Syria: Pepe Escobar Breaks Down Arab League Investigation
Panetta Signals Green Light for Attack on Iran
Webster G. Tarpley, Ph.D.
PressTV
December 30, 2011
For more information on Iran please see the Iran archives.
Arab Spring: Egypt Strikes Back
by Tony Cartalucci
December 30, 2011 - The LA Times reported, "Egypt raids foreign organizations' offices in crackdown. Three U.S. groups are among those raided. Activists say the army is using the ruse of foreign intervention to stoke nationalism and deflect criticism of abuses."
Photo: (AP) US State Department agitators from the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) subsidary, the National Democratic Institute, standby as Egyptian security forces raid their offices. Despite NED veritably being run by Neo-Conservative, corporate-fascists who have signed PNAC documents declaring their intentions of acheiving and maintaining a century of global hegemony, they and the US State Department would decry Egypt's crackdown on their insidious activities as a slight against "human rights."
However, it is no "ruse" as the US-funded "activists" claim. And while the LA Times denies its readership a documented back-story either confirming or denying "activist claims," understanding the US role in funding sedition in Egypt is essential to understanding why not only are the raids of NGOs justified, but an absolute necessity to protect both Egyptian national sovereignty and international stability.
Documented Back-Story of the US-Engineered "Arab Spring" in Egypt
In January of 2011, we were told that "spontaneous," "indigenous" uprising had begun sweeping North Africa and the Middle East, including Hosni Mubarak's Egypt, in what was hailed as the "Arab Spring." It would be almost four months before the corporate-media would admit that the US had been behind the uprisings and that they were anything but "spontaneous," or "indigenous." In an April 2011 article published by the New York Times titled, "U.S. Groups Helped Nurture Arab Uprisings," it was stated:
"A number of the groups and individuals directly involved in the revolts and reforms sweeping the region, including the April 6 Youth Movement in Egypt, the Bahrain Center for Human Rights and grass-roots activists like Entsar Qadhi, a youth leader in Yemen, received training and financing from groups like the International Republican Institute, the National Democratic Institute and Freedom House, a nonprofit human rights organization based in Washington."
The article would also add, regarding the US National Endowment for Democracy (NED):
"The Republican and Democratic institutes are loosely affiliated with the Republican and Democratic Parties. They were created by Congress and are financed through the National Endowment for Democracy, which was set up in 1983 to channel grants for promoting democracy in developing nations. The National Endowment receives about $100 million annually from Congress. Freedom House also gets the bulk of its money from the American government, mainly from the State Department. "
It is hardly a speculative theory then, that the uprisings were part of an immense geopolitical campaign conceived in the West and carried out through its proxies with the assistance of disingenuous organizations including NED, NDI, IRI, and Freedom House and the stable of NGOs they maintain throughout the world. Preparations for the "Arab Spring" began not as unrest had already begun, but years before the first "fist" was raised, and within seminar rooms in D.C. and New York, US-funded training facilities in Serbia, and camps held in neighboring countries, not within the Arab World itself.
In 2008, Egyptian activists from the now infamous April 6 movement were in New York City for the inaugural Alliance of Youth Movements (AYM) summit, also known as Movements.org. There, they received training, networking opportunities, and support from AYM's various corporate and US governmental sponsors, including the US State Department itself. The AYM 2008 summit report (page 3 of .pdf) states that the Under Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs, James Glassman attended, as did Jared C0hen who sits on the policy planning staff of the Office of the Secretary of State. Six other State Department staff members and advisers would also attend the summit along with an immense list of corporate, media, and institutional representatives.
Shortly afterward, April 6 would travel to Serbia to train under US-funded CANVAS, formally the US-funded NGO "Otpor" who helped overthrow the government of Serbia in 2000. Otpor, the New York Times would report, was a "well-oiled movement backed by several million dollars from the United States." After its success it would change its name to CANVAS and begin training activists to be used in other US-backed regime change operations.
The April 6 Movement, after training with CANVAS, would return to Egypt in 2010, along with UN IAEA Chief Mohammed ElBaradei. April 6 members would even be arrested while awaiting for ElBaradei's arrival at Cairo's airport in mid-February. Already, ElBaradei, as early as 2010, announced his intentions of running for president in the 2011 elections. Together with April 6, Wael Ghonim of Google, and a coalition of other opposition parties, ElBaradei assembled his "National Front for Change" and began preparing for the coming "Arab Spring."
Clearly then, unrest was long planned, with activists from Tunisia and Egypt on record receiving training and support from abroad, so that they could return to their home nations and sow unrest in a region-wide coordinated campaign.
