Prior to this post I’ve been keeping to a decision not to engage in debate or commentary on issue specifics such as behind-the-scenes manipulation of current global events. The decision has been reinforced every time I continue my own personal research and am faced with a huge amount of data of the kind that you won’t find floating in the mainstream, data pertaining to the real reasons and real global power-posturing activities behind the ‘information’ being given out by the mainstream media.
Today though, after a morning of reading reports and analysis, I depart from that decision. The reason for the departure is because I feel I should. True, there are literally hundreds of alternative information outlets which deal with these issues, from which the following information is lifted from and linked to, but this blog is another outlet and, I feel, should be used as such.
I also can’t stand idle and say nothing in response to yet another round of NATO ‘humanitarian imperialism’ and the massacring of civilians on a mass scale, just as they did in the Balkans and Iraq, and…and…
The articles cut-and-pasted in the following post contain information regarding some of what’s gone on in Libya so far, and the ‘deep’ reasons for such. (‘Deep politics’ is a phrase coined by author and emeritus Berkeley professor, Peter Dale Scott, to describe the multilayered aspects of global politics that include the covert reasons behind overt political and military actions worldwide. A simple example of this is corporate military/industrial influences within government engaging in activities that encourage and escalate conflicts in order to benefit through increased armament sales. Other researchers such as Dr. David Ray Griffin, Jim Marrs, and Michael Parenti also pursue the same line of investigation.)
The author of the first piece, Ian Hunter, is a Canadian, and the piece a letter he was sending to the general election candidates running in his city. The points he makes are valid points that could be put across to political representatives of any country involving themselves in Libya.
Dear Candidate:
I am a Canadian citizen writing to you with great concern for the current state of my country.
A week before our Parliament was dissolved for the upcoming federal election, our Government committed itself militarily to enforce a No-Fly Zone in the North African state of Libya on the basis of humanitarian intervention. This is an incredibly important issue of Canadian foreign policy and it is the responsibility every single political party that is participating in the current federal election to clearly state their stance on this issue.
If in fact your political party is intending to support the military intervention in Libya, the following is a list of information on this conflict that – as my potential political representative to the Canadian Federal Government – you should seriously consider informing your party with.
Col. Muammar Qaddafi is being demonized as a dictator, a tyrant, and a mass murderer. Canadians are being told that it is for the sake of protecting innocent civilians from the Qaddafi government that we are involved in enforcing a no-fly zone over Libya. A brief historical background on Libyan government – and the rebels we are supporting – clearly demonstrates how flawed this argument is.
· In 1969, Muammar Qaddafi led a bloodless coup to overthrow King Idris I, a monarch imposed by the British after WWII. At the time, Libya was the poorest country in the entire world; with a literacy rate below 10%. Since then, the Libyan government has improved all aspects of their society.
· Libya now has a literacy rate above 90%.
· Libya has the lowest infant mortality rate of all of Africa.
· Libya also has the highest life expectancy of all of Africa.
· Less than 5% of the population was undernourished. In response to the rising food prices around the world, the government of Libya abolished ALL taxes on food.
· Libya has the highest gross domestic product (GDP) at purchasing power parity (PPP) per capita of all of Africa.
· Libya has the highest Human Development Index of any country on the continent.
· In Libya, a lower percentage of people lived below the poverty line than in the Netherlands, and again, far lower than that of the United States.
· They have free health care and treatment, and education is free of charge. Talented youth have an opportunity to study abroad at the expense of the Libyan government.
· Before the chaos erupted, Libya had a lower incarceration rate than the Czech Republic, and far lower than the United States.
· The core legal obligation expressed in article 2(7) of the UN Charter prohibits member states from any use of force unless it can be justified as self-defence after a cross-border armed attack; unless expressly authorized by the Security Council as essential for the sake of international peace and security. With respect to Libya, you need to take account of the fact that the Qaddafi government remains the lawful diplomatic representative of a sovereign state, and any international use of force even by the UN, much less a state or group of states, would constitute an unlawful intervention in the internal affairs of a sovereign state. This also implies that the Security Council’s decision – to allow foreign states to bomb Libya – is legal if, and only if, the outcome of this conflict represents a serious threat to international peace. Also UN Resolution 1970 (2011) forbids the delivery of weaponry of any sort to any citizen in Libya. UN Resolution 1973 (2011) while allowing the use of force to protect “civilians” does not mention attacking conventional ground forces not engaged in battle to help “rebels” nor does it bear any mention whatsoever of aiding rebellious forces to gain power.
