Iraq: Invasion Ends – Neo-Colonial Rule Begins
Foreign-domination of Iraq’s economy are the real chains of servitude.
by Tony Cartalucci
Land Destroyer Report
December 29, 2011
Even as US troops symbolically withdraw from Iraq, a superficial indicator that many may interpret as the return of Iraqi sovereignty, it is the flow of foreign-investment into the country that marks the true chains of foreign-rule being laid out. USA Today in an article titled, “Foreign investment begins to pour into Iraq,” describes the real take over, prepared for over the course of nearly a decade, and is now beginning.
Image: A nation can survive and resist an occupation of troops. It is much more difficult to resist an insidious occupation build on an endless, fraudulent torrent of capital and economic domination. Iraqi PM Nouri Al-Maliki “opens Iraq” for just such an occupation – one of Wall Street and London’s corporate-financier interests.
The US Chamber of Commerce, which represents the collective interests of the largest corporations both in the United States and around the world, has a “US-Iraq Business Initiative” dedicated to “building a better Iraq through private sector investment.” The Chamber of Commerce stated in a post titled, “Iraqi Prime Minister: Business Now at the Front,” that “Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki visited the Chamber today [December 13, 2011] to mark the transition from U.S. military engagement to economic engagement through commerce, trade, and investment.” A similar article can be read via “The Hill’s” “Iraq is open for Business.”
What is Economic-Imperialism?
An explanation of how economic-imperialism works was noted in February 2011’s “Egypt Today, Thailand Tomorrow:”
In the late 90’s these think-tanks, NGOs, and research groups together with their International Monetary Fund and the World Bank made immense loans to developing nations around the world. Nations were forced to take these loans with the threat of sanctions aimed against them by the World Trade Organization should they refuse. Like a mafia loan shark, these globocrat gangsters decided to call in the loans knowing how hopelessly unpayable they were.
And like a mafia loan shark, favors were asked of those who defaulted on their payments. Target nations were called to exercise sweeping economic liberalization reforms, eliminating their control and protection over their economy, industry, infrastructure, and as a result, eliminating their national sovereignty itself. It was a new form of an old art. It was economic neo-colonialism.
This is no different than the one-sided trade deals made by the old European empires with target nations in the colonial age. These trade deals also included ownership of property by foreigners, the ability to operate a business, and travel with impunity throughout the host nation – all with minimum or no taxes imposed upon the foreign occupiers. The only difference would be that modern day concessions are forced through invasive economic policy, while colonial concessions were forced through “gunboat policy.”
Colonial Southeast Asia circa 1850’s. Thailand/Siam
was never colonized but made many concessions.Thailand, then the Kingdom of Siam, was surrounded on all sides by colonized nations and in turn was made to concede to the British 1855 Bowring Treaty. See how many of these “gunboat policy” imposed concessions sound like today’s “economic liberalization:”
1. Siam granted extraterritoriality to British subjects.
2. British could trade freely in all seaports and reside permanently in Bangkok.
3. British could buy and rent property in Bangkok.
4. British subjects could travel freely in the interior with passes provided by the consul.
5. Import and export duties were capped at 3%, except the duty-free opium and bullion.
6. British merchants were to be allowed to buy and sell directly with individual Siamese.A more contemporary example would be the outright military conquest of Iraq and Paul Bremer’s (CFR) economic reformation of the broken nation.
The Economist gleefully enumerates the neo-colonial “economic liberalization” of Iraq in a piece titled “Let’s all go to the yard sale: If it all works out, Iraq will be a capitalist’s dream:”
1. 100% ownership of Iraqi assets.
2. Full repatriation of profits.
3. Equal legal standing with local firms.
4. Foreign banks allowed to operate or buy into local banks.
5. Income and corporate taxes capped at 15%.
6. Universal tariffs slashed to 5%.As you can see, not much has changed since 1855 as far as imperialist “wish-lists” go. The Economist argued, as would any 19th century imperialist, that Iraq needed foreign expertise to catch up, justifying the evisceration of their national sovereignty.
Similarly we saw in April 2011’s “Libyan Rebels Fighting the Globalists’ War” NATO’s military conquest of Libya sowing the seeds for post-war dominion of Libya’s economy led by what was predicted to be a “Western stooge” that would serve foreign, not Libyan interests. Months later, it would be confirmed that indeed such a Western stooge, Abdurrahim el-Keib, had been found and promptly installed as “Prime Minster” after the fall of Qaddafi’s government.
Abdurrahim el-Keib, portrayed by the Western corporate-media as a progressive academic who had spent decades in the United States teaching at Alabama University and leading the local Muslim community, was in fact also a “professor & chairman” at the Petroleum Institute, based in Abu Dhabi, UAE and sponsored by British Petroleum (BP), Shell, France’s Total, the Japan Oil Development Company, and the Abu Dhabi National Oil Company. El-Keib’s Petroleum Institute profile also describes extensive research conducted by him sponsored by various US government agencies and departments over the years. In other words, el-Keib is a man that owes his existence to corporate-financier oligarchs, as well as his current position of power, and will surely spend his time in office paying them back at the expense of the Libyan people.
Conclusion
Considering the Economist’s eagerness to commandeer the Iraqi economy, historical contexts stretching back over a century, the US Chamber of Commerce’s own admissions, and recent developments in Libya where a fraudulent “humanitarian war” has yielded a government led not by a national government in the service to the people, but to foreign interests, it is safe to say that Iraq’s real occupation by the forces of global corporate-fascism is only now beginning.
It should be noted that many of the corporations now jockeying for a position to infest the Iraqi economy, represented within the Chamber of Commerce’s Board of Directors, are also chief contributors, partners, members, and sponsors of the very US policy think-tanks that engineered the Iraq War in the first place, as well as America’s other planned or ongoing military operations around the world. They literally have hijacked the governments of the West to carry out a campaign pursuing global hegemony, both militarily and economically.