An April 2011 AFP report would confirm this, when US State Department's Michael Posner stated that the "US government has budgeted $50 million in the last two years to develop new technologies to help activists protect themselves from arrest and prosecution by authoritarian governments." The report went on to explain that the US "organized training sessions for 5,000 activists in different parts of the world. A session held in the Middle East about six weeks ago gathered activists from Tunisia, Egypt, Syria and Lebanon who returned to their countries with the aim of training their colleagues there." Posner would add, "They went back and there's a ripple effect." That ripple effect of course, is the "Arab Spring."
NED & Freedom House are Run by Warmongering Neo-Cons
The National Endowment for Democracy, despite the lofty mission statement articulated on its website, is nothing more than a tool for executing American foreign policy. Just as the military is used under the cover of lies regarding WMD's and "terrorism," NED is employed under the cover of bringing "democracy" to "oppressed" people. However, a thorough look at NED's board of directors, as well as the board of trustees of its subsidiary, Freedom House, definitively lays to rest any doubts that may be lingering over the true nature of these organizations and the causes they support.
Upon NED's board of directors we first find John Bohn who traded petrochemicals, was an international banker for 13 years with Wells Fargo, and is currently serving as a principal for a global advisory and consulting firm, GlobalNet Partners, which assists foreign businesses by making their "entry into the complex China market easy." Surely Bohn's ability to manipulate China's political landscape through NED's various activities both inside of China and along its peripheries constitutes an alarming conflict of interest. However, it appears "conflict of interest" is a reoccurring theme throughout both NED and Freedom House.
Bohn is joined by Rita DiMartino who worked for Council on Foreign Relations corporate member AT&T as "Vice President of Congressional Relations" as well as a member of the CFR herself. Also representing the Fortune 500 is Kenneth Duberstein, a board member of the war profiteering Boeing Company, big oil's ConocoPhillips, and the Mack-Cali Realty Corporation. Duberstein also served as a director of Fannie Mae until 2007. He too is a CFR member as are two of the companies he chairs, Boeing and ConocoPhillips.
We then consider several of the certified warmongers serving upon NED's board of directors including Francis Fukuyama, Zalmay Khalilzad, Will Marshall, and Vin Weber, all signatories of the pro-war, pro-corporate Project for a New American Century. Within the pages of documents produced by this "think tank" are pleas to various US presidents to pursue war against sovereign nations, the increase of troops in nations already occupied by US forces, and what equates to a call for American global hegemony in a Hitlerian 90 page document titled "Rebuilding Americas Defenses." As we will see, this warmongering think tank serves as a nexus around which fellow disingenuous rights advocate Freedom House also gravitates.
The "Statement of Principles," signed off by NED chairmen Francis Fukuyama, Zalmay Khalilzad, and Vin Weber, states, "we need to accept responsibility for America's unique role in preserving and extending an international order friendly to our security, our prosperity, and our principles." Of course by "international order" they mean meddling beyond the sovereign borders of the United States and is merely used as a euphemism for global imperialism. Other Neo-Con that signed their name to this statement include Freedom House's Paula Dobriansky, Dan Quayle (formally), and Donald Rumsfeld (formally), along with Paul Wolfowitz, Dick Cheney, Eliot Cohen, and Elliot Abrams.
A PNAC "Statment on Post-War Iraq" regarding a wholehearted endorsement of nation-building features the signatures of NED chairman Will Marshall, Freedom House's Frank Carlucci (2002), and James Woolsey (formally), along with Martin Indyk (Lowy Institute board member, co-author of the conspiring "Which Path to Persia?" report), and William Kristol and Robert Kagan both of the warmongering Foreign Policy Initiative. It should be noted that the Foreign Policy Initiative (FPI) is, for all intents and purposes, PNAC's latest incarnation and just recently featured an open letter to House Republicans calling on them to disregard the will of the American people and continue pursuing the war in Libya. The FPI letter even suggests that the UN resolution authorizing the war in the first place, was holding America "hostage" and that it should be exceeded in order to do more to "help the Libyan opposition."
An untitled PNAC letter addressed to then US President George Bush regarding a general call for global warmongering received the seal of approval from Freedom Houses' Ellen Bork (2007), Ken Adelman (also former lobbyist for Thailand's Thaksin Shinawatra via Edelman), and James Woolsey (formally), along with Neo-Con degenerates Richard Perle, William Kristol, Robert Kagan, and the always disingenuous demagogue Daniel Pipes.
It is safe to say that neither NED nor Freedom House garners within its ranks characters appropriate for their alleged cause of "supporting freedom around the world." It is also safe to say that the principles of "democracy," "freedom," and "human rights" they allegedly champion for, are merely being leveraged to co-opt well meaning people across the world to carry out their own self-serving agenda.
