Exclusive: U.S. urges Pakistanis to keep Musharraf, despite election defeat
 

By: Jonathan S. Landay and Warren P. Strobel | McClatchy- via Rubber

on: 21.02.2008

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan- The Bush administration is pressing the opposition leaders who defeated Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf to allow the former general to retain his position, a move that Western diplomats and U.S. officials say could trigger the very turmoil the United States seeks to avoid.

U.S. officials, from President Bush on down, said this week that they think Musharraf, a longtime U.S. ally, should continue to play a role, despite his party’s rout in parliamentary elections Monday and his unpopularity in the volatile, nuclear-armed nation.

The U.S. is urging the Pakistani political leaders who won the elections to form a new government quickly and not press to reinstate the judges whom Musharraf ousted last year, Western diplomats and U.S. officials said Wednesday. If reinstated, the jurists likely would try to remove Musharraf from office.

Bush’s policy of hanging on to Musharraf has caused friction between the White House and the State Department, with some career diplomats and other specialists arguing that the administration is trying to buck the political tides in Pakistan, U.S. officials said.

Officials in the White House and the intelligence community fear that the longer Pakistan remains without a new government, the deeper the gridlock, threatening the progress made in the elections toward greater stability and helping the country’s Islamic extremists.

One Western diplomat said, however, that the strategy could backfire if Pakistanis feel betrayed after voting to kick Musharraf from office.

“This is dangerous,” said the diplomat.

The officials spoke to McClatchy on condition of anonymity because they weren’t authorized to discuss internal government debates.

The effort to persuade Pakistan’s newly elected parliament not to reinstate the judges could be perceived in Pakistan as a U.S. attempt to keep Musharraf in power after voters overwhelmingly rejected his Pakistan Muslim League-Q political party.

“There is going to be an uprising against the people who were elected” should opposition parties agree to the plan, warned Athar Minallah, the lawyer of ousted Chief Justice Iftikhar Chaudhry, whom Musharraf has under house arrest.

A close aide to Nawaz Sharif, whose Pakistan Muslim League-N party won the second highest number of seats in the 342-seat National Assembly, said the former prime minister is under growing Western pressure to drop his demands for Musharraf’s immediate resignation and the reinstatement of Chaudhry.

“The suggestion has been there from Western countries for some time,” said the aide, who requested anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue. “We are not willing to compromise on our stance. It would be against the interests of the Pakistani people.”

There may also be personal reasons for Sharif’s demands: He was ousted as prime minister when Musharraf led a 1999 coup against him.

The Bush administration has long praised Musharraf as an “indispensable” ally against al Qaida and Islamic radicals waging a guerrilla war and suicide bombing campaign from the tribal region bordering Afghanistan.

Bush, traveling in Africa, on Wednesday expressed appreciation for Musharraf.

“It’s now time for the newly elected folks to show up and form their government, and the question then is, will they be friends of the United States, and I certainly hope so,” he said at a news conference in Ghana.

But many Pakistanis consider Musharraf a U.S. puppet for stepping up counter-insurgency operations in the tribal areas that have claimed the lives of women and children.

Experts cite that cooperation as a key reason for the devastating losses suffered by Musharraf’s political allies, who retained only 38 of 132 National Assembly seats.

The party backed Musharraf’s ouster of Chief Justice Chaudhry, the arrests of thousands of critics, the muzzling of the independent press and a state of emergency last year.

Sharif’s calls for Musharraf’s ouster and the reinstatement of the judges are shaping up as the main hurdles to the formation of a coalition government between his party and the Pakistan Peoples Party of assassinated former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto. That party won the largest share — but not a majority — of National Assembly seats.

Bhutto’s widower, Asif Ali Zardari, who assumed the party leadership after his wife’s death in a Dec. 27 suicide bombing, is noncommittal on Musharraf’s resignation, and said the reinstatement of the judges should be left to the new assembly to decide. 

 

Zardari and Sharif were scheduled to hold talks on forging a coalition in Islamabad on Thursday, a day after Zardari met U.S. Ambassador to Pakistan Anne W. Patterson and a U.S. diplomat in Lahore held talks with Sharif’s brother, Shabaz.

The parties shouldn’t become fixated on the confrontation between Musharraf and the judges, said one Western diplomat.

“It’s not a good idea to have some kind of upset that could lead to new instability,” said the second diplomat.

Zardari appears to be receptive to the plan. He said Tuesday that the new government should proceed with “softer, small steps.”

His aides also indicated that the party could explore a coalition without Sharif if he refused to embrace the U.S. plan, saying it might be possible to forge one by bringing in moderate members of the pro-Musharraf party, independents and regional parties.

“There are moderate elements within the Q League. All options are open at this point,” said Javaid R. Laghari, a senior PPP senator.

(Strobel reported from Washington.)

McClatchy Newspapers 2007

www.mcclatchydc.com/homepage/story/28273.html

 

Opening a Pandora’s Box:

Kosovo “Independence”

and the Project for a “New Middle East”

 

By: Mahdi Darius Nazemroaya

on: 20.02.2008

Western public opinion has been misled. Unfolding events and realities on the ground in former Yugoslavia have been carefully manipulated.Germany and the U.S. have deep-seated geo-strategic interests in dividing Yugoslavia. Washington and Berlin have also been the first governments to recognize the secessionist states, which resulted from the breakup of the Yugoslav federation.The Broader Implications of Kosovo “Independence”

The February 2008 declaration of independence of Kosovo is a means towards legitimizing the dissolution and breaking up of sovereign states on a global scale.

Eurasia is the main target. Kosovar “independence” is part of a neo-colonial program with underlying economic and geo-political interests. The objective is to instate a New World order and establish hegemonic control over the global economy.

In this sense Kosovo provdes a blueprint, a “dress-rehearsal” which can now be applied to restructuring the economies and borders of the Middle East, under the Project for a “New Middle East.”

The restructuring model that is being applied in the former Yugoslavia is precisely what is intended for the Middle East — a process of balkanization and economic control.

Kosovo’s Pseudo-Declaration of Independence

On February 17, 2008, the secessionist province of Kosovo declared unilateral independence from the Republic of Serbia. The occasion was declared through an extraordinary gathering of the Kosovar Parliament and its executive bodies. Belgrade has not had any control over Kosovo since 1999, when NATO went to war with Serbia to impose control over Kosovo under humanitarian arguments.

President Fatmir Sejdiu, Prime Minister Hashim Thaci and Parliament Speaker Jakup Krasniqi all marked the occasion with speeches inside and outside of the Kosovar Parliament.

Many in Kosovo’s ethic Albanian majority celebrated what they believed was a shift towards self-determination. The truth of the matter is that the Kosovar declaration of independence was a declaration of dependency and surrender to colonial forces.

Kosovar leaders have transformed their land into a colonial outpost of Franco-German and Anglo-American interests. February 17, 2008 also marked the day that Kosovo further entrenched itself as a NATO-E.U. protectorate. Under the so-called independence” roadmap, NATO and E.U. troops and police officers will formally administer Kosovo.

In reality, Kosovo would have had greater independence as an autonomous province in an agreement of autonomy with Serbia, which had been envisaged in bilateral talks between Belgrade and Pristina. The majority of Kosovars would have been satisfied under such an agreement.

However, the talks were never meant to succeed for two obvious reasons:

1) the leadership of Kosovo are agents of foreign interests that do not represent the Kosovar populaiton;

2) the U.S. and E.U. were determined to establish another protectorate in the former Yugoslavia.

Kosovo: Another phase in the Economic Colonization of the former Yugoslavia

One of the leading global academic figures who has thoroughly documented the foreign-induced disintegration of Yugoslavia and the situation in Kosovo is Michel Chossudovsky. He has documented the economic and geo-strategic motives that have acted as the fingers pulling the strings that have caused the collapse of Yugoslavia and the drive for the independence of Kosovo from Serbia. His work unmasks the truth behind the downfall of Yugoslavia and the tactics being used to divide nations and peoples who have lived together in peace for hundreds of years.

A glance at the restructuring of Bosnia-Herzegovina must be made before further discussing the case of Kosovo.

Bosnia’s constitution was written at a U.S. Air Force base in Dayton, Ohio by U.S. and European “experts.”
Chossoduvsky appropriately labels Bosnia-Herzegovina as a neo-colonial entity. NATO troops have dominated Bosnia-Herzegovina, closely followed by the imposition of a new political and economic framework and model.

Chossudovsky’s work also reveals that the real head of the Bosnian government, the High Representative, and the head of the Bosnian Central Bank are both foreigners that are hand-picked by the European Union, the U.S., and the International Monetary Fund (IMF). 1 This is a clear re-enactment of a colonial administration.

This model has also been replicated with some variations in several of the former republics of the Yugoslav federation. The major obstacle to the full implementation of this agenda is the popular will of the local people in the former Yugoslavia, especially the Serbs.

Serbia, like an island of resistance, is the last bastion of independence left in the former Yugoslavia and the Balkans, but even in Serbia a modus vivendi exists where the local people have made a one-sided accommodation with the foreign economic agenda to allow their way of life to go on for a little longer. However, this accommodation is not meant to last.

The same Political and Socio-Economic Model is being applied in the Balkans and the Middle East

The process in Iraq is no different than the model applied in the former Yugoslavia. Divisions are fueled by foreign catalysts, the economy is destabilized, national dissolution is induced, and a new politico-socio-economic order is established.

Foreign interference and military intervention are also justified on bogus humanitarian grounds. It is no coincidence that a “High Representative” was appointed by the US led coaltion to govern Iraq, thereby replicating the Bosnia-Herzegovina model, which is characterised by E.U. appointed “High Representative”. The pattern should start becoming startlingly familiar!

The parallels between Iraq and the former Yugoslavia are endless.

In the wake of the Anglo-American invasion of Iraq, the U.S. and Britain established the Office for Reconstruction and Humanitarian Assistance (ORHA), which evolved into the Coalition Provisional Authority.

The head of the Coalition Provisional Authority was also called “Special Representative,” “Governor,” “Special Envoy,” and “Consul.”

The justifications for setting up the occupation administration in Iraq, similarly to Bosnia-Herzegovina, where originally humanitarian and national stabilization. However, the main objectives of the Coalition Provisional Authority were to decentralize the state and implement a mass privatization program.

It is no coincidence that Bosnia-Herzegovina was divided alongside ethnic and religious lines: Serb, Croat, and Bosniak); Christian Muslim. To these various ethnic-religious divisions, however, further sectarian divisions were created: Eastern Orthodoxy versus Roman Catholicism.

A similar strategy of “divide and rule” was applied in Iraq. Just like in the former Yugoslavia the centralized economic system of Iraq was also shattered by the occupying administration. Under the Anglo-American occupation and its Coalition Provisional Authority foreign corporations entered Iraq in a second wave of foreign invasion, an economic takeover.

The neo-colonial project is based on two inderdependent building blocks: a military stage executed by NATO and process of political, social and economic restructuring executed by the U.S. and E.U. with the help of corrupt local leaders. The shock and awe of war opens the door for destabilization followed by “nation building” or the restructuring process, which even attacks the cultural and social roots of the target nation-state.

The Economic Colonization of Kosovo

The economic affairs of Kosovo are to be exclusively under the hands of the E.U. in partnership with the United States. The euro was already being used in Kosovo, despite of the protests of Belgrade, as the official currency for a number of years before 2008. The utilization of the euro was part of the process of untying the Kosovar economy from the rest of the Serbian economy and a means of establishing control over the sovereignty of Kosovo via monetary and financial means.

The Kosovar flag has been designed to match both the flags of Bosnia-Herzegovina and the European Union. The Bosnian flag was also designed to match the flag of the European Union.

This unraveling process has been the modus operandi throughout the former Yugoslavia. The key players behind this process are the usual players; the U.S., Germany, Britain, and France, which have been sharing the spoils of war and economic colonization in the former Yugoslavia. NATO and the E.U. have been the agents of this process on behalf of all four Western powers.

An Illegal Precedent: Paving the Way for the Dismantlement of other Nation-States

In the realm of international law, a Pandora’s Box has been opened. A new form of interventionism which threatens nation-states has emerged. Worldwide, nations have been divided into two camps in regards to Kosovo: those that recognize it at the expense of international law and those that do not recognize Kosovar independence.

There are profound implications in regards to the events in Yugoslavia. The law of the jungle and the concept that “might is right” have been unveiled as the true ideals of E.U. and American foreign policy. From Somalia, Sudan, and Iraq to the Russian Federation and Central Asia, a dangerous precedent has been established. The latter is intent upon fracturing and dividing.

The E.U. and NATO have also threatened Belgrade and the Serbian people with military action if they try and keep Kosovo. NATO had prepared for Kosovar independence through the holding of war games in late-2007. As Germany has admitted, negotiations for a solution were never taken seriously by Western powers from the start. NATO’s military preparations for the secession of Kosovo suggests that the negotiations were a diplomatic game, which was intended to succeed.

The global ramifications of EU-US interentionism are significant. Nations combating secessionist movements worldwide have voiced disapproval of the Kosovar declaration of Independence, while espressing apprehension regarding the enthusiastic support shown by American, German, British, and French officials.

China has voiced disapproval out of fears that Taiwan (Chinese Taipei) may declare independence under the precedent set by Kosovo. Indonesia, Sri Lanka, Sudan, Spain, the Republic of Azerbaijan, and Russia have all voiced opposition because of their own secessionist movements such as the Tamil Tigers and the Basque separatist group ETA.

Ramifications of the Kosovo Precedent in the Caucasus and the Former Soviet Space

While fully acknowledging the fact that the Kosovo precedent is internationally illegal, Moscow has nonetheless used the Kosovo precedent against Georgia. Moscow’s objective is to strengthen its control in the geo-strategically important Caucasus region. Georgia has opposed the push by Kosovar Albanians for independence because of secessionist movements in Abkhazia, South Ossetia, and Adjara. While Adjaran separatism has become prominent, Abkhazia and South Ossetia have standing armies, with close ties to Moscow, and are virtually independent.

Russia is arguing that if the U.S. and E.U. recognize the independence of Kosovo , then the independence of Abkhazia and South Oesstia must also be recognized.

The Kosovar declaration of independence also has ramifications for Trans-Dniester (also known as Transnistria or Transdniestria), a tiny breakaway Russian-majority portion of Moldava.

The effects of Kosovar independence have also been watched carefully by the leaders of Armenia and the Republic of Azerbaijan, because of the Nagorno-Karabakh Conflict. In the cases of Trans-Dniester, Nagorno-Krabakh, Abkhazia, and South Ossetia, all four breakaway republics believe they have far stronger cases for lobbying for official recognition by the Commonwealth of Independent States (C.I.S.), Russia, and the United Nations.

Preparing a Dangerous Precedent for the Middle East and Beyond

The ghosts of Versailles and earlier schemes still hunt humanity. U.S. President Woodrow Wilson’s seemingly good intentioned declaration of creating an arc of “national self-determination” stretching from the Baltic Sea and the Balkans to the Middle East after the First World War is coming into fruition.

Since the First World War, the larger and more powerful states of Eastern Europe and the Middle East have progressively been carved up into smaller and weaker states. This process was part of a colonial project to control the Eurasian Heartland 2

The board is being set for the recognition of new states in a redrawn Middle East in total disregard for international law. The Kosovar declaration of independence from Serbia is part of the broader post-Cold War balkanization and dismantlement of Yugoslavia. Kosovar “independence” serves to extend Anglo-American and Franco-German influence across the globe. This model is tied in a straight line with the forthcoming plans in the Middle East to breakup countries such as Iraq, Syria, and Iran in fragmented and easy to control protectorates managed by the E.U., the U.S., and Israel.

