Geopolitical strategy lesson from Professor Jiang

Programmable digital currency is the final piece of the global control grid that’s finally snapping into place. Catherine Austin Fitts on how to defeat it.

 

Catherine's website:

https://solari.com/

FRANKENSKIES

FrankenSkies is an 80 minute social change documentary regarding the Solar Geoengineering/Chemtrail agenda that affects every living being on earth. The struggle of bringing awareness to this subject, despite the obstacles of a socially engineered populace and the military industrial complex with its endless resources, is palpable in this awakening truth feature.

Top scientists to Obama: Ban mutation experiments that will make avian flu more infectious

By RT

A group of leading scientists – including a Nobel Prize winner - has proclaimed that it is “ethically and morally” wrong to alter the deadly H5N1 virus to make it more contagious for research purposes, and have asked President Obama to ban it.

“The accidental release of an artificial, laboratory-generated, human-transmissible H5N1 virus into the community has the potential to cause a global pandemic of epic proportions that would dwarf the 1918 Spanish flu pandemic that killed over 50 million people,” read a letter to the Presidential Commission for the Study of Bioethical Issues.

The petition was drafted by the Foundation for Vaccine Research (FVR), a scientific advocacy group, and numbered world-leading biologists among the 17 signatories, including Lord May, the former chief science advisor to the UK government, and Sir Richard Roberts, the recipient of the 1993 Nobel Prize for Medicine, for genetics research.

Late in 2011, two groups of scientists courted controversy, when they prepared to publish studies showing a modified version of the avian flu virus that could be passed through the air between mammals. In its current form, the virus, which has killed 60 percent of those it infects, is not easily caught by people from birds, and is even more difficult to transmit from one human to another.

But, Ron Fouchier, of Erasmus Medical Center in the Netherlands, and Yoshihiro Kawaoka, from the University of Wisconsin, the scientists behind the purposeful mutations, known as gain-of-function studies, say the virus will itself change without lab research, and foreseeing its progression might enable a vaccine or cure to be developed sooner.

They had voluntarily placed a moratorium on gain-of-function research after their initial research created concern that details about how these modifications to a virus that has killed more than 350 people since its discovery in 2003, were achieved would fall in the hands of careless scientists or worse, terrorists and hostile governments.

The moratorium was lifted earlier this year.

“The recent calling off of the moratorium by 40 flu researchers alone – not funders, governments or international bodies – says it all. The flu community simply hasn’t understood that this is a hot-button issue that will not go away,” Professor Simon Wain-Hobson, one of the signatories, told UK’s Independent newspaper.

FVR hopes the further gain-of-function experiments – most of which are funded by the government - will be postponed, pending a more thorough scientific debate on the ethics.

The US government is currently making tentative steps to regulate the research. The White House has published a draft paper that would require government agencies to evaluate the potential risk of any study involving 15 most dangerous cultures, but it has no plans to curb gain-of-function studies altogether.

And even if the petitioners manage to persuade Barack Obama, their plea is unlikely to stem the tide of similar new manipulations around the world.

“The H5N1 studies represent the first of no doubt many such studies involving other potential pandemic pathogens. Gain-of-function studies with H5N1 virus are being conducted in China, and a team in The Netherlands is expanding their H5N1 studies to include studies with the H7N7 virus, and has announced plans to conduct similar gain-of-function studies with the SARS coronavirus,” admits the petition.

Source

The Mayan 2012 Prophecy: Orwellian “End of the World” Doomsday is “Made in America”

By Prof Michel Chossudovsky

Global Research, December 19, 2012

Url of this article:
http://www.globalresearch.ca/the-mayan-2012-prophecy-the-end-of-the-world-is-man-made-orwellian-doomsday-made-in-america/5316231

The 2012 Mayan Prophecy has been readily distorted and misunderstood. The End of the Mayan Calendar on December 21, 2012 has nothing to do with the “End of the World”.

In fact, the Mayan calendar does not end on December 21st, 2012. Rather December 21 marks the beginning of a new “Long Cycle” in the Mayan calendar system. (See Washington’s Blog, End of the World: Hear the 2012 Prophecy ... Direct from the Mouths of the Mayan Priests, Global Research, December 13, 2012)

The End of the World concept is a falsehood and misinterpretation of Mayan thought. What is at stake is a renewal, the unfolding of a new era. For the Mayans, December 21, 2012 marks the beginning of a new long cycle (Ibid).

Meanwhile, “End of the World” stories and commentary are plastered on the news tabloids. While the Western media readily refutes the Mayan prophesy, the apocalypse narrative, when repeated ad nauseam, serves as a distraction and distortion.

A Reuters-Ispos poll conducted last May confirms that 10% of the World’s population believe that: “The Mayan calendar, which some say ‘ends’ in 2012, marks the end of the world”.

Ironically, in sharp contrast to the Mayan prophesy of “renewal, the real World we live in at the outset of the 21st Century is marked by a formidable economic and social crisis which is impoverishing millions of people, literally destroying people’s lives.

In the figurative sense, we are in the midst of an unfolding “doomsday scenario” of a complex political, social and economic nature: it’s man made, it’s “Made in America”; it is the consequence of the fracture of the judicial system, the evolving Homeland Security apparatus, the fraudulent deregulation of financial markets, the mismanagement of the real economy.

These fundamental shifts in America’s institutional and social fabric are coupled with a far-reaching global military agenda and a self-serving US foreign policy. The latter under the helm of Secretary Hillary Clinton points towards potential a breakdown of the channels of international diplomacy.

War and the Economic Crisis are intimately related. While the global economy is in a state of chaos, marked by the collapse of productive systems, the US and its allies –including NATO and Israel– have embarked upon a military adventure, “a long war” under the disguise of a “global war on terrorism”.

The Pentagon’s global military design is one of world conquest. The military deployment of US-NATO forces is occurring in several regions of the world simultaneously. Pentagon war games routinely focus on simulating World War III scenarios. This “End of the World” military agenda potentially threatens the future of humanity.

Media Disinformation

While World public attention is riveted on the “Mayan apocalypse”, the “Real Crisis” which is affecting humanity is not an object of serious debate. The Pentagon’s “long war” combined with a murky scenario of global impoverishment and economic breakdown is not front page news.

The corporate media plays a central role in providing legitimacy to a destructive military agenda. The US-NATO weapons arsenal and military deployment in all regions of the World are routinely portrayed as instruments of peace. America’s new generation of tactical nuclear weapons are said to be “harmless to the surrounding civilian population”. Pre-emptive nuclear war, which constitutes a de facto doomsday scenario, is portrayed as a “humanitarian undertaking”.

Central to an understanding of war is the media campaign which grants it legitimacy in the eyes of public opinion.

A good versus evil dichotomy prevails.

The perpetrators of war are presented as the victims.

According to the Western media, America and NATO’s “Atlantic area” were attacked by a “foreign power” [Afghanistan] on September 11, 2001: an a absurd proposition.

NATO’s doctrine of collective security, based on the concept of “self defense” was invoked by the Atlantic Council on the morning of September 12, 2001 as a justification to bomb and invade Afghanistan, because Afghanistan had allegedly attacked America.

Meanwhile, the media stands mum: no analysis, no debate. Public opinion is misled.

