A New Middle East

‘British satirist and playwright George Bernard Shaw once described England and America as “Two countries divided by a common language”. Nothing could be truer of the Arab Middle East today’

The Middle East of the near future promises to be as turbulent and tense as that of the recent past, writes Ayman El-Amir*

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THE ROAD TO HERE: There have been momentous events of course that sometimes forced a measure of change. These included the 1952 Free Officers’ military coup in Egypt, the failure of the 1956 Suez campaign against it, the defeat of Egypt in the 1967 war with Israel and the drastic changes it instilled on the geostrategic situation, the restoration of the military balance in the October 1973 War, the emergence of the global power of oil, the signing of the Egypt-Israel Peace Treaty in 1979, the Iranian revolution of the same year, the assassination of Egyptian president Anwar El-Sadat in 1981, the Iran-Iraq War (1980-88) and the 2003 Anglo-American invasion of Iraq, among others.

This conflicting train of events did not help the transition of the region to a more progressive and stable order. If anything, it encouraged foreign interference, inter-state conflict and political polarisation. The national revolution that rolled out promises of transformation failed to build democracy, deliver economic prosperity, establish social justice or protect national security. National leaders turned into authoritarian dictators who ruled not by the mandate of the ballot box but by the secret police and torture chambers. They linked the destiny of the countries they ruled to their own survival in power. It may have been that they were visionaries who believed they could single-handedly convert their countries to oases of prosperity, even when their policies led to dismal failure. But their claimed visions masked a naked thirst for power and personal ambitions.

On the political front, suppression of the opposition and curtailment of fundamental human rights became the tools of government. From an economic perspective, experimentation with state capitalism, socialism and later with free market economy failed to raise the standards of living, provide quality healthcare, establish a modern education system or offer basic

services. Surprisingly, regional monarchies that the revolutionary regime of Nasser branded as decadent and reactionary agents of neo- colonialism fared much better with the advent of the oil bonanza and national acknowledgement of the hereditary rotation of power.

The downfall of the former Soviet Union released all countries of Eastern Europe from the Soviet grip, ended the Cold War and weakened Soviet influence in the Middle East. As this influence had already declined after Egypt signed a peace treaty with Israel a decade earlier, and the Soviet Union failed the litmus test in Afghanistan, it gave the US a free hand in shaping the world order in its own interests. The Middle East, in which the US already had solid alliances, lay wide open for US intrusion. This was demonstrated twice after the end of the Cold War, first in 1991 when the US led an international coalition under authority of the UN Security Council to drive the invading forces of Saddam Hussein out of Kuwait and, secondly, when it invaded Iraq in 2003 under the pretext of seizing Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction. As much as the Anglo-American invasion betrayed Russia’s weakness in the post-Soviet era it signalled to Arab countries, particularly those in the Gulf region, that the US was willing to use raw military force to back up its interests.

TERRORISM AS PRETEXT: Ruling dictators of the region shuddered when in 2004 the Bush administration unfurled its “Greater Middle East Initiative” against the backdrop of the invasion of Iraq. It pledged to transform the countries of the Middle East into working democracies as the most effective antidote to terrorism. Agents of target regimes blared out misleading slogans of “reform from within”, organised conferences and produced documents whose only purpose was to blunt the half-hearted US drive for democratic change. They eventually succeeded in persuading the Bush administration that the facilities they offered to support the US invasion of Iraq, including military bases, air, sea and land transit routes, were more important for US interests than democratic change and respect for human rights. To boost its presence, the US dotted the Gulf region with an array of military bases to control oil resources and contain the rising influence of Iran. With the invasion of Iraq the US, for the first time in decades, had unchallenged control of the region and the policies of its ruling regimes.

The rise of terrorism, which was starkly highlighted by the unwarranted bombing of the twin towers of the World Trade Center in New York on 11 September 2001, posed a dilemma for both the US and its Middle Eastern allies. The distinction between national liberation struggle, which had led more than half the member-states of the United Nations to independence in the 1950s and 1960s, and sheer acts of terrorism, was nixed. Israel manipulated US reaction to the 9/11 events and its declaration of “war on terrorism” to confuse agendas and to classify Palestinian resistance against its military occupation and the countries supporting this resistance as agents of terrorism. Hamas, Hizbullah, the Islamic Jihad and other armed resistance organisations were lumped together with Al-Qaeda as terrorist organisations while their supporters, mainly Syria and Iran, were listed as state sponsors of terrorism.

Arab countries that were warned by President Bush’s edict “You are either with us or against us” faced a similar dilemma. Domestic opposition, including the Muslim Brotherhood, was regarded as a threat to national security and was treated as such by harsh measures of emergency or anti- terrorism laws. Arab regimes found themselves entangled in a mixed agenda: armed resistance against military occupation in Iraq and Palestine and political opposition at home that sometimes resorted to violence. Since 9/11, no Arab summit conference or leader publicly supported armed struggle against Israeli occupation at a time while Israel adopted a policy of targeted assassinations, kidnapping and incarceration against the Palestinians. Instead, Arab countries promoted the 2002 Arab Peace Initiative that Israel spurned. This added another ingredient to domestic indignation, as reactions in most Arab capitals to the recent Israeli invasion of Gaza demonstrated.

Indiscriminate acts of international terrorism subverted legitimate armed struggle. On the home front, the ruling elite’s resistance against genuine democratic change, as opposed to cosmetic measures, remains a destabilising factor in the Arab Middle East that creates a casus belli for militant political organisations. Terrorism mushroomed into a global phenomenon. Despite setbacks for armed separatist movements in Chechnya, Sri Lanka, and shaky peace agreements in southern Sudan and Darfur, the mixed phenomenon of armed struggle and terrorism will continue to grow until a clear distinction is established between liberation struggle against illegal military occupation and other senseless acts of terrorism. The assassination of President Anwar El-Sadat in 1981 and the terrorist acts in New York two decades later created an extremist security mentality in most Arab countries and in the US, whether in the form of emergency laws, the US Patriot Acts or the notorious Guantanamo Bay detention centre.

FACTORS FUELLING RADICALISM: For 40 years, Israeli policy of military occupation, territorial expansion and crushing of the Palestinian people has been a destabilising factor in the Middle East. As moderate Arab regimes offered more concessions and pressured the Palestinians to do the same, Israel grew more arrogant and stubborn. The Bush administration’s unconditional support of Israeli policies and actions for the past eight years fuelled more radicalism, undermined the US position, weakened Arab allies, triggered confrontation between Arab moderates and so-called radicals and retarded the achievement of a just and lasting peace in the Middle East — a cherished objective of the US policy at one time. More recently, as the Israeli army, air force and navy mercilessly pounded the civilian population of Gaza for three weeks both senior Bush administration officials and the US Congress issued unconscionable statements and resolutions supporting “Israel’s right to defend itself”. Israeli actions, more than anything else, divided the Arabs, bolstered Palestinian and Lebanese resistance and gave Iran a more active role in the region.

Iran is no stranger to the Middle East equation. It was a pivotal player at the time of the region’s great transition from the old colonial order of the British Empire to the new US sphere of influence era. It became the key ally in the US grand design of containing the former Soviet Union, dominating the region’s oil resources and controlling inter-continental energy routes. On New Year’s Eve in 1978 former US president Jimmy Carter was in Tehran toasting Shah Mohamed Reza Pahlavi. He lauded Iran as “an island of stability in a turbulent sea”. Eleven months later, in February 1979, Iran burst open in a massive uprising that changed the region forever and gave it a more influential role. In reality, Iran did not step on the Arab Middle East scene but was forced onto it by the 1980-88 Iran-Iraq War that Saddam Hussein launched as an act of muscle flexing to intimidate his Gulf Arab neighbours. Saddam also wanted to fill what he believed to be a vacuum that was created by Egypt’s isolation in the Arab world as a consequence of its peace treaty with Israel. In the mentality of Arab dictators of the time, he believed he should win some kind of war that would make him the uncontested hero of the Arabs. And what better target could there be than conquering unstable revolutionary Iran and achieving control of the Arab/Persian Gulf. He failed on both counts and the war left one million combatants killed or wounded on both sides. As a result, the incipient Iranian revolution felt more confident but also more aware of the security challenges it faced in the neighbourhood — a feeling that was sharpened by the huge military bases the US planted in the small Gulf emirates.

IRAN ASCENDANT: For Iran, the 2003 Anglo- American invasion of Iraq came as a mixed blessing. On the one hand it removed the threat of archenemy Saddam Hussein and freed the oppressed Shia majority from the dictatorial grasp of the Baathist secular state. Under a new political regime, the Shia was assured of a controlling majority in representative councils and in the government. On the other hand, long-term US presence represented a lasting menace for Iran’s geopolitical ambition and a destabilising factor in the region. Furthermore, it was bound to unleash sectarian rivalries and associated violence. Iran felt more than ever that it had vital security interests in the Gulf region. Moreover, unabated Israeli military aggression against the Palestinians in the occupied territories and Lebanon extended Iran’s security interests farther afield.

Iran’s expanding involvement in regional affairs, from Iraq to Lebanon, presented a political dilemma for traditional Arab regimes as well as for Western powers led by the US. Its strong moral and material support to countries and groups combating Israeli aggression upstaged the leadership role claimed by Egypt and Saudi Arabia. It also raised Israeli and Western concerns about its growing power, particularly as President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad unveiled Iran’s nuclear research programme and simultaneously lashed out at Israeli military aggression. Israel exercised its best tradition of subterfuge to portray Iran as a lethal challenge to its existence and repeatedly urged US military action. No one in the US or in Western governments had the moral courage to question Israel’s arsenal of nuclear weapons.

As Iran asserted strategic and national security interests after the invasion of Iraq, a contrived Shia expansionist threat to the predominantly Sunni countries of the region suddenly took centre stage in Arab-Iranian relations. Championed by Saudi Arabia as the defender of the Sunni faith, this seeming confrontation intensified after the 2006 Israeli war on Lebanon. King Abdullah II of Jordan also warned against the threat of the rising “Shia crescent” in the Middle East. The Bush administration spared no effort to persuade loyal Arab countries that it was Iranian and not Israeli expansionism that was the threat to the stability of Arab regimes. It echoed the John Foster Dulles effort to enlist Nasser’s Egypt on the grounds that communist expansion and not Israeli aggression was the immediate threat to the Arab world. In reality, it was Iran’s anti-American, anti-Israeli revolutionary rhetoric, and the popularity it scored among the impoverished masses in the Arab world, that pro-Western conservative Arab regimes feared most. From the religious perspective, little mention was made of the fact that for almost nine centuries, since the Muslim Arab conquest of Persia in 651 AD, the country was solid Sunni territory until the Safavid Empire (1501-1722) adopted Shia Islam as the state religion. So, painting Iran as the image of a Shia scarecrow was not free of ulterior motives. Iran’s growing political involvement in the Middle East has become an integral part of the dynamics of the region, not just a temporary reflection of a revolutionary mood or of the firebrand rhetoric of a president.

Then, in the ancient tradition of Greek tragedy, Turkey landed on the complex Middle East scene like a modern Deus ex machina. Having served for 50 years as the southern flank of NATO’s Western strategy of containment of the former Soviet Union, it actively sought membership in the European Union whose Western member countries are its major trading and military partners. Turkey’s quest was held in abeyance pending its fulfilment of certain preconditions. Last year, during its presidency of the EU, France nearly cast a veto against Turkey’s accession. Without abandoning its quest, the government of Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan looked southward to Iran and Syria to forge new alliances, to diversify its political and economic relations and to widen its strategic depth. Turkey already had highly developed strategic, military, intelligence and economic ties with Israel since the time of former prime minister Mesut Yilmaz, whose government had resigned in a corruption scandal in 1998. Ever since, the powerful Turkish military elite maintained the relationship. Thus, Turkey found itself in the unique position of a trusted mediator between Israel, a strategic partner, and Syria with which it had vital interests in shared water resources, particularly those of the Aasi River. Turkish mediation between “hardline” Syria and Israel over the occupied Golan Heights almost succeeded in preparing the ground for direct negotiations between the two adversaries when Israel scuttled the process by its brutal military invasion of Gaza, which provoked strong Turkish reaction. From another perspective, the Kurdish problem continues to engage Turkey’s interest in Iraq. Like Iran, Turkey is inexorably gravitating towards the core of the Middle East geopolitical situation of which the confrontation with Israel is a fundamental factor.

THE MIDDLE EAST MAZE: For many observers, the Middle East landscape appears as a maze of paradoxical interests, incompatible players and old powers trying to hold off the pressure of change. Israel’s military occupation, continued aggression and implacable drive for domination of the region are the central concerns. Other players close and distant are approaching common issues with different agendas: some, like Iran, Syria and the Palestinian resistance movement, are promoting defiant armed struggle against Israeli occupation. Others like Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia and most Gulf Arab countries are pursuing pacification and betting on US goodwill. It is not that they are impervious to the suffering of the Palestinians, but they do not want confrontation with Israel at any price. As a result, Israel does not feel any pressure from immediate neighbours and has little, if any, political or moral consideration for their views or concerns, as the recent war on Gaza demonstrated. This has polarised the countries of the region into hardliners and pacifists and thrust the two sides into confrontation over a shared agenda. In addition, the Bush administration’s categorical support of Israeli atrocities in the face of its regional allies and at the United Nations gave Israel a free hand in the region. Again, this was rubbed in when the Israeli air force repeatedly bombed the border corridor between Egyptian Rafah and Gaza and as the US stonewalled the proposed ceasefire resolution at the Security Council. In another light, it is how the proponents of armed resistance against the 40- year-long Israeli occupation of Arab territories came to be classified either as terrorists or state sponsors of terrorism.

