Critical Thinking Amid the Elation  
by Shannon Joyce Prince
"Obama is hiding imperialism, neo-liberalism, and corporatism behind the language of progressivism." 
"It's one thing for masses of white people to assume that racism is 90% over. It's another for a black man, Obama, to tell them this is so."
Obamist sections of the Left seem to believe it "doesn't matter who Obama is, what he does, says, or stands for - he represents hope and change and that's good enough." Some folks are simply misinformed, and therefore blissful. "Many of the people that danced in the streets haven't taken the time to do any research on Obama, so part of their euphoria is based on ignorance." One is expected to partake in the party. "Those who castigate folks for not being appropriately jubilant at Obama's election are insisting that blacks content themselves, in perpetuity, with symbolism instead of real change."    Read more: http://www.blackagendareport.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&...

WHO'S BEHIND 'PROGRESSIVE' IMPERIALIST AGENDA? HINT: 'HUMANITARIAN' HEDGE FUND BILLIONAIRE & NGO KING (see below}
Soros-Funded "Premier Progressive" Democratic Think-Tank CAP Becomes Obama Policy Font
By Edwin Chen
Nov. 18 (Bloomberg) -- Three blocks from the White House, on the 10th floor of a sleek glass building, young workers pound at computers, with giant flat-screen TVs overhead. It has the look and feel of a high-tech startup. In many ways it is. The product is ideas. Thanks in part to funding from benefactors such as billionaire George Soros, the Center for American Progress has become in just five years an intellectual wellspring for Democratic policy proposals, including many that are shaping the agenda of the new Obama administration. Much as the Heritage Foundation provided intellectual heft for the Republican Party in the 1980s, CAP has been an incubator for liberal thought and helped build the platform that triumphed in the 2008 campaign....

CAP's president and founder, John Podesta, 59, former chief of staff to President Bill Clinton, is one of three people running the transition team for president-elect Barack Obama, 47. A squadron of CAP experts is working with them. Some of the group's recommendations already have been adopted by the president-elect....
To help promote its ideas, CAP employs 11 full-time bloggers who contribute to two Web sites, ThinkProgress and the Wonk Room; others prepare daily feeds for radio stations. The center's policy briefings are standing-room only, packed with lobbyists, advocacy-group representatives and reporters looking for insights on where the Obama administration is headed.

CAP, which has 180 staffers and a $27 million budget, devotes as much as half of its resources to promoting its ideas through blogs, events, publications and media outreach.
The center's future was far from certain in 2003, when wealthy donors Soros and film producer Stephen Bing gave $10 million or more to fill what they believed was an intellectual void in the Democratic Party and create a vehicle to produce an agenda for the party's eventual return to power.

"The center is the premier progressive think tank in Washington,'' said Mark Green, head of the New Democracy Project, an urban-affairs institute in New York.
Just eight days after the Nov. 4 election, CAP released a 300,000-word volume called ``Change for America: A Progressive Blueprint for the 44th President'' that offers advice on issues such as economic revival and fixing the Federal Emergency Management Agency. Work on the book began almost a year ago. Podesta modeled the center on the Heritage Foundation, which became the go-to policy-research organization in 1981 when newly elected President Ronald Reagan embraced its conservative ideas embodied in a book called ``Mandate for Leadership.''...

CAP isn't the only Democratic-leaning research organization in Washington with enhanced cachet after Obama's election. The 92-year-old Brookings Institution, for example, has advisers in Obama's inner circle, including economist Jason Furman and foreign-policy expert Susan Rice. Others are working either part-time or full-time in the Obama transition. Brookings has a staff of more than 400 and an annual budget of $48 million. Heritage has a staff of 200 and a budget of $60 million. The American Enterprise Institute, which has close ties to the administration of President George W. Bush, has about 140 staffers, including Lynne Cheney, wife of Vice President Dick Cheney, and a budget of $28 million.

Yet CAP may be the most influential. In addition to Podesta, at least 10 other CAP experts are advising the incoming administration, including Melody Barnes, the center's executive vice president for policy who co-chairs the agency-review working group and Cassandra Butts, the senior vice president for domestic policy, who is now a senior transition staffer.
To contact the reporter on this story: Edwin Chen in Washington at echen32@bloomberg.net .
Last Updated: November 18, 2008 00:01 ES

Power and Superpower: Global Leadership and Exceptionalism in the 21st Century, a joint project of the Center for American Progress and The Century Foundation, some of the United States’ most distinguished and experienced policymakers and experts outline a foreign policy that would allow America to reclaim its status as a reliable and visionary global leader.
Power and Superpower’s essays feature such prominent figures as former NATO Supreme Allied Commander Wesley Clark, former Assistant Secretary of State James Dobbins, former Assistant Secretary of State Susan Rice, and former Deputy National Security Adviser Jim Steinberg. In addition, several Center for American Progress experts, including Morton H. Halperin, William Schulz, Gayle Smith, and Daniel Tarullo, wrote chapters for the book. A final section in the volume presents the remarks of former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, former U.N. Deputy Secretary-General Mark Malloch Brown, former U.S. Representative James Leach, and philanthropist George Soros at the June 2006 Center for American Progress-Century Foundation international security conference in New York. http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/2007/06/power_superpower.html

HIZBOLLAH SECTY. GENL.'S STATEMENT ON U.S. ELECTIONS
Regarding the U.S. elections, Secretary General of Hizbollah said:
I look at the elections from two angles. The first, through the American
people's vote results, the results are a confession from the people to the
failure of Bush's internal and external (foreign) policies. The Americans
stood in front of the world and announced that their government have
failed them. I am not talking about the failure of the U.S. project in our
region, because this accomplishment should be given to the people of the
region and its liberation movements. Sayed Khamenaei did not say that we
will defeat the Americans in Lebanon, but the U.S. will succumb in
Lebanon. What is defeating the American project in Lebanon is the Lebanese
people, and the project in Palestine is the Palestinian people. Iran did
not use Lebanon to defeat the U.S. , It is the Lebanese people who are
suffering from the American project for the benefit of Israel.

The second angle, an everyday person can't but rejoice for the failure of
the Republicans and Bush, but we should not have false hope for the
"change" that the new elect president is talking about. Our people may
sympathize with his background, but politics is a different matter. Do not
raise your hopes! I do not want to make assumptions but I would like to
say one thing: It is not logical to bet on a change by the unjust, the
arrogant. you can sit and say that we have a new situation because this
new unjust entity may look at us from a different angle, this is a
description of a weak nation that accepts its backwardness and lack of
initiative. For a nation that is alive, the proper logic dictates that you
have to look at the changes around you and work to achieve strength in
your unity, your education, your culture, your economy and the strength of
your society and its interaction with other friendly and brotherly
societies. When you are strong then the unjust will respect you. The
unjust will think twice to overstep you. We are the protectors of the
houses, the people, the sovereignty, the country and the nation. On the
"Day of the Martyrs", the martyrs teach us not to bet on changes by the
unjust. As long as we are weak, the message of the martyrs guarantees our
dignity and nationhood...
(excerpt)

bipartisan U.S. dictatorship of capital IS the law...which cannot be voted out
Lawless Capital, Rushing to Armageddon  
A Black Agenda Radio commentary by Glen  Ford  
The rule of law has been cast aside in the mad frenzy to loot the wealth of a nation before George Bush leaves office. "Wall Street has succeeded in establishing a kind of privatized martial law economic regime," in which trillions of dollars are secretly transferred to unnamed corporations
The fundamental law of capital - the system's need to extract by any means possible ever increasing returns on investment, or die - brought the world to the current catastrophe. Inevitably, despite all the noise about the need for transparency and tightening of regulations on the behavior of capital, the system's response to its crisis is to descend into even greater depths of lawlessness. The frenzy of unchecked illegality pulsates outward from the chaotic center of crisis and criminality: Wall Street, which has succeeded in establishing a kind of privatized martial law economic regime in the waning months of the Bush kleptocracy. The $700 billion "bailout" is revealed as a brazen bait-and-switch bamboozlement, in which Goldman Sachs Family Don Hank Paulson, under color-of-law as Treasury Secretary, ignores the terms of congressional legislation to dispense mountains of public wealth to his bankster friends as he sees fit. In return for their cut of the loot, the banking mafia give the public - nothing! ...the Lords of Capital hijack the people's money to expand their territory, buying up the turf of smaller banksters in order to make themselves more indispensable, more untouchable, more removed from the elementary rule of law... Paulson and banksters are above the law - mega-thieves operating with total impunity.... at the Federal Reserve, Ben Bernanke, distributed two trillion dollars in "loans" to a list of corporations whose identities are secret, for purposes that are also secret. Even the billionaire Michael Bloomberg's news agency is in the dark, and has sued to find out where the two thousand billion dollars has gone. Few lawmakers on Capitol Hill seem to even want to know, fearing they would be blamed for the panic that might break out if the public were aware of who pocketed their trillions. If there is one person who possesses the moral capital to demand an accounting from the conspirators, it is Barack Obama. But the president-elect behaves as if it is none of his business... but Obama fought for the bailout, has the kindest words for Paulson, and gets his economic advice from Robert Rubin, a former Goldman Sachs Godfather and Treasury Secretary, and Larry Summers, another former Treasury chief who teamed with Rubin during the Clinton administration to cast a cloak of silence over questions surrounding derivatives, the exotic financial instruments that finally wrecked the global system....For Black Agenda Radio, I'm Glen Ford. http://www.blackagendareport.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&...

Financial Crisis Tab Already In The Trillions
CNBC.com has been keeping a running tally of actual spending as well as the commitments involved. Try $4.28 trillion dollars. That's $4,284,500,000,000 and more than what was spent on WW II, if adjusted for inflation, based on our computations from a variety of estimates and sources. http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article21263.htm

2.5 MIL. JOBS BY 2011, REWARDS FOR EMPLOYERS, NO DIRECT PUBLIC RELIEF
Obama vows swift action on economy
President-elect Obama said Saturday that he had started work on a two-year economic-stimulus plan designed to provide 2.5 million jobs, funnel money toward public-works programs to repair the country's failing infrastructure and invest in alternative-energy programs... Obama's proposal would go beyond the $175 billion stimulus plan he proposed in October. That included a $3,000 tax credit to employers for each new hire above their current work force and billions in aid to strapped states and cities.... Though few details were provided, Obama's proposal would most likely require the new administration to go back to Congress for approval of a significant jobs and infrastructure program beyond the money it has authorized for the financial bailout.
"There are no quick or easy fixes to this crisis, which has been many years in the making," Obama said. "And it's likely to get worse before it gets better."
In the presidential campaign, Obama focused on tax cuts for low-wage and middle-class workers and tax breaks for small businesses. But as part of a stimulus package, his advisers have discussed letting the Bush tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans remain until they expire after 2010 as scheduled....that in effect, would delay the tax increases that rich taxpayers would have faced had Obama repealed the Bush tax cuts a year or two early, as he suggested in his campaign. http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/politics/2008425355_econ230.html

bloodsucker capitalism: exploitation, debt and war
Gonna Need a Bigger Boat
By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN
To fight a global financial panic like this, you have to go at it with overwhelming force -- an overwhelming stimulus that gets people shopping again.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/16/opinion/16friedman.html?th&emc=th

capitalist relief in good hands
Hints of Relief From the Siege
Reports Timothy F. Geithner would lead the Treasury Department seen as a sign of continuity to a new administration.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/22/business/22bailout.html?th&emc=th

Obama to Pick Timothy Geithner as Treasury Secretary
Nov. 21 (Bloomberg) -- President-elect Barack Obama picked Timothy Geithner, head of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, to be his Treasury secretary, with Lawrence Summers getting a senior White House role, a Democratic aide said. Geithner, 47, served as an undersecretary for international affairs under Summers, 53, and has been at the helm of the New York Fed since November 2003.... Geithner helped lead the U.S. response to the deepest financial crisis in seven decades, including the takeover of American International Group Inc. and Bear Stearns Cos. rescue, and decision to let Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. fail....Geithner is “extremely able, but also helps provide some continuity,” House Financial Services Committee Chairman Barney Frank said today in a telephone interview. “He ought to be very reassuring to the markets.”The U.S. stock market’s benchmark index climbed from an 11- year low after news of Obama’s pick....
Kevin Warsh, a Fed Board governor, is a leading contender to succeed Geithner at the New York Fed, a U.S. official said on condition of anonymity. Warsh, 38, previously worked at Morgan Stanley, later joining the Bush White House as an economic-policy adviser. He has been a link for the Fed board with securities firms during the crisis, drawing on his Wall Street contacts and experience. head of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, to be his Treasury secretary, with Lawrence Summers getting a senior White House role...
Summers, Bill Clinton‘s last Treasury secretary and now a professor at Harvard University, would have a post that positions him to succeed Ben S. Bernanke as Fed chairman, central-bank watchers said: “He’s certainly on the short list, and perhaps on the top” for Fed chief, said Vincent Reinhart, former director of the Fed’s Division of Monetary Affairs who is now a scholar at the American Enterprise Institute in Washington.
Obama is also likely to nominate New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson as Commerce Secretary... Richardson was Clinton’s Energy secretary and former ambassador to the United Nations.
Geithner helped lead the U.S. response to the deepest financial crisis in seven decades, including the takeover of American International Group Inc. and Bear Stearns Cos. rescue, and decision to let Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. fail. http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=a7V42kGHp.4o&refer=h...

Citigroup to Get Government Rescue, Investors Say:
Citigroup Inc., with more than 2 trillion of assets, will probably get rescued by the U.S. government after a crisis in confidence erased half its stock-market value in three days, investors and
analysts said.

After Losses, Pensions Ask For Relief
The total value of company pension funds is thought to have fallen by more than $250 billion since last winter Stung by outsize investment losses, some of the nation’s biggest companies are pushing Congress to roll back rules requiring them to put more money into their pension funds... With cash now in short supply for companies, they are asking Congress to excuse them from having to replenish the required amounts.Lawmakers from both parties seem receptive to the idea, there was talk of adding a pension relief provision to the broad fiscal stimulus package Congress considered for this week’s lame-duck session. http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/20/business/economy/20pension.html?th&emc...

