Avente Logos = Man

NYC authorities trying to freeze out OWS?

noreply@blogger.com (Dr. Ajith Rohan) — Sat, 29 Oct 2011 06:22:00 +0000

With the temperatures in New York plummeting toward freezing and snowfall predicted, city authorities removed six power generators and several dozen canisters of fuel from Occupy Wall Street protesters camped out in Zuccotti Park.

On Friday, more than 20 police and fire department officials entered the encampment and demanded that the protesters turn over anything that could be considered a fire hazard, citing safety concerns. That included even vegetable oil for cooking.

As RT’s Lucy Kafanov reports, many activists feel that it is a convenient way for city officials to crackdown on the movement and freeze them out as temperatures continue to drop.

Zuccotti Park in downtown Manhattan was the scene of the original Occupy Wall Street demonstration against economic inequality and corporate greed that started on September 17. Since then it has inspired similar protests across the world, from Tokyo to Toronto. The protesters often claim that they are the 99 per cent who are fed up with the greed of the 1 per cent.

“OWS points finger where it belongs”

Earlier this week, during a rally in Oakland, California, an Iraq war veteran was badly injured when police cracked down on thousands of activists.

“The police sometimes fail to recognize that when they attack non-violent protesters, it really exposes the corruption of the system and the fact that the police ultimately are fielded to protect the 1 per cent and not to protect the free-speech rights of the rest of us,” said David Korten, author of the book "When Corporations Rule the World."

He cautioned, however, against losing focus on then big picture. The movement, Korten said, is “pointing the finger where it belongs,” opening a conversation about the real source of pain felt by many across the US and the world.

“My excitement about the protest is the fact that they are finally drawing attention to the fact that we have an economy that is predominantly working for the 1 per cent of people who control the financial system,” he argued.

According to Korten, the OWS movement has quite clear demands.

“They want their economy back, their government back, they want their future back and they actually want a country that operates by principles of true democracy and real markets which work for everyone,” he said.

Journalist and writer Edward Murray says the incident in Oakland shows that the authorities are not in control of the police.

“The fact that police acted in the way that they did shows that there is a big discontent between the mayor’s statement and what they are doing there on the ground,” Murray said.

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The EU is dead: Long live the new EU

noreply@blogger.com (Dr. Ajith Rohan) — Sat, 29 Oct 2011 06:17:00 +0000

The creation of the Eurasian Union (EU-2) as recently mooted by Vladimir Putin could become an integral idea for Russia and allied nations of Eurasia. Writer and political scientist Igor Panarin says the concept might become reality as early as 2016.

I was very happy to watch Prime Minister Putin’s interview with the federal TV channels on October 17th, where he elaborated on the concept of forging a new Eurasia, which he had initially put forward in his article in Izvestia on October 3.

Eurasia is a great integrative continent, a continent of original civilizations that have never known slavery and that are ready for an innovative spiritual, ethical and technological leap. Therefore, the gradual formation of a Eurasian Union that would rely on the constructive experience of Eurasian unity through the millennia (Trubetskoy’s pan-European nationalism) and the inter-state building in the EU and the CIS looks like a promising prospect.

The Eurasian Union may have several centers (St. Petersburg for the north, Almaty for Asia, Kiev for Eastern Europe, Belgrade for the Balkans). It is an image of a future that I personally look forward to and hope to see it become reality by the year 2016.

Eurasian countries have been actively integrating their economies and defense capabilities on Russia’s initiative for the past few years.

Since January 1, 2011, the Customs Union (Russia, Belarus and Kazakhstan) has become a fully-fledged customs alliance with free circulation of goods, except for a few special categories of goods to which bans and restrictions still apply, such as narcotics. This has resulted in the rapid growth of trade within the Customs Union – by 43 per cent!!! The creation of the Customs Union increased economic growth by 50 per cent.

And now we see another ambitious yet practical step taken towards Eurasian economic integration. On October 18, 2011, after “prolonged and difficult yet constructive talks,” as Vladimir Putin said, the heads of the CIS governments signed the Free Trade Zone Treaty. Indeed, this will become a new foundation for trade and economic relations within the CIS. The document will remove the remaining barriers and restrictions on trade between the Commonwealth countries. The treaty will replace the largely outdated 1994 treaty. In fact, many Commonwealth countries have not ratified the old treaty, so it was practically of no effect. The CIS Free Trade Zone Treaty took 10 years to draw up and finalize, and it was not until the St. Petersburg summit that the parties were able to reach an agreement. Therefore, the meeting in St. Petersburg has marked a breakthrough for the Eurasian integration process.

“We had a long discussion with the heads of the delegations and eventually we achieved a result that was unexpected even for us. We made a few changes and agreed the final version of the treaty,” the Russian prime minister said. The Free Trade Zone Treaty was signed by Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Armenia, Kyrgyzstan, Moldova and Tajikistan. So far, Azerbaijan, Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan have refrained from joining the club. Vladimir Putin reminded everybody that trade within the CIS grew by 48 per cent in the first six months of 2011 and reached $134 billion. “Considering that we have this kind of growth even without having a free trade zone treaty, imagine how our trade could have grown, had this zone been in place,” the prime minister said.

The creation of the Eurasian Union (EU-2) could become Russia’s global geopolitical development project in the 21st century, an integral national idea for the Russian and allied nations of Eurasia.

I am convinced that Eurasian integration meets the interests of all the countries of the world. The first step, the establishment of the Customs Union, has been made. On October 18, 2011, the Free Trade Zone of the CIS countries was set up.

Eurasian integration also requires an integration ideology which should be worked out on the basis of the ethical and spiritual values of the Russian idea voiced by the great Russian philosophers (such as Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Nikolay Berdyaev and others).

Russia could contribute to starting a creative discussion on such an Integration Formula among experts from CIS countries by proposing the following Triad:

1. Spiritual values of Eurasian religions (Orthodox Christianity, Islam, Buddhism)
2. Russian Cosmism
3. Pan-Eurasian Nationalism

Eurasian integration can even find its future allies among the political elites of the United States, China, Germany, Italy and France.

My vision of the Eurasian Union is that of a voluntary inter-state integrated alliance of European and Asian nations promoting their economic cooperation based on spiritual and moral values, and on the cooperative dialogue of civilizations. It is essential that the EU-2 should develop a common spiritual and ethical information space that would encourage spirituality and creativity and promote economic and technological development. We must seek to overcome the serious ailments of Western civilization, which manifested themselves explicitly during the London riots of August 2011.

The EU-2 will need a common Eurasian internal market with unrestricted circulation of goods, capital and workforce between its member states and a common currency (based on the Russian ruble) with a common monetary regulator.

Russia has been blessed with a chance of not only restoring itself as a robust economic and spiritual power, but also offering a new integration model for the development of Eurasia, based on spirituality and a constructive dialogue of civilizations. The signing of the CIS Free Trade Zone Treaty on October 18, 2011, has promoted the Eurasian Union concept to the stage of a feasible project. I cannot but commend the Russian government for its focused, committed and efficient performance in bringing Eurasian integration one step closer to becoming reality.

Igor Panarin, for RT

The statements, views and opinions expressed in this column are those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of RT.

EU takes begging bowl to Beijing

noreply@blogger.com (Dr. Ajith Rohan) — Sat, 29 Oct 2011 06:14:00 +0000

The chief of the European Union bailout fund is holding talks with Chinese officials on China’s possible involvement in saving the euro. Klaus Regling also hinted that his fund could become part of a joint vehicle with the IMF.

China has always said it intended not to invest too heavily in helping out the European economy. However, EU bailout chief Klaus Regling says the Asian giant might change its mind if given the option of dealing with an IMF-backed vehicle.

Regling travelled to Beijing for talks with China's Central Bank and Finance Ministry on Friday, a day after European leaders reached an agreement on tackling Europe’s debt crisis.

The trip follows speculation that China might agree to help Europe out of its financial turmoil, with French President Nicolas Sarkozy talking up the idea of China helping rescue the struggling European currency.

"If the Chinese, who have 60% of global [currency] reserves, decide to invest in the euro instead of the dollar, why refuse?" said the French president.

China, for its part, favors funding attractive, solid, safe investment opportunities. And as Dr Baozhi Qu, a senior research fellow at the Skolkovo Institute for Emerging Market Studies in Beijing told RT, Europe has no other choice other than to ask China for help.

“They have no choice – they want to increase the size of the fund from 440 billion euros to one trillion, so they need to seek outside help,” he explained.

And China may potentially be interested in helping the EU because Europe is a major market for Chinese goods, so it stands to benefit from a stable European economy.

A senior adviser to the Chinese government has been quoted as saying that the last thing China wants is to "throw away the country's wealth and be seen as just a source of dumb money." And according to Dr Qu, there is some truth in this.

“China will take a lot of precautionary measures to make sure the money is returned. After all, the financial market evaluates the European Financial Stability Facility as a triple-A borrower, so I think the risk is under control for now,”he said.

Pierre Guerlain, a professor of political science at Paris West University Nanterre La Defense, agrees that China is interested in saving Europe, but at a price.

“They are not going to throw good money after bad to save Europe just because they love Europe,” he said. “If the Chinese helped, it would be for their advantage.”

Guerlain believes that China’s financial aid to the EU would mean a serious shift in the global economy.

“Actually, symbolically, it means: if you ask the Chinese to save Europe, you ask the Chinese to become the new financial hegemonic power,” he said. “And this is something very serious. “

“It’s ludicrous on some level, hard to understand,” he added. “It is as if both the US and Europe were organizing the transition to Chinese hegemonic power.”

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Gaddafi was set-up in an assassination plot: a double-cross-execution set-up

noreply@blogger.com (Dr. Ajith Rohan) — Fri, 28 Oct 2011 19:51:00 +0000

Daya Gamage – Asian Tribune Foreign News Desk presentation

Appearing on the Alex Jones Show October 24, investigative journalist Wayne Madsen said his sources in Libya provided information revealing Moammar Gaddafi was set-up in an assassination plot. Madsen’s information reveals that Gaddafi was set-up for a double-cross and execution. It also appears likely the arrival of Secretary of State Clinton in Libya may have played into the plot and convinced Gaddafi to surrender.

Early on October 19, Twitter messages from Gaddafi’s hometown of Sirte reported the presence of white flags across the devastated town. Flags were reported at multiple locations in the town, leaving some to believe the rebels were surrendering.

The use of white flags to signal surrender is an ancient tradition going back to the Eastern Han dynasty in China and the Roman Empire. Violating the widely accept convention is considered an act of extreme treachery.

Under both the Geneva and Hague protocols of international humanitarian law (IHL), it is forbidden to kill or injure persons hors de combat (outside of combat) and doing so constitutes a major war crime.

With the adoption of the 1977 Additional Protocols to the Geneva Conventions, the two strains of law began to converge, although provisions focusing on humanity could already be found in the Hague law (i.e. the protection of certain prisoners of war and civilians in occupied territories). However the 1977 Additional Protocols relating to the protection of victims in both international and internal conflict not only incorporated aspects of both the Law of The Hague and the Law of Geneva, but also important human rights provisions.

Basic rules of International Humanitarian Law (IHL)

1. Persons hors de combat (outside of combat) and those not taking part in hostilities shall be protected and treated humanely.

2. It is forbidden to kill or injure an enemy who surrenders or who is hors de combat.

3. The wounded and sick shall be cared for and protected by the party to the conflict which has them in its power. The emblem of the "Red Cross," or of the "Red Crescent," shall be required to be respected as the sign of protection.

4. Captured combatants and civilians must be protected against acts of violence and reprisals. They shall have the right to correspond with their families and to receive relief.