British satirist and playwright George Bernard Shaw once described England and America as “Two countries divided by a common language”. Nothing could be truer of the Arab Middle East today — a motley coalition of countries divided by common culture, history and political purpose. Not only is the region more fragmented than ever before, but also the old role of central leadership that managed crises has devolved to the fringes. Qatar, with a population of 820,000 and an erudite leadership, has taken bold initiatives that successfully reconciled Lebanese political rivals in May 2008 and ended 18 months of conflict, convened an Arab summit conference in the midst of the Israeli military campaign against the Palestinians in Gaza and is mediating between the Sudanese government and rebel factions in Darfur, with a measure of success. Turkey took a mediation role between Syria and Israel that was frustrated by Israeli aggression. In the meantime, Iran has thrown its weight around in support of Arab causes in Iraq, Lebanon, Syria and Gaza. Egypt continues to struggle with Israeli intransigence over an extended ceasefire with Hamas. Some major Arab countries have played along with the Bush administration’s classification of Arab and Islamic countries as moderates pitted against radicals, with Israel assigning the definition labels.

The present political map of the Middle East shows divisive competitions, mixed new alliances, conversion of Arab and Islamic agendas and boiling domestic situations. The fight against terrorism is also a confused central issue. Partners against Terrorism, Inc, chaired by the US, include all moderate Arab states and Israel. Turkey is wary of domestic Kurdish terrorism-cum-liberation struggle. Secular Baathist Syria is key supporter of Shia Hizbullah and its coalition of Lebanese forces, as well as the Muslim Brotherhood-oriented Hamas. But it also has problems with its domestic Muslim Brotherhood and pro-democracy forces at home. Egypt makes sure that it keeps its powerful Muslim Brotherhood organisation constantly off balance by continuous arrests and trials, even when they organise demonstrations in support of Gaza. The legitimate-resistance-cum-terrorism designation has never been more confused, with Israel sharing the same attitude as the moderates.

Looking through the political prism confirms that moderate Arab states are hostile to the loosely knit alliance of militant Syria and Iran that supports Hizbullah and Hamas. They unwittingly divide Palestinian ranks by propping up the declining Palestinian Authority of Mahmoud Abbas, who has been dressed up in presidential trappings, against “rebellious” Hamas that is bearing the brunt of the Palestinian struggle against Israeli occupation. Small players on the outer edge like Qatar and Yemen are riling up conventional leaders by promoting their own initiatives to address inter- Arab or Palestinian crises. (Egyptian Foreign Minister Ahmed Abul-Gheit proudly announced recently that Egypt had foiled the Qatar-sponsored Arab summit conference on Gaza).

LOOKING AHEAD: The domestic situation in major Arab countries is bordering on the explosive as sitting rulers continue to hold onto power by suppressing any serious opposition, resisting democratic change, quietly seeking hereditary extension of their rule and cultivating a new culture of monarchic republicanism. In September, Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi will have logged 40 years in power, while for 25 years Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak could not find a single Egyptian who would be suitable enough to serve as vice-president. This makes the pursuit of orderly democratic succession virtually impossible, and it remains the most serious obstacle to the peaceful transition of the Arab Middle East. Autocratic rulers unused to opposition or to the rotation of power will soon face the double challenge of a restive civil society that could destabilise the countries they rule and mounting foreign disenchantment.

External pressure for democratic change will gradually take priority over the service of short- term Western interests, particularly now that US heavy military presence in Iraq will begin to diminish. In the case of Iran, the new Obama administration is leaning towards substituting confrontation with dialogue. Gulf Arab states, or most of them, will soon find that a modicum of coexistence with Iran is more rewarding than confrontation. In due course, they may give more serious consideration to concluding bilateral or multilateral non-aggression pacts with Iran to defuse potential future crises. Such arrangement may not sit well with Israel or with conservative Arab regimes that fear the rise of the “Shia crescent” or, in reality, the Iranian revolutionary drive. However, Gulf community interests override destabilising confrontation or assurances of US protection. Iran, on the other hand, will not have to worry about the rise of another Saddam Hussein in Iraq who would want to engage in another decade- long war to become an Arab hero.

It will be left to the new Obama administration to show its strategic hand in managing the boiling Middle East cauldron. Cascading US congressional visits to Syria and conciliatory statements towards Iran are new overtures to engage both in productive dialogue that may work. Dealing with Israel as it drifts to the right will be a major challenge for the US and for Middle East peace. The Obama administration may do well to separate the wheat from the chafe and clear the agendas that Israel has confused in order to stall the attainment of a just and lasting Middle East settlement. The Arab and Islamic Middle East will find it inevitable to develop a loose confederacy based on a community of interests with no central command or foreign allegiance. Regrettably, Israel is not ready to be part of such alliance.

* The writer is former Al-Ahram correspondent in Washington, DC. He also served as director of United Nations Radio and Television in New York.

The Middle East of the near future promises to be as turbulent and tense as that of the recent past, writes Ayman El-Amir

‘The old role of central leadership that managed crises has devolved to the fringes’

Pakistan: What Can We Do?

Pakistan: What Can We Do?

We know how they are destroying Pakistan from the inside. It’s like a checklist. They overthrow a government through chaos, bring in their cronies, and then spread terrorism. When the army is close to ending this terrorism, they start Sunni-Shia riots. I am a confused Pakistani that loves every inch of this great land of ours, likes the cool of Murree as much as the heats of Nawabshah and the cold of Ziarat and Quetta. There isn’t a day that goes by without thinking about it. This is a genuine request for some advice.

By ZEESHAN KHAN

Wednesday, 25 February 2009.

WWW.AHMEDQURAISHI.COM

HONG KONG, China—I am sure this question flashes in your heads from time to time: What can we, as young overseas nationalist Pakistanis, do to benefit or contribute to Pakistan?

This question is even truer nowadays with the current situation in our homeland. It is as if a game is being played out in front of our own eyes, whose direction has been painstakingly predictive. It is like a checklist, isn’t it:

First, remove the government through mass propaganda, aide the lawyers’ protests, scare the investors, creating false/negative news to create a sense of paranoia.

Once that has been taken care of, put in place an incompetent, corrupt and to some extent idiotic government that is so cut off from the local Joe on the street and from reality for that matter. A government that is rewarding their party goons with lost jobs and government ministries and foreign travel incentives to beg governments for money, giving national honorary medals to the likes of CIA‘s chief, the same medals that were given to our brave soldiers who paid with their blood when it came to the name of Pakistan. A government whose officials, instead of reassuring their people about the security of the country are instead raising alarm bells in Washington by saying the country is being taken over by the Taliban. [President Zardari did this in a TV interview to an American channel.]

Simultaneously, pump money to insurgents in different parts of the country, and if the army somehow tries to get close to defeating them, then try plan B that is create Shia/Sunni violence. Create fear that the strongest, most disciplined Muslim army has some outlaws in its ranks and that the nuclear assets will be soon in control of some bearded officers that are ready to ship them out and explode a dirty bomb in midtown Manhattan, miraculously bypassing their intelligence agencies, their airport security and their radars and checkpoints.

Now back to my opening statement, what are we do to help our homeland in the midst of all this propaganda and deliberate terrorism and destabilization?

I am a confused Pakistani that loves every inch of this great land of ours, likes the cool of Murree as much as the heats of Nawabshah and the cold of Ziarat and Quetta. There isn’t a day that goes by without thinking about it. This is genuine request for some advice.

Zeeshan is a young Pakistani living and working in Hong Kong, China. He can be reached at zeeshank16ATgmail.com

THE BANKERS MANIFESTO

IS THIS DOCUMENT PRECURSOR TO “PROTOCOLS OF ELDERS OF ZION?” WHAT BETTER WAY TO PUT-OFF POPULAR SCRUTINY OF THE BANKERS’ CONSPIRACY THAN TO CREATE AND PROMOTE AN ALTERNATIVE ANTI-SEMITIC CONSPIRACY, WHERE THE JEWS ARE BLAMED FOR THE HANDIWORK OF THE INTERNATIONAL BANKERS? THE BANKERS MANIFESTO Congressman Charles A. Lindbergh, Sr. revealed the Bankers Manifesto of 1892 to the U.S. Congress somewhere between 1907 and 1917.

We (the bankers) must proceed with caution and guard every move made, for the lower order of people are already showing signs of restless commotion. Prudence will therefore show a policy of apparently yielding to the popular will until our plans are so far consummated that we can declare our designs without fear of any organized resistance. Organizations in the United States should be carefully watched by our trusted men, and we must take immediate steps to control these organizations in our interest or disrupt them. At the coming Omaha convention to be held July 4, 1892, our men must attend and direct its movement or else there will be set on foot such antagonism to our designs as may require force to overcome. This at the present time would be premature. We are not yet ready for such a crisis. Capital must protect itself in every possible manner through combination (conspiracy) and legislation. The courts must be called to our aid, debts must be collected, bonds and mortgages foreclosed as rapidly as possible. When, through the process of law, the common people have lost their homes, they will be more tractable and easily governed through the influence of the strong arm of the government applied to a central power of imperial wealth under the control of the leading financiers. People without homes will not quarrel with their leaders. History repeats itself in regular cycles. This truth is well known among our principal men who are engaged in forming an imperialism of the world. While they are doing this, the people must be kept in a state of political antagonism. The question of tariff reform must be urged through the organization known as the Democratic Party, and the question of protection with the reciprocity must be forced to view through the Republican Party. By thus dividing voters, we can get them to expend their energies in fighting over questions of no importance to us, except as teachers to the common herd. Thus, by discrete actions, we can secure all that has been so generously planned and successfully accomplished.

Pak Paid $6Mn To Taliban For Swat Ceasefire?

(RTTNews) – The Taliban in Pakistan’s restive Swat valley was paid $6 million in compensation by the government as part of the deal for a ceasefire with security forces for an indefinite period, media reports said Tuesday.

Islamabad signed a controversial deal with Maulana Sufi Mohammad of the Tahrik-e-Nafiz Shariat Muhammadi (the Movement for the Enforcement of Islamic Law) to enforce Islamic law (Sharia) in Swat to restore peace in exchange for the payment, a security official was quoted as saying.

The amount–paid through a backchannel–was compensation for those who were killed during military operations and compensation for the properties destroyed by the security forces.

The reports said all of Pakistan’s tribal areas come under President Asif Ali Zardari’s jurisdiction and the amount was paid from a special fund of president.

A special aid package, including a donation from the U.S., was designated for the region by the president’s office and distributed through the Governor’s office in North West Frontier Province (NWFP), the reports said.

The deal was thrashed out after months of intense fighting in which hundreds of civilians and militants were killed and 500,000 persons displaced.

Pakistan pushes US for drones

Pakistan’s Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi answers a question during talks with Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton at the State Department in Washington.—AP

WASHINGTON: Pakistan’s foreign minister said Wednesday that his country has asked the United States to provide unmanned planes that would allow Pakistan to strike extremists hiding in rugged terrain along the Afghan border.

Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi said in an Associated Press interview with reporters and editors that Pakistan, and not the United States, should control the missile strikes that have killed high-level extremists but also civilians.

The US missile strikes, he said, are alienating the Pakistani people and making it harder for his government to persuade locals to support the fight against militants.

‘We feel that if the technology is transferred to Pakistan, Pakistan will be in a better position to determine how to use the technology and, without alienating people, achieve the objective,’ he said.

‘Pakistan is a willing partner with the US in this fight,’ he said. ‘Let us exercise that judgment.’

The US missiles are fired from drones believed launched from neighboring Afghanistan. The strikes are one of the most sensitive issues in US-Pakistan ties.

Qureshi said the matter was raised Tuesday in a meeting with President Barack Obama’s national security adviser, retired Gen. James Jones. He would not provide specific details; ‘we are talking at this stage,’ he said.

White House spokesman Robert Gibbs would not comment on Qureshi’s comments Wednesday.

Qureshi also said the Obama White House is more ‘willing to listen’ to Pakistan than the Bush administration.

The Bush administration initially was a strong supporter of the current Pakistani government’s predecessor, former President Pervez Musharraf, calling the former general ‘indispensable.’ Musharraf took power in a bloodless 1999 coup but was swept from power in democratic elections by the current government.

The Bush administration, Qureshi said, ‘had a point of view, and it was like the approach was, ‘this is it; take it or leave it.’’

He called the Obama administration’s approach ‘more understanding and more endearing.’

Qureshi and Pakistan’s army chief are in Washington to participate, along with Afghan Foreign Minister Dadfar Rangeen Spanta, in the Obama administration’s efforts to draw up a new strategy for Pakistan and Afghanistan.

Qureshi and Spanta were scheduled to have dinner Wednesday with Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton.

Pentagon spokesman Geoff Morrell said the United States wants ‘this review to be as inclusive as possible. The White House is reaching out to everybody with a stake in this.’

‘It won’t just be window dressing: take a look at our plan and sign off on it when it’s already virtually completed,’ he said. ‘We are all collectively in this, and we need as much advice and buy-in as possible for this to be a succeed.’

On the Obama administration’s drone strikes, Qureshi called for Pakistan and the United States to ‘reassess the advantages and disadvantages, and, if the disadvantages outweigh the advantages, there is a case to review this strategy.’

More Disinformation From Schizophrenic Terror Group

AFTER SWEARING-OFF ATTACKS UPON GOVERNMENT FORCES, Taliban rename their group Shura Ittehadul Mujahideen [Council of United Mujahideen].  NOW NEW SELF-APPOINTED SPOKESMAN PROMISES TO FIGHT PAKISTANI SECURITY FORCES.

TTP announces support for LI

BARA: The Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) on Wednesday announced full support to Lashkar-e-Islam (LI) if the security forces started an operation against the LI in Khyber Agency. Bara-based TTP leader Hamza Afridi told reporters by telephone from an undisclosed location that they would support the LI in the agency if the security forces launched an operation against it. He said Taliban would not abandon LI chief Mangal Bagh. staff report

Wana Tribesmen Fear Deal Will Bring Back Uzbek “Al Qaida”

Taliban alliance only against US, says Maulvi Nazir

* Tells South Waziristan elders Taliban factions will remain independent
* Wana tribesmen fear deal with Baitullah may cause Uzbek influx

By Iqbal Khattak

PESHAWAR: The top three Taliban factions in Pakistan have unified “only to act together against the United States”, Taliban leader Maulvi Nazir told Ahmedzai Wazir elders in South Waziristan in a meeting earlier this week, a tribal elder told Daily Times on Wednesday.

