Just like the US has drawn Great Britain into its orbit of militarizing world society so to is it doing with our neighbor to the North, Canada. (Hey, I always liked that ‘neighbor to the North’ phrase!)
Here is an interview with prominent Canadian antiwar activist, Steven Staples that sheds some light on the situation UP THERE. It’s a good interview, though I think he takes a much more positive view of how the Peace Movement there is actually doing than it in fact might deserve.
The false version, put out by the ‘Save Darfur’ pro- do something folk, is that Darfur is a matter of 2 sides, a good side of Black victims and a bad side of Arab murderers. This couldn’t be farther from the truth though, yet this ‘Black and Arab’ view is very useful for prompting US interventionism into the region.
In truth, the conflict in the Darfur region of Sudan is just one regional conflict amongst many throughout Sudan and neighboring countries. It isn’t even the deadliest of these wars. Both the conflicts in the Horn of Africa and those throughout Congo and the countries to the East of Congo hav been far more deadlier in loss of life.
Even in Darfur itself, the conflict is far more complex than Western ears usually hear about. Darfur is much more than the land of the Fur people, since there are several other ethnic groups living in Darfur than the just the Fur themselves.
The Fur themselves live in not just Sudan, but also in Chad and the Central African Republic. Those who want intervention from the US and Europeans, paint a picture of Arab horsemen from outside the region, raiding and raping into Dafur to genocidally wipe Blacks of the Fur off the face of the map to take over the region for themselves.
Here is another picture of the conflict that is quite different. Darfur Conflict Takes Unexpected Turn
In Iraq, Afghanistan, Somalia, and the Balkans, we have begun to see the dangers of plopping ourselves down inside multi-ethnic conflicts that our society poorly understands. It certainly is good for the munitions industry that supplies ‘our troops’ when we do get involved in these conflicts. They make a killing.
Our own US population foots the bill for the killing fields ‘our troops’ involve themselves in creating…. the killing fields that benefit nobody outside those who have jobs or stock portfolios in the military-industrial complex.
Incredibly, many liberal Democrats have positioned themselves in favor of some sort of interventionism into Sudan, while the Bush Administration has actually, in this case, tried some to avoid it, though they favor interventionism throughout other parts of Africa (like in Somalia). We should be quite aware, though, that all calls for humanitarian intervention easily and quickly morph into calls for ‘humanitarian intervention’ delivered by military forces. In fact, Blackwater is already in Sudan, supposedly carrying out relief operations in the southern portion of that country. We need to get them out of there.
The embattled US military puppet regime of Musharraf is using US made helicopter gunships to threaten continued attack on an Islamabad mosque where young students are holed up inside. What an image for the entire Muslim world to see.
This dictator Musharraf is setting himself for an exit in the same style as the Shah of Iran. This US backed attack on this major Pakistani mosque comes along with the mass US murders of Afghanistan civilians, the Pentagon’s use of collective punishment across Iraq, attacks on Palestinian refugee camps in Lebanon, the pardoning of the criminal, Scooter Libby, and in the days to come, the crumbling of Pakistan’s dictatorship. What next for the Bush Administration? Probably a joint US-Israeli bombing of Iran in the days ahead.
And which countries are truly into Jihad? It appears that it is the Christian and Jewish ones. Payback for the Iranian hostage crisis, too, and for Iran’s government having successfully defended their country against the US backed Saddam Hussein. This is an unholy alliance that wants to run the affairs of the entire Muslim world, and most especially that portion of it stretching from Iraq to Iran to Pakistan.
And what was the supposed main crime of this mosque not reported in the AFP article? It was leading a campaign against the abuse and torture of Musharraf’s political prisoners. It was for their campaign against Musharraf’s prostitution of Pakistan to the Bush Administration. For that, the mosque had to be taken out. But the net result, is that the US and its puppet are destabilizing the entire country of Pakistan, and YES, the entire region, too. The Muslim countries will eventually unite against the Bush led thugs when pushed too far. They don’t like US government terrorism. And neither should the American population.
The definitive film so far about private military contractors in Iraq is Iraq for Sale: The War Profiteers
Halliburton Energy Services 3445 N. Marksheffel Rd. Colorado Springs CO
Computer Sciences Corporation 1250 Academy Park Loop Colorado Springs CO
Dyncorp 1115 Elkton Dr Colorado Springs CO
Dyncorp Information Systems 985 Space Center Dr Colorado Springs CO
Halliburton Energy Services 410 17th St., Ste. 600 Denver CO
Dyncorp 303 E 17th Ave Denver CO
Dyncorp Inc. 2525 S Dayton Way Denver CO
Computer Sciences Corporation 1726 Cole Blvd Golden CO
Dyncorp Inc. 1711 Illinois St Golden CO
Dyncorp 143 Union Blvd Lakewood CO
Where is the war profiteering Center of Evil located in Colorado Springs? That is located at the well hidden away Lockheed complex at Fountain and Academy Blvd. You might be driving by it every day and not even have noticed the 3 groups of buildings in that area belonging to Lockheed.
Right down the road is the huge Satellite Hotel. There are other ‘defense’ companies located in the same area but easily missed by those driving by.