· Libya is the only country currently experiencing civil unrest that our Government has deemed important enough to support militarily. The day after the Security Council vote, March 18, armed forces of Ali Abdullah Saleh’s government in Yemen carried out a massacre. The massacre took place in broad daylight at the central square in Sana’a, Yemen’s capital. At least 52 people were killed and more than 200 wounded, most by snipers firing from atop government buildings. Hilary Clinton stated: “The U.S. government “is alarmed by today’s violence in Sana’a against anti-government protesters and is seeking to verify reports that this is the result of actions by security forces…We call on Yemeni security forces to exercise maximum restraint, refrain from violence, and permit citizens to freely and peacefully express their views.” There are currently no calls from Washington for a U.N. imposed “no-fly zone,” or the bombing of Saleh’s military. Not even a whisper from Washington about sanctions. On the contrary, U.S. military and other aid has continued to flow unimpeded to Saleh and his army. On March 16, the government of Bahrain, with the assistance of 2,000 invading Saudi troops and hundreds of United Arab Emirates security forces, dispersed the mass protests in the capital Manama and elsewhere. As in the case of Yemen, no threats of military intervention, sanctions or anything at all in the face of a blatant invasion and brutal repression. More than 20 Bahrainis have been killed and hundreds wounded, out of a total population of just over a million, over the past month.
· Another important aspect of this conflict often ignored in Canadian media is the role being played by the rebel groups of Eastern Libya. If the conditions in Libya prior to this armed insurrection were so favorable, then where did this uprising coming from? The answer is that the same groups the US and Great Britain have been funding for decades are now taking their chance to gain control over the nation.
· The rebels of Eastern Libya are represented by several different organizations: The National Front for the Salvation of Libya (NFSL); The Islamic Emirate of Berka; The National Conference for the Libyan Opposition (NCLO); The Al-Jama’a al-Islamiyyah al-Muqatilah bi-Libya, or the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG); and the Transitional National Council (TNC). The first group calling itself “Islamic Emirate of Berka”, the former name of the North-Western part of Libya, took numerous hostages, and killed two policemen as reported by western media a few days after protests began. On Friday, the 18th of February – the day after the revolt began – the group stole 70 military vehicles after attacking a port and killing four soldiers. All the worthy democratic aspirations of the Libyan youth movement notwithstanding, the most organized opposition group happens to be the National Front for the Salvation of Libya – financed for years by the House of Saud, the CIA and French intelligence. The key figure in the National Front for the Salvation of Libya is one Ibrahim Sahad who conveniently enough lives in Washington. According to the Library of Congress archives, Sahad is the same man the CIA used in their failed attempt at a Libyan coup of 1984. The Library of Congress confirms that the CIA trained and supported the NFSL both before and after the failed coup. It was this organization that called for the “Day of Rage” that plunged Libya into chaos on February 17 of this year. The rebel “Transitional National Council” is little else than the National Front, plus a few military defectors. This is the elite of the “innocent civilians” the “coalition” is “protecting”. The UK based National Conference for the Libyan Opposition (NCLO) – is well known to be a CIA and MI5 supported and trained organization of anti-Kaddafi and counter-revolutionary Libyans.
As several documents have discovered, by far the most violent of the opposition groups is the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group. The first is a secret cable to the State Department from the US embassy in Tripoli in 2008, part of the WikiLeaks trove, entitled, “Extremism in Eastern Libya,” which revealed that this area is rife with anti-American, pro-jihad sentiment.
The second document, or rather set of documents, are the so-called Sinjar Records, captured al-Qaeda documents that fell into American hands in 2007. They were analyzed by the Combating Terrorism Center at the US Military Academy at West Point. Al-Qaeda is a bureaucratic outfit and the records contain precise details on personnel, including those who came to Iraq to fight American and coalition forces and, when necessary, commit suicide.