A delegation of Ahmedzai Wazir elders met Maulvi Nazir, the Taliban chief in Wana, to ask him why he had formed the ‘United Council of Mujahideen’ without consulting them, a senior member of the delegation said. “Gul Bahadar (the Taliban chief in North Waziristan) and I have reached an understanding with Baitullah Mehsud (the chief of the defuct Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan) to fight the US together, because we are concerned over the surge in American troops in Afghanistan,” Nazir reportedly told the delegation. He denied the groups had joined hands against Pakistani troops.

US President Barack Obama has ordered 17,000 additional troops into Afghanistan and Washington is currently meeting top officials from Islamabad and Kabul to put together a new strategy on tackling the Afghanistan problem.

Maulvi Nazir told the Ahmedzai Wazir elders that the understanding with Baitullah did not mean a merger of the three groups. “Each group will have its own independent status and emirates, and each group will be sovereign in their territory,” the Taliban leader said. Maulvi Nazir did say who had helped them forge the alliance, the delegation member told Daily Times. “I think someone from across the border may have influenced the move,” he added. The understanding comes despite serious differences between Maulvi Nazir and Baitullah Mehsud over Uzbek fighters among the latter’s ranks. The Ahmedzai Wazirs and Maulvi Nazir had made a peace deal in April 2007 after the latter flushed out the Uzbek men from the area. The new understanding alarmed the tribesmen the foreigners might return to their land. “We told Maulvi Nazir if his understanding with Baitullah brings any harm to our areas, then the peace accord we reached with him will also be in jeopardy,” the delegation told the Taliban chief, the elder said.

Transmarginal Inhibition

Laura Knight-Jadczyk
Cassiopedia.com

Wow! It’s been almost three weeks since I have written anything for my blog or SOTT! How time does fly! But, that doesn’t mean that I haven’t been writing; as it happens, I have. Not only am I working on the research for my upcoming book, “The Horns of Moses,” I have been working on our Cassiopedia project. After finishing the latest entry on Transmarginal Inhibition as researched by Ivan Pavlov, I thought that it was important enough to bring it to wider attention.

Pavlov demonstrated that when Transmarginal Inhibition began to take over a condition similar to hysteria manifested. In states of fear and excitement, normally sensible human beings will accept the most wildly improbably suggestions.

Once you read this information, I think that you will agree with me that this is the process that has been used on the global masses for quite some time, with a peak of stress inducement on September 11, 2001. You will also understand why so many people have been hoodwinked. (By the way, you won’t find this kind of in-depth information on such subjects on Wikipedia!)

Transmarginal Inhibition

Transmarginal Inhibition, or TMI, is an organism’s response to overwhelming stimuli. Ironically, the popular acronym TMI means too much information, which can be a common factor of transmarginal inhibition in today’s culture.

Research

Ivan Pavlov enumerated details of TMI on his work of conditioning animals via various stimuli, including pain. (It is not true that all of Pavlov’s work was inducing responses via pain as is often reported.)

Pavlov discovered that an organism’s level of tolerance to various stimuli varied significantly depending on fundamental differences in temperament. He commented “that the most basic inherited difference among people was how soon they reached this shutdown point and that the quick-to-shut-down have a fundamentally different type of nervous system.” [1] This led him to pay increasing attention to the need to classify subjects according to their inherited constitution before applying experimental conditioning. Not only did dogs respond differently to conditioning according to their temperament, when a dog broke down under stress, its treatment depended on its constitutional type. For instance, Pavlov confirmed that sedatives were very helpful in restoring stability to the nerves of a dog that had broken down, but that the one type might require 5 to 8 times as much medication than that required by another type even if the body weight was exactly the same.

The Four Temperaments

Based on the empirical evidence accumulated through thirty years of research, Pavlov was convinced of the idea of the four basic temperaments. He noted that these temperaments approximated closely to those differentiated in man by Hippocrates. Though various blends of basic temperamental patterns appeared in Pavlov’s dogs, they could be distinguished as such instead of by creating new categories.

The first type corresponded with Hippocrates’s “choleric” type which Pavlov called “strong excitatory.” The second type: “sanguine” which Pavlov named “lively”, applied to dogs of a more balanced temperament. The normal response to imposed stresses or conflict situations by these two types was increased excitement and more aggressive behavior, but that is where the similarity ended. The “strong excitatory”, or choleric, type would turn so wild as to be completely out of hand as opposed to the “sanguine” type which continued to behave with purposeful and controlled reactions.

The phlegmatic type, Pavlov called “calm, imperturbable,” and the melancholic was called “weak inhibitory” type. In these two types, imposed stresses and conflict situations were met with more passivity or “inhibition” rather than aggression. The “weak inhibitory” type, or melancholic, constitutional tendency was to meet anxieties and conflicts with passivity and avoidance of tension. Any strong experimental stress imposed on such a dog’s nervous system resulted in the dog being reduced to a state of brain inhibition and “fear paralysis.”

Pavlov found that the other three types, when faced with more stress than could be coped with by the usual means, would also eventually enter a state of brain inhibition similar to that state entered very quickly by the melancholic/weak inhibitory type. He regarded this as a protective mechanism normally employed by the brain as a last resort when pressed beyond endurance. The “weak inhibitory” type was an exception to the other three types: this type of dog went into a state of protective brain inhibition more rapidly and in response to lighter stresses. The important finding was, of course, that the four basic natures responded differently to different levels of stress both before, during, and after experiments, the most important datum being that the weak inhibitory type was particularly susceptible.

Regarding the weak inhibitory type, Pavlov observed that though the basic temperamental pattern is inherited, every dog has been conditioned since birth by varied environmental influences which can produce long-lasting inhibitory patterns of behavior under certain stresses. Therefore, the final pattern of behavior of any given dog will depend on both its own constitution as well as specific patterns of behavior induced by prior environmental stresses. [2]

The Ultraboundary Response

Later, when Pavlov was experimentally applying his discoveries about dogs to human psychology, he noted carefully what happened when the higher nervous system of the dog was strained beyond the limits of normal response, and compared these states to clinical reports of various kinds of mental breakdowns in human beings. He found that more severe and prolonged stresses could be applied to dogs of the “lively” or “calm imperturbable” type without causing a breakdown, than to those of the “strong excitatory” and “weak inhibitory” types.

Pavlov was convinced that this “ultraboundary” response that he called Transmarginal Inhibition, was the brain’s protective mechanism. When it occurred, it meant that the brain had no other means of avoiding physical damage due to fatigue and nervous stress. He found that he could determine the degree of protective inhibition in any dog at any moment by using his salivary gland conditioned reflex protocol. Even if the dog seemed normal upon visual examination, the amount of saliva being secreted could tell him what was happening in the dog’s brain, i.e. whether the inhibitory response was initiating, and to what stage it had developed.

The Flood and Brainwashing

Apparently, an accidental event led to some of Pavlov’s more advanced experiments in induced TMI. In 1924, there was a flood in Leningrad. Pavlov had conditioned an entire group of dogs before this flood, during which they were trapped in their cages as the water rose steadily in the laboratory. The dogs were swimming around in terror, fighting to hold their heads above water when, at the last possible moment, a lab attendant came and pulled them down through the water and out of their cage doors to safety.

This event was evidently terrifying in the extreme to the dogs. Some of them switched from a state of acute excitement to severe Transmarginal Protective Inhibition. When Pavlov tested some of them soon after, he found that the recently implanted conditioned reflexes had all disappeared. Other dogs which had faced the ordeal were not affected. Pavlov realized that for those dogs whose conditioning had been wiped away by terror, there was a further degree of inhibitory activity that was capable of wiping the mental slate clean. Most dogs that had reached this stage of “brainwashing” could later have their old conditioned behaviors restored, but it took months of patient work. They were, effectively, “newborn”. If Pavlov would allow a trickle of water to run in under the door of the laboratory, all the dogs were sensitive to, and affected by, the sight; but most particularly those dogs who had been “brainwashed” by the flood.

Even though some of the dogs had resisted total breakdown, Pavlov was convinced that appropriate stresses “properly applied”, could have induced breakdown in every one of them. At the end of his life, Pavlov told an American physiologist that the observations made on this occasion had convinced him that every dog had its “breaking point”. [3]

Four Main Types of Stress

Among Pavlov’s most important findings was what can happen to conditioned behavior when the brain of a dog is pushed to the “ultraboundary” limit by stresses and conflict beyond its habitual response capacity. He was able to bring about what he called a “rupture in higher nervous activity” by utilizing four main types of imposed stresses.

1) The first type of stress was simply an increase in the intensity of the signal to which the dog was initially conditioned. If this was gradually increased, at a certain point, when the signal was too strong for its system, the dog would begin to break down.

2) The second way of achieving the ultraboundary event was to increase the time between the giving of the signal and the arrival of food. If a dog was conditioned to receive food five seconds after the warning signal, and this period was then prolonged, signs of restlessness and abnormal behavior would become evident in the less stable dogs. Pavlov discovered that the dog’s brains revolted against any abnormally long waiting period while under stress. Breakdown would occur when the dog had to either exert very strong, or very prolonged, inhibition. (Human beings also find protracted waiting while under stress to be debilitating: worse than the event that produces the anxiety.)

3) The third way of inducing a breakdown was to confuse the dogs by anomalies in the conditioning signal. If positive and negative signals were given one after the other, (yes, no, yes, no, etc), the hungry dog would become uncertain as to what would happen next and this disrupted the normal nerve stability. This is also true with human beings.

4) The fourth way of inducing a breakdown in a dog was to destabilize the dog’s physical condition in some way, either by subjecting it to long periods of work, inducing gastro-intestinal disorders, fever, disturbing the glandular balance, surgery, etc.

If, in any case, the first three methods would fail to induce a breakdown in a particular dog, it could be achieved by utilizing the same stresses that had failed, but doing so only after initiating the fourth protocol: physical destabilization. Pavlov also discovered that, after physical destabilization, a breakdown might occur even in temperamentally stable dogs and also that any new behavior pattern occurring afterward might become a fixed element of the dog’s personality even long after recovery from the debilitating experience.

In the weak inhibitory type of dog, new neurotic patterns implanted under such conditions could frequently be readily removed by little more than doses of sedatives. But in the calm and lively types – which often needed to be surgically castrated in order to physically debilitate them sufficiently to cause a breakdown – Pavlov discovered that the newly implanted pattern was quite often ineradicable after the dog had recovered its health. Pavlov thought that this was due to the natural toughness of the nervous systems in such types of dogs. The new behaviors were difficult to implant without temporarily induced debilitation and subsequently seemed to be as strong a part of the dog’s “stubborn nature” as the old pattern.

As observed by Pavlov, tolerence of stimulation varies greatly between individuals. Highly sensitive persons may be overstimulated by the loud volumes in a movie theater or the background confusion of a large social gathering. Other individuals will find those same stimulations as ideal stimulation levels, or even understimulating.

Three Stages of TMI

Pavlov established that the ability of a dog to resist heavy stress not only depended on its type, but its physical condition. Once the ultraboundary had been reached and cerebral inhibition induced, very strange things began to happen in the dog’s brain. These changes could be measured with some precision (by the amounts of saliva secreted), and, unlike with human beings, were not altered by subjective distortions. That is to say, there was no question of the dog trying to explain away or rationalize their odd behavior as human beings do. Three distinct and progressive stages of “ultraboundary” inhibition were described by Pavlov.

1)The Equivalent Phase of cortical brain activity. In this phase, all stimuli, of whatever strength resulted only in the same amounts of saliva being produced. In the human being, a similar phenomenon is observed when a normal person is in a state of extreme fatigue; they report that there is very little difference between their emotional reactions to either trivial or important experiences. They may say “I’m too tired to care.”

2) The Paradoxical Phase. When even stronger stresses are applied (and this can be pain or any other mental, physical, or emotional stress), the equivalent phase passes into the paradoxical phase. In this state, weak stimuli can produce a stronger reaction than a strong stimuli. The reason for this is that the strong stimuli only increase the state of protective inhibition while the weak stimuli can still produce positive responses. When a human being is in this stage, their behavior can reverse in a way that seems totally irrational to an outside observer.

3) The Ultra-Paradoxical Phase. The third stage is where positive conditioned responses suddenly reverse to negative responses and negative ones to positive. The dog (or person) may suddenly find that they like what they formerly detested and loathe what they formerly loved. In this stage, the organism’s response becomes opposed to all its previous conditioning.

Additional research on these phases was done by William Sargant in his work on shell-shocked servicemen.

Significance To Human Psychology

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People are a lot like Pavlov’s dogs…

This last discovery has great relevance to understanding similar changes in behavior in human beings. Toward the end of a long period of some type of debilitation, people of very strong character have been known to make a dramatic change in their beliefs and/or convictions. When they recover, they then are known to remain true to their new beliefs for the rest of their lives. There are many case histories of people who experience various types of conversion – religious, political, etc – during times of war, in prison, or after having some prolonged terrifying experience such as shipwreck, plane crash, etc.

Much of human behavior is the result of conditioned patterns of responses that begin to form in infancy and childhood. These patterns of response to reality can persist almost unchanged, but in general, the healthy adult human has learned to adapt their programs to changes in their environment. Other human responses are due to study and learning; driving a car, for example. In the beginning, learning to drive and negotiate in traffic requires a great deal of attention. Later on, it becomes more automatic and the driver can navigate in busy city traffic while talking, eating, or doing any number of other activities. “Driving” has become an automatic program. But if the driver then travels into the country where there is little traffic, he is able to adapt to changing conditions and does this automatically.

So it is that an organism’s brain is required to build ever more elaborate structures of both positive and negative conditioned responses – behavior patterns – to the changing conditions of the environment. Pavlov showed that the nervous system of a dog could develop extraordinary powers of discrimination automatically. A dog could be made to salivate in reaction to a tone of exactly 500 vibrations per minute, not 490 or 510.

Negative conditioned responses, such as anger or “fight or flight” reactions are generally controlled in civilized societies though it is occasionally necessary to activate them in response to changes in the environment such as threat or a life-or-death emergency.