Breaking the “big lie”, which upholds war as a humanitarian undertaking, means breaking the propaganda apparatus, which sustains a criminal project of global destruction.

War propaganda not only sustains a profit-driven military agenda, it creates in the inner consciousness of millions of people the acceptance of war as a societal project. It literally stamps out and excludes from the human mindset fundamental human values of peace, compassion and social justice. It transforms people into unconscious zombies.

The corporate media is involved in acts of camouflage. The devastating impacts of a nuclear war are either trivialized or not mentioned. Against this backdrop, people across the land, nationally and internationally, should understand the gravity of the present situation and act forcefully at all levels of society to reverse the tide of war.

Strong “Economic Medicine”

The conduct of global warfare is accompanied by process of Worldwide macroeconomic restructuring. Throughout the World strong “economic medicine” is imposed.

People are led to believe that austerity is the “solution” to crisis when it is in fact the “cause” of economic collapse. In the 1980s and 1990s, the IMF “Structural Adjustment Program” (SAP) was imposed on the Third World, Eastern Europe, the Balkans and the countries of the former Soviet block. In all these countries, the standard of living plummeted, State social programs were phased out or privatised.

In North America and the European Union, the social crisis has been is marked by the weakening or outright disintegration of Medicare, Social Security and public education. The civilian economy is in crisis. Tax revenues are reallocated to building a formidable war economy at the expense of social services. Fiscal collapse is the inevitable outcome. State budgets are dictated by the creditor banks, which increasingly decide on the fate of millions of people.

Across America, millions of households have lost their homes. Small businesses are driven into bankruptcy. What remains of social security and Medicare is slated to be scrapped. The only sectors of the US economy which are booming are the luxury goods sector geared to the “One Percent” and the state of the art weapons industry, largely composed of the defence conglomerates including Lockheed Martin, Raytheon, Northrop Grumman, British Aerospace et al.

Tax Dollars used to Wage Wars and Kill People

The war economy is booming, F35 fighter jets are to be sold at half a billion dollars a piece. Not included in this price is another 300 million dollars of related maintenance and upkeep of these state of of the art fighter jets. Canada and Norway be acquiring a large number of these planes at the expense of their social programs. “The overall cost of the program to the US military is estimated at a staggering $1.51 trillion over the so called life cycle of the program, namely $618 million per plane. (Shalal-Esa, Andrea. Government sees lifetime cost of F-35 fighter at $1.51 trillion., Chicago Tribune, April 2, 2012).

War and Globalization

War and globalization including the imposition of deadly austerity measures are intimately related. Global Warfare is good for business. It feeds billions of dollars into what Dwight D. Eisenhower call the “Military Industrial Complex”. The fanciful headlines regarding the upcoming Apocalypse serve to overshadow the grim realities of the US-NATO led wars.

Several new weapons systems have been introduced in the course of the post Cold war era. The emphasis is on unconventional warfare.

• Unmanned warfare, killing from a computer screen,
• environmental modification techniques including climatic warfare,
• a new generation of nuclear weapons made in America, not to mention the use of depleted uranium ammunition which causes cancer.

The backdrop is a culture of violence in Hollywood where war, police brutality, torture and extrajudicial killings are the “new normal”;

Meanwhile the Fukushima disaster is a nuclear war without a war, conducive to massive contamination and radiation, the consequences of which are still to be fully assessed.

Who are the main actors behind the US led war?

• The military industrial complex also described as the defence contractors, including the mercenary and security outfits on contract to the US Department of Defense (DoD)
• the Wall Street financial establishment including the institutional speculators and the hedge funds,
• the biotech conglomerates, agribusiness and big Pharma, which produce genetically modified seeds, chemical and biological weapons. This sector overlaps with the military industrial complex,
• the Anglo-American oil conglomerates and energy companies,
• the communications giants overlapping with the military and intelligence apparatus, including surveillance and police state technology,
• The media conglomerates which constitute the cornerstone of the US imperial propaganda.

Wars on the Pentagon Drawing Board

Active war preparations against Syria, Lebanon and Iran have been ongoing for the last eight years.

Since 2005, the US and its allies, including America’s NATO partners and Israel, have been involved in the extensive deployment and stockpiling of advanced weapons systems.

Public opinion, swayed by media hype is tacitly supportive, indifferent or ignorant as to the likely impacts of what is upheld as an ad hoc “punitive” operation directed against Iran’s nuclear facilities rather than an all out war.

The war on Iran is presented to public opinion as an issue among others. It is not viewed as a threat to humanity, as a doomsday scenario. Quite the opposite: it is viewed as a humanitarian endeavor which contributes to enhancing an illusive concept of global security.

The “End of the World” is an ongoing man made process. What we are witnessing in the 21st Century is the outright destruction of entire countries.

Erasing the Achievements of Post War Economic and Social Development. Dismantling the Welfare State

The European Union –which had reached a high level of economic and social development– is now beset with mass unemployment and the dismantling of the post World War II Welfare State. The governments of sovereign countries are controlled by a shadow financial establishment.

Almost one quarter of Europe’s young people are without work, with the highest youth jobless rate (52.1 percent) recorded in Greece and Spain.

In Greece and Spain, the overall unemployment rates now stand at the record levels of 21.9 percent and 24.6 percent, respectively. In both countries unemployment has risen sharply in the past year. In May 2011, unemployment stood at 20.9 percent in Spain and 15.7 percent in Greece. (See Christoph Dreier, Record Unemployment in Euro Zone, Global Research, July 03, 2012 World Socialist Web Site 3 July 2012,http://www.globalresearch.ca/record-unemployment-in-euro-zone/31740)

At the height of the great depression of the 21st century, economic chaos prevails, the possibility of financial breakdown can not be dismissed.

Criminalization of the Banking System

Known and documented, the mega-banks which oversee the economic restructuring of the European and North American economies are routinely involved in money laundering and the drug trade. Pervasive links to organized crime have been established. The banks work hand in glove with the drug cartels.

HSBC was sued for collaborating with the Mexican drug. This is not an isolated event. All major financial institutions are involved in the laundering of drug money.

And lest we forget, the drug economy is part of a long history of international trade. The Hongkong and Shanghai Banking Corporation founded in 1865 in the British colony of Hong Kong was an offshoot of the British East India company (BEIC). Starting in the late 18th century, protected by the British Empire, the BEIC was involved in the lucrative opium trade. Produced in Bengal and then shipped to China, the revenues were used to finance Britain’s imperial expansion.

When the Chinese imperial government ordered the opium to be destroyed in 1839, Britain declared war on China, initiating what was called the “first opium war”. Britain’s casus belli was that China –by destroying the opium– had violated the tenets of 19th Century “free trade”.

The HKSB is no exception. Today, corporate capital continues to protect the drug trade and the most respected banking institutions annually launder billions of narco-dollars. It is worth noting that since 2001, Afghanistan’s war shattered economy supplies more than 90 percent of the World’s heroin. The highly lucrative drug trade out of Afghanistan is protected by the US-NATO occupation forces on behalf of powerful financial interests: a multibillion dollar bonanza for the banks and the criminal syndicates involved in the Golden Crescent drug trade. The resulting flow of narco-dollars is largely laundered in the Western banking system.

