Russians Have Second Thoughts

Russia is different. The Americans, the Brits and the French by and large approve of their forces’ Libya bombing spree (yes, some doubt that it’s a good bang for the buck). The Russians are flatly against it, with no ifs, ands or buts. The Russian Ambassador in Tripoli, Vladimir Chamov, came back to a hero’s welcome in Moscow. President Dmitri Medvedev had dismissed him publicly after the Ambassador sent him a cable. In the five-points cable leaked to media, the Ambassador called Medvedev’s response to Libya crisis a “betrayal of Russian national interests”. (Meanwhile, the sides climbed down a bit: the Foreign Office said Chamov was not “fired”, just “called back” from Tripoli, and retained his ambassadorial rank and salary, while Chamov denied he had used the word “betrayal”.)

The Russians do not like the Western intervention in Libya. The rebels do not appear genuine, note the Russian bloggers; they are a peculiar mixed bag of Kaddafi’s ex-ministers fired for corruption, al-Qaeda mujahedeen, well-clod riff-raff beefed up by SAS soldiers and supported by these best friends of every Arab, American cruise missiles. The Russian media discovered that the first reports of massive civil casualties inflicted by the ruthless Kaddafi apparently were invented by editors in London and Paris. More civilians were killed by the Western intervention than by the government fighting the rebels. The mass-readership Komsomolskaya Pravda published reports from the Russian expats in Libya that flatly disproved claims of Kaddafi’s planes bombing residential quarters: this was done by the French and British bombers.

The Russians tend to a conspiratorial view of politics. They presume that the Arab risings were organised by their enemy: some “orange” Western forces, NED, CIA, Mossad, you name it, in order to create chaos, Iraq-style. They quote Israeli and American doctrines for the promotion of “constructive chaos”.And then they support Kaddafi, or even feel sympathy for Mubarak. This is especially true for patriotic Russians who remember that Kaddafi stood by Russia in 2008 during the Georgia conflict, and for a business community who were involved in many projects in Libya from gas to railways.

President Dmitri Medvedev has good reason to regret the haste with which he joined in the Western media onslaught, for he will be blamed for what already looks to Russians as Kosovo II. Probably he was misled by his media advisers who suggested he should jump on the internationally-acceptable media bandwagon of “stop the massacre in Libya”, and on he jumped. The first reports of the alleged massacre were still reverberating when President Medvedev warned Kaddafi of “crimes against humanity”, and later on he added that Kaddafi is persona non grata in Russia. Medvedev supported the decision to pass Libya’s case to ICC; though by that time he could have learned from the Russians present in Libya that nothing all that extraordinary took place in the country; that it was nothing beyond a small-scale rising on the way to being put down. It could be compared to Los Angeles riots of 1965 (threescore dead and thousands wounded) or of 1992 (fifty dead and thousands wounded), except that the LA blacks had no Tomahawks for aerial support.

Medvedev is also perceived as the man who ordered his Ambassador in the Security Council to abstain. Russia and China usually vote in agreement if they intend to go against the will of the world sheriff – ever since the fateful Zimbabwe vote in 2008 when Russia activated its veto for the first time since God-knows-when and stopped the West-proposed sanctions against the African nation. Then, the BBC reported, the UK foreign secretary David Miliband said Russia used its veto despite a promise by President Dmitry Medvedev to support the resolution. This time, apparently, Medvedev prevailed and acquiesced in what looks now as another Suez campaign (if you can still remember 1956, when the Brits and the French had tried to liberate Egypt from its Hitler-on-the-Nile, Gamal Abdel Nasser, and keep the Canal for themselves).

A few days later, the strongman of Russia, Vladimir Putin, roundly criticised this step of Medvedev; he called the Western intervention, “a new crusade”, and proposed the Western leaders should “pray for their souls and ask the Lord’s forgiveness” for the blood shed. People loved it. Medvedev tried to rebuff with a meaningless “don’t you speak of crusades”, but even he could not find anything positive about the NATO campaign in Libya.

Now as always, the Russians’ gut reaction is against any Western intervention. They were against American interventions in Vietnam and Korea, Iraq and Afghanistan, against British and French colonial wars – just like you were, my wonderful readers, the enlightened spiritual minority in the West. The Russians do not believe that the reasons for the Western intervention have anything to do with love of democracy, human rights or value of human life. For them, a rose is a rose is a rose, a Western intervention is a Western intervention, one of many they were on the receiving end of.

However, Medvedev did not let the Western intervention march on for purely sentimental reasons of “supporting Europe”. The idea is, better let NATO be occupied in the South than in the East. Libya is much less important for Russians than Georgia, Ukraine or even Afghanistan. If this beast has to eat somebody, let it better be somebody in the Maghreb, where the Russians never had strong positions anyway. A WPR writer called this turn a “Tilsit moment” for NATO: acknowledging the immutability of the West’s Eastern borders in exchange for a free hand in the South flank. That is why Poland was unhappy with the Odyssey Dawn operation: instead of being on the frontline of the most important confrontation, this southern switch left the Poles in a geopolitical cul-de-sac.

Indeed we should not be captivated by East-West thinking. As the US slowly declines, the European powers begin to reassess their role. The Libya war is a French project. The Libya war was started by Sarkozy as an attempt to rebuild the French Empire in North Africa fifty years after the Evian treaty ostensibly sealed its fate. This was his old idea, and he called for the establishment of a Mediterranean Union during his election campaign. The MU project was supported by Israelis – and now Bernard Henry Levy is the foremost proponent on the intervention. Turkey strongly opposed the MU and now the Turks oppose the intervention in their subtle way, as Eric Walberg has correctly described. Italy supported the MU and expectedly supported the intervention. Germany was against the MU and is against the intervention. From this point of view, the intervention in Libya is the beginning of a new wave of European colonization of the Maghreb.

A Russian observer noticed an uncanny resemblance of this operation to one that occurred one hundred years ago in Libya during the previous colonisation wave. Then, recently united aggressive Italy in search for its empire decided to seize Libya, an Ottoman province. Then, as now, the newspapers wrote of freedom-loving Libyans suffering under the Ottoman heel and of the Italians’ moral duty to liberate them. The Turks were in a bad shape and they tried to find a face-saving way to surrender. They proposed to hand Libya over to Italians for management and colonization provided the suzerainty should remain with the Sublime Porte. The Italians refused, and their Dawn Odyssey began. The Turks fought valiantly, and among them a young officer proved his valour: that was Mustafa Kemal, later nicknamed Ataturk. A lone voice against intervention was that of young Italian socialist Benito Mussolini. The Italians’ Libya campaign was the first ever air bombing, exactly one hundred years ago in 1911, and history has preserved the name of the first bomber, Flt Lt Giulio Gavotti, who was the first man ever to perform a bombing run.

Modern Russia is not the USSR; it has few world-wide ambitions. It is worried about its own part of the world, and is not keen to get involved elsewhere. For the Russians, Europe’s drive south is not a threat, rather a resumption of France’s regional role. That is why the Russians abstained at UNSC. So it will be the task of the enlightened forces of the West to stop the aggression – instead of relying on the Russian veto.

President Kaddafi succeeded in annoying a lot of people in a lot of places. He annoyed both the French and the Russians by striking deals and then not sticking to them. Wikileaks cables refer to that many times, notably in 10PARIS151 saying: “the French are growing increasingly frustrated with the Libyans’ failure to deliver on promises regarding visas, professional exchanges, French language education, and commercial deals. “”We (and the Libyans) speak a lot, but we’ve begun to see that actions do not follow words in Libya.” He annoyed the Saudis and worse, he annoyed his own people.

We are certainly against the intervention; but the case of supporting Kaddafi is not all that clear-cut. Muammar Kaddafi was/is a dual figure: on one hand, an autochthonous leader who provided his countrymen with the highest standard of living in Africa, with generous subsidies, free medical care and education, who supported the vision of One State in Palestine/Israel and befriended Castro and Chavez. On the other hand, for the last five years Kaddafi and his clique have been busy dismantling the Libyan welfare state, privatising and cannibalising their health and education systems, hoarding wealth, dealing with transnational oil and gas companies to their personal advantage. The “New Kaddafi” took away a lot of social achievements and did not give his people elementary political freedoms. His support of One State in Palestine dried up in 2002, a long time ago.

My friends in Tripoli do not support Kaddafi. They are certainly against western intervention, but they dislike the old colonel for his dictatorial habits. They are grown-ups, they want to be involved in the decision-making, they do not like corruption, they also want bigger role for Islam. In their eyes, Kaddafi kept his anti-imperialist rhetoric for public use, but his praxis was Western and neo-liberal. It is fine that Kaddafi teased the Saudi royals and brandished his sword against the western leaders; but at the same time he gave away Libyan wealth to the foreigners. So while certainly standing against the intervention, we should not forget that not all anti-Kaddafi forces are Western stooges or al-Qaeda fighters.

Politics do not provide a bed of laurels to recline on. With all due respect to Muammar Kaddafi and his past achievements, he overstayed his prime time. There are reasons to hope he will survive the storm; we heartily wish him the defeat of the interventionist forces. But that should be a departure point for democracy in Libya, not necessarily democracy-European style, but a better way for Libyans to participate in forging their own lives.

Migration of the Black Swans

By Giordano Bruno | Neithercorp Press…

The phrase “Black Swan” is really making the rounds these last few months. Uttering the term a year ago would have earned you a collection of confused looks and a general attitude of disinterest. Now, people behave as if they had learned about economic shockwave events and the global domino effect when they were in kindergarten. The problem is that when this kind of terminology hits the mainstream, in most cases it comes prepackaged with dumbed down and diluted definitions which promote an inadequate, cartoonish understanding of the circumstances.

To be sure, most Americans are well aware that the world’s political and economic foundations are about as stable as fresh pudding under a heat lamp. The problem is that they are now being conditioned by the mainstream media to view the idea of collapse as “cinematic”; a kind of live action fantasy in which we all get to play the part of the audience, watching safely from the dark in our cushy theater seats with a bag of overpriced popcorn, Dolby surround sound, and a hot date to keep us company during the boring parts. Three years ago, even mentioning the idea of a breakdown in society or a financial catastrophe beyond a minor recession earned you the label of “doom monger”; a rather inept and naïve attempt on the part of the MSM to silence any economic analysis that stepped outside the establishment Keynesian framework. Today, I turn around to look at a magazine stand at the airport and right in front of me is Newsweek openly declaring “Apocalypse Now”!

Is the mainstream finally catching up to the alternative media? No. The MSM is merely adopting pieces of our common language and twisting them to fit a more globalist friendly viewpoint. Because our readership is growing exponentially, and our traffic is skyrocketing while corporatized news sources are floundering, the MSM is losing its ability to obscure our fact based journalism with their over funded and highly sterilized adaptation of reality. So instead, they attempt to co-opt our particular vocabulary, and our news focus, while adding their own subtle spin and sensationalism. When people not familiar with the alternative media and the more in-depth information we provide talk about a “Black Swan event”, a depression, hyperinflation, etc., their concept of the implications of such disasters is far different than ours. They are living in the Disney version of financial and social Armageddon.