It is essential to take note of these corporate-financier interests, boycott them entirely, and replace them with local, pragmatic solutions. Their unwarranted influence throughout business, politics, and even the theater of war constitutes the greatest threat toward free humanity, not the contrived excuses they have used to dominate nation after nation and continuously perpetuate their agenda.
Major Voting Fraud at Iowa Caucus Robs Ron Paul, GSK Vaccine Trial Kills 14 Babies! (video)
Infowars Nightly News
January 6, 2012
In the wake of Mitt Romney’s dramatic close finish in Iowa, Rob Dew will put together a number of reports on anomalies during the Iowa caucus voting process, with focus on Clinton County, where a ‘computer glitch’ reportedly delayed a vote count. Audio from the head of Clinton County Republican Women’s Club gives us some important information on this issue. Put that into perspective with lax voter ID requirements, reports that lights went out during vote tallies, the reported secret vote counting locations, letters from our readers (that will be covered by Dew) and much more.
Other news focuses on various cases in the ever-escalating war on food & medicine, with FritoLay now facing a lawsuit alleging that it deceptively marketed genetically-modified snack foods as “all natural.” Meanwhile, the British Medical Journal published a study that shows many drug manufacturers have been found to frequently leave out inconvenient data when publishing trial results. Meanwhile, GlaxoSmithKline was fined $400,000 pesos by an Argentine judge after 14 babies died during illegal lab vaccine trials conducted between 2007 and 2008. Finally, the EU is planning to add a VAT tax to food, putting even greater pressure on families dealing with the rising costs of paying for essentials.
http://www.prisonplanet.tv/
U.S. and NATO are on the march worldwide
A ship-launched, intercept-aerial guided missile (RIM-7) is launched from a NATO Sea Sparrow (MK-57) launcher during a live-fire exercise aboard the aircraft carrier USS Enterprise (CVN 65). Enterprise is conducting work-ups and flight operations in preparation for an upcoming deployment. (U.S. Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist 3rd Class Tiger Martinez/Released)
By Madison Ruppert
Editor of End the Lie
December 29, 2011
There is something big brewing across the globe and it does not look good. India, Japan and Australia are strengthening trilateral ties while the United States and NATO are looking to firm up alliances between them all along with Ukraine and Armenia.
This comes soon after the United States announced they are going to place 2,500 Marines in Australia, in addition to cutting edge fighter jets and transport planes and Australia announced they are going to purchase $950 million in military equipment.
This is a large and quite complex picture that requires a great deal of reading and research and I recommend that everyone check out my sources and come to their own conclusions.
I can only speculate as to the purpose of these geopolitical developments and I would love to hear what my readers think as well so please email me if you care to share your analysis.
I will be going country by country and breaking down these latest developments in order to present to you the most complete information I can, but I am sure this is far more intricate than even I realize at this point.
India-Japan-United States
Japan is reportedly partially lifting their 40-year-long self-imposed ban on arms trade which began in 1967.
The ban stated that they could not buy or sell arms in concert with nations that had Communist governments or nations at war.
Slowly Japan ceased all military cooperation with every nation, aside from the United States of course.
This is seen as a move to not only expand military cooperation but also to allow for Japan to get in on the controversial European Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) project.
Despite the ban on a great deal of arms trade, in the 1980s Japanese corporations outfitted the United States with some 15 new technologies for the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI).
The SDI was proposed in 1983 by the President at the time, Ronald Reagan, and was derisively called “Star Wars” by the program’s many detractors.
Now Japan, in a partnership with the Unites States, is in the process of creating a unit for a new, upgraded SM3 ship missile which is expected to become a key component in the European ABM system, according to the Voice of Russia.
The head of the Center for Japanese Studies, Valery Kistanov, said, “Above all Japan wants to strengthen its military alliance with the US. Japan needs it amid current instability in the Asian Pacific region.
“It is concerned about the so-called Chinese military threat and the situation on the Korean peninsula after the death of Kim Jong-il. The government’s recent move is probably intended to show that Tokyo is loyal and committed to its alliance with the US,” Kistanov added.
There is also the notable factor of a growing close cooperation between Tokyo and Brussels – the location of the headquarters of NATO – which would greatly contribute to a greater presence in the Asia-Pacific region.
This is just another instance of NATO mission creep far beyond what the alliance was originally intended to do, and as you will see, this is expanding to a disturbing degree just as we saw in the case of Libya.
Japan is also greatly strengthening ties between India, starting with a 2008 Joint Declaration on Security Cooperation which was modeled on a 2007 defense-cooperation accord with Australia.
This treaty later spawned a similar accord between India and Australia in 2009, leading to circular ties which are now developing into trilateral relations.
Japan is also reinforcing economic ties with India with a free-trade accord known as the Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement (CEPA) which became active a mere three months ago.
CEPA covers over 90 percent of trade and even spreads into the sectors of services, rules of origin, intellectual property rights, investment, customs regulations and other related trade issues.
This agreement is intended to strengthen bilateral trade between the two nations in order to reduce trade with China, which still outweighs trade between Japan and India by a large margin.
According to the Japan Times, India is already becoming a preferred nation for Japanese foreign direct investment.
Japan and India have also come to an agreement on development of rare earths after China leveraged their monopoly on production of rare earths to cut off exports to Japan in the fall of 2010.
Japanese-Indian relations go even deeper with an annual summit meeting between the two prime ministers along with several annual dialogues between their respective foreign ministers, defense ministers, and Japan’s minister of economy, trade and industry and India’s commerce and industry minister.
There are also separate meetings between ministers of energy and other economic talks, dialogues between the Indian foreign and defense secretaries and the Japanese vice minister equivalents, a maritime security dialogue, comprehensive security talks and even military-to-military dialogues which include regular visits between the chiefs of staff of both nations.
To even further cement these relations, Japan, India and the United States have begun trilateral strategic talks which began in Washington just last week.
India and Japan already have their own missile defense cooperation agreements with Israel and the United States but they are also looking to develop defense systems in cooperation with each other as well.
Despite the economic turmoil at home, the so-called leaders of America continue to pour astounding amounts of money into the Israeli missile defense program.