Yes, there is such a creature that calls itself ‘The Peace and Stability Industry‘. The ‘International Peace Operations Association’ considers themselves to be just that. And they’re for ‘Saving Darfur’.
The money for the Justice and Peace Darfur benefit tomorrow is going to a group called CARE. Here is an article that mentions in passing their general level of awareness of issues regarding US based military contractors and Darfur.
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The Privatization Agenda: Hired Guns and Darfur
The U.S. under the Bush administration has served up more money for Darfur than any other country has to date. But when President Bush announces that he’s giving an impressive $10 million a month to AMIS, as he did in one of his innumerable Darfur press releases last year, where do all those greenbacks actually go? The answer may surprise readers who are unfamiliar with the modern cash cow of private security contracting. Much of it is channeled to Pacific Architects and Engineers (PAE)—an L.A.-based subsidiary of Lockheed Martin, the world’s largest defense contractor. Another significant portion goes to the L.A.-based DynCorp International, a name you may recognize from the child sex trafficking scandal in Bosnia, or the alleged beatings of journalists in Haiti, or the toxic crop-spraying in Colombia. No individual DynCorp employee has been prosecuted in any of these cases. To the contrary, DynCorp went on to win more lucrative contracts in Iraq and Afghanistan … and, yes, Darfur.
Whereas the lack of accountability for hired guns in America’s current wars has proved to be one of the major stories of the past few years (think Blackwater in Fallujah, or Titan at Abu Ghraib), there’s been hardly a peep about U.S. defense contractors on the ground in Darfur. When I asked a senior official from CARE—a major humanitarian group working throughout Sudan—about the phenomenon, she replied: “Our people are not aware of private contractors in Darfur. Some in Khartoum, but not Darfur.” This oversight is difficult to comprehend, given that the vast majority of AMIS projects in Darfur are managed by PAE and DynCorp employees, from the building of barracks to the provision of strategic transport…..
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This is just an excerpt from the whole article Can Drag Queens and Hired Guns Save Darfur? at Truthdig. One might also mention that Lockheed is the largest military-industrial employer in Colorado Springs.
Yasser Arafat’s legacy is death. Fatah is now completely connected with total betrayal in the eyes of the Palestinians. How could it be otherwise now that the US and Israel are all that props up this monstrous remnant of the Palestinian cause called Fatah?
Arafat looked for complete personal power and becoming the ‘president’ of an ethnic Palestinian enclave, and he got that. It was a crumb, and for that crumb he betrayed the idea of struggling for a multi-ethnic Israel-Palestine, where 2 peoples could live together without Apartheid or other forms of ethnic discrimination.
Now we have nothing more than a slow moving Christian Jewish Crusade against the Muslim World, with elements of multiple genocides popping up everywhere. The Evil Empire from Washington DC marches its legions forward still.
President Putin and Gorbachev have been in the news, both denouncing the US’s military expansionism and encirclement of Russia. Also in the news, is the increased US government interventionism into Africa. Assisting them in this effort, is the interventionist liberal Left that helps hype the US government case against ‘Arabs, China, and genocide’, linking all 3 into excuses for supporting their own government’s imperial interests in Africa.
China gets one third of its oil from Africa, and the US wants to lock that off. White American and British liberals want to help Blacks out, just not so much in the home countries. It’s a touchy feely thing for them, and especially also for the Hollywood types, that seem so drawn to the liberal interventionist cause. And liberal think tanks like the Carter Center and Bill Gates Foundation, too. Darfur is now celebrity cause #1, edging out Tibet, celebrity cause from the past.
Of particular comic interest, has been the Condi Rice response to Putin’s and Gorbachev’s remarks against NATO and the US government. Rice accuses them of being locked into prolonging the past’s antagonisms, and chides them for not still believing that the US Right Wing imperialists are just mighty good friends of Russia!
This sort of line shows how determined that the US is to crush Russia, and is believable only to American six packers watching Fox for their propaganda feeds. And maybe some of the nitwits that work for the Gazette management team, perhaps? There, they are locked in a heroically stupid battle to convince their readers that the earth’s environment is being well protected by corporate interests. Good luck, Nitwits. lol…
Meanwhile at home in the proPeace camp, all seemed to be hypnotized by concentrating all their attention on just 2 things: Iraq and Darfur. That’s good prep for the coming elections for them no doubt. Then, the Media and the Democratic Party will turn that focus into trying to get us to cheer lead Hillary against Rudy, or some other such nauseating carnival. Activists around cheer leading a DP candidate will try to convince all the Peace Movement that the best hope for Darfur and Iraq will lie in voting into office the Democratic Party pushed Saviour.
All this makes one wanna weep, as the Pentagon, CIA, and legions of US/ British/ Israeli mercenaries continue their project of winning the destruction of China’s and Russia’s future in our new and drained corporate-led world ecological fall.
Mad Max beyond belief, and even Biblical in proportions. Yet another Great Flood perhaps is under way? This time with toxic and radioactive waters, too…
We’ve sentenced our soldiers to death, why not condemn them too?
At the supermarket this evening I ran across an unusual number of Fort Carson soldiers doing their shopping in their OIF camo and buzzed heads. I deliberated with making eye contact, but they seemed like condemned men in what we know now to be death-row uniforms, being led by their girlfriends or mothers through the aisles to buy their last meals.
