S@LE (my book of revelation)

Crimes against Libya - Epilogue

2012-01-27T02:12:00.012-10:00

In mid-January 2012, 12,000 US troops were positioned in Malta ahead of occupying Libya. On January 18, Libya SOS said hundreds of American soldiers already arrived. Libya's Western-appointed foreign minister said 6,000 came to Tripoli's Mitiga International Airport. Straightaway, they set up "mobile camps and equipment around oil fields and refineries." In other words, they're protecting Western interests, principally oil. Libyans lost their rightful resources and living standard they afforded.“Tunis Focus” reports that US forces are in Brega, Ras Lanouf, Sirte, and Tripoli's Mitiga International Airport. Moreover, US and NATO helicopters, warplanes, and drones now patrol Libyan airspace. They're surveilling and attacking suspicious targets. Ahead lies occupation, neo-colonization, pillaging, exploitation, violence and repression. It persists wherever America shows up. So does overwhelming suffering and human misery. Libyans experienced it for months. Much more lies ahead... NATO comes to stay. Like Kosovo, Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere, permanent bases will be built. Occupation, colonization and plunder will follow.

by Stephen Lendman

Until Washington and rogue NATO partners blocked its approval, the UN Human Rights Council praised Gaddafi in its January 2011 "Report of the Working Group on the Universal Periodic Review: Libya Arab Jamahiriya."It said his government protected "not only political rights, but also economic, educational, social and cultural rights." It also lauded his treatment of religious minorities, and "human rights training" of its security forces. Throughout most of 2011, NATO's killing machine destroyed 42 years of achievements. Literacy under Gaddafi rose from 20 - 80%. Libya's hospitals and private clinics were some of the region's best. Now they're in shambles. Before NATO intervention, all Libyans enjoyed free healthcare, education, electricity, water, training, rehabilitation, housing assistance, disability and old-age benefits, interest-free state loans, as well as generous subsidies to study abroad, buy a new car, help couples when they marry, practically free gasoline, and more. Impressive social benefits also included free land, equipment, livestock and seeds for agriculture to foster self-sufficient food production. In addition, all basic food items were subsidized and sold through a network of "people's shops."Moreover, since the 1960s, women could vote and participate politically. They could also own and sell property independently of their husbands. Under the December 1969 Constitutional Proclamation Clause 5, they had equal status with men, including for education and employment, even though men played leading roles in society.

Gaddafi's vision marked him for removal. It was just a matter of when, even though he cooperated with Western powers post-9/11 on matters of intelligence and terrorism. Until vilified and targeted, he was welcomed in Western capitals. In 2003, he came in from the cold, became a valued Western ally, and had meetings and discussions with top officials like UK Prime Ministers Tony Blair and Gordon Brown, France's Nicolas Sarkozy, Italy's Silvio Berlusconi, US Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice, and others. He also participated in the 2009 G-8 Summit in L'Aquila, Italy as Chairman of the African Union. At the time, he met and shook hands with Obama. On May 16, 2006, Washington restored full diplomatic relations. Libya was removed from its state sponsors of terrorism list. At the time, Rice called the move:"tangible results that flow from the historic decisions taken by Libya's leadership in 2003 to renounce terrorism and to abandon its weapons of mass destruction programs... Libya is an important model as nations around the world press for changes in behavior by the Iranian and North Korean regimes. "She also praised Gaddafi's "excellent cooperation" in fighting terrorism. Moreover, he opened Libya's markets to Western interests by arranging deals with Big Oil giants BP, ExxonMobil, Royal Dutch Shell, Occidental, France's Total, Italy's Eni Gas and others. By all appearances, he joined the club, so why turn on him? Though on board in some ways, he very much wasn't on others. He supported Palestinian rights. As a result, he opposed Israel's occupation and Gaza's siege. Earlier he backed South Africa's anti-apartheid struggles, as well as others in Northern Ireland, Spain, and elsewhere. He opted out of AFRICOM's imperial regional plan. He wanted Libyans to control their own resources and use revenues domestically for all Libyans. His Central Bank of Libya was state owned. It created its own money interest-free for economic growth, not speculation and wealth for predatory bankers. He promoted pan-African unity, an idea anathema to Washington and Western powers. He advocated a new "Gold Standard," replacing dollars with gold dinars, and hoped other African and Muslim states would adopt the idea. That alone got him targeted for removal.

Libya will long be remembered as one of history's great crimes. For over eight months, NATO's killing machine ravaged the country, killing tens of thousands. Civilians and non-military sites were deliberately targeted. Cold-blooded murder and mass destruction were planned. Sirte, a city once home to 100,000, symbolizes NATO's depravity. Terror bombing destroyed it. Thousands were massacred. Under siege for weeks, food, medical supplies and other essentials were cut off. Basic infrastructure was destroyed, including power, water and sanitation systems.
Homes, schools, mosques, hospitals and other civilian sites were bombed. Terror weapons were used including thermobaric fuel-air bombs and white phosphorous able to burn flesh to the bone.
Virtually every structure was destroyed or damaged. Rebel rats looted what they found. Over 400 air strikes targeted Sirte for weeks. Each delivered powerful munitions. In addition, rebel rats "indiscriminately shelled the town with tank fire, heavy mortar fire and artillery." Libya not only was ravaged, likely permanent contamination makes wide areas hazardous. No amount of radiation is safe. It's harmful, cumulative, permanent, unforgiving, and deadly...

Yes, but democracy finally arrived, right?

Mustafa Abdul Jalil, Washington's man in Libya, commented after rival militia gun battles left "a trail of dead and injured."According to Jalil:"We are now between two bitter options. We deal with these violations by brigades strictly and put the Libyans in a military confrontation which we don't accept, or we split and there will be civil war. If there's no security, there will be no law, no development and no elections." Libya's NTC (New puppet government, the so-called National Transitional Council, which membership is largely secret, and is called the "rats council" by the Libyan masses) "faced a political crisis Sunday after protesters ransacked its offices in Benghazi, highlighting growing nationwide unease with its leadership and triggering a shake-up in which the governing council's No. 2 official resigned and several members were suspended." On Sunday, about 2,000 protesters raged outside NTC Benghazi headquarters. Using grenades, iron bars and stones, they set exterior grounds ablaze, broke windows, forced their way inside, ransacked offices, and confronted Jalil angrily. On January 22, BBC said NTC deputy chief Abdel Hafiz Ghoga resigned following growing protests against him. "My resignation is for the benefit of the nation," he said. In fact, he feared for his life after being accosted at gunpoint twice beaten twice, beaten, and called a "NATO mercenary. "Conflicting reports suggest Jalil and officials close around him may resign over anger about their rule. Perhaps so if it continues to grow. On January 23, NTC officials met secretly at an undisclosed location to adopt new election laws. Legal affairs head Salwa al-Digheili said secrecy was for "security reasons." Basic services aren't restored yet. Sirte, Bani Walid, and other devastated areas remain in ruins with no restoration plans. Tripoli is still violent. Regional militias control it. Days earlier, explosions rocked the city. Fighting raged around Maitiga International Airport and other areas. On January 23, London's Guardian headlined, "Gaddafi loyalists take back Bani Walid," saying:"Reports said at least four people were killed during clashes" between both sides. Many others were injured. According to Reuters, "They control the town now."...

SOPA and PIPA

2012-01-22T02:33:00.016-10:00

"The Stop Online Piracy Act will change the Internet as we know it in an effort to censor and block the free flow of information. You would no longer be able to share, link to or post any videos, sounds or images on sites like Youtube Twitter and Facebook that have not been personally created by you! We have reached a fork in the road in regards to the direction the Internet will go and we must do everything we can to make sure it continues down the path of being neutral open and free."/ Press for thruth.

No one owns the Internet! If passed, the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and the Protect IP Act (PIPA) would allow the government to block search engine links to any website which may contain what is perceived as copyright material and would without a doubt affect people outside the US – their ability to share information between sites and to collaborate widely from all over the world would be seriously obstructed. The bills, which are perhaps the most controversial pieces of proposed legislation in recent American history, were supposedly written to protect copyrighted material but Internet campaigners say they could cripple the Internet as we know it, effectively killing all websites allowing user-uploaded content, endangering potential whistleblowers and severely damaging online freedom of speech. So if you’re sitting there reading this, with some cash in your pocket and a website where someone may have posted something that may lead to something else that is potentially suspicious – expect the might of the US security and legal systems to knock – or bust through your door. They might not even have a warrant, having convenient access to the so-called ‘sneak-and-peak’ granted by the Patriot Act. Of course, those were "created to capture terrorists", but we may all soon be branded as such because of a YouTube search.

What is unfolding here?

SOPA and PIPA have not even made it to the Senate floor, but have already caused public outrage. Internet giants such as Google, YouTube, Yahoo, AOL, Wikimedia, Twitter, Facebook, eBay, Mozilla and many others have likened the bills to China-style censorship. The idea behind these bills sounds reasonable. They came about in order to try and snuff out piracy online, as the entertainment industry is obviously not excited that many people are downloading their products without payment or permission. The issue is, however, that the methods are ineffective. Here's why they're problematic. SOPA and PIPA opponents are so upset about is that the bills are not specific enough, that they’re heaping all Internet users together and branding them as one step short of evil, instead of clearly defining what constitutes an illegal activity and how it can realistically be battled. The passing of the Stop Online Piracy Act, or SOPA, could very well scrub the Internet clean of any content that the US government considers questionable. Under the legislation, websites and people that post or share third-party content could be crushed with heavy fines and imprisoned for the distribution of knowledge. Both bills are aimed at foreign websites that infringe copyrighted material. Originally, both bills provided two methods for fighting copyright infringement on foreign websites. In one method, the U.S. Department of Justice could seek court orders requiring Internet service providers to block the domain names of infringing sites. The other tool would allow rights holders to seek court orders requiring payment providers, advertisers, and search engines to stop doing business with an infringing site. In other words, rights holders would be able to request that funding be cut off from an infringing site, and that search links to that site be removed. Opponents of SOPA and PIPA believe that neither piece of legislation does enough to protect against false accusations. Sites that host user-generated content will be under pressure to closely monitor users' behavior.

Internet Wars

Following a wildly successful protest against SOPA and PIPA internet censorship legislation, the Department of Justice “conducted a major action” and shuttered MegaUpload, a popular file-sharing site accused of trading in copyrighted movies and televisions shows. The Electronic Frontier Foundation, which defends free speech and digital rights online, said in a statement that, “This kind of application of international criminal procedures to Internet policy issues sets a terrifying precedent. If the United States can seize a Dutch citizen in New Zealand over a copyright claim, what is next?” Megaupload is one of many highly visited websites that allows users to upload any media of their choice that might be too large for traditional online distribution. In lieu of email and instant messaging, users of Megaupload and similar sites can upload massive digital files and then pass the link to others across the world for easy download. The website claims that it has always been diligent in handling complaints regarding pirated material, but authorities have taken Megaupload offline while they investigate. Following action by a grand jury, the feds arrested four people and executed more than 20 search warrants in the United States and eight foreign countries. They seized 18 domain names and around $10 million in assets, including a number of servers.The grand jury indictment accuses Megaupload of causing $500 million in damages to copyright owners and of making $175 million through selling ads and premium subscriptions, according to the New York Times.The conspicuously timed raid “on Megaupload Thursday proved that the feds don’t need SOPA or its sister legislation, PIPA, in order to pose a blow to the Web,” writes the AnonOps Communications blog. Fifteen minutes after Megaupload disappeared from the internet, the hacker group Anonymous launched denial of service attack on websites run by Universal Music, the Department of Justice, the FBI, the Copyright Office, the Motion Picture Association of America, and the Recording Industry Association of America. The attack, which managed to take down the targets, some for several hours, was reportedly the largest such effort by the group in years, with some 5,600 activists collaborating. Anonymous maintained the blackout was just part of a larger assault on those they blame for attacking Internet freedoms. The group has not admitted responsibility for attacking US federal government institutions, although it did target those of Iran, Australia and Sweden on various occasions. The assault may call for a tougher-than-usual reaction from the US authorities.

Both bills have taken a hit in the last week, as their authors have decided to remove the provisions that require Internet service providers to block the domain names of infringing sites. SOPA, which has yet to pass out of the House Judiciary Committee, is reportedly stalled, as lawmakers continue to work on the bill. Representative Darrell Issa (R-California) has proposed an alternative bill that is far more narrow in its focus.

Global Powers and The World We Live In

2012-01-12T04:07:00.005-10:00

As competition for oil, water and other resources intensify, global power relationships are shifting, providing backdrops for a string of conflicts from Iraq to Libya. Brazilian-born journalist Pepe Escobar, one of the most perceptive analysts of these trends, was interviewed by German Lars Schall. /source

By Lars Schall
Mr. Escobar, given your experience in that field, what would you highlight as the most crucial misunderstanding held by the general public related to the so called “War on Terror”?

Pepe Escobar: This is the cover story for a “Clash of Civilizations“ and an undercover cold war that maybe becomes a hot war between the U.S. and the two strategic competitors, China and Russia. They couldn’t go directly against any of these two BRICS members. [BRICS is an organization of emerging economies consisting of Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa].
Remember that before the “War on Terror“ and after the fall of the Berlin Wall, the Americans were trying to find out who was going to be our next enemy? So you needed a pre-fabricated external enemy – before that there was the Soviet Union, the Iron Curtain and the evil of communism. After the evil was defeated by realpolitik – okay, who’s next?
First they thought about China, but they said, no, we can’t take China, it’s a big power, it’s nuclear armed. The same thing with Russia – and they were doing nice, they had a puppet in the Kremlin, Boris Yeltsin, who was privatizing everything like crazy and was plundering Russia’s resources to the benefit, hypothetically, of Western corporations. Then Putin took the whole thing upside-down.
So the “War on Terror“ was perfect because Islam was branded as the enemy, and 9/11, it couldn’t have been more convenient because then, what was conceptionalized before, you had the Pearl Harbor element – you could sell it not only to the American public but to world public opinion. But undercover the real agenda of the global “War on Terror,“ which the Pentagon calls “The Long War“ – meaning infinite war – is in fact that there are two emerging powers that pose a real serious threat to the United States.
Russia basically because it is nuclear armed. At that time they were not thinking about Russia as a major oil and gas exporter – this was before [Vladimir] Putin re-organized Gazprom, so that Gazprom would become the top international major in oil and gas. And China, which at that time, ten years ago, the Americans were looking at it as still struggling, maybe there would be a peasant revolt, whatever, they didn’t think that China was the big competitor. And now, of course, they have 3.2 trillion U.S. dollars in foreign reserves and U.S. treasury bonds etc. (laughs.)
The perfect pretext was 9/11, but undercover the war for energy resources in the Persian Gulf and Central Asia intensified, and they had the neo-con masterplan, which incredibly is being implemented now, which is to destabilize this “Arc of Instability,“ this is Pentagon-coined, of course, from the Maghreb through Northern Africa across the Middle East and all the way to Central Asia via Afghanistan/Pakistan – which is the intersection between Central Asia and South Asia – up to the Chinese border in Xinjiang.
So they needed to implement their strategy, which was conceptionalized finally after 9/11 – this is the Pentagon’s “Full Spectrum Dominance“ doctrine, which is something you will never ever read about in the U.S. mainstream press or in the European mainstream press for that matter. Since 2002 the “Full Spectrum Dominance“ doctrine is the official Pentagon doctrine. It is intrinsically linked to America’s National Security – we have to be the predominant power not only on land, on sea and in the air but also in cyberspace and outerspace. That is the essence of the “Full Spectrum Dominance“ doctrine.
This is being applied now after the “Arab Spring,“ and that’s incredible because nobody is talking about it also. Everybody was saying at the beginning: Wow, finally the Arabs are “awakening,“ but that is too hard a term, as it means that the Arabs were sleeping for the past 100 years – that is not true.
“Spring“ is also not really the right word, I would say that it is a process of enhanced conciousness of the working classes and the middle classes in Tunisia, in Egypt, in Bahrain and other parts of the Middle East as well. And then came the counter-revolution, and this process of counter-revolution is leading directly to the implementation of further steps of the “Full Spectrum Dominance“ doctrine.
We can go back to this later on, but basically what I’m trying to say is that the counter-revolution, orchestrated by the U.S. and especially by the House of Saud, re-instrumentalized what has happened in Tunisia and Egypt, they unleashed the counter-revolution in the Persian Gulf, they try to bribe the military dictatorship in Egypt to keep it that way as a military dictatorship (they gave already 4 billion U.S. dollars to the Tantawi junta, and more is coming from Saudi Arabia), and meanwhile in Central Asia the United States is trying to re-organize itself because suddenly they have noticed that they are losing terrain to who else? China and Russia.
This in terms of oil and gas deals between China and Russia themselves, between Turkmenistan and China, between all these players and Iran as well – Russia and China have very close cooperation with Iran in their oil and gas fields.
So the Americans are saying: Okay, how do we re-organize the whole thing? The “War on Terror“ for all practical purposes is more or less over in the Pentagon way of seeing the world. Now it’s back to “Full Spectrum Dominance“ – we have to control the whole thing. So this means control of the Mediterranean Sea as a NATO lake, which was what they have implementated in Libya and now will try to implement in Syria; control the rest of Africa, sending troops to Uganda like Obama did a few weeks ago, which is not only Uganda but the heart of Central Africa, it’s Uganda, South Sudan, Central African Republic and Congo – lots of oil, lots of minerals, lots of rare earths as well, all extremely precious.
So the West has to be there and the U.S. has to be in control, forget about China. This means raving up AFRICOM, the African Command sitting in Stuttgart, Germany, and soon probably sitting in Benghazi, Libya.
I was talking to people from the European Union in Brussels a few days ago, some smart dissidents who don’t agree with what they are doing, and they told me off the record: Look, there is going to be a military base in Libya, this was the project right from the beginning.
There will not be a lot of European boots on the ground, it’s going to be Turkish, Qatari, UAE, those mercenaries that get trained by Blackwater – now Xe – in the United Arab Emirates, these people will be part of this base and it’s going to be the base that NATO and AFRICOM wanted in North African territory.
For me the number one answer to your question is this: the “War on Terror“ was a diversion that lasted more or less ten years. Now even the Pentagon, the CIA, the FBI, the National Security Agency, the Obama administration, everybody is saying out loud: “al-Qaeda is operationally ineffective” – these are their own words.
Virtually everybody is dead, apart from al-Zawahiri and the new guy that they have named to be their military commander, but I can’t even remember his name, they have a new one every week or so. Everybody is dead, they are not in Afghanistan anymore, they have a few trainers in the tribal areas in the Waziristans, they are ineffective in the rest of the world, though, of course, they are in power now in Tripoli because the West has used them. Those guys were trained in a military camp north of Kabul.
I was there in this place in early 2001, and I was told that they had a lot of Libyans there. And yes, these Libyans were the guys from the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group, LIFG, and they were trained in this camp north of Kabul, it was very easy to go there. So now they are in Libya, the military commander of Tripoli, Abdelhakim Belhadj, with his cohorts, they are very well armed, very well trained, they will not go away, and these al-Qaeda-linked jihadis were used by the West with no second thoughts.

Would you say that al-Qaeda, now as a phantom and in the “good old days“ as a real force, was an useful tool for the foreign policy of the U.S.A.?

Pepe Escobar: Yes, of course it was! It was the perfect excuse because they kept them to try to implement “Full Spectrum Dominance“ anywhere that they could. In Central Asia they were very active – until maybe two years ago – during the Bush administration.
Remember that Cheney used to go to Central Asia every two or three months at that time. The U.S. tried to strike deals directly with the Kazakhs, with the Turkmen, and especially with the Azerbaijanis – the Azerbaijani elite is very close with the Republicans in the U.S. So Dick Cheney was there all the time.
And their special embassador, who is still working for the Obama administration, Richard Morningstar, is the oil envoy of Washington to Central Asia, he knows the area well, he knows all the players. The Americans tried to pressure them: don’t do deals with Russia, don’t do deals with China, bypass Iran and do deals with us. What is happening now? They did deals with Russia, they did deals with China, they did not bypass Iran and they didn’t do any deals with the Americans. (laughs.)

Usually, people expect when you do a war that you want to win it. But isn’t it the case in Central Asia that a perpetual war theater has some advantages for the “military petroleum complex” (as economist James K. Galbraith called it) vis-à-vis China and Russia? [For the term "military-petroleum complex" compare James K. Galbraith: "Unbearable Costs of Empire", originally published by The American Prospect magazine, November 2002,republished at Third World Travelor.]

Pepe Escobar: Yes, but the problem is that they don’t know who they are dealing with. They forget cultural factors, they forget that Turkmen, for instance, are very independent and prefer to do deals with people who speak the same language, which is Russian. If the middleman Medvedev goes to Ashgabat to talk to President Berdimuhamedov in Russian it is much easier to clinch a deal.
Or if the Chinese go to Ashgabat, they say: Look, we build anything you want and we even build a pipeline ourselves. So give us a good rate for your gas and we build this pipeline tomorrow from eastern Turkmenistan to western China. This is exactly what they did, two years ago the pipeline was inaugurated. And this applies to the Africans as well: there are no conditionalities, there is no interference in internal politics.
The Americans tried this for a while, like with Uzbekistan and this guy who boils his own people, Islam Karimov. They had a very close understanding with the Bush administration, and the U.S. had a military base in Karimabad near the Afghan border during the Bush years, which was very helpful to the Americans, but afterwards they started to criticize human rights in Uzbekistan – so what did the Uzbeks say? No more base, bye bye! And they are part of this pipeline that goes from Turkmenistan to China via Uzbekistan. They changed tactics a bit, but at the end the Americans lost the plot.
Now the Americans are realizing that they were losing terrain to both Russia and China in Central Asia, so they redeployed in the Persian Gulf, in northern Africa and inside Africa as well. Libya will be very helpful for new oil and gas explorations. The Libyans say that they will keep the contracts that they have with the Italians – there is this gas pipeline from northern Libya to Sicily and the shipments to Italy. But the new contracts will go to Total, BP and the Americans, not to the Russians and the Chinese.
Libya was, is and will be profitable for Western energy majors. In Central Asia their only hope is Azerbaijan, because they more or less control the energy business in Azerbaijan, and like I have said, the elites work as a satrapy of Washington, basically. But the problem is that they cannot control Turkmenistan. They’ve been pressuring Turkmenistan to build Nabucco, the pipeline. Nabucco will cost a fortune, it will cost around 20 billion euros, nobody knows where this money is coming from, especially in a European crisis.
The Turkmen say that they can provide enough gas, but nobody knows if they actually have that kind of gas, because they are swapping gas with Iran, they are selling a lot of gas to China, and they are still selling gas via the old Soviet pipeline. Nabucco is going to need a lot of gas and nobody knows if Turkmenistan has it. And the Turkmen still say: you need to prove us that you have the investment for the pipeline, which can be built within the next three to four years, so that we can commit our gas reserves to this pipeline.
But this means, if Turkmenistan does not have enough gas, the Europeans have to find it somewhere else, and it shouldn’t be in Azerbaijan, unless they spend over 22 billion U.S. dollars in new investment.
So while everybody is stuck, the Russians built two pipelines: North Stream and South Stream. Putin is winning the war against Nabucco because he started first and he made deals with governments, with Gerhard Schröder of Germany for North Stream and with Silvio Berlsconi of Italy for South Stream. So North and South Stream is winning against Nabucco, because they still don’t know where the money is coming from, they don’t know if they will have enough gas, and they don’t know where they are finding the gas if it is not in Turkmenistan or in Azerbaijan.
Turkey wants to have a lot of the gas for itself as well, plus the transit fees, it is an absolute mess. I keep reading these official pronouncements from Nabucco, which is based in Vienna, and every month or so there is an official communication: it is going to work, we have the 20 billion euros, it will be ready in 2017, we will start next year – but we are hearing this for the past five years, if I’m not mistaken.

Another central problem is the opium / heroin trade in Afghanistan. What are your observation with regards to this problem? Who are the major players in that business? And would you say that this whole affair is a shame for the West?

Pepe Escobar: Oh, yes. One of the major players has always been Ahmed Ali Karzai, Hamid Karzai’s brother. I met him after 9/11 in Quetta, he was always living in Quetta because this was his perfect base. Quetta is a fascinating place. I would say it is the smuggling capital of the East – and that’s no mean feat because you are competing with Hong Kong, you are competing actually with everybody, with the Russians, with the Ukrainian mafia.
In Quetta you have a transportation mafia, you have a heroin mafia, and from Quetta all these networks start to diversify. There is one network that goes through northern Pakistan and goes to Tajikistan, they is another one that bifurcates in Tajikistan and goes towards Central Asia and from Central Asia to Turkey.
So there are these Pakistani/Afghan opium networks, there is another Tajik network which is basically refining. Everybody knows there is a CIA network, what we don’t know is exactly what trajectory they follow. Probably it’s a trajectory from Afghanistan via Uzbekistan to get to Turkey, probably flying from Uzbekistan. Everybody has a network.
As far as I know the Chinese mafias don’t have a network in Afghanistan, but maybe soon they will. And this is the major problem for Russia. Whenever you talk to Russian officials about what is the big deal in Afghanistan, they immediately say: There is a drug war against us, and the source is Afghan opium.

They have now more victims related to heroin than they had during the 1980′s with the war in Afghanistan.

Pepe Escobar: You are absolutely right, exactly. This is one of the key focusses for the Russians within the Shanghai Cooperation Organization. It’s not only to keep American bases outside of the region, just like the Chinese want as well. It’s to try to find a way to fight these drug, opium mafias. It’s a big problem for Russia, and it’s also a big problem for Iran as well.
For Iran because of the Afghan refugees. The Afghan refugees basically moved to eastern Iran, so if you go to Mashhad in eastern Iran, if you go to the suburbs of Mashhad that’s the opium center, that’s the smuggling center. They cross Afghanistan, they cross via Herat, from Herat to Mashhad with very good roads now it’s like seven hours maximum, and from Mashhad they distribute this opium all across Iran, there is a huge drug problem for Iran as well, and Iran is an observer member of Shanghai Cooperation Organization, and one of the main reasons for them to join the SCO is to try to organize a regional mechanism to fight a real drug war, because these countries are badly suffering from it.

If true, then they are processing heroin in Afghanistan, they are not only growing the opium. And one question that I always ask myself is, who provides the chemicals involved in the manufacturing process? I guess the Afghans don’t have factories to produce acetic acid chloride, do they?

Pepe Escobar: Honestly, I cannot answer this question, but I would say there is outside help involved, it’s true. In Afghanistan they simply cannot process. In fact, the refineries used to be in Tajikistan or in Pakistan, in Quetta, for instance, or in Dushanbe in Tajikistan. The people from the Panjshir valley who deal with the trafficking, everything is concentrated in Dushanbe, 40 minutes to northern Afghanistan by helicopter – and they have their own private helicopters. So I would say yes, there is outside help, and then, of course, it’s specualtion: is it Western outside help? (laughs.)

Is it just by chance that one can have the impression: where energy resources and / or illicit drugs are placed (for example South America, Central Asia, South East Asia), the U.S. military and intelligence is never really far away?

Pepe Escobar: They are, they are everywhere. Though they can’t be in South America at the moment because of what is going on in South America since, I would say, 2002. It’s a geopolitical earthquake, in fact, because the South Americans for the first time in their history with the elections of first Chavez, and then Lula in Brazil in 2002, and then in Ecuador, even in Uruguay, even when Kirschner won in Argentina – they decided: Okay, let’s get our act together now that most of our governments are center-left or at least nominally progressive.
Let’s get our backyard in order, organize ourselves via the Unasur, for instance, the Union of South American countries, and also the Mercosur, which is a commercial/trade union. And let’s try to fight American interference directly. And this is what’s been happening. Remember the failed coup against Chavez in 2002, which was directly organized by Washington, there is extensive proof, you can find it on the net, Eva Golinger, a Venezuelan-American lawyer, she wrote excellent books about it. Okay, and they tried in 2007 to destabilize Bolivia as well, the failed coup in Ecuador over a year ago. So why is it not happening anymore in South America? Because of political, economic and geopolitical unity.
But don’t doubt it, if the Pentagon found an opening to interfere directly in Venezuela again, they will do it. The problem is, now there are Russian advisors over there, there are Chinese traders in Venezuela, Iranian commercial interests as well. Venezuela is not only trading with South America and they are now a member of Mercosur as well, so they are trading a lot with Brazil and Argentina etc., but they are trading with the other side of the world as well – and with two of America’s strategic competitors, plus their nemesis, Iran. So that explains a lot.
Since 2002, South America for the Pentagon is a big, big problem, and no wonder these Republican whacko candidates in their last foreign policy debate, they were saying that Hamas and Hezbollah are all over South America, that they have to pay attention to Latin America because we forget that there are a lot of communists and terrorists over there. It’s no wonder.

But would you say it’s a coincidence, this historical connection between energy resources and illicit drugs? For example, in the Vietnam war.

Pepe Escobar: True, with Air America. Remember, Air America was not only defending civilians in Laos and Vietnam, basically this was a CIA heroin smuggling operation, of course. – But the thing is, it’s not necessarily so. I would mention Colombia. Colombia was a completely different case, Colombia was a case of indigenous cartels, they were fighting among themselves to see who would have the monopoly of exporting cocaine to the U.S., I would say there were few American interests here – selling equipment and weapons, yes, but the Americans were not at the forefront of the battle against the cartels.
So when they fragmented, the cartels went all over the place. So now for the past three or four years, it’s the Peruvians who control the distribution of cocaine in South America, it’s not the Colombians anymore.
They delocalized, for instance, to Brazil as a refinery center and an export center as well. I would say every week there’s a major apprehension of coke at Sao Paulo’s International Airport, for instance. So if you multiply this by what really goes through, it’s amazing. Now the airport in Sao Paulo is one of the major shipping routes of cocaine to North America, or to Europe as well. Once there used to be heroin coming from Central Asia via Europe that was landing in Brazil as well. It was funny, there was a time during the 80s, I remember, there was an Italian connection: people would bring heroin from Milan to Sao Paulo, and would take cocaine from Sao Paulo to Milan. (laughs.) That was almost thirty years ago.
In the Colombian case it’s very different. There is not a direct relation between drugs and energy. In Venezuela as well: the only game in town over there is energy, it’s a battle for energy. Hugo Chavez, whatever you think about him, was very clever, because: Okay, my way out is to do deals with other players. So they made a gigantic deal with China, and now they are one of the top suppliers of oil to China.
Soon they will be selling China one million barrels of oil per day, and they could expand to two million easily, if the Chinese invest in the Orinoco region, exploiting the new fields, which they will do, it’s not a priority at the moment, because for the moment the Chinese are concentrated in Siberia, Central Asia, and Africa, But they still have this Plan C or Plan D for them, which is Venezuela.

Do they also count on Brazil as an oil exporter?

Pepe Escobar: Definitely, because of the pre-salt deposits in Brazil, which is a kind of mixed blessing, in fact. Petrobras is regarded all over the world as one of the most competent national oil companies. The problem is they have to develop this specific technology to perforate this salt layer to extract the oil. It’s an extremely complex and extremely expensive operation. They say they will start in 2017, I doubt it.
The last figure that I saw in terms of investment that they needed, this was a few months ago, they were talking about 220 to 240 billion U.S. dollars of investment over the next few years to start extracting oil from the pre-salt layer. Everybody wants to be part of it. Chevron is already here, Exxon Mobil, Gazprom wants to be here, and of course the Chinese. And I’m sure when the Brazilians start issuing tenders, the Chinese are going to be at the forefront, all of their companies, CNPC, CNOOC, all of them.
But this is a long term project for the Chinese, of course, because in a realistic assessment there’s not going to be oil from the pre-salt layer before 2019/2020, so the Chinese are thinking ahead.

We hear quite a lot about the BRICS. Would you say this is just a nice name once given by Goldman Sachs or is there more behind it, a comprehensive strategy, something like this?