Considering NED and Freedom House's role in fomenting the premeditated destabilization disingenuously titled the "spontaneous, indigenous" "Arab Spring," and the true nature of those that constitute their boards of directors, we can examine the LA Times article regarding the recent raids for what it is - a white wash if not an outright lie. Similarly, the US State Department comments made condemning the recent raids in Egypt take on a new, farcical, and very hypocritical tone in light of the documented fraud the US is carrying out through the State Department and the organizations it is on record funding.
The Current NGO Raids in Egypt
The LA Times claims:
"Egyptian security forces on Thursday raided the offices of 17 nongovernmental organizations, including three U.S.-based agencies, as part of a crackdown on foreign assistance that has drawn criticism from the West and threatened human rights groups and pro-democracy movements.The LA Times would go on to describe the US State Department's response:
The move appeared to be part of a strategy to intimidate international organizations. The ruling military council has repeatedly blamed "foreign hands" for exploiting Egypt's political and economic turmoil. But activists said the army was using the ruse of foreign intervention to stoke nationalism and deflect criticism of abuses."
Ironically, US-stooge Mohamed ElBaradei would chime in on the side of the US State Department claiming, "human rights organizations are the guardians of the nascent freedom. Efforts to suffocate them will be a major setback and will surely backfire." Freedom House director David Kramer, formally a State Department official under the Bush Administation, would claim the Egyptian army crackdown was "an intensive campaign by the Egyptian government to dismantle civil society through a politically motivated legal campaign aimed at preventing 'illegal foreign funding' of civil society operations in Egypt." Meanwhile NDI president Ken Wollack said "cracking down on organizations whose sole purpose is to support the democratic process during Egypt's historic transition sends a disturbing signal."
"This action is inconsistent with the bilateral cooperation we have had over many years," State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland said at a news briefing after the raids. "We call on the Egyptian government to immediately end the harassment of NGO staff, return all property and resolve this issue immediately."
Egyptian soldiers and black-clad police officers swept into offices, interrogated workers and seized computers across the country. Those targeted included U.S. groups the National Democratic Institute, the International Republican Institute and Freedom House, which are funded by Congress to monitor elections and promote democracy overseas."
We see then, US and Egyptian organizations that are documented frauds acting in absolute concert not only with each other, but in tandem with both the US State Department and a willfully ignorant corporate-media. These "NGOs" are the equivilant of Great Britain's imperial networks that spanned the globe, supplanted national sovereignty in nation after nation and executed the will of the crown, not that of the people they ruled over from Ireland to India, from Myanmar to the American colonies.
Conclusion
Let us note and expose the perversion of ideals such as "representative governance" cheaply reduced to "democracy" or "mob rule," and the obscene abuse of concepts such as "free speech" and "human rights" by organizations like NED and Freedom House who have themselves engineered conflicts that have resulted in genocide, state-sponsored terrorism, codified torture and indefinite detention as well as everything else that crawls out from beneath the rocks of Wall Street and London's brand of corporate-fascism and its willing servants in America's "Neo-Conservative" establishment and more recently Obama's supposedly "liberal" presidency.
And while Egypt has taken up the challenge to directly confront traitors and foreign-funded sedition within their own sovereign borders, as has Belarus recently, Egypt is by far not the only nation suffering under the debilitating division and destruction NED and its US State Department-funded subsidiaries sow throughout nations.
Tunisia's new president had literally served the US agenda for decades via his Paris-based, NED-funded "NGO." The destabilization that his NGO contributed to paved the way for his coming to power. Likewise, a list of nations are documented to be under similar attack.
Myanmar: "Democracy icon" Aung San Suu Kyi's entire political apparatus is US and British funded.
Thailand: Fraudulent NGOs like Prachatai, Thai Netizen, and many others are entirely funded by US State Department cash and are insidiously paving the way for Wall Street servant Thaksin Shinawatra to remove Thailand's traditional institutions and replace it with US-installed "civil society."
Russia: Moscow's streets have been choked week after week with protesters led by verified servants of the US State Department, funded for years by NED and whose foreign-funded NGOs constitute the entirety of accusations of "fraud" in Russia's recent elections.
Malaysia: NED-funded "Bersih" protesters are attempting to sow division and instability to pave the way for IMF stooge Anwar Ibrahim to return to power and enter the people of Malaysia back under Anglo-American servitude.
Egypt and Belarus have given the world a model to follow. Instead of striking out at throngs of protesters manipulated and used by these insidious organizations as the Egyptian military has been doing, they are now striking at the organizations and the foreign-funded traitors doing the manipulation in the first place. By exposing and attacking Wall Street and London's network of insidious agents directly, the global destabilization they are attempting to carry out may just very well fail - and not only fail but leave those behind it naked in their megalomania and criminal intentions for all the world to see.