I wanted to look at those young men with condemnation. Poor lads, but pawns for a murderous agenda. Please don’t kill anyone I wanted to say.
At the checkout I looked from the side into the pale blue eyes of a shaved-bald, sunburned junior-security-guard-in-training, and pitied the Iraqis for whom our uneducated underclass are making on-the-spot decisions about life and death. These are boys you do not imagine should be entrusted with an ounce of authority, much less guns. (In fact, critical operations such as protection of our politicians or of the Ministry of Oil are not entrusted to these boys, but rather to professional private contractor mercenaries.)
Hang the soldiers’ commanders of course, but brand these poor soldiers too for what they are. Brand them lest others, their children for example, follow their apparently patriotic path. Shit happens, that’s the soldier’s apology for killing the undeserving Iraqi, let it be the mantra over the soldier’s condemnation as well. Your leaders were bad men, but you followed them. Let no one imagine that your complicity was laudable, even acceptable. Shit happens Bro, now you IT.
I’d just been thinking about the necessity of confronting war-doers head-on instead of letting the opportunity pass for the sake of civility. Political aids to President Bush, for example, retiring at age 36 to spend their loot on their children, averting being confronted with their critics. We need to punish these people. A newscaster who characterizes the Haditha episode by saying “the marines were attacked by an IED” should meet the fate of a propagandist.
Let no war-supporter go un-criticized, and why not start now? Perhaps it will prompt some to think about why they are being condemned with such ferocity? Perhaps our scolding can lay the groundwork to effect eventual introspection and reform. How could anyone begin to think they might actually be guilty of war crimes if their accusers are always so civil? Certainly such accusations must be merely academic, otherwise would they not come with a noose? By waiting politely our turn to intone, by not calling urgently for each miscreant’s apprehension, are we not misleading the soldiers about the reprehensibility of their role?
We can talk about forgiveness later. Right now we have to stop the unthinking manslaughterers.
‘Orgies on the negotiating table’ by Colombian death squad leaders is in the news in Latin America.
A pretty picture of what the Organization of American States (OAS) located in Washington DC has actually deteriorated to, since they sponsored and secured the area where these criminals partied. And think that the US and its allies have a tough-on-crime attitude? How about a monthly $200 pension for death squad members who lay down their knives and stop dismembering peasants and other poor folk with?
Isn’t that nice? All part of the so-called War on Drugs, otherwise know as the daddy of the so-called ‘War Against Terrorism’.
See also, Colombia’s Civil War and the US
This Memorial Day the number of US soldier casualties in Iraq nears 3,500.
At 1,000 we held a vigil in Acacia Park. We did the same at the 1,500 and 2,000 marks. The numbered-cross memorial we mounted at Camp Casey COS commemorated near 2,000 deaths. The “Eyes Wide Open” boot collection came to town as the number exceeded 2,500. Colorado Springs was its last stop because the figures began to require too many boots to unpack at each stop. We met again in the park for the 3,000th, but I’m not going to eulogize any more boots until the number reaches 50,000.
That’s well into Vietnam War casualty territory and that’s where we’re going. The war got its funding, the military has revealed its plans to double the troop levels, the President is warning us to expect US casualties to surge, and sure enough we’re seeing the body count rise. Eight, fifteen a day. Not counting mercenaries. And still no one’s tallying the Iraqi dead.
I’m okay not to count the mercenaries. But what of our volunteer army, signing ever-increasing re-enlistment bonuses? I don’t want to count them either. Our soldiers keep shipping themselves off to Iraq to serve well-enough-documented evil illegal deeds. What’s to commemorate, really? They’re not jumping off cliffs, they’re driving armored vehicles into Iraqi children on the way.
Our soldier’s souls are already lost to us. That’s 150,000 active in Iraq. 300,000 counting the mercenaries. Plus who ever’s being held back with PTSD. Cry about that.
On this date in 1973, the military had counted 44 deaths for El Paso County. It was not enough even then.
Last night, some misguided peace activists in Colorado Springs got together at ‘Poor Richards’ to call for more US-UN-EU intervention into Sudan. They want to stop the bloodshed in Darfur but seem oblivious to the actual realities of US global interventionism. Their get together comes just days after Joseph Biden, a Democratic Party presidential candidate, called for US troops to be sent into Sudan.
So what in effect we have, are Colorado Springs pacifists calling for US military intervention into an African country! It is companies like Blackwater USA who will actually carry out this intervention, along with other outfits from the USA like the Louis Berger Group.
US Out of Africa, not further into it! Blackwater USA Out of Sudan!
Jeremy Scahill testified before a Congressional panel about war sub-contracting by the Pentagon last week. It was pretty damning testimony and spreads the light about how so many private companies have no desire to see the endless war ever end, since their profit making is tied to continued hostilities. How many of these companies operate in Colorado Springs?
As a leader of Otpor (now called Canvas) meets with people in Colorado Springs and at Colorado College, it might be of interest to follow the trail of Otpor to Venezuela, and efforts of the US to overthrow Hugo Chavez there.
Contrary to how Otpor represents itself, it is not just a group of nice Serbian student leaders from Belgrade, that through Gandhi inspired tactics non-violently overthrew Milosevic in the wake of a very violent US war on Yugoslavia. The story is quite a bit more complex than that, so we follow their trail to Venezuela.