5. No one shall be subjected to torture, corporal punishment or cruel or degrading treatment.

6. Parties to a conflict and members of their armed forces do not have an unlimited choice of methods and means of warfare.

7. Parties to a conflict shall at all times distinguish between the civilian population and combatants. Attacks shall be directed solely against military objectives.

Investigative journalist Wayne Madsen’s sources said Gaddafi was told to surrender to the al-Qaeda rebels besieging Sirte before morning prayers at 5 am, but that it was decided to surrender after the sun was well up in the sky so the white flags would be clearly visible.

According to official accounts, however, Gaddafi was attempting to flee Sirte and avoid surrender.

He was wounded in a Predator drone attack and subsequently killed by crossfire, either from the rebels or Gaddafi supporters. Video footage released hours after the attack, however, clearly reveals a seriously wounded Gaddafi abused by a crowd of rebels. A choppy cell phone video then shows the body of the deposed leader.

A NATO rebel fighter later bragged that he had killed Gaddafi.

Both Madsen and Jones said the official cover story does not make sense. If Gaddafi wanted to escape Sirte, why didn’t he do it under the cover of darkness? It makes little sense to attempt an escape convoy in broad daylight in rebel territory with U.S. predator drones likely on constant patrol.

Madsen’s information reveals that Gaddafi was set-up for a double-cross and execution. Dead men, as they say, tell no tales.

The Alex Jones Show is a nationally syndicated news/talk show based out of Austin, TX. Syndicated radio journalist and documentary filmmaker Alex Jones has been on the front lines of the growing global information war from ground zero to the occult playgrounds of the elite.

-Asian Tribune-

Mahmoud Jibril and Gaddafi’s Wealth Redistribution Project

noreply@blogger.com (Dr. Ajith Rohan) — Fri, 28 Oct 2011 19:33:00 +0000

by Mahdi Darius Nazemroaya

from

Colonel Muammar Gaddafi symbolizes many things to many different people around the world. Love or hate the Libyan leader, under his rule Libya transformed from one of the poorest countries on the face of the planet into the country with the highest living standards in Africa. In the words of Professor Henri Habibi:

When Libya was granted its independence by the United Nations on December 24, 1951, it was described as one of the poorest and most backward nations of the world. The population at the time was not more than 1.5 million, was over 90% illiterate, and had no political experience or knowhow. There were no universities, and only a limited number of high schools which had been established seven years before independence.¹

Gaddafi had many grand plans. Many of them were of a pan-African nature. This included the formation of a United States of Africa.

Gaddafi’s Pan-African Projects

Colonel Gaddafi started the Great Man-Made River. The Great Man-Made River is a massive project to transform the Sahara Desert and reverse the desertification of Africa. The Great Man-Made River with its irrigation plans was also intended to help the agricultural sector in other parts of Africa. This project was one of the victims of NATO’s attacks on Libya.

Gaddafi also envisioned independent pan-African financial institutions. The Libyan Investment Authority and the Libyan Foreign Bank were important players in setting up these institutions. Gaddafi, through the Libyan Foreign Bank and the Libyan Investment Authority, was instrumental in setting up Africa’s first satellite network, the Regional African Satellite Communication Organization (RASCOM), to reduce African dependence on external powers.²

It is believed that his crowning achievement would have been the creation of the United States of Africa. The supranational entity would have been created through the African Investment Bank, the African Monetary Fund, and finally the African Central Bank. These institutions were all viewed with animosity by the European Union, United States, International Monetary Fund (IMF), and World Bank.

Gaddafi’s Wealth Redistribution Project

Gaddafi had a wealth redistribution project inside Libya. U.S. Congressional sources in a report to the U.S. Congress even acknowledge this. On February 18, 2011 the report stated:

In March 2008, [Colonel Gaddafi] announced his intention to dissolve most government administrative bodies and institute a Wealth Distribution Program whereby state oil revenues would be distributed to citizens on a monthly basis for them to administer personally, in cooperation, and via local committees. Citing popular criticism of government performance in a long, wide ranging speech, [he] repeatedly stated that the traditional state would soon be “dead” in Libya and that direct rule by citizens would be accomplished through the distribution of oil revenues. [The military], foreign affairs, security, and oil production arrangements reportedly would remain national government responsibilities, while other bodies would be phased out. In early 2009, Libya’s Basic People’s Congresses considered variations of the proposals, and the General People’s Congress voted to delay implementation.³

The Wealth Redistribution Project, along with the establishment of an anarchist political system, was viewed as a very serious threat by the U.S., the E.U., and a group of corrupt Libyan officials. If successful it could have created political unrest amongst many domestic populations around the world. Internally, many Libyan officials were working to delay the project.

Why Mahmoud Jibril Joined the Transitional Council

Amongst the Libyan officials who was opposed to this project and viewed it with horror was Mahmoud Jibril. Jibril was put into place by Saif Al-Islam Gaddafi. Because of strong influence and advice from the U.S. and the E.U., Saif Al-Islam selected Jibril to transform the Libyan economy and impose neo-liberal economic reforms.

Jibril would become the head of two bodies in the Libyan Arab Jamahiriya, the National Planning Council of Libya and National Economic Development Board of Libya. While the National Economic Development Board was a regular ministry, the National Planning Council would actually put Jibril in a government position above that of the equivalent of the prime minister–the Office of the General-Secretary of the People’s Committee of Libya. Jibril actually was one of the forces that opened the doors for privatization and poverty in Libya.

About six months before the conflict erupted in Libya, Mahmoud Jibiril actually met with Bernard-Henri Lévy in Australia to discuss forming the Transitional Council and deposing Gaddafi.⁴ He described Gaddafi’s Wealth Redistribution Project as “crazy” in minutes and documents from the National Economic Development Board of the Libyan Arab Jamahiriya.⁵ Jibril believed that the masses were not fit to govern themselves and that an elite should control the fate and wealth of any nation. What Jibril wanted to do is downsize the government and layoff a large segment of the public sector, but in exchange increase government regulations in Libya. He would also always cite Singapore as the perfect example of a neo-liberal state. While in Singapore, which he regularly visited, it is likely that he meet with Bernard-Henri Lévy.

When the problems erupted in Benghazi, Mahmoud Jibril immediately went to Cairo, Egypt. He told his colleagues that he would be back in Tripoli soon, but he had no intention of returning. In reality, he went to Cairo to meet the leaders of the Syrian National Council and Lévy. They were all waiting for him to coordinate the events in Libya and Syria. This is one of the reasons that the Transitional Council has recognized the Syrian National Council as the legitimate government of Syria.

Mahmoud Jibril is now the prime minister of the Transitional Council of Libya. The opposition of Jibril to Gaddafi’s Wealth Redistribution Project and his elitist attitude are amongst the reasons he conspired against Gaddafi and helped form the Transitional Council. Is this ex-regime official, who has always been an open supporter of the Arab dictators in the Persian Gulf, really a representative of the people?

Henri Pierre Habib, Politics and Government of Revolutionary Libya (Montmagny, Québec: Le Cercle de Livre de France Ltée, 1975), p.1. [↩]
Regional African Satellite Communication Organization, “Launch of the Pan African Satellite,” July 26, 2010. [↩]
Christopher M. Blanchard and James Zanotti, “Libya Christopher M. Blanchard and James Zanotti, “Libya: Background and U.S. Relations,” Congressional Research Service, February 18, 2011,” Congressional Research Service, February 18, 2011, p.22. [↩]
Private discussions with Mahmoud Jiribil’s co-workers inside and outside of Libya. [↩]
Internal private documents from the National Economic Development Board [↩]

China wants clarity on EU bailout fund

noreply@blogger.com (Dr. Ajith Rohan) — Fri, 28 Oct 2011 19:30:00 +0000

China says it wants more information before investing in European bailout fund, as scheme's head arrives in Beijing.

China has said it wants more clarity before investing in an EU bailout fund, as the head of the scheme held talks in Beijing to try to win the help of the world's second-largest economy.
Friday's announcement came after earlier expectations for a strong commitment from Beijing over Europe's debt crisis.
The Financial Times, a UK newspaper, had quoted a source saying China could inject more than $100bn to help bail the EU out, ahead of the visit to Beijing by Klaus Regling, the head of the European Financial Stability Facility (EFSF).
But publicly, Beijing has been noncommittal and Chinese state media said Europe must take responsibility for the crisis and not rely on "good Samaritans" to save the continent from its fiscal woes.

"If the Chinese, who have 60 per cent of global reserves, decide to invest in the euro instead of the dollar, why refuse?"
- Nicolas Sarkozy, French president

Regling said Europe was trying to come up with new mechanisms for investment in the EFSF in a bid to restore market confidence in the debt-laden region.
But China's vice finance minister said his country would wait for more details before committing to invest in the fund.
"We need to wait for the technicalities to be clear and also to carry out serious studies before we can decide on investment," said Zhu Guangyao.

Ren Xianfang, an IHS Global Insight analyst, said China was likely to attach a number of conditions to any investment, such as greater market access in Europe and silence on the strength of the yuan, which critics argue is undervalued.
Speculation
There have been calls from Europe for China and other developing economies to invest in the bailout fund, with intense speculation that Beijing will agree to deploy some of its huge foreign-exchange reserves.
But bailing out developed European countries would be a hard sell for the Communist leaders of a country where soaring housing and food costs are hurting millions of poor households and many exporters are struggling.
Regling, in China a day after Europe reached a last-ditch agreement to tackle the region's worst crisis in decades, said there was no prospect of reaching a deal during his talks with China's central bank and finance ministry.
But he said the EFSF was looking at new ways to secure additional investment following the decision to boost the fund's resources to $1.4 trillion.
Hours after Thursday's deal was struck, French President Nicolas Sarkozy telephoned China's President Hu Jintao, later giving a television interview in which he defended the idea of asking China to bail out Europe.
"If the Chinese, who have 60 per cent of global reserves, decide to invest in the euro instead of the dollar, why refuse?" said Sarkozy.
Regling said he would discuss with China and other investors how to structure a special purpose investment vehicle and explore the possibility of linking it to the International Monetary Fund.
China, which has $3.2 trillion in foreign exchange reserves, was "interested in finding attractive, solid, safe investment opportunities," he told a media briefing.
The EFSF was set up in May 2010 and is designed to provide financial assistance to European economies at risk of default, such as Greece, Ireland and Portugal.
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'We Are All Scott Olsen' - Occupy movement's new battlecry

noreply@blogger.com (Dr. Ajith Rohan) — Fri, 28 Oct 2011 19:22:00 +0000

People hold photos of Scott Olsen, an Iraq veteran who was severely injured during a standoff between Occupy Oakland and Oakland police, during a candlelight vigil in front of Oakland City Hall on October 27, 2011 in Oakland, California (Justin Sullivan / Getty Images / AFP)

With wounded veteran Scott Olsen unable to speak following an assault from police during a raid on Occupy Oakland earlier this week, thousands of Americans across the country are lending their voice to the movement to do the talking for the hero.

Olsen served two tours in Iraq with no injuries. It wasn’t until he attended a peaceful protester earlier this week that he nearly lost his life.

Corporal Scott Olsen, 24, was wounded Tuesday night after a non-lethal projectile, believed to be fired from a Bay Area policeman, was fired at his face. Suffering from a fractured skull and swelling on the brain, Olsen remains hospitalized yet stable. His story, however, has only become stronger in the days since he ended up in a Northern California emergency room. Days later, thousands of demonstrators with Occupy Wall Street offshoots from coast to coast and even abroad are rallying with the message that “We Are All Scott Olsen!” offering their support for their brother that was brought down for defending his country.