Of course, when the curtains raise, the previews are over, and the show begins, none of us will be lounging comfortably outside these calamities to simply watch. We will all be inexorably involved, whether we like it or not. So, carry on with the media war we must. Educating the masses on the ENTIRE story behind international events and their consequences continues to stand as a top priority, until that final straw caves the camel’s back and disseminating the truth becomes a needless exercise in pointing out the horrifyingly obvious.

First, let’s examine the veiled reverberations of recent “Black Swan” events, the wider view of the chain that ties them together, as well as what we should expect in the near future in the wake of their aftermath…

Fukushima Mon Amour

If I could choose only one tragedy to be categorized as a textbook example of a Black Swan, it is the earthquake and subsequent tsunami off the coast of northern Japan which led to the current and precarious meltdown of the nuclear reactors at Fukushima. Now, the immediate concerns of Western nations, especially citizens of the U.S., have automatically turned to the threat of radioactive fallout traveling across the Pacific. Unfortunately, radioactivity is the least of our troubles in the face of Japanese nuclear core exposure. Again, Japan is currently the number three economy in the world, and the effects of the Fukushima incident have contributed to the possibility of a full spectrum crisis.

First, we must always keep in mind that incidents in areas like Japan or the Middle East are NOT the direct cause of global economic or social turmoil; they are only trigger points for an avalanche that has been building for the past three to four years. If Fukushima had occurred in 2007, international markets would have easily absorbed the blow, but today, economies everywhere have been so weakened by the implosion of the banker created derivatives bubble and the inflationary fiat measures of private organizations like the Federal Reserve that they no longer have the capacity to shield themselves from unexpected catastrophes. Big banks have been playing a massive game of Jenga with the global economy, pulling one support after another until the whole construct begins to sway and tremble. One gust of wind, one tremor, one wrong move, and the whole thing comes crashing down. If you want to place blame for the chaos we are about to see in the aftermath of Fukushima, be sure to place it where it belongs; on the doorstep of corporate monstrosities like the Fed, Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan, HSBC, etc.

Second, Japan’s official debt to GDP ratio now stands at 225%, way above the limit usually attributed to a country on the verge of complete debt destruction. The cost of rebuilding the areas damaged by the tsunami alone is estimated at around $300 billion. My primary concern in light of Japanese instability, though, is the severe weakening of their export markets. Japan is almost entirely reliant on its export capacity to support its ailing economy, meaning they are dependent on other countries to continually purchase their goods. However, in 2008, Japanese exports were pummeled, and have not improved anywhere near levels reached previous to the credit collapse, at least according to initial numbers for 2010:

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-11-24/japan-export-growth-slows-more-than-forecast-as-economy-loses-trade-boost.html

The earthquake and nuclear meltdown of 2011 have sealed Japan’s fate. It could take ten, twenty, even thirty years for them to recuperate from this setback. Manufacturing in the Asian nation has already deteriorated at the fastest pace in nearly a decade:

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-03-30/japan-manufacturing-shrinks-most-since-2009-in-first-sign-of-quake-impact.html

Japanese food exports are being shunned by international markets for fear of radioactive contamination. Prime Minister Naoto Khan is now pleading with the WTO to urge its members to avoid curbing imports of Japanese goods, claiming that the government is on top of the Fukushima situation:

http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/03/30/us-japan-quake-idUSTRE72A0SS20110330

This hardly appears to be the case though. Reports of radioactive iodine 10,000 times safe levels in the water table below Fukushima have surfaced; reports which the Tokyo Electric Power Company is now vaguely stating “may be incorrect”:

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-03-31/japan-reviewing-water-tests-showing-iodine-at-10-000-times-limit.html

The secrecy surrounding Japan’s nuclear meltdown is highly disconcerting and reminiscent of the Chernobyl incident in 1986, which the Soviet Union also refused to report honestly. Nearby cities were completely uninformed as to the true danger of the meltdown, and the international community was without a clue as to the extent of the radiation until Sweden, nearly seven hundred miles away, discovered radioactive particulates in its atmosphere. The problem with a containment breach in a nuclear plant is that it releases a steady stream of radioactive materials into the environment until the plant is finally buried under tons of concrete, lead, boric acid, and sand, as opposed to a nuclear weapon, which detonates, irradiating surrounding particles, which then dissipate after around two weeks. Fukushima, if left uncontained, could spew radioactivity for decades. The Japanese government does not seem to be providing forthright information about the real jeopardy involved.

Of course, if they were forthright, there would certainly be alarm amongst the citizenry, but even more so, a flight of investment dollars from Japanese industry and stocks. The only equity in Japan which seems to be attracting investment is the Yen itself, which skyrocketed against the U.S. dollar at the onset of the crisis:

http://www.rttnews.com/ArticleView.aspx?Id=1577203

The Yen has climbed steadily against the dollar since the early 1970’s, from 300 yen per dollar, to only 80 yen per dollar after Fukushima. I find it interesting that now, during times of financial uncertainty, global investors would rather pour their savings into the currency of a country that is about to be radioactive, rather than put their savings into the U.S. Greenback! What does that tell you about the level of trust the world currently has in our currency?

Being that Japan is a dedicated export economy, the higher the Yen goes, the more strenuous the exchange rate, and the less other countries will buy from them. G7 nations have since attempted to artificially knock down the rise of the Yen, but their efforts have yielded little success. The Yen still stands at around 83 per dollar. Hardly an improvement that will make Japanese exports more viable.

So, where is this all leading…? High speed deflationary depression for Japan. But that’s not all! The ASEAN trading bloc, led by China and fueled by the rising Yuan, has been pushing Japan to join the fold for years. Japan has been less than receptive to the proposition for numerous cultural, political, and financial reasons. But now, with the complete downfall of the country underway, and their export capability crumbling, Japan may go begging to join ASEAN. Already, ASEAN is beginning to offer help in Japan’s rebuilding process:

What does this mean for the U.S.? It means the Japanese will likely begin a progressive dump of their vast reserves of U.S. Treasuries and dollars, replacing them with Yuan bonds. Its means a severe devaluation of the dollar in the near future along with the possible end to its World Reserve Currency status. It means hyperinflation in America. This is the true nature of a Black Swan event. It is not a single incident, but a chain reaction that spreads like cancer through an economic system, leading to broader misfortune than anyone dared imagine.

Once Upon A Time In The Middle East

The effects of the revolutionary fervor in the land of OPEC are a bit more obvious than those caused by Japan, at least, for the most part. Crude oil is now climbing towards $107 per barrel at the publishing of this piece. World markets are swinging wildly like a cheap carnival ride. Political alliances (especially between the U.S. and its primary oil suppliers) are becoming strained. The dollar’s peg to oil is now under threat. But this is really no surprise. As we have discussed in past articles, it is exactly what happened to the British Empire in the early 1950’s when it attempted to strong arm Middle Eastern governments and maintain the oil trade under the Pound Sterling. Eventually, the British became embroiled in Arab conflicts and revolts they could not possibly untangle, and their main debt holders (one of which was the United States) threatened to dump British Treasuries and the pound sterling as the world reserve currency. Sound familiar….?

So now that America is repeating the blunders of the British (most likely by design), what can we expect from turmoil in the Middle East?

First, crude prices are going to continue expanding. Not so much due to supply concerns (Libya, for instance, makes up only 2% of global oil production), but because of the escalating distrust of the U.S. and its interests in the region, leading to a likely decoupling of oil from the greenback. The Obama Administration’s response to this growing danger has been, interestingly, to focus not on the devaluation of the dollar, but instead, to distract us with more nonsensical supply side theories. The president (and I use that term loosely) has seen fit to present yet another model for “green alternatives” which would supposedly diminish Americas dependence on foreign oil supplies. Unfortunately, this plan’s main drive is to cut oil importation to the U.S by one third over the next ten years while we are at the very onset of an energy crisis. Keep in mind that this plan does NOT include utilizing the extensive crude oil reserves discovered in America’s northwest:

http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/03/30/us-obama-energy-idUSTRE72S3C820110330

http://www.usgs.gov/newsroom/article.asp?ID=1911&from=rss_home

Absolutely brilliant! Let’s cut our oil supply by a third while the dollar is in the midst of losing its reserve status and Obama fumbles about with biofuels that rely mainly on corn, a commodity which is also exploding in cost due to dollar devaluation, and requires more energy to refine than it eventually produces. Does anyone doubt anymore that this government is deliberately sabotaging our economy?! Holy Frijoles!

China’s move over the past two years to purchase more oil from Russia instead of the Middle East while dropping the dollar as a reserve currency in bilateral trade now seems almost clairvoyant, doesn’t it?

As the destabilization of the Middle East spreads, the most volatile situation is not even necessarily that of oil and the dollar, but that of Syria. Due to its alliances and its tensions with Israel, Syria has become the keystone of the Middle East. Any disruption in Syria could lead to widespread war in the region, involving not just the U.S., but also Russia. Protests have begun to rage in the country, just as in the rest of the Arab nations, which has suddenly peaked the interest of the publication ‘Foreign Policy’; the official magazine of the Council on Foreign Relations, a well known globalist think tank. In a recent article, they called the state of affairs in Syria the “Syrian Time Bomb”:

http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2011/03/28/the_syrian_timebomb?page=full

Foreign Policy covers the basics of the Syrian connection, but omits a very important factor; the revamped Russian naval base on the coast of Syria itself. I have written several articles over the past four years covering the possibility of a Syrian chain reaction. Here is a quote from one, published in June, 2010 to illustrate the potential for calamity that could unfold if Syria is invaded or even politically pressured by the U.S. or Israel:

This leads us to what may end up being the most important news of last year besides the “Great Recession”; a defense pact signed between Iran and Syria:

http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1260447419513&pagename=JPArticle%2FShowFull

So, what elements are we dealing with here? We have a nuclear armed Israel itching to attack Iran. We have Iran engaged in a defense pact with Syria against Israel. We have Syria with Russian navy bases and weapons on its soil, and we have the U.S. rampaging through the Middle East encroaching on the borders of Pakistan and Yemen, essentially pissing off everyone. What we have is a Globalist made recipe for disaster, using the same ingredients they have used for the last several major wars.

http://neithercorp.us/npress/2010/01/will-globalists-trigger-yet-another-world-war/

There is little doubt, Syria is in the beginning stages of revolution at this very moment. The government has responded with the same murderous tactics that have been attributed to Gaddafi in Libya, including shooting down protesters using snipers (meaning soldiers were not firing in random panic, but deliberately picking targets and killing unarmed citizens in cold blood):

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2011/mar/25/violence-erupts-around-syria-protesters-shot/#

Will the U.S. or the UN respond to Syrian upheaval as they have in Libya? If they do, expect a powder keg reaction far more violent than we have yet seen, and also expect Russia to begin taking a much greater interest in the affairs of the Middle East. The hidden consequences of the Black Swan strike again…

Swan Lake, Or Swan Dive?