While Japan only has naval interoperability with the United States Navy, former Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe said in a speech in New Delhi, India that the aim should be that “sooner rather than later, Japan’s navy and the Indian navy are seamlessly interconnected.”
Japan is also planning on employing the F-35 next generation fighter jet, which was developed with nine nations including Britain and the United States.
The regulations against arms exports in place previously prevented Japan from joining the development team for the F-35, even though they were asked to join the project.
A remarkable article was published in Gulf News written by Jaswant Singh, who is the former Indian finance minister, foreign minister, and defense minister entitled, “New regional order in Asia is reaction to Chinese hegemony.”
I found this noteworthy due to the phrase “New regional order” which calls to mind the infamous “new world order” concept, which is quite an interesting choice of words indeed.
Speaking of the trilateral relations between India, Japan and the United States, United States Deputy Secretary of State William burns said it could very well “reshape the international system.”
According to Singh, “Burns and much of the rest of America’s foreign-policy establishment, now thinks that India’s regional influence has become comprehensive,” although he is obviously coming from a highly biased perspective.
It is quite remarkable that Japan and India are now developing the same type of comprehensive military and economic ties that have so long been the hallmark of ties between the United States and Japan.
Singh erroneously claims that the newly formed trilateral alliance is also aimed at helping to mitigate the so-called “gaping hole” which will supposedly be left in the Asian security architecture after the West will remove troops from Afghanistan without establishing peace there.
Of course, this is outright absurd seeing as there is no indication that the United States or NATO will actually be leaving Afghanistan.
This became clear in November when the spokeswoman for the loya jirga in Afghanistan stated that Washington wanted a complete media blackout over the conditions being set in the new strategic long-term deal between American and Afghanistan.
Many of the loya jirga participants complained that they were not being provided with information about the terms and conditions of the long-term deal and Afghan President Hamid Karzai said that so long as some minor conditions were met they would be prepared to allow U.S. troops to remain in Afghanistan for an unspecified length of time.
One man covering Kabul and provinces for The New York Times, Sharifullah Sahak, said at the time via Twitter that “members with different views [are] saying [the] government should sign the strategic pact for 10, 20, even for 50 years with the US.”
It is quite clear that Singh is parroting the blatantly false line promulgated by NATO and the United States despite all of the proof showing that they have no interest in leaving that theater.
Rick Rozoff of Stop NATO (which puts out a free daily newsletter that is an absolute must read for anyone trying to keep up with the diabolical geopolitical machinations going on every day) says the evolution and expansion of the so-called “Asian NATO” is nothing new.
In fact, he says that he has been writing for at least 10 years on this subject and yet these developments are generally ignored like far too many other important issues that impact us all.
Rozoff points to the fact that Europe was first brought “under the NATO boot” and having finished that has now moved on to the Middle East and Africa.
“Asia is the only ‘unsubjugated’ part of the world except for Latin America – which is being saved for ‘dessert,’” Rozoff said.
It is clear that Asia is the new focus and this only becomes clearer as we continue to look at recent developments that the West is setting the proverbial sights on the Asia-Pacific region.
It has also become quite obvious to even the casual observer that this is aimed at encircling the countries that will not follow the West’s orders, most notably China, Russia and of course Iran.
During the recent visit of India’s Defense Minister A.K. Antony to Tokyo, it was decided that there would be a joint naval and air force exercise in 2012 between Japan and India, which would be a first.
This is part of the agreement between Japan and India which is aimed at increasing cooperation on “maritime security issues, including anti-piracy measures, freedom of navigation,” in addition to “maintaining the security of the Sea Lanes of Communication to facilitate unhindered trade, bilaterally as well as multilaterally with regional neighbors,” which Singh points out obviously means China.
In early 2012 a “Japan-India Defense Policy Dialogue” will be held in Tokyo along with the many top-level meetings between government and military officials as previously mentioned.
Singh says that these ties will certainly upset China while claiming that China’s role in the South China Sea dispute “has been a wake-up call about the type of regional order that China would establish if it had the power.”
Then again, the “new regional order” being established by NATO isn’t quite as glorious and peaceful as Singh is making it out to be, and the United States has been pretty clearly goading China in the South China Sea dispute.
“India’s and China’s rival aspirations to be acknowledged as regional Great Powers, as well as their quest for energy security, are compelling both countries to seek greater maritime security,” Singh writes.
Of course in this case “maritime security” is a not-so-subtle way of saying naval dominance as determined by the clout of alliances and sheer firepower.
Singh acknowledges the Indian approach has been opting “to construct a regional security structure with no Chinese participation,” and isolation isn’t quite the phenomenal strategy Singh seems to be making it out to be.
Cutting a nation out of the equation while encircling it and engaging in saber-rattling is bound to be disruptive, especially when the nation feels threatened.
This is exactly what we’re seeing right now with the NATO ABM program in Europe which is not leaving Russia either happy or reassured, as Rozoff has been extensively pointing out in his newsletters.
China is also not quite pleased with these developments, evidenced by China Daily saying that Japanese Premier Yoshihiko Noda’s visit to India was aimed at containing China.
They cite Lu Yaodong, the director of the department of Japanese diplomacy at the Institute of Japanese Studies of the Chinese Academy of Social sciences who says that the summit between India and Japan is a continuance of the Japanese strategy known as the “Arc of Freedom and Prosperity.”
They also point to an expected dollar swap accord worth up to $10 billion along with possible increased nuclear cooperation between the two nations.
Su Hao, the director of the Asia-Pacific research center at China Foreign Affairs University in Beijing reportedly said that Japan’s move to ease the arms trade restrictions “will complicate security in the Asia-Pacific region,” and thus “will have a negative effect on China,” according to the India Times.
There is also the concern that the Chinese People’s Daily Online reported on June 15, 2011 that the Liberation Army Daily said, “China resolutely opposes any country unrelated to the South China Sea issue meddling in disputes, and it opposes the internationalization of the South China Sea issue.”
