Tuesday, September 28, 2010
The Edge
Obama Edges to The Dark Side
Mark LeVine 20 Sep 2010
Candidate Obama swept the electoral college on a political platform of change, however President Obama has continued numerous policies implemented by his predecessor.
In possibly the most dramatic mea culpa in Presidential history, Bill Clinton, newly appointed as UN Special Envoy for Haiti, admitted to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee that the US policy of compelling poor developing countries to buy US agricultural products at subsidised prices, which destroyed local agricultural sectors, was a disaster.
“I did that. I have to live every day with the consequences of the lost capacity to produce a rice crop in Haiti to feed those people, because of what I did. Nobody else.”
For where Clinton helped lay the groundwork for the re-militarisation of America’s political and economic systems through his uncritical embrace of neoliberalism (which, despite the “liberal” in the label, inevitably leads to neoconservatism and war), Obama, with the greatest of care and deliberation, is heading to the ‘dark side’ that the millions of Americans who voted for him did so with the justified expectation that he’d avoid.
Politics of insanity?
The warning signs that President Obama’s trajectory would depart from his campaign rhetoric were clear from the beginning. Like when the newly minted President chose for his senior economic advisor’s men like Lawrence Summer, Clinton’s one time Treasury Secretary, who were responsible for the policies that besides destroying Haiti’s rice crop, also enabled a million and one corporate get rich schemes such as the sub-prime mortgage bonanza whose collapse has left the country in its current disastrous condition.
Another clue was surely the fact that Obama’s defence spending from the start outstripped his Republican predecessor’s, even though his campaign reached national prominence precisely with his pledge to end the war in Iraq, which should logically have meant a major reduction in the military budget.
To be sure, we can understand how hard it would have been for a Democratic president significantly to reduce defence spending in the midst of war. But Obama was elected to do hard things, and given the urgency of the escalating recession and the souring of public opinion regarding both Iraq and Afghanistan, he could have taken control of the national discourse surrounding the ‘Really Existing War on Terror’ and begun a process of steering the country back towards some measure of fiscal and moral sanity.
Indeed, can one consider spending upwards of a trillion dollars a year on defence – enough money to cure most of America’s economic and social woes, not to mention much of the world as well – anything less than insane?
The false choice of human rights vs. national security
Instead, President Obama has essentially continued almost every major Bush security policy, either by default or design. State secrets, targeted killings, renditions and indefinite detention, opposing the right of habeas corpus, preventing victims of admitted torture from seeking judicial redress, expanding the Afghan war while moving – however gingerly – to secure a long-term presence in Iraq; all these must surely be making Bush, and especially Cheney, happy and wealthier men.
As Michael Hayden, Bush’s last CIA Director, put it in a recent interview, “Obama has been as aggressive as Bush” in defending executive prerogatives and powers that have enabled and sustained the ‘war on terror.’
But just how close to the dark side Obama has moved became evident in the last couple of weeks, specifically from two angles.
In the first, a federal appeals court overturned a lower court decision allowing former CIA prisoners to sue companies that participated in their rendition and torture in overseas prisons. In deciding that the plaintiffs could not sue despite an ample public (rather than classified) record supporting their claims, Judge Raymond C. Fisher supported the Obama Administration’s contention that, in his words, sometimes there is a “painful conflict between human rights and national security” in which the former must be sacrificed to preserve the latter.
But this is an utterly ludicrous concept, since a core reason for so much of the frustration, nihilistic anger, radicalisation and ultimately violence involved in Islamist terrorism and insurgencies lies precisely in the long term, structural denial of the most basic human rights by governments in the region, the lion’s share of whom continue to be supported by the United States despite their behaviour on the grounds of ‘national security’.
What neither Attorney General Eric Holder nor the President seems to understand is that there can be no contradiction between human rights and national security, since the absence of human rights can never but lead to a lack of security.
What’s more, the very idea in the globalised era that one country’s “national” security (especially that of the global “hyper-power,” the United States) can be defined apart from and in contrast to the security of other nations is so ridiculous, one wonders how supposedly intelligent people, like former law school professors – turned presidents, can in good faith imagine and declare it.
A complete rebuttal of US war justifications
Even more troubling was the release last week of two reports from bi and non-partisan study groups regarding the best possible course forward in Afghanistan. The reports, “A New Way Forward: Rethinking US Strategy in Afghanistan,” published by Washington-based Afghan Study Group, and the “Strategic Survey 2010,” released by the London-based International Institute for Strategic Studies, both conclude that “a Taliban takeover is unlikely even if Washington reduces its military commitment” in Afghanistan, in good measure because the conditions that allowed the first Taliban takeover in the 1990s no longer exist and can’t easily be repeated. As important, “there [are] no significant Al Qaeda presence in Afghanistan today, and the risk of a new ‘safe haven’ there under more ‘friendly’ Taliban rule is overstated.”
Indeed, the unusually blunt critique of the US-British Afghan policy by the normally staid IISS was made precisely because the think tank believes that the current path, far from addressing the threat of Islamist terrorism, is in fact a serious threat to the security interests of the two countries.
Equally important, according to one of the Institute’s directors and former senior British Intelligence official Nigel Inkster, al-Qa’eda is unlikely to be able to create a major threat in other countries currently high on the US military-intelligence radar, such as Yemen and Somalia.
These reports are important not merely due to their conclusions, which vitiate the entire rationale for continuing the war in Afghanistan. More so is the fact that if these two documents, based largely on non-classified information and sources, have reached the same fundamental conclusion, then there is no way that the US and allied military and intelligence communities haven’t reached the same determination.
President Obama is by all accounts a decent man who unlike his predecessor does not enjoy leading his country in war time. His political future and legacy depend in large part on successfully navigating the United States away from a war economy and towards rebuilding it along more innovative and sustainable lines. And yet he is deepening the War in Afghanistan even though he and his senior advisor’s and commanders must know full well that doing so is a disastrous folly.
Even though they must understand that it will likely produce precisely the outcome the policies were supposed to avoid – greater hatred and violence against the United States in the heart of Central Asia, and from there, across the Muslim world.
Perhaps some day President Obama will write a memoir or testify before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and echo, or even evoke, President Clinton’s sad testimonial to the arrogance of power and wilful ignorance seems all too often to produce in the leaders entrusted with it.
If so, it will be good fodder for historians and commentators, but of little comfort to the untold masses of peoples – Afghans, Pakistanis, Americans, and who knows whom else – who will continue to be devastated by the President’s inability to look the truth square in the face and do what he was elected to do: lead his country, away from greed, cynicism, and despair, and towards hope and renewal
Wednesday, September 22, 2010
Capitalism's Death
Ahmadinejad
Says Capitalism is on Verge of Death
Tehran Times
UNITED NATIONS (Agencies) — President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad says capitalism is on the verge of death and has called for an overhaul of the “undemocratic and unjust” global decision-making bodies.
“Discriminatory order of capitalism and the hegemonic approach are facing defeat and getting closer to the end,” Ahmadinejad told a summit meeting assessing progress on achieving UN goals to drastically reduce poverty by 2015.
Ahmadinejad called on world leaders, thinkers, and global reformers “to spare no effort” to make practical plans for a new world order, AP reported.
Ahmadinejad called for fundamental reform of “the undemocratic and unjust” world order.
“The world is in need of an encompassing and, of course, just and humane order in the light of which the rights of all are preserved and peace and security are safeguarded.”
“The demanding liberal capitalism and transnational corporations have caused the suffering of countless women, men and children in so many countries,” AFP quoted Ahmadinejad as saying.
He added, “Now that the discriminatory order of capitalism and the hegemonic approaches are facing defeat and are getting close to their end, all-out participation in upholding justice and prosperous interrelations is essential.”
“The undemocratic and unjust governance structures of the decision-making bodies in international economic and political fields are the reasons behind most of the plights today humanity is confronting,” Ahmadinejad stated, according to Bloomberg.
The past decade, he said, was “unfortunately marred with war, occupation, carnage, wandering and intimidation.”
Decade for joint global governance
The Iranian president called for a new order based on the “divine mindset,” suggesting that the next 10 years be called the “Decade for the Joint Global Governance” and urged all leaders at the UN to plan for its realization.
Ahmadinejad shared the stage Tuesday with world leaders, among them Zimbabwe’s Robert Mugabe and German Chancellor Angela Merkel.
The summit on the Millennium Development Goals is assessing the successes of eight measurable goals set a decade ago that were intended to help halve extreme poverty and alleviate hunger and disease by 2015.
Ahmadinejad will address the 192-nation General Assembly again on Thursday during its annual General Debate, in which world leaders traditionally cover issues important to them.
Sunday, September 19, 2010
Western Imperialism
U.S. Soldiers in BabylonIMPERIALISM
AND IMPERIAL BARBARISM
JAMES PETRAS:- 19. Sep, 2010
Imperialism, its character, means and ends has changed over time and place. Historically, western imperialism, has taken the form of tributary, mercantile, industrial, financial and in the contemporary period, a unique ‘militarist-barbaric’ form of empire building. Within each ‘period’, elements of past and future forms of imperial domination and exploitation ‘co-exist’ with the dominant mode. For example , in the ancient Greek and Roman empires, commercial and trade privileges complemented the extraction of tributary payments. Mercantile imperialism, was preceded and accompanied initially by the plunder of wealth and the extraction of tribute, sometimes referred to as “primitive accumulation”, where political and military power decimated the local population and forcibly removed and transferred wealth to the imperial capitals. As imperial commercial ascendancy was consolidated, manufacturing capital increasingly emerged as a co-participant; backed by imperial state policies manufacturing products destroyed local national manufacturers gaining control over local markets. Modern industrial driven imperialism, combined production and commerce, both complemented and supported by financial capital and its auxiliaries, insurance, transport and other sources of “invisible earnings”.
Under pressure from nationalist and socialist anti-imperialist movements and regimes, colonial structured empires gave way to new nationalist regimes. Some of which restructured their economies, diversifying their productive systems and trading partners. In some cases they imposed protective barriers to promote industrialization. Industrial-driven imperialism, at first opposed these nationalist regimes and collaborated with local satraps to depose industrial oriented nationalist leaders. Their goal was to retain or restore the “colonial division of labor” – primary production exchanged for finished goods. However, by the last third of the 20th century, industrial driven empire building, began a process of adaptation, “jumping over tariff walls”, investing in elementary forms of ‘production’ and in labor intensive consumer products. Imperial manufacturers contracted assembly plants organized around light consumer goods (textiles, shoes, electronics).
Basic changes in the political, social and economic structures of both the imperial and former colonial countries, however, led to divergent imperial paths to empire-building and as a consequence contrasting development performances in both regions.