The flow of events from one into the other, melding and changing like the currents of a river, can become confusing, if not downright terrifying. The underlying rush of economies and political tensions is often obscured by disinformation, as well as the distracting nature of simultaneous cataclysms. What is created in the torrent of this global swell is a kind of ‘factory of fear’; a frenetic blast of winding grinding machinery swirling around us with menacing gears made of panic and dread. A step in the wrong direction, and we lose an arm or a leg. Black Swan incidents are not the source of this pandemonium. In fact, they sometimes shock the masses into clarity. They reveal the hidden landmines strewn about our financial and social landscape. They cause migrations of decline and surprisingly erratic reactions within a system, but also expose the fallacies inherent in that system as well. The key is to not allow fear to drive our response to the now unmistakable problems we face.

Whether we stand in defense against one adversity, or a thousand at once, is irrelevant. The bottom line is that we cannot lose focus, we cannot fail, and we cannot stop. There is no other choice but to move forward, and to prevail.

 

Libya and The Holy Triumvirate

The words they find it very difficult to say — “civil war”.

Libya is engaged in a civil war. The United States and the European Union and NATO — The Holy Triumvirate — are intervening, bloodily, in a civil war. To overthrow Moammar Gaddafi. First The Holy Triumvirate spoke only of imposing a no-fly zone. After getting support from international bodies on that understanding they immediately began to wage war against Libyan military forces, and whoever was nearby, on a daily basis. In the world of commerce this is called “bait and switch”.

Gaddafi’s crime? He was never respectful enough of The Holy Triumvirate, which recognizes no higher power, and maneuvers the United Nations for its own purposes, depending on China and Russia to be as spineless and hypocritical as Barack Obama. The man the Triumvirate allows to replace Gaddafi will be more respectful.

So who are the good guys? The Libyan rebels, we’re told. The ones who go around murdering and raping African blacks on the supposition that they’re all mercenaries for Gaddafi. One or more of the victims may indeed have been members of a Libyan government military battalion; or may not have been. During the 1990s, in the name of pan-African unity, Gaddafi opened the borders to tens of thousands of sub-Saharan Africans to live and work in Libya. That, along with his earlier pan-Arab vision, did not win him points with The Holy Triumvirate. Corporate bosses have the same problem about their employees forming unions. Oh, and did I mention that Gaddafi is strongly anti-Zionist?

Does anyone know what kind of government the rebels would create? The Triumvirate has no idea. To what extent will the new government embody an Islamic influence as opposed to the present secular government? What jihadi forces might they unleash? (And these forces do indeed exist in eastern Libya, where the rebels are concentrated.) Will they do away with much of the welfare state that Gaddafi used his oil money to create? Will the state-dominated economy be privatized? Who will wind up owning Libya’s oil? Will the new regime continue to invest Libyan oil revenues in sub-Saharan African development projects? Will they allow a US military base and NATO exercises? Will we find out before long that the “rebels” were instigated and armed by Holy Triumvirate intelligence services?

In the 1990s, Slobodan Milosevic of Yugoslavia was guilty of “crimes” similar to Gaddafi’s. His country was commonly referred to as “the last communists of Europe”. The Holy Triumvirate bombed him, arrested him, and let him die in prison. The Libyan government, it should be noted, refers to itself as the Great Socialist People’s Libyan Arab Jamahiriya. American foreign policy is never far removed from the Cold War.

We must look closely at the no-fly zone set up for Iraq by the US and the UK (falsely claimed by them as being authorized by the United Nations) beginning in the early 1990s and lasting more than a decade. It was in actuality a license for very frequent bombing and killing of Iraqi citizens; softening up the country for the coming invasion. The no-fly zone-cum invasion force in Libya is killing people every day with no end in sight, softening up the country for regime change. Who in the universe can stand up to The Holy Triumvirate? Has the entire history of the world ever seen such power and such arrogance?

And by the way, for the 10th time, Gaddafi did not carry out the bombing of PanAm Flight 103 in 1988.¹ Please enlighten your favorite progressive writers on this.

Barack “I’d kill for a peace prize” Obama

Is anyone keeping count?

I am. Libya makes six.

Six countries that Barack H. Obama has waged war against in his 26 months in office. (To anyone who disputes that dropping bombs on a populated land is act of war, I would ask what they think of the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor.)

America’s first black president now invades Africa.

Is there anyone left who still thinks that Barack Obama is some kind of improvement over George W. Bush?

Probably two types still think so. 1) Those to whom color matters a lot; 2) Those who are very impressed by the ability to put together grammatically correct sentences.

It certainly can’t have much otherwise to do with intellect or intelligence. Obama has said numerous things, which if uttered by Bush would have inspired lots of rolled eyeballs, snickers, and chuckling reports in the columns and broadcasts of mainstream media. Like the one the president has repeated on a number of occasions when pressed to investigate Bush and Cheney for war crimes, along the lines of “I prefer to look forward rather than backwards”. Picture a defendant before a judge asking to be found innocent on such grounds. It simply makes laws, law enforcement, crime, justice, and facts irrelevant.

There’s also the excuse given by Obama to not prosecute those engaged in torture: because they were following orders. Has this “educated” man never heard of the Nuremberg Trials, where this defense was summarily rejected? Forever, it was assumed.

Just 18 days before the Gulf oil spill Obama said: “It turns out, by the way, that oil rigs today generally don’t cause spills. They are technologically very advanced.” (Washington Post, May 27, 2010) Picture George W. having said this, and the later reaction.

“All the forces that we’re seeing at work in Egypt are forces that naturally should be aligned with us, should be aligned with Israel,” Obama said in early March.² Imagine if Bush had implied this — that the Arab protesters in Egypt against a man receiving billions in US aid including the means to repress and torture them, should “naturally” be aligned with the United States and — God help us — Israel.

A week later, on March 10, State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley told a forum in Cambridge, Mass. that Wikileaks hero Bradley Manning’s treatment by the Defense Department in a Marine prison was “ridiculous, counterproductive and stupid.” The next day our “brainy” president was asked about Crowley’s comment. Replied the Great Black Hope: “I have actually asked the Pentagon whether or not the procedures that have been taken in terms of his confinement are appropriate and are meeting our basic standards. They assure me that they are.”

Right, George. I mean Barack. Bush should have asked Donald Rumsfeld whether anyone in US custody was being tortured anywhere in the world. He could then have held a news conference like Obama did to announce the happy news — “No torture by America!” We would still be chortling at that one.

Obama closed his remark with: “I can’t go into details about some of their concerns, but some of this has to do with Pvt. Manning’s safety as well.” ³

Ah yes, of course, Manning is being tortured for his own good. Someone please remind me — Did Georgieboy ever stoop to using that particular absurdity to excuse prisoner hell at Guantanamo?

Is it that Barack Obama is not bothered by the insult to Bradley Manning’s human rights, the daily wearing away of this brave young man’s mental stability?

The answer to the question is No. The president is not bothered by these things.

How do I know? Because Barack Obama is not bothered by anything as long as he can exult in being the president of the United States, eat his hamburgers, and play his basketball. Let me repeat once again what I first wrote in May 2009:

The problem, I’m increasingly afraid, is that the man doesn’t really believe strongly in anything, certainly not in controversial areas. He learned a long time ago how to take positions that avoid controversy, how to express opinions without clearly taking sides, how to talk eloquently without actually saying anything, how to leave his listeners’ heads filled with stirring clichés, platitudes, and slogans. And it worked. Oh how it worked! What could happen now, having reached the presidency of the United States, to induce him to change his style?

Remember that in his own book, “The Audacity of Hope”, Obama wrote: “I serve as a blank screen on which people of vastly different political stripes project their own views.”

Obama is a product of marketing. He is the prime example of the product “As seen on TV”.

Writer Sam Smith recently wrote that Obama is the most conservative Democratic president we’ve ever had. “In an earlier time, there would have been a name for him: Republican.”

Indeed, if John McCain had won the 2008 election, and then done everything that Obama has done in exactly the same way, liberals would be raging about such awful policies.

I believe that Barack Obama is one of the worst things that has ever happened to the American left. The millions of young people who jubilantly supported him in 2008, and numerous older supporters, will need a long recovery period before they’re ready to once again offer their idealism and their passion on the altar of political activism.

If you don’t like how things have turned out, next time find out exactly what your candidate means when he talks of “change”.

Dear Lord, please save us from the Holy Republican Empire

Glenn Beck, Sarah Palin, Mike Huckabee, John Boehner, and many other Republicans often find it difficult to speak about domestic or foreign issues without bringing religion into the picture. Speaker of the House of Representatives John Boehner, for example, in a recent talk at the National Religious Broadcasters conference stated that America’s national debt is a “moral hazard.” The Washington Post (March 5, 2011) reported that “Boehner made clear that this fiscal crisis requires people to get on their knees.”

Rep. Joe Barton of Texas justified his opposition to controlling greenhouse gases because “you can’t regulate God.”

Arizona Senator Jon Kyl accused Democratic Senate Leader Harry Reid of “disrespecting one of the two holiest of holidays for Christians” for considering keeping Congress in session during Christmas.

Rep. Steve King of Iowa compared Democrats to Pontius Pilate, the ancient Roman official who sentenced Jesus to be crucified.⁴

And South Carolina Senator Jim DeMint recently declared that “the bigger government gets, the smaller God gets. … America works, freedom works, when people have that internal gyroscope that comes from a belief in God and Biblical faith. Once we push that out, you no longer have the capacity to live as a free person without the external controls of an authoritarian government. I’ve said it often and I believe it –– the bigger government gets, the smaller God gets. As people become more dependent on government, less dependent on God.” ⁵

So, in a futile attempt to enlighten the likes of these esteemed Republican members of Congress, I feel obliged to point out the following:

On the 4th day of November 1796, a “Treaty of peace and friendship between the United States of America and the Bey and subjects of Tripoli, of Barbary” was concluded at Tripoli [Libya]. Article 11 of the treaty begins: “As the government of the United States of America is not in any sense founded on the Christian Religion … ” Be it further noted: Article VI, Section II, of the United States Constitution states: “This Constitution, and the Laws of the United States which shall be made in Pursuance thereof; and all Treaties made, or which shall be made, under the Authority of the United States, shall be the supreme Law of the Land; and the Judges in every State shall be bound thereby, any Thing in the Constitution or Laws of any State to the Contrary notwithstanding.”

The creed of America’s founders was neither Christianity nor secularism, but religious liberty.

After the terrorist attacks of 9-11, a Taliban leader declared that “God is on our side, and if the world’s people try to set fire to Afghanistan, God will protect us and help us.” ⁶

“With or without religion, good people will do good things and bad people will do bad things. But for good people to do bad things — that takes religion.” — Steven Weinberg, Nobel Prize-winning physicist

The Bad Guys

I’ve written on many occasions about America’s ODE — Officially Designated Enemies: Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Hugo Chávez, Fidel Castro, Daniel Ortega, Hasan Nasrallah, Moammar Gaddafi, and others. Once the government of the United States of America makes it clear that an individual foreign leader is not one of the Good Guys, that he doesn’t believe that America is God’s gift to humankind, and that he is not willing to allow his country to become an obedient client state, the US mainstream media invariably picks up on this and goes out of its way to denigrate the individual at every opportunity. (If any reader knows of any exceptions to this rule I’d be interested in hearing from them.)