Russia and China also are aware of the real danger of dividing their territory as has been advocated for years by Anglo-American policy makes in Washington, D.C. and London. Iran is also aware of a Kosovo-like scenario planned for its predominately Arab regions in Khuzestan. The declaration of independence was also closely watched by the Kurdish Regional Government of Northern Iraq.

The synchronization of other global events with Kosovo Independence: Coincidence?

The “Arc of Instability” is yet again being exasperated and agitated. In Pakistan threats of civil war and balkanization loom large. In the Levant one of Hezbollah’s top officials, Imad Mughniyeh, was assassinated in Syria by a car bomb similarly to those killing Lebanese politicians.

Most probably Imad Mughniyeh was assassinated by the Mossad, the intelligence agency of Israel. American, Jordanian, Saudi, French, British, and German intelligence were almost all likely to be involved. It is an open secret that all these intelligence agencies have been collaborating together in Lebanon against Hezbollah and have been behind attempts to assassinate Hezbollah leaders. The timing of the assassination is extremely suspicious.

Mughniyeh’s assassination also came just before the anniversary of the Hariri Assassination and could have been meant to further galvanized political tensions in Lebanon. Israel has denied being behind the assassination, but it is now talking about a new war with Lebanon that it conveniently plans to blame Hezbollah for starting with the help of Syria and Iran.

The rupture of multiple conflicts and crises can be a means to also encircle and envelope the westernmost periphery of Russia within an arc of conflict or in other words there may be a deliberate attempt to supersaturate the “Arc of Instability” to paralyze Russia and other opposing players.

A Prepackaged Solution: Supranationalism?

The leadership in Serbia is playing a balancing act between its people and foreign interests. The Serbian people are against the foreign agenda in their region, but the leadership in Serbia is the spawn of a Western-funded and supported Velvet Revolution that occurred in 2000 and ousted Slobodan Milosevic. A large portion of Belgrade’s leadership supports the foreign agenda and has been co-opted into the neo-liberal restructuring project for the Balkans. The fact that the U.S. and the E.U. became major paymasters for Serbia after the Kosovo War is a mere testimony to this.

Surpanationalism or entry into the E.U. or a larger supranational entity for both Serbia and Kosovo is most probably going to be presented as the solution for Kosovar independence. Similar such a solution may also be presented for a balkanized Middle East through such projects as the Mediterranean Union. Supranationalism is also being pressed as an answer to the unification of Cyprus under the Mediterranean Union.

Returning to Serbia and Kosovo, many of the leaders of Serbia are opposing Kosovar succession, but this is merely a façade that is meant to occupy the minds of the Serbian general public. These same leaders are taking a soft stance on the issue and also moving towards integration into the European Union. To them, like the case of Québec, supranationalism is a solution.

On the Eve of the New World Order: Welcome to the Rule of the Jungle

While the E.U. pushes for a bridge to end national and ethnic divisions amongst its own members it does the opposite in the cases of Kosovo and other regions. Is not the American Civil War marked with honour, because the Union States fought a war to keep the Confederate States within the “American Union” by force?

Whatever the case, the hypocrisy of the E.U. and the U.S. in international relations is exposed by the recognition of Kosovar independence. Firstly, it is a breach of international law, but also it is insincere and for self-serving motives and not because of genuine principles or concerns for the people of Kosovo.

In addition, the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus has a far more legitimate case of being recognized in addition to its own institutions and maturity. Although there is a secure and stable means to peacefully address the desires of the Basque and the Catalans in the Pyrenees and the Flemish in the Flanders region of Belgium, these separatist movements are also ignored.

The Armenian majority in Nagorno-Karabakh declared independence on December 10, 1991. Yet, the self-proclaimed and functioning breakaway republic enjoys no backing from either the U.S. or the E.U. unlike Kosovo. What sets Northern Cyprus, South Ossetia, Abkhazia, the Nagorno-Karabakh Republic, and Trans-Dniester apart from Kosovo? The answer is: Anglo-American and Franco-German interests represented through the E.U. and NATO are the forces behind self-serving “exceptionalism” — the same force that permitted the Nazis to believe that they could colonize Eastern Europe and the Eurasian Heartland without guilt.

American and European Union leaders have argued that the Serbs are no longer morally capable of managing the affairs of Kosovo. What gives the governments of the U.S., Germany, France, and Britain any moral capability after years of blood baths and a deficit in credibility? If these claims where based on any principle then what about the case of the Palestinians? Does Israel have any moral capability to occupy the Palestinians? Yet, the occupation continues. Ironically it is not Serbian troops who occupy Kosovo, but NATO troops and tanks.

NOTES

1 Michel Chossudovsky, The Globalization of Poverty and the New World Order, (Montreal, Global Research, 2003), pp.257-277.

2 Mahdi Darius Nazemroaya, The “Great Game:” Eurasia and History of War, Global Research, December 3, 2007.

Mahdi Darius Nazemroaya is an independent writer based in Ottawa specializing in Middle Eastern affairs. He is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG).

http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=8132

Large Potential Albanian Oil and Gas Discovery Underscores Kosovo’s Importance

February 20, 2008

On January 10, Swiss-based Manas Petroleum Corporation broke the news. Gustavson Associates LLC’s Resource Evaluation identified large prospects of oil and gas reserves in Albania, close to Kosovo. They’re in areas called blocks A, B, C, D and E, encompassing about 780,000 acres along the northwest to southeast “trending (geological) fold belt of northwestern Albania.”

Assigned estimates of the find (so far unproved) are up to 2.987 billion barrels of oil and 3.014 trillion cubic feet of natural gas. However, because of their depth, oil deposits may be capped with a layer of gas. If so, Gustavson calculates the potential to be 1.4 billion barrels of light oil and up to 15 trillion cubic feet of natural gas. Further, if only gas is present, the discovery may be as much as 28 trillion cubic feet. In any case, if estimates prove out, it’s a sizable find.

In its statement, Gustavson reported: “The probability of success for a wildcat well in a structurally complex area such as this is relatively high (because) it is in a structurally favorable area (and) proven hydrocarbon source and analogous production exists only 20 to 30 kilometers away.”

Currently, the Balkans region has small proved oil reserves of about 345 million barrels, of which an estimated 198 million barrels are in Albania. Proved natural gas reserves are much larger at around 2.7 trillion cubic feet.

In December 2007, Albania’s Council of Ministers allowed DWM Petroleum, AG, a Manas subsidiary, to assist in the exploration, development and production of Albania’s oil and gas reserves in conjunction with the government’s Agency of Natural Resources.

This development further underscores Kosovo’s importance and the cost that’s meant for Serbia. Since the 1999 US-led NATO war, it’s been all downhill for the nation, the region and its people:

–Kosovo is part of Serbia; at least it was; since 1999 it’s been a Washington-NATO occupied colony stripped of its sovereignty in violation of international law;

– it’s been run by three successive US-installed puppet Prime Ministers with known ties to organized crime and drugs trafficking;

– it’s the home of one of America’s largest military bases in the world, Camp Bondsteel; the province/country is more a US military base than a legitimate political entity;

– its part of Washington’s regional strategic objective to control and transport Central Asia’s vast oil and gas reserves to selected markets, primarily in the West;

– on February 17 during a special parliamentary session, Kosovo unilaterally declared its independence; the action violates international law; Kosovo is as much part of Serbia as Illinois is one of America’s 50 states; to no surprise, Washington and dominant western countries support it; opposed are Serbia, Russia, Spain, Greece, Portugal, Slovakia, Malta, Bulgaria, Romania and Cyprus;

– might makes right; the issue is a fait accompli; the February 17 declaration ignores EU division pitting one-third of its 27 members in opposition; and

– unilateral western-supported independence mocks the 1999 UN Security Council Resolution 1244; it only permits Kosovo’s self-government as a Serbian province; the resolution recognizes the “sovereignty and territorial integrity of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia;” only a new UN resolution in compliance with international law can change that legally; nonetheless, it happened anyway on another historic day of infamy when Washington again trashed international law and the rules and norms of civil society.

Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago and can be reached
at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net.

Also visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com and listen to The Global Research News Hour on RepublicBroadcasting.org Mondays from 11AM to 1PM US Central time for cutting-edge discussion of world and national topics with distinguished guests.

Dissimulation consciente

par la politique et le militaire:

 

Meurtre systématique de la population civile

 

 

Les photos, publiées maintenant, d’un massacre d’enfants afghans dans la province de Helmand de l’année passée et d’un ­massacre dans le district de Garmsee bouleversent l’opinion publique.

D’un hélicoptère armé, on chasse et tue des enfants d’un village afghan. On ne peut rester sourd aux cris des mères désespérées devant l’événement incompréhensible.

 

(cf. le DVD «Le ­massacre des enfants à Helmand», M.D. Miraki, et le rapport juxtaposé de Matiullah Minapal et d’Aziz ­Ahmad Tassal).

Personne ne peut dire que les responsables de l’armée n’aient pas eu connaissance d’un tel massacre d’enfants innocents (et ils ­doivent en prendre connaissance!). Tous les indices (rapports et témoignages oculaires) montrent que ce massacre n’est pas un cas isolé et qu’un tel procédé est toléré par la direction militaire, voire même approuvé.

Aujourd’hui, c’est encore par hasard que des nouvelles des événements réels par­viennent des territoires de l’Afghanistan du Sud et de l’Est, qui sont isolés de façon hermétique du public par les forces belligérantes.

 

Les nouvelles, qui sont répandues «normalement» aux Etats-Unis et en Europe, sont censurées et arrangées par les officines de presse militaires américaines responsables (par exemple Fort Bragg).

 

Le peu de rapports qui passent quand même la censure sont bouleversants. Massacres de civils, viols, abus sexuels de mineurs et meurtres insensés.

 

Les belles paroles venant des autorités officielles comme «hôpitaux, démocratie et reconstruction» donnent l’impression de la pire moquerie.

Les parallèles avec la guerre du Vietnam sont de plus en plus fatals. Cette guerre-là s’était également dirigée de facto contre la population civile.

 

Aux yeux du soldat, les habitants du Vietnam étaient tous des alliés du Vietcong ennemi. Ainsi le militaire justifiait les atrocités exercées contre la population du pays.

 

Les crimes de guerre ­furent ignorés et tolérés – ou même exigés – par la direction de l’armée.

 

Les ressemblances entre le Vietnam et l’Afghanistan sont alarmantes. (cf. Bernd Greiner, «Krieg ohne Fronten. Die USA in Vietnam», ISBN 978-3-936096-80-4).

L’escalade militaire en progression en Afghanistan est décrite par l’expert allemand sur l’Afghanistan Christoph R. Hörstel («Sprengsatz Afghanistan. Die Bundeswehr in tödlicher Mission», ISBN 978-3-426-78116-6).

 

 Au lieu de la reconstruction promise, les combats s’intensifient partout et l’emploi d’armes est plus massif.

L’alliance de guerre sous la direction des Etats-Unis mène une guerre dépourvue d’un minimum de respect devant tout être humain. L’emploi gigantesque de différentes armes dépasse toute imagination.

 

Déjà en 2002 (!), Helen Caldicott a décrit l’arsenal de terreur utilisé en Afghanistan («Atomgefahr USA. Die nukleare Aufrüstung der Supermacht.», ISBN 3-7205-2385-3). A part les armes à sous-munitions, les bombes à l’essence, les armes à l’uranium et les bunker buster, qui frappent tout d’abord la population civile, on «teste» aussi d’autres systèmes d’armes.

 

Ce sont des armes dont les effets nous sont encore inconnus. Il faut tout de suite arrêter ces crimes de guerre meurtriers. •

 

Chers lecteurs, chères lectrices,

Vous trouverez ci-dessous le lien vers une documentation vidéo sur le massacre de 27 enfants afghans dans la région de Helmand en Afghanistan qui a été perpétré en été 2007.

Ce document nous a été transmis par le Pr Daud Miraki.

Regardez ce document vidéo et écoutez les cris des mères – ce sont aussi nos enfants …

Et rendez-vous bien compte qu‘il ne s‘agit pas d‘homicides involontaires – quasi­ment par mégarde, lors d‘une attaque contre une cible militaire:

Non, chacun de ces enfants a été pris pour cible individuellement et assassiné à l‘aide de moyens technologiques militaires d‘une précision extrême lors d‘un raid aérien.

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-1332529811306781463

Vous pouvez obtenir la documentation et son exposé contenant des informations sur la situation actuelle en Afghanistan sur ­disque DVD auprès de la rédaction d’Horizons et débats.

 

Mardi 19 Février 2008

 

http://www.horizons-et-debats.ch

Turkey plans to invade northern Iraq

Feb. 19, 2008 

ANKARA, Turkey, — The Turkish military said it is setting the ground work for a large-scale ground invasion into northern Iraq targeting the Kurdistan Workers’ Party.

The military said the ground operation is the final strike against the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, known by its Kurdish language initials of PKK. The operation follows airstrikes on the group in late 2007 and military officials said the operation is scheduled for mid-March, the English language Turkish daily, Today’s Zaman said Monday.

Military sources told the newspaper that the operation would be on two fronts; one along the Turkish border with Iraq and one inside Turkey in its southeastern provinces.

Israel gave the Turkish military unmanned surveillance drones that military officials said will provide key intelligence about PKK activity.

The Turkish military deployed about 50,000 troops along the border with Iraq and the newspaper said military officials will keep the same amount of troops in the region for the March operations.

The PKK is listed as a terrorist organization by the U.S. State Department.

http://www.upi.com/NewsTrack/Top_News/2008/02/18/turkey_plans_to_invade_northern_iraq/9268/

Turkey readies for ground operation

The Turkish Armed Forces (TSK) is preparing for a comprehensive ground operation into northern Iraq against the terrorist Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) organization, expected to take place in spring.

The TSK is currently developing its strategy for the operation, which will most likely be launched in the middle of March. The ground operation is planned to be the final strike against the terrorist organization. It will follow upon a series of aerial attacks that have seriously disrupted the organization, bringing it to the brink of collapse. Reports indicate that communications between PKK leaders was seriously disrupted by the operations and that the distrust that emerged following the severing of communications has brought the organization to the edge of dissolution. The TSK has set up military bases at high elevations in the Cudi, Gabar, Küpeli, Tanin and Kato mountains, strategic points used by the PKK militants for infiltration into Turkey. The bases will include helicopter landing facilities, thermal cameras and artillery equipment.

TSK Special Forces based in Bolu, Kayseri, Isparta and Manisa have been trained for the purpose of destroying the remaining PKK presence in northern Iraq. The Land Forces Command is currently working to determine the number and state of armored vehicles, trucks, trailers, mobile medical units and mobile kitchens in the transportation units. A thorough review is being undertaken to check the state of equipment, clothing and food supplies of the units based in the region.

The spring operations will coincide with the withdrawal of the units that carried out operations in the winter and the deployment of replacement units. Military sources indicate that the spring operation will be carried out in two separate regions, one along Turkey’s borders with Iran and Iraq and one inside Turkey, near the provinces of Tunceli, Bingöl, Siirt and Diyarbakır.

The military units that will take part in the spring operation are being picked by the authorities at the Land Forces Command and Gendarmerie Command. The number of training sessions for the command units based in Bolu, Kayseri, Isparta and Manisa has been increased in preparation for the ground operation in spring. Two large military units from Bolu have been deployed to the region. The Land Forces Command is currently working to determine the quantity of military equipment proper for use in the operation.

Turkey will also reportedly use unmanned Heron surveillance airplanes, which will be provided by Israel. These will play an indispensable role in the combat against terrorist activity. The Heron will be used to screen and monitor a large area, including northern Iraq and the Gabar, Cudi, Küpeli, Kato, Yazlıca and Tanin mountains.