This is a pretty clear statement to the United States who has been conducting naval exercises with nations involved in the dispute, arming others and encircling China with their increasing Japanese, Indian and Australian ties.
It is also worrisome that Australia has decided to sell natural uranium to India, which is a total reversal from the previous policy which had been in place since India had first developed a nuclear weapons program.
The Australian Greens characterized this “unethical, illogical and probably illegal,” pointing to the fact that India is not a signatory of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, although I think we all know just how much treaties are worth these days.
This comes as there is significant opposition to Indian nuclear power, including hunger strikes and the Australian Senator for Western Australia Scott Ludlam said that “selling uranium to India will increase the proliferation of nuclear weapons in our region.”
Ludlam also cites the former head of the Indian National Security Advisory Board K. Subrahmanyam who said, “It is to India’s advantage to categorize as many power reactors as possible as civilian ones to be refueled by imported uranium and conserve our native uranium fuel for weapons grade plutonium production.”
It is quite clear that uranium sold to India will just replace other uranium which would go to civilian nuclear programs so more uranium can be devoted to weapons grade plutonium production and thus nuclear weapons.
Ludlam also said that even the Indian civilian nuclear program was considered dangerous, pointing out, “This trade is illegal, dangerous and opposed by many Indian people including nuclear experts.”
This issue dovetails with the concern over America’s new and quite pronounced military presence in Australia, which in combination with the nuclear proliferation is sure to make China a bit concerned.
There is also the matter of Australia purchasing some $950 million in military equipment from the United States.
The Defense Security Cooperation Agency informed the U.S. Congress earlier in December that Australia will be purchasing 10 C-27J military planes and other equipment like missile warning and radar systems.
Washington approved the sale which is being done under the guise of helping “improve the air mobility and capability of the Australian Defence Force to run humanitarian and disaster relief operations in Southeast Asia,” according to the International Business Times.
They point out that the United States will also be opening a training center in Australia on top of the 2,500 Marines and the cutting edge F-22 fighter jet capable of cyberwarfare and electronic warfare, along with other military hardware, all of which will supposedly “help U.S. allies and protect American interests in Asia.”
Other items included in the order are: more electronic warfare equipment, portable flight mission planning systems, 23 Rolls Royce AE2100D2 engines, radios, support and test equipment, spares, aircraft ferry and tanker support, training equipment and personnel training, technical data and publications, maintenance trainers and an operational flight simulator.
Is this preparation for innocent humanitarian missions like they claim or could it possibly be building up supplies for a greater encirclement and possible future military action?
The Philippines
The Filipino Presidential Communications Operations Office announced on December 26 that the Gregorio del Pilar (PF-15) set out from Manila to the province of Palawan on December 23 for her first deployment as a warship of the Philippine Navy, after being handed over by the U.S. Coast Guard on May 13, 2011.
The Philippine Navy said that the vessel will act to strengthen the naval security in the Malampaya Oil Fields along with other areas west of the Palawan province.
The Malampaya field is roughly 80 km off the coast of Palawan Island, which Is not too far from the South China Sea as you can see in the following map where “A” is the South China Sea and “B” is Palawan Island.
Click to see full size
While there very well might be closer areas to the South China Sea in the Philippines, the newest patrol frigate can sustain a month-long mission without any need to re-provision and is 378 feet long with a beam of 42 feet.
The ship carries 18 officers and 144 enlisted personnel and thus represents yet another aspect of the expansion and encirclement in the region thanks to the United States.
Ukraine
According to the KyivPost (Kyiv is an alternate spelling of Kiev), Ukraine hopes that the upcoming NATO summit in Chicago in May of 2012 will strengthen ties between NATO and Kiev.
They cite Oleh Voloshyn, the Ukrainian Foreign Ministry’s information policy department director, who said, “We very much hope that next year’s NATO summit in Chicago will be an impetus to the deepening of cooperation between Ukraine and the alliance.”
Voloshyn also said that Ukraine and NATO have been engaging in intensified dialogues this year in a clear effort to bring the Eastern European nation into the alliance to further encircle Russia and China.
“Of course, we will continue to see NATO as our strategic partner in the sphere of security, reform of the armed forces, and in the sphere of tackling the consequences of emergency situations,” Voloshyn added.
The KyivPost adds that the United States Ambassador to Ukraine John Tefft said that the Ukrainian President, Viktor Yanukovych, would also be invited to attend the NATO summit in Chicago in May.
Bringing Ukraine into NATO could be a huge boon for those seeking to further encircle Russia and continue to grow the hegemonic Western control as Ukraine is a relatively large nation which shares a border with Russia.
Armenia
According to Public Radio of Armenia, recently the interdepartmental commission which was coordinating the implementation of the Individual Partnership Action Plan (IPAP) between Armenia and NATO held their final meeting in 2011.
While Armenia does not border Russia, it is quite close and would provide yet another way to encircle Russia and strengthen NATO’s grip on the region.
Ashot Hovakimyan, the Armenian Deputy Foreign Minister lauded the effectiveness of the interdepartmental commission’s activity over the past year in presenting the general assessment of their actions.
Armenia’s First Deputy Defense Minister David Tonoyan said that the main areas of cooperation with NATO in the field of defense would be the participation of Armenian so-called peacekeepers in NATO actions along with support from NATO and member states in implementing defense reforms.
During the final sitting the results of the implementation of the objectives of IPAP in 2011 were summarized along with the progress they had made towards expanding the cooperation between Armenia and NATO.
If nothing else, this much is clear: NATO and the West are expanding far beyond their original stated intentions when NATO was created and now moving into new regions, expanding ties and military dominance, and overall doing whatever it takes to grow the hegemonic control of the world.
The direction this is heading is far from pleasant and despite the constant reassurances that this is being done for humanitarian purposes or motivations that seem otherwise innocent, I think by now all of my readers realize this is very unlikely, to say the least.
If you have stories or tips on this issue please email me at Admin@EndtheLie.com along with your analysis and opinion. I very well might use what you have to say in a future article!