SOURCE: Washington’s Blog, Are American Troops Protecting Afghan Opium? U.S. Troops Patrolling Poppy Fields In Afghanistan (Photos) Global Research, October 28, 2012

Destroying Civilization: Mesopotamia and the Indus Valley

America’s wars in the Middle East and Central Asia have largely been conducive to the destabilization and decline of an entire region, considered by historians to be the cradle of civilization.

The “doomsday” wars on Iraq and more recently Syria are instrumental in the destruction of Mesopotamia, the “Land of two Rivers”.

More than 5000 years of history are erased. In Iraq. At the very outset of the occupation in April 2003, the cultural and archaeological heritage was looted by the invaders.

America’s unmanned drone attacks against civilians in Pakistan under the mandate of the “Global War on Terrorism” occur in the upper Indus Valley, another cradle of ancient civilization going back to the Bronze Age (Third Millennium BC) , which is currently being destroyed. The Indus Valley Civilization also known as the Harappan civilization, started in the third millennium BC (3300–1300 BC). Together with the Nile Valley and Mesopotamia, the Indus Valley was one of the first urban river civilizations.

The “collateral casualties” resulting from the drone attacks are “nothing more than a euphemism for state-sponsored mass murder.”

The recipients of these profit driven wars are the Anglo-American oil giants and the weapons conglomerates, the so-called “defence contractors” (Lockheed Martin, Raytheon, Northrop Grumman, British Aerospace, etc) which produce the humanitarian missiles and fighter planes for the US-NATO war machine. The latter includes a new generation of nuclear weapons.

The technology and sophistication of this military hardware at the height of the electronic age have expanded beyond bounds. In a bitter irony, these “weapons of peace” are used to ensure that Iran and Syria do not use their alleged WMDs against the Western World.

The Role of Al Qaeda

US led wars are geared towards in fomenting ethnic and factional divisions as well as supporting, through covert operations the formation of “Islamist” terrorist paramilitary organizations. These covert operations are essentially intended to destroy the nation state and install a puppet regime.

Over the past 30 years, US intelligence in partnership with Britain’s MI6 and Israel’s Mossad, have supported the creation of Al Qaeda as well as a number of “Al Qaeda affiliated” organizations. These terrorist entities are “intelligence assets”, namely instruments of Western intelligence.

Today, the jihadists freedom fighters are recruited by NATO. In Libya and in Syria, these Al Qaeda affiliated entities, supported and integrated by French and British special forces, act on behalf of the Western military alliance. They are NATO’s foot-soldiers.

The Plight of Genetically Engineered Seeds (GMO)

In India, the Ganges which floods the fertile plains of Uttar Pradesh, Bihar and West Bengal, thousands of bankrupt and impoverished farmers are committing suicide. The figures confirm that 250,000 farmers have committed suicide. Why? Because the organic seeds are being replaced by genetically modified varieties, which once adopted leads not only to the destruction of biodiversity but also to the demise of entire farming communities:

Monsanto offered its GM seeds to the farmers of India with hopes of reaping plentiful crops. Plain and mostly uneducated farmers thought Monsanto had come to provide a “magic” formula that would transform their lives. They had no idea what was coming.

Monsanto’s seeds in India did not produce what the company had promised and farmers hoped. The expensive seeds piled up debts and destroyed farming fields. In many instances, the crops simply failed to materialize. The farmers were not aware that the GM seeds required more water than the traditional seeds. And lack of rain in many parts of India exacerbated the crop failure.

With no harvest, the farmers could not pay back the lenders. Burdened with debts and humiliation, the farmers simply took their own lives, some by swallowing poisonous pesticides in front of their families. To date, an estimated 200,000 farmers have committed suicide all over India.

To add to the misery, wives inherited the debts along with the fear of losing their homes and lands. With no money coming in, they also had to pull their kids from the schools. The mass suicide among the Indian farmers is known as the “GM genocide.” (KILLER SEEDS: The Devastating Impacts of Monsanto’s Genetically Modified Seeds in India By Iqbal Ahmed. January 12, 2012 http://www.globalresearch.ca/killer-seeds-the-devastating-impacts-of-monsanto-s-genetically-modified-seeds-in-india/28629

A similar process is occurring in sub-Saharan Africa. In the highlands of Ethiopia, where the landraces of an ancient agricultural system are being replaced by seeds and farm inputs from Monsanto, Cargill, et al:

The hidden agenda was to eventually displace the traditional varieties and landraces reproduced in village-level nurseries. With the weakening of the system of traditional exchange, village level seed banks were being replenished with commercial hi-bred and genetically modified seeds. Michel Chossudovsky, Sowing the Seeds of Famine in Ethiopia Global Research, September 10, 2001 The Ecologist, 1 September 2000, also published as a chapter in The Globalization of Poverty and the New World Order, Global Research, Montreal 2003

Impoverishment and Famine in sub-Saharan Africa

This destructive pattern – invariably resulting in famine – is replicated throughout Sub-Saharan Africa. From the onslaught of the debt crisis of the early 1980s, the IMF-World Bank had set the stage for the demise of the peasant economy across the region .

This process of planned impoverishment of the African continent under the helm of the IMF and the World Bank has been accompanied by an ongoing process of US led militarization under the mandate of the “Global War on Terrorism.

In the course of the last 30 years, civil wars triggered through covert intelligence ops have been launched. Powerful corporate interests are behind these wars. Control over resources, oil, natural gas, precious and strategic metals is the not so hidden agenda.

In South Sudan, oil was discovered in 1978. Five years later a US sponsored “civil war” supported by the CIA was launched, led by John Garang, who was trained by the US military at Fort Benning, Georgia. The Sudan war resulted in 2 million lives and another 4 million displaced. Estimates of war related deaths in Sudan are in the range of 4 million.

The Rwandan civil war and 1994 genocide resulted in a million deaths out of a total population of approximately 7 million. The resource wars in the Democratic Republic of the Congo resulted in up to five million deaths.

These wars in sub-Saharan Africa are never mentioned by the media. Many people in America do not know they even happened.

More generally, the 2012 Mayan prophesy among other World events serves the useful purpose of distracting people’s attention from the most devastating crisis in word history characterised by endless war, environmental degradation and poverty triggered by macroeconomic reform.

Reversing the Tide of War. Restoring Economic and Social Development. Reinstating Civil Liberties

While we are not facing an imminent “End of the World” scenario, the World is nonetheless at the juncture of the most serious economic and social crisis in modern history. The outbreak of a full fledged war against Syria and Iran could potentially lead humanity into a Third World War scenario.

The US possesses an impressive arsenal of weapons which it is being used to threaten the World.

An Orwellian police state has emerged, with spying and eves-dropping implemented at a global level. Big Brother is instated at height of the electronic age, with sophisticated data banks and surveillance techniques, operating Worldwide.

Habeas corpus has been repealed. Extrajudicial assassinations are now legal.

The international community has endorsed preemptive nuclear war in the name of world peace.

“Making the world safer” is the justification for launching a military operation which could potentially result in a nuclear holocaust.

