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“OPERATE TO FAILURE”: How BP’s MO & The US Addiction To Oil Caused The Catastrophe Of The Millennium
Dr. Tom Termotto
And Why It Is So Difficult To Put This Genie Back In The Bottle
Really, why has it been so difficult to put this GENIE (Oil & Gas) back into the bottle (Macondo Prospect, Gulf of Mexico)? Or at least keep any more of him from coming out?
There are many reasons, on many different levels, but let’s start with BP and the culture of corporate superiority that has evolved at this corporate behemoth since its founding in 1908. We’re talking about the granddaddy here – the Anglo-Persian Oil Company – which was the first to develop the oil and gas reserves discovered in the Middle East. Simply put, when you’re the biggest and the oldest in that neck of the woods, you get used to doing it your way, and ONLY your way.
Progressive ‘Green’ Counterinsurgency, 21rst Century Removal of Indigenous Peoples
By Atheo
The energy industry is aligning with government of the Philippines in reducing the burden of suppression of the insurgency in Mindanao.
Divide and rule tactics pitting Christians and Muslims against one another have failed to cement state power. Military occupation has proved ineffective. The intractable conflict with the rebels has persisted for decades despite the presence of US military advisers as well as generous provision of the latest, most lethal, weapons.
During the Vietnam war, the US used napalm and agent orange in an attempt to isolate and expose the Viet Cong. Now a new and progressive method of fracturing the links between the insurgency and the population in which the insurgents move is appearing.
The Case for War: The Iron Mountain Report
by Stephen Lendman
In his 1966 book, "How the World Really Works," Alan B. Jones included a chapter on the "Report from Iron Mountain: On the Possibility and Desirability of Peace," later published in 1967 by The Dial Press. It became a bestseller, then disappeared. Now few copies are available, but when circulating in the 1960s, it was reported that concerned Johnson administration officials ordered global US embassies to downplay it, saying it had nothing to do with policy. Later accounts doubted the material's authenticity, suggesting it was a hoax. True or false, its findings are reviewed below because they accurately reflect longstanding US policy.
Prepared by unnamed 15-man "Special Study Group, (SSG)" they were commissioned "by some governmental entity which wished to remain unknown" because of the sensitive nature of its assignment, completed after two and a half years work, from August 1963 - March 1966, at a secret Iron Mountain, New York "underground nuclear hideout."
US-Russian relations: Wooing the West
Eric Walberg
Anna Chapman spy
The Russian leader has re-enacted the famous American goodwill tour of his predecessor a half century ago, but faces the same Cold War scheming. Will his attempts to befriend Europe have more success...
The past two years have witnessed a much more pliable Russia, retreating from the fiery rhetoric of Putin concerning NATO, the war in Afghanistan and America ’s targetting of Iran. Russian President Dmitri Medvedev has turned Russian foreign policy around, playing to US. He signed the new START treaty, agreed to transit war materiel to Afghanistan, and supports US-sponsored sanctions against Iran. To crown his charm offensive, he made a photo-op visit to the US last month to meet not only his “reset” friend in the White House, but business leaders such as Apple CEO Steve Jobs in Silicon Valley, much like his predecessor Nikita Khrushchev rubbed shoulders with American farmers a half century ago.
Judaizing Jerusalem
by Stephen Lendman
The Middle East Monitor (MEM) covers significant regional issues and events through its weekly newspaper and reports like Samira Quraishy's September 2009 Briefing Paper titled, "The Judaization of Jerusalem," discussing Israel's "escalating campaign of land seizures, house demolitions and eviction(s) of Palestinians."
Israeli scholars agree, including Ben-Gurion University of the Negev Professor Oren Yiftachel, in a 1999 paper titled "Ethnocracy: the Politics of Judaizing Israel/Palestine," saying Israel is an ethnocratic regime "enhanc(ing) a rule by, and for, a specific ethnos, and a dominance of ethnicity over citizenship (by) facilitat(ing) the expansion of one ethnic group over contested territory or polity." It evolved around "the central Zionist (uni-ethnic) project of Judaizing and de-Arabising Israel/Palestine, (and as a consequence undermining) equal citizenship and popular sovereignty," reserving it solely for Jews, exposing the myth of a democratic nation.
Deficit Hysteria: Wrongheaded in Times of Depression
by Stephen Lendman
When economic stimulus and productive investment are most needed, public spending cuts are coming, G20 governments agreeing to cut deficits and balance budgets, what economist Michael Hudson calls "fiscal suicide, (months into) a carefully orchestrated financial war against the 'real' economy."
Begun in Washington, Obama, in his first State of the Union address, announced plans to "freeze government spending for three years," starting in 2011, and said he'll establish a bipartisan fiscal commission by executive order, to cut the deficit by imposed austerity - social spending cuts, including Medicare, not defense, banker bailouts, or other handouts to corporate favorites, how Washington works under both parties, anti-populist by any standard, anti-productive when large stimulus is needed to revive the cratering economy.