Related posts:
- Working towards World War III? NATO helicopters invade Pakistani airspace
- al Qaeda rebels in Libya demand more money from the West, NATO still killing civilians
- The Fourth Reich: be warned, the EU is on the march
- Russia views NATO missile shield as ‘legitimate target for attack’
- US-NATO troops reportedly gathering on Jordan-Syria border
Short URL: http://EndtheLie.com/?p=33050
Doctor Admits TSA Body Scanners Can Cause Cancer: Infowars Nightly News (video)
Infowars Nightly News
January 6, 2012
Co-host Rob Dew will cover news for the day, including calls from the former head of the Secret Service to establish a ‘global e-mail fusion center’ that would effectively be capable of tracking and tracing all private mail sent over the Internet– in the name, of course, of stopping terrorism.
Reports show that Homeland Security conducted an unannounced ID checkpoint at a Florida social security office, refusing to explain to the media or Florida officials the rationale behind the heavily-armed “drill.” “With their blue and white SUVs circled around the Main Street office, at least one official was posted on the door with a semiautomatic rifle, randomly checking identifications. And other officers, some with K-9s, sifted through the building,” reported the Daily Commercial.
The TSA continues to face not only opposition to its policies from travelers, but from credible critics as well. Dr. Edward Dauer, head of radiology at the Florida Medical Center, has come forward to warn that the controversial body scanners used at airport checkpoints can cause cancer, particularly affecting those over age 65, as well as women of all age who’ve been found with genetic predisposition to developing breast cancer.
http://www.prisonplanet.tv/
Arab Spring: Egypt Strikes Back
US-funded agitators have offices raided across Egypt.
by Tony Cartalucci
Land Destroyer Report
December 30, 2011
The LA Times reported, “Egypt raids foreign organizations’ offices in crackdown. Three U.S. groups are among those raided. Activists say the army is using the ruse of foreign intervention to stoke nationalism and deflect criticism of abuses.”
Photo: (AP) US State Department agitators from the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) subsidary, the National Democratic Institute, standby as Egyptian security forces raid their offices. Despite NED veritably being run by Neo-Conservative, corporate-fascists who have signed PNAC documents declaring their intentions of acheiving and maintaining a century of global hegemony, they and the US State Department would decry Egypt’s crackdown on their insidious activities as a slight against “human rights.”
However, it is no “ruse” as the US-funded “activists” claim. And while the LA Times denies its readership a documented back-story either confirming or denying “activist claims,” understanding the US role in funding sedition in Egypt is essential to understanding why not only are the raids of NGOs justified, but an absolute necessity to protect both Egyptian national sovereignty and international stability.
Documented Back-Story of the US-Engineered “Arab Spring” in Egypt
In January of 2011, we were told that “spontaneous,” “indigenous” uprising had begun sweeping North Africa and the Middle East, including Hosni Mubarak’s Egypt, in what was hailed as the “Arab Spring.” It would be almost four months before the corporate-media would admit that the US had been behind the uprisings and that they were anything but “spontaneous,” or “indigenous.” In an April 2011 article published by the New York Times titled, “U.S. Groups Helped Nurture Arab Uprisings,” it was stated:
“A number of the groups and individuals directly involved in the revolts and reforms sweeping the region, including the April 6 Youth Movement in Egypt, the Bahrain Center for Human Rights and grass-roots activists like Entsar Qadhi, a youth leader in Yemen, received training and financing from groups like the International Republican Institute, the National Democratic Institute and Freedom House, a nonprofit human rights organization based in Washington.”
The article would also add, regarding the US National Endowment for Democracy (NED):
“The Republican and Democratic institutes are loosely affiliated with the Republican and Democratic Parties. They were created by Congress and are financed through the National Endowment for Democracy, which was set up in 1983 to channel grants for promoting democracy in developing nations. The National Endowment receives about $100 million annually from Congress. Freedom House also gets the bulk of its money from the American government, mainly from the State Department. “
It is hardly a speculative theory then, that the uprisings were part of an immense geopolitical campaign conceived in the West and carried out through its proxies with the assistance of disingenuous organizations including NED, NDI, IRI, and Freedom House and the stable of NGOs they maintain throughout the world. Preparations for the “Arab Spring” began not as unrest had already begun, but years before the first “fist” was raised, and within seminar rooms in D.C. and New York, US-funded training facilities in Serbia, and camps held in neighboring countries, not within the Arab World itself.
In 2008, Egyptian activists from the now infamous April 6 movement were in New York City for the inaugural Alliance of Youth Movements (AYM) summit, also known as Movements.org. There, they received training, networking opportunities, and support from AYM’s various corporate and US governmental sponsors, including the US State Department itself. The AYM 2008 summit report (page 3 of .pdf) states that the Under Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs, James Glassman attended, as did Jared C0hen who sits on the policy planning staff of the Office of the Secretary of State. Six other State Department staff members and advisers would also attend the summit along with an immense list of corporate, media, and institutional representatives.
Shortly afterward, April 6 would travel to Serbia to train under US-funded CANVAS, formally the US-funded NGO “Otpor” who helped overthrow the government of Serbia in 2000. Otpor, the New York Times would report, was a “well-oiled movement backed by several million dollars from the United States.” After its success it would change its name to CANVAS and begin training activists to be used in other US-backed regime change operations.
The April 6 Movement, after training with CANVAS, would return to Egypt in 2010, along with UN IAEA Chief Mohammed ElBaradei. April 6 members would even be arrested while awaiting for ElBaradei’s arrival at Cairo’s airport in mid-February. Already, ElBaradei, as early as 2010, announced his intentions of running for president in the 2011 elections. Together with April 6, Wael Ghonim of Google, and a coalition of other opposition parties, ElBaradei assembled his “National Front for Change” and began preparing for the coming “Arab Spring.”
Clearly then, unrest was long planned, with activists from Tunisia and Egypt on record receiving training and support from abroad, so that they could return to their home nations and sow unrest in a region-wide coordinated campaign.