Pepe Escobar: They still don’t have a comprehensive strategy. It used to be a nice name in 2001/2002; not anymore, because now they are meeting regularly, not only an official annual meeting, but their foreign ministers are meeting, their deputy foreign ministers are meeting just like they did in St. Petersburg recently for that matter. Their interests are more or less the same in terms of: for Russia and China to keep the U.S. out of their backyard, which is basically Central Asia and the former Soviet Republics.
For Brazil it’s to keep the Americans out of South America as much as humanly possible, considering that the relations between Brazil and the U.S. are very, very close, and the United States still regards Brazil as a key ally in Latin America. It’s a very complicated foreign policy game between Brazil and the U.S.
For India, they want to be in the same group of all emerging countries as well, but without antogonizing the U.S. too much, so they have a difficult game to play as well. South Africa was included basically so that they would have a continental span, so that three continents were represented.
I would say from the point of view of the BRICS, and in fact they discussed this in Brasilia over a year ago – the fifth BRIC would be Turkey, it would be BRICT actually, but at the last minute they decided to include South Africa, because they said: we need the largest economy from Africa as well, and because Brazil and South Africa and India started to trade among themselves much more over the past 4 years than over the past 400. Brazil and South Africa are integrating very closely, and South Africa is the bridge between Brazil and India.
So it would suit all of these three players. But soon the BRICS might include – I say “might“ because they started discussing but still don’t know how to do it as a formal mechanism: Turkey, Indonesia and South Korea, which are natural candidates, there is no question about it. Two in Asia and one in the Middle East, the intersection between Europe and Asia.
So they started to talk about more integration in terms of our economies, cultural exchanges, all those bla-bla-bla’s…now they are thinking: Okay, we need geopolitically to pound our fist on the table, even if very softly in the beginning. So it started in Libya, they abstained from voting UN 1973, which was already a big step. They were mildly condemned by the Europeans and the Americans for that. But they said, this is still not a red line, this is a very, very yellow line, we cannot afford to antagonize the Americans at this point.
And then came the latest proposal for a UN Security Council vote on Syria, and the BRICS immediately said: No way, this is the red line. For many reasons, because Russia and China have very good deals with Syria. Brazil and Syria are very close. There are millions of Syrians living in Brazil and Syrian-Libanese living in Brazil, so in Brazil people call them Syrian-Libanese, it’s indinstinctive for most people here because they started coming in the 1920′s, 1930′s, and after the Second World War as well, they are very well integrated in Brazilian society, and there is lots of commercial deals between Brazil and Syria. These are some of the reasons why they have a common position for this as well.
As for South Africa, it is evident. The first time they voted for the UN resolution, they were pressured by Obama, Obama called president Zuma, they were on the phone for two hours or so, and Obama said: Look, you got to vote for us, otherwise you are going to be in trouble. So Zuma voted against his will. And later he was part of the African Union delegation to organize a peace deal between the rebels and Gaddafi. And the Gaddafi regime said yes, the rebels said no. Why? Because NATO told them to say no.
So South Africa had their reasons, too. Syria is the red line. So now they are starting to organize their geopolitical approach vis-à-vis the Atlanticist West in a much more coordinated way. And in terms of economics, they are putting pressure on the IMF to give more voting power rights to Brazil and China.
There are three guys as regional chair directors at the IMF, and the Chinese and the Brazilians are saying for years: we need more directors and we need more voting rights. That was part of the discussion, remember when the Brazilian minister of finance said: Look, maybe we can devise a mechanism to help the struggling European economies. That was their message to say: The thing goes to the IMF, and we want to be there, we want more voting rights, and then we decide if we can help or not, but this has to be within the IMF mechanism.
Yes, they are definitely coordinating much more than they were, I would say, two years ago. Soon BRICS is going to be BRICTS, BRICTIISS, an expanded BRIC. But now it is configured as a counterpower in geopolitical terms, in terms of appeal to the developing world, because the appeal by the BRICS to the Non-Aligned Movement, NAM, for instance, to other countries in South America, to a lot of countries in the Middle East, to many countries in South-East Asia is huge against what is an Atlanticist U.S.-NATO, which is basically the same thing because the U.S. controls NATO.
NATO aligned with the most ultra-reactionary and repressive Persian Gulf monarchies. The realignment of the chessboard is something very tricky now because now these countries, especially Qatar and the Emirates, they are sub-sects of NATO. In one of my pieces recently I was venturing the possibility of soon talking about a NATOGCC, or GCCNATO, Gulf Cooperation Council – I usually call them Gulf Counterrevolutionary Club, because this is what they are.
So the merging between NATO and the GCC now is total. And if we include the merger between the Western military-industrial complex in the U.S. and the Saudi defense system which is total as well, we can say that Pentagon and the GCC is all the same thing.
And the BRICS look at this and for some of them this is extremely complicated, for China, for instance, because still their number one oil supplier is Saudi Arabia. For the moment Saudi Arabia is outrunning Angola. Venezuela is already among the top five. Libya was not among the top five, that’s why they said: Okay, not now, maybe later. But how do they organize the relationship between Beijing and Riyadh, because they see that Riyadh is totally aligned with the Pentagon agenda, and at the same time they depend on their oil, and this explains among other things why the Chinese are so eager to be less and less dependent on Middle Eastern oil.
So this means more deals with Iran. My guess, my more or less informed guess is soon the Chinese will go to Iran and say: How much money do you need to totally upgrade your oil and gas installations? Here it is, but deal with us.
This explains the pipeline from Turkmenistan to China, this explains the two pipelines from Siberia to China, and this explain China in Angola and in Central Africa as well, and this will explain China coming to Brazil as soon as possible, saying: How much money do you want? The Saudi-China relation for Beijing is very complicated, and that means, for now, they they cannot antogonize Saudi Arabia on anything.

Related to the BRICS, do you pay attention to the fact that the central banks of Russia, China and India and also South American central banks are buying gold big time?

Pepe Escobar: Oh, yes! In the moment they are buying gold, and they still have in the backburner the Plan B, which is a basket of currencies in terms of an international currency system. The Russians and the Chinese want it, the Brazilians also want it, it would include probably the U.S. dollar, the euro, yuan, maybe ruble, maybe real as well, maybe yen, but the Japanese are not part of this conversation, and for the moment, of course, it’s to buy gold, including those who are not in this loop but are connected to the loop, Venezuela. Remember Venezuela was repatriating all their gold that they had in European banks, the first shipment already arrived in Caracas.

Do you think there could be some sort a connection in the pricing of oil with gold in the future going ahead?

Pepe Escobar: I don’t know, Lars, honest answer. I don’t know. You know why? I would say it depends on a move connected to bypassing the petrodollar. And this move already started a few years ago. Iran wants to do it badly like yesterday. Russia already said: Yes, we want it. Venezuela already said in South America: Yes, we want it as well. But I think this is the nuclear option. Can you imagine the day when you have major oil producers inside OPEC saying: It’s not going to be the petrodollar anymore, it’s going to be our own currencies or it’s going to be a basket of currencies. That’s basically the end of the American hegemony for good.

The whole country will burn, basically.

Pepe Escobar: Exactly. The whole globe will burn. I see this as the nuclear option. A few years ago when Iran was establishing an energy bourse, in fact, they did, it’s already there.

Since 2008. [Oil Bourse Opens in Kish, published at Fars News Agency on Feb. 18, 2008]

Pepe Escobar: I remember in 2005, I interviewed the guy in charge of establishing this bourse in Tehran. We had a fantastic conversation, and then I got into a big fight with the editor at that time of Asia Times, because he said: If we publish this, the Americans will bomb our site tomorrow.
The Iranians said: This is our first step to entice people to start buying oil contracts with us at our bourse and not in New York or in London. And then I told this guy: You know what you’re doing when this thing goes ahead. You are going to be bombed by the U.S. tomorrow. They said: Yes, we know the risks. But the guy who was implementing this mechanism for us was a former trader in London actually. It was a very complicated messy affair.
After my interview, it took them three years, as you have said, they only established it in 2008. It’s a very small bourse, but as far as the Iranians see it, it’s just the beginning. They like this bourse. They started with petrochemicals first. They start to deal with petrochemicals, oil and gas for the future and they were especially interested in attracting buyers from the developing world plus Russia and China, so that they could buy Iranian energy products in Iran directly. I’m sure, Russia and China loved the idea as well, but for the moment it’s an embryo of something much bigger coming later.

You call the “Great Game 2.0″ in Central Asia / the Greater Middle East “Pipelineistan.” Is it of advantage to be familiar with good ol’ Halford Mackinder (a British geographer credited with being the father of geopolitics) in “Pipelineistan”?

Pepe Escobar: No, the thing is, the people who are familiar with Mackinder are the Brzeziński crowd and people at national security agencies in Washington. They think they can apply Mackinder and win. (laughs.) The Russians and the Chinese would say: Not in our region, guys, here is different. We have the resources. Russia is a continental power. China, it’s a kingdom and a civilization in itself, we don’t admit foreign interference, you are never going to control our part of Eurasia, you can control the euro part of Eurasia, but that stops at the Bosphorus.
To the right of the Bosphorus, Turkey has regional ambitions, Iran has regional ambitions, we have our former Soviet Republics, which we still see as our satellites, South East Asia now is linked to China in terms of trade, commerce, and I would say parts of South East Asia are becoming a sub-sect of China, in fact.
Remember, during the Asian Miracle, when the World Bank launched that famous book in 1993, “The Asian Miracle,“ it was Japan as the lead goose, then the other four tigers right behind it, then the mini-tigers, and China was way behind, and now in 2011 the whole thing is upside down, because it’s China as the larger-than-life goose, and then we have all these mini-gooses behind China trying to keep up and clinch deals as well, because the Chinese diaspora in all these countries is essential.
They control most of the economy in Indonesia, they control most of the economy in Thailand, mixed marriages Thai-Chinese, they control most of the economy in the Philippines, they control a lot of the economy in Malaysia, they control the whole economy in Singapore. Tigers? Not really. Mini-gooses. The whole thing is upside down.
So I don’t see Mackinder being applied. They thought during the Bush administration because of hubris, and because they said, remember, they were saying it on a daily basis practically: We create our own reality, and then you people in the rest of the world have to keep up. They thought that they could implement their new great game strategy in Central Asia by building this pipeline in Afghanistan, finally, the TAPI – Turkmenistan, Afghanistan, Pakistan, India, bypassing Iran and bypassing Russia and China.
They thought that they could force the Turkmen to sell gas to Western companies and not to China or to be linked to the Russian pipeline network. They were still drunk with their success of the BTC, the Baku- Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline, saying this was the beginning of many other pipelines bypassing Iran.
But that was in the beginning of the Bush administration until 2003/2004 after the “success“ of the Iraq war. Now, only a few years later, as we were talking before, they didn’t win anything. In fact, the Shanghai Cooperation Organization which is a mechanism that is counter this proliferation of American initiatives in Central Asia is getting stronger and stronger.
In terms of energy deals, Russia, Iran, China, Turkmenistan, they all are dealing among themselves. Obviously there is space with Europe, but they cannot deal with Europe in the case of Iran because of the sanctions, and in the case of Turkmenistan because to build a pipeline like Nabucco, over 20 billion euros, it’s unfeasible. To give you an idea: BTC cost 4.5 billion U.S. dollars at that time, and at that time everybody was saying: it’s ridiculous to build a pipeline like this when we could have had a shorter route from Iran that probably costs ten times less than this pipeline. They built it anyway. So now it’s 500 percent more than BTC was.
So the Americans are not winning anything, in fact, in Afghanistan they are shooting themselves in the foot, because now they antagonized not only Pakistan, which they did when they began to bomb the country over the last few years with the drone war, they antagonized the Afghans themselves, which were really willing to cut a deal with the Americans. The tribal leaders were even saying let’s talk to the Americans what kind of a base complex they want after they retire in 2014. They were willing to discuss it.
Nowadays, forget it, because Pakistan don’t want to discuss this anymore, they are fed up, and Pakistan and China are getting closer and closer, the Chinese are going to exploit this rift between Washington and Islamabad. In Afghanistan, there will be a total mess, they don’t want American bases, I’m sure, after 2014, so the Pentagon has to force these bases over to Afghan controls, we still don’t know the road map for this as well. So if you analyze in terms of successes of the new great game American-style in Eurasia over the past four or five years, there is not much to show. (laughs.)

If one would address the question: “Why do wars happen at all?”, would you say that the fact that bankers are at the top of the list of beneficiaries of wars is an important part of the answer, insofar for example:
[Editor: For background, see J.S. Kim: “Inside The Illusory Empire Of The Banking Commodity Con Game“, published at The Underground Investor on Oct. 19, 2010: "The U.S. Federal Reserve creates money to fund the war and lends it to the American government. The American government in turn must pay interest on the money they borrow from the Central Bank to fund the war. The greater the war appropriations, the greater the profits are for bankers."]

Pepe Escobar: I agree if there were a lot of war appropriations, if the looting is conducive. In Iraq it didn’t happen. The looting in Iraq would supposedly be the oil that would not only pay for the war, but for America’s supply of oil for the next 1,000 years or so, the new American Reich based on Iraqi oil. Didn’t work.
We had a fascinating historical lesson of what happened in Iraq. The neocons thought in the beginning, obviously, because they knew absolutely [nothing] about the Middle East, they don’t even travel, they don’t even go there, they thought: Okay, this will cost us virtually nothing, we will make the Iraqis pay for the whole thing later on, and then when the oil comes, that’s it. Remember what they used to say: We’re the new OPEC, this was in late 2002/03.
Didn’t work. And now we have a different, let’s say, variant of the model, that you’ve just explained: wars paid by foreign powers. China is financing the wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, part of the war in Libya, it didn’t cost much, but anyway, still the war in Libya, the war in Somalia, the war in Yemen, the next war in Uganda or Sudan that the U.S. decides to start. This is being financed basically by Chinese buying U.S. treasury bonds. It’s a variant of the model.

In an article for al-Jazeera you’ve once quoted a study related to the cost of the War on Terror, published by the Eisenhower project at Brown University. [Pepe Escobar: “Why the US won't leave Afghanistan“, published at Al Jazeera on July 12, 2011] Do you remember?

Pepe Escobar: Yes, I do.

And the costs were four billion?

Pepe Escobar: Yes, depending on the variables, depending on the medical costs for the injured veterans in the U.S., which escalate and go on forever, because they still have to pay pensions for these people, it could be between four and six trillion U.S. dollars. So what did the U.S. get for these four to six trillion dollars so far? We can say, so far they only got Libya, which is not exactly a priority for them.
It was part of the original neocon plan – it starts with Iraq, then Lebanon, Syria, especially Iran. For the moment the only thing they get is Libya. That’s why Syria is so important because Syria is the way to Iran, and it is still the same what the neocons said in 2002, and it is still part of the Full Spectrum Dominance doctrine. We always come back to the same themes, because these themes are the basis of what we are watching nowadays.

Do you think that the war in Libya qualifies as a Resource War, not only related to oil and maybe the gold currency that Gaddafi wanted to issue, but also related to the Great Man Made River project?

Pepe Escobar: Yes, I was going to say that, Lars, absolutely, it’s a water war already. I was writing a few months ago a long story about coming water wars – no, it’s not coming, they are already here. This was the first big water war, if you think about it. There is going to be a lot of water wars in the Middle East, Southern Turkey, Israel-Palestine, but this one is big because of the Great Man Made River project – over 20 billion U.S. dollars financed by the Libyan government, by Gaddafi, with a lot of Canadian expertise involved.

And no money from the International Monetary Fund.

Pepe Escobar: Especially that! No money from the IMF and from those schemes at the World Bank when you have to keep paying interest until you die three times over. They built this by themselves and they imported the technology that they needed, and they built an indigenous pipeline system undercover in the southern desert to bring water to the coast line in Libya. It’s absolutely fantastic because they have a reservoir of fresh water in the southern desert that lasts according to the best estimates for a thousand years. A thousand years of fresh water.
Can you imagine, the project isn’t even totally completed, I think 80 percent are completed. Obviously, the three major water companies in the world are French, and in my opinion this explains 99 percent of the French rationale for the war. They want to privatize these one thousand years of fresh water and sell it to the whole planet. And then we have Sarkozy and the interests of the industrial-military complex in France, we need more gas and oil for Total, which they were always complaining that they always wanted the lion’s share of Libya’s energy exports.
There is an alliance of the Qataris, the industrial-military complex in France and Sarkozy, who is basically a lackey of these people, and the Qataris wanted to be involved in trade and commerce in Northern Africa. NATO and AFRICOM interests in establishing a beach head. There were so many interests. Gaddafi couldn’t win from the beginning because all these interests in the axis Pentagon, NATO, key European countries like France and England, and the monarchies of Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, and House of Saud as well, because they wanted to bring Gaddafi down because there was a bad beef between King Abdullah and Gaddafi since 2002, before the invasion of Iraq.
Gaddafi couldn’t possibly face this, too many powerful interests were behind it, they wanted to renegotiate the contracts, they wanted the new oil and gas contracts to go only to European and American companies, maybe Turkish companies, but not to BRICS countries, and Gaddafi, he was interviewed by German journalists two or three days before the resolution was passed, and he said explicitly: If you attack us, the next contracts are going to BRIC countries – so he was attacked three days later. (laughs.) Absolutely obvious.
And what you’ve mentioned, very importent as well: the gold dinar, because the gold dinar could have been an African currency, he could have financed development projects in Sub-Saharan Africa, he was already doing this, financing a lot of projects in Sub-Saharan African countries, and he was bypassing completely the Bretton Woods system and this from the point of view of Washington, the Bank of International Settlements, all this gang – it’s a no-no, it’s an absolute no-no. And remember, when Saddam started selling oil in euro in Iraq in late 2002. Major reason for the invasion as well.

Do you think it was good for the Benghazi “rebels“ to establish a central bank that is in bed with Western central banks?

Pepe Escobar: This is what they wanted. In fact, these people of the Transition National Council, which is bag of dodgy cats – opportunists, former Gaddafi officials, Islamists linked to al-Qaeda from Cyrenaica, exiles living in Virginia, come on! This is a bloody tragic joke, in fact. And of course, from the beginning, they had a Qatari connection: one of the advisors of Sheika Moza, the wife of the Emir of Qatar, was the link between Qatar and the Transition National Council.
So why Qatar got this independent central bank based in Benghazi, obviously, Qatari influence, because they wanted to get into the financial and the trade system in Northern Africa, they are expanding. Qatar is a fast-expanding mini empire. It’s very, very impressive. I remember Doha ten years ago, it was a backwater. I remember very well. I used to go Iraq via Qatar. I saw it growing year by year, and nowadays when you arrive in Doha, you think you are in a mini-Hong Kong already.
And their tentacles are everywhere: in Europe, in the U.S., in the Middle East, of course, and northern Africa as well, they trade heavily with Asia, they are setting their sights in Brazil nowadays. So it’s very impressive. And their move in Northern Africa was very clever, because they are now localized in Northern Africa, and, as they hope, the rest of Africa: We want to trade with everybody, we have a very good banking system, we sell gas to anyone who wants to buy. Mini-empire in the make.

What do we have to expect in the next year related to Syria and Iran. These are allies, right?

Pepe Escobar: Yes. Well, this is the multi-trillion-dollar question. I would go to Iran as soon as I can, the problem for us to get a press visa to Iran, after the Green Movement in 2009, it’s very difficult. You need a press visa to go to Iran, because if you want to talk to the IRGC, for instance, officials, people from the govenment, you need that kind of visa. I am going to try again, exactly to get from those people their point of view, and I am talking especially about the IRGC commanders, the people in the oil industry, and of course, in order to talk to average Tehranians, which is something that I have always enjoyed doing.
In the North of Tehran, you think you are in California. In South Tehran, you know you are in the hardcore heart of the Middle East. There are two universes in one city, and the spectrum of opinions that you get just by a fourty minute taxi ride, is absolutely outstanding. You see people who want to kill Rafsanjani the day they’d meet him, you see people defending the ayatollahs strictly, you see people saying, without the Green Movement we’re lost. It’ a universe in itself.
And the echoes that I get from my friends who live there or from Iranians who send me a lot of stuff is: people are consuming, they are living their lives, there is lots of inflation, prices have been rising substantially, but they want to go out, try to buy an iPad that was smuggled from China, they want to have a new European car that they can afford, they want to keep eating meat, which is very funny, because the Brazilian meat that they import is cheaper than the Iranian-produced meat. Go figure! You have that kind of stuff.
And at the same time, they know that something is brewing. It could be an Israeli strike, it could be a U.S.-Israeli strike, it could be a strike only on the nuclear facilities, but a lot of people fear a strike on the civilian infrastructure. They always say: Look, what happened to Iraq. They attacked civilian buildings – yes, it’s true, I saw it for myself.
People are expecting the worst. They are trying to keep a brave face, but they immediately recognize there is a power struggle inside the regime between the Ahmadinejad faction and the revolutionary guards ultra-hardline faction, which is against Ahmadinejad because he wants some sort of a compromise with the West. These IRGC guys, they want confrontation.
This is very dangerous. Why? Because the supreme leader, Ayatollah Khameinei, is supporting this faction against Ahmadinejad. He wants Iran to be respected for what it is, and we can assume that he is welcoming this confrontation. This is extremely dangerous, because we could have an incident that would be the casus belli for an attack, an Israeli-Anglo-American attack, let’s put it this way.
People are very much aware of this, and they are very much afraid of this power struggle at the top of the regime. At the same time, next year they will have parliamentary elections, and they are going to have Presidential elections in 2013, where the favorite, at least for the moment, is Larijani, he is a former nuclear negotiator and a close friend and protege of Khamenei’s. This means the hardliners are very much in power and control, and incredibly as it might seem, Ahmadinejad at the moment he is more or less sidelined, and he is considered by these hardliners as an appeaser vis-à-vis the West.
So the internal situation inside Iran is extremely worrying. And they know what might happen in Syria, and they know that Syria is the short cut to get to them. But at the same time the hardliners they are not only expecting an attack on Syria, in fact, they say: maybe they won’t even use the short cut, maybe they will attack us directly. So they are preparing for this as well. Everything very worrying.

Do you perceive a similar mood in Israel?

Pepe Escobar: I don’t know. I have a lot of Jewish friends in South America, in the U.S. and in Europe, they come and go to Israel, and when they come back, they say: Look, people are lost in Israel, they don’t know how to deal with the Arab Spring, the regime doesn’t know how to deal with the Arab Spring, they don’t even know how to deal with the the non-Spring in Syria, because they expect what might come next as even worst, like a Muslim Brotherhood antagonistic government in Damascus. Which is a no-no for Israel.
They prefer to deal with the devil they know, which is an ineffectual devil, the Assad regime. There is a civil society movement, very strong in Israel, against corruption, inflation and rising costs of living, they are anti-war and anti-government as well.
And then we have a government that is a hostage of this absolutely disgusting settler lobby. Extreme right-wing, Lieberman-Ukrainian immigrants, it’s horrible, because the progressive left in Israel, you read them in the Israeli press once in a while, but they have been marginalized. Even inside the U.S.: the progressive Jews in the U.S., they are more or less marginalized, because AIPAC is controlling the discourse.
If you listen to radio, read the mainstream press, watch the networks, it’s like an AIPAC press release after another. You don’t see Jewish progressives saying: It’s crazy, what we are doing, we have to sit down and talk about Palestine, sit down and talk about the Golan Heights, about Iran. This is a minority position.

Whereas the majority is supported by the Evangelics and new-born Christians in the U.S., who believe in Armaggedon.

Pepe Escobar. Exactly. You have the majority of the establishment who wants to have an Eretz Israel, a greater Israel, and the religious nuts, who say: Okay, the best way to Armaggedon is a war against our neighbours.

The maniacs are running the asylum.

Pepe Escobar: Yes, it’s crazy. I would say, since the beginning of the Arab Spring, 2011 was the year that the maniacs took over the asylum completely. And that’s why 2012 could be such a really terrible year, I think, for all this arc: Northern Africa, Middle East and Central Asia. In Central Asia basically Af/Pak, because the situation in Af/Pak tends to be going down the drain very fast.

What’s your take of the recent assault by NATO troops on Pakistan? [See “'Mistakes made': Pentagon 'regrets' slaughter of 24 Pakistani troops“, published at Russia Today on Dec. 22, 2011]

Pepe Escobar: This is a very complex thing, because maybe there’s a hidden motive behind it, and we still don’t know what it could be. Could be that some Pakistani provoked it, could be that NATO itself provoked it to have a better excuse to ramp up the demonization of Pakistan campaign, try to provoke a military coup, so that the factions within the Pakistani military who are more pro-American are running the show. It’s still very murky.
But there is something behind this attack that makes no sense: NATO knows where all the Pakistani checkpoints are in the tribal areas, they have the maps and the coordinates, they simply cannot bomb a Pakistani military checkpoint, because they know that it is a friendly place, it’s not that they were bombing a Pashtun wedding in Waziristan in a mud house, where the satellite said: This house is full of al-Qaeda, bomb them – boom! It’s different. Our writers in India and Pakistan are not convinced by the official story. Short of calling it a lie, it’s still a story to tell.

But it is a problem, because Pakistan and China have the closest relations to each other possible.

Pepe Escobar: Yes, and anything that happens in Pakistan from now on, drives Islamabad closer and closer to Bejing, it’s absolutely inevitable. Pakistani public opinion is fed up with American interference, with the relentless drone war and the loss of their sovereignty if they had ever had any, by the way.
And of course, the Chinese are reacting typically, they are very quiet, they are not making any move, they are just waiting for the leadership in Islamabad to come running to Bejing and say: Take care of us, please. And it is not very hard with the way the Americans are acting. The only two things that matters to Washington; they don’t give a flying fuck – excuse me for the expression – about the Pakistani people. What they cared about was the “War on Terror“ to exterminate al-Qaeda.
So now they are saying openly and on the record, that al-Qaeda is ineffective, since the death of bin Laden – was it bin Laden or not is still open for speculation, but they killed al-Qaeda. So what are they doing in Af/Pak? Oh, now we have a problem, because Pakistan is a very unstable country, they are now the heartbeat of the terrorist movement in the world, it’s not Aghanistan anymore, and can you imagine if these nuclear weapons fall into the hand of the terrorists.
This is the only thing that matters. They want to find a pretext to interfere in Pakistan to get a hold of Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal. It’s an extremely long shot, of course, but this is what the Pentagon would like to do. This is their agenda.
The political elite in Pakistan apart from Imran Khan, I would say, is corrupt. Imran Khan by himself is not a corrupt man, he is getting a hundred thousand people everytime he speaks in public in Pakistan, because they start to see him as an alternative. He says: Let’s get rid of the Americans, let’s get rid of the corrupt political elite, let’s get the military to stay in their barracks, let’s have a true civilian government, let’s try to develop the country and try to bridge the inequality gap. That’s why he is so popular now, he could win the next elections.
But basically, Pakistani civil society is fed up with the state of things. And for the Americans this is really bad news, because they want since Zia to have the military in control basically, doing what the Pentagon tells them to do, and for the past few years conduct their “War on Terror“ the way they want it from their bases inside Pakistan, like this one in Balochistan,Samsi, and the drone war in the Waziristans, but this is not going to happen anymore, I don’t see it happening. The Chinese are just waiting. I think they will admit Pakistan to the SCO, this is something that could happen next year, so Pakistan would be inside a meachanism that implies military cooperation with the Chinese.
The problem is that the Pakistani military is not a monolithic organization, there are layers, there are people who were appointed by Musharraf, there are people, like some Pashtun middle-ranking officers, who are sympathetic to the Taliban in Pakistan or even al-Qaeda, and there are cracks inside this arrangement. And I am sure the army leaders, their relationship with the Pentagon is more than difficult at the moment, especially after the last raid, which was an attack against their own, this was an attack against an army post. This is for them a bit too much.

Anti-Americanism is on the raise everywhere in the world.

Pepe Escobar: Except in the Persian Gulf. (laughs.)

Would you say it’s a bit tragic given the friendliness of the ordinary American people?

Pepe Escobar: It’s true. I have been going to the U.S. since I was a kid, I traveled to at least 40 states, I lived there on both coasts, I have friends in the U.S., a lot of people who read my stuff know where I am coming from, but I also have a lot of readers who are saying: you are a Taliban-Communist-Apocalyptic-Anti-American bla-bla-bla – the whole thing. They still don’t get it.
One thing is to be very fond of the country and American pop culture, American entertainment, American icons in music, in literature, in cinema, in architecture, in art etc., and another thing is to criticize their foreign policy. If you grew up like myself, I grew up in Brazil and Europe during the 1960/70′s – the military dictatorship installed in Brazil in 1964, when I was ten years old, was an American coup.

Yes.

Pepe Escobar: We learned here in South America by ourselves what it means to live under a military dictatorship sponsored by the U.S. So we know what we are talking about. Obviously, the people in the Middle East also know what they are talking about. Some people in Asia also know what they are talking about, like the South Koreans, for instance, they lived under a military regime sanctioned by the U.S. before they became a democracy.
So it’s very tragic that after the beginning of the Arab Spring, a lot of people in the Persian Gulf haven’t seen already that they live in extremely autocratic regimes, they are vassals and satrapies of the U.S. empire, and they simply cannot count on their own governments to get the minimum of sovereignty.
So when you see indigenous pro-democracy movements in Bahrain or in Eastern Saudi Arabia, you see how the response is. Even in Egypt, where they said: Let’s get finally rid of the system once and for all – they didn’t get rid of the system, the snake is still there, and the snake is being financed by Saudi Arabia.
There was no revolution in Egypt, the revolution maybe will start if they get rid of the Tantawi junta, which is what the masses in Tahrir Square, the Google generation and the working class in Egypt want. But the problem is the army in Egypt controls – there are different estimates about it – from 25 to 40 percent of the Egyptian economy, they are not going to give that up. It’s got to be a real bloody revolution for these people to go, and obviously the U.S. don’t want this...

Would you say that the whole handling of affairs related to 9/11 was a big push for alternative media?

Pepe Escobar: It was, because if you wanted to know after 9/11 what was really going on – forget about mainstream media anywhere in the world. The only place where you could find it was in the net – independent observers and analysts, who took the trouble of going through documents, in mainstream media it was impossible.
Nowadays, sometimes they filter these guys, you see them once in a while, but these are just glimpses. The mainstream discourse itself is monolithic. There is no alternative. And there is really no alternative, because you only listen to these guys all saying the same thing for decades.

Yes, and most of those experts and big news media outlets are linked to the Round Tables like the Royal Institute of International Affaires, Council on Foreign Relations, the Trilateral Commission, Bilderberg Club…

Pepe Escobar: Exactly, they all work for the same think tanks. And other media outlets have credibility problems as well. The international Chinese tv-channel in English, CCTV9, because you would need at least a minimum of debates, but there are no debates going on. I like what RT, Russia Today, is doing, I am a contributor, but they don’t criticize Russia. Big problem.
I also work for al-Jazeera, which is great, because I can reach people and get responses that I otherwise would not have, for example from people in Africa. But they have an enormous problem of credibility, because of their coverage of Tunisia, Egypt and Libya compared to their coverage of what happens in the Persian Gulf, they simply cannot criticize themselves and they cannot criticize – forget about it – the House of Saud, because of the close relations between the House of Saud and the Emir of Qatar. It’s very complicated when you are navigating this universe.
We are very happy, all of us, who work and write for Asia Times because it is truly independent and we are respected for that. We have Zionists’ opinions in it, we have extreme-right opinions, extreme-left opinions, we have the middle, we have the Iranians, the Pakistanis, the Russians, the Chinese, we even have a North Korean writing for us, so it’s all there.
We don’t have any specific editorial line, no, it’s open for everybody. That is what people respect us for. But that’s something hard to find. We have for example tremendous problems with financing. I have been involved with this for the past few months, and it’s a headache: we want to expand, but we don’t want to lose our editorial control. Very tricky equation.

I wish you many success with that!

Pepe Escobar: Thank you!

Pepe Escobar was born in 1954 in Brazil and has been a foreign correspondent since 1985, based in London, Milan, Los Angeles, Paris, Singapore, and Bangkok. Since the late 1990s, he has specialized in covering geopolitical stories from the Middle East to Central Asia andhas reported during this decade from Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq, Iran, the Central Asian Republics, U.S.A. and China. He now works for Hong Kong/Thailand-based Asia Times as “The Roving Eye“ and is an analyst for The Real News in Washington DC, as well as a contributor to Russia Today and Al Jazeera. He is author of three books:Globalistan: How the Globalized World is Dissolving into Liquid War,Red Zone Blues: a snapshot of Baghdad during the surge, and Obama does Globalistan. #

History of U.S. Intervention in Iran - 1953 Until Present

2012-01-08T05:56:00.000-10:00

Syria and Iran are next

2011-12-07T02:17:00.015-10:00

There's no letup, is there? The preparation of the American mind, the world mind, for the next gala performance of D&D — Death and Destruction. The Bunker Buster bombs are now 30,000 pounds each one, six times as heavy as the previous delightful model. But the Masters of War still want to be loved; they need for you to believe them when they say they have no choice, that Iran is the latest threat to life as we know it, no time to waste. The preparation of minds was just as fervent before the invasion of Iraq in March 2003. And when it turned out that Iraq did not have any kind of arsenal of weapons of mass destruction (WMD) ... well, our power elite found other justifications for the invasion, and didn't look back. Moreover, Gen. Hussein Kamel, former head of Iraq's secret weapons program, and a son-in-law of Saddam Hussein, told the UN in 1995 that Iraq had destroyed its banned missiles and chemical and biological weapons soon after the Persian Gulf War of 1991. Most of the WMD had been destroyed by the U.N. inspectors in the '90s, and those that hadn't been destroyed by the inspectors were unilaterally destroyed by Iraq and Americans knew that. Last year Hans Blix, former chief United Nations weapons inspector, who led a doomed hunt for WMD in Iraq, told a British inquiry into the 2003 invasion that those who were "100 percent certain there were weapons of mass destruction" in Iraq turned out to have "less than zero percent knowledge" of where the purported hidden caches might be. He testified that he had warned British Prime Minister Tony Blair in a February 2003 meeting — as well as US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice in separate talks — that Hussein might have no weapons of mass destruction. There is ample evidence that Bush knew this to be the case, or at a minimum should have seriously suspected it; the same applies to Tony Blair. Saddam Hussein did not sufficiently appreciate just how psychopathic his two adversaries were. Bush was determined to vanquish Iraq, for the sake of Israel, for control of oil, and for expanding the empire with new bases, though in the end most of this didn't work out as the empire expected; for some odd reason, it seems that the Iraqi people resented being bombed, invaded, occupied, demolished, and tortured.