The emotional attitudes and patterns of response are also conditioned in the human being though most people do not like to admit this. We learn as children to feel attraction or revulsion for certain things, people, events, and so on. Words such as “Catholic,” or “Communist” can evoke instant emotional reactions that have no relation to any facts or data, but are simply programmed attitudes acquired by conditioning within the family and society.

Use in Mind Control

The work of Ivan Pavlov was found by the Soviet totalitarian regime to be quite useful in pursuing their political policy of indoctrination. As evidence of this fact, it is noted that in July, 1950, a medical directive was issued in Russia for a re-orientation of all Soviet medicine along Pavlovian lines. [4] The reason for this directive is apparently due to the most impressive results that were obtained by applying Pavlovian principles.

Pavlov’s work seems to have strongly influenced the techniques used in Russia and China for the “eliciting of confessions”, for brainwashing and for inducing political conversions. This research has, apparently, been carried on in the U.S. by secret services who have a vested interest in “debunking” and marginalizing such information. Most of Pavlov’s findings applicable to Mind Control are reported in a series of Pavlov’s later lectures translated by Horsley Gantt, published in Great Britain and the United States in 1941 under the title “Conditioned Reflexes and Psychiatry.” [5] Professor Y. P. Frolov’s book about these experiments, Pavlov and His School [6] has also been translated into English. Later books made little or no reference to most of Pavlov’s important findings along the line of Mind Control. Joseph Wortis, M.D., in his study “Soviet Psychiatry”, published in the U.S. in 1950 [7], made a point to emphasize the importance of Pavlov’s experiments in psychiatry, but gave very few details of the last phase of this work that dealt with Mind Control. Other books contain many details of Pavlov’s early experimental work, but little to nothing of his later work relevant to Mind Control and brain-washing.

Pavlov demonstrated that when Transmarginal Inhibition began to take over a dog, a condition similar to hysteria in a human manifested. The applications of these findings to human psychology suggest that for a “conversion” to be effective, it is necessary to work on the subject’s emotions until s/he reaches an abnormal condition of fear, anger or exaltation. If such a state is maintained or intensified by any of various means, hysteria is the result. In a state of hysteria, a human being is abnormally suggestible and influences in the environment can cause one set of behavior patterns to be replaced by another without any need for persuasive indoctrination. In states of fear and excitement, normally sensible human beings will accept the most wildly improbably suggestions.

Social Implications

The means by which TMI operates on the individual is rather clear; what is less clear is how hysteria affects larger groups even moving to the macro-scale. Nevertheless, scientific observers of U.S. society since September 11, 2001, often point out that the events of that day were a classic example of inducing Transmarginal Inhibition in masses of people in order to condition them to accept the destruction of the U.S. Democratic government.

References

Frolov, Y.P. (1938). Pavlov and His School. Trans. by C.P. Dutt. Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner, London.

Babkin, B.P. (1951) Pavlov. A Biography. Gollancz, London.

Asratyan, E.A. (1953) I.P. Pavlov: His Life and Work (English translation) Foreign Languages Publishing House, Moscow.

Boakes, R. A. (1984). From Darwin to behaviourism. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Firkin, B. G.; & Whitworth, J. A. (1987). Dictionary of Medical Eponyms. Parthenon Publishing. ISBN 1-85070-333-7

Pavlov, I. P. (1927). Conditioned Reflexes: An Investigation of the Physiological Activity of the Cerebral Cortex (translated by G. V. Anrep). London: Oxford University Press.

Todes, D. P. (1997). “Pavlov’s Physiological Factory,” Isis. Vol. 88. The History of Science Society, p. 205-246.

External links

Battle for the Mind by William Sargant

Brainwashing: Lecture Notes: Physiological Perspective

The Battle For Your Mind

PBS article

Nobel Prize website biography of I. P. Pavlov

Institute of Experimental Medicine article on Pavlov

Link to full text of Pavlov’s lectures

The Highly Sensitive Person or the HSP

Cutting through the illusion – The Grand Chessboard

Simon Davies
SOTT.net

The US and Israel- the Reality

It may seem blindingly obvious, but I’m going to say it anyway as we often seem to forget, that clear communication is essential to mutual understanding. Without a common understanding of what we say to each other we find ourselves adrift in Babel-land. The risks to us all from a lack of common understanding cannot be overstated.

In the midst of the deluge of bailouts, rescues and stimulus packages there is no clear communication as to just why these measures are being taken and how they are meant to improve the lives of ordinary people. It is abundantly clear that this is deliberate. If we, the normal people of the planet, were to gain a common understanding of what is really happening, we would decide that we don’t approve, we would agree on exactly why we don’t approve and we would likely agree on what we wish to see happen instead. Those that control our world know this so they ensure that no common understanding is reached; they need the confusion. In fact, they create the confusion.

They do this because should enough people truly understand the reality of what is happening on this planet a critical mass might be reached such that collectively we decide that we will no longer tolerate the world being the way it is and, more importantly, we would have a common direction to get out of the mess.

In order to ensure that we do not develop this common direction the controllers, or as Douglas Reed called them, the Managers, continuously ensure that we are in a state of confusion. The pre-requisite to achieving this confusion is that we be kept in a state of constant mutual fear wherein we see “others” as threatening to us whether to our property, our social status, our position at work, our position in our community, our economic position and even to our very survival.

Our societies have been engineered so that the wealthy fear the poor, the middle class fear the unionized workers, one race fears another, one religious creed fears another, and so on and so on almost ad infinitum. We compete rather than cooperate and we fear and hate rather than loving and empathizing. All our religions, all our political parties, all our beliefs have been engineered to keep us in a constant state of fear. Every society reflects in the fear of its people the inequalities and injustice of its social structure and the political and social agendas of its ruling elite.

For most people in the so called “free” countries of the western world our fear is typically of each other and of foreigners, whether immigrant or “terrorist”, but this has been changing as we have become increasingly aware of the awesome power of the state as it manifests its brutality against our protests, as it whittles away our “freedoms” and commits our nations to criminal and immoral wars and theft. In order to amass greater power for itself the state has manipulated people’s fears under the guise of the “war-on-terror”, the “war-on-drugs”, immigration and economic insecurity. Overlaying the fear is a constant barrage of conflicting information, misinformation and disinformation constructed so as to ensure that no clear picture of reality can be discerned. In a nutshell, the state has used the technique of mass Transmarginal Inhibition to render the bulk of people passive, apathetic, submissive and confused.

People who are perpetually confused are impotent and incapable of coherent collective action. The tactic has always been to divide and conquer.

There is a struggle taking place which will determine the future of this planet and the people on it. Arrayed against normal people is a pathological system dominated by psychopaths of all races, creeds and colours. These psychopaths have no purpose that normal people can properly comprehend, for their purpose is power; power for its own sake. They seek no strategic political or economic goal, there is no specific land they covet or a level of wealth which they seek, for there is not enough land nor enough wealth to satisfy them. Neither is there a limit to the suffering they will cause for they seem to revel in bloodbaths, in torture and starvation. They seek infinite control, no bargain nor parlay can assuage them, there is no treaty that can halt their rapacious advance nor law that can limit them.

All the institutions of our world, our governments, corporations and religions reflect the pathology of the psychopath. We have grown up and bring our children up in a world dominated by this pathology and these beings.

Yet the psychopath has a fundamental weakness, like any stalking predator in the wild that depends on concealment to eat: they have an overwhelming fear of exposure. It is this innate fear of exposure that dominates much of what they do and explains the immense fear and confusion that we are kept in. The fear and confusion of the world is the deliberate ploy of the psychopaths to avoid discovery.

We cannot fight the psychopaths and the diseased system they have created with weapons of war for they control the greatest war machines the world has ever known; we cannot succeed by any means other than through a simple and all powerful revolution, a revolution of truth. For truth reveals the lie and the psychopath withers in the light of truth.

The truth, as famously stated by St Paul, will also set us free. It will set us free from fear and confusion, because the truth has no political, religious or any other affiliation, it stands on its own. But finding the truth is no easy task, for it remains hidden behind veil after veil. Our task therefore is to strip away every veil without pity; especially without pity for ourselves and the warm fuzzy religious and philosophical lies we have used as wool over our eyes.

We will discover horrors about the world and about ourselves that will challenge everything we have taken for granted but if we do not have the courage to face these horrors, these truths about ourselves and our world, we will lose, and the world will sink into darkness, a darkness from which it may never recover. Psychopaths have dominated the world for millennia, but now they have the power to destroy this world and no capacity to understand what that really means. As Andrew M. Lobaczewski put it in Political Ponerology, “Germs are not aware that they will be burned alive or buried deep in the ground along with the human body whose death they are causing.”

When we strip away the lies, the system we find ourselves captive in does not resemble the world in which we thought we lived. All the boundaries and defining features of the world that we are conditioned to believe in are false illusions simply created as the framework for control. For those who truly run the world there are no boundaries, for them there are no nation states, no laws, no morals; there is just power.

Money and the economy are mere tools for the attaining of power so that everything we observe in the field of economics and money is simply part of the perpetual garnering of power. Yet we have to understand that the system, the Matrix, is not something that we will one day suddenly find and be able to point to and say “see, there it is”, for it surrounds us; all we see are at best mere reflections of what is happening at levels which we cannot penetrate.

With this in mind, let us return to the matter of confusion. It seems to us that the immense confusion surrounding the economic crisis is a key to perceiving the Matrix. It seems to us that those that run the world, the Managers, are relying on this confusion to ensure that we take a particular path which is to their advantage. We think that the path they are sending us down is one of near total economic collapse resulting in the breakdown of the existing social order and the imposition of overt military dictatorship. That is the obvious end result of what they are doing and thus is their intent.

This is precisely the scenario envisaged in a monograph from the Strategic Studies Institute in a November 2008 entitled “Known Unknowns: Unconventional ‘Strategic Shocks’ in Defense Strategy Development,” in which it is stated:-

Widespread civil violence inside the United States would force the defense establishment to reorient priorities in extremis to defend basic domestic order and human security. Deliberate employment of weapons of mass destruction or other catastrophic capabilities, unforeseen economic collapse, loss of functioning political and legal order, purposeful domestic resistance or insurgency, pervasive public health emergencies, and catastrophic natural and human disasters are all paths to disruptive domestic shock.

It is also the reason that in the UK the Metropolitan Police have begun a propaganda war against the people of the UK when they had the Guardian newspaper report:-

Superintendent David Hartshorn, who heads the Metropolitan police’s public order branch, told the Guardian that middle-class individuals who would never have considered joining demonstrations may now seek to vent their anger through protests this year.

He said that banks, particularly those that still pay large bonuses despite receiving billions in taxpayer money, had become “viable targets”. So too had the headquarters of multinational companies and other financial institutions in the City which are being blamed for the financial crisis.

Hartshorn, who receives regular intelligence briefings on potential causes of civil unrest, said the mood at some demonstrations had changed recently, with activists increasingly “intent on coming on to the streets to create public disorder”.

The warning comes in the wake of often violent protests against the handling of the economy across Europe. In recent weeks Greek farmers have blocked roads over falling agricultural prices, a million workers in France joined demonstrations to demand greater protection for jobs and wages and Icelandic demonstrators have clashed with police in Reykjavik.

In the UK hundreds of oil refinery workers mounted wildcat strikes last month over the use of foreign workers.

Intelligence reports suggest that “known activists” are also returning to the streets, and police claim they will foment unrest. “Those people would be good at motivating people, but they haven’t had the ‘footsoldiers’ to actually carry out [protests],” Hartshorn said. “Obviously the downturn in the economy, unemployment, repossessions, changes that. Suddenly there is the opportunity for people to mass protest.”

It is obvious that in the US and the UK those that control the military, police and intelligence apparatus are seeking widespread conflict. They are simply preparing the popular mind for the violence that they themselves plan to unleash upon us. This violence will be used to justify dictatorship, civil repression, mass arrests and incarceration without trial.

Douglas Reed, in From Smoke to Smother (1948) foresaw this exact scenario when he wrote of the World Dictatorship that he saw arising under the guise of the United Nations implemented through ‘emergency powers’, ‘labour direction’ and ‘bread rationing’.

We have the ‘emergency powers’ in place now: the Patriot Act, the Military Commissions Act etc in the US, the Terrorism Acts in the UK (to name but a few). Soon we will have ‘labour direction’ as the economy crumbles in ruins and labouring for the state or via the state for the global corporations will become a necessity in the face of starvation. In due course, with the breakdown in global trade and social structure there will no doubt be ‘bread rationing’ of some sort. Whether it will truly be rationing or rather the simple expedient of starvation of those that do not bow down before the might of the US and Israeli empire.

Yet we now see that the United Nations may have been a foil all along. For 50 years, Christian fundamentalists and conspiracy theorists in the US and elsewhere, have been ranting about the New World Order under the United Nations while the US was portrayed as the bastion of freedom and the only power that can stand against the UN and the World. This has rendered those who see a great deal incapable of seeing where the real danger lies.

Even Douglas Reed saw the United Nations as the supra-national body to impose the first World Dictatorship and how wrong was he when one looks at the invasion of Iraq based on wholly imaginary weapons, the bullying of Iran for being in the way of the global hegemony of the US and Israel while the barefaced genocide perpetrated by Israel goes unremarked let alone addressed by an impotent United Nations?

So too will we be faced with one or more supra-national bodies based, as the United Nations was, on the justification of “never again”. This time the “never again” is economic but will become military on the heels of social unrest and state violence . The same lies will be trotted out to justify these institutions now as in the 1940′s and yet again these will be foils behind which the real rulers of the world, the US and Israel, will hide.

The Managers have engineered this crisis, its form, scope and magnitude such that there is nothing that our governments could do, within the constraints imposed upon them, even if they had the vision and understanding to comprehend the trap we are all in.

The banking crisis has been expertly engineered through the transformation of banking into a high risk greed driven casino supported by the manipulated absence of regulation and excess of money supply. The nature of the banking system is such that it would inevitably lead to the debt driven asset price bubble that has made prisoners of debt out of millions and slaves out of billions. Years of banking merger upon banking merger resulted in a small number of banks coming to dominate the globe with the inevitable result that the very existence of the entire system now rests upon their shoulders.