And finally, while Egyptians, and indeed the world, must scrutinize NGOs claiming to promote "democray," "freedom," and "human rights," they must likewise scrutinize those whom these NGOs are attacking. If the forces of "liberal activism" can be so completely hijacked, so can the forces of nationalism. We must then identify the corporate-financier interests driving this obscene agenda, and not only boycott and entirely replace them, but in the meantime, monitor their interactions not only with these NGOs now confirmed to be frauds, but inroads they may be making in compromising the nationalist forccs they are attacking. Eternal vigilance is a price we must be willing to pay if freedom is truly something we aspire for.
Iraq: Invasion Ends - Neo-Colonial Rule Begins
by Tony Cartalucci
December 29, 2011 - Even as US troops symbolically withdraw from Iraq, a superficial indicator that many may interpret as the return of Iraqi sovereignty, it is the flow of foreign-investment into the country that marks the true chains of foreign-rule being laid out. USA Today in an article titled, "Foreign investment begins to pour into Iraq," describes the real take over, prepared for over the course of nearly a decade, and is now beginning.
Image: A nation can survive and resist an occupation of troops. It is much more difficult to resist an insidious occupation build on an endless, fraudulent torrent of capital and economic domination. Iraqi PM Nouri Al-Maliki "opens Iraq" for just such an occupation - one of Wall Street and London's corporate-financier interests.
The US Chamber of Commerce, which represents the collective interests of the largest corporations both in the United States and around the world, has a "US-Iraq Business Initiative" dedicated to "building a better Iraq through private sector investment." The Chamber of Commerce stated in a post titled, "Iraqi Prime Minister: Business Now at the Front," that "Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki visited the Chamber today [December 13, 2011] to mark the transition from U.S. military engagement to economic engagement through commerce, trade, and investment." A similar article can be read via "The Hill's" "Iraq is open for Business."
What is Economic-Imperialism?
An explanation of how economic-imperialism works was noted in February 2011's "Egypt Today, Thailand Tomorrow:"
In the late 90's these think-tanks, NGOs, and research groups together with their International Monetary Fund and the World Bank made immense loans to developing nations around the world. Nations were forced to take these loans with the threat of sanctions aimed against them by the World Trade Organization should they refuse. Like a mafia loan shark, these globocrat gangsters decided to call in the loans knowing how hopelessly unpayable they were.Similarly we saw in April 2011's "Libyan Rebels Fighting the Globalists' War" NATO's military conquest of Libya sowing the seeds for post-war dominion of Libya's economy led by what was predicted to be a "Western stooge" that would serve foreign, not Libyan interests. Months later, it would be confirmed that indeed such a Western stooge, Abdurrahim el-Keib, had been found and promptly installed as "Prime Minster" after the fall of Qaddafi's government.
And like a mafia loan shark, favors were asked of those who defaulted on their payments. Target nations were called to exercise sweeping economic liberalization reforms, eliminating their control and protection over their economy, industry, infrastructure, and as a result, eliminating their national sovereignty itself. It was a new form of an old art. It was economic neo-colonialism.
This is no different than the one-sided trade deals made by the old European empires with target nations in the colonial age. These trade deals also included ownership of property by foreigners, the ability to operate a business, and travel with impunity throughout the host nation - all with minimum or no taxes imposed upon the foreign occupiers. The only difference would be that modern day concessions are forced through invasive economic policy, while colonial concessions were forced through "gunboat policy."
Thailand, then the Kingdom of Siam, was surrounded on all sides by colonized nations and in turn was made to concede to the British 1855 Bowring Treaty. See how many of these "gunboat policy" imposed concessions sound like today's "economic liberalization:"
1. Siam granted extraterritoriality to British subjects.
2. British could trade freely in all seaports and reside permanently in Bangkok.
3. British could buy and rent property in Bangkok.
4. British subjects could travel freely in the interior with passes provided by the consul.
5. Import and export duties were capped at 3%, except the duty-free opium and bullion.
6. British merchants were to be allowed to buy and sell directly with individual Siamese.
A more contemporary example would be the outright military conquest of Iraq and Paul Bremer's (CFR) economic reformation of the broken nation.
The Economist gleefully enumerates the neo-colonial "economic liberalization" of Iraq in a piece titled "Let's all go to the yard sale: If it all works out, Iraq will be a capitalist's dream:"
1. 100% ownership of Iraqi assets.
2. Full repatriation of profits.
3. Equal legal standing with local firms.
4. Foreign banks allowed to operate or buy into local banks.
5. Income and corporate taxes capped at 15%.
6. Universal tariffs slashed to 5%.
As you can see, not much has changed since 1855 as far as imperialist "wish-lists" go. The Economist argued, as would any 19th century imperialist, that Iraq needed foreign expertise to catch up, justifying the evisceration of their national sovereignty.