Anglo-American financial capital gained ascendancy over industrial, investing heavily in highly speculative IT, bio-tech, real estate and financial instruments. Germany and Japanese empire builders relied on upgrading export-industries to secure overseas markets. As a result they increased market shares, especially among the emerging industrializing countries of Southern Europe, Asia and Latin America. Some former colonial and semi-colonial countries also moved toward higher forms of industrial production, developing high tech industries, producing capital and intermediate as well as consumer goods and challenging western imperial hegemony in their proximity.
By the early 1990’s a basic shift in the nature of imperial power took place. This led to a profound divergence between past and present imperialist policies and among established and emerging expansionist regimes.
Past and Present Economic Imperialism
Modern industrial-driven empire building (MIE) is built around securing raw materials, exploiting cheap labor and increasing market shares. This is accomplished by collaborating with pliant rulers, offering them economic aid and political recognition on terms surpassing those of their imperial competitors. This is the path followed by
China. MIE eschews any attempt to gain territorial possessions, either in the form of military bases or in occupying “advisory” positions in the core institutions of the coercive apparatus. Instead, MIEs’ seek to maximize control via investments leading to direct ownership or ‘association’ with state and/or private officials in strategic economic sectors. MIEs’ utilize economic incentives in the way of economic grants and low interest concessionary loans. They offer to build large scale long term infrastructure projects-railroads, airfields, ports and highways. These projects have a double purpose of facilitating the extraction of wealth and opening markets for exports. MIEs also improve transport networks for local producers to gain political allies. In other words MIEs like China and India largely depend on market power to expand and fight off competitors. Their strategy is to create “economic dependencies” for long term economic benefits.
In contrast imperial barbarism grows out of an earlier phase of economic imperialism which combined the initial use of violence to secure economic privileges followed by economic control over lucrative resources.
Historically, economic imperialism (EI) resorted to military intervention to overthrow anti-imperialist regimes and secure collaborator political clients. Subsequently, EI frequently established military bases and training and advisory missions to repress resistance movements and to secure a local military officialdom responsive to the imperial power. The purpose was to secure economic resources and a docile labor force, in order to maximize economic returns
.
In other words, in this ‘traditional’ path to economic empire building the military was subordinated to maximizing economic exploitation. Imperial power sought to preserve the post colonial state apparatus and professional cadre but to harness them to the new imperial economic order. EI sought to preserve the elite to maintain law and order as the basic foundation for restructuring the economy. The goal was to secure policies to suit the economic needs of the private corporations and banks of the imperial system. The prime tactic of the imperial institutions was to designate western educated professionals to design policies which maximized private earning. These policies included the privatization of all strategic economic sectors; the demolition of all protective measures (“opening markets”) favoring local producers; the implementation of regressive taxes on local consumers, workers and enterprises while lowering or eliminating taxes and controls over imperial firms; the elimination of protective labor legislation and outlawing of independent class organizations.
In its heyday western economic imperialism led to the massive transfer of profits, interest, royalties and ill begotten wealth of the native elite from the post-colonial countries to the imperial centers. As befits post-colonial imperialism the cost of administrating these imperial dependencies was borne by the local workers, farmers and employees.
While contemporary and historic economic imperialism have many similarities, there are a few crucial differences. For example China, the leading example of a contemporary economic imperialism, has not established its “economic beach heads” via military intervention or coups, hence it does not possess ‘military bases’ nor a powerful militarist caste competing with its entrepreneurial class in shaping foreign policy. In contrast traditional Western economic imperialism contained the seeds for the rise of a powerful militarist caste capable, under certain circumstance, of affirming their supremacy in shaping the policies and priorities of empire building.
This is exactly what has transpired over the past twenty years, especially with regard to US empire building.
The Rise and Consolidation of Imperial Barbarism
The dual processes of military intervention and economic exploitation which characterized traditional Western imperialism gradually shifted toward a dominant highly militarized variant of imperialism. Economic interests, both in terms of economic costs and benefits and global market shares were sacrificed in the pursuit of military domination.
The demise of the USSR and the virtual reduction of Russia to the status of a broken state, weakened states allied to it. They were “opened” to Western economic penetration and became vulnerable to Western military attack.
President Bush (senior) perceived the demise of the USSR as a ‘historic opportunity’ to unilaterally impose a unipolar world. According to this new doctrine the US would reign supreme globally and regionally. Projections of US military power would now operate unhindered by any nuclear deterrence. However, Bush (senior) was deeply embedded in the US petroleum industry. Thus he sought to strike a balance between military supremacy and economic expansion. Hence the first Iraq war 1990-91 resulted in the military destruction of Saddam Hussein’s military forces, but without the occupation of the entire country nor the destruction of civil society, economic infrastructure and oil refineries. Bush (senior) represented an uneasy balance between two sets of powerful interests: on the one hand, petroleum corporations eager to access the state owned oil fields and on the other the increasingly powerful militarist zionist power configuration within and outside of his regime. The result was an imperial policy aimed at weakening Saddam as a threat to US clients in the Gulf but without ousting him from power. The fact that he remained in office and continued his support for the Palestinian struggle against the Jewish state’s colonial occupation profoundly irritated Israel and its zionist agents in the US.
With the election of William Clinton, the ‘balance’ between economic and military imperialism shifted dramatically in favor of the latter. Under Clinton, zealous zionist were appointed to many of the strategic foreign policy posts in the Administration. This ensured the sustained bombing of Iraq, wrecking its infrastructure. This barbaric turn was complemented by an economic boycott to destroy the country’s economy and not merely “weaken” Saddam. Equally important, the Clinton regime fully embraced and promoted the ascendancy of finance capital by appointing notorious Wall Streeters (Rubin, Summers, Greenspan et al.) to key positions, weakening the relative power of oil, gas and industrial manufacturers as the driving forces of foreign policy. Clinton set in motion the political ‘agents’ of a highly militarized imperialism, committed to destroying a country in order to dominate it …
The ascent of Bush (junior) extended and deepened the role of the militarist-zionist personnel in government. The self-induced explosions which collapsed the World Trade Towers in New York served as a pretext to precipitate the launch of imperial barbarism and spelled the eclipse of economic imperialism.
While US empire building converted to militarism, China accelerated its turn toward economic imperialism. Their foreign policy was directed toward securing raw materials via trade, direct investments and joint ventures. It gained influence via heavy investments in infrastructure, a kind of developmental imperialism, stimulating growth for itself and the “host” country. In this new historic context of global competition between an emerging market driven empire and an atavistic militarist imperial state, the former gained enormous economic profits at virtually no military or administrative cost while the latter emptied its treasury to secure ephemeral military conquests.
The conversion from economic to militarist imperialism was largely the result of the pervasive and ‘deep’ influence of policymakers of zionist persuasion. Zionist policymakers combined modern technical skills with primitive tribal loyalties. Their singular pursuit of Israel’s dominance in the Middle East led them to orchestrate a series of wars, clandestine operations and economic boycotts crippling the US economy and weakening the economic bases of empire building.
Militarist driven empire building in the present post-colonial global context led inevitably to destructive invasions of relatively stable and functioning nation-states, with strong national loyalties. Destructive wars turned the colonial occupation into prolonged conflicts with resistance movements linked to the general population. Henceforth, the logic and practice of militarist imperialism led directly to widespread and long-term barbarism-the adoption of the Israeli model of colonial terrorism targeting an entire population. This was not a coincidence. Israel’s zionist zealots in Washington “drank deeply” from the cesspool of Israeli totalitarian practices, including mass terror, housing demolitions, land seizures, overseas special force assassination teams, systematic mass arrests and torture. These and other barbaric practices, condemned by human rights organizations the world over, (including those in Israel), became routine practices of US barbaric imperialism.
The Means and Goals of Imperial Barbarism
The organizing principle of imperial barbarism is the idea of total war. Total in the sense that (1) all weapons of mass destruction are applied; (2) the whole society is targeted; (3) the entire civil and military apparatus of the state is dismantled and replaced by colonial officials, paid mercenaries and unscrupulous and corrupt satraps. The entire modern professional class is targeted as expressions of the modern national-state and replaced by retrograde religious-ethnic clans and gangs, susceptible to bribes and booty-shares. All existing modern civil society organizations, are pulverized and replaced by crony-plunderers linked to the colonial regime. The entire economy is disarticulated as elementary infrastructure including water, electricity, gas, roads and sewage systems are bombed along with factories, offices, cultural sites, farms and markets.
The Israeli argument of “dual use” targets serves the militarist policymakers as a justification for destroying the bases of a modern civilization. Massive unemployment, population displacement and the return to primitive exchanges characteristic of pre-modern societies define the “social structure”. Educational and health conditions deteriorate and in some cases become non-existent. Curable diseases plague the population and infant deformities result from depleted uranium, the pre-eminent weapon of choice of imperial barbarism.
In summary the ascendancy of barbarous imperialism leads to the eclipse of economic exploitation. The empire depletes its treasury to conquer, destroy and occupy. Even the residual economy is exploited by ‘others’: traders and manufacturers from non-belligerent adjoining states. In the case of Iraq and Afghanistan that includes Iran, Turkey, China and India.
The evanescent goal of barbarous imperialism is total military control, based on the prevention of any economic and social rebirth which might lead to a revival of secular anti-imperialism rooted in a modern republic. The goal of securing a colony ruled by cronies, satraps and ethno-religious warlords – willing givers of military bases and permission to intervene – is central to the entire concept of military driven empire building. The erasure of the historical memory of a modern independent secular nation-state and the accompanying national heritage becomes of singular importance to the barbarous empire. This task is assigned to the academic prostitutes and related publicists who commute between Tel Aviv, the Pentagon, Ivy league universities and Middle East propaganda mills in Washington.
Results and Perspectives
Clearly imperial barbarism (as a social system) is the most retrograde and destructive enemy of modern civilized life. Unlike economic imperialism it does not exploit labor and resources, it destroys the means of production, kills workers, farmers and undermines modern life.
Economic imperialism is clearly more beneficial to the private corporations; but it also potentially lays the bases for its transformation. Its investments lead to the creation of a working and middle class capable of assuming control over the commanding heights of the economy via nationalist and/or socialist struggle. In contrast the discontent of the ravaged population and the pillage of economies under imperial barbarism, has led to the emergence of pre-modern ethno-religious mass movements, with retrograde practices, (mass terror, sectarian violence etc.). Theirs is an ideology fit for a theocratic state.
Economic imperialism with its ‘colonial division of labor’, extracting raw materials and exporting finished goods, inevitably will lead to new nationalist and perhaps later socialist movements. As EI undermines local manufacturers and displaces, via cheap industrial exports, thousands of factory workers, movements will emerge. China may seek to avoid this via ‘plant transplants’. In contrast barbaric imperialism is not sustainable because it leads to prolonged wars which drain the imperial treasury and injury and death of thousands of American soldiers every year. Unending and unwinable colonial wars are unacceptable to the domestic population.
