http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=27279
by Rady Ananda
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Global Research, October 25, 2011
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 24,486 permanent and 3,593 temporarily abandoned wells in the Gulf of Mexico [Image]
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Archive for the ‘Global Research’ Category
"Stage Two" of the BP Gulf of Mexico Environmental Disaster New Drilling Permits amid 28,000 Unmonitored Abandoned Wells
Posted by Admin on October 28, 2011
Posted in Global Research, Pollution | Tagged: associated press, bp, deepwater horizon, Deepwater Horizon oil spill, Ed Markey, Government Accountability Office, gulf of mexico, John Amos, New Orleans | Leave a Comment »
America's Endless Wars in Afghanistan and Iraq
Posted by Admin on October 28, 2011
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=27291
by Jack A. Smith
Global Research, October 25, 2011
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The 10th anniversary of Washington’s invasion, occupation and seemingly endless war in Afghanistan was observed Oct. 7, but despite President Barack Obama’s pledge to terminate the U.S. “combat mission” by the end of 2014, American military involvement will continue many years longer. The Afghan war is expanding even further, not only with increasing drone attacks in neighboring Pakistani territory but because of U.S. threats to take far greater unilateral military action within Pakistan unless the Islamabad government roots out “extremists” and cracks down harder on cross-border fighters. Washington’s tone was so threatening that Secretary of State Hillary Clinton had to assure the Pakistani press Oct. 21 that the U.S. did not plan a ground offensive against Pakistan. The next day, Afghan President Hamid Karzai shocked Washington by declaring “God forbid, If ever there is a war between Pakistan and America, Afghanistan will side with Pakistan…. If Pakistan is attacked and if the people of Pakistan needs Afghanistan’s help, Afghanistan will be there with you.” At the same time, Washington has just suffered a spectacular setback in Iraq, where the Obama Administration has been applying extraordinary pressure on the Baghdad government for over a year to permit many thousands of U.S. troops to remain indefinitely after all American forces are supposed to withdraw at the end of this year. President Obama received the Iraqi government’s rejection from Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki Oct. 21, and promptly issued a public statement intended to completely conceal the fact that a long-sought U.S. goal has just been obliterated, causing considerable disruption to U.S. plans. Obama made a virtue of necessity by stressing that “Today, I can report that, as promised, the rest of our troops in Iraq will come home by the end of the year.” This article will first discuss the situation in Afghanistan after 10 years, then take up the Iraq question and what the U.S. may do to compensate for a humiliating and disruptive rebuff. The United States is well aware it will never win a decisive victory in Afghanistan. At this point, the Obama Administration is anxious to convert the military stalemate into a form of permanent truce, if only the Taliban were willing to accept what amounts to a power sharing deal that would allow Washington to claim the semblance of success after a decade of war. In addition President Obama seeks to retain a large post-“withdrawal” military presence throughout the country mainly for these reasons:
There has been an element of public deception about withdrawing U.S. “combat troops” from Iraq and Afghanistan dating from the first Obama election campaign in 2007-8. Combat troops belong to combat brigades. In a variant of bait-and-switch trickery, the White House reported that all combat brigades departed Iraq in August 2010. Technically this is true, because those that did not depart were simply renamed “advise and assist brigades.” According to a 2009 Army field manual such brigades are entirely capable, “if necessary,” of shifting from “security force assistance” back to combat duties. In Afghanistan, after the theoretical pullout date, it is probable that many “advise and assist brigades” will remain along with a large complement of elite Joint Special Operations Forces strike teams (SEALs, Green Berets, etc.) and other officially “non-combat” units — from the CIA, drone operators, fighter pilots, government security employees plus “contractor security” personnel, including mercenaries. Thousands of other “non-combat” American soldiers will remain to train the Afghan army. According to an Oct. 8 Associated Press dispatch, “Senior U.S. officials have spoken of keeping a mix of 10,000 such [special operations-type] forces in Afghanistan, and drawing down to between 20,000 and 30,000 conventional forces to provide logistics and support. But at this point, the figures are as fuzzy as the future strategy.” Estimates of how long the Pentagon will remain in Afghanistan range from 2017 to 2024 to “indefinitely.” Obama marked the 10th anniversary with a public statement alleging that “Thanks to the extraordinary service of these [military] Americans, our citizens are safer and our nation is more secure”— the most recent of the continuous praise of war-fighters and the conduct of these wars of choice from the White House since the 2001 bombing, invasion and occupation. Just two days earlier a surprising Pew Social Trend poll of post-9/11 veterans was made public casting doubt about such a characterization. Half the vets said the Afghanistan war wasn’t worth fighting in terms of benefits and costs to the U.S. Only 44% thought the Iraq war was worth fighting. One-third opined that both wars were not worth waging. Opposition to the wars has been higher among the U.S. civilian population. But it’s unusual in a non-conscript army for its veterans to emerge with such views about the wars they volunteered to fight. The U.S. and its NATO allies issued an unusually optimistic assessment of the Afghan war on Oct. 15, but it immediately drew widespread skepticism. According to the New York Times the next day, “Despite a sharp increase in assassinations and a continuing flood of civilian casualties, NATO officials said that they had reversed the momentum of the Taliban insurgency as enemy attacks were falling for the first time in years…. [This verdict] runs counter to dimmer appraisals from some Afghan officials and other international agencies, including the United Nations. With the United States preparing to withdraw 10,000 troops by the end of this year and 23,000 more by next October, it raises questions about whether NATO’s claims of success can be sustained.” Less than two weeks earlier German Gen. Harald Kujat, who planned his country’s military support mission in Afghanistan, declared that “the mission fulfilled the political aim of showing solidarity with the United States. But if you measure progress against the goal of stabilizing a country and a region, then the mission has failed.” According to Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman Adm. Mike Mullen, the U.S. presence in Afghanistan is a critically important “long term commitment” and “we’re going to be there longer than 2014.” He made the disclosure to the Senate Armed Services Committee Sept. 22, a week before he retired. In a statement Oct. 3, the Pentagon’s new NATO commander in Afghanistan, Marine Gen. John Allen, declared: “The plan is to win. The plan is to be successful. And so, while some folks might hear that we’re departing in 2014… we’re actually going to be here for a long time.” Lt. Gen. John Mulholland, departing head of U.S. Army Special Operations Command, told the AP Oct. 8: “We’re moving toward an increased special operations role…,whether it’s counterterrorism-centric, or counterterrorism blended with counterinsurgency.” White House National Security Advisor Tom Donilon said in mid-September that by 2014 “the U.S. remaining force will be basically an enduring presence force focused on counterterrorism.” Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta strongly supports President Obama’s call for an “enduring presence” in Afghanistan beyond 2014. Former U.S. Afghan commander Gen. Stanley McChrystal, who was fired last year for his unflattering remarks about Obama Administration officials, said in a speech to the Council on Foreign Relations Oct. 6 that after a decade of fighting in Afghanistan the U.S. was only “50% of the way” toward attaining its goals. “We didn’t know enough and we still don’t know enough,” he said. “Most of us — me included — had a very superficial understanding of the situation and history, and we had a frighteningly simplistic view of recent history, the last 50 years.” Washington evidently had no idea that one of the poorest and least developed countries in the world — a society of 30 million people where the literacy rate is 28% and life expectancy is just 44 years — would fiercely fight to retain national sovereignty. The Bush Administration, which launched the Afghan war a few weeks after 9/11, evidently ignored the fact that the people of Afghanistan ousted every occupying army from that of Alexander the Great and Genghis Kahn to the British Empire and the USSR. The U.S. spends on average in excess of $2 billion a week in Afghanistan, not to mention the combined spending of the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force, but the critical needs of the Afghan people in terms of health, education, welfare and social services after a full decade of military involvement by the world’s richest countries remain essentially untended. For example, 220,000 Afghan children under five — one in five — die every year due to pneumonia, poor nutrition, diarrhea and other preventable diseases, according to the State of the World’s Children report released by the UN Children’s Fund. UNICEF also reports the maternal mortality rate with about 1,600 deaths per every 100,000 live births. Save the Children says this amounts to over 18,000 women a year. It is also reported by the UN that 70% of school-age girls do not attend school for various reasons — conservative parents, lack of security, or fear for their lives. All told, about 92% of the Afghan population does not have access to proper sanitation. Even after a decade of U.S. combat, the overwhelming majority of the Afghan people still have no clear idea why Washington launched the war. According to the UK’s Daily Mail Sept. 9, a new survey by the International Council on Security and Development showed that 92% of 1,000 Afghan men polled had never even heard of the attack on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon — the U.S. pretext for the invasion — and did not know why foreign troops were in the country. (Only men were queried in the poll because many more of them are literate, 43.1% compared to 12.6% of women.) In another survey, conducted by Germany’s Konrad Adenauer Foundation and released Oct. 18, 56% of Afghans view U.S./NATO troops as an occupying force, not allies as Washington prefers. The survey results show that “there appears to be an increasing amount of anxiety and fear rather than hope.” Perhaps the most positive news about Afghanistan — and it is a thunderously mixed “blessing” — is that the agricultural economy boomed last year. But, reports the Oct. 11 Business Insider, it’s because “rising opium prices have upped the ante in Afghanistan, and farmers have responded by posting a 61% increase in opium production.” Afghani farmers produce 90% of the world’s opium, the main ingredient in heroin. Half-hearted U.S.-NATO eradication efforts failed because insufficient attention was devoted to providing economic and agricultural substitutes for the cultivation of opium. Another outcome of foreign intervention and U.S. training is the boundless brutality and corruption of the Afghan police toward civilians and especially Taliban “suspects.” Writing in Antiwar.com John Glaser reported:
In mid-September Human Rights Watch documented that U.S.-supported anti-Taliban militias are responsible for many human rights abuses that are overlooked by their American overseers. At around the same time the American Open Society Foundations revealed that the Obama Administration has tripled the number of nighttime military raids on civilian homes, which terrorize many families. The report noted that “An estimated 12 to 20 raids now occur per night, resulting in thousands of detentions per year, many of whom are non-combatants.” The U.S. military admits that half the arrests are “mistakes.” Meanwhile, it was reported in October that in the first nine months this year U.S.-NATO drones conducted nearly 23,000 surveillance missions in the Afghanistan sky. With nearly 85 flights a day, the Obama Administration has almost doubled the daily amount in the last two years. Hundreds of civilians, including nearly 170 children, have been killed in the Afghan-Pakistan border areas from drone attacks. Miniature killer/surveillance drones — small enough to be carried in backpacks— are soon expected to be distributed to U.S. troops in Afghanistan. So far the Afghanistan war has taken the lives of some 1,730 American troops and about a thousand from NATO. There are no reliable figures on the number Afghan civilians killed since the beginning of the war. The UN’s Assistance Mission to Afghanistan did not start to count such casualties until 2007. According to the Voice of America Oct. 7, “Each year, the civilian death toll has risen, from more than 1,500 dead in 2007 to more than 2,700 in 2010. And in the first half of this year, the UN office reported there were 2,400 civilians killed in war-related incidents.” At minimum the war has cost American taxpayers about a half-trillion dollars since 2001. The U.S. will continue to spend billions in the country for many years to come and the final cost — including interest on war debts that will be carried for scores more years — will mount to multi-trillions that future generations will have to pay. At present there are 94,000 U.S. troops in Afghanistan plus about 37,000 NATO troops. Another 45,000 well paid “contractors” perform military duties, and many are outright mercenaries. Washington is presently organizing, arming, training and financing hundreds of thousands of Afghan troops and police forces, and is expected to continue paying some $5 billion a year for this purpose at least until 2025. The U.S. government has articulated various different objectives for its engagement in Afghanistan over the years. Crushing al-Qaeda and defeating the Taliban have been most often mentioned, but as an Oct. 7 article from the Council on Foreign Relations points out: “The main U.S. goals in Afghanistan remain uncertain. They have meandered from marginalizing the Taliban to state-building, to counterinsurgency, to counterterrorism, to — most recently — reconciliation and negotiation with the Taliban. But the peace talks remain nascent and riddled with setbacks. Karzai suspended the talks after the assassination of Burhanuddin Rabbani, the government’s chief negotiator, which the Afghan officials blamed on the Pakistan-based Haqqani network. The group denies it.” There is another incentive for the U.S. to continue fighting in Afghanistan — to eventually convey the impression of victory, an absolute domestic political necessity. The most compelling reason for the Afghan war is geopolitical, as noted above — finally obtaining a secure military foothold for the U.S. and its NATO accessory in the Central Asian backyards of China and Russia . In addition, a presence in Afghanistan places the U.S. in close military proximity to two volatile nuclear powers backed by the U.S. but not completely under its control by any means (Pakistan, India). Also, this fortuitous geography is flanking the extraordinary oil and natural gas wealth of the Caspian Basin and energy-endowed former Soviet Muslim republics such as Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan. In Iraq, the Obama Administration’s justification for retaining troops after the end of this year was ostensibly to train the Iraqi military and police forces, but there were other reasons:
Under other conditions, the U.S. may simply have insisted on retaining its troops regardless of Iraqi misgivings, but the Status of Forces compact governing this matter can only be changed legally by mutual agreement between Washington and Baghdad. The concord was arranged in December 2008 between Prime Minister Maliki and President George W. Bush — not Obama, who now takes credit for ending the Iraq war despite attempting to extend the mission of a large number of U.S. troops. At first Washington wanted to retain more than 30,000 troops plus a huge diplomatic and contractor presence in Iraq after “complete” withdrawal. Maliki — pushed by many of the country’s political factions, including some influenced by Iran’s opposition to long-term U.S. occupation — held out for a much smaller number. Early in October Baghdad decided that 3,000 to 5,000 U.S. troops in a training-only capacity was the most that could be accommodated. In addition, the Iraqis in effect declared a degree of independence from Washington by insisting that remaining American soldiers must be kept on military bases and not be granted legal immunity when in the larger society. Washington, which has troops stationed in countries throughout the world, routinely insists upon legal exemption for its foreign legions as a matter of imperial hubris, and would not compromise. The White House has indicated that an arrangement may yet be worked out to permit some American trainers and experts to remain, perhaps as civilians or contractors. Shi’ite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, a staunch opponent of the U.S. occupation, has suggested Iraq should employ trainers for its armed forces from other countries, but this is impractical for a country using American arms and planes. Regardless, the White House is increasing the number of State Department employees in Iraq from 8,000 to an almost unbelievable 16,000, mostly stationed at the elephantine new embassy in Baghdad’s Green Zone quasi-military enclave, in new American consulates in other cities, and in top “advisory” positions in many of the of the regime’s ministries, particularly the oil ministry. Half the State Department personnel, 8,000 people, will handle “security” duties, joined by some 5,000 new private “security contractors.” Thus, at minimum the U.S. will possess 13,000 of its own armed “security” forces, and there’s still a possibility Baghdad and Washington will work out an arrangement for adding a limited number of “non-combat” military trainers, openly or by other means. In his Oct. 21 remarks, Obama sought to transform the total withdrawal he sought to avoid into a simulacrum of triumph for the troops and himself: “The last American soldier will cross the border out of Iraq with their heads held high, proud of their success, and knowing that the American people stand united in our support for our troops…. That is how America’s military efforts in Iraq will end.” Heads held high, proud of success — for an unjust, illegal war based on lies that is said to have cost over a million Iraqi lives and created four million refugees! It has been estimated that the final U.S.. costs of the Iraq war will be over $5 trillion when the debt and interest are finally paid off decades from now. If President Obama is reelected— even should the Iraq war actually end — he will be coordinating U.S. involvement in wars and occupations in Afghanistan, Libya, Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia, and now Uganda (where American 100 combat troops have just been inserted). Add to this various expanding drone campaigns, and such adventures as Washington’s support for Israel against the Palestinians and for the Egyptian military regime against popular aspirations for full democracy, followed by the backing of dictatorial regimes in a half-dozen countries, and continual threats against Iran. Washington’s $1.4 trillion annual military and national security expenditures are a major factor behind America’s monumental national debt and the cutbacks in social services for the people, but aside from White House rhetoric about reducing redundant Pentagon expenditures, overall war/security budgets are expected to increase over the next several years. The Bush and Obama Administrations have manipulated realty to convince American public opinion that the Iraq and Afghan wars are ending in U.S. successes. Washington fears the resurrection of the “Vietnam Syndrome” that resulted after the April 1975 U.S. defeat in Indochina. The “syndrome” led to a 15-year disinclination by the American people to support aggressive, large-scale U.S. wars against small, poor countries in the developing third world until the January 1991 Gulf War, part one of the two-part Iraq war that continued in March 2003. According to an article in the Oct. 9 New York Times titled “The Other War Haunting Obama,” author, journalist and Harvard emeritus professor Marvin Kalb wrote: ” Ten years after the start of the war in Afghanistan, an odd specter haunts the Obama White House — the specter of Vietnam, a war lost decades before. Like Banquo’s ghost, it hovers over the White House still, an unwelcome memory of where America went wrong, a warning of what may yet go wrong.” This fear of losing another war to a much smaller adversary — and perhaps suffering the one-term fate of President Lyndon Johnson who presided over the Vietnam debacle — evidently was a factor behind President Obama’s decision to vastly expand the size of the U.S. military commitment to Afghanistan and why the White House is now planning a long-term troop presence beyond the original pullout date. Today’s combat directly touches the lives of only a small minority Americans — militarily members and families — and much of the majority remains uninformed or misinformed about many of the causes and effects of the Iraq/Afghan adventures. Obama may thus eventually be able to convey the illusion of military success, which will help pave the way for future imperial violence unless the people of the United States wise up and act en masse to prevent future aggressive wars. Jack A. Smith is the Editor of the Activist Newsletter |
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| Jack A. Smith is a frequent contributor to Global Research. Global Research Articles by Jack A. Smith |
Posted in Global Research, War Quotient | Tagged: afghanistan, Barack Obama, Hamid Karzai, iraq, NATO, Pakistan, United States, Washington | Leave a Comment »
Who Was Muammar Qaddafi? Libya's Wealth Redistribution Project With an Introduction by Cynthia McKinney
Posted by Admin on October 28, 2011
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=27327
by Mahdi Darius Nazemroaya
Global Research, October 27, 2011
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Fourth of Four Installments on Libya: Who is Stealing the Wealth? Once again, Mahdi Darius Nazemroaya peels away the veneer of legitimacy and deception enveloping the U.S./NATO genocide currently taking place in Libya. In his first article, Nazemroaya makes it clear that there never was any evidence given to the United Nations or the International Criminal Court to warrant or justify United Nations Resolutions 1970 and 1973 or current U.S./NATO operations inside Libya.
In his second article detailing this very sad story, Nazemroaya exposes the relationships between the major Libyan protagonists/NATO collaborators and the U.S. Congress-funded National Endowment for Democracy. Incredibly, when leading Members of Congress publicly proclaimed repeatedly that they did not know who the Libyan “rebel” NATO collaborators were, select so-called rebel leaders were political intimates with stakeholders at the National Endowment for Democracy. Nazemroaya also exposes that, despite its Global War on Terror, the U.S. government actually financed Libyan terrorists and criminals wanted by INTERPOL.
In his third installment, Nazemroaya removes the U.S./NATO fig leaf that attempts to cover the cynical machinations of the pro-Israel Lobby and its objective of balkanizing African and Asian states, especially those whose populations are largely Muslim. Nazemroaya makes the essential point: “An attempt to separate the merging point of an Arab and African identity is underway.” The Voice of America has exposed the psychological aspects of its brutal intervention and hints at the mindset of the U.S./NATO Libyan pawns; several stories suggest that the “new” Libya will turn more toward its Arab identity than its African identity. While Muammar Qaddafi drove home to all Libyans that Libya, as its geography dictates, is an African country, Nazemroaya shows how this fact is not a policy objective shared by the U.S., NATO, Israel, or their Libyan allies.
Finally, in this last of the four-part series, Nazemroaya shows the ultimate perfidy of the U.S./NATO Libyan allies, especially Mahmoud Jibril, in the pre-emptive strike against the Jamahirya Wealth Redistribution Project. The Libyan people are now fighting the world’s most powerful militaries to save their Jamahirya. No matter how many times NATO-inspired media lie to their publics, the lies will never become the truth. Hauntingly, Nazemroaya ends by telling us that the Libyan National Transitional Council has already recognized the Syrian National Council (SNC) as the legitimate government of Syria. Meanwhile, Dr. Ayman al-Zawahiri, now reputed to be the leader of Al Qaeda and reportedly rewarded with U.S. citizenship after fighting for the C.I.A. in Bosnia, just called for the people of Algeria to oust their President. President Obama’s policy of flying drones and dropping bombs over Africa, and invading the Continent with U.S. troops, means that any country that resists an AFRICOM base, as Colonel Qaddafi’s wife tells us he did, or expects to exercise its right of self-determination, can expect the kind of treatment we are witnessing now in Libya. We, in the U.S., must resist these policies for ourselves and and on behalf of the Africans who deserve better than this from the United States of America. Cynthia McKinney, 25 October 2011.