The United States and Israel are preparing to attack Iran because of their alleged development of nuclear weapons, which Iran has denied on many occasions. But if Iran is in fact building nuclear weapons, we have to ask: Is there some international law that says that the US, the UK, Russia, China, Israel, France, Pakistan, and India are entitled to nuclear weapons, but Iran is not? Iran sits directly between two of the United States' great obsessions — Iraq and Afghanistan ... directly between two of the world's greatest oil regions — the Persian Gulf and Caspian Sea areas ... it's part of the encirclement of the two leading potential threats to American world domination — Russia and China ... Tehran will never be a client state or obedient poodle to Washington. How could any good, self-respecting Washington imperialist resist such a target? Bombs Away! (1) Shadow operations on the ground have already begun. Amid conflicting reports that a huge explosion at Iran's uranium conversion facility in Isfahan occurred last week, speculation was rife that Israel and the United States were stepping-up covert attacks against defense and nuclear installations. The latest attack on Iran's civilian nuclear program followed a blast two weeks ago at the sprawling Bid Ganeh missile base 25 miles west of Tehran. That blast killed upwards of 30 members of the Iran Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), including Major General Hassan Moqqadam, a senior leader of Iran's missile program. Satellite imagery shows much of the base in ruins. The attack was described by Time Magazine as the work "of Israel's external intelligence service, Mossad." Dan Meridor, the Israeli Intelligence Minister, said: 'There are countries who impose economic sanctions and there are countries who act in other ways in dealing with the Iranian nuclear threat'." In 2007, the CIA has received secret presidential approval to mount a covert 'black' operation to destabilize the Iranian government according to ABC News. Congress has appropriated some $300 million for the CIA and the Pentagon's covert war. In a further sign that the "shadow war" is heating up, last week's occupation of the British embassy in Tehran may have been a warning to the U.K. The embassy occupation and subsequent downgrade of diplomatic relations between Britain and Iran mean these threats are being taken very seriously indeed. Asia Times Online reported that Iran's claim "to have arrested 12 spies working for the United States Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) is potentially a major blow to American intelligence-gathering efforts in Iran and to American intelligence generally." Following closely on the heels of last month's arrest in Lebanon of some 30 CIA operatives by Hezbollah "is suggestive of a major American intelligence defeat, if not a full-blown disaster," Asia Times analyst Mahan Abedin wrote. According to Abedin's Iranian sources, the CIA's team of "operatives and analysts" appears to have been "embedded within numerous official and unofficial American organizations, including US embassies, multinational corporations, medium-sized commercial organizations, recruitment consultancies, immigration and wider legal services, academic and quasi-academic institutions and reputable (i.e. longstanding) as well as newly set up think tanks." In other words, as many researchers have amply documented, efforts by the U.S. secret state to subvert a target nation's internal defenses prior to full-on "regime change" either through direct warfare (Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, now Syria) or via an American-brokered "color revolution" (Yugoslavia, Venezuela, Ukraine, Georgia) are not about "freedom and democracy" but to achieve Washington's geopolitical goals: total economic and political domination. On Sunday, Al Jazeera reported that the Iranian armed forces "brought down an unmanned US spy plane." "Iran's military has downed an intruding RQ-170 American drone in eastern Iran," Iran's Arabic-language Al Alam state television network quoted an unnamed source as saying on Sunday." (2) The unmanned U.S. spy plane was deep inside Iran's airspace, flying over an eastern town famous for Persian carpets and saffron when it was downed by Iranian armed forces, state radio reported Wednesday. The report said the stealth-version of the RQ-170 drone was detected by Iranian forces over the eastern town of Kashmar, some 140 miles (225 kilometers) from the border with Afghanistan. It was the first time an RQ-170 Sentinel was lost by the United States, according to AP. The Sentinel drone has cutting-edge stealth and surveillance technology that other nations could exploit. The aircraft's full abilities are a closely guarded secret, and the Pentagon has not revealed its price tag, size or top speed. But it has acknowledged this: The Sentinel may now be in Iranian hands... The truth is Iranian Army has the aircraft, pride of U.S. Navy and Air Force untouched. The aircraft is flown remotely by pilots based in the United States, but is also programmed to autonomously fly back to the base it departed from if its data link with U.S.-based pilots is lost. The fact that the plane did not return to its base suggests a "catastrophic" technical malfunction. It has safely landed, it was not shot down. Stealth technology is no longer secret, not after NATO bombing of Serbia in 1999. Current flight tests of the Chinese J-20 stealth fighter at a Chengdu aircraft factory are ringing alarm bells inside the Pentagon. Invisible to radar, the high-tech aircraft is upping the ante against the U.S. Navy and Air Force in the Pacific theater. The takeoff of a Chinese-built stealth aircraft should come as no surprise. It traces its inception to a distant Southern European battlefield more than a decade ago, when the Pentagon and the People's Liberation Army fought the world's first electronic war. As NATO forces based in Albania launched their invasion to "liberate" Kosovo in May 1999, the U.S. Air Force unleashed over the Yugoslav capital its most sophisticated aircraft—the stealth B-2 Spirit bomber and F-117 Nighthawk fighter. On the second night of the Belgrade bombing campaign, however, things went horribly wrong when a Nighthawk was hit with stunning accuracy. Americans may be tempted to conclude that the Chinese stole or pirated the stealth ware, but the fact is that the technology was captured from invaders as a fair prize of war.

Bombing a country into "democracy and freedom", simply doesn't work. As a result of NATO’s interference, “Sharia law is coming to previously relatively secular states”. To what extent NATO is aware of the fact that the coming of radical Islam to all the regions where it projected its force is a result of its actions? The epic fight for democracy which unfolded in Egypt in February has turned to major disillusionment. Almost a year after Mubarak’s fall, Tahrir Square was again stained with blood as ordinary Egyptians struggled to oust the military junta which has been in power since February’s uprising. The situation carries echoes of Libya, whose ousted leader, Muammar Gaddafi, was murdered with no trial. People there have been left with a country in ruins and a government they did not choose. And it now looks as if Syria might be joining the club as the demands of NATO and some Arab states for regime change grow more vocal. Some say the louder they call, the more violent the opposition becomes. Civil war is brewing in Syria. Libyan sources conveyed in recent days that 600 rebel fighters have already gone from Libya to Syria in order to support the Syrian opposition. The sources explained that the announcement of Libyan interim leader Mustafa Abdul Jalil regarding his country's willingness to provide support for the rebels in Syria, has actually opened the door to volunteers. The source pointed out that there is coordination between the Libyan interim government and the Syrian opposition. The source added that the Libyan rebels entered Syria through Turkey, to join "the free Syrian army" in order to counter the pro-Bashar al-Assad forces, asserting that the door is still open to more volunteers in Libya in case they wish to fight. The whole region seems to be plunging deeper into crisis. While people on the ground bear the brunt of the continuing wave of violence in the Middle East and North Africa, some observers say certain powers might be interested in keeping the trouble boiling. Powerful interests outside the Middle East want to bring discontent and chaos to pave the way for a NATO militarisation of the region so that the oil resources of those oil-rich countries can be put directly into private hands.

With globalist restructuring plans for the Middle East and North Africa looking to be nearly complete, one major hurdle remains. After a relatively easy path to victory in Tunisia and Egypt, and with the project to dismantle and re-privatise the Libyan state nearly complete, only Syria remains as the last serious contender for resistance against a globalist effort to dominate the greater region. No one can deny the strategic importance of Syria on the grand chessboard. It’s bordering neighbors include no less than Israel, Turkey, Lebanon and most importantly now, Iraq. It is also a natural political ally of Iran and aligned firmly with the region’s last remaining independent militia, Hezbollah. To bring Syria under the globalist umbrella would be a key jewel on the globalist crown in their effort to control the entire Middle East and Central Asian region. In addition, Syria is one the region’s most economically independent sovereign states and possesses an incredible basket of natural resources. For all these reasons, Syria is a very high priority for globalist economic privatisation and dismantling of the state that is currently in place. Israel’s stake in Syrian regime change is first and foremost- land. The Golan Heights, as well as its formerly occupied prize in the form of South Lebanon will be firmly within Israel’s grasp if the country should eventually come under US and European globalist control. A successful NATO operation in Syria would probably come at a high cost, but it would in effect remove the Middle East’s last remaining strong independent state from the chess board. (3)

(1) by William Blum, author of:
Killing Hope: US Military and CIA Interventions Since World War 2Rogue State: A Guide to the World's Only SuperpowerWest-Bloc Dissident: A Cold War MemoirFreeing the World to Death: Essays on the American Empire
(2) by Tom Burghardt, Global Research
(3) by Patrick Henningsen, Global Research

Yinon Plan and the "Clash of Civilizations"

2011-12-04T08:45:00.015-10:00

The plans for reconfiguring the Middle East started several years before the First World War. It was during the First World War, however, that the manifestation of these colonial designs could visibly be seen with the "Great Arab Revolt" against the Ottoman Empire. After the collapse of the Ottoman Empire, it was London and Paris which denied freedom to the Arabs, while sowing the seeds of discord amongst the Arab peoples. Local corrupt Arab leaders were also partners in the project and many of them were all too happy to become clients of Britain and France. In the same sense, the "Arab Spring" is being manipulated today. The U.S., Britain, France, and others are now working with the help of corrupt Arab leaders and figures to restructure the Arab World and Africa. The Yinon Plan, which is a continuation of British stratagem in the Middle East, is an Israeli strategic plan to ensure Israeli regional superiority. It insists and stipulates that Israel must reconfigure its geo-political environment through the balkanization of the surrounding Arab states into smaller and weaker states. Israeli strategists viewed Iraq as their biggest strategic challenge from an Arab state. This is why Iraq was outlined as the centerpiece to the balkanization of the Middle East and the Arab World. In Iraq, on the basis of the concepts of the Yinon Plan, Israeli strategists have called for the division of Iraq into a Kurdish state and two Arab states, one for Shiite Muslims and the other for Sunni Muslims. The first step towards establishing this was a war between Iraq and Iran, which the Yinon Plan discusses. The Atlantic, in 2008, and the U.S. military's Armed Forces Journal, in 2006, both published widely circulated maps that closely followed the outline of the Yinon Plan. Aside from a divided Iraq, which the Biden Plan also calls for, the Yinon Plan calls for a divided Lebanon, Egypt, and Syria. The partitioning of Iran, Turkey, Somalia, and Pakistan also all fall into line with these views. The Yinon Plan also calls for dissolution in North Africa and forecasts it as starting from Egypt and then spilling over into Sudan, Libya, and the rest of the region. Although tweaked, the Yinon Plan is in motion and coming to life under the "Clean Break." This is through a policy document written in 1996 by Richard Perle and the Study Group on "A New Israeli Strategy Toward 2000" for Benjamin Netanyahu, the prime minister of Israel at the time. Perle was a former Pentagon under-secretary for Ronald Reagan at the time and later a U.S. military advisor to George W. Bush Jr. and the White House. As a first step towards creating an Israeli-dominated "New Middle East" and encircling Syria, the 1996 document calls for removing President Saddam Hussein from power. Perle and the Study Group on "A New Israeli Strategy Toward 2000" also call for driving the Syrians out of Lebanon and destabilizing Syria by using Lebanese opposition figures. The document states: "[Israel must divert] Syria’s attention by using Lebanese opposition elements to destabilize Syrian control of Lebanon." This is what would happen in 2005 after the Hariri Assassination that helped launch the so-called "Cedar Revolution", and create the vehemently anti-Syrian March 14 Alliance controlled by the corrupt Said Hariri. The document also mentions something that resembles what is currently going on in Syria. It states: "Most important, it is understandable that Israel has an interest supporting diplomatically, militarily and operationally Turkey’s and Jordan’s actions against Syria, such as securing tribal alliances with Arab tribes that cross into Syrian territory and are hostile to the Syrian ruling elite." With the 2011 upheaval in Syria, the movement of insurgents and the smuggling of weapons through the Jordanian and Turkish borders has become a major problem for Damascus.
In this context, it is no surprise that Ariel Sharon and Israel told Washington to attack Syria, Libya, and Iran after the Anglo-American invasion of Iraq. Finally, it is worth knowing that the Israeli document also advocated for pre-emptive war to shape Israel's geo-strategic environment and to carve out the "New Middle East." This is a policy that the U.S. would also adopt in 2001.

"Iraq, rich in oil on the one hand and internally torn on the other, is guaranteed as a candidate for Israel’s targets. Its dissolution is even more important for us than that of Syria. Iraq is stronger than Syria. In the short run it is Iraqi power which constitutes the greatest threat to Israel. An Iraqi-Iranian war will tear Iraq apart and cause its downfall at home even before it is able to organize a struggle on a wide front against us. Every kind of inter-Arab confrontation will assist us in the short run and will shorten the way to the more important aim of breaking up Iraq into denominations as in Syria and in Lebanon. In Iraq, a division into provinces along ethnic/religious lines as in Syria during Ottoman times is possible. So, three (or more) states will exist around the three major cities: Basra, Baghdad and Mosul, and Shiite areas in the south will separate from the Sunni and Kurdish north. " Oded Yinon, February 1982

It is no coincidence that Egyptian Christians were attacked at the same time as the South Sudan Referendum and before the crisis in Libya. Nor is it a coincidence that Iraqi Christians, one of the world's oldest Christian communities, have been forced into exile, leaving their ancestral homelands in Iraq. Coinciding with the exodus of Iraqi Christians, which occurred under the watchful eyes of U.S. and British military forces, the neighbourhoods in Baghdad became sectarian, as Shiite Muslims and Sunni Muslims were forced by violence and death squads to form sectarian enclaves. This is all tied to the Yinon Plan and the reconfiguration of the region as part of a broader objective. The objectives of the Yinon Plan are to divide Lebanon and Syria into several states on the basis of religious and sectarian identities for Sunni Muslims, Shiite Muslims, Christians, and the Druze. Christian leaders in Lebanon and Syria are afraid of a Muslim Brotherhood takeover in Syria. Like Iraq, mysterious groups are now attacking the Christian communities in Syria. The leaders of the Christian Eastern Orthodox Church, including the Eastern Orthodox Patriarch of Jerusalem, have also all publicly expressed their grave concerns. Aside from the Christian Arabs, these fears are also shared by the Assyrian and Armenian communities, which are mostly Christian. A Christian exodus is being planned for the Middle East by Washington, Tel Aviv, and Brussels.

"Lebanon's total dissolution into five provinces serves as a precendent for the entire Arab world including Egypt, Syria, Iraq and the Arabian peninsula and is already following that track. The dissolution of Syria and Iraq later on into ethnically or religiously unqiue areas such as in Lebanon, is Israel's primary target on the Eastern front in the long run, while the dissolution of the military power of those states serves as the primary short term target. Syria will fall apart, in accordance with its ethnic and religious structure, into several states such as in present day Lebanon, so that there will be a Shi'ite Alawi state along its coast, a Sunni state in the Aleppo area, another Sunni state in Damascus hostile to its northern neighbor, and the Druzes who will set up a state, maybe even in our Golan, and certainly in the Hauran and in northern Jordan. This state of affairs will be the guarantee for peace and security in the area in the long run, and that aim is already within our reach today." Oded Yinon, February 1982

In Iran, the Israelis have been trying in vain to get the Iranian Jewish community to leave. Iran's Jewish population is actually the second largest in the Middle East and arguably the oldest undisturbed Jewish community in the world. This project is meant to delineate the Arab nations along the lines of being exclusively Muslim nations and falls into accordance with both the Yinon Plan and the geo-political objectives of the U.S. to control Eurasia. A major war may be its outcome.

"Egypt is no longer the leading political power in the Arab World and is economically on the verge of a crisis. Without foreign assistance the crisis will come tomorrow. In the short run, due to the return of the Sinai, Egypt will gain several advantages at our expense, but only in the short run until 1982, and that will not change the balance of power to its benefit, and will possibly bring about its downfall. Egypt, in its present domestic political picture, is already a corpse, all the more so if we take into account the growing Moslem-Christian rift. Breaking Egypt down territorially into distinct geographical regions is the political aim of Israel in the Nineteen Eighties on its Western front. If Egypt falls apart, countries like Libya, Sudan or even the more distant states will not continue to exist in their present form and will join the downfall and dissolution of Egypt. The vision of a Christian Coptic State in Upper Egypt alongside a number of weak states with very localized power and without a centralized government as to date, is the key to a historical development which was only set back by the peace agreement but which seems inevitable in the long run." Oded Yinon, February 1982

With regard to Africa, Tel Aviv sees securing Africa as part of its broader periphery. In the same context as the sectarian divisions in the Middle East, the Israelis have outlined plans to reconfigure Africa. The Yinon Plan seeks to delineate Africa on the basis of three facets: ethno-linguistics; skin-colour; and, finally religion. An attempt to separate the merging point of an Arab and African identity is underway. It seeks to draw dividing lines in Africa between a so-called "Black Africa" and a supposedly "non-Black" North Africa. This objective is why the ridiculous identity of an "African South Sudan" and an "Arab North Sudan" have been nurtured and promoted. This is also why black-skinned Libyans have been targeted in a campaign to "colour cleanse" Libya. In the same context, tensions are being fomented between Muslims and Christians in Africa, in such places as Sudan and Nigeria, to further create lines and fracture points. This is why the Christians in the Middle East and North Africa, such as the Copts, are being targeted. This is also why black-skinned Arabs and black-skinned Berbers, as well as other North African population groups which are black-skinned, are facing genocide in North Africa. The fuelling of these divisions on the basis of skin-colour, religion, ethnicity, and language is intended to fuel disassociation and disunity in Africa. This is all part of a broader African strategy of cutting North Africa off from the rest of the African continent.

"In the long run, this world will be unable to exist within its present framework in the areas around us without having to go through genuine revolutionary changes. The Moslem Arab World is built like a temporary house of cards put together by foreigners (France and Britain in the Nineteen Twenties), without the wishes and desires of the inhabitants having been taken into account. It was arbitrarily divided into 19 states, all made of combinations of minorites and ethnic groups which are hostile to one another, so that every Arab Moslem state nowadays faces ethnic social destruction from within, and in some a civil war is already raging... This national ethnic minority picture extending from Morocco to India and from Somalia to Turkey points to the absence of stability and a rapid degeneration in the entire region. When this picture is added to the economic one, we see how the entire region is built like a house of cards, unable to withstand its severe problems." Oded Yinon, February 1982

The chessboard is being staged for a "Clash of Civilizations" and all the chess pieces are being put into place. What is being staged is the creation of an exclusively "Muslim Middle East" area (excluding Israel) that will be in turmoil over Shiite-Sunni fighting. A similar scenario is being staged for a "non-Black North Africa" area which will be characterized by a confrontation between Arabs and Berber. At the same time, under the "Clash of Civilizations" model, the Middle East and North Africa are slated to simultaneously be in conflict with the so-called "West" and "Black Africa." In this regard, Zbigniew Brzezinski, former U.S. National Security Advisor, explains why multiculturalism is a threat to Washington and its allies: "As America becomes an increasingly multicultural society, it may find it more difficult to fashion a consensus on foreign policy issues [e.g., war with the Arab World, China, Iran, or Russia and the former Soviet Union], except in the circumstances of a truly massive and widely perceived direct external threat. Such a consensus generally existed throughout World War II and even during the Cold War [and exists now because of the 'Global War on Terror']." This is why both Nicolas Sarzoky, in France, and David Cameron, in Britain, made back-to-back declarations during the start of the conflict in Libya that multiculturalism is dead in their respective Western European societies. Real multiculturalism threatens the legitimacy of the NATO war agenda. It also constitutes an obstacle to the implementation of the "Clash of Civilizations" which constitutes the cornerstone of U.S. foreign policy.

In the past, the colonial powers of Western Europe would indoctrinate their people. Their objective was to acquire popular support for colonial conquest. This took the form of spreading Christianity and promoting Christian values with the support of armed merchants and colonial armies. At the same time, racist ideologies were put forth. The people whose lands were colonized were portrayed as "sub-human," inferior, or soulless. Finally, the "White Man's burden" of taking on a mission of civilizing the so-called "uncivilized peoples of the world" was used. This cohesive ideological framework was used to portray colonialism as a "just cause." The latter, in turn, was used to provide legitimacy to the waging of "just wars" as a means to conquering and "civilizing" foreign lands. Today, the imperialist designs of the United States, Britain, France, and Germany have not changed. What has changed is the pretext and justification for waging their neo-colonial wars of conquest. During the colonial period, the narratives and justifications for waging war were accepted by public opinion in the colonizing countries, such as Britain and France. Today's "just wars" and "just causes" are now being conducted under the banners of women's rights, human rights, humanitarianism, and democracy.

Kraj Gadafijeve ere i afričkog sna?

2011-10-23T00:44:00.036-10:00

Smrt pukovnika iz pustinje označiće novu eru za narod Libije, ali i čitav kontinent, jer je Gadafijeva želja bila osnivanje sjedinjenih afričkih država. Dok telo pukovnika stoji u frižideru jednog tržnog centra, a NATO najavljuje da će se 31. oktobra povući iz Libije, svetska javnost polako se okreće „postgadafijevskoj" eri - kako u Libiji tako i u čitavoj Africi. A koliko je bivši libijski lider bio popularan i voljen na Crnom kontinentu govori i činjenica da se unuk Nelsona Mandele zove Gadafi... Njegov imidž revolucionara inspirisao je Južnoafrikance da se bore za slobodu. Finansirao je i naoružavao pokret protiv aparthejda, pa nije ni čudo što je Mandela 1994, kada je postao prvi crni predsednik najjužnije afričke zemlje, odbio pritiske Vašingtona da raskine veze sa Gadafijem.- Oni koje nervira naše prijateljstvo mogu da se udave, što se mene tiče - rekao je tada Mandela. "On je pravi nacionalista. Ali mnogo više volim nacionaliste od stranih marioneta" - kazao je u februaru ove godine predsednik Ugande Joveri Museveni. - Muamer Gadafi, uz sve njegove mane, dao je veliki doprinos i Libiji, i Africi, i zemljama Trećeg sveta. Gadafi je bio i najžešći zastupnik Afričke unije, tela koje je on finansirao i za koje je smatrao da treba da počne što više da liči na Evropsku uniju. Na samitu 2008. većina tradicionalnih afričkih lidera proglasila ga je za „kralja kraljeva". Portparol jednog od poznatijih vođa Toro kraljevstva iz Ugande kazao je da je Gadafi bio vizionar i da će veoma nedostajati Africi. Pukovnik je želeo da se stvore sjedinjene afričke države, koje bi bile rival SAD i Evropskoj uniji.- "Mi želimo jednu afričku vojsku koja će braniti naš kontinent. Mi želimo jednu valutu. Želimo i jedan pasoš za sve Afrikance" - govorio je Gadafi. Libija je bila članica velike petorke AU, sa Južnom Afrikom, Nigerijom, Egiptom i Alžirom. Pokrivala je 15 odsto budžeta i finansijski pomagala siromašne države poput Malavija. Evropska Unija i SAD duguju Libijskoj džamahiriji 200 milijardi dolara za već isporučenu naftu. 2012 godine ističu koncesije velikih naftnih kompanija koje polažu pravo na libijsku naftu. Gadafi je zatražio vraćanje duga i zapretio je ...da će u suprotnom da sklopi međudržavne ugovore s drugim zemljama i kompanijama. SAD su razaranje Libije nazvale investicijom a sada je jasno i zašto. Nova vlast u Libiji neće imati dobre odnose sa Afričkom unijom, jer se Unija protivila NATO bomardovanju te zemlje. Slično razmišlja i predsednik Južne Afrike Džejkob Zuma, čija je vlada u prvi mah podržala zapadnjačku intervenciju, ali onda i podigla glas protiv nje.- "Pukovnik je provodio mnogo vremena sanjajući o zajedničkoj vladi Afrike, koja je trenutno nemoguća. Stalno nas je požurivao, možda i zato što je želeo da stane na njeno čelo" - kazao je Zuma. - "Nekoliko puta sam se otvoreno sukobio sa njim oko toga". Dezmond Tutu, dobitnik Nobelove nagrade za mir, kaže da priča nije samo crno-bela:- "Gadafi je imao taj divan, divan san o sjedinjenim afričkim državama. Ali mislim da ćemo se uglavnom sećati potonjih dana njegove vladavine, kada je bombardovao sopstveni narod". A da... varnica koja je pokrenula NATO genocid nad libijskim narodom, stalno ponavljana rečenica: "Gadafi bombardovao sopstveni narod". To vam je ista priča kao sa Kuvajtom i pričom devojčice o krađi inkubatora iz porodilišta, Miloševićem koji je ubijao sopstveni narod na Kosovu (masakr u Račku), Sadamom koji ipak nije krio Oružje za Masovno Uništavanje ispod svog kreveta, Afganistanom i odbeglim čobaninom Bin Ladenom (koji pak stoji iza napada na SAD civilnim avionima i priučenim pilotima i najneverovatnijeg rušenja čeličnih nebodera, u istoriji građevinarstva ), Iranom i atomskom bombom... Nijedan od tih povoda za istinski terorizam i divljanje NATO mašine, nije se pokazao kao istinit. Miloševića su ubili u Hagu ali su shvatili da je rešavanje po kratkom posupku mnogo brže i mnogo manje košta. Pa na kraju da li je Gadafi zaista bombardovao sopstveni narod? "Video sam da onih događaja, o kojima su svi pričali, u stvarnosti nema. Nije bilo revolucije protiv Gadafija, dešavalo se nešto sasvim drugo..." izjava je nezavisnog novinara Tjeri Mejsana. -O radu stranih novinara u Libiji mogu da kažem samo jedno: svi su zajednički lagali... Gadafi je imao podršku najvećeg dela stanovništva. Bio sam sa mnogo ljudi, koji su po tradiciji predstavljali opoziciju Gadafiju, ali su se zbog osećanja patriotizma pridružili Gadafiju u njegovoj borbi protiv agresije NATO. 1. jula je u Tripoliju održan veličanstven skup. Tripoli je grad sa ukupno 1,5 milion stanovnika, a na skupu je bilo 1,7 milion ljudi. Značilo je da su ljudi došli sa svih strana kako bi prodemonstrirali svoju podršku borbi protiv NATO-a. "Nemiri su počeli kada su se snage Al Kaide naoružale i napale regularne vojne snage", rekao je Gadafi na ceremoniji povodom obeležavanja 34 godišnjice od kako je Libiju nazvao zemljom u kojoj vladaju "snage naroda" i pozvao UN da pošalju istražnu komisiju u Libiju. Umesto istrage o navodnom bombardovanju civila, uvedena je Zona zabrane letenja nad Libijom. Američko kodno ime operacije: Operation Odyssey Dawn; Britansko kodno ime: Operation Ellamy; francusko kodno ime: Opération Harmattan; kanadsko kodno ime: Operation MOBILE, je zona u kojoj je Savet bezbednosti Ujedinjenih Nacija svojom odlukom zabranio letove, 17. marta 2011. Ova zona zabrane je predložena tokom ustanka Al-kaide u Libiji, 2011. godine, kako bi se snage lojalne vladi Muammar Gaddafi-ja sprečile da bombarduju pobunjenike. Odluka o ratu protiv Libije je doneta pre 10 godina, i to nije imalo nikakve veze sa nedavnim događajima, sa „arapskim prolećem“. Odmah posle događaja 11. septembra, bukvalno 4 dana posle toga, na sastanku u Kemp-Dejvidu, Bušova administracija je odlučila da napadne 7 zemalja, jednu za drugom počev sa Afganistanom. Rezultat strane intervencije u Libiji je da je ubijeno preko 50.000 ljudi, da je preko 200.000 ranjeno, da su 2.000.000 postali izbeglice. Savet bezbednosti Ujedinjenih Nacija je sa glasanjem 10-0-5 odobrio uspostavljanje zone zabrane leta Rezolucijom 1973. Bilo je pet suzdržanih, uključujući Brazil, Rusiju, Indiju i Kinu, koje su bile protiv vojne intervencije protiv suverene zemlje, dok je Nemačka odbila da učestvuje u bilo kojoj vojnoj operaciji u Libiji. Jedini glas razuma u Evropi je odluka Nemačke zbog koje su oni kasnije žalili. 19. marta silom se uspostavlja zona zabrane letenja, i francuski avioni preduzimaju letove iznad Libije, a mornarica Velike Britanije uspostavlja pomorsku blokadu. Zona zabrane leta se pretvorila u otvorenu agresiju bivših kolonijalizatora Afrike a delimičnu odgovornost ipak snose Rusija i Kina (koje nisu iskoristile pravo na veto u SB)- Naročito Kina koja je izgubila mnogo uništavanjem Libije. Ovo nije bio samo rat protiv Libije, već rat protiv Afrike i jačanja kineskog uticaja na crnom kontinentu. UN svojom rezolucijom dozvoljavaju udare po libijskim kopnenim snagama i ratnim brodovima koji su "pretnja civilima". Potvrđeni su napadi francuskih aviona na borna vozila, kao i udar sa 112 Tomahawk raketa po položajima libijske protivvazdušne odbrane čime su spašeni tada već poraženi prozapadni libijski pobunjenici. Operaciju vodi Afrička Komanda SAD, pod vođstvom generala Carter Ham-a. Taktička komanda se izvršava sa broda USS Mount Whitney, stacioniranog u Mediteranu, pod komandom admirala Sam Locklear-a.

Počinje pogrom crnog stanovništva

Na istoku Libije, u gradovima koji su pod kontrolom pobunjenika – rulja i bande, prema tvrdnjama nekoliko organizacija za zaštitu ljudskih prava, bukvalno vrše zločin protiv čovečnosti. Odmazde se vrše nad crnim imigrantima, studentima i izbeglicama. Desetine izbeglica i imigracionih radnika iz Etiopije, Eritre, Gane, Nigerije i Čada ubijeno je, a neki od njih odvedeni su u pustinju, gde su ostavljeni da umru od žeđi. Zabeleženi su i slučajevi otmica tamnoputih bolesnika iz bolnice u Bengaziju, a veruje se da je do sada oteto više stotina Afrikanaca. Kako tvrde humanitarci, njihova jedina krivica jeste boja kože, jer su za pobunjenike svi crnci Gadafijevi plaćenici. I dok je sve više izveštaja o pobunjeničkoj odmazdi nad crncima, zapadni mediji ignorišu ove činjenice, tvrdeći da ksenofobični stavovi prema tamnoputim izbeglicama i radnicima postoje već godinama. Prema njihovom pisanju, napadi su rasno motivisani zbog toga što mnogi Libijci smatraju da ih je njihov lider napustio i okrenuo se crncima... Pre deceniju i po CIA je u Ruandi i Zairu pokrenula plemenske sukobe i uz posredovanje Ugande i drugih suseda ubijeno je preko pet miliona Afrikanaca. Pretežno žena i dece. Odgovornost su poneli gurnuti u pokolje, ali ne i podstrekači (SAD). Crno stanovništvo je legitiman cilj u Libiji. Novi svetski poredak podržava značajna smanjenja broja stanovnika a naročito u crnoj Africi. Zašto libijski Tuarezi toliko mrze Al-Kaidu? Zato što su pobunjenici, inače silovatelji, kriminalci i zločinci iz redova Al-Kaide obrisali čitav jedan grad Tawargha sa mape, naseljen crnim stanovništvom.

Mesec dana pre ubistva Gadafija

Opšta bežanija civila iz Sirta. U gradu je haos, NATO pogađa škole, bolnice i stambene zgrade, tvrde izbeglice. Sprema se novi napad na grad. Moamera el Gadafija štite Tuarezi. Seif el Islam u Bani Validu, Mutasim u Sirtu, tvrde pobunjenici. Hamis Gadafi u Sirtu, tvrde Gadafijeve pristalice. Ustanici i NATO već nekoliko puta ubili Gadafijevog najratobornijeg sina, poslednji put pre mesec dana u napadu bespilotnih letelica. Civili koji beže iz Sirta optužuju NATO za genocid. Isprepadani, pričaju stravične priče o stradanju u rodnom gradu Moamera el Gadafija, jer je, kako tvrde, NATO gađao stambene zgrade, bolnice i škole. Bežaniju iz Sirta prate i nove optužbe na račun ustanika, čiji su borci, navodno, otimali žene iz kolona izbeglica. Prema rečima stanovnika Sirta, cena litre benzina u opkoljenom gradu dostigla je 72 dolara, a sve su češće zarazne bolesti, prouzrokovane nedostatkom vode i opštim haosom koji u gradu vlada već sedmicama. Napredovanje ustanika je suštinski zaustavljeno na prilazima luci, gde se nalaze dobro utvrđeni položaji Regularne vojske Libije. U opsadama Sirta i Bani Walida, NATO koristio i hemijsko oružje. Sirt je grad duhova...