Abdurrahim el-Keib, portrayed by the Western corporate-media as a progressive academic who had spent decades in the United States teaching at Alabama University and leading the local Muslim community, was in fact also a "professor & chairman" at the Petroleum Institute, based in Abu Dhabi, UAE and sponsored by British Petroleum (BP), Shell, France's Total, the Japan Oil Development Company, and the Abu Dhabi National Oil Company. El-Keib's Petroleum Institute profile also describes extensive research conducted by him sponsored by various US government agencies and departments over the years. In other words, el-Keib is a man that owes his existence to corporate-financier oligarchs, as well as his current position of power, and will surely spend his time in office paying them back at the expense of the Libyan people.
Conclusion
Considering the Economist's eagerness to commandeer the Iraqi economy, historical contexts stretching back over a century, the US Chamber of Commerce's own admissions, and recent developments in Libya where a fraudulent "humanitarian war" has yielded a government led not by a national government in the service to the people, but to foreign interests, it is safe to say that Iraq's real occupation by the forces of global corporate-fascism is only now beginning.
It should be noted that many of the corporations now jockeying for a position to infest the Iraqi economy, represented within the Chamber of Commerce's Board of Directors, are also chief contributors, partners, members, and sponsors of the very US policy think-tanks that engineered the Iraq War in the first place, as well as America's other planned or ongoing military operations around the world. They literally have hijacked the governments of the West to carry out a campaign pursuing global hegemony, both militarily and economically.
It is essential to take note of these corporate-financier interests, boycott them entirely, and replace them with local, pragmatic solutions. Their unwarranted influence throughout business, politics, and even the theater of war constitutes the greatest threat toward free humanity, not the contrived excuses they have used to dominate nation after nation and continuously perpetuate their agenda.
William Engdahl on NATO's Encirclement of Russia
William Engdahl
Geopolitics-Geoeconomics
December 28, 2011
Most in the civilized world are blissfully unaware that we are marching ineluctably towards an increasingly likely pre-emptive nuclear war. No, it's not at all about Iran and Israel. It's about the decision of Washington and the Pentagon to push Moscow up against the wall with what is euphemistically called Ballistic Missile Defense (BMD).
On November 23, a normally low-keyed Russian President Dmitry Medvedev told the world in clear terms that Russia was prepared to deploy its missiles on the border to the EU between Poland and Lithuania, and possibly in the south near Georgia and NATO member Turkey to counter the advanced construction process of the US ballistic missile defense shield: "The Russian Federation will deploy in the west and the south of the country modern weapons systems that could be used to destroy the European component of the US missile defense," he announced on Russian television. "One of these steps could be the deployment of the Iskander missile systems in Kaliningrad." Those would be theatre ballistic missile systems. The latest version of Iskander, the Iskander-K, whose details remain top secret, reportedly has a range up to 2000 km and carries cruise missiles and a target accuracy to 7 meters or less.
Medvedev declared he has ordered the Russian defense ministry to "immediately" put radar systems in Kaliningrad that warn of incoming missile attacks on a state of combat readiness. He called for extending the targeting range of Russia's strategic nuclear missile forces and re-equipping Russia's nuclear arsenal with new warheads capable of piercing the US/NATO defense shield due to become operational in six years, by 2018. Medvedev also threatened to pull Russia out of the New START missile reduction treaty if the United States moves as announced.
Image: NATO's creeping encirclement of Russia. Engdahl concludes, "in any case the fact that Washington continues to tear up solemn international arms treaties and illegally proceed to install its global missile shield is basis enough for those in Moscow, Beijing or elsewhere to regard US promises, even treaties as not worth the paper they were written on."
Medvedev then correctly pointed to the inevitable link between “defensive” missiles and “offensive” missiles: “Given the intrinsic link between strategic offensive and defensive arms, conditions for our withdrawal from the New Start treaty could also arise,” he said.
The Russian President didn’t mince words: “I have ordered the armed forces to develop measures to ensure, if necessary, that we can destroy the command and control systems” of the US shield, Medvedev said. “These measures are appropriate, effective and low-cost.” Russia has repeatedly warned that the US BMD global shield is designed to destabilize the nuclear balance and risks provoking a new arms race. The Russian President said that rather than take the Russian concerns seriously, Washington has instead been “accelerating” its BMD development.
Read the rest of Engdahl's report here, in .pdf format. For more of Engdahl's work, please visit his website, Geopolitics-Geoeconomics here.
