Showing posts with label Saddam Hussein. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Saddam Hussein. Show all posts
Saturday, October 22, 2011
Perspectives: On The Topic Of Muammar al-Gadaffi, Other 'Brutal Dictators', And 'Atrocities'
THIS in an "Atrocity":
"We don't do body counts" ~~General Tommy Franks srcBut, of course that was just another lie:
"The Wikileaks Iraq war logs provide us with a unique picture of every death in Iraq.
These are those events mapped using Google Fusion tables."
When the Hand Cursor points at a red dot, click once for the specifics of that particular death.
[Baghdad alone. This map zooms out to cover every death in Iraq at the time of 'purloin-ment']
Fullscreen online version available here
[Download the data]
Go To The Guardian (UK) For More
Tuesday, June 28, 2011
'The Baby And The Baath Water' - A Multi-Media History Of The West's Involvement In Syria & The Region Via The CIA Infiltrated Baath Party
THE BABY AND THE BAATH WATERAdam Curtis
Thursday, 16 June 2011
What is happening in Syria feels like one of the last gasps of the age of the military dictators. An old way of running the world is still desperately trying to cling to power, but the underlying feeling in the west is that somehow Assad's archaic and cruel military rule will inevitably collapse and Syrians will move forward into a democratic age.
That may, or may not, happen, but what is extraordinary is that we have been here before.
Between 1947 and 1949 an odd group of idealists and hard realists in the American government set out to intervene in Syria. Their aim was to liberate the Syrian people from a corrupt autocratic elite - and allow true democracy to flourish. They did this because they were convinced that "the Syrian people are naturally democratic" and that all that was neccessary was to get rid of the elites - and a new world of "peace and progress" would inevitably emerge.
What resulted was a disaster, and the consequences of that disaster then led, through a weird series of bloody twists and turns, to the rise to power of the Assad family and the widescale repression in Syria today.
I thought I would tell that story.
In 1968 a CIA agent called Miles Copeland (Ed. Conspiracy Buffs Note: His son is Stewart Copeland drummer for the well-known band "The Police".) wrote a book called 'The Game of Nations' that revealed what went on in 1947.
Back then Copeland was part of a mangement consulting team in Washington who were working out how America should contain the threat of communism in the Middle East, now the old European Empires had gone. This was before the CIA existed, and Copeland describes how they got together an odd group of diplomats, secret agents left over from the war, advertising men from Madison Avenue, and "pipe-smoking owls" (which is what intellectuals were called in those days).
Copeland describes an impassioned lecturer telling this group that their aim should be to change the leadership in the countries in the Middle East:
"Politicians in Syria, Lebanon, Iraq and Egypt seem to have been elected into power, but what elections! The winners were all candidates of foreign powers, old land-owners who tell their tenants and villagers how to vote, or rich crooks who can buy their votes. But peoples of these countries are intelligent, and they have a natural bent for politics. If there is a part of the world which is crying for the democratic process the Arab World is it."They decided to start with Syria. Compared to what was to come, it was all very sweet and innocent...
In Full
Author Adam Curtis also produced the excellent three part documentary "The Power Of Nightmares" for the BBC.
The documentary explains the roots of the Muslim Brotherhood, now much in the news due to the Egyptian revolt earlier this year, al-Qaeda, the Neoconservatives of the United States and elsewhere, and their common philosophical roots derived from a grossly dysfunctional 'reading' of Jewish philosopher Leo Strauss' works and teachings. There was an Egyptian national in Leo Strauss' lecture hall, and he returned home to Egypt with the same world view and vision as Elliot Abrahms Fred Kagan, Paul Wolfowitz, and other public figures who now have the ear of the American political Right and all to often, the confidences of sitting US presidents.
From the introduction:
This film explores the origins in the 1940s and 50s of Islamic Fundamentalism in the Middle East, and Neoconservatism in America, parallels between these movements, and their effect on the world today.The documentary is available at Internet Archive at two links:
From the introduction to Part 1:"Both [the Islamists and Neoconservatives] were idealists who were born out of the failure of the liberal dream to build a better world. And both had a very similar explanation for what caused that failure. These two groups have changed the world, but not in the way that either intended. Together, they created today's nightmare vision of a secret, organized evil that threatens the world. A fantasy that politicians then found restored their power and authority in a disillusioned age. And those with the darkest fears became the most powerful."
The documentary presented in a player-on-page with a number of video formats available for download here.
Here is the link to the landing page for an ISO file ready to burn to DVD.
Sunday, February 27, 2011
The Neocon's 'Crude Urges' - The UN's Libya Sanctions Are A Declaration Of War On Libya's Civilians Who Have Already All But Removed Their 'Dictator'
The Neo-Cons have 'Urged' a Libyan 'intervention' and demanded (draft-dodging arrogant warmongering pricks that they are) 'immediate military action.'.The appeal, which came in the form of a letter signed by 40 policy analysts, including more than a dozen former senior officials who served under President George W. Bush, was organised and released by the Foreign Policy Initiative (FPI), a two-year-old neo-conservative group that is widely seen as the successor to the more-famous – or infamous – Project for the New American Century (PNAC). [More @ al-Jazeera]In the REALPOLITIK world, Gadaffi is done... why wait for those "Sanctions" to have the effect they had on Iraq with an estimated half million children alone dead from causes including starvation, unsanitary water, and lack of medicine, when the citizens of the country have already isolated, disenfranchised, and cornered him in the only remaining 'un-liberated' city in Libya, Tripoli?