The West Point analysts’ statistical study of the al-Qaeda personnel records concludes that one country provided “far more” foreign fighters in per capita terms than any other: namely, Libya.
The Libyan Islamic Fighting Group mounted a major challenge to the Qaddafi regime in the 1990s. The destabilizing impact of that challenge was a major factor in the decision of the Qaddafi regime to abandon its traditional anti-imperialist rhetoric and seek an accommodation with Europe and the United States. Anas al Liby is a notable member of the LIFG. He remains on the U.S. government’s most wanted list, with a reward of $5 million for his capture, and is wanted for his involvement in the U.S. African embassy bombings. Al Liby was with bin Laden in Sudan before the al Qaeda leader returned to Afghanistan in 1996. Despite being a high-level al Qaeda operative, al Libya was granted political asylum in Britain and lived in Manchester until May of 2000. In 2009, to mark Qaddafi’s 40 years in power, the LIFG apologized for trying to kill him and agreed to lay down its arms. Six LIFG leaders, still in prison, disavowed their old ways and explained why fighting Qaddafi no longer constituted “legitimate” jihad. The last 110 members of the LIFG were freed on 16 February; the day after the Libyan uprising began. One of those released, Abdul Wahab Mohammed Kayed, is the brother of Abu Yahya Al Libi, one of al Qaida’s top propagandists.
There is an abundance of evidence proving that our Government is supporting religious extremists including Al Qaeda, and other rebels who are fighting against NATO troops in Afghanistan. In fact, Muammar Qaddafi and the Libyan revolutionary forces were the first to issue an arrest warrant for Osama bin Laden. The Libyan government spent years warning the world about the very serious threat posed by these Islamic deviants. According to former MI5 intelligence operative David Shayler, western intelligence turned a deaf ear to Libya’s warnings because they were actually working with the al Qaeda group inside Libya to bring down Qaddafi and the Libyan revolution.
“Uranium tipped missiles fit the description of a dirty bomb in every way. I would say that it is the perfect weapon for killing lots of people.”
Marion Falk, retired chemical physicist at Lawrence Livermore Lab, California, USA.
· Since the March 18th, coalition forces have bombed Libya with at least 221 Tomahawk missiles killing at least 100 civilians. These massive bombs, along with the Cruise missiles launched from both planes and ships, all contained depleted uranium (DU) warheads. DU is the waste product from the process of enriching uranium ore. When a weapon made with a DU tip strikes a solid object like the side of a tank, it goes straight through it, and then erupts in a burning cloud of vapor. Thevapor settles as dust, which is not only poisonous, but also radioactive. Internalized DU can cause kidney damage, cancers of the lung and bone, skin disorders, neuro-cognitive disorders, chromosome damage, immune deficiency syndromes and rare kidney and bowel diseases. Pregnant women exposed to DU may give birth to infants with genetic defects. Once the dust has vaporized, its effects are very long-term. As an alpha particle emitter, DU has a half life of 4.5 billion years.
There is overwhelming evidence proving Canada’s current military involvement in Libya is supportive of both the most radical elements of Al-Qaeda, and the removal of a sovereign Government that is only legal according to International Law if it represents a legitimate threat to international peace and security.
As such, Canadian citizens have been told since 9/11 that the enemies of peace and democracy are religious extremists who will stop at nothing to destroy Western Civilization. The Canadian Government claims to be doing everything it can to protect us from external threats; yet they are supporting the exact organizations in Libya that we are supposedly needed to be defended from. In this context, we are actually further endangering Canadian lives by supporting a military intervention in Libya.
The Libyan Government is not a totalitarian dictatorship. If your political party supports the military intervention in Libya, you are supporting illegal interference in the healthiest, richest, most egalitarian state in all of Africa.
By supporting the military intervention of Libya, your political party is claiming selectively that certain countries are more important than others to receive Canada’s assistance. If Canada was truly concerned with saving civilian lives, our Government would press for resolutions protecting the citizens of Iraq, Gaza, Afghanistan, Yemen, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, and elsewhere where civilians are being systematically murdered by their governments.
