Citing "shithole countries" of Africa, Trump impolitely referenced where it is that developed nations go to shit. OBVIOUSLY, SHITHOLE is vulgar, derogatory and unhelpful. Used by the US president to describe dark-skinned nations, it's reprehensible and racist. But "shithole" is more than a euphemism. Literally it's a place made awful by being the dumping ground of everyone's excrement. The specific lands which Trump slandered, El Salvador, Honduras, Haiti, and all of Africa, are beautiful, scenic, and bountiful places. How could "shitholes" begin to describe them? Well, in a gold-plated toilet scale... Isn't "shithole" an appropriately condescending description of the purposefully underdeveloped and exploited African and Caribbean lands? The victims of the externalized costs of colonialism, capitalism, and now climate disaster, are what President Trump calls shithole countries. Predictably the international western press is translating shithole in its colloquial sense, not its literal, as shabby, backward, etc. --obviously to spare western readers from embarrassing themselves about their abusive relation to the third world, because there is absolutely no doubt that every culture and every language has a word (which predates plumbing) for where the community goes to shit.
Tag: Africa
US reduces troop levels in Niger by 3
What are US soldiers doing in Niger? Reducing our deployment by five Green Berets, three of them for good. But seriously. Niger is not a declared war and US personel are not allowed to report they've been there. AFRI-COM now admits it’s building a drone base in Agadez Niger from which to strike resistance fighters hindering our corporate exploitation of the African continent. The drone base “is projected to be the biggest military labor troop project in US Air Force history.”
Save Darfur was an Oil Play
I remember when you couldn't throw a stick without hitting someone who didn't want to SAVE DARFUR. And boy did they need hitting with a stick. All those high school and college students activated by OBAMA 08 lined up to add Darfur to their extracurriculars. Why? The usual manipulative pictures and imperialist propaganda. Sudanese refugees needed saving. Bleeding Hearts' Burden. George Clooney was showered with activist laurels for playing Hollywood's ambassador to Darfur. Soon enough pacifists were calling for military intervention, a "no-fly zone" but enforced with force. Denied, the US provided the military intervention covertly, and ultimately the southern fossil fuel rich portion of Sudan was lopped off for the multinational profiteers.
Ebola kills 4,000 in Africa but US has temerity to call its first “Patient Zero”
RIP Thomas Eric Duncan. Thankfully there is now some sympathetic coverage of the Ebola victim who traveled to the US from Liberia. It turns out Duncan wasn't by definition a selfish refugee who lied to immigration officers. He can hardly be tagged "patient zero" unless an outbreak can be traced to him. We have no idea whether Duncan is the only infected traveler to exit West Africa undetected.
Obama launches bold US medical relief program “Soldiers Without Borders”
The US response to Ebola is "Doctors Without Borders" with a cheaper payroll, serving US imperial needs above all. Okay, the US has been rolling out SOLDIERS WITHOUT BORDERS since Manifest Destiny and the Shores of Tripoli, but President Barack Obama's initiative to send 3,000 soldiers to fight the Ebola-Zaire virus in West Africa marks the ploy's most farcical disguise: soldiers-as-peacekeepers-passing-as-doctors. Who knew Specialist 1st Class meant health specialist? If your neighborhood doctor doesn't accept Medicaid, maybe your local garrison will. Poor President Obama. Most of the national budget goes to the Defense Department, so our federal resources are mostly soldiers! When your only tool is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail. In this case, coffin nails, to contain the stricken people of West Africa. They need epidemiologists, we give them boots on the ground.
John Kerry tells Africa its greatest resource was & will always be slavery
With the developed empire still wildly exploiting Africa's vast natural resources and pillaging the wealth of its peoples, US Secretary of State John Kerry had the temerity to pretend that the dark continent's most precious resource is its untapped labor. Globalization means Western Civ doesn't have to ship slaves to labor intensive ventures across oceans. Now debt slaves can serve world bank masters in sweatshops and maquiadores and plantations situated in their own prison states.
US government occupation of Africa
---- What does US imperialism look like? Well it looks much like this... US deploying troops to 35 African countries in 2013.