Juan Forero has long been a Latin American correspondent for the Washington Post. He’s also the same for National Public Radio. I used to send letters to the Post pointing out how Forero was distorting the facts each time he wrote about Hugo Chávez, errors of omission compounded with errors of commission. None were printed, so I began to send my missives directly to Forero. He once actually replied saying that he (sort of) agreed with me on the point I had raised and implied that he would try to avoid similar errors in the future. I actually detected some improvement after that for a short period, then it was back to usual. During the current unrest in Libya he wrote: “Chavez said it ‘was a great lie’ that Gaddafi’s forces had attacked civilians.” ⁷

Well, how stupid can Hugo Chávez think the world is? We’ve all seen and read of Gaddafi’s attacks on civilians.

But it turns out that if you find the original Spanish you get a fuller and different picture. According to the United Press International (UPI) Spanish-language report, Chávez said that the fighting in Libya was a civil war and those who were attacked were thus not simply protestors or civilians; they were on the other side of the civil war; i.e., combatants. ⁸

Al Jazeera in America

The uprisings in North Africa and the Middle East have given a great boost to al Jazeera, the television network based in Doha, Qatar. Until recently Americans shied away from the station; it was just too easily associated with the Middle East and Muslims, which of course leads easily to thinking about terrorists and “terrorists”; and certainly any well-brought-up American knew that the station could not be as unbiased as CBS, CNN, NPR or Fox News. The station had reason to be paranoid about its office in the United States, land of ten million crazies (more than a few of them holding public office). It occupies six floors in a downtown Washington, DC office building, but its name doesn’t appear on the building directory.

But US mainstream media now quote al Jazeera English and show their news footage. Many progressives, including myself, have taken to watching the station in preference to US mainstream media. In general, the news is of more substance, the guests are mainly more or less progressive, and there are no commercials. However, the more I watch it the more I realize that the station’s presenters and correspondents are not necessarily as well imbued with the progressive perspective as they should be.

One case in point of many I could give: On March 12 al Jazeera correspondent Roger Wilkinson was reporting about the trial in Cuba of Alan Gross, the American arrested after he dispensed electronic equipment to Cuban citizens. Gross entered Cuba as a tourist but was actually there in behalf of Development Alternatives Inc. (DAI), a private contractor working for the Agency for International Development (AID), a division of the State Department. Gross was thus a covert unregistered agent of a foreign government. Wilkinson reported this very controversial story with all the innocence and distortion of the US mainstream media. He mentioned in passing that the Cuban government tries to control the Internet. What can one conclude from that other than that Cuban officials want to hide certain information from its citizens? Just like the US mainstream media, Wilkinson gave no examples of any Internet sites blocked by the Cuban government; for the simple reason, perhaps, that there aren’t any. What is the terrible truth that Cubans might learn if they had full access to the Internet? Ironically, it’s the US government and US multinationals who impinge upon this access, for political reasons and by pricing their services beyond Cuba’s means. This is why Cuba and Venezuela are building their own undersea cable connection.

Wilkinson spoke of AID’s program of “democracy promotion”, but gave no hint that in the world of AID and the private organizations that contract with it — including Gross’s employer — this term is code for “regime change”. AID has long played a subversive role in world affairs. Here is John Gilligan, Director of AID during the Carter administration:

“At one time, many AID field offices were infiltrated from top to bottom with CIA people. The idea was to plant operatives in every kind of activity we had overseas, government, volunteer, religious, every kind.” ⁹

AID has been but one of many institutions employed by the United States for more than 50 years to subvert the Cuban revolution. It is because of this that we can formulate this equation: The United States is to the Cuban government like al Qaeda is to American government. Cuba’s laws dealing with activities typically carried out by the likes of AID and DAI reflect this history. It’s not paranoia. It’s self-preservation. In discussing a case like Alan Gross without considering this equation is a serious defect in journalism and political analysis.

Hopefully the Gross case will serve to temper the nature of US “democracy promotion” efforts in Cuba.

Washington’s policy — and therefore Britain’s policy — toward Cuba has always stemmed mainly from a desire to keep the island from becoming a good example for the Third World of an alternative to capitalism. But Western leaders actually do not, or do not dare, understand what can motivate people like the Cuban leaders and their followers. Here’s one of the Wikileaks US-Embassy cables, March 25, 2009 — William Hague, then-British Conservative MP and Shadow Foreign Secretary, giving the US embassy in London a report on his recent visit to Cuba: Hague “said that he was slightly surprised that the Cuban leadership did not appear to be moving toward more of a Chinese model of economic opening, but were rather still ‘romantic revolutionaries’.” In his conversation with Cuban Foreign Minister Bruno Rodriguez “the discussion turned to political ideology, during which Hague commented that people in Britain were more interested in shopping than ideology.” [Oh dear, what a jolly good defense of the Western way of life. Rule Britannia! God Bless America!] Hague then reported that “Rodriguez appeared disdainful of the notion and said one needed shopping only to buy food and a few good books.”

Japan devastated by an earthquake and tsunami. America devastated by the profit motive.

Christine Todd Whitman, George W. Bush’s first Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) administrator, speaking of how the nuclear industry has learned from every previous nuclear accident or disaster: “It’s safer than working in a grocery store,” she said.

Whitman is now co-chairwoman of the nuclear industry’s Clean and Safe Energy Coalition. ¹⁰

Upcoming talks by William Blum

Saturday, April 2, 7:00 pm
University of Pittsburgh at Titusville, PA
504 East Main Street
Henne Auditorium
Titusville is about 2 hours by car from Pittsburgh and 2 1/2 hours from Cleveland.
For further information call
Or email Mary Ann Caton: 

Thursday, May 19
Paris, France
Conference: “Ethics and US Foreign Policy in the 21st Century”
Université de Paris Ouest-Nanterre-La Défense, Amphi B-2
All day, beginning at 9 am
Email me for full schedule

Notes

1. killinghope.org/bblum6/panam.htm ^↩
2. March 4, 2011, Democratic Party function, Miami, FL, CQ Transcriptions ^↩
3. Los Angeles Times, March 11, 2011 ^↩
4. For this and the previous two examples, see “Jim DeMint’s Theory Of Relativity: ‘The Bigger Government Gets, The Smaller God Gets’“, Think Progress, March 15, 2011^↩
5. Fox News Sunday, December 19, 2010 ^↩
6. Washington Post, September 19, 2001 ^↩
7. Washington Post, March 7, 2011 ^↩
8. UPI Reporte LatAm, March 4, 2011 (email me for the text)  ^↩
9. George Cotter, “Spies, strings and missionaries”, The Christian Century (Chicago), March 25, 1981, p.321 ^↩
10. “Former EPA chief: Nuke crisis ‘a very good lesson’“, Politico, March 14, 2011

Nobel Peace Prize for AWOL War President

William Jefferson Clinton was called the first black president. Now it can be said that Barry Soetoro is the first female president. What justifies such a label? Clearly, Barack Hussein Obama has nocojones. The Ipanema vacationer practices his African samba carnival dance while carnage rains from tomahawk missiles. Humanitarian altruism acts as cover for a remote controlled marionette doing the bidding in the Soros world of his sorcerer mentors. This commander in chief runs from his own shadow.

Do you recall when media outlets with calls of “the wimp factor” bedeviled George Herbert Walker Bush? Or do you remember when a national magazine emblazoned, Jr – George Walker Bush with the wrong “W.” He is not a wimp? Well, what name do you use when a lily-livered mistake of a president needs to interrupt another holiday to push the war buttons, while his girls, Sasha and Malia await more spring break entertainment? Obama shed his coat and tie, rolled up his sleeves and dribbled one-on-one soccer with one surprised boy from a Rio slum. What a do-gooder.

Sorry, folks this excuse for a leader exemplifies the feminization of a pussy-whipped upbringing. His need to use the singular I in every other sentence and the delusional claim that he speaks for all Americans is characteristic of an insecure crybaby who cannot handle criticism or reasoned refrains. A mammy’s boy of untold pansy traits, is a sissy POTUS. His mental instability is similar to a man hating feminist, feeling perpetual menstrual cycle urges of self-destruction. Such a whiner induces a cognitive dissonance administration that has small testicles with the swagger of a bully’s bravado. Ordering others to do the dirty deeds is the disgraceful profile in courage of a coward.

The Orwellian newspeak coming out of the military permanent security empire was almost too much for Defense Secretary Robert Gate. Yet, his gut objections against another foreign incursion were overridden by the culture of compliance. Any strong leader and person of conscience would have resigned his post before unleashing the dogs of war.

Such a president, is commendable of a second courtier award, the first War is Peace medal. The standards to qualify require the killing of thousands to take out one bad man whose successor will be interchanged from among scores of replacement despots waiting in line for empire approval. Serenity reestablished for the New World Order gets another noble prize. Ignorance of the masses = the strength of the system.

The time is ripe for the next substitute clone president. Obama’s claim for party re-nomination as the leader of the free world has evaporated. His minions distance themselves as the house of cards collapses. Barry is a joke and his handlers know he has done enough, if not all the damage envisioned, in this stage of completing the Totalitarian Collectivismmodel.The neocons have an ideal loyal opposition dummy in Obama. The progressive left twist in the wind as they bite their tongues to stop their criticism of their inept underdog hero. The disarray in policy has the appearance of weakness, while still pursuing the same aggressive destruction of the Middle East region to secure control over the oil and protect the Zionist lust for a greater Israel.

Kathleen Parker, of the Washington Post makes these points. “Women tend to be coalition builders rather than mavericks (with the occasional rogue exception). While men seek ways to measure themselves against others, for reasons requiring no elaboration, women form circles and talk it out.”

The ADR Prof Blog reflects up this viewpoint.

“Additionally, women are generally viewed as effective communicators　while employing “feminine” communication styles, but have been chastised for taking on styles normally attributed to men. For example, Hillary Clinton has received continual criticism for talking too assertively.

Would you agree that Obama’s style, in comparison to past presidents and to the stereotypical male politician, is “feminine” and that he is suffering as a result of that adoption? Is this sentiment true of other men who adopt the “listener” style?”

This Ms. President is over her head. All the more reason to defer to foreign policy experts like Clinton and Biden. What a crew. Absent-minded Joe is so far out of the loop that the “village idiot” is still looking for the train to get back to . As for HilLAIRy, she swings her woody stick with the enthusiasm of a cheerleader at a Vince Foster wake. Who better to dictate the internment over the Siege of Tobruk? It takes a Nazi to raise a comrade and a spy to sell out their country.

Before anyone misunderstands the true nature of a strong American leader, the best war president is one who never takes the nation into harm’s way for imperialistic motives. The war that needs waging is the one against the real enemy, the globalist international community of elite’s.