The ‘goals’ of military conquest and satrap rule are illusory. A stable, ‘rooted’ political class capable of ruling by overt or tacit consent is incompatible with colonial overseers. The ‘foreign’ military goals imposed on imperial policymakers via the influential presence of zionists in key offices have struck a mighty blow against the profit seeking opportunities of American multi-nationals via sanctions policies. Pulled downward and outward by high military spending and powerful agents of a foreign power, the resort to barbarism has a powerful effect in prejudicing the US economy.
Countries looking for foreign investment are far more likely to pursue joint ventures with economic driven capital exporters rather than risk bringing in the US with all its military, clandestine special forces and other violent baggage.
Today the overall picture is grim for the future of militarist imperialism. In Latin America, Africa and especially Asia, China has displaced the US as the principal trading partner in Brazil, South Africa and Southeast Asia. In contrast the US wallows in unwinable ideological wars in marginal countries like Somalia, Yemen and Afghanistan. The US organizes a coup in tiny Honduras, while China signs on to billion dollar joint ventures in oil and iron projects in Brazil and Venezuela and an Argentine grain production. The US specializes in propping up broken states like Mexico and Columbia, while China invests heavily in extractive industries in Angola, Nigeria, South Africa and Iran. The symbiotic relationship with Israel leads the US down the blind ally of totalitarian barbarism and endless colonial wars. In contrast China deepens its links with the dynamic economies of South Korea, Japan, Vietnam, Brazil and the oil riches of Russia and the raw materials of Africa.
James Petras is a Bartle Professor (Emeritus) of Sociology at Binghamton University, New York. He is the author of 64 books published in 29 languages, and over 560 articles in professional journals, including the American Sociological Review, British Journal of Sociology, Social Research, Journal of Contemporary Asia, and Journal of Peasant Studies. He has published over 2000 articles. His latest book is War Crimes in Gaza and the Zionist Fifth Column in America (Atlanta:Clarity Pres 2010)
Imperialism, its character, means and ends has changed over time and place. Historically, western imperialism, has taken the form of tributary, mercantile, industrial, financial and in the contemporary period, a unique ‘militarist-barbaric’ form of empire building. Within each ‘period’, elements of past and future forms of imperial domination and exploitation ‘co-exist’ with the dominant mode. For example , in the ancient Greek and Roman empires, commercial and trade privileges complemented the extraction of tributary payments. Mercantile imperialism, was preceded and accompanied initially by the plunder of wealth and the extraction of tribute, sometimes referred to as “primitive accumulation”, where political and military power decimated the local population and forcibly removed and transferred wealth to the imperial capitals. As imperial commercial ascendancy was consolidated, manufacturing capital increasingly emerged as a co-participant; backed by imperial state policies manufacturing products destroyed local national manufacturers gaining control over local markets. Modern industrial driven imperialism, combined production and commerce, both complemented and supported by financial capital and its auxiliaries, insurance, transport and other sources of “invisible earnings”.
Under pressure from nationalist and socialist anti-imperialist movements and regimes, colonial structured empires gave way to new nationalist regimes. Some of which restructured their economies, diversifying their productive systems and trading partners. In some cases they imposed protective barriers to promote industrialization. Industrial-driven imperialism, at first opposed these nationalist regimes and collaborated with local satraps to depose industrial oriented nationalist leaders. Their goal was to retain or restore the “colonial division of labor” – primary production exchanged for finished goods. However, by the last third of the 20th century, industrial driven empire building, began a process of adaptation, “jumping over tariff walls”, investing in elementary forms of ‘production’ and in labor intensive consumer products. Imperial manufacturers contracted assembly plants organized around light consumer goods (textiles, shoes, electronics).
Basic changes in the political, social and economic structures of both the imperial and former colonial countries, however, led to divergent imperial paths to empire-building and as a consequence contrasting development performances in both regions.
Anglo-American financial capital gained ascendancy over industrial, investing heavily in highly speculative IT, bio-tech, real estate and financial instruments. Germany and Japanese empire builders relied on upgrading export-industries to secure overseas markets. As a result they increased market shares, especially among the emerging industrializing countries of Southern Europe, Asia and Latin America. Some former colonial and semi-colonial countries also moved toward higher forms of industrial production, developing high tech industries, producing capital and intermediate as well as consumer goods and challenging western imperial hegemony in their proximity.
By the early 1990’s a basic shift in the nature of imperial power took place. This led to a profound divergence between past and present imperialist policies and among established and emerging expansionist regimes.
Past and Present Economic Imperialism
Modern industrial-driven empire building (MIE) is built around securing raw materials, exploiting cheap labor and increasing market shares. This is accomplished by collaborating with pliant rulers, offering them economic aid and political recognition on terms surpassing those of their imperial competitors. This is the path followed by
China. MIE eschews any attempt to gain territorial possessions, either in the form of military bases or in occupying “advisory” positions in the core institutions of the coercive apparatus. Instead, MIEs’ seek to maximize control via investments leading to direct ownership or ‘association’ with state and/or private officials in strategic economic sectors. MIEs’ utilize economic incentives in the way of economic grants and low interest concessionary loans. They offer to build large scale long term infrastructure projects-railroads, airfields, ports and highways. These projects have a double purpose of facilitating the extraction of wealth and opening markets for exports. MIEs also improve transport networks for local producers to gain political allies. In other words MIEs like China and India largely depend on market power to expand and fight off competitors. Their strategy is to create “economic dependencies” for long term economic benefits.
In contrast imperial barbarism grows out of an earlier phase of economic imperialism which combined the initial use of violence to secure economic privileges followed by economic control over lucrative resources.
Historically, economic imperialism (EI) resorted to military intervention to overthrow anti-imperialist regimes and secure collaborator political clients. Subsequently, EI frequently established military bases and training and advisory missions to repress resistance movements and to secure a local military officialdom responsive to the imperial power. The purpose was to secure economic resources and a docile labor force, in order to maximize economic returns
.
In other words, in this ‘traditional’ path to economic empire building the military was subordinated to maximizing economic exploitation. Imperial power sought to preserve the post colonial state apparatus and professional cadre but to harness them to the new imperial economic order. EI sought to preserve the elite to maintain law and order as the basic foundation for restructuring the economy. The goal was to secure policies to suit the economic needs of the private corporations and banks of the imperial system. The prime tactic of the imperial institutions was to designate western educated professionals to design policies which maximized private earning. These policies included the privatization of all strategic economic sectors; the demolition of all protective measures (“opening markets”) favoring local producers; the implementation of regressive taxes on local consumers, workers and enterprises while lowering or eliminating taxes and controls over imperial firms; the elimination of protective labor legislation and outlawing of independent class organizations.
In its heyday western economic imperialism led to the massive transfer of profits, interest, royalties and ill begotten wealth of the native elite from the post-colonial countries to the imperial centers. As befits post-colonial imperialism the cost of administrating these imperial dependencies was borne by the local workers, farmers and employees.
While contemporary and historic economic imperialism have many similarities, there are a few crucial differences. For example China, the leading example of a contemporary economic imperialism, has not established its “economic beach heads” via military intervention or coups, hence it does not possess ‘military bases’ nor a powerful militarist caste competing with its entrepreneurial class in shaping foreign policy. In contrast traditional Western economic imperialism contained the seeds for the rise of a powerful militarist caste capable, under certain circumstance, of affirming their supremacy in shaping the policies and priorities of empire building.
This is exactly what has transpired over the past twenty years, especially with regard to US empire building.
The Rise and Consolidation of Imperial Barbarism
The dual processes of military intervention and economic exploitation which characterized traditional Western imperialism gradually shifted toward a dominant highly militarized variant of imperialism. Economic interests, both in terms of economic costs and benefits and global market shares were sacrificed in the pursuit of military domination.
The demise of the USSR and the virtual reduction of Russia to the status of a broken state, weakened states allied to it. They were “opened” to Western economic penetration and became vulnerable to Western military attack.
President Bush (senior) perceived the demise of the USSR as a ‘historic opportunity’ to unilaterally impose a unipolar world. According to this new doctrine the US would reign supreme globally and regionally. Projections of US military power would now operate unhindered by any nuclear deterrence. However, Bush (senior) was deeply embedded in the US petroleum industry. Thus he sought to strike a balance between military supremacy and economic expansion. Hence the first Iraq war 1990-91 resulted in the military destruction of Saddam Hussein’s military forces, but without the occupation of the entire country nor the destruction of civil society, economic infrastructure and oil refineries. Bush (senior) represented an uneasy balance between two sets of powerful interests: on the one hand, petroleum corporations eager to access the state owned oil fields and on the other the increasingly powerful militarist zionist power configuration within and outside of his regime. The result was an imperial policy aimed at weakening Saddam as a threat to US clients in the Gulf but without ousting him from power. The fact that he remained in office and continued his support for the Palestinian struggle against the Jewish state’s colonial occupation profoundly irritated Israel and its zionist agents in the US.
With the election of William Clinton, the ‘balance’ between economic and military imperialism shifted dramatically in favor of the latter. Under Clinton, zealous zionist were appointed to many of the strategic foreign policy posts in the Administration. This ensured the sustained bombing of Iraq, wrecking its infrastructure. This barbaric turn was complemented by an economic boycott to destroy the country’s economy and not merely “weaken” Saddam. Equally important, the Clinton regime fully embraced and promoted the ascendancy of finance capital by appointing notorious Wall Streeters (Rubin, Summers, Greenspan et al.) to key positions, weakening the relative power of oil, gas and industrial manufacturers as the driving forces of foreign policy. Clinton set in motion the political ‘agents’ of a highly militarized imperialism, committed to destroying a country in order to dominate it …
The ascent of Bush (junior) extended and deepened the role of the militarist-zionist personnel in government. The self-induced explosions which collapsed the World Trade Towers in New York served as a pretext to precipitate the launch of imperial barbarism and spelled the eclipse of economic imperialism.
While US empire building converted to militarism, China accelerated its turn toward economic imperialism. Their foreign policy was directed toward securing raw materials via trade, direct investments and joint ventures. It gained influence via heavy investments in infrastructure, a kind of developmental imperialism, stimulating growth for itself and the “host” country. In this new historic context of global competition between an emerging market driven empire and an atavistic militarist imperial state, the former gained enormous economic profits at virtually no military or administrative cost while the latter emptied its treasury to secure ephemeral military conquests.
The conversion from economic to militarist imperialism was largely the result of the pervasive and ‘deep’ influence of policymakers of zionist persuasion. Zionist policymakers combined modern technical skills with primitive tribal loyalties. Their singular pursuit of Israel’s dominance in the Middle East led them to orchestrate a series of wars, clandestine operations and economic boycotts crippling the US economy and weakening the economic bases of empire building.