An April 2011 AFP report would confirm this, when US State Department’s Michael Posner stated that the “US government has budgeted $50 million in the last two years to develop new technologies to help activists protect themselves from arrest and prosecution by authoritarian governments.” The report went on to explain that the US “organized training sessions for 5,000 activists in different parts of the world. A session held in the Middle East about six weeks ago gathered activists from Tunisia, Egypt, Syria and Lebanon who returned to their countries with the aim of training their colleagues there.” Posner would add, “They went back and there’s a ripple effect.” That ripple effect of course, is the “Arab Spring.”
NED & Freedom House are Run by Warmongering Neo-Cons
The National Endowment for Democracy, despite the lofty mission statement articulated on its website, is nothing more than a tool for executing American foreign policy. Just as the military is used under the cover of lies regarding WMD’s and “terrorism,” NED is employed under the cover of bringing “democracy” to “oppressed” people. However, a thorough look at NED’s board of directors, as well as the board of trustees of its subsidiary, Freedom House, definitively lays to rest any doubts that may be lingering over the true nature of these organizations and the causes they support.
Upon NED’s board of directors we first find John Bohn who traded petrochemicals, was an international banker for 13 years with Wells Fargo, and is currently serving as a principal for a global advisory and consulting firm, GlobalNet Partners, which assists foreign businesses by making their “entry into the complex China market easy.” Surely Bohn’s ability to manipulate China’s political landscape through NED’s various activities both inside of China and along its peripheries constitutes an alarming conflict of interest. However, it appears “conflict of interest” is a reoccurring theme throughout both NED and Freedom House.
Bohn is joined by Rita DiMartino who worked for Council on Foreign Relations corporate member AT&T as “Vice President of Congressional Relations” as well as a member of the CFR herself. Also representing the Fortune 500 is Kenneth Duberstein, a board member of the war profiteering Boeing Company, big oil’s ConocoPhillips, and the Mack-Cali Realty Corporation. Duberstein also served as a director of Fannie Mae until 2007. He too is a CFR member as are two of the companies he chairs, Boeing and ConocoPhillips.
We then consider several of the certified warmongers serving upon NED’s board of directors including Francis Fukuyama, Zalmay Khalilzad, Will Marshall, and Vin Weber, all signatories of the pro-war, pro-corporate Project for a New American Century. Within the pages of documents produced by this “think tank” are pleas to various US presidents to pursue war against sovereign nations, the increase of troops in nations already occupied by US forces, and what equates to a call for American global hegemony in a Hitlerian 90 page document titled “Rebuilding Americas Defenses.” As we will see, this warmongering think tank serves as a nexus around which fellow disingenuous rights advocate Freedom House also gravitates.
The “Statement of Principles,” signed off by NED chairmen Francis Fukuyama, Zalmay Khalilzad, and Vin Weber, states, “we need to accept responsibility for America’s unique role in preserving and extending an international order friendly to our security, our prosperity, and our principles.” Of course by “international order” they mean meddling beyond the sovereign borders of the United States and is merely used as a euphemism for global imperialism. Other Neo-Con that signed their name to this statement include Freedom House’s Paula Dobriansky, Dan Quayle (formally), and Donald Rumsfeld (formally), along with Paul Wolfowitz, Dick Cheney, Eliot Cohen, and Elliot Abrams.
A PNAC “Statment on Post-War Iraq” regarding a wholehearted endorsement of nation-building features the signatures of NED chairman Will Marshall, Freedom House’s Frank Carlucci (2002), and James Woolsey (formally), along with Martin Indyk (Lowy Institute board member, co-author of the conspiring “Which Path to Persia?” report), and William Kristol and Robert Kagan both of the warmongering Foreign Policy Initiative. It should be noted that the Foreign Policy Initiative (FPI) is, for all intents and purposes, PNAC’s latest incarnation and just recently featured an open letter to House Republicans calling on them to disregard the will of the American people and continue pursuing the war in Libya. The FPI letter even suggests that the UN resolution authorizing the war in the first place, was holding America “hostage” and that it should be exceeded in order to do more to “help the Libyan opposition.”
An untitled PNAC letter addressed to then US President George Bush regarding a general call for global warmongering received the seal of approval from Freedom Houses’ Ellen Bork (2007), Ken Adelman (also former lobbyist for Thailand’s Thaksin Shinawatra via Edelman), and James Woolsey (formally), along with Neo-Con degenerates Richard Perle, William Kristol, Robert Kagan, and the always disingenuous demagogue Daniel Pipes.
It is safe to say that neither NED nor Freedom House garners within its ranks characters appropriate for their alleged cause of “supporting freedom around the world.” It is also safe to say that the principles of “democracy,” “freedom,” and “human rights” they allegedly champion for, are merely being leveraged to co-opt well meaning people across the world to carry out their own self-serving agenda.
Considering NED and Freedom House’s role in fomenting the premeditated destabilization disingenuously titled the “spontaneous, indigenous” “Arab Spring,” and the true nature of those that constitute their boards of directors, we can examine the LA Times article regarding the recent raids for what it is – a white wash if not an outright lie. Similarly, the US State Department comments made condemning the recent raids in Egypt take on a new, farcical, and very hypocritical tone in light of the documented fraud the US is carrying out through the State Department and the organizations it is on record funding.
The Current NGO Raids in Egypt
The LA Times claims:
“Egyptian security forces on Thursday raided the offices of 17 nongovernmental organizations, including three U.S.-based agencies, as part of a crackdown on foreign assistance that has drawn criticism from the West and threatened human rights groups and pro-democracy movements.
The move appeared to be part of a strategy to intimidate international organizations. The ruling military council has repeatedly blamed “foreign hands” for exploiting Egypt’s political and economic turmoil. But activists said the army was using the ruse of foreign intervention to stoke nationalism and deflect criticism of abuses.”
The LA Times would go on to describe the US State Department’s response:
“This action is inconsistent with the bilateral cooperation we have had over many years,” State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland said at a news briefing after the raids. “We call on the Egyptian government to immediately end the harassment of NGO staff, return all property and resolve this issue immediately.”
