An American Atrocity In Afghanistan

Word Games

By Dave Lindorff
March 09, 2011
Courtesy Of "Information Clearing House"

The people of Afghanistan know who was flying the two helicopter gunships that brutally hunted down and slaughtered, one by one, nine boys apparently as young as seven years old, as they gathered firewood on a hillside March 1. In angry demonstrations after the incident, they were shouting “Death to America.”

Americans are still blissfully unaware that their “heroes” in uniform are guilty of this obscene massacre. The ursine US corporate media has been reporting on this story based upon a gutless press release from the Pentagon which attributes the “mistake” to “NATO” helicopters.

The thing is, this terrible incident occurred in the Pech Valley in Afghanistan’s Kunar province, where US forces have for several years been battling Taliban forces, and from which region they are now in the process of withdrawing. Clearly then, it is US, and not “NATO” helicopters which have been responding to calls to attack “suspected Taliban forces.”

So why can’t the Pentagon say that? And if they won’t say that, why won’t American reporters either demand that they clearly state the nationality of whatever troops commit an atrocity, or exercise due diligence themselves and figure it out?

There is a second issue too. Most publications appear to have followed the lead of the highly compromised New York Times, and are going with the Pentagon line that the boys who were killed were aged 9-15. That’s bad enough. It’s hard to see how helicopter pilots with their high-resolution imaging equipment, cannot tell a 9-year-old boy when they see one, from a bearded Taliban fighter. But at least one news organization, the McClachy chain, is reporting that the ages of the boys who were murdered from the air were 7-13. If that latter range of ages is correct, then it is all the more outrageous that they were picked off one by one by helicopter gunners. No way could they have mistaken a 7-year-old for an adult.

No wonder the even the famously corrupt Afghan President Hamid Karzai refused to accept an apology proffered for this killing by Afghan War commander Gen. David Petraeus.

Calls by this reporter to the Pentagon for an accurate report on whose troops were flying those two helicopters, and for an accurate accounting of the ages of the nine victims, have thus far gone unanswered. 

This, I have discovered, is fairly standard for the Defense Department. If it’s a story about some big victory, or a new eco-friendly plan for a military base’s heating system, you have to beat the Pentagon PR guys off with a stick, but if you call them about something embarrassing or negative, you get passed from Major Perrine to Lt. Col. Robbins to Commander Whozits, and nobody give you an answer. Finally you’re given someone to email a question to, and that message goes into the Pentagon internet ether and never gets returned.

So let’s give an honest report here. Two US helicopter gunships, allegedly responding to a report of “insurgent” activity on a hillside in Kunar Province, came upon the scene of 10 young Afghan boys who were collecting brush for fuel for their families. The gunships, according to the account of a lone 11-year-old surviver who was hidden by a tree, systematically hunted down the other nine boys, hitting them with machine gun and rocket fire and killing them all--their bodies so badly damaged that their families had to hunt for the pieces in order to bury them.

This atrocity is being described as a “mistake,” but it was no mistake, clearly. The crews of the helicopters were shooting at fleeing human beings who made no attempt to return fire (obviously, because all the boys had were sticks, which they surely dropped when the first shots were fired).

They almost certainly saw that they were dealing with kids, because it would be hard to mistake even a nine year old for an adult, particularly in a country where young kids go around with their heads uncovered, and don’t have beards, while adult males generally wear head coverings, and have full beards. But killing kids is part of the deal in America’s war in Afghanistan. Even in Iraq, 12 year olds were being classified by the US military (in contravention of the Geneva Conventions) as being “combat age,” for example in the assault on the city of Fallujah.

Let’s also be clear that this slaughter of nine Afghan children is the ugly reality behind Gen. Petraeus’s supposed policy of “protecting civilians.” Here’s a number that tells the true story about that policy: since Gen. Petraeus assumed command after the ousting of Gen. Stanley McChrystal, US airstrikes in Afghanistan have gone up by 172%. That’s not counting attacks by remote-controlled, missile-firing drone aircraft, which are also up by a huge amount. Those airstrikes and drone attacks are notoriously deadly for civilians--far more so than ground attacks, but of course they have the advantage for our “heroes” in uniform of reducing the number of US casualties in this hugely one-sided conflict.

There are so many aspects to this story that are disturbing, it’s hard to know what’s worse. Clearly we are deliberately murdering kids in Afghanistan, and this particular incident is just an example we know about. The men who did this will hopefully pay for their crimes by living with their guilt, but hopefully there will be an honest investigation and proper punishment too by military authorities (I’m not holding my breath). Petraeus and his boss, Commander in Chief Obama, should also be called to account and punished for implementing a war plan that calls for this kind of brutal slaughter of civilians.

But the US media are also guilty here. How can Americans reach proper conclusions about this obscene war against one of the poorest peoples in the world if our supposedly “fair and balanced” media simply perform the role of Pentagon propagandist, running Defense Department press releases as if they were news reports?

The blood of these poor Afghan kids is smeared not just on the hands of Obama and the generals, and the soldiers who pull the triggers and push the buttons that unleash death, but on the desks and keyboards of American newsrooms that cover up their crimes.

http://www.thiscantbehappening.net

What If NATO Is Defeated In Afghanistan?

By Eric S. Margolis
November 20, 2010
Courtesy Of "Information Clearing House"



Amazing as it sounds, NATO, the world’s most powerful military alliance, may be losing the only war the 61-year old pact every fought. All its soldiers, heavy bombers, tanks, helicopter gunships, armies of mercenaries, and electronic gear are being beaten by a bunch of lightly-armed Afghan farmers and mountain tribesmen.

This weekend in Lisbon, NATO’s 28 members face deepening differences over the Afghanistan War as public opinion in the United States, Canada and Europe continue to turn against the conflict.

President Barack Obama again painfully showed he is not fully in charge of US foreign policy. His pledge to begin withdrawing some US troops from Afghanistan next July has been brazenly – even scornfully - contradicted by US generals and strongly opposed by resurgent Congressional Republicans. Hardly anyone believes the president’s withdrawal date.

Obama is fresh from groveling before Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu. He pleaded with Israel’s leader to impose a short, token freeze on settlement building in exchange for a multi-billion dollar bribe from Washington of advanced US F-35 stealth warplanes, promises of UN vetoes, and raising the value of US arms stockpiled for Israel’s use to $1 billion. Rarely has a US president crawled so low.

Israel will likely take Obama’s bribe, with more sweeteners, but not before rubbing his face in the dirt to show who really runs US Mideast policy and as a warning not to mess with Israel. The last US president to challenge Israel’s colonization of the West Bank, George H. W. Bush, was ousted in 1992 after one term.