INSTALLMENTS I-III
Colonel Muammar Qaddafi symbolizes many things to many different people around the world. Love or hate the Libyan leader, under his rule Libya transformed from one of the poorest countries on the face of the planet into the country with the highest standard of living in Africa. In the words of Professor Henri Habibi:
Qaddafi had many grand plans. He wanted to create a South Atlantic Treaty Organization to protect Africa and Latin America. He advocated for a gold dinar standard as the currency of Muslim countries. Many of his plans were also of a pan-African nature. This included the formation of a United States of Africa. Qaddafi’s Pan-African Projects Colonel Qaddafi started the Great Man-Made River, which consisted in a massive project to transform the Sahara Desert and reverse the desertification of Africa. The Great Man-Made River with its irrigation plans was also intended to support the agricultural sector in other parts of Africa. This project was a military target of NATO bombings. Without just cause, NATO’s bombing campaign was intent upon destroying the Great Man-Made River. Qaddafi also envisioned independent pan-African financial institutions. The Libyan Investment Authority and the Libyan Foreign Bank were important players in setting up these institutions. Qaddafi, through the Libyan Foreign Bank and the Libyan Investment Authority, was instrumental in setting up Africa’s first satellite network, the Regional African Satellite Communication Organization (RASCOM), to reduce African dependence on external powers. [2] His crowning achievement would have been the creation of the United States of Africa. The supranational entity would have been created through the African Investment Bank, the African Monetary Fund, and finally the African Central Bank. These institutions were all viewed with animosity by the European Union, United States, International Monetary Fund (IMF), and World Bank. Qaddafi’s Wealth Redistribution Project Qaddafi had a wealth redistribution project inside Libya. U.S. Congressional sources in a report to the U.S. Congress even acknowledge this. On February 18, 2011 one report states:
Qaddafi wanted all the people of Libya to have direct access to the nation’s wealth. He was also aware of the deep rooted corruption that plagued the ranks of the Libyan government. This was one of the reasons why he wanted to apply a model of political anarchy in Libya through progressive steps. He was talking about both these project for a few years. On the other hand, the Wealth Redistribution Project, along with the establishment of an anarchist political system, was viewed as a very serious threat by the U.S., the E.U., and a group of corrupt Libyan officials. If successful, the reforms could have created political unrest amongst many domestic populations around the world. Internally, many Libyan officials were working to delay the project. This included reaching out to external powers to intervene in Libya to stop Qaddafi and his projects. Why Mahmoud Jibril Joined the Transitional Council Amongst the Libyan officials that were heavily opposed to this project and viewed it with horror was Mahmoud Jibril. Jibril was put into place by Saif Al-Islam Qaddafi. Because of strong influence and advice from the U.S. and the E.U., Saif Al-Islam selected Jibril to transform the Libyan economy and impose a wave of neo-liberal economic reforms that would open the Libyan market. Jibril became the head of two bodies in the Libyan Arab Jamahiriya, the National Planning Council of Libya and National Economic Development Board of Libya. While the National Economic Development Board was a regular ministry, the National Planning Council would actually put Jibril in a government position above that of the Office of the General-Secretary of the People’s Committee of Libya (which is the equivalent of the post of a prime minister). Jibril actually became one of the forces that opened the doors of privatization and poverty in Libya. About six months before the conflict erupted in Libya, Mahmoud Jibiril actually met with Bernard-Henri Lévy in Australia to discuss forming the Transitional Council and deposing Colonel Qaddafi. [4] He described Qaddafi’s Wealth Redistribution Project as “crazy” in minutes and documents from the National Economic Development Board of the Libyan Arab Jamahiriya. [5] Jibril strongly believed that the Libyan masses were not fit to govern themselves and that an elite should always control the fate and wealth of any nation. What Jibril wanted to do is downsize the Libyan government and layoff a large segment of the public sector, but in exchange increase government regulations in Libya. He would also always cite Singapore as the perfect example of a neo-liberal state. While in Singapore, which he regularly visited, it is likely that he also meet with Bernard-Henri Lévy. When the problems erupted in Benghazi, Mahmoud Jibril immediately went to Cairo, Egypt. He told his colleagues that he would be back in Tripoli soon, but he had no intention of returning. In reality, he went to Cairo to meet the leaders of the Syrian National Council and Lévy. They were all waiting for him inside Cairo to coordinate the events in Libya and Syria. This is one of the reasons that the Transitional Council has recognized the Syrian National Council as the legitimate government of Syria. Do Not Pity the Dead, Pity the Living! Muammar Qaddafi is now dead. He was murdered in his hometown of Sirte. He stood his ground until the end like he said he would. The Transitional Council, which vowed to take him to court had him murdered. He even reminded the men who beat him, anally raped him, mocked him, and finally murdered him that they were not following the laws of Islam about respectful treatment of prisoners. NATO played a central role and oversaw the whole event. The murder was systematic, because after Qaddafi was murdered his son and several other Libyan leaders were killed too. Colonel Qaddafi’s death marks a historic milestone for Libya. An old era has ended in Libya and a new chapter begins. Libya will not become a new paradise like the Transitional Council says. In many cases the living will envy the dead, because of men like Mahmoud Jibril, Ali Tarhouni, and Sliman Bouchuiguir. Mahmoud Jibril is a mere opportunist. The man had no problems being a government official under the late Qaddafi. He never complained about human rights or a lack of democracy. He was the prime minister of the Transitional Council of Libya until a few days after the savage murder of Colonel Qaddafi. The opposition of Jibril to the late Qaddafi’s Wealth Redistribution Project and his elitist attitude are amongst the reasons he conspired against Qaddafi and helped form the Transitional Council. Is this ex-regime official, who has always been an open supporter of the Arab dictators in the Persian Gulf, really a representative and champion of the people? How about his colleagues in the Transitional Council who negotiated oil contracts with NATO member states, even before they held any so-called government positions in the Transitional Council? Mahdi Darius Nazemroaya is a Sociologist and Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG), Montréal. He specializes on the Middle East and Central Asia. He was on the ground in Libya for over two months and was also a Special Correspondent for Flashpoints, which is an investigative news program carried on numerous stations in the United States and based in Berkeley, California. Nazemroaya has been releasing these articles about Libya in conjunction with aired discussions (now archived) with Cynthia McKinney on Freedom Now, a show aired on Saturdays on KPFK, Los Angeles, California. Notes [1] Henri Pierre Habib, Politics and Government of Revolutionary Libya (Montmagny, Québec: Le Cercle de Livre de France Ltée, 1975), p.1. [2] Regional African Satellite Communication Organization, “Launch of the Pan African Satellite,” July 26, 2010: [3] Christopher M. Blanchard and James Zanotti, “Libya Christopher M. Blanchard and James Zanotti, “Libya: Background and U.S. Relations,” Congressional Research Service, February 18, 2011, p.22. [4] Private discussions with Mahmoud Jiribil’s co-workers inside and outside of Libya. [5] Internal private documents from the National Economic Development Board of the Libyan Arab Jamahiriya. |
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Posted in Geo-Politics, Global Research | Tagged: Africa, Cynthia McKinney, Libya, Muammar Qaddafi, NATO, Nazemroaya, United Nations, United States | Leave a Comment »
Libya and the Big Lie: Using Human Rights Organizations to Launch Wars
Posted by Admin on September 30, 2011
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=26848
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by Mahdi Darius Nazemroaya
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Global Research, September 29, 2011
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– 2011-09-24
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Posted in Geo-Politics, Global Research, War Quotient | Tagged: Benghazi, Human rights, Libya, LLHR, Muammar al-Gaddafi, Non-governmental organization, Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court, UN Human Rights Council, United Nations, United Nations Security Council | Leave a Comment »
Pakistan and "The Haqqani Network" : The Latest Orchestrated Threat to America and The End of History
Posted by Admin on September 30, 2011
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=26797
by Dr. Paul Craig Roberts
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Global Research, September 27, 2011
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– 2011-09-26
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Posted in Global Research | Tagged: al qaeda, Haqqani Network, osama bin laden, Pakistan, Pakistan government, United States, Washington, World War III | Leave a Comment »
ECONOMIC COLLAPSE 2011 – AUGUST UPDATE
Posted by Admin on August 31, 2011
By Georgi Stankov, Copyright 2011
This economic update is a response to the question from the journalist Alfred Webre, from the examiner.com and exopolitics.com to me on August 8, 2011:
Question from Alfred Webre to Dr. Georgi Stankov:
Can you identify causes, coordinates, timelines, and outcomes of the coming economic collapse?
Answer from Dr. Georgi Stankov to Alfred Webre on August 9, revised on August 20, 2011
The current financial crisis is part of the Scenario for the End Times in 2012 and was planned eons of time ago by the Anunnaki. They have left earth in March this year. The renegade Anunnaki that build the blue bloodline of the 13 ruling families (Rockefeller, Rothschild, The British Royal family etc.), which currently control this world financially, have severed all bonds with the initial Anunnaki, who were our original genetic engineers, and declined to observe the divine plan for earth and humanity in the End Times. Hence the many delays in the 2012-scenario, which was planned to begin in 2009 or even earlier.
Thus all the necessary events, which will lead to the collapse of the Old World Order, will now take place within several days or weeks. This is the background information, which one should consider in order to understand the present forecast. Within this framework, I will discuss the actual causes for the financial collapse, which are currently known to the broad public as random events from the mass media, but are not analysed in the context of Ascension. This concept is only known to few light workers, and even among them there is a huge confusion as to what will really happen and how it will happen in the course of this and next year.
The single major cause for the current financial collapse, which has commenced at the beginning of this month (August), is the World inflation. It was deliberately instigated by the Anunnaki and their minions in the financial sector and in all Western governments. Most CEOs and managers are willful, greedy puppets of these alien masterminds, who have long-term plans for the End Times of this planet, which they consider to be their own. I have discussed the Anunnaki’s heinous methods of money inflation in my three essays on the Orion monetary system.