War memorial to Global War On Terror, aka War on Islam For World Resources now logging “Horn of Africa” casualties
By now you've read elsewhere that many of the wounded soldiers being medivac'd to the US surgery hub in Germany are coming from parts unknown more specifically not-known to be US-declared war zones. Their flight origin is only revealed as "Horn of Africa", but it's telling isn't it? US disrespect for foreign sovereignty means not even uttering the nation states involved. USG spokesmen know, for the geographically challenged, calling it the Horn can obfuscate the spheres of disputed influence stretching from Somalia, for you Blackhawk Downers, to Mali, where three US special ops were recently killed with their prostitute attaches, while the corporate media breathed a collective "huh?" Thankfully US adversaries in Mali had the better sense not to string the American bodies from bridges like pre-Falluja'd Fallujah, or did they? NATO's media cameras weren't there to exploit it in any case. Basically the Horn is where US AFRICOM has yet to beat back the continent's last Islamic protectors as the Western serial rape of Africa drops its pretense that strangulation isn't the final act.
Putin to Israel: if you start a war with Iran and Syria, it will also be seen as a US attack on Russia and China
The message is very simple that Putin has carried to Israel during his visit. It is the exact same one he gave directly to Obama at the G20 summit in Mexico last week. .... 'Don't start your war!' Is China solid in support of Putin's position for Russia? Here is how it seems from the Chinese pov... 'The Syrian opposition abroad has long called for a military operation in Syria similar to the one that helped toppling the Libyan regime of Muammar Gaddafi last year, but the United States and its European allies have shown little appetite for such intervention given the complexity of the Syrian situation and the repercussions it might drag, particularly on Israel. Syria's powerful regional allies with Iran and the Lebanese Hezbollah, along with its international ones, such as Russia, have greatly contributed in restraining the superpowers from considering a military offensive on Syria.' from Xinhua News Analysis: Syria's new government faces escalation of tension on international arena.
Obama Administration has expanded US military interventionism in Africa
As the Democratic Party dominated 'Peace' Movement in the US has slept the last 3 years PLUS, with its hero in office, the Obama-Clinton Administration has steadily increased the Pentagon presence across Africa. Actually many of the liberal Democrats demanded Pentagon expansionism on the continent, as they demanded that D.C. supposedly 'save' Darfur. Black Agenda Report this week examines the US imperialist increase in forces in Africa under Obama, in Glen Ford's report U.S. Escalates Military Penetration of Africa.
Stop Joseph Kony? Who’s going to stop US military from raping all of Africa?
Wanna know who's all over Kony, KONY 2012 that is? Denver's Global Equality collective is on top of that shit like you wouldn't believe. You may have thought the viral video debunked and that was that, a screening of KONY 2012 was attempted in Uganda and caused a riotous backlash. But offline and getting no mention in the MSM is our military's propaganda campaign in the public schools. From elementary to high school, American children are being rallied to push for US military intervention in Africa. Fortunately anti-imperialist Global Equality owns that cause and has been sending operatives into as many Denver area schools as they can. They've got multitudes of handouts, posters, and stickers to subvert the pro-intervention line. Unadulterated, the official message has American children pumping their fists to support hunting down warlord Kony. It's not just boosterism, they're recruiting! Our Hitler Youth are vowing to join up to defeat Joseph Kony, for the crime of abducting children to fight in his army, aptly named "invisible children" because our would-be conscripts forget that's who they'll be killing. If you want to save the children in the Denver schools, contact Global Equality about getting their anti-press-kit, otherwise their resources are available online.