Obama appears to want out of the Afghan War. His final gamble of sending 30,000 more troops into the $7.5 billion monthly war has so far failed to produce the hoped-for decisive victory. But powerful pro-war groups, including the Pentagon, the arms industry and Republicans, are thwarting the weakened Obama’s attempts to wind down the war.

US, Canadian and European politicians who backed the Afghan War fear admitting the conflict was a huge waste of lives and treasure. Their political careers hang in the balance.

Canada’s prime minister, who is trying to assume the former role of Britain’s Tony Blair as Washington’s most obedient ally, just announced 900 Canadian soldiers will remain in Afghanistan after his own pullout date, ostensibly for "training."

That, of course, is the new euphemism for staying on as a permanent garrison to keep the Afghan client regime in power. "Training," as with US forces in Iraq, really means the old British Raj’s native troops under white officers.

Canadian journalists who opposed continuation of the Afghan War, or exposed many of the lies that justify it, have been purged from their newspapers under pressure from the Harper government – which claims, ironically, to be fighting in Afghanistan for "democracy."

While the US heads deeper into war and debt, its European allies are fed up with what was supposed to have been a limited "police action" to eliminate al-Qaida bases.

Instead, Europe got a full-scale war against Afghanistan’s Pashtun tribes raising uneasy memories of its 19th-century colonial "pacifications."

France’s new defense minister, Alain Juppé, openly called the Afghan conflict a "trap" for NATO and called for an exit strategy. He is quite right.

By contrast, British Defense Chief Gen. Sir David Richards, warned, "NATO now needs to plan for a 30 or 40 year role." In short, permanent occupation. That may be the bottom line, at least for the imperial camp. Central Asia’s resources are the real reason.

The US-installed Afghan president, Hamid Karzai, is demanding the US scale back military operations and night raids that inflict heavy civilian casualties. Washington counters that Karzai is mentally unstable. He is marked to be overthrown once Washington can find a suitable Pashtun replacement.

America’s rational for invading Afghanistan was to destroy al-Qaida. But CIA chief Leon Panetta recently admitted there were no more than 50 al-Qaida operatives left in Afghanistan. The rest – no more than few hundred - fled to Pakistan years ago.

So what are 110,000 US troops and 40,000 NATO troops doing in Afghanistan? Certainly not nation-building. Most reports show Afghanistan is in worse poverty and distress than before the US invasion.

While the platitudes and synthetic optimism flowed thick at Lisbon, giant US Army bulldozers, demolition teams and artillery were busy leveling wide swathes of Afghan homes around the Pashtun stronghold, Kandahar. In 2006, US Marines conducted a similar ruthless campaign to crush the rebellious Iraqi city of Falluja.

The US is using the same punitive tactics in Afghanistan and Iraq as Israel employs on the occupied West Bank: targeted assassinations, death squads, demolishing buildings and whole neighborhoods to punish and open fields of fire. In fact, the US military has often been guided by Israeli advisors in such operations.

Destroying large parts of Kandahar is a sign of growing US frustration and a sense the war is being lost. It certainly won’t win hearts and minds of the locals, the stated goal of US proconsul Gen. David Petraeus.

Like the rest of the Pentagon, Petraeus is determined that the mighty US military must not be defeated by Afghan tribesmen. The humiliation would be intolerable. Defeat in Afghanistan would bring demands for major cuts in the bloated US military, a Leviathan that consumes 50% of world military spending.

Washington’s so-called national security establishment (in Britain they used to be called "imperialists") also fears failure in Afghanistan threatens to undermine the entire NATO alliance.

Europe is slowly re-emerging as a world power, however fitfully and painfully. NATO has been the primary tool of US geopolitical control of Western Europe since the late 1940’s. The Japan-US security pact has played the same role in north Asia.

The loss of the Afghan War by the US and its reluctant allies will call into question the reason for the alliance and likely hasten Europe building an integrated military independent of US control. America’s grip on Western Europe would be ended.

That is why Afghanistan so unnerves Washington’s right wingers. The defeat of Soviet armies in Afghanistan in 1989 began the collapse of the Soviet Empire. Could the same fate be in store for the American Raj?

Copyright Eric S. Margolis 2010 - http://www.ericmargolis.com/

NATO'S True Role In US Grand Strategy

Encircling Russia, Targeting China

By DIANA JOHNSTONE
November 18, 2010
Courtesy Of "CounterPunch"

On November 19 and 20, NATO leaders meet in Lisbon for what is billed as a summit on “NATO’s Strategic Concept”.  Among topics of discussion will be an array of scary “threats”, from cyberwar to climate change, as well as nice protective things like nuclear weapons and a high tech Maginot Line boondoggle supposed to stop enemy missiles in mid-air. The NATO leaders will be unable to avoid talking about the war in Afghanistan, that endless crusade that unites the civilized world against the elusive Old Man of the Mountain, Hassan i Sabah, eleventh century chief of the Assassins in his latest reincarnation as Osama bin Laden.  There will no doubt be much talk of “our shared values”. 

Most of what they will discuss is fiction with a price tag.

The one thing missing from the Strategic Concept summit agenda is a serious discussion of strategy.

This is partly because NATO as such has no strategy, and cannot have its own strategy.  NATO is in reality an instrument of United States strategy.  Its only operative Strategic Concept is the one put into practice by the United States. But even that is an elusive phantom.  American leaders seem to prefer striking postures, “showing resolve”, to defining strategies.

One who does presume to define strategy is Zbigniew Brzezinski, godfather of the Afghan Mujahidin back when they could be used to destroy the Soviet Union.  Brzezinski was not shy about bluntly stating the strategic objective of U.S. policy in his 1993 book The Grand Chessboard: “American primacy”.  As for NATO, he described it as one of the institutions serving to perpetuate American hegemony, “making the United States a key participant even in intra-European affairs.” In its “global web of specialized institutions”, which of course includes NATO, the United States exercises power through “continuous bargaining, dialogue, diffusion, and quest for formal consensus, even though that power originates ultimately from a single source, namely, Washington, D.C.” 

The description perfectly fits the Lisbon “Strategic Concept” conference.  Last week, NATO’s Danish secretary general, Anders Fogh Rasmussen, announced that “we are pretty close to a consensus”.  And this consensus, according to the New York Times, “will probably follow President Barack Obama’s own formulation: to work toward a non-nuclear world while maintaining a nuclear deterrent”.

