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When Osama bin Laden said he didn't know who was responsible for the September 11, 2001 attacks in America, except it was "one of America's many enemies", I decided to look into who those enemies might be, and the sources of their grievances. I can now see why America might have many enemies. Over a period of 50+ years, the CIA has interfered in the internal affairs of over 50 countries, including assassinating their politicians, funding war machines such as Al-Qaida ("the database"), Saddam Hussein and Ayatollah Khomeini, running drugs, manufacturing news, and carefully nurturing American business interests.
This is "neo-colonialism", the latest incarnation of a habit practised by American and European imperialists since around 1400 and the time of Christopher Columbus. Since then, the land and natural resources have been systematically stolen from the native peoples of the Americas, Africa, the Middle East, Asia and Australia - of the entire planet. In addition, many of these people have been murdered, through a combination of conventional, chemical, biological and nuclear warfare, and terrorist attacks. The rest have essentially been enslaved and forced to live in "the system" that was then built around them.
In 1920, Winston Churchill advocated the use of mustard gas on errant "tribes" who didn't pay their taxes. Their towns were bombed with mustard gas... Churchill wrote that the bombs should "spread a lively terror" - the purpose of the English bombs was to create fear.
In 1983, the USS New Jersey killed thousands of civilians after it bombarded mountains in retaliation for the loss of 263 marines in Beiruit. During Vietnam, the USA dropped VX nerve gas on Vietcong troops and used chemical weapons such as Agent Orange. During World War II, the USA dropped two atomic weapons on Japan, killing around 300,000 innocent civilians. The USA continues to use cluster bombs, white phosphorous, and depleted uranium weapons; these technologies are all known for their extensive harmful side-effects ("collateral damage").
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| Check out that gutless mother-killer in the mask. If these people are so proud of what they are doing, why are they too scared to show their faces? |
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| do you have this man's blood on YOUR hands? |
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| A nurse treats a Lebanese girl who was injured by the Israeli attacks in Chebaa, south Lebanon, July 15, 2006. (text: Commondreams; photo: REUTERS/Chawki Hajj) |
After World War II, the CIA secretly helped 30000 SS and Gestapo agents escape Germany for safe havens. Many relocated to the USA and started work for the CIA instead - the CIA claimed they needed German intelligence to beat the coming "communist threat".
But this threat is indeed itself just another Hegellian construction. Hegel was a social philosopher at the University of Berlin in the mid- 1800's. Hegel suggested that society could be controlled by immersing it in "constant conflict". If the populace feels threatened then it is more pliant, less argumentative, easier to bully. Hegel suggested that if the people feel vulnerable, then the government can present itself as their protector, and then pass laws and commit acts it would not otherwise have been able to.
Modern governments have the means, the motive, and the capability to fabricate threats. It might be possible for a corrupt government, through a combination of propaganda and covert (unseen) activity, to make it seem that a threat is real. The benefit in fabricating the threat is that a corrupt government need not wait for an actual threat before it passes those laws and commits those acts. A bonus for government, corrupt or otherwise, and irrespective of whether the threats they identify are real or not, is that the threats ensure that politicians and bureaucrats have a job. They often are able to create new layers of bureaucracy, which means they get more responsibility and more pay.
After the end of World War I, the military-industrial complex needed a new enemy, or defence spending would fall... bring on Hitler and the Nazis - who were funded by the same military-industrial complex.
After the end of World War II, the military-industrial complex again needed a new enemy, or defence spending would fall... bring on the Soviets - who were funded by the same military-industrial complex.
After the end of the cold war, the military-industrial complex needed a new enemy, or defence spending would fall... bring on the war on drugs, and now the war on terrorism - both of whom have received funding by the same military-industrial complex.
No doubt a portion of each of these threats was real - there's no doubt however that a portion of each threat was exaggerated, overblown, distorted and over-inflated, either by propaganda or by covert action, by our own governments for their own purposes.
In the 21st century a new motivator has emerged: oil, or rather, the lack of it.
Now, the wildcard. It would be in the interests of the governments of certain other countries to see disharmony between the Islamic and Christian worlds. The country that stands the most to benefit from disharmony here is Israel. The rebellious house of Israel has the means, the motive, and the capability to incite disharmony on this scale. The fact that the Israeli military kills peace activists in cold blood, engages in vengeful turkey shoots at civilians relaxing on a beach, destroys civilian power supplies (an act in breach of the Geneva Conventions) (and again in revenge, this time affecting the power supplies of 700,000 people for 6 months because a single Israeli soldier was kidnapped, not to mention the other crimes they committed in additional revenge, including invading Gaza), repeatedly destroys civilian infrastructure including bridges, airports, highways, power stations, petrol stations, seaports and hospitals (in more acts of pre-meditated revenge), kidnaps 30+ elected government ministers including the Deputy Prime Minister, destroys the offices of government, hunts down and kills UN observers, blows up ambulances, uses banned weapons including phosphorous incendaries and cluster bombs, detained hundreds of Palestinans without charge for up to 15 years in torture prisons, and over a 20-year period, coated Lebanon with an estimated 300,000 landmines (an average of 74.35 mines per square mile), does nothing to dispel this possibility.