Child hunger in US rose by 50 percent in 2007
By Kate Randall
(WSWS) -- Some 691,000 children went hungry in America in 2007, a rise of 50 percent over the previous year, while one in eight Americans overall struggled to feed themselves. The figures are reported in a study on food security conducted annually by the US Department of Agriculture (USDA). Of the 36.2 million people who struggled with hunger during the year, almost a third of these adults and children faced a substantial disruption to their food supply, meaning they went hungry at some point. The number of these most hungry Americans has grown by more than 40 percent since 2000, rising to 11.9 million individuals in 2007. These statistics... do not reflect the impact of the current economic crisis. http://www.inteldaily.com/?c=144&a=8778

Congress extends jobless benefits through December
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/national/1133ap_financial_meltdown.html

According to the US Bureau of Labor Statistics, an additional 240,000 jobs were lost during the month of October alone:
"Nonfarm payroll employment fell by 240,000 in October, and the unemployment rate rose from 6.1 to 6.5 percent [official # includes only those receiving benefits] the Bureau of Labor Statistics of the U.S. Department of Labor reported today. October's drop in payroll employment followed declines of 127,000 in August and 284,000 in September, as revised. Employment has fallen by 1.2 million in the first 10 months of 2008; over half of the decrease has occurred in the past 3 months. In October, job losses continued in manufacturing, construction, and several service-providing industries...Among the unemployed, the number of persons who lost their job and did not expect to be recalled to work rose by 615,000 to 4.4 million in October. Over the past 12 months, the size of this group has increased by 1.7 million." (Bureau of Labor Statistics, November, 2008) http://globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=10977

36 Million officially unemployed in U.S.
Obama economic plan aims for 2.5M new jobs by 2011by rebuilding roads and bridges and modernizing schools while developing alternative energy sources and more efficient cars. "These aren't just steps to pull ourselves out of this immediate crisis. These are the long-term investments in our economic future..."We have acted boldly, bravely, and above all, together," Obama said. "That is the chance our new beginning now offers us, and that is the challenge we must rise to in the days to come. It is time to act. As the next president of the United States, I will."

meaning mostly whites...
The Formerly Middle Class
By David brooks
At the beginning of every recession, there are people who see the downturn as an occasion for moral revival: Americans will learn to live without material extravagances. They’ll simplify their lives. They’ll rediscover what really matters: home, friends and family. But recessions are about more than material deprivation. They’re also about fear and diminished expectations. The cultural consequences of recessions are rarely uplifting....
This recession will probably have its own social profile. In particular, it’s likely to produce a new social group: the formerly middle class. These are people who achieved middle-class status at the tail end of the long boom, and then lost it. To them, the gap between where they are and where they used to be will seem wide and daunting.
The phenomenon is noticeable in developing nations. Over the past decade, millions of people in these societies have climbed out of poverty. But the global recession is pushing them back down. Many seem furious with democracy and capitalism, which they believe led to their shattered dreams. It’s possible that the downturn will produce a profusion of Hugo Chávezes. It’s possible that the Obama administration will spend much of its time battling a global protest movement that doesn’t even exist yet.
In this country, there are also millions of people facing the psychological and social pressures of downward mobility.
In this recession, maybe even more than other ones, the last ones to join the middle class will be the first ones out. And it won’t only be material deprivations that bites. It will be the loss of a social identity, the loss of social networks, the loss of the little status symbols that suggest an elevated place in the social order. These reversals are bound to produce alienation and a political response. If you want to know where the next big social movements will come from, I’d say the formerly middle class.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/18/opinion/18brooks.html?th=&emc=th&pagew...

Not so fast: No security guarantee against what rulers know is inevitable at the rate they're going, even in this dumbfounded, pacified, privileged 'homeland'
An “armed insurrection” averted:
Guardian journalist on Obama’s election:
...There is a degree of hyperbole in Kettle invoking the danger of armed insurrection. Nevertheless there is a serious content to the warning he directs towards the political elite. He made his remarks in the knowledge that, ever since George W. Bush came to power in 2000 thanks to electoral fraud and the disenfranchisement of many voters, confidence in the US electoral system has been at rock bottom. Under conditions of acute social tensions made worse by the onset of recession, the situation in the US is indeed explosive.
Kettle is right in warning that a defeat for Obama could have led to an explosion of pent-up social anger—not only amongst African Americans, but millions of young people, Hispanics and many others who want an end to the Bush years and who believe Obama when he promises "change". He is also correct that it would have created the conditions for a major political realignment by finally discrediting the Democratic Party as a vehicle for even partially realizing the social interests of the American working class.
He also understands that such a disastrous development for big business and its political representatives and media apologists has only been deferred not eliminated. That is why Kettle spends the second half of his comment warning that expectations amongst working people and youth that Obama will deliver policies framed in their interests must be opposed.
Obama has won "his presidency by crafting a majoritarian programme on the economy, health, energy and the war," Kettle stresses, i.e., by also appealing to big business and former Republicans in "the mountain and desert states of the west and in parts of the south." "So, while Obama has a mandate that has been denied to every Democratic president since the days of Martin Luther King," he warns, "he also has a level of support that he must be careful not to test to destruction. Forty-eight per cent of Americans did not feel the hand of history on their shoulders on Tuesday, in spite of everything." Kettle is urging that Obama must do only what is considered acceptable by corporate America. And to this end he insists that the "majoritarian" coalition is not tested "to destruction" ...

Editorial
A Military for a Dangerous New World
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/16/opinion/16Sun1.html?th=&emc=th&pagewan...
Barack Obama will face the most daunting and complicated national security challenges in more than a generation -- and will inherit a military that is critically ill-equipped for the task.

DEFENSE INTELLIGENCE STRATEGY 2008
http://www.cfr.org/publication/16324/defense_intelligence_strategy_2008....
A Message from the Under Secretary of Defense for Intelligence
“The real challenges we have seen emerge since the end of the Cold War—from Somalia to the Balkans, Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere—make clear we in Defense need to change our priorities to be better able to deal with ‘asymmetric warfare.’” For defense intelligence professionals, this means our missions will be diverse and multidimensional, punctuated by persistent regional engagements requiring a range of military, humanitarian, and diplomatic capabilities and assets to be used simultaneously....Governments of all stripes seem to have great
difficulty summoning the will and the resources to deal even with threats that are obvious and likely inevitable, much less threats that are more complex or over the horizon.”
Secretary of Defense Robert Gates

Pentagon Wants $581 Billion From Obama – War Costs Not Included
By Noah Shachtman
http://blog.wired.com/defense/2008/11/pentagon-wants.html

"Democracy is inimical to imperial mobilization."
Z. Brzezinski.The Grand Chessboard, 1997
http://www.nytimes.com/learning/general/onthisday/20070726.html

"We cannot continue to rely on our military in order to achieve the national security objectives we've set. We've got to have a civilian national security force that's just as powerful, just as strong, just as well-funded.
Obama, campaign speech in Colorado Springs

Emanuel's "Real Patriot Act" Plan
"It's time for a real Patriot Act that brings out the patriot in all of us.... universal civilian service for every American 18 to 25. This is not a draft."
Rahm Emanuel, chief of staff elect, co-author of 2006 The Plan: Big Ideas for America,

Gates seen likely to stay as Pentagon chief:
What Robert Gates once called "inconceivable to me" — his remaining as defense secretary beyond Inauguration Day — is looking a bit more conceivable to the rest of Washington.... It would reflect a widely held view among Republicans as well as Democrats that Gates has the experience, demeanor and policy priorities to manage U.S. defense under a president of either political party. On the other hand, he has said he supported President George W. Bush's decision to invade Iraq in March 2003, whereas a central theme of Obama's campaign was that he opposed it from the start. One of the strongest indications of Obama's interest in possibly keeping Gates came in early October when Richard Danzig, a senior national security adviser to the Obama campaign and himself a possible selection to succeed Gates, told reporters that Gates has proved himself an effective Pentagon chief.
"He'd be an even better one in an Obama administration," Richard Danzig, a senior national security adviser to the Obama campaign and himself a possible selection to succeed Gates, said. "...the kinds of efforts he's made are in tune with what we are trying to do." He mentioned, as examples, Gates' efforts to get more U.S. combat forces to Afghanistan and to expand the size of the Afghan army. Picking Gates... could be hard to swallow for liberals and strong critics of the Iraq war. Those groups nursed Obama's candidacy through an improbable infancy, motivated by his firm anti-war stance. Gates's official biography at http://www.defenselink.mil/bios/biographydetail.aspx?biographyid115
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20081120/ap_on_go_ca_st_pe/gates_defense

ANOTHER OBAMA 'ANTI-WAR' PARTNER
Obama's national security adviser: Boeing and Chevron
Gabriele Zamparini, The Cat's Blog
November 21, 2008
From the Times:
A retired Marine general and former Nato commander is emerging as a leading contender to become Barack Obama's national security adviser, the most important foreign policy post in the White House. James Jones, a decorated Vietnam veteran and former Supreme Allied Commander in Europe, is admired by Republicans and Democrats - he is a close friend of John McCain - and would bring particular expertise on Iraq and Afghanistan, two of Mr Obama's overseas priorities when he takes office on January 20... but the progressive left is still in overdose.
www.thecatsdream.com/blog/2008/11/obamas-national-security-adviser-boein...

AS NEW WAR PLANS PERCOLATE, U.S.' SENDS MIXED TERROR THREATS: CHRONOLOGY OF RECENT PSYWAR / FALSE FLAG 'AL-QAEDA'

11/06/08 President Obama will no doubt face global crises
... Just a day after the election, Iran's military officials Wednesday issued a notice warning U.S. forces that any violation of Iranian airspace will be met with force.
Another test may already have come Wednesday, his first day as president-elect. Russian President Dmitry Medvedev announced in his first state of the nation speech that Russia will station short-range missiles near its border with Poland if Obama proceeds with Bush's plan to station missile-defense systems in Poland and the Czech Republic.It was a reminder that Russia, which seemed cooperative during most of the tenure of Obama's two predecessors, has turned anti-Western.... The United States is still the world's dominant power, but it's less dominant than it was and increasingly is challenged by China, Russia and others...

The global economic crisis, more than any other factor, could limit Obama's flexibility in defense and foreign affairs, whether it's increasing the size of the U.S. military, as he's promised to do, or ramping up foreign aid in an attempt to expand American influence, former U.S. officials said."The administration is not going to come out of the box" immediately with large new foreign-policy initiatives, said James Dobbins a former assistant secretary of state now at the RAND Corp., a defense and international-relations research company."Frankly, that's not necessarily a bad thing."

Richard Haass, the president of the Council on Foreign Relations, said that what makes the current situation unique isn't the multiplicity of challenges facing the United States, but the fact that the U.S. military is stretched in Iraq and Afghanistan and the economic crisis demands attention."It's going to be the president's first priority. It will probably limit the availability of resources. It could lead to increased instability in certain countries around the world," Haass said. While foreign leaders may or may not choose to test Obama, "the one thing I'm sure of is, events will test him," Haass said. "There will be coups. ... There will be genocide. ... There will be terrorism."
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/presidentialrace/2008357525_obamap... published November 6, 2008 | Page modified November 6, 2008

11/09/08 Council on Foreign Relations president predicts coups, genocide and terrorism to test Obama
Echoing Vice President-Elect Joe Biden's promise of a generated crisis and Colin Powell's revelation of a crisis that will happen on January 21 or 22, we now have the president of the Council on Foreign Relations and Biderberger Richard Haas' similar predictions of doom and gloom scheduled for President-Elect Obama.
http://current.com/items/89510052_council_on_foreign_relations_president...

11/19/08 Al-Qaida takes aim at Obama's race, character
NYT
WASHINGTON -- In a propaganda salvo by al-Qaida aimed at undercutting the enthusiasm of Muslims worldwide about the U.S. presidential election, Osama bin Laden's top deputy Ayman al-Zawahri warned Obama that the U.S. risked a reprise of the Soviet Union's failures in Afghanistan if the president-elect followed through on pledges to deploy thousands more troops to that country. Zawahri painted Obama as a hypocrite and traitor to his race, comparing him unfavorably with "honorable black Americans" like Malcolm X, a 1960s Black Muslim leader.... The video shows Malcolm X speaking about the docile "house Negro," who he said "always looked out for his master," and the "field Negro," who was abused by whites and was more rebellious. The video also insulted two prominent black diplomats, the former and current secretaries of state, Colin Powell and Condoleezza Rice. "And in you and in Colin Powell, Rice and your likes, the words of Malcolm X (may Allah have mercy on him) concerning 'house Negroes' are confirmed," Zawahri said, according to an English-language transcript... The al-Qaida video, provided by the SITE Intelligence Group, which monitors militant Web sites, which SITE says was provided by As-Sahab, an al-Qaida media outlet that produced the video.

11/21/08 Report predicts al-Qaida is on its way out: Terror group seen self-destructing
WASHINGTON -- A new study of the global future by American intelligence agencies suggests that al-Qaida could soon be on the decline, having alienated Muslim supporters with indiscriminate killing and inattention to the practical problems of poverty, unemployment and education....
While not contradicting intelligence assessments suggesting that al-Qaida remains a major threat with a strong presence in the tribal areas of Pakistan, the report says that the group "may decay sooner" than many experts have assumed because of severe weaknesses: "unachievable strategic objectives, inability to attract broad-based support and self-destructive actions." "The appeal of terrorism is waning," said Mathew Burrows, head of long-range analysis in the office of the director of national intelligence and a lead author of "Global Trends 2025: A Transformed World." Burrows said polls and anecdotal evidence strongly suggested disillusionment among Muslims with al-Qaida and its methods and goals since the 2001 attacks.
The predicted decline of al-Qaida is one of the few bright spots in the generally gloomy report, which describes a decline in the United States' world dominance as China, India and other powers assert themselves. "Although the United States is likely to remain the single most powerful actor, the United States' relative strength -- even in the military realm -- will decline and U.S. leverage will become more constrained," the report said. By 2025, it predicted, "the U.S. will find itself as one of a number of important actors on the world stage," playing "a prominent role in global events" but not as decisive of one.
The report said the global shift from West to East in terms of wealth and economic power "is without precedent in modern history."...
The previous report in the Global Trends series, completed in 2004, anticipated continued American dominance through 2020, though it recognized that the emergence of China and India as powers would transform the geopolitical landscape. The new report describes a world riven by increased conflict over scarce food and water supplies and threatened by rogue states and terrorists, widening gaps between rich and poor and an uneven impact of global warming. It said the chance of the use of nuclear weapons, while remaining "very low," would rise in the next two decades as the technology spread. The report said Russia's emergence as a world power was "clouded" by persistent corruption and lagging investment in its critical energy industry.