Wait a minute, does that make sense?  No, but it is the stuff of NATO consensus. Peace through war, nuclear disarmament through nuclear armament, and above all, defense of member states by sending expeditionary forces to infuriate the natives of distant lands. 

A strategy is not a consensus written by committees.

The American method of “continuous bargaining, dialogue, diffusion, and quest for formal consensus” wears down whatever resistance may occasionally appear.  Thus Germany and France initially resisted Georgian membership in NATO, as well as the notorious “missile shield”, both seen as blatant provocations apt to set off a new arms race with Russia and damage fruitful German and French relations with Moscow, for no useful purpose.  But the United States does not take no for an answer, and keeps repeating its imperatives until resistance fades.  The one recent exception was the French refusal to join the invasion of Iraq, but the angry U.S. reaction scared the conservative French political class into supporting the pro-American Nicolas Sarkozy.

In Search Of “Threats” and “Challenges”

The very heart of what passes for a “strategic concept” was first declared and put into operation in the spring of 1999, when NATO defied international law, the United Nations and its own original charter by waging an aggressive war outside its defensive perimeter against Yugoslavia. That transformed NATO from a defensive to an offensive alliance. Ten years later, the godmother of that war, Madeleine Albright, was picked to chair the “group of experts” that spent several months holding seminars, consultations and meetings preparing the Lisbon agenda. Prominent in these gatherings were Lord Peter Levene, chairman of Lloyd’s of London, the insurance giant, and the former chief executive of Royal Dutch Shell, Jeroen van der Veer.  These ruling class figures are not exactly military strategists, but their participation should reassure the international business community that their worldwide interests are being taken into consideration.

Indeed, a catalogue of threats enumerated by Rasmussen in a speech last year seemed to suggest that NATO was working for the insurance industry.  NATO, he said, was needed to deal with piracy, cyber security, climate change, extreme weather events such as catastrophic storms and flooding, rising sea levels, large-scale population movement into inhabited areas, sometimes across borders, water shortages, droughts, decreasing food production, global warming, CO2 emissions, the retreat of Arctic ice uncovering hitherto inaccessible resources, fuel efficiency and dependence on foreign sources, etc.   

Most of the enumerated threats cannot even remotely be construed as calling for military solutions. Surely no "rogue states" or "outposts of tyranny" or "international terrorists" are responsible for climate change, yet Rasmussen presents them as challenges to NATO.

On the other hand, some of the results of these scenarios, such as population movements caused by rising sea levels or drought, can indeed be seen as potentially causing crises.  The ominous aspect of the enumeration is precisely that all such problems are eagerly snatched up by NATO as requiring military solutions.

The main threat to NATO is its own obsolescence.  And the search for a “strategic concept” is the search for pretexts to keep it going.

NATO’s Threat To The World

While it searches for threats, NATO itself is a growing threat to the world.  The basic threat is its contribution to strengthening the U.S.-led tendency to abandon diplomacy and negotiations in favor of military force.  This is seen clearly in Rasmussen’s inclusion of weather phenomena in his list of threats to NATO, when they should, instead, be problems for international diplomacy and negotiations.  The growing danger is that Western diplomacy is dying.  The United States has set the tone: we are virtuous, we have the power, the rest of the world must obey or else.  

Diplomacy is despised as weakness. The State Department has long since ceased to be at the core of U.S. foreign policy.  With its vast network of military bases the world over, as well as military attachés in embassies and countless missions to client countries, the Pentagon is incomparably more powerful and influential in the world than the State Department. Recent Secretaries of State, far from seeking diplomatic alternatives to war, have actually played a leading role in advocating war instead of diplomacy, whether Madeleine Albright in the Balkans or Colin Powell waving fake test tubes in the United Nations Security Council.  Policy is defined by the National Security Advisor, various privately-funded think tanks and the Pentagon, with interference from a Congress which itself is composed of politicians eager to obtain military contracts for their constituencies. 

NATO is dragging Washington’s European allies down the same path.  Just as the Pentagon has replaced the State Department, NATO itself is being used by the United States as a potential substitute for the United Nations.  The 1999 “Kosovo war” was a first major step in that direction.  Sarkozy’s France, after rejoining the NATO joint command, is gutting the traditionally skilled French foreign service, cutting back on civilian representation throughout the world.  The European Union foreign service now being created by Lady Ashton will have no policy and no authority of its own. 

Bureaucratic Inertia

Behind its appeals to “common values”, NATO is driven above all by bureaucratic inertia.  The alliance itself is an excrescence of the U.S. military-industrial complex. For sixty years, military procurements and Pentagon contracts have been an essential source of industrial research, profits, jobs, Congressional careers, even university funding. The interplay of these varied interests converge to determine an implicit U.S. strategy of world conquest. 

An ever-expanding global network of somewhere between 800 and a thousand military bases on foreign soil. 

Bilateral military accords with client states which offer training while obliging them to purchase U.S.-made weapons and redesign their armed forces away from national defense toward internal security (i.e. repression) and possible integration into U.S.-led wars of aggression. 

Use of these close relationships with local armed forces to influence the domestic politics of weaker states. 

Perpetual military exercises with client states, which provide the Pentagon with perfect knowledge of the military potential of client states, integrate them into the U.S. military machine, and sustain a “ready for war” mentality. 

Deployment of its network of bases, “allies” and military exercises so as to surround, isolate, intimidate and eventually provoke major nations perceived as potential rivals, notably Russia and China. 

The implicit strategy of the United States, as perceived by its actions, is a gradual military conquest to ensure world domination.  One original feature of this world conquest project is that, although extremely active, day after day, it is virtually ignored by the vast majority of the population of the conquering nation, as well as by its most closely dominated allies, i.e., the NATO states.  The endless propaganda about “terrorist threats” (the fleas on the elephant) and other diversions keep most Americans totally unaware of what is going on, all the more easily in that Americans are almost uniquely ignorant of the rest of the world and thus totally uninterested.  The U.S. may bomb a country off the map before more than a small fraction of Americans know where to find it.

The main task of U.S. strategists, whose careers take them between think tanks, boards of directors, consultancy firms and the government, is to justify this giant mechanism much more than to steer it. To a large extent, it steers itself.   Since the collapse of the “Soviet threat”, policy-makers have settled for invisible or potential threats.  U.S. military doctrine has as its aim to move preventively against any potential rival to U.S. world hegemony.  Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, Russia retains the largest arsenal outside the United States, and China is a rapidly rising economic power.  Neither one threatens the United States or Western Europe.  On the contrary, both are ready and willing to concentrate on peaceful business.