If your political party supports the military intervention in Libya, you are supporting an act of war that is illegal according to international law. You are therefore supporting the destabilization of our entire global order.
If your political party supports a Canadian military intervention in Libya, you are directly supporting Al-Qaeda and other extremist religious groups that our Government claims to be protecting us from. You are NOT supporting a peaceful protest movement; you are supporting an illegal armed insurrection. Canadian support of this mission is a direct threat to the safety of every single Canadian citizen.
As an informed citizen of Canada, I plead to you – and your political party – to strongly oppose any interference in a sovereign nation that poses no threat to World peace.
By Ian Hunter. Axis of Logic exclusive
Axis of Logic.
______
F. William Engdahl elaborates on the above in Creative Destruction: Libya in Washington’s Greater Middle East Project Part II
_______
So what level of military force is being unleashed against the ‘ healthiest, richest, most egalitarian state in all of Africa’?
NATO data confirms the magnitude and destructive nature of the Libya military operation.
“Since the beginning of the NATO operation (31 March 2011, 08.00GMT) a total of 2,771 sorties and 1,110 strike sorties have been conducted.
“A total of 18 ships under NATO command are actively patrolling the Central Mediterranean. 22 Vessels were hailed on 17 April to determine destination and cargo. 1 boarding was conducted (no diversion).
A total of 384 vessels have been hailed, 10 boardings and 3 diversions have been conducted since the beginning of arms embargo operations.”
http://www.nato.int/nato_static/assets/pdf/pdf_2011_04/20110418_110418-oup-update.pdf
The above number of sorties includes only those tabulated since NATO took command of Operation Odyssey Dawn. It does not include the sorties between March 19 and March 30
The coalition is currently running more than a hundred sorties a day.
We are dealing with a formidable military force, a deployment of naval power and air force bombers directed against a country of less than 7 million people, less than the population of Switzerland.
Let us be under no illusions. There is evidence of mass civilian casualties. These are war crimes (using advanced weapons systems) directed against a defenseless population .
These are some of the high tech “humanitarian bombers and fighters” deployed by the US Air Force and the Marine Corps, not to mention those of France (Mirage 2000), UK, Italy, Canada, Belgium, Qatar, UAE, Denmark, Norway, et al…
Solely in the US arsenal
Three B-2 Spirit stealth bombers operating from Whiteman AFB. [see video below, a deadly aircraft capable of launching 16 bunker buster bombs (with conventional or nuclear warheads) in a single sortie]
Two B-1B bombers
Ten F-15E Strike Eagle strike fighters operating out of RAF Lakenheath
Eight F-16C Fighting Falcon multi-role fighters from Spangdahlem Air Base started leaving for Aviano on 20 March
Two HH-60 Pave Hawk combat search and rescue helicopters from RAF Lakenheath operating from USS Ponce (LPD-15).
Three E-3 Sentry airborne warning and control system (AWACS)
Three E-8C battle management/command and control aircraft
One EC-130H electronic warfare (communications jamming) aircraft
One EC-130J psychological operations aircraft
One RC-135V/W Rivet Joint signals intelligence aircraft
Two AC-130U gunships[49]
Four KC-10A Extender Aerial Refueling Tanker/Airlift Aircraft
Six A-10 Thunderbolt ground-attack aircraft[40][49]
Global Hawk unmanned aerial surveillance vehicle
Lockheed U-2 Reconnaissance aircraft
Four AV-8B Harrier II ground attack fighters from the 26th Marine Expeditionary Unit, operating off of USS Kearsarge
Two MV-22 Osprey tiltrotor aircraft from the 26th MEU participated in the pilot rescue.
Two CH-53E Super Stallions from the 26th MEU participated in the pilot rescue.
One KC-130J Hercules from the 26th MEU participated in the pilot rescue.
See Operation Odyssey Dawn – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
France’s Mirage 2000 used in Operation Odyssey Dawn against Libya,
Royal Air Force Tornado GR4A
Northrop Grunman Video Clip on the B-2
This war has been on the NATO drawing board for several years.