Militarist driven empire building in the present post-colonial global context led inevitably to destructive invasions of relatively stable and functioning nation-states, with strong national loyalties. Destructive wars turned the colonial occupation into prolonged conflicts with resistance movements linked to the general population. Henceforth, the logic and practice of militarist imperialism led directly to widespread and long-term barbarism-the adoption of the Israeli model of colonial terrorism targeting an entire population. This was not a coincidence. Israel’s zionist zealots in Washington “drank deeply” from the cesspool of Israeli totalitarian practices, including mass terror, housing demolitions, land seizures, overseas special force assassination teams, systematic mass arrests and torture. These and other barbaric practices, condemned by human rights organizations the world over, (including those in Israel), became routine practices of US barbaric imperialism.
The Means and Goals of Imperial Barbarism
The organizing principle of imperial barbarism is the idea of total war. Total in the sense that (1) all weapons of mass destruction are applied; (2) the whole society is targeted; (3) the entire civil and military apparatus of the state is dismantled and replaced by colonial officials, paid mercenaries and unscrupulous and corrupt satraps. The entire modern professional class is targeted as expressions of the modern national-state and replaced by retrograde religious-ethnic clans and gangs, susceptible to bribes and booty-shares. All existing modern civil society organizations, are pulverized and replaced by crony-plunderers linked to the colonial regime. The entire economy is disarticulated as elementary infrastructure including water, electricity, gas, roads and sewage systems are bombed along with factories, offices, cultural sites, farms and markets.
The Israeli argument of “dual use” targets serves the militarist policymakers as a justification for destroying the bases of a modern civilization. Massive unemployment, population displacement and the return to primitive exchanges characteristic of pre-modern societies define the “social structure”. Educational and health conditions deteriorate and in some cases become non-existent. Curable diseases plague the population and infant deformities result from depleted uranium, the pre-eminent weapon of choice of imperial barbarism.
In summary the ascendancy of barbarous imperialism leads to the eclipse of economic exploitation. The empire depletes its treasury to conquer, destroy and occupy. Even the residual economy is exploited by ‘others’: traders and manufacturers from non-belligerent adjoining states. In the case of Iraq and Afghanistan that includes Iran, Turkey, China and India.
The evanescent goal of barbarous imperialism is total military control, based on the prevention of any economic and social rebirth which might lead to a revival of secular anti-imperialism rooted in a modern republic. The goal of securing a colony ruled by cronies, satraps and ethno-religious warlords – willing givers of military bases and permission to intervene – is central to the entire concept of military driven empire building. The erasure of the historical memory of a modern independent secular nation-state and the accompanying national heritage becomes of singular importance to the barbarous empire. This task is assigned to the academic prostitutes and related publicists who commute between Tel Aviv, the Pentagon, Ivy league universities and Middle East propaganda mills in Washington.
Results and Perspectives
Clearly imperial barbarism (as a social system) is the most retrograde and destructive enemy of modern civilized life. Unlike economic imperialism it does not exploit labor and resources, it destroys the means of production, kills workers, farmers and undermines modern life.
Economic imperialism is clearly more beneficial to the private corporations; but it also potentially lays the bases for its transformation. Its investments lead to the creation of a working and middle class capable of assuming control over the commanding heights of the economy via nationalist and/or socialist struggle. In contrast the discontent of the ravaged population and the pillage of economies under imperial barbarism, has led to the emergence of pre-modern ethno-religious mass movements, with retrograde practices, (mass terror, sectarian violence etc.). Theirs is an ideology fit for a theocratic state.
Economic imperialism with its ‘colonial division of labor’, extracting raw materials and exporting finished goods, inevitably will lead to new nationalist and perhaps later socialist movements. As EI undermines local manufacturers and displaces, via cheap industrial exports, thousands of factory workers, movements will emerge. China may seek to avoid this via ‘plant transplants’. In contrast barbaric imperialism is not sustainable because it leads to prolonged wars which drain the imperial treasury and injury and death of thousands of American soldiers every year. Unending and unwinable colonial wars are unacceptable to the domestic population.
The ‘goals’ of military conquest and satrap rule are illusory. A stable, ‘rooted’ political class capable of ruling by overt or tacit consent is incompatible with colonial overseers. The ‘foreign’ military goals imposed on imperial policymakers via the influential presence of zionists in key offices have struck a mighty blow against the profit seeking opportunities of American multi-nationals via sanctions policies. Pulled downward and outward by high military spending and powerful agents of a foreign power, the resort to barbarism has a powerful effect in prejudicing the US economy.
Countries looking for foreign investment are far more likely to pursue joint ventures with economic driven capital exporters rather than risk bringing in the US with all its military, clandestine special forces and other violent baggage.
Today the overall picture is grim for the future of militarist imperialism. In Latin America, Africa and especially Asia, China has displaced the US as the principal trading partner in Brazil, South Africa and Southeast Asia. In contrast the US wallows in unwinable ideological wars in marginal countries like Somalia, Yemen and Afghanistan. The US organizes a coup in tiny Honduras, while China signs on to billion dollar joint ventures in oil and iron projects in Brazil and Venezuela and an Argentine grain production. The US specializes in propping up broken states like Mexico and Columbia, while China invests heavily in extractive industries in Angola, Nigeria, South Africa and Iran. The symbiotic relationship with Israel leads the US down the blind ally of totalitarian barbarism and endless colonial wars. In contrast China deepens its links with the dynamic economies of South Korea, Japan, Vietnam, Brazil and the oil riches of Russia and the raw materials of Africa.
James Petras is a Bartle Professor (Emeritus) of Sociology at Binghamton University, New York. He is the author of 64 books published in 29 languages, and over 560 articles in professional journals, including the American Sociological Review, British Journal of Sociology, Social Research, Journal of Contemporary Asia, and Journal of Peasant Studies. He has published over 2000 articles. His latest book is War Crimes in Gaza and the Zionist Fifth Column in America (Atlanta:Clarity Pres 2010)
Thursday, September 16, 2010
US Media Campaign
Against Chávez Intensifies
by Eva Golinger
As election time approaches in Venezuela, international media increase negative coverage of the South American nation. CNN applauds terrorism against Venezuela, while Fox News accuses the Chavez government of terrorism
The bombardment of negative, false, distorted and manipulated news about Venezuela in US media has increased in volume and intensity during the last few days. Venezuela is subjected to this phenomenon every time an electoral process nears. This international media campaign against the government of Hugo Chavez appears to have a clear and coordinated objective: removing the Venezuelan President from power.
During the last eight years, those pursuing this same objective have promoted, and attempted to justify, coup d’etats, economic sabotages, terrorist acts, assassination attempts, electoral interventions, psychological warfare and a disproportionate increase in US military presence in the region – all with the goal of ousting President Chavez. And to achieve this objective – which every year seems attainable to the powers that be – millions and millions of US taxpayer dollars are channeled by US agencies into political parties, campaigns, candidates and organizations that oppose Chavez.
International media also do their part. With sensationalist headlines and slanted reports, mass media try to condition public opinion to believe any action or aggression against Venezuela will be necessary to remove the “evil” Chavez from power.
According to The Economist, “Venezuela has the worst economy in the world”, despite the fact the data cited by the financial magazine doesn’t match up. The New York Times, which sets the news standard for press worldwide, erroneously and dangerously headlined two weeks ago, “Venezuela is more lethal than Iraq”.
“Venezuela has the highest homicide rate in the hemisphere”, claimed Newsweek, falsely adding, “Chavez’s popularity has fallen off a cliff”.
To these media, it doesn’t matter that Venezuela’s economy is actually on an upward rise, despite the world financial crisis, or that while Caracas certainly has crime – and homicides – there is absolutely no comparison to the millions killed in Iraq at the hands of the US war machine.
And if a 54% popularity rate (per the latest national polls) means President Chavez’s popularity has “fallen off a cliff”, well then, where does that put President Obama’s “best” rate at 47%?
Regarding coverage of Venezuela, television is even worse. Two weeks ago, CNN International premiered a docu-report titled “The Guardians of Chavez”, during which the international network falsely associated armed groups, criminals, terrorists and paramilitary forces with the Venezuelan government.
On Monday, September 13, just one and a half weeks before the upcoming legislative elections in Venezuela, CNN en Español’s primetime anchor, Patricia Janiot, conducted a live interview with an escaped convict from Venezuela, who just two years earlier had been tried and sentenced for terrorism.
In a clear showing of yellow journalism, Janiot referred to the terrorist fugitive as a “political prisoner” and “student persecuted” by the Chavez government. The escaped convict, Raul Diaz Peña, was sentenced in 2008 after a lengthy trial proving his guilt as one of the material authors of a terrorist attack with C4 explosives against the embassies of Colombia and Spain that took place February 25, 2003 in Caracas.
Diaz Peña escaped from his Venezuelan jail cell on September 5 and after arriving in a commercial airliner at the Miami International Airport, was somehow able to easily enter the US, despite his status as a convicted terrorist and fugitive from justice.
A mere week after his US arrival, CNN broadcast him in prime time.
“How many other students are political prisoners in Venezuela”, Janiot asked of the terrorist. “Were you tortured”, she inquired, with concern in her voice. At the end of the interview, the stellar journalist of the US network wished the fugitive terrorist “good luck”, lauding him for escaping Chavez’s “terrible dictatorship”.
It’s a wonder that an international television network can conduct a live interview with a convicted, fugitive terrorist, and wish him “good luck” in public, without a concern for any kind of consequence. But this type of irony is only possible when it comes to US media treatment of Venezuela.
According to CNN, in the case of Venezuela, terrorists are “political prisoners” and fugitives from justice are “immigrants”.
Two days after CNN’s flagrantly offensive interview with Venezuelan fugitive terrorist Raul Diaz Peña, which openly validated and approved the use of terror in Venezuela, Fox News headlined “Venezuela cancels roundtrip ‘Terror Flight’ to Syria and Iran”.
In the report, which also ran on its website, the US network claimed Venezuela was one of “the world’s most terror-friendly nations”, along with Syria and Iran.
Regarding a legitimate flight route conducted by a Venezuelan airline, Conviasa, between Caracas-Damascus-Tehran, Fox falsely sustained, “the flight would carry illicit, lethal cargoes -- such as explosives and possibly radioactive materials -- and provide safe passage to terrorists, spies, weapons experts, senior Iranian intelligence operatives and members of both Hezbollah and Hamas”.
The source? “Western intelligence agencies, Venezuelan opposition figures and a former Iran-based spy for the CIA”. Sounds convincing.
The dangerous and intentionally erroneous Fox News report, which attempts to link Venezuela to international terrorism (ironically while CNN welcomes Venezuelan terrorists, Fox accuses the Venezuelan government of terrorism), went on to further accuse the Venezuelan government of facilitating terrorism against the United States:
“Reza Kahlili, the pseudonym for an Iranian who the CIA has confirmed once spied for the United States as a member of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard, told FoxNews.com these ‘special flights’ have been ‘instrumental in creating an Iranian dominated worldwide terror network that now reaches the United States.’ He said the flights were used to expand Iran’s efforts to create a base of operations in the Western Hemisphere”.