To understand the following Reuters report dated back in 2003, though, one must first realize that Otpor is connected with ‘The Albert Einstein Institute’ of which Colonel Robert Helvey is an integral part of. This is a US government run operation designed to link Gandhian methods of nonviolent protest to Pentagon and US State Department efforts to overthrow foreign governments. Hence, we move from Belgrade to Caracas as the US government goes after Hugo Chavez. It’s Gandhi in the service of the Pentagon to help make a coup!
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US democracy expert teaches Venezuelan opposition
By Pascal Fletcher
CARACAS, Venezuela, April 30, 2003 (Reuters) – Retired U.S. army colonel Robert Helvey has trained pro-democracy activists in several parts of the world so he knows something about taking on military regimes and political strongmen.
Now he is imparting his skills in Venezuela, invited by opponents of President Hugo Chavez who accuse the leftist leader of ruling like a dictator in the world’s No. 5 oil exporter.
Helvey, who has taught young activists in Myanmar and Serbian students who helped topple the former Yugoslav leader Slobodan Milosevic in 2000, is giving courses on non-violent opposition tactics this week at an east Caracas university.
Secrecy surrounds the classes. A sign outside the door, apparently there to deflect the curious, reads: “Seminar on strategic marketing.”
But the strategies Helvey is sharing with some of Chavez’s foes focuses not on balance sheets but on how to resist, oppose and change a government without the use of bombs and bullets.
After initially declining to answer questions, Helvey, a former U.S. military attache in Burma and now a consultant with the private U.S. Albert Einstein Institution that promotes non-violent action in conflicts, told Reuters non-violence was the key to the tactics he taught.
“In every political conflict, there is a potential for violence, and it is incumbent on leaders to make sure they don’t cross the threshold of violence,” he said.
Organizers of the seminar did not welcome journalists. “This is a private meeting of friends,” one said.
The attendees included representatives of Venezuela’s broad-based but fragmented opposition, who are struggling to regroup after failing to force Chavez from office in an anti-government strike in December and January.
Chavez, a fiery populist first elected in 1998, survived a brief coup last year by dissident military officers who now form part of the opposition movement, which also includes labor and business chiefs, politicians and anti-Chavez civic groups.
CHAVEZ, DEMOCRAT OR DICTATOR?
Opposition sources said Helvey was invited to Caracas by a group of businessmen and professionals. They in turn organized the course involving a broad cross-section of the opposition.
Helvey’s presence comes at a time when a debate is raging inside and outside Venezuela about whether Chavez is a democrat or a power-hungry autocrat. That debate is important for the United States, which is a major buyer of Venezuelan oil.
Chavez’s critics portray him as a dangerous, anti-U.S. maverick who has extended his personal political control of the country’s political institutions, judiciary and armed forces.
They say he has strengthened his country’s ties with anti-U.S. states like communist Cuba, Iran, Libya and — until the U.S.-led invasion toppled Saddam Hussein — Iraq.
Since the April 2002 coup that briefly overthrew him, Chavez’s relations with the United States have remained edgy. The U.S. government has fiercely denied accusations from some Venezuelan officials that it encouraged or supported the coup.
Chavez fiercely condemned the invasion of Iraq. But Venezuelan oil shipments to the U.S. have kept on flowing.
The Venezuelan leader, who was elected to office six years after failing to seize power in a botched coup, denies he is a communist, says his government is democratic and regularly pillories his opponents as “terrorists” and “coup-mongers.”
His foes have staged huge, anti-Chavez street protests over the last 18 months. He portrays them as a wealthy, resentful elite opposed to his self-styled “revolution” which he says aims to benefit the oil-rich nation’s poor majority.
Neither Helvey nor the organizers of the Caracas seminar would give details of exactly what opposition tactics were being taught. But in his work in Serbia before Milosevic’s fall, Helvey briefed students on ways to organize a strike and on how to undermine the authority of a dictatorial regime.
In the mid 1990s, he traveled to the Thailand/Myanmar border to give classes in non-violent resistance to exiled Burmese students opposing the military junta in their country.
His former students remember him as “Bob.”
“He used his military skills in strategic planning for non-violent protest methods … Everybody was fascinated by Bob, because he was a military man and was applying that to non-violence,” Aung Naing Oo, former foreign secretary for the All Burma Students Democratic Front, told Reuters.
A spokesman for the U.S. Embassy in Caracas told Reuters the embassy knew nothing about Helvey’s visit and had nothing to do with the secretive seminar.
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Oh, yes, for sure. lol… This article, interestingly enough, is from ‘Burma Related News’. It’s a small world it does appear.
http://www.burmalibrary.org/TinKyi/archives/2003-05/msg00000.html
You probably missed the notice, but Otpor will be at Colorado College this week and next, ‘organizing non-violence’ oriented people. Otpor claims credit for itself for supposedly non-violently bringing down Milosevic in Yugoslavia, though the real credit for this feat had more to do with the violence of an illegal war against Yugoslavia organized by the US and its European allies than any local student movement in Belgrade.
And it had more to do with the funds the US government channelled into Yugoslavia to illegally influence the national elections there. Many of these funds went to Otpor.