____
Talking of ‘on the drawing board’…
Military operations of this size and magnitude are never improvised. The war on Libya as well as the armed insurrection were planned months prior to the Arab protest movement…
Libya, 19 March 2011. “No Fly Zone” under UN Security Council Resolution 1973: A “Humanitarian War” is Launched.
We were led to believe that the protest movement in Egypt and Tunisia had spread to Libya.
The insurrection in Libya was presented as a spontaneous response to a wave of pro-democracy activism which had swept the Arab World.
In turn, we were led to believe that ”the international community” decided in response to these unfolding events, to “protect the lives of civilians” and refer the matter to the United Nations Security Council.
The media then reported that it was only once the UN Security Council had adopted Resolution 1973, that the US and NATO member countries took the decision to intervene militarily in Libya under the “No Fly Zone”…
THE WAR ON LIBYA WAS KNOWN AND DECIDED WELL IN ADVANCE.
MILITARY PLANNING WAS IN “AN ADVANCED STAGE OF READINESS”.
UN SECURITY COUNCIL RESOLUTION 1973 PERTAINING TO LIBYA WAS ALREADY ON THE DRAWING BOARD, MONTHS PRIOR TO THE ONSET OF THE “PRO-DEMOCRACY” INSURRECTION IN EASTERN LIBYA. …
Read carefully [" " indicate quotation from "The Southern Mistral 2011" War Games, Scenario)]
On November 02 2010, more than four months prior to the onset of Operation Odyssey Dawn, France and the UK announced the conduct of war games under Operation “SOUTHERN MISTRAL 2011″ against “AN IMAGINARY COUNTRY’ called “SOUTHLAND”, living under a “DICTATORSHIP” which allegedly “was responsible for an attack against France’s national interests”.
The Franco-British (humanitarian) air operation against “SOUTHLAND” was to be carried out pursuant to an IMAGINARY “UNITED NATIONS SECURITY COUNCIL RESOLUTION NO: 3003″.
The war games were scheduled to start on March 21, 2011. THESE FRANCO-BRITISH WAR GAMES NEVER TOOK PLACE. OPERATION “SOUTHERN MISTRAL” WENT LIVE ON MARCH 19, 2011 (two days prior to the scheduled date).
Below is the exact quote and colors from the Franco-British war games website which is hosted by France’s Air Force:
“SOUTHLAND”: Dictatorship responsible for an attack against France’s national interests.
FRANCE: Makes the decision to show its determination to SOUTHLAND (under United Nations Security council resolution n°3003).
UNITED-KINGDOM: Allied country as determined in the bilateral agreement. The United Kingdom supports France through the deployment of its air assets.” (Commandement de la défense aérienne et des opérations aériennes, Southern Mistral 2011: Scenario)
The war games were scheduled to take place from the 21st to the 25 March 2011.
“Six Royal Air Force Tornado GR4s, one tanker Vickers VC-10 and one Boeing E3D will be deployed together with French Air force Mirage 2000Ds, 2000Ns and 2000Cs operating with a fleet of around thirty aircraft including helicopters, Boeing tankers and Awacs radar aircraft.
Air Raid Southern Storm will be commanded and controlled by the National Air Operations Centre (CNOA) of Lyon Mont-Verdun air base (BA 942).
An Air Operations Cell deployed at Nancy air base (BA 133) will follow in real time all the air missions and reproduce the air raids.
Simultaneously, Paratrooper Commando Air 20 (CPA20) will receive its British counterpart in Dijon: the RAF Regiment. Together they will train for air base protection missions on operational theatres in compliance with what is achieved today in Afghanistan.
Furthermore, RAF Regiment members will train in Captieux to helicopters’ air policing measures. These specific procedures are implemented on a daily basis by the Quick reaction Alert FAF air defence helicopters to intervene against “slow movers”.” Welcome to Southern Mistral 11
Based on Western geography, France mostly, an imaginary country was created: SOUTHLAND. An artificial border was drawn inside France to simulate this country.”
SOUTHLAND : Dictatorship responsible for an attack against France’s national interests. (See Commandement de la défense aérienne et des opérations aériennes, Operation Southern Mistral: Scenario)
THESE FRANCO-BRITISH WAR GAMES NEVER TOOK PLACE. OPERATION “SOUTHERN MISTRAL” WENT LIVE ON MARCH 19, 2011 AGAINST “SOUTHLAND”.
