Patriots, Traitors And Empires

Patriots,Traitors And Empires – The Story of Korea’s Struggle For Freedom

By: Stephen Gowans

About this Book: 

Patriots, Traitors and Empires is an account of modern Korean history, written from the point of view of those who fought to free Korea from the domination of foreign empires. It traces the history of Korea’s struggle for freedom from opposition to Japanese colonialism starting in 1905 to North Korea’s current efforts to deter the threat of invasion by the United States or anybody else by having nuclear weapons.

Koreans have been fighting a civil war since 1932, when Kim Il Sung, founder of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, along with other Korean patriots, launched a guerrilla war against Japanese colonial domination. Other Koreans, traitors to the cause of Korea’s freedom, including a future South Korean president, joined the side of Japan’s Empire, becoming officers in the Japanese army or enlisting in the hated colonial police force.

From early in the 20th century when Japan incorporated Korea into its burgeoning empire, Koreans have struggled against foreign domination, first by Japan then by the United States. Some protests were peaceful; others involved riots, insurrection and sustained guerrilla war. After the US engineered political partition of their country in 1945, the Koreans fought a conventional war, from 1950-1953. Three million gave their lives.

Examining the history of the Republic of Korea (South Korea), Gowans shows that it can be accurately qualified a “US puppet state” or even “a stationary US aircraft carrier.” Only when faced with virtually insurmountable military threat did the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (North Korea) resort to nuclear weapons to ensure its defense.

Patriots, Traitors and Empires, The Story of Korea’s Struggle for Freedom is a much-needed antidote to the jingoist clamor spewing from all quarters whenever Korea is discussed. ~

Book Launch and Overview - May 7th, 2018 (Montreal)

Video Source: The Activist Poet

To get a copy of this important historical book click on the following link: Baraka Books

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Washington's Long War on Syria

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American Killers and their Killer Friends

 

A Syrian insurgent fires shots at a helicopter during clashes with the Syrian Army force in the northern province of Idlib, June 26, 2012.

By: Rodney Shakespeare

Source: Press TV

http://www.presstv.ir/detail/2012/11/03/270168/american-killers-and-their-killer-friends/

In 1968 around five hundred unarmed civilians were massacred by American soldiers at My Lai (Son My), Vietnam. Most of the victims were women, children, infants, and the elderly.

Many of the women were raped, or gang-raped and their bodies mutilated. Only one soldier was found guilty and he then served a mere three and a half years under house arrest (i.e., he was sentenced to three and a half years of lounging on a sofa, drinking Coca Cola, eating pizzas and watching television).

In 1988, Iran Air Flight 655 was shot down by a missile from the American ship USS Vincennes. All two hundred and ninety on board including sixty six children and sixteen crew members were killed. The United States has never admitted responsibility, nor apologized.

In 2007, leaked videos revealed that American helicopters were playing lets-shoot-’em video games whose object is to machine gun as many people as possible in the shortest possible time. Posted on YouTube, the thirty nine minute cockpit video shows three incidents, in which people were targeted as they walked along Baghdad streets, sat in a van or went into a building, unaware that Apache gunships were aiming to destroy them.

Because the dead included two Iraqi journalists working for Reuters TV, the news agency attempted to request the video footage under the Freedom of Information Act. It did not succeed. The footage was eventually acquired from an undisclosed source in 2009 by the website Wikileaks which released the footage in 2010, under the name ‘collateral murder’.

Moreover, as ‘collateral’ is being mentioned, it should be remembered that the Americans snigger and titter when reference is made to ‘collateral damage’. By ‘collateral damage’ they mean the hundreds of civilians now being killed, in various countries, by the drones which blast them apart with never a word of apology let alone compensation for the killing of innocents. These are war crimes of the worst sort. Furthermore, American drone policy is being extended to new countries almost every day.

And now a video, if confirmed as genuine, shows Syrian insurgents beating government soldiers before spraying them with bullets. However, this latest massacre is only the latest in a string of summary executions throughout Syria and the reason is that the insurgents, supported by the Americans, the Saudis, the Qataris and the Turks, are a bunch of throat-slitters, thugs and gangsters.

Of course, the USA, once again exposed as connected to war crimes, is throwing up its hands in horror and claiming that the massacre must have been done by the irresponsible few. We are innocent, they say.

Oh no they’re not. The USA is hand in glove with these killers and its only complaint is when, like My Lai in 1968, like with Flight 655 in 1978, like those videos from 2007 in Iraq, clear evidence reveals that a war crime has been committed. The USA trains, finances and arms these gruesome killers, and, when it cannot do so directly, does so through its allies such as Turkey or Saudi Arabia. These war crimes go on because the USA has embarked upon a wholesale war against Islam in which anything is allowed.

They started the war in September 2001 (just think of Tower Number Seven, not touched by an airplane, suddenly imploding into dust....)

Of course, just in case it gets caught out once too often in war crimes, the USA has been careful to ensure that it is excluded from the aegis of the International Criminal Court. Furthermore, in the United Nations Security Council the USA has a veto which is always sufficient to ensure that the Council does not put the USA up before the ICC.

However, world public opinion is now becoming fully informed that, like Zionist Israel, the USA does not care if it commits war crimes. Nor does it care if war crimes are committed on its behalf. It only cares if a war crime is exposed.

That is why Bradley Manning, a young American soldier is being tortured in a military prison, when he has not yet been tried and convicted and why the USA, together with its subservient ally, the UK, is intent on getting its hands on Julian Assange for allegedly revealing those videos to world opinion. If he did it, Assange was only doing what journalists always do if they can i.e., reveal the crimes of governments.

However, the USA, suffused with its sense of arrogant exceptionalism (which means that the USA believes it can torture and kill indiscriminately while receiving plaudits from the rest of the world) is not going to stop committing war crimes. It is only going to try to prevent exposure by, for example, ensuring that alternative radio and television media such as Press TV are shut down.

Nor is the USA going to stop its allies from committing war crimes or straightforward ordinary crimes. As long as a regime agrees to give overt or covert support to the ever-expanding Zionist entity then, in the USA’s eyes, it cannot possibly be complicit in anything which is wrong. Which is why Israel itself commits war crimes, and Saudi Arabia and Bahrain, to take but a few, daily commit civilian crimes.

So next time you hear hectoring Hilary Clinton lecturing somebody on freedom and democracy just remember that, behind the rhetoric, there lies an evil intent to commit war crimes or get somebody else to do them.

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About: Rodney Shakespeare

A Visiting Professor of Binary Economics at Trisakti University, Jakarta, Indonesia, Rodney Shakespeare is a Cambridge MA, a qualified UK Barrister, a co-founder of the Global Justice Movement http://www.globaljusticemovement.net, a member of the Christian Council for Monetary Justice. His main website is http://www.binaryeconomics.net. Shakespeare is also Chair of the Committee Against Torture in Bahrain. More articles by Rodney Shakespeare

 

 

Panama protests against free trade zone land sales (PHOTOS)

 

A police officer runs as a photographer lies on the street as police opened fire during a massive protest against a new government law, which allows for the sale of land in Panama's free trade zone of Colon, in Colon City October 19, 2012 (Reuters / Carlos Jasso)

Source: Russia Today

http://rt.com/news/panama-protests-trade-zone-843/

The Panamanian government’s decision to sell land in the free-trade zone at the Caribbean entrance to the Panama Canal has sparked violent protests. Clashes with police the streets of the sea-port of Colon reportedly left 15 people wounded.