Par dana pre ubistva Gadafija

Sve je iznenadila poseta američke državne sekretarke Hilari Klinton Tripoliju, što ostavlja prostora za brojne (racionalne) spekulacije. Jedna od njih glasi da je bivši libijski lider već ranije zarobljen u borbama za Sirt i da je likvidiran po nalogu SAD i Hilari Klinton. Ovu spekulaciju ne smemo tek tako olako odbaciti jer se zaista vreme ubistva Gadafija i “iznenadne” posete Hilari Klinton gotovo podudaraju. U svakom slučaju ispunjena je želja kreatora tzv. novog svetskog poretka. Još jedan borac protiv politike ugnjetavanja i uvođenja zoni zabrane letenja je uklonjen sa svetske scene. Agencija AP je prenela da je ovo prvi put da neko od američkih lidera otvoreno kaže da Gadafi treba da bude ubijen. Gledano s ljudske strane, a ne geopolitički i sama ova izjava predstavlja izjavu koja je za svaku osudu. Hilari Klinton je lično izjavila da jedan čovek treba da bude ubijen. Šta reći o ličnosti sekretarke i politici zemlje koju ona predstavlja? Ovaj šokantni presedan u međunarodnim odnosima koji je za svaku osudu predstavlja u pravom svetlu model američke politike i politike onih zemalja koje su njeni bliski saveznici. Američki model takođe znači da Obamina administracija nimalo nije prekinula kontinuitet Bušove kaubojske retorike i ratno huškačke politike u međunarodnim odnosima. Dakle, imamo ubistvo, izvršioca i naručioca i ceo svet ćuti...

Bani Walid je već duže vremena u okruženju pobunjeničke vojske, ali dosad nisu uspeli osvojiti unutrašnjost grada. U dva navrata su kretali u ofanzivu , samo da bi se povukli nakon žestokog otpora Gadafijevih snaga. Vojni zapovednici pobunjeničke vojske javljaju kako su opet naišli na jak otpor Gadafijevih trupa, ali se čini da se ovog puta neće povlačiti, već će pokušati zauzeti barem deo grada. Navode da su neke trupe stigle do samog centra, ali ta informacija ne može biti potvrđena. Slična je situacija i u Gadafijevom rodnom gradu Sirtu, u kojem vladaju haos i nasilje. Pobunjenici i tamo pokušavaju doći do centra grada, ali velik broj njihovih vojnika gine u prijateljskoj vatri, što ih značajno usporava. Zapovjednici pokušavaju pregrupisati snage, kako bi iskoordinirali ofanzive koje dolaze sa različitih strana grada...

20. oktobar 2011

Nije im bilo dovoljno da se reše Gadafijevog režima, morali su da mu zatru seme, pobiju sinove i unučad i da ga ubiju kao psa. U očima Gadafijevih pristalica, kao i svih ljudi koji poštuju međunarodno pravo, Gadafi je postao mučenik, čovek koji se do kraja borio protiv nepravde međunarodne zajednice i zla pod imenom NATO pakt. Sama činjenica da Gadafi nije želeo da napusti Libiju i da je ubijen u svom rodnom gradu koji je poslednji pao mnogo govori o njemu i njegovoj želji da do kraja ostane veran Libiji i njenom narodu. SAD su sebi dale za pravo da po svetu ubijaju nepoželjne lidere i navodne diktatore po nalogu multinacionalnih kompanija i različitih, veoma jakih lobija koji zapravo i upravljaju američkom politikom. Najtužnije u celoj priči je to što je upravo prvi američki predsednik afričkog porekla (inače dobitnik ovogodišnje Nobelove nagrade za mir), Barak Obama ubio san o nezavisnoj i naprednoj Africi. SAD su zvanično i javno naručile ubistvo Gadafija i pomogle u njegovom izvršenju novcem, logistikom i napadom bespilotne letelice tipa Predator na konvoj koji se povlačio iz Sirta. Skoro 7.000 ratnih zarobljenika lojalnih Gadafiju, nagurano je u prljave improvizovane zatvore širom Libije, gde nedeljama čame bez podignute optužnice, a izloženi su zlostavljanju i mučenju, piše Vašington post, pozivajući se na organizacije za zaštitu ljudskih prava i razgovore sa zatočenicima. Na skupu kome su prisustvovali najviši zvaničnici novog režima, predsednik Prelaznog nacionalnog saveta Mustafa Abdel Džalili rekao je da bi „osnova za zakonodavstvo trebalo da bude islamski šerijatski zakon", i da će „postojeći zakoni koji su u suprotnosti sa islamskim učenjem biti poništeni". Sahrana Muamera Gadafija odložena je jer zvaničnici nisu mogli da se slože šta da urade s njegovim telom, dok su Ujedinjene nacije i porodica bivšeg libijskog vođe tražili punu istragu o njegovoj smrti. „Nastavljamo našu borbu. Nalazim se u Libiji, živ sam i slobodan i nameravam da idem do samog kraja kako bih poravnao račune sa ubicama mog oca ", poručuje naslednik ubijenog libijskog vođe Saif al Islam. Ruski informativni portal „Rusija danas" preneo je i da je Saif al Islam obezbedio lojalnost plemena odanih njegovom ocu i da su mu vođe ovih plemena obećale da će nastaviti borbu protiv novih libijskih vlasti i osvetiti se za ubistvo Muamera Gadafija i njegovog sina Mutasima. Ovaj ruski medij navodi i reči eksperata koji veruju da je rat u Libiji samo ušao u novu fazu u kojoj će etničke razmirice preuzeti primat od političkih. Da li će čelnici NATO-a ikada odgovarati za počinjene zločine? U Bani Validu, samo od NATO bombi život je izgubilo više od 1,200 civila. NATO je iskoristio bojište u Libiji da bi testirao novo oružje: FAE bombu (Fuel Air Explosive) napravljenu da sprži sav kiseonik u određenom području odnosno uguši sva živa bića radijusu svog delovanja. Postoje dokazi da je korišćen beli fosfor u napadu na civile (oružje koje koristi Izrael u Palestini). Sirt je gotovo sravnjen sa zemljom i potseća na Berlin 1945. Zločini terorista Al-Kaide koji su imali ulogu NATO pešadije, u Bengaziju, Tripoliju, Sirtu... tek će izaći na videlo.

Da li su belci rano otišli iz Afrike? Pitanje se postavlja u kontekstu pojave, na ovom kontinentu, Kineza, tačnije kineskog kapitala. Posle Drugog svetskog rata, zbog jačanja antikolonijalnih pokreta, evropske sile su se odricale svojih kolonija. Do 1990. godine preostala je samo šačica evropskih kolonija. Na Četvrtom panafričkom kongresu u Mančesteru 1945, po uzoru na ideje istaknutih afričkih rodoljuba tražilo se samoodređenje afričkih naroda i sjedinjenje afričkih država. Iako su, dakle, belci, tačnije beli zapadnoevropljani, pet vekova gazdovali svetom, uspostavljali svoje zakone, potčinjavali druge kontinente, pljačkajući ih i eksploatišući radnu snagu, tome je došao kraj u XX veku. U Africi se pojavio afro-centrizam, osobeni vid afričkog nacionalizma koji je izrodio niz oslobodilačkih pokreta koji su izveli antikolonijalnu i socijalnu revoluciju. No, danas afro-centrizam kao da je na izdisaju. On nije Afriku doveo do toga da u XXI vek bude vek Afrike, naprotiv izgubio je snagu i belci se, kako svedoče događaji, ponovo vraćaju u Afriku. Trenutno, u Africi „luduju“ Francuzi. Za Francuze je Afrika kao za Rusiju „Gasprom“. Međutim, „ludovanje“ je počela da ometa Kina, preotimajući cele segmente biznisa francuskim i evropskim trans-nacionalnim korporacijama. I Francuska je odgovorila – serijom prevrata i kolonijalnih ratova, koje javnost nije ni primetila, jer se pažnja usmerila na događanja i rat Libiji. Rat u Libiji, pod čijom maskom se danas događa predaja vlasti belcima u Africi je delo Francuske, mišljenje je afričke kritičke inteligencije. „Od početka do kraja to je operacija Pete republike, iako je Francuska u to uvukla NATO, samo da bi imala masku“. Peta republika ima velike mogućosti da utiče na politiku i ekonomiju crnog kontinenta. Francuska ima mnoštvo bivših kolonija odakle ona i danas pljačka tamošnje bogatstvo. Trećina današnjih Francuskih prihoda potiče iz Afrike. Sada taj prihod ugrožava novi igrač – Kina! Kineski biznis stvara novu realnost u Africi, a to se uopšte ne sviđa Evropljanima, posebno Francuzima i Englezima. To se trenutno događa po celoj Africi. Koja države neće da preda vlast, biva silom oborena. Pod maskom „NATO za demokratiju u Libiji“ događa se „čišćenje nepodobnih režima koji su se družili sa Kinom, od Alžira do Zaira. Tome se, naravno, raduje sva 'demokratska' Evropska unija i SAD.

1. Mali

Gadafijev novac i diplomatija pomogli su da se reše sukobi pobunjenika i vlade na severu Malija. Sada, kada njega nema, postoji opasnost od eskalacije nasilja.

2. Liberija

Libija je investirala 65 miliona dolara u ovu zemlju ne bi li se učvrstila vlast predsednice Elene Džonson Sirlif, ovogodišnje dobitnice Nobelove nagrade za mir.

3. Niger

I ovde su pomoću libijskog novca pomireni vlast i naoružane pobunjeničke grupe.

4. Čad

Gadafi je bio mecena tamošnje krhke vlasti, koja bi mogla da se sruši kao kula od karata.

5. Centralnoafrička Republika

Libijski vojnici su 2001. odbranili zgradu vlade od napada

6. Sudan

Kakav-takav mir u Darfuru zajednički održavaju mirotvorci UN i Afričke unije. Bez Gadafijevog novca, postoji mogućnost da će oni biti povučeni.

7. Etiopija

U Adis Abebi nalazi se sedište Afričke unije, u čijem je skupom funkcionisanju Libija učestvovala sa čak 15 odsto novca. Može li AU da nastavi bez pukovnika?

8. Somalija

U Somaliji je razmešteno 8.000 mirotvoraca Afričke unije, a njihova sudbina sada je neizvesna.

Govor Gadafija na 46. zasedanju skupštine OUN

Murder of Muammar Gaddafi

2011-10-20T08:33:00.017-10:00

Oct 20th 2011

Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi was reportedly wounded and captured during the siege of the city of Sirte. The colonel was wounded in his legs, The Guardian reports. Gaddafi was reportedly hiding in a dugout. When he saw the fighters of the National Transitional Council, he shouted: "Don't Shoot!" According to Sky News, Gaddafi was hospitalized with serious injuries after the attack. The TV channel said that Libya's leader died of the wounds. Other sources say that he was captured when a column of vehicles, in which he was leaving Sirte, was shelled by the Libyan rebels. According to Interfax, Gaddafi could be killed when two NATO planes attacked the convoy of vehicles of the colonel's followers. Gadaffi suffered serious injuries and subsequently died as a result of the raid. French defense chief said French jet fired on Gadhafi convoy, AP reported. A new explicit amateur video released by AP clearly shows that Colonel Gaddafi was caught alive rather than dead. Previously, the media had released pictures showing Gaddafi already dead with a bullet hole in his left temple. Al Jazeera’s video could thus indicate that the colonel was killed by some of the NTC soldiers. If Gaddafi was captured alive, he should have been treated as prisoner of war, interrogated and put on trial. Al Arabiya reported that the body of the deposed Libyan leader had arrived in Misrata and said it would be allowed to film the corpse. Al Arabiya TV has reported that Colonel Gaddafi's son, Saif al-Islam, has been killed on the same day as his father. In the meantime, a Libyan minister says Gaddafi’s heir apparent is wounded and in hospital...

PREVIOUSLY

Hillary Clinton arrived supposedly somewhere in Libya. The exact location is under dispute, claims that Clinton was in Tripoli are doubtful at best. She was under heavy guard and moved about in total secrecy. It was a disgusting display of imperial bombastic arrogance and pompous, pretentious theatrics. During her visit with the groveling, bowing terrorists, she made the following statement regarding Libyan leader, Muammar Gaddafi:

"We hope he can be captured or killed soon so that you don't have to fear him any longer."

It is not only bad diplomacy, it is unlawful regarding interational law. Killing Gaddafi would be an illegal targeted assassination and that there is obviously a hidden agenda behind Hillary Clinton’s apparently spontaneous visit. She brought some stolen money for terrorist leaders to oil up her "wish". There is a lot of fighting in Libya at present and almost everything we've been told, everything we've seen, is false. We are getting just a complete propaganda story of what's going on in Libya. The world might never get a clear picture of what exactly happened in the eight-month civil war. Why was she there? Clearly to make it look to the American public like the U.S. is in absolute control of Libya. Cover up the atrocities, put a white, clean, shiny, happy, lovely face on the death and destruction. Since the loyalist forces have all means and have already downed several UAVs and a couple of helicopters, it is a miracle that the American Secretary of State was not shot down during her short visit to the scene of crime.

The website of Al-Libya TV channel said that Colonel Muammar Gaddafi had not been captured. He is still alive and healthy, the website says. According to the channel, the photos of the killed colonel were fabricated. Green Committees have confirmed that the leader is alive, and that the enemy is seeking to take advantage of his being currently out of communications. The aim is to please Hillary Clinton who barked at her Arab slaves that she wants Muammar Gaddafi "dead or alive." The analysts who are close to the Libyan leader have told Mathaba independent news agency, that the aim of the rumours is several fold. On the one hand, they wish to demoralize the Libyan resistance which has held out for over 7 months against the strongest terrorists and invading armies in the world. On the other hand, they wish to thus lure the Leader out to make a call in order to attempt to get a fix on his location. Clinton wishes to lay her hands on the over 100 billion dollars of Libyan Jamahiriya assets which have been frozen. She cannot do so legally nor hand over any of those funds on any legal footing so long as the Jamahiriya continues to exist. NATO and Clinton are desperate to show a "victory" in Libya, by way of a compliant media, and the NTC is anxious to provide that "victory" for their masters, in order to secure further support. The NTC leaders and their factions are all fighting amongst each other, and are dissatisfied with the spoils, which so far have not been forthcoming due to the armed population putting up a fierce resistance, and the globalist bankers being unable to keep their promises to the Libyan traitors.

Mistery of Gaddafi's death

The Great North African Jamahiriya

2011-10-14T01:47:00.016-10:00

by Dennis South

A series of secret meetings between tribal leaders from Zintan, Libya and Algeria resulted in an agreement that a unified front of tribal militia will enter the war which they call “The War for the Liberation of Northern Africa”. This alliance of tribes is backed by a unified North African Front, including Moroccan Tribes as well as Polisario who is fighting against the Moroccan administration of the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic. Many members of Sahrawi´s provisional government and Polisario fighters are living in exile in Algeria. The Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic was officially recognized by Libya in 1980, and is recognized by a wide range of countries, none of which is a NATO member state. Hama Ag Sid'Ahmed, spokesman for the North of Mali Tuareg Movement, has told The Associated Press in an interview by satellite phone that his group was holding meetings with the Tuaregs who just returned from Libya. He said there were discussions going on about a "common position." He said: "We are preparing ourselves both on a political and a military level." This could eventualy lead to creation of North African Socialist Jamahiriya - a union of North African nations into one nation that would, in time, lead the way for the unification of the entire African continent. That is Muammar Gaddafi's long-standing vision. In the African nation of Mali, a congress of students and young Tuareg tribes unanimously decided to join the fight at the Libyan front. Speaking of the Tuareg, there is information that states that they want to declare Muammar Gaddafi their Sultan. Gaddafi had enlisted a new, 12,000-strong army of Tuareg tribal fighters. So, as we can see, the relationship between Gaddafi and the Tuaregs had grown rapidly from their initial support as bodyguards for Gaddafi and Libyan convoys, to lending much more serious support by way of giving Gaddafi 12,000 soldiers to fight for the liberation of Libya. By demonstrating Gaddafi's freedom of movement across Libya, the convoy to Niger indicates that his loyal officials and troops have resumed operations [and had re-grouped] from scattered places. The fact that Tuareg fighters guarded the convoy demonstrated that Gaddafi had gained the allegiance of the Tuaregs, whose territory covers southwestern Libya, all of eastern Algeria, eastern Mali, "where they command more than half of the country," western Niger and northern Burkina Faso. The blueprint for the liberation of all of North Africa - Egypt, Libya, Tunisia, Algeria, Morocco, and Western Sahara - is the Jamahiriya. Algeria is similiar to Libya as it relates to tribes. This shows that Algeria is ripe and ready to duplicate the Jamahirya system that was developed by Muammar Gaddafi and the Libyan people. The Libyan people can easily help the Algerian people adapt the Jamahiriya system of direct government, for what might even be a rapid transformation of Algerian society that would lead to the union of Algeria and Libya. In China, at first, they did not have a political philosophy that would unite the myriad tribes of China. But they found one from outside. The political philosophy that united China was Soviet Communism. And it worked fantastically. North Africa does not have to import Communism, or any such system from outside of its borders. The system that developed within the borders of North Africa is the Jamahiriya. Arab-African people have developed their own political philosophy called The Third Universal Theory. It is the philosophy created by Muammar Gaddafi. The fact that Libya has not fallen, even after being attacked relentlessly for six months by the most powerful military alliance in human history, stands as proof positive of the strength of the Jamahiriya system of government. Jamahiriya can unite Africa. It has been working strongly for 42 years. The northern/Western governments are attempting to stop the creation of The Great Socialist North African Jamahiriya. That is what this is all about. The game that the northern countries are playing is the same game that they played when they carved up Africa the first time: divide and conquer. Nothing will save North Africa except unity...

Don't write off Gaddafi yet. Things aren't going so well for the rebels right now. Territorially speaking, the NTC does not control much. The only true rebel-controlled zone is Tripoli airport. In Misrata, the rebels clash amongst themselves. Mustafi Abdel Jalil, the NTC leader, moves from place to place (obviously in fear of his life). 50% of Benghazi is under the Green Resistance. NTC is short of fighters, due to setbacks at Sirte and Bani Walid. They rely, instead, on foreign mercenaries. NTC suffers from desertion amongst its ranks by fighters that simply stop fighting and go home. NTC hopes that Washington, DC will help with PMCs (private military companies). Contrary to the claims of the TNC, Khamis Gaddafi, is indeed alive. He even gave the TNC, in addition to his regular interviews to Arab media, an ultimatum to leave ... Tripoli.

Crimes Against Humanity: The Slaughter in Sirte, Libya

2011-10-11T22:43:00.011-10:00

Sirte Oct 2011 CITY UNDER SIEGE

Thousands of civilians are fleeing the Libyan city of Sirte en masse, as fighting between Gaddafi loyalists and the rebel forces reaches a climax. Reports say most of the refugees are heading for the comparative safety of the desert, leaving behind their belongings and livelihoods. Hundreds of families are streaming out of the city through its western entrance. As they pass through, NTC troops are cross-checking them at block-posts in an attempt to eliminate all possible Gaddafi supporters. Civilians pouring out of the besieged city of Sirte accused NATO of committing genocide as revolutionary forces reinforced their numbers and prepared for a new attack on Colonel Muammar Gaddafi's home town. NATO countries led by the US, Britain, and France are committing terrible war crimes in the Libyan city of Sirte. In their frenzied drive to crush all remaining resistance in the North African state, NATO and its proxy militia forces aligned with the National Transitional Council are unleashing indiscriminate military force, killing civilians and destroying buildings and infrastructure throughout the urban centre. Numerous civilian refugees who have managed to escape the siege have reported seeing schools, hospitals, homes, and other civilian buildings destroyed by NATO bombs. Air raids are now taking place around the clock. Anti-Gaddafi militiamen are firing rockets, mortar rounds and tank shells, without even pretending that they are aiming at any particular targets within the city of 100,000 people. Sirte is suffering from severe shortages of food, water and medicine supplies, further fuelling the humanitarian crisis. Children, the elderly and other vulnerable people are especially affected. The slaughter in Sirte further exposes the "humanitarian" pretext for the war. Last March the imperialist governments and their mouthpieces in the media claimed, without evidence, that Gaddafi’s forces were on the verge of committing a massacre in Benghazi. Now in Sirte, NATO is perpetrating an actual bloodbath on the city’s population in an attempt to overcome the resistance in one of the last pro-Gaddafi strongholds. Unsurprisingly, the various media pundits and political figures in the US and Europe who backed the war on the basis of "protecting civilians" are now uniformly silent amid the unfolding slaughter. According to estimates previously released by the National Transitional Council (NTC), by early September 30,000 people had been killed and 50,000 wounded in the war. The toll continues to escalate. According to NATO’s publicly released figures, their bombers recorded 121 separate "key hits" in Sirte in the last two weeks of September alone. These air strikes are being conducted on the basis of limited or no intelligence and therefore can only be described as indiscriminate and in blatant contravention of international law. Tens of thousands of civilians remain trapped in Sirte, though the exact number remains unclear. According to the Red Cross, about 18,000 have left the city. The local population, however, has been swelled by a recent influx of refugees from surrounding areas. This includes a significant number of dark-skinned Libyan families from Tawargha, a town that has been devastated and depopulated by the NTC militias that conducted a murderous racist pogrom there in August and early September. The people of Sirte are being subjected to a brutal collective punishment for their bitter and determined opposition to the NTC and the NATO intervention. The city is also symbolically identified with the deposed regime. It is Gaddafi’s birthplace and childhood home, and his former legislative body, the General Peoples Congress, convened in Sirte. For the US, British, and French governments, the destruction serves as a warning to the entire Libyan population—any resistance to the post-Gaddafi order that is to be established under NATO auspices will confront violent repression. The situation in Sirte is unbearable, the worst ever. The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) reports the hospital was overwhelmed with wounded people. Because of the fighting in the area, most patients have been moved from wards to the corridors, where it is safer. Medical supplies are still needed. "We did provide a number of medical supplies in the past days, but more is needed, including fuel as well for the generator that enables electricity to function in the hospital. Otherwise, there is no electricity in the town. The first time we went to the hospital, we saw that the water reservoir had been hit by a rocket. The situation inside the hospital is very chaotic and distressing," said Patrick Schwaerzler, the ICRC delegate in charge of the evacuations. "When we arrived there, we found patients with severe burns and shrapnel wounds. Some had sustained recent amputations. A few were half-conscious. They were lying among crowds of other people who were also asking us for help."
The hospital has been partly destroyed and is not functional any more. It was urgent to move out wounded patients requiring intensive care or specialized treatment. "Today we even brought out a newborn baby in its incubator," said Mr Schwaerzler. "We saw hundreds of civilians fleeing Sirte yesterday and today, but thousands are still caught inside the city," said Mr Schwaerzler. "There is no electricity, and no food has reached civilians in the city for weeks. All parties engaged in the hostilities must take all possible precautions to spare them." Medical personnel at the city's Ibn Sima hospital told the Red Cross that "because of lack of oxygen and fuel for the generator people are dying". Other wounded or ill people cannot get to the hospital because of the fighting and NATO airstrikes, he said. "Several rockets landed within the hospital buildings while we were there," he said. "We saw a lot of indiscriminate fire. I don't know where it was coming from." After the ICRC team went in, National Transitional Council fighters launched a ferocious attack with rockets, anti-tank cannons and machine gun fire from a position less than a kilometre from the hospital. The Red Cross has been has been trying for weeks to enter Sirte. It sought to bring medical supplies in by boat but abandoned that idea because of security concerns.

The humanitarian disaster in Sirte comes as an unspoken consequence of the international forces’ intervention in Libya. It seems that the goal now is simply to wipe out what is left of Gaddafi’s forces, and bring the country under the control of the former rebels that are now recognized as the official government of Libya. In other words, the civilians that happened to be on the side of Gaddafi are not going to be protected, they are going to be punished. How far the rebels will go with that is unclear. Clearly there is a lot of suffering going on, and those civilians are not being protected. It seems as if the TNC had concentrated all available troops in the all out assault on Sirte. Under the cover of heavy and light artillery barrages from land and sea, as well as under the cover of NATO air support, the TNC fighters were approaching towards forward positions, capturing some of the suburbs of Sirte, paying the price of heavy casualties. In spite of a heavy investment in manpower and material, the assault on Sirte has grinded into a halt, and the attacking TNC troops have made themselves massively available as targets for special operations from Libyan Military, Tribal Militia and other Allied Forces from throughout North Africa...

Occupy Wall Street

2011-10-02T08:42:00.010-10:00

"Occupy Wall Street is leaderless resistance movement with people of many colors, genders and political persuasions. The one thing we all have in common is that We Are The 99% that will no longer tolerate the greed and corruption of the 1%. We are using the revolutionary Arab Spring tactic to achieve our ends and encourage the use of nonviolence to maximize the safety of all participants. We are the 99 percent. We are getting kicked out of our homes. We are forced to choose between groceries and rent. We are denied quality medical care. We are suffering from environmental pollution. We are working long hours for little pay and no rights, if we're working at all. We are getting nothing while the other 1 percent is getting everything. We are the 99 percent."

"The Occupy Wall Street protests are a sure sign that people have begun to realize where the real power center of the United States rests. It was not Occupy DC, it was Occupy Wall Street which I think shows the idea that the people are looking past the political theater that is taking place in Washington towards the real axis of political power which is located in the heart of the American empire on Wall Street and in the finance capital. The real heart of the empire is in the finances and that is something that makes this political movement somewhat different and sets it apart."/ James Corbett, editor of the corbettreport.com

"Whoever controls the power of money has supreme power.The bankers in Wall Street have the power of money and literally run the government. Goldman Sachs runs the government, JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America – they run the government. This has to stop. The people in the streets across America have to understand this and demand that the power of money returns to the Congress."/ Stephen Lendman, radio host and author

"Who is lobbying for Wall Street? Wall Street has lobbyists in Washington DC, allowing them to take the money from the poor and give it to the rich. Definitely they should be worried and I can definitely see this protest spreading throughout America and one day be on the steps of Capitol Hill and possibly in front of the White House."/ George Mapp, journalist and blogger

Police in New York have violently dispersed an anti-Wall Street rally, arresting more than seven hundred people after a dramatic showdown on Brooklyn bridge. Activists, as well as commentators following the protest against inequality and corporate excess, claim the response of the city's police force to the peaceful event was vastly out of proportion. Almost 1,000 people have been arrested in two weeks – substantially more than the number of financiers who led the world into the 2008 economic meltdown. The march began on Saturday afternoon in Zuccotti Park, the Manhattan the base of the core of 200 or so OWS demonstrators. By the time it reached Brooklyn bridge it had swollen to several thousand. Accounts vary as to how about 500 protesters ended up on one lane of the road across the bridge, where they were all penned in with orange netting and arrested. Some accused the police of leading them on to the road as a sort of trap.

occupy wall street /wikipedia

News from the Battlefield Libya

2011-09-28T10:14:00.017-10:00

Battle of Tripoli

There is very bad news for the rebels in Tripoli. There are intense clashes happening in Tripoli every single day. Rebels are either killed or being kidnapped every day by the armed citizens who are furious at the mass murder, pillage and destruction caused by the lawless rebels. The situation for the rebels is becoming more difficult, as the citizens of Tripoli who have put up with an unbearable life since the invasion, are resisting. Although most all of Tripoli is in the hands of the rebels, LDF sniper-marksmen are popping off rebels left and right. Tripoli hospitals are filling up with European mercenaries who are being shot by fighters of the resistance. It's guerilla warfare now. Al-Qaeda commander Abdelhakim Belhadj, the creator and the emir of the Islamic terrorist organization, "The Libyan Islamic Fighting Group," now holds the post of head of the Military Council of Tripoli, and does not hide his discontent with the leadership of the TNC (Transitional National Council). Belhadj spent years in prison in Libya after being captured in Thailand and handed over to the Jamahiriya by the British and American intelligence. He is still listed as a known terrorist, fully assisted by the US-NATO alliance.

Immediately after his visit to Tripoli by President Sarkozy and Prime Minister Cameron, the rebels became greatly inspired. So, in celebration of the visit of their masters, they set out in 900 pickup trucks and 100 tanks, and rushed to assault the cities of Bani-Walid and Sirte, which had previously been bombed for several weeks by NATO, only to be once again crushed by the Libyan Defense Forces, the Jamahiri green volunteers, and the armed citizens of those cities. Despite the support of the Special Forces of Qatar and France, the rebels fled to about 50-60 kilometers outside of the cities of Sirte and Bani-Walid.

Battle for Sirte

Gaddafi wanted Sirte to become the capital of a united Africa and it is the site of the headquarters of the African Investment Bank, which together with the African Monetary Fund (HQ in Yaounde, Cameroon) and African Central Bank (HQ in Abuja, Nigeria) which were to launch this September with a $42 billion fund to set Africa free from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank. The citizens of Sirte fiercely resisted the rebel attackers, who were forced to retreat in panic. The rebels met particularly fierce resistance about 50 km east of Sirte (population - 100 thousand people, located 360 km east of Tripoli), in the Khamsin. They claim they did not have enough firepower to respond to the forces of the Libyan resistance. Commander Mustafa Ben Dardef, from the team that walked 5 kilometers from the occupied areas of Sultan, located east of Sirte (370 km from Tripoli), said that his men would cease to conduct combat operations for one week. "We will stop fighting for a week. We are faced with the fact that we do not have enough ammunition," he said. "The main goal for now is to maintain progress and to establish a strong line of defense in Sultana, 30 kilometers east of Sirte," he said. The rebel command structure virtually doesn't exist, so maybe none of them even knew whose responsibility it was for re-supplying (logistics). Also, the rebels are actually fighting each other, and may be hesitant to supply ammunition to a rival rebel faction that might turn their weapons against them. This after the rebels had given repeated "final deadlines" for the city of Sirte to surrender of face massacres.

Battle for Bani Walid

Bani Walid still remains under the control of the Libyan Jamahiriya. This although the city has been under constant bombing for a month and constant missile attacks, as well as having its water supply cut off, food sources bombed by NATO, and being ringed by rebels who prevent anyone going into or out of the city thus enforcing a siege. NATO is thus deliberately starving an entire city into submission. The rebels prepared for an attack on Bani Walid, and on September 9 the NATO-rebel TNC leadership declared that the rebels had entered Bani Walid. As it turned out later, their attack was repulsed and the town was again shelled by the Air Forces of NATO. 17 foreign mercenaries of NATO, mostly French, with 2 Brits and 1 Asian were captured and are still held prisoners by the Libyan Defense Force. Meanwhile, NATO has decided to extend its war against Libya for another three more months to provide cover for the rebels from the air. Many military bases in the region of Sirte and Bani Walid were destroyed by NATO airstrikes.

No one is hiding the fact that the war in Libya is being fought between the Libyan Armed Forces and NATO. The role of the rebels is to pose for the cameras, chant slogans, and recite monologues about "freedom". TNC emissaries arrived at the location of the retreating rebel troops, trying to convince them not to disperse to their homes. The rebels lost hundreds of soldiers and the defense of Bani Walid was so strong that the rebels refused their commanders' orders to return to the fight.

It is said that one of the reasons that the rebel assaults on Bani Walid and Sirte failed is because of bad interaction between rebel forces, some of whom rushed to the assault based on their own decision to do so, not through any consultation with commanders. Commanders of the rebels in all key areas have accused each other of being unwilling to act in a coordinated manner. Another reason for the failure is because of mutual hatred of each other, within the military units, based on tribe and ethnicity.

Battle for Sabha

The rebels, who entered the city without a fight, were lured into an ambush that will go down in history as a legendary achievement. Those who entered the city were quickly rounded up and the others fled. There were 45 rebels killed, and hundreds taken as prisoners. Their flight took place amidst big confusion. The world media fail to report on this. Sabha remains under full control of the Libyan Jamahiriya as does over 85% of the country. Sabha is the largest town in the Libyan desert, with a population of 100 thousand people. Military bases placed at Sabha make it a strategically important city.

The first attempt to create a TNC government has failed. Members of the board rejected more than 50% of the nominees proposed by Jibril. The Islamists, as stated before, are gradually gaining strength and influence, and plan to attempt to build a "new Libya". The Libyan Defense Forces re-captured Brega. That's the oil port where they ship out oil. It's what NATO wanted to capture, and hold, more than anything. They have never been able to hold Brega, and it is now in the hands of Libyan Defense Forces. The Libyan Defense Forces re-captured Ras Lanouf, an important oil refinery. Gaddafi now has at least 10,000 Tuaregs at his disposal, some of them have crossed into Libya from Niger to help him fight. The Tuareg's are known by military experts, to be the world's top desert fighters. The Tuaregs made an announcement that was also a warning to the rebels. They said something like, "Only those people can cross our deserts who we like." And they don't like the rebels. The rebels slaughtered a group of Tuaregs in Libya and are carrying out ethnic cleansing (genocide) against Blacks in the limited areas they now control in Libya. Other Saharan tribes and sub-tribes are rallying behind Gaddafi. There is mass chaos in Benghazi, the HQ of the rebels. Residents are flying the green flag, in defiance. Al-Qaeda wants Mustafa Abdul Jalil, head of the rebels, dead, and they actually announced that. Mustafa Abdul Jalil, the head rat, was forced to admit, that Gaddafi and the Jamahiriya HAS ALL OF LIBYA'S GOLD. The rebels themselves are fighting against each other, even on the battlefield. Since NATO and the rebels have utterly failed, it is certain that the northern countries are now contemplating the full NATO occupation of Libya.