These will play an indispensable role in the combat against terrorist activity. The Heron will be used to screen and monitor a large area, including northern Iraq and the Gabar, Cudi, Küpeli, Kato, Yazlıca and Tanin mountains. The intelligence thus gathered will be swiftly evaluated and used in military strikes.

The TSK had previously deployed 50,000 troops in the border region before the cross-border operation on Dec. 16, when Turkish warplanes began pounding PKK bases. During the operations, which also included members of the TSK Special Forces Unit, the regular forces backed the main units by performing mine sweeping. Reports say that the number of troops deployed along the border will not go below 50,000.

The Pro-Kurdish Democratic Society Party (DTP) held a march to Mt. Cudi last week in an attempt to protest the projected military action.

http://www.todayszaman.com/tz-web/detaylar.do?load=detay&link=134248

 

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Comment:

Turkey is a long-time ally and servant of US, a member of NATO since 1952. It is being governed behind the scenes by pro-US and pro-Zionist generals.

Parties and governments have very little say. Turkish army has killed more than 30,000 people of Kurdish origin in Turkish Kurdistan between 1984 and 1999 and deported more than 2 millon Kurdish peasants from their homes and villages. Besides, Turkey has supported the invasion of Afghanistan, Iraq and Lebanon.

It has troops in Afghanistan, Lebanon and Northern Iraq. It supported the bombing of Yugoslavia in 1999, has troops in Kosovo and has recognized the ‘independence’ of pro-US semi-colony of Kosovo.

Turkey has oppressed and massacred its Armenan, Greek, Kurdish etc. minorities for decades with the support of imperialists, has expansionist ambitions which in general is in line with NATO policies.

It has invaded Northern Cyprus in 1974 with the support of US and Britain, who play the game o divide and rule between Greek and Turkish Cypriots.

We should be against the pro-US policies of Iraqi Kurds and oppose Barzani-Talabani cliques; this, however does not and cannot lead to the rejection of the right of Kurdish people for self-determination.

The same is true for the people of Kosovo. Such questions cannot be described in terms of black and white.

by marlenst

Russian state TV suggests USA involved in drug-trafficking from Afghanistan 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Russian state-controlled Channel One TV has broadcast a report containing allegations that US forces are involved in drug-trafficking from Afghanistan to Europe. It also highlighted the problem of drug abuse in the British army.

The channel’s weekly news roundup “Voskresnoye Vremya” on 10 February noted that, according to the UN, the amount of opium being produced in Afghanistan has more than doubled since the coalition troops entered the country.

The report went on to show former UK Prime Minister Tony Blair visiting the country at an unspecified time. It said that he had met almost 800 British troops during the visit. “This is either a coincidence or the working of cruel fate, but this is the exact number of soldiers that the British army loses each year because of drug abuse. This is more than the total combat losses of the royal army in Iraq and Afghanistan,” the correspondent noted.

The report then featured an extract from a BBC news website story saying that the British army loses a whole battalion of troops a year because of drug abuse (Research revealed that the story was published on 14 December 2007).

The report went on to look at the wider problem of how to reverse the trend of increasing opium production in Afghanistan.

Aleksandr Mikhaylov, the head of the department of interdepartmental and informational activity at the Russian Drugs Control Agency, was shown saying that economic measures to tackle the problem are foundering on local corruption. “The local authorities draw up seriously forged lists in which an amount is recorded for the amount destroyed and, in fact, the crop has not been destroyed at all. The theft of the money to combat narcotics is going on and is flourishing,” he said.

The accusation that US forces are involved in drug-trafficking came from Geydar Dzhemal, chairman of the Islamic Committee of Russia. “Without the control and connivance on the part of the special services none of these things are possible. For example in Afghanistan, the CIA and the special services are quite brazen. Under the protection of the American army they meet the necessary people. They collect the stuff, go to the Bagram airbase and they hand in a large consignment of narcotics, which is then taken away,” he said.

The report went on to say that heroin reached the Balkans via Turkey, which “has been a member of NATO since 1952 and is the USA’s closest ally in the region”. It said it is “another amazing coincidence” that Kosovo hosts the largest NATO base in Europe. The correspondent added that there is a “secret Interpol post” next to this base. “Here they speak almost openly about Afghan heroin in American planes,” he noted.

A man captioned as Marko Nicovic, Interpol employee, explained that 90 per cent of heroin goes through the Albanian mafia, which is now more powerful than the Sicilian mafia. He also alleged that members of this mafia bribe European parliamentarians to support the independence of Kosovo.

The report went on to link high levels of drug crime in Russia with the US invasion of Afghanistan. “Since the Americans unleashed war on the Taleban, Russian crime labs have been working non-stop,” the correspondent observed over footage of a drugs raid and packages of drugs being opened.

Aleksandr Mikhaylov, the head of the department of interdepartmental and informational activity at the Russian Drugs Control Agency, was shown saying that the production of narcotics in Afghanistan is getting more professional and that drugs have taken a real stranglehold on the Afghan economy. “The situation today is that narcotics have become a substance used for barter in Afghanistan,” he observed.

“For as long as heroin remains the only hard currency in the country and until NATO and its military coalition do not resolve their own issues, the agricultural proclivities here will hardly change,” the correspondent concluded.

 

 

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Washington’s Hidden Agenda:

Restore the Afghanistan’s Multibillion-Dollar Heroin Trade…

 

 

Since the US led invasion of Afghanistan in October 2001, the Golden Crescent opium trade has soared. According to the US media, this lucrative contraband is protected by Osama, the Taliban, not to mention, of course, the regional warlords, in defiance of the “international community”.

The heroin business is said to be “filling the coffers of the Taliban”. In the words of the US State Department:

“Opium is a source of literally billions of dollars to extremist and criminal groups… Cutting down the opium supply is central to establishing a secure and stable democracy, as well as winning the global war on terrorism,” (Statement of Assistant Secretary of State Robert Charles. Congressional Hearing, 1 April 2004)

According to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), opium production in Afghanistan in 2003 is estimated at 3,600 tons, with an estimated area under cultivation of the order of 80,000 hectares. (UNODC at http://www.unodc.org/unodc/index.html). An even larger bumper harvest is predicted for 2004.

The State Department suggests that up to 120 000 hectares were under cultivation in 2004. (Congressional Hearing, op cit):

“We could be on a path for a significant surge. Some observers indicate perhaps as much as 50 percent to 100 percent growth in the 2004 crop over the already troubling figures from last year.”(Ibid)

“Operation Containment”

In response to the post-Taliban surge in opium production, the Bush administration has boosted its counter terrorism activities, while allocating substantial amounts of public money to the Drug Enforcement Administration’s West Asia initiative, dubbed “Operation Containment.”

The various reports and official statements are, of course, blended in with the usual “balanced” self critique that “the international community is not doing enough”, and that what we need is “transparency”.

The headlines are “Drugs, warlords and insecurity overshadow Afghanistan’s path to democracy”. In chorus, the US media is accusing the defunct “hard-line Islamic regime”,

without even acknowledging that the Taliban –in collaboration with the United Nations– had imposed a successful ban on poppy cultivation in 2000. Opium production declined by more than 90 per cent in 2001. In fact the surge in opium cultivation production coincided with the onslaught of the US-led military operation and the downfall of the Taliban regime. From October through December 2001, farmers started to replant poppy on an extensive basis.

The success of Afghanistan’s 2000 drug eradication program under the Taliban had been acknowledged at the October 2001 session of the UN General Assembly (which took place barely a few days after the beginning of the 2001 bombing raids). No other UNODC member country was able to implement a comparable program:

“Turning first to drug control, I had expected to concentrate my remarks on the implications of the Taliban’s ban on opium poppy cultivation in areas under their control… We now have the results of our annual ground survey of poppy cultivation in Afghanistan. This year’s production 2001 is around 185 tons. This is down from the 3300 tons last year 2000, a decrease of over 94 per cent. Compared to the record harvest of 4700 tons two years ago, the decrease is well over 97 per cent.

Any decrease in illicit cultivation is welcomed, especially in cases like this when no displacement, locally or in other countries, took place to weaken the achievement” (Remarks on behalf of UNODC Executive Director at the UN General Assembly, Oct 2001, http://www.unodc.org/unodc/en/speech_2001-10-12_1.html )

United Nations’ Coverup

In the wake of the US invasion, shift in rhetoric. UNODC is now acting as if the 2000 opium ban had never happened:

“the battle against narcotics cultivation has been fought and won in other countries and it is possible to do so here in Afghanistan, with strong, democratic governance, international assistance and improved security and integrity.” ( Statement of the UNODC Representative in Afghanistan at the :February 2004 International Counter Narcotics Conference, http://www.unodc.org/pdf/afg/afg_intl_counter_narcotics_conf_2004.pdf , p. 5).

In fact, both Washington and the UNODC now claim that the objective of the Taliban in 2000 was not really “drug eradication” but a devious scheme to trigger “an artificial shortfall in supply”, which would drive up World prices of heroin.

Ironically, this twisted logic, which now forms part of a new “UN consensus”, is refuted by a report of the UNODC office in Pakistan, which confirmed, at the time, that there was no evidence of stockpiling by the Taliban. (Deseret News, Salt Lake City, Utah. 5 October 2003)
Washington’s Hidden Agenda: Restore the Drug Trade

In the wake of the 2001 US bombing of Afghanistan, the British government of Tony Blair was entrusted by the G-8 Group of leading industrial nations to carry out a drug eradication program, which would, in theory, allow Afghan farmers to switch out of poppy cultivation into alternative crops. The British were working out of Kabul in close liaison with the US DEA’s “Operation Containment”.

The UK sponsored crop eradication program is an obvious smokescreen. Since October 2001, opium poppy cultivation has skyrocketed. The presence of occupation forces in Afghanistan did not result in the eradication of poppy cultivation. Quite the opposite.

The Taliban prohibition had indeed caused “the beginning of a heroin shortage in Europe by the end of 2001″, as acknowledged by the UNODC.

Heroin is a multibillion dollar business supported by powerful interests, which requires a steady and secure commodity flow. One of the “hidden” objectives of the war was precisely to restore the CIA sponsored drug trade to its historical levels and exert direct control over the drug routes.

Immediately following the October 2001 invasion, opium markets were restored. Opium prices spiraled. By early 2002, the opium price (in dollars/kg) was almost 10 times higher than in 2000.

In 2001, under the Taliban opiate production stood at 185 tons, increasing to 3400 tons in 2002 under the US sponsored puppet regime of President Hamid Karzai.

While highlighting Karzai’s patriotic struggle against the Taliban, the media fails to mention that Karzai collaborated with the Taliban. He had also been on the payroll of a major US oil company, UNOCAL. In fact, since the mid-1990s, Hamid Karzai had acted as a consultant and lobbyist for UNOCAL in negotiations with the Taliban. According to the Saudi newspaper Al-Watan:

“Karzai has been a Central Intelligence Agency covert operator since the 1980s. He collaborated with the CIA in funneling U.S. aid to the Taliban as of 1994 when the Americans had secretly and through the Pakistanis specifically the ISI supported the Taliban’s assumption of power.” (quoted in Karen Talbot, U.S. Energy Giant Unocal Appoints Interim Government in Kabul, Global Outlook, No. 1, Spring 2002. p. 70. See also BBC Monitoring Service, 15 December 2001)

History of the Golden Crescent Drug trade

It is worth recalling the history of the Golden Crescent drug trade, which is intimately related to the CIA’s covert operations in the region since the onslaught of the Soviet-Afghan war and its aftermath.

Prior to the Soviet-Afghan war (1979-1989), opium production in Afghanistan and Pakistan was directed to small regional markets. There was no local production of heroin. (Alfred McCoy, Drug Fallout: the CIA’s Forty Year Complicity in the Narcotics Trade. The Progressive, 1 August 1997).

The Afghan narcotics economy was a carefully designed project of the CIA, supported by US foreign policy.

As revealed in the Iran-Contra and Bank of Commerce and Credit International (BCCI) scandals, CIA covert operations in support of the Afghan Mujahideen had been funded through the laundering of drug money. “Dirty money” was recycled –through a number of banking institutions (in the Middle East) as well as through anonymous CIA shell companies–, into “covert money,” used to finance various insurgent groups during the Soviet-Afghan war, and its aftermath:

“Because the US wanted to supply the Mujahideen rebels in Afghanistan with stinger missiles and other military hardware it needed the full cooperation of Pakistan. By the mid-1980s, the CIA operation in Islamabad was one of the largest US intelligence stations in the World. `If BCCI is such an embarrassment to the US that forthright investigations are not being pursued it has a lot to do with the blind eye the US turned to the heroin trafficking in Pakistan’, said a US intelligence officer. (”The Dirtiest Bank of All,” Time, July 29, 1991, p. 22.)

Researcher Alfred McCoy’s study confirms that within two years of the onslaught of the CIA’s covert operation in Afghanistan in 1979,

“the Pakistan-Afghanistan borderlands became the world’s top heroin producer, supplying 60 per cent of U.S. demand. In Pakistan, the heroin-addict population went from near zero in 1979 to 1.2 million by 1985, a much steeper rise than in any other nation.”

“CIA assets again controlled this heroin trade. As the Mujahideen guerrillas seized territory inside Afghanistan, they ordered peasants to plant opium as a revolutionary tax. Across the border in Pakistan, Afghan leaders and local syndicates under the protection of Pakistan Intelligence operated hundreds of heroin laboratories. During this decade of wide-open drug-dealing, the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency in Islamabad failed to instigate major seizures or arrests.

U.S. officials had refused to investigate charges of heroin dealing by its Afghan allies because U.S. narcotics policy in Afghanistan has been subordinated to the war against Soviet influence there. In 1995, the former CIA director of the Afghan operation, Charles Cogan, admitted the CIA had indeed sacrificed the drug war to fight the Cold War. ‘Our main mission was to do as much damage as possible to the Soviets. We didn’t really have the resources or the time to devote to an investigation of the drug trade,’ I don’t think that we need to apologize for this. Every situation has its fallout. There was fallout in terms of drugs, yes. But the main objective was accomplished. The Soviets left Afghanistan.’”(McCoy, op cit)

The role of the CIA, which is amply documented, is not mentioned in official UNODC publications, which focus on internal social and political factors. Needless to say, the historical roots of the opium trade have been grossly distorted.

(See UNODC http://www.unodc.org/pdf/publications/afg_opium_economy_www.pdf

According to the UNODC, Afghanistan’s opium production has increased, more than 15-fold since 1979. In the wake of the Soviet-Afghan war, the growth of the narcotics economy has continued unabated. The Taliban, which were supported by the US, were initially instrumental in the further growth of opiate production until the 2000 opium ban.

(See UNODC http://www.unodc.org/pdf/publications/afg_opium_economy_www.pdf

This recycling of drug money was used to finance the post-Cold War insurgencies in Central Asia and the Balkans including Al Qaeda. (For details, see Michel Chossudovsky, War and Globalization, The Truth behind September 11, Global Outlook, 2002, http://globalresearch.ca/globaloutlook/truth911.html)

Narcotics: Second to Oil and the Arms Trade

The revenues generated from the CIA sponsored Afghan drug trade are sizeable. The Afghan trade in opiates constitutes a large share of the worldwide annual turnover of narcotics, which was estimated by the United Nations to be of the order of $400-500 billion. (Douglas Keh, Drug Money in a Changing World, Technical document No. 4, 1998, Vienna UNDCP, p. 4. See also United Nations Drug Control Program, Report of the International Narcotics Control Board for 1999, E/INCB/1999/1 United Nations, Vienna 1999, p. 49-51, and Richard Lapper, UN Fears Growth of Heroin Trade, Financial Times, 24 February 2000). At the time these UN figures were first brought out (1994), the (estimated) global trade in drugs was of the same order of magnitude as the global trade in oil.