Obama’s willingness to continue the Afghanistan adventure to make the world safe for poppy seed distribution brings anopium habit of collateral damage to a higher level. The ongoing evil empire continues under a different name and another administration. The only message that changes is the “PC” wordsmith distortions of the face of war.Writing in Slate, Timothy Noah nails it with a hammer of dynamic precision in When warfare gets “kinetic”. The Rumsfeld tradition continues under Madam President Obama.

“The recent war in Afghanistan demonstrates that when the chips are down, we still find it necessary to go kinetic. Indeed, for all its novel methods of non-kinetic warfare, today’s military is much more deadly than it ever was before. For the foreseeable future, civilians and at least a few soldiers will continue to be killed in war. “Kinetic” seems an objectionable way to describe this reality from the point of view of both doves and hawks. To those who deplore or resist going to war, “kinetic” is unconscionably euphemistic, with antiseptic connotations derived from high-school physics and aesthetic ones traceable to the word’s frequent use by connoisseurs of modern dance. To those who celebrate war (or at least find it grimly necessary), “kinetic” fails to evoke the manly virtues of strength, fierceness, and bravery. Imagine Rudyard Kipling penning the lines, “For it’s Tommy this, an’ Tommy that, an’ ‘Chuck him out, the brute!’/ But it’s ‘Saviour of ‘is country’ when the U.K goes kinetic.” Is it too late to remove this word from the Washington lexicon?”

The mad rush to occupy the lands of Northern Africa, the Middle East and central Asia is all about the elimination of the nation state and the merging of strong-arm dictator regimes or tribal feuding factions, into a worldwide synthetic kingdom of top down global authoritarianism.

In order to deserve a peace prize a recipient needs to demonstrate leadership in the cause of the sacred nature and sanctity of human life. The bogus claim that the Libyan attack is based upon humanitarian motives ignores the last forty years of crony capitalism with Colonel Gaddafi. What changed now and just who are these phantom rebels?

Obama deserves the Gideon Pillow medal of dishonor for consistent incompetency and cowardice for firing the first shoot. Another failed president and coldblooded wartime general, Ulysses S. Grant sets the qualifications. “I had known General Pillow in Mexico, and judged that with any force, no matter how small, I could march up to within gunshot of any entrenchments he was given to hold.”Just think about it. This libber president holds the nuclear football codes. America needs a divorce from this attention seeking personality. With no prenuptial, the keys to the oval office need to be retrieved. Keeping the doors locked is a good start.

Time for Nassrallah and Obama to talk?

“Just maybe!” hints the latest National Intelligence Estimate (NIE)

An experienced Washington Post columnist, David Ignatius, to his credit not among the most biased Israeli Hasbara spewers from  the Zionist daily, dropped by our Hezbollah neighborhood known as Dahiyeh the other day. During a hour meeting with Hezbollah Foreign Relations Officer Ammar Mousawi and his brilliant assistant, and friend to many Americans,  English Literature scholar Hussein Haider, the WP  reporter  came away apparently impressed with the quality of the discussion with the Lebanese political party that Israeli President Shimon Peres claims “is now Lebanon!”   Visiting Westerners are regularly surprised to learn firsthand that Hezbollah, the new majority party in Lebanon whose imprimatur will be stamped on all major Lebanese government decisions, including, enshallah (God willing), without any more nonsense, the internationally mandated civil right to work and to own a home for Lebanon’s quarter million Palestinian refugees, bears no resemblance to the past quarter century of Zionist Fox News- US Main Stream Media portrayal.

But then, western epiphanies in Dahiyeh are old news.

Like many observers of Lebanon’s new majority, Ignatius apparently wondered about the possibility of some sort of high level direct dialogue between Hezbollah and the Obama administration given the continuing US skid and waning influence in the region and the dramatic rise of Hezbollah and its allies against the backdrop of the Islamic-Arab Awakening that may be in just its early stages. So, as seems to happen every couple of years recently, an alert journalist makes contact with the US Intelligence Community and grist is offered for an intriguing column that the US might anoint for dialogue  the ”political wing” of Hezbollah as distinct from the “military wing” since the Party does not act much like  a “terrorist organization” should.

The “separate wings” concept is a fiction of course as there is no totally separate political-military command division within Hezbollah. There are many departments and units that do specialized work on health care, education, urban and environmental planning, post war reconstruction and fourteen other social service focused tasks. Specialized units keep an eye on the blue line and prepare to confront Israeli aggression against Lebanon.  The party is generally unified in its decision making following sometimes freewheeling  “best expert argument wins” debates as part of its almost Leninist ‘democratic centralism’ model with the buck stopping with the 7 member Shura or Executive Council. The Secretary-General, Hassan Nasrallah has significant power but he acts for and answers to the Shura and lacks the typical absolute authority of collapsing Arab despots.

The “good wing-bad wing” pretense is favored by some in the US Intelligence Community as it allows political cover for desired engagement much as was the case for other ‘terrorist’ groups such as the PLO, the ANC and the IRA. For that reason John Brennan, the White House counterterrorism adviser recently discussed the new National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) on Hezbollah that is nearing completion, with ‘draft ideas’ being circulated to key Members of Congress and AIPAC.

According to Congressional sources, the White House, has zero interest in attacking Iran and believes that Hezbollah Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah is someone the US “can do business with.”  Given Nasrallah’s admirers in Tehran, and his mass popular appeal in this region, some of the NIE drafters and White House staffers think Nasrallah could help with at least some US-Iranian antagonisms.

As Israel and its Arab collaborators quake  as Iran ascends in the region, the future determinate of Middle East Peace will be US Iranian relations”, according to a US Senate Intelligence Committee staffer, who added: “Many in Washington think we can work with Iran and Nasrallah could perhaps help both of us immeasurably.”

The same source opined that the White House appears split down the middle whether to seek direct contact with Hezbollah with some close Obama aides arguing that times are changing in the Middle East and maybe US policy should too following a decade of trillion dollar a year wars with nothing but carnage and US economy ruining deficits to show for them.  Obama aids are said to favor a regional approach that has already led to two U.S.-sponsored meetings on Afghanistan that included Iranian representatives – one in Rome last year and one in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, on 3/3/11.

Opposed to this view is the Foreign Policy establishment which, committed to Israel, does not care much who is president as they always stay in power and exist in the form of the Council on Foreign Relations and other non-elected, self-appointed and  auto-replenished guardians of American foreign policy.  Their view, expressed this week by Tommy Vietor, the National Security Council spokesman, is still mired in:  “on the political level, there can be no dialogue with Hezbollah because it is a terrorist organization creating instability in the Middle East.”

Dialogue with political adversaries is a well-known hallmark of Hezbollah and some have suggested that Hassan Nasrralah and Barack Obama might have a fascinating private tete a tete given many shared life experiences and outlooks including work as community organizers, inclusive outreach advocates, multiculturalists, bright and broad minded progressive thinkers not much attracted to acceptance of stereotyping or political shibboleths.

Truth claimed, Congressional sources report that Obama, and his friend US Senate Foreign Relations Committee John Kerrey (D-Mass.) are fascinated with Nassrallah.  On the other hand, having been publically humiliated three times by Israel’s Netanyahu, Obama reportedly finds the latter intransigent, lacking any interest in a just peace in Palestine and fixated only in building illegal settlements on stolen Palestinian land. At the same time finding Netanyahu personally obnoxious.  Nasrallah might agree.

Some of the 16 Intelligence Agencies that comprise the US Intelligence Community are discussing the prospects, in the context of the expanding Middle East uprising,  that the single obstacle to normalizing relations between the US and the Middle East, the continued occupation of Palestine by the 19^th Century Zionist Colonial Enterprise, may be resolved, perhaps sooner than later.  Some Israeli leaders reportedly concede privately that with the rising youth fuelled rebellions toppling US-Israeli backed despots the freedom tsunami might not ebb until Palestine is restored.

There remains some heavy baggage around potential “let bygones be bygones” discussion between Dahiyeh and Washington.  During its 29 year history Hezbollah has had multiple indirect contacts with US administrations via Lebanese politicians, PLO figures, and European diplomats and even today, with Western countries queuing for dialogue with Hezbollah, understanding  mutual US-Lebanese resistance problems is no mystery.  The issues are clear.

While conceding that White House-Dahiyeh talks, based on mutual respect, could be historic, nevertheless neighborhood contacts suggest that there is a de facto condition precedent to meaningful dialogue.  It includes a political ceasefire from Washington.

Since the 1992 Lebanese elections when Hezbollah decided to participate in governing Lebanon, but even before, the American administration has waged with Israel, a continual campaign against the Lebanese resistance for one reason. Hezbollah’s opposition to the theft of Palestine and the movements pledge to help return Palestine to its rightful inhabitants. The same pledge millions of American and Western human rights advocates have taken and continue to pursue with increased solidarity during this Arab Spring.

Hezbollah has been incessantly targeted by Washington accusing it, without proof of “terrorism” and sometimes, even conceding US errors such as the admitted March 8, 1985 CIA ordered assassination of the erroneously identified “Hezbollah leader”, the late humanist, Mohammad Hussein Fadallah.  Grand Ayatollah Fadlallah escaped death, but more than 60 Lebanese civilians were slaughtered and more than 250 wounded outside his Hussayneyeh  (Mosque) near my current home.

After more than half the past decade of launching various anti-Hezbollah schemes, the Jeffrey Feltman team has made clear that its pressure on Lebanon’s new majority is just getting started. Analyst’s across the political spectrum in Lebanon claim they have never witnessed  such intense sectarian strife and vitriol as has been unleashed since the collapsed of the pro-US  March 14 government last January.

Last week the US Treasury Departments reminded Lebanon of its skill at interfering with international banking and sent a warning that Lebanon’s banks were “on limits for scrutiny.” It hinted that a run on the banks from Gulf money could be expected.  Among those it seeks to intimidate is Lebanon’s richest businessman, Nijab Miqati who Hezbollah helped choose  for Prime Minister. Washington claims that some Lebanese banks laundry money for Hezbollah and allow Iran to avoid US sanctions while helping to fund the Resistance.  Current US Ambassador Maury Connelly told the media that the US actions “were part of the U.S. Treasury’s global effort, under Section 311 of the Patriot Act to protect the U.S. financial sector from illicit activities. Lebanon’s Central Bank Governor, Riad Salameh Central Bank fired back that Lebanon’s banks abide by all national and international regulations and that the US should offer proof otherwise if it has any.

 

The Feltman teams: “It’s us or Nasrallah-it’s the US or Iran running Lebanon!” attitude has been exposed yet again by the publication of a bundle of Wilklikeaks Beirut Embassy cables, this past week.

The diplomatic cables confirm is that the US Embassy functioned as a virtual Israeli operations center during the July 2006 war and has saturated Lebanon with more intelligence and political penetrations than perhaps any country in the region, except Iraq.

During the July 2006 war, US embassy staff, led by Feltman who functioned as a kind of ‘godfather’ for Hezbollah’s detractors, received countless pro-Israeli   as they executed plans how to best manage the war for Israel while protecting their own business  and sectarian interests.

