which were recovered after a couple of days by Navy divers, were grotesquely swollen. One of the Marines was so bloated and misshapened that the body was difficult to carry on a litter.
“His neck was as wide as his bloated head, and his stomach jutted out like a barrel,” she writes in the book. “His testicles were the size of cantaloupes. His face was white and puffy and thick. Not fat, but thick. It was unreal. He looked like a movie prop, with thick, gray, waxy skin and the thick purple lips. We couldn’t stop looking at these bodies because they were so out of proportion and so disfigured and because, still, they looked like us.”
It was hardest to look into the faces of the dead. She and the other members of the mortuary unit swiftly covered the faces when they worked on the bodies. They avoided looking at the eyes of the corpses.
Once, the unit had to process seven Marines killed in an explosion. Seven or eight body bags were delivered to the bunker.
“We had clean body bags set up so we could sort the flesh,” she said. “Sometimes things come in with nametags. Or sometimes one is Hispanic and you could tell who was Hispanic and who was the white guy. We tried separating flesh. It was ridiculous. We would open a body bag and there was nothing but vaporized flesh. There were not four hands or a whole leg in a bag. We tried to distribute the mush evenly throughout the bags. We were trying to do the best we could sorting it out. We had the last body bag come in. We opened up the body bag and it was filled with the heads. I looked at four before looking away. Not only did we have to look at them, we had to pick them up and figure out who it belonged to. The eyes were looking back at us. We got used to a lot of it. But the heads worked the other way. They affected us more strongly as time passed. We saw on the heads the expressions of fright and horror. It made us wonder what we were doing here.”
She processed one Marine whose face was twisted at the moment of death by rage. The face of this Marine began to haunt her.
“I had this feeling that something awful had occurred,” she said. “The way he had come in and stiffened he had this look to his face that made my stomach curl. It looked angry. Often expressions on bodies would look fearful and hurt. The faces looked as though they had received death. But this face looked like he had given death.”
She and the other members of the unit became convinced they could feel and hear the souls of the dead Marines they had processed and housed in their reefers.
And then there was a body that was brought in one day that was not stiff.
“He was fully dressed in his cammies and his whole body was intact,” she said. “His hands were lying folded across his stomach.”
She and the others noticed that the Marine on the table was breathing lightly. The chest was going up and down. They frantically called their superiors to find out what to do. They were told to wait.
“Just wait? Wait for what?” she cried.
She remembers the doc saying: “There’s nothing we can do. Just wait.”
“People don’t wait for this sort of thing,” she protested. “What are we waiting for? What if this Marine was your brother, would we wait?”
They stood and watched as the man died. Goodell stormed out of the bunker.
“There was always a heaviness in the air,” she said. “It felt like I was being watched. We would feel hands on our shoulders or hands on our heads. Everyone had stories of sounds they heard or things they had felt. I was on watch at the bunker and I heard the back door open. I assumed it was one of the Marines coming in to use the Internet or the phone. I waited for them to come up. They would always come up. But no one came up. I got up and didn’t see anyone. I went back to my duty hut and I heard footsteps walk across the bunker. This kind of thing happened often.”
Her return to the United States was difficult, filled with retreats into isolation, substance abuse, deep depression and dysfunctional relationships. Slowly she pulled her life back together, finishing college and applying to graduate school so she can counsel trauma victims.
“Every single Marine I know goes to Iraq to help,” she said. “While I was there that is what I thought. That is why I volunteered. I thought I was going to help the Iraqis. I know better now. We did the dirty work. We were used by the government. The military knows that young, single men are dangerous. We breed it in Marines. We push the testosterone. We don’t want them to be educated. They are deprived of a lot and rewarded with very little. It keeps us at ground level. We cannot question anyone. We do what we are told.
“I am still in contact with most of the people I knew,” she said. “They are not coping. One lives in VA [Veterans Affairs], constantly seeing psychologists and psychiatrists. One was kicked out of the Marines for three DUIs. Another was kicked out of the Marines because he took cocaine. Those who have gotten out are living below the poverty level. And what people do to cope is re-enlist. When they re-enlist they do better. They function. I am the only one who went to school of the 18 Marines in Mortuary Affairs. But I am in counseling at the VA. I have been diagnosed with PTSD, anxiety, depression and substance abuse. What separates me from them is that I have a great support system and I found my salvation in my education.