This website calls for the full and immediate implementation of UN Resolution 181 (1947) which defines two sovereign states, one for Palestinians and one for Israelis. Furthermore the borders shall be as defined in Resolution 181. Anything further is illegal, and will be prosecuted soon enough in the International Criminal Court.
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| left: Manchester, England, 1940 after being bombed by Nazi Germany; right: Beruit, Lebanon, 2006 after being bombed by Israel |
"All those now in south Lebanon are terrorists..." -- Haim Ramon, Israeli justice minister, July 27 2006
(Israel killed 54 civilians, including 34 children in a raid on Qana, south Lebanon three days later)
(Mr Ramon has since been convicted of indecent behaviour)
"It is our enemies who specifically target women and children, and when we do it, we apologize." -- Dan Gillerman, Israeli ambassador to the UN, July 31 2006
(he said when, not if)
"In my opinion, whole villages should be removed from the air..." -- Eli Yishai, Israeli MP, August 9 2006
"Psychopathy is a term derived from the Greek psych (mind) and pathos (suffering) ... psychopathy is defined ... as a condition characterised by lack of empathy or conscience, poor impulse control and manipulative behaviors." -- Wiki
"Israel has gone mad. It's attacking, doing the same thing to the Palestinian and Lebanese people that they have criticised - and with reason - the Holocaust. But this is a new Holocaust." -- Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, August 7, 2006
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"A mnemonic that can be used to remember the criteria for [sociopathy] is CORRUPT: [Wiki] C - cannot follow law
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| oil laps at Beruit's shoreline, August 1, 2006 |
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| A layer of crude oil covers Beirut's Ramlet el-Beida public beach. Much of Lebanon's coastline is awash with oil believed to originate from the Jiyeh power plant that has been targeted by Israeli air strikes. (Photo: BEN CURTIS/AP; text: Toronto Star) |
"Genocide is defined by the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (CPPCG) Article 2 as "any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial or religious group, as such: Killing members of the group; Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group; Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part; Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group; and forcibly transferring children of the group to another group." -- [Wiki]
Olmert and his gangsters have placed themselves - and increasingly, Bush and Blair - in an extremely unenviable position. For if the rule of law is to be upheld, and to avoid sending the message that genocide is a permitted activity, then an example must be made of these men. If this is not done, it will be a green light for any nation or group to unilaterally attack another, to wantonly violate the Geneva Conventions and many other commonly accepted principles such as the presumption of innocence and habeas corpus. In time the view will form that permitting these acts to go unpunished is in fact inciting terrorism - that to prevent further violence, and for the sake of national security and world peace, justice must be done, and must be seen to be done. And that is when the axe will fall on the necks of these mutinous bullies.
We've been here before: "The lawlessness of the Court of Star Chamber under Charles I far exceeded that under any of his predecessors. Under Charles' reign, defendants were regularly hauled before the Court without indictment, due process of the law, right to confront witnesses, and their testimonies were routinely extracted by the King and his courtiers through extensive torture ... Charles was subsequently tried, convicted and executed for high treason and "other high crimes" [and misdemeanours] ... his head [was] held up and exhibited to the crowd ... Parliament was reinstated in 1659." -- [Wiki]
We don't behead our traitors anymore, we throw them in jail for 25 years instead.
Jan 07: Well, not in Europe, anyway - it still happens.
see also: Modest Proposal: Waterboard Congress
link: The Israel Lobby and US Foreign Policy: "In this paper, John J. Mearsheimer of the University of Chicago's Department of Political Science and Stephen M.Walt of Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government contend that the centerpiece of U.S. Middle East policy is its intimate relationship with Israel. The authors argue that although often justified as reflecting shared strategic interests or compelling moral imperatives, the U.S. commitment to Israel is due primarily to the activities of the "Israel Lobby." This paper goes on to describe the various activities that pro-Israel groups have undertaken in order to shift U.S. foreign policy in a pro-Israel direction."
link: Bush's Fondness For Fundamentalism Is Courting Disaster At Home and Abroad
That the US vetoed a UN Security Council resolution condemning Israel's most recent crimes against humanity speaks volumes for its commitment to justice.