However, they are increasingly alarmed by the military encirclement and provocative military exercises carried on by the United States on their very doorsteps. The implicit aggressive strategy may be obscure to most Americans, but leaders in the targeted countries are quite certain they understand what it is going on.

The Russia-Iran-Israel Triangle

Currently, the main explicit “enemy” is Iran.  Washington claims that the “missile shield” which it is forcing on its European allies is designed to defend the West from Iran. But the Russians see quite clearly that the missile shield is aimed at themselves. First of all, they understand quite clearly that Iran has no such missiles nor any possible motive for using them against the West.  It is perfectly obvious to all informed analysts that even if Iran developed nuclear weapons and missiles, they would be conceived as a deterrent against Israel, the regional nuclear superpower which enjoys a free hand attacking neighboring countries.  Israel does not want to lose that freedom to attack, and thus naturally opposes the Iranian deterrent.  Israeli propagandists scream loudly about the threat from Iran, and have worked incessantly to infect NATO with their paranoia. 

Israel has even been described as “Global NATO’s 29th member”. Israeli officials have assiduously worked on a receptive Madeleine Albright to make sure that Israeli interests are included in the “Strategic Concept”.  During the past five years, Israel and NATO have been taking part in joint naval exercises in the Red Sea and in the Mediterranean, as well as joint ground exercises from Brussels to Ukraine. On October 16, 2006, Israel became the first non-European country to reach a so-called “Individual Cooperation Program” agreement with NATO for cooperation in 27 different areas.  It is worth noting that Israel is the only country outside Europe which the U.S. includes in the area of responsibility of its European Command (rather than the Central Command that covers the rest of the Middle East).

At a NATO-Israel Relations seminar in Herzliya on October 24, 2006, the Israeli foreign minister at the time, Tzipi Livni, declared that "The alliance between NATO and Israel is only natural....Israel and NATO share a common strategic vision.  In many ways, Israel is the front line defending our common way of life."

Not everybody in European countries would consider that Israeli settlements in occupied Palestine reflect “our common way of life”.  This is no doubt one reason why the deepening union between NATO and Israel has not taken the open form of NATO membership.  Especially after the savage attack on Gaza, such a move would arouse objections in European countries.  Nevertheless, Israel continues to invite itself into NATO, ardently supported, of course, by its faithful followers in the U.S. Congress.

The principal cause of this growing Israel-NATO symbiosis has been identified by Mearsheimer and Walt: the vigorous and powerful pro-Israel lobby in the United States.  Israeli lobbies are also strong in France, Britain and the UK.  They have zealously developed the theme of Israel as the “front line” in the defense of “Western values” against militant Islam.  The fact that militant Islam is largely a product of that “front line” creates a perfect vicious circle.

Israel’s aggressive stance toward its regional neighbors would be a serious liability for NATO, apt to be dragged into wars of Israel’s choosing which are by no means in the interest of Europe.

However, there is one subtle strategic advantage in the Israeli connection which the United States seems to be using… against Russia.  By subscribing to the hysterical “Iranian threat” theory, the United States can continue to claim with a straight face that the planned missile shield is directed against Iran, not Russia.  This cannot be expected to convince the Russians. 

But it can be used to make their protests sound “paranoid” – at least to the ears of the Western faithful.  Dear me, what can they be complaining about when we “reset” our relations with Moscow and invite the Russian president to our “Strategic Concept” happy gathering?

However, the Russians know quite well that:

The missile shield is to be constructed surrounding Russia, which does have missiles, which it keeps for deterrence. 

By neutralizing Russian missiles, the United States would free its own hand to attack Russia, knowing that the Russia could not retaliate. 

Therefore, whatever is said, the missile shield, if it worked, would serve to facilitate eventual aggression against Russia.

Encircling Russia

The encirclement of Russia continues in the Black Sea, the Baltic and the Arctic circle.

United States officials continue to claim that Ukraine must join NATO.  Just this week, in a New York Times column, Zbigniew’s son Ian J. Brzezinski advised Obama against abandoning the “vision” of a “whole, free and secure” Europe including “eventual Georgian and Ukrainian membership in NATO and the European Union.” The fact that the vast majority of the people of Ukraine are against NATO membership is of no account.  For the current scion of the noble Brzezinski dynasty it is the minority that counts. Abandoning the vision “undercuts those in Georgia and Ukraine who see their future in Europe.  It reinforces Kremlin aspirations for a sphere of influence…”  The notion that “the Kremlin” aspires to a “sphere of influence” in Ukraine is absurd considering the extremely close historic links between Russia and Ukraine, whose capital Kiev was the cradle of the Russian state.  But the Brzezinski family hailed from Galicia, the part of Western Ukraine which once belonged to Poland, and which is the center of the anti-Russian minority.  U.S. foreign policy is all too frequently influenced by such foreign rivalries of which the vast majority of Americans are totally ignorant.

Relentless U.S. insistence on absorbing Ukraine continues despite the fact that it would imply expelling the Russian Black Sea fleet from its base in the Crimean peninsula, where the local population is overwhelmingly Russian speaking and pro-Russian.  This is a recipe for war with Russia if ever there was one.

And meanwhile, U.S. officials continue to declare their support for Georgia, whose American-trained president openly hopes to bring NATO support into his next war against Russia.  Aside from provocative naval maneuvers in the Black Sea, the United States, NATO and (as yet) non-NATO members Sweden and Finland regularly carry out major military exercises in the Baltic Sea, virtually in sight of the Russia cities Saint Petersburg and Kaliningrad.  These exercises involve thousands of ground troops, hundreds of  aircraft including F-15 jet fighters, AWACS, as well as naval forces including the U.S. Carrier Strike Group 12, landing craft and warships from a dozen countries.

Perhaps most ominous of all, in the Arctic region, the United States has been persistently engaging Canada and the Scandinavian states (including Denmark via Greenland) in a military deployment openly directed against Russia. The point of these Arctic deployment was stated by Fogh Rasmussen when he mentioned, among “threats” to be met by NATO, the fact that “Arctic ice is retreating, for resources that had, until now, been covered under ice.”  Now, one might consider that this uncovering of resources would be an opportunity for cooperation in exploiting them.  But that is not the official U.S. mind set.       

Last October, US Admiral James G Stavridis, supreme Nato commander for Europe, said global warming and a race for resources could lead to a conflict in the Arctic. Coast Guard Rear Admiral Christopher C. Colvin, in charge of Alaska’s coastline, said Russian shipping activity in the Arctic Ocean was “of particular concern” for the US and called for more military facilities in the region. 