“War is disgusting and horrific,” she said. “It never leaves the people who were involved in it. The damage is far greater than the lists of casualties or cost in dollars. It permeates lifestyles. It infects cultures and people and worldviews. The war is never over for us. The fighting stops. The troops get called back. But the war goes on for those damaged by war.”
Not long ago she received a text message from a Marine she had worked with in Mortuary Affairs after he tried to commit suicide.
“I’ve got $2,000 in the bank,” the message read. “Let’s meet in NYC and go out with a bang.”
Source: https://www.truthdig.com/report/page3/the_body_baggers_of_iraq_20110321/
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…
(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:
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
How To Respond To The Awful Truth
December 12, 2011 By Leave a Comment
It’s a volatile, challenging time to be alive, no doubt. The world is a landscape thoroughly scattered with catastrophic nightmares like flaming lava pits on a giant festering orb. And this huge array of drastic, life-threatening problems we’re facing that are burning in the world’s collective subconscious are apparently careening towards some mad, apocalyptic finale.
The big question we’re all faced with is this. Once we’re aware of what’s going on, what do we do? And more importantly, for those not willing to face the truth, what will it take to wake them up?
And third: does that predominant attitude make it inevitable for the rest of us to share their fate?
What does one do as they observe the deliberately imploded economy, the corporate thuggery pillaging the world, a manipulated media bent on an ignorant, placated populace, the ramped up rape of the environment, the poisoning of our food, water and air supply, the drugging of our children, and wars without end appearing to be leading up to a horrific nuclear conflagration?
What is our role in what we discover to be a literally predatory environment in a hijacked world?
Here’s How: Identify The Problems Are Real and Deliberate
The first issue is to clearly identify the problems and admit their gravity. Second, we need to understand the objective of these apparent trends, however horrific these motives may appear to be.
But let me get one thing straight before we go on any further.
In light of the vastness of these incontrovertible assaults on humanity and the obvious connections to corporate, banking and government insanity, whoever does NOT think that there’s an underlying motive with definite objectives by those controlling these massive programs is a stark raving lunatic, voluntarily living in a straightjacket of self-preserving denial, staring in a zombified trance at the shadows on their cell walls.
Secondly and similarly, if anyone thinks it’s simply “greed gone wild” that’s causing these problems and an unfortunate cyclical downturn of some sort, they need to get their minds blown.
And I’m here to help.
Why Doesn’t Money Satisfy The Controllers If It’s Just Greed? Cuz It’s Power and Control
Tell me something. If everything was done just for money, why don’t they stop there? These elites know they couldn’t spend what they have in a thousand lifetimes. So why do they keep pushing?
Why do wealthy people run for office when their coffers are overflowing? Why do banksters keep loaning money they know they won’t get it back to nation after nation as they slowly take over their economies and politics? The infamous Rothschilds are estimated to be worth over 500 trillion dollars yet keep pushing for more international “programs” and intervention.
Why?
Do you see the world improving because of their efforts? Do the mega-rich dynasties, industrialists, royal families, or the uber-wealthy Vatican chip in a non self-serving dime to help the world?
Or has the plug been pulled deliberately and we’re now in free-fall towards worldwide disaster? And could someone possibly be positioning themselves to pick up the pieces and take control of the filet that’s left on the world’s butcher block once the scraps have been extricated and thrown to the dogs of war?
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Is their plan actually written in stone? Look up “Georgia Guidestones” for a spine tingler.
Living A Conscious Life
The issue and point of this article isn’t to run once again through the litany of wrongs being deliberately perpetrated on humanity and its home. If you’re reading this, chances are you’ve caught on to some extent and hopefully are active in the awakening, or are on an accelerating path to the stage of awareness where you realize to not take action is impossible, if you have any semblance of awakened consciousness. That will come, believe me.
To be conscious means to act according to consciousness, not just think or realize in some ashram. I’m sure those folks have their place, but if you’re a somewhat normal operating human trying to exist in a world bent on abusing and even killing you off, there are some serious challenges involved as to what exactly to do.
This Is Where The Universe Comes In
You cannot…and there’s no exception to this..you cannot operate solely in the mental and physical realm and expect to understand what’s going on and where your place is in all this. You may be led there in spite of your blockage, but it’s absolutely essential to have a spiritual awakening in your life.
I’m in no way talking about religion. But I guarantee if you’re pursuing truth like I think you are, the spiritual, metaphysical, esoteric, whatever you want to call it, side of all this is becoming very, very apparent. And it’s vastly empowering. Right?