11/14/08 C.I.A. Chief Says Qaeda Is Extending Its Reach
WASHINGTON — Even as Al Qaeda strengthens its hub in the Pakistani mountains, its leaders are building closer ties to regional militant groups in order to launch attacks in Africa and Europe and on the Arabian Peninsula, the director of the Central Intelligence Agency said Thursday. The director, Michael V. Hayden, identified North Africa and Somalia as places where Qaeda leaders were using partnerships to establish new bases. Elsewhere, Mr. Hayden said, Al Qaeda was “strengthening” in Yemen, and he added that veterans of the fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan had moved there, possibly to stage attacks against the government of Saudi Arabia. He said the “bleed out” from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan also extended to North Africa, raising concern that the countries there could be used to stage attacks into Europe. Mr. Hayden delivered his report in a speech to the Atlantic Council of the United States in Washington, and it offered a mixed assessment of Al Qaeda’s ability to wage a global jihad... His remarks were the first public appraisal of Al Qaeda’s Pakistan sanctuary since the C.I.A. escalated what had been a secret campaign of airstrikes in the tribal areas over the summer. ...
Mr. Hayden deflected questions about whether he would consider remaining at the C.I.A. during the Obama administration and declined to say whether President-elect Barack Obama had asked him to extend his tenure. http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/14/washington/14intel.html?_r=1&oref=slog...

11/15/08 Barack Obama warned to beware of a ‘huge threat’ from al-Qaeda
Security officials fear a ‘spectacular’ during the transition period
Barack Obama is being given ominous advice from leaders on both sides of the Atlantic to brace himself for an early assault from terrorists.
General Michael Hayden, director of the CIA, this week acknowledged that there were dangers during a presidential transition when new officials were coming in and getting accustomed to the challenges. But he added that no “real or artificial spike” in intercepted transmissions from terror suspects had been detected. “As far as we know there is nothing from the intelligence world to indicate that anything has changed dramatically in recent months to put us on alert for an attack at the moment,” a source said. The present threat level is “severe”, which is the second-highest alert status. But a senior counterterrorism official suggested last month that this should be regarded as “the severe end of severe”.
James Lewis, a security expert with the Centre of Strategic and International Studies in Washington, said that al-Qaeda may wish to provoke a reaction from the next US Administration designed to show the rest of the world that “America is still the evil crusader”.
Last month Joe Biden, the Vice-President-elect, told campaign donors: “Watch, we’re going to have an international crisis, a generated crisis, to test the mettle [of Mr Obama].”
[this psywar propaganda notably omits Gen.'l. Powell's specific warning on Meet the Press: 10/19/08 "There's going to be a crisis which will come along on the 21st, 22nd of January which we don't even know about right now",and ends with select nuclear 'arms race' dates... ending with Russia today]
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/us_and_americas/article51585...

10/28/08 Pentagon Advisors Warn Of Coming International Crisis
Michael Bayer, chairman of the Defense Business Board and veteran Pentagon consultant announced during a public meeting late last week that the new President should "prepare for a likely first-270-days crisis." Accordingly, the Defense Business Board says the new administration should set a goal to win Senate confirmation of key Pentagon posts in the first 30 days of the inauguration, in order to have a full team in place to deal with such a contingency, an Inside Defense report reveals.
The incoming administration "must not wait until June" to get assistant secretaries confirmed and October for deputy assistant secretaries to be Senate confirmed...
http://researchris.blogspot.com/search/label/key%20pentagon%20advisor%20...

10/19/08 "There's going to be a crisis which will come along on the 21st, 22nd of January which we don't even know about right now"
Colin Powell on Meet the Press
"If a crisis hits on January 21, they're the ones who are going to have to deal with it. We need to make sure that they're as well prepared as possible..."
Mr Bush's chief of staff, Josh Bolten pledging a smooth transition

U.S. PSYWAR PROPAGANDA: U.S. TERROR WAR DEPENDS ON 'AL QAEDA' & OTHER 'ISLAMIC TERRORISM' PRETEXTS
new 'al qaeda threat' to establish Black revolutionaries & other anti-imperialist / anti-Obama -- regime forces as 'pro-terrorist' threats to 'national security'

"The Negro youth and moderates must be made to understand that if they succumb to revolutionary teachings, they will be dead revolutionaries."
J. Edgar Hoover,FBI Chief, re: COINTELPRO  against the Black Panther Party

Al Qaeda Coldly Acknowledges Obama Victory
...Mr. Zawahri painted Mr. Obama as a hypocrite and a traitor to his race, comparing him unfavorably with “honorable black Americans” like Malcolm X, the 1960s black Muslim leader.
The Qaeda video, provided by the SITE Intelligence Group, which monitors militant Web sites, drew extensively on archival film of Malcolm X, and much of the message juxtaposes a still picture of Mr. Obama wearing a yarmulke during a visit to the Western Wall in Jerusalem with a photo of Malcolm X kneeling in prayer at a mosque.The video shows Malcolm X speaking about the docile “house Negro,” who he said “always looked out for his master,” and the “field Negro,” who was abused by whites and was more rebellious....“And in you and in Colin Powell, Rice and your likes, the words of Malcolm X (may Allah have mercy on him) concerning ‘house Negroes’ are confirmed,” Mr. Zawahri said, according to an English-language transcript, which SITE says was provided by As-Sahab, a Qaeda media outlet that produced the video. In the original Arabic, according to SITE, the words used are “house slave.”
The video by Mr. Zawahri, an Egyptian doctor who has long been Al Qaeda’s second-ranking operative, contains no specific warning of an attack against the United States. But he tells his followers that America “continues to be the same as ever, so we must continue to harm it, in order for it to come to its senses.”... The high quality of the English subtitles and the references to Malcolm X in the tape may reflect the influence of Adam Gadahn, an American-born Qaeda spokesman who has appeared in past As-Sahab productions under the name “Azzam the American.” American officials said they believed that the video was authentic.... http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/20/world/middleeast/20qaeda.html?th&emc=t...

Former CIA Employee Zawahri Threatens America
Alleged Al-Qaeda number two pops up again to provide Obama with pretext for bombing more sovereign countries in the name of the war on terror
Paul Joseph Watson
Al-Qaeda’s alleged number two Ayman Al-Zawahiri has called for new attacks to be launched against “criminal America,” which is somewhat odd considering the fact that he once fought on behalf of the CIA and was granted U.S. residence by the Immigration and Naturalization Service.
Indeed, Al-Zawahiri has reportedly been captured twice before, so the fact that he is still releasing video tapes via the Pentagon-allied IntelCenter organization and playing the role of boogeyman so Obama can continue bombing sovereign countries in the name of the war on terror strikes us as a little fishy. “America, the criminal, trespassing crusader, continues to be the same as ever, so we must continue to harm it, in order for it to come to its senses,” Zawahri said, addressing Muslims across the world, reports Reuters.

Is this Al-Zawahiri a different person to the real Al-Zawahiri who was reported to have been captured in Tehran in February 2002?
Is this a different Al-Zawahiri to the one reportedly captured near the Pakistan-Afghanistan border in September 2004?
Is this the same Al-Zawahiri who, as the head of the Egyptian Islamic Jihad, fought for the CIA in Bosnia?
Is this the same Al-Zawahiri who, according to January 2000 U.S. Congressional testimony, was granted U.S. residence by the Immigration and Naturalization Service - something almost impossible for many legitimate immigrants to obtain?
Is this the same Al-Zawahiri whose brother Zaiman is running terrorist camps under NATO protection in the U.S. zone in Kosovo?

Previous tapes which featured Ayman al-Zawahiri were found to be cobbled together from old footage but that doesn’t bother a lapdog media well versed in manufacturing consent and never offering retractions when said tapes turn out to be questionable frauds.

A 2006 Ayman al-Zawahiri tape was studied by a computer expert, who discovered that the As-Sahab logo (the alleged media arm of Al-Qaeda) and the IntelCenter logo (a U.S. based private intelligence organization that “monitors terrorist activity”) were both added to the video at the same time - meaning the Pentagon-affiliated group releasing the tapes were slapping on the Al-Qaeda brand right before they released them to the media. The expert suspiciously reversed his stance a day later despite producing detailed technical analysis to justify his claim.
Any credibility that these so-called “Al-Qaeda tapes” had was devastated after our investigation revealed that the people putting them out had connections into the highest ranks of the military-industrial complex.

In our exposé, we unveiled the ties between IntelCenter, a group that regularly ‘obtains’ Al-Qaeda tapes and the Pentagon. IntelCenter is an offshoot of IDEFENSE, staffed by a senior military psy-op intelligence officer, Jim Melnick, who has worked directly for Donald Rumsfeld.
IntelCenter were behind the October 2006 release of the “laughing hijackers” tape that showed Mohammad Atta and Ziad Jarrah allegedly attending a 2000 Al-Qaeda meeting and reading their last will and testament.

Segments of the video that were interspersed with footage of the “laughing hijackers,” Jarrah and Atta, showing Bin Laden giving a speech to an audience in Afghanistan on January 8 2000, were culled from what terror experts described as surveillance footage taken by a “security agency.”News reports at the time contained the admission that the U.S. government had been in possession of the footage since 2002, while others said it was found when the United States invaded Afghanistan in 2001, and yet it was still bizarrely reported that the tape, bearing all the hallmarks of having been filmed and edited by undercover US intelligence and having admittedly been in US possession for five years, was released over the weekend of September 31/October 1 by “Al-Qaeda”.
The video also contained segments that were first broadcast in a British documentary called The Road to Guantanamo, which was originally aired in March 2006. The context of the corresponding scene in the dramatized documentary featured U.S. interrogators attempting to coerce Gitmo detainees into confessing Al-Qaeda membership by showing them fake videos where their likeness had been computer generated to appear as if they were in attendance during Bin Laden’s January 8 2000 speech.

IntelCenter are also responsible for the occasional video appearances of Adam Pearlman, the Jewish Mossad agent who once wrote stinging essays condemning Muslims as “bloodthirsty terrorists”, but now magically pops up when Neo-Cons are embroiled in scandals or the war on terror needs a fresh injection of necessity.

IntelCenter were also behind the release of the July 2007 “new” Bin Laden tape, which in actual fact was old footage filmed in 2001 and had been released, including by IntelCenter itself, on no less than two previous occasions spanning back five years.
Al-Zawahiri has a history of popping up at the most politically expedient times, most notably when he appeared right before State of the Union speeches two years running, to attack Bush’s policy in Iraq and allow him to use Al-Zawahiri’s words as a rallying call to prolong the occupation, following in the footsteps of Dick Cheney and former Press Secretary Tony Snow, who had compared troop surge skeptics to Al-Qaeda sympathizers.
His appearance following the election of Obama provides fresh pretext for Obama’s plans to expand military strikes on foreign nations said to be harboring terrorists but normally harboring bakeries, marketplaces and little kids playing football in the street. http://www.prisonplanet.com/former-cia-employee-zawahri-threatens-americ...

BIPARTISAN APPROVAL FOR OBAMA'S 'HOMELAND' CAPITALIST 'VALUES': WAR AGAINST WORKING CLASS & OPPRESSED PEOPLES
Obama off to a start that nearly justifies the hype
By DAVID BROOKS
SYNDICATED COLUMNIST
Obama seems to have dispensed with the romantic and failed notion that you need inexperienced "fresh faces" to change things. As a result, the team he has announced so far is more impressive than any other in recent memory. One may not agree with them on everything or even most things, but a few things are indisputably true.... Most of all, they are picking Washington insiders. Or to be more precise, they are picking the best of the Washington insiders....
First, these are open-minded individuals who are persuadable by evidence. Orszag, who will probably be budget director, is trusted by Republicans and Democrats for his honest presentation of the facts.
Second, they are admired professionals. Conservative legal experts have a high regard for the probable attorney general, Eric Holder, despite the business over the Marc Rich pardon.
Third, they are not excessively partisan. Obama signaled that he means to live up to his post-partisan rhetoric by letting Joe Lieberman keep his committee chairmanship.
Fourth, they are not ideological. The economic advisers, Furman and Goolsbee, are moderate and thoughtful Democrats. Hillary Clinton at State is problematic, mostly because nobody has a role for her husband. But, as she demonstrated in the Senate, her foreign policy views are hardheaded and pragmatic.
Finally, there are many people on this team with practical creativity. Any think tanker can come up with broad doctrines, but it is rare to find people who can give the president a list of concrete steps he can do day by day to advance American interests. Dennis Ross, who advised Obama during the campaign, is the best I've ever seen at this, but Rahm Emanuel also has this capacity, as does Craig and legislative liaison Phil Schiliro.
Believe me, I'm trying not to join in the vast, heaving O-phoria now sweeping the coastal haut-bourgeoisie. But the personnel decisions have been superb. The events of the past two weeks should be reassuring to anybody who feared that Obama would veer to the left, or would suffer self-inflicted wounds because of his inexperience. He's off to a start that nearly justifies the hype....http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/opinion/388865_brooksonline22.html

AS IF GEOSTRATEGIC DECISIONS ARE PERSONAL PICKS
Clinton-Obama Détente: From Top Rival to Top Aid
...Mr. Obama’s advisers said, he had the self-confidence to name a global brand as his emissary to the world. He recognizes, they said, that after Jan. 20, he will have to build the kind of relationship that ensures that foreign leaders know that when Mrs. Clinton speaks, she is speaking directly for him. “It helps to have a relationship that Bush had with Baker, that’s no doubt true,” said Martin Indyk, the former American ambassador to Israel, who was a supporter of Mrs. Clinton in the primary battles. “But if they are seen as working together effectively, I think that can be easily overcome. I don’t think he would have decided to appoint her if he didn’t want her to be effective.”...
two close advisers to Mr. Obama who held top positions in the Clinton administration — Rahm Emanuel and John Podesta — have served as key negotiators between her [Clinton] and the president-elect on the secretary of state position... http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/23/us/politics/23hillary.html?hp

FINANCE CAPITAL'S DICTATORSHIP IN LATE STAGE CAPITALISM: SOROS-HEDGE FUNDS
The Great Depression of the 21st Century: Collapse of the Real Economy
...Bankruptcies and Foreclosures: A Money-spinning Operation for the Financial Giants
Among the companies on the verge of bankruptcy are some highly lucrative and profitable operations. The important question: who takes over the ownership of bankrupt giant industrial corporations? Bankruptcies and foreclosures are a money-spinning operation. With the collapse in stock market values, listed companies experience a major collapse of the price of their stock, which immediately affects their creditworthiness and their ability to borrow and/ or to renegotiate debts ( which are based on the quoted value of their assets).