The world inflation, the money supply in circulation worldwide, was about 200 times bigger than the actual industrial production measured as GDP in October 2008 when the current depression began. We are still in the same crisis, which will end with the total destruction of the old economic order this year. As this will happen within the next 90 days, there is no point in giving exact dates, because this will be irrelevant. It is sufficient to point out that the old financial structures will be wrapped up by 11.11.11 (November 11, 2011), when the last, but one star portal will be opened and the ascending timeline of earth and humanity will enter irrevocably the 5th dimension.
The current world inflation is inflation created out of debt. You have the debt of the banks, with which they intended to control the world economy, as they actually did until 2008. The problem of debt is that you can play the game as long as debt is accepted by the other players. As soon as mistrust and fear grip around, the process is reversed. This has happened on many occasions in the past – hence the numerous crises every 3 to 5 years.
The current debt inflation was delegated from the banks to the governments in form of fiscal debt, caused by the huge bailouts of the defaulted banks in 2008 and 2009. This debt was then burdened onto the tax payers, the citizens, in form of austerity programmes. This is the basic mechanism, with which the renegade Anunnaki planned to impoverish the human population and enslave it in the End Times.
But every process on earth and in All-That-is is of dialectical nature. You can stretch the rubber as long as you can in the direction of darkness, but then you have to let it go, and it whiplashes equally further in the opposite direction of light, which is Ascension. Exactly this mechanism, based on the elasticity of All-That-Is (for further information see “Cosmic Laws of Creation and Destruction“) was used by the Forces of Light and by the incarnated human souls from the Higher Realms to overcome the huge resistance of the dark ones in the financial sector and in government in the last several years.
For this reason, the Forces of Light mitigated the financial crisis in 2008 in order to prevent the plan of the 13 ruling families to ruin the Western countries and establish the New World Order. Humanity stayed in the Old Order, which will be wrapped up in the coming 90 days under the conditions of the Forces of Light. This would say that the human dark ones in finance and governance, which have now become orphans after the Anunnaki have left earth, will have to surrender unconditionally to the Forces of Light.
Their only condition will be love, compassion, and forgiveness. This would say that the dark ones, who still believe in controlling mankind and earth, must simply open to this inevitable truth. This will happen with or without their consent, as the huge high frequency waves from the central sun of the galaxy are flooding earth and opening the human hearts (the 4th chakra) for the Christ energies of unconditional love. The only unknown variable is the degree of readiness of each individual to open for these energies and accept unconditional love, transparency, and full rejection of all kinds of manipulation as the only spiritual principles of human behaviour.
This total psycho-mental transformation of all incarnated human entities on earth must be based on the deep spiritual insight that all human beings are part of the Source (All-That-Is) and that the idea of Separation, leading to wars, oppression and endless atrocities against other human beings in the past, is the greatest illusion, to which any sentient entity in this universe can succumb.
Now, I hope that you understand the dynamics and the logic behind the coming events. One should always explore the events on earth from both, the spiritual and concrete point of view. This is the dialectics of any expanded human awareness that enables it to transcend the illusionary duality of 3-space-time on earth.
Now let us go back to the present economic situation. The financial system is broke since 2008 and is on life-sustaining fraud since then. This fraud is termed in financial slang. as “creative accounting”. It means that all broke big banks were allowed by their governments to take all their toxic assets and losses out of their balance sheets. Otherwise, they would have defaulted in October 2008 or several weeks later.
None of the money in circulation currently are real money. The equity charts were kept artificially high by fictive transactions since 2009 through 2011. Specialists have found out that since 2008 90% of all orders on the New Yorker stock exchange are faked and were electronically traded by the biggest Wall Street banks in a coordinated fashion.
They manipulate the charts by short and long orders through computerized programmes as to keep the equity markets artificially stable. Everything is manipulated. All real private investors have left the equity markets long time ago. There is no free financial market anymore, and it has never been there in the first place. But since the beginning of August, they can no longer manipulate the equity markets, and they have begun to crash. This is the actual situation, and that is why the brokers are so nervous. One has to watch CNBC or Bloomberg to notice immediately the sheer panic of the traders and the journalists in their lifeless eyes.
The bosses of all the big banks behave in the last days like “paralyzed rabbits in front of a cobra”, to quote a German saying.
However, the Forces of Light have chosen the least explosive scenario for the End Times. They have decided to let the system crash when the cosmic energies that flood earth have reached the necessary light quotient that will simply disable the dark ones in the financial sector to control the world events, as this has been the case in the past.
In addition, the coming astral energies of rebellion and upheaval ignite the masses worldwide, and they no longer trust their former masters, be they politicians or financial bosses. The current anti-corruption movement in India that came out of nowhere and swept across this huge country of one billion people caught the Indian government by a total surprise. Its embarrassing retreats in front of a single man in a hunger strike, whom they initially imprisoned in the old oppressive manner. are paradigmatic for the confusion that has gripped the political Elite worldwide and will soon destroy the fragile political and economic order.
If one follows the political development in Europe for example, there is currently the march of indignation which started in Spain and is now engulfing the whole EU.
All EU-countries, except Germany, are practically broke. If the small Greece could derail the Euro currency, how about Spain, Italy, Portugal, Ireland, Italy, and even France put together. All the big banks in these countries are also bankrupt, because they are highly leveraged and sit on huge toxic loans, which they will never get payed back.
This explains the EU-saving package for Greece and the other “pigs” countries – it is a saving belt for the French and German banks. Only Deutsche Bank has 50 billion Euro toxic Greek loans in its books, which Greece will never pay back. This is twice the basic capital of this bank and higher than its capitalisation at the Frankfurter stock exchange. But this bank has much more toxic loans from Ireland, Spain, and Italy in its books.
The actual crash exacerbated when it became known that the Deutsche Bank sold all its Italian treasure bonds because it assumed that Italy would go bankrupt very soon. The same holds true for the big French banks, SocGen and Credit Lyonnais. The big Spanish banks are already broke and some of the big Italian banks as Unicredit have been effectively bankrupt since 2008. The English banks HSBC and Royal Bank of Scotland have actually defaulted in 2008 and are since than de facto state banks, just as the two big Irish banks that caused the current political and economic crisis in this country. And so on.
It always takes 3 to 5 years before a real bankruptcy of a large company is officially declared, as was the case with the Enron scandal. This time-lag between actual default and its official announcement has been defined by myself as “Stankov’s law of financial default”. It works fabulously in the current situation.
The financial situation in Great Britain is even worse than that on the Continent. The British debt is similar to that of Greece, Portugal, and Italy in terms of GDP, which is more than 100%, Even Germany that ranks strong among all other Western countries has a national debt of 80% of its GDP since its unification with East Germany.
Now Europe and Great Britain (EU) are still in a much better financial and economic shape than the USA, only one talks much more about these countries as to divert the attention of the masses from the disastrous situation in the USA. Even the politically correct Claude Trichet, the chairman of the ECB, had to admit this fact recently under huge pressure from the mass media. The international banksters have already begun to throw stones at each other.
I will not discuss the situation in the USA in detail, as you know it better than myself. I will only add to this that the overall debt of the USA is not the 14,5 trillion fiscal debt, which drew the attention of the mass media in the last several weeks because of the fiscal debt ceiling fiasco of the political Elite at the Capitol, but actually 200 trillion, and thus 13 times bigger than the GDP of the USA. This is generally acknowledged by all competent experts, even when they prefer to be silent on this issue in front of a camera.
All the federal states and local municipalities in the USA are currently broke, while the real unemployment in this country is 20% and higher – similar to that of Spain, which is the worst hit country by the crisis in Europe.
Now, given this disastrous situation, the question is not if the system will collapse, but why it has not collapse much earlier. This is so, because the Forces of Light kept it on life-sustaining measures for some time, by allowing the dark ones in the financial sector to continue with their global fraud for a while and thus drain the system to the last drop of its fresh blood, respectively money.
As I have already written to you, there is an invariant seasonal pattern how a major world crisis unfolds on this planet. You can trace this pattern for WW1, WW2, and for the Fall of the Iron Curtain in 1989.
Major global events that change the destiny of mankind always tend to show themselves after spring equinox by numerous symbolic signs, which can only be discerned by far-sighted people at the beginning. Then the signs begin to grow throughout the spring. The first visible manifestations of the coming change take place at the beginning of August and gain momentum throughout September. When this threshold is reached, the dam is broken and the flood inundates the society within days and hours. This will be the timely dynamics behind the coming events that will lead to total economic collapse of the old order and to ET Disclosure and First Contact in the fall of this year.
The financial crisis was announced in early spring when the Greek default became inevitable and the Euro crisis commenced. It reached a preliminary peak in July with the fiscal debt ceiling crisis of the political Elite in the USA and the possible default of this country. Although this crisis was averted in the last minute, this was a Pyrrhic victory as the US-rating was degraded at the same time.
This was the official start of the global financial collapse, which now reached the equity markets at the beginning of August, when all indices lost 1000-1500 points within 5 days, which is, per definition, already a financial crash. This trend will continue throughout August. Currently, the DAX Index of the most stable economy in the Western world, Germany, has fallen more than 20% – from 7400 points at the end of July to less than 5500 on August 19. This is the worst performance since October 2009.
The more wealth is wiped out at the stock exchange, the more nervous the people will become, and the deeper the crisis. Currently, the total losses on all stock exchanges worldwide are estimated to be in the order of 7 to 10 trillion. But the psychological loss is much more dangerous, because it is contagious. As soon as the banksters realize that they can no longer manipulate the indices, they will crumble within several days, and the rats will begin to leave the sinking ship: This insight is bound to enter the blurred consciousness of the international banksters at the latest by the end of August
Wealth, created out of debt, melts immediately when the people begin to demand the return of the lent money, and it becomes evident to everybody, participating in this fraudulent game, that there is no money left, but only debt. This is how the crisis will explode in the fall. At the very moment, when all participants in the current Ponzi-Scheme realize that they have only debt in their hands, while all real money is gone, the crash will be a done deal.
The world economy is like an addict, who has lived on higher and higher dosages of opiates because their pharmacological effect diminishes as the number of opioid receptors grows in the body. In this case the patient needs higher and higher dosages to achieve the same anaesthetic effect.
When there is a drug withdrawal, the patient experiences an acute withdrawal syndrome and may not survive it, as all vital systems are out of control and run amok. You can use this comparison to describe the current financial situation that will explode in the fall. The economy is already in a financial withdrawal syndrome and can fall in coma anytime soon.