Yet these banks were deliberately allowed to be run in a cavalier and immoral fashion with precious little proper oversight. Similarly, the world has become dominated by a small number of global corporations that control our access to energy, food, and the other essentials, and non-essentials, of life. Our political systems have become hostage to the interests of these banking and corporate empires, our governments so dominated by them that the US government has been referred to as “Government Sachs”, a reference to the number of positions in the US government held by Goldman Sachs people.

Our national governments are now simply puppets of the banks and corporations that dominate the globe who are in turn the puppets of the hidden Managers, their rule imposed through military might and the police state.

This was all a trap, designed to lead to exactly this situation from which there is no apparent escape. Our political leaders, our civil servants, our leading bankers and corporate managers are all the products of a system that has provided them with a framework of reality which is false, limited and engineered such that the psychopathic rise to the top and the non-psychopathic become so hopelessly infected that they might as well be psychopathic. Their beliefs about the world are so diseased that they justify to themselves the rape and destruction of entire peoples and nations and will justify to themselves the repression and destruction of their own people. Yet it is to these people that we are told we must defer in leading us out of the mess that they have created.

The vast majority of these people did not consciously create this mess, they simply participated in its creation because that is how they are, it reflects their nature, they can be and could do nothing else.

But behind them lie those who are very conscious of the actions they take and who have a very clear and specific agenda. The way these Managers work is simple, they understand the nature of psychopaths, for that is their nature, and the weaknesses of normal people and they play them. They establish environments in which psychopaths will flourish and in which the weaknesses of normal people such as greed and avarice will become dominant. The free market capitalist system is just such an environment; an environment easily manipulated by the Managers to create whatever result they wish.

The result they desired and have crystalised is the collapse of the system in exactly the manner we see; the inevitable scrambling by their minions for ‘solutions’, which are themselves part of the plan, including the setting up of the simultaneous pillaging of national treasuries across the globe in a manner designed to extract maximum wealth, exponentially increase debt and create figures of hatred, in the banks and bankers, for the masses to direct their anger at.

Each piece on the chessboard is there for a reason. The political leaders have been chosen for their traits whether it is Obama’s apparent charisma in contrast to Bush, Brown’s surliness or Sarkozy’s limitless arrogance. The banks have been set up to fail and then seek public money to the inevitable disgust and anger of the masses. The war machines have been battle hardened, the military and police personnel conditioned in the “war-on-terror, there’s a terrorist in every person” mentality, the people bred fearful and confused. The mass of people have been reduced to an ignorant and confused rabble, easily directed, manipulated into violence or submission exactly as they Managers wish. At no time can the Managers be identified for they are never on the chessboard.

For many the idea that our entire world is a giant chessboard is too much. These people fall back on the illusions of the Matrix always seeking a more comfortable, a more reassuring explanation. As Douglas Reed said, “Men are quick to tremble before imaginary dangers and slow to see the real ones”.

We are being driven towards economic apocalypse, societal collapse and totalitarian dictatorship; it is as simple as that. Denial makes victims, facing reality makes the people of the future.

Our problem is civil obedience

Civil disobedience is not our problem. Our problem is civil obedience. Our problem is that numbers of people all over the world have obeyed the dictates of the leaders of their government and have gone to war, and millions have been killed because of this obedience. Our problem is that people are obedient all over the world in the face of poverty and starvation and stupidity, and war, and cruelty. Our problem is that people are obedient while the jails are full of petty thieves, and all the while the grand thieves are running and robbing the country. That’s our problem.”

Howard Zinn, from ‘Failure to Quit’

EVIL are these means and avowed ends

Carolyn Bennett, thepeoplesvoice.org

Feb 24, 2009 In a sense there are only Means and means must be judged against firm and impartial standards of morality and legality. If an End though a means is envisioned as an end, it too must stand and be judged impartially as moral or immoral, just or unjust, legal or illegal, humane or inhumane. Ends contrived by men never justify means. Given this— The world watches Israel as it enters another corrupt phase in a sixty-year era of corruption—means upon means. Thomas Paine said “A bad cause will ever be supported by bad means and bad men” (and women). In its fraudulent cause Israel has caused deaths and displacements of hundreds of thousands of people who never harmed or threatened Jews. In its 23-day reign of rabid violence (on top of continuous aggression and occupation) that left 1,330 people (among them 400 children) massacred and 5,450 wounded, Israel has left two thirds of Gaza’s 1.5 million people homelessness. New refugees number 30,000 that the Palestinian Red Crescent Society and the UN refugee agency are scrambling to house in 700 tents. Do you know (Are you acquainted with) any human beings who live in “tents” or have lived in “camps” for 60 years —under critically worsening conditions? People in the United States and Europe think of tents and camps—if they think of them as all—as something they might sleep in on summer outings or vacation safaris—never as the sole, the only, form of housing day in and day out; housing handed out to you by some aid group because you are prohibited by an occupying nuclear power from obtaining the materials and building your own home and living in it in peace and permanence on your own land. Israel’s sixty-one year reign of terror is said to have displaced “more than 700,000 Palestinians from their lands.” The Palestinians remember this as “the Nakba”—the “Catastrophe.” “A good End cannot sanctify evil Means,” writes the Quaker; “nor must we ever do Evil, that Good may come of it.” This is decidedly true as far as it goes. But of Israel together with the assent of leading Western nations, their means and ends concerning Palestinians and Arabs and Muslims and their lands and lives are Evil—through and through, bad to the bone—and the cry in outrage persists in demanding justice before a demonstrably impartial court of law. -###- Blog: todaysmissingnews http://todaysmissingnews.blogspot.com Dr. Carolyn LaDelle Bennett is a writer and independent journalist: author of Women’s Work and Words Altering World Order: Alternatives to Spin and Inhumanity of Men and other books available online from publishers, at Amazon or Barnes & Noble.

Gaza, Dresden, Hamburg: Legality of targeting civilians?

By Kamal Dib

Feb 24, 2009 Photos and reports on Gaza on TV, in newspapers and Internet websites, remind one of German cities, such as Hamburg and Dresden, following the Allied bombing during World War II. Scenes of destruction in Gaza streets and neighborhoods in 2009 resemble those of Beirut’s southern suburbs in 2006. In both events, totally or partially destroyed buildings and infrastructure, and slaughtered civilians were standard outcomes of Israeli attacks. Many late-night TV documentaries of World War II battles show German cities, flattened by Allied bombings in 1942-45, shell-shocked civilians, wandering among the ruins, looking for family members if they are still alive, and searching for morsels of food and shreds of clothing to stay alive in the bitter cold winter. Some scenes from these German cities showed body parts (hands, legs, heads) extending from underneath the rubble, an image that also came up in the aftermath of the massacre of Palestinian refugees in Sabra and Shatilla in 1982, following the occupation of Beirut by Israeli forces. Legal experts may say that bombings of civilians in Germany and Japan during World War II have preceded the Geneva Conventions (1949) on the treatment of civilians in war zones or under occupation, and that after 1949 there was no excuse for countries not to respect modern rules of conduct. The Geneva Conventions (http://www.unhchr.ch/html/menu3/b/91.htm) made it illegal to target civilians, as targeting civilians by warring armies or paramilitary groups is considered a breach of international law and a serious human rights abuse, let alone the illegal use of weaponry, that is meant for long-range battles between armies, against civilian concentrations in residential areas in short-range bombing (which Israel casually did in Lebanon and the Palestinian territories). It is true that most media outlets around the world, including news agencies and satellite TV, are preoccupied with civilian suffering in modern military conflicts, and that civil society organizations issue condemnations and launch demonstrations against targeting civilians. But is there evidence that international law was applied and perpetrators of war crimes were brought to justice? Facts since World War II, and up to the attack on Gaza in 2009, confirm that civilians were and are still “legitimate” targets, in wars and conflicts where the superior side included the Western alliance or the United States alone, Israel and Russia (invasion of Afghanistan in 1978). The US has used nuclear weapons against Japan in bombing Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945. Both cities were flattened and hundreds of thousands of civilians perished. After World War II, the US and several of its Allies waged multiple wars, alone or collectively, in Korea, in Viet Nam, Cambodia, and Laos from the late 1950s till the early 1970s. Other wars also took place after World War II and produced shocking scenes of civilian causalities. On its own, Israel committed a long list of massacres against the civilian population in Palestine, Lebanon and Egypt between the 1930s and 2009. In 1982, the Israeli invasion of Lebanon resulted in the murder of 20,000 civilians. The recent attack on Gaza resulted in the death of 1,400 people, the wounding of 5,000, and the uprooting of hundreds of thousands of civilians, with untold damage to the civilian infrastructure, to the economy and to residential neighborhoods. These outcomes were denounced by civil society organizations, such as Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International, and by conscientious media outlets, but rarely by governments. The attacks against civilians in Gaza were clearly in violation of international law and of basic human rights, but the Israelis and their Arab and Western sponsors knew that world-wide public anger will pass and threats of suing Israeli soldiers and their commanders and political overseers are just that – threats. And then life will go on. This was proven by the rush of European leaders to Israel to offer their services to Israel to make sure that Gaza never rises again against the 40-year occupation, or by the fact that the new US administration has not said a word about Gaza’s agony and death toll, as the world opinion has expected from the new US president, Barack Obama. During World War Two, 131 German cities and towns were targeted by Allied bombs; more than one third was almost entirely flattened. This bombing killed over 600,000 German civilians, destroyed 3.5 homes, and left 7 million Germans homeless. For many decades, this subject occupied little space in German publications, public discourse or popular culture. That the victims were civilians being targeted in the time of war was put aside when the victorious Allies established courts to bring the Nazi regime to justice, but no Allied soldiers were brought to accountability for their actions. It mattered little what crimes the Allies, including Britain and Stalinist Russia, have committed against the German civilian population between 1943 and 1949. The British Royal Air force alone dropped one million tons of bombs on Germany cities in 1942-1945. After the war, there were 31.1 cubic meters of rubble for every person in Cologne (Kšln) and 42.8 cubic meters for every inhabitant in Dresden. Similar devastation was to hit Beirut’s southern suburbs in 2006 and Gaza in 2009, where the Israeli massive war machine turned urban areas into heaps of concrete and steel. That there was no political or military logic that dictated the bombing of German cities in 1942-1945, was lost on historians, politicians, lawmakers and judges till today. First, how can a military strategy, directed primarily against civilian population, be defended morally or by the laws of war (the same question goes to Israeli strategists)? The British government has approved such bombing in February 1942, “to destroy the morale of the enemy civilian population and, in particular, of the industrial workers”. However, as many records have shown, even by the spring of 1944, “it was emerging that despite incessant air raids the moral of the German population was obviously unbroken, while industrial production was impaired only marginally at best, and the end of the war had not come a day closer” (cited in W.G. Sebald, The Natural History of Destruction). However, the British still needed to continue the bombing to boost public morale at home and claim that Britain is still capable of hitting the Nazi homeland. It is common knowledge that the Germans fought on every square inch on their territory and that Berlin had to be taken street by street from the German defenders by the invading Allied Forces. Bombing German cities did not help the Allied war effort and killing civilians and destroying cities were unnecessary whether back in the 1940s or today in Gaza or Beirut. This brings us back to the innermost reprehensible principle of every war, which is to aim for as wholesale an annihilation of the enemy with his dwellings, his history, and his natural environment as can possibly be achieved. How can one explain that in 2009, a country (Israel) can still bomb hospitals, schools, United Nations relief buildings, and over-crowded residential areas, and still get away with it? Isn’t this enough proof that the most basic instincts of humanity’s dark side still prevail relations among nations (which are supposed to be civilized)? A Lebanese poet (Khalil Gibran) once said: “Where is the justice of political power if it executes the murderer and jails the plunderer, and then itself marches upon neighboring lands, killing thousands and pillaging the very hills? … where the murder of one person is a heinous crime, but the mass-murder of an entire people is somewhat an excusable act”. How true these words are today when the world provides funds and human resources to bring individuals to international tribunals at The Hague for the murder of one individual, while little is done to apply international law when 1.5 million people in Gaza were bombed for four weeks without anyone raising a finger. Kamal Dib is a Canadian economist with research interest in the Middle East and an observer of German culture (kamaldib@videotron.ca)

Pakistan army and ISI in CIA’s firing line

By Asif Haroon Raja

Feb 25, 2009

It is now getting clear as to why FATA has been declared most dangerous place on earth. After making series of allegations that FATA is the main breeding ground where militants and suicide bombers are trained for launching into Afghanistan; where the entire senior leadership of Al-Qaeda and Taliban is housed; and from where possible attack on US homeland would take off, so far not a single training camp has been located in FATA, nor any high-profile militant leader nabbed or killed. This is in spite of continuous hovering of spy planes and next door US-NATO troops equipped with latest state-of-the-art surveillance and detection gadgets breathing over Pakistan’s neck, and RAW-CIA-Mossad agents having infiltrated into FATA in big numbers.

If CIA controlled drones can hit suspected houses, madrassas and Hujras based on intelligence, why have they been unable to detect so-called training sites and the top wanted leaders? Why have the drones not taken a pot shot at Baitullah Mehsud or Maulana Fazlullah if the US considers Pakistani Taliban a threat? The fact is that whatever has been said about FATA is pack of white lies uttered with sinister designs. All sorts of harrowing stories were cooked up to justify drone attacks as well as ground raids in Pakistan’s northwestern tribal belt. Blatant lies are similar to the WMD falsehood to justify invasion of Iraq. Why not Afghanistan, Iraq, Somalia, Sudan or for that matter India which has become the hub-centre of extremism and terrorism been added to the list of most dangerous places?

Other than the militants, which the US is keen to eliminate, Pakistan army and the ISI also continue to remain in CIA’s firing line. CIA is deliberately leaking out stories in US leading newspapers while CNN, Fox News drum beats scandalous news on electronic media to malign the two institutions. The allegations made against the two institutions range from collaboration with the Taliban and playing a double game. The themes played are: One, the army is either incapable of dealing with militants or is soft towards them; Two, the army has surrendered FATA and Swat to the Taliban; Three, the army uses the Taliban as a weapon to regain strategic depth in Afghanistan; Four, the army is not under civil government control; Five, the ISI trains, equips and launches militants into Pakistan to hit Afghan-Nato targets.