But right after that false accusation, Fox News discredited its own report, when a prime source admitted he didn’t really have any evidence to prove his claims:
“Peter Brookes, a former Defense Department analyst and CIA employee now with the Heritage Foundation, said there was a steady stream of elite Al Quds officers from Iran’s Revolutionary Guard who were transported to Venezuela aboard the flight and took up positions in the Latin American country’s intelligence service. ‘We can’t say for sure what is going on, but it is clandestine and secretive’, he said”.
In the final stretch before the September 26 legislative elections, media attacks against Venezuela continue to intensify.
Last week, in an interview with the Spanish newspaper El Pais, Uruguayan writer Eduardo Galeano summed up the media campaign against Venezuela: “There is a process of demonization against Chavez…It’s scandalous that today, every minute, three million dollars are spent on military affairs. And that requires enemies. In the theater of good and evil, at times those concepts are inter-changeable, as with Saddam Hussein, a saint of the West who was converted into Satan”.
Eva Golinger is a frequent contributor to Global Research.
Tuesday, September 14, 2010
USA Arms Dealer
US Plans Massive Arms Sale to Saudi to Counter Iran
September 13, 2010
The United States plans to offer Saudi Arabia 60 billion dollars' worth of hi-tech fighters and helicopters to help counter the threat posed by Iran, in the largest ever US arms deal, officials said.
A senior defense official said President Barack Obama's administration would formally notify Congress this week or next about the groundbreaking deal, which follows months of talks with the Saudis, who are increasingly anxious about Iran's missile arsenal.
"If you look at the kingdom, the major threat that they face in the region emanates from Iran," the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, told reporters.
"And this gives them a whole host of defensive capabilities to defend the kingdom and deterrence capabilities."
US officials see the package as underscoring the strategic alliance between the two countries, despite serious strains over Middle East diplomacy and the aftermath of the September 11, 2001 attacks.
"The (Saudi) king sees this as very symbolic of the relationship we have with him and the kingdom," the official said.
In its notification to Congress, the administration will authorize the Saudis to buy as many as 84 new F-15 fighters and upgrade 70 more, as well as three types of helicopters -- 70 Apaches, 72 Black Hawks and 36 Little Birds.
The package would also include HARM anti-radar missiles, more precision-guided JDAM bombs, Hellfire missiles and sophisticated displays mounted on fighter pilots' helmets.
Although previous arms sales to Saudi have often encountered strong opposition from Israel and its allies in the US Congress, the administration expected the deal to win approval and that Israel would not object to the sale.
"The Israelis I think are fairly comfortable that this configuration is not a threat to their qualitative, military edge," he said.
Israel will be getting a more advanced, "fifth generation" US fighter jet in the F-35.
Lawmakers would also likely support aircraft production that "involved" 77,000 jobs across the country, the official said, though it was unclear how many new jobs would be created by the deal.
Some congressional officials, however, said the deal would be subject to tough scrutiny by lawmakers and might be revised.
"There is serious concern about some sensitive material which is expected to be included in the deal," said one source, who told AFP that Obama aides would brief congressional staff on the deal on Monday.
"You can fully expect that a hold will be placed on this deal," said another senior congressional source.
A "hold" would come from the chair or ranking member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee or Senate Foreign Relations Committee, which typically must sign off on arms transfers, and could change what is in the package.
It remained unclear if the Saudis would opt to buy the entire 60-billion package or a lower number of aircraft, the defense official said.
"But in any world, this is an enormous arms package. In fact, the notification is the largest of its kind in history," he said.
The administration is also in talks with the kingdom about potential improvements to the country's naval fleet and missile-defenses, which could be worth tens of billions of dollars more, the official said.
The Saudis were looking at possibly buying littoral combat ships, with the naval talks at a more advanced stage than discussions on ballistic missile defenses, he said.
Top American officials, including the military chief of the US Missile Defense Agency, have been urging Saudi leaders to purchase Terminal High Altitude Area Defense systems, or THAAD, and to improve the country's Patriot missiles.
Earlier, media reports said that to assuage Israel's concerns, the Obama administration had decided not to offer Saudi Arabia so-called standoff systems, which are advanced long-range weapons that can be attached to F-15s for use in offensive operations against land- and sea-based targets.
The United States plans to offer Saudi Arabia 60 billion dollars' worth of hi-tech fighters and helicopters to help counter the threat posed by Iran, in the largest ever US arms deal, officials said.
A senior defense official said President Barack Obama's administration would formally notify Congress this week or next about the groundbreaking deal, which follows months of talks with the Saudis, who are increasingly anxious about Iran's missile arsenal.
"If you look at the kingdom, the major threat that they face in the region emanates from Iran," the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, told reporters.
"And this gives them a whole host of defensive capabilities to defend the kingdom and deterrence capabilities."
US officials see the package as underscoring the strategic alliance between the two countries, despite serious strains over Middle East diplomacy and the aftermath of the September 11, 2001 attacks.
"The (Saudi) king sees this as very symbolic of the relationship we have with him and the kingdom," the official said.
In its notification to Congress, the administration will authorize the Saudis to buy as many as 84 new F-15 fighters and upgrade 70 more, as well as three types of helicopters -- 70 Apaches, 72 Black Hawks and 36 Little Birds.
The package would also include HARM anti-radar missiles, more precision-guided JDAM bombs, Hellfire missiles and sophisticated displays mounted on fighter pilots' helmets.
Although previous arms sales to Saudi have often encountered strong opposition from Israel and its allies in the US Congress, the administration expected the deal to win approval and that Israel would not object to the sale.
"The Israelis I think are fairly comfortable that this configuration is not a threat to their qualitative, military edge," he said.
Israel will be getting a more advanced, "fifth generation" US fighter jet in the F-35.
Lawmakers would also likely support aircraft production that "involved" 77,000 jobs across the country, the official said, though it was unclear how many new jobs would be created by the deal.
Some congressional officials, however, said the deal would be subject to tough scrutiny by lawmakers and might be revised.
"There is serious concern about some sensitive material which is expected to be included in the deal," said one source, who told AFP that Obama aides would brief congressional staff on the deal on Monday.
"You can fully expect that a hold will be placed on this deal," said another senior congressional source.
A "hold" would come from the chair or ranking member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee or Senate Foreign Relations Committee, which typically must sign off on arms transfers, and could change what is in the package.
It remained unclear if the Saudis would opt to buy the entire 60-billion package or a lower number of aircraft, the defense official said.
"But in any world, this is an enormous arms package. In fact, the notification is the largest of its kind in history," he said.
The administration is also in talks with the kingdom about potential improvements to the country's naval fleet and missile-defenses, which could be worth tens of billions of dollars more, the official said.
The Saudis were looking at possibly buying littoral combat ships, with the naval talks at a more advanced stage than discussions on ballistic missile defenses, he said.
Top American officials, including the military chief of the US Missile Defense Agency, have been urging Saudi leaders to purchase Terminal High Altitude Area Defense systems, or THAAD, and to improve the country's Patriot missiles.
Earlier, media reports said that to assuage Israel's concerns, the Obama administration had decided not to offer Saudi Arabia so-called standoff systems, which are advanced long-range weapons that can be attached to F-15s for use in offensive operations against land- and sea-based targets.
Chinese Tee Shirt
A Chinese shopkeeper shows the latest t-shirt featuring
U.S. President Barack Obama in Beijing
Saturday, September 11, 2010
The Border
THE MEXICAN-U.S. BORDER
A breeding ground
A breeding ground
for interference, corruption and xenophobia
Granma Internacional by Nidia Diaz
LAST weekend Barack Obama, Nobel Peace Prize laureate, gave the green light to reinforcing security on the southern border of the United States with 1,500 new agents and a further $600 million dollars, supposedly to combat the trafficking of drugs and weapons as well as illegal immigration. In a few words, to throw more fuel on the fire of xenophobia and racism at a time when the conservative ultra-right is asking for new sacrifices to be placed at the electoral altar.
This is how it has always been. At election time, Democrats and Republicans, that perfectly squared duo, recharge their batteries to see who will win more voters in the wake of a barrage of publicity criminalizing immigrants and blaming them for the economic chaos in a country in which banks and bankers are centrally responsible for the crisis.
Meanwhile, Obama is making people believe that the solution to the problems affecting the close to 12 million undocumented immigrants is still a priority of his mandate. This time something more than thirty pieces of silver were responsible for the first African-American U.S. president in the history of the empire betraying the dreams of millions who believed in him.
Like Christ, the undocumented are being crucified along the huge U.S.-Mexican border, while the real terrorists, the arms and drugs traffickers, are continuing to operate with impunity in the same measure that U.S. laws allow them to acquire not only conventional weapons, but more sophisticated ones such as those used by any modern army and as demand grows within the United States. And so an easy life for those who really generate and provoke corruption and violence in this immense extension that separates one nation from the other and which, moreover, serves as a communication route to amplify those evils within Middle America.
It was worth nothing that federal judge Susan Bolton temporarily eliminated—just 24 hours before its implementation—the most discriminatory aspects of the controversial Law SB1070. With every good intention, what she has done is to slightly postpone the great wave of violence which would increase what are already in themselves uncontrollable actions against the undocumented, because we are not convinced that the reinforced militarization of the Mexican-U.S. border is solely against immigrants, those who, expelled from their country by lack of opportunity are, in most cases, paying the corrupt coyotes of the "American dream" with their lives.
In any event an article in the Mexican daily La Jornada calls for reflection by stating that "this legislation (SB1070) is only a strident and rabid declaration of an operation that is silently expelling thousands of undocumented workers, increasing terror in Mexican communities in the United States.
Another of the many press commentaries published these days assures that "…under this administration (Obama’s), the number of raids and mass deportations has increased, the separation of families has continued, and the kidnapping of children of deported families has increased. Sadly this pernicious White House policy has received the support of the major political parties (Democrat and Republican), extremist right-wing organizations (the Tea Party, Concerned Citizens of the United States), the media (Fox), which have all promoted the fallacious association between illegal immigration and the terrorism and criminal violence of Mexican drug cartels."
In the border area, all of this is sufficient reason for men of the ilk of Joe Arpaio, sheriff of Maricopa County, Arizona, to spew out more than his usual anti-immigrant, racist and xenophobic phobias, in the hope that Governor Jan Brewer wins this fight and can "cleanse" the state of the 450,000-plus undocumented in the first place and then, do not doubt it, go for the 30% of Hispanics who live there.
In Arpaio’s county, raids are daily routine in a species of hunting worse than Hitler’s troop raids against the Jews, in spite of the fact that this same "cowboy," known as the "iron sheriff" or the "illegals hunter," is the son of immigrants.