When people speak of America doing this, or Britain doing that, they are generalising. The people of these countries are most likely as opposed to the actions their governments are taking as you or I. Rather than being whole countries acting as one, as the mainstream media might have you believe, what we have instead is a small international cartel. They aren't Americans. They aren't British. They work for themselves. They represent nobody but themselves. And compared to the 6 billion of the rest of us, they are very, very small in number.
My government doesn't represent me anymore, and I don't care to have it associated with my name. It doesn't speak for me. *I* speak for me. These webpages speak for me. And I am like every other little guy swimming around hoping to hell he doesn't get nuked. They speak for nobody but themselves. Let history show that these crimes against humanity are committed in the name of the people, yet they are not committed BY the people.
America attacking Iraq might really be seen as a bunch of greedy oil barons attempting to shore up their crumbling resource base. I don't resent Americans, per se; rather it is the oil barons most worthy of contempt. Unfortunately, they and their "friends and colleagues" are in control of America, and they are authorised to speak and act in the name of America.
link: Rummy's Diaries - "An archive of information on human rights abuses, prisoner abuse, and torture committed by the Coalition of the Willing in the Global War on Terror." |
That the oil barons attempt to pass their actions off as a "war on terror" behind a see-through smokescreen of lies, propaganda and covert action betrays the true nature of the beast. When the "Oilmongers" say it's in the interests of US National Security to attack [insert name of token terrorist/CIA operative/oil-rich nation], they're telling the truth, but perhaps not as you might expect. America is heavily dependent upon oil, which, as we all know, is going to run out completely sometime this century. I guess they want to be the last left standing. Alone, in a bombed-out, greenhoused world - what a great way to die.
Hmm? Oh, they'll die. We live in a global economy. 30% of the world's shoes come from one province in China. Instead of investing in a sustainable future, America is desperately clutching onto the very technologies that led it to the abyss. Monopolising scarce resources is simply prolonging what is inevitable. Fighting over them first - well, that's just wasting resources and bringing finality a little closer. It's all really quite pathetic. Look what the humans do when their back is against the wall. They fight each other over increasingly small bits of nothing! Stupid creatures. If they had just figured out they could work together to fix their problem, they wouldn't all be dead.
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| The face of liberty: An Iraqi woman mourns the execution of 37 people inside a mosque by US forces |
Meanwhile, energy research goes underfunded - imagine what might happen if the money spent on the "War on Terror" - reportedly USD 330bn by February 2006 - was instead spent on, say, superconductor or fusion research.
In addition, the US' annual defence budget is around USD 500bn (that's per year) - again, the foolishness of spending all this money every year on things that destroy rather than create is astounding in proportion.
So it must be concluded that the greatest threat to world peace at this time is the United States of America; that its reckless, selfish and by definition, futile pursuit of non-renewable resources is impeding and undermining the development of sustainable energy; and that consequently, it is endangering the lives of every human on the planet.
Anyone who dares defend these actions has this blood on their hands as well.
Update 2006: In January's State of the Union speech, Bush stated that America was "addicted to oil" and pledged to increase funding for clean energy research. It obviously took him five years to find this page. Not to worry, mate, pull up a chair ...
A hint for the doubters: Big Money has started talking. I'll say that another way: Your insurance premiums are going up. You didn't really expect insurance companies to pay for cleaning up the mess caused by reckless environmental policies without passing on the costs to their customers, did you?
Update Jun 2006: A new report from the large and influential insurer Lloyds of London makes it plain. It's called Climate Change: Adapt or Bust.
Link: a book detailing the economic costs of war
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| spot the difference |
| (well, at least the one on the left has a clue) |
Setting the Record Straight -- a few clueless assertions corrected
1. Radical Islam is the greatest threat to world peace.
No, the USA is the greatest danger to world peace; this opinion has not only been ratified multiple times in public polls, but is borne out by the disaster in Iraq.
2. The war on terror can be won.
No, there is a limitless supply of potential terrorists, there always has been, and there always will be. The timelessness of the tactics of terror ensure they will outlast any regime or indeed any civilisation, including our own.
3. Peace can be assured by force.
No, this approach not only contradicts Einstein, who said that "peace cannot be kept by force, but can only be achieved through understanding", but is so morally bankrupt, so hypocritical, and so manifestly unjust, that it can never hope to gain the support it needs for legitimacy.
4. Indecision is weakness.
No, excessive indecision is weakness. Moderate indecision indicates a balanced judgement. Inconsequential indecision indicates an unwillingless to consider the consequences of one's actions.
5. Liberals are evil.
No, liberals, by definition, founded and developed the egalitarian, freedom-loving democracies that our societies have become. These ideas might be frightening to the neo-conquistadors, however.
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