In order to nullify the negative impact of deadly drone attacks which have killed mostly innocent men, women and children, USA has launched a bizarre campaign in its bid to convince Pakistanis and the world that drones are flown from air bases in Baluchistan and not from Afghanistan. Earlier on it was stated that there was a tacit understanding between Gen Musharraf and USA and that Zardari on his visit to Washington had given his blessing to continue drone attacks. It was also said that missile attacks were conducted without informing Pakistan because of strong suspicion that the army and the ISI forewarned the Taliban about the intended attack.

David E Sanger and Ron Suskind, both from USA have belatedly come up with news that Gen Musharraf had played a double game. In his book ‘Inheritance’, Sanger claims that he learnt about the ISI and Pakistani Generals protecting the Taliban by listening to the highly classified tapes in which telephonic conversations of top Pakistani Generals with the then ISI chief were recorded. Who will buy this crap for everyone knows that Generals use highly secured communication system which cannot be breached. More so, why the hell they should be discussing Taliban over phones? Diane Feinstein, chairperson of US Senate Committee on Intelligence came out with a startling disclosure that US drones were operating form certain ISI bases within Pakistan and that USAF and US army had nothing to do with it. The ISI was deliberately added to generate feelings of hatred against it. Who doesn’t know that the ISI do not control any bases and that drones are flown from Bagram air base in Afghanistan? It is also a known fact that Shamsi and Dalbaldin air bases are utilized by CIA and FBI for covert operations in Baluchistan and Iran.

The CIA and ISI have always enjoyed cordial relations. The Afghan war against the Soviets brought the two very close to each other. This closeness got reinvigorated when Pakistan volunteered to become the frontline state against war on terror. The two sailed along smoothly till as late as 2007 after which there was a sudden shift in CIA’s attitude. This change in attitude occurred after ISI learnt about CIA playing a double game in FATA and Baluchistan by providing all out assistance to RAW to destabilize the marked regions. When ISI became cautious and started to take protective measures, it irked CIA and started to distance itself. CIA’s relations with Pak army and the ISI became strained when the army-ISI outspread details of drug trade in Afghanistan in which CIA, RAW and Mossad were deeply involved. This disclosure with proofs was made when the USA had begun to tantalize Pak army and blamed it for its woes in Afghanistan. Pakistan argued that one of the principle reasons for USA not being able to control militancy in Afghanistan was the unchecked drug trade which was also a source of income for the militants to fund their militancy. It transpired that CIA assisted by India was sponsoring multi-billon dollar Afghan drug trade. The duo banks on $3 trillion worth of drug money each year, generated through heroin production and its subsequent sale across the world. Drug money is used by CIA for carrying out covert operations in the world. RAW utilizes drug money for running tens of training camps, for recruiting and equipping agents and suicide bombers and funding dissident elements within Pakistan.

Exposure of this racket angered CIA and relations of the two soured. Matters worsened when the Indian defence attaché serving in Indian Embassy in Kabul got killed on 7 July 2008 suicide bombing. He was a lynchpin arranging drug deals and hence very dear to the CIA. RAW convinced CIA that the attack had been perpetrated by ISI. It infuriated CIA so intensely that it vowed to teach ISI a lesson. We remember how Deputy Director CIA and Adm. Mullen came fuming to Pakistan and expressed their deepest concern. Ever since, CIA is not missing any opportunity to fire salvos to defame and axe this premier organization which provides first line of defence to Pakistan.

Otherwise too, both CIA and RAW consider the army and ISI as the only bottlenecks which are blocking their route to denuclearize Pakistan. Among the many conditions attached to Benazir return to Pakistan was to turn the army into a counter terrorism force and to bring the ISI and the nuclear program under civilian control. A serious attempt was made in August last year when the ISI had nearly been placed under Ministry of Interior. CIA was part of the gory drama of Mumbai in which the army and ISI in particular were blamed. The CIA not only exercises control over US media and think tanks which it uses for propaganda purposes and for forming perceptions, it has also cultivated intellectuals, writers, journalists, English newspapers and TV channels in Pakistan and uses Pakistani brigade to supplement its propaganda warfare. Among the latter category some are based in foreign countries but subscribe their articles in Pakistan’s leading English newspapers. Of late this brigade has become very active and is parroting dictated themes with greatest vigor.

There is no denying the fact that the CIA used drug money to finance war against the Soviets in the 1980s. Earlier on it had also used drug money in Nicaragua in 1979-80 to finance Contras. By the close of Afghan war in 1989, Afghanistan was the second biggest opium producing country in the world. It was almost cleansed of the curse of drugs by the Taliban during their rule from 1996 to 2001.

It has now been converted into the largest heroin producing state in the world. Hamid Karzai brother Izzatullah Wasifi is the biggest heroin producer and there are dozens of heroin factories established across the country and run by Wasifi and other Afghan warlords. Ahmad Wali Karzai in Kandahar handles all exports of heroin to Europe through Turkmenistan. The 7 July attack on Indian Embassy had been masterminded by Wasifi once he learnt that the Indian officer was betraying him to US Drug Enforcement Agency.

It is surprising that neither CIA has ever recommended to US government to launch a crackdown on heroin factories that finance militants and warlords nor the US military command or NATO command in Kabul have raised this issue. It seems as if all are party to the drug game. Without Pentagon and CIA blessing it is not possible to export thousands of tons of heroin. Reportedly, even US military cargo planes are in use to shift heroin and on occasions coffin boxes were used. Possibility of NATO countries and Afghan army and police indulging in this lucrative business cannot be ruled out. It is to be seen whether the hard taskmaster Holbrook would be able sort this critical matter without which any amount of troop surge will not produce any tangible results.

Asif Haroon Raja is a retired Brig and a defence analyst.

- Asian Tribune -

Pak Spies: Drones Destabilizing Qaeda – and Our Gov’t

By Noah Shachtman February 25, 2009 | 11:43:52 AMCategories: Drones, Perils of Pakistan

U.S. unmanned aircraft attacks may be decimating al Qaeda’s ranks in Pakistan. But, if the killer drone pilots aren’t careful, they could wind up undermining the Islamabad government, too.

That’s the message Pakistani’s spy service is trying to deliver to the American government, through the New York Times. Officials from the Directorate for Inter-Services Intelligence, or ISI, briefed the paper on the impact of the robo-plane attacks. “The officials acknowledge that the strikes and raids by the Pakistani military are proving effective, having killed as many as 80 Qaeda fighters in the past year. But they express growing alarm that the drone strikes in particular are having an increasingly destabilizing effect on their country.”

Pakistani intelligence and military officials say there is no argument that Qaeda fighters must be hunted down; they provide targeting information to the CIA, which remotely pilots the drones. But they complain that the missile strikes cause too many civilian casualties and that they hand the militants a propaganda windfall.

We know that the Air Force takes all kinds of precautions, when it plots out drone strikes on targets in Afghanistan. Does the CIA take those same precautions, when it unleashes the killer drones in Pakistan?

It’s more than a little ironic for the ISI to be carping about unintended consequences, of course. These are the guys that helped create and nurture the Taliban, after all. But that doesn’t mean the spy service is wrong to worry about its once-controllable creation is turning on its masters. “It’s morphing into a monster and growing uglier,” one senior Pakistani intelligence official tells the Times.

Meanwhile, the public outcry over the drones continues. There were protests against the unmanned strikes earlier this week in Karachi. In Islamabad, the News of Pakistan reports, “the parliamentary committee on national security on Tuesday urged the government to use all options to stop the drone attacks on Pakistani territory.”

[Photo: USAF]

Tracking Down Gaza War’s Deadly, Mysterious Cubes

By David Hambling February 24, 2009 | 11:21:49 AMCategories: Ammo and Munitions, Missiles, Sabras

An unidentified weapon packed with strange “cube shaped shrapnel” killed or wounded civilians in the recent Gaza war, according to a new report from Amnesty International.

Amnesty’s report on weapons used by both sides in Gaza finds much to condemn. The group is particularly hard on the U.S., having found numerous remains of American munitions — including white phosphorus shells from Pine Bluff Arsenal, and a Hellfire missile made in Orlando. Another weapon which bothers Amnesty is a mysterious munition, filled with cubic particles.

“Amnesty International delegates in Gaza also found evidence of the use of a new type of missile, seemingly launched from unmanned drones, which explodes large numbers of tiny sharp-edged metal cubes, each between 2 and 4 mm square in size. This purpose-made shrapnel can penetrate even thick metal doors and many were seen by Amnesty International’s delegates embedded deep in concrete walls. They appear designed to cause maximum injury…

The signature of these new missiles, in addition to the deadly tiny metal cubes, is a small and deep hole in the ground (about 10 cm or less in diameter and up to several meters in depth) [emphasis mine]

While it’s impossible to say for certain, we can make a very educated guess that where the shrapnel came from -– and also evaluate the claim about maximum injury.

One likely candidate is the Spike missile, made by the Israeli company Rafael (not to be confused with the U.S. Navy’s Spike missile we featured previously) . Originally designed as an anti-tank missile, it is comes in several versions — including a man-portable one and a vehicle-mounted version. It has also been shown fitted to the Israeli Heron drone. A naval version is featured in this video, being used against targets in Gaza.

One interesting feature of the Spike is that the latest version features “fire and forget plus”: a trailing fiber-optic cable relays video back to the operator, allowing them to see from the missile’s point of view and switch targets. When used in this mode, it performs a pop-up maneuver, giving a better view and diving on the target from above. A promotional video here shows how this approach can be used to attack a target out of sight behind a ridge.

Marc Garlaso of Human Rights Watch previously noted the Spike’s use in Gaza, describing it as “a special missile that is made to make very high-speed turns, so if you have a target that is moving and running away from you, you can chase him with the weapon.”

Like virtually all anti-tank missiles, the Spike has a shaped charge warhead, which produces a narrow jet of metal at very high velocity. This is excellent for slicing through armor, but does little damage to anything not immediately in front of the missile.  Blast alone is not an effective killer for a small warhead. To turn an anti-tank missile into a general purpose one capable of damaging other targets (such as people or soft vehicles), the answer is invariably to add a “fragmentation sleeve.”

This is wrapped around the warhead to produce lethal fragments, which are much more deadly than blast alone. The procedure was done to turn the anti-tank Hellfire into the general-purpose AGM-114K Hellfire, and to transform the Viper-Strike from an anti-armor weapons to anti-everything. The tungsten cubes in Viper Strike weigh 15-30 grains, which would correspond to an three to four-and-a-half millimeter cube, approximately. In other words, right in the range of Amnesty’s mysterious weapon.

However, the Israeli military is not known to have Viper Strikes in its arsenal. But they do have Spike missiles — which could have been outfitted with a fragmentation sleeve.

As the U.S. Army illustration (above) shows, the fragmentation is enhanced by embossing — cutting grooves into the sleeve. But the best method is to pre-form the fragments, typically producing tiny cubes like those shown. The cube shape is not particularly vicious; that’s just how the manufacturing process works. And without any kind of fragments the weapons would be far less effective. (Of course you can pack warheads around with ball-bearings or other shrapnel — like Hamas did, with its rockets.)

The end result is a missile which hits the ground almost vertically after the pop-up, leaving a narrow deep hole as described, and spraying the area with small cubic shrapnel. This is not some specific Israeli invention and it is far from the only nation armed with this type of weapon. It’s really just another version of Henry Shrapnel’s bursting ammunition which has been increasing casualties for over two hundred years. But unless it gets banned like nerve gas and dumdum bullets it will be very much a part of warfare for more centuries to come.

Perhaps what is more alarming is the number of civilian deaths that Amnesty documents related to the new weapon. This type of ultra-precise strike capability is supposed to limit collateral damage and civilian casualties. But, as with the “focused lethality” DIME weapon, this does not seem to be happening. So we turn once again to Garlasco’s comment, from an earlier conflict:

“It is unfortunate that these weapons are being developed specifically for use in densely populated areas which may negate the intended effect.”

[Illustration: U.S. Army]

Zionists Of America Freak-Out! Want Freeman Appointment Rescinded

“…[Israel's] inability to find peace with the Palestinians and other Arabs is the driving factor in the region’s radicalization and anti-Americanism … Demonstrably, Israel excels at war; sadly, it has shown no talent for peace … For the past half decade Israel has enjoyed carte blanche from the United States to experiment with any policy it favored to stabilize its relations with the Palestinians and its other Arab neighbors, including most recently its efforts to bomb Lebanon into peaceful coexistence with it and to smother Palestinian democracy in its cradle …”

ZOA wants Freeman appointment rescinded

By Eric Fingerhut · February 25, 2009

The Zionist Organization of America is urging President Obama to rescind the reported appointment of Chas Freeman to head the National Intelligence Council. Here’s their lengthy press release:

The Zionist Organization of America (ZOA) has expressed shock and deep concern at President Barack Obama’s invitation to anti-Israeli former
diplomat and pro-Arab lobbyist Chas W. Freeman Jr. to be Chairman of the National Intelligence Council and has called upon the President to
rescind the invitation. The Council has a strong influence on the content of intelligence briefings presented to the President and the Council Chairman is often called to brief the President directly.

Freeman has served, among other positions, as U.S. Ambassador to Saudi Arabia (1989-92) and, since 1997, President of the Middle East Policy Council (MEPC)(formerly known as the American Arab Affairs Council), a lobbying group for the Arab world. MEPC owes its endowment to the “generosity” of the Saudi monarch. In 1994, Saudi Arabia awarded Freeman the Order of ‘King Abd Al-Aziz’ 1st Class (Diplomatic Service).

The Atlantic’s Jeffrey Goldberg has observed that, “Freeman is well-known for his hostility toward Israel <http://www.mepc.org/whats/mpc.asp> , but what’s more substantively troubling about this report is the obvious inappropriateness of hiring a well-known advocate for the interests of Middle Eastern autocracies to produce national intelligence estimates for the Obama Administration …it seems inappropriate to give the job to a Saudi sympathizer as well.” (Jeffrey Goldberg, ‘Saudi Advocate to Run the National Intelligence Council? <http://jeffreygoldberg.theatlantic.com/archives/2009/02/saudi_advocate_to_run_the_nati.php> ,’ February 23, 2009).