Our Refuge and Armament
The most important tool in our arsenal is the ability to listen to and act according to our hearts, our source, our spirit, our connection to consciousness. Call it God, the Universe or the underlying powers inherent in Chi, Ki, Prana or whatever. Learning to listen to a deeper influence and act in responsible, loving conscious awareness is the answer.
And we must grow in this area to meet the challenges of our time. Like the internet, our old modes of communication have been tampered with and will be used against us.
Spotting the Predators
Like the Hollywood ephemeral cloaked predator character, these mostly unseen forces we are up against can usually only be spotted by their effects, like leaves and branches moving in an organized pattern as the enemy approaches. Never mind the fact that the real government leaders and societal directors are not the ones we see in the news and that others are telling them what to do, the powers behind ALL of this we can safely assume are another level removed, and I would contend are ultimately spiritual, or other dimensional.
At the very least, call it evil people and you’ll be right. But the extent and source of this evil is quite revelatory when the next level of dots starts to connect for you. I don’t claim to know everything that’s going on, but the point is we’re up against a vastly interconnected conspiracy that, like seeing the leaves rustle when the transparent predator approaches, you can only identify by their effects.
And it’s important that we’re aware of this next level.
Any Way You Look At It It’s Nasty…But Make Some Conclusions
The point is, we don’t need to know every detail before drawing some very obvious conclusions.
1. A LOT of serious somethings are very wrong with the world.
2. World so-called “leadership” is out of touch, self serving and apparently working towards some other agenda.
3. This other agenda does not necessarily benefit you and me. They’re elitists with their own plans.
4. People are dying, being poisoned, starved and outright killed at a horrific rate, while food is withheld and medical care has become restricted and basically wealth-producing pharmaceutical in nature.
5. The extremely wealthy Powers That Be refuse to give any form of aid except to their own institutions and cohorts.
6. You are sitting at home wondering what the hell is going on while reading this article.
7. What are you going to DO with your life now that you realize this?
I hope you’ll follow your heart.
That’s my wish, prayer and affirmation. We need an energetic revolution, a call to real conscious action. That action is continuous open awareness and responding to the call of the Heart!
Wanna demonstrate, and mix with others who feel the call in whatever form? Go for it! Where will that take you? I don’t know!
Wanna participate in blogs and internet forums about your search, 9/11 truth, outrage about the world’s pollution, etc? Go for it!!
Point is, if you feel the call, respond! Respond! RESPOND!
And it will respond to you!
Happy trails, meet you in the awakening…
White House Targets Domestic Extremism
December 12, 2011 By Leave a Comment
WASHINGTON (AFP) - The White House on Thursday laid out a plan to implement a government strategy to combat homegrown domestic terrorism and any attempts by Al-Qaeda to seek to radicalize American Muslims.
The initiative commits the federal government to work closely with local authorities and communities that may be targeted by extremist groups, particularly Al-Qaeda as it reels from a US onslaught abroad. 
“Protecting our nation’s communities from violent extremist recruitment and radicalization is a top national security priority,” said the document, known as the Strategic Implementation Plan (SIP).
“It is an effort that requires creativity, diligence, and commitment to our fundamental rights and principles.
“Although the SIP will be applied to prevent all forms of violent extremism, we will prioritize preventing violent extremism and terrorism that is inspired by al-Qaeda and its affiliates and adherents.”
The strategy was released a day after US officials warned that the US military was under threat as homegrown Islamic extremists, including “radicalized troops,” pose a risk to military installations.
The only deadly terror strikes on US soil since those of September 11, 2001 have been against the military, with three separate attacks that left 17 people dead, most of them soldiers, according to a report released Wednesday at the first joint House-Senate hearing on homegrown terrorism.
The SIP plan commits a task force of senior officials from a wide range of departments to ensuring the federal government engages closely with local communities. It will report to the president annually.
The plan is a spin-off of a new National Counterterrorism Strategy released in June which warned the government must be vigilant for new efforts by Al-Qaeda to infiltrate US communities and inspire homegrown terrorism.
Senior officials said Thursday that as Washington had been successful in degrading Al-Qaeda overseas, the group and its adherents were becoming increasingly interested in recruiting followers already in the United States.
The document also calls for new efforts to analyze the impact of the Internet and social networks on radicalizing Americans from outside the country.
“This direct communication allows violent extremists to bypass parents and community leaders,” the plan said.
“Because of the importance of the digital environment, we will develop a separate, more comprehensive strategy for countering and preventing violent extremist online radicalization.”