Some seers expect that the banks will close their doors in August. I expect this event in late September or in early October, but I will not be at all surprised, if this crash happens earlier. One should not give any fixed dates in this respect, but it is wise to expect the total collapse of the system in the fall of this year.
After the shock, the whole economy will be paralysed for a while. This is the just psychological moment for ET-Disclosure and First Contact and changing the course of the events on this planet.
There are essentially two scenarios for the End Times: Either the Galactic Federation will show up first and then some Ascended Masters in a physical vessel will officially transform their bodies and appear as such in front of humanity, or it will be the other way round. I am in support of the second alternative. However, this should not influence our prognosis on the coming financial collapse, as one of the two alternatives will definitely take place no later than the opening of thestar portal 11.11.11. This is the pivotal date for all major events that are bound to happen this year.
Ultimately, the divine plan for this planet and humanity is to destroy all material structures of the old economic order of the Orion Empire, before a new provisional order can be established prior to Ascension. There are two pivotal dates, which one should always bear in mind – 11.11.11 and 12.12.12. By November 11, 2011, the old economic order must be abolished for ever and human beings deprived of most distractions in the outer world that hinder them on their way to Ascension.
Human ego hinders Ascension and must surrender to the soul. It can only be neutralized when the carpet is pulled away from under its feet. There is no other way on earth to effectively eliminate the collective and individual ego that shapes the dark destiny of humanity, but to take away any possibility from it to exert its illusionary free will in the outer material world.
After that mankind will fall in its greatest collective depression in the history of this planet. This mental and emotional state is energetically extremely favourable for radical changes that will open the mediality of the incarnated entities to the Higher Self, respectively to the soul. This will be accomplished by the end of 2011.
Many revelations will have to take place in this time, carried out by the human Ascended Masters from the first wave and later on by the Galactic Federation,which will have disclosed by then.
The year 2012 will be dedicated to the preparation for ascension, and it should not be that much chaotic and full of scary events, as this year will inevitably be. Therefore, I do not expect huge natural catastrophes for this time, but there will be some local disasters as in the past.
This is all for the moment.
Further Links
http://www.examiner.com/exopolitics-in-seattle/exoprediction-sharp-economic-decline-solution-commit-to-unity-consciousness
Posted in Annunaki Overlords, Anomalic Interferences, Conspiracy Archives, Earth Changes, Economic Upheavals, Exopolitical Interventions, Geo-Politics, Global Research, India Forgotten, The Esoteric Agenda of Humanity, Truthout Articles | Tagged: alfred webre, Anunnaki, Business, Economic, End time, GDP, government, Gross domestic product, Money supply, new age, new world order, United States | Leave a Comment »
The Strategies of the Galactic Federation And the Dark Forces in the End Times – A Forecast for 2011 and 2012 –
Posted by Admin on August 31, 2011
By Georgi Stankov, February 2011, Copyright 2011
INTRODUCTION
I have always made the experience that when I make an assessment on current and future timelines in a written form, this endeavour always serves a higher purpose, and my predictions are much more easily materialized on earth. I energize them, so to say.
After all, we are all Creators of our destiny and what we envisage always happens – in one or another way, the final say has, however, always the soul as long as we live on earth. This is the Heavenly Dichotomy of Creation in a physical vessel – both the ego and the Higher Self create simultaneously, however it is the soul that pulls the strings behind the veil of forgetfulness.
This assessment was performed at the beginning of 2011 and must be seen retrospectively as a very precise analysis and a forecast of the Ascension-Scenario for the current End Times.
WHY THE ANTICIPATED PLAN FOR THE END TIMES OF ASCENSION HAD TO BE DELAYED?
It is a well-known fact among most light workers that there was a major postponement of the anticipated Ascension events, such as “First Contact” with theGalactic Federation in the last 2-3 years. Initially, it was announced that the first contact would happen on October 14, 2008, but the anticipated Disclosurewas then postponed.
After that there were many more similar channelled announcements from the Galactic Federation; the time passed by, but nothing happened. This has led to much a frustration among all light workers and deepened their disbelief, whether anything will ever happen. Or as one put it: “The cavalry has failed to show up.”
I, personally, expected huge changes in 2009 and then in 2010 again. Last year, I was informed by my soul five months in advance,that my individual Ascension is scheduled for October 13, but then it was substituted with an out-of-body experience to the Highest Realms of Cosmic Providence, during which I learned a lot more about the reasons for the many delays in the cosmic plan for the End Times. In particular, I was informed in detail on the current status of the ongoing fierce battle between the Galactic Federation and the Powers That Be from the Orion/Reptilian Empire, which has necessitated these delays in the original plan for Ascension.
It has been acknowledged by many trustworthy channels that the Galactic Federation has underestimated the fact, how deeply the Dark Forces are entrenched on earth. The dilemma was as follows: If the Galactic Federation had intervened earlier, the dark ones would have unleashed a devastating war and would have caused a massive destruction on earth. This would have led to the death of millions, if not, billions of human beings.
Given the balance of power at that time, the Galactic Federation may not have been able to prevent such a devastating outcome, as it had to observe the free will of the incarnated human entities, whose collective visions might have supported such a catastrophic astral alternative for earth and humanity several years ago. Therefore, they made a decision to await and act deliberately behind the veil.
The problem is, however, that the Dark Forces continue incessantly with their efforts to exterminate human beings by various means, such as HAARP, chemtrails, epidemics such as H1N1, inoculations with toxic vaccines, etc. Therefore, there is a point in time, when the Galactic Federation can no longer sit and wait, but must make the decisive step.
The reason, why the Dark Forces commit genocide on humans, is that they are already stretched thin due to their limited numbers and inferior 4d-technologies when compared to that of the Galactic Federation and can no longer control the events on earth to the worst of their heinous plans.
Many of their plans have gone awry in the last years as a result of the active, though hidden, intervention of the Galactic Federation, for instance, by inactivating the H1N1 virus and the recommended toxic vaccines in 2009, as well as by preventing an outbreak of the announced H1N1 pandemics by WHO during this same year. These events were instigated by the Dark Forces as to cause the death of millions of human beings.
These were the facts that I had to consider in my assessment of current timelines after my announced Ascension was postponed. My initial point of view was that the system will collapse as a result of the numerous failures and imbecilities, being made all the time by the majority of mankind, first and foremost, by the greedy banksters in the financial sector.
I had already predicted in 1999 (see my “1999-Forecast of the World Economic Collapse in the End Times“) that the USA will be compelled to perform acurrency reform and exchange the devalued dollar, which is the major cause for the current world inflation, with a new stable currency. This would have triggered the collapse of the USA as a superpower.
This was, as I see it know from a higher vantage point of view, a somewhat sterile forecast that did not take into account the fact that this collapse was aplanned event by the Dark Forces as to install the New World Order. This changes significantly the point of leverage of my assessment of current timelines and their eventual unfolding in the course of this year (2011).
Had the Dark Forces been successful in instigating a second, greater financial collapse than the one in October 2008, as I expected it for 2009, then they would have immediately declared martial law in the USA and would have subsequently introduced the new currency Amero, which they are preparing for a long time. The Amero was planned to substitute the three currencies: US-Dollar, Canadian Dollar, and Peso in relation to 6 Dollar for 1 Amero or 500 Peso for 1 Amero. This would have made economic activities in North America much more difficult.
This insidious currency reform, as planned by the US-Elite, would have been tantamount to mass expropriation of the North American population. This scenario was part and parcel and did not happen only because the popular opposition in these countries against the free trade zone that was supposed to be introduced prior to the planned currency reform became very strong during this time. The Galactic Federation also helped to prevent this plan.
What does this scenario tell us? Obviously, the Galactic Federation makes everything possible to deliberately postpone all crashes and collapses that the Dark Forces instigate as part of their plan to impose the New World Order (NWO) on humanity and enslave it prior to Ascension.
In reality, we have to do with two opposite astral probability alternatives for earth with regard to the plans and options of the Dark Forces. On the one hand, they want to carry out their nefarious plans as soon as possible, because they know that the final date of Ascension on Dec 2012 is looming bright on the horizon, so that they have very little time left to realize them.
On the other hand, they must make the experience that most of their plans, such as mass inoculations and pandemics, were effectively averted by the Galactic Federation. This also holds true for the massive disablement of nuclear missiles, which the Dark Ones launched on numerous occasions in the past as to unleash a mayhem on earth. These facts are not well known to most light workers, while the broad human populaticon is in a deep slumber. although some high-ranking officers officially disclosed the disablement of nuclear misslies on many occasions in interviews with Larry King, CNN, which can be seen in Internet.
In the summer of 2009, there was for instance a huge battle on the moon. The human bases there revolted against their masters, the Orion/Reptilian faction, and took control over them with the help of the Galactic Federation. This was a real Star war. The Dark Forces decided to send a rocket with nuclear weapon from the earth to annihilate the humans in their former bases, now controlled by them and the Galactic Federation. This missile was however inactivated by the Galactic Federation. Since then the Dark Forces have lost control on the Moon.
It is important to observe that NASA announced only one day before the planned explosion in the mass media that a rocket had been launched on the moon and that they intended to make an experiment by making a small explosion on the surface of the moon as to analyse whether there was any water underground. This was in breach with the previous practice of NASA to announce such launches months or even years in advance. This was a deliberate cover-up, which most people did not realize or question at that time. Especially when one considers the fact that the announced explosion did not take place, as this could have been easily observed even by amateur-astronomers.
Now that the Galactic Federation is in firm hold of the moon, it has weakened significantly the ability of the Dark Forces to launch a first strike and annihilate most of mankind, which was a central piece of their insidious plan to control earth in the End Times.
THE ASCENSION-SCENARIO FOR THE END TIMES: A FORECAST
From this elaboration, it follows that the Galactic Federation has every reason to cancel all activities of the Dark Forces, which are aiming at collapsing the whole economic system, as long as possible. On the other hand, this collapse is inevitable as part of the Ascension process. It will now take place in 2011, most probably in the fall of this year, following a typical seasonal pattern, which the author has elaborated many years ago for all global key events on this planet, such as WW1, WW2, and the Fall of the Iron Curtain and the Berlin Wall in the autumn of 1989.