Egyptian soldiers and black-clad police officers swept into offices, interrogated workers and seized computers across the country. Those targeted included U.S. groups the National Democratic Institute, the International Republican Institute and Freedom House, which are funded by Congress to monitor elections and promote democracy overseas.”
Ironically, US-stooge Mohamed ElBaradei would chime in on the side of the US State Department claiming, “human rights organizations are the guardians of the nascent freedom. Efforts to suffocate them will be a major setback and will surely backfire.” Freedom House director David Kramer, formally a State Department official under the Bush Administation, would claim the Egyptian army crackdown was “an intensive campaign by the Egyptian government to dismantle civil society through a politically motivated legal campaign aimed at preventing ‘illegal foreign funding’ of civil society operations in Egypt.” Meanwhile NDI president Ken Wollack said “cracking down on organizations whose sole purpose is to support the democratic process during Egypt’s historic transition sends a disturbing signal.”
We see then, US and Egyptian organizations that are documented frauds acting in absolute concert not only with each other, but in tandem with both the US State Department and a willfully ignorant corporate-media. These “NGOs” are the equivilant of Great Britain’s imperial networks that spanned the globe, supplanted national sovereignty in nation after nation and executed the will of the crown, not that of the people they ruled over from Ireland to India, from Myanmar to the American colonies.
Conclusion
Let us note and expose the perversion of ideals such as “representative governance” cheaply reduced to “democracy” or “mob rule,” and the obscene abuse of concepts such as “free speech” and “human rights” by organizations like NED and Freedom House who have themselves engineered conflicts that have resulted in genocide, state-sponsored terrorism, codified torture and indefinite detention as well as everything else that crawls out from beneath the rocks of Wall Street and London’s brand of corporate-fascism and its willing servants in America’s “Neo-Conservative” establishment and more recently Obama’s supposedly “liberal” presidency.
And while Egypt has taken up the challenge to directly confront traitors and foreign-funded sedition within their own sovereign borders, as has Belarus recently, Egypt is by far not the only nation suffering under the debilitating division and destruction NED and its US State Department-funded subsidiaries sow throughout nations.
Tunisia’s new president had literally served the US agenda for decades via his Paris-based, NED-funded “NGO.” The destabilization that his NGO contributed to paved the way for his coming to power. Likewise, a list of nations are documented to be under similar attack.
Myanmar: “Democracy icon” Aung San Suu Kyi’s entire political apparatus is US and British funded.
Thailand: Fraudulent NGOs like Prachatai, Thai Netizen, and many others are entirely funded by US State Department cash and are insidiously paving the way for Wall Street servant Thaksin Shinawatra to remove Thailand’s traditional institutions and replace it with US-installed “civil society.”
Russia: Moscow’s streets have been choked week after week with protesters led by verified servants of the US State Department, funded for years by NED and whose foreign-funded NGOs constitute the entirety of accusations of “fraud” in Russia’s recent elections.
Malaysia: NED-funded “Bersih” protesters are attempting to sow division and instability to pave the way for IMF stooge Anwar Ibrahim to return to power and enter the people of Malaysia back under Anglo-American servitude.
Egypt and Belarus have given the world a model to follow. Instead of striking out at throngs of protesters manipulated and used by these insidious organizations as the Egyptian military has been doing, they are now striking at the organizations and the foreign-funded traitors doing the manipulation in the first place. By exposing and attacking Wall Street and London’s network of insidious agents directly, the global destabilization they are attempting to carry out may just very well fail – and not only fail but leave those behind it naked in their megalomania and criminal intentions for all the world to see.
And finally, while Egyptians, and indeed the world, must scrutinize NGOs claiming to promote “democray,” “freedom,” and “human rights,” they must likewise scrutinize those whom these NGOs are attacking. If the forces of “liberal activism” can be so completely hijacked, so can the forces of nationalism. We must then identify the corporate-financier interests driving this obscene agenda, and not only boycott and entirely replace them, but in the meantime, monitor their interactions not only with these NGOs now confirmed to be frauds, but inroads they may be making in compromising the nationalist forccs they are attacking. Eternal vigilance is a price we must be willing to pay if freedom is truly something we aspire for.
America on The Road to Total Destruction with Author Charlotte Iserbyt (video)
The Alex Jones Show
January 6, 2012
…Alex talks with Charlotte Iserbyt, who served as Senior Policy Advisor in the Office of Educational Research and improvement at the Department of Education during the Reagan years. During her stint there, she blew the whistle on a major technology initiative which would control curriculum in America’s classrooms. She subsequently wrote and compiled the deliberate dumbing down of america, a chronological history of the past one hundred plus years of education reform. A new version of Iserbyt’s book is now available at the Infowars store.
New Asian Union Means The Fall Of The Dollar
by Brandon Smith, Contributing Writer
Activist Post
December 30, 2011
One of the most frustrating issues to haunt the halls of alternative economic analysis is the threat of misrepresentative terminology. For instance, when the U.S. government decided to back the private Federal Reserve in lowering the interest rates on lending windows to European banks last month, they did not call this a bailout, even though that’s exactly what it was. They did not call it quantitative easing, or fiat printing, or a hyperinflationary landmine; rarely does bureaucracy ever apply honest terminology to their subversive activities. False terminology is the bane of every honest analyst, because in order for them to educate and awaken those who are unaware of the truth, they must first battle through the daunting muck of the general public’s horrifically improper perceptions and vocabulary.
The chain of financial events taking place over the past decade in Asia has been correspondingly mislabeled and misunderstood. What some economists see as total collapse is actually a new and decidedly prophetic (or engineered) transition. What some naively see as the “natural” progression of globalism, is actually a distinctly deliberate program of centralization meant to further the goals of world economic and political totalitarianism. Asia, and most especially China, is a Petri dish for elitist psychopaths. What we see as suffocating collectivism in this region of the world today is the exact social schematic intended for the West tomorrow. Call it whatever you will, but on the other side of the Pacific, like the eerie smile of a sinister clown, sits fabricated fate.