LATEST UPDATE Tuesday, 27.09.2011

In Benghazi, 1500 new Al-Qaeda soldiers have arrived from Afghanistan after heavy losses during the past week. Abu Yahya "Al-Libby (the Libyan)", who was one of those close to Bin Laden himself, has been appointed the commander of these Al-Qaeda soldiers. Libby is a notorious terrorist. These are very serious fighters, not "revolutionaries" in jeans. News reports indicated that Belhadj Hakim, (the commander of Al-Qaeda forces in Tripoli) had been killed. To avoid bloodshed in the city of Ghadamas, the Jamahiriya army ceased fire and sent an ultimatum. The rebels sent a message to others in their headquarters in Tripoli: "Save us! We are surrounded!" And the received the answer: "Save yourselves!". Zawaiya again raised the green flags. This means that soon the entire western road to the Tunisian border will be "green" again. Muammar Gaddafi, with a Kalashnikov in his hands, personally met with the soldiers and said that he would soon begin an offensive on the cities that are still in the hands of "traitors in the service of NATO," as he called the rebels.

Odyssey Dawn

9/11: Explosive Evidence - Experts Speak Out

2011-09-20T01:52:00.001-10:00

Libya Inc. - Truth behind NATO intervention

2011-09-19T23:38:00.021-10:00

"We have done what we did because we thought it was the right thing to do." / Sarkozy

What they did is committing grievous crimes of war and against humanity. It's ongoing serial killing on an industrial scale. 50.000,00 dead and counting. History will tell us whether the world stood idly by watching NATO collectively, and Britain and France in particular (whose collective histories are synonymous with countless massacres across the globe) , launching a murderous assault upon a sovereign nation, while stealing its resources and destroying its achievements with an arrogant hatred yet again based upon lies and false flag events (the terrorists themselves committed the “massacres” and the Libyan Armed Forces did not bomb civilians as proven by Russian military satellites – the one bombing civilians and committing massacre is NATO). It is not about freedom and democracy – why did Britain’s David Cameron and France’s Nicolas Sarkozy refuse the Jamahiriya’s offer of further free elections? It is not about protecting civilians – how do you “protect civilians” by bombing them, destroying their water supply “to break their spirit”, strafing their civilian infrastructures with military hardware to guarantee rebuilding contracts in a post-conflict scenario and blockading their cities and shutting off their water, food and medical supplies? It is about assaulting the most wealthy state on the entire continent of Africa, which brought the African Union into being as well as independence from the IMF and World Bank by donating $32 billion to a $42 billion fund for African sovereign wealth. It is about African Monetary Fund and Investment Bank which would free Africans from crippling interest rate repayments to foreign banks. It is about dismantling the African Union, it is about destroying Africa's institutions and handing them back to former colonial powers, it is about channelling Africa's resources outwards for free. Sarkozy had already declared that "Gaddafi's economic plans are a direct threat to the international financial system" by which he meant of course the bankers in the west, who control the world's fake money supply. (1) Gaddafi was planning to introduce a gold dinar – a single African currency made from gold, a true sharing of the wealth. The idea was that African and Muslim nations would join together to create this new currency and would use it to purchase oil and other resources in exclusion of the US dollar. An idea that would shift the economic balance of the world. In Gaddafi's case, as he held some 144 tons of gold against a fairly small population, a gold dinar would prove a most powerful currency. There are many who believe Iraq's Saddam Hussein's overthrow by the US was sealed when he announced Iraqi oil would be traded in euros, not US dollars. Sanctions and then a US invasion followed. Coincidence? Hussein's idea would have strengthened the euro, but Gaddafi's idea would have strengthened all of Africa in the opinion of hard-money economists. A country’s wealth would depend on how much gold it had and not how many dollars it traded. Pricing oil in something other than the dollar would attack the basis of US power in the world. The dollar is the reserve currency based on a deal made with the Saudis back in 1971 in which the Saudis as the world's largest oil producer agreed to accept only dollars for oil. A gold dinar would have had serious consequences for the world financial system, but may also have empowered the people of Africa, something black activists say the US wants to avoid at all costs. (2)

We have seen that under the UN so-called international law does not exist. The world community has the obligation to terminate NATO’s adventure, to expose the United Nations Organization as unable and unwilling to resist a clique of corporate elitists. Is this the world we want? One in which terrorist organizations such as NATO have free reign? The United Nations Organization is neither United, nor it is an Organization, but rather, a club for trading interests of the powerful.

sources:

(1) mathaba - Independent News Network

(2) RT

NATO crimes in Libya

2011-08-17T22:36:00.024-10:00

145 days of non-stop bombing

Five months (145 days) into the bombing campaign, it is no longer possible to believe the initial official version of the events and the massacres attributed to the "Gaddafi regime". Moreover, it is now essential to take into account Libya’s legal and diplomatic rebuttal, highlighting the crimes against peace committed by television propaganda, the war crimes perpetrated by NATO military forces, and the crimes against humanity sponsored by political leaders of the Atlantic Alliance. NATO, the largest military coalition in history, has failed after five months of bombardments to overthrow the one it designated as a "tyrant." In the current NATO war on Libya, the citizens of European and North American NATO countries are being treated to the largest propaganda blitz by their governments in cahoots with corporate media outlets since the U.S.-led invasions and occupation of Iraq. The situation on the ground in Tripoli, the Libyan capital, could not be more different from what is being portrayed by Western news networks and newspapers. Every Friday, a large demonstration in support of the regime is organized in a different city and all experts are unanimous in considering that Colonel Gaddafi enjoys at least 90% of popular support in Tripolitania and 70% across the entire country, including the "rebel" areas. The difference between those in the West who believe that Gaddafi is a tyrant who fired on his own people, and those in Libya who believe that he is a hero of the anti-imperialist struggle, is that the former live in an illusion created by TV propaganda, whereas the others are exposed to the concrete reality on the ground. It is true that, until now, international justice has been the justice of the victors or the powerful. More recently, we saw how NATO used the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia to try to justify post facto that the war in Kosovo was "the first humanitarian war in History," according to the expression employed by Tony Blair. In the case of Libya, the violations of international law are countless. Plundering the assets of a state, establishing a naval blockade and bombing infrastructure to cause people to suffer, attacking an army inside its barracks and ordering the assassination of enemy leaders or, failing this, terrorizing them by murdering their families, all amount to war crimes. NATO, as an organization, is legally responsible for the material and human damage of this war. France has played a central role in preparing for this war since October 2010 by organizing a failed military coup and then, as early as November 2010, by planning with the United Kingdom the bombing of Libya and the landing of ground troops on its soil, which was then believed to be feasible, and finally by actively conspiring in the lethal unrest in Benghazi which led to the war. In addition, France, more than any other power, has deployed Special Forces on the ground - without uniforms, no doubt - and violated the arms embargo by supplying the insurgents, either directly or through Qatari airplanes. Not to mention that France has violated the UN freeze of Libyan assets, funnelling part of the fabulous cash from the Libyan Sovereign Fund to the CNT puppets, to the detriment of the Libyan people who wanted to guarantee the well-being of their children in the face of oil depletion. These gentlemen from NATO, who hoped to escape international justice by crushing their victim, Libya, in a few short days so that it would not survive to pursue them, will be disenchanted. Libya is still there. She is filing complaints with the International Criminal Court, the Belgian courts (whose jurisdiction NATO falls under), the European Court of Justice, and the national courts of aggressor states. She is undertaking steps before the Council of Human Rights in Geneva, the Security Council and General Assembly of the United Nations... /by Thierry Meyssan

All Tribes Support Gaddafi

Recently, the 2,000 sheikhs and representatives of the tribes held a meeting in which they decided there was to be no partition of Libya, that the west has no right to interfere in the internal affairs of Libya and that Libyans do not have the right to kill each other. Even if Gaddafi falls, NATO has no hope of eliminating the entire tribal structure of the Libya, which embraces all families and clans. Instead NATO is losing the battle for the hearts and minds of the people with every missile that smashes into another building. Here's what those 2,000 Tribal Leaders had to say about British aggression, in a statement approved unanimously on June 3. Sheikh Ali, head of the Tribal Leaders, delivered it to Joanna Moriarty and other members of the global fact finding mission:

"The Libyan people have the right to govern themselves. Constant attacks from the skies, at all hours of the day have completely disrupted the lives of the families of Libya. There has never been any fighting in Tripoli, yet we are bombed every day. We are civilians and we are being killed by the British and NATO. Civilians are people without guns, yet the British and NATO protect only the armed crusaders from the East by acting as their attack army. We have read the UN resolutions and there is no mention of bombing innocent civilians. There is no mention of assassinating the legitimate authorities in all of Libya.The Libyan People have the right to select their own leaders. We have suffered occupation by foreign countries for thousands of years. Only in the last 41 years have we Libyans enjoyed property ownership. Only in the last 41 years have we seen our country develop. Only in the last 41 years have we seen all of the Libyans enjoy a better life, and know that our children will have a better life then we have had. But now with the British and NATO bombings of our country, we see the destruction of our new and developed infrastructure.We leaders see the destruction of our culture. We leaders see tears in the eyes of our children because of the constant fear from the “rain of terror” in the skies of Libya from the British and NATO bombings. Our old people suffer from heart problems, increased diabetes and loss of vigor. Our young mothers are losing their babies every day because of the stress of the British and NATO bombings. These lost babies are the future of Libya. They can never be replaced. Our armies have been destroyed by the British and NATO bombings. We cannot defend ourselves from attacks from anyone.As Tribal Leaders of Libya, we must ask why have the British and NATO decided to wage this war against the Libyan people? There are a small percentage of dissidents in the east of Libya that started an armed insurrection against our legitimate authority. Every country has the right to defend itself against armed insurrection. So why cannot Libya defend itself? The Tribal Leaders of Libya demand that all acts of aggression, by the British and NATO, against the Libyan People stop immediately."

War Crimes in Libya

The NATO missile attack that killed Muammar Gaddafi's son, Seif al Arab Gaddafi, along with his friend and three of Muammar Gaddafi's grandchildren on April 30, was an attempt to kill Muammar Gaddafi himself. The only reason why Muammar Gaddafi survived the blast was that he was away from the main residence. Muammar escaped the fate of his son and grandchildren by only about 500 feet. The residence was hit by bunker buster bombs fired from a U.S. warplane. One of the warheads did not detonate and was later removed from what remained of a bedroom in the home. There are still small body parts lying underneath the rubble of the residence. Obama's order to kill Gaddafi is reminiscent of George W. Bush's order to kill Sadaam Hussein at the outset of the U.S. war against Iraq, an assassination order that was also a violation of international and U.S. law.

Rapes are now ongoing acts of war in rebel-held cities, like an organized military strategy, according to refugees. It's a story CNN won't report: Late at night there's a pounding on the door in Misurata. Armed soldiers force young Libyan women out of their beds at gun-point. Hustling the women and teenagers into trucks, the soldiers rush the women to gang bang parties for NATO rebels—or else rape them in front of their husbands or fathers. When NATO rebels finish their rape sport, the soldiers cut the women's throats. Rebels have gone house to house through Misurata, asking families if they support NATO. If the families say no, they are killed on the spot. If families say they want to stay out of the fighting, NATO rebels take a different approach to scare other families. The doors of "neutral homes" are welded shut. NATO forces have cut off food and medical supplies throughout Libya. But the seas are plentiful with fish in Mediterranean waters. Brave fishermen have taken their boats out of port, trying to harvest fish for the hungry population. To break their perseverance, American drones and British war planes steadily fire missiles on the fishing boats, deliberately targeting non-military vessels to chase them out of the waters. An international journalists' group sharply criticized NATO air strikes against Libyan television, which killed three people and injured 15, saying they violated international law and U.N. resolutions. NATO said the bombing of the Libyan TV's satellite dishes was in compliance with the U.N. mandate authorizing the strikes to protect the civilian population. When one side decides to take out a media organization because they regard its message as propaganda, then all media are at risk. In conflict situations, international law is clear that unarmed journalists cannot be treated as combatants, irrespective of their political affiliations. This reminds of the 1999 NATO bombing of Serbian TV in Belgrade, which killed 16 people. At the time, NATO said the station was a legitimate target because it was a "propaganda mouthpiece" for the regime of Slobodan Milosevic. NATO attacked the Great Manmade River pipeline in Libya which literally brings water across the desert to millions of Libyans and farms in western and southern Libya as well as to the capital Tripoli and Benghazi. The Manmade River project is not only a life-sustaining source of water for millions of Libyan people and a core part of Libya’s agriculture, it also stands as a source of national pride and identity. That's the right way to "protect civilians from an evil dictator". Gaddafi himself called it “the eighth wonder of the world”. They started the project in 1983 with an extraordinary session of the People’s Congresses and 25 billion dollars later, it was completed. Funding came from profits from the very oil industry that NATO countries hope to privatize. NATO’s strikes seem to have been extremely deliberate in their planning. First, they targeted a key section of the water supply line itself, then the next day or so, they targeted the only facility which makes the replacement sections of the pipes. Their intentions are crystal clear; they intend to kill perhaps a million Libyan by depriving them of life’s basic necessity, water. This cowardly action is beyond the definition of a war-crime and has moved into a different realm altogether. on August 9, NATO aircraft committed a massacre of civilians in the village of Majer, near Zliten - 85 people lost their lives, including 33 children, 32 women and 20 men. The massacres and killing were never by Gaddafi's forces, but rather from terrorist elements with links to Al-Qaeda, liberals, counter-revolutionaries, thugs, common criminals, Islamist fanatics and opportunists, whose space is labelled "The Opposition" while the west continues to label the terrorists as "rebels". And NATO's part in this has been massive. Until June 7, NATO flew 11,000 sorties, in which it murdered or injured 4,711 people - at least 856 of these were innocent civilians, 109 were children. At least 523 civilians were seriously injured and 3,332 received minor injuries. White phosphorous is being used against Libyan government positions now that NATO is getting desperate. NATO's bombing campaign has directly and negatively affected the livelihoods of some 3.5 million people in Africa because the construction projects in which 3.5 million foreign workers made their livings, have stopped. Cameron, Obama and Sarkozy have the blood of hundreds of innocent people on their hands. The stupidity of recognizing a group of ragtag, disorganized terrorists as a government in Libya is not for the first time. Remember Kosovo? The terrorists, stupidly referred to as "rebels" in western corporate media, are now violently fighting each other, as could have been predicted by anyone willing to see the real picture. The criminals of NATO are trying to completely rewrite hundreds of years of diplomatic protocol. Bing, we create a government here, bang, we eliminate a population there. Last reports were that NATO helicopters were shooting at anything that moved in Benghazi, since their terrorist clients were run off, wantonly killing civilians, just like during the US exit from Vietnam. NATO. As it has become patently obvious, taking as a starting point the bombing of Yugoslavia in 1999, the support for the KLA terrorist organization, the abuses committed in Afghanistan, the illegal invasion of Iraq and the horrific human rights abuses committed there, culminating now in the five-month bombing campaign against Libya, NATO is not a peaceful defensive organization. It is an offensive military organism which goes looking for wars if none exist, against targets that do not affect the security of its member states. It is an organization which violates human rights, violates the UN Charter, violates international law and violates the Geneva Conventions with countless acts of despicable cowardice. NATO is only existing threat to international security with the UK and USA with a 100% presence in all conflicts. The last five Prime Ministers of the UK have been involved in six wars! If this isn't evil, what is? Since when and under what international laws is a children's school a legitimate target? Since when and under what international law is it allowed to purposefully precision-bomb a family home and murder children? Since when and under what international law is NATO permitted to bomb, bomb, bomb, day after day after day, supporting terrorists?

Next Step: Ground Invasion

America is preparing for ground attacks on Libya, which could start in October. As stalemate grips Libya, a NATO spokesman says the use of ground troops may be the only way to move the situation forward. While Britain’s prime minister ruled out ground troops, now his Defense Secretary tells Parliament they plan exactly that. But UN members are angered at the number of civilian deaths from NATO bombing, and are unlikely to welcome an escalation of the conflict. Remember, UN Security Council resolution 1973 authorized the imposition of a no-fly zone over Libya to “protect civilians” from air attacks by Muammar Gaddafi loyalists. This war on Libya has nothing to do with protection of civilians, protecting civilians was the claim, but grabbing the country’s resources is their real goal. United States and its European allies will certainly launch a ground invasion of Libya, if the airstrikes are not effective. There is still little sign of progress for either side in the conflict, so there is a need for a new UN resolution to approve sending foreign troops in. In the meantime, civilian casualties from allied bombing continue to mount. With international opposition on the rise, NATO states face an uphill task to make the case for more war. Clearly what we are seeing unfolding in Libya is a pre-existing war plan, by NATO, by the British, by the French, by the Americans to attack Libya. The West has been covertly arming the opposition to Gaddafi in hope of grabbing control of the oil and different parts of Libya. The Libyan government promises “hell” for NATO if it sends in ground troops. Some agree such a war may be tougher, than expected. In the meantime, the EU has a plan to send up to 1,500 troops to Libya to "convoy humanitarian aid". The UN is far from keen, saying it may only go ahead as a “last resort”. Russia has voiced concern that Europe plans an invasion under the guise of a relief effort. Germany was skeptical over the campaign from the very beginning and said it will not give its troops for a ground operation. However, Berlin said it would back a UN-mandated humanitarian operation, which would be necessary for the EUFOR Libya plan to be implemented. The troops on the ground would coordinate air strikes and help prevent friendly fire incidents. The move, however, would require a UN Security Council mandate, since UN Resolution 1973, which gave the green light for the aerial operation, explicitly forbids any ground invasion. The international community looks on, the international media remains silent and the truth about what is happening in Libya is shocking NATO to the core. That is precisely why in recent weeks, since the brilliant Libyan victory in the Battle of Al-Brega against NATO's terrorists (it is claimed around 100,000 foreign bearded Islamist fanatics crossed over the frontier from Egypt just before mayhem broke out), a battle in which a smokescreen clouded the skies so that NATO's jets could not (illegally) intervene in an internal conflict to protect the terrorists against Libyan government troops, NATO has been pouring more and more mercenaries into their fight. At least one million people are ready to defend Libya if an international ground military campaign begins. Hundreds of thousands of rifles were being distributed to civilians to defend the home front. NATO troops will have to fight for every city corner and every building to "bring democracy" to this proud country. It's obvious that the Libyan people are a fine, noble, courageous, proud people willing to endure. They cannot be defeated. From March 19th until July 8th, 1,108 Libyans were killed by the attacks of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and 4,537 were injured, of whom 717 were seriously injured, reports the Ministry of Health in Libya and reported by TeleSUR special envoy on the North African country, Rolando Segura.
The UNSC resolution 1973 authorises "all necessary measures" (that is military action) to protect civilians and civilian populated areas under threat of attack. Repeating, "all necessary measures." Therefore, the international community is put on notice that since deaths, injuries and destruction to civilian infratruture are being caused by NATO, countries should begin to implement plans to provide the government of Libya with all means of air defense weapons, as well as other weapons designed for self defense, in order to prevent further NATO attacks.

NATO getting desperate

Istina o Libiji (video/srb)

Children of the Revolution - UK Riots

2011-08-16T01:19:00.023-10:00

In London and other British cities, young people burned cars and buildings, looted stores and fought with police. The riots broke out after a still-unresolved shooting by police in a poor North London neighborhood. On Saturday a small crowd including Mark Duggan’s mother and fiance gathered outside a Tottenham police station to demand a senior officer explain how Mark had been shot dead by police. After hours of waiting outside no explanation was forthcoming. On 6 August the peaceful march in Tottenham, calling for police answers over their fatal shooting of Mark Duggan was followed by rioting and looting in Tottenham. The spread of news and rumours about the previous evening's disturbances in Tottenham sparked riots during the night of 7 August in the London districts of Brixton, Enfield, Islington and Wood Green and in Oxford Circus in the centre of London. However, that was just the spark. Many Londoners initially assumed the violence was a backlash from chronic unemployment, slow economic recovery and cuts to public service spending by the country’s new government. The riots were concentrated in neighborhoods with large African and Caribbean populations, which have a history of tension with the police. Following a massively increased police presence, London was quiet on 9 August, but copycat actions continued in Birmingham and Nottingham and spread to Leicester, West Bromwich and Wolverhampton in the midlands and to Bury, Liverpool, Manchester, Rochdale, Salford, Sefton and Wirral in the north-west of England. On 10 August, London remained quiet whilst hundreds of arrests were being made there by the police. Three men were killed in Birmingham in a hit-and-run incident related to the disturbances. Looting and violence continued in two locations around Manchester and Liverpool. "Independet observers" say the rioting was not based on specific political or economic demands, but they acknowledge there are underlying reasons that so many young people are willing to take part in looting, arson and vandalism on a scale the country has not seen in many years. So this is not people expressing their anger against an oppressive state? A majority of people are just looting to loot, with no reason, just because they want to do it. Simple as that? Rrrright... Well I don't think so. Politicians were quick to dismiss the unrest in the British cities as pure criminality but the truth is that “there are some disaffected, alienated, but in fact very clever people out there from the underclasses who are incredibly bitter about the lack of opportunity – and they are incredibly ambitious as well.

The internet exploded with comments, some of them pertinent, others ridiculous. "Hang the bastards" was a typical statement from the more reactionary elements of society; "Revolution" was the keyword from those fantasising about a Leftist New Order installed in London. Parallels were drawn between the Libyan "uprising" and the English "uprising", calls were made for a no-fly zone to be implemented over England, which would entail the arming of the "rebels", the immediate labelling of the Cameron Government as illegitimate because it had "lost control" and clearly was "not fit to govern". One wonders what would really have happened if outside forces had done to England what the UK has done in Libya. So what was it this time? Wait a minute, what was all that about the Members of Parliament scandal with expense accounts? What was all that about obtaining plasma TVs, and washing machines and gardeners and maids all paid for by the British taxpayer? So basically, those youths being jailed today for four or five or six or seven months, for stealing a plasma TV screen or pinching a packet of bubble gum, are being ruled by those who sat in their crystal ball of excellence, doing the same thing, yet instead of looting shops, got the same goods by looting the British taxpayer. So MPs got their plasma screens legally by stealing from the British taxpayer and these "hoodlums" got 6 months for doing the same thing, yet ended up without the screen?

PM David Cameron eventually came up with a “zero tolerance” approach to street crime. The same rough tactics were originally introduced in the US and see even minor offences prosecuted vigorously to send out the message that no law-breaking will be tolerated. The use of water cannon was approved shortly after the rioting started. As another preventive measure, the Cabinet has threatened the possible disruption of social messaging networks such as twitter and facebook, for they have been widely used by rioters to co-ordinate their action. (some months ago, those social networks were praised for spreading democracy through North Africa and Middle East). After the condemnation of Libya, Egypt, Tunisia etc for cutting social media networks such as Twitter and Facebook during their social unrest, it was a surprise to hear the British Press openly discuss limiting their use as a way of curtailing communication amongst the rioters. A 17-year-old who posted a Facebook message saying "come on rioters" has been banned from social networking sites for 12 months. He was ordered to complete 120 hours' community service, a 12-month youth rehabilitation order and observe a curfew between 7pm and 6am for three months. The court heard that the boy, who cannot be named for legal reasons, wrote the message at 9.45am on 9 August. It read: "I think we should start rioting, it's about time we stopped the authorities pushing us about and ruining this country. It's about time we stood up for ourselves for once. So come on rioters – get some. LOL." He had no more than 400 friends on facebook. The boy added: "I meant it as a joke which is why I wrote LOL at the end."The police were alerted and when they arrived "he had already deleted the post." Criticism is growing of the sentences imposed on some convicted rioters after two other men were jailed for four years for posting messages on Facebook inciting people to create disorder in their home towns. Jordan Blackshaw, 20, from Northwich Town, and Perry Sutcliffe-Keenan, 22, of Latchford, Warrington, were sentenced at Chester crown court after admitting using the social networking site to try to organise riots. No trouble resulted from their actions. Blackshaw set up an "event" on Facebook called Smash Down in Northwich Town for the night of 8 August but no one apart from the police, who were monitoring the page, turned up at the meeting point outside a McDonald's restaurant. Blackshaw was promptly arrested (same thing happened in China, not long ago when only CNN crew showed up at McDonald's). Defence lawyers and civil rights groups have also criticised "disproportionate" sentences as official figures show nearly 1,300 suspects have been brought before the courts. Judge Elgan Edwards sentenced Blackshaw to four years in a young offenders' institution and said he had committed an "evil act". "This happened at a time when collective insanity gripped the nation. Your conduct was quite disgraceful and the title of the message you posted on Facebook chills the blood." It has been reported that courts have been advised by senior justice clerks to deal harshly with offences committed during the disturbances. The advice is said to tell the courts that they can ignore existing sentencing guidelines and hand down heavy sentences. This could never happened in Libya, Tunis, Egypt or Syria because overthere fake facebook and Twitter accounts are made by CIA. When there are real people behind "organizing riots" it "chills the blood". When it happens in UK, then it is called collective insanity. Iran has called on the British police to exercise restraint against people protesting over the killing of a Black man in London. Iranian Foreign Ministry Spokesman Ramin Mehmanparast urged the British government to order the police to stop their violent confrontation with the people, IRNA reported in the early hours of Tuesday. Mehmanparast asked the British government to start dialogue with the protesters and to listen to their demands in order to calm the situation down. The Iranian official also asked independent human rights organizations to investigate the killing in order to protect the civil rights and civil liberties. The African Union has adopted a unilateral resolution to deploy army troops and care packages to England as looting and violence spread from London to other major cities. Spokesperson Charity Khumalo said “We can no longer stand by while these savages tear themselves apart.”

As of 15 August, about 3,100 people have been arrested, of whom more than 1,000 have been charged. Arrests, charges and court proceedings continue, with courts working extended hours.
Five people have died and at least 16 others have been injured as a direct result of related violent acts. An estimated 200 million pounds worth of property damage was incurred, and local economic activity was significantly compromised. A petition was submitted to the UK goverment proposing that any convicted rioters have their benefit payments cut. This petition has been signed by over 200,000 people. So much for the purely criminal aspects, but many say other underlying causes of the riots are poor parenting, unemployment, poor job prospects, austerity cuts removing many support mechanisms, especially for the young. However, throwing kids in prison and giving them a criminal record is not the answer; community-based rehabilitation schemes, which Cameron and Osborne closed, are.

Acoma Pueblo - Ancient Sky City of Native Americans

2011-07-27T02:08:00.006-10:00

Strategically built atop a 357-foot sandstone mesa for defensive purposes, the Acoma Pueblo is more familiarly known as Sky City. Believed to be the oldest continuously inhabited city in the United States, the pueblo was built sometime between 1100 and 1250 A.D. The name "Acoma" means "People of the White Rock" in the Puebloan Kersan dialect. The pueblo, covering some 70 acres, is actually comprised of several villages including Acomita, McCartys, Anzac and Sky Line.
The site was chosen, in part, because it provided a defensive position for the tribe against raiders. Access to the pueblo was difficult as the faces of the mesa are sheer and before modern times, it could only be accessed by a hand-cut staircase carved into the sandstone. For centuries the Acoma people have farmed the valley below the Acoma Pueblo using irrigation canals in the villages closer to the Rio San Jose River. They were also actively involved in trading, not only with neighboring pueblos, but, also over long distances with the Aztec and Mayan peoples.
The pueblo was already well established when Francisco Vasquez de Coronado was the first European to lay eyes on it in 1540, describing it as: "One of the strongest ever seen, because the city was built on a high rock. The ascent was so difficult that we repented climbing to the top."
Almost fifty years later, Sky City was almost destroyed in 1598 when Governor Juan de Oñate, under orders from the King of Spain, invaded New Mexico, and began staging raids on Native American pueblos in the area, taking anything of value. When the Spanish soldiers arrived in the area, they made their headquarters at the Ohkay Owingeh Pueblo, formerly called the San Juan Pueblo, located about 25 miles north of Santa Fe. Upon their arrival, they removed the Tewa Indians who lived there and used it as a base to stage more raids on other Native American pueblos in the area. In December, 1898, a party of Spanish soldiers seeking food arrived at Acoma. Initially, they were welcomed and treated in a friendly manner until the soldiers turned aggressive and began to demand grain from the Acoma storehouses, which was needed for the tribe to survive the winter. Provoking a furious reaction, the Acoma attacked the soldiers, killing 13 of them, including their commander, Juan de Zaldivar, who was a nephew of Juan de Oñate.
In response, Oñate resolved to make an example of Acoma, and dispatched 70 of his best men, under the command of Vicente de Zaldivar, to attack the Acoma Pueblo. On January 21, 1599, the Spanish troops came into view of the pueblo and the tribe fanned out from their village to guard the edge of the mesa. As the Spaniards drew closer, the defenders unleashed a barrage of rocks and arrows down on them. Despite the defensive barrage coming from atop the mesa, the soldiers fought their way to the top over the next three days. During the battle, the Spaniards brought a small cannon up the back of the mesa and began firing into the village. The battle then became a massacre and when it was over, as many as 800 Acoma people were dead and their pueblo in ruins.
Afterwards, the survivors were marched to the Santo Domingo Pueblo (now known as the Kewa Pueblo), where all males over the age of 12 were condemned to 20 years' servitude. Of the few dozen Acoma men of fighting age who were still alive after the battle, they were sentenced to have one foot cut off. The surviving children under the age of 12 were taken from their parents, and given to Spanish missionaries to raise. However, most of them, as well as the women were sold into slavery. Oñate was later tried, convicted of cruelty to Indians and colonists, and was banished from New Mexico. However, he appealed the ruling and was later cleared of all charges. He lived out the rest of his life in Spain. In the end, the approximate population of the 2,000 people who had lived at the Acoma Pueblo was reduced to approximately 250 survivors. In time, some of the Acoma people managed to escape and made their way home, where they began the long process of rebuilding. Since that time, it has been continuously inhabited and never again fell to an invader.
Decades later, In 1629, as a "gesture of peace" and to attempt to Christianize the Indians, the Spanish began to build the San Estéban del Rey Mission, which included a church, convent, and cemetery. All of the building materials, including some 20,000 tons of earth and stone, were hand carried or hauled up the steep slopes of the mesa. The mission’s 30-foot beams were carried 30 miles from Mount Taylor and Kaweshtima. Under the guidance of Friar Juan Ramirez the pueblo was finally completed in 1640. However, according to Acoma oral tradition, the people were forced by Ramirez to build the mission. These abuses of power by both religious and political authorities eventually led to the Pueblo Revolt. On August 10, 1680, some 17,000 thousand Puebloans, including 6,000 warriors rose up in vengeance against 2,500-3,000 colonists. The tribes struck mission churches, killing 22 of 33 friars and demolishing and burning many of them. Warriors attacked isolated farms and haciendas, killing entire families. The Acoma participated in the Revolt by killing the Spanish friars who were living at the mesa at the time, but, did not destroy the church. It was one of the few Spanish missions to survive the revolt intact. The Puebloans were again forced to submit to Diego de Vargas in 1692. The Acoma joined in another uprising in 1696, but, were again subdued in 1699.
Today, the San Estéban del Rey Mission church houses the largest inventory of early 17th century building material of any structure in New Mexico. It features a large collection of Spanish colonial ecclesiastic art, an original hand-hewn circular staircase, hand-carved rails, and paintings.
Acoma is, along with the Hopi town of Oraibi, the oldest inhabited settlement in the United States. A federally recognized Indian Tribe, the Acoma Pueblo now has a land base covering 431,664 acres and is home to 4,800 tribal members. Both the San Estéban del Rey Mission and the pueblo itself have been proclaimed National Historic Landmarks.
Today's Acoma people continue the traditions of their ancestors who they trace to the former inhabitants of older ruins to the north and west of their present-day pueblo. Some also practice their ancient religion while others converted to Catholicism long ago when the first Spanish settlers arrived in the 1500's. Throughout the years celebrations and feasts are held for religious and historic occasions. While visitors are allowed to attend, they are encouraged to be respectful and aware of local protocol.
Today, fewer than 50 of the 3,000 Acomans live at the pueblo, the remaining residents choosing to live in the nearby villages. The Acoma Pueblo is known for its amazing pottery and a permanent exhibit, One Thousand Years of Clay, is housed in the Visitors Center located at the base of the mesa along with native food and crafts shops.

skycity today

Lady GaGa

2011-06-12T00:43:00.022-10:00

Project MK-ULTRA, or MKULTRA, was the code name for a covert CIA mind-control and chemical interrogation research program, run by the Office of Scientific Intelligence. The program began in the early 1950s, continuing at least through the late 1960s, and it used United States citizens as its test subjects. The published evidence indicates that Project MK-ULTRA involved the surreptitious use of many types of drugs, as well as other methods, to manipulate individual mental states and to alter brain function. Although the CIA insists that MK-ULTRA-type experiments have been abandoned, 14-year CIA veteran Victor Marchetti has stated in various interviews that the CIA routinely conducts disinformation campaigns and that CIA mind control research continued. In a 1977 interview, Marchetti specifically called the CIA claim that MK-ULTRA was abandoned a “cover story.” An outgrowth of that project is unofficially referred to as “Project Monarch”. It is a mind control technique which exposes the subject to a trauma so violent that his/her mind creates a dissociation. The victim’s brain becomes compartmentalized and a new personality, which is then molded and educated by the manipulators, emerges. What we must retain here is the symbolism Monarch project engendered and its use in mass media. Monarch is a type of butterfly and became the ultimate “insider’s”symbol of mind control.