According to press sources, in his favorite hobby, the feared racist not only employs systematic violations of the rights of his co-citizens, but skillfully arranges things to embezzle public funds with those who, without doubt, have guaranteed his reelection to office for four terms.
And that is not all: the stink of corruption has followed him from the period when he was converted from a simple police officer to a special DEA agent and rose to division director in Arizona.
The print media relates that "one of the most publicized acts of the "iron sheriff" is, without any doubt, a jail of army tents that he has installed in Phoenix, whose main 'clients' are undocumented Mexicans, who he forces to wear pink clothes,
including underwear.
"Whether the color is a fixation or mere coincidence, it is a fact that Arpaio has not only forced detainees to wear pink, but has also made them march through the streets in chains as though they were dangerous killers, when the only thing that they have done is to illegally enter the United States."
And as a demonstration of the fact that militarization of the alleged fight against violence and drug trafficking is the cover of the big business of corruption on one side of the border and on the other that of interference from the United States, the Arizona’s Department of Public Safety has revealed that while violent crime has gone down across the whole state, this has not been the case in the jurisdiction of Arpaio, Maricopa County; on the contrary, there it has increased by 58%.
Well, history repeats itself. Before it was the Ku Klux Klan and now "immigrant hunting," both with the common denominator of racism and "ethnic cleansing" of non-whites in U.S. territory.
A sad contradiction at a time when the presidency of that nation is occupied by an African American who insists that "the security of the southern border has been my main priority since I took office," that border which, as I read a few days ago, "is that space which reveals the differences, that places a price on dreams or on nightmares."
LAST weekend Barack Obama, Nobel Peace Prize laureate, gave the green light to reinforcing security on the southern border of the United States with 1,500 new agents and a further $600 million dollars, supposedly to combat the trafficking of drugs and weapons as well as illegal immigration. In a few words, to throw more fuel on the fire of xenophobia and racism at a time when the conservative ultra-right is asking for new sacrifices to be placed at the electoral altar.
This is how it has always been. At election time, Democrats and Republicans, that perfectly squared duo, recharge their batteries to see who will win more voters in the wake of a barrage of publicity criminalizing immigrants and blaming them for the economic chaos in a country in which banks and bankers are centrally responsible for the crisis.
Meanwhile, Obama is making people believe that the solution to the problems affecting the close to 12 million undocumented immigrants is still a priority of his mandate. This time something more than thirty pieces of silver were responsible for the first African-American U.S. president in the history of the empire betraying the dreams of millions who believed in him.
Like Christ, the undocumented are being crucified along the huge U.S.-Mexican border, while the real terrorists, the arms and drugs traffickers, are continuing to operate with impunity in the same measure that U.S. laws allow them to acquire not only conventional weapons, but more sophisticated ones such as those used by any modern army and as demand grows within the United States. And so an easy life for those who really generate and provoke corruption and violence in this immense extension that separates one nation from the other and which, moreover, serves as a communication route to amplify those evils within Middle America.
It was worth nothing that federal judge Susan Bolton temporarily eliminated—just 24 hours before its implementation—the most discriminatory aspects of the controversial Law SB1070. With every good intention, what she has done is to slightly postpone the great wave of violence which would increase what are already in themselves uncontrollable actions against the undocumented, because we are not convinced that the reinforced militarization of the Mexican-U.S. border is solely against immigrants, those who, expelled from their country by lack of opportunity are, in most cases, paying the corrupt coyotes of the "American dream" with their lives.
In any event an article in the Mexican daily La Jornada calls for reflection by stating that "this legislation (SB1070) is only a strident and rabid declaration of an operation that is silently expelling thousands of undocumented workers, increasing terror in Mexican communities in the United States.
Another of the many press commentaries published these days assures that "…under this administration (Obama’s), the number of raids and mass deportations has increased, the separation of families has continued, and the kidnapping of children of deported families has increased. Sadly this pernicious White House policy has received the support of the major political parties (Democrat and Republican), extremist right-wing organizations (the Tea Party, Concerned Citizens of the United States), the media (Fox), which have all promoted the fallacious association between illegal immigration and the terrorism and criminal violence of Mexican drug cartels."
In the border area, all of this is sufficient reason for men of the ilk of Joe Arpaio, sheriff of Maricopa County, Arizona, to spew out more than his usual anti-immigrant, racist and xenophobic phobias, in the hope that Governor Jan Brewer wins this fight and can "cleanse" the state of the 450,000-plus undocumented in the first place and then, do not doubt it, go for the 30% of Hispanics who live there.
In Arpaio’s county, raids are daily routine in a species of hunting worse than Hitler’s troop raids against the Jews, in spite of the fact that this same "cowboy," known as the "iron sheriff" or the "illegals hunter," is the son of immigrants.
According to press sources, in his favorite hobby, the feared racist not only employs systematic violations of the rights of his co-citizens, but skillfully arranges things to embezzle public funds with those who, without doubt, have guaranteed his reelection to office for four terms.
And that is not all: the stink of corruption has followed him from the period when he was converted from a simple police officer to a special DEA agent and rose to division director in Arizona.
The print media relates that "one of the most publicized acts of the "iron sheriff" is, without any doubt, a jail of army tents that he has installed in Phoenix, whose main 'clients' are undocumented Mexicans, who he forces to wear pink clothes,
including underwear.
"Whether the color is a fixation or mere coincidence, it is a fact that Arpaio has not only forced detainees to wear pink, but has also made them march through the streets in chains as though they were dangerous killers, when the only thing that they have done is to illegally enter the United States."
And as a demonstration of the fact that militarization of the alleged fight against violence and drug trafficking is the cover of the big business of corruption on one side of the border and on the other that of interference from the United States, the Arizona’s Department of Public Safety has revealed that while violent crime has gone down across the whole state, this has not been the case in the jurisdiction of Arpaio, Maricopa County; on the contrary, there it has increased by 58%.
Well, history repeats itself. Before it was the Ku Klux Klan and now "immigrant hunting," both with the common denominator of racism and "ethnic cleansing" of non-whites in U.S. territory.
A sad contradiction at a time when the presidency of that nation is occupied by an African American who insists that "the security of the southern border has been my main priority since I took office," that border which, as I read a few days ago, "is that space which reveals the differences, that places a price on dreams or on nightmares."
In Remembrance
In Memory of Salvador Allende
and all the Other Victims of the Fascist,
U.S. Sponsored Coup, September 11, 1973
Last Photo at the Presidential Palace
Last Photo at the Presidential Palace
Allende with Pablo Neruda and Victor JaraWednesday, September 08, 2010
America's Terrorists
America's War Racketeers,
The Real Terrorists
Is America's Racketeering "Elite" a Terrorist Organization?
There is a group of Americans, a combination of coward, gangster, politician, buffoonish soldier, con man and Israel obsessed bully. These are the “users” and “takers” who live their lives, some invisible, some media darlings, some famous heroes as portrayed by their friends in the media, their fellow thugs. This is the world’s greatest terrorist organization, the threat to, not only world security but the lives and freedom of the people of the world. These are the people who bleed America dry and have for generations, the people who have turned America into what the world clearly sees it as now, a weapon to be wielded against the common and decent people of the world on behalf of criminal terrorists.
Everyone has heard the story at one time or another. President Wilson was duped into setting up the Federal Reserve system. The term “Federal Reserve” is a lie. The Rothschild family and their predecessors that have controlled European currencies forever, since the 1600s and before, took over operation of America in 1913, printing our money and running the country through a series of banks that they control, and not all that “secretly.”
”Federal Reserve” means “Rothschild.” “Rothschild” means poverty, hunger, ignorance and, most of all, war. This is all you really need to know. Everything else, the Pentagon, Wall Street, the corporate news, congress, the Supreme Court, the arms industry bandits are nothing but their henchmen, cowards and thieves that sold their souls for cash, the perception of power and vice.
Walk the corridors of power in America and you will see vice, drugs, sex and corruption. We all know the “nice Jewish girls” that are passed around Washington like party favors, Monica Lewinsky, Chandra Levy are only two names America knows. There are a hundred more. It doesn’t take a genius to figure out who recruited them and why. Sex is power in Washington, London, Rome and Tel Aviv. If they aren’t snared in Washington, fly them to Tel Aviv. They got John McCain in Hanoi, or so reliable sources tell us, giving North Vietnam virtual control over American trade policies with Vietnam and guaranteeing the slow death of hundreds of abandoned prisoners of war.
It was the Franklin Scandal that told us how bad it was. A case is made against American presidents as pedophiles, not just them but hundreds of others including dozens of prominent members of congress. “Franklin” went after the GOP and their weakness, phony Christianity, phony “family values” and the love of young boys. We know it isn’t just the GOP and Pentagon but Franklin taught us how far America could go to cover up well documented crimes, how much control there is over, not only the criminal justice system but the news media as well.
The political assassination of Chandra Levy was another, even easier than the murder of Pat Tillman, now supposedly “revealed” to the world as the cover-up of an “accident.”
One of the most obvious expressions of disdain for America displayed by the criminal elite is the treatment of Americas soldiers and veterans. This week it was discovered that Prudential Insurance, one of America’s best known companies, was defrauding the families of soldiers killed in action. Insurance payments to the survivors of those killed in wars now admitted by all to be, not just “mistakes,” but clearly criminal wars of aggression, were withheld and reinvested but the proceeds was retained by Prudential and never paid to the survivors.
Prudential, one of the most influential corporations on the planet profits, not only from war but from American deaths in war. With America’s Supreme Court ruled on a 5/4 basis by justices who cannot be described in terms other than corporate Zionist lackeys, the recent decision allowing unlimited campaign donations by international corporate conglomerates gives Prudential and their friends and affiliates virtual control over America’s military adventurism.
That power had always been there but now it is written into law. Corporations control America’s government and sending armies to do their bidding is now their legal right. There are no “checks and balances” left.
Calling them “armies” is also a misnomer, as much as calling congress a legislative body or the Supreme Court as an organization meant to support justice is equally silly. Let’s look at what we call an army or in a broader sense, our new “agile” military.
America turned onto the road to total bankruptcy and collapse during the Reagan years. Star Wars is the biggest of the cons. The idea was to develop hard science that could create a missile shield for America. Tests were falsified, money squandered, corruption was out of control. Nothing whatsoever resulted as the total failure of the Patriot missile system during the First Gulf War demonstrated. Every defensive technology can be defeated by an offensive technology for a tenth the price. The French taught the world this with the Maginot Line.
Billions, actually hundreds of billions have been spent to develop “stealth” everything, especially aircraft. However, by tuning down their radar frequencies, the Serbs had no trouble shooting down our stealth planes. The technology is a joke and the science to beat stealth was in place long before the planes hit the drawing board. Stealth is a con.