While one can conceptualize the loss of life and destruction resulting from present-day wars including Iraq and Afghanistan, it is impossible to fully comprehend the devastation which might result from a Third World War, using “new technologies” and advanced weapons, including nuclear weapons, until it occurs and becomes a reality.

What we are witnessing at the outset of the 21st Century, however, is not an abrupt shift and fracture, but a gradual process of decay and social decline. What is at stake is the destruction of civilization as we know it, where progress is interrupted and the reproduction of human life is impaired. This process is marked by the implementation of a global military agenda coupled with a Worldwide economic depression.

We are living in a destructive and momentous period in World history

The ideological underpinnings of this inquisitorial New World Order are devastating:

The overriding consensus is that people should support a Wordwide criminal project, involving illegal wars, the police State, the derogation of civil liberties and financial fraud, “in the name of democracy”.

The consensus does not allow for dissent or debate. Its the American inquisition. Those opposed to this perverted brand of democracy are categorized as “terrorists”. Being opposed to criminality is a criminal offence.

For this Orwellian New World Order to be sustained, realities must be turned upside down: the propaganda apparatus is predicated on instilling falsehoods in the minds of millions of people.

Citizens must accept the premises of a World Order where:

• war is heralded as peace,
• the police state is upheld as democracy,
• austerity means prosperity,
• wealth and luxury is a indicator of progress and development,
• killing and torturing alleged terrorists are required to ensure national security
• the victims of war constitute a threat to Western civilization

Realities are distorted and turned upside down, the Lie becomes the Truth.

The real global crisis affecting the people of this planet is thereby obfuscated by “fake crises” and catastrophes, not to mention warnings of impending “terrorist attacks” by unidentified “outside enemies”.

The ultimate purpose of propaganda is to create confusion and obedience to a pre-determined political consensus. The objective is to distract and divert public attention from an understanding of the real crisis which is affecting humanity: The great depression and World War III are not front page news, yet the danger of a world war is real.

Reversing the tide is tantamount to a revolution, it is the reversal of certain embedded tendencies in the capitalist World Order.

The latter is characterized by the criminalization of both the financial system and the political apparatus. Bankers are rightfully involved in fraud and money laundering, Lockheed Martin, Raytheon et al. are vying for more wars, oil companies have their eyes riveted on conquering the Middle East: more than 60 percent of the World’s oil lies in Muslim lands.

This downward spiral underlying this crisis is a gradual yet cumulative process. It can be reversed.

The conditions for its reversal imply the dismantling of fundamental structures and institutions, repealing the police state, closing down the military industrial complex, revamping the financial system, scrapping economic austerity measures and restoring the standard of living of working people, putting an end to humanitarian killings, repealing racism and xenophobia.

In essence, what is required at the outset is meaningful “Regime Change” in the USA, a massive overall in the political system as well as the financial architecture.

A revolution involves first and foremost the dismantling of the propaganda apparatus, which means targeting the sources of media disinformation.

Dismantling mainstream media disinformation is is a prerequisite to implementing more fundamental changes in the workings of the economic and social system, implying fundamental shifts in power relations.

The most important instrument at our disposal is the Truth, because the truth overrides the Lie. It is the basis for developing a mass grass-roots movement, nationally and internationally

When the Lie becomes the Truth within an Orwellian police state environment, there is no going back, humanity is precipitated onto the path of self destruction. It is therefore crucial to fully comprehend the criminal nature of the New World Order, of its legal and political underpinnings, and the nature of the elite power structures which sustain it.

To reverse the tide, war criminals in high office, must be targeted as an initial step. The weapons industry must eventually be closed down. The fraudulent financial mechanisms –including derivative trade and speculative instruments, the institutions, the legal apparatus, etc.– underlying the global capitalist economy must eventually also be dismantled.

What is presented here are a few thoughts to initiate a broader debate. The complexities underlying the military agenda and global economic system must be addressed if we are to successfully reverse the tide.

What is required is a mass movement of people which forcefully challenges the legitimacy of war and economic austerity, a global people’s movement which criminalizes war.

Martin Luther King once said:

Youngsters will learn words they will not understand,

Children from India will ask: “What is hunger?”

Children from Alabama will ask: “What is racial segregation?”

Children from Hiroshima will ask: “What is the atomic bomb?”

Children at school will ask: “What is war?”

You will answer them, you will tell them: “Those are words not used any more,

Like ‘stage-coaches’, ‘galleys’ or ‘slavery’,

Words no longer meaningful,

That is why they have been removed from dictionaries.”

_______________________________________________________________________________________

Copyright © 2012 Global Research

Chemtrails. The Realities of Geoengineering and Weather Modification

By Prof. James F. Tracy

Global Research, November 08, 2012

Url of this article:

http://www.globalresearch.ca/chemtrails-the-realities-of-geoengineering-and-weather-modification/5311079

Over the past decade evidence has increasingly emerged indicating how geoengineering and weather modification programs designed to inflict major impacts on the atmosphere and environment are fully operational.

Despite such developments the CO2-specific anthropogenic theory of global warming touted by foundation-funded environmental groups and public relations dominates much of popular discourse and the prevailing worldview of intellectuals.

By drawing attention away from actually existing efforts of atmospheric experimentation and manipulation, such coordinated efforts are complicit in the impending environmental catastrophe they profess to be rallying against. The repeated claim of CO2-driven climate change without acknowledgment of geoengineering-related environmental intervention is a severe perversion of both meaningful scientific inquiry and public opinion with overwhelming implications for all life on earth.

“While scientists continue research into any global climatic effects of greenhouse gases, we ought to study ways to offset any possible ill effects. Injecting sunlight-scattering particles into the stratosphere appears to be a promising approach. Why not do that?”—Edward Teller[1]

“To accept opinions in their terms is to gain the good solid feeling of being correct without having to think. “—C. Wright Mills[2]

For anyone who looks up in the sky every so often while fostering some recollection of what a sunny day used to resemble, the reality of geoengineering—what are often referred to as “chemtrails”—can no longer be easily dismissed. For over a decade military and private jet aircraft have been spraying our skies with what numerous independent researchers, journalists, and activists observe to be an admixture of aluminum, barium, strontium, and other dangerous heavy metals. Such substances distributed into the atmosphere as microscopic subparticulates eventually descend to earth where they are breathed by living things and absorbed by the soil and plant life.