The Western industrial nations fronted by NATO and blessed by their Security Council cronies at the UN will simply use Muammar al-Gadaffi as the excuse for military intervention and an 'oil grab'. All they REALLY want al-Gadaffi to do is hide. But he probably won't because he considers himself Libya's 'leader of destiny' (for want of a better nomenclature).
Perhaps there's a JSOC team with al-Gadaffi visage, daily movements and habits already burned into their memories ready to 'snatch' him in the same manner they illegally kidnapped Haitian president Jean-Bertrand Aristide? (Just a conjecture... al-Gadffi would be a much 'harder' target for such an operation.)
But the BIG QUESTION here is... If the Libyans are capable of deposing their own leader (and currently the 'Libyan government' probably controls less that 10% of what was 'Libyan' territory), with the oil the West so badly needs soon under the control of tribal groups more than willing to deal for their fair share of what they've been deprived of for all these years... It begs the question: "Why Sanctions? Why Intervention?
It will not stop the bloodshed the sanctions have been claimed to prevent.
If Iraq is used as a notable example of "intervention" in recent history, those now-in-place sanctions will only magnify the mayhem by un-countable multiples in an economic and militarized war-without-a-thought for the civilian population of Libya.
Because it WILL BE a war on the civilian population of Libya who almost completely OPPOSE the regime we have sanctioned, after turning a blind eye to the alleged atrocities al-Gadaffi's administration has committed for all these years.
The West and America were such good friends with Libya that our EX-Vice President's company sold Libya (Iraq too!) dual-use oil drilling equipment (The other use would be drilling test holes for nuclear weapons experiments) and, through its subsidiary, Halliburton Logging Services, sent six pulsed neutron generators to Libya.Pulsed neutron generators are used to break down Uranium into isotopes, and could easily be used to create fissionable material for a nuclear 'dirty bomb' or, with more time and materials, a complete nuclear weapon.
[More about Halliburton @ Wikipedia] (including information on the long-standing relationship between the Bush family and Halliburton-related corporations)
The State Department prosecution and fining of Halliburton that followed was a joke, "After having pleaded guilty, the company was fined $1.2 million, with another $2.61 million in penalties.". Halliburton's revenue statement for the year of the prosecution, 1995, is Here.
But about those sanctions...
When the West committed to sanctions on Iraq's Hussein regime it caused mass suffering among a population which was already under authoritarian rule.
UNICEF has stood by it's figures of ONE HALF MILLION CHILDREN DEAD (including sanctions, collateral effects of war) by those measures, which deprived the civilian population of Iraq such things a Chlorine ('Dual-use', natch!) to purify their water (after we bombed their infrastructure thereby CREATING a contaminated water supply).
Do you really suppose that Saddam Hussein (by US media parlance 'so-damn insane') went even one day of the sanctions drinking unclean water, without food or medicine?
Sanctions on a country like Libya, where the leader is already 'on the way out' is a murderous joke (if they are ever truly useful at all for reining in a 'loose cannon' in the geopolitical 'deck'), and NOT to the benefit of ANYONE but the invested(sic) financial and industrial interests in the West.
They will certainly be of no benefit to the Libyan people, and may very well PREVENT Muammar al-Gadaffi's removal from power by his own people. The ONLY people who have a right to judge him for his actions, and allow him to cobble his regime back together in the guise of a 'Jihad' against foreign intervention.
...and I AM NOT alone in that train-of-thought...
Libya: Is Washington Pushing for Civil War to Justify a US-NATO Military Intervention?
Is Tripoli being set up for a civil war to justify U.S. and NATO military intervention in oil-rich Libya?
Are the talks about sanctions a prelude to an Iraq-like intervention?
Something is Rotten in the so-called “Jamahiriya” of Libya
Mahdi Darius Nazemroaya is a Canadian Multidisciplinary sociologist and scholar. He is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG) specializing in geopolitics and strategic issues. He is also a lecturer and author about the topics of the Middle East, Central Asia and the former USSR.
There is no question that Colonel Muammar Al-Gaddafi (Al-Qaddafi) is a dictator. He has been the dictator and so-called “qaid” of Libya for about 42 years. Yet, it appears that tensions are being ratcheted up and the flames of revolt are being fanned inside Libya. This includes earlier statements by the British Foreign Secretary William Hague that Colonel Qaddafi had fled Libya to Venezuela. [1] This statement served to electrify the revolt against Qaddafi and his regime in Libya.
Although all three have dictatorship in common, Qaddafi’s Libya is quite different from Ben Ali’s Tunisia or Mubarak’s Egypt. The Libyan leadership is not outright subservient to the United States and the European Union. Unlike the cases of Tunisia and Egypt, the relationship that exists between Qaddafi and both the U.S. and E.U. is a modus vivendi. Simply put, Qaddafi is an independent Arab dictator and not a “managed dictator” like Ben Ali and Mubarak.
In Tunisia and Egypt the status quo prevails, the military machine and neo-liberalism remain intact; this works for the interests of the United States and the European Union. In Libya, however, upsetting the established order is a U.S. and E.U. objective.
The U.S. and the E.U. now seek to capitalize on the revolt against Qaddafi and his dictatorship with the hopes of building a far stronger position in Libya than ever before. Weapons are also being brought into Libya from its southern borders to promote revolt. The destabilization of Libya would also have significant implications for North Africa, West Africa, and global energy reserves...
[More @ GlobalResearch.ca]
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