The institutional speculators, the hedge funds, et al have cashed in on their windfall loot. They trigger the collapse of listed companies through short selling and other speculative operations. They then cash in on their large scale speculative gains. According to a report in the Financial Times, there is evidence that the plunge of the US automobile industry was in part the result of manipulation: "General Motors and Ford lost 31 per cent to $3.01 and 10.9 per cent to $1.80 despite hopes that Washington may save the industry from the brink of collapse. The fall came after Deutsche Bank set a price target of zero on GM." (FT, November 14, 2008, emphasis added). The financiers are on a shopping-spree.

The G20 Financial Summit doesn't question the legitimacy of the hedge funds and the various instruments of derivative trade. The final Communiqué includes an imprecise and blurred commitment "to better regulate hedge funds and create more transparency in mortgage-related securities in a bid to halt a global economic slide." ....
"President-elect Barack Obama and Vice President-elect Joe Biden announced that former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright and former Republican Congressman Jim Leach would be available to meet with delegations at the G-20 summit on their behalf. Leach and Albright are holding these unofficial meetings to seek input from visiting delegations on behalf of the president-elect and vice president-elect. (mlive.com, November 15, 2008)
http://globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=10977

Soros, Falcone Defend Hedge Funds at House Hearing (Update2) (more on U.S. / Soros NGOs below)
Nov. 13 (Bloomberg) -- George Soros and Philip Falcone, in a rare appearance by hedge-fund managers before Congress, defended their industry's practices and profits while splitting over whether the U.S. should impose stricter regulations....Falcone, senior managing director of New York-based Harbinger Capital Partners, said in testimony today to the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform... urged Congress to oversee the $1.7 trillion industry and require more disclosure of investments, while Soros, founder of Soros Fund Management LLC in New York, cautioned against ``ill-considered'' regulations because the managers are reeling from market losses and client defections.
Soros... chairman of $19 billion Soros Fund Management... warned the committee against ``going overboard with regulation.''... ``The bubble has now burst and hedge funds will be decimated. I would guess that the amount of money they manage will shrink by between 50 and 75 percent. It would be a grave mistake to add to the forced liquidation currently dislocating markets by ill-considered or punitive regulations,'' Soros said.
The hedge-fund managers also defended their multimillion- dollar compensation... profits they were able in many cases to treat as capital gains rather than as ordinary income, which is taxed at a higher rate. Soros, Falcone, Griffin were joined by Paulson & Co.'s John Paulson and James Simons, head of Renaissance Technologies LLC, in testifying as part of a congressional investigation into the credit crunch that has slowed the global economy. ... http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601103&sid=a2kes4jCodUY&refer=n...

Soros says deep recession inevitable, depression possible: hedge funds will be "decimated" by the current financial crisis and forced to shrink their portfolios by 50-75 percent.
http://www.reuters.com/article/ousiv/idUSTRE4AC5IN20081113

When Big Isn't Enough
Hedge fund manager Stephen Cohen wants to add to his 35,000-square-foot mansion.... Describing Mr. Cohen’s estate in an article in Vanity Fair in July 2006, Nina Munk said it “resembles Buckingham Palace, or Windsor Castle. Even people unfazed by luxury are startled by the excess. One billionaire, whose name I’ve promised not to reveal here, said his jaw dropped the first time he visited.” Its amenities include a basketball court, an indoor pool and a Zamboni machine that smooths out a 6,734-square-foot ice rink. Google Maps has an overhead view of the Cohens’ T-shaped estate, complete with geometric gardens at the bottom end. http://dealbook.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/11/14/for-stevie-cohen-35000-squa...

Hedge Funds Anxious as Redemption Deadline Looms
George Soros, an industry elder statesman who emerged from retirement at age 78 to protect his fortune at Soros Fund Management, said he expects hedge fund industry assets “will shrink by between 50 percent and 75 percent.”
“We expect to experience increased redemptions at year end” in our liquid hedge funds, Mr. Edens told investors on a conference call on Thursday, adding that he expects the pace of redemptions to remain high next year.... edge funds may try to defend themselves against the liquidation wave by limiting the amount of money investors can withdraw at a time by either suspending redemptions or throwing down gates.
Even though hedge fund losses are less than mutual fund losses, wealthy investors said they are disappointed because hedge funds have been just as vulnerable to market declines. They are also tired of the long lock-up periods and lack of transparency in the funds, several investors said.
http://dealbook.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/11/14/hedge-funds-anxious-as-rede...

"Imperialism the Highest Stage of Capitalism"
V. I. Lenin

Lenin described the following five characteristic features of the capitalist era of imperialism:

(1) the concentration of production and capital has developed to such a high stage that it has created monopolies which play a decisive role in economic life; (2) the merging of bank capital with industrial capital, and the creation on the basis of this “finance capital”, of a financial oligarchy; (3) the export of capital as distinguished from the export of commodities acquires exceptional importance; (4) the formation of international monopoly capitalist associations which share the world among themselves, and (5) the territorial division of the whole world among the biggest capitalist powers is completed. Imperialism is capitalism at that stage of development at which the dominance of monopolies and finance capital is established; in which the export of capital has acquired pronounced importance; in which the division of the world among the international trusts has begun, in which the division of all territories of the globe among the biggest capitalist powers has been completed.
(Lenin, Imperialism the Highest Stage of Capitalism, LCW Volume 22, p. 266-7)

"[Imperialism] is something quite different from the old free competition between manufacturers, scattered and out of touch with one another, and producing for an unknown market. Concentration [of production] has reached the point at which it is possible to make an approximate estimate of all sources of raw materials (for example, the iron ore deposits)... [throughout] the whole world. Not only are such estimates made, but these sources are captured by gigantic monopolist associations [multi-national conglomerates]. An approximate estimate of the capacity of markets is also made, and the associations "divide" them up amongst themselves by agreement. Skilled labor is monopolized, the best engineers are engaged; the means of transport are captured – railways in America, shipping companies in Europe and America. Capitalism in its imperialist stage leads directly to the most comprehensive socialization of production; it, so to speak, drags the capitalists, against their will and consciousness, into some sort of a new social order, a transitional one from complete free competition to complete socialization.

"Production becomes social, but appropriation remains private. The social means of production remain the private property of a few. The general framework of formally recognized free competition remains, and the yoke of a few monopolists on the rest of the population becomes a hundred times heavier, more burdensome and intolerable." (p. 205]

"The development of capitalism has arrived at a stage when, although commodity production still "reigns" and continues to be regarded as the basis of economic life, it has in reality been undermined and the bulk of the profits go to the "geniuses" of financial manipulation. At the basis of these manipulations and swindles lies socialized production; but the immense progress of mankind, which achieved this socialization, goes to benefit... the speculators." (p. 206-207) http://www.marxists.org/glossary/frame.htm

disinfo?
Olmert-Bush-Obama Talks on PA May be Window Dressing for Striking Iran:
Outgoing Prime Minister Ehud Olmert left Israel Saturday night for talks with the present and future American presidents. The announced agenda is negotiations with the Palestinian Authority, but a possible attack on Iran's nuclear site may be the main topic of the summit.
http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/128499

“Israel is an illegitimate offspring of the U.S.”
We know that both Democrats and Republicans are under obligation to serve Israel because it’s an illegitimate offspring of the U.S.
http://www.aljazeera.com/news/print.php?newid=183196

OBAMA'S JOB: KEEP PUBLIC SUPPORT TO FURTHER DIVIDE AND CONQUER, RESTRUCTURING WORLD IN THE INTERESTS OF U.S. GLOBAL DOMINATION
Ralph Peters “Blood Borders: How a Better Middle East Would Look”
http://www.armedforcesjournal.com/2006/06/1833899
... As for those who refuse to “think the unthinkable,” declaring that boundaries must not change and that’s that, it pays to remember that boundaries have never stopped changing through the centuries. Borders have never been static, and many frontiers, from Congo through Kosovo to the Caucasus, are changing even now...
Oh, and one other dirty little secret from 5,000 years of history: Ethnic cleansing works....

NYT 'reporter' promotes justification for U.S. South Asia strategy including eliminating-Pakistan-by-partitioning it, similar to Biden Iraq plan
Memo From Islamabad
Redrawn Map Has Pakistan Worried (original title changed as below, before & after maps gone)
later entitled Ringed by Foes, Pakistanis Fear the U.S., Too
By JANE PERLEZ
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — A redrawn map of South Asia has been making the rounds among Pakistani elites. It shows their country truncated, reduced to an elongated sliver of land with the big bulk of India to the east, and an enlarged Afghanistan to the west. That the map was first circulated as a theoretical exercise in some American neoconservative circles matters little here. It has fueled a belief among Pakistanis, including members of the armed forces, that what the United States really wants is the breakup of Pakistan, the only Muslim country with nuclear arms.
That notion may strike Americans as strange coming from an ally of 50 years. But as the incoming Obama administration tries to coax greater cooperation from Pakistan in the fight against militancy, it can hardly be ignored.... Pakistan, a 61-year-old country marbled by ethnic fault lines, is a collection of just four provinces, which often seem to have little in common. Virtually every one of its borders, drawn almost arbitrarily in the last gasps of the British Empire, is disputed with its neighbors, not least Pakistan’s bitter and much larger rival, India... The new democratically [S]elected [by U.S.] president, Asif Ali Zardari, has visited the United States twice since assuming power three months ago. He has been generous in his praise of the Bush administration. But that stance is criticized at home as fawning and wins him little popularity among a steadfastly anti-American public.
So how will the promise by President-elect Barack Obama for a new start between the United States and Pakistan be received here? How can it be begun?
One possibility could be some effort to ease Pakistani anxieties, even as the United States demands more from Pakistan. That will probably mean a regional approach to what, it is increasingly apparent, are regional problems. There, Pakistani and American interests may coincide. American military commanders, including Gen. David H. Petraeus, have started to argue forcefully that the solution to the conflict in Afghanistan, where the American war effort looks increasingly uncertain, must involve a wide array of neighbors.
Mr. Obama has said much the same. Several times in his campaign, he laid out the crux of his thinking. Reducing tensions between Pakistan and India would allow Pakistan to focus on the real threat — the Qaeda and Taliban militants who are tearing at the very fabric of the country. “If Pakistan can look towards the east with confidence, it will be less likely to believe its interests are best advanced through cooperation with the Taliban,” Mr. Obama wrote in Foreign Affairs magazine last year.

But such an approach faces sizable obstacles, the biggest being the conflict over Kashmir. The Himalayan border area has been disputed since the partition of India and Pakistan in 1947, and remains divided between them....Pakistanis warn that the United States should not appear too eager to mediate. First, they caution, India has always regarded Kashmir as a bilateral question. India, they note, also faces a general election early next year, an inappropriate moment to push such an explosive issue.

Second, some Pakistanis are concerned about the reliability of the United States as a fair mediator. “Given the United States’ record on the Palestinian issue, where the Palestinians had to move 10 times backwards and the Israelis moved the goal posts, the same could happen here,” said Zubair Khan, a former commerce minister who has watched Kashmir closely. It was discouraging, Mr. Khan said, that the United States ignored the importance of the huge nonviolent protests by Muslims in Kashmir against Indian rule this summer. “Anywhere else, and they would have been hailed as an Orange Revolution,” he said, referring to the wave of [U.S. / Soros sponsored] protests that led to a change in the Ukrainian government in 2004.

Such distrust has been exacerbated by what Pakistanis see as the Bush administration’s tilt toward India. Exhibit A for the Pakistanis is India’s nuclear deal with the United States, which allows India to engage in nuclear trade even though it never joined the global Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty. Pakistan, with its recent history of spreading nuclear technology, received no comparable bargain. The nuclear deal was devised in Washington to position India as a strategic counterbalance to China. That is how it is seen in Pakistan, too, but with no enthusiasm.
“The United States has changed the whole nuclear order by this deal, and in doing so is containing China, the only friend Pakistan has in the region,” said Talat Masood, a retired Pakistani Army general. Further, Pakistan is upset about the advances India is making in Afghanistan, with no checks from the United States, Mr. Masood said.....

If the Obama administration is indeed to convince Pakistanis that militancy, not the Indian Army, presents the gravest threat, it will not be easy.... among ordinary Pakistanis, many regard Al Qaeda more positively than the United States, polls find. Talk shows here often include arguments that the suicide bombings in Pakistan are payback for the Pakistani Army fighting an American war. ...

AFGHANISTAN
U.S. eyes "surge" of over 20,000 for Afghanistan:
The Pentagon is considering a plan to send more than 20,000 troops to Afghanistan over the next 12 to 18 months to help safeguard elections and quell rising Taliban violence
http://uk.reuters.com/article/topNews/idUKTRE4AK77320081122

Defense Secretary Robert Gates: Financial global crisis no excuse for not funding Afghan war:
http://www.enquirerherald.com/366/story/423105.html

U.S. DRUG WAR SUCCESS
Afghanistan drug production up 150% since 2001
20 Nov 2008
(RIA Novosti) - Opium production in Afghanistan has increased by 150% since... 2001, Russia's Federal Drug Control Service said Thursday. "Afghanistan has become the absolute leader in narcotics production, producing 93% of the world's entire opiates... Afghan drug dealers have in two years set up the successful production of cannabis [marijuana, hashish] with over 70,000 hectares of land being cultivated, taking Afghanistan into second place in the world behind Morocco in terms of the cultivation of such drugs," the service said in a statement. Since the Taliban regime was overthrown in the 2001 U.S.-led campaign, Afghanistan, with almost all its arable land being used to grow opium poppies remains the world's leading producer of heroin.... http://www.inteldaily.com/?c=143&a=8782

Afghan article says US Bin-Ladin hunt phoney
Juan Cole
The USG Open Source Center translates an article from the Persian Afghan press alleging that French troops were at one point close to capturing Usamah Bin Ladin in Afghanistan, but that American forces stopped them from doing so. It says that a forthcoming French documentary containing interviews with the French soldiers provides proof for the allegation. The argument is that the Bush administration needed Bin Ladin to be at large in order to justify its military expa nsionism... http://www.uruknet.de/?p=48851

US to move five new brigades to Afghanistan:
US Defense Secretary Robert Gates said today he expected to move five combat brigades into Afghanistan next year and wanted at least some of them in place before the country's election next autumn, stressing this was a top priority. http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/breaking/2008/1121/breaking88.htm http://tinyurl.com/6562x8

Menace of US drones:
While so-called cross border terrorism is not causing any harm to homeland of USA, cross border terrorism from Afghanistan into Pakistan is directly impinging upon the integrity and existence of Pakistan. As a policy, US military is extending support to warlords and officials in Afghanistan that are friendly with India and are anti-Pakistan.
http://www.asiantribune.com/?q=node/14327

AFRICA
Pentagon Seeking New Access Pacts for Africa Bases
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/07/05/international/africa/05BASE.html?ex=10...

