 |
| Mr Kwesi Ahwoi, Minister of Interior |
The Ministry
of Interior appears to be in very deep trouble.
A small scale
mining firm, Hansol Mining Company is threatening to drag the Ministry to court
to recover US$3,594,000 following an “invasion” of its premises by state
security agents.
In later
dated April 4, 2013, lawyers of the company, Gyandoh Asmah and company gave the
Ministry 31 days to pay up or face court action.
The lawyers
claim that on March 19, 2013, a team of police, immigration and national
security officials “invaded the site of our clients company in search of
alleged immigrants working in our clients company without authorization”.
According to
the lawyers, the security personnel engaged in reckless destruction of the
company’s properties and stole several properties belonging to it.
The security
personnel allegedly burnt down 9 pick trucks worth about US$450,000 and Toyota
Land Cruiser V8 worth US$ 80, 000.
They also
allegedly burnt 8 excavators worth US$250,000 each.
The lawyers
also claim that the security personnel stole 9 kilos of gold worth US$200,000.
The company claims the actions of the security
personnel immobilized its mining operations and as a result it is losing one
kilo of gold a day.
This has allegedly cost the company US$864,000
from the date of the raid to April 4, 2013.
So far the
Ministry of Interior has not reacted to this threat.
EDITORIAL
REALISTIC WHAT?
President
John Dramani Mahama has called on the people of Ghana to ready themselves to
pay realistic utility tariffs.
It is
significant that the President’s call is coming after the World Bank and the
International Monetary Fund (IMF) have asked the government to increase utility
tariffs to make the sector attractive
to so called foreign investers.
It is clear
that the two institutions do not give a dime about the plight of the people of
Ghana who are struggling to survive in a harsh globalised economy.
What the
World Bank and the International Monetary Fund worry about is the profit levels
of the multinational corporations and as far as they are concerned the poor
people of Ghana can go hang.
That the
President is thinking along the same lines as the World Bank and the IMF must
be exceedingly worrying, given the promises the President and his party made to
the people only six months ago.
The Insight
insists that the people of Ghana are already paying far more than realistic
tariffs for unreliable utility services.
The utility
companies have been passing on their inefficiencies and corruption to the
Ghanaian public as high cost for a very long time.
We would like
to caution the government that any increases in utility tariffs can only worsen
the plight of under privileged Ghanaian.
BUSIA TOO DID IT!
 |
| Kofi Abrefa Busia |
The Committee for Joint Action (CJA), the AFAG
and other organisations and individuals are justifiably angry at the Ghana
Police Service for attempting to ban demonstrations.
The CJA has even gone to the extent of
threatening to go to court if the police does not withdraw the ban.
The
position of civil society groups against the attempt to ban demonstrations is
surely a reflection of the fact Ghana
has come a very long way.
The September 16, 1971 issue of a “Ghanaian
Times” carried a screaming banner headline “GET PERMITS FOR MEETINGS’
The
report reads “No meeting or procession can be held in a public place in any
part of the country by any person without police permission.
“Any
person or persons who default this shall be liable to a fine not exceeding a N Ȼ200 or
imprisonment not exceeding 12 months or both.
“This
followed the Governments application of Part11 of the Public Order Act which relates to public meetings and procession
to the whole country.
“An
Executive Instrument to this effect, signed by Internal Affairs Minister Mr.
N.Y. B Adade was laid before the National assembly yesterday.
“The Act under reference enjoins any persons
desiring to hold or form any meeting or procession in a public place to first
apply to a police officer not below the rank of Assistants superintendent for
permission.
“If the officer is satisfied that the meeting is
not likely to cause a breach of the peace he may issue a permit authorising the
meeting or the procession.
“He may in issuing such a permit, prescribe any
special condition or limitation or restrictions to be observed at the meeting.
“The Act
also empowers the Police to impose restrictions on the use of music, drumming
and other instruments or apparatus at such meetings or procession.
“They are
also empowered to direct and conduct such meetings and processions and
prescribe the route by which and the time at which the procession may pass and also place and time at which the meeting
may be held”.
There are two ways to
conquer and enslave a nation.
One
is by the sword. The other is by debt."
By John Perkins':
"There are two ways to conquer and enslave a nation.
One is by the sword. The other is by debt." John Adams, 1735-1826
We economic hit men really have been the ones responsible for creating this first truly global empire, and we work many different ways…but perhaps the most common is that we will identify a country that has resources that our corporations covet, like oil, and then arrange a huge loan to that country from the World Bank or one of its sister organizations. But the money never actually goes to the country…instead it goes to our big corporations to build infrastructure projects in that country-power plants, industrial parks, ports-things that benefit a few rich people in that country, in addition to our corporations-but really don`t help the majority of the people at all…however those people, the whole country, is left holding a huge debt. Its such a big debt that they can`t repay it, and that`s part of the plan, that they can`t repay it. And so at some point we economic hit men go back to them and say listen, you owe us a lot of money, can`t pay your debts, so, sell your oil real cheap to our oil companies…allow us to build a military base in your country…or, send troops in support of ours to someplace in the world, like Iraq…or vote with us on the next U.N. vote…to have their electric utility company privatized, and their water and sewage system privatized, and sold to US corporations or other multinational corporations. So there was a whole mushrooming thing, and it`s so typical of the way that the IMF and the World Bank work: they put a country in debt, in such a big debt it can`t pay it, and then you offer to refinance that debt, and pay even more interest, and you demand this quid pro quo which you call a "conditionality" or "good governance" which means basically that they`ve got to sell off their resources, including many of their social services; their utility companies; their school systems sometimes; their penal systems; their insurance systems, to foreign corporations. So its a double, triple, quadruple whammy.(Iran, 1953)
We economic hit men really have been the ones responsible for creating this first truly global empire, and we work many different ways…but perhaps the most common is that we will identify a country that has resources that our corporations covet, like oil, and then arrange a huge loan to that country from the World Bank or one of its sister organizations. But the money never actually goes to the country…instead it goes to our big corporations to build infrastructure projects in that country-power plants, industrial parks, ports-things that benefit a few rich people in that country, in addition to our corporations-but really don`t help the majority of the people at all…however those people, the whole country, is left holding a huge debt. Its such a big debt that they can`t repay it, and that`s part of the plan, that they can`t repay it. And so at some point we economic hit men go back to them and say listen, you owe us a lot of money, can`t pay your debts, so, sell your oil real cheap to our oil companies…allow us to build a military base in your country…or, send troops in support of ours to someplace in the world, like Iraq…or vote with us on the next U.N. vote…to have their electric utility company privatized, and their water and sewage system privatized, and sold to US corporations or other multinational corporations. So there was a whole mushrooming thing, and it`s so typical of the way that the IMF and the World Bank work: they put a country in debt, in such a big debt it can`t pay it, and then you offer to refinance that debt, and pay even more interest, and you demand this quid pro quo which you call a "conditionality" or "good governance" which means basically that they`ve got to sell off their resources, including many of their social services; their utility companies; their school systems sometimes; their penal systems; their insurance systems, to foreign corporations. So its a double, triple, quadruple whammy.(Iran, 1953)
The precedent for economic hit men really began in the early fifties, when democratically elected Mossadegh, who was elected in Iran…he was considered to be the hope for democracy in the Middle East and around the world…he was Time Magazine`s "Man of the Year"…but, one of the things that he`d run on and began to implement was the idea that foreign oil companies needed to pay the Iranian people a lot more for the oil that they were taking out of Iran, that the Iranian people should benefit from their own oil. Strange policy. We didn't like that of course. But we were afraid to do what we normally were doing, which was to send in the military. Instead we sent in one CIA agent, Kermit Roosevelt, Teddy Roosevelt's relative…and Kermit went in with a few million dollars and was very, very effective and efficient, and in a short amount of time he managed to get Mossadegh overthrown…and brought in the Shah of Iran to replace him, who always was favorable to oil…and it was extremely effective.
(Revolt in Iran)
VOICE:
Mobs overflow Tehran. Army officers shout that Mossadegh has surrendered, and his regime as virtual dictator of Iran is ended. Pictures of the Shah paraded through the streets as sentiment reverses. The Shah is welcomed home.