Source: https://www.activistpost.com/2011/12/white-house-targets-domestic-extremism.html
Heading Towards WWIII ~ This Is The Plan Of The Ruling Elite
December 12, 2011 By Leave a Comment
We can avert this fate of humanity by the renewal of the Glass-Steagall Act. The passage of Glass-Steagall is as a pivotal turning point in moving America in a new direction towards the development of all nation states globally. If we don’t renew the Glass-Steagall Act then we (humanity) will meet the catastrophic event of WWIII head on … how would you like that instead?
Wake-Up-America !!
So far in my videos discussing the economic collapse of the U.S. I have left out one important element:
World War Three.
WWIII is not going to be an accident. It will not be caused by an unfortunate chain events that the U.S. struggles to avoid. It is a goal, a specific objective that must be reached in order to force a cultural shift that the population would otherwise never accept.
It is only from this context that the events unfolding in the world right now make any sense. - StormCloudsGathering
US Vacates Air Base In Pakistan To Meet Deadline
December 12, 2011 By Leave a Comment
QUETTA, Pakistan (AFP) - The United States on Sunday vacated a Pakistani airbase following a deadline given by Islamabad in the wake of anger over NATO air strikes last month that killed 24 soldiers, officials said.
Pakistan’s military said in a statement that the last flight carrying US personnel and equipment had left Shamsi airbase, in the southwestern province of Baluchistan, completing a process that began last week. 
Islamabad’s fragile alliance with the United States crashed to new lows in the wake of the November 26 NATO air strikes that killed 24 Pakistani soldiers and which the Pakistan military called a deliberate attack.
The base was widely believed to have been used in covert CIA drone attacks against the Taliban and Al-Qaeda commanders in northwest Pakistan’s tribal areas, which border Afghanistan.
“The control of the base has been taken over by the Army,” the statement said.
A senior security official requesting anonymity earlier told AFP: “The Americans have vacated the Shamsi air base and it has been handed over to the Pakistani security forces.”
Another official in Baluchistan confirmed that the last batch of US officials left in two flights on Sunday.
Following the November air strikes, Pakistan closed two border crossings to Afghanistan to US and NATO supplies and gave American personnel until Sunday to leave Shamsi airbase.
US Ambassador to Islamabad Cameron Munter told a Pakistan television channel last week: “We are complying with the request.”
A security official said the US aircraft left the Pakistani airfield around 3:00 pm (1000 GMT) with the remaining group of 32 US officials and material.
US President Barack Obama last Sunday expressed condolences to Pakistan’s President Asif Ali Zardari for the soldier deaths and said the NATO air strikes that killed them were not a “deliberate attack.”
But the incident has rocked Washington’s alliance with its counterterrorism ally Islamabad, though officials say neither country can afford a complete break in relations.
US officials and intelligence analysts have said the covert drone war would not be affected by the closure of the base as Washington could fly Predator and Reaper drones out of air fields in neighboring Afghanistan.
But the Shamsi air base was supposed to be particularly useful for flights hampered by poor weather conditions.
Islamabad has tacitly consented to the covert US drone campaign, which many Pakistanis see as a violation of their country’s sovereignty.
Nearly half of all cargo bound for NATO-led forces runs through Pakistan. Roughly 140,000 foreign troops, including about 97,000 Americans, rely on supplies from outside Afghanistan for the decade-long war effort.
Pakistan has shut off the border over previous incidents, partly to allay popular outrage, but the latest closure had entered a third week.
Islamabad has so far refused to take part in a US investigation into the deadly November air strikes, and decided to boycott the Bonn Conference on the future of Afghanistan earlier this month.
Source: https://www.activistpost.com/2011/12/us-vacates-air-base-in-pakistan-to-meet.html
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!
The Orwellian ‘Non-Lethal’ War Waged Against Peaceful Citizens
December 11, 2011 By Leave a Comment
Non-lethal weapons are being distributed by the West into protest zones throughout the world, as well as being utilized in crowd suppression within the borders of the Land of the Free. 
The producers of weapons such as rubber bullets, tear gas and pepper spray are quick to point out that it is not the weapons themselves that are the cause of fatalities, but rather it is their misuse through faulty training. The Orwellian nature of such a statement is staggering, as the admission of lethality is actually buried in the justification. In fact, one of the main manufacturers, NonLethal Technologies Inc., states in their own search description that they are a “Manufacturer of Less-Lethal riot and crowd control products.” Less-lethal is not non-lethal. Moreover, it seems disingenuous that major players in the military-industrial complex, which has been quite lethal to a large number of nations and peoples, should themselves be developers of supposedly non-lethal technology.