On the degree to which some Arab leaders, in this case Bahrain, and its  ambassador, Houda Ezra Nonoo,  are collaborating with Israel while publicly pledging brotherly support for the Arabs “ central cause”, Palestine, a recent report is instructive http://www.collive.com/show_news.rtx?id=7636.

Feltman, the cables make plain,  personally instructed Washington to tell Israel not to bomb bridges in what he derisively called “Maronistan areas” because that would weaken Christian support for Israel and affect logistics for US Embassy “staff” in Awkar.  Embassy Beirut apparently had no problem with Israel carpeting bombing  south Beirut, with American weapons, endangering  Shatila  and Burj al Barajneh Palestinian Camps around the  Bir Hassan neighborhood which includes the ‘little Tehran’ neighborhood with Iranian media outlets and the Iranian Embassy.

Five days after the July 2006 war was launched Embassy cables to Washington which were immediately passed to Israel document: “The Ambassador asked Jumblatt what Israel should do to cause serious damage to Hezbollah. Jumblatt replied that Israel is still in the mindset of fighting classic battles with Arab armies. “You can’t win this kind of war with zero dead,” he said. Jumblatt finally said what he meant; Israel will have to invade southern Lebanon. Israel must be careful to avoid massacres, but it should clear Hezbollah out of southern Lebanon”. (July 17, 2006)

On August 5, Assistant Secretary David Welch and Ambassador Feltman met with a more than a dozen Christian leaders from the anti-Syria March 14 movement, The Embassy cable read: “While claiming to be fully supportive of Prime Minister Siniora’s call for a ceasefire, they are troubled that the current conflict might leave Hezbollah in a stronger position within Lebanon than at the beginning. The Lebanese government will need to be in a position of strength to deal with Hezbollah once the conflict is over, the leaders argued. To this end, they would support a continuation of the Israeli bombing campaign for a week or two if this were to diminish seriously Hezbollah’s strength on the ground….Claiming to reflect PM Siniora’s private thoughts, several of the assembled leaders urged that Hezbollah be given a “real pounding” by the Israelis to the point that the group would be “soft enough to listen to reason.” According to Boutros Harb, ( Ed:  one of the anti-Palestinian Cabinet Ministers who prevented Palestinians from obtaining the internationally mandated Right to Work and Home Ownership on August 17, 2010)   “if we are convinced that Israel can finish the job, then we can allow a few more weeks,”( Ed: of slaughter) though the consensus seemed to rest between seven to ten days. If on the other hand Hezbollah were to emerge emboldened with a perceived sense of victory, “that would be a disaster.” (August 7, 2006)

Another leaked Embassy Beirut cable: “Asking that his comments be kept close-hold, Saad Hariri whispered that, “We need to remove Lahoud, (LAF commander Michel) Sleiman, and (Head of the G2 army intelligence) George Khoury. They are in bed with Syria. They are in bed with Hezbollah.” While Hariri hopes to eventually recruit Nabih Berri’s critical support to achieve this, he asked that international pressure on Iran and Syria continues unabated.” (August 12, 2006)

This close coordination with Israel during its July 2006 War on Lebanon which slaughtered more than 1,400 and wounded thousands, represented a rogue US government view of “noninterference in the internal affairs of Lebanon.”  These strategy sessions,  and a long list of other actions by some claiming to represent the American people in Lebanon  has raised serious questions about the diplomatic status of Embassy Beirut and whether Embassy Beirut serves the American people or Israel.  According to Lebanese Human Rights Ambassador Ali Khalil, “Israel has an Embassy in Lebanon representing its interests.  The American people do not.”

Yet another serious allegation that the Feltman team corrupted the Special Tribunal of Lebanon has been leveled by As Safir a Lebanese daily in its 3/23/11 edition. According to its investigative report, the US sought to use the indictment of the STL to back Caretaker Premier Saad Hariri after his government was toppled by the Hezbollah-led alliance, and to bring Hariri back to power while sidelining Hezbollah. The US plan was to have the STL issue the indictment after STL Prosecutor Daniel Bellemare filed an amended indictment earlier in the month for confirmation by pre-trial judge Danial Fransen. But developments in the Arab world, including the fall of Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak’s regime “thwarted the US plan to issue the indictment as a prelude to a change in the political balance of power in Lebanon with Feltman’s team concluding that the release of the indictment at this stage would have made it ineffective amid the ongoing Arab Awakening turmoil.  Moreover, western diplomats informed March 14 officials that any STL indictment and Lebanon are currently at the bottom of their priority list, hinting that the release of the charges could be delayed for several months.

If true, this latest US action alone would destroy any remaining STL credibility as such a political corruption fundamentally violates UNSCR 1757.

Perhaps it is the above described US government campaign that is one of the reasons that Hezbollah contacts, in principle, genuinely interested in dialogue, feel the timing is not yet quite right.

Hassan Nassrallah, speaking on 3/19/11 to our neighborhood gathering in support of the Arab Spring Awakening, repeated Hezbollah’s position: “We will have something constructive to talk about and call for normalizing relations with the Americans once the US administration changes its policy on Palestine. We will reevaluate our stance on the United States’ policies when it changes its stance on Palestine.”

One neighbor, a fan of Kenny Rodgers as Jeffrey Feltman is said to be, put it this way to me:  “We in Hezbollah know when to hold em and when to fold em. For now Hezbollah best hold our cards.  There will be time enough for talking when the dealings done.”

Interview with Lawrence Davidson

Worldwide sanctions can erode Israel’s fanaticism: Dr. Lawrence Davidson…

Born in 1945 in Philadelphia PA, Dr. Lawrence Davidson is professor of history at West Chester University in West Chester PA. His academic work is focused on the history of American foreign relations with the Middle East. He also teaches courses in the history of science and modern European intellectual history.

At Georgetown University he studied modern European intellectual history under the Palestinian ex-patriot Professor Hisham Sharabi. Sharabi and Davidson subsequently became close friends and one can date his interest in Palestinian, as well as Jewish and Zionist, issues from this time.

Dr. Davidson writes regularly on the Middle East affairs, Israeli-Palestinian conflict and U.S. foreign policy.

He has written several books of which “America’s Palestine: Popular and Official Perceptions from Balfour to Israeli Statehood” by the University Press of Florida is a prominent example.

Dr. Davidson joined me in an exclusive interview to discuss the latest developments in the Middle East, the collective uprising of the Arab world, Egyptian and Tunisian revolutions of 2011, the humanitarian crisis in Libya, the prospect of anti-government protests in Saudi Arabia and the fate of Israeli regime in the wake of growing international isolation.

What follows is the complete text of my interview with Dr. Lawrence Davidson.

Kourosh Ziabari: Everything started when a simple, unostentatious street vendor committed an act of self-immolation before a municipal office in the suburbs of Tunis in protest to the humiliation and persecution which was inflicted on him. How this apparently trivial incident led to the unprecedented wave of protests which encompassed the whole Arab world in a matter of days? Do you consider the suicide of Mohamed Bouazizi the cause of this turmoil or did the Arab world revolutions have their roots in other factors which we might be unaware of?

Lawrence Davidson: The conditions which made the uprisings in the Middle East possible have been with us for a very long time. Economic deprivation, repression and corruption were constants throughout the reigns of Ben Ali in Tunisia and Mubarak in Egypt. They also exist in Yemen. Different variations on these themes can be found in Bahrain and Saudi Arabia and many other countries of the region as well. So revolt was and is always a possibility. The much harder question to answer is, why now? For instance, why did the steps taken by Mohamed Bouazizi in Tunisia act as a successful trigger?

We know that the default position of most people living under repressive regimes is fear and passivity. At some point an exceptional occurrence (it can be negative or positive) will bring a small and brave element of the population into the streets. If they are not suppressed quickly by the regime, their actions might encourage others to join them and then you have a snowballing effect. At that point the regime either negotiates or brings in the tanks. Negotiating often risks the complete unraveling of an authoritarian regime. That is why you most often get the tanks.

In the case of Tunisia, the military seems to have backed off shooting its own people. In Egypt I think the Obama administration played a role by telling the Egyptian military that they were not to use American weapons to shoot Egyptian protesters. That seemed to have had a real impact. Washington ought to tell the Israelis the same thing.

KZ: It’s undeniable that the United States and its European allies are dithering over how to deal with Libya‘s dictator Muammar Gaddafi, refusing to take a practical, decisive step to tackle the deplorable situation in the war-hit country. It’s estimated that the Libyan butcher has so called massacred more than 6,500 people and the UN, UNSC, the US and its allies haven’t made any decision to stop him. What’s the reason behind the West’s indecisiveness over the situation in Libya?

LD: Well, it would appear that the Western powers have overcome their indecisiveness as far as Libya is concerned. I wrote a recent blog piece which points out that the American rationale for this intervention, the protection of civilians, is just sheer hypocrisy. It is simply impossible to believe that Washington has any real concern for civilians in Libya given the U.S. history of slaughter of civilians in Vietnam, Iraq and now Afghanistan, as well as its protection of Israel as that country ethnically cleanses Palestine. No, the issue of civilians is just an excuse for the Americans.

The U.S. government, after some hesitancy over the Islamic makeup of a number of Libya’s rebelling elements, has decided to go for regime change in that country. The on-going civil war is a good opportunity for Washington to do this. Most of the NATO allies were quickly brought into agreement and the Gulf oil sheiks, who never liked Gadhafi, soon joined the chorus. The next step was a bit more difficult. Intervening in someone else’s civil war is easy for Washington. The Americans do this all the time, particularly in South America. However, it is the sort of thing that does undermine the principle of national sovereignty, and countries such as China and Russia have always been very wary of creating precedents along this line. That is why I was surprised when these countries abstained in the Security Council vote on Libya rather than casting a veto. One wonders what they got in return from Washington.

The passage of the Security Council resolution means that Muammar Gadhafi is probably finished. Whatever one might think of his regime, I do not believe that it is going to be easy to put Libya back together again once you have helped take the country apart. But then, maybe the Western powers don’t care if this basically tribal society falls apart. A dismembered Libya is an inherently weaker Libya. All they care about is that the oil keeps flowing.

KZ: What’s your estimation of the military presence of Saudi Arabia and UAE in Bahrain? It seems that the United States has showed the green light to Saudi Arabia and UAE to invade Bahrain and suppress the anti-government protestors. What are the impacts of this invasion on the Persian Gulf security and the implications thereof for the regional countries?

LD: When one compares American policy in Libya with the policy in Bahrain it becomes pretty clear that neither the protection of civilians, nor the cause of democracy and freedom espoused by the protesters, is a motivator of U.S. policy. In Libya the issue is oil and getting rid of a leader who is obviously beyond Western control. In Bahrain the issue is, as it was in Egypt, finding a way to bring about a modicum of reform that maintains stability. Washington has a major naval base in Bahrain as well as oil interests. Optimally, Obama would have liked to see the ruling Sunni elements in that country come to some compromise with the majority Shiite citizenry. The Obama administration sees (with more clarity than most U.S. administrations) that outright suppression of the Bahraini Shiites only postpones the day of reckoning. And so they have counseled both the Bahrainis and the Saudis to move in the direction of compromise reforms. After all, the next time you get protests in Bahrain, and there will be a next time, things might be much more violent and you run the risk of getting a pro Iranian takeover in that country.