Lady Gaga incorporates in her videos, photos and shows symbolism that refers to the Illuminati and mind control. Her symbolism is deep, esoteric and even spiritual yet she makes song like “Just Dance” which is about being totally numb. This paradoxical aspect of Lady Gaga is something that deserves to be analyzed and understood. While masses of young people imitate Gaga’s gestures, her act is part of a bigger system that incorporates many other stars with the same symbolism. She is creative and a gifted song writer. But at the end of the day, the “Lady Gaga” persona is a Fame Monster, doing everything required to be an international superstar, including incorporating in her act the symbolism of the elite, making her an Illuminati puppet.

Symbolism surrounding Lady Gaga, in her pictures and videos, mixes those symbols with occultism of secret societies. Her vacuous, robotic and slightly degenerate persona embodies all the “symptoms” of a mind control victim. Let’s look at what Lady Gaga represents, starting by the basics: her name. Gaga is a term that immediately refers to absent mindedness. “Gaga” is probably the easiest word to say in the English language, as it is often the first sound emitted by babies trying to imitate speech. So her name basically says: I’m a lady and I’m empty-headed. This empty head can filled with any crap you want. Imitate me young people. This state of mind is achieved after successful mind control. Her name is also said to be inspired by Queen’s song “Radio Gaga”. The video of this song contains many scenes of the 1927 movie Metropolis. The motion picture tells the story of a woman from the working class that was chosen by the elite to give life to a robot, through a mix of science and Black magic. This robot becomes a sexy and alluring performer and is given the goal to corrupt the working class. References to this movie abound in music videos, as if it was very significant for the occult elite. Madonna, Beyonce, Kylie Minogue and many others have taken the likeness of this female robot and, as you’ll see in the “Paparazzi” video, Lady Gaga also continues this “tradition”. Her logo is pretty revealing and particularly fitting. Its a headless female body with a bolt of lightning going through her and exiting her genitalia. There is once again a focus on the lack of conscious thought by the singer. The body looks like the weird headless mannequins you find at clothing stores. The bolt of lightning implies that her thoughtless body has been “charged” with a force that gives it life (interesting note: trauma-based mind control is often induced using electro-shock treatments). You only need to look at a couple of Lady Gaga pictures or videos to notice that she is constantly hiding one of her eyes. Most people will simply interpret this as ”a cool thing to do” or a “fashion statement”. Those who have passed the 101 of Illuminati symbolism know that the All-Seeing Eye is probably its most recognizable symbol. The gesture of hiding one eye, usually the left one, goes way back in occult orders. Here’s an explanation of the origin of the Eye of Horus. Horus, the sun of Osiris and Isis was called ‘Horus who rules with two eyes’. His right eye was white and represented the sun: his left eye was black and represented the moon. According to the myth, Horus lost his left eye to his evil brother, Seth, who he fought to avenge Seth’s murder of Osiris. Seth tore out of the eye but lost the fight. The eye was reassembled by magic, by Thoth, the god of writing, the moon and magic. Horus presented his eye to Osiris, who experienced rebirth in the underworld. Her videos: Almost all of Lady Gaga’s videos contain occult symbolism and not-so-subtle hints referring to mind control. We’ll first look at a short video used as an intro during her tour. Lady G is talking in a vaporous and robotic way, as if she was lobotomized, about a man who “swallowed her brain”. Gaga is questioned by a man who is talking in a very strange and hypnotic matter. If this is not about mind control, I have no idea what its about. /source

Paparazzi video:

It basically describes the fall and rise to the top of Lady Gaga, who, during the process, went through a huge metamorphosis. Lady is in a bedroom with her boyfriend and they’re “getting it on”. Notice the Masonic checkerboard pattern on the wall and a ram’s head, representing Baphomet. He takes her outside on the balcony (which also features a checkerboard pattern). After noticing cameras taking pictures, the guy starts acting strangely and things get violent. He finally pushes Lady off the balcony. While falling down, the background becomes a swirling pattern, typically associated with hypnotism. Lady Gaga falls down rather stylishly, hinting the fact that this descent is not physical. It represents the “trauma” victims of mind control have to go through in order to be “rebuilt from scratch”. Lady Gaga then enters a mansion in a wheel chair and gradually takes off her clothes. She slowly starts walking, with the help of crutches, representing her reeducation by the occult elite (she is inside a mansion). She is dressed like a robot, hinting Maria from the movie Metropolis. Another scene shows her dancing in a half white/half black wedding dress. This signifies her (forced) association with the “dark Brotherhood”. Her transformation is then complete. We then see her next to the boyfriend that pushed her off the balcony. She is wearing Mickey Mouse clothes, hinting once again Monarch programming. She is behaving in a very robotic way, as if her thoughts and actions were controlled by someone else. Gaga then proceeds to poison the guy and smiles very weirdly about it. The fact that she murdered her boyfriend refers to the level “Delta” of the Monarch project, which is also known as the “killer” programming. Here’s a description of it:
DELTA. This is known as “killer” programming, originally developed for training special agents or elite soldiers (i.e. Delta Force, First Earth Battalion, Mossad, etc.) in covert operations. Optimal adrenal output and controlled aggression is evident. Subjects are devoid of fear; very systematic in carrying out their assignment. Self-destruct or suicide instructions are layered in at this level.-(Dr. Corydon Hammond, Project Monarch Programming Definitions). After carrying out her murderous mission, Lady Gaga is more popular than ever and reaps the rewards of being an Illuminati slave...

Born This Way video:

The introduction basically involves around G.O.A.T (which stands for Government Owned Alien Territory) and the ‘declaration’ of the Manifesto of Mother Monster. Mother Monster basically envisioned a world where no prejudice exists (and beings with pointy shoulders). We’re given the Mother Monster Manifesto, which is really sort of a long-winded, gorgeously styled way of saying “In the future, we will all look the same, have pointy shoulders and love each other without prejudice.” And so, as the Eternal Mother gives birth to The New Race from above, so too does Evil spring forth from the womb of the underworld. Mother Monster gives birth to a race who are ‘good’ (for a lack of a better term). However, the evil race also gets born in the process. This leads GaGa to say “How can I protect something so perfect without evil?” So the dancing sequence begins... Some scenes do not actually provide continuity to the plot. Rather, aesthetics seem to be the name of the game especially in the scenes with the skeleton duo that resemble Zombie Boy. The final scene with the white gloves and that lone tear while facing the camera which eventually leads to people seeing the gap-toothed version of GaGa. These two elements in the final moments of the plot obviously reference the late King of Pop, Michael Jackson and the Queen of Pop who is Madonna. Discussion can go on and on whether GaGa is simply paying her respects to the two icons in Pop or declaring that she belongs with them.

Judas video:

(yes, we know Madonna did it too with "Like a Prayer") She's moving in a new direction from her bluffin' muffin,' Poker Face days: Gaga's going philosophical. And in her own words, "The cultural baptism cannot be stopped." Looks like Gaga's talking about herself here, and perhaps taking a deeper look into her role in this world using allusions she and quite a few others in this world know so well. The song and video are told from Mary Magdelene’s perspective, with lyrics such as, “When he comes to me, I am ready/ I’ll wash his feet with my hair if he needs/ Forgive him when his tongue lies through his brain/ Even after three times, he betrays me/ I’ll bring him down (Jesus), a king with no crown…” The demon that overtook Judas was said to be Satan himself. So the demon she cling to is not Judas but Satan. Lady Gaga is a vehicle for satanic propaganda, she is a mindless robot that carries a message, she sold her soul for fame. Her deep symbolic occult gestures are welcomed by the mindless masses and imitated because she is cool.

Libya: War Against Africa

2011-06-07T08:15:00.007-10:00

Libya: NATO's War Of Aggression Against A Sovereign African State

By Obi Nwakanma

June 06, 2011 "Vanguard" -- France and Great Britain, leading a NATO alliance, are effectively at war in Libya on the pretext of a United Nations’ mandate. The United States, led the early charge against Libya’s Ghadaffi from the air, but has taken something of a back seat, and allowed Britain and France to continue what can now be considered a war of aggression against a sovereign African state, far beyond the mandate of the UN. They have been bombing Libya relentlessly from the air. They have killed Ghadaffi’s son in a direct personal attack on the home of the Ghadaffis. The relentless strafing of Tripoli, the Libyan capital, in the past two weeks has also led to serious civilian casualties which the Libyan authorities have reported and which NATO has denied. The NATO alliance at the fore of this new colonial war in Africa has now moved beyond its mandate to seek regime change; to undermine the sovereignty of Libya, and create a civil war situation in this North African country and member-nation of the African Union. The French have positioned their aggression against Libya as a fight to free Libyans from the tyranny of Moumar Ghadaffi. They have not hidden the fact that they wished to make it impossible for a transition of power from Ghadaffi to a newer generation of Libyan nationalists who may follow in the state policies of Ghadaffi, particularly as it affects oil. It is not a secret that Libya sits on the vastest oil field in Africa and that Ghadaffi has prevented the international oil cartel from exploiting Libya’s oil and had forced them to comply with the strictest standards in oil production. It is no longer a secret that behind this NATO alliance war on Libya, and far beyond the “do-good” face it places or wears as its mask as its reason for bombing Libya to smithereens, is the quest to control the oil fields of Libya, guarantee Western access to energy sources in the face of growing concern over the rise of China and India and their own emergent gluttony for oil, and, of course, solve the problem of an intransigent African nationalist challenge to Western shenanigans. It is the 19th century all over again. Libya is the first flashpoint in the resource war that is bound to once more make Africa the battlefield of the great industrial powers. Once they take out Ghadaffi, that challenge to organise and fund a formidable African resistance against a new colonial mandate using the UN will weaken. The new scramble for Africa will more than likely commence. It is, therefore, ridiculous that Nigeria, a more than likely victim of this potential threat sits idly, voting with those who have launched a new aggressive war on Libya. The Nigerian government under President Goodluck Jonathan has failed to understand the wider dimensions of this NATO campaign on Libya. The Nigerian delegation was among those African countries who sided with the voters in the UN to commence the operations in Libya. The mandate, of course, was for a low-grade, protective operation against the potential of the Libyan military use of force against civilian populations, particularly in Benghazi, the so-called outpost of the Libyan resistance. Last week, at the G-8 meeting in France, and, in justifying America’s participation in the fight in Libya, the US President Barack Obama said it was a pre-emptive action by the NATO alliance, presumably the world’s chief defenders of humane mores and democratic freedom, to prevent a possible massacre of wide proportions against the Libyan civilian opposition against Ghadaffi. But the Libyan opposition is not a civilian opposition, it is an armed rebellion. The UN decision in which Nigeria participated basically tied the hands of the legitimate government of Libya behind its back, gave ammunition to a fringe rebellion, and has aided a civil war in Libya in which Libya’s national Armed Forces was prevented through relentless air attack from defending the territorial integrity of the Libyan state for which it is established. The West has aided a small fissiparous and ill-organised militia to destroy an African country. It is like NATO deciding to bomb the Nigerian Armed Forces if it goes after the increasingly organised Boko Haram militia in the North. Nigeria has in voting with France and Great Britain and the NATO alliance given ammunition to the new conquest of Africa and this is why she is seen roundly in Africa and by most Africans as the handmaiden of the West. This image of Nigeria as a consistent ally of the West against the interests of a free, independent, and prosperous continent is why most Africans and African nations do not take Nigeria seriously, and even, in fact, are amused by its claims of leadership in Africa. They think her quest for the UN seat is a joke given the weakness of its leadership and the inconsistency of its foreign policy. But contrast this with the strategic position of the South Africans on this matter, leading the African union to demand an immediate NATO cessation of the bombing of Libya. Last week, Jacob Zuma, the South African President went to Tripoli for consultations with the Libyan authorities, and the African Union issued a demand for NATO to stop bombing Libya. It is a follow-up to AU’s earlier intervention in which they have proposed a negotiated settlement between Tripoli and Benghazi. But NATO countries, busy setting up new embassies, and cutting new oil deals with the Libyan rebels against the long-term interest of Libya, are fobbing off any attempts for the Africans to sort out the situation in Libya and ease off Ghadaffi with less sanguinity. It is remarkable that Nigeria’s own president has continued to play possum to this NATO disregard of the African Union. Indeed, within the week of Zuma’s visit to Tripoli, NATO announced heightened military action against Ghadaffi’s Libya, and the use of more direct boots on the Libyan streets. The use of Western troops in Africa – particularly in the case of France – the use of its paratroopers, first in Ivory Coast, and now in Libya, represents a new strategic declaration of war against Africa, the African interest, and the African continent. In NATO’s disregard of AU, there is without doubt a remanifestation of that ontological disease of the Western mind that regards Africa as simply a place without history and without agency. It is not surprising that Sarkozy is leading this war in Africa. Here was a man who came to Africa, at the Cheik Anta Diop University in Dakar to declare that “the African man has not entered history;” he is still a hewer of wood fit only for the enlightened charity of France and the West. At the core of Sarkozy’s racist mind lies this quest to cut Libya and Ghadaffi down to size and seize her property – the oil. But here is the irony: the West had to wait for a weakened Ghadaffi, weakened by his decision to dismantle his nuclear arsenal and open up to the West, before the NATO alliance in a joint and cowardly effort decided to attack him from the air using a UN mandate. What is the lesson here? Nigeria must be alert to its duties to the continent and join the AU effort to more forcefully demand NATO’s cessation of her bombing operations in Libya, failing which it must then regard further operations in Libya as an open act of war and aggression against an African country. Africans have a right to defend themselves and their continent by all means necessary. Perhaps, it is time to re-open the discussions about an African High Command.

Project H.A.A.R.P.

2011-04-21T03:43:00.025-10:00

Mass animal deaths across the globe

U.S. officials are looking into why more than 5,000 blackbirds crashed from the sky in Arkansas on the final day of 2010. In scenes reminiscent of the FlashForward drama series, state wildlife employees were searching the town of Beebe after scores of birds fell to the ground late on New Year's Eve, continuing into the early hours of the morning. Arkansas Game & Fish is trying to figure out why 100,000 fish in Northwest Arkansas turned up dead. They were found along a 20-mile stretch between the Ozark Dam and Highway 109 Bridge in Franklin County. Two million dead fish were found to have washed up on shores in Chesapeake Bay, Maryland. The alarming find is being blamed by authorities in Maryland on the stress caused by unusually cold water and overbreeding among spot fish. 40,000 crabs join slew of animal-death mysteries: more than 40,000 Velvet swimming crabs have wound up dead on England beaches. The possible reason? Hypothermia. The Thanet shoreline is littered with the crabs, along with dead starfish, lobsters, sponges and anemones. 8,000 turtle doves fall dead in Italy with strange blue stain on their beak. Thousands of dead turtle doves rained down on roofs and cars in an Italian town of Faenza. Residents in Faenza described the birds falling to the ground like 'little Christmas balls' with strange blue stains on their beaks. Fishermen and harbour chiefs are puzzled after millions of dead sardines were found floating in a marina just south of Los Angeles. Experts said the fish, found at a harbour in Redondo Beach, may have died from lack of oxygen due to algae, while locals wondered if high winds overnight might have had something to do with it. After hearing all the fairy tales (heart attacks from fireworks, bad weather, etc) about what could be causing this mass die-off of animal like, let's turn our attention to something that's not a fairytale, and certainly has the power and ability to be wreaking all this havoc.

The controversial military program based on Tesla technology. In a remote region of Alaska, a special government research center is said to be testing the High Frequency Active Auroral Research Program, which, some believe, allows radio waves to be developed as a potential weapon. If true, these radio waves could be used to change the weather and control people's minds. A scientific research facility, located near Gakona, in the remote Alaskan outback is a joint Navy and Air Force project. This facility is used to study the earth's Ionosphere, the electrically-charged belt surrounding our planet's upper atmosphere, ranging between 40 to 60 miles from its surface. More specifically, H.A.A.R.P. is a controversial high frequency radio transmitter, or "ionospheric heater". The military intends to use this billion-watt pulsed radio beam in our upper atmosphere, which will create extremely low frequency waves, or ELF waves. "This technology will enhance communications with submarines and will allow us to "see" into the Earth, detecting anything from oil reserves to hidden underground military targets."

At the haarp official website they will tell you that "in the end, the goal of all the research conducted at HAARP is knowledge. Knowledge is the fuel that powers our modern technological society. While many of the potential applications of this research can be foreseen, history tells us that many new and highly significant benefits will also emerge." HAARP has been presented to public opinion as a program of scientific and academic research. US military documents seem to suggest, however, that HAARP's main objective is to "exploit the ionosphere for Department of Defense purposes." Without explicitly referring to the HAARP program, a US Air Force study points to the use of "induced ionospheric modifications" as a means of altering weather patterns as well as disrupting enemy communications and radar.

BY Michel Chossudovsky

The important debate on global warming under UN auspices provides but a partial picture of climate change; in addition to the devastating impacts of greenhouse gas emissions on the ozone layer, the World's climate can now bemodified as part of a new generation of sophisticated "non-lethal weapons." Both the Americans and the Russians have developed capabilities to manipulate the World's climate. In the US, the technology is being perfected under the High-frequency Active Aural Research Program (HAARP) as part of the ("Star Wars") Strategic Defence Initiative (SDI). Recent scientific evidence suggests that HAARP is fully operational and has the ability of potentially triggering floods, droughts, hurricanes and earthquakes.

From a military standpoint, HAARP is a weapon of mass destruction. Potentially, it constitutes an instrument of conquest capable of selectively destabilising agricultural and ecological systems of entire regions. World renowned scientist Dr. Rosalie Bertell confirms that "US military scientists are working on weather systems as a potential weapon. The methods includethe enhancing of storms and the diverting of vapor rivers in the Earth's atmosphere to produce targeted droughts or floods."

"Technology will make available, to the leaders of major nations, techniques for conducting secret warfare, of which only a bare minimum of the security forces need be appraised... Techniques of weather modification could be employed to produce prolonged periods of drought or storm. " Zbigniew Brzezinski had foreseen this in his book "Between Two Ages"

The High-Frequency Active Aural Research Program (HAARP) based in Gokoma Alaska-jointly managed by the US Air Force and the US Navy-is part of a new generation of sophisticated weaponry under the US Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI). Operated by the Air Force Research Laboratory's Space Vehicles Directorate, HAARP constitutes a system of powerful antennas capable of creating "controlled local modifications of the ionosphere". Scientist Dr. Nicholas Begich-actively involved in the public campaign against HAARP-describes HAARP as: "A super-powerful radiowave-beaming technology that lifts areas of the ionosphere (upper layer of the atmosphere) by focusing a beam and heating those areas. Electromagnetic waves then bounce back onto earth and penetrate everything-living and dead." Dr. Rosalie Bertell depicts HAARP as "a gigantic heater that can cause major disruption in the ionosphere, creating not just holes, but long incisions in the protective layer that keeps deadly radiation from bombarding the planet." It would be rash not to associate HAARP with the space laboratory construction which is separately being planned by the United States. HAARP is an integral part of a long history of space research and development of a deliberate military nature. The military implications of combining these projects is alarming. The ability of the HAARP / Spacelab/ rocket combination to deliver very large amount of energy, comparable to a nuclear bomb, anywhere on earth via laser and particle beams, are frightening. The project is likely to be "sold" to the public as a space shield against incoming weapons, or, for the more gullible, a device for repairing the ozone layer. In addition to weather manipulation, HAARP has a number of related uses: "HAARP could contribute to climate change by intensively bombarding the atmosphere with high-frequency rays. Returning low-frequency waves at high intensity could also affect people's brains, and effects on tectonic movements cannot be ruled out. More generally, HAARP has the ability of modifying the World's electro-magnetic field. It is part of an arsenal of "electronic weapons" which US military researchers consider a "gentler and kinder warfare". HAARP is part of the weapons arsenal of the New World Order under the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI). From military command points in the US, entire national economies could potentially be destabilized through climatic manipulations. More importantly, the latter can be implemented without the knowledge of the enemy, at minimal cost and without engaging military personnel and equipment as in a conventional war.
In February 1998, responding to a report of Mrs. Maj. Britt Theorin-Swedish MEP and longtime peace advocate--, the European Parliament's Committee on Foreign Affairs, Security and Defense Policy held public hearings in Brussels on the HAARP program. The Committee's "Motion for Resolution" submitted to the European Parliament: "Considers HAARP by virtue of its far-reaching impact on the environment to be a global concern and calls for its legal, ecological and ethical implications to be examined by an international independent body". The Committee's request to draw up a "Green Paper" on "the environmental impacts of military activities", however, was casually dismissed on the grounds that the European Commission lacks the required jurisdiction to delve into "the links between environment and defense".

"States have, in accordance with the Charter of the United Nations and the principles of international law, the responsibility to ensure that activities within their jurisdiction or control do not cause damage to the environment of other States or of areas beyond the limits of national jurisdiction." According to the Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) signed at the 1992 Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro.

While there is no concrete evidence of HAARP having been used, scientific findings suggest that it is at present fully operational. What this means is that HAARP could potentially be applied by the US military to selectively modify the climate of an "unfriendly nation" or "rogue state" with a view to destabilizing its national economy.

Is it HAARP?

Before the Niigata earthquake, just as before the China and Chile quakes, strange aurora-like lights were seen in the sky, lights that HAARP experts have confirmed are caused by electromagnetic disturbance coming down from the ionosphere. Were Haiti and Chile test run demonstrations for others? Following a week of electromagnetic silence, HAARP was turned on at approximately 0:00 hours 9 March, 2011 UTC and has been going strong since. HAARP or not, the Japanese economy has now been effectively destroyed and "Mother Nature" is to blame. Then, on May 19 2011 during the NATO operation "Libyan freedom and flowers for all" or whatever, an 8,4 magnitude earthquake hits Libya and you won't find it in the NEWS. (?!?) Two different European earthquake monitoring sites reported an 8.4 earthquake deep inside the Libyan desert about 30 miles southeast of Sinawin on May 19. The epicenter was approximately 120 miles south of the Mediterranean coast and roughly 200 miles southwest of Tripoli. Oddly, this earthquake was censored later. It was on all the sites, now it's all gone, didn't see anything on the news, no media coverage at all. Why? We've seen nothing yet...

Project Bluebeam

2011-04-18T09:51:00.028-10:00

Basically, Project Bluebeam is designed to usher in the New World Order with a one world government, one world army, one world religion, a cashless society and micro-chipped populations controlled by a central computer. "The elite" of the world would not be subject to this fascist control system but would run it and enjoy its spoils. The collective plan is to create a gigantic space light show with accompanying electronically driven wave patterns. 3D optical holograms and sounds, laser projections of multiple holographic images. This show would make people believe God is talking to them. When the project is activated, a "Messiah" will appear in every country, representing that country's biggest religion. All religions will melt into one (the new world order religion). World's greatest hoax. Wernher von Braun warned of such a hoax, as a pretext for putting war in space. As Wernher von Braun related to Dr. Carol Rosin, his spokesperson for the last 4 years of his life, a maniacal machine - the military, industrial, intelligence, laboratory complex - would go from Cold War, to Rogue Nations, to Global Terrorism, to the ultimate last card: A hoaxed threat from space. At first that threat would be from asteroids, later from extraterrestrial attack. Something must be created to terrify the people and the media is then used as the perfect tool to brodcast the official version to them. This is using the "Problem-Reaction-Solution" formula, as David Icke would call it. Create the fake alien invasion, wait for the public to be scared and then offer the answer - a one world government and army. When the media has announced in mainstream news that the planet is being attacked by hostile aliens the solution will be martial law declared and the introduction of a one world government and army to fight this threat to humanity. The idea was actually once voiced by the late President Reagan when he spoke about a cause needed to unite the world and suggested that that threat might come from outer space. Did Reagan know all about Bluebeam? In the case of Project Bluebeam there are more than one theorised plan that may be put into operation. One of these is to stage an elaborate worldwide faked alien invasion with UFOs that will be seen in the sky. The other one is to create religious prophecied scenarios taking place like "fake second coming". An innovative technique for generating 3D holographic display using strontium barium niobate (SBN) exists today. Chemitrails, LRADs (Long Range Acoustic Device being used these days in Iraq: "devilish American weapon that makes people believe they are hearing voices in their head") and 3D holograms in the sky will play their role in fake second coming of Messiah...

PROJECT BLUE BEAM

By Serge Monast

Originally Published 1994 /short version

[Note: Serge Monast [1945 - December 5, 1996] and another journalist, both of whom were researching Project Blue Beam, died of "heart attacks" within weeks of each other although neither had a history of heart disease. Serge was in Canada. The other Canadian journalist was visiting Ireland. Prior to his death, the Canadian government abducted Serge's daughter in an attempt to dissuade him from pursuing his research into Project Blue Beam. His daughter was never returned. Pseudo-heart attacks are one of the alleged methods of death induced by Project Blue Beam.]

The infamous NASA [National Aeronautics and Space Administration] Blue Beam Project has four different steps in order to implement the new age religion with the Antichrist at its head. We must remember that the new age religion is the very foundation for the new world government, without which religion the dictatorship of the new world order is completely impossible.

Engineered Earthquakes & Hoaxed 'Discoveries'. The first step in the NASA Blue Beam Project concerns the breakdown [re-evaluation] of all archaeological knowledge. It deals with the set-up, with artificially created earthquakes at certain precise locations on the planet, of supposedly new discoveries which will finally explain to all people the "error" of all fundamental religious doctrines. The falsification of this information will be used to make all nations believe that their religious doctrines have been misunderstood for centuries and misinterpreted.

The Big Space Show in the Sky. The second step in the NASA Blue Beam Project involves a gigantic 'space show' with three-dimensional optical holograms and sounds, laser projection of multiple holographic images to different parts of the world, each receiving a different image according to predominating regional national religious faith. This new 'god's' voice will be speaking in all languages. The space show, the holographic images will be used in a simulation of the ending during which all nations will be shown scenes that will be the fulfillment of that which they desire to verify the prophecies and adversary events. These will be projected from satellites onto the sodium layer about 60 miles above the earth. The project has perfected the ability for some device [referred to as "tractor beams" by ufologists].to lift up an enormous number of people, as in a Rapture, and whisk the entire group into a never-never land. We see tests of this device in the abduction of humans by those mysterious little alien greys who snatch people out of their beds and through windows into waiting "mother ships." The calculated resistance to the universal religion and the new messiah and the ensuing holy wars will result in the loss of human life on a scale never imagined before in all of human history. In addition, this event will occur at a time of profound worldwide political anarchy and general tumult created by some worldwide catastrophe.

Artificial Thought & Communication. The advancement of techniques propel us toward the third step in the Blue Beam Project that goes along with the telepathic and electronically augmented two-way communication where ELF, VLF and LF waves will reach each person from within his or her own mind, convincing each of them that their own god is speaking to them from the very depths of their own soul. Government agencies and the corporations that work with them toward a new world order are prepared to promote anything that will help them achieve their objective of total social control. As for the question of why: For one thing, if you terrify the public and make them fear for their safety, they will allow you to implement draconian law enforcement practice, disarm them and keep extensive records on them, and they only have to tell you that it is all to protect you, of course. Secondly, it promotes the decay of the present democratic forms of political systems, and leads societies to search for alternative methods of political ideology. Of course, the alternative has already been planned. No one should now be allowed to have their own individual personality. Anyone with 'antisocial' behavior will be disposed of quickly so that other modified individuals will be able to fulfill the needs and agendas of the new world order without being distracted by the truth. Mind-control operations and technology include a transmitter that broadcasts at the same frequency as the human nervous-system, which transmitter is manufactured by the Loral Electro-Optical System in Pasadena, California. Loral, a major defense contractor, has previously conducted research on directed energy weapons for Lt. Gen. Leonard Perez of the U. S. Air Force who was searching for a weapon that could implant messages into the minds of the enemy while urging his own troops on to superhuman deeds of valor! The device employs electromagnetic radiation of gigahertz frequencies [microwaves] pulsed at extremely low frequencies (ELF). It is used to torture people both physically and mentally from a distance. The process employed by such ELF technology are described in various U. S. Defense Department publications, including one entitled, ' The Electromagnetic Spectrum and Low Intensity Conflict,' by Captain Paul E. Tyler, Medical Commandant, U. S. Navy, which is included in a collection entitled, 'Low Intensity Conflict and Modern Technology Edict,' by Lt. Col David G. Dean, USAF. The paper was delivered in 1984 and the collection published 1986 by Air University Press, Maxwell Airforce Base, Alabama. A 1978 book entitled, 'Microwave Auditory Effect and Application,' by James C. Lynn describes how audible voices can be broadcast directly into the brain. This technology could actually allow the blind to see and the deaf to hear. Instead, it has been turned into a weapon to enslave the world. Allen Frie also reports that he could speed up, slow down or stop the hearts of isolated frogs by synchronizing the pulsed rate of a microwave beam with the heart itself. According to Dr. Robert Becker, similar results have been obtained using live frogs, which shows that it is technically feasible to produce heart attacks with rays designed to penetrate the human chest. Now figure out when we hear that voice from the new world messiah who would be speaking from space to all of the sane people of the earth who might give instructions to zealots and religious fanatics, we would see hysteria and social mayhem on a scale never witnessed before on this planet.

Universal Supernatural Manifestations via Electronics. The fourth step concerns the universal supernatural manifestation with electronic means. It contains three different orientations. One is to make mankind believe that an alien (off-world) invasion is about to occur at every major city on earth in order to provoke each major nation to use its nuclear weapons in order to strike back. This way, the United Nations Court will require that all those nations which launched nuclear weapons to disarm when the invasion is shown to have been false. The second is to make the Christians believe that the Rapture is going to occur with the supposed divine intervention of an alien (off-world) civilization coming to rescue earthlings from a savage and merciless demon. Its goal will be to dispose of all significant opposition to the implementation of the New World Order in one major stroke, actually within hours of the beginning of the sky show! The third orientation in the fourth step is a mixture of electronic and supernatural forces. The waves used at that time will allow "supernatural forces" to travel through optical fibers, coaxial cables (TV) electrical and phone lines in order to penetrate to everyone at once through major appliances. Embedded chips will already be in place. The goal of this deals with global Satanic ghosts projected all around the world in order to push all populations to the edge of hysteria and madness, to drown them into a wave of suicide, murder and permanent psychological disorders. After the Night of the Thousand Stars, worldwide populations will be ready for the new messiah to re-establish order and peace at any cost, even at the cost of abdication of freedom.

A lot of people ask when this is going to happen and how they will accomplish the visions of the Night of a Thousand Stars, and the events that will point to the days when it will begin. According to the many reports we have received, we believe it will begin with some kind of worldwide economic disaster. Not a complete crash, but enough to allow them to introduce some kind of in-between currency before they introduce their electronic cash to replace all paper or plastic money. The in-between currency will be used to force anyone with savings to spend or turn in their cash because they understand that people who have money and are not dependent upon them might be the very ones who will mount an insurrection against them. If everyone is broke, no one can fund a war of any kind: paper currency will cease to exist. This is one of the first signs. The goal of a dictatorship is to control everyone, everywhere on the planet, ruthlessly and without exception. That's why the new technology being introduced everywhere is a technology for the control of the people.

/source/

video

Great East Japan Earthquake Disaster 2011

2011-04-14T10:39:00.024-10:00

Higashi Nihon Daishinsai

Friday, 11 March 2011

The earthquake came first, but it was not like all of the other earthquakes they had known. The ground shook so violently, for so long that afternoon on March 11, 2011, the earth liquefying in many places. The destruction of the magnitude 9.0 earthquake was unimaginable, but the wall of water was next...

9.0 magnitude undersea megathrust earthquake triggered extremely destructive tsunami waves of up to 37.9 meters (124 ft) that struck Japan minutes after the quake, in some cases traveling up to 10 km (6 mi) inland. The quake has moved portions of northeast Japan by as much as 2.4 m (7.9 ft) closer to North America and shifted the Earth's axis by 25 cm (9.8 in). This deviation led to a number of small planetary changes, including the length of a day and the tilt of the Earth. The speed of the Earth's rotation increased, shortening the day by 1.8 microseconds due to the redistribution of Earth's mass. The degree and extent of damage caused by the earthquake and resulting tsunami were enormous, with most of the damage being caused by the tsunami. 13,498 deaths has been confirmed, 4,916 injured and 14,734 people missing. 45,700 buildings were destroyed, earthquake and tsunami created an estimated 25 million tons of rubble and debris in Japan... But it wasn't over, yet.