The Middle East Policy Council headed for the past eleven years by Freeman publishes a quarterly journal, Middle East Policy, which has been filled with articles and editorial notes fervently hostile to Israel. In its Fall 2008 issue, the editor, Anne Joyce perpetuated the veiled anti-Semitic slander <http://www.mepc.org/journal_vol15/EdNote.pdf>  that the Iraq war was waged on behalf of Israel. In its Summer 2007 issue, she invested Israel
with Nazi-like characteristics <http://www.mepc.org/journal_vol14/0707_ednote.asp>  by describing Israel’s 1967 capture of the Golan Heights as a “Blitzkrieg.” In its Fall 2006 issue, Middle East Policy published a revised, updated, and unabridged version of the anti-Semitic assault on the pro-Israel
advocacy community, by John J. Mearsheimer and Stephen M. Walt, ‘The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy,’ about which Freeman boasted
saying, “No one else in the United States has dared to publish this article, given the political penalties that the Lobby imposes on those who criticize it. So we continue to do important things that are not done by anybody else, which I think fill some gaps.” (‘Building Understanding: The Role of the MEPC: A Conversation with Chas W. Freeman, Jr.,’ Saudi-US Relations Information Service <http://www.saudi-us-relations.org/articles/2006/interviews/060920-freeman-interview.html> ,’ September 20, 2006). The ZOA critiqued in detail the manifold errors, distortions and omissions that disfigure the
Walt-Mearsheimer tract at the time, which can be read here <http://www.zoa.org/sitedocuments/pressrelease_view.asp?pressreleaseID=777> ).

Some recent statements by Chas W. Freeman:

*        “As long as the United States continues unconditionally to provide the subsidies and political protection that make the Israeli occupation and the high-handed and self-defeating policies it engenders possible, there is little, if any, reason to hope that anything resembling the former peace process can be resurrected. Israeli occupation and settlement of Arab lands is inherently violent … And as long as such Israeli violence against Palestinians continues, it is utterly unrealistic to expect that Palestinians will stand down from violent resistance and retaliation against Israelis.” (Remarks to the 14th Annual US-Arab Policymakers Conference The National Council on US-Arab Relations <http://www.mepc.org/whats/conf.remarks.pdf> , Washington, D.C., September 12, 2005).

*        “…[Israel's] inability to find peace with the Palestinians and other Arabs is the driving factor in the region’s radicalization and anti-Americanism … Demonstrably, Israel excels at war; sadly, it has shown no talent for peace … For the past half decade Israel has enjoyed carte blanche from the United States to experiment with any policy it favored to stabilize its relations with the Palestinians and its other Arab neighbors, including most recently its efforts to bomb Lebanon into peaceful coexistence with it and to smother Palestinian democracy in its cradle … The suspension of the independent exercise
of American judgment about what best serves our interests as well as those of Israelis and Arabs has caused the Arabs to lose confidence in the United States as a peace partner … By sad contrast, the American decision to let Israel call the shots in the Middle East has revealed how frightened Israelis now are of their Arab neighbors and how reluctant this fear has made them to risk respectful coexistence with the other peoples of their region … [the 2002 so-called Arab Peace Initiative] would exchange Arab acceptance of Israel and a secure place for the Jewish state in the region for Israeli recognition of Palestinians as human beings with equal weight in the eyes of God, entitled to the same rights of democratic self-determination … Despite the fact that such a peace is so obviously also in Israel’s vital and moral interests, history and the Israeli response to date both strongly suggest that without some tough love from Americans, including especially Israel’s American coreligionists, Israel will not risk the uncertainties of peace. Instead, it will persist in the belief, despite all the evidence to the contrary, that it can gain safety through the officially sanctioned assassination of potential opponents, the terrorization of Arab civilians, and the cluster bombing of neighbors rather than negotiation with them. These policies have not worked; they will not work. But unless they are changed, the Arab peace plan will exceed its shelf life, and Arabs will revert to their previous views that Israel is an ethnomaniacal society with which it is impossible for others to coexist and that peace can be achieved only by Israel’s eventual annihilation, much as the Crusader kingdoms that once occupied Palestine were eventually destroyed. Americans need to be clear about the consequences of continuing our current counterproductive approaches to security in the Middle East. We have paid heavily and often in treasure in the past for our unflinching support and unstinting subsidies of Israel’s approach to managing its relations with the Arabs. Five years ago we began to pay with the blood of our citizens here at home. We are now paying with the lives of our soldiers, sailors, airmen, and marines on battlefields in several regions of the realm of Islam, with more said by our government’s neoconservative mentors to be in prospect.” (‘Remarks to the 15th Annual US-Arab Policymakers Conference <http://www.mepc.org/whats/mpc.asp> ,’ Washington, D.C., 31 October 2006).

*        “the problem of terrorism that now bedevils us has its origins in one region – the Middle East. To end this terrorism we must address the issues in the region that give rise to it. Principal among these is the brutal oppression of the Palestinians by an Israeli occupation … American identification with Israeli policy has also become total. Those in the region and beyond it who detest Israeli behavior, which is to say almost everyone, now naturally extend their loathing to Americans. This has had the effect of universalizing anti-Americanism, legitimizing radical Islamism, and gaining Iran a foothold among Sunni as well as Shiite Arabs. For its part, Israel no longer even pretends to seek peace with the Palestinians; it strives instead to pacify them. Palestinian
retaliation against this policy is as likely to be directed against Israel’s American backers as against Israel itself. Under the
circumstances, such retaliation – whatever form it takes – will have the support or at least the sympathy of most people in the region and many
outside it. This makes the long-term escalation of terrorism against the United States a certainty, not a matter of conjecture. The Palestine
problem cannot be solved by the use of force; it requires much more than the diplomacy-free foreign policy we have practiced since 9/11. Israel is not only not managing this problem; it is severely aggravating it …Israel has shown – not surprisingly – that, if we offer nothing but unquestioning support and political protection for whatever it does, it will feel no incentive to pay attention to either our interests or our advice. Hamas is showing that if we offer it nothing but unreasoning hostility and condemnation, it will only stiffen its position and seek allies among our enemies … There will be no negotiation between Israelis and Palestinians, no peace, and no reconciliation between them – and there will be no reduction in anti-American terrorism – until we
have the courage to act on our interests.” (‘Can American Leadership Be Restored <http://www.mepc.org/whats/usleadership.asp> ?’ Remarks to the
Washington Institute of Foreign Affairs Washington, D.C., 24 May 2007).

*        “… we embraced Israel’s enemies as our own; they responded by equating Americans with Israelis as their enemies. We abandoned the role
of Middle East peacemaker to back Israel’s efforts to pacify its captive and increasingly ghettoized Arab populations. We wring our hands while sitting on them as the Jewish state continues to seize ever more Arab land for its colonists … Now the United States has brought the Palestinian experience – of humiliation, dislocation, and death – to millions more in Afghanistan and Iraq.”(‘Diplomacy in the Age of Terror, Remarks to the Pacific Council on International Policy The American Academy of Diplomacy <http://www.mepc.org/whats/100407.asp> ,’ Los
Angeles, October 4, 2007).

ZOA National President Morton A. Klein said, “We are naturally appalled, as are a large number of American Jewish and pro-Israeli groups, that a lobbyist for Saudi and other autocratic Arab interests as well as someone so obviously brimming with hostility against the Jewish state and its supporters should have been invited to occupy this senior intelligence position within the Obama Administration.

“The statements we have cited clearly display Mr. Freeman’s animus and malignant hostility to Israel.

“After Israel recognized the PLO, agreed to the establishment of the Palestinian Authority (PA), gave away half of Judea and Samaria and all of Gaza to Palestinian control, as well as disbursing funds, assets and even arms to the PA, and offered statehood in almost all of the disputed territories, only to receive more terrorism and incitement to hatred and murder in return, Freeman has the gall to assert that Israel has not
acted to achieve peace.

“Freeman’s words explicitly justify Palestinian terrorism as reasonable behavior in response to what he calls the “inherently violent” presence of Jews living and building communities in Judea and Samaria. This is nothing less than endorsement of the racist Palestinian agenda that regards the presence of even a single Jew in Judea and Samaria or in a future Palestinian state as unacceptable. Imagine what Freeman would say
if it were Israeli policy that all of Israel be forcibly depopulated of Arabs.

“Freeman’s detestation of Israel is evident in his Orwellian language. About a Palestinian polity that insists on the expulsion of every last Jew from a Palestinian state, he has not a word of criticism. But about democratic Israel, which has 20 percent Arab citizenry, complete freedom of religion and full Arab participation in the legislative and judicial arms of government, he speaks of an ‘ethnomaniacal state.’ We note that Freeman has not criticized Saudi Arabia, with whom he retains ties and from whom he accepted in 1994 the Order of ‘King Abd Al-Aziz’ 1st Class (Diplomatic Service), for its complete suppression of freedom of religion, extending even to prohibition on the holding of even private church services among Westerners in the country, the lack of basic rights for women, the promotion of extreme Wahhabi Islamist doctrine, or the routine ban on entry of Jews to the country

“Freeman’s other Orwellian, flat-earth statements about ‘Palestinian democracy’ which he claims Israel seeks to ‘smother,’ or alleged seizure of land for ‘colonists’ are a good indication of his malicious hostility to Israel. In no other case could one imagine Freeman having the temerity to claim that a polity like the PA, in which someone who denounced suicide bombings as a moral obscenity would be strung up and lynched, is a functioning democracy. In no other case could one imagine Freeman referring to a ‘democracy’ when speaking of a regime that, like the PA, incites hatred of Jews and glorifies suicide terrorism in its controlled media, mosques, schools and youth camps.

“We are appalled and perturbed that President Obama has turned to this clear apologist for Arab autocracies, facilitator of anti-Semitic smears and vicious defamer of Israel when seeking someone to occupy a senior appointment in our intelligence community. Mistakes occur in government all the time and the correct response must be to acknowledge and fix them. We therefore call upon President Obama to rescind this invitation to Chas W. Freeman.”

Democracy doesn’t mean a hoot to us: Philip Agee (CIA)

We wanted a terror campaign: Howard Hunt (CIA)

Democracy doesn’t mean a hoot to us: Philip Agee (CIA)

The true goal of the United States’ government is control… the principle of government by the people for the people is just silly: Philip Agee

The War on Democracy by John Pilger

Russell Means: Breaking the silence on Obama

Russell Means: Breaking the silence on Obama

by Brenda Norrell

American Indian activist Russell Means said President-elect Obama was selected by the colonial powers as president to improve the US image globally in the aftermath of George Bush. Further, Means said Obama’s appointments show that he is a Zionist controlled by Israel.

Speaking on Red Town Radio today, Means said what is happening now to Palestinians is what happened to American Indians.

“Every policy now the Palestinians are enduring was practiced on the American Indian,” Means said on Red Town Blog Talk Radio, hosted by Brenda Golden, Mvskoke Creek. “What the American Indian Movement says is that the American Indians are the Palestinians of the United States, and the Palestinians are the American Indians of Europe,” Means said.

Stating that the Zionists who control Israel now control the United States, Means added, “The power of the US in world politics diminishes every day.”

“Now they have found a house servant by the name of Obama,” he said.

Obama was selected as a “man in charge to take the heat,” because of the “bad cop” image that Bush put forth in the world.

“Now, all of a sudden, it is, ‘We’re so great. We elected a black man to be president.’” Means added that Obama is a black man who was raised by his white grandmother and has appointed Zionists to key positions.

Means said the US is headed for a new era of menial jobs. On Indian lands, Means said the only people who get ahead are those who sell out to the colonial system. Means said he has been in solidarity with Palestinians for about 30 years. Now, there is massive and sophisticated propaganda by Israel and the U.S. Both countries, he said, are liars.

In the US, American Indians have been shut out of history, philosophy and the arts, in a “total blackout.” The United States does not want to be reminded of the smallpox blankets, theft, colonialism and mistreatment of the American Indian, he said.

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He said most Americans do not realize that the financial collapse of this country is only beginning. Americans cannot continue the lifestyles of consumers when there is no money. Low income jobs and menial jobs are the only ones left. Health care in the US reveals how the policies used as experiments on American Indians became US policies. The US health care system is now stringent and calloused, with constant refusals of treatment. This has always been the case with the Indian Health Service. Now it is the policy of the HMOs. Family ranchers and family farmers are now in the way of progress, the same way the American Indian was once viewed. Now, family farmers and family ranchers are being gutted, because they function on massive credit. They are trying to pay back debts, which is not possible with manipulated agriculture prices.

“The family farmer and family rancher are now going to be extent.”

Means said the federal government also took over education. Americans don’t even know their own history. Along with this federal control, came the passage of English-only laws in many states. However, for Indigenous Peoples it is positive to know many languages.

“If you speak two languages, you are speaking with two brains. That is the way it is to us. That’s how we look at life.”

In the mid-Twentieth Century, US schools listened to the communities and local governing boards. However, now the US educational policy has taken away local control and mandated federal guidelines. So now education has become a matter of money. Meanwhile, the real history is silenced. While the United States attempts to portray itself as a peace loving nation, the fact is the United States is at war every year. The United States breaks a host of international laws every year, which has been the pattern since 1946. American Indians were aware of what the US was doing, because the US had already broken all treaties with American Indians; treaties guaranteed by the US Constitution.

Means said there is a great deal of propaganda about why the US broke away from England. But the fact is that George Washington, the largest landowner, along with the slave owners, broke with England so that the original treaties of England with American Indians in the west would not have to be honored. The US broke with England, to invade the west and take the land.

“The US was created to break international laws,” Means said, adding that it is obvious today that this is the pattern of the U.S.