According to Venezuelan state TV channel Venezolana de Televisión, there have been at least 25 protesters detained by police. Information about a 15-year-old person killed in clashes has found no confirmation.

Curfew has been enacted in Colon immediately after the clashes when protesters were burning tires to block the streets.

­Facts about Panama Canal:

Panama Canal was constructed between 1880 and 1914.

Between 1904 and 1913, a total of 56,307 persons were employed during the construction of the Panama Canal. Nearly 20,000 French and 6,000 American workers died during the completion of the Panama Canal.

The length of the Panama Canal is 80 kilometers (50 miles) from the deep waters of the Atlantic to the deep waters of the Pacific.

A ship takes an average of eight to 10 hours to transit the Panama Canal.

At the end of fiscal year 2011, 1,015,721 vessels had used the waterway since its opening on August 15, 1914.

Between 12,000 and 15,000 ships About 40 ships cross the Panama Canal every year.

The Canal transports 4 per cent of world trade

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Demonstrators in Colon believe the government’s decision to sell state-owned land in the Colon Free Zone (CFZ) will hit those who work in the free-trade zone and affect the income of many citizens of the country. The protesters insist the law is unconstitutional.

The head of the Colonense Broad Movement, Felipe Cabezas, told the AP news agency,"We do not want the land to be sold because these are assets that belong to Colon."

President Ricardo Martinelli said those instigating protests are protecting “small-minded interests” of their own and that sale of state-owned land will benefit the country.

The law supposes creation of a “social investments” trust that would manage 35 per cent of the revenues received from the sale of the land just outside the former Panama Canal Zone.

The larger, 65 per cent, share will go to the country’s central government.

he free trade port of Colon is one of the largest in the world. In operation for over half a century now, the port hosts over 2,000 companies doing business in the profitable free-trade zone.

In 1999, the United States passed control over the Panama Canal to the Panamanian state. Since then the waterway linking Atlantic and Pacific oceans is the principal source of the revenues for Panama.

It is expected that in 2014 the works on expansion of the waterway will be over just ahead of the Panama Canal’s centenary.

 

People take part in a massive protest against a new government law, which allows for the sale of land in Panama's free trade zone of Colon, in Colon City October 19, 2012 (Reuters / Carlos Jasso)

 

A family runs for shelter after tear gas was shot by riots police during a massive protest against a new government law, which allows for the sale of land in Panama's free trade zone of Colon, in Colon City October 19, 2012 (Reuters / Carlos Jasso)

 

A police officer positions his gun during a massive protest against a new government law, which allows for the sale of land in Panama's free trade zone of Colon, in Colon City October 19, 2012 (Reuters / Carlos Jasso)

 

A riot policeman fires tear gas during a massive protest against a new government law, which allows for the sale of land in Panama's free trade zone of Colon, in Colon City October 19, 2012 (Reuters / Carlos Jasso)

 

Attacking Democracy: Chavez, the US, and the Destabilization of Venezuela

By: Eric Draitser

Source: Global Research

http://www.globalresearch.ca/attacking-democracy-chavez-the-us-and-the-destabilization-of-venezuela/

Venezuela goes to the polls this Sunday in an election many are calling a referendum on President Chavez and his policies. Although there is surely such a dimension, the significance of the elections goes far beyond political opinion and partisan bickering, striking at the heart of the Venezuelan state. This is because these elections will be used as a front for an attempt to overthrow, by brute force if necessary, the democratically elected government and put in its place a government more amenable to US interests.

If this sounds familiar, it should. This is precisely the same tactic tried in 2002 in a US-instigated coup that, though it briefly deposed Chavez, ultimately failed. Now, ten years later, the US imperialist ruling class is prepared to try their hand at regime change in Venezuela once more.

The Destabilization Strategy

Sunday’s election presents the ideal opportunity for US intelligence to instigate some kind of coup or “color” revolution in Venezuela. However, in order to achieve this insidious goal, there are very specific strategies, tactics, and contingencies which must be understood. In his paper, published by the Council on Foreign Relations, former US Ambassador to Venezuela Patrick Duddy presents a number of scenarios in which the election becomes the centerpiece of a destabilization campaign. Perhaps the most important of these scenarios, one which would be in keeping with the tradition of “color” revolutions all over the world, is the outbreak of violence in the hours after the winner is announced. Duddy writes, “most plausible scenarios for instability and conflict in Venezuela derive from the premise that the Chavistas will not willingly surrender power and would be willing to provoke violence, orchestrate civil unrest, or engage in various forms of armed resistance to avoid doing so.” Naturally, Duddy fails to explain for whom such a scenario would be deemed “plausible”. Because of the nature of the paper and the author, it is fair to assume that he is referring to the US intelligence community for whom this is “plausible”. Of course, this assertion is made with no precedent of historical evidence of Chavistas engaging in such behavior. Rather, this is precisely the type of unrest fomented by the United States in the service of regime change.

Any violence would have to be predicated on the notion that the election were unfair and that Chavez has “stolen” a victory. In fact, the US propaganda on this premise is unmistakable. In an article written for the right-wing Heritage Foundation and propagandistically titled “The Chavez Plan to Steal Venezuela’s Election”, Dr. Ray Walser writes that the “stealing” of the elections will be made possible because of deception, electoral inequality, propaganda, and violence among other factors. However, in examining the way in which Dr. Walser presents each of these factors, one begins to see that, in fact, what is being described is not a list of possible tactics and scenarios, but rather, an incredibly detailed blueprint of the pretexts that will be used to legitimize a manufactured and likely violent response to a Chavez victory.

One of the most obvious forms of deception that the US intelligence community is engaging in is the manipulation of polling data. A study conducted by the Venezuela Solidarity Campaign UK shows that, no more than two months ago, Chavez’s lead was anywhere from 15 to 27 points, depending on the polling agency. However, despite the overwhelming amount of statistical evidence to the contrary, the Western media and intelligence establishment continue to propagate the outright lie that Chavez is actually behind in the polls. Nowhere is this deception more obvious than in the fact that Democracy Digest, a mouthpiece for the National Endowment for Democracy, claims that Capriles Radonski holds a two point lead over the Venezuelan president. The article quotes Luis Christiansen, a representative of the dubious Consultores polling group, who states, “If we were to make a linear projection for the election, it would be that Capriles will maintain an advantage of 2.5 percent over Chávez.” This would seem a rather innocuous assertion that might have some validity were it not for the incontrovertible fact that more than a dozen other independent polling agencies conclude just the opposite that, in fact, Chavez leads and that the margin is significant. Therefore, one can easily see that a poll such as Consultores will play a major role in manufacturing a crisis because the poll will then be held up as evidence of clear “election fraud”.

Another aspect of this propaganda and deception has to do with the integrity of the elections themselves. One of the most common talking points established by the US imperialist ruling class has been that the decision by Chavez not to allow international elections observers can only be interpreted as an admission of government guilt in election fraud. As Walser states in his Heritage Foundation article, “Following the 2006 presidential election, Venezuela ended serious electoral observation missions by the OAS, the European Union, and other groups, such as the Carter Center in the U.S…The CNE [National Electoral Council] now allows only electoral ‘companions’…which lack international credibility.” This assertion completely ignores the obvious fact that such international NGOs and other organizations are part of a complex network of institutions funded and controlled by the Western imperialist ruling class. As was most clearly demonstrated in Russia following Putin’s reelection, so-called “independent monitors” function as provocateurs who attempt to create controversy where there is none. Moreover, such organizations are entirely dependent on funding from the US State Department and other powerful institutions of the ruling class, and work in the service of US imperialism. In light of such attempted subversion as well as similar examples throughout the world in recent years, it makes perfect sense that Caracas would want to ensure the validity of elections outside the purview of US hegemonic power.