Unfortunately, neither the Bahraini government nor the Saudis feel confident enough to compromise with their Shiite populations. So, they decided to settle the matter through repression. The distractions provided by the Libyan situation provided the moment to do so and the Americans made the decision to stand aside in these cases. Solving the problems that brought on protests in Bahrain, and also in the eastern provinces of Saudi Arabia, is therefore postponed to an unspecified later time.

KZ: It’s been a longstanding American tradition to help foster, back and encourage dictators and dismantle them consequently. We know of Saddam Hussein’s fate who was unconditionally backed and supported by the United States during the 8-year war with Iran. 20 years later, the same United States captures and kills Saddam Hussein. The same goes about Osama Bin Laden, whom we know that was promoted by the United States. Ben Ali and Mubarak are also the same. At first, President Obama urged them to remain in power and implement the changes which the angry people demanded, but when he saw that the implementation of changes without a regime change would be impossible, he softened his tone and called on them to step down. You may remember that the same happened with the Shah of Iran. What’s your opinion about this?

LD: When it comes to American foreign policy you have the war hawks such as the neo-conservatives, and then you have the more flexible and diplomatic elements like Jimmy Carter and now Barak Obama. The two groups have the same ends, the maintenance of U.S. domination and the satisfying of various powerful domestic interest groups, but their tactics can be quite different. From the point of view of the latter group, the Shah of Iran self-destructed. In other words, he brought himself down by not knowing how and when to adjust to changing conditions. Thus, when Mubarak got into trouble he was told by Washington to adjust to the new conditions and meet the protesters half way. If it had been George W. Bush in office he might have gotten quite different advice.

The willingness of Washington to support an ally and then abandon him is an indicator that (outside of traditional alliances like that with Great Britain) individual loyalty has nothing to do with anything. The Saudi royal house may have been shocked and unsettled when Washington let Mubarak go, but what is really surprising is that they had not yet learned that international relations as played by the Western powers is not at all about personal relationships and loyalties, its about the satisfaction of special interests embedded in the domestic politics of the Western nations. If Mubarak, Saddam Hussein, Osma bin Laden, or anyone else behaves in ways deemed really incompatible with those interests they will be pushed aside, or worse.

KZ: What’s your prediction for the outcome of anti-government protests in Saudi Arabia and Yemen which have not borne fruits so far? It seems quite unlikely that Saudi Arabia which enjoys the all-out backing of the United States will bow down to the demands of its people regarding the expansion of social and political freedoms. The sames goes with Yemen where the uncompromising Ali Abdullah Saleh has shown no signal of willingness to reconcile with the revolutionaries. What do you think about this?

LD: The answer to this question has been given, pretty definitively, by events in Bahrain over the last couple of days. The Obama administration, though they would have like to see reform, have acquiesced in the suppression tactics of the Bahrainis and Saudis. Such tactics are not deemed long term solutions, but they do maintain stability for the immediate future. Yemen is not a very strategic place for Washington. And so the Americans will go along with whoever comes out on top as long as that party keeps Al Qaida out and does not interfere in Saudi Arabia.

KZ: Some thinkers believe that the recent developments in the Middle East will jeopardize the interests of Israel on one hand and empower the Islamic Republic of Iran on the other hand. They believe that a democratic government in Egypt which is led by a moderate Islamist such as Mohamed ElBradei will be quite intolerable and bitter for Israel while being a good news to the Iranians. The same would be applicable to the other U.S.-backed tyrannical regimes of the region such as Bahrain, Libya, Tunisia, Yemen and Jordan. What’s you viewpoint in this regard?

LD: Washington had much more leverage in Egypt than in Saudi Arabia or Bahrain. The U.S. supplies Egypt’s weapons, spare parts, and practically pays the salaries of the officer corp. It sends tons of free surplus wheat to Egypt to help moderate food prices. The Obama administration made a strategic decision that having Egyptians, protesting for democratic reform, shot down with American weapons would be disastrous and so it decided that Mubarak would compromise or he would be pushed out.

The Obama administration relationship with Israel is barely cordial. While Obama will retreat before Zionist pressure, particularly as exercised through Congress, he seems to have drawn the line when it came to Egypt and Mubarak. His arguments must have won the day with the Congress because the Zionist lobbies went largely mute on this issue even as the Israeli government was screaming and throwing temper tantrums. If nothing else all this goes to prove that the Zionists in the U.S. are not invincible.

This being said, the Israeli influence in the U.S. is still very great and, as we have seen with the recent U.S. veto of a Security Council resolution on illegal West Bank settlements, Obama will still play along with the Zionists on most issues. However, the Israelis will just have to learn to live with the new Egypt. They will have no choice as long as Obama is president. After that, who knows? The amount of influence Iran will have in the new Egypt will almost certainly be very small. After all, the U.S. still has its leverage.

KZ: It’s widely believed that the Israeli lobby controls the majority of mainstream media in the United States and Europe and hence impedes the publication of any report, commentary, feature story, article or news in which Tel Aviv is criticized or its illegal, unjustifiable policies and actions are exposed. How has the Israeli lobby acquired such an immense power and how does it control the mass media in the United States? What is the source of Israeli lobby’s influence and power?

LD: The answer to this question has to do with the nature of American domestic politics, which is driven by special interests and lobbies. Here is how it works in terms of Israel. The Zionist lobby is one of the best organized and funded special interests in the country. It is allied to the Christian fundamentalist lobby which represents one of the country’s largest voting constituencies. The two allies go to each of the American Senators and Congressmen and offer them support. The support comes in the form of mobilizing Jewish and Chr. fundamentalists voters in their areas to vote for them, and also in terms of financial contributions to their campaigns. What they want in return is a consistent pro-Israel voting record which, of course, includes voting for generous foreign aid to Israel. Since the vast majority of Senators and Congressmen come from areas where their general constituency is either indifferent or favorable to Israel, it is easy to see how they would go along with the Zionist and Christian fundamentalist lobbies. On those rare occasions when an American legislator refuses to play along, the Zionists financially back his or her opponent both in the primaries and the general election. Eventually they are able to help defeat him. The opponent whom they backed is now beholden to the Zionists who helped get him elected. It is a rather simple strategy.

In addition both political parties, the Republicans and the Democrats, receive money from the Zionist lobby and so both parties try to keep the Zionists happy. Thus, for all intents and purposes, the American Congress, both House and Senate, have become agents of a foreign power when it comes to the question of Israel/Palestine.

When it comes to the media it has to be kept in mind that these are mostly for profit companies. They are not in business to supply the “truth” or even accurate reporting. They are in business to sell newspaper and television advertising. That is where they make their money. Under the circumstances, the Zionists, or “the Jews,” do not have to own or control these businesses, and in most cases they do not. All they have do is be able to organize subscription and advertising boycotts, and this they can do. So most media outlets are simply going to stay away from any sort of consistent reporting that will result in loss of revenue.

KZ: Many political academicians have openly suggested that the life of Israel is approaching an end and it will have the destiny of the former Soviet Union. A report which is attributed to CIA says that Israel will decline in 20 years. What’s your prediction for the future of Israel? Do you cast the same doubts regarding the survival of Israel? Is it capable of standing on its own feet should the United States lift its support for Tel Aviv?

LD: I think it is premature to start predicting the demise of Zionist Israel. What we have here is a fully industrialized, high technology economy that is now fairly well integrated into equivalent high tech and military production in the United States and Europe. In other words, to a certain extent these economies are now tied together. Therefore, Western support for Israel is not going to evaporate by magic in the foreseeable future. In Israel we also have a population that is fully indoctrinated into a racist ideology. They already feel abandoned by most of the world and so most Israelis (who do not simply pick up and leave the country) are fanatically holding own to their Zionist ideology and state.

My feeling is that the only thing that can eventually erode this Israeli fanaticism is a worldwide campaign of boycott, sanctions and divestment similar to the one that finally brought down the regime in South Africa. And, of course, that campaign is underway and growing steadily. Still, in will be a long struggle, perhaps another fifty to seventy five years. It is a shame, but I will probably not live to see it.

From Hiroshima to Fukushima to US!

“It’s like the third atomic bomb attack on Japan. But this time, we made it ourselves.“- Keijiro Matsushima, an 82-year-old survivor of America’s atomic bombing of Hiroshima. [1]

Japan’s quake-damaged northeast has helped recall the fact that sixty-six years ago Hiroshima and Nagasaki’s razed villages and burning shells of buildings were MADE IN THE USA!

Japan has 54 nuclear power plants and about one-third of its nationwide electricity comes from nuclear energy.

There are 104 nuclear power plants in the United States!

Japanese journalist JoAkira Tashiro, has been actively advocating for the elimination of nuclear weapons and regarding the damaged nuclear plants in Japan said, “This might be a good turning point. I hope Hiroshima will take a lead on this because of our own experience with the atomic bomb.” [Ibid]

The American Experience:

At 5:30 AM on July 16, 1945, the nuclear age began, when the first nuclear bomb was exploded by the American federal government at the Trinity Test Site, at the White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico. Plutonium and other toxic and radioactive chemicals were dispersed for hundreds of miles and some areas are still contaminated.

The bomb that exploded over the New Mexico desert vaporized a tower and turned the asphalt to green sand. Seconds later a huge blast of heat scorched the desert. No one could see the radiation generated by the explosion, but they all knew it was there. A half a mile away, the steel container called “Jumbo,” weighing over 200 tons was knocked over as the orange and yellow fireball stretched up and spread into a second column, that rose and flattened into a mushroom cloud; imprinting upon the human consciousness a symbol of violent power and destruction.

The father of the atomic bomb, Dr. Robert Oppenheimer chose to name this harrowing happening the “Trinity” test.

“Why I chose the name is not clear, but I know what thoughts were in my mind. There is a poem of John Donne, written just before his death, which I know and love. From it a quotation: ‘As West and East, In all flat Maps—and I am one—are one, So death doth touch the Resurrection.’ That still does not make a Trinity, but in another, better known devotional poem Donne opens, ‘Batter my heart, three person’d God.'”

In the moment that followed that atomic inferno, Oppenheimer then recalled this sentence from the Bhagvad Gita:

“Now I have become death, the destroyer of the worlds.”

When Oppenheimer was asked for his thoughts regarding Sen. Robert Kennedy’s efforts to urge President Lyndon Johnson to initiate talks to stop the spread of nuclear weapons, he responded: “It’s 20 years too late. It should have been done the day after Trinity.”

Indeed! But it was not and that lead to the US who upped the ante by continuing to create even more diabolical creations of mass destruction since Little Boy, the uranium bomb, which was dropped upon innocent civilians in Hiroshima on August 6, and the plutonium weapon of mass destruction called Fat Man, that followed three days later in Nagasaki.