The IMF estimated global money laundering to be between 590 billion and 1.5 trillion dollars a year, representing 2-5 percent of global GDP. (Asian Banker, 15 August 2003). A large share of global money laundering as estimated by the IMF is linked to the trade in narcotics.

Based on recent figures (2003), drug trafficking constitutes “the third biggest

http://www.sott.net/articles/show/148967-Russian-state-TV-suggests-USA-involved-in-drug-trafficking-from-Afghanistan

 

by Michel Chossudovsky

www.globalresearch.ca 5 April 2004

The URL of this article is: http://globalresearch.ca/articles/CHO404A.html

 

HOW THE ZION-WEST KILL RUSSIA WITH HEROIN AND HIV

 

MOSCOW. Nov 26 (Interfax) -

Russia has become the largest consumer of Afghan drugs and the situation in Afghanistan hurts it more than it does other countries, said Russian Federal Drug Control Service (FSKN)
Director Viktor Ivanov.

“Russia, which has become the largest consumer of heroin in the world over the past few years, is experiencing the most problems,” Ivanov told a press conference on Wednesday.

The use of Afghan drugs in Europe is much lower than in Russia, he said.

“Although there in Afghanistan there are victims among civilians, among the military coalition, our country is losing the most from the events in Afghanistan,” said Ivanov.

Over 90% of drugs coming to Russia are from Afghanistan, said FSKN.

http://www.interfax.com/3/449638/news.aspx

 

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Washington: The Helpmate of Afghanistan’s Narcobusiness

Bush-cheney-leur-empire-de-drogue

 

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NATO Still Killing People in Kosovo

Back in 1999 NATO carried out a 78-day shelling of Serbia and Kosovo. They allegedly used depleted uranium which continues to kill people.

 

November 22, 2008

Back in 1999 NATO carried out a 78-day shelling of Serbia and Kosovo. They allegedly used depleted uranium which continues to kill people.Nine years after NATO’s bombing of Serbia, the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation is still taking lives in Kosovo, Serbia’s Pressonline reported. The NATO allegedly used shells with depleted uranium which are still today causing an increase in the number of cancer patients.Prior to 1999, the number of Serbs who suffered from malignant tumours was three times lesser, according to the statistics of Serb hospitals. In Kosovo’s Kosovska Mitrovica in 2005 there were 38 percent more cancer patients than in 2004.In those two years, a total of 3,500 cancer cases in Kosovo Albanians were diagnosed.Globally, six people out of a thousand suffer from malignant tumours on average. In the Kosovska Mitrovica hospital, there are 200 cancer patients to 1,000 people.

NATO used weapons banned by international conventions?

After 2000, groups of experts in atomic energy tested water, food, air, plants and animals to establish the damage caused by radiation from NATO shells. Beta and Gamma radiation was higher than the permissible level and radiation was discovered in the soil, water, plants and animals. After it gets into the soil, it takes some 250 years for depleted uranium to degrade.

The conclusions of the studies were that the environment on 100 locations in Kosovo was not safe for animals or people, but no bans or moving of the population was carried out.

European peace troops stationed in Kosovo knew there was great danger of radiation in these areas. Italian military experts concluded in 2005 that 34 soldiers had died from leukaemia and various malignant tumours. Since then 150 soldiers from Kosovo were sent home.

In mid-2000 NATO published a map with 112 marked locations that had been shelled with depleted uranium. Over the 78 days of NATO bombing, a total of 31,000 shells with depleted uranium, weapons banned by international treaties, were dropped in Kosovo.

 

 

 

 

 

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This “war” as a manipulated US/Zion war to implode the latest socialist melting-pot religious country Yougoslavia ” and  to rise up muslims/christians mutual hate…. This is a part of the agenda, of clash civilisation Zion agenda, Goy and muslims fighting together for Zionn earn.

depleted uranium kill inn Irak, Afghanistan,

and also kill GI’s using this weapon(they sign 4) 

US heroin drug traffic kill all over the world thanks Uncle Sam.

Who is the next Mister ”YES WE CAN”

Imposing the New World Order

 

Review of F. William Engdahl’s  ”A Century of War” (Part II)
Stephen Lendman

February 15, 2008

Part II continues the story of “A Century in War” in Part I. It’s breathtaking in scope and content, and a shocking and essential history of geopolitics and the strategic importance of oil. Part I covered events from the late 19th century through the end of the 1960s. Part II completes the story to the present era under George Bush.

Running the World Economy in Reverse: Who Made the 1970s Oil Shocks?

In 1969, the US was in recession, interest rates were cut, dollars flowed abroad, and the money supply expanded. In addition, in May 1971, America recorded its first monthly trade deficit that triggered a panic US dollar sell-off. Things were desperate, gold reserves were one-quarter of official liabilities, and Nixon shocked the world on August 15. He unilaterally imposed a 90 day wage and price freeze, a 10% import surcharge, and most importantly closed the gold window, suspended dollar convertibility into the metal, and shredded the Bretton Woods core provision. He also devalued the dollar by 8%, far less than what US allies wanted.By this action, Nixon “pulled the plug on the world economy” and set off a series of events that shook it. Further deterioration followed with massive capital flight to Europe and Japan. It forced Nixon to act again on February 12, 1973. He announced a further 10% devaluation, major world currencies began a process called a “managed float,” and world instability was the worst seen since the 1930s.

Unknown was the reason behind the August, 1971 strategy. It was to buy time before initiating a bold new monetary “paradigm shift” – to revive a strong dollar and US world power with it. In May 1973, the scheme was hatched – to initiate a “colossal assault” on world industrial growth through a 400% increase in oil prices. In addition, the resulting petrodollar flood had to be managed. A global oil embargo was the scheme to rocket up its price and create an equally great demand for dollars.

Kissinger’s Yom Kippur war began it when Egypt and Syria invaded Israel on October 6, 1973. It wasn’t by accident as Washington and London carefully orchestrated the conflict while Kissinger controlled Israel’s response. An oil embargo followed, OPEC prices skyrocketed 400% overnight, panic ensued, Arab oil producers were scapegoated, and the key part of the scheme took shape. It was for much of the windfall oil revenue (mainly Saudi, the world’s largest producer) to be recycled into US investments.

Following a Tehran January 1, 1974 meeting, a second price increase doubled the price of oil for even more recycling. The net effect – the worst American and European economic crisis since the 1930s with bankruptcies, unemployment, and in the US, a bonus of stagflation. The fallout was horrific. It brought down most European governments but its effects on developing states were devastating. Nixon as well got caught in the “Watergate affair” that benefitted Henry Kissinger hugely. He became de facto president throughout the period while his boss battled to survive and lost. For Big Oil and major US and London banks, it was even sweeter. They profited handsomely.

Other issues were at stake as well, one of which was potentially cheaper nuclear electricity as an alternative energy source. By the early 1970s, it was viewed favorably, and European governments favored building 160 to 200 nuclear plants by 1985. For the first time, America’s nuclear export market was threatened as well as Big Oil’s overall energy dominance. It got Anglo-American think tanks and journals to launch an “awesome propaganda offensive” to ensure the oil shock strategy’s success. The scheme was an “Anglo-American ecology agenda” (strongly anti-nuclear) that became “one of the most successful frauds in history.”

A second Malthusian plot was also hatched through a classified Kissinger April 1974 memo. It was a secret project called National Security Study Memorandum 200 (NSSM 200) that called for drastic global population reduction. It reasoned that many developing nations are resource rich and vital to US growth. If Third World populations grow too fast, their domestic demand will as well, and that will pressure price rises for their goods. Curbing population growth was the counter strategy. It’s also self-defeating along with horrific fallout for targeted countries.

Europe, Japan and a Response to the Oil Shock

By late 1975, industrial countries began recovering but not developing ones. The oil shock was crushing and prevented their ability to finance industrial and agricultural growth and the hopes of their people for a better life. Perversely, it was also at a time the worst global drought in decades hit Africa, South America and parts of Asia especially hard. The fourfold increase in oil prices exacerbated conditions and increased developing states’ current account deficits sevenfold by 1976. They halted internal development to preserve revenue for debt service and to buy oil. Conditions also let foreign banks and later the IMF provide loans that became an onerous debt bondage cycle.

At the same time in 1974, 70% of surplus OPEC revenues were recycled abroad into equities, bonds, real estate and other investments as part of an exclusive OPEC decision to accept only US dollars for oil. It forced world nations to buy enormous amounts of dollars and do it when the currency was weak. This effectively replaced the gold standard with a “highly unstable (petrodollar) exchange system.” Washington and New York banks planned to control it and thus benefit from artificially inflated oil prices.

The scheme transformed the world economy and began an unprecedented transfer of wealth to an elite minority. Engdahl called it “a perverse variation on the old mafia ‘protection racket’ game.” Third World agricultural and industrial development suffered so a select few could prosper. It sent shock waves through the developing world and got a Colombo, Sri Lanka gathering to confront it.

Officials from 85 Non-Aligned Nations met in the Sri Lankan capital in August, 1976 and produced a document unlike any others by developing states post-war. Its theme was “A fair and just economic development, and its contents stated that “economic problems have become the most difficult aspect of international relations (and) developing countries have become the victim(s) of this worldwide crisis.” Steps were proposed to address it, and they called for a “fundamental reorganization of the international trade system to improve” its terms. They also wanted the international monetary system overhauled and the “explosive issue” of foreign debt raised for the first time.

The proposal was then presented at the annual UN General Assembly meeting in New York. It was a “political bombshell,” and financial markets reacted sending bank shares and the dollar lower. The fear was a potential alliance between key oil producing states and continental Europe and Japan. If in place, it could challenge Anglo-American dominance, had to be confronted, and Henry Kissinger got the job with “the full power and force of the US government.” He warned EEC foreign ministers and disrupted any efforts they were considering to ally with OPEC and the non-aligned group.

Coordinating with Britain, he also forced key non-aligned nation strategists out of office within months of their declaration. The threat was thwarted and leading New York and London banks took full advantage. They turned on the spigot and increased lending to developing nations under draconian IMF terms.

Down but not out, North-South cooperation resurfaced in new ways. In late 1975, Brazil contracted with Germany to build a nuclear power plant complex. A similar deal was made with France for an experimental fast breeder reactor. Mexico as well decided to go nuclear for part of its electricity to conserve oil and so did Pakistan and Iran. The Shah’s oil revenues were substantial, and his idea was “to realize an old dream” – to create a modern energy infrastructure, built around nuclear power generation, that would transform the entire Middle East’s power needs. In 1978, Iran had the world’s fourth largest nuclear program, the largest among developing states, and the plan was for 20 new reactors by 1995.

The idea was simple – to diversify from Iran’s dependence on oil and weaken Washington and London’s pressure to recycle petrodollars. Also involved was investing in leading European companies to ally with the continent. Washington was alarmed and tried to block the plan but failed. Nonetheless, the Carter administration continued Kissinger’s strategy behind a phony “human rights” mask. In reality, the game was unchanged – limit Third World growth and maintain dollar hegemony. It failed miserably but threats to dollar dominance were stalled for a time.

They resurfaced in June, 1978 on the initiative of France and Germany. Responding to policy disagreements and a fluctuating dollar, they took steps to create a European currency zone and proposed Phase I of the European Monetary System (EMS) under which central banks of EEC countries agreed to stabilize their currencies relative to each other. EMS became operational in 1979 with notable positive results. This worried Washington and London as a threat to petrodollar supremacy, Britain refused to be an EMS partner, and Carter was unable to dissuade Germany from pursuing a nuclear option. The situation required drastic action.

It began in November 1978 with a White House Iran task force that recommended Washington end support for the Shah and replace him with Ayatollah Khomeini, then living in France. It would be by the same type coup that overthrew the Iranian government in 1953 along with broader aims that again are in play in the region.

Key then (and now) was to balkanize the Middle East along tribal and religious lines – a simple divide and conquer strategy that worked in the 1990s Balkan wars. The aim was to create an “Arc of Crisis” that would spread to Central Asia and the Soviet Union. Another 1978 event highlighted the urgency. At the time, the Shah was negotiating a 25-year oil agreement with British Petroleum (BP), but talks broke down in October. BP demanded exclusive rights to future Iranian output but refused to guarantee oil purchases. The Shah balked and was on the verge of independently seeking new buyers with eager ones lined up in Germany, France, Japan and elsewhere.

Washington and London were alarmed and acted. They implemented destabilization plans, starting with cutting Iranian oil purchases. Economic pressures followed, and trained US and UK agitators exacerbated them by fanning religious discontent and overall turmoil. Oil strikes as well were used. They crippled production and made things worse. American security advisors recommended Iran’s Savak secret police use repressive tactics to maximize antipathy to the Shah. The Carter administration cynically protested human rights abuses, and BBC correspondents exaggerated anti-Shah protests to rev up hysteria against him. At the same time, it gave Khomeini an open platform to speak and prevented the Shah from replying.

Things came to a head in January, 1979 when he fled the country, and Khomeini returned to Tehran and proclaimed a theocratic state. Chaos was unleashed, and by May the new regime cancelled plans for further nuclear reactor development. At the same time, Iran’s oil exports were cut off, and the Saudis inexplicably cut their own in January. Spot prices skyrocketed, and a second oil shock ensued that was as deviously conceived as the first one. Then it got worse. In October, newly appointed Fed Chairman Paul Volker unleashed a new scheme that turned calamity into catastrophe by design.

It was a radical new monetary policy on the pretext of “squeezing inflation out of the system.” In fact, it was made-in-Washington fraud to preserve dollar hegemony, make it the world’s most sought currency, and crush industrial growth to let political and financial power prop up dollar strength. Volker succeeded by raising interest rates from 10% to 16% and finally 20% in weeks. World policy makers were stunned, economies plunged into the deepest recession since the 1930s, and the dollar began an extraordinary five year ascent.

The combined effect of oil and Volker shocks took “the bloom off the nuclear rose” and ended its threat to Anglo-American oil supremacy. And if more was needed it came on March 28, 1979 in the middle of Pennsylvania at a place called Three Mile Island. Conveniently, at the same time The China Syndrome was released that fictionalized the ongoing event. The combined effect was public hysteria, and later investigation revealed critical valves had illegally been closed. In addition, FEMA controlled all news to create panic. The scheme worked, and Anglo-American supremacy was reasserted over the industrial and financial world. Nothing is stable forever, however, and within a decade new rumblings would be felt.

Imposing the New World Order

The combined effects of two oil shocks and resulting inflation created a new US “landed aristocracy” while the vast majority of Americans saw their living standards sink. It was the same type scheme Margaret Thatcher imposed on Britain when she declared “there is no alternative.” Preaching free market hokum, she claimed deficit spending was the culprit, not two oil shocks causing 18% UK inflation. Her remedy – kill the patient to save it by cutting the money supply and government spending while sharply hiking interest rates to 17% in weeks, thereby causing depression she called the “Thatcher revolution.” Engdahl had another view saying: “Never in modern history had an industrialized nation undergone such (a counterproductive) shock” in so short a time, except in wartime emergency. Thatcher crushed the economy by design the way Volker did in America.

At the time, Britain’s problem wasn’t government ownership. It was lack of investment in public infrastructure, in educating a skilled work force, and in enough scientific research and development. Government isn’t the problem. Misguided policy is, and Thatcher and Volker excelled at it with one mutual aim – benefit their banks and Big Oil interests by cutting taxes and spending, reducing social services, privatizing and deregulating business, and breaking the back of organized labor in their brave new world order.