“A glimpse into new death technologies” intended to modify weather and the environment “is in legislation introduced by Ohio Congressman Dennis Kucinich,” investigative writer Amy Worthington wrote almost a decade ago. Kucinich’s

unsuccessful Space Preservation Act of 2001 was intended to ban space deployment of:

*electronic, psychotronic and information weaponry

*high altitude ultra low frequency weapons

*plasma, electromagnetic, sonic and ultrasonic weapons

*laser weapons

*strategic, theater, tactical or extraterrestrial weapons

*chemical biological, environmental climate or tectonic weapons

*chemtrails (this term was stricken from a later version, suggesting duress)

In their quest to remain top dog in the kill chain, the purveyors of perpetual war have deliberately dimmed earth’s life-giving sunlight, and reduced atmospheric visibility with lung-clogging particulates and polymers. This ecological terrorism has severely compromised public health, according to thousands of testimonials.[3]

A recently discovered NASA document from 1966 indicates that weather modification efforts have been underway since the 1940s. “There is ... great motivation to develop effective countermeasures against the destructive measures of weather,” the paper observes,

and, conversely, enhance the beneficial aspects. The financial and other benefits to human welfare of being able to modify weather to augment water supplies, reduce lightening, suppress hail, mitigate tornados, and inhibit the full development of hurricanes would be very great.[4]

According to the report, in 1964 the National Science Foundation formed a Special Commission on Weather Modification. Thereafter, weather weapons in the form of cloud seeding were used to flood North Vietnamese supply lines during the Vietnam War.[5] More recent documentation points to private and government bodies’ active pursuit of weather modification, including the US Department of Homeland Security’s Hurricane Aerosol and Microphysics Program.[6] And in mid-2012 scientists proposed a $5 billion geoengineering plan to potentially unleash one million tons of particulates in the upper atmosphere each year to “cut world greenhouse gas emissions.”[7]

Since this is such an open program—taking place in plain sight directly over our heads—why is there almost complete silence about it in academic circles as well as mainstream and “alternative” progressive media outlets, particularly if one is to conclude that academe and the press are where disinterested inquiry and the dissemination of information and ideas in the public interest are allegedly anticipated and guaranteed? Indeed, geoengineering and weather manipulation are “a scientific taboo,” Michel Chossudovsky points out.

The possibility of climatic or environmental manipulations as part of a military and intelligence agenda, while tacitly acknowledged, is never considered as relevant. Military analysts are mute on the subject. Meteorologists are not investigating the matter, and environmentalists are strung on global warming and the Kyoto protocol.[8]

In this way such a condition is also attributable to the deleterious effect of intellectual disengagement and naivete originating within scholarly and journalistic communities that, combined with well-funded public relations efforts promoting the CO2-specific theory of global warming, eventually compromises the reasoning and communicative capacities of the broader public sphere.

The Trouble with Normal

When individuals share certain understandings and rationalities about themselves, their profession, and the broader society and culture, as is the overwhelming case in academe or journalism, they possess a binding ideology, and thereby a basis where certain perceptions and beliefs may become readily embraced or dismissed. Concepts inimical to such firm convictions are verboten. Moreover, the heavy reliance on foundation funding combined with rigid hiring and peer review processes ensure that ideas and research challenge this institutional matrix and the broader order of things in only playful and generally non-threatening ways.

Speaking as someone who works in the academy, the fear of being rejected as a crackpot also plays a large role in self-censorship. I never wholly dismissed the chemtrail phenomenon or the reports of chemtrail activists. Yet the very idea of such a nefarious program was so disturbing and surreal that several years ago I half-heartedly sought out a variety of what appeared to be conflicting information of both chemtrail activists and skeptics via online sources to placate and thereby suppress my concerns. After all, I thought, if there was anything to such claims they would be interrogated and ferreted out by university research itself and the independent progressive-left news media and intelligentsia that I relied on so heavily to form my worldview. The real problem, clearly articulated by United Nations agencies, Noble laureates and from seemingly every corner of our mediated environments is the abundance of carbon dioxide and the threat it poses in the form of melting glaciers, rising sea levels, and severe weather events.

Not until 2010, when I happened across the documentary What in the World Are They Spraying? (WITWATS) did I become more fully convinced that coordinated geoengineering programs not only exist, but that they are far-reaching in scope and have major implications for life on earth. Perhaps alongside the alleged scourge of CO2-induced global warming, geoengineering programs that are purportedly in place to “curb” such processes actually pose the greatest threat to humanity and the environment. Like Monsanto, which seeks to control all facets of agriculture and thus our physiological makeup, the US military’s self-admitted objective is to “control the weather” through atmospheric manipulation by 2025.[9]

Living in a tropical climate and spending much of the time outdoors I eventually became something of a novel “skywatcher.” Upon closer observance it has become increasingly difficult to ignore the activity of numerous high altitude aircraft leaving plumes that over the course of several hours expand and coalesce to make massive cloudlike formations that could be easily mistaken for overcast above sometimes naturally-occurring cumulus clouds. I recognized how throughout most of the year this was an almost daily phenomenon initiated by planes with sometimes bizarre and inconsistent flight paths.

When I contacted to Federal Aviation Administration in Fort Lauderdale on a day with high aerial activity of this nature, I was consoled by an overly polite FAA agent that the trails were merely “water vapor,” and that dispersal of any substances several miles overhead would have but negligible effects at ground level. While it is true that jet engines can briefly produce plumes akin to cirrus clouds resulting from the exhaust process, the prevalence of this activity once I became aware of it struck me as highly unusual, and geoengineering activists contend that the inexplicable and often dangerous admixture of microscopic heavy metal particulates now common in our air—particularly aluminum—originate in the persistent contrails. A variety of air samples, most recently by activists at losangelesskywatch.com, confirm this phenomenon.[10]

In late 2011 my six year old daughter had a long-running respiratory ailment which prompted me to send off a small sample of her hair for lab analysis. The results indicated a high level of aluminum.[11] This was disturbing especially given that she had received an abbreviated vaccine regimen, drank water run from a state-of-the-art reverse osmosis filter, and ate only organic food. Her pediatrician expressed some astonishment, asking whether we use aluminum cookware. Apart from this he could offer no explanations and merely prescribed a popular antibiotic for the cough. While there may have been no correlation between the symptoms, it seemed as if the often obscure and bizarre government projects pointed to by “conspiracy theorists” had now struck home in a most intimate way.

It was around this time that I proposed to my department chair we invite WITWATS co-director Michael Murphy to screen his film and give a public talk on campus. Earlier that year a colleague hosted De Franklin Lopez, the director of EndCiv, a provocative documentary profiling the ideas of radical environmental activist and writer Erick Jensen that compares CO2-producing activities with the severest forms of colonial exploitation and Nazi war crimes while advocating violence and vandalism to save the earth. The screening was well-attended by faculty and graduate students.

At the time our department also included on faculty a talented documentary filmmaker whose work has become a platform for proselytizing on anthropogenic global warming and the many lifestyle changes necessary to thwart it. I took for granted that the university was a place where a variety of ideas, however controversial, could be presented, scrutinized, and pondered. However, after emailing the WITWATS YouTube link to my superior I was told in no uncertain terms, “That’s far right propaganda.”

Following a lengthy and good-natured exchange (which included an apology) there was no moral or monetary support forthcoming, which prevented me from approaching other university-related funding sources. Aided by Murphy’s honest willingness to forego an honorarium, I helped to support his campus visit to speak to one of my classes and present the film to the broader public. The screenings and question and answer sessions were very well-received by the students especially, all of whom can detect baloney a mile or two away. Yet despite publicity for the screening and personal invitations to colleagues I found it instructive that none were in attendance.

The story provides a microcosmic demonstration of the limited parameters for the exchange of information and ideas, that are at least as constrictive in the academy—which asserts a license on what constitutes truth and knowledge—as they are in the broader public sphere that is typically policed by ideas and assumptions that have legitimacy and rootedness in academic circles. Along these lines, within mainstream and specifically progressive media the hypothesized ecological dangers of CO2 have become the default line of reasoning for environmental issues. And, as public discourse in the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy suggests, such notions overwhelmingly constitute the precognitive conditions and informational frames through which “extreme weather” events are interpreted.