Once upon a time we had one Marine Corps. It worked out well for the United States and, as General Smedley Butler loved pointing out, it was always there when Wall street needed thugs to collect a debt. Now we have a dozen cardboard cutout versions of the Marine Corps and every one of them is a con. The game, of course, is to sell the idea of elitism as a way of funding, not only wasteful spending and redundancy but to secretly give our “rogue” government their own terrorists, gangster enforcers, drug running lackeys and death squads, like any “banana republic.”
When this wasn’t bad enough, we had to “privatize.” Not only does America have tens of thousands of “troops” probably involved in war crimes such as kidnapping, murder, torture and drug running but we now have private contracting companies hiring foreign nationals to do things even worse.
What do we mean by that?
Simply put, thousands of Islamic contractors are now employed by the CIA and Department of Defense to perform “black ops” that even the most secretive organizations can’t be trusted with. What we are doing, of course, is guaranteeing “illness” in order to justify wasting billions on “cure.”
Our “Middle Eastern” and “South Asian” born contractors are offered to “perform tasks with deniability” as actually stated in public brochures. What this means to anyone who knows the English language is that we are hiring terrorists, employees of American countries, who some believe are supposed to attack fellow Muslims. We are trying to sell the idea we are using “terror against terrorists.”
There are now strong signs that one of the most successful operations these groups have thus far planned and executed was the Mumbai attack.
Are the Ft. Hood shootings and the “Times Square Fizzler” two more?
70% of the military spending in the world serves one purpose, to fight Muslim terrorists whose only issue is American support of Israeli actions against Palestinians, or so we are told. However, as most of us also know that most Muslims could care less about Palestine and do business with Israel all day long, it should be obvious that the “war on terror’ is a con also.
Historians have taken a new look at World War I and found it to be an attempt to destabilize Europe and bring about a socialist/communist takeover. It is only coincidental that the communists were almost all Jewish. The war would have ended in 1916 when Germany agreed to withdraw from France were it not for negotiations between Britain and the Rothshilds that culminated in the Balfour Declaration. Britain got the billions they needed from the Rothschilds who brought America into the war. Communists took over Russia and, for a time, Germany, Hungary and other countries also. There was even an attempt to take over the United States in 1918 called “the Red Scare.” It is only coincidental that almost all involved were Jews.
Those historians trying to take an honest look at our falsified history of World War II are called “anti-Semites” and “holocaust deniers.” All lose their teaching positions, many are jailed and more are “accidented” or “suicided,” themselves or family members.
The pattern is there but will be suppressed as long as the international power structure remains as it is. Hitler warned that Germany would be destroyed and that Russia would take over Eastern Europe and try to conquer the world.
This warning wasn’t in 1945 but 1922.
He warned that, in the end, Russia would be undermined as would America and Britain, that the war was against Christianity, and was never politics.
Those who study such things will gladly tell you that Russia was never communist, no more than Sweden or Israel.
America escaped the yoke of communism and, instead, became a hybrid state, not really socialist but a corporate dictatorship ruled from Tel Aviv and London. America exists only as a slave labor pool and factory that manufactures no product other than debt. Imagine being able to wield the world’s largest military force, really mercenaries for a worldwide gangster cartel and never have to pay them a cent.
They don’t even have to win wars, losing is even more profitable.
Thus we return to the issue of the great con game, now being sold as fighting terrorism and extremism but, if anything, not only creating terrorism but creating future generations of extremists but guaranteeing the failure of any state that fails to comply with the dictatorship model America and her friends spread across the world during the Cold War. Any nation failing to become the right kind of police state, and we can name 40 of these easily, is quickly branded as terrorist or “evil doer” be they an Islamic, Democratic or Socialist Republic. It isn’t politics, its about slavery.
Today’s “con” is war, selling it like a product, the equivalent of decades of rotting meat, spoiled eggs or those poisoned products the Chinese are so glad to sell us and we are so happy to put into the food chain, until we are caught.
War isn’t all technology and wizardry, our sons and daughters wiping out villages around the world while sitting at computer screens clutching game controllers and yelling out “kapowie!” when the smoke clears and the ground is strewn with blood, body parts and broken children’s toys.
Our “flavor of the month” real war is Afghanistan, simply a replay of the American Revolution with US playing both the British soldiers and Hessian mercenaries and an uncomfortable looking Barak Obama taking the helm as the madman “King George.”
Mullah Omar is doing “John Adams” and the Taliban are the “minutemen.” The tory sympathizers and “Benedict Arnold” types are the Karzai regime and their backers, whoever they might be. Nobody is playing “the French.” They are needed as America is quite capable of beating herself out of incompetence and corruption alone, no enemy required.
But we do have an enemy and a war and with all our talk, all our technology, we are just like “the redcoats” marching down the pike, vehicles blown apart by IED’s and RPGs or riflemen behind every rock, ready to spew lethal fire from their long range rifles.
Our troops, carrying “pea-shooter” 5.56 mm assault rifles, short range and unreliable, are supposed to win the hearts and minds of people who hate the traitors and criminals we put in power and hate us even more knowing the heartless destruction we rain on their families, not just our UAV “pilotless” murder machines but our death squads that have killed thousands of innocent civilians, “terrorist suspects” out of confusion, religious or racial hatred or plain and simple insanity.
The fantastic American army is little more than “press gang” conscripts from the 18th century, slaves to “stop loss” and other tricks tying them to endless deployments until they are too sick or too crazy to go on.
The privileged elite never cared, never will. Senator Alan Simpson recently took the reigns in the Senate Finance Committee, making it clear to all deemed stupid enough to serve that such foolishness would be rewarded with what should have been expected all along, betrayal.
If only it were possible for America’s rulers to manage to profit from the suffering of veterans like they do from the destruction of our military forces, those who manage to survive war might have a fighting chance of surviving “the love and thanks of a grateful nation.”
I’ve been thanked before and I wouldn’t wish it on a dog.
Gordon Duff is a Marine Vietnam veteran. A 100% disabled vet. He has been a featured commentator on TV and radio including Al Jazeera and his articles have been carried by news services around the world. He has been a UN Diplomat, defense contractor and is a widely published expert on military and defense issues. This article first appeared in Veterans and Foreign Affairs Journal.
USA Style Liberation
Vomiting Perfidy
September 2, 2010 Layla Anwar, Arab Woman Blues
Since yesterday I have been vomiting my insides out...
My first bout of vomit came after I read a transcript of your President's speech, his speech to the "nation". Because you consider yourselves a nation ?!
It started off with an uneasiness felt in the pit of my stomach, then quickly transformed itself into a queasiness, then into a foul nausea, only to erupt like a dammed out volcano into violent throes of pure vomit...
I have over the past 20 years or so, developed a high intolerance to perfidy and you throughout your history have excelled in perfecting what I am most allergic to...
You literally make me sick.
Change - you clamored like a herd of sheep, while munching, ruminating like cattle every word that is fed to you...Black and White, even those retards who call themselves American Arabs and Muslims rejoiced at Uncle Tom's arrival to the White House.
Oh the "principled", "moralistic" prudish puritanical perverts called Americans, always showing up late for change...always jumping on the bandwagon, when the train has already passed...
The peace loving war mongers of the new world order is what you are. Fake and ignorant to the bone.
So you pride yourselves on being "a good people", a "compassionate" "sharing caring hugging" people -- nothing but Perfidy.
For 20 years, I witnessed my country, the land of my father, my mother, my ancestors, disintegrate before my very eyes...20 fucking years. 20 fucking years.
Twenty years of people -- first withering, wilting away, like flowers never allowed to see the light, never allowed to turn their faces to the sun, then from fading into shadows, faltering into a colorless background...bombed, massacred, slaughtered into a nothingness...the same nothingness that inhabits you daily...the same nothingness that makes you rush to your shrink, the same nothingness that you feed with your junk, the same nothingness that you fill with your consumer products...the same nothingness of your void, of the pit, the deep pit that you all live in, and I throw up some more, from the pits of my belly....
So you "sacrificed" for us, so you liberated us from "tyranny", so you "lived up to your responsibilities" --- like you did in Falluja, Haditha, Mahmoudiya, Baghdad, Basra, Mosul, Ramadi...¨"kill the motherfuckers" you shouted...and your wives masturbated to your love letters, or shed a few tears while waving that infamous flag...the flag of a degenerate, decaying country that has offered nothing but murder, carnage and mayhem...
You liberated us from "dictatorship" with 5 times the size of a Hiroshima and a Nagasaki...you liberated us until there was no space left in our morgues, and 7 and half years later, we still search for the dead...you liberated us until our streets turned into pools of blood, and mosques became torture dungeons where those hajjis were having their eyes plucked out and their flesh drilled, you liberated us so we can be abducted, raped and murdered for a 1000$ or for wearing lipstick...you liberated us so our bodies can float on the Tigris and Euphrates, mutilated unrecognizable...you liberated us alright...stuffing us in prisons cells, covering us with your piss and excrements, or handing us to your mercenaries and your pimps and whores in turbans, while you fucked the prostitutes specially brought to you in your Green Fortress... and while the rest of us lived in walled ghettos that you constructed for us...
You liberated us alright...and you lived up to your principles, your ideals and your responsibilities...
But I do grant you one thing, you computerized, digitalized death for us...you see, thanks to you our morgue is now equipped with the latest technology, so 7 years down the line, we can finally go and find the corpse of a loved one, maybe. We even got numbers, serial numbers, you are serial killers and we get serial numbers...
We carry numbers wherever we go, number on our passports, on our ID cards, on our prison bracelets, and even on our dead bodies...the numbers follow us to the cemeteries, we got plenty of them today...all this reconstruction money, we built cemeteries with...well not quite, you stole the money...billions of dollars, so we turned gardens and parks into graveyards...our children play there, amidst the wailing of mothers in perpetual grief...
You are indeed a brave people...a noble, brave people. See, all what you've done for us! Your generosity will be recorded in history annals...and you will be used as a historical example, a model of a country and a people of great integrity -- just like the New Iraq model.
Those of us who could not handle this overflowing compassion from you (as your stinking alternative press likes us to believe - Americans are compassionate people), flew away...escaped the milk of human kindness, carrying a few documents and memories, wounds and scars stacked in suitcases...with no destination...
A permanent exile has become our abode...a new geographical location not found on any map...carrying our selves like some overburdening, heavy bundle, struggling to make ends meet, struggling to survive, struggling not to become insane, struggling not be engulfed by that nothingness of yours...
Scratching humanity with our nails...trying to find it, digging with our bare hands, sometimes wishing that we were buried there, alongside our loved ones...sometimes wishing we were never born, sometimes crying in our solitude, sometimes screaming in our nightmares, sometimes numbing ourselves so we can match your nothingness...