These days, Otpor ideology acts in many other countries where the US channels funds to subvert local autonomy. It has changed its name to ‘Canvas’ and receives much aid not only directly from the US government, but also from many a rich American think tank. Essentially, it is a Right Wing imperialist US government pushed campaign masquerading as a form of international Leftism. It’s symbols are a clenched fist, even as it plays on the image of being Gandhi-ist and nonviolent, which has become a semi mystical religious cult amongst many US campuses harboring hordes of American middle class student types. Very attractive cover to keep help hide its hidden agenda of backing US government propaganda campaigns and interventions in nations around the world. Imperialists posing as non-violent pacifists recruiting relatively naive and innocent students who often believe in the sugar coated rhetoric being spread. What results is a ‘non-violence’ working side by side with US military and economic subversion of other countries.
The US government in the ’70s and ”80s at one time pushed another camouflaged Right Wing group inside the US disguised as Leftism. The leader of that cult effort was a man named Lyndon LaRouche, who still plies his wares from time to time. To the utter discredit of the Pikes Peak Justice and Peace Commission, this group a few months ago accepted for its newspaper a full page advertisement from this fascist who has many connections with US government and military high officials. A split off of this group operates in Mexico where it postures as being Far Left in a similar manner to how it has operated in the US. OTPOR in a way, is an extension of this type of covert government operation in private politics that Lyndon LaRouche got quite well known for at one time.
Wikipedia has done an excellent job in its coverage of Otpor, whose connections to US funding remain shadowy and hidden though it operates across the planet. Since they will have 2 of their operatives as Colorado College doing their thing, hopefully some of us will be there to challenge them on their real record this week.
The United Nations is fully supporting US war crimes in multiple nations around our planet. It has become nothing less than a total satellite captured in the orbit of the US Pentagon. In Iraq, the UN has sat by without ever condemning the US genocide in that country, but rather participating in it. Over 2 million Iraqi casualties have been killed solely due to US interference against the Iraqi people over more than a decade and a half, and the role of the UN has been in total support of that.
There are currently over 4 million Iraqi refugees, 2 million inside and 2 million outside Iraq. The UN has little to say about that, and little relief offered to the victims. All its efforts go to help the US government intervene around the planet.
Jordan alone, with a population of a little over 5 million has taken in almost 1 million Iraqi refugees! That would be the equivalent relative to population as if the US had had to take in 60 million destitute refugees from some war zone! Syria, with a population of slightly less than 19 million, has had to take in an even greater number of Iraqi refugees from US violence than the almost 1 million in Jordan. And as the US and Israel are currently threatening Syria with attack alongside its ally Iran, the UN sits back nodding its head in acquiescence! Lest we forget, Syria was Iran’s ally while the US and its Arab client states were funding Saddam Hussein in its war upon Iran. It is the US that supported Saddam, not Syria or Iran, and the UN never did anything to stop him from killing hundreds upon hundreds of thousands of innocent Iranians. .
The situation is the same around the globe, as the UN everywhere is running backup for US foreign policy and the resulting mayhem and atrocities that follow in the wake of US war crimes. The United Nations is helping the US occupy Yugoslavia, Afghanistan, and Haiti as well as Iraq. These are all nations where the US violated international law and bombed, invaded and occupied these countries with its military. The United Nations has acted as an integral part of these war crimes, lending the support of the troops of its misnamed ‘Security Council’ at crucial intervals. In short, the United Nations has become the Pentagon’s whore, constantly pimped out to service America’s reactionary foreign policy.
We move to Africa, and the United Nations today is calling for occupation of Somalia with its troops instead of condemning the US-Ethiopian invasion of that country. The United Nations offers no security to the people’s of the world from US war crimes and genocides. In Africa, the countries of Rwanda and Congo can attest to that.
The UN rushes into action everywhere behind US military interventionism and it offers political cover for the US just to help perpetuate this criminality. With its history the United Nations can no longer hope to be reformed but instead should be impeached and dissolved the same as was done to its predecessor, The League of Nations.
The people of the world need to get the UN out of the nations it currently helps occupy on behalf of the US. We need an international body of nations, but the UN has defaulted on all its responsibilities, and is not acting as anything other than an agent of the richer imperial nations of the world, all bullied into line by US firepower. This is a body that can not be reformed any more, just as is the US 2 party system of corporate political control. It’s time we admit that the UN is complicit with all the US war crimes being committed and not innocently continue to back this organization as some possible alternative to the US government itself. It isn’t, and never will be.
Stop the war now and get the United Nations troops back to all their home countries. These troops are nothing more than mercenaries in the same vein that Halliburton’s are. They are not peacekeepers, but rather nothing more than another type of privatization of US military operations. Dissolve the UN Security Council Now and Help Save the World from US imperialism. The UN is no friend of anybody, other than friend to the rich and powerful corporate state creeps heading up the US government.
I’ve got an algebra problem for you. If there are approximately the same number of private contractors, which we’ll denote as (m) -for mercenaries, as there are reservists and active duty soldiers, which we’ll denote as (s), in Iraq; and if each mercenary (m) earns ten times as much per day as a soldier (s); how much of the supplemental war allocation is slated to “support the troops?”