JOHN:
So back here in the United States in Washington people looked around and said, wow, that was easy. And cheap. So this established a whole new way of manipulating countries, of creating empire. The only problem with Roosevelt was that he was a card carrying CIA agent, and had he been caught, the ramifications could have been pretty serious. So very quickly at that point the decision was made to use private consultants, to channel the money through the World Bank or the IMF or one of the other such agencies, to bring in people like me who work for private companies…so that if we got caught there would be no governmental ramifications.
(Guatemala 1954)
When Arbenz became president of Guatemala, the country was very much
under the thumbs of United Fruit Company, the big international
corporation, and Arbenz ran on this ticket that says you know, we want to get
the land back to the people, and once he took power he was implementing
policies that would do exactly that, give land rights back to the people.
United Fruit didn`t like that very much, and so they hired a public relations
firm, launched a huge campaign in the United States to convince the United
States people, the citizens of the United States, and the press of the United
States, and the congress of the United States that Arbenz was a Soviet puppet,
and that if we allowed him to stay in power the Soviets would have a foothold
in this hemisphere, and that at that point in time was a huge fear on
everybody's mind, the red terror, the communist terror…and so to make a long story
short, out of this public relations campaign came a commitment on the part of
the CIA and the military to take this man out…and in fact we did. we sent in
planes, we sent in soldiers, we sent in jackals, we sent everything in to take
him out, and did take him out. And as soon as he was removed from
office, the new guy that took over after him basically reinstated
everything to the big international corporations, including United Fruit. (Ecuador
1981)
Ecuador for many, many years had been ruled by pro-US dictators, often relatively brutal. Then it was decided that they were going to have a truly democratic election. Jaime Roldos ran for office, and his main goal he said as president would be to make sure that Ecuador's resources were used to help the people. And he won, overwhelmingly, by more votes than anyone had ever won anything in Ecuador, and he began to implement these policies…to make sure that the profits from oil went to help the people…well, we didn`t like that in the United States. I was sat down as one of several economic hit men, to change Roldos, to corrupt him, to bring him around. To let him know, you know, ok, you know, you can get very rich you and your family if you play our game, but if you continue to try to keep these policies you`ve promised, you`re gonna go… he wouldn`t listen.
(Ecuadorian leader dies in plane crash)
He was assassinated. As soon as the plane crashed, the whole area was cordoned off. The only people that were allowed in were US military from a nearby base, and some of the Ecuadorian military. When investigation was launched, two of the key witnesses died in car accidents before they had a chance to testify. A lot of very, very strange things that went on around the assassination of Jaime Roldos. I, like most people who`ve really looked at this case, have absolutely no doubt that it was an assassination, and of course in my position as an economic hit man I was always expecting something to happen to Jaime, weather it be a coup or an assassination I wasn`t sure, but that he would be taken down because he was not being corrupted, he would not allow himself to be corrupted the way we wanted to corrupt him.
(Panama 1981)
Omar Torrijos, president of Panama, was one of my favorite people, I really,
really liked him, he was very charismatic, he was a guy who really wanted to
help his country. When I tried to bribe him or corrupt him he said, look John…
he called me Juanito…he said, look Juanito, I don`t need the money. What I
really need is for my country to be treated fairly. I need for the United
States to repay the debts that you owe my people for all the destruction you`ve
done here. I need to be in a position where I can help other Latin American
countries win their independence, and be free of this terrible presence from the
north that you people are exploiting us so badly. I need to have the Panama
canal back in the hands of the Panamanian people. That`s what I want. And so
leave me alone, don`t try to bribe me. It was 1981, and in may Jaime Roldos was
assassinated, and Omar was very aware of this. Torrijos got his family together
and he said, I`m probably next. But it`s ok, because I`ve done what I came here
to do. I`ve renegotiated the canal, the canal will now be in our hands…he`d
just finished negotiating the treaty with Jimmy Carter. In June of that same
year, just a couple of months later, he also went down in an airplane
crash…which there`s no question was executed by CIA sponsored Jackals.
Tremendous amount of evidence that one of Torrijos' security guards handed him at
the last moment as he was getting on the plane a tape recorder, a small tape
recorder, that contained a bomb.
(Venezuela 2002)
(Venezuela 2002)
It is interesting to me how this system has continued pretty much the same way for years and years and years, except the economic hit men are getting better and better and better. Then we come up with, very recently, what happened in Venezuela. In 1998 Hugo Chavez gets elected president, following a long line of presidents who`d been very corrupt, and basically destroyed the economy of the country…and Chavez was elected amidst all that. Chavez stood up to the United States, and he has done it primarily demanding that Venezuelan oil be used to help the Venezuelan people. Well, we didn`t like that in the United States. So, in 2002 the coup was staged, which, there`s no question in my mind and most other peoples minds that the CIA was behind that coup. The way that that coup was fomented was very reflective of what Kermit Roosevelt had done in Iran, of paying people to go out into the streets to riot, to protest, to say this Chavez is very unpopular. You know, if you can get a few thousand people to do that, television can make it look like its the whole country, and things start to mushroom. Except in the case of Chavez, he was smart enough and the people were so strongly behind him that they overcame it. This was a phenomenal moment in the history of Latin America.
(Iraq 2003)
Iraq actually is a perfect example of the way the whole system works…so, we economic hit men are the first line of defense, we go in, we try to corrupt governments and get them to accept these huge loans which we then use as leverage to basically own them. If we fail, as I failed in Panama with Omar Torrijos, or in Ecuador with Jaime Roldos, men who refused to be corrupted, then the second line of defense is we send in the jackals. And the jackals either overthrow governments or they assassinate, and once that happens then a new government comes in and boy, it`s going to tow the line, because the new president knows what will happen if he doesn't.
In the case of Iraq, both of
those things failed-economic hit men were not able to get through to Saddam
Hussain, we tried very hard, we tried to get him to accept a deal very similar
to what the house of Saud had accepted in Saudi Arabia, but he wouldn`t accept
it, and so the jackals went in to take him out…they couldn`t do it, his
security was very good…after all, he at one time worked for the CIA. he`d been
hired to assassinate a former president if Iraq, and failed…but he knew the
system. So in '91 we send in the troops, and we take out the Iraqi military.
So
we assume at that point that Saddam Hussain is going to come around. We could
have taken him out, of course, at that point in time, but we didn`t want to,
he`s the kind of strong man we like. He controls his people, we thought he
could control the Kurds and keep the Iranians within their border, and keep
pumping oil for us, and that once we took out his military, now he`s going to
come around. So the economic hit men go back in in the '90s, without success.
If they`d had success, he`d still be running the country. We`d be selling him
all the fighter jets he wants, and everything else he wants… but they couldn`t,
they didn`t have success. The Jackals couldn`t take him out again. So we sent
the military in once again, and this time we did the complete job and took him
out, and in the process created for ourselves some very, very lucrative
construction deals…we had to reconstruct a country that we`d essentially
destroyed, which is a pretty good deal if you own construction companies, big
ones.
So, Iraq shows the three stages; the economic hit men, failed there; the
jackals, failed there; and as a final measure the military goes in. And in that
way we`ve really created an empire, but we`ve done it very, very subtly…it`s
clandestine. All of the empires of the past were built on the military. And
everybody knew that they were building them. So that the British knew they were
building them….the French, the Germans, the Romans, the Greeks…and they were
proud of it, and they always had some excuse like spreading civilization,
spreading some religion, something like that, but they knew they were doing
it…we don`t.
The majority of the people in the United States have no idea that we
are living off the benefits of a clandestine empire, that today there`s more
slavery in the world than ever before. And then you have to ask yourself, well
if it`s an empire, then who`s the emperor? Obviously, our presidents of the
United States are not emperors, an emperor is someone who`s not elected,
doesn`t serve a limited term, and doesn`t report to anyone, essentially.
So you
can`t classify a president that way. But we do have what I consider to be the
equivalent of the emperor, and it`s what I call the Corporatocracy.
Corporatocracy is this group of individuals who run our biggest corporations
and they really act as the emperor in this empire.
They control our media,
either through direct ownership or advertising, they control most of our
politicians because they finance their campaigns, either through the
corporations or through personal contributions that came out of the
corporations.