The CO2 Noise Machine

A significant portion of the underlying research and public relations maneuvers of conventional environmental groups alleging CO2’s baneful and poisonous nature are funded almost entirely by major philanthropic foundations, and this goes a long way in drowning out other arguably more clear-cut and well-documented explanations of weather events, above all geoengineering and weather modification programs.

A foremost reason for the CO2 climate change theory’s endurance is the perceived legitimacy of its proponents, a widescale uncritical acceptance of its assumptions by mainstream and purportedly “alternative/progressive” media figures and outlets, and a limited understanding of the dubious science often based on drastically tortured and opaquely-constructed measurements and data. That a minority of climate scientists and seemingly impartial United Nations entities such as the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change have apparently managed to convince a wide swath of opinion leaders and policy makers that the atmosphere is heating up because of genuinely miniscule increases in carbon dioxide is a feat that takes substantial resources and coordination.[12]

A passage from “economic hitman” John Perkins’ second semiautobiographical book provides an illustrative example how the CO2 theory of climate change becomes a deep-seated component of an ostensibly well-informed individual’s outlook and belief system.

I checked the clock on the bookcase and, aware that I had dallied too long, headed for the shower. As I passed the radio I flicked it on the local NPR station ... Then suddenly the words of the radio announcer caught my attention.

“Within less than a hundred years,” she said, “all the maple trees—and the fall foliage—will be gone from Massachusetts. According to a recent scientific study, global warming will make our climate here similar to North Carolina’s. So” she sighed, “enjoy this year’s display. We may not have many more like it.” I stood there for a moment staring through the bathroom window. Outside, the old red maple next to the house bowed in the wind, its branches scrapping against the wall. The familiar sound now seemed foreboding, a death rattle. I felt absolutely devastated.[13]

Scratching the veneer of some of the major climate change movers and shakers one finds a very well-financed assemblage of entities with major philanthropic foundation ties. Indeed, the Rockefeller Foundations alone are major players behind the anthropogenic global warming “activism” and propaganda. For example, in 2009 the Rockefeller Family Foundation gave $3,500,000 to Grace Communications Fund, an organization that “builds partnerships and develops innovative media strategies that increase public awareness of the relationships among food, water, and energy systems.” Also in 2009 Rockefeller gave $775,000 to the Natural Resource Defense Council, whose foremost agenda is “curbing global warming” and “creating a clean energy future.” Another $650,000 was channeled to the World Wildlife Federation, $350,000 to the Center for Climate Strategies, and $200,000 to the Sierra Club.[14]

As bizarre as it may seem, such organizations are funded to such a degree because of their express intent on austerity and even depopulation programs. Toward this end they speak in one powerful voice that climate change is caused by the CO2-specific consumptive practices of human beings. Curiously, however, these extremely well-funded groups completely ignore actually existing or impending environmental upheavals brought about by geoengineering, dangerously designed nuclear power plants, the wanton disbursal of depleted uranium, and the proliferation of genetically modified organisms throughout the food supply.

A leading mouthpiece of the CO2 global warming hysteria is science author and journalist Bill McKibben, who oversees the popular 350.org publicity outlet. Through this effort McKibben has succeeded in convincing young and old alike to draw attention to the “scientific” assertion that atmospheric carbon dioxide levels are advancing from the low 300s to 400 parts per million of overall atmospheric gases—an ominous .01 percent—by sending in money, buying 350.org paraphernalia, partaking in civil disobedience and even hiking across the United States. This is an impressive public relations accomplishment. More importantly, however, such antics cleverly lend themselves toward authenticating the notion that most every extreme weather event is attributable to dangerous CO2 levels. This conjecture has become as central part a part of the powerful liberal and progressive opinion generating apparatus as the declarations of eugenicists seeking to build a master Nordic race a century ago—an assemblage of scientists and publicists who were, uncoincidentally, funded by some of the same interests.

McKibben’s 350.org project is the public face of his 501(c)(3) 1Sky Education Fund, which between its founding in 2007 and 2009 took in close to $5,000,000 in foundation money and “public contributions.” In 2010 the Rockefeller Brothers Fund gave 1Sky $200,000. The key “scientific” paper McKibben points to as support for his dire warnings on climate change, “Target Atmospheric CO2: Where Should Humanity Aim,” coauthored by NASA scientist James Hansen, was partially funded through Rockefeller Foundation money.[15]

The piece is not so much a scientific report as it is a set of mandates calling for drastic social and political action to avert continued CO2 “buildup.” “Preservation of a climate resembling that which humanity is accustomed,” the authors assert, “requires that most remaining fossil fuel carbon is never emitted to the atmosphere.” Independent researchers and journalists assert that such proposed policies based on tying carbon emissions to atmospheric decay, many of which are already underway in some US states at the local level, will inevitably curtail further industrial development (and consequently economic growth) of almost every type and circumvent existing property rights while ushering in a new age of near-feudal hardship.[16]

McKibben and 350.org are an especially proficient example of the many foundation-supported promotional outlets that, in the tradition of Edward Bernays, have since the late 1990s fundamentally altered public perception and discourse on weather and the climate. This is particularly the case among members of the intelligentsia who disturbingly accept the pronouncements of calculating figures such as McKibben and Vice President Al Gore—individuals that routinely demonstrate their contempt for science and the public interest by trumpeting the assumed inevitability of an uncertain theory. As a result the CO2 explanatory phantom dominates center stage and wholly removes from consideration far more probable causes of unusual and extreme weather.

Piece of Mind through Conformity

The established intellectual communities’ uncritical acceptance of the CO2-specific description of climate change has far less to do with its plausibility or scientific soundness—the “science” is too opaque for pedestrian comprehension and its accompanying shortcomings and qualifications are routinely and fraudulently downplayed—than it does with the overall ubiquity of the notion and an especially naïve faith in the fair and equitable production and dissemination of scientific knowledge.

The reasoning goes something like this. If non-CO2-related explanations of unusual weather patterns existed, the benevolent and impartial foundations would recognize their significance and fund such countervailing scientific research. As the histories of modern medicine, psychiatry, eugenics, and public education suggest, however, the reality is that the dominant paradigm is not the one that is ultimately the most valid and principled, but rather the one that is best funded. In this regard the foundations’ wealthy benefactors call the tune and run the show.

The overall effort has been a public relations coup of immense proportions not because it has seized the hearts and minds of the general public, many of which remain skeptical of the theory, but rather among educated opinion leaders who through personal mystification with their own credentials and titles are the most steadfast in the beliefs they are inured to accept. Even the few who have misgivings about the prevalent explanation of climate change and less examined yet entirely conceivable causes will seldom speak their minds for fear of incurring the wrath of their colleagues and peers, thus perpetuating a professional sphere that more closely resembles a Stalinist inquisition than one where free and open debate are fostered.

In order to preserve ones sanity, reputation and specialized status one need recognize the importance of alignment with an unexamined belief in what one has been told by the “experts” and their spokespersons while simultaneously assuming excessive skepticism toward the readily apparent phenomena of everyday life, however well-documented and alarming they may be. We may seldom have any more clear, sunny days, storms may be of mainly synthetic derivation and direction, and in less than a generation children could be developing Alzheimer’s by their late teens, but are these sufficient reasons to jeopardize one’s professional and social standing?