Thus we have m = 10s and therefore s = $103,000,000,000 / 11
Except that it’s really 103,000,000,000 – p, where (p) is the amount of money going to the weapons industry to replace the missiles and bombs we are going through like potato chips. Not to mention minus (r) reconstruction, (a) administration and (g) graft.
If Bush is concerned that Congress is denying the soldiers their funding, in favor of earmarking the funds for pork, how much of Bush’s allocation is destined for his pork, and how much to the soldiers? It’s a COMPLETELY UNEDUCATED GUESS but I bet high tech weapons makers get $34 billion, administration and graft get another $33, leaving the mercenaries $33, and our troops $3.
What is the price of militarism on the militarists themselves? In the case of Pat Tillman it was death instead of wealth, yet others live and still pay a price. In ‘Torturers Toll‘, another Tony other than myself tells the story of how his torturing of innocent people in Iraq, has essentially destroyed his entire self respect for the duration of his life. How can he ever forgive himself for the cruelty he dealt others, all dictated by picking a ‘career’ inside the US military? He can’t, and many other Americans are also in his shoes, too.
These dehumanized participants in mayhem and abuse of their fellow humans reside throughout our super militarized society now. Take the most interesting case of Zbigniew Brzezinski, former cohort of our peanut farmer pastor President, Jimmy Carter. For years now, Brzenzinski used to brag about how he brought down the Soviet Union by starting the Muslim insurgency in Afghanistan that bogged the Soviet Union into ‘their own Vietnam’. The US threw $2 billion PLUS dollars into a covert war waged by puppet troops of the US led by people like Osama bin Laden. Today, Brzenzinski is singing a different tune though, and he is inow nto warning us about militarism, instead of bragging about promoting it.
The Washington Post carries his thoughts in a commentary titled, Terrorized by the ‘War on Terror’. How bizarre to see a terrorist like Jimmy’s former buddy now taking a stance against the likes of Bush and Cheney. Poor Zbigniew! Tears drop from my eyes even, in sympathy for this Donald Rumsfield of an earlier more..uh….innocent time. The man feels terrorized now by the thought that Bush’s gangsterism is undermining the economic system and imperialism that he did so much to prop up. Yes, there is a price to militarism that the militarists themselves will have to pay. Zbigniew worries about that.
For the overwhelming majority of us though, it will be the economic collapse that we will soon most suffer from. And for Brzezinski and his friends, the price to be paid will come from our anger at what unbidled capitalist corruption does to us all. Ultimately, the rich will become isolated as criminals that must be removed from the power they currently hold over us. The total price we will all pay for Iraq will be in many forms and will be seen differently by all of us American citizens. The returning troops are a first Tsunami wave that is hitting our society today. What will society look like afterwards though? Time will tell the now hidden price for turning away from solving our real problems by creating yet worse ones? The price is enormous.
The bad conditions at Walter Reed Army Medical Center has brought many US soldiers from killing Iraqis into a new battle with their own US government. Now they and their families are not waving US flags so much as they discover what many of the elderly and sick amongst us already knew. The US government doesn’t give much a damn about Afghans, Iraqis, nor the majority of US citizens either.
Did the youngsters signing up for the US killing machine think they would get something special? Some sort of privileged status for themselves for being hired killers for Dubya, Cheney, or whomever might come along whenever as their top officers?
The whole military medical system has big nasty holes in it much as does the civilian medical system does, too. When you sign up and go abroad to fight people you haven’t a clue about you might want to think you are a big hero/ heroine, but you are not. You are somebody looking to get special treatment, that’s all. You want that spiffy uniform, the perks, the respect by the people in power and their suck ass supporters at the lower economic levels. But once you get hurt all that fades into the background. Now you become much more like the rest of us, and the rest of us have to deal with sorry, don’t give a damn, medical care. So tell any younger sisters and brothers, to deal with the real problems back home, before getting all psyched up to supposedly go solve the world’s problmes by high tech killing. Didn’t make any sense to begin with, but you let yourself get suckered, didn’ you?And now the chickens perhaps have come home to roost, right on top of your own lonesome shoulders?
When somebody tells you to jump off a cliff by joining up as hired killer, you don’t have to go along smirking and thinking how smart you are. Yes, many vets that previously played the fool have to eventually battle the nasty US for-private-don’t-give-a-damn- except-about profits medical system like the rest of us. You’ll not get quality care like the top dogs are sure to give themselves.
It was a dummy thing you did joining up, and we wish you now the best, just like we wish all of us the best in getting the decent medical care that is our human right…. one that our rulers ignore all the time. How many of the wounded vets wish they could frag the same people they signed up to blindly follow? After all, they fragged you did they not? If not yet, then you are one of the more fortunate. Thank your lucky stars up to now. Because the nasty sorry ass US medical system is more likely to kill you in the long run, far more likely than any ol’ Osama. That’s whether you or vet, or not? What you heroes going to do about it? When you fight back (if you do?), at least you’ll be on the right side this time.