Arab League in Syria: A pre-ordained conclusion
RT.com / Corbett Report
RT.com
December 28, 2011
The Syrian government has released 755 detainees as Arab League monitors continue their mission to stop nine months of violence that has killed thousands. However, doubts remain on both sides that the observers can provide a neutral verdict.
The release of the detainees Wednesday follows the three-pronged Arab League plan that will see Damascus withdrawal government troops from residential areas, release prisoners and begin talks with the opposition.
The report comes as Sudanese General Mustafa Dabi, the head of the Arab League mission, said he saw “nothing frightening” in the city of Homs, the epicenter of the nine-months of the anti-government rising and the first stop on the month-long monitoring mission that kicked off Tuesday, Reuters reports.
“There were some places where the situation was not good,” Dabi told Reuters by telephone on Wednesday. “But there wasn’t anything frightening, at least while we were there. Things were calm and there were no clashes.”
Meanwhile, some members of the opposition believe the Arab League will prove ineffective by concluding that the violence is being generated from both sides.
The opposition also says Dabi’s military background disqualifies him from being a neutral witness, while the Arab League’s mission is nothing more than a stalling tactic to put off a foreign military intervention.
However, political analyst James Corbett told RT that while the observer mission is in fact lacking in credibility, it is only because conclusions will unlikely be based on facts on the ground.
“The final report will be a pre-ordained conclusion that the Assad government is not doing enough to listen to the concerns of its citizens. Personally, I’m not sure what is more ridiculous about this story – the idea that the autocratic thugs of the Arab League are going to presume to pronounce on the democratic leanings of the Syrian government, or that the international community is supposed to take what they say with any sort of moral authority.”
“Clearly, these are not people in a position to be lecturing on this. I think that the report has been pre-ordained, and I’d be very surprised to see that it concludes anything other than the fact that the Assad government is to blame for what’s going on in Syria right now,” Corbett said.
While he argues that the monitoring mission could potentially be effective, he fears efforts to put off a potentially catastrophic war will likely be disregarded.
“It [the monitoring mission] could actually avert military intervention if they do come out and say that the tensions are internal and need to be dealt with internally, but I don’t think that is what is ultimately going to be concluded, but we certainly have to hope that that is the case, because as we know, military intervention in Syria would be an extremely destabilizing event in the region, and would lead almost inevitably to some sort of confrontation with Iran, if not eventually with other states in the region. So I think it is absolutely imperative that this mission does indeed defuse the situation, though I’m not hopeful for that possibility.”
While Corbett argues the international community’s decision to dictate how Syria should manage their internal affairs is as ludicrous as Damascus telling the Obama administration how to deal with the Occupy Wall Street protests, he fear that the observer mission will ultimately serve as the first step to justifying outside military intervention in the country.
“This is all just political theater that is being played out for the benefit of the public that is obviously unwilling to go along with military intervention unless there is the degree of some sort of body that’s seen to – or at least we’re told – have some sort of moral authority to pronounce on the subject,” he added.
Understanding North Korea
Nile Bowie
NileBowie.blogspot.com
December 28, 2011
These portraits of the Great Leader, Kim il Sung and the Dear Leader, Kim Jung il are required to be hung in the home of every Korean by law. |
“Long live the Democratic People’s Republic Of Korea!” |
"Thousands of years ago, on a beautiful peninsula in the center of East Asia, there emerged one of mankind’s first distinct races, the Korean race. While still evolving from the early Korean to the modern Korean man, the Koreans settled the whole peninsula and much of northeast Asia. All they lacked was a strong leader. At last, in the third millennium BE, a great emperor named Tan’gun united Koreans into a state named Choson, taking Pyongyang as it’s capital. Koreans were thus the first Asians to achieve nationhood, a crucial first stage of civilization.
Though Old Choson shared the peninsula with other, smaller kingdoms, the Koreans were always one people with the same blood, language, culture and lofty morals. In the year 918 they were united once more. Alas, foreign aggressors, resentful of Korea’s autonomy and greedy for it’s natural riches, refused to leave the peace-loving people alone. Only by repeatedly driving back invading forces – from Chinese tribes to Japanese Samurai to American war ships – was the Korean race able to preserve its unique integrity up to the present day.
From the start Koreans were marked by a strong sense of virtue and justice, and their exemplary manners earned then country renown as “The Land of Politeness in the East.” No less famous were their clothes, which were as white as the snow-capped peaks of Mount Paektu. Kind-hearted and well featured, Koreans lived in harmonious villages, respecting the people above them and loving those beneath them. Unfortunately, the effete ruling classes, having fallen under the sway of Confucianism, Buddhism and other pernicious foreign ideologies, proved no match for the imperialists’ schemes, and in 1905 Korea became a Japanese colony.