“OPERATION SOUTHERN MISTRAL” = “Operation Odyssey Dawn”
“SOUTHLAND” = ”Libya”
“Security Council Resolution 3003″ = ”Security Council Resolution 1973″.
“DICTATORSHIP” = “Qadhaffi Regime”
Under the war games scenario Security Council Resolution 3003 was proposed by France, whereas “the real life” UN Security Council Resolution 1973 was proposed by France, the UK and Lebanon.
The only difference of substance is that “SOUTHLAND” (aka Libya), the so-called imaginary Southern country for the war games was inserted inside the territory of Southern France (See Map above THE UK IS GREEN, FRANCE IS BLUE, SOUTHLAND IS RED AND NAVARRE IS ORANGE). (Navarre ‘Navarra” designates a region of Northern Spain).
The imaginary location of this imaginary Southern country called “SOUTHLAND” was not really an issue, because the war games were postponed…
The French Air Force announced (in English) the “Suspension of exercise Southern Mistral 2011 [against SOUTHLAND]… Due to the current international events [BOMBING OF LIBYA], exercise Southern Mistral has been suspended.” Suspension of exercise Southern Mistral 2011. The French version uses the term Mise en veille which means “put on standby” (Mise en veille de l’exercice Southern Mistral 2011). THE OPERATION WAS NOT “PUT ON STANDBY”: THE BRITISH AND FRENCH WAR PLANES WHICH WERE TO BE DEPLOYED AS PART OF OPERATION “SOUTHERN MISTRAL” INCLUDING FRANCE’S MIRAGE 2000 AND BRITAIN’S TORNADO GR4A WERE SENT TO BOMB LIBYA.
What can be said regarding these war games, the attacks on Libya and United Nations Security council resolutions 3003 and 1973?….
We invite our readers to think and reflect on the logic of military planning.
Military operations of this size and magnitude are never improvised. The war on Libya as well as the armed insurrection were planned months prior to the Arab protest movement. In the words of Rep. Denis Kucinich:
“While war games are not uncommon, the similarities between ‘Southern Mistral’ and ‘Operation Odyssey Dawn’ highlight just how many unanswered questions remain regarding our own military planning for Libya.
The ‘Southern Mistral’ war games called for Great Britain-French air strikes against an unnamed dictator of a fictional country, “Southland.” The pretend attack was authorized by a pretend United Nations Security Council Resolution. The ‘Southern Mistral’ war games were set for March 21-25, 2011.
On March 19, 2011, the United States joined France and Great Britain in an air attack against Muammar Gaddafi’s Libya pursuant to UN Security Council Resolution 1973.
Scheduling a joint military exercise that ends up resembling real military action could be seen as remarkable planning by the French and British, but it also highlights questions regarding the United States’ role in planning for the war. We don’t know how long the attack on Libya has been in preparation, but Congress must find out. We don’t know who the rebels really represent and how they became armed, but Congress must find out. (Denis Kucinich, Kucinich: President Had Time to Consult with International Community, Not Congress? | Congressman Dennis J. Kucinich, Press Release, March 29, 2011. See also November 2010 War Games: “Southern Mistral” Air Attack against Dictatorship in a Fictitious Country called “Southland” by Rep. Dennis J Kucinich)
_______
I leave you with this from researcher/writer James Corbett, included not just for the information in it, but also for Corbett’s concluding thoughts.
China Firing Back in the New Cold War.
But which side should the public be on?
Now that ground forces have already been deployed in Libya, and now that the leaders of the NATO war machine have finally admitted that their end goal is nothing less than regime change, the mainstream media is finally daring to ask about the geostrategic consequences of this third American war front.
The spectre of the overthrow of the Iranian government is being bandied about once again, Lieberman is lobbying for intervention in Syria, and even John McCain is sending not-so-veiled threats to Moscow and Beijing that this wave of destabilization—a wave that is now fully admitted to be an invention of US and globalist-controlled NGOs—will be crashing on their shores soon. The long-term game plan of the globalist forces is now increasingly clear: overthrow Assad in Syria, isolate Iran, get rid of Ahmedinejad, and encircle China and Russia.