President Carter knew nothing about finance and economics and was duped into signing an “extraordinary piece of legislation” – the Depository Institutions Deregulation Monetary Control Act of 1980. It let the Fed impose reserve requirements on banks and be able to choke off credit to them. It also phased out interest rate ceilings banks could charge customers. Reagan continued the policies and was bamboozled by Chicago School ideologues like Milton Friedman. Engdahl called his radical monetarism “one of the most cruel economic frauds ever perpetrated.” It was that and more because of all the human wreckage it caused.

It led to the Third World debt crisis and its horrific fallout. It willfully immiserated millions of people, and events came to a head in the summer of 1982 with debtor states struggling to repay. Their burden was too onerous, and Reagan and Thatcher planned an example of what happens when nonpayment is an option. The Malvinas (or Falkland) archipelago was the targeted choice. It’s off Argentina’s coast but was hardly a reason for war. The issue wasn’t Argentina’s sovereignty. It was to enforce the principle that Third World debts must be paid by a “new form of 19th century gunboat diplomacy.” Two-thirds of Britain’s fleet was dispatched, a shooting war ensued, and Argentina became a test case.

Reagan backed Thatcher, and it soured relations with Latin American states like Mexico that also became a target. President Jose Lopez Portillo favored a modernization and industrialization policy and planned to use his oil revenue to implement it. The prospect of a strong Mexico was intolerable, Washington had other ideas, and a scheme was hatched to sabotage the plan by demanding rigid repayment of Mexican debt at exorbitant rates.

It began with an orchestrated run on the peso in the fall of 1981. Claims of an impending devaluation followed, and stories were planted of impending capital flight. An unavoidable austerity program followed, and the Portillo government cracked under pressure. It devalued the peso 30%, Mexican industry was devastated, many businesses were bankrupted, industrial production was cut and so were living standards for the majority of the people under conditions of orchestrated chaos.

Mexico effectively became insolvent at a time the US was in deep recession. Nonetheless, the Reagan administration hatched a plan to solve the debt crisis and save New York banks. Ignoring the root cause of the crisis, Secretary of State George Schultz offered IMF medicine combined with stimulating US consumer purchases as a way to increase Third World exports.

It would be “the most costly recovery in world history (and what followed) was almost beyond belief.” Lopez Portillo failed to rally Latin American support, and his term expired two months later. US officials then blackmailed Brazil and Argentina to back down, and debtor countries had to accept IMF terms that became “the most concerted organized looting operation in modern history,” far exceeding the worst of Versailles.

New York and London banks profited hugely the way they do today. First, they “socialize(d) their debt crisis” by getting unprecedented international repayment support. Working through governments and the IMF, they spun off their debt to taxpayers, privatized gains for themselves, and pummeled debtor countries by structural adjustment looting.

That was Step One. Next came Step Two – restructuring debtor nations’ repayment schedules that included onerous interest on top of oppressive principal. It caused mounting debt no matter how much was paid in an unending looting daisy chain still in play today and bigger than ever.

Back in the 1980s, here are the numbers. Between 1980 and 1986, 109 debtor countries were charged $326 billion in interest. They paid an additional $332 billion in principal for a total of $658 billion on original debt of $430 billion. In spite of it, in 1986 they still owed $882 billion, an impossible debt trap, and Engdahl attributed it to “the wonders of compound interest and floating rates” with a little gunboat diplomacy thrown in. Only one way out was possible – surrender economic sovereignty and valued raw materials, or else. Capital flight in the tens of billions followed, and it became a profit-making bonanza for major US banks.

In the 1980s, Americans also suffered. Reaganomics victimized them by structuring big gains for banks, oil and defense giants while ignoring the greater good and long-term economic health. The plan was nonsensical and built around the largest post-war tax cut until the combined three George Bush ones (with another coming) may have topped it. They did in nominal dollars, but Reagan’s was much bigger as a percent of GDP in an economy half today’s size.

Reagan and Bush had the same scheme in mind. Some call it “supply-side economics,” others a “voodoo” variety on the idea that tax cuts release “stifled creative energies,” stimulate higher economic growth and produce greater government revenue. The Reagan one signaled “anything goes.” Besides generous benefits for the rich and business, it encouraged speculative real estate investment, especially for commercial ventures. It also removed restrictions on corporate takeovers.

A year later, interest rates headed down, stock and bond prices shot up, a speculative bonanza was unleashed, and here’s the bottom line. Reaganomics failed to encourage productive investment, except for selected defense contractors. Money instead poured into equities and debt instruments, high-risk real estate, junk bond-financed leveraged buyouts, and tax-sheltered oil well and other development.

At the same time, infrastructure needs were ignored, organized labor was targeted, government became the problem, and deregulation the solution to get it off our backs. Throughout the 1980s and since: organized labor ranks declined, high-paying manufacturing jobs were lost, working American living standards declined, and an astonishing generational shift began – the annual wealth transfer of over $1 trillion from 90 million working class households to for-profit corporations and the richest 1% of the population to create an unprecedented wealth disparity. It continues unabated and is destroying the bedrock middle class without which democracy can’t survive and is already on life support and sinking.

Simultaneously, by the mid-1980s, the US went from being the world’s largest creditor to a net debtor nation for the first time since 1914. Budget deficits as well skyrocketed along with the national debt, and the true economic condition was revealed. “It was sick.” Today, it’s much sicker and depends on “the kindness of strangers” the way it did in the roaring twenties until the 1929 market crash smashed it.

At the end of the 1980s, a lesser version of it occurred from the savings and loan industry (S & Ls) collapse. During the decade, almost $1 trillion went into speculative real estate, and for the first time banks were allowed to participate. S & Ls took full advantage in an anything goes, deregulated environment. The 1982 Garn-St. Germain Act let them invest in anything they wished with government-backed $100,000 per account insurance. It allowed reckless speculation, massive fraud, and was an ideal way for organized crime and CIA to launder billions in drugs-related funds.

The 1980s ended the Reagan era when George HW Bush became President in 1989. It coincided with the fall of the Berlin Wall in November and breakup of the Soviet Union in 1991. Around the same time, it was decided to target the Middle East and its vast oil reserves to counter the fear of a united Germany and economically expanding continental Europe that could threaten US dominance. Saddam would be the victim and an easy target after being weakened by the 1980 – 1988 Iran-Iraq war and a $65 billion debt to foreign creditors.

The scheme was to lure him into a trap (with Kuwait as bait) to provide a pretext for US military intervention. The rest is history:

– Iraq invaded Kuwait on August 2, 1990;

– four days later Operation Desert Shield was launched; harsh economic sanctions were imposed and a large US troop deployment began;

– Operation Desert Storm began on January 17, 1991 and ended six weeks later on February 28;

– Next came 12 years of the most comprehensive genocidal sanctions ever imposed on a country that included a crippling embargo; hundreds of thousands died and millions suffered;

– Operation Iraqi Freedom was launched on March 19, 2003 and is still ongoing nearly five years later; the “cradle of civilization” was erased, a free market paradise created, and the death, human misery and displacement toll is incalculable for an impossible to win guerilla war.

From the Evil Empire to the Axis of Evil

In his 1991 State of the Union address, GHW Bush proclaimed a New World Order, quickly dropped the term but pursued the policy. The younger Bush does as well with focus shifted from the “Evil Empire” to the “Axis of Evil.” It was a vague construct that conveniently encompassed the Eurasian continent and its oil riches. To ensure US dominance, they had to be controlled, especially against key Japanese, European Union (EU) and emerging Chinese rivals.

A threefold scheme was hatched to do it:

– target Russia, eastern Europe and all parts of the world to ensure IMF rules and US dollar hegemony are maintained;

– control every country with significant energy or other vital raw material resources; and

– maintain unchallengeable military supremacy to deter opposition to US-imposed rules.

The catch word was “globalization.” It denies global justice, globalizes US dominance, and consolidates it by political, economic and military enforcement. At the start of the 1990s, however, Japan had become the world’s economic and banking leader and had to be confronted. A reckless speculation decade left American banks in deep crisis. Japan operated differently, prospered and challenged US supremacy. Its influence was recognized and had to be undercut.

Treasury Secretary James Baker laid the trap through the 1985 Plaza accord and the Baker-Miyazawa month later agreement. He got Tokyo to exercise monetary and fiscal measures to expand domestic demand and reduce Japan’s external surplus. At the same time, the Bank of Japan cut interest rates to 2.5% in 1987 and held that level until May, 1989. The plan was for lower rates to stimulate US goods purchases. Instead, cheap money went into Japanese stocks and real estate and led to colossal twin bubbles still deflating today.

The yen was also affected. Within months, it shot up 40% against the dollar, and overnight Japan became the world’s largest banking center, surpassing London and New York. As the country’s twin bubbles inflated, Japan became home to the world’s 10 largest banks, an astonishing achievement for a country its size or any country. Things were so extreme at the bubble’s peak that the value of Tokyo real estate, in dollars, exceeded all of it in the US, and the nominal value of Japanese stocks amounted to 42% of the world’s total – but not for long.

Tokyo equities peaked in December, 1989. Three months later, the Nikkei dropped 23% or over $1 trillion in value, and it was just the beginning. From its 38,915 peak, Japanese stocks plunged to 7831 in April, 2003 with no assurance that’s a bottom. Why and how could this happen? Japanese officials speculated on the reason.

In 1990, Japan proposed financing the former Soviet Union’s reconstruction and drew strong US opposition. In addition, Japan’s MITI model was suggested for former communist countries with Washington dead set against it for two reasons: it might exclude US companies, and it would rely on state economic guidance that impressively fueled Japanese and Asian Tiger growth. It had to be stopped as America had other ideas for the post-Cold War era.

Pressure was applied with threats of drastic US troop cuts that would endanger Japan’s security. The message was abandon economic plans or provide your own defense. At the same time, Japan’s twin bubbles kept deflating, months later the Nikkei had lost $5 trillion in value, the country was badly hurt, and its challenge to America was dropped.

That was Phase One. Phase Two confronted Asian Tiger countries because (like Japan) their economic model bested the US and threatened it. It was a major embarrassment to IMF rules that exploit developing states for America’s gain. In the 1980s, East Asia boomed with 7 – 8% annual growth rates compared to half that in the US. Their market economy followed state guidance and planning and it worked. They were also debt-free and unhampered by IMF restrictions. In addition, their model enhanced social security and productivity, promoted universal education and set limits on foreign investment and imports. Washington had other ideas.

In 1993, demands were made to deregulate, open financial markets, and allow free capital flows. Easing followed and trouble began. From 1994 to 1997, hot money flooded in and created speculative real estate, stock and other asset bubbles. Hedge funds (including George Soros’ billions allied with major international banks) forcefully acted. They attacked the weakest regional economy and its currency – Thailand and its baht. The aim? Force devaluation, and it worked. Thailand capitulated, floated its currency and turned to the IMF for help it never before needed.

Next came the Philippines, Indonesia and South Korea as their “populations sank into economic chaos and (mass) poverty.” Prosperous Asian Tigers were humbled, they were forced into IMF debt bondage, and Russia got the same medicine plus a bonus. A sole superpower remained under US dollar supremacy, and US military bases encircled its former adversary, were closing in, and targeted an emerging China as well.

Russian shock therapy was especially tragic. Washington wanted to deindustrialize the country to permanently destroy the old Soviet economic structure. Boris Yeltsin complied, and IMF wreckage was the scheme. A corporatist state replaced a communist one, and its apparatchiks were winners along with a handful of mutual fund managers who made dizzying returns from newly privatized Russian companies. In addition, 17 nouveau billionaires (called “the oligarchs”) emerged overnight, strip mined the country’s wealth, and shipped it overseas to safe havens.

Russia’s people were devastated and still suffer. Unemployment is epidemic, well over half the population is impoverished, 80% of farmers were bankrupted, and 70,000 state factories were shuttered. And it got worse. Social services ended, diseases like HIV/AIDS became rampant, suicides rose, violent crime jumped fourfold, and the population now declines by about 700,000 a year with free market medicine already having killed over 10% of it. Outside a select elite, the former superpower was humbled, reduced to Third World status, and it created potential for Big Oil to exploit Russia’s energy riches that were given away for kopecks on the ruble.

Seven oligarchs grabbed off half the country’s natural resources. Their hard currency profits were dollarized, but by summer 1998 things got out of hand. With the economy in trouble, the IMF extended an emergency $23 billion loan to support the ruble and protect speculative western investments, but it came too late. On August 15, Russia did the unthinkable. It defaulted and, for a time, shock the dollarized world. The largest of all hedge funds (LTCM) bet on the country and leveraged up manyfold. A financial disaster loomed, the Fed intervened, Russia’s default was quietly forgiven, and dollarization resumed.

Earlier, the Balkans got shock therapy and became a target for dismemberment with a simple idea in mind – destroy its mixed socialist economy that was independent of the West and couldn’t be tolerated. Europe’s soft underbelly also lies between central Asia’s oil and the route over which Washington wants it transported. It had to be brought to heel, and a US-led NATO was the way. Softening up began by the late 1980s, continued into the new decade, and George Soros was at it again. IMF medicine was employed, living standards plunged, and economic chaos resulted. Breakup began, each region was on its own, and a lot of pushing came from the West.

Croatia and Slovania seceded first in 1991. That lit the fuse that exploded in a series of Balkan wars. Slobadan Milosevic became the fall guy, was targeted for removal, conflict lasted the decade, and it culminated with US-NATO’s merciless 79 day 1999 Serbia bombing that caused an estimated $40 billion of destruction to the country’s economy and infrastructure. The US moved in and set up shop in one of its largest military bases in the world – Camp Bondsteel near Gnjilane in southeast Kosovo. It’s a Serbian province that was split off and occupied by design. The West’s divide and conquer strategy is in play, Kosovo heads for independence, and the mother country’s objections don’t matter.

At war’s end, US Eurasian control was enhanced but not guaranteed as the contest for Caspian riches is still in play with Russia, China and others vying for them.

A New Millennium for Oil Geopolitics

A new president accompanied the new millennium with a changed Washington focus – oil is at its core, controlling it is key, and Dick Cheney’s first job as vice-president was working with the (James) Baker Institute to draft the April 2001 National Energy Policy Report. It projected a growing dependency on foreign oil, highlighted Iraq’s “de-stabilizing influence,” and recommended “restat(ing) goals with respect to Iraq policy.” It also linked the Pentagon with future energy policy plans.

Core report recommendations signalled how with a crystal clear message:

– securing foreign sources is key;

– less than cooperative governments in volatile parts of the world control some of the largest sources; and

– Cheney highlighted concern at a private 1999 London Institute of Petroleum meeting saying: “by 2010 we will need on the order of an additional fifty million barrels a day.”

He didn’t flinch saying where we’d get it: “the Middle East, with two-thirds of the world’s oil and the lowest cost, is still where the prize ultimately lies….” and Iraq is the potential crown jewel with the largest of all untapped low-hanging fruit. Immediately on entering the White House, Cheney & Co. swung into action. They focused on Iraq like a laser, targeted Saddam Hussein, and removing him from office became top goal.

Washington teems with schemes and intrigue, but a neoconservative think tank was particularly diabolical. Established in 1997, it was called the Project for the New American Century (PNAC), its goal was unchallengeable US dominance, and a policy paper was drafted to achieve it. It appeared in 2000 and was called “Rebuilding America’s Defenses: Strategies, Forces and Resources for a New Century.” It stated that “America should seek to preserve and extend its position of global leadership by maintaining the preeminence of US military forces.” It further called for “American hegemony” and “full-spectrum dominance,” and believed achieving it would be long-term “absent some catastrophic and catalyzing event – like a new Pearl Harbor.”