There is also emerging evidence from the front lines of Egyptian protesters, and the medics treating them, that these non-lethal weapons have increased in strength and lethality as Egypt enters its second revolution and the protester death toll rises. So, if these weapons are promoted as non-lethal, why are so many people dying?
So, let’s look at some of these supposedly safety-oriented weapons, their track record, and how the rise in strength and frequency with which they are deployed by governments poses a far greater threat than guns obtained legally under the Second Amendment by any citizen who wishes to defend themselves against legitimate criminals.
Old school - I would be remiss if I didn’t mention the now-old-fashioned fire hose, and its upgraded partner the water cannon. This was used widely in the civil rights protests of the ’60s, and appears to have actually been the first use of a so-called non-lethal weapon . . . in 1930′s Germany. It has more recently been used in countries like Belgium, France, and Northern Ireland, as well as in less-developed countries throughout the world as a tremendously painful crowd suppression, dispersal, or torture instrument. It has resulted in ruptured internal organs, broken bones and eye damage. Despite being very effective — from a police state point of view — and resulting in very few fatalities, it has largely been abandoned for more . . . lethal methods.
Firearm rounds - Rubber, plastic, beanbag rounds, wax bullets and more. There have been some widely publicized cases of this group of non-lethal weapons resulting in horrific injuries and deaths in America, with hundreds more in other countries that have begun employing these weapons. Here is a list of 17 people killed in Ireland (8 of them children) from 1972-89. The well-respected, peer-reviewed medical journal The Lancet studied the perpetual war zone of Palestine and the use of rubber bullets by Israeli forces. Their conclusion was that after a documented 152 casualties, “this ammunition should therefore not be considered a safe method of crowd control.”
Chemical - Article I.5 of the U.S. Chemical Weapons Convention states that “Each State Party undertakes not to use riot control agents as a method of warfare.” While Article II.9 of the CWC specifically authorizes their use for civilian law enforcement. The definitions and criteria themselves are Orwellian, and the effects equally so. Tear gas has resulted in deaths, not only from suffocation, but even from getting hit with the canister itself. Pepper spray is supposed to be the more benign of the two, especially according to Megyn Kelly of Fox News who has now infamously stated that it’s an all-natural product, so what’s the problem? Sayer Ji, however, countered her health tip with a compelling article that shows how pepper or not — it is still a potentially lethal chemical weapon. The death toll is rising across the world, but particularly in Egypt where medics are seeing new, more deadly effects than they saw in revolution number one. Here is what the creator of pepper spray has to say about how his chemical invention is being used:
As an aside, I wonder how law enforcement is going to rule in the case of a woman who used pepper spray against other Black Friday shoppers? Will it be labeled an act of terrorism? Or does this act merely highlight the additional danger of making these weapons appear acceptable for crowd control, thus enabling a trickle-down tyranny.
Futuristic - The military-industrial complex, and its police state minions, continue full-speed ahead with non-lethal weapons development despite their horrendous track record thus far. Here are some of their high-tech devices which have now been unleashed upon the human body . . . and even a few new ones that are set to be rolled out. Under the guise of the label “non-lethal,” the frequency with which they will be deployed, as well as the limits of pain that will be pushed are guaranteed to rise.
Tasers - The idea that literally short-circuiting someone’s nervous system could not lead to death is truly indicative of who is running the show. Everyone from the elderly, to the deaf, to 10-year-old girls, have been tortured or killed by this non-lethal weapon. And it’s not only hand-held; police can fire a shotgun taser that can deliver a jolt from within 20 feet. As the promo video below raves “you are about to see the most technologically advanced projectile ever fired from a 12-gauge shotgun.”
Long-range acoustic devices - This was first put to use in the Land of the Free at the Pittsburgh G20 and was indiscriminate in the pain, suffering, and permanent hearing loss some people received. The device seems to have been judged a success for the police state, as it has been brought back for the #OWS protests. However, the maker of the LRAD has claimed that it is not a weapon . . . so it must not be, despite the video evidence.
Drones - To further increase the distance put between cause and effect, the ever-growing fleet of drones that are set to hover over America can be equipped with classic non-lethal weapons, as well as tasers and beyond. Nervous system strafing and chemical clouds are an impending reality for protesters.