Beyond the elections themselves, the US also intends to try to use the military against Chavez. In a strategy reminiscent of Egypt and the use of Tantawi and others to do the dirty work of ousting Mubarak, so too does the intelligence establishment hope to bribe or otherwise influence senior officers to turn on Chavez. This is precisely the final, and perhaps most significant, recommendation made by former ambassador Duddy who writes that the US should, “Leverage defense department contacts in Latin American and Spanish armed forces to communicate to the Venezuelan military leadership that they are obliged to uphold their constitution, respect human rights, and protect their country’s democratic tradition.” Aside from being a gross violation of international law by meddling in the affairs of a sovereign state, such a recommendation demonstrates the weakness of the political opposition which, despite being well-funded and enjoying the support of the wealthy elite, still does not have the support to achieve a legal, electoral victory.

The recommendations of Duddy, Walser, and others show that those forces (opposition, military, police, business elite, etc.) that instigated the attempted coup d’etat against Chavez back in 2002, are very much active in this renewed destabilization effort. Nowhere is this fact more obvious than in the opposition candidate himself, Henrique Capriles Radonski. At the time of the attempted coup, Capriles was mayor of Baruta (a municipality in Caracas) and led what can only be described as an assault on the Cuban embassy. His culpability in the attack is demonstrated quite clearly in the statement issued by the Cuban embassy staff which read:

The immediate responsibility of Mr. Capriles Radonsky and other Venezuelan state authorities was demonstrated when they failed to act diligently in order to prevent an increase in the aggression to which our embassy was subjected, causing serious damage and endangering the lives of officials and their families in clear violation of national and international law. Some also speculate, with good reason, that Capriles was also involved in the assassination of Danilo Anderson, the prosecutor in charge of investigating the individuals involved in, and responsible for, the 2002 coup. Given such criminality as Capriles has demonstrated, coupled with an insatiable egomania, one would have to wonder whether this man could possibly be anything other than a US puppet.

Capriles does have a base among the wealthy and some of the bourgeois middle class, though it should be pointed out that the breadth of this base is often purposely mischaracterized by the media mouthpieces of the ruling class. However, regardless of the size, his core supporters will be put in harm’s way due to the recent call by Capriles for them to “stay in the streets” to “minimize fraud” at the polls. These supporters will likely become the victims, instigators, and/or both, of post-election violence, just as has been seen in Kenya, Thailand, and countless other countries in recent years. This violence would then be blamed on the Chavez government and is designed to destabilize the entire country. However, the question remains: if not Chavistas, then who would perpetrate such violence?

One possibility is a covert, mercenary force that has penetrated into Venezuela by crossing the border into the country illegally. In early August, an American was captured trying to sneak into Venezuela. Although he has refused to divulge any information about himself or his mission, his passport showed trips to Libya, Afghanistan, Iraq, and other countries. This revelation alone would indicate at least some military involvement and, likely, Special Forces or some other covert detachment. Moreover, his capture coincided quite closely with the mysterious refinery explosion and fire that killed a number of innocent Venezuelans. Was this individual part of a group of saboteurs and mercenaries sent into Venezuela in preparation for a destabilization effort? Though concrete proof of this is impossible to obtain given the nature of covert operations, the possibility must be considered.

Why They Hate Chavez

The reasons why Chavez evokes such rage and antipathy from the US ruling class are many and interrelated. First and foremost, Chavez has demonstrated himself to be perhaps the leading international voice of anti-imperialism and resistance to US hegemony. He has led the transformation of much of Latin America from little more than US markets for exploitation to independent nations capable of managing their own affairs. This development comes in the form of the establishment of regional cooperation organizations, the assertion of national sovereignty and control over resources, as well as the formation of viable and independent political blocs in the region. Additionally, Chavez leads a country that is one of the world’s leading energy producers, giving him leverage over Western oil companies. Finally, and perhaps most critically, Chavez represents a model for other nations of Latin America and the rest of the world who wish to pursue an independent, socialist path of development. This is, of course, anathema to the goals of the financial elite of the Anglo-American establishment who wish to reassert dominance in what had been the US sphere of influence.

One of Hugo Chavez’s great accomplishments has been the formation of regional cooperation organizations such as the Bolivarian Alliance for the Americas (ALBA) and the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC). These organizations serve as both economic communities and political blocs, providing a viable alternative to dependence on the United States. It is because of such regional organizations that countries such as Ecuador and Bolivia have been able to take the initiative against the various forms of domination, coercion, and subversion by the United States. Moreover, this has delegitimized the hegemony of the US by allowing Latin America to move away from US-dominated organizations such as the Organization of American States (OAS) and Mercosur. In doing so, ALBA, CELAC, and other such alliances become organs of national agency and independence.

Another aspect of Chavez’s influence that draws the ire of the US imperialists is his support for large-scale economic development in the region. Not only has Venezuela taken over from the US and its international finance arms, the IMF and the World Bank, but it has used the aforementioned alliances to promote independent economic development. The recently announced plans for an Inter-Oceanic Canal through Nicaragua that would link the Pacific and Atlantic oceans along with the proposed Colombia-Venezuela oil pipeline, are merely two examples of the Chavez government’s commitment to mutually beneficial economic development. These projects, and many like them, have helped move Latin America in the direction of cooperation and progress and away from the division and subjugation of the 20^thCentury.

This form of domination at the hands of the US Empire was nowhere more apparent than in the oil sector. For decades, foreign oil companies had extracted untold wealth from beneath the feet of the people of Venezuela while rampant poverty only worsened. However, with the Hydrocarbons Law of 2001, the Chavez government effectively nationalized the energy industry and, for the first time, exercised national sovereignty over natural resources. This move, perhaps more than any other, earned him the hatred of the Anglo-American ruling class. The oil industry was not the only one to be nationalized – cement, telephone, and a number of others were also brought under state control.

Chavez has also built warm economic and political relations with China, Russia, Iran, Cuba, and countless other countries that the imperialists perceive to be “enemies”. This is what is often referred to as Chavez’s “anti-Americanism”. However, it should here be pointed out that Chavez has stated repeatedly his positive view of Americans, saying at a speech in New York City, “…I fell in love with the soul of the people of the United States.” Rather, it is the ruling class of the United States, the same ruling class that exploited and oppressed Venezuela and the rest of Latin America for decades, which he despises. This is an important distinction which is crucial to dispelling the distortions and lies told by the mainstream media in the US.

Perhaps Chavez’s most important accomplishments are socio-economic. The progress that his government has made in combating poverty, illiteracy, racism, oppression of indigenous peoples, infant mortality and countless other indicators of social progress, has made Venezuela into the shining example for the rest of Latin America and the world. This is, of course, an existential threat to the power of international finance capital, and capitalism more generally. By expounding this sort of “21^st Century Socialism”, Chavez makes himself into the target of subversion at the hands of the US – his social policies make him public enemy number one.