This collapse will take place under the conditions, dictated by the Galactic Federation and only after the Dark Forces have been fully neutralized by the huge influx of high frequency energies from the central sun of the galaxy, in preparation of Gaia and humanity for the final Ascension in December 2012. The total economic collapse must precede the opening of the last, but one, star portal 11.11.11, which will trigger the final Shift of the two timelines for this planet, as described in the Ascension-Scenario 2012.
In Summary:
What we have witnessed in the last three years, was a huge clandestine battle that has been waged between the Galactic Federation and the Dark Forces, The Powers That Be. This ongoing battle in the 4th and higher dimensions has had only modest repercussions on earth so far, given its ferocity, on the one hand, and the deep slumber, in which most human beings live nowadays, on the other.
But it has squeezed the dark ones to the point, where they can no longer manifest any of their major plans. At the same time, the cosmic energies flood earth and augment its frequency. They awaken the sleeping majority of mankind, which becomes more and more rebellious, as the ongoing revolution in Tunisia clearly demonstrates. Many other countries will soon follow.
When the cosmic energies of rebellion against the Old Order encompass the whole humanity, which I expect to happen in the summer of 2011, we will know precisely that the economic collapse is bound to occur any time soon. It will be triggered by a global financial crisis, when the bank system, created upon huge debt, will collapse as a house of cards within several days (see my essays on the Orion Monetary System).
This analysis tells us that the outstanding events prior to Ascension must now unfold with a greater intensity and within a much shorter period of time than initially planned. There are both advantages and disadvantages to this approach:
1) The Time of Tribulations will be shorter, which is good news for mankind.
2) The power of destruction – both social and natural, e.g. earthquakes and other natural catastrophes -, will be greater, and the confusion among humans profounder. The time of awakening of the sleeping majority will be shorter and the process of enlightenment and empowerment of most enslaved incarnated entities must be accelerated. This will inevitably increase the stress on all humans.
This elaboration leads us to the only possible scenario for this year:
1) The change can only be achieved by the massive intervention of the Galactic Federation in association with my Ascension and that of some other individuals.This First Wave of Ascended Masters will immediately take control over earth and mankind from the Dark Forces. The old economic order, which will collapse within days, will be swiftly mended by the Galactic Federation and the Ascended Human Masters as to provide food, shelter and just, evenly distributed income for all human beings, until Ascension will take place on the 21st of December. 2012.
There will be no major economic reforms prior to Ascension, as most of the social and economic structures on current 3d-earth will no longer exist in the new 5thdimensional earth, where the energetic conditions will be completely different from those that humans know so far.
However, the timeline of the ascending earth will begin to materialize after 11.11.11, so that some evolved incarnated entities may begin to experience some of the miracles and wonders in form of advanced astral technologies, which are awaiting humanity after Ascension in the 5th dimension in December 2012. There will be infinite individual experiences in 2012, as the individual timelines will begin to diverge and leave the common plane of existence on the current 3d-earth, as it has been familiar to human beings for eons of time.
The Dark Forces will disappear from the surface of this planet and will keep silent until Ascension. After that they may take full control of the descending earth (planet B) and the remaining human population, unless a different astral probability alternative will be chosen for this debased planet and its hugely reduced population.
2) The total collapse of the current human civilisation must be accomplished by and large by 11.11.11, when the last, but one, star portal will be opened.
3) After that the final preparation for Mass Ascension will begin. In this sense, 2012 will be an anti-climax to 2011, when most of the sweeping changes will occur.
This forecast may sound quite improbable, given the quietness and the lack of major events in the last three years, but the timelines for this planet are such, that no other scenario is possible.
The huge transformation of earth and mankind, which has been announced for many years by numerous channels, must now unfold within a very short period of time. The first unmistakable signs of decay will be visible after spring equinox, when the last wave of Christ consciousness will be released – hence my urgency to put this assessment in a written form and to share it with the readers. This schedule will help them to prepare mentally for the upcoming events and make their final arrangements before the storm gathers.
______
This forecast was written in January 2011 as an email to my cousin Christo Stankov, who lives in the USA, and was later published in my book “The Cosmic Laws of Creation and Destruction..”
In February 2011, I decided to rewrite this email in form of a separate publication, which is now published for the first time on this website.
Georgi Stankov
Posted in Anomalic Interferences, Conspiracy Archives, Earth Changes, Economic Upheavals, Exopolitical Interventions, Geo-Politics, Global Research, The Esoteric Agenda of Humanity, Truthout Articles | Tagged: earth, first contact, Galactic Federation, Georgi Stankov, Human, Metroid, Mythology of Stargate, new age, new world order, United States | Leave a Comment »
The Hidden Hand that Shaped History
Posted by Admin on August 8, 2011
http://vigilantcitizen.com/vigilantreport/the-hidden-hand-that-changed-history/
By VC | October 20th, 2009
Has the course of History been directed by a small group of people with common interests? The paintings and pictures of the great men of the past centuries reveal a common thread which links them together. Is it a coincidence that many of them hid one of their hands when posing for a portrait? It seems unlikely. We’ll look at the Masonic origin of the “hidden hand” and the powerful men who used the sign in famous portraits.
- Stalin and Washington – two opposing ideologies, one hand gesture
“Today’s thinking toward a democratic world state is neither a new trend nor an accidental circumstance; the work of setting up the background of knowledge necessary to the establishing of enlightened democracy among all nations has been carried on for many hundreds of years by secret societies.”
–Manly P. Hall, Secret Destiny of America
Is there a hidden force behind the world events of the past centuries? Are the fall of European monarchies, the bringing forth of the Age of Enlightenment and our path towards a world democracy part of a great plan lead by a “hidden hand”? Before the advent of mass media, portraits depicting their leaders in majestic poses were the only artifacts people had. Do these portraits have an occult meaning?
One of those poses is the “hiding of the hand”. I remember my history teacher trying to explain why Napoleon was often shown with a hand inside his shirt. The common explanation went along these lines:
“Many theories have been presented as to why Napoleon is traditionally depicted with his hand in his waistcoat. Some of these theories include: he had a stomach ulcer, he was winding his watch, he had an itchy skin disease, in his era it was impolite to put your hands in your pockets, he had breast cancer, he had a deformed hand, he kept a perfumed sachet in his vest that he’d sniff surreptitiously, and that painters don’t like to paint hands”
-Tom Holmberg
Unless all the individuals discussed in this article had stomach ulcer or deformed hands, the gesture of hiding one’s hand simply has to have a specific meaning. It does. Most of the people using this sign are proven (and often enthusiastic) members of the Freemasons. Considering the great importance of this gesture in Masonic rituals and the fact that all of the elite were either part of Freemasonry or knew of it, it is simply impossible that the recurrence of this sign could be the result of a coincidence. The “hidden hand” can, in fact, be found in the rituals of the Royal Arch Degree of Freemasonry and the world leaders that use this sign are subtly saying to other initiates of the order: “This is what I’m part of, this is what I believe in and this is what I’m working for”.
The Royal Arch Degree
- The Triple Tau
The Royal Arch Degree (the 13th degree of the Scottish Rite or the 7th degree of the York Rite) is also known as the Mason of the Secret. During this Degree, initiates are said to receive great Masonic truths.
“The members of this Degree are denominated companions, and are “entitled to a full explanation of the mysteries of the Order”; whereas in the former Degrees they are recognized by the common, familiar appellation of brothers, and kept in a state of profound ignorance of the sublime secret which is disclosed in this Chapter. This accords with the custom of Pythagoras, who thus distinguished his pupils. After a probation of five years, as stated before, they were admitted into the presence of the preceptor, called his companions, and permitted to converse with him freely. Previous to the expiration of that term he delivered his instructions to them from behind a screen”
-John Fellows, Fellows’s Inquiry into the Origin, History, and Purport of Freemasonry
“If we pass on to the Royal Arch, we receive a wonderful accession of knowledge, and find every thing made perfect; for this is the nec plus ultra of Masonry, and can never be exceeded by any human institution.”
-George Oliver, Lectures on Freemasonry
It is during this degree that the initiate learns the sacred name of God.
“A Degree indescribably more august, sublime, and important than any which precede it, and is, in fact, the summit and perfection of ancient Masonry. It impresses upon our minds a belief in the being of a God, without beginning of days or end of years, the great and incomprehensible Alpha and Omega, and reminds us of the reverence which is due to His Holy NAME.”
-George Oliver, Historical Landmarks
This holy name is Jahbulon, a combination of words meaning “god” in Syriac, Chaldaic and Egyptian.
“JEHOVAH. Of the varieties of this sacred name in use among the different nations of the earth, three particularly merit the attention of Royal Arch Masons:
1. JAH. This name of God is found in the 68th Psalm, v. 4.
2. BAAL OR BEL. This word signifies a lord, master, or possessor, and hence it was applied by many of the nations of the East to denote the Lord of all things, and the Master of the world.
3. ON. This was the name by which JEHOVAH was worshiped among the Egyptians.”
-Malcolm C. Duncan, Duncan’s Masonic Ritual and Monitor
The initiation ritual to this degree re-enacts the return to Jerusalem of three Most Excellent Masons who were held captive in Babylon. I won’t go through the whole ceremony and symbolism but at one point, the initiate is asked to learn a secret password and a hand sign in order to go through a series of veils. The following image depicts the hand sign required to go through the second veil, as documented in Duncan’s Masonic Ritual and Monitor:
“Master of Second Veil: “Three Most Excellent Masters you must have been, or thus far you could not have come; but farther you cannot go without my words, sign, and word of exhortation. My words are Shem, Japhet, and Adoniram; my sign is this: (thrusting his hand in his bosom); it is in imitation of one given by God to Moses, when He commanded him to thrust his hand into his bosom, and, taking it out, it became as leprous as snow. My word of exhortation is explanatory of this sign, and is found in the writings of Moses, viz., fourth chapter of Exodus”:
“And the Lord said unto Moses, Put now thine hand into thy bosom. And he put his hand into his bosom; and when he took it out, behold, his hand was leprous as snow”
-Malcolm C. Duncan, Duncan’s Masonic Ritual and Monitor
As stated above, this hand gesture is said to be inspired by Exodus 4:6. In this biblical verse, the heart (“bosom”) stands for what we are, the hand for what we do. It can thus be interpreted as :What we are is what we ultimately do. The symbolic significance of this gesture might explain the reason why it is so widely used by famous Masons. The hidden hand lets the other initiates know that the individual depicted is part of this secret Brotherhood and that his actions were inspired by the Masonic philosophy and beliefs. Furthermore, the hand that executes the actions is hidden behind cloth, which can symbolically refer to covert nature of the Mason’s actions. Here are some of the famous men who used this hand signal.