‘The Angry Arab’ and Craig Unger, author of the book ‘House of Bush, House of Saud’ team up for a great radio program about the Saud family and Saudi Arabia, the American government’s favorite Arab oil whore. Sell the oil cheap for foreign benefit, make a sweetheart deal for one’s own relatives, shaft the Arab people as a whole. So much for the US bringing democracy to the Arabs. What the US corporations and government want is for Arabs to bring cheap oil to America, peacefully or by force. The main Arab ally of the US is a brutal monarchy based on a fundamentalist Muslim theocracy. Check the program out- almost an hour long.
How many American clowns does it take to screw on a light bulb? Heck, I don’t know, but I do know part of the answer to how many police/military agencies it takes to play Homeland Stupidity at the Super Bowl this weekend!
I’ve been making up some stuff recently but this one is for real. According to the US Customs and Border Protection, they will be one of 30 federal agencies there, but they did not state the number of state and local uniformed clowns that will show up. We can only guess? No naked breasts this year though, so you might want to rent a tape in that Department, or you women/ your women will just be watching the tight ends.
The US invasion and occupation of Somalia is like that of Haiti, nobody is paying much attention. And like the current occupation of Haiti, it ‘rolls’. What do I mean by describing this as a ‘rolling invasion’, for it is a term I think that describes the now prototypical US intervention into the affairs of other nations? Lebanon, too, is being violated by an American rolling invasion as yet another example. So let’s take a quick look at Somalia then, to get a glimpse of the US strategy everywhere for its misnamed ‘war on terrorism’.
In Somalia, the US first arranged an invasion of that country using Ethiopian troops. Then it followed by bombing the country from US ships. Just several weeks after the initial assault using another country’s military, that of Ethiopia, the US is switching them out, and moving a contingent of another country’s military in, 1,500 Kenyans troops. In turn, the US is pressuring Uganda, Rwanda, and South Africa amongst other countries, to follow. And without any interest at home what-so-ever, the US bombed Somalia once again just yesterday!
Imagine how the Somalians feel? As a Muslim country they finally get some semblance of government after 15 years of chaos, but then the US returns once again to topple the cart yet one more time. The US sponsored troops? Thousands of Christian Ethiopians! And to follow up this humiliation using a traditional enemy of one nation, the US brings in yet a second nation’s troops. See the roll? Like rolling waves of a heavy surf on the beach. This will then be followed by an eclectic assortment of other nations, none of which have anything in common with the natives, except for their racial coloring perhaps. And that of being sponsored by George W. Bush!
We could go to Iraq or Afghanistan to see the same nonsensical outsourcing of imperialism once again. But let’s look at Lebanon first. US invasion launched using Israeli troops first. Less than successful, so the Jewish forces pull partially back out. The US then has an unwanted UN move into the country as so-called ‘peacekeepers’. The US then threatens Hezbollah. The US then has France, Britain, Saudi Arabia, the European Union, and others to cajole the country with being given possible funds to rebuild itself some. The US threatens Syria and Iran. What will Bush roll in with next? US troops? Or maybe Polish troops? Don’t joke, they are already in Iraq and Afghanistan in large numbers. How about Japanese? Don’t joke, they are in Iraq! At the end of 2006, Yugoslavia had its area of Kosovo occupied by troops from 30 nations! Talk about a Tower of Babel!
OK, enough of Lebanon. More rolling imperialism, the grand daddy of idiotic imperialism, Haiti! US invades, deposes the legitimate president, and then partially removes itself, bringing in Canadians (some speak French) and Brazilians (many are Black)! Haitians in the streets improve their language skills in French and Portuguese. But wait! Troops arrive on behalf of Dubya from China, Chile, Argentina, France,Nepal, Jordan, Peru, Sri Lanka!, and Guatemala! (80 of them). I especially think the Haitians are impressed with Sri Lanka and Guatemala coming to visit. Those 2 militaries have such great reputations! And Haitians love a circus!
Isn’t all this rolling imperialism reminiscent of the Romans? They would send in all sorts of barbarians from one end of the Empire into the next. Can we even begin to imagine our own reaction if we were ever to be disrespected with such occupations and warmaking against us, as the US uses against so many others? Imagine if the former Soviet Union had won the Cold Ware, and followed it by occupying our country with troops speaking 20 different languages, 30 different cultures, etc.? That certainly would have gotten us into an enduring peace, for sure! lol.
Where will the US invasion of Somalia roll off to? What new group of heathens to trample on? Will any American ever really give a damn about these smaller societies that get run roughshod over by their government? Liberals are too busy trying ot get the US to send troops to Chad and Darfur to notice much where the troops are actually at. Some have yet to figure out that there is a war going on in Afghanistan, for example. Though it is encouraging to see that the latest poll finally finds over 1/2 of Americans are for withdrawal from that country at last. No thanks to the Democratic Party, I might add. Afghanistan is a dirty word for them to mention.
These rolling invasions create nothing but chaos and misery.
For decades after the Second World War, German vets would get together in beer halls to remember the great days of the Third Reich. The Nazi cause may have become perverted, but its ideals were certainly grandiose: a Germany reborn as the worker’s utopia, a master race unshackled to bring order to a never-before united Europe.
My father grew up in occupied Norway. He remembers the incomparable German swagger. To this day he judges the authenticity of war movies based on whether the actors capture the arrogance of the German officers in their walk. I remember reading a Wehrmacht soldier’s autobiography reflecting on the initial ease with which Germany had overrun its neighbors. “It was impossible in those days not to feel immense pride in being a German.”