ZOMBIE – Fela Kuti’s tribute to Military Zombies that make up our world
I love this song. Zombie - by Fela Kuti ...Fela Kuti is Africa's greatest musical legend and this is his greatest song! ZOMBIE Zombie o, zombie (Zombie o, zombie) Zombie o, zombie (Zombie o, zombie) Zombie no go go, unless you tell him to go. (Zombie) Zombie no go stop, unless you tell him to stop. (Zombie) Zombie no go turn, unless you tell him to turn. (Zombie) Zombie no go think, unless you tell him to think. (Zombie) Tell him to go straight. A joro, jara, joro. No break, no job, no sense. A joro, jara, joro. Tell him to go kill. A joro, jara, joro. No break, no job, no sense. A joro, jara, joro. Tell him to go quench. A joro, jara, joro. No break, no job, no sense. A joro, jara, joro. Go and kill! (Joro, jaro, joro) Go and die! (Joro, jaro, joro) Go and quench! (Joro, jaro, joro) Put him for reverse! (Joro, jaro, joro) Joro, jara, joro, zombie went a one way. Joro, jara, joro, zombie went a one way. Joro, jara, joro, zombie went a one way. Joro, jara, joro. Attention! (Zombie) Quick march! Slow march! (Zombie) Left turn! Right turn! (Zombie) About turn! Double up! (Zombie) Salute! Open your hat! (Zombie) Stand at ease! Fall in! (Zombie) Fall out! Fall down! (Zombie) Get ready! HALT! ORDER! Dismiss!
Smell test shows KONY 2012 viral vid tests positive for military grade virus
Was mainstream media endorsing a viral Youtube video your first clue that the Invisible Children campaign bears the suspicious signs of US war-making propaganda?! What "Save Darfur" was to Sudan, the CIA-spelled backward [Africa's] Invisible Children operation is to Uganda. With its Libyan protector out of the way, Africa and its resources have never been more accessible, so now AFRICOM's cross-hairs are on regional insurgent defenders. Apparently Joseph Kony is today's poster villain, and those pitching a US intervention in Central Africa want to convince the public the engagement would have an exit strategy not to exceed 2012. Flowers and candy. What are we holding against Joseph Kony, indoctrinating child soldiers? What are American recruiters doing in our middle schools but trolling for our Invisible Children who, undereducated, undernourished and unprotected from predatory militarist propaganda, succumb to the economic or criminal justice draft?
How European imperialism spread AIDS to the world
About 7 years ago, scientists discovered that the origins of the AIDS epidemic began in Cameroon, Africa. That info can be found here... Hunt for origin of HIV pandemic ends at chimpanzee colony in Cameroon ...This week an article in the Washington Post by Daniel Halperin, who was a senior HIV prevention adviser in the U.S. government’s global AIDS program, posits that European imperialism spread AIDS out of Africa and eventually throughout the rest of the world. See Colonialism in Africa helped launch the HIV epidemic a century ago. Question now is, will current US imperialism done in the name of 'National Security' similarly launch new disease into the US population and into world wide populations as well? Time only will tell.
DC Sniper John Allen Muhammad was early post-911 Muslim Avenger
What morbid fortuity that as President Obama heads to Fort Hood to commemorate the victims of renegade Nidal Malik Hasan, preparations are being made for the execution of another Islamic avenger, the Beltway sniper. As Americans satiate their blood lust against Muslims in the person of John Allen Muhammad who is scheduled to die tonight by lethal injection, perhaps comparisons to Major Hasan will draw attention to the ideological motives behind the 2002 shooting spree. We don't have to like them, but it would obviously pay us to listen. Not to excuse the Washington DC killings, nor suggest that the Gulf War veteran and convert to Islam is any less a cold-blooded murderer, but TV crime shows have painted he and accomplice Lee Boyd Malvo as sadistic serial killers, completely burying the sociopolitical elements which tie the snipers to the Global War On Terror/Islam, the legacy of the African American struggle, and its extreme incarnation as the Black Liberation Army. Muhammad maintains his innocence, primarily because the evidence implicating him remains circumstantial. He was convicted on the strength of partner Malvo's testimony, and recently lost a Supreme Court appeal. In his testimony, Malvo described three phases to Muhammad's murderous plans. First was to be the sniper killings, which the two calculated could claim six victims a day. Phase two involved plans to murder a policeman and set bombs at the site of his funeral, to claim an unprecedented toll of police casualties. With money extorted from the government in return for a cessation to the killings, Muhammad and Malvo planned to retreat to Canada, where they planned to build a Utopian community for other disenfranchised African American men, where they would be trained for bigger and more numerous missions against the US. While I can understand US public figures having to distance themselves from Muhammad, I'm not sure why the organizations speaking out for US political prisoners weren't showing their solidarity for his motives. Were Muhammad's ambitions much different from the freedom fighters of the EZLN? Does the rejection of Muhammad reflect the post 9/11 pallor of insurrection in word only? The case against Major Hasan proceeds apace with the usual unofficial press leaks. I heard reporters site sources who don't want to be identified by name, in deference to the legal constraints of the ongoing investigation. The accusations they make against Hasan, however, for the benefit of the media outlets, reflects not a concern for Hasan's due process, but rather their fear for getting themselves in trouble. But the media is eating it up.