Napoleon Bonaparte
- Napoleon, a known Mason in his study at the Tuileries, 1812
Napoleon Bonaparte (1769-1821) was a military and political leader of France whose actions shaped European politics in the early 19th century. He was initiated into Army Philadelphe Lodge in 1798. His brothers, Joseph, Lucian, Louis and Jerome, were also Freemasons. Five of the six members of Napoleon’s Grand Councel of the Empire were Freemasons, as were six of the nine Imperial Officers and 22 of the 30 Marshals of France. Bonaparte’s association with Masonry has always been played down in historical records. Masonic researcher J.E.S. Tuckett addresses the situation:
“It is strange that evidence in favor of the Great Napoleon’s membership of the Masonic Brotherhood has never been examined in detail, for the matter is surely one of interest, and – seeing the remarkable part that remarkable men played in the affairs of Europe, at a time when Continental Freemasonry was struggling out of chaos into regular order – it cannot be without an important bearing upon Masonic history”
In his essay on Napoleon and Masonry, Tuckett claims:
“There is incontestable evidence that Napoleon was acquainted with the nature, aims and organization of Freemasonry: that he approved of and made use of it to further his own ends”
-J.E.S. Tuckett, Napoleon I and Freemasonry (source)
Napoleon was also said to be aided by occult powers. In 1813 he was defeated at Leipzip and behind him was a “Cabinet of Curiosities” in which a Prussian officer discovered his Book of Fate and Oraculum. Originally this Oraculum was discovered in one of the Royal tombs of Egypt during a French military expedition of 1801. The emperor ordered the manuscript to be translated by a famous German scholar and antiquarian. From that time onward, the Oraculum was one of Napoleon’s most treasured possessions. He consulted it on many occasions and it is said to have “formed a stimulus to his most speculative and most successful enterprises.”
Karl Marx
Karl Marx is known today to be the founder of modern Communism. Despite being denied by some Masons, Marx is said to have been a 32nd degree Grand Orient Freemason. Marx became the spokesman of the atheist and socialist movement of Europe. He planned the replacement of monarchies with socialist republics, with the next step conversion to communist republics.
George Washington
George Washington was one of the Founding Fathers of the United States and is considered to be the “most important American Mason”. Charles Willson Pealed produced this painting when Washington was 52 years old. Notice the position of Washington’s feet: they form an oblong square. The position of the feet are of utmost importance in Masonic symbolism. Compare this with this excerpt from Duncan’s Ritual Monitor:
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart is considered to be one of the most prolific and influential composers of music ever. He also was a Freemason and was initiated in the Austrian lodge Zur Zur Wohltatigkeit on Dec. 14th 1784. Mozart’s creations often incorporated important Masonic elements. The Magic Flute opera was mainly based on Masonic principles.
“The music of the Freemasons contained musical phrases and forms that held specific semiotic meanings. For example, the Masonic initiation ceremony began with the candidate knocking three times at the door to ask admittance. This is expressed musically as a dotted figure: meanings. For example, the
This figure appears in Mozart’s opera The Magic Flute in the overture, suggesting the opening of the Masonic initiation.”
– Katherine Thompson, The Masonic Thread in Mozart
The musical progression of The Magic Flute was based on the Golden Ratio (1,6180…), the proportion of everything that is considered divine by Mystery Schools.
Here are compositions created by Mozart for use in Masonic lodges:
- Lied (song) “Gesellenreise, for use at installation of new journeymen”
- Cantata for tenor and male chorus Die Maurerfreude (“The Mason’s Joy”)
- The Masonic Funeral Music (Maurerische Trauermusik)
- Two songs to celebrate the opening of “Zur Neugekrönten Hoffnung”
- Cantata for tenor and piano, Die ihr die unermesslichen Weltalls Schöpfer ehrt
- The Little Masonic Cantata (Kleine Freimaurer-Kantate) entitled Laut verkünde unsre Freude, for soloists, male chorus, and orchestra
Marquis de Lafayette
Marquis de Lafayette was a 33rd degree Freemason. According to Willam R. Denslow’s 10,000 Famous Freemasons, Lafayette was a French military officer who was a general in the American Revolutionary War and a leader of the Garde Nationale during the bloody French Revolution. Lafayette was also made an honorary Grand Commander of the Supreme Council of New York. More than 75 Masonic bodies in the U.S. have been named after him, including 39 lodges, 18 chapters, 4 councils, 4 commanderies, and 7 Scottish rite bodies.
Salomon Rothschild
Salomon Rothschild was the founder of the Viennese branch of the prominent Mayer Amschel Rothschild family. The most powerful family in the world has greatly influenced the policies of Germany, France, Italy and Austria. The Rothschilds are also the main players behind the creation of Zionism and the state of Israel.
The power of the Rothschilds went way beyond the confines of the Masonic lodge. They are said to be part of the 13 “Illuminati Bloodlines”. An analysis of the recently built Supreme Court of Israel (see article here) confirms the Rothschild’s embrace of Masonic symbolism.
Simon Bolivar
Known as “El Libertador” (the Liberator), Bolivar is considered to be the “George Washington of South America”. He joined Freemasonry in Cadiz, Spain, received the Scottish Rite degrees in Paris and was knighted in a Commandery of Knights Templar in France in 1807. Bolivar founded and served as master of Protectora de las Vertudes Lodge No. 1 in Venezuela. The country of Bolivia is named after him. Bolivar also served as the president of Colombia, Peru and Bolivia in the 1820′s. He belonged to the Order and Liberty Lodge No. 2 in Peru.
Notice in the image above the position of his feet (oblong square) and the checkerboard pattern of the floor, also Masonic. His stance might have been inspired by the Knights of Christian Mark Degree as depicted below in Richardson’s Monitor of Freemasonry:
Joseph Stalin
Stalin’s reign of terror in the Soviet Union lead to the deaths of millions of his own countrymen. He is often shown in pictures using the hidden hand gesture. No official records have been found that prove Stalin’s initiation into Masonry. Of course, dictators such as Stalin tightly controlled all information concerning themselves and their affairs, making it difficult to prove anything one way or the other. The hiding of his hand, however, provides an initiate’s clue to his possible allegiance to an occult brotherhood.
After being shot in 1940, the young man on the right has been
edited out by Stalin’s people.
In Conclusion
As seen above, thee leaders using the “hidden hand” gesture had a great influence on world history and many were confirmed Masons. This gesture is an obvious yet widely overlooked detail which hints at the leader’s embrace of occult philosophy. By understanding this fact and by recognizing the IMMENSE influence these leaders had on the course of History, we can begin to realize the hidden force which is currently steering the world toward international democracy.
Members of these brotherhoods might have maintained different opinions and even adhered to different factions (communism vs. capitalism), but the fundamental philosophy, beliefs and ultimate goals are still the same: the coming of an “Age of Reason and Enlightenment”. Of course, any serious researcher is already aware of the role of Masonry in the unfolding of world history. The “hidden hand” gesture, so often used by historical figures is simply the outward expression of this little known fact. As Confucius said, “Signs and symbols rule the world, not words nor laws.” These people’s words and policies will eventually be twisted and forgotten, but their image will remain for the ages.
Posted in Conspiracy Archives, Geo-Politics, Global Research, Truthout Articles | Tagged: Age of Enlightenment, Freemasonry, health, history, Joseph Stalin, List of gestures, Napoleon I, Peptic ulcer, Portrait, Secret Destiny of America, Soviet Union, United States | Leave a Comment »
Libya in Pictures: What the Mainstream Media Does Not Tell You
Posted by Admin on July 25, 2011
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=25630
by Mahdi Darius Nazemroaya
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Global Research, July 16, 2011
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Global Research reports from Tripoli
Mirage fighters, F16 fighters, B-2 Stealth bombers, 15,000 NATO air sorties. the bombing of thousands of civilian targets…
NATO is said to be coming to the rescue of the Libyan people. That is what we are being told.
Western journalists have quite deliberately distorted what is happening inside Libya. They have upheld NATO as an instrument of peace and democratization.
They have endorsed an illegal and criminal war.
They are instruments of US-NATO propaganda.
Global Research’s Mahdi Darius Nazemroaya reporting from Tripoli refutes the media consensus which uphold’s NATO’s humanitarian mandate. He provides us with a review of the mass rallies directed against NATO including extensive photographic evidence.
Forward this article. Post it on Facebook. Spread the word.
Michel Chossudovsky, Global Research, July 15, 2011
PHOTOMONTAGE
For complete report on GRTV with extensive photographic evidence
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VIDEO: This is Libya: On the Ground Scenes
GRTV Report from Tripoli
– by Mahdi Darius Nazemroaya – 2011-07-16
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TRIPOLI. July 15, 2011.
Friday of July 1, 2011 like many other Fridays has seen huge rallies in Tripoli’s Green Square.
It’s very hard to get an accurate number of the mass of people that have attended these rallies. Estimates have placed the size of the July 1st rally in Green Square at one million people.
(See the GRTV Video report by ANSWER with Cynthia McKinney and Ramsey Clark)
The rallies have been taking place almost weekly in Tripoli and other Libyan cities, including Sabha on July 8, 2011.
Western public opinion has been misinformed. People in Europe and North America are not even aware that these mass rallies have taken place.
The rallies express the Libyan people’s firm opposition to NATO’s “humanitarian” intervention (“on behalf of the Libyan people”).
The large majority of the population are opposed to the Benghazi-based Transitional Council.
The rallies also indicate significant popular support for Colonel Qaddafi in contrast to the usual stereotype descriptions of the Western media.
The mainstream media has either casually dismissed the significance of these public gatherings directed against NATO intervention or has failed to even report them.
These rallies continue late into the night.
The following are pictures of Libyans converging on Green Square on July 1, 2011.
These pictures also show that the mainstream media was present and aware of these rallies.
So what is preventing them from reporting the truth?
Why are some of these journalists claiming that only a few thousand people attended?
It is important to note that the pictures were taken at the outset of the event.
Libyans headed throughout the day into the night towards Green Square. Highways and roads leading towards Green Square were packed. At the height of the rally, the number of people was signifcantly larger than what is conveyed in the pictures.