The Cold War is Underway…and the West is Losing
The question of why China would let the Libyan resolution pass through the UN Security Council without exercising its veto is a good one, and one that I didn’t answer adequately in that short segment. The full answer involves an understanding that the “war” in “cold war” is more analogous than literal.
The Chinese are not stupid, and they understand that the fall of the Soviet Union was not due to a grand military confrontation but an economic collapse. That collapse, in hindsight, was inevitable: the Soviet economy was broken and pathetic, and a greater and greater percentage of that economy was being shunted off into the unwinnable, never-ending war in Afghanistan The people were tired of decades of repression and deprivation and they cheered on the overthrow of the Soviet empire.
Similarly, the American economy has long been teetering on collapse, saved only by the petrodollar hegemony that has ensured the Treasury’s ability to sell as much debt as it needs to keep the empire running. Now the dollar is a reserve in name only, and the unbelievable lengths that Geithner and Bernanke are going to in order to keep the economy limping along—from buying up their own treasuries to selling puts on those treasuries to threatening default if the Congress cuts off their debt-supply—signals the last gasp of a financial system in terminal decline. Add to that a defense budget that is now topping $1 trillion a year and the idea that the Chinese are happy to let America continue expanding their military commitments around the world begins to make sense.
The truth is that the Chinese are not sitting idly by while NATO destabilizes Africa and attempts to create the turmoil that would justify a stronger AFRICOM. They have already fired their shots in this cold war. Last week alone, the BRICS countries were turning up the heat on the US dollar, and the China Development Bank, for one, struck out. They announced a new 10 billion yuan loan fund for their BRICS allies denominated in local currencies, not dollars. More and more bilateral trade agreements, oil bourses and markets are being set up without any need for Federal Reserve Notes. And the Chinese still hold over a trillion dollars in US treasuries, the dumping of which could be the final nail in the coffin for the dollar.
The False Choice: The Enemy of Your Enemy is Not Your Friend
Average observers of these geopolitical manoeuvres and economic power plays—that is, the vast majority of the public of every nation who are not invested in the corporate-financial-military oligarchy—might find themselves at a loss as to what to do about this global spectacle, or even what to think about it. Should Americans be rooting for the bombing of Libyan civilians? If not, does that mean they should be with the Chinese (and let’s not forget the Russians) in trying to encourage the collapse of the American financial empire? But what about the hundreds of millions around the world who will inevitably be thrust further into poverty by this economic turmoil, and the millions who are expected to die as food prices continue to rise in line with oil?
The trick, of course, is that this entire line of thinking, the either/or that is generally presented as the only alternatives in these situations, is a false choice. In a shell game it doesn’t matter which shell you pick; you’re going to lose in any event. Similarly in a false conflict it doesn’t matter which side you support: you’re going to suffer in the end.
This is not just a situation that has come about by happenstance; the entire West-East conflict that seems headed toward a grand confrontation and World War III has been engineered by the international financiers who are interested in nothing but increased control for themselves. This is nowhere more evident than in China.
“Whatever the price of the Chinese Revolution, it has obviously succeeded not only in producing more efficient and dedicated administration, but also in fostering high morale and community of purpose. The social experiment in China under Chairman Mao’s leadership is one of the most important and successful in human history.” — David Rockefeller, The New York Times, August 10, 1973
In truth, Mao’s “Great Leap Forward” was one of the greatest slaughters in human history, with an incomprehensible 45 million Chinese being “worked, starved or beaten to death” in the four years from 1958 to 1962 alone. But in the eye of the Rockefeller-fronted American financial power elite, a man who slaughters tens of millions of his own people should be lauded for “efficient and dedicated administration” and “fostering high morale” while Libyan civilians need to be bombed for Qaddafi’s mortal sin of fighting back against the US-funded, Al Qaeda-linked insurgency attempting to overthrow him.
The seeming paradox of this hypocrisy vanishes when one realizes that the Communist Chinese (like Soviet Russia before it) is the apple of the globalists’ eye, something that they have fostered, funded and promoted since its inception and deliberately positioned to be the leader of the world economy in our current era.