They`re not elected, they don`t serve a limited term, they don`t
report to anybody, and at the very top of the corporatocracy you really can`t
tell where the person`s working for a private corporation or the government
because they`re always moving back and forth…so, you know, you`ve got a guy who
one moment is the president of a big construction company, like Haliburton, and
the next moment he`s vice president of the United States, or the president, who
was in the oil business, and this is true weather you`ve got democrats or
republicans in the office, you have them moving back and forth through the
revolving door…and in a way, our government isn`t visible a lot of the time and
its policies are carried out by our corporations on one level or another, and
then again, the policies of the government are basically forged by the
corporatacracy, and then presented to the government and they become government
policy. So it`s an incredible cozy relationship. This isn`t a conspiracy theory
type of thing, these people don`t have to get together and plot to do things,
they all basically work under one primary assumption, and that is that they
must maximize profits, regardless of the social and environmental cost
(Maximize profits, regardless of the social and environmental cost)
This process of manipulation by the corporatacracy through the use of debt, bribery and, political overthrow is called "Globalization". Just as the federal reserve keeps the American public in a position of indentured servitude through Perpetual Debt, Inflation and Interest, the World Bank and IMF serve this role on a global scale.
(Maximize profits, regardless of the social and environmental cost)
This process of manipulation by the corporatacracy through the use of debt, bribery and, political overthrow is called "Globalization". Just as the federal reserve keeps the American public in a position of indentured servitude through Perpetual Debt, Inflation and Interest, the World Bank and IMF serve this role on a global scale.
The basic scam is simple. Put a country in debt either by its own indiscretion or through corrupting the leader of that country, then , impose conditionalities, or Structural Adjustment Policies…often consisting of the following:
1- Currency Devaluation. When the value of a currency drops, so does everything valued in it. This makes indigenous resources available to predator countries, at a fraction of their worth.
2- Large funding cuts for Social Programs, These usually include education and health care. …compromising the well-being and integrity of the society, leaving the public vulnerable to exploitation.
3 -Privatization of state-owned enterprises… This means that socially important systems, can be purchased and regulated by foreign corporations, for profit. For example, in 1999, the world bank insisted that the Bolivian Government sell the public water system of it third largest city to a subsidy of the US corporation, Bechtel. As soon as this occurred, water bills for the already impoverish local residents skyrocketed. It wasn't until after a full blown revolt by the people that the Bechtel contract was nullified.
4 Then there is trade liberalization.. or the opening up of the economy through removing any restrictions on foreign trade. This allows for a number of abusive economic manifestations… such as transnational corporations bringing in their own mass produced products, undercutting the indigenous production and ruining local economies…an example is Jamaica, which, after accepting loans and conditionalities from the world bank, lost its largest cash crop markets due to competition with western imports. Today, countless farmers are out of work, for they are unable to compete with the large corporations.
Another variation is the creation of numerous, seemingly unnoticed, unregulated, inhumane sweatshop factories, which take advantage of the imposed economic hardship. Additionally, due to production deregulation, environmental destruction is perpetual, as a country's resources are often exploited by the indifferent corporations, while outputting large amounts of deliberate pollution.
PERKINS:
The largest environmental lawsuit in the history of the world today is being brought on behalf of 30,000 Ecuadorian Amazonian people, against Texaco, which is now owned by Chevron, so its against Chevron but for activities conducted by Texaco….they estimate it to be more than eighteen times what the Exxon Valdese dumped into the coast of Alaska…in the case of Ecuador it wasn`t an accident…the oil companies did it intentionally, they knew they were doing it to save money out there rather than arranging for a proper disposal.
Furthermore, A cursory glance at the performance record of the World Bank reveals that the institution, which publicly claims to help poor countries develop and alleviate poverty, has done nothing but increase poverty and the wealth gap, while corporate profits soar. In 1960 the income gap between the 5th of the world's people in the richest countries, versus the 5th in the poorest countries was 30:1. By 1998, it was 74:1.While global GNP rose 40% between 1970 and 1985, those in poverty actually increased by 17% While from 1985 to 2000, those living on less than 1 dollar a day increased by 18%.
Even the Joint Economic Committee of the US Congress admitted that there is a mere 40% success rate of all World Bank projects.
In the late 1960s, The world Bank intervened in Ecuador with large loans. During the next 30 yrs, poverty grew from 50% to 70%…under or unemployment grew from 15% to 70%… public debt increased from 240 million to 16 billion….while the share of resources allocated to the poor went from 20% to 6%.
In fact, By the year 2000, 50% of Ecuador's national budget had to be allocated for paying its debts.
It is important to understand, The World Bank is, in fact, a US bank, supporting US interests. For the United States holds veto power over decisions, as it is largest provider of capital… and where did it get this money? You guessed it….it made it out of thin air through the fractional reserve banking system.
Of the world's top 100 economies, as based on the annual GDP, 51 are corporations,
And 47 of that 51 are US based. Wal-mart, General Motors and Exxon are more economically powerful than Saudi Arabia, Poland, Norway, South Africa, Finland, Indonesia and many others….
… and as protective trade barriers are broken down, currencies tossed together and manipulated in floating markets and state economies overturned in favor of open competition and global capitalism, the empire expands.
NETWORK CLIP :
You get up on your little twenty-one inch screen, and howl about America and democracy…there is no America, there is no democracy…there is only IBM and ITT…and AT&T…and Dupont, Dow, Union Carbine…and Exxon. Those are the nations of the world today. What do you thing the Russians talk about in their consuls of state? Karl Marx? They get out their linear programming charts, statistical decision theories, minimax solutions, and compute the price cost probabilities of their transactions and investments, just like we do. We no longer live in a world of nations and ideologies, Mr. Beale. The world is a college of corporations, inexorably determined by the immutable bylaws of business. The world is a business, Mr. Beale .
(Taken cumulatively, the integration of the world as a whole, particularly in terms of economic globalization and the mythic qualities of "free market" capitalism, represents a veritable "empire" in its own right…few have been able to escape the "structural adjustments" and "conditionalities" of the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, or the arbitrations of the World Trade Organization, those international financial institutions that, however inadequate, still determine what economic globalization means….such is the power of globalization that within our lifetime we are likely to see the integration, even if unevenly, of all national economies in the world into a single global, free market system.
--Jim Garrison, President, State of the World Forum )
the world is being taken over by a handful of business powers, who dominate the natural resources we need to live, while controlling the money that we need to obtain these resources. The end result will be world monopoly, based not human life, but financial and corporate power.
and as the inequality continues, naturally more and more people are becoming desperate…. so the establishment was forced to come up with a new way to deal with anyone who challenges the system…so they gave birth to the terrorist.. The term terrorist is an empty distinction, designed for any person or group who chooses to challenge the Establishment.
This isn't to be confused with the fictional Al Qaeda, which was actually the name of a computer database for the US supported mujahideen in the 1980s .
("The truth is, there is no Islamic army or terrorist group called Al Qaida. And any informed intelligence officer knows this. But there is a propaganda campaign to make the public believe in the presence of an identified entity…the country behind this propaganda is the US" -Pierre-Henry Bunel, former French military intelligence )
In 2007, the department of defense received 161.8 billion dollars for the so called "global war on terrorism". According to the National Counter terrorism Center, in 2004 roughly 2000 people were killed internationally due to supposed terrorist acts. Of that number, about 70 were American. Using this number as a general average, which is extremely generous, …it is interesting to note than twice as many people die from peanut allergies a year, than from terrorist acts. Concurrently, the leading cause of death in America is coronary heart disease, killing roughly 450,000 each yr. And, in 2007, the government`s allocation of funds for research on this issue was about 3 billion dollars.
This means that the US government in 2007 spent 54 times the amount for preventing terrorism , than it spent for preventing a disease which kills 6600 times more
people annually than terrorism does.
Yet, as the name Terrorism and Al-Qaida are arbitrarily stamped on every news report relating to any action taken against US interests, the myth grows wider… in mid 2008, the US attorney general actually proposed that the US congress officially declare war against the fantasy. Not to mention as of july 2008, there are now over 1 million people currently on the "US terrorist watch list"
These so-called counter terrorism measures of course have nothing to do with social protection… and everything to do with preserving the establishment amongst the growing anti-American sentiment both domestically and internationally…, which is legitimately founded on the greed based corporate empire expansion that is exploiting the world.