Hours after he was ushered off the streets of Oakland with blood pouring from his head, a vigil was held in Washington DC’s Freedom Plaza Wednesday in solidarity. Similar demonstrations are now spreading to other cities as the Occupy Wall Street movement itself is in its second month and many of the locales offering meeting places are about to see their first weekend of inclement weather since the demonstrations for sprung from Zuccotti Park in Lower Manhattan.

Three days after he was shot, Olsen is making a miraculous recovery from a hospital bed in the San Francisco Bay. A spokesman for Highland General hospital confirmed Friday morning that Olsen offered up a “very large smile” to his parents as they visited bedside and added that he can write and hear but is still having difficulty speaking.

Though he didn’t expect his involvement in Tuesday’s protest to turn him into a hero, his story is resonating in Americans, including his fellow vets.

“I wish I had the vocabulary to describe the plethora of emotions I felt,” Sgt. Jay Gentile tells RT. Following the incident in Oakland, Gentile, an Iraq War vet from New Jersey, posted a photo of himself to the Internet, holding an image of his wounded comrade in one hand and a note reading ”you did this to my brother” in the other.

“I knew that I wasn’t the only person that felt that way,” he says. “There are just honestly no words to express the bond that Marines feel for each other. This goes across the service, but it’s very specific for the Marines,” whom he added think of each other “as brothers and sisters — and we mean it.”

In Manhattan, protesters with the original Occupy Wall Street camp led a chant of "New York is Oakland, Oakland is New York” to show their solidarity. A vigil in support of Olsen was scheduled this afternoon for 400 miles west in Buffalo and, across the pond, The Nation reports that Olsen’s image decorates signs held up at General Assembly meetings in London, England.

And though these marches and meetings in support of Olsen and his Oakland brethren remain peaceful and calm, on the Internet activists want to know what really happened on Tuesday night. Now members of the hacking collective Anonymous are offering a cash reward for information pertaining to the officer that shot Olsen in the face.

"These are among the most disturbing and criminal acts to be have been proven on the part of US police since NYPD officers were outed as having routinely planted drugs on suspects earlier this month,” an Anonymous official writes this week. “The time has come to retaliate against Oakland police via all non-violent means, beginning with doxing of individual officers and particularly higher-ups involved in the department's conduct of late."

For the name of the guilty officer, Anonymous is offering $1,000, “no questions asked.”

And for Sgt. Gentile, all he asks is that people of the world, Marine vets or not, work to keep the cause going.

“We are all here on the planet together and, like it or not, we are all in this together,” he tells RT. “I’m thankful an proud to be associated with the people in New York and cities all across this country that share this bond that I share with Corporal Olsen.”

Marches, rallies, General Assembly meetings and vigils will continue in over 100 cities in America this weekend.

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US eyes blackout of 'rogue websites'

noreply@blogger.com (Dr. Ajith Rohan) — Fri, 28 Oct 2011 19:20:00 +0000

New anti-piracy legislation placed before the US House of Representatives would allow copyright law to be used to close down websites. Sites such as Wikileaks would be vulnerable, sparking fears that the bill could be used to stifle free speech.

The bill, submitted on Wednesday, is called the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA), and will be reviewed by the House Judiciary Committee on November 16.

If approved, SOPA will enable individuals or organizations claiming copyright to effectively block any website they suspect of infringing their rights. They would simply send complaints to advertisers, payment services, search engines and even internet service providers operating in the US, who would stop doing business with the site in question.

No court decision would be necessary, and third parties would be granted immunity from any reprisals resulting from their voluntary action against the alleged offenders. Not-for-profit websites would not be spared.

The lawmakers behind the “rogue websites” bill say it would deal a blow to online pirates and producers of counterfeit brand products like designer fashion items or medicines, reports AFP.

"The bill prevents online thieves from selling counterfeit goods in the US, expands international protection for intellectual property, and protects American consumers from dangerous counterfeit products," House Judiciary Committee chairman Lamar Smith, a Republican from Texas, said in a statement.

Howard Berman, a Democrat from California who co-sponsored the legislation, said it is "an important next step in the fight against digital theft and sends a strong message that the United States will not waiver in our battle to protect America's creators and innovators."

This stance is not shared by some human rights groups, however. The Washington-based Center for Democracy and Technology (CDT) says the House bill "raises serious red flags.

"It includes the most controversial parts of the Senate's Protect IP Act, but radically expands its scope," the CDT said in a statement. "Any website that features user-generated content or that enables cloud-based data storage could end up in its crosshairs.”

There are fears that the legislation could be exploited to gag political rivals. Recently, the controversial whistleblower website WikiLeaks had to stop publishing new leaks due to what they called an unlawful financial blockade by payment services and banks. The move leaves open the possibility of the US State Department copyrighting cables to give them protection under SOPA.

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Gaddafi’s son – new nightmare for Western leaders

noreply@blogger.com (Dr. Ajith Rohan) — Fri, 28 Oct 2011 19:17:00 +0000

Col. Gaddafi is dead and details of his murky deals with Western leaders have been buried with him. But Gaddafi’s son is safe and reportedly ready to surrender to the International Criminal Court, where he may spill secrets of his father’s regime.

The court’s chief prosecutor, Luis Moreno-Ocampo, said on Friday he is in contact with Saif al-Islam Gaddafi through intermediaries. He has reportedly crossed the border from the Libyan desert into Niger. If he does eventually stand a trial, he could spill some of the secrets of the regime's hidden dealings with the same governments that helped topple his father.

From the perspective of Blair, Sarkozy and many others, Muammar Gaddafi was a man who knew too much. Expediency dictated that he be buried along with his secrets.

“I think there were tremendous sighs of relief all over capitals in Western Europe. This is somebody who cut all sorts of deals, particularly with the French, but also the British, the Italians and the Americans as well,” Conn Hallinan, a columnist for Foreign Policy in Focus, told RT.

“I think they did not want him put on trial for any reason, and I am not in the slightest bit surprised that he was captured alive and that he very quickly ended up dead,” said Hallinan.

Gaddafi’s return from diplomatic exile was marked by hugs, handshakes and kisses from leaders of countries who had previously denounced him as evil. Now he is silenced. But the suspicion swirling around those who once laid out the welcome mat is far from buried.

“Gaddafi has gone to the grave taking those secrets with him. But the shadow that dealing with him has cast over Tony Blair’s reputation and Nicolas Sarkozy’s won’t go away,” says Mark Almond, visiting professor of International Relations at Bilkent University in Ankara.

“And precisely because of this uncertain situation, the suspicion will probably grow rather than shrink. So it may actually ironically lead to a situation where they can’t, in fact, prove their innocence,” he suggests.

Britain’s then prime minister, Tony Blair, was instrumental in Gaddafi’s rehabilitation, bringing him in from the cold in 2007. But Blair did not leave Libya empty-handed. Trade between the two countries flourished; so did the cozy relationship. There were six more secret meetings after Blair left office. His people denied they were about releasing the Lockerbie bomber, Abdel Baset al Megrahi, in exchange for lucrative Libyan deals.

“I regret, myself, enormously that Gaddafi was butchered,” says British Labor Party MP Denis Macshane.

“He should have been sent to the International Criminal Court, put on trial, and forced to answer questions about all the terrible things he did. And if it damaged contemporary world leaders, or previous regimes and leaders – tough. We need to know what is done in our name with bad people,” Macshane believes.

Meanwhile, some details of the murky dealings have already come to the surface, sullying the reputation of one of Britain's leading universities.

The London School of Economics agreed a deal with the Gaddafi regime to educate hundreds of its future civil servants in return for more than $3 million. Its director was forced to resign, and now Tripoli University is demanding the money back.

French President Nicholas Sarkozy, in his turn, was never shy of greeting Gaddafi – even letting him pitch his tent in the Elysee Palace as an apparent reward for bankrolling Sarkozy’s path to the presidency.

But Gaddafi’s son, Saif al-Islam, may now become a new nightmare for the West’s current and former leaders.

“Sarkozy must give back the money he took from Libya to finance his electoral campaign. We funded it and we have all the details and are ready to reveal everything,” Saif stated in an interview with Euronews TV channel.

“Saif’s going to have a lot of information on that. I think Tony Blair intervened to help Saif get his dodgy PhD degree from the London School of Economics when a lot of that degree was apparently plagiarized. So there’s a lot of things that have gone on that Saif al-Gaddafi knows about,” Stephen Brown, an independent journalist, told RT.

Saif Gaddafi intends to answer for his own actions in Libya’s drawn-out battle for control. But it is what he could reveal about the diplomatic deals hammered out by his father that is bringing Western power-players out in a cold sweat.

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Biggest success? NATO proud of Libya op which killed thousands

noreply@blogger.com (Dr. Ajith Rohan) — Fri, 28 Oct 2011 19:15:00 +0000

With Gaddafi dead and its “military job now done,” NATO has declared its campaign in Libya one of the “most successful in NATO history.” However, untold casualties and a country devastated by war call into question the alliance’s notion of success.

Coming through on last week’s promise to end military operations in Libya, on Friday NATO Secretary-General Anders Fogh Rasmussen declared the military operation in Libya would be wrapped up on October 31, the Associated Press (AP) reports.

His announcement came a day after the United Nations Security Council passed a resolution to lift the no-fly zone over Libya.

Speaking from Brussels, Rasmussen said that following the death of Gaddafi, military operations were able to wind down quickly, noting triumphantly that “Operation Unified Protector is one of the most successful in NATO history,'' as cited by AP.

US President Barack Obama was equally full of praise for the operation. Speaking on the popular late night talk show The Tonight Show with Jay Leno, Obama told the host operations in Libya "only cost us a billion dollars" and no US troops were killed or injured.

The price of success

Speaking on March 31, Bishop Giovanni Innocenzo Martinelli, Apostolic Vicar of Tripoli, reported that “the so-called humanitarian air raids have taken the lives of dozens of civilians in various areas of Tripoli.” The senior cleric went on to say “in the district of Buslim, a building collapsed because of the bombing, killing 40 people,” as cited by Agenzia Fedes, the information service of the Pontifical Mission Societies.

However, despite the decision to turn a blind eye to the casualty figures, one of the few instances the alliance could not deny culpability in was a June 19 NATO missile strike that resulted in the deaths of nine civilians.

Attacks of this nature were happening on a daily basis throughout the intense bombing campaign.

Speaking in September, the health minister in the new Libyan government estimated that at least 30,000 people had been killed and 50,000 wounded during the first six months of the war. Some, however, have estimated that the real figure could be much higher.

Writing back in September, Thomas C. Mountain, an independent journalist currently living in Africa who was a member of the 1st US Peace Delegation to Libya in 1987, estimated that NATO had dropped over 30,000 bombs on Libya, with an average of "two civilians killed in each attack.” Thus, Mountain has estimated that some 60,000 Libyan civilians had been killed by NATO air strikes alone by the end of August.

Shortly thereafter, when rebel forces began the siege of Sirte, Moussa Ibrahim, a spokesman for the now-deceased Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi, told Reuters via telephone on September 19 that "in the last 17 days, more than 2,000 residents of the city of Sirte were killed in NATO air strikes."

As of today, some 26,000 NATO sorties and 9,600 strike missions have been conducted by NATO, with an average of four bombs used per attack.

A country in ruins

Though it may never be known just how many died in “the most successful operation in NATO history,” the alliance has shown little interest in rebuilding a nation that has in many ways been wrecked by its seven-month military campaign.