Forbes.com: U.S. oil companies seek Libyan oil permit renewal
http://www.forbes.com/markets/newswire/2003/12/02/rtr1166953.html

Papers prove US President Clinton knew of genocide in Rwanda:
US president Bill Clinton's administration knew Rwanda was being engulfed by genocide in April 1994 but buried the information
http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2004/03/31/1080544556703.html

"The US must reshape its whole military policy if it is to maintain control of Africa."
The Scramble for Africa's Oil
http://www.blackagendareport.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&...
by Christopher Thompson
The Pentagon is embarked on a massive effort to militarily secure African oil assets for the United States. Under cover of the so-called "war on terror," the U.S. is deepening its military ties to "friendly" African regimes, enhancing their capacity to deal with internal dissidents and external rivals. From the Horn of Africa to the Gulf of Guinea and the Niger Delta, the Americans bolster authoritarian regimes and flaunt U.S. air, naval and "special operations" power. Even the FBI has gotten into the act, performing interrogations of hundreds of "suspects" swept up in Ethiopia's invasion of Somalia and brutal suppression of internal foes.
The Pentagon at present has five geographic Unified Combatant Commands around the world, and responsibility for Africa is awkwardly divided among three of these. Most of Africa - a batch of 43 countries - falls under the European Command (Eucom), with the remainder divided between the Pacific Command and Central Command (which also runs the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan). Now the Pentagon - under the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the defense department - is working on formal proposals for a unified military command for the continent under the name "Africom." This significant shift in US relations with Africa comes in the face of myriad threats: fierce economic competition from Asia; increasing resource nationalism in Russia and South America; and instability in the Middle East that threatens to spill over into Africa....
"The US must reshape its whole military policy if it is to maintain control of Africa."
The Pentagon hopes to finalize Africom's structure, location and budget this year. The expectation is that it can break free from Eucom and become operative by mid-2008. "The break from Europe will occur before 30 September 2008," Professor Peter Pham, a US adviser on Africa to the Pentagon told the New Statesman. "The independent command should be up and running by this time next year."...
n March 2006, speaking before the Senate armed services committee, General James Jones, the then head of Eucom, said: "Africa currently provides over 15 per cent of US oil imports, and recent explorations in the Gulf of Guinea region indicate potential reserves that could account for 25-35 per cent of US imports within the next decade."... These high-quality reserves - West African oil is typically low in sulphur and thus ideal for refining - are easily accessible by sea to western Europe and the US. In 2005, the US imported more oil from the Gulf of Guinea than it did from Saudi Arabia and Kuwait combined. Within the next ten years it will import more oil from Africa than from the entire Middle East. Western oil giants such as ExxonMobil, Chevron, France's Total and Britain's BP and Shell plan to invest tens of billions of dollars in sub-Saharan Africa (far in excess of "aid" inflows to the region).
But though the Gulf of Guinea is one of the few parts of the world where oil production is poised to increase exponentially in the near future, it is also one of the most unstable. In the big three producer countries, Nigeria, Equatorial Guinea and Angola, oil wealth has been a curse for many, enriching political elites at the expense of impoverished citizens. Angola is now China's main supplier of crude oil, supplanting Saudi Arabia last year. The Chinese, along with the rest of oil- hungry Asia, are looking covetously at the entire region's reserves.... China is willing to offer billions in soft loans and infrastructure projects - all with no strings attached - to secure lucrative acreage.... According to Nicholas Shaxson, author of Poisoned Wells: the Dirty Politics of African Oil, "[Africom] comes in the context of a growing conflict with China over our oil supplies."
Africom will significantly increase the US military presence on the continent. At present, the US has 1,500 troops stationed in Africa, principally at its military base in Djibouti, in the eastern horn. That could well double, according to Pham. The US is already conducting naval exercises off the Gulf of Guinea, in part with the intention of stopping Delta insurgents reaching offshore oil rigs. It also plans to beef up the military capacity of African governments to handle their dissidents, with additional "rapid-reaction" US forces available if needed. But - echoing charges leveled at US allies elsewhere in the "war on terror" [...]

US Amplifies Darfur Crisis Eyeing Regime Change: Report
http://www.islamonline.net/English/News/2004-10/03/article04.shtml

U.S. support behind Ethiopia's invasion
http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/2007-01-07-ethiopia_x.htm?POE=click-r...
Somalia's transitional government, backed by the Ethiopian military, drove a radical Islamic militia out of Mogadishu last week. A Christian-led nation in sub-Saharan Africa, surrounded almost entirely by Muslim states, Ethiopia has received nearly $20 million in U.S. military aid since late 2002. That's more than any country in the region except Djibouti. Last month, thousands of Ethiopian troops invaded neighboring Somalia and helped overturn a fundamentalist Islamic government that the Bush administration said was supported by
al-Qaeda. The U.S. and Ethiopian militaries have "a close working relationship," Pentagon spokesman Lt. Cmdr. Joe Carpenter said.

U.S., ISRAEL & AFRICA...with George Soros, great imperialist "philanthropist":
Mining the Apocalypse parts 1 & 2
By keith harmon snow & Rick Hines
http://zmagsite.zmag.org/JulAug2007/snow.html
Z Magazine (abridged and edited)
http://zmagsite.zmag.org/June2007/snow0607.html
Minor corrections and adjustments July 20, 2007.

Ethiopia: U.S. proxy for geostrategic African agenda
Somalia: The Specter of Detrimental Trusteeship
by Abukar Arman
Somalia, invaded and occupied by Ethiopia with the encouragement of the United States, is now to be reduced to a "trusteeship" of Addis Ababa, the aggressor. "This is a case of putting the fox in charge of the barn so that he may teach the chicken how to function in an orderly manner!"
"The arrangement places Somalia at the mercy of its occupier, Ethiopia."..."The IGAD declaration a manipulative charade to lend a façade of legitimacy to the Ethiopian occupation of Somalia."... Prime Minister Meles Zenawi of Ethiopia, who engineered the meeting, is the current IGAD Chairman who presided over the meeting. ...to place Somalia at the mercy of its occupier, Ethiopia. Part of Ethiopia 's strategic plan is to keep Somalis at war with one another. This is articulated in its National Security Policy and Strategy posted on the Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia Foreign Affairs website. And, candidly speaking, that is why for the last 17 years no other country but Ethiopia has armed Somali factions against one another, and tried to micromanage the Somali political affairs. And IGAD has been the enabler....Washington 's loyal partner in the region in its failed foreign policy driven by GWT (Global War on Terrorism). Despite the expressed protestations by some of its members such as Eritrea and Djibouti, IGAD had opted to remain silent on Ethiopia 's invasion of Somalia - an act that would ultimately compel Eritrea to withdraw its IGAD membership. This left Ethiopia, Djibouti, Kenya, Sudan, Uganda, and Somalia as the current members of IGAD. ...
http://www.blackagendareport.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&...

Buccaneers In Somali Waters - They're Not Somalis
A Black Agenda Radio commentary by Glen Ford
"Foreign ‘fish pirates' plunder Somali waters from about 700 vessels - an armada of commercial buccaneers."
So far this year, at least two dozen vessels have been boarded and seized by armed men off the coast of Somalia, the latest a Saudi Arabian supertanker capable of carrying two million barrels of oil. I'm avoiding using the term "pirates" because there is lots of piracy going on in Somali waters, most of it committed, not by Somalis, but by foreigners from around the globe. The northeast African nation, with 2,000 miles of coastline, once boasted some of the richest fisheries in the world, swarming with tuna, lobster, shark, shrimp and whitefish. But there has been no effective government in Somalia since 1991 and, therefore, no Somali coast guard to protect the fishing grounds from marauding foreign vessels. How much damage has been done by over fishing is unknown - foreigners sail into the fisheries as if they own them, and take what they wish.
Webster's Dictionary defines piracy as "robbery on the high seas." By that definition, Somalia is the victim of pirates from all over the world. According to the United Nations, these foreign "fish pirates" plunder Somali waters from about 700 vessels - an armada of commercial buccaneers. Before Somalia descended into chaos, 30,000 fishermen made their livings from the sea. But they can't compete with the modern, foreign vessels, and there is no one to keep the commercial fish pirates out. Some foreign fishing interests make their own deals, purchasing fishing "licenses" from warlords purporting to represent authority on behalf of Somalia. That's very much like the "diplomacy" practiced by white settlers in the colonial and early United States, when they made "treaties" with bogus Indian "chiefs" who signed away Native American land for trinkets and liquor.
"The American fleet does little to interfere with the illegal dumping of radioactive waste in Somali waters."
Local and clan militias have replaced national authority in Somalia, partially occupied by the Ethiopian military. The Ethiopian invasion and occupation, instigated by the United States in late 2006, has displaced millions, many of whom face starvation. The coastal fishermen are also members of militias. Western media call them pirates, but as one armed sailor told the New York Times: "Think of us like a coast guard." Somebody needs to guard Somali's water resources, but it certainly isn't the Americans. The U.S. Fifth Fleet, of the U.S. Navy's Central Command, patrols the Red Sea, the Arabian Sea and the Indian Ocean - Somalia's neighborhood. It also bombs Somalis that resist the Ethiopian occupation and targets people the U.S. claims have ties to Al Qaida. But the American fleet does little to interfere with the illegal dumping of radioactive waste in Somali waters or any other crimes against the environment and Somalia's national treasure and sovereignty.
When it comes to piracy, Somalis are on balance the victims rather than the perpetrators. It is estimated that foreigners poach $300 million from Somali fisheries each year. Somalia's armed sailors extort about one-third that amount - $100 million - from the owners of captured ships. So, who are the real pirates? The United States helped Ethiopia hijack the entire Somali nation: an international crime against peace. Uncle Sam is the biggest pirate of them all.
For Black Agenda Radio, I'm Glen Ford. BAR executive editor Glen Ford can be contacted at Glen.Ford@BlackAgendaReport.com
http://www.blackagendareport.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&...

"Coastal villagers report of helicopters hunting wildlife"
http://www.garoweonline.com/artman2/publish/Somalia_27/Coastal_villagers...
." GALKAYO, Somalia Nov 11 (Garowe Online) Coastal villagers in Somalia are increasingly reporting incidents whereby naval forces from unknown foreign countries are actively hunting wildlife in the war-torn Horn of Africa country.... local leaders are collecting evidence and eyewitness reports regarding the hunting allegations.A traditional elder from a village in Mudug region, central Somalia, told the BBC Somali Service recently that local leaders are collecting evidence and eyewitness reports regarding the hunting allegations."Three helicopters landed three separate days," said elder Mohamed Hussein Warsame, quoting witnesses and community leaders. Soldiers jumped out of the helicopters and loaded live animals, including deer and ostriches, he added. The helicopters then returned to a warship off the coast... locals reported seeing the American flag hovering above one of the warships in the distance." Foreign warships from a number of countries, mainly in the West are patrolling Somalia's waters in an international anti-piracy campaign.

The Strategic Importance of Africa
by IASPS Staff
http://www.israeleconomy.org/opeds/oped30.htm
co-authored by IASPS Strategic Fellow Paul Michael Wihbey and US State Department expert Dr. Barry Schutz, Office of Analysis for Africa, Washington DC., the article challenges the conventional wisdom that the United States has no vital interests in Africa... because of the availability of its alternative, plentiful and reliable energy sources, Africa is increasingly an
attractive zone for American engagement at the political, economic and security levels. The authors recommend three specific American policy initiatives that would enhance the US presence in Africa including: 1. Debt Forgiveness, 2. Free Trade and 3. Establishing a new US military command structure for the South Atlantic.