The true terrorists of our world do not meet at the docks at midnight… or scream allahu akbar before some violent action. The true terrorists of our world wear 5000 dollar suits and work in highest position finance, government and business…
So what do we do?… how do we stop a system of greed and corruption that has so much power and momentum. How do we stop this aberrant group behavior which feels no compassion for, say, the million slaughtered in Iraq and Afghanistan so the Corporatocracy can control energy resources and opium production for Wall street profit?
( Before 1980, Afghanistan produced 0% of the world`s opium; After the US/CIA backed Mujahideen won the Soviet/Afghan war, by 1986 they were producing 40% of the world`s heroin supply;
By 1999, they were producing 80% of the total market supply;
But then something unexpected happened…; The Taliban rose to power, and by 2000 they had destroyed most of the opium fields. Production dropped from 3,000+tons to only 185 tons, a 94% reduction. ; On Sept. 9th 2001, the full Afghanistan invasion plans were on President Bush`s desk;
Two days later they had their excuse;
Today, opium production in US controlled Afghanistan, which now provides more than 90 percent of the world`s heroin, breaks new production records nearly every year.
How do we stop a system of greed and corruption, that condemns poor populations to sweat shop slavery for the benefit of Madison avenue… or that engineers false flag terror attacks for the sake of manipulation….or that generates built in modes of social operation which are inherently exploitative…
or that systematically reduces civil liberties, and violates human rights in order to protect itself from it own shortcomings.
How do we deal with the numerous covert institutions such as the council on foreign relations, the trilateral commission and the bilderburg group and other undemocratically elected groups which , behind closed doors collude to control the political, financial, social and environmental elements of our lives?
In other to find the answer, we must first find the true underlying cause….for the fact is, the selfish, corrupt, power and profit based groups are not the true source of the problem…they are symptoms.
You get up on your little twenty-one inch screen, and howl about America and democracy…there is no America, there is no democracy…there is only IBM and ITT…and AT&T…and Dupont, Dow, Union Carbine…and Exxon. Those are the nations of the world today. What do you thing the Russians talk about in their consuls of state? Karl Marx? They get out their linear programming charts, statistical decision theories, minimax solutions, and compute the price cost probabilities of their transactions and investments, just like we do. We no longer live in a world of nations and ideologies, Mr. Beale. The world is a college of corporations, inexorably determined by the immutable bylaws of business. The world is a business, Mr. Beale .
(Taken cumulatively, the integration of the world as a whole, particularly in terms of economic globalization and the mythic qualities of "free market" capitalism, represents a veritable "empire" in its own right…few have been able to escape the "structural adjustments" and "conditionalities" of the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, or the arbitrations of the World Trade Organization, those international financial institutions that, however inadequate, still determine what economic globalization means….such is the power of globalization that within our lifetime we are likely to see the integration, even if unevenly, of all national economies in the world into a single global, free market system.
--Jim Garrison, President, State of the World Forum )
the world is being taken over by a handful of business powers, who dominate the natural resources we need to live, while controlling the money that we need to obtain these resources. The end result will be world monopoly, based not human life, but financial and corporate power.
and as the inequality continues, naturally more and more people are becoming desperate…. so the establishment was forced to come up with a new way to deal with anyone who challenges the system…so they gave birth to the terrorist.. The term terrorist is an empty distinction, designed for any person or group who chooses to challenge the Establishment.
This isn't to be confused with the fictional Al Qaeda, which was actually the name of a computer database for the US supported mujahideen in the 1980s .
("The truth is, there is no Islamic army or terrorist group called Al Qaida. And any informed intelligence officer knows this. But there is a propaganda campaign to make the public believe in the presence of an identified entity…the country behind this propaganda is the US" -Pierre-Henry Bunel, former French military intelligence )
In 2007, the department of defense received 161.8 billion dollars for the so called "global war on terrorism". According to the National Counter terrorism Center, in 2004 roughly 2000 people were killed internationally due to supposed terrorist acts. Of that number, about 70 were American. Using this number as a general average, which is extremely generous, …it is interesting to note than twice as many people die from peanut allergies a year, than from terrorist acts. Concurrently, the leading cause of death in America is coronary heart disease, killing roughly 450,000 each yr. And, in 2007, the government`s allocation of funds for research on this issue was about 3 billion dollars.
This means that the US government in 2007 spent 54 times the amount for preventing terrorism , than it spent for preventing a disease which kills 6600 times more
people annually than terrorism does.
Yet, as the name Terrorism and Al-Qaida are arbitrarily stamped on every news report relating to any action taken against US interests, the myth grows wider… in mid 2008, the US attorney general actually proposed that the US congress officially declare war against the fantasy. Not to mention as of july 2008, there are now over 1 million people currently on the "US terrorist watch list"
These so-called counter terrorism measures of course have nothing to do with social protection… and everything to do with preserving the establishment amongst the growing anti-American sentiment both domestically and internationally…, which is legitimately founded on the greed based corporate empire expansion that is exploiting the world.
The true terrorists of our world do not meet at the docks at midnight… or scream allahu akbar before some violent action. The true terrorists of our world wear 5000 dollar suits and work in highest position finance, government and business…
So what do we do?… how do we stop a system of greed and corruption that has so much power and momentum. How do we stop this aberrant group behavior which feels no compassion for, say, the million slaughtered in Iraq and Afghanistan so the Corporatocracy can control energy resources and opium production for Wall street profit?
( Before 1980, Afghanistan produced 0% of the world`s opium; After the US/CIA backed Mujahideen won the Soviet/Afghan war, by 1986 they were producing 40% of the world`s heroin supply;
By 1999, they were producing 80% of the total market supply;
But then something unexpected happened…; The Taliban rose to power, and by 2000 they had destroyed most of the opium fields. Production dropped from 3,000+tons to only 185 tons, a 94% reduction. ; On Sept. 9th 2001, the full Afghanistan invasion plans were on President Bush`s desk;
Two days later they had their excuse;
Today, opium production in US controlled Afghanistan, which now provides more than 90 percent of the world`s heroin, breaks new production records nearly every year.
How do we stop a system of greed and corruption, that condemns poor populations to sweat shop slavery for the benefit of Madison avenue… or that engineers false flag terror attacks for the sake of manipulation….or that generates built in modes of social operation which are inherently exploitative…
or that systematically reduces civil liberties, and violates human rights in order to protect itself from it own shortcomings.
How do we deal with the numerous covert institutions such as the council on foreign relations, the trilateral commission and the bilderburg group and other undemocratically elected groups which , behind closed doors collude to control the political, financial, social and environmental elements of our lives?
In other to find the answer, we must first find the true underlying cause….for the fact is, the selfish, corrupt, power and profit based groups are not the true source of the problem…they are symptoms.
US driven by Nazi war machine
By Finian Cunningham
The annual VE Day - victory in
Europe - celebrations held this month see, as usual, Western governments
indulging in self-glory and moral superiority for their supposed defeat of
German fascism. However, the official history books do not tell of the secret
pact that Western governments and Washington in particular formed with the
remnants of the Nazi war machine.
The absorption of Nzi military practice and intelligence into the CIA and other Western organizations at the end of the Second World War had fateful and far-reaching pernicious consequences - consequences that are becoming more and more manifest today, as US-led wars of aggression rage around the world.
If we want to understand why US-led wars of aggression, covert and overt, are plaguing the planet, from Iraq, Afghanistan, to Libya, Syria and Iran, we can gain much insight into today’s problems by going back to events at the end of the Second World War.
Within days of Nazi Germany’s unconditional surrender to the Allies - 68 years ago this week - the Western powers of the United States and Britain were already drawing the battle lines for their next war - against the Soviet Union.
On 22 May 1945, the Third Reich’s chief of intelligence on the Eastern Front, Major General Reinhard Gehlen, surrendered himself to the American military near his Bavarian hideout. The Americans quickly realized the scoop. Gehlen had been Hitler’s “spy master” during Nazi Germany’s war on the Soviet Union, in charge of running agents, death squads and compiling data on Soviet and Red Army infrastructure.
Gehlen prepared well for his surrender to the Americans. He traded his copious intelligence assets for liberty, instead of being handed over as a wanted war criminal to the Soviets, as the Americans should have done as part of an agreement hammered out between the Allies at the Yalta conference weeks before the war’s end. The Soviets wanted Gehlen and his high-value files, and they knew that the Americans were breaking their word.