According to Palestinian human rights activist Shawan Jabarin, “The military operation damaged everything in Libya, not just Gaddafi and his regime, but the society [as well].”

Former MI5 agent Annie Machon went further, telling RT that NATO’s intervention had plunged Libya back into the Stone Age.

“They’ve had free education, free health, they could study abroad. When they got married they got a certain amount of money. So they were rather the envy of many other citizens of African countries. Now, of course, since NATO’s humanitarian intervention, the infrastructure of their country has been bombed back to the Stone Age,” Machon asserted.

“They will not have the same quality of life. Women probably will not have the same degree of emancipation under any new transitional government. The national wealth is probably going to be siphoned off by Western corporations. Perhaps the standard of living in Libya might have been slightly higher than it is now in America and the UK with the recession,” she concluded.

Outside of the damage done to Libya’s infrastructure and economy, Thursday’s UN resolution also expressed"concern at the proliferation of arms in Libya and its potential impact on regional peace and security," as cited by Reuters.

As the circumstances surrounding Muammar Gaddafi’s death remain a mystery following his capture by a mob on the streets of Sirte, analysts fear that armed groups answering to no central authority could prove to be the new ruling model for some time to come in NATO’s newly-liberated Libya.

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U.N. Tally Excluded Most Afghan Civilian Deaths in Night Raids

noreply@blogger.com (Dr. Ajith Rohan) — Thu, 27 Oct 2011 21:07:00 +0000

by Gareth Porter and Shah Noori

IPS — A July United Nations report asserting that only 30 civilians died in targeted raids in Afghanistan during the first six months of 2011 reflected only a very small fraction of night raids in which civilians were killed, according to officials of the independent Afghan commission which had co-produced the 2010 report on civilian casualties with the U.N. Mission.

The report on civilian casualties by the United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA) attributed 80 percent of the 1,462 civilian deaths it counted during the six-month period to the Taliban- mostly from improvised explosive devices – and only 14 percent of them to “”Pro-Government Forces”.

The report credited the U.S.-NATO military command with reducing civilian casualties in night raids during the six-month period by 15 percent compared with the same period last year.

But officials of the Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission, which collaborated with UNAMA on its 2010 civilian casualties report, told IPS that the number of night raids that UNAMA investigated in some fashion could only have been a very small proportion of the total number of targeted raids with civilian casualties.

A leading official of the independent commission has also objected publicly to UNAMA’s exclusion from the total in last year’s report of most of the allegations of civilian deaths in raids that had been brought to its attention.

The AIHRC officials, who have personal experience on the issue of civilian casualties from night raids, told IPS that most night raids are carried out in districts that are dominated by the Taliban. In those districts, people are not able to file complaints and usually are not even aware of any opportunity to do so, the sources said.

The AIHRC sources requested anonymity because they are not authorized to talk to the news media about the matter.

In Helmand province, the raids are believed to be concentrated in the districts where the Taliban are strongest, such as Baghran, Baghni, Sangin and Nahr-e-Saraj, the sources explained. The same is true for Kandahar, Zabul, Uruzgan and other southern and eastern provinces where the Taliban has a strong presence, the AIHRC sources said.

The commission received only nine complaints directly from families of those who had been killed or injured in a night raid during the first six months of 2011, according to the AIHRC sources.

In fact, the commission gets most of its information about civilian casualties in night raids not from complaints from people in the area where the raids take place but from talking with people in detention, the sources said.

But that information is fragmentary, according to the sources, because the commission has access to only a fraction of the detainees in the Afghan prison system, and because the detainees themselves are only aware of some of the cases.

UNAMA has seven regional offices, but travel and contact between those offices and the districts in which the Taliban are strongest are limited.

Daphne Eviatar, who has monitored human rights in Afghanistan for the U.S.-based group Human Rights First, agreed with the assessment that the families of victims in many districts would be unlikely to file complaints about civilian casualties from night raids.

“I’m not sure who they would complain to,” said Eviatar.

UNAMA’s six-month report conceded that, “Given both limitations associated with the operating environment and limited access to information, UNAMA may be under-reporting the night raids involving civilian casualties.”

In a February 2011 interview with researchers on a study by the Open Society Foundations and The Liaison Office, an unnamed “international human rights monitor” went even further. The unnamed individual admitted to “underreporting of night raids because many of the areas in which they took place are inaccessible and the civilians are difficult to verify.”

UNAMA is the only international entity that has been reporting totals of civilian casualties in night raids.

The UNAMA report for the first six months indicates that the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) had refused repeatedly to provide information on the number of night raids it had carried out.

Nevertheless, figures provided by ISAF to the Washington Post and to blogger Bill Roggio show a total of 2,020 targeted raids in the six-month period from early May through early November 2010, killing roughly 2,000 “insurgents”.

U.S. military officers also told the researchers for the Open Societies Foundation study that shots had been fired in only 20 percent of night raids. That would mean that 2,000 people were killed in just over 400 raids in which shots were fired during the six months — an average of five people per shooting incident.

The vast majority of night raids target a single individual. So the available statistics on night raids suggest that the vast majority of those killed in the raids had not been targeted.

UNAMA acknowledged in the report that ISAF does not apply the same definition of “civilian” based on international humanitarian law that UNAMA applies in counting civilian casualties.

U.S. Special Forces officers belonging to a unit that had killed nine election workers along with a former Taliban insurgent they had mistakenly believed was the Taliban shadow governor of Takhar province in September 2010 told former BBC reporter Kate Clark last December that anyone found in the company of a person who is targeted is regarded as an insurgent as well.

The very broad definition of “insurgent” used by ISAF in releasing figures on the number killed in night raids, along with statistics on raids coming from ISAF itself, suggests that most of those killed in night raids would be considered civilians under international humanitarian law criteria.

UNAMA would not allow IPS to interview the head of its human rights office, Georgette Gagnon, about the 2011 report, even though she had told IPS she could do an interview during the week of August 22.

In response to questions e-mailed by IPS, however, Gagnon said that UNAMA had investigated a total of 89 night raids in which casualties had been alleged, and that it had rejected the allegations of civilian deaths in 58 of those cases.

AIHRC and UNAMA, which co-produced the 2010 report, had clashed over UNAMA’s decision to put the number of civilian deaths in night raids at 82 in that report.

Nader Nadery, a commissioner of the AIHRC, revealed in an interview with IPS after the report was published that UNAMA had based the figure of 82 deaths on only 13 night raids in which the civilian deaths had been verified to UNAMA’s satisfaction. Nadery said the total had excluded alleged civilian deaths in 60 other raids.

UNAMA did not partner with AIHRC in producing the 2011 six-month report.

In a recent interview with IPS, Nadery estimated that 462 civilian deaths had occurred in all of the night raids in 2010 about which the commission had obtained some information.

The latest report’s methodological section confirms that alleged civilian deaths are not included in UNAMA’s total if the civilian status of any of the victims in an incident is uncertain.

Gagnon told IPS that the mission’s decisions on such cases “are based on firsthand accounts for the vast majority of the incidents investigated”. She would not say, however, how many of the decisions to reject allegations were made on the basis of eyewitness accounts.

Gagnon also acknowledged that ISAF and Afghan officials had challenged some allegations, but would not reveal how many of the allegations that had been rejected fell into that category.

• Shah Noori reported from Afghanistan

From

We Shall Not Be Moved Police repression, official mendacity and why OWS has already overcome

noreply@blogger.com (Dr. Ajith Rohan) — Thu, 27 Oct 2011 21:01:00 +0000

by Phil Rockstroh

Until recent events proved otherwise, the hyper-commercialized surface of the corporate state gave the appearance of being too diffuse–too devoid of a center to pose a threat of totalitarian excess. Accordingly, as of late, due to the violent response to OWS protesters by local police departments in Oakland, Atlanta, Chicago, and in other U.S. cities, the repressive nature of the faux republic is beginning to be revealed.

Behind the bland face of the political establishment (purchased by the bloated profits of the plundering class) are riot cops, outfitted and armed with the accoutrements of oppression, who are ready and willing to enforce the dictates of the elitist beneficiaries of the degraded status quo. In deed and action, as of late, the police state embedded within neo-liberal economic oligarchy is showing its hyper-authoritarian proclivities to the world.

In general, existence within the present societal structure inflicts on the individual a sense of atomization and its concomitant feelings of alienation, vague unease, free floating anxiety and anomie. The coercion is implicit and internalized.

Because of its mundane, ubiquitous nature, the system is reliant on an individual’s sense of isolation (even ignorance of the existence of the structure itself) to remain in place. In short, the exploitive system continues to exist because its denizens are bereft of other models of comparison.

The public commons inherent in the OWS movement provides a model of comparison. Apropos, that is why we are beginning to receive reports such as the following:

On Tuesday Oct. 25, 2011, the Oakland Tribune reported that police raided and demolished the local OWS encampment after declaring the area a “crime scene”. This is revelatory regarding the character of the enforcers of the present order: Those in positions of power within a police state view freedom of assembly and freedom of expression as a punishable offense.

It is a given that: Authoritarian personality types take particular umbrage when citizens are expressing their displeasure with official abuses of power and begin to do so in an effective manner.

Too many in the U.S. have bought the fiction that the nation was, is and will remain a democratic republic. Therefore, by drawing its brutal operatives and mendacious apologist into the open, the state will reveal itself in all its ugliness. As a result, all concerned will be able to observe the true nature of the police/national security/oligarchic state in place in the U.S.

Ideally, few illusions will remain intact regarding the ruthless, brutal forces against which we struggle.

Moreover, the actions of the police in regard to public protest are premeditated tactics aimed at the suppression of the right to public assembly. The goal of the power brokers, their political operatives and police enforcers is to render one’s (allegedly) constitutionally guaranteed right to dissent too prohibitive to be practiced.   

The economically dispossessed and members of minority communities have known for many years what OWSers are suffering, presently, at the hands of official power and its enforcers.   

In turn, individual police officers are well aware of whom they are sworn to protect (and it isn’t those who desire to exercise their rights to free assembly and free speech). In most cases, if an individual police officer ever refused an order to make an unconstitutional arrest, he/she would be committing an act of careercide; their chance of advancement within the department would have to be scraped off the sidewalk on the spot and transported to the city morgue.

Are you willing to leave the confines of your comfort zone and go to jail for justice?

Rarely, does reform arrive without the arrest of frontline agitators. Power does not yield without a fight, without attempting to silence dissent by brutality and forced detention. The powerful demand that those of us who notice their excesses and crimes be placed out of sight and out of mind.

Hence, in Oakland, the local corporate news affiliates, to their shame, turned off their cameras when the violent attacks and mass arrest of protesters began.

Are you willing to risk injury to body and reputation to bear witness? The survival of the OWS movement depends on having bodies on the ground and eyes (as well as cameras) on the thugs in uniform.

True to form, a servile corporate media will proclaim how unsightly dissenters are, inferring that sensible folk, simply as a matter of good taste and public propriety should disregard the protesters’ entreaties and that these malcontents and cranks should be denied entrance into the realm of legitimate discourse, that these disheveled interlopers be barred by walls of silence.

To be in the world is to be confronted with walls. How we respond to these barriers is called character and art.

Many brave souls have confronted walls such as these.

Often, as I gaze upon the blue wall of mindless repression surrounding Zuccotti Park and reflect on other OWS sites nationwide, I am induced to feel the sadness and longing of the repressed souls of the earth, of those throughout time who have met walls of blind hatred, of economic exploitation, of institutional repression….