American Policy and Africa
http://www.iasps.org/nbn/nbn308.htm
http://www.israeleconomy.org/nbn/nbn308.htm

The Pentagon's New Africa Command
Interviewees:Robert T. Moeller, Rear Admiral, Head of Africa Command
Robert G. Loftis, Ambassador, State Department
http://www.cfr.org/publication/13348/pentagons_new_africa_command.html

AfriCom will preside over all countries on the continent except Egypt according to Pentagon officials. They say it is needed to secure vast, lawless areas where terrorists have sought safe haven to regroup and threaten U.S. interests.
http://www.washingtontimes.com/world/20070430-124131-8532r.htm

"...Africom was fashioned as a template for a new interagency structure that would coordinate "hard" and "soft" U.S. power...."
U.S. Africa Command Trims Its Aspirations
Nations Loath to Host Force; Aid Groups Resisted Military Plan to Take On Relief Work
By Karen DeYoung
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/05/31/AR200805...
The U.S. Africa Command, designed to boost America's image and prevent terrorist inroads on the continent, has scaled back its ambitions after African governments refused to host it and aid groups protested plans to expand the military's role in economic development in the region. Africom, due to begin operations Oct. 1, will now be based for the foreseeable future in Stuttgart, Germany, with five smaller regional offices planned for the continent on hold while the military searches for places to put them... Planning for Africom began in early 2006, when the Bush administration designated Africa an area of "strategic concern" and policymakers cited a number of "pre-conflict" situations there. Based on lessons learned in Iraq and Afghanistan, where the U.S. military is deeply involved in civil affairs and economic development efforts, Africom was fashioned as a template for a new interagency structure that would coordinate "hard" and "soft" U.S. power.
U.S. Agency for International Development personnel were assigned to Africom, and a senior State Department diplomat was named one of two command deputies under Army Gen. William E. "Kip" Ward. Not only would Africom help make Africa secure, Bush said when he unveiled it in February 2007, it would help promote "development, health, education, democracy and economic growth."...
Africa has always been an orphan in the U.S. defense establishment, divvied up among the Pentagon's four regional "Unified Combatant Commands" -- European, Central, Southern and Pacific -- that manage U.S. military relationships and operations overseas. Of the four, only Eucom, established in post-World War II Germany, is based overseas. Pacom handles Asia from its headquarters in Hawaii; Southcom, responsible for Latin America, and Centcom, in charge of operations in the Middle East and Central Asia, are both in Florida.
Under Africom, one command will consolidate military responsibility for all of Africa, excluding Egypt...it encompasses the volatile Horn of Africa and the U.S. Navy's forward operating base in Djibouti and will take over training tasks on the continent...With its headquarters on the continent, liaison groups of 20 to 30 military personnel established in key countries and U.S. units brought in to help with development and relief tasks, the command was envisioned as an example to Africans of how their own armed forces and civilians could work together for the good of their nations.
The trouble was, no one consulted the Africans. "Very little was really known by the majority of people or countries in Africa who were supposed to know before such a move was made," said retired Kenyan army Lt. Gen. Daniel Opande. Worry swept the continent that the United States planned major new military installations in Africa. "If you know the politics of Africa," said Opande, who has headed U.N. peacekeeping forces in Sierra Leone and Liberia, "you know there are certain very powerful countries who said, no, we are not interested in having a headquarters here." South Africa and Nigeria were among them, and their resistance helped persuade others....
But despite the promise of new development and security partnerships, many Africans concluded that Africom was primarily an extension of U.S. counterterrorism policy...It was seen as a massive infusion of military might onto a continent that was quite proud of having removed foreign powers from its soil." The United States "equates terrorism with Islam," senior Kenyan diplomat Bethuel Kiplagat said, and few African governments wanted to be seen as inviting U.S. surveillance on their own people.
Russell Feingold (D-Wis.), who chairs the Senate Foreign Relations African affairs subcommittee, thought Africom was "something that would show real respect for Africa." But there was no question, Feingold said, that the concept had "a neocolonialist feel to it." ...

At home, major U.S. nongovernmental aid organizations protested that what might work in the Iraq war zone -- where government civilian-military "provincial reconstruction teams" operate together under heavy security to build local governing capacity and infrastructure -- was ill-suited for non-conflict zones. Not only would a military presence draw unwanted attention and increased risk for development workers, they argued, the military had neither the training nor the staying power for effective development. "Is the face of America in Africa a baseball cap or a helmet?" asked Samuel A. Worthington, president of Interaction, the Washington-based umbrella for many development and relief organizations. "We told the military -- do what you're good at. Stay in your lane."... There has been a "retooling" of the mission, the Africom officer said, away from development and toward "peacekeeper training, military education, a counterterrorism element -- programs that have been going on for some time." To USAID and other U.S. government development partners, worried that the military's vast human and financial resources would overshadow them, Ward said he has explained that "we absolutely have no intention of being the leader in doing development on the continent of Africa. It is not our job, not our lane. We have no intention of taking over."

U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, Libyan Leader Col Muammar Abu Minyar al-Qadhafi Discuss Africa Command
U.S. Department of State
TRIPOLI, Libya, Sep 6, 2008
"The issue of AFRICOM came up," Rice said...Qadhafi expressed "concerns about what the United States was doing with AFRICOM, were we looking to military bases on the African continent, were we looking to a large military presence." Rice said she told Qadhafi "that we clearly weren't getting through about what we meant for AFRICOM; that this was to be -- to help Africans help themselves in peacekeeping, in counterterrorism work." www.africom.mil/ http://www.africom.mil/getArticle.asp?art=2026

AFRICANS REFUSE, KNOWING FIRSTHAND HOW U.S. MILITARY PROMOTES PEACE & FREEDOM -- U.S. ADJUSTS ADDRESS & APPEARANCES
Africom Seeks Military-to-Military Relationship
General William Ward, Commander, U.S. Africa Command
Interviewer: Stephanie Hanson, News Editor
May 22, 2008
http://www.cfr.org/publication/16330/africom_seeks_militarytomilitary_re...

"Opposition in Africa means the new command's headquarters will more likely be in US or Europe."
www.csmonitor.com/2008/0516/p03s03-usmi.html
16 May 2008
Soft power: A US sailor volunteers to help paint the D. Twe Memorial High School in Monrovia, Liberia, as part of US efforts to boost security and support in the region
- When Pentagon strategists sought to create a new military command to oversee Africa, they believed they could build one that deemphasized military might and would serve as an exemplar of what so-called US soft power could do around the world. But in recent months, the Pentagon has had to scale back its ambitious vision to adapt Africa's political terrain, military officials acknowledge, adding they remain committed to the original idea of a military command to promote peace in the region....
As the US Africa Command – or AFRICOM – works to stand on its own by October, the change in plans illustrates the limits of the US trying to use the military to try to broaden its influence across the globe.
The creation of AFRICOM represents a major reorganization of the Defense Department's family of six regional commands, and recognizes the strategic, security, and economic interests the US has begun to confront in Africa. In addition to the continent's vast oil reserves, the US is wary of China's continued investment there.
As the symbol of the new command's stature, the location of the headquarters has long been a source of controversy, with even some strong US allies refusing to host the command. Countries like Liberia were privately receptive, say defense officials, who had launched an extensive lobbying effort to counter the notion that the US was trying to establish military bases on the continent. The effort even included a high-profile visit in February by President Bush. Still, they were unable to sway opposition in African countries, where many viewed the new command as a neocolonialist move to secure US oil interests and counterbalance China's influence. American officials could not overcome the "paranoid rhetoric," said a defense official....

Africa Command Tackles Traffickers in First Drill
November 11, 2008
http://blog.wired.com/defense/2008/11/africa-exercise.html
Flintlock 2008, a joint military exercise that kicked off last week in Bamako, Mali, marked the first deployment for the CV-22 Ospreys of U.S. Air Force Special Operations Command. It is also the first military exercise overseen by U.S. Africa Command, which was formally activated last month.
Flintlock will also feature a sort of "hearts and minds" campaign, with exercise participants setting up rural medical clinics in Senegal and Mali. I observed one such Medical Civic Action Program in a village outside Bamako, the capital of Mali. Military doctors dispensed medicine and peformed medical exams in an improvised field hospital; the waiting lines (pictured here) were pretty long. Another team ran a separate veterinary clinic. AFRICOM needs the good press....while U.S. military planners emphasized that they expect to keep a "light footprint" on the continent, many African governments have been concerned that AFRICOM spells a greater militarization of U.S. foreign policy.

Bringing US War on Terror to Africa
By Amy Zalman, Ph.D.
http://terrorism.about.com/od/globalwaronterror/a/AFRICOM.htm
In 1999, the Organization of African Unity (OAU) created the first African definition of terrorism. Called the OAU Convention on the Prevention and Combating of Terrorism (the Algiers Convention), the legal instrument distinguishes between violent struggles for self-determination and terrorism.
AFRICOM Faces Sensitivity about its goals. Given the history of foreign intrusion in African nations, it's no surprise that AFRICOM is facing some resistance. The U.S., for its part, has marketed the Command to Africans as a more of a clearinghouse for security cooperation, within different parts of the U.S. government, and between U.S. and African institutions. Others are more cynical. A blog on public diplomacy, warfare and related issues.) Under the current unified command system, which is how the U.S. Department of Defense assigns itself different areas of responsibility, military and related operations in Africa fall under three different Commands: European Command (EUCOM), Central Command (CENTCOM) and Pacific Command (PACOM). AFRICOM would treat Africa as one unit (with the exception of Egypt, which would remain in CENTCOM's domain, with other Middle Eastern countries). AFRICOM is temporarily housed in Stuttgart, Germany, and is expected to relocate in Africa...

MORE ON U.S. NGOs in AFRICA in many previous digest issues including http://www.burbankdigest.com/node/118

"The principal beneficiary of America's foreign assistance programs has always been the United States."
US Agency for International Development Source: "Direct Economic Benefits of U.S. Assistance Programs," 1999

"If war aims are stated which seem to be solely concerned with Anglo-American imperialism, they will offer little to people in the rest of the world. The interests of other peoples should be stressed. This would have a better propaganda effect."
- Private memo from The Council of Foreign Relations to the US State Department, 1941
http://www.sunnahonline.com/ilm/contemporary/0013.htm

a short history very worth reading...
Over Five Million Dead in Congo? How Truth is Hidden, Even When it Seems to Be Told
by keith harmon snow
Wednesday, 06 February 2008
http://www.blackagendareport.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&...
Genocide in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) - and on the entirety of the Africa continent - is the direct result of deliberate policies by American and European governments and the multinational corporations they serve. So-called "relief" agencies that make a pretense of counting the dead are often themselves creatures of the very corporations that have set countless militias and neighboring client states on successive rampages of slaughter and ethnic cleansing - all to protect the business of extracting the riches of Congo. Many, many Nuremburg courts could be filled to capacity with American and European luminaries guilty of crimes against humanity in Central Africa, yet the corporate, racist political culture insists African "savagery" is to blame for the ongoing holocaust....

"The United States Africa Command is to ‘be responsible for U.S. military operations in and military relations with 53 African nations - an area of responsibility covering all of Africa except Egypt.'" The U.S. African offensive is not some future threat - it is already in motion.
http://www.blackagendareport.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&...

Chad Now Awash in Blood, Alongside Darfur: U.S. Mischief
by BAR Executive Editor Glen Ford
http://www.blackagendareport.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&...
http://www.blackagendareport.com> .

"The escalating reverse flow of refugees from Chad to Darfur shows the U.S. is a maestro of chaos."
Thousands of refugees are doing the unthinkable: fleeing into the cauldron of death that is Darfur, Western Sudan, from neighboring Chad. The scenario seems so counterintuitive as to make the head swim - unless one understands the continent-wide scope of U.S. military penetration of the region and, most importantly, that the bedrock America strategy in Africa is the creation of chaos.
As the death toll spirals from inter-ethnic fighting, starvation and outright massacre in Darfur - a carnage for which the Sudanese regime in Khartoum bears by far the largest responsibility - the U.S. relentlessly attempts to position itself as the only angel that can save the day: that is, rescue Africans from themselves. However, the escalating reverse flow of refugees from Chad to Darfur shows quite a different reality. Chad's government is a virtual military appendage of the United States, a proud "success story" in the wholesale American penetration of the armed forces of nations across Africa's northern Sahel region. A March 22 report from the IRIN news service, an organ of the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, reveals another side of the story:
"An estimated 20,000 Chadians have sought refuge in West Darfur since 2005."

It is significant that the destabilization of Chad is dated to have begun in 2005. On July 26, 2005, the Washington Post reported: "The Pentagon plans to train thousands of African troops in battalions equipped for extended desert and border operations and to link the militaries of different countries with secure satellite communications. The initiative, with proposed funding of $500 million over seven years, covers Algeria, Chad, Mali, Mauritania, Niger, Senegal, Nigeria, Morocco and Tunisia - with the U.S. military eager to add Libya if relations improve."

Remember that refugee flight in Chad began in 2005, at the onset of the U.S.-Chad military relationship, and the acute Chad refugee crisis has come about since the U.S.-backed Deby regime cut the other generals out of the power continuum. Given its huge resources and dominant influence over the Chadian regime, the U.S. should have been capable of averting a Chad political dislocation that would force tens of thousands into the frying pan of Darfur. But in fact, it was the U.S intention, once its "general-to-general," "colonel-to-colonel" and "wallet-to-wallet" military tentacles had sunk deeply enough, to destabilize the Chadian state. By creating the circumstances for chaos on Chad's eastern border with Darfur, the U.S. seeks to declare an international crisis that will enable it to intervene directly in Sudanese and Chadian territory under the guise of a transnational "humanitarian" mission.
"It was the U.S. intention to destabilize the Chadian state." [...]

"Depopulation should be the highest priority of U.S. foreign policy towards the Third World."
Henry Kissinger, National Security Memo 200, April 24, 1974

Why Africa Fears Western Medicine
By HARRIET A. WASHINGTON, Op-Ed Contributor
The medical workers’ release appears to be the latest episode in a health care nightmare in which white and Western-trained doctors and nurses have harmed Africans — and have gone unpunished... to dismiss the Libyan accusations of medical malfeasance out of hand means losing an opportunity to understand why a dangerous suspicion of medicine is so widespread in Africa. Africa has harbored a number of high-profile Western medical miscreants who have intentionally administered deadly agents under the guise of providing health care or conducting research. In March 2000, Werner Bezwoda, a cancer researcher at South Africa’s Witwatersrand University, was fired after conducting medical experiments involving very high doses of chemotherapy on black breast-cancer patients, possibly without their knowledge or consent. In Zimbabwe, in 1995, Richard McGown, a Scottish anesthesiologist, was accused of five murders and convicted in the deaths of two infant patients whom he injected with lethal doses of morphine. And Dr. Michael Swango, ultimately convicted of murder after pleading guilty to killing three American patients with lethal injections of potassium, is suspected of causing the deaths of 60 other people, many of them in Zimbabwe and Zambia during the 1980s and ’90s. (Dr. Swango was never tried on the African charges.)
These medical killers are well known throughout Africa, but the most notorious is Wouter Basson, a former head of Project Coast, South Africa’s chemical and biological weapons unit under apartheid. Dr. Basson was charged with killing hundreds of blacks in South Africa and Namibia, from 1979 to 1987, many via injected poisons. He was never convicted in South African courts, even though his lieutenants testified in detail and with consistency about the medical crimes they conducted against blacks....The distrust of Western medical workers has had direct consequences. Since 2003, for example, polio has been on the rise in Nigeria, Chad and Burkina Faso because many people avoid vaccinations, believing that the vaccines are contaminated with H.I.V. or are actually sterilization agents in disguise. This would sound incredible were it not that scientists working for Dr. Basson’s Project Coast reported that one of their chief goals was to find ways to selectively and secretly sterilize Africans....
Harriet A. Washington is the author of “Medical Apartheid: The Dark History of Medical Experimentation on Black Americans From Colonial Times to the Present.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/31/opinion/31washington.html?th=&emc=th&p...