Hitler’s spy master was not only given his liberty. He was flown to Washington and was received with open arms by President Truman’s top intelligence brass. For the next year, Gehlen worked with American military intelligence to establish an anti-Soviet clandestine army that would operate throughout Eastern Europe, the Baltics and inside Russian territory. The Gehlen Organization, as it became known, was Washington’s “eyes and ears” on the Soviet Union.
One of Gehlen’s closest American associates at the time was John Foster Dulles, who led the American Office of Strategic Services (OSS) in Europe during the war. Dulles shared Gehlen’s rabid anti-communist views. Justifying the American collaboration with this senior Third Reich officer, Dulles said: “He’s on our side, and that’s all that matters.” The OSS would soon evolve into the Central Intelligence Agency and Dulles became its director.
While the Nuremberg Trials were prosecuting a handful of high-profile Nazi leaders, such as Hermann Goring and Rudolf Hess, the glaring but lesser-known contradiction to the much-vaunted “de-Nazification” was that the US was recruiting thousands of Nazi scientists, industrialists, militarists and intelligence.
The Gehlen Org was a foundation stone of the CIA and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). A central part of the American deal with Reinhard Gehlen was that he not only supplied all his intelligence files on the Soviet Union, but he also rendered the services of his contacts and operatives among the Wehrmacht’s vast Eastern Front.
The Americans and British turned a blind eye as thousands of former Nazi personnel were quietly released from POW camps or brought in from hiding to join the ranks of the Gehlen Org. They included wanted war criminals and former members of the Gestapo, Waffen-SS and Einsatzgruppen - the mobile killing squads that had carried out mass exterminations in the Nazi onslaught against the Soviet Union during Operation Barbarossa (1941-44).
According to Christopher Simpson in his book, Blowback, notorious Nazi death squad figures, such as Klaus Barbie, Franz Six and Emil Augsberg were afforded “rat lines” to escape from justice and become re-employed to serve American and NATO military intelligence against the Soviet Union in what became the Cold War.
For years after the Second World War, the Gehlen Org’s remit was to run espionage, sabotage and assassination operations - state-sponsored terrorism - on behalf of the American CIA and NATO behind enemy lines in the Soviet territories, stretching from the Balkans to the Black Sea. Thousands of other Nazi war criminals were spirited out of Europe with American oversight to take up residence in South America.
Some of them would resurface as key players in American-backed fascist dictatorships in South and Central America during the 1950s, 60s and 70s.
One consequence of the US incorporating the Nazi war machine was the deep-chilling effect on Western-Soviet relations. The Soviet Union had borne the brunt of Nazi aggression during the Second World War, with as many as 50 million of its citizens killed. It is not hard to imagine how the redeployment by the US of Nazi spies, intelligence, commandos and Eastern European puppets must have appeared then to Moscow. It was an unspeakable betrayal and de facto declaration of war by its former war-time ally.
This Western betrayal set the scene for the Cold War that would haunt international relations for nearly six decades from the end of the Second World War. Gehlen would go on to become head of West German intelligence (BND) until his decorated retirement in 1968. He died in 1979 at the age of 77.
The reliance of the CIA, the Pentagon, White House and NATO on the Nazi war machine for its intelligence ensured that a deadly nuclear arms race took hold. The result was the growth of the gargantuan American military-industrial complex, which today not only threatens the rest of the world with hyper destructive power, but also the viability of American society from the exorbitant economic cost for maintaining this voracious complex.
Another result was that the rabid anti-communist ideology and military practices of the Nazi apparatus became embedded in American foreign policy and military doctrine.
It is ironic that every year the American and Western European governments commemorate VE Day - victory in Europe - when the army of the Third Reich surrendered on 8-9 May, 1945. Washington and its Western allies claim that they saved the world from fascism, and for decades Western governments have lived off that supposed glorious victory. The moral authority that these governments have derived seems wholly undeserved given the expedient alliance they forged out of the ashes of the war with the cutting edge of German fascism.
In reality, no sooner had the Nazi war machine capitulated, when it was promptly used as the foundation for American and Western military intelligence and counterinsurgency establishments.
When we survey the carnage of criminal wars of aggression by the US and its NATO allies since the official end of the Cold War, including the genocides in Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya and currently in Syria, not to mention large swathes of Asia and Africa, it is worth bearing in mind the moral corruption at the heart of these governments that can be traced back to end of the Second World War. Today, more than ever, America’s clandestine partnership with the Nazi war machine is increasingly made manifest.
Did CIA kill Malcolm X's grandson?
 |
| Malcolm Shabazz |
I never met Malcolm Shabazz, the
outspoken activist whose grandfather, Malcolm X, was the most influential
African-American of the 20th century. Now I will never meet him. According to
reports, Malcolm Shabazz was recently murdered in Mexico.
I had been hoping to get to know Malcolm Shabazz at last February's Hollywoodism Conference in Tehran. But the US National Security State had other ideas. While trying to catch his flight to Tehran, Malcolm was arrested by the FBI. No explanation for the arrest was ever provided.
Why did US authorities prevent Malcolm from traveling to Iran?
The arrest was almost certainly politically-motivated. Malcolm Shabazz's presence at the Hollywoodism Conference would have brought the event invaluable publicity - especially in the black community and among Muslims, anti-Zionists, and anti-imperialists worldwide. And that publicity would have fueled Malcolm's impending rise to superstar-dissident status.
Make no mistake: Malcolm Shabazz, like his grandfather, posed a serious, “actionable” long-term threat to the powers-that-be.
Malcolm had converted to Shi'a Islam and become a spokesman for the “axis of resistance” - not just anti-Zionist forces in the Middle East, but anti-empire forces around the world. Like his grandfather, he had had some brushes with the law when he was young. And like his grandfather, he was on the road to putting his past behind him and becoming a charismatic spokesman for the world's dispossessed.
I do not know whether the usual suspects - the “asteroids” who assassinate the enemies of empire on behalf of the CIA, the World Bank, and related entities, according to author John Perkins - killed Malcolm Shabazz. But I am 100% certain that they were thinking about it.
How can I be so sure?
I have been studying these assassinations for many years. My conclusion is that the empire's assassins profile their potential enemies, and decide which ones present an “actionable threat.”
Charismatic leaders with access to the media are among the most actionable threats. President John F. Kennedy was murdered because he was so charismatic and media-savvy that he was capable of pushing through policies that the guardians of empire deemed unacceptable: Nuclear disarmament, rapprochement with Cuba, détente with Russia, withdrawal from Vietnam, a new deal for the Third World. This story has been beautifully told by James Douglass, one of America's leading peace activists, in his book JFK and the Unspeakable.
JFK's brother Robert Kennedy also presented an actionable threat to the powers-that-be. RFK would have been elected president in 1968 had he not been gunned down by CIA assassins. Robert wanted to be president, so he could prosecute his brother's murderers and continue his brother's policies. But the “asteroids” - and their bankster masters - had other ideas.
Martin Luther King was also an “actionable threat.” MLK had turned against the Vietnam War and the whole military-industrial complex, even as the FBI was trying to drive him crazy and make him commit suicide. Far from committing suicide, MLK was planning to lead a half-million people to occupy Washington DC and stay there until the war and poverty were both ended. So - as a jury verdict legally established in 1999 - the US Army, FBI, and CIA worked together to murder Dr. King. The full story is in William Pepper's book Act of State.
Other “actionable threats” in recent history include JFK Jr., who was murdered in 1999 for pursuing the killers of his father and uncle; Senator Paul Wellstone, murdered in 2003 for planning to investigate 9/11 and prevent the US from invading Iraq; and Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, killed with a cancer weapon for the crime of having enough charisma to almost single-handedly lead Latin America out from under the US empire.
Malcolm Shabazz's grandfather, Malcolm X, was also an “actionable threat” when the CIA orchestrated his assassination in 1965. Malcolm X was forging an anti-empire alliance consisting of Muslims and other non-Western victims of imperialism, along with poor and middle-class American whites and blacks...the same alliance Dr. King was assembling when he was killed three years later.
And now, Malcolm Shabazz - who was forging an updated version of the same anti-empire alliance - is murdered in Mexico. Coincidence? Maybe.