Hugo Chavez has come to symbolize everything that the US imperialist ruling class despises: independent economic development, independent foreign policy, and a deep commitment to social justice. He has openly challenged, not just the US Empire, but imperialism in all its forms. Moreover, Chavez represents a viable future for Latin America, one that is free of the chains of US bondage. For these reasons, the ruling class is set on trying for regime change once more. Anti-imperialists the world over must stand now and defend Chavez and the Bolivarian Revolution, not because we agree or disagree with all of its tenets, but because it stands in opposition to empire, colonialism, and domination.

Eric Draitser is an independent geopolitical analyst based in New York City. He is the Founder and Editor of StopImperialism.com as well as host of the Stop Imperialism podcast. He is a frequent contributor to Russia Today, the Center for Research on Globalization, and many other sites and publications.

Poverty and Rising Social Inequality in India

 

By: Colin Todhunter

Source: Global Research
http://www.globalresearch.ca/poverty-and-rising-social-inequality-in-india/

The issue of poverty keeps rearing its inconvenient head in India. The Planning Commission tends to keep on shifting the poverty line, but it is always at a ludicrously low level, which underestimates the numbers actually living in poverty. But playing fast and loose with India’s poverty line has almost become a trendy pastime.

The truth is that poverty is an embarrassment. It is an embarrassment to many of India’s rich and to a good number of politicians, who like to portray the country as an emerging superpower, with its space program, sophisticated weaponry, sports towns, growth figures, Formula 1 race track and gleaming malls.

Apart from such headline-grabbing trappings, India also houses the second largest number of affluent people in the world, with three million households having over $100,000 of investable funds. While this represents just 1.25 per cent of households, it is again the kind of phenomenon that some love to promote as part the myth of India sitting at the top table of nations.

Reality check. One in four people in India is hungry and every second child is underweight and stunted. In 2011, India was 73rd out of 88 countries listed in the annual Global Hunger Index, six places down from the previous year. The 2010 Multidimensional Poverty Index indicated that eight Indian states account for more poor people than in the 26 poorest African countries combined. According to this measure, Bihar, Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, Madhya Pradesh, Orissa, Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh and West Bengal have 421 million poor people. This is more than the 410 million poor in the poorest African countries.

Instead of concentrating on GDP growth figures, how about we focus on the annual poverty alleviation figure? The former fluctuates between eight and nine per cent, while the latter is 0.8 per cent, virtually the same as it was 20 years ago. The sacred scripture of free market ‘trickle-down’ dogma has not delivered.

But, hold on a minute. The eight or nine per cent GDP economic growth figures tell us that India is thriving. Right? Wrong. The rich in India are thriving, but the poor, and these days given the inflationary pressures, many of the middle classes too, are struggling to get by. If the growth figures tell us anything, it is that they – the poor and large sections of the middle class – can be said to be paying for the lifestyles of India’s rich.

The logic of ‘development’

Step inside the gated communities or a plush 27-storey one billion dollar plus Mumbai house and arrive in a Forbes nightmare world of privilege and wealth. Step inside the brand spanking new shopping malls, and you could be forgiven for thinking that you were in London or New York, with the plastic food joints, bland international chains and an air-conditioned macburger world of cola dens and coffee bars. These swish temples of modernity are a statement of perhaps where India wanted to be, of where part of India thinks it now is.

But India is capitalism’s success story, isn’t it? Or so the media like to tell us. Despite the logic of capitalism being to drive down costs and increase profits, politicians in the West are trying to change perceptions of India among their own populations. They are attempting to eradicate the notion of it being a land of call centres and back offices that takes jobs from the West and replace it with the idea that trade between India and the West is a two-way relationship that is creating jobs, growth and higher living standards for all concerned.

The reality is somewhat different. For example, a deal struck between India and the US for Harley-Davidsons a couple of years ago will not benefit plants in the US because a new assembly unit in India is to be built. Setting up shop in India not only often leads to the use of cheap exploited labour that works long hours with few if any rights, but also puts downward pressure on existing labour costs in the West. This is the whole logic behind ‘outsourcing’. It’s a win-win situation for CEOs and shareholders alike.

Servicing the well-to-do by providing them with Harleys, overpriced coffee and i-phones is what ‘development’ is all about for those who will financially profit. On his visit to India in 2010, it was noticeable that Barak Obama and his entourage had little to say about the 75 per cent of the population that lives on less than two dollars a day. Not much was said about India’s warped development that creates rich-list billionaires while maintaining so many in poverty or merely hovering above it. There seems to be no invite, no reservation at the top table, no impending arrival at destination corporate-driven-nirvana for those people and others like them.

In the West, workers’ jobs and wages are heading one way – downwards. In large parts of India, especially with increasing food, worklessness and petrol costs, things are just as tough. Listening to political leaders you’d be hard pressed to notice though. They and the media are adept in twisting the truth and passing off such things to their respective populations as necessary blips in the journey towards to some cheap con-trick notion of the promised-land.

There is a shift in power occurring across the world – from the poor and less well off to the rich, boosted by an economic system that ensures the flow of wealth goes upwards via what academic David Harvey calls ‘accumulation by dispossession’ and these days reflected in massive handouts to bankers, public services cutbacks or wages that continue to fall in real terms. When politicians speak of ‘inclusive growth’, it is nice talk. But that’s all it is. How could it be anything else, especially in India as the government continues to sell the country to western financial and corporate interests?

The new colonial masters

India has been moving increasingly closer to the US in recent years and, by implication, complying with its geo-political and economic hegemony. In return for the US sanctioning, supplying and facilitating the development of India’s nuclear industry (despite India not being a signatory to the Non-Proliferation Treaty and having developed a nuclear bomb – contrast its treatment to that of Iran, which is a signatory and cannot be proved to be pursing a nuclear weapons programme), the Indian economy is being prized open on behalf of western retail, agribusiness, pharmaceutical and various other concerns.

On August 15, India celebrated Independence Day. Some 65 years earlier, Nehru stood in Delhi and spoke about a tryst with destiny. Free from the shackles of British colonialism, India was on course for a bright new future.

But appealing to base instincts, greed and narcissism has become the priority value of ‘modern’ India. Shopping and consumerism have become the concerns and priorities of India’s misinformed and misled creamy layer. Misinformed by news outlets that pass off infotainment for news. Misinformed by a government that cosies up to western multi-nationals with secretive ‘Memorandums of Understanding’ and then proceeds to target some of the poorest people in the country as ‘the enemy within’.

Part of India’s own self proclaimed ‘war on terror’ is taking place in the highly mineral rich mountains and jungles of Chhattisgarh, Orissa, Jharkhand and Andhra Pradesh. State governments have already signed hundreds of agreements with companies to begin mining and build steel and aluminum plants and other industries. How easy it was for the Indian government to discredit any legitimate protestor in those regions as a Maoist or Naxalite insurgent. How easy it was for it to then attempt to secure those areas for rich foreign companies by killing thousands and forcing nearly 50,000 adivasis (tribal people) into camps in order to control dissent.

Some 300,000 people have been forcibly displaced. Hundreds of thousands of security personnel have poured into the region with sophisticated military hardware.

Despite Nehru’s misty eyed views, the Indian and western elites are now the new colonial masters in India. Is this the bright new future he had in mind?

But imagine for a moment a world where India pursued a more independent path that would be strident in its rejection of predatory capitalism and US-led militarism increasingly aimed at China, India’s neighbour.

Imagine a model of development that would in fact be inspired by particular policies adopted by the likes of Cuba, Bhutan, Venezuela, Costa Rica and Bolivia, which place strong emphasis on health, ‘happiness’, education or bio-diverse agriculture and not least on the rights of indigenous peoples, sustainability, respect for the environment and/or common ownership.