The US Geological Service believes that the Arctic contains up to a quarter of the world’s unexplored deposits of oil and gas. Under the 1982 United Nations Law of the Sea Convention, a coastal state is entitled to a 200-nautical mile EEZ and can claim a further 150 miles if it proves that the seabed is a continuation of its continental shelf.  Russia is applying to make this claim. 

After pushing for the rest of the world to adopt the Convention, the United States Senate has still not ratified the Treaty.  In January 2009, NATO declared the “High North” to be “of strategic interest to the Alliance,” and since then, NATO has held several major war games clearly preparing for eventual conflict with Russia over Arctic resources.

Russia largely dismantled its defenses in the Arctic after the collapse of the Soviet Union, and has called for negotiating compromises over resource control.  Last September, Prime Minister Vladimir Putin called for joint efforts to protect the fragile ecosystem, attract foreign investment, promote environmentally friendly technologies and work to resolve disputes through international law.   But the United States, as usual, prefers to settle the issue by throwing its weight around.  This could lead to a new arms race in the Arctic, and even to armed clashes.

Despite all these provocative moves, it is most unlikely that the United States actually seeks war with Russia, although skirmishes and incidents here and there cannot be ruled out.  The U.S. policy appears to be to encircle and intimidate Russia to such an extent that it accepts a semi-satellite status that neutralizes it in the anticipated future conflict with China.

Target China

The only reason to target China is like the proverbial reason to climb the mountain: it is there.  It is big.  And the US must be on top of everything.

The strategy for dominating China is the same as for Russia.  It is classic warfare: encirclement, siege, more or less clandestine support for internal disorder.  As examples of this strategy:

The United States is provocatively strengthening its military presence along the Pacific shores of China, offering “protection against China” to East Asian countries.

During the Cold War, when India got its armaments from the Soviet Union and struck a non-aligned posture, the United States armed Pakistan as its main regional ally.  Now the U.S. is shifting its favors to India, in order to keep India out of the orbit of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization and to build it as a counterweight to China. 

The United States and its allies support any internal dissidence that might weaken China, whether it is the Dalai Lama, the Uighurs, or Liu Xiaobo, the jailed dissident. 

The Nobel Peace Prize was bestowed on Liu Xiaobo by a committee of Norwegian legislators headed by Thorbjorn Jagland, Norway’s echo of Tony Blair, who has served as Norway’s prime minister and foreign minister, and has been one of his country’s main cheerleaders for NATO. 

       At a NATO-sponsored conference of European parliamentarians last year, Jagland declared: 

“When we are not able to stop tyranny, war starts. This is why NATO is indispensable. NATO is the only multilateral military organization rooted in international law. It is an organization that the U.N. can use when necessary — to stop tyranny, like we did in the Balkans.” This is an astoundingly bold misstatement of fact, considering that NATO openly defied international law and the United Nations to make war in the Balkans – where in reality there was ethnic conflict, but no “tyranny”.

In announcing the choice of Liu, the Norwegian Nobel committee, headed by Jagland, declared that it “has long believed that there is a close connection between human rights and peace." The “close connection”, to follow the logic of Jagland’s own statements, is that if a foreign state fails to respect human rights according to Western interpretations, it may be bombed, as NATO bombed Yugoslavia. Indeed, the very powers that make the most noise about “human rights”, notably the United States and Britain, are the ones making the most wars all over the world.  The Norwegian’s statements make it clear that granting the Nobel Peace Prize to Liu (who in his youth spent time in Norway) amounted in reality to an endorsement of NATO.

“Democracies” To Replace The United Nations

The European members of NATO add relatively little to the military power of the United States. 

Their contribution is above all political.  Their presence maintains the illusion of an “International Community”.   The world conquest being pursued by the bureaucratic inertia of the Pentagon can be presented as the crusade by the world’s “democracies” to spread their enlightened political order to the rest of a recalcitrant world. 

The Euro-Atlantic governments proclaim their “democracy” as proof of their absolute right to intervene in the affairs of the rest of the world.  On the basis of the fallacy that “human rights are necessary for peace”, they proclaim their right to make war. 

A crucial question is whether “Western democracy” still has the strength to dismantle this war machine before it is too late.

Note: Grateful thanks to Rick Rozoff for his constant flow of important information.

Diana Johnstone is the author of Fools Crusade: Yugoslavia, NATO and Western Delusions.She can be reached at  diana.josto@yahoo.fr

All You Need Is War, NOT Love

Have (Infinite) War, Will Travel 


By Pepe Escobar
November 18, 2010
Courtesy Of "Asia Times Online"


Anyone aware enough to think that Washington's goal is not to "win" the unwinnable AfPak quagmire but to keep playing its bloody infinite war game forever is now eligible for a personal stimulus package (in gold).

Let's review the recent evidence. All of a sudden, the White House, the Pentagon and the United States House of Representatives have all embarked on a new narrative: forget major US troop withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2011; let's move the goalpost to 2014.

Then wily Afghan President Hamid Karzai tells the Washington Post he does not want all these US troops roaming around "his" country no more, adding please, stop killing my people with
special-forces night ops - a euphemism for Pentagon terrorism.

General David “I'm always positioning myself for 2012” Petraeus is "astonished". How could he not be? After all, Karzai wanted to give the boot to private contractors - undisputed AfPak champions of false-flag black ops - then he gave up, as he might give up again on the night raids. As for Petraeus, he only wants the best of both worlds; kick up the hell-raising, as in drone hits and night ops (who cares about collateral damage?) and sit back and talk with the Pakistani Inter-Services Intelligence-created Taliban.

Incidentally, Petraeus' counter-insurgency myth has been buried in the plains south of the Hindu Kush (not that many in the US noted). The counter-insurgency (COIN) myth implies that Washington, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and what passes for "Afghan security forces" could "take, clear, hold and build" areas previously controlled by the Taliban. They could not accomplish any of this even in Marjah, insistently sold by the Pentagon and compliant corporate media as a success, not to mention much bigger Kandahar.

Former US secretary of state Colin Powell has just weighed in on CNN, admitting the US won't be "pulling out 100,000 troops. I don't know how many troops we'll pull out." Powell also said that "inside the national security team", the whole thing is "conditions-based". Thus "conditions" may be bent to suit any narrative. Sharp noses may immediately detect a whiff of Vietnam, and Powell had to insist that Afghanistan is not that country. Well, whether Karzai is increasingly becoming the new Ngo Dinh Diem is beside the point; his assassination would not solve anything anyway.