But look at it from the point of view of his likely murderers. From their perspective, Malcolm Shabazz seemed to be following in his grandfather's footsteps. If they waited much longer to kill him, and let him establish his growing reputation as a respected activist, it would be a lot harder to stage an assassination and then spread the media propaganda line, based on the ancient history of his alleged teenage misdeeds, that he was “just a thug.”
If they waited until his book was finished and published, killing him would look suspicious...and sell his book.
And if they waited until he got as famous and influential as his grandfather, they might have wound up with a major problem on their hands.
So, apparently, they decided to take pre-emptive action. Kill him while he's only a decade or so past his “troubled” phase. Do it in a way that reinforces the “troubled young man with a criminal history” Operation Mockingbird mantra. Spread that mantra through all of the controlled-media outlets.
Whatever happened to Malcolm Shabazz, it is abundantly obvious that the intelligence agency assets infiltrating US mainstream media are conducting a scripted posthumous character-assassination designed to obscure Malcolm's role as an up-and-coming activist and long-term threat to the Empire.
If you search the CIA-Mossad-linked Google for “Malcolm Shabazz,” the first result is a story published by the CIA propaganda front, the Huffington Post. The story is a smear designed to drag Malcolm's name through the mud.
Huffington Post: “In his youth, he set a fire that caused the death of his grandmother.”
Reality: Malcolm Shabazz denied having set that fire as a child; he was forced to plead guilty in the same way that virtually all defendants, especially African-American ones, are forced to plead guilty in plea bargains to avoid facing long prison terms for crimes they may or may not have committed.
Huffington Post: “Shabazz continued to have trouble with the law throughout his life.”
Reality: His last conviction was in 2002, more than a decade ago; the only “trouble” the character-assassins could find since then was an arrest, with no conviction, meaning he was and remains legally innocent. In other words, he was legally deemed innocent of allegedly “punching a hole in a store window” in 2006 (seven years ago!)
In the USA, where Obama's presidency has not decriminalized “Driving While Black,” practically all young black men have “trouble with the law.” Actually, it isn't that they have trouble with the law. It's that the law has trouble with them. Being young, black, and male means being guilty until proven innocent.
The imperial propagandists at the New York Times, Huffington Post, and similar outlets are working overtime smearing Malcolm Shabazz. This apparently pre-orchestrated smear smells like an intelligence operation. It is strong circumstantial evidence that Malcolm Shabazz was yet another political assassination victim.
Malcolm Shabazz's real “crime,” like that of his famous grandfather, was joining the axis of resistance, standing up to Zionism and the US empire, and speaking the truth.
Fear and Loathing in the EU
AFP Photo / Frederic Florin
By Patrick L Young
It’s not just the eurozone that is
increasingly derided as a failure: Now, the very European Union itself is
mistrusted by its largest members. And who discovered this gem of Eurosceptic
propaganda? The EU’s own statistics agency.
In the heyday of ancient Rome, the
Emperor satisfied the citizens with ‘panem et circenses’ (bread and
circuses). Alas, the Roman law-based empire the European Union is spluttering
through waves of crises thanks to their odd belief that bread and circuses can
be replaced by austerity. Nations have been left wearing hair shirts (and
worse) in the masochistic belief that they can slim their way to health if
sufficiently starved of stimulus.
So it may not be such a surprise
that polling conducted by the EU’s own EuroBarometer agency has shown a simply
staggering reversal in how major European nations view the EU. In 2007,
Germany’s refusal to abide by Euro currency rules was copied by Mediterranean
states, economic growth was taken for granted, and various asset bubbles
propelled a sense of calmness, confidence and wealth. At the time, polling
showed that the EU was widely trusted, except in the UK.
But now, even in Poland, where
economic growth has continued, the percentage of people who distrust the EU has
catapulted from 18 percent to 42 percent. The pragmatic Poles are wavering in
their support of joining the Euro. Indeed, one poll showed some 20 percent
suggested fiscally sound Euro nations should join the Zloty!
In five other nations a majority of
citizens now clearly distrust the Brussels apparatus. In Britain, this amounts
to a remarkable 69 percent, up from 49 percent in 2007, placing them second
behind the Spaniards, where post-property-bust distrust has leapt from 23
percent to a resoundingly skeptical 72 percent.
This message from the heart of EU
bureaucracy ought to be very clear: The European Union is utterly and
completely out of step with the views of its citizens. Some 59 percent of
Germans distrust the EU over frustrations at having to transfer billions in
bailouts to Mediterranean states, while on the southern fringes of Europe the
citizenry who trusted the EU are now being forced to deal with austerity that
will deliver significant pain.
AFP Photo / Samuel
Kubani
The EU remains an organization with
plenty of presidents, but no leadership. The crumbling quasi-imperial edifice
fails to appreciate the tectonic shifts shredding its influence. A democratic
deficit at the top with limousine liberals on tax-free salaries looks as
out-of-touch as the Soviet Politburo in 1985. A genuinely beneficial free trade
zone has been hijacked by a crazed group of political integrationists convinced
of their divine right to make Europe one big nation.
However, this is not one big happy
family. Nor is the opposition a single unitary group. This may permit
divide-and-conquer politicking within the EU, but the ultimate fissures will be
very hard to paper over to achieve the foolish integrationist ideal. The EU
itself may yet collapse.
Yet even though distrust is at
record-high levels, the Eurosceptics are anything but harmonized. The Five Star
Movement in Italy has little in common with Scandinavian True Finns or
Britain’s UKIP. British Euroscepticism is tinged with a right-wing individual
determinism and innate distrust of central government. In other places, Euroscepticism
may wear the mask of Fascist or other unpleasant socialist extremists. In the
Mediterranean, there is incredulity that the EU is not the ultimate lender of
last resort there to bail out bankrupt welfare systems. Ironically, such models
of patronage and state-assisted folly were not reduced earlier, because the
Euro had artificially low interest rates as the ECB sought to keep the German
economy healthy.
Brussels, aided and abetted by a
generation of political pygmies, has played its cards so badly that while the
Euro faces death by a thousand cuts, even the core universal benefits of the EU itself are
endangered. Barbaric cures to sustain a flawed currency are being disowned by a
formerly Europhile political generation, such as German Socialist Oskar
Lafontaine and British Conservative Nigel Lawson. Both formidable finance
ministers now see how the Euro threatens European unity at all levels.
Meanwhile, with a perfect demonstration
of how his political skills have become more attuned to the Brussels trough as
opposed to the problems of ordinary citizens, President Barroso has remarked
that the clear path to a better EU is more federalism.
When politicians ignore the people
from their position of privilege, the end result is usually upheaval.
Syria: A global dance of diplomacy
 |
| US Secretary of State Kerry with Russian Foreign Minister |
US Secretary of State John Kerry met Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu before landing in Moscow to meet President Putin. Iranian Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Salehi was in Amman – and then forward to Damascus. British Prime Minister David ‘of Arabia’ Cameron will also meet Putin in Sochi. Next week, Qatar's Foreign Minister will be in Tehran.
What does this diplomatic dance mean? From an Obama administration point of view, it’s still the same game: “Assad must go,” as the President himself stressed many times, and Moscow must give way. Wishful thinking, of course; even Kerry, after meeting Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, seems to have realized which way the (desert) wind is blowing.
I interpreted the choices Obama had before the Israeli bombing. It’s (relatively) safe to assume that the Obama administration may have abandoned the no-fly zone option, at least for now. The notion that Obama – or Cameron, or Israel – would be able to intimidate Putin comes straight from Alice in Wonderland.
The
Iranian angle
Yes, it’s always about Iran.
Those plush abodes of armchair-generals – also known as US Think Tankland – are
abuzz with the wishful thinking that Iran’s regional influence is declining
because of the NATO-GCC-Israel-supported civil war in Syria. It’s not that
simple. On Monday, Ankara started military exercises on the Turkish-Syrian border. There’s no question Salehi and Davutoglu will be talking about this sooner rather than later.
The ultimate red line for Tehran is Assad remaining in power in Damascus. For the moment, there’s absolutely no evidence his government is collapsing.