I empathize with all of those who faced walls of smug indifference, walls of internalized shame and walls of official lies–those who stood powerless before the stark reality of seemingly implacable circumstances. I reflect upon the lives and work of itinerate blues musicians of the U.S. Deep South and the manner they met walls of both official repression and collective blind, ignorant fear and hatred, and how they transformed those prison walls into the numinous architecture of The Blues…How they alchemicalized the barriers into guitar technique.

Musical instruments, like word meeting meter to a poet, serve as both barrier and salvation; the limits of the self are tested, explored, and by effort, failure and moments of elation are transformed by confrontation and union with the instrument, personal circumstance and audience.  

As is the case with those on the front lines of OWS encampments, millions of people throughout history have met seemingly implacable barriers in the form of walls of human brutality e.g., Jim Crow laws, union busting management goon squads, the Zionist apartheid wall, various secret police and public bullies–but they weren’t going to let the bastards “turn them ’round…”

If you choose to resist entrenched power, when confronted by mindless authority, your heart will know the drill; it will guide you–its natural trajectory is towards freedom. Hence, you will know what to do when the moment arrives–and will gain the knowledge that your predecessors discovered in their struggle for justice…that the cry arose forth from deep in their souls, “We shall not be moved.”

The practitioners of the Delta Blues came upon walls of oppression–walls of raging hatred, and responded by passing through those walls–to inhabit a landscape more alive, more resonant, more ensouled than their oppressors will ever know possible. They occupied their own hearts and draw us still into the immediacy of the world by their victory over their degraded circumstances by their appropriating the very barriers that were placed in their path by their oppressors and transforming the criteria of their oppression into the living architecture of the soul.

Those who know this–have already won, have already overcome.

Lorca limned the situation (one extant as well in the enfolding OWS movement) in his theory of “the duende”. His concept of the duende reveals why people, when faced by the ossified order of an inhuman system, either become caught up–even compelled–by the challenge to begin to make the world anew–while others are seized with mortification, indifference, resignation and hostility.

In which direction does your soul wend?   ”The arrival of the duende always presupposes a transformation on every plane. It produces a feeling of totally unedited freshness. It bears the quality of a newly created rose, of a miracle that produces an almost religious enthusiasm.” — from The Havana Lectures, Federico Garcia Lorca.

When I witness police harassing, arresting and brutalizing those exercising their rights to free assembly, I find myself gripped by a surge of rage…The rage rises in me in an animalistic fury–an urge to fight tooth and nail, to tear at the throats of these vicious intruders into the territory of authentic social discourse.   

As of late, instead of pushing down the fury rising from within me or acting upon it, I let it inundate my being. As a result, the coursing rage transforms into a penetrating, powerful force–enveloping and demarcating the geography of my convictions…arriving to bring acceptance and to define and defend the contours of my true self.

Rage can appear as an angel of self-definition, the protector of one’s authentic nature and a source of personal power, “ain’t gonna let nobody turn me around, turn me ’round …”

One’s anger is vital to one’s existence; it is a valuable gift; therefore, it should not be squandered…no need to waste it on fools and idiots.   

When rage arrives, invite him in; his presence will fill the room with alacrity, and his surging vitality will allow you to push farther and deeper into the unexplored regions of your soul.

In contrast, the world of the neoliberal oligarchs, the duopolistic political class and of the cops has been called into question. They have grown accustomed to having their way, of having a compliant and complicit peasantry. In this they are not unique; what they are experiencing is universal: The world we know (or at least believe we do) and struggle to maintain, from time to time, is apt to reveal an aspect of itself that seems alien and unmanageable e.g., the growing dissent across the nation, perhaps too vast and potent to be kettled, penned, tear gassed, cuffed and detained. The otherness of the world seems too large…has become an army of aggrieved angels

I once saw a Great Dane on Second Avenue attempt to engage in canine communion with his fellows. In order to display his intentions were benign, friendly, he crouched down on the sidewalk, making his massive frame as small as possible, even placing his large head on the concrete…doing all he could to produce the artifice of submission, to even the smallest dog that approached him.   In other words, to enlarge his world he created the illusion of smallness. He did not reduce his essence; he created the artifice of smallness so he could grow larger than himself by his union with the otherness of the world.

We are not requesting that cops crouch before us. They just need not bristle so.   To grow in each other’s presence, we are required to meet the other at eye level, even if one has to descend a bit from a habitual position of power and authority.

Officers, your guns, rubber bullets, nightsticks, pepper spray–the looming wall of blue intimidation that you brandish merely creates the illusion of strength. If you truly want to grow strong, meet us on these sidewalks, sans the display of empty power.

from

American Crisis Politics

noreply@blogger.com (Dr. Ajith Rohan) — Thu, 27 Oct 2011 20:58:00 +0000

by Eric Walberg

American voters now have a clear view of who they can vote for next year, with Barack Obama as the Democrats’ certain candidate and Mitt Romney as the Republicans’. Both candidates offer much the same prescriptions for the multiple crises facing their country — more war and military spending, lower taxes (certainly no big hike for the rich), more bank bailouts, trickle-down economics for the unemployed and the disintegrating environment.

If Barack and Mitt are the best the political elite can come up with, we can only conclude that the entire American ruling class is suffering from acute paranoid schizophrenia — fearing commies-turned-Muslims under their beds, shedding tears over the odd child hit by a stray bullet in, say, Syria, while joyously bombing hapless Afghans, Iraqs and Libyans into the Stone Age, wiping out hundreds of thousands in the process.

Obama said Saturday that the US now must tackle its “greatest challenge as a nation” — rebuilding a weak economy and creating jobs — with the “same urgency and unity that our troops brought to their fight”. More like: with the “same cold-blooded disrespect for human life …” Is it possible Obama will promote a Swift-like “modest proposal” to unemployment, and exhort Americans to eat their children?

Despite overwhelming evidence that the chaos and destruction the US brings the world has induced only hate and disgust for America and its values, he preened himself for helping murder Gaddafi and for pretending to withdraw US troops from Iraq: “This week, we had two powerful reminders of how we’ve renewed American leadership in the world.”

Of course, there is an explanation for this raving. The chaos is caused by the logic of profit in the economy, and the rhetoric — by the need to control the political process to ensure profit’s uninterrupted flow. But Obama’s fine rhetoric is not even convincing Americans anymore, as Occupy Wall Street and demonstrations across the country show. As for Congress; just 6 per cent of registered voters think sitting members deserve re-election — the lowest percentage since CBS News Polls began 20 years ago.

What is the poor — literally, at this point — voter to do? There are stirrings, even in the ruling class. Warren Buffett is spreading a chain letter calling on citizens to demand “a constitutional amendment which would make all sitting members of Congress ineligible for re-election anytime there is a deficit of more than 3 per cent of GDP.” If only it were that simple.

As analyst William Cook puts it, “Representatives no longer serve the citizen seeking their consent to govern, they are servants of the corporations and lobbies that control the economic system. Presidents no longer lead, they are the obedient lackeys of their corporate overseers.” If Buffett’s amendment passed, it would merely bring in another crop of time-servers, with no noticeable effect except higher unemployment and more poverty.

Oblivious to the obvious, Libertarian Ron Paul is battling it out with the Mitts in Republican cuckoo-land to slash both the budget deficit and taxes. At least Paul wants less war. He is determined to end what he calls the “welfare-warfare state”, undeterred by the plight of the record 46 million Americans on food stamps (whose welfare expenditures are a crucial stimulus to local economies), and the fact that his very own campaign manager in 2008 died of pneumonia in 2011 from lack of medical insurance.

Then there is the perennial Ralph Nader, who is bowing out from a full-scale campaign so far, and working with left Democrats to field primary challengers to Obama in the desperate hope to move him to the left.

What about a third-party/ independent presidential campaign? The Green Party always fields someone, and Nader ran many times in the past as both the Green candidate and as an independent. There is a new such campaign this year — an Internet campaign called Americans Elect, intending to nominate “a competitive, nonpartisan ticket” that “answers directly to voters”. A Republican must team up with a Democrat. Give me a break.

It is impossible for such a dark horse to actually win, given the Republicrat control of the media and corporate financing of elections. However, American third-partiers, or rather non-partiers, have a venerable history in the US. Theodore Roosevelt (Progressive Bull Moose) captured 27 per cent of the vote in 1912, and Progressive Robert La Follette — 27 per cent in 1924. Billionaire Ross Perot created his own Reform Party, running on a confusing mix of balanced budget, war on drugs, gun control, trade protectionism and environmentalism, to gain almost 20 per cent of the vote in 1992.

If, say, the Green candidate miraculously takes off, s/he will at best be a spoiler, like Republican Party-pooper Roosevelt in 1912 (allowing Democrat Woodrow Wilson to win), Ross Perot in 1992 (allowing Democrat Bill Clinton to win) and possibly Nader in 2000, whose 2.74 per cent of the vote might have been the cause of Al Gore’s loss to George W Bush.

Whichever Republicrat takes over in January 2013 will continue the failed policies of yesteryear as the US people continue to sink into poverty. But the end is already in sight, as the American long spring continues to gain momentum, both on the ground and in the ether. Ipads can distract from reality, but they are also a powerful tool to fight it, as Egyptians found out this January.

The bottom line is, of course, to dismantle the “reality of corporate control”, as Cook puts it. He rightly argues that “the rights of citizens to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness require the government to ensure these rights”, which means universal health care, freedom from want; in short, a government that serves the people, not the corporations. While this may sound trite, it is the stark truth. “Rights before privilege.”

There is strong US precedent for this. In 1944, shortly before he died, president Franklin Roosevelt presented Congress with a new Bill of Rights, which included “the right to adequate protection from the economic fears of old age, sickness, accident, and unemployment”, as well as farmers’ and businessmen’s rights “to trade in an atmosphere of freedom from unfair competition by monopolies”. Of course, Congress being Congress, it dismissed out of hand this parting gift of FDR.

Another stark truth is that real change in America requires the defeat of America in its imperial wars. This uniquely happened in 1975, when the last helicopters carried panicked remnants of the US puppet regime in Saigon to safety. It resulted in a shift towards détente, exposure of CIA black-ops, limits on US promotion of regime-change and assassination, and on the presidential right to launch undeclared war. Alas, this reversal was short-lived. Memories are short. Rhetoric (then, it was the folksy Reagan) and the ease of spinning circles around do-nothing Congress (a truly worthy whipping boy) have brought us to the current impasse.

Obama’s attempts to paint Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya as triumphs of “American leadership” ring hollow as the economy continues to sink under the weight of its military might. In 1944, America was on top of the world, and FDR’s wistful reminder of the dark 1930s was easily brushed aside. His vice president from 1941-44, Henry Wallace, ran as a Progressive Party candidate in 1948 largely on FDR’s wish list, but his third-party campaign of racial equality and socialism was greeted by boycotts and rotten eggs, and netted him only 2.4 per cent of the vote. America’s long journey into the imperial wilderness had begun in earnest.

To resuscitate FDR’s dashed dreams today means acknowledging, even welcoming, defeat in Iraq and Afghanistan, as their peoples throw off their American shackles. Any thought that Libya will save the Yanks’ bacon is a pipedream. The smoke of civil war there will remain in the air for a long time to come, as a constant reminder of the follies of such imperial games.

The American pacifist Gene Sharp, author of Waging Nonviolent Struggle: 20th Century Practice and 21st Century Potential (2005), is credited with ushering in the so-called Coloured Revolutions in countries as disparate as Yugoslavia and Egypt during the past two decades. Ahmed Maher, one of the founders of the April 6 Youth Movement that sparked the Egyptian revolution, was inspired by Sharp, and is returning the favour by advising “our brothers”, the Occupy Wall Streeters, on Twitter. It is a nice touch that Sharp’s techniques for facing down police states (Congress be damned) are now being turned on the American police state itself, as the “99 per cent” of Americans try to pick up where FDR’s Bill of Rights left off.