A rogues gallery of PNAC members joined the Bush administration in 2001, key among them Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld and Paul Wolfowitz, and topping their goals was removing Saddam Hussein. September 11 obliged, the “war on terror” was born, “terrorism” replaced communism as the new enemy, its core was in the oil-rich Middle East, and its headquarters was in Iraq. Removing the Taliban was just a warm-up for the main event ahead. It was conceived before bin Laden was “Enemy Number One” and overnight Al-Queda became western civilization’s greatest threat.

On October 7, 2001 (four weeks after 9/11), America went to war. Target One was Afghanistan, controlling Central Asian oil was the goal, transporting it through Afghanistan was the plan, and the Taliban had to go because they rejected one-way Washington (double) deal making. They fled Kabul five weeks later, Northern Alliance warlords took over, a puppet president was installed, war ended (for a time), and the focus shifted to Iraq.

Prepping the public began, Saddam became another Hitler, his WMDs threatened western civilization, so he had to go. “Shock and awe” began on March 19, 2003, and Baghdad fell three weeks later. Saddam was removed, fighting “officially” ended in May, and to almost no one’s surprise, no WMDs were found because they’re weren’t any, and that was known by the mid-1990s or earlier.

Paul Wolfowitz attended an unreported Singapore security conference in June. He was asked why America chose WMDs as a causis belli when none existed. He answered it was “the only thing we could agree on.” He was also asked why Iraq was targeted, not North Korea and its nuclear threat, and he explained: “The country swims on a sea of oil” so there was no other choice with world supply running out.

That conclusion came out of an alarming September 9, 2001 Oil Depletion Analysis Centre energy policy memo to Tony Blair. It highlighted “hydrocarbon difficulties,” declining output, and importance of Iraq as the one remaining untapped oil-rich country. Securing it was key because credible geological reports argued that easy cheap oil was dramatically declining while global demand was rising, especially in emerging China and India. For almost a century, world economic growth needed cheap, plentiful oil. No good substitute exists so controlling what’s left is essential.

Further, if “peak oil” has been reached, as many believe, its cost will explode, and one analyst predicted: “Beyond 2005, the energy required to find and extract a barrel of oil will exceed the energy contained in the barrel.” Further, he estimated most major oil sources are near or at peak, for every new barrel discovered, four are being used, and the only cheap untapped supply left is in the Middle East where around two-thirds of proved reserves remain. Five regional countries are key – Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Iran, the Gulf Emirates (notably Qatar) and Iraq above all with estimates that its potential may be 432 billion barrels or around two-thirds more than Saudi Arabia’s proved reserves.

If true, Iraq’s importance is vital, its real estate is the world’s most valuable, and controlling it unchallenged means “Washington (holds) the trump cards over all potential economic rivals,” friends and foes. Even more grandiose would be to control every major and potential worldwide oil source and transport route to achieve unimaginable omnipotence. It would be a global-scale chokehold to decide who gets supply, who doesn’t, how much and at what price. It would thereby assure who controls world economic development and remains Number One.

Unchallengeable military power is key and the reason the Bush administration repositioned its global presence through a web of new bases. They’ve been strategically placed where Cold War geopolitics didn’t permit. Unsurprisingly, they target Eurasia and its importance Zbigniew Brzezinski highlighted in his 1997 book, “The Grand Chessboard.” He referred to the region as the “center of world power extending from Germany and Poland in the East through Russia and China to the Pacific and including the Middle East and Indian subcontinent.” Dominating it assures the US access to and control of its vast energy reserves, so that becomes Goal One.

But it doesn’t exclude broader aims, including Africa that will supply around one-fourth of future US oil supply, according to some analysts. It explains the Pentagon’s AFRICOM presence that’s expected to be fully operational by late summer and be responsible for the entire continent and its valued resources that include more than energy.

Swing over to Latin America and its energy potential. Countries like Venezuela, Colombia, Ecuador, Bolivia, Brazil and Mexico are very much in US plans with the Bolivarian Republic far and away most important. According to Hugo Chavez and some US estimates, the country has more potential reserves than Saudi Arabia when its heavy oil is included. It explains SOUTHCOM’S mission and command over 30 regional countries with a growing presence in a number of them and ongoing operations (some covert) throughout Latin America.

Engdahl ends his book discussing oil’s importance to US “full spectrum dominance.” Controlling it directly or indirectly through client regimes means holding “a true weapon of mass destruction (and) potential blackmail over the rest of the world. Who would dare challenge the dollar” as the world’s reserve currency? And if IMF rules keep restraining developing countries’ growth, their oil demand will be curbed, so all the more for America and its key Global North allies at a time when most world oil sources have peaked. More than ever then, controlling world energy reserves is crucial to maintaining economic growth.

The 1970s oil shocks were warning shots. Today, threatened shortfalls are real and worsening. We call controlling world supply promoting democracy, others see the subterfuge, and some critics feel our imperial arrogance defines our weakness. Today, America is unrivaled in global power, and Engdahl quoted the late Edward Said after Iraq’s invasion saying: “Every single empire (says) it is not like all the others, that (it’s special), that it has a mission to enlighten, civilize, bring order and democracy (and only use) force as a last resort.” It remains to be seen what’s ahead in “the New American Century,” but the evidence so far isn’t encouraging, and that’s putting it mildly.

http://sjlendman.blogspot.com/

Andrew Sullivan on Obama:

The “Best Face” For Imperialism

 

In an article in the December issue of The Atlantic, commentator Andrew Sullivan argues that Barack Obama should be the next president of the United States. (“Goodbye to All That: Why Obama Matters,” December 2007). Sullivan writes that a (ruling class) “consensus” agenda for endless war and increased repression will be in effect regardless of who is president. He challenges the reader to pick who could best implement all this in the face of global isolation and profound domestic alienation. And, in the process, he sheds light on the real role of elections in this society.

Those who are willing to listen in on a ruling class insider’s case for Obama, read on.

Civics 101: Your Vote for President “Has Little to Do With” Basic Policy Decisions

First, a note on Andrew Sullivan’s credentials: Sullivan writes columns for the New York Times, Time magazine, and is a regular on the political talk shows. He is a senior editor at The Atlantic magazine. Sullivan’s defining political legacy was his tenure as editor of The New Republic, where he counted among his big achievements the promotion of the book The Bell Curve, a completely ridiculous but highly influential pseudoscientific book that claimed that Black people are genetically inferior to whites. The New Republic under his editorship played a key role in—in his words—“helping to torpedo the Clinton administration’s plans for universal health coverage.” A conservative who has differences with Christian fundamentalism (Sullivan is openly gay), he invokes Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher as models.

And yes, he is supporting Barack Obama for president.

Very early in Sullivan’s article, he invokes and reveals a little ruling class secret: Your vote “has little to do with” basic policy decisions.

Listen to Sullivan: “The logic behind the candidacy of Barack Obama,” he writes, “has little to do with his policy proposals, which are very close to his Democratic rivals’ and which, with a few exceptions, exist firmly within the conventions of our politics.”

Sullivan lists, rather extensively, how such “conventions of our politics” are set for the next president, regardless of who he is. The war in Iraq? It “has a momentum that will propel the occupation into the next decade.” “Every potential president,” writes Sullivan, “is committed to an open-ended deployment in Afghanistan and an unbending alliance with Israel.” And Sullivan doesn’t even pose as “issues” many of the most egregious outrages that people are angry about—from the abandonment of the poor and Black people of New Orleans, to the generated xenophobia and reign of terror against immigrants. The word “torture” never appears in his article.

While Sullivan’s actual projection of the ruling class “evolving consensus” is bad enough, it also includes what is likely wishful thinking on his part. For example, he postulates that this “consensus” includes permitting abortion in the first trimester—something that the leading Republican candidates have vowed to end. But the more fundamental revelation pointed to here is not that Obama’s policies are the same as those of every other “credible” candidate (which they are), but that it doesn’t really matter what his policies are.

Underlying Sullivan’s assertion that Obama’s candidacy (or anyone else’s) has “little to do with his policy proposals” is a deeper truth which is not acknowledged by Sullivan, although it drives the whole framework that he does acknowledge. The foundational thing here is that whoever is elected president of the United States presides over a system of capitalism-imperialism that has its own logic, and any president who tried to go against that would be “overruled” in one form or another quickly by the system. To take just one example: If someone got elected president and tried to withdraw U.S. military forces from all of the 130 countries with U.S. bases, this plan would be “overruled” in one form or another by the apparatus of the capitalist state (through “advice” from ruling class advisers, impeachment, “scandal,” or other forms). Why? Because the global domination of U.S. capital is projected and enforced by these military bases. That imperialist domination of the world, in turn, is key to the relative high standard of living and social stability within the U.S. If a president tried to shut down all the U.S. military bases around the world, that would be incompatible with, and cause severe disruption in the U.S. imperialist economy and in society.

Having clarified that this election “has little to do with Obama’s policy proposals,” and “even less to do with his ideological pedigree,” Sullivan gets to the argument for Obama, and in the course of doing so, entreats the reader into complicity with terrible crimes.

“The Most Effective Re-Branding of the United States Since Reagan”

Obama, argues Sullivan, is “the most effective potential re-branding of the United States since Reagan. Such a re-branding is not trivial—it’s central to an effective war strategy. The war on Islamist terror, after all, is two-pronged: a function of both hard power and soft power.” (By “hard power,” Sullivan means military force; by “soft power,” he means non-military dimensions of “winning hearts and minds”—in conjunction with the use of, or threat of, military power.)

Choosing whether Obama, Clinton, Edwards, McCain or anyone else would actually be the most effective “soft power” weapon in the “war on terror,” is choosing who will put the best face on the actual source of the worst global terror—U.S. imperialism. Let’s check back into reality for a moment and reflect on the horrors the “war on terror” has brought: Up to a million or more dead Iraqis. Five million Iraqis dislocated from their homes or country. Afghanistan, in ruins, controlled by either the Taliban or drug-growing Islamic fundamentalist warlords aligned with the U.S. Torture chambers from Bagram in Afghanistan to secret cells in Europe. Rendition to Egypt, Syria, Saudi Arabia for more U.S.-sponsored torture. Detention without trial. Guantánamo. And a world trapped in a horrific polarization between U.S. imperialist aggression, plunder, and terror, and reactionary Islamic fundamentalism that is both the target of and, in many ways, a product of the “war on terror.”

Obama’s invocation of Ronald Reagan is worth another look in the context of Sullivan’s article. Sullivan specifically argues that Obama could be the most effective president at projecting U.S. power around the world since Reagan.

Reagan’s infamous joke: “My fellow Americans, I’m pleased to tell you today that I’ve signed legislation that will outlaw Russia forever, we begin bombing in five minutes,” concentrated his role in history. While he rattled horrific nuclear weapons, he armed thugs to carry out terror from Nicaragua to Afghanistan, from El Salvador and Guatemala to Angola and Mozambique. Reagan fostered a war between Iraq and Iran that took the lives of a million people and backed the apartheid government of South Africa and the racist state of Israel—when both were brutally suppressing internal rebellions of the oppressed peoples within their borders.

Since controversy broke out over his pro-Reagan statements to a Nevada newspaper, Obama has sought to “clarify” what he meant. Let’s re-examine his statements.

In the interview with the Reno Gazette-Journal, Obama said: “Ronald Reagan changed the trajectory of America in a way that Richard Nixon did not and in a way that Bill Clinton did not. He put us on a fundamentally different path because the country was ready for it. I think they felt like with all the excesses of the ’60s and ’70s, and government had grown and grown, but there wasn’t much sense of accountability in terms of how it was operating. I think he tapped into what people were already feeling. Which is, ‘We want clarity, we want optimism, we want a return to that sense of dynamism and entrepreneurship that had been missing.’”

Later Obama “clarified” his remarks to say that he “spent a lifetime fighting against Ronald Reagan’s policies,” while not recanting his previous comments. But, as we have seen, “policies” are not really what elections are all about. What Obama calls the “excesses” of the ’60s were really great struggles that did not go far enough. And the point remains that both Sullivan, and Obama himself, are invoking the Reagan legacy in terms promoting feel-good “clarity” and “optimism” about the crimes of U.S. imperialism.

Nobody who opposes the terrible course this country is on should want to be part of a campaign to do that.

Two Scenarios

In promoting Obama for president, Sullivan poses a couple of very heavy scenarios. Sullivan writes: “Consider this hypothetical. It’s November 2008. A young Pakistani Muslim is watching television and sees that this man Barack Hussein Obama is the new face of America. In one simple image, America’s soft power has been ratcheted up not a notch, but a logarithm… If you wanted the crudest but most effective weapon against the demonization of America that fuels Islamist ideology, Obama’s face gets close. It proves them wrong about what America is in ways no words can.”

This is an argument for who would be the best face on endless imperialist war, mass murder, and torture. Why the hell would you want to be part of choosing who could best put that over on people?

And Sullivan argues that Obama is not only a better face for the “war on terror” around the world, but also a uniquely credible face for domestic repression. What would happen, Sullivan asks, if there were “another 9/11–style attack.” He poses that “It is hard to imagine a reprise of the sudden unity and solidarity in the days after 9/11, or an outpouring of support from allies and neighbors. It is far easier to imagine an even more bitter fight over who was responsible (apart from the perpetrators) and a profound suspicion of a government forced to impose more restrictions on travel, communications, and civil liberties. The current president would be unable to command the trust, let alone the support, of half the country in such a time. He could even be blamed for provoking any attack that came.”

The context here is an argument over who would be best, in the event of “another 9/11-style attack” (or, one could add, a claim by the government that one was “planned”), to implement what Sullivan euphemistically calls “more restrictions on travel, communications, civil liberties.”

Right now, uncounted people are on secret “watch lists,” prohibited from traveling on airplanes. The most massively intrusive surveillance in human history monitors your phone calls and your Internet browsing, and makes it illegal for a librarian to tell you the government is looking at what books you check out. The president can lock up anyone, for any reason, on his say-so, without recourse to anything resembling a credible trial. And Sullivan is arguing that Obama would be best for implementing even more fascistic repression.

Once more: Why the hell would you want to be part of choosing who could best put that over on people?

The Intensifying Domestic “Civil War”

Sullivan frames his argument for Obama in the context of what he calls an “intensifying, a nonviolent civil war.” A conflict “about culture and about religion and about race.”

There is profound conflict in the U.S. over culture, religion, and race. It is characterized not by nonviolence, but by one-sided violence. White supremacy that in an earlier era was enforced through lynch mobs and nooses (and note the comeback of the noose) is today enforced in the inner cities by the policeman’s gun. The religious culture war is waged by violent attacks on not only abortion clinics, but also those who work for them. And society is so permeated with violence against women in the form of rape and domestic violence against women that it is an invisible part of the “culture.”

There is also a polarization at the top of society, among the ruling class. On one side, the core around Bush (and, generally speaking, ruling class forces whose agenda is expressed by or represented by the Republican Party) is on a mission—in the literal, religious sense in many ways—to radically remake the post-“Cold War” world and to tear up the “social contract” that has more or less held U.S. society together for generations. On the other side are forces in the ruling class who are operating in the same framework, but fear doing all this too fast, too overtly, and in a way that will tear society apart (generally characterized by the leaders of the Democratic Party).

A substantial thread in Sullivan’s article includes his advice on how to manage the conflict at the top of the ruling class, including his dissatisfaction with Bush’s style and approach (among Sullivan’s complaints: Bush is “unable to do nuance”). But here, we’ll focus on Sullivan’s argument that Obama is the best face not only for U.S. imperialist war, but also for resolving the domestic “civil war.”