Burning with righteous anger, the masses rose up on March 1, 1919 to demand national independence. The demonstration was brutally suppressed. Fortunately a great leader had already been born who would guide the nation to its proper place on the world stage…"
Images of fresh snowfall and the snow-capped peaks of Mount Paektu are conjured to exemplify the pristine quality of Korean racial stock. |
“The snowstorm rendered Pyongyang – this city steeped in the five thousand year old, jade-like spirit of the race, imbued with proudly lonely life-breath of the world’s cleanest, most civilized people – free of the slightest blemish… covering everything in a thick white veil of purity.”
“The Revolutionary Spirit of Mount Paektu.” |
"Ah, Korean Workers’ PartyAt whose breast onlyMy life begins and ends;Be I buried in the ground or strewn to the windI remain your son, and again return to your breast!Entrusting my body to your affectionate gaze,Your loving outstretched hand,I will forever cry out in the voice of a child,Mother! I can’t live without Mother!"
“When provoking a war of aggression, we will hit back, beginning with the US!” |
The war crimes committed by American soldiers in the Korean war and the subsequent struggle of the Korean people is constantly channelled in domestic propaganda. |
As the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea exists today in a virtual time pocket, one of the world’s wealthiest and most developed economies exists just south of the Demilitarized Zone in the Republic of Korea. The contrast couldn’t be any harder to fathom. There was once a time after the Korean War where the North was developmentally superior to the South, decades of Northern propaganda depicted the South as an emaciated Yankee Colony where American soldiers reign freely, killing Korean children for pleasure. While the South Korea public regards the US military presence in their country (and the legitimate cases of rape and unprovoked murder committed by US soldiers) with the highest distain, the South has become one of the world’s flourishing hubs of modernity and economic development.
Kim Jung il is depicted as the center of public praise in Seoul. |
“Through all manner of falsehoods and trickery, the imperialists and reactionaries are paralyzing the healthy thinking of the masses while spreading among them bourgeois-reactionary ideas and rotten bourgeois customs. What will happen if we succumb to and fail to block these customs of living that the bastards are disseminating? In a word, we become… incapable of adhering to socialism. Most importantly, we become unable to defend to our death the leadership of the revolution.” – Kim Jong il
The cost of travel is subsidized for villagers from the countryside who must annually pilgrimage to Kim il Sung’s mausoleum in Pyongyang. |
“In 2006 the Dear General successfully saw the acquisition of a nuclear deterrent that would protect the Korean race forever. Truly, the son had proven himself worthy of his great father.”
The Songun Military First emblem has become a prominent propaganda motif under Kim Jung il, “Let us loyally venerate the party’s military-first leadership!” |
“Kim Jong Il, great master of politics and illustrious commander born of Heaven, honorably defended the socialist gains, noble heritage bequeathed by the President, by dint of Songun politics despite the collapse of the world socialist system, the demise of the President which was the greatest loss to the nation, the vicious offensive of the imperialist allied forces to stifle the DPRK and severe natural disasters. He turned the DPRK into an invincible political and ideological power in which single-minded unity has been achieved and made it emerge a nuclear weapons state and an invincible military power, which no enemy can ever provoke.”
A painting on the North Korean side of the DMZ reads: “Our children will inherit a unified peninsula!” |
“We should highly value comrade Kim Jong Un’s military-first leadership and should preserve our socialist system and achievements of our revolutions through bolstering our defense power in every way, Kim Jong Il passed away to our sorrow before seeing the victory in the drive for building a thriving nation, his great desire, but we are under respected Kim Jong Un identical to him. Kim Jong Un's leadership provides a sure guarantee for successfully carrying forward the revolutionary cause of Juche through generations, the cause which was started by the President and led by Kim Jong Il to victory.”
Wall Street Journal "Determines" Russian Election a "Fraud"
by Tony Cartalucci
December 28, 2011 - The Wall Street Journal (WSJ), going through extraordinary lengths to prove a foreign election "fraudulent," claims to have written a "computer program that downloaded 2,957 web pages posted on Russia's Central Election Commission website." They then claim they used another program to mine pages "for precinct-level data extracting outcomes for 95,228 precincts spread across 2,745 electoral commissions. " The Wall Street Journal then had "experts" in "election fraud and statistics" look at the data finding what they called, "the fingerprints of fraud."
In Wall Street Journal's article, "Russia's Dubious Vote," the authors admit that "the analysis doesn't in itself prove fraud in Russia's Dec. 4 parliamentary elections." But the WSJ then cites "local and international observers," that corroborate their findings of "fraud" with claims of ballot-box stuffing, vote falsification, and other violations. The only organization WSJ is able to cite by name, however, is US National Endowment for Democracy (NED) funded GOLOS.