PHOTOMONTAGE
For complete report on GRTV with extensive photographic evidence
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VIDEO: This is Libya: On the Ground Scenes
GRTV Report from Tripoli
– by Mahdi Darius Nazemroaya – 2011-07-16
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1. Western journalists position themselves on rooftops
People move towards Green Square
Libya’s Children: The Victims of NATO bombings
Photographs: Copyright. Mahdi Darius Nazemoroaya, Global Research 2011
Mahdi Darius Nazemroaya reporting from Tripoli is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG).
Posted in Geo-Politics, Global Research, War Quotient | Tagged: Africa, Benghazi, Cynthia McKinney, Depleted uranium, Facebook, government, Libya, Michel Chossudovsky, Muammar al-Gaddafi, NATO, Ramsey Clark, Tripoli | Leave a Comment »
World Population to Hit Seven Billion by October
Posted by Admin on July 10, 2011
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=25562
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Posted in Global Research, Pollution | Tagged: Babatunde Osotimehin, Executive director, Family planning, Population, United Nations, United Nations Population Fund, World population, World Population Day | Leave a Comment »
Risk-Free And Above The Law: U.S. Globalizes Drone Warfare
Posted by Admin on July 10, 2011
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=25536
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by Rick Rozoff
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Global Research, July 7, 2011
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Last week the Washington Post, the New York Times and other major American newspapers reported that the U.S. launched its first unmanned aerial vehicle (drone) missile attack inside Somalia.
The strike was the first acknowledged Pentagon military attack inside the Horn of Africa nation since a helicopter raid staged by commandos in 2009 and the first use of an American drone to conduct a missile strike there. Drones had earlier been used in the country in their original capacity, for surveillance, including identifying targets for bomb and missile attacks, one being shot down in October of 2009. But as Britain’s The Guardian reported on July 30, the strike in Somalia marked “the expansion of the pilotless war campaign to a sixth country,” as the remote-controlled aircraft have already been employed to deadly effect in Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, Yemen and most recently Libya.
The lethal Somali mission was reportedly carried out by the U.S. Special Operations Command, in charge of executing special forces operations of the respective units of the four main branches of the American military: The Army, Marines, Air Force and Navy. On July 4 the U.S. armed forces publication Stars and Stripes reported that there are currently 7,000 American special forces in Afghanistan and another 3,000 in Iraq, with the bulk of the latter to be transferred to the first country in what was described as a “mini-surge” of special operations troops to compensate for the withdrawal of 10,000 other troops from Afghanistan by the end of this year.
Last week BBC News reported on the proposed transfer of drone aircraft by the U.S. to its military client states Uganda and Burundi for the war in Somalia. Citing American defense officials, BBC disclosed that four drones will be supplied to the two nations who have 9,000 troops engaged in combat operations against anti-government insurgents in the Somali capital of Mogadishu.
According to a New York Times feature of July 1: “[T]he United States has largely been relying on proxy forces in Somalia, including African Union peacekeepers from Uganda and Burundi, to support Somalia’s fragile government. The Pentagon is sending nearly $45 million in military supplies, including night-vision equipment and four small unarmed drones, to Uganda and Burundi to help combat the rising terror threat in Somalia. During the Ethiopian invasion of Somalia in 2007, clandestine operatives from the Pentagon’s Joint Special Operations Command initiated missions into Somalia from an airstrip in Ethiopia.”
On June 15 a major newspaper in the United Arab Emirates, The National, reported on the escalation of deadly U.S. drone attacks in Yemen, across the Gulf of Aden from Somalia. It cited an official with the Yemeni Ministry of Defense claiming that the U.S. had launched over 15 drone strikes in the country in the first two weeks of June. The newspaper also quoted the deputy governor of Abyan province, Abdullah Luqman, decrying the attacks and stating: “These are the lives of innocent people being killed. At least 130 people have been killed in the last two weeks by US drones.”
The leader of an observation committee created to evacuate local residents added that “more than 40,000 people have left Abyan province because they feared drone strikes.”
The same defense official mentioned above warned that the “United States is turning Yemen into another Pakistan.” [1]
Recent reports in the American press reveal that the Pentagon will establish a new air base in the Persian Gulf from which to intensify drone strikes in Yemen. According to a Russian source, “The location is kept secret but some say this might be Bahrain as it already has a US base [the headquarters of the U.S. Fifth Fleet] and provides the safest route to Yemen for US drones through American ally Saudi Arabia.” [2]
The drone missile assaults in Pakistan, which caused a record number of deaths – over 1,000 – last year, are carried out by the Special Activities Division of the Central Intelligence Agency, whose last director is the new secretary of defense, Leon Panetta, a transfer that presages a yet greater intensification of the deadly attacks inside the South Asian nation.
On June 5 the 40th drone strike of the year killed at least six people in South Waziristan in Pakistan’s Federally Administered Tribal Areas, bringing the death toll this year to at least 350.
Late last month the Pakistani government ordered the U.S. to vacate the Shamsi Air Base in the province of Balochistan which had been used for drone strikes inside the nation. Washington has in the interim shifted those operations to upgraded air bases in Afghanistan near the Pakistani border. A recent poll conducted by the Pew Research Center found that only 3 percent of Pakistanis support the drone attacks in the country’s tribal belt.
At the end of June, 28 people were reported killed by drone strikes in the South Waziristan Agency, with a local resident quoted by Pajhwok Afghan News as stating “that 20 civilians were killed and several others injured in the second attack.” [3]
Some 2,100 of the 2,500 people killed in the strikes since they began in 2004 have lost their lives since 2009, when Barack Obama became the president of the U.S. and Leon Panetta director of the Central Intelligence Agency.
On July 5 a British Reaper drone killed at least four Afghan civilians and wounded two more in a missile attack in Helmand province. The use of the Reaper, rightly referred to as the world’s deadliest drone, marks the crossing of an ominous threshold. It is the first of what is described as a hunter-killer – long-endurance, high-altitude – remote-piloted aircraft that can be equipped with fifteen times the amount of weaponry and fly at three times the speed of the Predator used in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia and Libya. (The U.S. has used Reapers in Iraq since 2008 and in Afghanistan starting the following year. Toward the end of 2009 the Pentagon deployed Reapers to the East African island nation of Seychelles along with over 100 military personnel.)
On June 28 the U.S. lost the third of three drones in Afghanistan in as many days.
A recent Refugees International report stated that over 250,000 Afghans have been forced to flee their towns and villages during the last two years, over 91,000 so far this year: “Not only have NATO-led troops and Afghan forces failed to protect Afghans, but international airstrikes and night raids by U.S. Special Forces were destroying homes, crops and infrastructure, traumatising civilians and displacing tens of thousands of people.” [4]
Last month an RT feature suitably titled “US expands drone war, extremists expect new recruits” stated:
The source added:
Analyst Denis Fedutinov told Voice of Russia last month:
In fact, last year U.S. Marine Corps Brigadier General Glenn Walters told an Institute for Defense and Government Advancement conference that ten years ago America had 200 drones in its arsenal, but by 2010 that number had risen to 6,000 and that by next year it would be 8,000. A fortyfold increase.
And in May of 2010 “NATO representatives from around the world” visited the Camp Atterbury Joint Maneuver Training Center in the state of Indiana to observe drone flight tests.
By transferring control of the 110-day war against Libya from U.S. Africa Command to NATO on March 31 the Obama administration intended to, among other purposes, evade accountability to Congress (and federal law) under provisions of the War Powers Resolution of 1973.
The resolution mandates that Congress must authorize military actions initiated by the president within 60 days of their commencement or grant him a 30-day extension. The 60-day limit was reached on May 20.
The White House responded to Congressional opposition to prolonging military action in Libya by releasing a 38-page report that claimed “US military operations are distinct from the kind of ‘hostilities’ contemplated by the resolution’s 60-day termination provision.”
It also maintained that “U.S. operations do not involve sustained fighting or active exchanges of fire with hostile forces, nor do they involve U.S. ground troops.”
Which is to say, as long as American military personnel are not in harm’s way it is not a war. Legal Adviser of the State Department Harold Koh stated: “We are acting lawfully…We are not saying the War Powers Resolution is unconstitutional or should be scrapped or that we can refuse to consult Congress. We are saying the limited nature of this particular mission is not the kind of ‘hostilities’ envisioned by the War Powers Resolution.”
General Carter Ham, the head of U.S. Africa Command, last month “said a Republican-sponsored bill that would block American Predator drone strikes in Libya would hurt the North Atlantic Treaty Organization alliance,” and “predicted that NATO would be unable to replace certain key U.S. missions, including the drone strikes and attacks to neutralize Libyan air defenses that threaten allied planes, if proposed funding cuts are made.” [7]
The launching of over 200 cruise missiles into Libya in the opening days of the war and the fact that, as the New York Times reported on June 21, “American warplanes have struck at Libyan air defenses about 60 times, and remotely operated drones have fired missiles at Libyan forces about 30 times” since command of the war was transferred from U.S. Africa Command to NATO – after which NATO has conducted over 14,000 air missions, more than 5,000 termed strike sorties – do not constitute armed hostilities in the mind of Mr. Koh, who stated last year that “U.S. targeting practices, including lethal operations conducted with the use of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), comply with all applicable law, including the laws of war.” According to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s top legal adviser, deadly drone attacks are “consistent with its [the U.S.’s] inherent right to self-defense.” [8] Koh cagily refers to murdering people on a grand scale by remote activation as targeted killing rather than targeted assassination, as the second is expressly prohibited under international law.
In a rare instance of dissenting from White House war policy, last month the New York Times published the following:
It further quoted Goldsmith directly:
Neither cruise missiles nor Hellfire missile-equipped unmanned aerial vehicles have pilots on board, so the lives of U.S. service members are safe as Pakistanis, Afghans, Libyans, Iraqis, Yemenis and Somalis are torn to shreds by U.S. strikes.
Wars of aggression are now both safe and “legal.”
Notes 1) The National, June 15, 2011
http://www.thenational.ae/news/worldwide/middle-east/us-makes-a-drone-attack-a-day-in-yemen
2) Voice of Russia, June 16, 2011
6) Voice of Russia, June 16, 2011 |
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| Rick Rozoff is a frequent contributor to Global Research. Global Research Articles by Rick Rozoff | |
Posted in Global Research, War Quotient | Tagged: afghanistan, Barack Obama, James Cartwright, Libya, Muammar al-Gaddafi, NATO, Robert Gates, United States | Leave a Comment »
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