Bill Gates: Killing Africans For Profit
By Greg Palast
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article4103.htm

"The same rebellion, the same impatience, the same anger that exists in the hearts of the dark people in Africa and Asia is existing in the hearts and minds of 20 million black people in this country who have been just as thoroughly colonized as the people in Africa and Asia."
Malcolm X

Sudan Accuses Israel Of Fueling Darfur Crisis
http://www.islamonline.net/English/News/2004-08/08/article01.shtml

" 'Save Darfur': Evangelicals and Establishment Jews" [e.g. liberal zionists]
[http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/furuhashi280406.html].

Who Wants Peace in Darfur?
by Yoshie Furuhashi
http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/furuhashi300406.html

Stop the U.S. - Israeli War Against Sudan
http://rule19.org/resources/sudan-drolde.htm
by David Rolde, Green-Rainbow Party of Mass.

Darfur: Simplification and Moralization of the Conflict

Voltaire Network | Paris (France) | International edition, 13 March 2006

WEALTH OF WEST BUILT ON AFRICA'S EXPLOITATION
Richard Drayton
http://www.blackcommentator.com/149/149_africa_exploitation.html

know the enemy...
More Than Humanitarianism: A Strategic U.S. Approach Toward Africa
Beyond Humanitarianism: What You Need to Know About Africa and Why It Matters
Editors:
Princeton N. Lyman, Adjunct Senior Fellow for Africa Policy Studies, Patricia Lee Dorff, Director, Council Publishing
Council on Foreign Relations Press
September 2007
http://www.cfr.org/publication/13535/

China in Africa: Implications for U.S. Policy
By Thomas J. Christensen, Deputy Assistant Secretary for East Asian and Pacific Affairs and James Swan, Deputy Assistant Secretary for African Affairs
Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Subcommittee on African Affairs Print
WASHINGTON, DC, Jun 4, 2008
http://www.africom.mil/getArticle.asp?art=1786
International concerns about China's increasing commercial and diplomatic presence in Africa must be considered within the wider context of questions about the ramifications of China's rise as a global economic and political actor. These questions are particularly acute because of our bilateral trade deficit with China and the perception that China's growing demand for natural resources is contributing upward pressure on global commodity prices during a potential global economic slowdown.
But the big questions for the United States in discussions of China-in-Africa are not based in concerns about the U.S.-China bilateral economic relationship but rather in our foreign policy priorities for Africa, which are promoting democracy, human rights, political stability, good governance, and sustainable economic development to improve the health, education and living standards of the continent's population. China already is making a substantial contribution to the continent's economic development, and we believe that it can play an even more important role in the future. In that spirit, we engage at multiple levels to influence Chinese actions on issues such as good governance, human rights, and transparency -- issues that we believe should play as prominent a role in Chinese Africa policy as in ours.
Source: U.S. Department of State

ASIA

AS U.S. PRESSURES CHINA FOR SUPPORT, U.S.-NGOS STIR UP ANTI-CHINA POT IN TIBET AGAIN
Bush seeks China's help on N. Korea at a yearly Asia-Pacific forum, where the world's economic collapse and the North Korea standoff dominated.
President George Bush on Friday sought China's help in pinning down North Korea to keep its shaky promises of nuclear disarmament.Bush and Chinese President Hu Jintao privately tried to push along a way to verify North Korea's nuclear declarations -- the latest hang-up in a showdown that has vexed six nations. North Korea has agreed to give up its nuclear weapons in exchange for coveted aid and diplomatic recognition, a deal arranged with the U.S., China, Russia, Japan and South Korea. But it has not fully allowed outside inspectors, and talks have repeatedly gone off course. Bush wants to emerge from the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum, also known as APEC, with firm plans for the six countries to meet in Beijing, perhaps in early December. The goal would be to formally agree on the way to verify North Korea's nuclear capabilities....
Privately, the two discussed a familiar range of topics, according to the White House: the economic crisis, conflicts of religious freedom, trouble spots such as Iran and Sudan....

Declassified documents shed new light on American support to Dalai Lama
Arthur J Pais in New York
http://www.rediff.com/news/1998/sep/16us.htm

Amid Brickbats From China's Government, Tibetans Will Ponder a New Strategy
The calm in many Tibetan areas of western China could soon crumble, depending on the outcome of a meeting of Tibetan exiles scheduled to begin Monday in India.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/17/world/asia/17tibet.html?th&emc=th

At Exile Meeting, Tibetans Debate Independence
By EDWARD WONG
Long associated with the Dalai Lama and his "middle way," the exile movement has reached a crossroads....“What are the pressures we can put on the Chinese? The pressures will come in any form.”... One of the biggest causes célèbres in the world, taken up by actors and rock stars, the movement is also losing international support because of China’s growing economic influence.
It is time to adopt desperate measures, some Tibetans here say. At the conclusion of this week’s meeting, a majority of the 581 delegates could very well recommend to the Dalai Lama and the government in exile that they start a formal independence movement — a situation that would alarm Chinese leaders while also confirming their long-held suspicions that exiled Tibetan leaders would never settle for anything but separation from China.... The Tibet issue has reached a critical point for the exiles following a mass uprising of Tibetans across western China last spring. Protests and riots in which ethnic Han Chinese were killed prompted a harsh crackdown by the Chinese government. Envoys of the Dalai Lama and Chinese officials held two further rounds of talks in a series of negotiations that began in 2002, but the Chinese announced last week that they would never make any concessions on genuine autonomy for the six million people in Tibetan regions of China. http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/22/world/asia/22tibet.html?th&emc=th

TIbetans Reaffirm a Conciliatory Path
NEW DELHI, India...the majority of delegates attending a conference of Tibetan exiles in northern India recommended Saturday that the Tibetan government in exile continue to adopt the Dalai Lama’s conciliatory approach to China, a Tibetan spokesman said.But in a sign of mounting frustration with fruitless negotiations with China, most delegates also advised the Tibetan government to end the dialogue until China shows real willingness to negotiate, the spokesman, Thubten Samphel, said in a telephone interview from Dharamsala, India. The Dalai Lama said he called the conference in Dharamsala, the seat of the Tibetan government in exile, so the Tibetan people could express democratically their opinions on the path forward. The conference was purely advisory, and the Tibetan Parliament will likely discuss the recommendations at its next session in March, Mr. Samphel said....he added, “there were also views expressing support for Tibetan independence.” http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/23/world/asia/23tibet.html?hp=&pagewanted...

U.S.-NGOS "SOFT POWER HUMAN RIGHTS" IN MYANMAR AIMED AT CHINA
China’s Burma Oil Conduit an ‘Abuse Threat’
China has been rumored to be building a deep-draft port at Kyaukphyu on Ramree Island, located just off western Burma’s Arakan coast, capable of handling oil supertankers. Xinhua news agency has more or less confirmed this by announcing that Burma will “provide an alternative route for China’s crude imports from the Middle East and Africa and ease the country’s worries of its over-dependence on energy transportation through the Strait of Malacca.”
Concurrent with the oil pipeline, China’s state-controlled energy giant China National Petroleum Corp (CNPC) is to build another pipeline through Burma costing just over $1 billion to pump gas from Burma’s offshore Shwe field.
International human rights groups have warned of the dangers to Burmese communities through which the pipelines will be built. “The oil and gas pipelines to China pose massive threats to human rights from Arakan to Shan states—forced relocation, forced labor and other impacts on local populations are likely from pipeline security battalions,” Wong Aung, coordinator of the Shwe Gas Movement, told The Irrawaddy on Friday.
It’s understood that the South Korean industrial giant Daewoo International, which is the main developer of the Shwe field, will partner with CNPC. “While CNPC will operate the gas pipeline, Daewoo International will still be culpable for the human rights impacts of the pipeline as the largest stakeholder in the Shwe Gas Project, of which the pipeline is a part,” said Matthew F Smith of the US-based EarthRights International (ERI). ERI recently named Daewoo in a complaint to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), of which South Korea is a member, for failing in Burma to adhere to corporate responsibility undertakings by OECD countries. “From what we understand, the CNPC will virtually own and control the operation of these pipelines even though it has been announced that the Myanmar Oil and Gas Enterprise will be the other shareholding partner,” regional energy industries analyst-consultant Sar Watana told The Irrawaddy on Friday.“These are major undertakings and underline China’s influence and utilization of Burma for its growing energy needs.”
http://www.irrawaddy.org/article.php?art_id=14673

...A humanitarian invasion of Myanmar is militarily doable, but we would have to accept significant responsibility for the aftermath....
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/14/opinion/14kaplan.html?th&emc=th

U.S. - SOROS 'soft power strategic non-violence'
Defiance undeterred: Burmese activists seek ways to oust the junta
By Amy Kazmin
December 6 2007
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/288da570-a425-11dc-a28d-0000779fd2ac.html?ncli...
http://www.aeinstein.org/organizationsffc4.html
In 1994 a visionary American appeared on the Thai-Burmese border, preaching non-violence to students from Burma who more than five years before had fled a crackdown on a pro-democracy uprising and were committed to armed struggle against their country’s military rulers. Gene Sharp, the Oxford-educated, Harvard-affiliated theoretician on peaceful resistance to repression, urged the rebels to embrace non-violent means to fight the junta. His acolyte, retired colonel Robert Helvey, a US military attaché in Rangoon in the 1980s, expounded on how to use military-style planning and strategising for peaceful dissent... Over the last three years, activists from the exile movement’s “political defiance committee” have trained an estimated 3,000 fellow-Burmese from all walks of life – including several hundred Buddhist monks – in philosophies and strategies of non-violent resistance and community organising. These workshops, held in border areas and drawing people from all over Burma, were seen as “training the trainers”, who would go home and share these ideas with others yearning for change. That preparation – along with material support such as mobile phones – helped lay the groundwork for dissident Buddhist monks in September to call for a religious boycott of the junta, precipitating the biggest anti-government protests in two decades... western help – from the Washington-based National Endowment for Democracy, George Soros’ Open Society Institute and several European countries... In 2006 and 2007, the congressionally funded NED, the largest financial supporter of the democracy movement, spent around $3.7m a year on its Burmese programme – up from $1.2m in 1996 and a mere $290,000 in 1994.
Since then, the generals – citing exiled opposition groups’ western connections, including foreign funding – have fulminated about what they describe as a CIA plot to instigate mass unrest and overthrow them. This week, Brig Gen Kyaw Hsan, the information minister, called protests a western plot to install a “puppet government” in Burma – a theme echoed by some critics of Washington, who have called the protesters a “human stage prop” in a US play for geostrategic control in Asia....
International donors and activists figure Burmese opposition groups received $8m-$10m in 2006 and again in 2007 from American and European funders for pro-democracy activities inside and outside Burma, including health and education projects. The political defiance trainer – asking not to be identified due to concerns about his security – likens western support for the opposition movement as a protective “shield” for dissidents struggling against a regime that monopolises profits from Burma’s rich natural resources, including natural gas...
Many trained activists are lying low inside, awaiting another chance to act, say exiles, who themselves are continuing their defiance training on the border....

Prison terms devastate Myanmar pro-democracy movement
BANGKOK, Thailand -- In a devastating week for Myanmar's democracy movement, dozens of its members have been sentenced to lengthy prison terms, as the military-ruled government locks away writers and Buddhist monks - as well as musicians, a poet and at least one journalist...Many of those sentenced were arrested following mass pro-democracy protests that were crushed by the ruling junta in September 2007....News of the sentences came mostly through activists and analysts... Amnesty International and other human rights groups say the junta holds more than 2,100 political prisoners, up sharply from nearly 1,200 in June 2007, before the pro-democracy demonstrations....
Twenty-three of those sentenced were members of the 88 Generation Students group, veterans of a brutally suppressed 1988 democratic uprising, who received prison terms of 65 years each, and a labor activist, Su Su Nway, was sentenced to 12 1/2 years. At least 10 people allied with the pro-democracy National League for Democracy party headed by Nobel Peace Prize laureate Aung San Suu Kyi received jail terms of eight to 24 years....
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/printer2/index.asp?ploc=t&refer=http://sea...

The Burma Project: A project of the Soros Foundation Open Society Institute.
http://www.soros.org/initiatives/bpsai

National Endowment for Democracy
The National Endowment for Democracy is a nonprofit organization that makes hundreds of grants each year to support prodemocracy groups in Africa, Asia, Central and Eastern Europe, Eurasia, Latin America, and the Middle East.

World Movement for Democracy || National Endowment for Democracy
1025 F Street, NW, Suite 800 | Washington DC, 20004 | 202/378-9700 | Fax 202/378-9889
Technical Help || Site map || Updated: Tue, 04 Nov 2008 20:33:16 GMT http://www.wmd.org/

Israel Lies About Selling Weapons to Myanmar/Burma Government:
Israeli military aid to Burmese regime: Jane's
Submitted by David Bloom
The Burmese junta currently shooting unarmed protestors received a cynical plea for restraint from the Israel government on Sept. 29. According to the Israeli paper Ha'aretz, the Israeli foreign ministry announced "Israel is concerned by the situation in Myanmar, and urges the government to demonstrate restraint and refrain from harming demonstrators." The article ended by pointing out that "Israel denies selling weapons to Burma or Myanmar." (Ha'aretz, Sept. 29)
Not true, according a March 1, 2000 report in the authoritative British publication Jane's Intelligence Review by William Ashton. The article, titled "Myanmar and Israel develop military," details how Israeli companies and the Israeli government have been supplying and developing weapons for the Burmese regime, and sharing intelligence:
In August 1997 it was revealed that the Israeli defence manufacturing company Elbit had won a contract to upgrade Myanmar's (then) three squadrons of Chinese-built F-7 fighters and FT-7 trainers. The F-7 is a derivative of the Mikoyan MiG-21 'Fishbed' jet fighter.
WWIVReport Proof of more Israeli weapons sold to Myanmar's ruling junta, machine guns and artillery pieces, in JANE's Intelligence Review.

"... Israel is the subcontractor for American arms to the 'Third World.' There is no terrible regime-Colombia, Guatemala, Uruguay, Argentina and Chile during the time of the colonels, Burma, Taiwan, Zaire, Liberia, Congo, Sierra Leone-there is not one that does not have a major military connection to Israel.... So this is the missing piece... Israel is a key member of the empire."