Obama, Sullivan writes, can take “America—finally—past the debilitating, self-perpetuating family quarrel of the Baby Boom generation that has long engulfed all of us.” And Obama can end “the war within America that has prevailed since Vietnam and that shows dangerous signs of intensifying.”

Sullivan’s own perspective is that the best course for those with fears and reservations about the direction things are heading is to adopt much of the framework established by Bush, and push for moderation within that. Sullivan sees the Baby Boomers (his repeated term for the legacy of the ’60s) as an obstacle to forging a reasonable course within the “evolving consensus.” In his article, he claims that those who oppose the U.S. “war on terror,” and the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, “judged the 9/11 attacks to be a legitimate response to decades of U.S. foreign policy.”

This distortion is important to excavate. The most powerful opposition voices to the “war on terror” have never argued that 9/11 was a “legitimate response” to U.S. foreign policy. They have argued that the “war on terror” is immoral, illegal, and illegitimate; and that the people themselves must forge a new way forward in opposition to both McWorld and Jihad. For example, the Call from World Can’t Wait, signed by thousands of people including many prominent actors, authors, political activists, and others, begins: “YOUR GOVERNMENT, on the basis of outrageous lies, is waging a murderous and utterly illegitimate war in Iraq, with other countries in their sights. YOUR GOVERNMENT is openly torturing people, and justifying it.” (The Call is available at worldcantwait.org.) Millions in this country have asked, and more should ask, “Why do they hate us so much?”

Distorting such questioning and opposition in the way Sullivan does—claiming that such opposition judges the 9/11 attacks “legitimate”—fits in with the framework established by the Bush mantra of “You’re either with us or you’re with the terrorists.”

Sullivan, and let’s face it, he is accurately projecting what Obama is about, argues that Obama can isolate “the Baby Boomers” and get America past all that ’60s stuff. And here again, the Reagan legacy is invoked, not—actually—by Sullivan, but by Obama himself who recently pointed to Reagan’s ability to “transform how we think about ourselves as a country in fundamental ways…”

As we wrote last week, in the wake of the rebellious culture of the ’60s, “Reagan came out there with this shit-eating grin and salesman’s chuckle, and all the while he mobilized a fascist social base ready to bully anybody, and he narcotized those in the middle, and he effectively silenced and marginalized those who stood for anything decent.” (See “ ‘American Greatness’—And Why Obama and Reagan Really DO Belong Together,” by Toby O’Ryan at revcom.us.) In this context, Obama’s constant invocation that “There is no liberal America, there is no conservative America, there is only the United States of America…” can be understood as a call for patriotic national unity—unity with the most terrible crimes being committed by the world’s sole superpower.

And again, it must be posed: Who the hell would want to “resolve” the culture wars in society this way?

Sullivan does not focus much in this essay on the great societal divide over the oppression of Black people (or other oppressed nationalities). (The relationship between Obama’s campaign and white supremacy is beyond the scope of this article, but here it can be noted that in this essay Sullivan describes “Obama’s campaign for white America: courteous and smiling and with no sudden moves.”) Sullivan does address the question of the rise of theocratic Christian religious fundamentalism. In the method typical of his article, Sullivan defines the societal divide over religion in terms that marginalize secularism, and even separation of church and state, referring to a conflict between “God-fearing Americans and the peacenik atheist hippies.”

Sullivan argues for a bigger role for religion in society and government than has been the norm up to Bush. The choice, Sullivan poses, is between “crude exploitation of sectarian loyalty and religious zeal by Bush and Rove,” and a bigger role for religion that stops short of that. Sullivan writes, “You cannot lead the United States without having a foot in both the religious and secular camps.” Whatever Sullivan’s intentions, the view of ceding a larger role to religion and denigrating secular culture (those “atheist hippies”) cedes the moral high ground to Christian fascists. Both Obama and Hillary Clinton (and before her Bill Clinton) have also promoted the illusion that by conceding ground to the Christian fundamentalists you can moderate or temper them. It is in this context that Obama’s particular brand of professed Christian beliefs fits the bill, according to Sullivan, although he acknowledges that Hillary Clinton as well is taking pains to position herself as accommodating to the rise of Christian fundamentalism.

What We REALLY Need

Underlying Sullivan’s argument that Obama is the best candidate to manage all these conflicts in the direction the ruling class wants to take things is an explicit acknowledgement that there is a sharp polarization in U.S. society that could get out of control—“the war within America that has prevailed since Vietnam and that shows dangerous signs of intensifying.”

This intensifying situation will not just “fall into” anything good for the people. The global anger at the U.S. is far from enough to bring about anything positive. That is the case within the U.S., and it is the case worldwide. Within the U.S., anger at the direction of things can take, and for many is taking, the form of rallying around patriotic Christian fascism and an attraction to the “good old days” of unquestioned white supremacy and “good vs. evil” simplistic support for U.S. wars. Around the world, far too many angry oppressed people look to the reactionary dead end of Islamic fundamentalism as a “response” to imperialism.

But the emergence of a real and visible opposition to the whole direction this country is headed, standing with and starting from the interests of humanity,can forge a new polarization within the U.S. and create a much better climate for the emergence of progressive and revolutionary movements worldwide, and can even create openings for, and forces for, revolutionary change in the U.S.

Working for that is something worth doing. And it is a lot more realistic than putting your faith in a candidacy, and a process that is part of putting “the best face” on a world of horrors!

“If you fall into the orientation of trying to make the Democrats be what they are not, and never will be, you will end up becoming more like what the Democrats actually are.”
—Bob Avakian

http://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2008/01/29/18475649.php

Venezuela cuts oil sales to Exxon Mobil

 

Venezuela’s state oil company has stopped selling crude to Exxon Mobil and suspended commercial relations with the US-based oil Corp.State-run Petroleos de Venezuela SA, or PDVSA, said in a statement that it “has paralyzed sales of crude to Exxon Mobil, in response to the company’s judicial-economic harassment. “PDVSA will completely honor the existing contractual commitments relative to common investments with Exxon Mobil abroad, reserving the right to terminate those contracts whose terms permit them to be rescinded,” the state oil company said.

“The legal actions carried out by the US transnational are unnecessary … and hostile,” PDVSA said of Exxon’s attempts to seize Venezuelan assets in US, British and Dutch courts. Exxon is challenging President Hugo Chavez government’s nationalization of one of four heavy oil projects in the Orinoco River basin, one of the world’s richest oil deposits.

Last month, a British court issued an injunction, temporarily freezing up to $12 billion in PDVSA assets abroad. Exxon is also challenging the nationalization in a US court in New York. President Hugo Chavez has already shaken oil markets with recent threats to entirely cut supply to the US, in retaliation for Exxon’s legal drive to freeze Venezuelan assets in a dispute over nationalized oil ventures.

It was not immediately clear what impact PDVSA’s decision to cut supply to Exxon would have.

http://www.presstv.ir/detail.aspx?id=42857§ionid=351020704

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Oil rises as Venezuela cuts off Exxon Mobil

Tue Feb 12, 2008 7By Rebekah Kebede

NEW YORK, Feb 12 (Reuters) – Oil prices rose late on Tuesday after Venezuela announced it was stopping sales of crude oil top U.S. oil company Exxon Mobil Corp.

The move came in response to a legal challenge by Exxon Mobil (XOM.N: Quote, Profile, Research) against Venezuela’s nationalization last year of a heavy oil project.

U.S. crude CLc1 rose 24 cents to $93.02 a barrel by 6:50 p.m. EST (2350 GMT), climbing into positive territory after settling the trading session 81 cents lower at $92.78 a barrel. London Brent crude LCOc1 settled 67 cents lower at $92.86 a barrel.

“This is a little bit more saber-rattling from Venezuela and the market is just beginning to realize that it is going to see more sparks from Venezuela and Exxon Mobil,” said Jim Ritterbusch, president of Ritterbusch & Associates.

On Monday, oil prices rose as Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez threatened a stoppage after Exxon won court rulings freezing $12 billion in Venezuelan assets in a fight over compensation for a nationalized project. The U.S. government has received assurances that the world’s top oil producers could compensate for any Venezuelan disruption, a U.S. government official, who declined to be named, told Reuters.

“While a disruption in short-haul Venezuelan supplies would be a blow to the U.S. economy, it would arguably be much more devastating to Venezuela itself,” said energy analyst Antoine Halff of Newedge Group.

Before Venezuela’s announcement, oil prices had been pressured by forecasts that U.S. government inventory data to be released on Wednesday would show a 2.7 million-barrel build in crude stocks in the week to Feb. 8. That would mark the fifth consecutive weekly rise in crude stocks amid concerns that the slowing U.S. economy was damping oil demand.U.S. crude prices have tumbled from record highs above $100 a barrel struck in early January as the credit crisis keeps dragging on the U.S. economy.

Analysts also forecast a 1.4 million-barrel decline in distillate stocks and a 1.8 million-barrel build in gasoline inventories. (Reporting by Matthew Robinson in New York, James Topham in Tokyo and Alex Lawler in London; Editing by David Gregorio)

reuters

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Iran to open oil bourse next Sunday

 

Oil Minister Gholam Hossein Nozari said on Wednesday that Iran’s Oil Bourse is to start operation from next Sunday. Speaking to reporters after a cabinet session, he said Minister of Economy and Financial Affairs Davoud Danesh Jaafari is to attend the opening ceremony.

Iran’s national currency, rial will be the base of hard currencies for all transactions in Tehran Oil Bourse, he said. The country’s oil revenue is to hit dlrs 63 billion this year, said the minister.

On construction of Peace Pipeline between Iran, Pakistan and India, he said China can join the project if it desires so. “Iran and India are now working on the plan and involvement of China does not mean that India has to be excluded from the project,” he said.

On invitation extended by Turkey to India for cooperation in ‘Valve Oil’ in Central Asia and impacts on such cooperation on Iran-India joint cooperation in Peace Pipeline, he said these are some assumptions which are not true.

The Oil Ministry is to drill ten oil wells which is expected to raise the volume of gas production by another 20 to 25 million cubic metric next year, he said. On formation of a gas cartel like OPEC, he said the plan is very time consuming and requires collective cooperation among gas producing countries.

 

http://www2.irna.ir/en/news/view/menu-237/0802135267165148.htm

 

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Note: Recall that the OPEC secretary general stated that OPEC is going to gradually wean itself away from the dollar. That’s not just in pricing, but in purchasing also.

The US-NATO Preemptive Nuclear Doctrine: Trigger a Middle East Nuclear Holocaust to Defend “The Western Way of Life”

by Michel Chossudovsky
Global Research, February 11, 2008

What the Western allies face is a long, sustained and proactive defence of their societies and way of life. To that end, they must keep risks at a distance, while at the same time protecting their homelands.

International terrorism today aims to disrupt and destroy our societies, our economies and our way of life. …

These different sources of Islamist propaganda and/or violence vary in their intellectual underpinnings, sectarian and political aims, … . But what they have in common is an assault on the values of the West – on its democratic processes and its freedom of religion…

Notwithstanding the common perception in the West, the origin of Islamist terrorism is not victimhood, nor an inferiority complex, but a well-financed superiority complex grounded in a violent political ideology.

If the irrational and fanatical Islamist organizations get out of hand, there is a risk that, … the rise of fundamentalisms and despotisms will usher in a new, illiberal age, in which the liberties that Western societies enjoy are seriously jeopardized.

The threats that the West and its partners face today are a combination of violent terrorism against civilians and institutions, wars fought by proxy by states that sponsor terrorism, the behaviour of rogue states, the actions of organised international crime, and the coordination of hostile action through abuse of non-military means.

Towards a Grand Strategy for an Uncertain World: Renewing Transatlantic Partnership”.

Group report by former chiefs of staff General John Shalikashvili, (US), General Klaus Naumann (Germany), Field Marshal Lord Inge (UK), Admiral Jacques Lanxade (France) and Henk van den Breemen (The Netherlands), published by the Netherlands based Noaber Foundation, December 2007, (emphasis added)

The controversial NATO sponsored report entitled “Towards a Grand Strategy for an Uncertain World: Renewing Transatlantic Partnership“. calls for a first strike use of nuclear weapons. The preemptive use of nukes would also be used to undermine an “increasingly brutal World” as a means to prevent the use of weapons of mass destruction:

“They the authors of the report consider that nuclear war might soon become possible in an increasingly brutal world. They propose the first use of nuclear weapons must remain “in the quiver of escalation as the ultimate instrument to prevent the use of weapons of mass destruction”. (Paul Dibb, Sidney Morning Herald, 11 February 2008)

The group, insists that the option of first strike of nuclear weapons is “indispensable, since there is simply no realistic prospect of a nuclear-free world.” (Report, p. 97, emphasis added):

Nuclear weapons are the ultimate instrument of an asymmetric response – and at the same time the ultimate tool of escalation. Yet they are also more than an instrument, since they transform the nature of any conflict and widen its scope from the regional to the global. …

…Nuclear weapons remain indispensable, and nuclear escalation continues to remain an element of any modern strategy.

Nuclear escalation is the ultimate step in responding asymmetrically, and at the same time the most powerful way of inducing uncertainty in an opponent’s mind. (Ibid, emphasis added)

The Group’s Report identifies six key “challenges”, which may often result as potential threats to global security:

• Demography. Population growth and change across the globe will swiftly change the world we knew. The challenge this poses for welfare, good governance and energy security (among other things) is vast.

• Climate change. This greatly threatens physical certainty, and is leading to a whole new type of politics – one predicated, perhaps more than ever, on our collective future.

• Energy security continues to absorb us. The supply and demand of individual nations and the weakening of the international market infrastructure for energy distribution make the situation more precarious than ever.

• There is also the more philosophic problem of the rise of the irrational – the discounting of the rational. Though seemingly abstract, this problem is demonstrated in deeply practical ways. These include the decline of respect for logical argument and evidence, a drift away from science in a civilization that is deeply technological. The ultimate example is the rise of religious fundamentalism, which, as political fanaticism, presents itself as the only source of certainty.

• The weakening of the nation state. This coincides with the weakening of world institutions, including the United Nations and regional organizations such as the European Union, NATO and others.

• The dark side of globalization … These include internationalized terrorism, organized crime and the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, but also asymmetric threats from proxy actors or the abuse of financial and energy leverage. (Ibid)

Deterrence and Pre-emption

According to the Report, a new concept of deterrence is required directed against both State and non-state actors, This “new deterrence” is based on pre-emption as well as on the ability to “restore deterrence through military escalation”. In this context, the Report contemplates, what it describes as:

“escalation dominance, the use of a full bag of both carrots and sticks—and indeed all instruments of soft and hard power, ranging from the diplomatic protest to nuclear weapons.” (Report, op city, emphasis added).

Iran

In much the same terms as the Bush administration, the NATO sponsored report states, without evidence, that Iran constitutes “a major strategic threat”:

“An Iranian nuclear weapons capability would pose a major strategic threat – not only to Israel, which it has threatened to destroy, but also to the region as a whole, to Europe and to the United States. Secondly, it could be the beginning of a new multi-polar nuclear arms race in the most volatile region of the world.” (Report, op. cit., p. 45)

Careful timing? The controversial NATO sponsored report calling for a preemptive nuclear attack on Iran was released shortly after the publication of the National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) report entitled Iran: Nuclear Intentions and Capabilities. The latter denies Iran’s nuclear capabilities. The NIE report, based on the assessments of sixteen US intelligence agencies, refutes the Bush administration’s main justification for waging a preemptive nuclear war on Iran. The NIE report confirms that Iran “halted its nuclear weapons program in 2003.”