Give this lackey a new directive
BagnewsNotes has juxtaposed two photos of African colonialism. One taken more than a century ago shows a white bwana being ferried by two porters, the second is the recent image at left. The difference is that today's servants are trusted with weapons because they have to double as security, the continent being more dangerous now than when it was darkest Africa. According to photographer Paolo Woods, the colonial industrialist beneath the umbrella, stands before a 544 villa development in Nigeria, built on the Lekki Peninsula to suit Chevron Oil. For this go-round of postcards from the outlands, could anti-imperialist venture capitalists raise funds to give these Nigerian servants more than pieces of silver? The-world-is-watching age of the internet could offer these henchmen several times more their pay to gun down the light-skinned slave masters point-blank, instead of defending them against Nigeria's oppressed victims.
Obama ate a fish who knew Lincoln
Fishermen have always called it the Slimehead fish. It's sorta-scientific name is Darwin's Slimehead. But when bottom-of-the-barrel scraping began for the ocean's remaining fisheries, fishmongers created a market for the never-thought-palatable deep bottom feeder by renaming it the Orange Roughy. That much you've probably heard before. Really, what's in a name? A fish by any other name will smell too. Is there a fish story without hyperbole, that does not smell fishy? The idiom comes from the experience-honed doubt that the fishmonger's catch is not fresh. People know steak is dead cow, so does it matter that Orange Roughy is Slimehead, Monkfish is Goosefish, Rock Salmon is Spiny Dogfish, or Tilapia is Mouthbrooder? Actually Israeli exporters wanted to give Tilapia a biblical makeover, asserting the Tilapia from the Sea of Galilee, should be called St. Peter's Fish, but US regulators intervened. In the Gospel of Matthew 17:27, apostle Peter tells tax collectors where they can go. In more than that many words he tells them to go fish, and from the mouth of the "first fish they catch," they will find the four drachmas he owes them. The FDA didn't buy it either. By the way, if you doubt Wikipedia has Zionist preoccupations, sniff the first paragraph of their entry for Tilapia. Maybe we are about to see whether Wiki momentum can surfeit the vernacular. The US government also intervened when fish wholesalers wanted to rename the Patagonian Toothfish as Chilean Sea Bass. It's not a Bass. And the poor Teethfish, like the Slimehead, are now endangered. Because man's traditional food fishes have become depleted, we're having now to make meals of the dregs. And the populations of these deep sea dwellers have less resiliency than the coastal stocks. In the case of the Toothfish and the Slimehead, it's because they grow very slowly. The Slimehead can grow to be 150 years old. They don't become sexually reproductive until they are 33, and that's not in dogfish years. Fishing operations which harvest entire sea mounts decimate every generation at once, leaving none who can spawn. Would it give you an unsettled feeling to consume something so ancient? If we're talking a pre-Phylloxera wine, it could be a great thing. But a fish that old has been absorbing mercury from the height of the industrial revolution onwards. So there might be a health benefit for showing deference to your fish elders. It recently upset me to learn that with modern agriculture we eat cattle before they're two, when they're barely adolescent. Now I wonder what's too old. We revere elephants and tortoises for their longevity, such ancient beings we don't eat. I'm old enough to remember learning about the old carp in the fountains of Paris, who also lived quite long. French schoolchildren could marvel that some carp still lived who might have glimpsed Napoleon. A Slimehead Orange Roughy caught today could have lived in the time of Lincoln. Certainly those fish drag-netted in the 1970s, when the Orange Roughy exotic star
Tea Party Patriot robes for tiny pee pees
COLORADO SPRINGS- This year for Halloween I'm dressing up like yokel heroes Sean Paige, Richard Randall, Tom Gallagher, and Doug Lamborn, the rabble-rousers behind our local Teabag mobs. They're reveling in the white man anger, against immigrants, ACORN, and taxes for social programs, laughing off accusations of being racist, while probably praying to God their mob doesn't seize upon a passing African American and lynch him. Until recently a Halloween costume like this would have been mistaken to be a ghost, but for the resurgent ugly white man. The Pikes Peak region was crawling with KKK members in the 1930s, and during the Bush years their sons and grandsons snuck to the Texas border to join the Klan's modern incarnation The Minutemen. With a black president clouding the horizon, suddenly these same men and women are rallying. At a recent public meeting, Representative Lamborn chuckled about his fellow malcontents rising up, at "I guess we call them, Tea Parties." A heckler cried out "Clan Rallies." The Lamborn crowd booed, but I bet most of them still have their fathers' robes.