In January 1969, shortly after taking office, Richard Nixon met with Henry Kissinger, David Rockefeller’s chief underling, and got word that the establishment desired the “normalization” of relations with China. Immediately, Nixon abandoned years of hard-line anti-communist rhetoric and began working toward the historic 1972 visit and the resumption of diplomatic relations between the two countries. The year before that visit Kissinger had secretly visited China to soften the way, and the year after Rockefeller himself visited as Chairman of Chase Manhattan Bank to establish the first U.S. correspondent bank to the Bank of China. Time Magazine wrote an article about that visit that noted that Chase had also become the first U.S. bank to open an office in Soviet Russia earlier that same year, noting that “the Communists, who like to deal with the topmost people, are captivated by the very name of Rockefeller.”
When Rockefeller visited Chinese President Jiang Zemin in the wake of 9/11, he called the U.S.-China relationship “the most important bilateral relations in the world” and the Chinese press noted that Zemin “expressed appreciation for Rockefeller’s contributions to Sino-U.S. relations.”
In the 1990s, even as the international trade agreements that would see the rise to dominance of China were being hammered out, the Clinton Administration helped a Chinese-owned shipping company in its bid to lease the old U.S. Naval base in Long Beach, California, a deal that Congress nixed. Clinton also personally approved the transfer of radiation-hardened chip sets to China in 1996, advanced technology that could be used in nuclear warfare.
Throughout the decade, as the Chinese economic juggernaut continued to grow, international financiers like George Soros began promoting it as the economic model for the rest of the world (see this and this and this and this). And a full decade and a half (at least) after tax breaks and other perks helped to incentivize the outsourcing of jobs from the industrialized world to China, a new study has just “discovered” that America has lost most of its jobs to China.
The Chinese threat is just another version of the red scare, or the Nazis, or Al Qaeda, or any of the other “menaces” to the West that have sprung up in the past century: an enemy fostered, funded and propped up by the international financial elite in order to provide the opposition in this geopolitical shell game. The public is then presented with two choices as a fait accompli: side with the NATO forces of imperial militarism, or choose to side with the Shanghai Cooperation Organization.
The Only Way to Win the Game is Not to Play
When we pull back from the geopolitical grand chessboard we find that it is in fact one player, the global financial elite, playing both sides. Whether you root for black or white, the elite will win in the end. In the face of such a false choice, the only real choice is not to choose at all.
Surely we can’t condone the bombing of Libyan civilians, and it makes no sense to side with a brutal communist dictatorship that enforces one child policies with forced abortions and harvests the organs of its prisoners. So we must identify ourselves as not being on either side. Depending where we live, who we work for, and how we spend our money, we may be tied to one side or the other, whether financially or socially, but that does not mean that we must continue to give our allegiance to any of these global power players in their Machiavellian manipulations of the planet.
Although it may not be as fundamentally satisfying to us as human beings, geared as we are to confrontation and battle as a way of resolving our problems, the best thing we can do is in fact to ignore the big players all together, withdraw ourselves from their system, and begin constructing our own self-sufficient communities. Everyday we make a conscious decision of our own free will to shop at their stores, to bank at their banks, and to eat the foods they process in their factories. With changes in lifestyle, we can detach ourselves from all of their levers of control over our lives and at the exact same time starve their war machine of the funds and the support that it needs to function.
As others have pointed out time and again, every community garden, every farmer’s market, every solar panel, every community currency, every neighborhood mutual aid society is a monkey wrench in the plans for the global war and a nail in the coffin of the ambitions of the globalists.
Unhooking ourselves from the system that is oppressing us is not an easy task, nor will it be an overnight one, but it seems that time is running out before the elite manipulate us into another big war. The consequences of a third world war, doubtless a nuclear one, are horrific. The elite are hoping to bring about this conflict in order to create a new, further centralized, truly global system of government from the ashes of the old world order. But they need our support in order to do it.
Let’s not give it to them.
James Corbett
The Corbett Report
19 April, 2011
Filed under: Misc' Tagged: | 'humanitarian imperialism', deep politics, Libya. Qaddafi, NATO