Sixty-six years later and we the people are reaping the continuous ionizing radiation pollution and contamination in the ‘home of the brave’ and also other locations throughout the world!

Today’s UN-Holy “Trinity” is a triune of radiological horrors: nuclear bombs, nuclear reactors, and conventional Uranium Weapons (such as Depleted Uranium or DU) that are used in military testing, training, and military combat.

Case in point:

In a 71-page report released March 25, 2009, by Human Rights Watch, Israel’s repeated firing of US-made white phosphorus shells over densely populated areas of Gaza was indiscriminate and is evidence of war crimes.

“Rain of Fire: Israel’s Unlawful Use of White Phosphorus in Gaza,” provides eye witness accounts of the devastating effects that white phosphorus munitions had on civilians and civilian property in Gaza.

“Human Rights Watch researchers found spent shells, canister liners, and dozens of burnt felt wedges containing white phosphorus on city streets, apartment roofs, residential courtyards, and at a United Nations school in Gaza immediately after hostilities ended in January.

“Militaries officially use white phosphorus to obscure their operations on the ground by creating thick smoke. It has also been used as an incendiary weapon, though such use constitutes a war crime.

“In Gaza, the Israeli military didn’t just use white phosphorus in open areas as a screen for its troops,” said Fred Abrahams, senior emergencies researcher at Human Rights Watch and co-author of the report. “It fired white phosphorus repeatedly over densely populated areas, even when its troops weren’t in the area and safer smoke shells were available. As a result, civilians needlessly suffered and died.”

During Operation Cast Lead, the 22 days of Israeli assault on Gaza, “Washington provided F-16 fighter planes, Apache helicopters, tactical missiles, and a wide array of munitions, including white phosphorus and DIME. The weapons required for the Israeli assault was decided upon in June 2008, and the transfer of 1,000 bunker-buster GPS-guided Small Diameter Guided Bomb Units 39 (GBU-39) were approved by Congress in September. The GBU 39 bombs were delivered to Israel in November (prior to any claims of Hamas cease fire violation!) for use in the initial air raids on Gaza.” [2]

“The deliberate use of manmade ionizing radiation is an assault upon people, the environment, and all living things.

“Since the first Plutonium and Uranium nuclear bomb was exploded in New Mexico on July 16, 1945, the contamination of the United States and the rest of the world [continues].

“Those responsible for seven decades of both domestic and international radiological assault are our own government agencies: the Departments of Energy and Defense, and the NRC (some say it stands for the Nuclear Radiating Committee) along with a multitude of corporations involved in various aspects of manufacturing munitions of both nuclear and ‘conventional’ weapons varieties.

“Used in military combat, these radioactive munitions have been contaminating the Middle East and other nations wherever they are fired and tested.

“Beyond military weapons applications, energy firms that use nuclear reactors to generate the electricity that powers America’s TV sets are similarly polluting our air, water, and soil with these DNA-wrecking poisons…[and] there are efforts underway to enrich even More Uranium as well as plans to build More weapons facilities and fund bailouts using taxpayers’ money to build More experimental nuclear reactors with unsafe designs like the Westinghouse AP-1000 and AREVA’s European Pressurised Reactor (EPR).

“While Nuclear-Everything is being pushed on America as a “clean” energy alternative sanctified under the guise of reduced carbon emissions, consider if you will just a few effects of ionizing radiation: decreasing fertility rates, miscarriages, genetic mutations, increasing rates of cancers, some forms of heart disease, neuromuscular disease, and thyroid disease, diabetes, and other endocrine-related disorders and many other radiation-induced diseases.” [3]

Regarding the President who promised US change we could believe in, we the people are being taxed $18­4 billion for three new bomb factories at Los Alamos, Oak Ridge and Kansas City of which 100 Billion is to go for new delivery systems for nuclear weapons, such as p­lanes, subs and missiles.

Regarding this warning by America’s prophet, Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr. made decades ago:

“Any nation that year after year continues to raise the Defense budget while cutting social programs to the neediest is a nation approaching spiritual death.”

This reporter adds America is on its last gasps!

On April 5, 2009, President Obama stood on the world stage amongst thousands of flag-waving Czechs and spoke of good humor, home town Chicago, the will of the people over tanks and guns, old conflicts, revolution, moral leadership as the most powerful weapon, iron curtains that fell and the state of 21st century nuclear weapons:

“We are here today because enough people ignored the voices who told them that the world could not change. We’re here today because of the courage of those who stood up and took risks to say that freedom is a right for all people, no matter what side of a wall they live on, and no matter what they look like. We are here today because the simple and principled pursuit of liberty and opportunity shamed those who relied on the power of tanks and arms to put down the will of a people.

“Some argue that the spread of these weapons cannot be stopped, cannot be checked -– that we are destined to live in a world where more nations and more people possess the ultimate tools of destruction. Such fatalism is a deadly adversary, for if we believe that the spread of nuclear weapons is inevitable, then in some way we are admitting to ourselves that the use of nuclear weapons is inevitable.

“As the only nuclear power to have used a nuclear weapon, the United States has a moral responsibility to act…It will take patience and persistence. But now we, too, must ignore the voices who tell us that the world cannot change. We have to insist, Yes, we can.

“There is violence and injustice in our world that must be confronted. We must confront it by standing together as free nations, as free people. I know that a call to arms can stir the souls of men and women more than a call to lay them down. But that is why the voices for peace and progress must be raised together.

“Let us honor our past by reaching for a better future. Let us bridge our divisions, build upon our hopes, and accept our responsibility to leave this world more prosperous and more peaceful than we found it. Together we can do it.

“Words must mean something [and] violence and injustice must be confronted by standing together as free nations, as free people…[and] Human destiny will be what we make of it.”

In 1995, from Ashkelon Prison, the Whistle Blower of Israel’s WMD program, Mordechai Vanunu wrote:

“A radioactive cloud consumed rubbed out Hiroshima…A live nuclear test sentenced you. A nuclear laboratory…children women trees animals in and under a nuclear mushroom…burning… burned…flattened to ground radioactive ash-Hiroshima…Nuclear weapons gamblers win against you…Hollywood doesn’t know you – you are not a Jewish Holocaust.”

On March 15, 2011, Vanunu wrote [spelling and punctuation corrected]

“Hiroshima was a Nuclear weapons test on Human beings. Fukushima is a Nuclear Energy test of Technology- until now no big disaster. Japan became The Nuclear test field. Freedom Now for all human Beings. The Nuclear age freedom!” [4]

In 1946, Lewis Mumford said:

“You cannot talk like sane men around a peace table while the atomic bomb itself is ticking beneath it. Do not treat the atomic bomb as a weapon of offense; do not treat it as an instrument of the police. Treat the bomb for what it is: the visible insanity of a civilization that has ceased…to obey the laws of life.”

Because of nuclear weapons we have nuclear energy and until both are abolished all the people of the world do indeed “live under a nuclear sword of Damocles, hanging by the slenderest of threads, capable of being cut at any moment by accident, or miscalculation, or madness. The weapons of war [and nuclear energy!] must be abolished before they abolish US.”-President John F. Kennedy in his address before the General Assembly of the United Nations on Sept. 25, 1961.

And because this reporter is also a Christian Anarchist Buddhist with a dose of dervish, I cannot help but wonder if the World will ever Wake Up before ‘civilized men’ blow it up to what Jesus Christ was talking about when he was about 33, and hiked up a hill and sat down under an olive tree and began to teach the people;

“Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the Kingdom of heaven.”

In other words: it is those who know their own spiritual poverty, their own limitations and ‘sins’ honestly and trust God loves them in spite of themselves who already live in the Kingdom of God.

How comforted we will all be, when we see, we haven’t got a clue, as to the depth and breadth of pure love and mercy of The Divine Mystery of The Universe.

God’s name in ancient Aramaic is Abba which means Daddy as much as Mommy and He/She: The Lord has said, “My ways are not your ways. My thoughts are not yours.” -Isaiah 55:8

Christ proclaimed more: “Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth.”

The essence of meek is to be patient with ignorance, slow to anger and never hold a grudge. In other words: how comforted you will be when you also know humility; when you know yourself, the good and the bad, for both cut through every human heart.

“Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, they will be filled.”

In other words: how comforted you will be when your greatest desire is to do what “God requires, and he has already told you what that is; BE JUST, BE MERCIFUL and walk humbly with your Lord.”-Micah 6:8

“Blessed are the merciful, they will be shown mercy.”

In other words: how comforted you will all be when you choose to return only kindness to your ‘enemy.’

“For with the measure you measure against another, it will be measured back to you” Christ warns his disciples as he explains the law of karma in Luke 6:27-38.

“Blessed are the pure in heart, for they see God.”

In other words: how comforted you will be when you WAKE UP and see God is already within you, within every man, every woman and every child. The Supreme Being is everywhere, the Alpha and Omega, beginning and end. Beyond The Universe -and yet so small; within the heart of every atom.

“Blessed are The Peacemakers: THEY shall be called the children of God.”

And what a wonderful world it would be when we all seek peace by pursuing justice; for there can be none without the other.

“Blessed are those who are persecuted because they do what God requires, theirs is The Kingdom of Heaven.”

And one fine day the lion may just will lie down with The Lamb and man will indeed abolish nuclear everything and thus make war no more; and that will create the Kingdom of God on this tiny planet we call earth.

1. http://edition.cnn.com/2011/WORLD/asiapcf/03/14/japan.hiroshima/index.html?hpt=C2
2. http://www.projectcensored.org/top-stories/articles/9-us-arms-used-for-war-crimes-in-gaza/
3. http://www.opednews.com/populum/linkframe.php?linkid=114934
4.

Video: NATO’s Secret Armies

This fascinating new study shows how the CIA and the British secret service, in collaboration with the military alliance NATO and European military secret services, set up a network of clandestine anti-communist armies in Western Europe after World War II.

These secret soldiers were trained on remote islands in the Mediterranean and in unorthodox warfare centres in England and in the United States by the Green Berets and SAS Special Forces. The network was armed with explosives, machine guns and high-tech communication equipment hidden in underground bunkers and secret arms caches in forests and mountain meadows. In some countries the secret army linked up with right-wing terrorist who in a secret war engaged in political manipulation, harrassement of left wing parties, massacres, coup d’états and torture.

Codenamed ‘Gladio’ (‘the sword’), the Italian secret army was exposed in 1990 by Italian Prime Minister Giulio Andreotti to the Italian Senate, whereupon the press spoke of “The best kept, and most damaging, political-military secret since World War II” (Observer, 18. November 1990) and observed that “The story seems straight from the pages of a political thriller.” (The Times, November 19, 1990). Ever since, so-called ‘stay-behind’ armies of NATO have also been discovered in France, Spain, Portugal, Germany, Belgium, the Netherlands, Luxemburg, Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Finland, Switzerland, Austria, Greece and Turkey. They were internationally coordinated by the Pentagon and NATO and had their last known meeting in the NATO-linked Allied Clandestine Committee (ACC) in Brussels in October 1990.

« Previous Page