Laser weapons - While seemingly futuristic, Sweden was the first to call for a ban on laser weapons . . . in 1973. In 1983 the Inhumane Weapons Convention was established to limit the use certain technologies, which by 1996 codified laser weapons, specifically. However, U.S. defense contractors had already produced a staggering array of these high-tech weapons including the visible-spectrum battlefield optical munitions of the Saber 203 and Perseus programs; the Los Alamos Laboratory (Los Alamos, NM) argon-ion-laser rifle and low-energy systems developed by the Air Force Phillips Laboratory (Kirtland AFB, Albuquerque, NM), some of which generate near-infrared wavelengths. As an answer to the Convention, these weapons were dialed down. Shorter-range versions of these systems were even considered for civil law enforcement purposes (see Laser Focus World, Sept. 1994, p. 49), but so far have not been used against protesters.
Directed Energy Weapons - These weapons have morphed from the above focus on lasers to include the death ray of science fiction. High-frequency microwave radiation weapons cause the water in the upper layer of human skin to rapidly heat up, stimulating the feeling of being burned alive as the nerve endings trigger intense pain. This weapon is widely known by its euphemism: Active Denial System. It is noticeable in the video demonstration below that contrary to non-lethal weapons’ apologists, these weapons are not restricted to imminent threat situations, but are instead perceived to be a valuable tool for general control over protesters. And, yes, directed energy weapons can be deployed from the air via the Vigilant Eagle system developed by Raytheon.
Non-lethal weapons used against peaceful civilians are a sad extension of the war culture. Protesters of all stripes are increasingly viewed by the militarized police as terrorists; and the law of the land is changing to treat the whole of the U.S. as one giant battlefield where the protester/terrorist will be fair game for the whole catalog of weaponry.
Now that the Pentagon has decided to offer free military hardware to every police force in the United States under the 1033 program, we activists should be well aware that when we engage in peaceful protest to redress our grievances to our governments gone wild, if we wind up in the line of fire of any one of the non-lethal weapons listed above . . . we might just wind up dead.
Global Rebellion: The Coming Chaos?
December 4, 2011 By Leave a Comment
Global elites are confused, reactive, and sinking into a quagmire of their own making, says author. 
As the crisis of global capitalism spirals out of control, the powers that be in the global system appear to be adrift and unable to proposal viable solutions. From the slaughter of dozens of young protesters by the army in Egypt to the brutal repression of the Occupy movement in the United States, and the water cannons brandished by the militarised police in Chile against students and workers, states and ruling classes are unable are to hold back the tide of worldwide popular rebellion and must resort to ever more generalised repression.
Simply put, the immense structural inequalities of the global political economy can no longer be contained through consensual mechanisms of social control. The ruling classes have lost legitimacy; we are witnessing a breakdown of ruling-class hegemony on a world scale.
To understand what is happening in this second decade of the new century we need to see the big picture in historic and structural context. Global elites had hoped and expected that the “Great Depression” that began with the mortgage crisis and the collapse of the global financial system in 2008 would be a cyclical downturn that could be resolved through state-sponsored bailouts and stimulus packages. But it has become clear that this is a structural crisis. Cyclical crises are on-going episodes in the capitalist system, occurring and about once a decade and usually last 18 months to two years. There were world recessions in the early 1980s, the early 1990s, and the early 21st century.
Structural crises are deeper; their resolution requires a fundamental restructuring of the system. Earlier world structural crises of the 1890s, the 1930s and the 1970s were resolved through a reorganisation of the system that produced new models of capitalism. “Resolved” does not mean that the problems faced by a majority of humanity under capitalism were resolved but that the reorganisation of the capitalist system in each case overcame the constraints to a resumption of capital accumulation on a world scale. The crisis of the 1890s was resolved in the cores of world capitalism through the export of capital and a new round of imperialist expansion. The Great Depression of the 1930s was resolved through the turn to variants of social democracy in both the North and the South - welfare, populist, or developmentalist capitalism that involved redistribution, the creation of public sectors, and state regulation of the market.
Globalisation and the current structural crisis
To understand the current conjuncture we need to go back to the 1970s. The globalisation stage of world capitalism we are now in itself evolved out the response of distinct agents to these previous episodes of crisis, in particular, to the 1970s crisis of social democracy, or more technically stated, of Fordism-Keynesianism, or of redistributive capitalism. In the wake of that crisis capital went global as a strategy of the emergent Transnational Capitalist Class and its political representatives to reconstitute its class power by breaking free of nation-state constraints to accumulation. These constraints - the so-called “class compromise” - had been imposed on capital through decades of mass struggles around the world by nationally-contained popular and working classes. During the 1980s and 1990s, however, globally-oriented elites captured state power in most countries around the world and utilised that power to push capitalist globalisation through the neo-liberal model.