Unfortunately, imagination does not match the reality.

For many foreigners who visit India, it is the land of the great philosophies. It is the land of spirituality, morality and enlightenment. Many view India through this distorted prism. It is this rose-tinted perception that brings them here. For other foreigners, however, it is a land ripe for the taking. And Washington knows it.

India threw off the shackles of colonialism in 1947. And long ago it threw off the shackles of any moral philosophy. There’s a new game in town. And it’s based on selling anything you can get your hands on to the highest bidder, even the soul of the country. Now there is a new colonial master on the block.

Whether it’s the waging of war on its poorest people or the collusion with foreign governments and corporations to loot the economy for profit, successive Indian administrations have conspired to deceive their own people as they work hand in glove with Wall Street and proponents of ‘free trade’ and neo-liberalism to sell the lie of freedom and independence to an affluent section of the population eager to believe it and willing to regard the oppression of the country’s poorest folk as ‘collateral damage’ in the drive to secure ‘necessary economic infrastructure’.

With 75 per cent of the population living on less than two dollars a day, the influence of western agribusiness leading to well over 200,000 farmers’ suicides and large parts of the country under military law, politicians and the media abroad still talk of India as capitalism’s miracle, as democracy’s great success story. The old clichés and convenient lies are often trotted out about a land of enterprise and growth, Bollywood and glitz, millionaires and cyber parks.

But there’s always Bollywood novacaine, the infotainment obsessed media or the latest Forbes rich list to distract or dull the pain, isn’t there? Better still – the stroke of a bureaucrat’s pen in drawing a new poverty line will do just fine.

 

A Secret War in 120 Countries: The Pentagon’s New Power Elite

By: Nick Turse

Source: Global Research
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=31051

Somewhere on this planet an American commando is carrying out a mission. Now, say that 70 times and you’re done… for the day. Without the knowledge of the American public, a secret force within the U.S. military is undertaking operations in a majority of the world’s countries. This new Pentagon power elite is waging a global war whose size and scope has never been revealed, until now.

While it’s well known that U.S. Special Operations forces are deployed in the war zones of Afghanistan and Iraq, and it’s increasingly apparent that such units operate in murkier conflict zones like Yemen and Somalia, the full extent of their worldwide war has remained deeply in the shadows.

Last year, Karen DeYoung and Greg Jaffe of the Washington Post reported that U.S. Special Operations forces were deployed in 75 countries, up from 60 at the end of the Bush presidency. By the end of this year, U.S. Special Operations Command spokesman Colonel Tim Nye told me, that number will likely reach 120. “We do a lot of traveling — a lot more than Afghanistan or Iraq,” he said recently. This global presence — in about 60% of the world’s nations and far larger than previously acknowledged — provides striking new evidence of a rising clandestine Pentagon power elite waging a secret war in all corners of the world.

The Rise of the Military’s Secret Military

Born of a failed 1980 raid to rescue American hostages in Iran, in which eight U.S. service members died, U.S. Special Operations Command (SOCOM) was established in 1987. Having spent the post-Vietnam years distrusted and starved for money by the regular military, special operations forces suddenly had a single home, a stable budget, and a four-star commander as their advocate. Since then, SOCOM has grown into a combined force of startling proportions. Made up of units from all the service branches, including the Army’s “Green Berets” and Rangers, Navy SEALs, Air Force Air Commandos, and Marine Corps Special Operations teams, in addition to specialized helicopter crews, boat teams, civil affairs personnel, para-rescuemen, and even battlefield air-traffic controllers and special operations weathermen, SOCOM carries out the United States’ most specialized and secret missions. These include assassinations, counterterrorist raids, long-range reconnaissance, intelligence analysis, foreign troop training, and weapons of mass destruction counter-proliferation operations.

One of its key components is the Joint Special Operations Command, or JSOC, a clandestine sub-command whose primary mission is tracking and killing suspected terrorists. Reporting to the president and acting under his authority, JSOC maintains a global hit list that includes American citizens. It has been operating an extra-legal “kill/capture” campaign that John Nagl, a past counterinsurgency adviser to four-star general and soon-to-be CIA Director David Petraeus, calls “an almost industrial-scale counterterrorism killing machine.”

This assassination program has been carried out by commando units like the Navy SEALs and the Army’s Delta Force as well as via drone strikes as part of covert wars in which the CIA is also involved in countries like Somalia, Pakistan, and Yemen. In addition, the command operates a network of secret prisons, perhaps as many as 20 black sites in Afghanistan alone, used for interrogating high-value targets.

Growth Industry

From a force of about 37,000 in the early 1990s, Special Operations Command personnel have grown to almost 60,000, about a third of whom are career members of SOCOM; the rest have other military occupational specialties, but periodically cycle through the command. Growth has been exponential since September 11, 2001, as SOCOM’s baseline budget almost tripled from $2.3 billion to $6.3 billion. If you add in funding for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, it has actually more than quadrupled to $9.8 billion in these years. Not surprisingly, the number of its personnel deployed abroad has also jumped four-fold. Further increases, and expanded operations, are on the horizon.

Lieutenant General Dennis Hejlik, the former head of the Marine Corps Forces Special Operations Command — the last of the service branches to be incorporated into SOCOM in 2006 — indicated, for instance, that he foresees a doubling of his former unit of 2,600. “I see them as a force someday of about 5,000, like equivalent to the number of SEALs that we have on the battlefield. Between [5,000] and 6,000,” he said at a June breakfast with defense reporters in Washington. Long-term plans already call for the force to increase by 1,000.

During his recent Senate confirmation hearings, Navy Vice Admiral William McRaven, the incoming SOCOM chief and outgoing head of JSOC (which he commanded during the bin Laden raid) endorsed a steady manpower growth rate of 3% to 5% a year, while also making a pitch for even more resources, including additional drones and the construction of new special operations facilities.

A former SEAL who still sometimes accompanies troops into the field, McRaven expressed a belief that, as conventional forces are drawn down in Afghanistan, special ops troops will take on an ever greater role. Iraq, he added, would benefit if elite U.S forces continued to conduct missions there past the December 2011 deadline for a total American troop withdrawal. He also assured the Senate Armed Services Committee that “as a former JSOC commander, I can tell you we were looking very hard at Yemen and at Somalia.”

During a speech at the National Defense Industrial Association’s annual Special Operations and Low-intensity Conflict Symposium earlier this year, Navy Admiral Eric Olson, the outgoing chief of Special Operations Command, pointed to a composite satellite image of the world at night. Before September 11, 2001, the lit portions of the planet — mostly the industrialized nations of the global north — were considered the key areas. “But the world changed over the last decade,” he said. “Our strategic focus has shifted largely to the south… certainly within the special operations community, as we deal with the emerging threats from the places where the lights aren’t.”

To that end, Olson launched “Project Lawrence,” an effort to increase cultural proficiencies — like advanced language training and better knowledge of local history and customs — for overseas operations. The program is, of course, named after the British officer, Thomas Edward Lawrence (better known as “Lawrence of Arabia”), who teamed up with Arab fighters to wage a guerrilla war in the Middle East during World War I. Mentioning Afghanistan, Pakistan, Mali, and Indonesia, Olson added that SOCOM now needed “Lawrences of Wherever.”