And all this while a 71-page Council on Foreign Relations report written by 25 "experts" gets a lot of traction in Washington. The report finds that the war costs a fortune, may not serve US interests and it's not "clear that the effort will succeed". Do people get paid to conclude this? The report also meekly suggests that depending on President Barack Obama's December strategic AfPak review, the US "should move quickly to recalculate its military presence in Afghanistan". It won't.

Let's try following the money. The AfPak war costs roughly US $7 billion a month - money that Washington needs to borrow from Beijing. Afghanistan in itself costs $65 billion a year - not counting NATO and humanitarian aid. Afghanistan's gross domestic product is only $22 billion. So Washington is spending three times the wealth of a whole country just to occupy it. Money for nothing. Properly invested, by this time Afghanistan would be the new Singapore.

AfPak costs nearly $100 billion a year. Surrealist as it may seem, polls indicate that for most Americans the US federal budget deficit is not a priority. No wonder no election candidates on November 2 emitted a peep about the ridiculously expensive quagmire.

Let's face it. Whoever is writing this screenplay deserves an Oscar.

All You Need Is NATO

According to the official narrative, technically NATO only left its (cavernous) building in Europe for Afghanistan under the organization's Article 5 (emphasizing collective defense) to help Washington fight George W Bush's "war on terror" against al-Qaeda. Yet even somnolent diplomats in Brussels know that Osama bin Laden and his deputy Ayman al-Zawahiri crossed from eastern Afghanistan to Pakistan in early December 2001, and disappeared into a black void.

This would never prevent NATO chief Anders Fogh Rasmussen - ahead of the NATO summit this weekend in Lisbon - stressing that the war, well, goes on forever, as in "there is no alternative to continuing military operations". NATO's council secretary Edmund Whiteside didn't mince his words, "Afghanistan will be a very long military venture." And German Brigadier General Josef Blotz insists: "No timetable has been set for withdrawal of coalition troops."

The "strategy" of the 152,000-soldier, 50-nation, NATO-led International Security Assistance Force in Afghanistan ranks as a thesis on Monty Python geopolitics; to pledge a tsunami of euros for Karzai's shenanigans while forcing member countries to unleash ever more troops into the Taliban meat grinder - even though public opinion all across Europe says out loud "we can't take this anymore".

At least the commander of British forces in southern Afghanistan, Major General Nick Carter, was sensible enough to stress that NATO would only know if it was "winning" by June 2011, "when the fighting season begins again" and everyone can "compare Taliban attacks with this year". Wait for another eight months and pray for 2014; that's the "strategy". Talk about on-the-ground intelligence.

NATO is absolutely useless at infiltrating the historic Taliban - also known as the Quetta shura, based in Balochistan (they cannot even point a drone to where Mullah Omar is). NATO cannot infiltrate the Haqqani network in North Waziristan. And NATO cannot infiltrate the Hezb-i-Islami network, controlled by former prime minister and bomber of Kabul (in the mid-1990s) Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, based in and around the strategic Khyber Pass.

The Pakistani ISI will always align with the Taliban under any circumstances - because this is Islamabad's way of protecting its "strategic depth" against India. The ISI will always insist on having the Taliban at the same table with Washington, otherwise any semblance of "talks" will be dead on arrival.

Islamabad's dream scenario is the Taliban, the Haqqanis and Hezb-i-Islami controlling southern and eastern Afghanistan. That would also be instrumental in preventing another one of Islamabad's primal fears - that disgruntled Pashtuns will unite and go all out to form an across-the-artificial-border Pashtunistan.

The key to all this mess is not Obama, Karzai, the Pentagon or NATO. It's which way General Ashfaq Parvez Kiani, number 29 on Forbes' list of the most powerful people in the world, will see the wind blowing. As much as during the Bush "war on terror" years, when Islamabad was ruled from Washington, during the Obama AfPak years the White House is a hostage of Islamabad.

But for the Pentagon/NATO axis, Pakistan is just a drop in the ocean. Next Friday and Saturday, at the Lisbon summit, the world will be presented with a NATO-goes-global narrative. Team Pentagon/NATO will be convinced to abandon its privileged outpost of infinite war - Afghanistan - over its dead nuclear bombs. After all, Washington/Brussels has implanted a precious foothold in the heart of Eurasia - arguably for life.

The Lisbon summit, moreover, will see NATO formally adopting a new strategic concept - which essentially means keeping its nuclear arsenal in perpetuity, including US nuclear bombs stationed in Europe. You know, those nuclear bombs that Iran does not have (but Pakistan and India, not to mention Israel, do). Paraphrasing the great Burt Bacharach, what the world needs now, is NATO sweet NATO.

Pepe Escobar is the author of Globalistan: How the Globalized World is Dissolving into Liquid War (Nimble Books, 2007) andRedZone Blues: a snapshot of Baghdad during the surge. His new book, just out, is Obamadoes Globalistan (Nimble Books, 2009). 

He may be reached at pepeasia@yahoo.com. 

(Copyright 2010 Asia Times Online (Holdings) Ltd. All rights reserved.)

Evo Answers NATO

Lights Of Rebellion

By FIDEL CASTRO
Weekend Edition
November 26 - 28, 2010
Courtesy Of "CounterPunch"

There are moments in history that require a speech, even if it is as brief as the “Alea jacta est” (“The die is cast”) pronounced by Julius Caesar when he crossed the Rubicon. It had to be crossed that day, precisely when the ministers of defence of the sovereign states of the western hemisphere were meeting in the city of Santa Cruz, where the Yankees had been encouraging secessionism and the disintegratrion of Bolivia.

It was Monday the 21st and the news agencies were devoting their time to divulging and commenting on the NATO meeting in Lisbon where that war-mongering institution, using arrogant and uncouth language, proclaimed its right to intevene in any country of the world wherever their interests were being felt to be threatened.

They were completely ignoring the fate of billions of people, and the real causes of poverty and suffering of most of the planet’s inhabitants.

NATO’s cynicism deserved an answer, and that arrived in the voice of an Aymara Indian from Bolivia, in the heart of South America, where a more human civilization had blossomed before the Conquest, colonialism, capitalist development and imperialism imposed the rule of brute force, based on the power of more developed weapons and technologies.

Evo Morales, president of that country, elected by the vast majority of his people, with indisputable arguments, information and facts, perhaps even before being aware of the monstrous NATO document, provided an answer to the policy that the United States government has historically been carrying out with the peoples of Latin America and the Caribbean.