Nuclear disaster

Japan declared a state of emergency following the failure of the cooling system at the Fukushima I Nuclear Power Plant, resulting in the evacuation of nearby residents. Officials from the Japanese Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency reported that radiation levels inside the plant were up to 1,000 times normal levels. It was reported that radioactive iodine was detected in the tap water in Fukushima, Tochigi, Gunma, Tokyo, Chiba, Saitama, and Niigata, and radioactive cesium in the tap water in Fukushima, Tochigi and Gunma. Radioactive cesium, iodine, and strontium were also detected in the soil in some places in Fukushima. Food products were also found contaminated by radioactive matter in several places in Japan. On April 5, 2011, the government of the Ibaraki Prefecture banned the fishing of the sand lance after discovering that this species was contaminated by radioactive cesium above legal limits. Some 45 per cent of 1,080 children under 15 from the Japanese Fukushima Prefecture have tested positive for thyroid exposure to radiation, a nuclear watchdog report says. Earlier, a Japanese civic group and Acro, a French body that measures radioactivity, reported that they had tested ten residents of Fukushima City aged between six and 16. All of them had trace amounts of radioactive substances in their urine. Thousands of Japanese recently took to the streets of Tokyo to protest against nuclear energy. In a culture that is generally non-confrontational and obedient, it is a serious sign of discontent. Some believe it is too early to tell what the real dangers of this situation are. Scientists know that large doses of radiation given in one blast is a significant health threat, but they say there is not enough information about long-term exposure to lower doses of radiation and the types of damage it can do. Now in the wake of an international crisis, there are allegations that the government and the power companies have worked out a deal to help each other, and that the media has been bought off.

“The first thing the government should do is let the citizens know the real cost of nuclear energy. Until now the priority has been to profit from energy. The PR machine of the government has been emphasizing the benefit of nuclear energy and the citizens have been brainwashed to believe in it,” ecological economist Yoshihiko Wada said.

For months the Japanese government has attempted to bury its head in the sand and try to ignore the severe levels of radiation being emitted into the air and sea. The Japanese government have attempted to ignore how serious the meltdowns have been, but the thruth is that Fukushima is the biggest industrial catastrophe in the history of mankind. There are twenty nuclear cores exposed with the potential to release twenty times the radiation of the Chernobyl disaster. Fukushima is going to dwarf Chernobyl. Chernobyl was different — a critical reactor exploded and stopped the reaction. At Fukushima, the reactor cores are still melting down. The Japanese government has had a level 7 nuclear disaster going for almost a week but won’t admit it. What Fukushima's triple meltdown means? Here is the information they don't want you to know. The highest levels of radiation were released into the atmosphere in the early days, when at least two and possibly three hydrogen explosions, the result of the building up of heat and steam inside the cores, occurred in the reactor buildings, releasing radioactive material into the atmosphere. When the nuclear plant entered its state of emergency, the fuel rods inside these reactors began to melt from their upright position and slump down to the bottom of their containers, or pressure vessels, which are designed to keep them sealed up and isolated. That's a problem because the nuclear fuel in a state of meltdown can, in the worst-case scenario, burn through its container and the plant infrastructure to leak into the ground around the facility. Fukushima is not far off the water table. When that molten mass of self-sustaining nuclear material gets to the water table it won’t simply cool down, it will explode. The Japanese are still talking about days or weeks to clean this up. That’s not true. They cannot clean it up. And no one will live in that area again for dozens or maybe hundreds of years.

The history of nuclear energy goes back more than half of a century, to when the first experimental reactors were built in the 1950s. The technology of nuclear energy production is still new. There were "several bumps" in its development, including the Chernobyl disaster in Ukraine in 1986 and this year’s accident at Fukushima Daiichi in Japan.

50 heroes of Fukushima

Over 20 workers had been injured by 18 March, including one who was exposed to a large amount of radiation when the worker tried to vent vapour from a valve of the containment building. 3 more workers were exposed to radiation over 100 mSv, and 2 of them were sent to a hospital due to beta burns on 24 March. Two other workers, Kazuhiko Kokubo, 24, and Yoshiki Terashima, 21, were killed by the tsunami while conducting emergency repairs immediately after the quake. Their bodies were found on March 30. Fukushima 50 is the alias given by the media to a group of employees of the Fukushima I Nuclear Power Plant who stayed after TEPCO management proposed withdrawing all its employees from the plant on 14 March... The following night hundreds joined the original Fukushima 50. The workers and volunteers were assigned the mission of stabilizing the reactors. Their activities included assessing the damage and radiation levels caused by the explosions, cooling stricken reactors with seawater and preventing any risk of fire. These workers remained on-site despite risks of radiation poisoning. The Fukushima 50 were present when an explosion and fire occurred at the Unit 4 reactor.

Amid destroyed homes and rotting debris, survivors of Japan's earthquake and tsunami are stoically trying to keep their lives together, while fresh health fears surface over radiation. Victims still queue for basic necessities, nearly four months after the disaster struck.

“I want to tell people we need more help, more supplies and things are still bad here,” says a volunteer worker from Tokyo.

satellite photos before and after

globalgiving - japan earthquake relief fund

japan society relief fund

countdown to megaquake

ODYSSEY DAWN

2011-03-25T00:08:00.063-10:00

"It will be over in 48 hours"

Just how many times did we hear that? Some people like to look into the name of the mission, Operation Odyssey Dawn, though those in charge of naming it say it was totally random. “There’s a group of planning officers led by a Lieutenant Colonel that in the early days of planning and looked at a list and decided to call it Odyssey basically because they liked the word odyssey,” said Eric Elliot, with US Africa Command. Still, some continue to find the title concerning. “It’s sort of an odd combination,” said Hayes Roth, Chief Marketing Officer for Landor Worldwide. “Odyssey implies that we’re on a long journey and dawn means we’re at the beginning of that long journey so in English, that’s a little worrisome.” And it’s not just the dictionary definition to be concerned about. Think about Homer’s epic, poem The Odyssey. In some ways, it’s a story about people wandering around the Mediterranean for ten years unable to find their way. The reports of Libya mobilizing its air force against its own people spread quickly around the world. However, Russia's military chiefs say they have been monitoring from space and the pictures tell a different story. According to Al Jazeera and BBC, on February 22 Libyan government inflicted airstrikes on Benghazi, the country's largest city and on the capital Tripoli. However, the Russian military, monitoring the unrest via satellite from the very beginning, says nothing of the sort was going on on the ground. At this point, the Russian military is saying that, as far as they are concerned, the attacks some media were reporting have never occurred. American officials said the military intervention has cost the Pentagon an extra $550 million so far, with bombs and missiles accounting for most. There are no official figures for the UK share of the cost, but at least £25 million will have been spent by British forces, most accounted for by weapons. The rebel forces trying to topple Gaddafi admittedly include more than 1,000 Al-Qaeda soldiers while enjoying total backing– weapons, planes, funding and forces– from the U.S., Britain, NATO and other allies. The CIA and British SAS forces that are now "officially" entering Libya as ground support were covertly operating at least a month ago. There are absolutely no "pro-democracy" fighters in Libya, especially in the East. Majority of the rebel forces are hard core Al-Qaeda, Darna is like world capital of terrorism, others are monarchists and islamic fundamentalists. If there was any doubt in the past that Al-Qaeda is CIA's secret army, today there is none. That's a fact. People trying to lead these unleashed gangs of mujahedeens are in fact former US POWs straight from Guantanamo. One key Libyan rebel leader (Khalifa Hifter) spent the last 20 years: inside the U.S., living just minutes away from Langley, Virginia, also known as home base to the CIA. It is insane. Do people in U.S. know this? No, they are brainwashed zombies. Mainstream propaganda does its job well. Another "bombs for peace" campaign, rrright..."Bombs for peace", that's like fucking for virginity. Just how legal is this war? Lord Ashdown, the former high representative for Bosnia and Herzegovina, said the coalition forces led by Britain, France and the US were facing "a moment of danger" over the legality of their actions. He said "continued support for this looks as though it is leading to support for regime change, which legally is beyond the [United Nations] security council resolution". Legal experts said the international coalition may have overstepped what was agreed by the UN resolution sanctioning military action to "take all necessary measures ... to protect civilians and civilian populated areas under threat of attack". Concern grew as Sergei Lavrov, Russia's foreign minister, said he believed the military action was now in breach of international law. "We consider that intervention by the coalition in what is essentially an internal civil war is not sanctioned by the UN security council resolution," he said. Russia abstained from the vote which resulted in resolution 1973. President Obama has told Congress, "U.S. military forces commenced operations" in Libya. Article I, section 8 of the United States Constitution states that "Congress shall have the power ... to declare war..." Since Congress has not declared war on Libya, is American involvement in the Libyan war unconstitutional? Some members of Congress think so. Presidential candidate Barack Obama agreed in 2007: "the President does not have power under the Constitution to unilaterally authorize a military attack in a situation that does not involve stopping an actual or imminent threat to the nation." Whatever else may be true about them, the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003 and the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan in 2001 were authorized by Congress. In the case of the Iraq war, there was a vigorous Congressional and public debate before the war took place. In this particular case, the decision of the Obama Administration to engage the country in a new Middle East war without Congressional authorization represents a long-term threat to the U.S. peace movement, because the U.S. peace movement is engaged in a long struggle to try to influence U.S. policy in the direction of less war, and Congress is a key arena in which the peace movement tries to assert influence over U.S. policy. And the precedent that has been set here, especially if Congress does not take affirmative action to reassert its war powers, is extremely dangerous. If President Obama can engage the country in a war in Libya with a "recess bombing" which has not been authorized by Congress, what's to stop a future President from doing the same thing in, let's say Iran?

The Libyan no-fly zone was established long ago; the focus is now on attacking Gaddafi's ground forces, enabling rebel advancements, and regime change. Libyan tanks, artillery and armoured vehicles do not fly. A mission that initially seemed to revolve around establishing a no-fly zone has become focused on halting advances by government ground forces in and around key coastal cities. Then there's the question of the legality of arming rebel troops. That would be a violation of the U.N. Resolution 1970 ("imposing an arms embargo on the country") and a breach of international law. More to the point, can it really be said that arming Libyan rebels is necessary for the protection of civilians? That sounds much more like what one does to help one side win a civil war. Arming the Libyan rebels will lay the foundation for new war 10 years from now. Maybe US are counting on that? The Turkish prime minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, accused France of seeing Libya as a source of 'oil, gold mines and underground treasures'. Using incendiary language directed at France in a speech in Istanbul, Erdogan said: "I wish that those who only see oil, gold mines and underground treasures when they look in Libya's direction, would see the region through glasses of conscience from now on." President Gül reinforced the Turkish view that France and others were being driven primarily by economic interests. "The aim [of the air campaign] is not the liberation of the Libyan people," he said. "There are hidden agendas and different interests." Earlier this week, Claude Guéant, the French interior minister who was previously Sarkozy's chief adviser, outraged the Muslim world by stating that the French president was "leading a crusade" to stop Gaddafi massacring Libyans. Gaddafi's son has claimed that Libya helped finance Nicolas Sarkozy's successful election campaign in 2007. Asked what he felt about the French president's so far unsuccessful efforts to muster support for military intervention, Saif said: "Sarkozy must first give back the money he took from Libya to finance his electoral campaign. We funded it. We have all the details and are ready to reveal everything. The first thing we want this clown to do is to give the money back to the Libyan people. He was given the assistance so he could help them, but he has disappointed us. Give us back our money." On August 30, 2008, Gaddafi and Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi signed a historic cooperation treaty in Benghazi. Under its terms, Italy would pay $5 billion to Libya as compensation for its former military occupation. Never happened. In exchange, Libya would take measures to combat illegal imigration coming from its shores and boost investments in Italian companies. Libya supplies almost a quarter of Italy’s oil, and Italy is the world’s largest importer of Libyan crude. Libya also owns 7.5 per cent of the Italian bank UniCredit and has investments in Fiat, the defense conglomerate Finmeccanica, the energy company ENI, the soccer team Juventus and a variety of other Italian businesses. Who is bombing Libya? Gaddafi's debtors united in a "coallition of the willing". This financial backing helped Italy stave off the most damaging effects of the global recession that started in 2008. It is interesting to note that in response to international pressure, Italy has only frozen some Libyan assets, but none belonging to the country’s central bank or the Libyan Investment Authority. However, Italy’s hardly the only cash-strapped European nation to forge significant economic ties with the Gaddafi regime. In 2009, the European Union’s two-way trading with Libya amounted to more than $37 billion, with Germany, France and Spain among its leading partners. Naturally, the bulk of this was petroleum because Libya supplies more than 10 per cent of Europe’s oil. For a sense of just how much that is, consider that the United States of America, which had just $2.6 billion in two-way trade with Libya in 2009 and imports virtually no petroleum from the country, gets roughly 10 per cent of its oil from Saudi Arabia. That’s what Europe is losing as Libya burns. Donald Trump, whose flirtations with a presidential bid continue, says he has special experience dealing with Libyan leader Moammer Gaddafi. Trump, who has said he will decide on a presidential bid by June this year, said he is particularly happy with the fact he "screwed" Gaddafi on a past real estate deal. "I rented him a piece of land. He paid me more for one night than the land was worth for two years, and then I didn't let him use the land," Trump boasted. "That's what we should be doing. I don't want to use the word 'screwed', but I screwed him." Good job, Mr Trump, put it in your CV. No Gaddafi, no debt... and maybe oil for free. The Gaddafi's family has a reputation for lavish parties attended by stars. Beyonce and Mariah Carey have performed in elaborate New Year’s Eve parties in the Carribean thrown by Gaddafi’s son, Mutassim, while 50 Cent performed in a private concert during the 2005 Venice Film festival. For each performance, the alleged fee is $2 million per-performer. Stars also get paid to simply attend parties. Following the brutal domestic conflict in Libya, stars who have performed for the Gaddafi family, have been expressing their "regret" by donating the money they gained from Gadaffi’s family to charity. Among the stars who have donated their money are Nelly Furtado, Beyonce, Mariah Carey and Usher. The latest star who followed their lead is rapper 50 Cent, who announced that he will donate to Unicef. The London School of Economics (LSE) says it will set up fund to support North African students with money donated by son of Libyan leader. In 2009, the university accepted £1.5 million from the International Charity and Development Foundation, which is chaired by the younger Gaddafi, who owns a $16 million mansion in London’s fashionable Hampstead Garden neighbourhood. The London School of Economics, which has come under heavy criticism for accepting a donation from a Gadaffi charity, is looking into accusations that Moammar Gaddafi’s second-oldest son and presumed political heir, 38-year-old Saif Islam, plagiarised parts of his doctoral thesis at LSE. His abandoned London home has been occupied by anti-Gaddafi protesters from throughout Britain. The cold reality is that with Libya descending into chaos, Europe is losing a major partner just when its key economies are struggling to regain their footing. Britain has recently emerged as a major target for Libyan investments. Libya has spent hundreds of millions of dollars on prime London commercial real estate and last year, a senior executive with the Libyan Investment Authority announced that the fund had earmarked $8 billion exclusively for Britain. So what were they thinking?

Life under "Gaddafi's dictatorship"

Just how bad was it? In the early 1980s, Libya was one of the wealthiest countries in the world; its GDP per capita was higher than that of developed countries such as Italy, Singapore, South Korea, Spain and New Zealand. The Libyan economy depends primarily upon revenues from the oil sector. Compared to its neighbors, Libya enjoys a low level of both absolute and relative poerty. Libyan officials in the past six years have carried out economic reforms as part of a broader campaign to reintegrate the country into the global capitalist economy. This effort picked up steam after UN sanctions were lifted in September 2003, and as Libya announced in December 2003 that it would abandon programmes to build weapons of mass destruction. Authorities have privatised more than 100 government owned companies since 2003 in industries including oil refining, tourism and real estate, of which 29 are 100% foreign owned. High oil revenues and a small population have allowed the Libyan state to provide an extensive level of social security, particularly in the fields of housing and education. Libyan social security legislation of 1973 ranked among the most comprehensive in the world and it protected all citizens from many hazards associated with employment. Workers employed by foreign firms were entitled to the same social security benefits as workers employed by Libyan citizens. Subsidized food, inexpensive housing, free medical care and education, and profit-sharing were among the benefits that eased the lives of all citizens. The government protected the employed in their jobs and subsidized the underemployed and unemployed. In addition, there were nurseries to care for the children of working mothers, orphanages for homeless children, and homes for the aged. I could live under such dictator. Before Odyssey Dawn, Libya was undergoing a business boom. Many government-run industries were being privatised. Many international oil companies have returned to the country, including oil giants Shell and Exxon Mobil. Tourism was on the rise. The United States removed Gaddafi's regime, after 27 years, from its list of states sponsoring terrorism. (Gaddafi decided to pay almost $3 billion in compensation to the families of Pan Am Flight 103 and UTA Flight 772.).

BROTHERS IN ARMS: NATO & Al-Qaeda

2011-03-22T02:32:00.033-10:00

(photo above)Osama Bin Laden and Zbigniew Brzezinski:

President Jimmy Carter's National Security Advisor, Zbigniew Brzezinski visiting 'his boy', Osama Bin Laden, in training with the Pakistan Army, 1981.Photo originally scanned from the New York Village Voice. Photo credited to the Sygma/Corbis Agency, Paris.

Osama Bin Laden CIA agent

In mid-1979, about the same time as the Soviet Union deployed troops into Afghanistan, the United States began giving several hundred million dollars a year in aid to the Afghan Mujahideen insurgents. The most famous of the Afghan Arabs was Bin Laden. As the war neared its end, bin Laden organized Al-Qeada. Bin Laden received security training from the CIA itself. It is difficult to believe that the United States played no role in the operations of the son of one of the wealthiest men in Saudi Arabia. Indeed, it is much more likely that the United States knew full-well of bin Laden's operation and gave it all the support they could. An article in Der Spiegel, in 2007, entitled "Arming the Middle East", Siegesmund von Ilsemann called Bin Laden "one of the CIA's best weapons customers."

"Death" of Osama bin Laden

Now, at the top of FBI's most wanted list, bin Laden was allegedly killed on May 2, 2011 in Bilal Town, Abbottabad, Pakistan in a raid by U.S. special operations forces. Pakistani officials denied harboring or supporting bin Laden, saying that they had no knowledge that he was there. The official mission code name was Operation Neptune Spear, with Jackpot as the code name for bin Laden as an individual and Geronimo as the code word for bin Laden's capture or death. (Geronimo was the Native American leader of the Chiricahua Apache who defied the U.S. government and eluded capture.) After the raid, U.S. forces took bin Laden's body to Afghanistan for identification, then dumped it somewhere at sea within 24 hours of his death. Al Qaeda confirmed the death on May 6 with posts made on jihadist websites, vowing to avenge the killing. There is an outcry from some groups for the photo evidence of the death. White House said the photograph of a dead Osama bin Laden is "gruesome" and that "it could be inflammatory" if released. The only released image so far, apparently showing a dead Osama bin Laden broadcast on Pakistani television and picked up by British newspaper websites is a fake. The bloodied image of a man with matted hair and a blank, half-opened eye has been circulating on the internet for the past two years. It was used on the front pages of the Mail, Times, Telegraph, Sun and Mirror websites, though swiftly removed after the fake was exposed on Twitter. Obama has shown irritation that the focus is more on the photo than the fact that Osama was killed. The statements released state that the Osama is in fact dead, and was proven with DNA evidence (The White House claims there was a DNA match between the body and tissue taken from bin Laden’s dead sister’s brain). In a propaganda piece reeking of US Triumphalism, two alleged journalists, Adam Goldman and Chris Brummitt, of the Associated Press or, rather, of the White House Ministry of Truth, write, or copy off a White House or CIA press release that “Osama bin Laden, the terror mastermind killed by Navy SEALs in an intense firefight, was hunted down based on information first gleaned years ago (emphasis added) from detainees at secret CIA prison sites in Eastern Europe. How many Americans will notice that the first paragraph of the “report” justifies CIA prisons and torture? Without secret prisons and torture “the terror mastermind” would still be running free, despite having died from renal failure in 2001. Americans are too busy celebrating to think, a capability that seems to have been taken out of their education.

Yes, Osama bin Laden is dead... He's been dead for almost ten years. Osama bin Laden has died a peaceful death due to an untreated lung complication, the Pakistan Observer reported (Dec 2001), citing a Taliban leader who allegedly attended the funeral of the Al Qaeda leader. Bin Laden, according to the source, was suffering from a serious lung complication and succumbed to the disease in mid-December 2001, in the vicinity of the Tora Bora mountains. Another source, a former CIA agent, currently living in Turkey , Berkan Yashar, himself an ethnic Chechen, told the Russian TV station, Channel One. “Samy, Ayub and Mahmud (Bin Laden's Chechen bodyguards) were with him right to the end. I remember well this date as there were three sixes in it – June 26, 2006. Those three men, as well as two Muslims from London and two from the US saw Bin Laden dead.He was seriously ill before his death. He faded away to skin and bone. The three Chechens washed his body before burying it.”

Yashar also said that on the eve of May 2, when President Obama announced that Bin Laden had been killed, the Americans found only Bin Laden’s grave near the Afghan-Pakistani border and staged an operation. According to Yashar, US special forces started hunting Bin Laden’s Chechen guards after Bin Laden’s death was first announced at a conference in Washington in November 2008. The last of them, Samy, was taken by the American special forces a few days before Bin Laden was officially pronounced dead. Berkan Yashar believes Samy could have told them the exact place of burial.

Allegedly, the “most wanted criminal” was not moving from hide-out to hide-out in desolate mountains, but ensconced in luxury quarters in broad daylight. Nevertheless, despite his obvious location, it took the CIA years to find him after claiming to have gained information of his whereabouts out of captives in secret prisons. So the claimed murder of bin Laden by the US in a sovereign foreign country with which the US is not at war, a crime under international law, has set up three more self-serving possibilities: Terrorists will avenge bin Laden’s death, says the CIA, setting up another false flag attack to keep the profits flowing into the military/security complex and the power flowing into the unaccountable CIA. Homeland Security can extend the domestic police state, abuse of travelers, and arrests of war protestors. And Pakistan is under the gun of invasion and takeover (for India, of course) for shielding bin Laden. As the alleged body has been dumped into the ocean, nothing remains but the word of the US government, which lied about Iraqi weapons of mass destruction and Al Qaeda connections, about Iranian nukes, and, according to thousands of experts, about 9/11. Suddenly the government is telling us the truth about bin Laden’s death? Obama needs closure of the Afghan war and occupation in order to deal with the US budget deficit. Subsequent statements from Obama regime officials suggest that the agenda might be to give Americans a piece of war victory in order to boost their lagging enthusiasm. Obama needs some "good news" after terrible failure in Libya. Dead or alive, it doesn't matter, Al-Qaeda lives on. There was no Al-Qeada in Iraq, Bosnia or Kosovo before NATO humanitarian operations.

LIBYA: Al-Qaeda and West on the same side

British MI6 and the CIA paid Osama bin Laden and Al-Qaeda $100,000 dollars to assassinate Gaddafi in 1996 (source). Indeed, it was Gaddafi’s Libya who put out the first Interpol warrant for Bin Laden’s arrest in 1998. Western intelligence agencies blocked the warrant from being pursued, and allowed Bin Laden and Al-Qaeda to go on and kill more than 200 people in the truck bombings of US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania Statements of support for Libya's revolution this year by Al-Qaeda and leading Islamists have led to fears that military action by the West might be playing into the hands of its ideological enemies. Some of the very rebels now being funded and trained by western forces were part of the Al-Qaeda cell that tried to kill Gaddafi on behalf of the United States and Britain 15 years ago. WikiLeaks cables, independent analysts and reporters have all identified supporters of Islamist causes among the opposition to Col Gaddafi's regime, particularly in the towns of Benghazi and Dernah. Col Gaddafi has pinpointed the rebels in Dernah as being led by an Al-Qaeda cell that has declared the town an Islamic emirate. The regime also casts blame on hundreds of members of the Libyan Islamist Fighting Group released since the group renounced violence two years ago. The man running Dernah's defences, Abdelkarim al-Hasadi, was arrested by US forces in Afghanistan in 2002. Achieving new heights of hypocrisy, the U.S government is hyping the threat of Libyan-backed reprisal terror attacks inside the United States, while launching air strikes in support of so-called “protesters” who have commandeered fighter jets and tanks, and are in fact Islamic fundamentalist Al-Qaeda cells who want to impose sharia law in Libya. The UN-backed air strikes have absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with protecting the human rights of “protesters”. This is about giving war a new facelift, leaving the new world order free to pillage any country they like in the name of “humanitarian” assistance. United States, which kills scores of innocent people every week with predator drone strikes, has now suddenly developed a conscience for human suffering. The whole farce mirrors Bill Clinton’s bombing campaigns in Bosnia and Serbia, which were also about helping Bin Laden and Al-Qaeda to topple autocratic but relatively moderate regimes, and were also military conquests packaged in the cloak of “humanitarian” deception by the global establishment media. (wanna know more?)

Support for Muammar al Gaddafi from the people of Serbia

2011-03-20T07:26:00.007-10:00

Facebook page

that hit over 22,000.00 fans in just two days (over 66,000.00 on april 5th). Group against aggression on Lybia formed by administrators from Serbia is most visited facebook page on the net at the moment. People got organized via facebook and showed their support in front of TITO memorial center in Belgrade. People of Libya, you are not alone. Serbian media have reported that Serb support for Gadhafi has been welcomed by the Libya's state-run media, while the Libyan opposition has warned that the pro-Gadhafi camp likely enjoys financial backing from nationalist Serb parties. Nothing can be further from the truth. Backers of this facebook group are ordinary everyday internet users that just don't buy another "humanitarian war for peace" lie. Why is that so hard to understand? "There's no such thing as free lunch" is a western saying. In their minds, you have to pay for everything, that's why they think that this support is paid by someone. Nope... this one is for free. Serbian people know fully well what's going on these days in the desert.

video

Journalism or Propaganda

2011-03-19T10:53:00.014-10:00

Remember this when you turn on your tv "News" channel. Propaganda is a form of communication that is aimed at influencing the attitude of a community toward some cause or position. Propaganda often presents facts selectively (thus possibly lying) to encourage a particular synthesis, or uses loaded messages to produce an emotional rather than rational response to the information presented. The desired result is a change of the attitude toward the subject in the target audience to further a political agenda. Propaganda can be used as a form of political warfare. If you control what people think, you’ve won the war before it has even begun. Since the 1950’s all major news and polling organizations have, to one degree or another, been absorbed into the sphere of control of the intelligence agencies.

The U.S. Department of Defense defines psychological warfare as:
"The planned use of propaganda and other psychological actions having the primary purpose of influencing the opinions, emotions, attitudes, and behavior of hostile foreign groups in such a way as to support the achievement of national objectives."

Probably every conflict is fought on at least two grounds: the battlefield and the minds of the people via propaganda. The “good guys” and the “bad guys” can often both be guilty of misleading their people with distortions, exaggerations, subjectivity, inaccuracy and even fabrications, in order to receive support and a sense of legitimacy. In preparing for or justifying war, additional techniques are often employed:

The Preliminary Stage—during which the country concerned comes to the news, portrayed as a cause for “mounting concern” because of poverty/dictatorship/anarchy;
The Justification Stage—during which big news is produced to lend urgency to the case for armed intervention to bring about a rapid restitution of “normality”;
The Implementation Stage—when pooling and censorship provide control of coverage;

There is always a "dead baby story" and it comes at the key point of the Justification Stage—in the form of a story whose apparent urgency brooks no delay—specifically, no time for cool deliberation or negotiating on peace proposals. Human interest stories … are ideal for engendering this atmosphere. Reference to the "dead baby story" is about the 1991 Gulf War where a U.S. public relations firm got a Kuwaiti Ambassador’s daughter to pose as a nurse claiming she saw Iraqi troops killing babies in hospitals. The purpose of this was to create arousal and demonize Iraq so war was more acceptable. The Guardian also points out four stages in preparing a nation for war:

1. The crisis
The reporting of a crisis which negotiations appear unable to resolve. Politicians, while calling for diplomacy, warn of military retaliation. The media reports this as “We’re on the brink of war”, or “War is inevitable”, etc.
2. The demonisation of the enemy’s leader
Comparing the leader with Hitler is a good start because of the instant images that Hitler’s name provokes.
3. The demonisation of the enemy as individuals
For example, to suggest the enemy is insane.
4. Atrocities
Even making up stories to whip up and strengthen emotional reactions.

Journalists who engage in war propaganda must be held accountable.

/by Thierry Meyssan

The war propaganda has entered a new phase, involving the coordinated action of satellite TV stations. CNN, France24, the BBC and Al Jazeera have become instruments of disinformation used to demonize governments and justify armed aggressions. These practices are illegal under international law and the impunity of the perpetrators must be stopped. We witnessed a situation in 2002 when Globovisión broadcast live images of a popular revolution against elected President Hugo Chávez plus images of pro-Chavez activists gunning down protesters. This staged event had made it possible to mask a military coup orchestrated by Washington with the help of Madrid. However, after a genuine popular uprising aborted the coup and reinstated the elected president, legal and journalistic investigations revealed that the revolution filmed by Globovisión was in fact a case of visual trickery and that the Chavistas had never fired on the crowd, but were themselves the victims of snipers armed by the CIA. We see the same thing happening today, but with a consortium of satellite channels which transmit images of nonexistent events in Libya and Syria. Their aim is to make people believe the majority of Libyans and Syrians want to overthrow their political institutions and that Muammar Gaddafi and Bashar al-Assad have massacred their own people. On the basis of such media intoxication, NATO attacked Libya and is about to destroy Syria. Resolution 110 of 3 November 1947 regarding "measures to be taken against propaganda and the inciters of a new war," condemns "propaganda which is either designed or likely to provoke or encourage any threat to the peace, breach of the peace, or act of aggression. " Words and, especially, images can be used to prepare the worst crimes. In this case, the intoxication by CNN, France24, the BBC and Al Jazeera constitute "crimes against peace." They should be considered as being more serious than the war crimes and crimes against humanity committed by NATO in Libya and by Western intelligence agencies in Syria insofar as they precede and make them possible. Journalists who engage in war propaganda must be tried by International Justice.

War, Propaganda and the Media

"Just doing my job"/ Joseph Goebbels

"Bombs for Peace" over Libya

2011-03-18T03:35:00.028-10:00

Nicolas Sarkozy, David Cameron, Hillary Clinton, representatives of the Arab League and UN chief Ban Ki-moon have met in Paris to discuss military action to help Al-Qaeda in Libya. Although Germany does not want to take part in any military action in Libya there are reports that there is a proposal on the table between Germany and the US. It could result in Germany sending reinforcements to Afghanistan to free up resources for the Libya mission. Nobel Peace Prize winner Barack Obama, didn't want to be the first to spill some Libyan blood unlike Sarkozy who owes Gaddafi some money, so French were the first to invade Libyan air space. Americans made it clear they do not want to lead the "no-fly zone operation" – they will be just participating. The main goal of the operation is to "protect civilians from Gaddafi". We already know how NATO protects civilians. But, there is a catch, not to mention that those "civilians" use jet fighters and tanks. In order to protect "civilians" one must first, get rid of Gaddafi.

Recent history in the Balkans and Iraq shows us that "no-fly zones" are the first step to a full-on ground assault. Those who advocate in favour of intervention assume that the outcome will be a free and liberal-democratic Libya. It is perhaps worth consulting our history books to remember that democracy does not just happen. It is a messy and long process. There is no guarantee that if NATO bombs Libya, democracy will result. What if the outcome of the rebellion against Gaddafi were to be a hardline Islamic government? Creating a no-fly zone at this point would be the first step to escalating the war, not preventing or ending it. If they are going to strike against targets in the cities, that will certainly result in large numbers of civilian casualties. If west intervenes in Libya, why not in Egypt, why not in Bahrain, why not in Ivory Coast? Some big players in Arab League trade their green light for agression on Libya for freedom of dealing with their own opposition. I'll scratch your back if you scratched mine. I wonder if that call for intervention from Arab League would be possible if Mubarack was still in power. Speaking of new democratic Egypt, Egypt's military is supplying arms to Libyan rebels with the US government’s full knowledge. Facing greater pressure from the Libyan army, rebel gangs have been losing ground. Rebellion has been a disaster and Libyan government won. There was no civil war, only bunch of untrained seccesionists. They were about to be defeated.