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The New Libya: Assassination, Ruination, Broken Promises and Body Snatching

noreply@blogger.com (Dr. Ajith Rohan) — Thu, 27 Oct 2011 20:57:00 +0000

by Felicity Arbuthnot

As usual, we swim in a pile of dishonorable politicians. An Arab poem describes how the rotten rubbish floats to the top of the water while all the gems – corals and precious fish – stay at the bottom.
— An Arab friend

If events of the past few days are anything to go by, the UN-NATO insurgent allies are set to bring a grim, lawless, murderous and fundamentalist future to the “New Libya.”

Polygamy is set to return as the disenfranchisement of women, the West’s new friend and interim leader, Mr Jalil, has declared. (He didn’t put it quite like that, but the particular interpretation of Sharia Law he espouses does.)

A country which had health, education and welfare services of which most could only dream is also set to instantly revert fifty years. Flying King Idris’ flag, Libya is being plunged seamlessly back to his era of illiteracy and neglect.

It will not get better. Britain is already demanding that bombarded, bereaved, largely broken Libya pay compensation for its “liberation.” No, not satire!

Libya also has its very own Falluja, in the fled, dead and now destroyed city of Sirte, flooded, ruined and heartrending. It also has its own Basra Roads. See the melted, bombed vehicles leaving Sirte and across Libya. Those inside them also melted or vaporized, a mirror image of that 1991 US massacre of the fleeing in Iraq..

Soon Libya will also have its own living memorials to their release from free health care, gasoline too cheap to meter and the highest living standard in Africa: deformed babies from the radioactive and chemically toxic depleted uranium weapons which rained down on them. Another mirror image of Iraq, Afghanistan and the Balkans where these weapons were also used.

The events, though, of the last days, have shone a light on the grim reality of the future for the population. The shocking spectacle of Colonel Gaddafi and his son’s bodies, displayed to the public in a meat cooler in a mall until decomposition forced a furtive body snatch and night time burial in an undisclosed location, hardly bodes well for the “human rights” to come.

Neither does the breaking of the commitment to return the bodies to the remaining, so far, un-murdered family.

Their “corpses should be dumped in the desert to be eaten by foxes”, stated one “liberator”, claiming that at the deaths: “we all took turns to stamp on” the former Leader’s face, some hitting it “with shoes.”

When Aisha Gaddafi called her father, minutes after his death, reports state that one of the thugs answered the call telling her: “Fuzzy head is dead.”

Aisha lost her husband and baby in a NATO bombing in July. She is an internationally respected lawyer, whose cases have included being part of Saddam Hussein’s defence team and who also defended Muntader Al Saidi, the journalist who threw his shoes at George W. Bush in Baghdad, for: “the widows, the orphans ..” the former President had created in Iraq, on his declared “Crusade.”

She is also a former Good Will Ambassador for the United Nations. One can only speculate how much good will she feels towards a UN which has endorsed the murder and plunder of family, people and land now. She had lost her father, four brothers, her baby daughter, with her two little cousins, within little over three months.

One (of many) questions which should be answered over the shoddy, surreptitious disposal of the bodies of Libya’s rightful leader, his son and his Defence Minister, Abu Bakr Younis, is, if the stated reason is because the insurgents did not want his last resting place to “become a shrine”, was he really the monster Washington and Whitehall have trumpeted? Or did the “coalition” just have an eye on the resources he stubbornly kept, largely for the benefit of his people?

America’s Nobel Peace Prize Laureate “first black” President, has declared the death of Muammar Gaddafi: “A momentous day in the history of Libya.”

This, as rebel forces going by the name of “The Brigade for Purging Slaves (of) Black Skin” have reportedly detained and displaced hundreds, while the people of Tawergha, a town of 20,000, have disappeared without a trace.

Numerous reports record that there are those avowed to ethnically cleanse Libya of dark and black skins. There are two million black Libyans, nearly one third of the population of little over six million.

Moreover, for all the horrific rhetoric over the deaths on 20th October, there are serious questions as to who really carried them out. “Our armed forces have been in action”, said Prime Minister Cameron. (Yes, the same Cameron who said there will never be “British boots on the ground …”)

Further: “British Special Forces are engaged in a frantic desert manhunt for Colonel Gaddafi’s son Saif .”

Heaven forbid that this sophisticated man should survive to tell the stories of socializing with Tony Blair, Lord Peter Mandelson and Prince Andrew. Or of Blair’s alleged six visits to his father, twice courtesy of the hospitality of Colonel Gaddafi’s private plane.

Gaddafi, in the flowery language which is Arabic, had called the insurgents “rats”, as Saddam Hussein had referred to them as “carion” and “crows.” So the Colonel is “found” in a sewer pipe. Get the connection? Few with a functioning brain would not wonder if this sewer rat image was not thought up by “intelligence” in Washington or Whitehall.

As the great “democracies” plunder and assassinate, do cast a passing thought to the (UN) Universal Declaration of Human Rights which celebrated its sixtieth anniversary on 10th December 2008, with great fan-fare.

Article 10: Everyone is entitled in full equality to a fair and public hearing by an independent and impartial tribunal, in the determination of his rights and obligations and of any criminal charge against him.
Article 3: Everyone has the right to life, liberty and security of person.
Article 5: No one shall be subjected to torture or to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment.

Sabah Al Mukhtar, President of the London based Arab Lawyers Association, is incandescent. “The US, UN, France and the UK should be seriously concerned regarding what has befallen Gaddafi. The serious legal implications of a killing with no trial, after an eight month bombardment. We have treated the law with contempt – and trampled on it for two decades.”

That the murderers are to investigate the murders renders Orwell redundant.

So far, of course, it seems we only have the perpetrators word that there was even a burial, somewhere near the port city of Misrata, disgraceful as it was. Perhaps, as with bin Laden, a precedent was set and the victims were simply fed to the fishes. Erase the evidence?

The burials – or disposals – were on two less than auspicious anniversaries. The British military disaster which was the Charge of the Light Brigade, in 1854, and the more recent, cravenly cowardly invasion of the tiny island of Grenada in 1983.

As ever, ignorance rules. After the disasters of Afghanistan and Iraq, with top military brass now admitting that they had no idea of the complexity of the societies, (US) Colonel Cedric Leighton writes that in spite of the “celebrations” in Libya: “ … it is easy to think our job in the Middle East is over.” Buy a map, Colonel. Wrong continent.

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The 99 per cent versus the One

noreply@blogger.com (Dr. Ajith Rohan) — Wed, 26 Oct 2011 10:17:00 +0000

by Kanishk Tharoor

Nearly three years ago, Barack Obama won the U.S. presidential election on the back of incredible popular mobilisation. In a country often bogged down in plodding party politics, there seemed to be something transcendent and epochal about his rise. Observers suggested that Mr. Obama did more than inspire voters; he energised a generational movement. This sense was no doubt aided by Mr. Obama's charisma and the messianic rhetoric of his campaign. He called for "the audacity of hope" and promised that "we are the ones we've been waiting for."

After three years of disillusionment, a more organic movement has taken root in the United States. The "Occupy Wall Street" protests began innocuously one month ago, but now claim public space and public attention. They reached new heights of spectacle on Saturday when thousands flooded Times Square in New York City as part of a wider "global day of rage" against the West's stuttering economic systems.

The American protesters come from many of the groups who rallied to Mr. Obama in 2008: young people, students, urban middle classes, union members, the working poor, the underemployed, and the unemployed. Yet this time they are not hitched to the ascendance of one man. They denounce the growth of stark inequality and the erosion of social mobility in America. They decry what they see as the collusion of the state with corporate and financial interests. And they tap into the widely-shared belief that the bankers, speculators, and traders responsible for the economic recession have escaped it unscathed while leaving behind a vast hinterland of despair and struggle.

Mr. Obama's campaign hyperbole returned to life in an unexpected way. Among the many striking signs I've seen around these protests, one placard at Zuccotti Park (the square in downtown Manhattan "occupied" by activists for the past month) reprised his old line: "We are the ones we've been waiting for." It was a rebuke to the President, not a pledge of fealty. For the newly galvanised left, those heady days of Obama-euphoria in 2008 seem terribly remote. The President and his party are not even auxiliary to the burgeoning movement. Its impetus doesn't spring from the imperatives of electoral politics, but from a much more inchoate and deeper well of feeling in American society.

Post-2008

We can trace this anger to the hardships that descended on many Americans following the 2008 economic collapse. The ranks of the unemployed have swollen; jobs are harder to come by for both the under- and over-educated; students graduate with unpayable debts; once free-flowing credit has dried up; prudent savers have seen their pensions vanish into thin air; government austerity measures threaten public sector jobs and what remains of America's social safety net. Protesters can summon an army of statistics to show how inequality in America has spiralled after three decades of intensifying deregulation (for instance, according to the Washington-based Economic Policy Institute, average incomes between 1979 and 2008 in the U.S. grew by over $10,000, but all that growth went to the richest 10 per cent of the country, while the incomes of the remaining 90 per cent effectively declined). Some activists replace the traditional slogans on their placards with economic charts, cluttering demonstrations with arrows and figures. It is perhaps fitting that the identity of this movement has coalesced around a number. Calling themselves the "99%," the protesters assail a hypothetical "1%," the rich elite that holds a country and its government in thrall.

The rawness and generality of this sentiment — aimed at financial institutions, corporations, the wealthy, and a supposedly complicit government — has convinced many critics that the protesters lack a coherent agenda: "What do these people want?" In fairness, it's difficult to summarise the movement. I've heard suggestions that the U.S. is in the midst of its own "Anna Hazare moment," but the comparison doesn't hold water. "Occupy Wall Street" has no figurehead and only the faintest tracing of a leadership structure. Where Anna's followers demanded concrete legislative action in the Jan Lokpal bill, "Occupy Wall Street" activists maintain a long, pious list of causes, from the reform of the financial system to stopping house foreclosures to ending U.S. involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan.

This series of grievances in the "Declaration of the Occupation of New York City" (the closest thing to a manifesto yet to emerge from the movement) can seem exhaustively idealistic or, worse, vague and impractical. But its role is not to serve as some blueprint for actual legislative reform. Instead, it allows the movement to remain open and inclusive to its growing number of sympathisers. While they frustrate the media and resist easy definition, the "Occupy Wall Street" protests continue to hit a nerve in an uncertain and depressed nation.

At its simplest level, "Occupy Wall Street" hopes to change American discourse. The demonstrations seek to re-centre American politics after they were wrenched off-kilter by the right-wing Tea Party movement, its Republican supporters, and by a pliant and weak Democratic party. This is a battle to be waged as much in front of cameras as it is in the finer points of political debates. Events in New York's Times Square on Saturday made for triumphant spectacle. The protesters — all critics of the current economic order — conquered the city's most garish and iconic plaza, its every edifice smothered in flickering neon advertisements. The rally confirmed the swelling appeal of the movement. I shuffled about a packed Times Square, in awe at the size, diversity, and remarkably good humour of the crowd.