While Olson made reference to only 51 countries of top concern to SOCOM, Col. Nye told me that on any given day, Special Operations forces are deployed in approximately 70 nations around the world. All of them, he hastened to add, at the request of the host government. According to testimony by Olson before the House Armed Services Committee earlier this year, approximately 85% of special operations troops deployed overseas are in 20 countries in the CENTCOM area of operations in the Greater Middle East: Afghanistan, Bahrain, Egypt, Iran, Iraq, Jordan, Kazakhstan, Kuwait, Kyrgyzstan, Lebanon, Oman, Pakistan, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, United Arab Emirates, Uzbekistan, and Yemen. The others are scattered across the globe from South America to Southeast Asia, some in small numbers, others as larger contingents.

Special Operations Command won’t disclose exactly which countries its forces operate in. “We’re obviously going to have some places where it’s not advantageous for us to list where we’re at,” says Nye. “Not all host nations want it known, for whatever reasons they have — it may be internal, it may be regional.”

But it’s no secret (or at least a poorly kept one) that so-called black special operations troops, like the SEALs and Delta Force, are conducting kill/capture missions in Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, and Yemen, while “white” forces like the Green Berets and Rangers are training indigenous partners as part of a worldwide secret war against al-Qaeda and other militant groups. In the Philippines, for instance, the U.S. spends $50 million a year on a 600-person contingent of Army Special Operations forces, Navy Seals, Air Force special operators, and others that carries out counterterrorist operations with Filipino allies against insurgent groups like Jemaah Islamiyah and Abu Sayyaf.

Last year, as an analysis of SOCOM documents, open-source Pentagon information, and a database of Special Operations missions compiled by investigative journalist Tara McKelvey (for the Medill School of Journalism’s National Security Journalism Initiative) reveals, America’s most elite troops carried out joint-training exercises in Belize, Brazil, Bulgaria, Burkina Faso, Germany, Indonesia, Mali, Norway, Panama, and Poland. So far in 2011, similar training missions have been conducted in the Dominican Republic, Jordan, Romania, Senegal, South Korea, and Thailand, among other nations. In reality, Nye told me, training actually went on in almost every nation where Special Operations forces are deployed. “Of the 120 countries we visit by the end of the year, I would say the vast majority are training exercises in one fashion or another. They would be classified as training exercises.”

The Pentagon’s Power Elite

Once the neglected stepchildren of the military establishment, Special Operations forces have been growing exponentially not just in size and budget, but also in power and influence. Since 2002, SOCOM has been authorized to create its own Joint Task Forces — like Joint Special Operations Task Force-Philippines — a prerogative normally limited to larger combatant commands like CENTCOM. This year, without much fanfare, SOCOM also established its own Joint Acquisition Task Force, a cadre of equipment designers and acquisition specialists.

With control over budgeting, training, and equipping its force, powers usually reserved for departments (like the Department of the Army or the Department of the Navy), dedicated dollars in every Defense Department budget, and influential advocates in Congress, SOCOM is by now an exceptionally powerful player at the Pentagon. With real clout, it can win bureaucratic battles, purchase cutting-edge technology, and pursue fringe research like electronically beaming messages into people’s heads or developing stealth-like cloaking technologies for ground troops. Since 2001, SOCOM’s prime contracts awarded to small businesses — those that generally produce specialty equipment and weapons — have jumped six-fold.

Headquartered at MacDill Air Force Base in Florida, but operating out of theater commands spread out around the globe, including Hawaii, Germany, and South Korea, and active in the majority of countries on the planet, Special Operations Command is now a force unto itself. As outgoing SOCOM chief Olson put it earlier this year, SOCOM “is a microcosm of the Department of Defense, with ground, air, and maritime components, a global presence, and authorities and responsibilities that mirror the Military Departments, Military Services, and Defense Agencies.”

Tasked to coordinate all Pentagon planning against global terrorism networks and, as a result, closely connected to other government agencies, foreign militaries, and intelligence services, and armed with a vast inventory of stealthy helicopters, manned fixed-wing aircraft, heavily-armed drones, high-tech guns-a-go-go speedboats, specialized Humvees and Mine Resistant Ambush Protected vehicles, or MRAPs, as well as other state-of-the-art gear (with more on the way), SOCOM represents something new in the military. Whereas the late scholar of militarism Chalmers Johnson used to refer to the CIA as “the president’s private army,” today JSOC performs that role, acting as the chief executive’s private assassination squad, and its parent, SOCOM, functions as a new Pentagon power-elite, a secret military within the military possessing domestic power and global reach.

In 120 countries across the globe, troops from Special Operations Command carry out their secret war of high-profile assassinations, low-level targeted killings, capture/kidnap operations, kick-down-the-door night raids, joint operations with foreign forces, and training missions with indigenous partners as part of a shadowy conflict unknown to most Americans. Once “special” for being small, lean, outsider outfits, today they are special for their power, access, influence, and aura.

That aura now benefits from a well-honed public relations campaign which helps them project a superhuman image at home and abroad, even while many of their actual activities remain in the ever-widening shadows. Typical of the vision they are pushing was this statement from Admiral Olson: “I am convinced that the forces… are the most culturally attuned partners, the most lethal hunter-killers, and most responsive, agile, innovative, and efficiently effective advisors, trainers, problem-solvers, and warriors that any nation has to offer.”

Recently at the Aspen Institute’s Security Forum, Olson offered up similarly gilded comments and some misleading information, too, claiming that U.S. Special Operations forces were operating in just 65 countries and engaged in combat in only two of them. When asked about drone strikes in Pakistan, he reportedly replied, “Are you talking about unattributed explosions?”

What he did let slip, however, was telling. He noted, for instance, that black operations like the bin Laden mission, with commandos conducting heliborne night raids, were now exceptionally common. A dozen or so are conducted every night, he said. Perhaps most illuminating, however, was an offhand remark about the size of SOCOM. Right now, he emphasized, U.S. Special Operations forces were approximately as large as Canada’s entire active duty military. In fact, the force is larger than the active duty militaries of many of the nations where America’s elite troops now operate each year, and it’s only set to grow larger.

Americans have yet to grapple with what it means to have a “special” force this large, this active, and this secret — and they are unlikely to begin to do so until more information is available. It just won’t be coming from Olson or his troops. “Our access [to foreign countries] depends on our ability to not talk about it,” he said in response to questions about SOCOM’s secrecy. When missions are subject to scrutiny like the bin Laden raid, he said, the elite troops object. The military’s secret military, said Olson, wants “to get back into the shadows and do what they came in to do.”

Nick Turse is the associate editor of TomDispatch.com, where this article originally appeared. His latest book, The Case for Withdrawal from Afghanistan (Verso Books), which brings together leading analysts from across the political spectrum, has just gone into its second printing.

Turse is currently a fellow at Harvard University’s Radcliffe Institute. His website is http://nickturse.com/

US to proceed with Mideast arms sales

Deputy Director of the Pentagon's Defense Security Cooperation Agency, Richard Genaille

Source: Press TV
http://www.presstv.ir/detail/174375.html

The Obama administration has decided to proceed with the sale of advanced weaponry to Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates in two of the largest-ever arms sales.

The Deputy Director of the Pentagon's Defense Security Cooperation Agency, Richard Genaille, said Monday that Saudi Arabia's $60 billion purchase of 84 new F-15 fighter jets, 190 helicopters and a wide array of missiles, bombs and delivery systems, as well as accessories such as night-vision goggles and radar warning systems have been approved and is proceeding without delay, Bloomberg reported.