The genius of globalization is not in how it “works”, but in how it DOESN’T work. Globalization chains together mismatched cultures through circumstance and throws us into the deep end of the pool. If one sinks, we all sink, enslaving us with interdependency. The question one must ask, then, is whether sovereign economies are currently tied together in the same way? The answer is no, not anymore. Certain countries have moved to insulate themselves from the domino effect of debt implosion; one of the primary examples being China.
Since at least 2005, China has been taking the exact steps required to counter the brunt of a global debt collapse; not enough to make it untouchable, but enough that its infrastructure will survive. One could even surmise that China’s actions indicate a foreknowledge of the events that would eventually escalate in 2008. How they knew is hard to say, but if the available evidence causes you to lean towards collapse as a Hegelian creation (and it should if you are paying any attention), then China’s activity begins to make perfect sense. If a globalist insider told you that in a few short years the two most powerful financial empires in the world were going to topple like bowling pins under the weight of their own liabilities, what would you do? Probably separate yourself as much as possible from the diseased dynamic and construct your own replacement system. This is what China has done….
China started with the circulation of Yuan-denominated bonds, like T-Bonds, meant to securitize Chinese debt, creating an outlet for the currency to go global. China’s considerable forex and bond reserves make this move a rather suspicious one. With so much savings at their disposal, why bother to issue bonds at all? Why threaten the traditional export-based economy and the uneven trade advantage that the country had been thriving on for decades? The success of Chinese bonds would mean the internationalization of the Yuan, a floating valuation of the currency, and the loss of the desirable trade deficit with the United States. Back in 2005, this all would surely seem like a novelty that was going nowhere fast. Of course, today China’s actions suggest an unprecedented push to convert to a consumer hub at the center of a massive trading bloc. To put it simply; China knew ahead of schedule that the U.S. was no longer going to be a viable customer, and reliance on such a country would spell disaster. They have been preparing to break away from America’s consumer markets and the dollar for some time.
In 2008, after China announced the use of the Yuan in cross-border trade on a limited basis, I began to write about the possibility that China was preparing to break from the Greenback. For the past few years my primary focus in terms of finance has been the East as a kind of warning bell for the state of the global economy. In 2009 and 2010, it became absolutely clear that China (with the help of global corporate entities) was developing the skeleton of a new system; a trade network that that had the capacity to supplant the U.S. and end the dollar’s world reserve status.
Since then, Yuan bonds have spread across the planet, China has dropped the dollar in bilateral trade with Russia, the ASEAN trading bloc has formed into a tight shell of export partners, and that is just the beginning. Two major announcements in 2011 have solidified my belief that a complete dump of the dollar by Eastern interests is near…
First was the announcement that China was actively and openly pursuing the establishment of a central bank for the whole of ASEAN, with the Yuan utilized as the reserve currency instead of the dollar:
http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/10/27/us-china-asean-financial-idUSTRE79Q2F520111027
This news, of course, has barely been reported on in the mainstream. As I discussed at the beginning of this article, the terminology surrounding economic developments has been diluted and twisted. When China states that an ASEAN central bank is in the works, we need to point out what this really means; the ASEAN trading bloc is about to become the Asian Union. The only missing piece of the puzzle is something that I have been warning about for at least a couple years, ever since my days at Neithercorp (see “Migration Of The Black Swans” as a recent example). This key catalyst is the inclusion of Japan in ASEAN, something which many said would take five to ten years to unfold. News released this Christmas speaks otherwise:
Japan has indeed entered into an agreement to drop the dollar in currency exchange with China and has expressed interest in melting into ASEAN. Japan has also struck somewhat similar though slightly more limited deals with India, South Korea, Indonesia, and the Philippines almost simultaneously:
This means that the two largest foreign holders of U.S. debt and Greenbacks will soon be in a position to tap into an export market far more profitable than that of America, and that all of this trade will be facilitated by currencies OTHER THAN THE DOLLAR. It means the end of the dollar as the world reserve, and probably the end of the dollar as we know it.
Japan’s inclusion in this process was inevitable. With its economy already in steep deflationary decline, the Yen skyrocketing in value against the dollar making exports difficult, as well as the ongoing nuclear meltdown problem at Fukushima, the island nation has been on the edge of complete collapse. Its only option, therefore, is to sink into the chaotic seas, or float like a buoy tied to an Asian Union. There can be absolutely no doubt now that Japan will soon implement the latter solution.
The dilemma at this point becomes one of timing. Now that we are certain that two of the largest economies in the world are about the dump the Greenback, what signals can we watch when preparing for the event? My belief is that the trigger will come squarely from the U.S. and the Federal Reserve, either as legislation to heavily tax Asian imports, a renewed threat of further credit downgrades like that which S&P brought down in August, or the announcement of more open quantitative easing. Any and all of these issues could very well arise in the course of the next 6-12 months, QE3 being a basic no-brainer. ASEAN could, certainly, drop the dollar immediately after their central bank apparatus is put in place, resulting in a much more volatile trade war atmosphere (also useful for full global centralization later down the road). The point is, we are truly at a place in our economic life when ANYTHING is possible.
My hope is that as our predictions in the alternative economic community are proven correct with every passing quarter, more Americans will take note, and prepare. I can say quite confidently that we have entered the first stages of the catastrophic phase of the economic implosion. All the fantastic and terrible consequences many once considered theory or science fiction, are about to become reality.
Practical solutions have been offered by myself and many others. The only thing left now is to take action, or ride the tidal wave of destruction like so much driftwood. We can help to determine the outcome, or we can be idle spectators. In everything, there is a choice….
Brandon Smith is the founder of Alt-Market is an organization designed to help you find like-minded activists and preppers in your local area so that you can network and construct communities for mutual aid and defense. Join Alt-Market.com today and learn what it means to step away from the system and build something better or contribute to their Safe Haven Project. You can contact Brandon Smith at: brandon@alt-market.com
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