Globalisation and neo-liberal policies opened up vast new opportunities for transnational accumulation in the 1980s and 1990s. The revolution in computer and information technology and other technological advances helped emergent transnational capital to achieve major gains in productivity and to restructure, “flexibilise,” and shed labour worldwide. This, in turn, undercut wages and the social wage and facilitated a transfer of income to capital and to high consumption sectors around the world that provided new market segments fuelling growth. In sum, globalisation made possible a major extensive and intensive expansion of the system and unleashed a frenzied new round of accumulation worldwide that offset the 1970s crisis of declining profits and investment opportunities.
However, the neo-liberal model has also resulted in an unprecedented worldwide social polarisation. Fierce social and class struggles worldwide were able in the 20th century to impose a measure of social control over capital. Popular classes, to varying degrees, were able to force the system to link what we call social reproduction to capital accumulation. What has taken place through globalisation is the severing of the logic of accumulation from that of social reproduction, resulting in an unprecedented growth of social inequality and intensified crises of survival for billions of people around the world.
The pauperising effects unleashed by globalisation have generated social conflicts and political crises that the system is now finding it more and more difficult to contain. The slogan “we are the 99 per cent” grows out of the reality that global inequalities and pauperisation have intensified enormously since capitalist globalisation took off in the 1980s. Broad swaths of humanity have experienced absolute downward mobility in recent decades. Even the IMF was forced to admit in a 2000 report that “in recent decades, nearly one-fifth of the world’s population has regressed. This is arguably one of the greatest economic failures of the 20th century”.
Global social polarisation intensifies the chronic problem of over-accumulation. This refers to the concentration of wealth in fewer and fewer hands, so that the global market is unable to absorb world output and the system stagnates. Transnational capitalists find it more and more difficult to unload their bloated and expanding mass of surplus - they can’t find outlets to invest their money in order to generate new profits; hence the system enters into recession or worse. In recent years, the Transnational Capitalist Class has turned to militarised accumulation, to wild financial speculation, and to the raiding of sacking of public finance to sustain profit-making in the face of over-accumulation.
While transnational capital’s offensive against the global working and popular classes dates back to the crisis of the 1970s and has grown in intensity ever since, the Great Recession of 2008 was in several respects a major turning point. In particular, as the crisis spread it generated the conditions for new rounds of brutal austerity worldwide, greater flexibilisation of labour, steeply rising under and unemployment, and so on. Transnational finance capital and its political agents utilised the global crisis to impose brutal austerity and attempting to dismantle what is left of welfare systems and social states in Europe, North America, and elsewhere, to squeeze more value out of labour, directly through more intensified exploitation and indirectly through state finances. Social and political conflict has escalated around the world in the wake of 2008.
Nonetheless, the system has been unable to recover; it is sinking deeper into chaos. Global elites cannot manage the explosive contradictions. Is the neo-liberal model of capitalism entering a terminal stage? It is crucial to understand that neo-liberalism is but one model of global capitalism; to say that neo-liberalism may be in terminal crisis is not to say that global capitalism is in terminal crisis. Is it possible that the system will respond to crisis and mass rebellion through a new restructuring that leads to some different model of world capitalism - perhaps a global Keynesianism involving transnational redistribution and transnational regulation of finance capital? Will rebellious forces from below be co-opted into some new reformed capitalist order?
Or are we headed towards a systemic crisis? A systemic crisis is one in which the solution involves the end of the system itself, either through its supersession and the creation of an entirely new system, or more ominously the collapse of the system. Whether or not a structural crisis becomes systemic depends on how distinct social and class forces respond - to the political projects they put forward and as well as to factors of contingency that cannot be predicted in advance, and to objective conditions. It is impossible at this time to predict the outcome of the crisis. However, a few things are clear in the current world conjuncture.
The current moment
First, this crisis shares a number of aspects with earlier structural crises of the 1930s and the 1970s, but there are also several features unique to the present:
The system is fast reaching the ecological limits of its reproduction. We face the real spectre of resource depletion and environmental catastrophes that threaten a system collapse.
- The magnitude of the means of violence and social control is unprecedented. Computerised wars, drones, bunker-buster bombs, star wars, and so forth, have changed the face of warfare. Warfare has become normalised and sanitised for those not directly at the receiving end of armed aggression. Also unprecedented is the concentration of control over the mass media, the production of symbols, images and messages in the hands of transnational capital. We have arrived at the society of panoptical surveillance and Orwellian thought control.