German regalia is highly collectible now, though my father remembers the days immediately following the war when Norwegians wouldn’t deign to pick up the Nazi medals, ribbons and flags strewn outside the German headquarters in newly freed Oslo.
Of course the German WWII regalia is collected fervently also because it was esthetic. A deliberate malevolence was courted by the fascists, a darkness amplified by the visual design of their uniforms, equipment and printed material. Albert Speer and Leni Reifenstahl were widely condemned for their contributions to the glorification of Nazi culture.
So when old SS veterans are clanging their glasses in memory of Germany’s grab for the brass ring, the nostalgia has quite a bit of pomp and polish. It was an Aryan dream in smart costumes and effective looking machinery.
Are ex-American servicemen going to look back at the U.S. adventures in Fascism with equal nostalgia? What trappings do the Neocons offer to distinguish their racist machinations? Wrap-around Oakleys? Kneepads and leggings? The mercenaries’ gold chains and Hawaiian shirts? And what stateside? Yellow ribbons? Cheap suits? Americans exude nothing but our simpleton arrogance I’m afraid. Yankee Fascism has probably required banality to disguise it. Later Americans will have to own up to our inhumanity and hubris with the additional shame that we couldn’t even transcend our ugliness for the occasion.
Military spokesmen announced yesterday the three thousandth US soldier’s death in Iraq, not counting the 25% more dead American mercenaries. Several local peace organizations have been planning a candlelight vigil to commemorate those lives sacrificed to our tragic warmongering in the name of “freedom.” Everybody’s welcome.
Acacia Park, downtown, Monday, January 1st, 5pm sundown.
Come, if you feel anything still for our soldiers losing their lives in Iraq. Soldiers who could possibly be knowing better by now that their orders are immoral and illegal. Soldiers who could exercise their own freedom and decline to participate in the further destruction of Iraq and its people. The US casualty count is up to 3,000 US, but that’s not even the average number of Iraqis who are killed every month under our occupation. That wouldn’t be happening if not for our boys.
Can somebody explain the psychology of our boys in their black gloves? Am I too distracted by the bad-guy movie image? Black gloves remind me of hired assassins, mafioso, bad cops, sadists, interrogators and torturers.
Did I miss any good guys who wear black gloves? Scuba divers? Al Jolsen?
The French para-military sent to put down the Algerian Islamic freedom fighters wore black gloves. They were notorious torturers. Did the gloves have to be black to hide the blood?
The Gestapo wore black gloves. And before them Hessian mercenaries. Americans had to fight black-clad Hessians during the Revolutionary War. Is that why black has such an ingrained stigma?
All the more reason why Americans would be sensitive to projecting themselves as heavies. Unless, like Hitler’s Death Head division, we want to create a fearful impression. How about a name? Brown Shirts. Jack-Boots. Black Gloves.
Before the Guernica that became Fallujah,
before our use of chemical weapons in Fallujah,
before there were civilians immolated in their beds by white phosphor in Fallujah,
before Napalm under the disguise of Mark-77 was used in Fallujah,
before our tanks were running over the injured Iraqis in the streets of Fallujah,
before our helicopters were killing every last family trying to wade across the Euphrates River to escape the blood bath that was Fallujah,
before we were turning back all able-bodied men from the age of 11 to 65 from the lines of refugees trying to leave Fallujah because we didn’t want insurgents to escape our pincer movement, forcing them back into the city to make a stand,
before we declared that anyone not evacuated from Fallujah would be treated as a combatant,
before we declared our determination to make an example of Fallujah.
2.
Before we tried to make an example of Fallujah the first time because the world saw what they did to the four contractor mercenaries,
but had to pull out because we hadn’t yet thought to cut off access to the hospitals from which were escaping horror stories of the atrocities we were committing against the civilians of Fallujah.
Before we had thought to ban Al-Jazeera from Iraq for reporting on Fallujah despite our restrictions,
before we killed the Al-Arabia reporter who dared to venture into Fallujah.
3.
Before the famous desecration of the bodies of the contractor-mercenaries by enraged Fallujah youth who’d often seen contractor-cowboys ride through their streets shooting indiscriminately out the window;
before our military tried to cordon off Fallujah with encampments.
4.
Before the killing of three unarmed Iraqi marchers, and the wounding of dozens more, who’d assembled to protest a massacre the day before, both times by nervous 82nd Airborne soldiers who thought they had been fired upon first.
3.
Before the massacre of schoolboys protesting the occupation of their school by American soldiers. The soldiers claimed to have been fired upon and yet the only bullet holes to be found after the killing of 17 unarmed Iraqi men and boys were from the American guns.
5.
Before that time Fallujah had not been occupied. Fallujah remained restful throughout America’s invasion of Iraq. It was not until the actions of the 82nd Airborne and the Marine Expeditionary Force that Fallujah erupted into a hotbed for the insurgency and, as a result of American anger, into American war crimes recalling Lidice and Guernica.
Throughout this period, and in between the disastrous actions by the 82nd and the Marines, Fallujah and the Anbar Provence were the responsibility of the 3rd Armored Cavalry of Fort Carson, Colorado Springs. To their credit, they were not party to the unfortunate American actions.