The day before, I was an observer at another victory of the "Occupy Wall Street" protests. Thousands arrived in the small hours of Friday morning to successfully prevent the New York Police Department from evicting the encampment at Zuccotti Park. As people in the park celebrated, several politicians from the Democratic party — mostly local councilmen — spoke to the crowd. Already, segments of the Democratic party have taken notice of the movement and try to exploit its momentum. Buoyed by recent successes, the protesters are here to stay. When asked for his own opinion about "Occupy Wall Street," Mr. Obama has equivocated, stopping short of offering a full endorsement. One suspects that the longer the protests last, the more Mr. Obama will have to consider bending to its sentiments. In Zuccotti Park, I watched one Democratic party official struggle to make himself heard. His speech was swallowed in the din of a movement committed to going forward, with or without him.

Kanishk Tharoor is a writer based in New York City.

(The Hindu)

Don’t be fooled by human rights it’s colonialism

noreply@blogger.com (Dr. Ajith Rohan) — Wed, 26 Oct 2011 10:05:00 +0000

By Nalin de Silva

Colonel Gaddafi was killed by NATO as a consequence of western Christian colonialism. There may be pundits in Sri Lanka who pontificate on neocolonialism as if colonialism ended in the sixties of the last century. However, these are concepts constructed by western colonialist intellectuals in order to hide the fact that western Christian colonialism is still living and kicking in spite of the financial crisis spreading in USA and the other western countries. In fact one could argue that if NATO did not bomb a few important areas in Libya Colonel Gaddafi would be still living. NATO was not a passive observer, only helping the so called Martyrs from Benghazi. It, at least the western countries organized the "rebellion" and in the final analysis it was not the Benghazis who killed Gaddafi but NATO.

What would have happened if NATO and the western countries were not behind the Benghazi "rebels"? I know that an experiment cannot be carried out in order to answer that question and we have to depend on speculation and argument of course based on certain assumptions, however empiricist we may like to be. (In fact no experiment can be repeated with or without the "same" conditions though the western "scientists" assume that it can be done so. I will come back to this problem in my series "On so called scientific knowledge".) My assumption is that there would not have been a Benghazi "uprising" without NATO.

I am not talking of so-called human rights of Gaddafi as there was no need for human rights for him in the western sense. Human rights is a concept formulated by the western Christian society that emerged in the sixteenth century in Europe as a challenge to the then existing Catholic society with its western feudalism, and not in an Islamic society. In the western Christian society, the individual acquired importance more than the society. This was the essence of Martin Luther’s campaign against the Pope and the last five hundred years have seen how, in spite of triumph of Christianity over Catholicism, the individual has failed to stand up to the state (and the Church) that originally represented the society. The human rights of individuals have been formulated to protect the individual against the state but in the west up to date the state remains more powerful than the individual.

The poor and helpless individuals have no human rights whatsoever as they cannot afford to go to courts seeking any protection from the state. The rich may be able to go to a court of law and challenge the state but the state still have the powers even to overrule the courts if necessary. In the west the vast majority of people do not have any human rights not only because they cannot afford to go to a court of law but also since they have been brainwashed successfully by the western education given to them through schools, media, arts and universities to obey the state without questioning it. How many people in USA are against the killing of Gaddafi? Chomsky may come out with one of his usual customary statements to the non western world but he is hardly known among the ordinary people in the west and is not influential at all in the USA.

Obama has already claimed that it was USA that gave leadership to NATO in Libya and there must be millions of ordinary Americans, who are amongst the worst educated people in the world, who would be rejoicing that USA has been able to get rid of another monster. They must be happy that their country is ruling the world and in spite of the economic crisis the political leadership is with Obama as far as the so called global village is concerned. In fact Obama remains the village headman or ralahamy of the global village.

What the west has emphasized in the recent past to the leaders of the other countries is that they can rule their countries the way they like it even suppressing so-called human rights but they should not expect to challenge the west. Gaddafi may have flirted with the west intermittently but in general he followed a path that was hostile to the west. The west is in a process of Christianizing the whole world culturally for the last five hundred years or so and they would tolerate only those leaders in the non west who do not challenge their mega schemes of Christianization. The west that goes through a financial crisis is more interested in the process of elimination of anti west leaders also in order to satisfy the masses and to instill in their minds that the west is strong in spite of the crisis. During the last few years they have been successful in eliminating bin Laden, Sadam Hussein and Gaddafi and they are now turning their eyes to Syria and Iran. The latter is their ultimate aim and they would tolerate only those rulers such as the kings of Saudi Arabia who are not opposed to the Christianization process carried out by the west.

This is nothing but colonialism and Obama is behaving as the modern version of the Anglo Saxon kings of England in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The west would interfere directly as they did in Libya only when necessary, and in what could be called normal times they are happy to allow the schools, media, arts and the universities to run the helpless countries in Asia and Africa through the western knowledge that is being bombarded day and night in those countries. Western science is the biggest culprit in this exercise and it is presented to us "wrapped" in a non existing objective realism and empiricism.

Gaddafi was the head of a state and in the western sense of human rights he had nothing to defend against the state. It is not different from discussing the human rights of Ms. Elizabeth Windsor also called the Queen of England and the head of the so called Commonwealth against the state of what they call UK. If one were to talk of human rights of Gaddafi then it is in that so called global village whose head is Obama. That kind of human rights against the "world order" is nothing but "human rights" vis –a- vis a "world government" which is another name for the "empire in which the sun did not set". Neither the empire nor the sun has changed in a conventional sense though they are all subject to anicca.

It is clear that Obama is not different from George III during whose time Sri Lanka was annexed to the empire and it is not a question of human rights in a western sense that is involved but the rights of nations and peoples against colonialism. Obama is an invader and all that he says is that he did not like Gaddafi’s policies and he (Obama) wants Libyans under his control. He and the other leaders of the west in the present as in the past have committed crimes against the humankind in general and all that has to done is to take him and his anti humankind friend to custody for not allowing other nations to select their leaders and way of life. However, the question is who has the power to take these thugs, in the words of Gaddafi, into custody. The thugs have the political power, even if they do not have the economic power and all that we can do at present is to wait for the downfall of the anti human western system, an event which does not belong to the distant future.

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NATO actions not in Libyan people’s interest

noreply@blogger.com (Dr. Ajith Rohan) — Wed, 26 Oct 2011 05:56:00 +0000

John Rees of the Stop the War Coalition in London says that NATO's actions in Libya will bring about a government which will not be in the interests of the Libyan people.

“The Western powers intervened in Libya not to protect the revolution, but to colonize the revolution, and they’ve succeeded in doing that – and the [National Transitional Council’s] request for continued military help underlines that fact very clearly,” he told RT.

Rees believes that the West has simply hijacked the Libyan conflict to pursue its own interests.

“The events in Libya show that the revolution was started off as a genuine organic expression of the Libyan people’s desire, was taken over by the West, has now got a [NTC] leadership which is wholly dependent militarily, economically, politically on the West,” he explained. “And what is being driven through in Libya is a government which at the end of the day won’t be in the interests of most Libyan people.”

The very same people who now have a foothold in Libya and who have been using the language about protecting the world from terrorism are those who have conducted the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, Rees noted.

“And that will be a situation which destabilizes the entire Middle East,” he concluded.

Conn Hallinan, a columnist for Foreign Policy in Focus, a project of the US-based Institute for Policy Studies, argued that NATO intervened in Libya without fully understanding the deep rift in Libyan society.

“NATO commanders were very explicit: They expected, when NATO went in, that very quickly the Gaddafi forces would basically run for the desert and roll up and surrender,” he told RT. “Well, they didn’t – it went on for at least 35 weeks. And I think that was a shock, and I think it also became clear that it wasn’t just the fact that they were up against the dictator, that there is a division in the country.”

“It’s really partly a civil war – partly it’s between west and east, partly it’s between different tribes; there’s also ethnicities involved in terms of the south and the north,” Hallinan explained. “It’s much more complex than most people were led to believe, and so I think that they are asking NATO to stay because the interim government does not have control over the militias.”

Another factor of instability is unaccounted-for weapons, and analysts noted that some of the weapons stockpiled by the Gaddafi regime are extremely dangerous.

“If they get outside of Libya, it’s going to cause a distressing amount of damage in a lot of different places,”

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In praise of lynching

noreply@blogger.com (Dr. Ajith Rohan) — Wed, 26 Oct 2011 05:53:00 +0000

American newspapers carry front-page news of Gaddafi's death

The mainstream US media has reacted to Muammar Gaddafi's brutal lynching with a tidal wave of cheers and approval, trumpeting the Colonel’s death as the start of a new era for Libya.

US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton led the triumphant celebrations of Gaddafi’s death with her immortal line, “We came, we saw, he died!” - words which are sure to be remembered far beyond America’s shores.

Joy at the killing of the killing of the African leader spread like wildfire through the US media.

“It cost us a trillion dollars to get Saddam and a billion dollars to get Gaddafi,” remarked television host Bill Maher.

“And Libya says they’re going to pay back the billion that we spent, too. So it’s going to end up being sort of free for nothing,” cheered the host of MSNBC’s The Rachel Maddow Show.

Senator Lindsey Graham gave it to us straight:

“Let’s get in on the ground, there is a lot of money to be made in the future in Libya, there is a lot of oil to be produced,” he said.

Not a single American soldier killed and great opportunities ahead – it seems like the perfect new warfare, and one that serves as a sharp lesson to others.

“I think it sends an important message to other leaders in the region,” lectured a CNN commentator.

“Boy, I tell you, these Arab dictators – they’re not very original. Just like Saddam Hussein, caught him in a hole,”sneered Bill Maher.

“Muammar Gaddafi was a bad guy,” Fox concluded.

Although many Libyans would argue whether he was really so bad, considering what Gaddafi did for the country’s social welfare and women’s rights, in the eyes of the US media, he was the ultimate evil.

“It is a demonization, every step of the way, against Gaddafi. In the media today always one man, one leader of a country, becomes a justification for destroying an entire country,” acknowledged Sara Flounders, member of the Workers World Party.

For a few days, the media savored the bloody images of Gaddafi’s killing and laughed at similarities between his capture in a ditch and that of Saddam Hussein.

In the eyes of the American public, the celebration of Gaddafi’s killing effectively erases the bad taste left by the NATO campaign – no mention of Libyan civilians killed in NATO strikes, not much talk about the destruction to the country caused by those strikes. Gaddafi’s killing is presented as a triumph, creating a perception that somehow it is perfectly OK to invade a country and help its leader be lynched. But if it is presented as such a success – doesn't it become more tempting to try the same methods somewhere else?

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Afghan War Remains Endless While Obama’s Iraq Plan...

noreply@blogger.com (Dr. Ajith Rohan) — Tue, 25 Oct 2011 20:46:00 +0000

Vision On Anvil: Afghan War Remains Endless While Obama’s Iraq Plan...:

by Jack A. Smith

The 10th anniversary of Washington’s invasion, occupation and seemingly

endless war in Afghanistan was observed October 7...

Drones do technically violate sovereignty, but no ...

noreply@blogger.com (Dr. Ajith Rohan) — Tue, 25 Oct 2011 20:39:00 +0000

Vision On Anvil: Drones do technically violate sovereignty, but no ...:

General Parvez Musharraf categorically denied that he had ever struck

a deal over allowing the US to strike into Pakistan with unmanned dro...

Are banks to blame for the global economic downturn?

noreply@blogger.com (Dr. Ajith Rohan) — Tue, 25 Oct 2011 20:25:00 +0000

As the global economy struggles, many politicians and protestors turn on the financial industry to demand reform.

U.S. banks are being blamed for pushing the global economy into the worst financial crisis since 1929. It was instigated by the subprime mortgage crisis – when banks loaned repacked home mortgages to under-qualified buyers who subsequently defaulted on their payments.

The recession briefly slowed after the U.S. government bailed out troubled banks with hundreds of billions of dollars (also known as the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008), but wages and consumer spending continue to stagnate.