The Pentagon official added that the purchase by the United Arab Emirates of Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) missile systems, worth nearly 7 billion dollars, has also been cleared to proceed.

The US Defense Department expects fiscal year 2011 arms exports to exceed $46 billion compared with about $37.9 billion in the previous fiscal year.

The report comes as Riyadh and Abu Dhabi have assisted Bahrain's Al Khalifa regime to reinforce its brutal crackdown against anti-government demonstrators.

“The Saudis are using American equipment: American tanks, American soldier carriers and they are also using the Apache helicopters, which are American,” a Bahraini opposition leader, Saeed al-Shahabi, has told Press TV.

On Monday, Saudi-backed Bahraini forces arrested clerics Sayyed Mohammad al-Alawi and Sheikh Abdul Adim al-Mohtadi in the capital Manama.

It comes after the Bahraini government dismissed 30 doctors and 150 health ministry workers for supporting anti-government protests.

Saudi Arabia dispatched thousands of troops to neighboring Bahrain in mid-March to help quell month-old protest rallies seeking to break al-Khalifa dynasty's monopoly on power.

Saudi and other Arab rulers fear that any concession by Bahrain's rulers could embolden more protests against their own despotic rulers.

This is while the US military, which has its Fifth Fleet based in Bahrain, has avoided describing the foreign troop intervention in the country as an invasion.

Bahraini demonstrators maintain that they will hold their ground until their demands for freedom, constitutional monarchy as well as a proportional voice in the government are met.

Scores of protesters have been killed and many others gone missing since the beginning of the Bahrain revolution.

US General Accuses Bush Administration of War Crimes

Maj. Gen. Antonio Taguba (now retired) served as the deputy commanding general for support for the Third Army for ten months in Kuwait during the early days of the Iraq occupation. In a statement released today, he bluntly accuses the Bush administration of war crimes and lays down a challenge for prosecution.

In 2004, Taguba released a classified report detailing abuses committed at Abu Ghraib Prison. The "Taguba Report" (executive summary) http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/4894001/ urged Pentagon officials to follow up on its findings by enforcing adherence to the Geneva Conventions in interrogations.

Taguba retired in January 2007, later alleging that Pentagon officials had ordered him to retire for being "overzealous" in his criticisms of the military.
In light of ongoing Congressional investigations into so-called harsh interrogation techniques, and on the heels of Congressman Dennis Kucinich recently issuing articles of impeachment accusing President Bush of, among other offenses, authorizing torture, we present Taguba's latest statement for your consideration.
The full Physicians for Human Rights report outlining the medical evidence of torture perpetrated by the United States can be read at their website.

physicians for Human Rights
http://physiciansforhumanrights.org/

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Preface to Broken Laws, Broken Lives

By: Maj. Gen. Antonio Taguba, USA (Retired)

Maj. Gen. Taguba led the US Army's official investigation into the Abu Ghraib prisoner abuse scandal and testified before Congress on his findings in May 2004.

This report tells the largely untold human story of what happened to detainees in our custody when the Commander-in-Chief and those under him authorized a systematic regime of torture. This story is not only written in words: It is scrawled for the rest of these individuals' lives on their bodies and minds. Our national honor is stained by the indignity and inhumane treatment these men received from their captors.

The profiles of these eleven former detainees, none of whom were ever charged with a crime or told why they were detained, are tragic and brutal rebuttals to those who claim that torture is ever justified. Through the experiences of these men in Iraq, Afghanistan and Guantanamo Bay, we can see the full scope of the damage this illegal and unsound policy has inflicted - both on America's institutions and our nation's founding values, which the military, intelligence services, and our justice system are duty-bound to defend.

In order for these individuals to suffer the wanton cruelty to which they were subjected, a government policy was promulgated to the field whereby the Geneva Conventions and the Uniform Code of Military Justice were disregarded. The UN Convention Against Torture was indiscriminately ignored. And the healing professions, including physicians and psychologists, became complicit in the willful infliction of harm against those the Hippocratic Oath demands they protect.

After years of disclosures by government investigations, media accounts, and reports from human rights organizations, there is no longer any doubt as to whether the current administration has committed war crimes. The only question that remains to be answered is whether those who ordered the use of torture will be held to account.

The former detainees in this report - each of whom is fighting a lonely and difficult battle to rebuild his life - require reparations for what they endured, comprehensive psycho-social and medical assistance, and even an official apology from our government.

But most of all, these men deserve justice as required under the tenets of international law and the United States Constitution.
And so do the American people.

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Also See: Human Rights Group Says It Has Proof of Detainee Abusehttp://www.truthout.org/article/human-rights-group-says-it-has-proof-detainee-abuse


Original Story Web site (Truthout)
http://www.truthout.org/article/us-general-accuses-bush-administration-war-crimes

The Bushes and Hitler's Appeasement

Prescott Bush Presiding over President Eisenhower & Ensuring Rockefellers Military Industrial Complex

By Robert Parry
Consortium News
Sunday 18 May 2008

The irony of George W. Bush going before the Knesset and mocking the late Sen. William Borah for expressing surprise at Adolf Hitler's 1939 invasion of Poland is that Bush's own family played a much bigger role assisting the Nazis.
If Borah, an isolationist Republican from Idaho, sounded naive saying "Lord, if only I could have talked to Hitler, all of this might have been avoided," then what should be said about Bush's grandfather and other members of his family providing banking and industrial assistance to the Nazis as they built their war machine in the 1930s?

The archival evidence is now clear that Prescott Bush, the president's grandfather, was a director and shareholder of companies that profited from and collaborated with key financial backers of Nazi Germany.
That business relationship continued after Hitler invaded Poland in 1939 and even after Germany declared war on the United States following Japan's bombing of Pearl Harbor in December 1941. It stopped only when the U.S. government seized assets of Bush-connected companies in late 1942 under the "Trading with the Enemy Act."

So, perhaps instead of holding up Sen. Borah to ridicule, Bush might have acknowledged in his May 15 speech that his forebears also were blind to the dangers of Hitler.

Bush might have noted that his family's wealth, which fueled his own political rise, was partly derived from Nazi collaboration and possibly from slave labor provided by Auschwitz and other concentration camps.

A more honest speech before the Knesset - on the 60th anniversary of Israel's founding - might have contained an apology to the Jewish people from a leading son of the Bush family for letting its greed contribute to Nazi power and to the horrors of the Holocaust. Instead, there was just the jab at Sen. Borah, who died in 1940.

President Bush apparently saw no reason to remind the world of a dark chapter from the family history. After all, those ugly facts mostly disappeared from public consciousness soon after World War II.

Protected by layers of well-connected friends, Prescott Bush brushed aside the Nazi scandal and won a U.S. Senate seat from Connecticut, which enabled him to start laying the foundation for the family's political dynasty.

In recent years, however, the archival records from the pre-war era have been assembled, drawing from the Harriman family papers at the Library of Congress, documents at the National Archives, and records from war-crimes trials after Germany's surrender.

Managers for the Powerful

One can trace the origins of this story back more than a century to the emergence of Samuel Bush, George W. Bush's great-grandfather, as a key manager for a set of powerful American business families, including the Rockefellers and the Harrimans. [See Consortiumnews.com's "Bush Family Chronicles: The Patriarchs."]

That chapter took an important turn in 1919 when investment banker George Herbert Walker teamed up with Averell Harriman, scion to a railroad fortune, to found a new investment banking firm, W.A. Harriman Company.