In, "US Caught Meddling in Russian Elections," GOLOS was noted as being the key "observer" cited across Western media in an attempt to portray the Russian elections as "stolen," a similar ploy that has been used throughout color revolutions since the 80s and in particular during the last year of US-backed destabilization also known as the "Arab Spring." However, GOLOS owes its existence to the US government and in turn the banking oligarchs of Wall Street and London who have been trying in vain to dislodge Russia's Vladimir Putin from power for years.
Indeed, something is "dubious" about Russia's elections, namely the concerted, overeager campaign by the West to portray them as fraudulent, to lend ammunition to their stable of US-funded NGOs and opposition leaders now taking to the streets in Moscow, and the Wall Street Journal's insistence that "local and international observers" back their recent "analysis" but failed to name any beyond a US-funded propaganda front, GOLOS. That the WSJ disingenuously insisted that GOLOS was "Russia's main independent election-monitoring group" despite receiving its funding from the US government - hardly independent by any stretch of the imagination - calls into question the alleged computer program they wrote to draw the conclusions they have presented.
Image: A screenshot from NED's official website, listing GOLOS as a recipient of NED funding, which in turn is provided by the US State Department. Despite this overt conflict of interest - especially with NED subsidiary International Republican Institute chairman John McCain openly threatening Russia with "Arab Spring" unrest, "journalists" like those at the Wall Street Journal continue citing them as "independent" election monitors. (click image to enlarge)
A computer program can be written to render any result desired, as the recent "Climate Gate" hoax has proven. It is then only the integrity of those carrying out the analysis and presenting the results that determine the possible veracity of their conclusions. Since the Wall Street Journal makes such overt misrepresentations, such as GOLOS being "independent" when they are clearly, admittedly funded by the US government, indicates that the WSJ lacks such integrity. Instead, they are but the most recent corporate-media propaganda front to jump on the Wall Street-London battlewagon on its way to Moscow.
Wall Street Journal's Conclusions are Fraudulent as are the Protest Leaders in Russia's Streets
Meanwhile, Christmas Eve protests in Moscow were once again led by verified agents of Western sedition, namely Alexei Navalny, according to an AP report titled, "Alexei Navalny, Key Engine Behind Russian Protests." Called a "corruption-fighting lawyer and popular blogger" by AP, who unlike Wall Street Journal, skipped feigned analysis and jumped right to labling the elections as "shameless falsification," Navalny is portrayed as a force of reform against a corrupt system.
And while Alexey Navalny is renowned for "exposing corruption," at least when profitable, those researching his background begin unraveling his own insidious, compromised agenda. Alexey Navalny was a Yale World Fellow, and in his profile it states:
The Democratic Alternative, also written DA!, is indeed a National Endowment for Democracy fund recipient, meaning that Alexey Navalny is an agent of US-funded sedition and willfully hiding it from his followers. The US State Department itself reveals this as they list "youth movements" operating in Russia:
"Navalny spearheads legal challenges on behalf of minority shareholders in large Russian companies, including Gazprom, Bank VTB, Sberbank, Rosneft, Transneft, and Surgutneftegaz, through the Union of Minority Shareholders. He has successfully forced companies to disclose more information to their shareholders and has sued individual managers at several major corporations for allegedly corrupt practices. Navalny is also co-founder of the Democratic Alternative movement and was vice-chairman of the Moscow branch of the political party YABLOKO. In 2010, he launched RosPil, a public project funded by unprecedented fundraising in Russia. In 2011, Navalny started RosYama, which combats fraud in the road construction sector."
"DA!: Mariya Gaydar, daughter of former Prime Minister Yegor Gaydar, leads DA! (Democratic Alternative). She is ardent in her promotion of democracy, but realistic about the obstacles she faces. Gaydar said that DA! is focused on non-partisan activities designed to raise political awareness. She has received funding from the National Endowment for Democracy, a fact she does not publicize for fear of appearing compromised by an American connection."
Alexey was involved directly in founding a movement funded by the US government and to this day has the very people who funded DA! defending him throughout Western media. (For more information, please see, "Wall Street Vs. Russia.")
It becomes clear then, that the AP report has misidentified the real "engine" behind the Russian protests. It is not Navalny, but rather Wall Street and London via organizations like the National Endowment for Democracy. It is safe to say that yet again we are watching unfold a "revolution" created from whole cloth not by the aspirations of the Russian people, but by the disingenuous "democracy promoting" forces of Wall Street and London bent on destabilizing Russia, undermining the Kremlin, and either extracting concessions from Russia, especially regarding Syria, or even going as far as replacing entirely the Russian government for one more servile like that of Yelsin's and the corrupt oligarchs that succeeded him.