Mohammad Hussein Fadlallah (11/16/1935- 7/4/2010)
Franklin Lamb
"Throughout my life, I have always supported the human being in his humanism and I have supported the oppressed. I think it is the person's right to live his freedom and it is her and his right to face the injustice imposed on each by revolting against it, using his practical, realistic and available means to end the oppressor's injustice toward him, whether it is an individual, a community, a nation, or a state; whether male or female."
Mohammad Hussein Fadlallah, perhaps sensing his imminent death, during his last dialogue with the Washington DC based, Council for the National Interest at his home on June 2, 2010m
Today, his family and hundreds of thousands in his community buried Lebanon's senior Shia cleric, Mohammad Hussein Fadlallah in South Beirut. May he forever rest in peace.
Ahmad Sa'adat: A Palestinian Prisoner of Conscience
by Stephen Lendman
Detailed information about him can be accessed through the following link:
http://www.freeahmadsaadat.org/bg.html
He's the 1967-founded Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine's (PFLP) General Secretary, one of thousands of Palestinian political prisoners, sentenced in 2002 to 30 years in prison "for a range of 'security-related' political offenses,' " including his prominence in a prohibited organization, a 1993 document stating that:
Adolph Hitler: War Hero, Street Cleaner, Prostitute or Secret Agent: A Psychohistory Analysis
By Katherine Smith
Adolph Hitler: A Modern View
Leader of Nazi Germany, progenitor of genocides and arguably solely responsible for the European half of the second World War, Adolf Hitler (considered to be one the most evil persons the world has ever known), probably needs no introduction.
In the decades since Hitler’s death many commentators have concluded that he must have been mentally ill, and that if he wasn’t when he started his rule the pressures of his failed wars must have driven him mad. Given that he ordered genocide and ranted and raved, it is easy to see why people have come to this conclusion, but it’s important to state that there is no consensus among historians that he was insane, or what psychological problems he may have had.
Hitler wasn’t insane and didn’t rant and rave because he was mentally ill.
In 1912 he was brainwashed at his grandfather’s Society for Psychical Research (SPR) most likely at the British Military Psych-Ops War School at Tavistock in Devon and in Ireland.
Why are we still in Afghanistan?
Mary Shaw
General Stanley McChrystal was recently relieved of his job as the top U.S. general in Afghanistan after being quoted in Rolling Stone magazine as dissing members of President Obama's staff.
Good riddance.
Now I'd like to see Obama bring our troops home from Afghanistan along with McChrystal. Unfortunately, however, that's not going to happen any time soon, as President Obama described McChrystal's departure as "a change in personnel, not a change in policy."
But is the unchanging policy really a good one?
Obama's escalation of our troop presence there was McChrystal's idea, and what did it get us?
It got us a bigger quagmire than ever, with violence up sharply.
Not only that, but the Washington Post has reported that the U.S. military is "funding a massive protection racket in Afghanistan, indirectly paying tens of millions of dollars to warlords, corrupt public officials and the Taliban to ensure safe passage of its supply convoys throughout the country, according to congressional investigators."
Yes, you read that right. They're using our tax dollars to pay off the Taliban -- the same guys we're supposed to be fighting.
Forget about Al-Qaeda. They're now across the border in Pakistan and in cells around the world, no longer concentrated in Afghanistan to any great extent. Bin Laden most likely is not in Afghanistan.
So why are we still there, exactly?
Why do we continue throwing money at this unwinnable mess in Afghanistan when we are suffering through the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression?
Why do we continue throwing money at this unwinnable mess in Afghanistan when we have nearly 10 percent unemployment in the U.S.?
Why do we continue throwing money at this unwinnable mess in Afghanistan when some 17 million American children -- more than one in five across the U.S. -- lack food security?
Why do we continue throwing money at this unwinnable mess in Afghanistan when we are in the midst of the worst environmental crisis in U.S. history and really need to invest in some clean and renewable energy alternatives?
As Congressman Jim McGovern (D-MA) said recently, "I'm concerned about the hundreds of billions of dollars we’re spending on 'nation-building' in Afghanistan when we need to do some more nation-building here at home."
Maybe President Obama fears looking weak if he initiates a withdrawal from Afghanistan "too soon". But why should it matter, when the Republicans will invent whatever it takes to make him appear weak no matter what he does?
Sadly, though, these are merely rhetorical questions. After all, General David Petraeus, whom Obama has chosen to replace McChrystal, is credited with turning the tide on the Iraq war via the surge there that he had architected. So Obama is probably hoping to replicate that perceived victory in Afghanistan.
So it appears that we will be fighting there for at least another year.
And we will be seeing more military and civilian deaths there for at least another year.
And more of our tax dollars will fund the violence there for at least another year.
No change there that I can believe in.
Mary Shaw is a Philadelphia-based writer and activist. She is a former Philadelphia Area Coordinator for the Nobel-Prize-winning human rights group Amnesty International, and her views on politics, human rights, and social justice issues have appeared in numerous online forums and in newspapers and magazines worldwide. Note that the ideas expressed here are the author's own, and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of Amnesty International or any other organization with which she may be associated. E-mail: mary@maryshawonline.com
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