Most of the time, confused, lost and bewildered...still unable to grasp what has befallen us, in the name of Freedom...other times engrossed with story after story of endless suffering and misery inflicted by you...with stories of relatives and friends lost in dungeons of Democracy, with stories of monsters being born in the land of Freedom, with stories of disease and illnesses nesting into our DNA and becoming part of our make up, of our being...infiltrating the very essence of us, of our soil, our air, our water...
Story after story...image after image -- wheelchairs, amputations, limbs lost, eyes lost, fingers lost, a child dying, a woman raped and killed, a man tortured to death...story after story of -- poverty, disease, need, neglect, abandonment...story after story of an eternal fatigue that has settled upon us like a blanket...
I watch in my head, in my imagination, in my memory, the river Tigris flowing on a summer eve right at sunset...when the air is cooler (and when there was electricity and drinking water), I watch the river flow, calmly, silently, peacefully...nothing obstructs it, it just flows and I close my eyes and imagine myself flowing with it, in it...to an unknown destination...only in these moments do I find real tranquility...during those seconds, when I am transported there, by that river where everything grew and took shape...from the dawn of Time...
I go back in time thousands of years, when you were non existent, when you had no name, no shape and no color...and I find myself...I find myself and I find Iraq.
This is the only consolation I can give to myself - that even in the buckets of vomit wrought out from my guts, I can still find Her and me.
But you can't.
Thursday, September 02, 2010
Song Lyrics
Poverty of Philosophy
by Immortal Technique
Here are the lyrics to an excellent piece of music on the Further Left music program in the chat room. All people should listen to these words and learn from them.
Most of my Latino and black people who are struggling to get food, clothes and shelter in the hood are so concerned with that, that philosophising about freedom and socialist democracy is usually unfortunately beyond their rationale. They don't realize that America can't exist without separating them from their identity, because if we had some sense of who we really are, there's no way in hell we'd allow this country to push it's genocidal consensus on our homelands. This ignorance exists, but it can be destroyed.
Niggas talk about change and working within the system to achieve that. The problem with always being a conformist is that when you try to change the system from within, it's not you who changes the system; it's the system that will eventually change you. There is usually nothing wrong with compromise in a situation, but compromising yourself in a situation is another story completely, and I have seen this happen long enough in the few years that I've been alive to know that it's a serious problem. Latino America is a huge colony of countries whose presidents are cowards in the face of economic imperialism. You see, third world countries are rich places, abundant in resources, and many of these countries have the capacity to feed their starving people and the children we always see digging for food in trash on commercials. But plutocracies, in other words a government run by the rich such as this one and traditionally oppressive European states, force the third world into buying overpriced, unnecessary goods while exporting huge portions of their natural resources.
I'm quite sure that people will look upon my attitude and sentiments and look for hypocrisy and hatred in my words. My revolution is born out of love for my people, not hatred for others.
You see, most of Latinos are here because of the great inflation that was caused by American companies in Latin America. Aside from that, many are seeking a life away from the puppet democracies that were funded by the United States; places like El Salvador, Guatemala, Peru, Colombia, Nicaragua, Ecuador and Republica Dominicana, and not just Spanish-speaking countries either, but Haiti and Jamaica as well.
As different as we have been taught to look at each other by colonial society, we are in the same struggle and until we realize that, we'll be fighting for scraps from the table of a system that has kept us subservient instead of being self-determined. And that's why we have no control over when the embargo will stop in Cuba, or when the bombs will stop dropping in Vieques.
But you see, here in America the attitude that is fed to us is that outside of America there live lesser people. "Fuck them, let them fend for themselves." No, Fuck you, they are you. No matter how much you want to dye your hair blonde and put fake eyes in, or follow an anorexic standard of beauty, or no matter how many diamonds you buy from people who exploit your own brutally to get them, no matter what kind of car you drive or what kind of fancy clothes you put on, you will never be them. They're always gonna look at you as nothing but a little monkey. I'd rather be proud of what I am, rather than desperately trying to be something I'm really not, just to fit in. And whether we want to accept it or not, that's what this culture or lack of culture is feeding us.
I want a better life for my family and for my children, but it doesn't have to be at the expense of millions of lives in my homeland. We're given the idea that if we didn't have these people to exploit then America wouldn't be rich enough to let us have these little petty material things in our lives and basic standards of living. No, that's wrong. It's the business giants and the government officials who make all the real money. We have whatever they kick down to us. My enemy is not the average white man, it's not the kid down the block or the kids I see on the street; my enemy is the white man I don't see: the people in the white house, the corporate monopoly owners, fake liberal politicians those are my enemies. The generals of the armies that are mostly conservatives those are the real Mother-Fuckers that I need to bring it to, not the poor, broke country-ass soldier that's too stupid to know shit about the way things are set up.
In fact, I have more in common with most working and middle-class white people than I do with most rich black and Latino people. As much as racism bleeds America, we need to understand that classism is the real issue. Many of us are in the same boat and it's sinking, while these bougie Mother-Fuckers ride on a luxury liner, and as long as we keep fighting over kicking people out of the little boat we're all in, we're gonna miss an opportunity to gain a better standard of living as a whole.
In other words, I don't want to escape the plantation I want to come back, free all my people, hang the Mother-Fucker that kept me there and burn the house to the god damn ground. I want to take over the encomienda and give it back to the people who work the land.
You cannot change the past but you can make the future, and anyone who tells you different is a Fucking lethargic devil. I don't look at a few token Latinos and black people in the public eye as some type of achievement for my people as a whole. Most of those successful individuals are sell-outs and house Negros.
But, I don't consider brothers a sell-out if they move out of the ghetto. Poverty has nothing to do with our people. It's not in our culture to be poor. That's only been the last 500 years of our history; look at the last 2000 years of our existence and what we brought to the world in terms of science, mathematics, agriculture and forms of government. You know the idea of a confederation of provinces where one federal government controls the states? The Europeans who came to this country stole that idea from the Iroquois LEAGUE. The idea of impeaching a ruler comes from an Aztec tradition. That's why Montezuma was stoned to death by his own people 'cause he represented the agenda of white Spaniards once he was captured, not the Aztec people who would become Mexicans.
So in conclusion, I'm not gonna vote for anybody just 'cause they black or Latino they have to truly represent the community and represent what's good for all of us proletariat.
Porque sino entonces te mando por el carajo cabron gusano hijo de puta, seramos libre pronto, viva la revolucion, VIVA LA REVOLUCION!
Niggas talk about change and working within the system to achieve that. The problem with always being a conformist is that when you try to change the system from within, it's not you who changes the system; it's the system that will eventually change you. There is usually nothing wrong with compromise in a situation, but compromising yourself in a situation is another story completely, and I have seen this happen long enough in the few years that I've been alive to know that it's a serious problem. Latino America is a huge colony of countries whose presidents are cowards in the face of economic imperialism. You see, third world countries are rich places, abundant in resources, and many of these countries have the capacity to feed their starving people and the children we always see digging for food in trash on commercials. But plutocracies, in other words a government run by the rich such as this one and traditionally oppressive European states, force the third world into buying overpriced, unnecessary goods while exporting huge portions of their natural resources.
I'm quite sure that people will look upon my attitude and sentiments and look for hypocrisy and hatred in my words. My revolution is born out of love for my people, not hatred for others.
You see, most of Latinos are here because of the great inflation that was caused by American companies in Latin America. Aside from that, many are seeking a life away from the puppet democracies that were funded by the United States; places like El Salvador, Guatemala, Peru, Colombia, Nicaragua, Ecuador and Republica Dominicana, and not just Spanish-speaking countries either, but Haiti and Jamaica as well.
As different as we have been taught to look at each other by colonial society, we are in the same struggle and until we realize that, we'll be fighting for scraps from the table of a system that has kept us subservient instead of being self-determined. And that's why we have no control over when the embargo will stop in Cuba, or when the bombs will stop dropping in Vieques.
But you see, here in America the attitude that is fed to us is that outside of America there live lesser people. "Fuck them, let them fend for themselves." No, Fuck you, they are you. No matter how much you want to dye your hair blonde and put fake eyes in, or follow an anorexic standard of beauty, or no matter how many diamonds you buy from people who exploit your own brutally to get them, no matter what kind of car you drive or what kind of fancy clothes you put on, you will never be them. They're always gonna look at you as nothing but a little monkey. I'd rather be proud of what I am, rather than desperately trying to be something I'm really not, just to fit in. And whether we want to accept it or not, that's what this culture or lack of culture is feeding us.
I want a better life for my family and for my children, but it doesn't have to be at the expense of millions of lives in my homeland. We're given the idea that if we didn't have these people to exploit then America wouldn't be rich enough to let us have these little petty material things in our lives and basic standards of living. No, that's wrong. It's the business giants and the government officials who make all the real money. We have whatever they kick down to us. My enemy is not the average white man, it's not the kid down the block or the kids I see on the street; my enemy is the white man I don't see: the people in the white house, the corporate monopoly owners, fake liberal politicians those are my enemies. The generals of the armies that are mostly conservatives those are the real Mother-Fuckers that I need to bring it to, not the poor, broke country-ass soldier that's too stupid to know shit about the way things are set up.
In fact, I have more in common with most working and middle-class white people than I do with most rich black and Latino people. As much as racism bleeds America, we need to understand that classism is the real issue. Many of us are in the same boat and it's sinking, while these bougie Mother-Fuckers ride on a luxury liner, and as long as we keep fighting over kicking people out of the little boat we're all in, we're gonna miss an opportunity to gain a better standard of living as a whole.
In other words, I don't want to escape the plantation I want to come back, free all my people, hang the Mother-Fucker that kept me there and burn the house to the god damn ground. I want to take over the encomienda and give it back to the people who work the land.
You cannot change the past but you can make the future, and anyone who tells you different is a Fucking lethargic devil. I don't look at a few token Latinos and black people in the public eye as some type of achievement for my people as a whole. Most of those successful individuals are sell-outs and house Negros.
But, I don't consider brothers a sell-out if they move out of the ghetto. Poverty has nothing to do with our people. It's not in our culture to be poor. That's only been the last 500 years of our history; look at the last 2000 years of our existence and what we brought to the world in terms of science, mathematics, agriculture and forms of government. You know the idea of a confederation of provinces where one federal government controls the states? The Europeans who came to this country stole that idea from the Iroquois LEAGUE. The idea of impeaching a ruler comes from an Aztec tradition. That's why Montezuma was stoned to death by his own people 'cause he represented the agenda of white Spaniards once he was captured, not the Aztec people who would become Mexicans.
So in conclusion, I'm not gonna vote for anybody just 'cause they black or Latino they have to truly represent the community and represent what's good for all of us proletariat.
Porque sino entonces te mando por el carajo cabron gusano hijo de puta, seramos libre pronto, viva la revolucion, VIVA LA REVOLUCION!