To broach the topic of weather control and geoengineering programs not only indicates an unhealthy lack of faith in overwhelmingly powerful yet poorly understood institutions and their guiding rationales. It also runs counter to that “good solid feeling of being correct without having to think.” Such dialogue suggests bad taste, especially when one can discuss Paul Krugman’s latest column or where to buy the best arugula. For these reasons I’ve tentatively resigned myself to a fate befitting a well-educated and properly conditioned member of the intellectual class. Realizing that my destiny and that of my loved ones can no longer be considered exclusively our own, I’ve finally learned to stop worrying and love chemtrails.

Notes

---

1. Edward Teller, “Sunscreen for Planet Earth,” Hoover Institution Digest, no. 1, 1998, http://www.hoover.org/publications/hoover-digest/article/6791. Article originally published under title, “The Planet Needs a Sunscreen,”Wall Street Journal, October 17, 1997.

2. C. Wright Mills, The Power Elite, New York: Oxford University Press, 312.

3. Amy Worthington, “Chemtrails: Aerosol and Electromagnetic Weapons in the Age of Nuclear War,” GlobalResearch.ca, June 1, 2004,http://globalresearch.ca/articles/WOR406A.html

4. Geoengineeringwatch.org, “1966 US Government Document Outlines National Weather Modification Programs and Implications,” November 1, 2012,http://www.geoengineeringwatch.org/a-recomended-national-program-in-weather-modification-icas-report-10a/

5. Paul Joseph Watson, “Exclusive Video: The Father of Weaponized Weather,” Infowars, February 2, 2011, http://www.infowars.com/the-father-of-weaponized-weather/

6. Richard W. Spinrad to William Laska, “Response to Statement of Work: Hurricane Aerosol and Microphysics Program,” US Department of Commerce, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, Silver Springs, MD, July 29, 2009,http://voices.washingtonpost.com/capitalweathergang/noaa_letter_dhs_hurricane_modification.pdf

7. Allister Doyle and David Fogarty, “’Sunshade’ to Fight Climate Change Costed at $5 Billion Year,” Reuters, August 31, 2012,http://in.reuters.com/article/2012/08/30/climate-sunshade-idINDEE87T0K420120830

8. Michel Chossudovsky, “The Ultimate Weapon of Mass Destruction: ‘Owning the Weather for Military Use,’” GlobalResearch.ca, September 27, 2004,http://www.globalresearch.ca/articles/CHO409F.html

9. Tamzy J. House, James B. Near Jr. et al, “Weather as a Force Multiplier: Owning the Weather by 2025,” United States Air Force, 1996,http://csat.au.af.mil/2025/volume3/vol3ch15.pdf

10. Losangelesskywatch.org, “Lab Test Results,” n.d., http://losangelesskywatch.org/lab-test-results

11. S_Tracy_Hair_Analysis_0112 (pdf), January 2012.

12. Donna LaFramboise, The Delinquent Teenager Who Was Mistaken for the World’s Top Climate Expert, CreateSpace Independent Publishing, 2011.

13. John Perkins, The Secret History of the American Empire: Economic Hit Men, Jackals, and the Truth About Global Corruption, New York: Dutton, 271-272.

14. All tax-related information obtained through GuideStar, http://www2.guidestar.org/Home.aspx, and Foundation Center, http://foundationcenter.org/

15. James Hansen, Makiko Sato, Pushker Kharecha et al, “Target Atmospheric CO2: Where Should Humanity Begin?” 2008 (Unpublished)http://arxiv.org/abs/0804.1126 or www.columbia.edu/~jeh1/2008/TargetCO2_20080407.pdf

16. See, for example, Rachel Koire, Behind the Green Mask: UN Agenda 21, The Post-Sustainability Press, 2011. Also Susanne Posel’s excellent coverage and analysis of Agenda 21 at http://occupycorporatism.com/category/united-nations-2/agenda-21/

Copyright © 2012 Global Research

Ben Schreiner: On the Verge of An All Out War? Massive Military Build-Up in the Persian Gulf‏

On the Verge of An All Out War? Massive Military Build-Up in the Persian Gulf

By Ben Schreiner

Global Research, July 16, 2012

URL of this article: www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=31940

The familiar menace of U.S. war drums have resumed at a fevered pitch, as Iran finds itself once again firmly within the Pentagon’s cross hairs. 

According to multiple reports, the U.S. is currently in the midst of a massive military build-up in the Persian Gulf on a scale not seen in the region since prior to the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq. The military surge reportedly includes an influx of air and naval forces, ground troops, and even sea drones. Lest one forgets, the U.S. already has two aircraft carriers and their accompanying striker groups in the region. 

A growing sense of Iran war fever can also be seen mounting in Washington. For instance, in an effort to foil ongoing nuclear negotiations between Iran and the so-called P5+1 (the five permanent members of the U.N. Security Council plus Germany), a bipartisan group of 44 U.S. Senators recently sent a letter to President Obama urging the administration to “focus on significantly increasing the pressure on the Iranian government through sanctions and making clear that a credible military option exists.”

Such hawkish posturing occurs despite the fact that the U.S. intelligence community (as well as the Israeli intelligence community, for that matter) finds no evidence that Iran has decided to pursue a nuclear weapon--the ostensible reason behind Western sanctions and threats of attack. Moreover, as an April Pentagon report states, Iran’s military doctrine remains one of self-defense, committed to “slow an invasion” and “force a diplomatic solution to hostilities.” (Compare this to the U.S. military doctrine rife with notions of global “power projection” and one sees where the credible threat lies.) 

The nuclear issue, though, is but a pretext used to veil U.S. imperial designs in the region. As a senior U.S. Defense Department official recently let slip to the New York Times: “This is not only about Iranian nuclear ambitions, but about Iran’s regional hegemonic ambitions.” In other words, it is about removing one of the last irritants to U.S. power projection in the resource-rich Middle East.

Of course, Iran already finds itself under siege from a lethal trifecta comprised of U.S.-led cyber attacks, Israeli-led assassinations, and oppressive Western economic sanctions. The latter of which has left ordinary Iranians to confront a toxic mix of ballooning inflation and rampant unemployment. In short, as Conn Hallinan writes at CounterPunch, the West is “already at war with Iran.”

The question, then, is just how far this "war by other means" shall ultimately escalate?

Towards a Dangerous Escalation

Although punitive economic sanctions are frequently sold as an alternative to war, history is replete with evidence to the contrary. In the end, sanctions are often but a prelude to military hostilities. (One only needs to cross over to Iraq and look at the history of Western sanctions and eventual U.S. invasion.) 

In fact, a recent report in the New York Times warned of much the same. The current round of Western economic penalties imposed on Iran, the paper wrote, “represent one of the boldest uses of oil sanctions as a tool of coercion since the United States cut off oil exports to Japan in 1940. That experiment did not end well: The Japanese decided to strike before they were weakened.”

But much like the attempted torpedoing of Japan’s economy prior to the Second World War, the current attempt to bring Iran to its knees via economic sanctions may very well be designed to draw an attack from Iran--thus creating a justification for a full-fledged U.S. military campaign to impose "regime change." 