The policy of might expressed through wars, crimes, violations to consitituions and the laws; training the officers of the armed institutions in conspiracies, coups d’état, political crimes that were used to overthrow progressive governments and install regimes of force to which they regularly offered political, military and media support.

Never was there a more timely speech.

Many times using the expressive manner of his Aymara language, he stated truths that will go down in history.

I shall attempt to briefly summarize what he said, using his own phrases and words:

“Thank you very much.

“It is a great satisfaction to receive you, the ministers of defence of the Americas, in Santa Cruz de la Sierra; Santa Cruz, the land of Ignacio Warnes, of Juan José Manuel Vaca, rebellious men who from 1810 fought and gave their lives for the independence of our beloved Bolivia.

“Men such as Andrés Ibáñez, Atahuallpa Tumpa, a native brother who, during the republic, fought for autonomy and for equality for all the peoples of our lands.

“Welcome to Bolivia, land of Túpac Katarí, land of Bartolina Sisa, of Simón Bolívar and of so many men who fought 200 years ago for the Independence of Bolivia and many countries in the Americas.

“Latin America […], in recent years, is living through profound democratic transformations seeking equality and dignity for the peoples…”

“…following the footsteps of Antonio José de Sucre, of Simón Bolívar, of so many native, mestizo and Creole leaders who lived 200 years ago.”

“Exactly one week ago, we were celebrating the bicentenary of the Army of Bolivia which, on November 14th of 1810, native peoples, mestizos and Creoles had organized as a military force to fight against Spanish domination…”

“In recent years, Latin America again takes up that decision to free ourselves as in a second liberation that is not only social or cultural but also economic and financial for the peoples of Latin America.

“…this 9th Conference of Ministers of the Defence has on its agenda gender and multiculturalism in the Armed Forces, democracy, peace and security for the Americas, natural disasters, humanitarian aid and the role of the Armed Forces; an appropriate agenda, an agenda that is well-conceived to discuss the hopes of the peoples, not just of Latin America, but of the world”.

“In 1985 […] the only ones who could be elected or could elect authorities were those having money, those who had a profession or who spoke Spanish or Castilian.

“Therefore, less than 10 percent of the Bolivian population could take part in electing or being elected as authorities, and more than 90 percent of us had no rights […] there have been various processes […] some reforms, but in 2009, with the participation of the Bolivian people for the very first time, a new Plurinational State Constitution was passed by the Bolivian people.”

“…in this new Constitution, of course the most excluded sectors […] had no rights to be elected or to elect the State authorities of the Republic of Bolivia.

“More than 180 years had to go by for us to make some profound transformations and incorporate these historically excluded sectors in Bolivia, and I hope I am not mistaken, I think it is the only country not just in the Americas but in the entire world where 50 percent of the ministers are women and 50 percent are men.”

“Of course beyond norms, the constitution […] I think that this is the political decision we must take in order to include the most abandoned sectors; after the Constitution was approved by the Bolivian people in 2009, the most excluded, reviled people, those that were considered to be animals, those that were the indigenous movement, now they are represented in the Plurinational Legislative Assembly as well as in the departmental assemblies.

“Something important; for the indigenous movements that do not have a large population, special electoral districts have been created so that our brothers and sisters from the highlands, the valleys and the eastern part of Bolivia may be represented.

The single candidate system also allow for our indigenous brothers and sisters to be represented in the Plurinational Legislative Assembly …”

“In this way, we permit these indigenous brothers and sisters, who were left out and condemned to extermination, to be present.”

“…that had never happened before …”

“…when I was a young man, as a union leader I would sometimes dispute with the Armed Forces and later, when I became president, I realized that a large part of the Armed Forces comes from the peasant communities, particularly those in the valleys…”

“Dear Ministers: I would like to tell you that never before did we have such participation; before, it was merely the color of your skin that determined your class in society and now, a indigenous person, a union leader, an intellectual, a professional, a business leader, a soldier, a general, anyone can become the president, democratically. Before, we didn’t have this way of changing Bolivia and our constitution.

“When this conference is putting forth the idea of only democracy, security and peace, of reviewing history, of reviewing the norms, this is for me very exciting; it is a pleasure to review these things dealing with democracy, security and peace in the Americas or in the world, not just for the sake of reviewing.

“If we talk about democracy in Bolivia’s past, there was only a contractual democracy; there was no party that could win with more than 50% as the Constitution of the Plurinational State declares …”

“…up to 2005, from 1952, the 1950s, in Bolivia there were only ‘contractual democracies’; there were parties winning with 20 percent, 30 percent …”

“A party in third place could become president; it all depended on the contracts and the distribution of the ministers. This kind of contract was precisely the kind that used to be guided by the United States ambassador. Our compatriots, our Bolivian brothers and sisters, should remember 2002, for example, when there was no winner having more than 50 percent; the party with the highest percentage in the voting got 21 percent. And there was the former US ambassador, Manuel Rocha, pulling together, uniting the neoliberal parties, in order for there to be a government: and those governments didn’t last, they could not endure.

“Luckily, thanks to the conscience of the Bolivian people, these kinds of democracies are being eliminated; now we do not have a ‘contractual democracy’, but a legitimate democracy in the hearts of the Bolivian people who accompany it with the thoughts and feelings coming from the suffering of peoples, under a government program.”

“…a program that brings dignity to the Bolivians, a program that seeks equality of all Bolivians, men and women; a program that recovers its natural resources, a program that allows basic services to be a human right…”

“…when some of our opposition, like yourselves, every country has its opposition, tells us, some totalitarian government, a dictatorial government, is it my fault that this program proposed by a party has more than two-thirds support in the different bodies of the Plurinational State, by myself I have not been able to win the mayoralty of the city of Santa Cruz.

“We respect our mayor, they won, but I salute you, Mr. Mayor, for the actions you undertook last week to fight against the speculation […] congratuations Mr. Mayor, you have my respect…”

“And some say to us, one single philosophy, there is no single philosophy; only a program that is working in the different social sectors at the head of social movements of the indigenous peoples and the workers can obtain the support needed to change Bolivia.

“But what do we face along the road if we talk about democracy, conspiracy, coup d’état, attempts at coups in 2008 […] who was it that contributed to this coup? The former US ambassador.

“I was looking over some history […] about the 1946 coup d’état when the president was Lt. Col. Gualberto Villarroel, who said as president, I am not the enemy of the rich, but I am more a friend to the poor; this patriotic soldier was the first president who called together the indigenous peoples’ congress.