Syrian
President Bashar al-Assad May 7,
Anyone even remotely familiar
with the Middle East, especially in Tehran, knows Washington’s agenda in Syria
– inbuilt in the Bush-Obama continuum. It’s all about divide and rule centered
on sectarianism – as Seymour Hersh already detailed. A major plank of this strategy, of
course, is the (never acknowledged) support of hardcore Islamists, once again
in this case reverted to the Reaganesque status of ‘freedom fighters.’ Tehran also clearly sees how this process has led the House of Saud to be embedded with Israel – and vice-versa. In the current situation, the plum tomato in the kebab is the new Defense Crescent, leaked to Rupert Murdoch’s Sunday Times in London, linking Israel, GCC members Saudi Arabia and the UAE, Jordan and Turkey to “counter Iran’s nuclear ambitions.”
So if Iran-Syria-Hezbollah – with the Maliki government in Baghdad added for good measure – is regarded by many in the pan-Arab street as the axis of resistance, the counterattack centered in Washington, Tel Aviv and Riyadh can easily be defined as the axis of neocolonialism (axis of puppets, perhaps?)
What is
Qatar up to?
US Think Tankland’s wet dreams
of an Assad government collapse – or reduced to the status of a ‘non-state
actor’ – obviously eschew the possibility of Salafi-jihadi outfits getting
the political upper hand in Syria. If that happens, and that’s a major if, it’s
clear these medieval outfits may become even more ferocious towards the GCC
petromonarchies, Israel and Turkey than towards Iran. It’s a safe bet that Salehi told the Jordanians as much during his visit. Tehran’s strategists see very clearly that in a post-Assad setting, the police state run by King Playstation – who gets away with anything in the West because he speaks perfect English – would become either another Muslim Brotherhood fiefdom or a mini-emirate.
But the really juicy relationships in all this mess are between Tehran and both Doha and Ankara. Tehran knows that nothing can be done regarding the House of Saud, whose hatred of Shia is pathological. But Tehran can certainly discuss with the Qataris and the Turks what the fallout of hardcore Sunni/Wahhabi intolerance and homicidal fury in Syria would mean for them.
Qatar will keep playing a double game. Prince Khalifa al-Thani is visiting Israel in November – a first for a Qatari royal. This is not exactly going down well among millions of committed anti-Zionists all across the Arab world.
)
It should not be forgotten that
Qatar has always been a cheerleader of Sheikh Youssef al-Qaradawi, who after
years in Doha now shines in Cairo as the head of the International Union of
Muslim Scholars. Al-Qaradawi has been a great cheerleader of the jihad against
Assad in Syria.Syrian nationalist commanders (yes, they do exist) blame Qatar for remote-controlling large swathes of the ‘rebels.’ Doha’s objective: An Islamic state in Syria, what else? Not exactly an agenda endearing Doha to Washington, even though they’re apparently in bed together; the US-approved Syrian National Coalition – a Muslim Brotherhood-infested outfit – is remote-controlled by Qatar.
In Absurdistan terms, this ranks close to the House of Saud, Turkey, Jordan and Qatar covertly weaponizing the ‘rebels,’ with the CIA having a ‘consulting role’ to ensure the weapons go to secular and moderate outfits.
Qatar denies everything; a golden rule of real journalism is never to believe anything until the official denial. According to Qatari Prime Minister Hamad bin Jassim al-Thani, “We are not looking for a role just for us… We are looking for a pan-Arab role.” Qatar may be fooling Washington, but it’s certainly not fooling Damascus, Tehran or Moscow.
Israeli
PM installs bed on plane
 |
| Benjamin Nyetanyahu (Israeli Prime Minister) |
By Ian Deitch
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will seek alternate
sleeping arrangements when traveling after receiving a sky-high bill for
installing a customized bed on a recent flight to London,
officials close to the Israeli
leader said.
Netanyahu's office initially defended the decision, saying the prime minister had a busy schedule ahead of the flight and needed to be fresh for important meetings in Britain.
But following public criticism, officials close to Netanyahu said late Saturday that he had been unaware of the cost, and once informed, he ordered the bed be canceled on all future flights. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to talk to the media.
The uproar comes at a delicate time. Netanyahu's government is in the process of drawing up a budget expected to include painful austerity measures and tax increases due to a widening deficit.
On Saturday night, several thousand people took to the streets in Tel Aviv and other cities to protest the expected budget cuts. Netanyahu was meeting Sunday with top officials to discuss likely cutbacks in the defense budget.
Micky Rosenthal of the opposition Labor Party called for an inquiry into the prime minister's "scandalous behavior" according to the Maariv daily on Sunday.
"We thought that nothing could surprise us anymore when it came to the Netanyahus' personal behavior. Well, we thought wrong," wrote Sima Kadmon, a political commentator in the Yediot Ahronot daily.
"It is unbelievable that not a single person in the prime minister's inner circle saw how reprehensible this was. Not a single person showed a tiny bit of common sense. There was no one who anticipated just how angry people would be when they learned about this," Kadmon said about the custom-made bed.
Earlier this year, Netanyahu stopped buying ice cream from his favorite Jerusalem parlor after an Israeli newspaper discovered his office was spending $2,700 a year for the frozen treat.
Euro architect calls for abolishment
The same man who called for a united
Europe and spearheaded the euro currency in 1999, Germany’s former finance
minister Oskar LaFontaine has formally retracted his support for the troubled
currency, and is calling for its abandonment.
Consistently weak data and little
upward momentum in recovery has caused severe doubts about the shared financial
responsibility that comes along with the continent-wide currency.
The current trajectory of the euro,
LaFontaine argues, is ‘leading to disaster’. Lafontaine wrote his remarks on
Germany’s Left Party website, and urged the jettisoning of the euro.
"The economic
situation is worsening from month to month, and unemployment has reached a
level that puts democratic structures ever more in doubt," he said.
LaFontaine took particular aim at
Chancellor Angela Merkel, writing that she will only "awake from her
self-righteous slumber" after Germany itself becomes a victim of the
crisis.
The dichotomy of the financial
crisis dialogue borders along Germany’s severe austerity measures, and the rest
of the EU’s general rejection. Germany’s efforts to ‘re-balance’ the euro zone
aren’t working.
The southern economies, including France,
Italy, and Spain, are shrinking. Unemployment has risen to 12.1%, according to Eurostat’s data released on May 1. In Greece
and Spain, the numbers are sobering: 3 out of every 5 people under the age of
25 are unemployed.
LaFontaine chastised Germany’s
strong-handed tactics in carrying out internal devaluations in Spain, Portugal,
and Greece, labeling such efforts as a ‘catastrophe’. The wage ‘squeezes’,
according to LaFontaine, are actually just self-serving tactics to improve
their own export niche.
"The Germans
have not yet realized that southern Europe, including France, will be forced by
their current misery to fight back against German hegemony sooner or later," he wrote.
The strains of the eurozone crisis,
coupled with the most recent bail-out scare in Cyprus, have drawn in a wide
array of criticism from all political platforms, but some still remain
positive.
In an interview with Bloomberg,
Finland’s Europe Minister Alexander Stubb defended the euro as the most stable
currency Europe has ever seen, and doesn’t foresee a break-up in his life time:
“The human mind
has a tendency to forget, but look at the devaluations, revaluations, the
peggings to the Gold Standard, the inflation rates and the monetary instability
that we’ve had throughout European currency history,” said Stubb.
Thatcher and
Thatcherism – A Long Time Dying
 |
| Margaret Thatcher |
By Ivan
Hardly a day goes by without our
being reminded that 2012 was a wonderful year. Not because of the weather which
was lousy. Especially when it poured down on that flotilla of jubilee boats
scudding along the Thames with their cargo of the royal family and that female
chorus defiantly bellowing Rule Britannia through their sopping wet fringes. It
was, we were regularly instructed, a time to shove into forgetfulness all that
turgid stuff about the economy drowning in deficit as a result of a horde of
idle scroungers sucking at the scandalously luxuriant system of services such
as care for the redundant elderly or the vulnerably sick or the unreasonably
injured. Whatever the difficulties, the royals and the leaders would see us
through. Of course there were a few people unreasonably stubborn enough to
refuse to partake of the popular exhilaration but they could be pinched out by
reminders that this was some glorious time to be alive and in poverty.