The Harriman firm was backed by the Rockefellers' National City Bank and the Morgan family's Guaranty Trust. The English-educated Walker assisted in assembling the Harriman family's overseas business investments.

In 1921, Walker's favorite daughter, Dorothy, married Samuel Bush's son Prescott, a Yale graduate and a member of the school's exclusive Skull and Bones society. Handsome and athletic, admired for his golf and tennis skills, Prescott Bush was a young man with the easy grace of someone born into the comfortable yet competitive world of upper-crust contacts.

Three years later, Dorothy gave birth to George Herbert Walker Bush in Milton, Massachusetts.

Lifted by the financial boom of the 1920s, Prescott and Dorothy Bush were on the rise. By 1926, George Herbert Walker had brought his son-in-law in on a piece of the Harriman action, hiring him as a vice president in the Harriman banking firm.

By the mid-Thirties, Prescott Bush had become a managing partner at the merged firm of Brown Brothers Harriman. The archival records also show that Brown Brothers Harriman served as the U.S. financial service arm for German industrialist Fritz Thyssen, an early funder of the Nazi Party.

Thyssen, an admirer of Adolf Hitler since the 1920s, joined the Nazi Party in 1931 when it was still a fringe organization. He helped bail the struggling party out with financial help, even providing its headquarters building in Munich.

Meanwhile, Averell Harriman had launched the Hamburg-Amerika line of steamships to facilitate the bank's dealings with Germany, and made Prescott Bush a director. The ships delivered fuel, steel, coal, gold and money to Germany as Hitler was consolidating his power and building his war machine.

Other evidence shows that Prescott Bush served as the director of the Union Banking Corp. of New York, which represented Thyssen's interests in the United States and was owned by a Thyssen-controlled bank in the Netherlands.

As a steel magnate, Thyssen was amassing a fortune as Hitler rearmed Germany. Documents also linked Bush to Thyssen's Consolidated Silesian Steel Company, which was based in mineral-rich Silesia on the German-Polish border and exploited slave labor from Nazi concentration camps, including Auschwitz. But records at the National Archives do not spell out exactly when Bush's connection ended or what he knew about the business details.

In 1941, Thyssen had a falling out with Hitler and fled to France where he was captured. Much of Thyssen's empire went under the direct control of the Nazis, but even that did not shatter the business ties that existed with Prescott Bush and Harriman's bank.

It wasn't until August 1942 that newspaper stories disclosed the secretive ties between Union Banking Corp. and Nazi Germany.

After an investigation, the U.S. government seized the property of the Hamburg-Amerika line and moved against affiliates of the Union Banking Corp. In November 1942, the government seized the assets of the Silesian-American Corp. [For more details, see an investigative report by the U.K. Guardian, Sept. 25, 2004.]

No Kiss of Death

For most public figures, allegations of trading with the enemy would have been a political kiss of death, but the disclosures barely left a lipstick smudge on Averell Harriman, Prescott Bush and other business associates implicated in the Nazi business dealings.

"Politically, the significance of these dealings - the great surprise - is that none of it seemed to matter much over the next decade or so," wrote Kevin Phillips in American Dynasty.

"A few questions would be raised, but Democrat Averell Harriman would not be stopped from becoming federal mutual security administrator in 1951 or winning election as governor of New York in 1954. Nor would Republican Prescott Bush (who was elected senator from Connecticut in 1952) and his presidential descendants be hurt in any of their future elections."

Indeed, the quick dissipation of the Nazi financial scandal was only a portent of the Bush family's future. Unlike politicians of lower classes, the Bushes seemed to travel in a bubble impervious to accusations of impropriety, since the Eastern Establishment doesn't like to think badly of its own. [For details, see Robert Parry's Secrecy & Privilege.]

To this day - as President Bush showed by mocking the long-forgotten Sen. Borah and then wielding the Nazi "appeasement" club against Barack Obama and other Democrats - the assumption remains that the bubble will continue to protect the Bush family name.

However, the evidence from dusty archives suggests that the Bush family went way beyond appeasement of Adolf Hitler to aiding and abetting the Nazis.
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Robert Parry broke many of the Iran-Contra stories in the 1980s for the Associated Press and Newsweek. His latest book, "Neck Deep: The Disastrous Presidency of George W. Bush", was written with two of his sons, Sam and Nat, and can be ordered at neckdeepbook.com. His two previous books, "Secrecy & Privilege: The Rise of the Bush Dynasty from Watergate to Iraq" and "Lost History: Contras, Cocaine, the Press & 'Project Truth'" are also available there. Or go to Amazon.com.
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Bush & Cheney are Spoiling for World War 3

By: Stewart Brennan

If you missed president Bush addressing the nation last Wednesday Oct 17th, 2007, you missed an American Terrorist warning the planet that he will start “World War 3” if he doesn’t get his way. Several days later, just so that everyone understood, Dink Cheney followed up this threat with World War warnings to Iran with the zeal of a madman and stated that the “International Community” was on their side. Are the Americans justified in issuing World War threats?

A World War against a tiny nation of Iran does not seem feasible assuming that the threat was directed at Iran alone. Somehow, I think it was also words of warning to Russia and China not to back Iran in the Security Council of the U.N. America wants Iran isolated so that they can control the Oil under the Iranian soil. The USA has drawn a line in the sand and warned the Russians and Chinese that if you back Iran, you risk a Global Conflict. Vladimir Putin addressed the World in Tehran earlier this week and stressed patience by waiting for the UN inspectors report; at the same time he also said that they would not tolerate war in the region.

The World it seems, and the American people must prepare themselves for the prospect of a Global Conflict. Why else would these American Terrorists bark these words if not to inflict a terror on the World. Bush and Cheney have served “The ultimate terror threat” in my opinion, which is Total annihilation.

Who Supports America?

The international community does not support America. The only nations that support the USA are Israel, and France, and they do not have the voice of the people. As a Canadian, I will NOT side with the USA and nor will most of my countrymen. The only International Community that supports the Americans is the International World Bank because to them, “War is Profit” short term and long term.

Reasons of Insanity:

America no longer controls the Worlds oil and believe they must get their hands on it to maintain what they term as freedom and democracy. In other words, the Americans have voted amongst themselves to take another nations natural resource and given themselves the freedom to do it. Freedom will be achieved when the World is free of the American Military Industrial Complex and the Private Bankers that steer and support their greedy gains.

I believe the USA is serious when it threatens World War 3!

Bush and Cheney need to be forcibly removed from office, if we are to have any hope of World Peace. The American Government has a history of inflicting terrorism throughout the World by using covert operations to cause upheaval in strategic nations with wealth not controlled by the machine called American freedom. Who will stop them now?!

Here is how I see the Bush / Cheney plan playing itself out.

In the coming weeks, a self-inflicted attack by the US government will be condemned as a terrorist plot of Iranian origin. The Bush & Cheney White house will use this staged event to rally the people of the United States and a few other nations to go to war. Civil liberties will be removed, the draft will be instated, and all elections will be put on hold. Russia and China will side with Iran and will protect the tiny nation from American aggression. George Bush will have his World War 3!

As a deterrent, to coin the bush lingo, “we should remove the threat altogether” and forcibly remove George Bush, and Dink Cheney “before their answer comes in the form of a mushroom cloud”!

Stewart

Added to Washington Post Comments on;
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/10/23/AR2007102300706_Comments.html