Tripoli has submitted to the UN Security Council’s demands and declared a ceasefire. Earlier on Thursday, the UN Security Council approved a resolution which allowed military action against Libyan forces as long as it helped stop violence in the country and did not include any ground operations. On Friday, Libyan Foreign Minister Mussa Kussa said that they had decided on an immediate ceasefire, and pledged that the government will do its best to ensure peace and order in the country and protect human rights. Libyan people's army has encircled last rebel strong hold, city of Benghazi. Mujahedeen fighters were about to be destroyed when US and EU decided to help them and turn the tide. Libyan authorities have already asked the governments of Malta, Turkey and China to send their observers to the country so that they keep a watch on the maintenance of peace. Meanwhile, US President Barack Obama said that Gaddafi should withdraw his troops from those cities occupied by the opposition. He also called on the Libyan authorities not to prevent "humanitarian aid deliveries to civilians" (weapon deliveries for rebel forces). Same thing happened in Yugoslavia, back in 1999. Same US administration, same Clintons, same politics. Meanwhile, the rebels say they simply do not need the ceasefire. The clashes in the east and west still continue. One "democratic opposition" fighter jet got shot down by Libyan forces and it was enough to call a ceasefire failed. French have dropped their bombs... War is on. It’s not full-scale war, but the objectives of the Western allies are certainly greater than a no-fly zone. Britain and France have absolutely no interest in the revolution being victorious all the way from the east to Tripoli and on to the west of Libya. They have all the oil they need in eastern Libya. They want to devide the country in two. If Gaddafi steps down that is. They are intervening in order to freeze the presence of revolutionary change at a certain point that is not fundamentally threatening to their interests. Collaborators will fight to the end because they know Gaddafi will have no merci on them. Another shamefull war, another lie. Hypocrisy of the West stinks like hell. Talking about selective interference. What about Bahrain? Islamist Rebellion in Libya is anything but killing innocent civilians. But, peaceful protesters are being killed today... in Bahrain.

Bahrain's security forces have continued their attempts to break the back of the island kingdom's mainly Shia opposition movement with a series of arrests and more attacks on Shia villages outside the capital. The 250,000-barrel-a-day oil refinery operated by Bahrain Petroleum Company has been shut down by the strike, what was unacceptable. Pro-democracy protesters fled in panic, witnesses said, as Saudi forces appeared poised to help the embattled government restore order in the strategic Gulf kingdom, home to the US Fifth Fleet. The Saudi troops entered Shiite-majority Bahrain last Sunday as part of the Gulf countries' joint Peninsula Shield Force, the Saudi official told AFP, requesting anonymity. Saudi Arabia being another democracy of course...

Humanitarian Imperialism

2011-03-15T11:49:00.020-10:00

by Diana Johnstone

Disturbing similarities between NATO intervention in Serbia 1999 and Libya 2011

Less than a dozen years after NATO bombed Yugoslavia into pieces, detaching the province of Kosovo from Serbia, there are signs that the military alliance is gearing up for another victorious little “humanitarian war”, this time against Libya. The differences are, of course, enormous. But let’s look at some of the disturbing similarities. As “the new Hitler”, the man you love to hate and need to destroy, emerges Gaddafi. Back in the 90's it was Slobodan Milosevic. The media had less than a decade to turn Milosevic into a monster, whereas with Gaddafi, they’ve been at it for several decades. As with Kosovo, the crisis in Libya is perceived by the hawks as an opportunity to assert power. By putting aside the U.N.'s antiquated rules, the United States can "save lives, improve global welfare, and serve its own national interests at the same time". An internal conflict between a government and armed rebels is being cast as a “humanitarian crisis” in which one side only, the government, is assumed to be “criminal”. This a priori criminalization is expressed by calling on an international judicial body to examine crimes which are assumed to have been committed, or about to be committed. It is crystal clear how the International Criminal Court is being used to set the stage for eventual military intervention. The ICC can be used by the West to get around the risk of a Security Council veto for military action. “The Kosovo war” set NATO on the endless path it now pursues in Afghanistan. There is again "We must do something to prevent genocide" Chorus. The mass of refugees fleeing Kosovo as NATO began its bombing campaign was used to justify that bombing, without independent investigation into the varied causes of that temporary exodus – a main cause probably being the bombing itself. Today, from the way media report on the large number of refugees leaving Libya since the troubles began, the public could get the impression that they are fleeing persecution by Gaddafi. As is frequently the case, media focuses on the superficial image without seeking explanations. A bit of reflection may fill the information gap. It is hardly likely that Gaddafi is chasing away the foreign workers that his regime brought to Libya to carry out important infrastructure projects. Rather it is fairly clear that some of the “democratic” rebels have attacked the foreign workers out of pure xenophobia. Another resemblance between former Yugoslavia and Libya is that the United States (and its NATO allies) once again end up on the same side as their old friend from Afghan Mujahidin days, Osama bin Laden. Osama bin Laden was a discreet ally of the Islamist party of Alija Izetbegovic during the Bosnia civil war (which resulted in creation of white Al-Qaeda), a fact that has been studiously overlooked by the NATO powers. Of course, Western media have largely dismissed Gaddafi’s current claim that he is fighting against bin Laden as the ravings of a madman. However, the combat between Gaddafi and bin Laden is very real and predates the September 11, 2001 attacks on the Twin Towers and the Pentagon. Libyan Islamist Group was formed in 1995 by veterans of the U.S.-sponsored fight against the Soviets in Afghanistan in the 1980s. Their declared aim was to overthrow Gaddafi in order to establish a radical Islamist state. As Serbia did in the 90's, Lybia is now fighting Al-Qaeda but that fact makes no difference to NATO. In 1999, the United States was eager to use the Kosovo crisis to give NATO’s new “out of area” mission its baptism of fire. The charade of peace talks at Rambouillet was scuttled by US Secretary of State Madeleine Albright. In Libya, the situation could be even worse. Libya is not a populous historic state with thousands of years of history, a strong sense of national identity and a long political culture. Half a century ago, it was one of the poorest countries in the world, and still has not fully emerged from its clan structure. Gaddafi, in his own eccentric way, has been a modernizing factor, using oil revenues to raise the standard of living to one of the highest on the African continent. The opposition to him comes, paradoxically, both from reactionary traditional Islamists on the one hand, who consider him a heretic for his relatively progressive views, and Westernized beneficiaries of modernization on the other hand, who are embarrassed by the Gaddafi image and want still more modernization. So far, the dogs of war are sniffing around for more bloodshed than has actually occurred. Indeed, the US escalated the Kosovo conflict in order to “have to intervene”, and the same risks happening now with regard to Libya, where Western ignorance of what they would be doing is even greater.
The Chavez proposal for neutral mediation to avert catastrophe is the way of wisdom. But in NATOland, the very notion of solving problems by peaceful mediation rather than by force seems to have evaporated.

want to know more?/Another NATO intervention?

Brave New Arab World

2011-02-22T02:36:00.032-10:00

As demonstrations sweep across the Arab world, Western governments are supporting the call for change. However, is it a call for change or is it actually a call for regimes they want in power? The protestors across the Arab world hoping to topple dictators in the quest for democracy may find that their choice may not be as free as they had hoped for, with a meddling hand from afar still pulling the strings. The situation in Libya is much different than that in Tunisia or Egypt. The rebels (peaceful protesters), who include mutinous army forces, are armed with tanks, machine guns and anti-aircraft guns. The only advantage Gadhafi has is his air force. International pressure to end the crackdown has escalated dramatically in the past few days. The U.S. moved naval and air forces closer to Libya on Monday and said all options were open, including patrols of the North African nation's skies to protect its citizens from their ruler. France said it would fly aid to the opposition-controlled eastern half of the country. The European Union imposed an arms embargo and other sanctions, following the lead of the U.S. and the U.N. The EU was also considering the creation of a no-fly zone over Libya. And the U.S. and Europe were freezing billions in Libya's foreign assets. "Gadhafi has lost the legitimacy to govern, and it is time for him to go without further violence or delay," U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said. "Would anyone leave his homeland? Why would I leave Libya?" Gadhafi replied. He invited the United Nations and any other organization to come to Libya and do a "fact finding mission" and questioned how they could freeze assets, impose sanctions and an arms embargo, and implement a travel ban based purely on media reports alone. Regarding reports that aerial bombardments had been used against protesters, Gadhafi (aka Ghadafi / Gaddafi / Khaddafy) said they did not happen and that they had only bombed military and ammunition depots. Gadhafi blamed Al-Qaeda for encouraging young people to seize arms from military installations. He said the people who have taken over Benghazi in eastern Libya are terrorists and Al-Qaeda operatives. He doesn't believe people are demonstrating against him anywhere in Libya, and repeated the charge that those who are have been given hallucinogenic drugs, a claim he first made in his televised speech broadcast last week. Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin has warned Western countries against attempts of meddling in the Arab world to try to impose democracy. “Today, we say we're concerned about things happening in Libya. But the North African cell of Al-Qaeda is also concerned about what is happening in Libya. Do you think this is a coincidence?” the Russian PM asked. The influence of Al-Qaeda and jihadist networks all over the Muslim world should not be underestimated. Now when we have revolutions rolling over the Arab world, one country after another, some of those countries are pretty rich in mineral resources, oil and gas and of course have cash . These recourses can easily be used by terrorists to stage attacks of an unprecedented scale. It is really hard to determine whether the ongoing crisis in the Arab world is actually democratization. There is a big dilemma for the West regarding North African and Middle Eastern unrest, as on the one hand they want democracy to be established there, but on the other, they also want a state that will be friendly to the Western powers. Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez claims U.S. criticism of Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi has a clear aim: military invasion. "Let's not get carried away by the drums of war, because the United States, I am sure that they are exaggerating and distorting things to justify an invasion," Chavez said Monday. "Instead of sending Marines and tanks and planes, why don't we send a goodwill commission to try to help so that they do not continue killing in Libya? They are our brothers," he said in a speech televised on the government-run network....

Just a week ago 29 peaceful demonstrators were killed in Iraq by a government propped up by thousands of US troops there. In Bahrain, demonstrators have been rioting for weeks, and authorities are firing tear gas and shooting on protestors. The US has not come out and said anything in either case, probably because of its troops in Iraq and the huge Navy base for its Fifth Fleet in Bahrain. Just a few weeks ago hundreds of peaceful demonstrators in Egypt were killed by police forces and the response from Washington was a call for restraint on both sides, without any mention of international intervention. Today, when forces loyal to Muammar Ghadafi have to deal with protestors armed with Kalashnikovs, RPGs and highjacked tanks, the international community intellectualizes on “stopping Ghadafi firing at his people”. To conclude why would USA be funding revolutions all over the world? To destabilise the former governments and then to usher in new one’s and all under the guise of a “people’s” revolution. The truth being what is happening now in North Africa and the Middle East is not a genuine revolution by the people, one the face of it is, they are being used as pawns to destabilise the governments in region so that new “pro Islamic” Muslim brotherhood governments can be formed in order to create an Islamic revival and to form the next big “enemy” for the west. Stage then would be set for military intervention and securing strategic recourses such as oil. Any NATO operation in Africa would be also a major step toward becoming an "international security guarantor". It must be noted that NATO’s Secretary General has repeatedly stressed that NATO would not interfere in the situation in Libya unless the UN adopts a resolution to do so. Getting such a document, however, looks like an impossible task because Russia and China have already vehemently opposed any kind of outside interference in Libya and say the resolution will definitely be vetoed.
Western politicians are also playing a “weapons of mass destruction” card, saying the Libyan regime might have stockpiles of chemical weapons, despite the fact that Libya officially refused to continue the development of chemical weapons and signed international treaties accordingly. In any case, possible external military interference in Libya might seriously damage the relationship between the Arab world and the West.

OIL

Libya is not the only African nation in turmoil. Somalia’s drawn-out conflict has been called ‘a slow genocide’ and it is a similar story on the other side of the continent (Ivory Coast). But there’s little sign of US or European military input. Why? Because of oil. You think NATO would be in Iraq if the major export there was broccoli? Libya, a member of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC), holds the largest proven oil reserves in Africa, followed by Nigeria and Algeria. Libya has 63 years of oil reserves at current production rates if no new reserves were to be found. Libya is considered a highly attractive oil area due to its low cost of oil production (as low as $1 per barrel at some fields), and proximity to European markets. Libya's oil industry is run by the state-owned National Oil Corporation (NOC). Rebels in eastern Libya said on Friday they now controlled most of the oil fields east of the town of Ras Lanuf, and said they would honour oil deals. Many of Libya's key oil producing areas and terminals are located in the east of the OPEC member state, large chunks of which have fallen to rebels seeking to oust veteran leader Muammar Ghadafi.

to be continued...

bombing Libya 1986

CIA recruiting for Taliban

NATO in Africa?

Mistery of Puma Punku

2011-02-15T08:53:00.018-10:00

Pumapunku, also called “Puma Pumku” or “Puma Puncu”, is part of a large temple complex or monument group that is part of the Tiwanaku Site near Tiwanaku, Bolivia. In Aymara, its name means, “The Door of the Cougar”. The processes and technologies involved in the creation of these temples are still not fully understood by modern scholars. Even today, with all the modern advances in engineering and mathematics, we could not fashion such a structure. Our current ideas of the Tiwanaku culture hold that they had no writing system and also that the invention of the wheel was most likely unknown to them. The architectural achievements seen at Pumapunku are striking in light of the presumed level of technological capability available during its construction. Due to the monumental proportions of the stones, the method by which they were transported to Pumapunku has been a topic of interest since the temple's discovery. The initial construction of the Pumapunku dates at AD 536–600. At its peak, Pumapunku is thought to have been “unimaginably wondrous,” adorned with polished metal plaques, brightly colored ceramic and fabric ornamentation, trafficked by costumed citizens, elaborately dressed priests and elites decked in exotic jewelry. The Tiwanaku civilization and the use of these temples appears to some to have peaked from around 700 AD to 1000 AD, by which point the temples and surrounding area may have been home to some 400,000 people. It is hard to imagine how the ruins of Pumapunku did not come to be known as one of the wonders of the world like the Great Pyramid. Spectacular in its own right, the Great Pyramid is, yet it pales in comparison to the ruins of Pumapunku in Tiahuanaco, in South America.

Even with modern day technology and information, these structures defy logic, and confound those who seek to solve the mysteries that lie within them. The ruins of Pumapunku are said to be the most fascinating, and most confusing of all. Several construction blocks at the site weigh between 100 and 150 tons, some even more. The quarry for these giant blocks was on the western shore of Titicaca, some ten miles away. There is no known technology in all the ancient world that could have transported stones of such massive weight and size up a steep incline from a quarry to the sacred mountain. Closer inspection shows that these stone blocks have been fabricated with a very advanced technology. Even more surprising is the technical design of these blocks. All blocks fit together like puzzle , forming load-bearing joints without the use of mortar. All pieces look like they were pre-fabricated. They "click" into each other just like modern pre-fabricated building blocks. Stacked and "clicked" into each other they form walls, some four levels high. Many of the joints are so precise that not even a razor blade will fit between the stones. The cuts on these stones are perfectly straight. The holes cored into these stones are perfect, and all of equal depth. Notable features at Pumapunku are I-shaped architectural cramps, which are composed of a unique copper-arsenic-nickel bronze alloy. Some blocks in Pumapunku are made up of granite, and diorite, and the only stone that is harder that those two, is the diamond. If the people who built this place cut these stones using stone cutting techniques, then they would had to have used diamond tools. Such a discovery flies directly in the face of all our concepts of the construction skills of the ancients. With no previous examples of masonry at such a sophisticated level, nor on such great scale leaves one to wonder at the confidence and skills of their designers and masons...

DEMOCRACY INDUSTRY

2011-01-31T00:53:00.021-10:00

A student-led Serbian uprising,Otpor! (Serbian Cyrillic: Отпор!,English: Resistance!) led to the overthrow of Slobodan Milošević(murdered later in Hague Tribunal) in 2000. The campaign–almost entirely obstructive program–was carefully planned with assistance from Gene Sharp and his colleagues. Additionally, information started to appear during this time about substantial outside help, both in funds and logistics, which "Otpor" received leading up to the revolution. A group of activists made one trip to neighbouring Hungary in June 2000 to attend a lecture by retired US Army Col. Robert Helvey, a colleague of Sharp, who was later portrayed as the "creator" of Otpor, although the movement had already reached its peak when the lecture took place. Otpor was also a recipient of substantial funds from U.S. government affiliated organizations such as the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), International Republican Institute (IRI), and US Agency for International Development (USAID).

There was Georgia’s Rose Revolution in 2003, the Orange Revolution in Ukraine in 2004, the Tulip Revolution in Kyrgyzstan in 2005 and the Cedar Revolution in Lebanon in 2005. Similar opposition rebellions were attempted in Uzbekistan in 2005, in Armenia in 2008, in Moldova in 2009, and several in 2010: in Iran, in Thailand and finally in Belarus in December. Next it was the turn of Tunisia and then Egypt. Who's next? Yemen, Syria, Algeria... Iran.

“If you look more closely, you look at the so-called people who are leading this, are being coached. And they're being coached by the US Intelligence Services, the same way the Orange Revolution was in Ukraine or the Rose Revolution with Saakashvili in Georgia,” /revealed author and researcher William Enghdal.

A string of revolutions – some bloodless, some not – rocked the post-Soviet space at the beginning of the 21st century. There were a number of common factors: an uprising against the regime, rooted in a popular dissatisfaction with standards of living, and also a unifying theme for the protesters. Hence the collective name “color revolutions”. Analysts recall the similarities in the color revolutions where youth groups were energized, rock bands lined up, and laser shows put on. The movements were marketed as cool. Amazingly, their outcomes have been quite similar too. Six years ago on Ukrainian capital Kiev’s Independence Square was the birthplace of the Orange Revolution. It promised a new dawn and major changes for the country, but ultimately all aspirations came to nothing. Poverty and corruption increased, the country is now divided by ideological issues. Nothing changed for the better, only for the worse. Viktor Yushchenko, the revolutionary hero [who became Ukrainian president in the aftermath of the revolution] got only five per cent of the votes at the next presidential election. The lowest result for an acting president in the world. It was a similar story in Georgia, where the heady optimism of the Rose Revolution soon gave way to disappointment and eventually to mass protests. Their anger with President Saakashvili was met with a response that was all too familiar, as gas grenades and water cannons were used to quell the unrest. Washington’s formula for regime change underwent a makover in the 1980s. In a bid to ensure US political and economic interests were safeguarded, CIA backed coup d’états ousted democratically elected leaders from Iran to Chile. In their place were brutal dictatorships and governments that committed heinous crimes against their people. By the 1980s, the reign of terror that blazed across Latin America was too much for most people to stomach. From death squads to torture chambers and various massacres, the Latin American generals who trained in the US to spread democracy around the world quickly gained reputations for major human rights abuses. To replace the overt support for dictatorships, a new concept for regime change was born; one that sounds and looks better – democracy promotion. The concept of democracy promotion is simple; finance, train, and politically back local opposition forces around the world that support the American agenda. Experts agree that it may take some time before the world sees whether or not the revolts in Tunisia and Egypt will change things for the better in these countries. Just as they have a common opinion that if these uprisings flop, Europe will be the first to suffer from waves of immigrants. What is going on in the Middle East with the Jasmine Revolution in Tunisia that we saw a few days ago, and now in Egypt with Mubarak in his 80s, and obviously a regime that is not exactly the most stable one, we have a food crisis taking place as a backdrop and the IMF coming and telling these countries to eliminate their state food subsidies so you have, of course, the explosive background for popular unrest. Within that you have these NGOs, like Freedom House, training activists and trade unions and various other organizations to demand democracy, demand human rights and so forth. Lawrence Wilkerson, the former Chief of Staff to former Secretary of State Colin Powell said, “We do this through surrogates and nongovernmental organization and through people who are less suspecting of the evil that may lurk behind their actions than perhaps they were before. Have we learned some lessons in that regard? You bet! Do we do it better? You bet? Is it still just as heinous as it has always been? You bet!”. So while the goal remains the same, it’s no longer the CIA but the US Agency for International Development (USAID) and its partners spearheading the effort. Since 2000, USAID has activated more than 620 programs in Venezuela alone, costing up to $20 million dollars. The USAID has implemented so called democracy promotion initiatives in over 100 countries in the past 25 years. This year’s budget is $1 billion dollars. And like the CIA, USAID, the National Endowment for Democracy and a number of similar organizations receive funding from Congress. But these are just the tip of the iceberg. There’s an entire network of organizations involved in the democracy promotion business. Their goal: "stable, free-market orientated democracy to ensure US political and economic interests were safeguarded."

Happening right now:

"Organizers younger than 30 taking the lead to topple a regime older than they are. Nobel Peace laureate Mohamed ElBaradei's appearance in Tahrir, or Liberation, Square underscored the jockeying for leadership of the mass protest movement that erupted seemingly out of nowhere in the past week to shake the Arab world's most populous nation." ElBaradei, the former head of the U.N. nuclear watchdog agency, has gained a following among young secular democracy activists with his grassroots organizing. But some demonstrators dismiss him as an expatriate long removed from Egypt's problems. The anarchy was further fueled when gangs of armed men attacked at least four jails across Egypt before dawn, freeing hundreds of criminals and Muslim militants. Gangs of young men with guns and large sticks smashed cars and robbed people in Cairo. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton urged "a peaceful, orderly transition to a democratic regime". Yemen next: More than 20,000 Yemenis filled the streets of Sanaa on Thursday for a "Day of Rage" rally, demanding a change in government and saying President Ali Abdullah Saleh's offer to step down in 2013 was not enough.

TO BE CONTINUED...

Human organs theft in Kosovo

2011-01-25T01:04:00.019-10:00

Kosovo's prime minister is the head of a "mafia-like" Albanian group responsible for smuggling weapons, drugs and human organs through eastern Europe, according to a Council of Europe inquiry report on organised crime. Hashim Thaçi is identified as the boss of a network that began operating criminal rackets in the runup to the 1998-99 Kosovo war, and has held powerful sway over the country's government since. The report of the two-year inquiry, which cites FBI and other intelligence sources, has been obtained by the Guardian. It names Thaçi as having over the last decade exerted "violent control" over the heroin trade. Figures from Thaçi's inner circle are also accused of taking captives across the border into Albania after the war, where a number of Serbs have been murdered for their kidneys, which were sold on the black market.

Dick Marty's Report

The Swiss senator Dick Marty, conducted a two-year inquiry into organised crime in Kosovo after the Council of Europe mandated him to investigate claims of organ harvesting by the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) after the war with Serbia ended in 1999.

Dick Marty's report suggests Thaçi's links with organised crime date back more than a decade, when those loyal to his Drenica group came to dominate the KLA(UCK), and seized control of "most of the illicit criminal enterprises" in which Kosovans were involved south of the border, in Albania. During the Kosovo war and for almost a year after, Thaçi "The Snake" and four other members of the Drenica group named in the report carried out "assassinations, detentions, beatings and interrogations". This same hardline KLA faction has held considerable power in Kosovo's government over the last decade, with the support of western powers keen to ensure stability in the "Europe's youngest democracy". Marty's report suggests the KLA held Serbs and other captives in secret detention centres in Albania for almost a year after the war ended. A small number of prisoners that survived, the report suggests, were transferred to a makeshift clinic just north of the capital Tirana, where they were shot in the head before their kidneys were removed. The report paints a picture in which ex-KLA commanders have played a crucial role in the region's criminal activity. It says: "In confidential reports spanning more than a decade, agencies dedicated to combating drug smuggling in at least five countries have named Hashim Thaçi and other members of his Drenica group as having exerted violent control over the trade in heroin and other narcotics." Marty says: "Thaçi and these other Drenica group members are consistently named as 'key players' in intelligence reports on Kosovo's mafia-like structures of organised crime. I have examined these diverse, voluminous reports with consternation and a sense of moral outrage." His inquiry was commissioned after the former chief prosecutor for war crimes at the Hague, Carla Del Ponte, said she had been prevented from investigating senior KLA officials. Her most shocking claim, which she said required further investigation, was that the KLA smuggled captive Serbs across the border into Albania, where their organs were harvested. Inquiry finds the KLA did hold mostly Serb captives in a secret network of six detention facilities in northern Albania, and that Thaçi's Drenica group "bear the greatest responsibility" for prisons and the fate of those held in them. The report states: "As and when the transplant surgeons were confirmed to be in position and ready to operate, the captives were brought out of the 'safe house' individually, summarily executed by a KLA gunman, and their corpses transported swiftly to the operating clinic.''

Serbs and Roma from Albanian concentration camps, during the war, were not the only victims of organ trafficking in Kosovo. Many desperate Russians, Moldovans, Kazakhs and Turks were lured into Kosovo "with the false promise of payments" for their kidneys. The organs had been illegally removed from victims and transplanted into wealthy recipients in the clinic, known as Medicus. Those who paid up to €90,000 (£76,400) for the black-market kidneys included patients from Canada, Germany, Poland and Israel.

A human body could be sold on the black market for EUR 2mn, that kidneys fetched between EUR 15,000 and 100,000, while prices for a liver or heart could reach as much as EUR 1mn.

Serbia has long complained of atrocities committed by the KLA after July 1999, when Nato-led air strikes forced Slobodan Milosevic's troops to retreat from the province. Marty finds evidence for those concerns, stating that Kosovo's guerrilla army formed "a formidable power base in the organised criminal enterprises" in Kosovo and Albania. A group known as Drenica, led by Thaçi, became the KLA's dominant faction and senior KLA figures from the group hold senior positions in Kosovo's government today.

Le Figaro (fra)

WikiLeaks.org

2010-12-03T03:43:00.021-10:00

The release of more than 250,000 US embassy cables by WikiLeaks reveals previously secret information on American intelligence gathering, and political and military strategy.

Here's a short summary:

• Saudi Arabia put pressure on the US to attack Iran. Other Arab allies also secretly agitated for military action against Tehran.

• China is ready to accept Korean unification and is distancing itself from North Korea which it describes as behaving like a "spoiled child". Cables say Kim Jong-il is a "flabby old chap" losing his grip and drinking.

• An official from the Commonwealth secretariat claimed Prince Charles is not respected in the same way as the Queen and questioned whether the heir apparent should necessarily succeed his mother as the head of the Commonwealth.

• US and British diplomats fear that Pakistan's nuclear weapons programme could lead to terrorists obtaining fissile material, or a devastating nuclear exchange with India. Also, small teams of US special forces have been operating secretly inside Pakistan's tribal areas, with Pakistani government approval. And the US concluded that Pakistani troops were responsible for a spate of extra-judicial killings in the Swat Valley and tribal belt, but decided not to comment publicly.

• Russia is a "virtual mafia state" with rampant corruption and scant separation between the activities of the government and organised crime.

•Rampant government corruption in Afghanistan is revealed by the cables, including an incident last year when the then vice-president, Ahmad Zia Massoud, was stopped and questioned in Dubai when he flew into the emirate with $52m in cash.

•Gordon Brown was written off as prime minister by the US embassy in London a year into his premiership. It concluded that an "abysmal track record" had left him lurching from "political disaster to disaster".

•US diplomats have reported suspicions that Silvio Berlusconi could be "profiting personally and handsomely" from secret deals with the Russian prime minister, Vladimir Putin

•The British Foreign Office misled parliament over the plight of thousands of islanders who were expelled from their Indian Ocean homeland – the British colony of Diego Garcia – to make way for a large US military base.

•A scandal involving foreign contractors employed to train Afghan policemen who took drugs and paid for young "dancing boys" to entertain them in northern Afghanistan caused such panic that the interior minister begged the US embassy to try to "quash" the story, according a US embassy cable.

•The US military has been charging its allies a 15% handling fee on hundreds of millions of dollars being raised internationally to build up the Afghan army. Germany has threatened to cancel contributions, raising concerns that money is going to the US treasury.

•The US has lost faith in the Mexican army's ability to win the country's drugs war, branding it slow, clumsy and no match for "sophisticated" narco-traffickers.

• Hillary Clinton wanted a briefing on the mental health of Argentina's President Cristina Kirchner and asked whether she was taking medication to calm her down.

•Venezuela's Hugo Chávez and Colombia's Álvaro Uribe "almost came to blows" at a Latin America unity summit, according to a US memo, which described it as "the worst expression of banana republic discourse".

• US diplomats spied on UN. Washington is running a secret intelligence campaign targeted at the leadership of the United Nations, including the secretary general, Ban Ki-moon and the permanent security council representatives from China, Russia, France and the UK.

• King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia repeatedly asks America to attack Iran to stop its nuclear programme.

• Don't pursue Guantanamo criminal case, says Spanish attorney general

US diplomats on Putin and Medvedev: Putin and Medvedev – Mr Alpha Dog and his poodle – are jailers of the regime but they are also its inmates. Putin is described as an "alpha dog" running a state dominated by the security services, while Medvedev is pale, hesitant and "Robin to Putin's Batman"...

Russian prime minister condemns cable describing him and President Dmitry Medvedev as Batman and Robin. "The truth of the matter is, this is about our interaction, which is an important factor of the domestic policies in this country," he said. "But to be honest with you, we didn't suspect that this would be done with such arrogance, with such a push and, you know, being so unethically done." Putin also dismissed an assessment by the US defence secretary, Robert Gates – revealed in the WikiLeaks documents – that "Russian democracy has disappeared".

US diplomats on Angela Merkel: German chancelor Merkel is described as an enigma, and sceptical about the US.

US diplomats on Nicolas Sarkozy: A series of classified US memos depict the French president as a self-absorbed, thin-skinned, erratic character who tyrannises his ministers and staff. He is portrayed as undiplomatic, hyperactive, sometimes uncouth and in need of careful handling, despite being the most pro-US French president since the second world war and a brilliant political tactician.

US diplomats on Karzai: Diplomats describe Afghan president as weak, indecisive, erratic, emotional, prone to believing paranoid conspiracy theories and beholden to criminals to maintain power. The current US ambassador, Karl Eikenberry identified two competing personalities in Karzai. "The first is a paranoid and weak individual unfamiliar with the basics of nation-building and overly self-conscious that his time in the spotlight of glowing reviews from the international community has passed. The other is that of an ever-shrewd politician who sees himself as a nationalist hero who can save the country from being divided by the decentralisation-focused agenda of Abdullah [Karzai's main rival in the 2009 election]."

The persecution of WikiLeaks’ Julian Assange

by Joseph Kishore

The American state, its spokesmen in the mass media, and its allies around the world are engaged in an international campaign of vilification and persecution against WikiLeaks’ founder Julian Assange. This campaign has nothing to do with any supposed crime he has committed, since he has committed none. He is the target of an international manhunt for his role in lifting the lid on the lies and criminal operations of imperialist powers the world over—above all, in the United States. The Obama administration has branded the leakers, as well as WikiLeaks, “criminals,” with the US attorney general pledged to “close the gap” by inventing a pseudo-legal basis for prosecution if one does not exist at present. Former presidential candidate Mike Huckabee and ex-military officials have demanded the death penalty for Manning, while Sarah Palin has insisted that WikiLeaks be branded a terrorist organization. Tom Flanagan, a former adviser to the Canadian prime minister, declared that Assange should be “assassinated,” that Obama should “put out a contract and maybe use a drone or something.” And the fact that Assange is a citizen of Australia did not prevent Julia Gillard, the prime minister of that country, from declaring, without any evidence, that Assange’s actions were “illegal,” while placing her government at the service of the US witch-hunt. Assange faces the immediate threat of arrest on the basis of trumped-up charges in Sweden. On Thursday, Swedish authorities obtained a new arrest warrant on alleged sexual misconduct charges—invariably, and falsely, described in the mass media as “rape.” The charges were initially considered so specious that the prosecutor ordered them dropped (Swedish prosecutors charge that while Mr. Assange did have consentual sex with his two accusers, he allegedly did not use a condom, which is against Swedish law. Rape is a serious crime that traumatizes and violates women. Therefore the charges of rape against someone in Sweden who neglected to use condoms makes one wonder "why" and "how." ) . This decision was reversed, however, and Sweden on Thursday submitted a warrant to Interpol. If the actions of WikiLeaks have helped reveal, in real time, the lies of the American government, they have also exposed the role of the chief propagators of these lies: the American media. For decades, the US government has cultivated the media to the point where it engages in self-censorship as a matter of course. There can be no doubt that the WikiLeaks revelations will provide further impetus to the campaign by the US government to assert greater control over online networks. The WikiLeaks web site has already been the target of repeated denial of service attacks, of suspicious origin. In an attempt to get WikiLeaks back online, the organization rented servers from Amazon. On Wednesday, Amazon blocked WikiLeaks from using its servers, apparently under pressure from US officials. The state persecution of Assange—enthusiastically backed by the mass media—is one expression of a far-reaching decay of democracy in the United States and internationally. World governments, led by the United States, are carrying out deeply unpopular policies—the multi-trillion dollar bailout of financial institutions, relentless demands for social austerity and the expanding war and global plunder. The constant proclamations about the need for secrecy, which WikiLeaks has violated by publishing government documents, arises fundamentally from the irreconcilable conflict between the social interests that these governments represent and the needs and aspirations of the vast majority of the population. The persecution of Assange in an effort to silence this exposure is not simply a threat to one individual. The methods employed against WikiLeaks will be used against all opposition to the policies of the corporate and financial aristocracy. the hysterical witch-hunt against Assange and WikiLeaks is not any sign of strength on the part of the American ruling elite and its state, but rather of fear and weakness...