In the past three years, the crisis has spread to the European Union. Now, Greece is in danger of defaulting on its national debt and citizens are protesting against their government’s proposed austerity measures.

In the U.S., activists, calling themselves The 99 Percent, are taking to the streets of New York City and other major American cities to protest what they say is runaway corporate greed and bankers’ outsized power. The Occupy Wall Street (or #OWS) movement has since spread to countries around the world.

Participants in #OWS are also angered over the multi-million dollar salaries and bonuses paid to financial executives while wages for the U.S. middle class continues to stagnate. The United Statesranks among the world’s worst for income equality.

Financial journalist Kat Aaron will be in the studio to discuss the state of the global economy. Joining the show via Skype are Brazilian financial journalist Patricia Campos Mello and Peter Schiff, president of Euro Pacific Capital and host of the Peter Shiff Show on U.S. radio. Greek economist Yannis Ioannides will also be with us via Skype from Massachusetts, where he is a professor of economics at Tufts University.

Send us your thoughts and comments on Facebook or Twitter using hashtag #AJStream.

These are some highlights of the conversation happening online.

The Occupy movement is symptomatic of the shift in perception of who is to blame for the troubled global economy. Rather than view the collapse as the responsibility of "a few bad apples," the Occupy protesters are seeking to change the system. Here, an image for a September 30, 2011 march to the headquarters of the New York Police Department.
Photo by English.aljazeera.net
Young people in the US face rising unemployment and uncertain job markets. Many, like the two below, believe their futures have been jeopardised by the top 1%.
Photo by English.aljazeera.net
Occupy protests have moved beyond the confines of New York City, spreading to hundreds of cities around the globe. Below, Occupy protesters in Los Angeles.
Photo by English.aljazeera.net
The 99% do not stand alone; a growing number of the wealthiest US citizens are calling on the government to increase taxes on the top income bracket.
Photo by 30.media.tumblr.com
Tweet
We are the 1 percent: We stand with the 99 percent
westandwiththe99percent.tumblr.com
I made millions studying the math of mortgages and bonds and helping bankers pass the Chartered Financial Analyst Exam. It isn't fair that I have retired in comfort after a career working with financial instruments while people who worked as nurses, teachers, soldiers, etc.
Occupy Wall Street is now entering its 5th week. Below, a video showing protests from Saturday, October 22.
Occupy Wall Street - Day 36 - Police Brutality Protest
ddipasupil, October 24, 2011 at 2:38
Many governments worldwide are operating at a deficit. The Economist's intelligence unit created this interactive map to show how debt affects the global economy.
Photo by Farm7.static.flickr.com
Tweet
World debt comparison: The global debt clock | The Economist
economist.com
The clock is ticking. Every second, it seems, someone in the world takes on more debt. The idea of a debt clock for an individual nation is familiar to anyone who has been to Times Square in New York, where the American public shortfall is revealed.
Growing debt is a serious problem for governments world wide.
Photo by Static.seekingalpha.com
Congressional Budget Office data demonstrates the growth in wealth disparity among US socioeconomic classes. While after tax income for the bottom 20% have barely outpaced inflation, the wealthiest 1% have seen nearly 300% growth.
Photo by Cbpp.org
Video from austerity protests on Oct 20, 2011 in Athens, Greece.
Συγκέντρωση στο Σύνταγμα 20 Οκτωβρίου 2011
kapafix, October 21, 2011 at 2:24
The UN Food and Agriculture Organisation created this graph to show how food prices have changed over the past two decades.
Photo by Fao.org

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Brutal arrests at Occupy Oakland

noreply@blogger.com (Dr. Ajith Rohan) — Tue, 25 Oct 2011 20:15:00 +0000

Police officers in Oakland, California arrested upwards of 75 protesters early this morning as they launched a crackdown on participants in the local Occupy Wall Street offshoot.

Occupants at Frank Ogawa Plaza in Oakland were met with hundreds of police officers from at least 10 law-enforcement agencies at around 4:30 am PT this morning. Using a public address system, an official informed that crowd that “It has been determined you are illegally blocking Frank Ogawa Plaza and are the subject to arrest.” Hundreds of protesters with the Occupy Oakland movement had been camping out in a mass demonstration in the city park for two weeks now, but were informed that anyone staying following police orders this morning would face arrest.

Protected in riot helmets armed with flash grenades and rubber bullets, cops began a raid on the 150 or so tents shortly after this morning’s announcement. Think Progress reports that authorities on the scene fired projectiles with shotguns and other sources say this morning that police also used sound-guns on protesters. To an ABC affiliate, however, officers say that their own actions, for the most part, were pretty peaceful.

"We want the best for you guys, that's all," Aiyahnna Johnson, a 30-year-old resident of Oakland, told two arresting officers as she was led away in cuffs.

Demonstrators told the police that they would be back soon and that the Occupy Oakland camp would not be shut down.

Around an hour after arrests began, some members of the group relocated to the corner of Franklin and 14th in Oakland, but were met shortly after there by more police. A smaller encampment at nearby Snow Park in downtown Oakland was also raided by the cops, yielding around four arrests.

Officers on the scene included authorities from the California Highway Patrol and nearby cities of Vacaville, Hayward, Fremont and Union City, CA.

This morning’s attack from the Oakland PD came as a surprise after Mayor Jean Quan had originally appeared supportive of the protests, noting that, sometimes, “democracy is messy.” The city had originally said that demonstrators could continue their occupation of Frank Ogawa Plaza, despite laws that would normally prohibit the camp. In recent days, however, officials have cited concerns over sanitation and fire hazards as among the reasons for the forced evacuation.

"People are going to keep coming back. What are they going to do, send cops in every night and waste taxpayer dollars?" asked Gabe Meyers to the San Francisco Chronicle. Meyers has been camping at the demonstration but was not detained by police during this morning’s raid. Less than two hours after arrests began, however, cops began erecting barricades around Ogawa plaza to curb further protests.

"The cops are the 99 percent, but they're doing the work of the 1 percent. Wall Street is proud of them every time they clear out an encampment,” Meyers added.

Three hours after the raid began, a reporter for the website Red Green and Blue wrote, “It’s all over. The parks are full of trash, protesters have been moved off. There will be quite the cleanup to do now, since the police trashed everything.”

Protesters intend to reconvene this afternoon to regroup at the main branch of the city library.

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Boomerang! Is the Pentagon Field-Testing ‘Son of S...

noreply@blogger.com (Dr. Ajith Rohan) — Tue, 25 Oct 2011 11:09:00 +0000

Counted Reflection: Boomerang! Is the Pentagon Field-Testing ‘Son of S...:

by Tom Burghardt

When the cybersecurity firm Symantec announced they had

discovered a sophisticated Trojan which shared many of the char...

OWS demand introduction of "Robin Hood" tax

noreply@blogger.com (Dr. Ajith Rohan) — Tue, 25 Oct 2011 10:53:00 +0000

Demonstrators with 'Occupy Wall Street' continue their protest at Zuccotti Park in New York on October 24, 2011 (AFP Photo / Timothy A. Clary)

Occupy Wall Street activists have called for worldwide protests ahead of Saturday's G20 summit in France, demanding that the G20 leaders introduce a "Robin Hood" tax on high-finance transactions and currency trades by banks and institutions.

Anti-corporate demonstrations are continuing across the US, despite tougher tactics from police, including mass arrests. In Chicago, 130 have been held and charged with camping out in a city park after closing time. Back in New York, where the rallies began over a month ago, dozens have been arrested in a police crackdown on activists in recent days.

Author and activist David Swanson, who has been at the protests in Washington, believes neither the police nor the upcoming cold spell will stop the growing movement.

“We are starting to hear talk from the police again that they are being pushed by someone in the administration higher up to drive us out of there. We’ll see what comes of that. We are not leaving,” he told RT.

“We are protesting not just our government but its funders, its handlers, its think-tanks, and we are building a community and we are making decisions, and we are networking with the other ‘occupy’ movements around the country,” he said. “We’ll see what the police do and what the weather does to these occupations but, you know, the weather won’t shut down half of this country… and there are a lot of people camped out there that have no intention of ever leaving.”

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Money makes the war go round

noreply@blogger.com (Dr. Ajith Rohan) — Mon, 24 Oct 2011 09:28:00 +0000

The Cold War is not over - it has shifted into the hawkish minds of some influential American lobbyists and politicians, who have envision battles rattling on with a vengeance.

It is true that US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton says ties between Moscow and Washington have significantly improved since she was appointed America's top diplomat, but despite a warming in relations, some political groups in the US are actively pushing for a more aggressive stance. And not only against Russia.

The Salon web magazine has looked into the expense records of one lobby group in Washington and revealed that for years it has courted journalists who adopt distinct anti-Russian standpoints by arranging interviews for them, and paying for their trips and dinners.

One of those reportedly wooed by the lobby, called Orion Strategies, is a journalist named Eli Lake from the Washington Times. He wrote a series of pieces undermining the reset between Russia and the US. One of his articles focused on allegations that Russia masterminded last year’s explosion near the US embassy in Georgia – accusations he took from Georgian investigators, of course. And as it turns out the lobby that approached Mr. Lake is officially contracted by the Georgian government.

RT tried to get in touch with Mr. Lake but he did not respond.

Analysts say it is not so much the Georgians’ agenda that a lobby like Orion Strategies is pushing forward, but rather that of Washington hawks.

The head of Orion was an aide to former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, who actively cheered for the war in Iraq. Then he was an aide to Senator John McCain, well-known for his hawkish foreign policy views. Senator McCain never concealed his desire to see Russian leaders overthrown – though not exclusively Russian.

“Dictators all over the world – including Bashar Assad [in Syria], maybe even Mr. Putin, maybe some Chinese, maybe all of them – might be a little bit more nervous because clearly the people of Libya rose up [as] we assisted them,” he proclaimed recently.

“This group of people has a large number of institutions that they work through. They have a large number of think tanks, magazines and newspapers to push this idea of supremacy of the US,” retired US Army Colonel Ann Wright reveals.

Washington has arguably never been short of warmongers. The most visible one these days is the Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney.

Romney has already delivered tough words to the likes of Iran, Pakistan and China.

He also called for boosting America’s military spending, ending the reset with Russia and unfolding a robust missile defense program in Europe.

“America is not destined t be one of the world's several equally-balanced global powers. America must lead the world,” presidential candidate Mitt Romney stresses.

“Romney is pitching himself as a candidate for the military industrial complex hoping that they bite,” evaluates Brian Becker, director of the Answer coalition.

America’s vast military industry will be first to benefit from the strong rhetoric of Washington’s war hawks.

“Some of the biggest transnational corporations that make weapons, that benefit from the ideology that the US must exercise military supremacy and have an endless arms race. And those big companies are tied to the biggest banks on Wall Street,” Brian Becker points out. “There is a military-industrial complex and it is facilitated by having pretext for endless wars. So when President Obama said we’re pushing a reset button with Russia, this whole lobby and Romney’s industries said that’s bad, because any relaxation of tensions means less of an excuse to produce more weapons.”

America is the world’s number one weapons’ producer and exporter. And countries like Georgia are looking to become the next market for American weapons.

We are familiar with US politicians and influential groups in Washington calling for the end of the reset with Russia, but it is not just Russia with which tensions are being ramped-up. The same people are doing a lot of fear mongering against countries like China and Iran. The list is pretty long, actually.

Meanwhile, experts agree the only side that could benefit from a potential confrontation is America’s military machine. And definitely not the people in the countries involved.

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