Top 10 secret armies of the CIA
Found this on the web, will try to retrace provenance, worth a read: The United States have a well known history of providing military support to countries in need. But from time to time, the US Government has provided secret forces. While many are successful, there have also been a number of failures. This is a list of the ten top secret armies of the CIA. 1. Ukrainian Partisans From 1945 to 1952 the CIA trained and aerially supplied Ukranian partisan units which had originally been organised by he Germans to fight the Soviets during WWII. For seven years, the partisans, operating in the Carpathian Mountains, made sporadic attacks. Finally in 1952, a massive Soviet military force wiped them out. 2. Chinese Brigade in Burma After the Communist victory in China, Nationalist Chinese soldiers fled into northern Burma. During the early 1950s, the CIA used these soldiers to create a 12,000 man brigade which made raids into Red China. However, the Nationalist soldiers found it more profitable to monopolise the local opium trade. 3. Guatemalan Rebel Army After Guatemalan president Jacobo Arbenz legalised that country’s communist party and expropriated 400,000 acres of United Fruit banana plantations, the CIA decided to overthrow his government. Guatemalan rebels were trained in Honduras and backed up with a CIA air contingent of bombers and fighter planes. This army invaded Guatemala in 1954, promptly toppling Arbenz’s regine. 4. Sumatran Rebels In an attempt to overthrow Indonesian president Sukarno in 1958, the CIA sent paramilitary experts and radio operators to the island of Sumatra to organise a revolt. With CIA air support, the rebel army attacked but was quickly defeated. The American government denied involvement even after a CIA b-26 was shot down and its CIA pilot, Allen Pope, was captured. 5. Khamba Horsemen After the 1950 Chinese invasion of Tibet, the CIA began recruiting Khamba horsemen - fierce warriors who supported Tibet’s religious leader, the Dalai Lama - as they escaped into India in 1959. These Khambas were trained in modern warfare at Camp Hale, high in the rocky mountains near Leadville, Colorado. Transported back to Tibet by the CIA operated Air American, the Khambas organised an army number at its peak some 14,000. By the mid-1960s the Khambas had been abandoned by the CIA but they fought on alone until 1970. 6. Bay of Pigs Invasion Force In 1960, CIA operatives recruited 1,500 Cuban refugees living in Miami and staged a surprise attack on Fidel Castro’s Cuba. Trained at a base in Guatemala, this small army - complete with an air force consisting of B-26 bombers - landed at the Bay of Pigs on April 19, 1961. The ill-conceived, poorly planned operation ended in disaster, since all but 150 men of the force were either killed or captured within three days. 7. L’armee Clandestine In 1962, CIA agents recruited Meo tribesmen living in the mountains of Laos to fight as guerrillas against Communist Pathet Lao forces. Called l’armee Clandestine, this unit - paid, trained, and supplied by the CIA - grew into a 30,000 man force. By 1975
What will Michael the Savage Weiner say
… to spin away the fact that the suspects are White, “conservative” Small-Town and with Mayflower ties?? This from Mt Vernon NH and the woman killed, also white, was murdered with a machete. Since the loud-mouth Hate Radio host “Savage” has been known to spend huge amounts of airtime screaming and denouncing anybody who doesn’t believe that Machete Murders are the exclusive domain of (black) recent Immigrants from Africa and the Caribbean. In a non-racist way, of course. At least to hear his lawyers tell it. For the past week he’s been denouncing (black) kids in Chicago, comparing them to Somalia, dig dig dig at the African Immigrant references he gosh darn it just doesn’t like have to make but… oh cut the CRAP, Weiner, you love to spew Hatred and blacks are his favorite target. No telling what sets somebody like that on the path of Slash and Burn Rage. Maybe his first boyfriend dumped him for a black dude or something. Since the (alleged) perpetrators are Skinhead Wannabees who probably never saw a live black person or a live Jewish person, how much would you like to bet they’re fans of The Savage Nation drivel? Which leads to another point, although he’s not observant, not “religiously” a Jew, he’s ethnically Jewish. Why would the SKI… errr.. Pinheads listen to him, since they despise among other PEOPLE, Jews. And not from a religious point of view either. Like Mike, they’ve abandoned the pretense of Religion as the justification of Extremist Hatred.?They just Love to Hate.