“These findings constitute a damning indictment of the Bush administration’s relentless fear-mongering in relation to an alleged nuclear threat from Iran. They demonstrate that just as in the buildup to the war against Iraq five years ago, the White House has been engaged in a systematic campaign to drag the American people into another war based on lies.” (See Bill van Auken, 24 January 2008)

It should be noted that this recently declassified intelligence ( pertaining to Iran contained in the 2007 NIE report) was known by the White House, the Pentagon and most probably NATO since September 2003. Ironically, US military documents confirm that the Bush Administration initiated its war preparations against Iran in July 2003, two months prior to the confirmation by US intelligence that Iran did not constitute a nuclear threat.

The July 2003 war scenarios were launched under TIRANNT: Theater Iran Near Term.

The justification for TIRANNT as well as for subsequent US war plans directed against Iran ( which as of 2004 included the active participation of NATO and Israel), has always been that Iran is developing nuclear weapons and plans to use them against us.

Following the publication of the 2007 NIE in early December, there has been an avalanche of media propaganda directed against Tehran, essentially with a view to invalidating the statements of the NIE concerning Tehran’s nuclear program.

Moreover, a third sanctions resolution by the UN Security Council, was initiated with a view to forcing Iran to halt uranium enrichment. The proposed UNSC resolution, which is opposed by China and Russia includes a travel ban on Iranian officials involved in the country’s nuclear programs, and inspections of shipments to and from Iran “if there are suspicions of prohibited goods” (AFP, 11 February 2008). Meanwhile, French President Nicolas Sarkozy together with British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, have been calling for a unified EU sanctions regime against Iran.

Contradicting the US national intelligence estimate (NIE), Bush’s most recent speeches continue to portray Iran as a nuclear threat:

“I feel pretty good about making sure that we keep the pressure on Iran to pressure them so they understand they’re isolated, to pressure them to affect their economy, to pressure them to the point that we hope somebody rational shows up and says, okay, it’s not worth it anymore,” Bush said.

Threat to “The Western Way of Life”

The Western media is involved in a diabolical disinformation campaign, the purpose of which is to persuade public opinion that the only way to “create a nuclear free World” is to use nuclear weapons on a preemptive basis, against countries which “threaten our Western Way of Life.”

The Western world is threatened. The NATO report, according to Paul Dibb: “paint(s) an alarming picture of the threats confronting the West, arguing that its values and way of life are under threat and that we are struggling to summon the will to defend them.”(Dibb, op cit)

A preemptive nuclear attack — geographically confined to Middle East (minus Israel?)– is the proposed end-game. The attack would use US tactical nuclear weapons, which, according to “scientific opinion” (on contract to the Pentagon) are “harmless to the surrounding civilian population because the explosion is underground”. (See Michel Chossudovsky The Dangers of a Middle East Nuclear Holocaust, Global Research, 17 February 2006)

B61-11 bunker buster bombs with nuclear warheads Made in America, with an explosive capacity between one third to six times a Hiroshima bomb, are presented as bona fide humanitarian bombs, which minimize the dangers of “collateral damage”.

These in-house “scientific” Pentagon assessments regarding the mini-nukes are refuted by the Federation of American Scientists (FAS):

Any attempt to use a B61-11 bunker buster nuclear bomb in an urban environment would result in massive civilian casualties. Even at the low end of its 0.3-300 kiloton yield range, the nuclear blast will simply blow out a huge crater of radioactive material, creating a lethal gamma-radiation field over a large area ” (Low-Yield Earth-Penetrating Nuclear Weapons by Robert W. Nelson, Federation of American Scientists, 2001 ).

Professor Paul Dibb is a former Australian Deputy Secretary of Defense., who has over the years also occupied key positions in Australia’s defense and intelligence establishment. Dibb carefully overlooks the consequences of the use of nuclear weapons in a conventional war theater. According to Dibb, NATO preemptive nuclear doctrine, which replicates that of the Pentagon, constitutes a significant and positive initiative to “halt the imminent spread of nuclear weapons”. .

“They the group believe that the West must be ready to resort to a pre-emptive nuclear attack to try to halt the imminent spread of nuclear weapons.”

Never mind the nuclear holocaust and resulting radioactive contamination, which would spread Worldwide and threaten, in a real sense, the “way of life”.

There is no “way of life” in a World contaminated with deadly radioactive material. But this is something that is rarely discussed in the corridors of NATO or in strategic studies programs in Western universities.

Nukes: Just Another Tool in the Military Toolbox

What is frightening in Professor Dibb’s article is that he is not expressing an opinion, nor is he analyzing the use of nuclear weapons from an academic research point of view.

In his article, there is neither research on nuclear weapons nor is there an understanding of the complex geopolitics of the Middle East war. Dibb is essentially repeating verbatim the statements contained in NATO/Pentagon military documents. His article is a “copy and paste” summary of Western nuclear doctrine, which in practice calls for the launching of a nuclear holocaust.

The stated objective of a Middle East nuclear holocaust is “to prevent the occurrence of a nuclear war”. An insidious logic which certainly out- dwarfs the darkest period of the Spanish inquisition…

Neither NATO nor the Pentagon use the term nuclear holocaust. Moreover, they presume that the “collateral damage” of a nuclear war will in any event be confined geographically to the Middle East and that Westerners will be spared…

But since their in-house scientists have confirmed that tactical nuclear weapons are “safe for civilians”, the labels on the bombs have been switched much in the same way as the label on a packet of cigarettes: “This nuclear bomb is safe for civilians”

The new definition of a nuclear warhead has blurred the distinction between conventional and nuclear weapons:

‘It’s a package (of nuclear and conventional weapons). The implication of this obviously is that nuclear weapons are being brought down from a special category of being a last resort, or sort of the ultimate weapon, to being just another tool in the toolbox,” (Japan Economic News Wire, op cit)

This re-categorization has been carried out. The ” green light” for the use of tactical nuclear weapons has been granted by the US Congress. . ” Let’s use them, they are part of the military toolbox.”

We are a dangerous crossroads: military planners believe their own propaganda. The military manuals state that this new generation of nuclear weapons are “safe” for use in the battlefield. They are no longer a weapon of last resort. There are no impediments or political obstacles to their use. In this context, Senator Edward Kennedy has accused the Bush Administration for having developed “a generation of more useable nuclear weapons.”

Russia and China

Who else constitutes a threat to ” the Western way of life”?

Nukes are also slated to be used against Russia and China, former enemies of the Cold War era.

This post Cold War logic was first revealed, when the Pentagon’s Nuclear Posture Review (NPR) was leaked to The Los Angeles Times in January 2002. The NPR includes China and Russia alongside the rogue states as potential targets for a first strike nuclear attack. According to William Arkin, the NPR “offers a chilling glimpse into the world of nuclear-war planners: With a Strangelovian genius, they cover every conceivable circumstance in which the president might wish to use nuclear weapons-planning in great detail.” (Los Angeles Times, March 10, 2002)

“Decapitate Their Leadership and Destroy their Countries as Functioning Societies”

The use of nukes against “rogue states”, including Iran and North Korea (which lost more than a quarter of its population in US bombings during the Korean war) is justified because these countries could act in an “irrational” way. It therefore makes sense to “take em out” before they do something irrational. The objective is: “decapitate their leadership and destroy their countries as functioning societies”:

“One line of reasoning is that so-called rogue states, such as Iran and North Korea, are sufficiently irrational to risk a pre-emptive nuclear strike on the US or its allies, such as Israel and South Korea.

The supposition here is that deterrence – that is, threatening the other side with obliteration – no longer works. But even the nasty regimes in Tehran and Pyongyang must know that the US reserves the right to use its overwhelming nuclear force to decapitate the leadership and destroy their countries as modern functioning societies. (Dibb, op cit., emphasis added)

Use nuclear weapons to prevent the use of weapons of mass destruction.

But of course, lest we forget, America’s nuclear arsenal as well as that of France, Britain and Israel are not categorized as “weapons of mass destruction”, in comparison with Iran’s deadly nonexistent nuclear weapons program.

Bin Laden’s Nuclear Program

Now comes the authoritative part of the NATO sponsored report: We need to use nukes against bin Laden, because Islamic “fanatics” can actually make a nuclear weapons or buy them from the Russians in the black market.

The Report calls for a first strike nuclear attack directed against Osama bin Laden’s Al Qaeda, which has the ability, according to expert opinion, of actually producing small nuclear bombs, which could be used in a Second 9/11 attack on America: .

The second line of reasoning contained in the NATO sponsored report is more difficult to refute. It argues that extreme fanatical terrorists, such as al-Qaeda, cannot be deterred because (a) they do not represent a country and therefore cannot be targeted and (b) they welcome death by suicide. So, we have to shift the concept of nuclear deterrence to the country or regime supplying the terrorists with fissile material.

Nuclear weapons require materials that can be made only with difficulty. Once these materials are obtained by terrorists, however, the barriers to fabricating a weapon are much lower. In that sense the nuclear threat today is greater than it was in the Cold War and it seems the terrorists cannot be deterred.( Dibb, op cit, emphasis added)

The alleged nuclear threat by Al Qaeda is taken very seriously. The Bush administration has responded with overall defense spending (budget plus war theater) in excess of one trillion dollars. This massive amount of public money has been allocated to financing the “Global War on Terrorism” (GWOT).

Confirmed by Pentagon documents, this military hardware including aircraft carriers, fighter jets, cruise missiles and nuclear bunker buster bombs, is slated to be used as part of the “Global War on Terrorism”. In military jargon the US is involved in asymmetric warfare against non-State enemies. (The concept of Asymmetric Warfare was defined in The National Defense Strategy of the United States of America (2005)

“The American Hiroshima”

The US media has the distinct ability to turn realities upside down. The lies are upheld as indelible truths. The “Islamic terrorists” have abandoned their AK 47 kalashnikov rifles and stinger missiles; they are not only developing deadly chemical and biological weapons, they also have nuclear capabilities.

The fact, amply documented, that Al Qaeda is supported by the CIA and Britain’s MI6 is beside the point.

The nuclear threat is not directed against the Middle East but against the USA, the perpetrators and architects of nuclear war are bin Laden’s Al Qaeda, which is planning to launch a nuclear attack on an American city:

“U.S. government officials are contemplating what they consider to be an inevitable and much bigger assault on America, one likely to kill millions, destroy the economy and fundamentally alter the course of history,…

According to captured al-Qaida leaders and documents, the plan is called the “American Hiroshima” and involves the multiple detonation of nuclear weapons already smuggled into the U.S. over the Mexican border with the help of the MS-13 street gang and other organized crime groups. (World Net Daily, 11 July 2005, emphasis added)

The New York Times confirms that an Al Qaeda sponsored “American Hiroshima” “could happen” .

“Experts believe that such an attack, somewhere, is likely.” (NYT, 11 August 2004)

According to the Aspen Strategy Group which is integrated among others, by Madeleine Albright, Richard Armitage, Philip D. Zelikow, Robert B. Zoellick, “the danger of nuclear terrorism is much greater than the public believes, and our government hasn’t done nearly enough to reduce it.”:

If a 10-kiloton nuclear weapon, a midget even smaller than the one that destroyed Hiroshima, exploded in Times Square, the fireball would reach tens of millions of degrees Fahrenheit. It would vaporize or destroy the theater district, Madison Square Garden, the Empire State Building, Grand Central Terminal and Carnegie Hall (along with me and my building). The blast would partly destroy a much larger area, including the United Nations. On a weekday some 500,000 people would be killed. (NYT, 11 August 2004)

“Threaten them with a devastating nuclear attack”

According to professor Dibb, nuclear deterrence should also apply in relation to Al Qaeda, by holding responsible the governments which help the terrorists to develop their nuclear weapons capabilities:

“Ashton Carter, a former US assistant secretary for defense, has recently argued, the realistic response is to hold responsible, as appropriate, the government from which the terrorists obtained the weapon or fissile materials and threaten them with a devastating nuclear strike. In other words, deterrence would work again. (Dibb, op cit)

The real nuclear threat is coming from bin Laden. The objective is to “to do away with our way of life”:

None of this is to underestimate the impact of a nuclear weapon being detonated in an American city. It could be catastrophic, but it is highly unlikely to threaten the very survival of the US. To believe otherwise risks surrendering to the fear and intimidation that is precisely the terrorists’ stock in trade.

General Richard Myers, another former chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, has claimed that if Islamic terrorists were able to kill 10,000 Americans in a nuclear attack, they would “do away with our way of life”. But Hiroshima and Nagasaki incurred well over 100,000 instant deaths and that did not mean the end of the Japanese way of life. (Ibid, emphasis added)

In an utterly twisted and convoluted argument, professor Dibb transforms the US-NATO threat to wage a nuclear war on Iran into an Al Qaeda operation to attack an American city with nuclear weapon.

Dibb presents the US-NATO menace to trigger what would result in a Middle East nuclear holocaust as a humanitarian operation to save American lives. By implication, the Al Qaeda sponsored “American Hiroshima” would be supported by Iran’s president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. and this in turn would immediately provide a juste cause (casus belli) for retaliation against Iran

“What a nuclear attack on a US city would mean, however, is an understandable American retaliation in kind. So, those countries that have slack control over their fissile nuclear materials and cozy relations with terrorists need to watch out. A wounded America would be under enormous pressure to respond in a wholly disproportionate manner.

And then we would be in a completely changed strategic situation in which the use of nuclear weapons might become commonplace. Ibid, emphasis added).

Dick Cheney’s Second 9/11

The insinuation that Al Qaeda is preparing an attack on America has been on the lips of Vice President Dick Cheney for several years now. Cheney has stated on several occasions since 2004, that Al Qaeda is preparing a “Second 9/11″: .

In August 2005, Vice President Dick Cheney is reported to have instructed USSTRATCOM, based at the Offutt Air Force Base in Nebraska, to draw up a “Contingency Plan”, “to be employed in response to another 9/11-type terrorist attack on the United States”. (Philip Giraldi, Attack on Iran: Pre-emptive Nuclear War, The American Conservative, 2 August 2005)

Dick Cheney’s “Contingency Plan” was predicated on the preemptive war doctrine. Implied in the “Contingency Plan” was the presumption that Iran would be behind the attacks.

The Pentagon in a parallel initiative has actually fine-tuned its military agenda to the point of actually envisaging a Second 9/11 scenario as a means to providing the US administration with a “credible” justification to attack Iran and Syria:

“Another 9/11 type terrorist attack could create both a justification and an opportunity that is lacking today to retaliate against some known targets Iran and Syria” (Statement by Pentagon official, leaked to the Washington Post, 23 April 2006, emphasis added)

Meanwhile,. the US Congress is concerned that an “American Hiroshima” could potentially damage the US economy:

“What we do know is that our enemies want to inflict massive casualties and that terrorists have the expertise to invent a wide range of attacks, including those involving the use of chemical, biological, radiological and even nuclear weapons. … Exploding a small nuclear weapon in a major city could do incalculable harm to hundreds of thousands of people, as well as to businesses and the economy,…(US Congress, House Financial Services Committee, June 21, 2007).

As far as sensitizing public opinion to the dangers of US sponsored nuclear war, there is, with a few exceptions, a scientific and intellectual vacuum: No research, no analysis, no comprehension of the meaning of a nuclear holocaust which in a real sense threatens the future of humanity. This detachment and lack of concern of prominent intellectuals characterizes an evolving trend in many universities and research institutes in the strategic studies, the sciences and social sciences.

Academics increasingly tow the line. They remain mum on the issue of a US sponsored nuclear war. There is a tacit acceptance of a diabolical and criminal military agenda, which in a very sense threatens life on this planet. The US-NATO doctrine to use nukes on a preemptive basis with a view to “saving the Western World’s way of life” is not challenged in any meaningful way either by academics or media experts in strategic studies.

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© Copyright Michel Chossudovsky, Global Research, 2008
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