The new Gladio in action: postmodern coup completes testing new 'democratization' template
By Jonathan Mowat
Online Journal Contributing Writer
http://onlinejournal.com/Special_Reports/031905Mowat-1/031905mowat-1.htm...
"Gene Sharp started the seminar saying 'Strategic nonviolent struggle is all about political power'-I thought, 'Boy is this guy speaking my language,' that's what armed struggle is about—Col. Robert Helvey

...In November 1989, Case Western Reserve in Cleveland, Ohio, under the aegis of that university's "Program for Social Innovations in Global Management," began a series of conferences to review progress towards that strategic objective, which was reported on in "Human Relations" in 1991. There, Dr. Howard Perlmutter, a professor of "Social Architecture'' at the Wharton
School, and a follower of Dr. Emery, stressed that "rock video in Katmandu," was an appropriate image of how states with traditional cultures could be
destabilized, thereby creating the possibility of a "global civilization." There are two requirements for such a transformation, he added, "building internationally committed networks of international and locally committed organizations,'' and "creating global events" through "the transformation of a local event into one having virtually instantaneous international implications through mass-media."...

Col. Helvey reports, in a January 29, 2001, interview with film producer Steve York in Belgrade, that he first got involved in "strategic nonviolence" upon seeing the failure of military approaches to toppling dictators—especially in Myanmar, where he had been stationed as military attaché—and seeing the potential of Sharp's approach. According to B. Raman, the former director of India's foreign intelligence agency, RAW, in a December 2001 paper published by his institute entitled, "The USA's National Endowment For Democracy (NED): An Update," Helvey "was an officer of the Defence Intelligence Agency of the Pentagon, who had served in Vietnam and, subsequently, as the US Defence Attache in Yangon, Myanmar
(1983 to 85), during which he clandestinely organised the Myanmarese students to work behind Aung San Suu Kyi and in collaboration with Bo Mya's Karen insurgent group. . . . He also trained in Hong Kong the student leaders from Beijing in mass demonstration techniques which they were to subsequently use in the Tiananmen Square incident of June 1989" and "is now
believed to be acting as an adviser to the Falun Gong, the religious sect of China, in similar civil disobedience techniques." Col. Helvey nominally retired from the army in 1991, but had been working with Albert Einstein and Soros long before then...

A Civilian Revolution in Military Affairs
The emphasis on the use of new communication technologies to rapidly deploy small groups, suggests what we are seeing is civilian application of Secretary Donald Rumsfeld's "Revolution in Military Affairs" doctrine, which depends on highly mobile small group deployments "enabled" by "real time" intelligence and communications. Squads of soldiers taking over city blocks with the aid of "intelligence helmet" video screens that give them an instantaneous overview of their environment, constitute the military side. Bands of youth converging on targeted intersections in constant dialogue on cell phones constitute the doctrine's civilian application.

This parallel should not be surprising since the US military and National Security Agency subsidized the development of the Internet, cellular phones, and software platforms. From their inception, these technologies were studied and experimented with in order to find the optimal use in a new kind of warfare. The "revolution" in warfare that such new instruments permit has been pushed to the extreme by several specialists in psychological warfare. Although these military utopians have been working in high places (for example the RAND Corporation) for a very long time, to a large extent they only took over some of the most important command structures of the US military apparatus with the victory of the neoconservatives in the Pentagon of Donald Rumsfeld.

The new techniques of warfare include use of both lethal (violent) and nonlethal (nonviolent) tactics. Both ways are conducted using the same philosophy, infrastructure, and modus operandi in what is known as Cyberwar. For example, the tactic of swarming is a fundamental element in both violent and nonviolent forms of warfare...

International Center on Nonviolent Conflicts
The International Center on Nonviolent Conflicts has been heavily involved in the new Postmodern Coups, especially through its top figures, Dr. Peter Ackerman and Jack DuVall.
According to its website, the center "develops and encourages the use of civilian-based, nonmilitary strategies to establish and defend democracy and human rights worldwide." It "provides assistance in the training and deployment of field advisors, to deepen the conceptual knowledge and practical skills of applying nonviolent strategies in conflicts throughout the world where progress toward democracy and human rights is possible."

The most significant nonviolent conflicts in the world today, which may lead to "regime changes," it reports, are occurring in Myanmar, Zimbabwe, Chinese Tibet, Belarus, Ukraine, Palestine, Iran, and Cuba...

INFORMATION ON U.S. / NGO ROLE IN TIBET & MYANMAR
http://www.burbankdigest.com/node/88
http://www.burbankdigest.com/node/86
http://www.burbankdigest.com/node/84
http://www.burbankdigest.com/node/81
http://www.burbankdigest.com/node/80
http://www.burbankdigest.com/node/77

The geopolitical stakes of 'Saffron Revolution'
A relevant question is why the US government has such a keen interest in fostering regime change in Myanmar at this juncture. We can dismiss rather quickly the idea that it has genuine concern for democracy, justice, human rights for the oppressed population there. Iraq and Afghanistan are sufficient testimony to the fact Washington's paean to democacy is propaganda cover for another agenda. The question is, what would lead to such engagement in such a remote place as Myanmar? Geopolitical control seems to be the answer - control ultimately of the strategic sea lanes from the Persian Gulf to the South China Sea. The coastline of Myanmar provides naval access in the proximity of one of the world's most strategic water passages, the Strait of Malacca, the narrow ship passage between Malaysia and Indonesia. The Pentagon has been trying to militarize the region since September 11, 2001 on the argument of defending against possible terrorist attack. The US has managed to gain an airbase on Banda Aceh, the Sultan Iskandar Muda Air Force Base, on the northernmost tip of Indonesia. The governments of the region, including Myanmar, however, have adamantly refused US efforts to militarize the region. A glance at a map will confirm the strategic importance of Myanmar ...

Power projection against whom? China, perhaps?
As well, the Bush administration has offered India a deal to lift its 30-year nuclear sanctions and to sell advanced US nuclear technology, legitimizing India's open violation of the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. At the same time Washington accuses Iran of violating same, an exercise in political hypocrisy to say the least. Notably, just as the saffron-robed monks of Myanmar took to the streets, the Pentagon opened US-Indian joint naval exercises, "Malabar 07", along with armed forces from Australia, Japan and Singapore. The US showed the awesome muscle of its 7th Fleet, deploying the aircraft carriers USS Nimitz and USS Kitty Hawk, guided missile cruisers USS Cowpens and USS Princeton, and no less than five guided missile destroyers. US-backed regime change in Myanmar together with Washington's growing military power projection via India and other allies in the region is clearly a factor in Beijing's policy vis-a-vis Myanmar's present military junta. As is often the case these days, from Darfur to Caracas to Yangon, the rallying call of Washington for democracy ought to be taken with a large grain of salt.
F William Engdahl is the author of A Century of War: Anglo-American Oil Politics and the New World Order, Pluto Press Ltd. Further articles can be found at his website, www.engdahl.oilgeopolitics.net.

US asks China not to help Pakistan build new nuclear plants:
We have communicated our position clearly to our Chinese and Pakistani interlocutors at multiple levels in Washington, Beijing, and Islamabad, and have made plain our view that proposed cooperation on Chasma III and IV should not move forward,' Reynolds wrote.
http://story.irishsun.com/index.php/ct/9/cid/2411cd3571b4f088/id/433136/...

''China's Distant Threat to U.S. Dominance in Asia''
http://www.pinr.com/report.php?ac=view_report&report_id=87

China 'Frankenstein threat' to US
http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/62F45F67-0096-482B-8BD0-E72D7BA9C...
5/02/07

Rand Study Suggests U.S. Loses War With China
By wendell minnick
http://www.defensenews.com/story.php?i=3774348&c=AME&s=TOP

Economists with Guns: Authoritarian Development and U.S. Indonesian Relations, 1960-1968
October, 01 2008 By Jeremy Kuzmarov
http://www.zcommunications.org/zmag/viewArticle/18991
By Bradley R. Simpson; Stanford University Press, 2008, 376 pp.
In 1965, following a coup by General Suharto, the Indonesian military massacred upwards of 800,000 people and imprisoned an estimated million more in an attempt to liquidate the Communist Party (PKI). The United States government gave both moral encouragement and logistical support to the mass killings, including weaponry and lists of suspected PKI members to be targeted for assassination. Mainstream newspapers like the New York Times wrote laudatory pieces in praise of the genocidal Suharto government, referring to it as a "gleaming light in Asia" because of its fervent anticommunism and openness towards foreign investment and free trade. C.L Sulzberger added, in the crude racism of the day, that "the killing had attained a volume impressive even in violent Asia, where life is cheap."

Bradley R. Simpson's outstanding new book Economists with Guns provides chilling new evidence of U.S. complicity with what the CIA referred to as "the worst mass killings" since Hitler and Stalin. He comments that the United States "viewed the wholesale annihilation of the PKI and its civilian backers as an indispensable prerequisite to Indonesia's reintegration into the global political economy and the ascendance of a military modernizing regime." Building off of George and Audrey Kahin's invaluable study, "Subversion as Foreign Policy: The Secret Eisenhower-Dulles Debacle in Indonesia," Simpson details how the U.S. support for the 1965 coup and genocide was part of a much longer destabilization campaign directed against Achmed Sukarno—Indonesia's first post-independence president whom Washington opposed because of his socialist leanings and leadership of the non-aligned movement of Third World states. Simpson explores in considerable depth, furthermore, the ideology of U.S. policy elites and the symbiotic relationship that they developed with U.S.-trained Indonesian economists who served as key advisers to the Suharto government. They promoted a mix of privatization, authoritarian development, and "free market" capitalism. These policies served as a precursor to the structural adjustment paradigm promoted by the World Bank during the 1980s and 1990s and yielded similarly deleterious effects for the working-class and poor. They could only be imposed, accordingly, by fiat rather than popular consent.

Challenging the romanticized views of the Kennedy administration pervading popular culture and in the Obama campaign, one of Simpson's major contributions is to show its continuity from Eisenhower in seeking to illegally subvert Indonesian politics and undermine Sukarno. Through the CIA, the Eisenhower administration had funneled arms to dissident generals mounting a series of regional rebellions. Its cover was blown when an Air America pilot, Allen Pope, was captured after shelling an Indonesian village. During the Kennedy era, the special group on counter-insurgency, headed by Robert Kennedy, was influential in trying to build up the paramilitary capabilities of the Indonesian police, who were seen as pro-western.

The counter-insurgency lay the groundwork for the 1965 military coup, which the Johnson administration supported. These policies were developed by prominent intellectuals of the period and RAND Corporation analysts, such as Guy Pauker, an expert on Indonesia. They believed that through the imposition of order and stability, the military could be the most effective instrument in serving U.S. Cold War interests and promoting economic development and growth. This idea lay behind the United States alliance with Suharto and also shaped its involvement in an assortment of right-wing coups in Latin America and elsewhere during the 1960s and early 1970s.

Going beyond previous scholarship on modernization and the Kennedy administration, which often focuses solely on ideology, Simpson advances a political economy analysis, showing how intellectual ideas of modernization were consistent with the promotion of Western economic interests. Indonesia was particularly valued by policy elites. As a result of its mineral and oil wealth, it provided a bonanza to oil corporations like Caltex following the 1965 coup. This was true of many other firms, including General Motors and Morris and Knudsen (precursor to Halliburton) who had been threatened by Sukarno's movement towards nationalization and feared the strength of the PKI.

General Suharto was ultimately far more amenable to U.S. interests, resulting in his being embraced in spite of his atrocious human rights record. The long shadow of McCarthyism, furthermore, made his anti-communist pogroms highly appealing to many in the State and Defense Departments who expressed no outspoken criticism of the rising toll of bloodshed. As Howard Federspiel, a State Department staffer, commented, "No one cared as long as they were communists that were being butchered."

Simpson's last chapter focuses on the title of his book—the economists who worked as a technocratic elite under Suharto in ushering in the new order. He traces how they were influenced by their training at Berkeley and other Ivy League institutions in opening the country to foreign investors. As Simpson makes clear, their policy influence stemmed not from any popular consent, but rather the violence and repression of dissent on which Suharto's power was based. In an arrogant manner, furthermore, they believed that their specialized technical knowledge of economic theory made them supremely qualified to dictate public policy. Ultimately, while Indonesia did experience striking growth levels in its GDP under Suharto, a large majority of the population remained mired in poverty and destitution, lacking in basic social services. Their political freedoms, meanwhile, had since been eroded.
Simpson's book provides an important case study for U.S. foreign policy in the Cold War. It demonstrates how Washington was able to use foreign aid and training programs to effectively promote its interests through native clients who were swayed by Western ideals and their own power interests. It shows the cold-hearted calculations of U.S. policy-makers who were willing to support murderous violence and genocide in order to advance their objectives.
Simpson's book is significant in one other respect: it shows the perils of authoritarian models of economic development and the fallaciousness of the military modernization theories promoted by Kennedy-era intellectuals, which continue to hold credence among policy elites today.

Our Home-Grown Melamine Problem
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/17/opinion/17mcwilliams.html?th=&emc=th&p...
...For all the outrage about Chinese melamine, what American consumers and government agencies have studiously failed to scrutinize is how much melamine has pervaded our own food system. In casting stones, we’ve forgotten that our own house has more than its share of exposed glass...
A related area of agricultural concern is animal feed....To think American consumers are immune to this unscrupulous behavior is to ignore the Byzantine reality of the global gluten trade. Tracking the flow of wheat gluten around the world, much less evaluating its quality, is like trying to contain a drop of dye in a churning whirlpool....the United States imports most of its wheat gluten. Last year, for instance, the F.D.A. reported that millions of Americans had eaten chicken fattened on feed with melamine-tainted gluten imported from China. Around the same time, Tyson Foods slaughtered and processed hogs that had eaten melamine-contaminated feed. The government decided not to recall the meat. Only a week earlier, however, the F.D.A. had announced that thousands of cats and dogs had died from melamine-laden pet food. This high-profile pet scandal did not prove to be a spur to reform so much as a red herring. Our attention was diverted to Fido and away from the animals we happen to kill and eat rather than spoil...
But as all the caveats above indicate, these precautions will only go so far. Melamine, after all, points to the much larger relationship between industrial waste and American food production. Regulations might be lax when it comes to animal feed and fertilizer in China, but take a closer look at similar regulations in the United States and it becomes clear that they’re vague enough to allow industries to “recycle” much of their waste into fertilizer and other products that form the basis of our domestic food supply. As a result, toxic chemicals routinely enter our agricultural system through the back channels of this under-explored but insidious relationship.[...]