Teabag Constitution Day, Acacia Park
THE NOT-WITH-MY-TAXES PATRIOTS are holding another tea party tomorrow, to mark Constitution Day Sept 17, 11AM downtown in Acacia Park, where two friends got permission to table there tomorrow to represent the Special Olympics and pass out applications. It's a terrible joke, but these teabaggers bring out my inner idiot. WE ARE TOMORROW going to don robes and false beards and circulate like multi-gendered Jesuses, through the throngs of angry Christians, passing out business cards on which we printed the passage from Matthew, what you did for the least of your brothers... But I'd really like to recruit an intrepid African American male to help me with a hypothesis. I'm pretty sure that at the height of the crowd's passions tomorrow, a single black voice raised against them, without his appearing to have allies nearby, will result in a spontaneous lunge to try to lynch him. Then we'll pounce, with the on-duty portion of the CSPD who aren't attending the event, and arrest the bigots. There won't be anybody left in the park.
George McGovern, 5pm, Colo. College
QUESTION: WHY an antiwar protest at elder statesman George McGovern's appearance at Colorado College? (Cornerstone Arts Center, South Theater, 5PM) He supports unions, health care, progressive causes; he has been against US interventions in the Middle East, Africa and Central America, and he's very outspoken against the occupations of Afghanistan and Iraq. ANSWER: YES, but what about YOU?
Do we have a soft spot for mercenaries
It's damning photograph. I sought it out after hearing the story of the two Norwegian mercenaries condemned to death in the Congo for the murder of their Congolese driver. Was their black companion killed in an attempt to rob the white adventurers, as they tell it? US news outlets asked Tjostolv Moland's mothers about the picture of her son, which showed him smiling as he wiped blood from the driver's seat of their pickup. The mother dismissed it as bad timing, she though her son was probably caught off guard, laughing at a joke unrelated to his morbid task. Boy can Americans relate. Other US newspapers speculated about a fabled Norwegian propensity to laugh at adversity. They also described Norwegian diplomats scrambling to save the two boys from the gallows. It's true that Norway doesn't have a death sentence, and therefore does not condone it elsewhere. Otherwise US and BBC portrayal of Norwegian concern for the two mercenaries seemed at odds with Norway's usual determined pacifism, so I was eager to hear from my relatives there. The scoop? Contrary to US and UK sentiments and their projection of Norwegian concerns, there is no domestic sympathy for the two wayward boys. None. The Norwegian public has become well aware that Moland and partner Joshua French have been traveling the Congo as mercenaries, and have been involved in other killings as well. The fact that Congolese courts are trying to extort a large fine from the Norwegian government, based on the accusation of the two travelers being agents of Norway, is due to documents which the two forged to pretend they had active duty contact with the Norwegian military. In Norway, military service is compulsory. Every Norwegian male has a record of military service. It helps that Norway rarely involves itself with acts of aggression, sanctioned by a fraternity of nations or not. And when soldiers of fortune like Moland and French set about rampaging in Africa, it behooves Norwegian authorities to ensure that their military is not implicated by association. How fitting that US and UK listeners should presume a reflexive maternal instinct to protect the two white boys, set upon by angry African opportunists. The boys might be mercenaries, but America and Britain have lots of those overseas. Hired guns, paid assassins, professional killers, why quibble with words? The laws of war grant little grace for mercenaries, but that's not what English-speaking supporters of imperial expansion want to believe. Mercenaries in the Neocon vernacular are called private contractors. They're just ordinary soldiers who've escaped the poor pay of military service, to the entrepreneurial ranks of war-making free enterprise.