Iron Lady
And now in 2013 it will be the
sixtieth anniversary of Elizabeth walking into Westminster Abbey to get the
crown on her royal head - which promises to be as sickening and pointless as
last year's events. But that will not be for a month or so; meanwhile the plans
are for us to be consoled by another female providing a virile incentive to
prod our British pride into life. Not a female standing on a boat in the rain
or waving to us from a remote balcony but one who has obligingly fulfilled
several months' predictions by dying. Margaret Thatcher – she who was the Iron
Lady, the one Not For Turning, the pitiless Snatcher of the Children's' Milk,
who rasped No!No!No! from the Commons at the meddlers over the English Channel,
the implacable enemy of any trade union threatening to bring the nation to a
standstill. Her death has focussed attention on the controversies immovably
associated with her very name; in some cases she is the subject of mindless
worship and in others of intense hatred. She died, cosseted in London's most
luxurious hotel, on 8th April. Was anyone bothered? Consider the response of
one socially conscious young woman whose caring and industrious mother, some
years ago dying of cancer, instructed that a bottle of expensive wine be laid
down for drinking on the day Thatcher died – which was exactly what happened,
in a gathering of joyful friends.
Commons Grovelling
Remarkable as Thatcher had been when
alive, in death she was even more so. Her long drawn-out decline had given all
parties– the government and the Labour Party led by Gordon Brown, the media,
the security forces – plenty of time to prepare. First with their share of
hysteria was the gutter press who, as expected, slavered over her memory and
lovingly crafted headline warnings to any protestors (perhaps like that woman
with her mother's wine) about the reception they might get from the vengeful
hordes of Thatcher idolisers. But the red tops were not alone in this; the day
after the death the Guardian gave over 35 pages to her. Then there was the
decision to recall Parliament so that toadying promotion-seekers could
demonstrate their talent for obsequious grovelling. This was requested by David
Cameron regardless of the fact that he was in breach of that thing beloved of
Parliament – precedent – because such events are by tradition only for matters
of national emergency (which might have been more appropriate on the day of
Thatcher's birth). There was a predictably robust attempt by Speaker Bercow to
frustrate this manoeuvre by Cameron but he eventually gave way to the weight of
the Prime Minister's authority in arguing that there should be a proper
response to the 'strength of feeling' over the death. And – perhaps just to rub
in the point – the Commons were timed to spend seven and a half hours on their
Thatcher toadying, as against the 45 minutes devoted to the end of Winston
Churchill. Consistent with the fact that they had been involved from the
beginning with planning this monster of hypocrisy, there were Labour MPs who
joined in the 'debate' to be washed along in the torrent of adulation. It was
no surprise that their contributions were so widely impoverished of any
original or perceptive comment.
Apartheid
For someone who allegedly didn't
believe in state subsidies, it is interesting that Thatcher's funeral is costed
at between £8 and £10 million pounds. Some might think this is a bit steep for
dragging a corpse through London except that there had to be all those other
people in military uniform and others in a different style of uniform –
like dark suits – making long and meandering speeches on the threadbare
theme of how historically wonderful she was. Like Cameron: '...a great leader,
a great prime minister, a great Briton'; like Miliband: 'we...greatly respect
her political achievements and her personal strength'; like Clegg: '...she left
a unique and lasting imprint on the country she served.' Well, she herself was
responsible for much of this rubbish because she also was involved from the
beginning in planning the funeral; she had no difficulty in forgetting that all
the preoccupation with pomp and diversion was not in accord with her
self-constructed reputation for being fearlessly frank in cutting
unceremoniously to the core of any situation. She claimed to be a staunch
defender of human freedom, which she said was particularly under threat
whenever a trade union defended the interests of its members from her
government's attacks on their conditions. But the flexibility of her notions
about freedom was demonstrated in her support for the vicious apartheid system
in South Africa which, along with the suppression, readily tortured and
murdered its opponents. The crime, poverty and tensions of that country
continue to bear witness to that gruesome time.
Baronetcy
None of this affected the devotees
of the myths that Thatcher was meticulously careful in all that she did,
leaving nothing to chance. This was not borne out in her obstinacy over the
poll tax and her many disastrous choices as ministers. It did however apply
when in her Retirement Honours List she made her husband Denis a baronet. This
was no ordinary baronetcy, which almost always applies just for the life of the
holder; for Sir Denis was pointedly ennobled with one of the rare – hereditary
– honours so that when he died their son, in tune with her indulgence of
him, became Sir Mark. Mark had been a forgettable pupil at the expensive,
exclusive Harrow School (where Winston Churchill and John Profumo, among
others, were also 'educated') he scraped through three O Levels before being
delivered to a place at a posh firm of accountants but this did not last long
and in any case he managed to fail his accountancy exams no less than three
times. So he set himself up in business as a rally driver; however he turned
out to be navigationally challenged and soon lost his way during a rally which
went through the Sahara Desert, causing an expensive operation to bring him to
safety. He then turned his talents to a number of suspicious ventures, one of
which earned him a suspended prison sentence and, for a time, a ban on entering
the United States. Through all such tests of character Mark Thatcher was fondly
watched over by his mother who, while abroad on official business, proved her
solicitude for him by corruptly influencing an arms deal he was involved in,
between the British Firm BAE and the rulers of Saudi Arabia, which set him up
with a £12 million pay-off. When Thatcher was under attack for this she
contemptuously disposed of the matter by claiming that, like any properly
patriotic citizen she had only been 'batting for Britain.'
World Ratings
In this defence she was pretty safe,
since she had won for herself the title of a Prime Minister who had 'made
Britain Great Again.' The harvest of this is being reaped now in the economic
woes and the attendant depression in the living standards and expectations of
the most needy people and the fact that in the ratings of the world's economy
British capitalism stands some way below the leaders. In terms of Gross
Domestic Product the IMF placed it in 2011 it at 8th and in 2012 the Centre for
Economics and Business Research placed it at 6th – only just above Brazil. But
never mind reality; at her end Thatcher was lavishly robed and looked after
while a horde of compliant acolytes were eager to pay their last, well
financed, respects to her.
Political leaders are remembered in
a variety of styles and intensity, from blind adulation on one hand to seething
hatred on the other, with a no-mans-land of apathy or ignorance stretching
between the two. It is a gloomy fact that whatever the reaction it is seldom a
natural response to what any particular politician has done or failed to do –
which all too often has encouraged them to regard themselves as immune from
dismissal by the voters. In Thatcher's case the flagrant pomp of her funeral
was the work of her adorers – or the simply ambitious. The bitterness of the
haters was so tense as to need relief through some kind of demonstration such
as turning their backs on the funeral procession or playing the children
warbling The Wicked Witch Is Dead. However incandescent the rage about
Thatcher, however cynical the manipulation of her funeral, the crucial fact is
that she was simply replaced by a succession of other leaders with nothing more
to offer. Some twenty years after she was deposed, the working class are subject
to the continuing problems of social humiliation.
Nazi Olympics
A parallel to this situation was in
the 1936 Berlin Olympics – when the black American sprinter Jesse Owens
won three gold medals. This was not just a superlative achievement for it also
went a long way to dismantling the carefully erected self-image of Hitler's
Germany as a free, tolerant, sports-loving country when in fact it was a
murderous, racist, anti-semitic dictatorship. When the Nazis came to power in
1933 the Games had already been awarded to Berlin so one of the new
government's concerns had to be to set up the event to gain the maximum
possible credit for them as a country newly risen from the terror, the grief
and the waste of 1914-18. They built a vast new stadium complex in Berlin and
arranged for devoted crowds to flock there confident that German athletes would
justify their leaders' insistence on their national, racial superiority. And
since then there have been many examples in other countries of the application
of the same distorting technique. One case was in Britain last summer when
there was a massive governmental campaign to use any success on the track or in
the pool or wherever to detract attention from the damage being done to the
living conditions, the health and the expectations of masses of needy people.
Choice For Change
And Thatcher's death and her
funeral, deliberately planned over a long period, are for the same objective –
to obliterate any awareness of what is actually happening to us in this system
of human misery .The Iron Lady? She who was not for turning? The scourge of
interfering continentals? Take your pick, then consider the diversion from any
progressive forethought about our lives and society. Consider how futile and
damaging is the assumption that we must forever choose between the hairline
differences of competing leaders. In terms of our security and well-being, what
choice was there between Thatcher's repressive abrasion and Major's emollient
manipulation? Then what benefit was there when the ruling party changed to put
us under the blood-spilling Blair? In reality we do not have a choice, other
than for radically applying out own talents to free the world of capitalism's
continually chaotic deceptions.
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