Means said the United States was initiated as an outlaw and renegade nation. Today, its imperial policies mean that Israel is a surrogate of the US, receiving aid from the U.S. With the combined US and international aid, Israeli receives $12 billion a year for its “military and the settlers in the West Bank,” he said. He said 80 percent of the people in the West Bank are paid to stay there. It is America who pays them to stay there. But even in Israel, where there is a free press, not everyone agrees with Israel’s war on Palestine. He said 20 to 30 percent of the people in Israel are against the war on Palestine.

Like the United States, Israel has been at war every year of its existence. He said Israel is often referred to as the 51st state, of warmongers and imperialists. The United States and Israel are based on lies, resulting in massive deaths in Iraq. Now, the US and Israel are focused on Iran because of its oil reserves. Indian lands have become “open air concentration camps.” “If you chose to stay on the reservation, you are guaranteed to be poor, unless you are part of the colonial apparatus set up by the Bureau of Indian Affairs, set up the United States.” On Indian lands, everyone fights to be part of the tribal governments because that is where the money is. Everyone fights to be part of the colonial system.

“The only way you can be part of the colonial system is to obey.” Those returning home to Indian lands cannot “rock the boat,” demand their treaty rights or their rights guaranteed by the US Constitution.

The American Indian Movement made people aware that the US Constitution came from the Six Nations. However, the US Constitution only includes one-third of the Great Law of Peace. If all of the Great Law of Peace had been adopted, this country would be much different and much wealthier. However, it was turned into a country of consumers. He said what you get with a country of consumers is greed.

“What is going on in Palestine is going on in America. The United States is taking away the homes of the people.”

Now in the United States, there is “communism from the right” and “right wing socialism.” He said the problem with socialism is that it is bereft of consensus and complete spirituality.

Means said he is 70 years old and has experienced the US when it reached its zenith in the world in the 1950s. At that time, America was a productive country. In the years that followed, the ruling elite sold out the unions, as the labor movement was razor thin close to taking over politics in America. The most watershed event was Brown vs. Board of Education, the US Supreme Court ruling which desegregated schools.

“The white male started losing his power.” Then, in the social revolution that followed, white males lost control of their women and their women’s vote, and lost control of the work place. While civil rights was the chosen remedy of most social movements, American Indians remained dedicated to “sovereign rights.” Individual sovereign rights.

“We are the only ones that held on to the sovereign concept.” The other social movements were saying, “Please Mr. Male let me be equal to you.”

Means said things will be different now.

“Our grandmother the Mother Earth is tired of the human race. She is going to eliminate it and I champion her, Mother Earth.”

Means said matriarchy is what Indigenous people are all about. “We know that women are the givers of life and men are the takers of life.”

“We have to follow the woman in order to gain balance.” He said in a matriarchal society, there is a balanced society, as each celebrates their strengths together. “True individual freedom has to be done by consensus, otherwise it is mob rule.”

In the US, now there are fake elections. “The people are convinced they are actually electing a president.” However, it is the Electoral College that actually selects the US president. The charade is now coming to a close, as the Patriot Act means that the Posse Comitatus is dead and buried. Means said everyone has the responsibility to be free.

“You are free to be responsible. That is the essence of freedom.”

He said everyone should know their rights. Otherwise, they are guaranteed slavery.

Means said human brains are “doped up with all this ignorance and greed.”

“Einstein said, ‘The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.’”  “That’s America, that’s the Indian reservation. That’s pathetic and an injustice to human beings.”

Red Town Radio show host Brenda Golden, enrolled Muscogee (Creek) Nation of Oklahoma, grew up in Clearview, Oklahoma. Golden attended Sequoyah Indian School in Tahlequah before joining the Air Force. Later, she received her bachelor’s and master’s degrees in business administration from the University of Oklahoma. She has worked in Indian Country as an educator, tribal liaison, grant writer, board member and volunteer since the early 1990′s.

Golden said she is hosting Red Town Radio, on Blog Talk Radio, to offer a platform for Indigenous issues.

Listen to more of the show, including David Hill, who called in, and pointed out that while the US cut school funds and school lunches, the US increased aid to Israel.

A struggle for the soul of capitalism

A struggle for the soul of capitalism

A Revolution in Spirit

By Benjamin R. Barber

February 24, 2009 “The Nation” — As America, recession mired, enters the hope-inspired age of Barack Obama, a silent but fateful struggle for the soul of capitalism is being waged. Can the market system finally be made to serve us? Or will we continue to serve it? George W. Bush argued that the crisis is “not a failure of the free-market system, and the answer is not to try to reinvent that system.” But while it is going too far to declare that capitalism is dead, George Soros is right when he says that “there is something fundamentally wrong” with the market theory that stands behind the global economy, a “defect” that is “inherent in the system.”

The issue is not the death of capitalism but what kind of capitalism–standing in which relationship to culture, to democracy and to life? President Obama’s Rubinite economic team seems designed to reassure rather than innovate, its members set to fix what they broke. But even if they succeed, will they do more than merely restore capitalism to the status quo ante, resurrecting all the defects that led to the current debacle?

Being economists, even the progressive critics missing from the Obama economic team continue to think inside the economic box. Yes, bankers and politicians agree that there must be more regulatory oversight, a greater government equity stake in bailouts and some considerable warming of the frozen credit pump. A very large stimulus package with a welcome focus on the environment, alternative energy, infrastructure and job creation is in the offing–a good thing indeed.

But it is hard to discern any movement toward a wholesale rethinking of the dominant role of the market in our society. No one is questioning the impulse to rehabilitate the consumer market as the driver of American commerce. Or to keep commerce as the foundation of American public and private life, even at the cost of rendering other cherished American values–like pluralism, the life of the spirit and the pursuit of (nonmaterial) happiness–subordinate to it.

Economists and politicians across the spectrum continue to insist that the challenge lies in revving up inert demand. For in an economy that has become dependent on consumerism to the tune of 70 percent of GDP, shoppers who won’t shop and consumers who don’t consume spell disaster. Yet it is precisely in confronting the paradox of consumerism that the struggle for capitalism’s soul needs to be waged.

The crisis in global capitalism demands a revolution in spirit–fundamental change in attitudes and behavior. Reform cannot merely rush parents and kids back into the mall; it must encourage them to shop less, to save rather than spend. If there’s to be a federal lottery, the Obama administration should use it as an incentive for saving, a free ticket, say, for every ten bucks banked. Penalize carbon use by taxing gas so that it’s $4 a gallon regardless of market price, curbing gas guzzlers and promoting efficient public transportation. And how about policies that give producers incentives to target real needs, even where the needy are short of cash, rather than to manufacture faux needs for the wealthy just because they’ve got the cash?

Or better yet, take in earnest that insincere MasterCard ad, and consider all the things money can’t buy (most things!). Change some habits and restore the balance between body and spirit. Refashion the cultural ethos by taking culture seriously. The arts play a large role in fostering the noncommercial aspects of society. It’s time, finally, for a cabinet-level arts and humanities post to foster creative thinking within government as well as throughout the country. Time for serious federal arts education money to teach the young the joys and powers of imagination, creativity and culture, as doers and spectators rather than consumers.

Recreation and physical activity are also public goods not dependent on private purchase. They call for parks and biking paths rather than multiplexes and malls. Speaking of the multiplex, why has the new communications technology been left almost entirely to commerce? Its architecture is democratic, and its networking potential is deeply social. Yet for the most part, it has been put to private and commercial rather than educational and cultural uses. Its democratic and artistic possibilities need to be elaborated, even subsidized.

Of course, much of what is required cannot be leveraged by government policy alone, or by a stimulus package and new regulations over the securities and banking markets. A cultural ethos is at stake. For far too long our primary institutions–from education and advertising to politics and entertainment–have prized consumerism above everything else, even at the price of infantilizing society. If spirit is to have a chance, they must join the revolution.

The costs of such a transformation will undoubtedly be steep, since they are likely to prolong the recession. Capitalists may be required to take risks they prefer to socialize (i.e., make taxpayers shoulder them). They will be asked to create new markets rather than exploit and abuse old ones; to simultaneously jump-start investments and inventions that create jobs and help generate those new consumers who will buy the useful and necessary things capitalists make once they start addressing real needs (try purifying tainted water in the Third World rather than bottling tap water in the First!).

The good news is, people are already spending less, earning before buying (using those old-fashioned layaway plans) and feeling relieved at the shopping quasi-moratorium. Suddenly debit cards are the preferred plastic. Parental “gatekeepers” are rebelling against marketers who treat their 4-year-olds as consumers-to-be. Adults are questioning brand identities and the infantilization of their tastes. They are out in front of the politicians, who still seem addicted to credit as a cure-all for the economic crisis.

And Barack Obama? We elected a president committed in principle to deep change. Rather than try to back out of the mess we are in, why not find a way forward? What if Obama committed the United States to reducing consumer spending from 70 percent of GDP to 50 percent over the next ten years, bringing it to roughly where Germany’s GDP is today? The Germans have a commensurate standard of living and considerably greater equality. Imagine all the things we could do without having to shop: play and pray, create and relate, read and walk, listen and procreate–make art, make friends, make homes, make love.

Sound too soft? Too idealistic? If we are to survive the collapse of the unsustainable consumer capitalism that has possessed our body politic over the past three decades, idealism must become the new realism. For if the contest is between the material body defined by solipsistic acquisitiveness and the human spirit defined by imagination and compassion, then a purely technical economic response is what will be too soft, promising little more than a restoration of that shopaholic hell of hyper-consumerism that occasioned the current disaster.

There are epic moments in history, often catalyzed by catastrophe, that permit fundamental cultural change. The Civil War not only brought an end to slavery but knit together a wounded country, opened the West and spurred capitalist investment in ways that created the modern American nation. The Great Depression legitimized a radical expansion of democratic interventionism; but more important, it made Americans aware of how crucial equality and social justice (buried in capitalism’s first century) were to America’s survival as a democracy.

Today we find ourselves in another such seminal moment. Will we use it to rethink the meaning of capitalism and the relationship between our material bodies and the spirited psyches they are meant to serve? Between the commodity fetishism and single-minded commercialism that we have allowed to dominate us, and the pluralism, heterogeneity and spiritedness that constitute our professed national character?

President Obama certainly inspired many young people to think beyond themselves–beyond careerism and mindless consumerism. But our tendency is to leave the “higher” things to high-minded rhetoric and devote policy to the material. Getting people to understand that happiness cannot be bought, and that consumerism wears out not only the sole and the wallet but the will and the soul–that capitalism cannot survive long-term on credit and consumerism–demands programs and people, not just talk.

The convergence of Obama’s election and the collapse of the global credit economy marks a moment when radical change is possible. But we will need the new president’s leadership to turn the economic disaster into a cultural and democratic opportunity: to make service as important as selfishness (what about a national service program, universal and mandatory, linked to education?); to render community no less valid than individualism (lost social capital can be re-created through support for civil society); to make the needs of the spirit as worthy of respect as those of the body (assist the arts and don’t chase religion out of the public square just because we want it out of City Hall); to make equality as important as individual opportunity (“equal opportunity” talk has become a way to avoid confronting deep structural inequality); to make prudence and modesty values no less commendable than speculation and hubris (saving is not just good economic policy; it’s a beneficent frame of mind). Such values are neither conservative nor liberal but are at once cosmopolitan and deeply American. Their restoration could inaugurate a quiet revolution.

The struggle for the soul of capitalism is, then, a struggle between the nation’s economic body and its civic soul: a struggle to put capitalism in its proper place, where it serves our nature and needs rather than manipulating and fabricating whims and wants. Saving capitalism means bringing it into harmony with spirit–with prudence, pluralism and those “things of the public” (res publica) that define our civic souls. A revolution of the spirit.

Is the new president up to it? Are we?

Rothschild Agents Take 10 Key Posts In Obama Administration

Michael Collins Piper � American Free Press February 23, 2009

OUR GREATEST FOUNDING FATHER and first president, George Washington, probably wouldn�t be ready to celebrate his birthday on Feb. 22 if he were alive today. Having led the 13 colonies to independence from the British Empire in 1783, following the course of a difficult eight-year struggle by those freedom-loving American colonists who followed him, Washington (who lived from 1732 to 1799) would most assuredly be appalled to see that the liberties achieved from the American Revolution are now being flagrantly defied by a number of figures who populate the upper ranks of the administration of Barack Obama.

Six former Rhodes Scholars (educated at Oxford University in Britain) and four others associated with the London School of Economics are serving in key posts in the Obama administration. That�s not good.

Here are 10 of the key �British��that is, Rothschild �operatives now ensconced in the Obama administration (more can be expected):

Susan Rice � ambassador to the UN; Michael McFaul � head of the Russian desk at the National Security Council; Elena Kagan � solicitor general of the United States; Anne-Marie Slaughter � State Department policy planning staff; Neal S.Wolin � deputy counsel to the president for economic policy; Ezekial Emanuel � senior counselor at the White House Office of Management and Budget on health care policy; Lawrence Summers � head of the National Economic Council; Peter Orszag � director of the Office of Management and Budget; Peter Rouse � senior advisor to the president; Mona Sutphen � deputy chief of the White House staff.

The truth about the Rhodes Scholarships is not known to the average American who is constantly told by the mass media that Rhodes Scholars (such as former President Bill Clinton) are among �the best and the brightest.�

The Rhodes Scholarships�awarded to Americans and students from other former British colonies�are funded by a trust set up by 19th Century British imperial figure Cecil Rhodes, whose intent was to indoctrinate these scholars with the theme that the American colonies should be reunited with the British Empire and that they should work through �public service� to achieve that goal. But Rhodes wasn�t just some rich madcap dreamer. His ventures were underwritten by the international Rothschild dynasty operating from the financial district in London known as �The City��the banking center of the Rothschild controlled British empire that also includes the London School of Economics.

So now a clique of internationalists trained in the idea of extinguishing American independence are ensconced in the Obama administration.

And another Rhodes Scholar, Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal, is widely touted as the great Grand Old Party candidate to �take back the White House� in 2012. Jindal doesn�t offer �change.� He�like the other globalists in the Obama administration�is part of the problem.

All of this is not a �conspiracy theory.� Rather, these facts are well known to those familiar with what the Rhodes scholarships are really about.
www.americanfreepress.net/html/rothschild_agents_168.html