And much the same as in the 1940s, a global crisis of capitalism greases our current path to war. After all, war enables the forcible opening of new markets, along with bounties galore to be wrought via “creative destruction”; both of which are desperately needed for the sustenance of an imperiled economic system predicated on limitless growth and expansion. Indeed, this enduring allure of war has already reared its ugly head amidst the current crisis.

The colonial smash-and-grab that was the 2011 N.A.T.O. intervention into Libya, as Alexander Cockburn has deemed it, was our first evidence that Western elites have settled on war as a means to resolve the current intractable capitalist crisis. But the spoils from Libya have proven to be insufficient to revive growth stymied since the onset of the 2008 financial crisis. 

A heavily sanctioned Iran, on the other hand, boasts a G.D.P. over five times larger than pre-“liberated” Libya, while also sitting atop the world’s third largest oil reserves and the second largest natural gas reserves. A defeated and placated Iran able to be enveloped more fully into the U.S.-dominated capitalist system thus holds great potential for global capitalism’s needed regeneration. Of course, in seizing control over Iran’s energy resources, the U.S. and its allies would also come to possess a monopoly over the Middle East’s energy resources--a strategic key in any future conflict with rivals Russia and China.

And so it is that under the imperative of renewing global capitalism that the U.S. swiftly amasses its military hardware to the Persian Gulf under to cloak of combating nuclear proliferation. The accompanying talk of military hostilities and of using “all options” against Tehran by elites in Washington thus ought not to be taken as idle threats. 

Clearly, we stand at the very precipice of outright war.

Ben Schreiner is a freelance writer based in Oregon. He may be reached at bnschreiner@gmail.com or via his website.

Obama is more of a war monger than Bush/Cheney

Iran is being accused by the UN for growing their nuclear enrichment program. The report that has yet to be released is seen as some for an excuse to go to war with Iran. Israel, the US and the UK are rumored to be gearing up for an armed confrontation. Early this year we reported Iran is the first country to have a nuclear power plant in the Middle East. Paul Craig Roberts, former Reagan Administration Official and columnist, gives us his take on the UN's allegations.

Obama, The Son of Africa, Claims a Continent’s Crown Jewels

By John Pilger

Global Research

On 14 October, President Barack Obama announced he was sending United States special forces troops to Uganda to join the civil war there. In the next few months, US combat troops will be sent to South Sudan, Congo and Central African Republic. They will only "engage" for "self-defence", says Obama, satirically. With Libya secured, an American invasion of the African continent is under way.

Obama’s decision is described in the press as "highly unusual" and "surprising", even "weird". It is none of these things. It is the logic of American foreign policy since 1945. Take Vietnam. The priority was to halt the influence of China, an imperial rival, and "protect" Indonesia, which President Nixon called "the region’s richest hoard of natural resources …the greatest prize". Vietnam merely got in the way; and the slaughter of more than three million Vietnamese and the devastation and poisoning of their land was the price of America achieving its goal. Like all America’s subsequent invasions, a trail of blood from Latin America to Afghanistan and Iraq, the rationale was usually "self defence" or "humanitarian", words long emptied of their dictionary meaning.

In Africa, says Obama, the "humanitarian mission" is to assist the government of Uganda defeat the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA), which "has murdered, raped and kidnapped tens of thousands of men, women and children in central Africa". This is an accurate description of the LRA, evoking multiple atrocities administered by the United States, such as the bloodbath in the 1960s following the CIA-arranged murder of Patrice Lumumba, the Congolese independence leader and first legally elected prime minister, and the CIA coup that installed Mobutu Sese Seko, regarded as Africa’s most venal tyrant.

Obama’s other justification also invites satire. This is the "national security of the United States". The LRA has been doing its nasty work for 24 years, of minimal interest to the United States. Today, it has fewer than 400 fighters and has never been weaker. However, US "national security" usually means buying a corrupt and thuggish regime that has something Washington wants. Uganda’s "president-for-life" Yoweri Museveni already receives the larger part of $45 million in US military "aid" – including Obama’s favourite drones. This is his bribe to fight a proxy war against America’s latest phantom Islamic enemy, the rag-tag al Shabaab group based in Somalia. The RTA will play a public relations role, distracting western journalists with its perennial horror stories.

However, the main reason the US is invading Africa is no different from that which ignited the Vietnam war. It is China. In the world of self-serving, institutionalised paranoia that justifies what General David Petraeus, the former US commander and now CIA director, implies is a state of perpetual war, China is replacing al-Qaeda as the official American "threat". When I interviewed Bryan Whitman, an assistant secretary of defence at the Pentagon last year, I asked him to describe the current danger to America. Struggling visibly, he repeated, "Asymmetric threats … asymmetric threats". These justify the money-laundering state-sponsored arms conglomerates and the biggest military and war budget in history. With Osama bin Laden airbrushed, China takes the mantle.

Africa is China’s success story. Where the Americans bring drones and destabilisation, the Chinese bring roads, bridges and dams. What they want is resources, especially fossil fuels. With Africa’s greatest oil reserves, Libya under Muammar Gaddafi was one of China’s most important sources of fuel. When the civil war broke out and NATO backed the "rebels" with a fabricated story about Gaddafi planning "genocide" in Benghazi, China evacuated its 30,000 workers in Libya. The subsequent UN security council resolution that allowed the west’s "humanitarian intervention" was explained succinctly in a proposal to the French government by the "rebel" National Transitional Council, disclosed last month in the newspaper Liberation, in which France was offered 35 per cent of Libya’s gross national oil production "in exchange" (the term used) for "total and permanent" French support for the NTC. Running up the Stars and Stripes in "liberated" Tripoli last month, US ambassador Gene Cretz blurted out: "We know that oil is the jewel in the crown of Libyan natural resources!"

The de facto conquest of Libya by the US and its imperial partners heralds a modern version of the "scramble for Africa" at the end of the 19th century.

Like the "victory" in Iraq, journalists have played a critical role in dividing Libyans into worthy and unworthy victims. A recent Guardian front page carried a photograph of a terrified "pro-Gaddafi" fighter and his wild-eyed captors who, says the caption, "celebrate". According to General Petraeus, there is now a war "of perception … conducted continuously through the news media".

For more than a decade the US has tried to establish a command on the continent of Africa, AFRICOM, but has been rebuffed by governments, fearful of the regional tensions this would cause. Libya, and now Uganda, South Sudan and Congo, provide the main chance. As WikiLeaks cables and the US National Strategy for Counter-terrorism reveal, American plans for Africa are part of a global design in which 60,000 special forces, including death squads, already operate in 75 countries, soon to be 120. As Dick Cheney pointed out in his 1990s "defence strategy" plan, America simply wishes to rule the world.

That this is now the gift of Barack Obama, the "Son of Africa", is supremely ironic. Or is it? As Frantz Fanon explained in Black Skin, White Masks, what matters is not so much the colour of your skin as the power you serve and the millions you betray.

For more information on John Pilger, visit his website at www.johnpilger.com

John Pilger is a frequent contributor to Global Research. Global Research Articles by John Pilger

http://globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=27181