US govt spreads terror to Yemen
Hundreds of thousands of new refugees and yet another country, Yemen, is now being destabilized by the US's relentless drive to control the Middle East's oil resources. Yemen is not oil rich but sits in a strategic locale between Iran and Saudi Arabia, and Iran and the Horn of Africa (Somalia, Ethiopia, Eritrea, Djibouti, Kenya). That makes it a key battle zone (like Lebanon and Syria to the West) in US efforts to destabilize and topple the current Iranian government in order to replace it with a servile puppet regime under US government control. If you hear anything about this new outbreak of fighting, it will be described by the corporate media as being nothing but a battle between Yemen government forces allied with US ally, Saudi Arabia, and Northern Shia Houtha rebels allied with Iran. No hint beyond that of this civil war being part of anything much larger in size. No hint of US government involvement in the hostilities. Hiding in the shadows though, is the US government and their traditional European allies, Britain, Germany, France, Italy, and so on. This is just one more front line in their neo-imperial expansionism, and thus Yemen joins Pakistan joins Lebanon joins Gaza. The direct casualties of these imperialist wars by the US government and the Pentagon can be seen in this film, and make up, as usual, many very innocent civilians, including many small children. Barack Obama doesn't care though. These children victims of US government war making live far away and are quite defenseless. Out of sight out of mind to the Big Shots in D.C. See Yemenis flee to Saudi border - a film from Al Jazeera for a snapshot picture of the new conflict.
Rock Creek Free Press available in COS
The Rock Creek Free Press is available online, but if you want it in print, the DC monthly is available in Colorado Springs at the Bookman, 3163 W. Colorado. The September issue features a speech given by legendary Australian journalist John Pilger on July 4th in San Francisco. Here's the RCFP transcript: Two years ago I spoke at “Socialism in Chicago” about an invisible government which is a term used by Edward Bernays, one the founders of modern propaganda. It was Bernays, who in the 1920s invented public relations as a euphemism for propaganda. And it was Bernays, deploying the ideas of his uncle Sigmund Freud, who campaigned on behalf of the tobacco industry for women to take up smoking as an act of feminist liberation calling cigarettes “tortures of freedom”. At the same time he was involved in the disinformation which was critical in overthrowing the Arbenz government in Guatemala. So you have the association of cigarettes and regime change. The invisible government that Bernays had in mind brought together all media: PR, the press, broadcasting, advertising and their power of branding and image making. In other words, disinformation. And I suppose I would like to talk today about this invisible government’s most recent achievement, the rise of Barrack Obama and the silencing of much of the left. But all of this has a history, of course and I’d like to go back, take you back some forty years to a sultry and, for me, very memorable day in Viet Nam. I was a young war correspondent who had just arrived in a village in the Central Highlands called Tuylon. My assignment was to write about a unit of US Marines who had been sent to the village to win hearts and minds. “My orders,” said the Marine Sergeant, “are to sell the American way of liberty, as stated in the Pacification Handbook, this is designed to win the hearts and minds of folks as stated on page 86.” Now, page 86 was headed in capital letters: WHAM (winning hearts and minds). The Marine Unit was a combined action company which explained the Sergeant, meant, “We attack these folks on Mondays and we win their hearts and minds on Tuesdays.” He was joking, of course, but not quite. The Sergeant, who didn’t speak Vietnamese, had arrived in the village, stood up on a Jeep and said through a bullhorn: “Come on out everybody we’ve got rice and candies and toothbrushes to give you.” This was greeted by silence. “Now listen, either you gooks come on out or we’re going to come right in there and get you!” Now the people of Tuylon finally came out and they stood in line to receive packets of Uncle Ben’s Miracle Rice, Hershey Bars, party balloons, and several thousand toothbrushes. Three portable, battery operated, yellow, flush lavatories were held back for the arrival of the colonel. And when the colonel arrived that evening, the district chief was summoned and the yellow, flush lavatories unveiled. The colonel