- We are reaching the limits to the extensive expansion of capitalism, in the sense that there are no longer any new territories of significance that can be integrated into world capitalism. De-ruralisation is now well-advanced, and the commodification of the countryside and of pre- and non-capitalist spaces has intensified, that is, converted in hot-house fashion into spaces of capital, so that intensive expansion is reaching depths never before seen. Like riding a bicycle, the capitalist system needs to continuously expand or else it collapses. Where can the system now expand?
- There is the rise of a vast surplus population inhabiting a planet of slums, alienated from the productive economy, thrown into the margins, and subject to sophisticated systems of social control and to crises of survival - to a mortal cycle of dispossession-exploitation-exclusion. This raises in new ways the dangers of a 21st-century fascism and new episodes of genocide to contain the mass of surplus humanity and their real or potential rebellion.
- There is a disjuncture between a globalising economy and a nation-state based system of political authority. Transnational state apparatuses are incipient and have not been able to play the role of what social scientists refer to as a “hegemon”, or a leading nation-state that has enough power and authority to organise and stabilise the system. Nation-states cannot control the howling gales of a runaway global economy; states face expanding crises of political legitimacy.
Second, global elites are unable to come up with solutions. They appear to be politically bankrupt and impotent to steer the course of events unfolding before them. They have exhibited bickering and division at the G-8, G-20 and other forums, seemingly paralysed, and certainly unwilling to challenge the power and prerogative of transnational finance capital, the hegemonic fraction of capital on a world scale, and the most rapacious and destabilising fraction. While national and transnational state apparatuses fail to intervene to impose regulations on global finance capital, they have intervened to impose the costs of the crisis on labour. The budgetary and fiscal crises that supposedly justify spending cuts and austerity are contrived. They are a consequence of the unwillingness or inability of states to challenge capital and their disposition to transfer the burden of the crisis to working and popular classes.
Third, there will be no quick outcome of the mounting global chaos. We are in for a period of major conflicts and great upheavals. As I mentioned above, one danger is a neo-fascist response to contain the crisis. We are facing a war of capital against all. Three sectors of transnational capital in particular stand out as the most aggressive and prone to seek neo-fascist political arrangements to force forward accumulation as this crisis continues: speculative financial capital, the military-industrial-security complex, and the extractive and energy sector. Capital accumulation in the military-industrial-security complex depends on endless conflicts and war, including the so-called wars on terrorism and on drugs, as well as on the militarisation of social control. Transnational finance capital depends on taking control of state finances and imposing debt and austerity on the masses, which in turn can only be achieved through escalating repression. And extractive industries depend on new rounds of violent dispossession and environmental degradation around the world.
Fourth, popular forces worldwide have moved quicker than anyone could imagine from the defensive to the offensive. The initiative clearly passed this year, 2011, from the transnational elite to popular forces from below. The juggernaut of capitalist globalisation in the 1980s and 1990s had reverted the correlation of social and class forces worldwide in favour of transnational capital. Although resistance continued around the world, popular forces from below found themselves disoriented and fragmented in those decades, pushed on to the defensive in the heyday of neo-liberalism. Then the events of September 11, 2001, allowed the transnational elite, under the leadership of the US state, to sustain its offensive by militarising world politics and extending systems of repressive social control in the name of “combating terrorism”.
Now all this has changed. The global revolt underway has shifted the whole political landscape and the terms of the discourse. Global elites are confused, reactive, and sinking into the quagmire of their own making. It is noteworthy that those struggling around the world have been shown a strong sense of solidarity and are in communications across whole continents. Just as the Egyptian uprising inspired the US Occupy movement, the latter has been an inspiration for a new round of mass struggle in Egypt. What remains is to extend transnational coordination and move towards transnationally-coordinated programmes. On the other hand, the “empire of global capital” is definitely not a “paper tiger”. As global elites regroup and assess the new conjuncture and the threat of mass global revolution, they will - and have already begun to - organise coordinated mass repression, new wars and interventions, and mechanisms and projects of co-optation in their efforts to restore hegemony.
In my view, the only viable solution to the crisis of global capitalism is a massive redistribution of wealth and power downward towards the poor majority of humanity along the lines of a 21st-century democratic socialism in which humanity is no longer at war with itself and with nature.
Source: https://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2011/11/20111130121556567265.html
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