“Another president, Germán Bush, a soldier, who stated: I have not become the president to serve the capitalists.

“The first president to nationalize natural resources, was another soldier, David Toro; I’m speaking of 1937 or 1938 […], but this soldier was hanged in 1946, they assassinated him in the Palace.”

“…and so the offensive was concentrated on the massive part of the Palacio Quemado that was under fire from Illimani Street, at the corner of Bolívar, from Comercio Street, from the Police and from behind from the La Salle and Kersul buildings where the US consulate is located.”

“…watching the fire coming from the Kersul Building, where the US consulate was, and which had been investigating this patriotic soldier who had ensured the first native congress, strafing the building, shooting to kill that soldier…those are the documents we are looking over.

“…history repeats itself; I had to face an ambassador who organizes, who plans to terminate my presidency using anti-democratic means, and I think that this gets repeated all over the world.

“But a comrade, a compatriot of ours who has been the victim of so many military coups tell me: President Evo, you have to watch out for the United States Embassy, there have always been coups d’état all over Latin America and, he says to me, there has never been a coup in the United States because there is no US embassy; I really start to see the truth that history does not hear coups d’état.

“…we, the countries who have suffered attempts at coups from 2002 in Venezuela, 2008 in Bolivia, 2009 in Honduras, 2010 in Ecuador; and we must acknowledge, compatriots from Latin America or the Americas, that the US had a victory in Honduras, strengthening that coup, the American empire has had a victory over us, but also the peoples of the Americas, in Venezuela, Bolivia and Ecuador have won […] what will the future bring?; we shall see the future.”

“…this internal assessment should be a profound debate by the ministers of defence to guarantee the democracies […] my ancestors, my people, have permanently been victims of coups, bloody coups, not because they wanted the military, the Armed Forces, but because of internal and external political decisions designed to terminate revolutionary governments, the governments that are born of the people; that is the history of Latin America.”

“…we have the right to propose for ourselves the ways of guaranteeing democracy in each country, but without coups, or coup attempts.

“We would like this conference of ministers of defence to guarantee an true peoples’ democracy, respecting our regional differences, the differences from sector to sector.

“But also, when we speak of peace, I am saying, how can we have peace if there are military bases? And there too I can speak with some knowledge because I have been the victim of these US military bases, with the excuse of a war against drug trafficking.

“When I was a soldier, a private in the Armed Forces in 1978, the officers and non-commissioned officers taught me to defend the Homeland; the Armed Forces are there to defend the homeland, the Armed Forces cannot permit any foreign uniformed and armed soldier to be in Bolivia.

“…when I became a leader, I personally have been witness to the fact that uniformed and armed DEA members were leading the Armed Forces and the National Police, armed with machine guns, with the excuse of fighting agains drug trafficking against the social movements, persecuting by flying light planes over the marches from Santa Cruz, from Cochabamba, from Oruro, and they couldn’t find us, not with their light planes; and they would say that these were ghost marches, some ghost marches; thousands of comrades looking for retribution and seeking dignity and the sovereignty of out peoples.”

“…I am convinced that it we the people fight for our dignity, for our sovereignty, this cannot be done with military bases nor with military interventions, no matter how small we may be, we, the countries called under-developed, countries called developing countries; we have dignity, we have sovereignty. Also, when I had a seat in parliament they tried to make me support immunity for officials of the US embassy.

“What is immunity? So that US embassy officials, including the American DEA, should they comit some crime, wouldn’t be tried under Bolivian laws; this was an open invitation to kill, to wound us as they did in my region.”

“…Peace is the legitimate daughter of equality, and of dignity which is social justice; if there is no dignity, then there is no social justice and we cannot guarantee peace; how can we give a guarantee? Because there are peoples who rise up in rebellion because there is an injustice.”

“…listening to our UN Secretary General talking about the doctrines, the doctrines we know about in Bolivia, an anti-Communist doctrine that says coups should take place to militarily intervene in the mining communities because of the social movements; the mining communities were great revolutionaries aiming to transform Bolivia.

“In the 1950s, 1960s, they accused us of being Red Communists to the leaders of the mining sector so that we should be imprisoned, exiled, put on trial, even massacred; that era has passed; by now they cannot accuse us of being Reds or Communists – we all have the right to think differently.

“If, for a country or a region, the solution is Communism: fine; for another country it is Socialism: fine. It is the democratic decision of any country.

“But when we have won that struggle and they can no longer justify it with an anti-Communist doctrine to silence the people, to replace presidents, to change governments, another doctrine appears: the war on drugs.

“Of course it is the obligation of all of us to fight against drugs […] Bolivia is not a drug-culture, Bolivia is not a cocaine-culture, but where is it that cocaine comes from? It comes from the markets of developed countries, that isn’t the responsibility of the national government, but we are obliged to fight against it.”

“…behind the war on drug trafficking there cannot be geopolitical interests that need the excuse of the drug war to demonize the social movements, to criminalize the social movements, to confuse the coca leaf with cocaine, to confuse the coca grower with the drug trafficker, or the legal consumption of the coca leaf with the dependence on the narcotic.

“Why is it that they didn’t fight against coca right from the last century, if coca is so harmful? The Europeans were the first landowners to exploit the coca leaf, surely it wasn’t a detour to cocaine.

“Before, the US governments used to give certificates of acknowledgement to the best producers of coca leaves: why? So that the coca leaf grower could supply coca leaves to the tin miners and the US could take the tin to the United States.

“…the world knows, you all know, that the so-called war on drugs has failed; we have to change those policies, of course, what is this new policy, such as for example, ending the banking secrets: could it be that great drug trafficker, the big fish in the drug trafficking world, carries his money in his backpack, in his suitcase, travelling by plane, no, going around the banks – why not end the banking secret in order to end drug trafficking in order to control that drug trafficker?

“Why doesn’t every country defend its borders against the entry of all drugs with similar technology, radars? I think there is a capacity out there to control and we cannot control; and it is with the excuse of the war on drug trafficking that controls are put in place, especially directed towards how to recover natural resources for the trans-nationals.”

“…the former US ambassador Manuel Rocha who says: Don’t vote for Evo Morales. Evo Morales is the Andean Bin Laden and the coca growers are the Taliban.

“In other words, dear ministers, ministers of defence, according to this type of doctrine, you are at this very moment meeting with the Andean Bin Laden and my comrades from the social movements are the Taliban. Such accusations, often bending the truth out of shape.”

“…now, when they can no longer sustain these anti-Communist, anti-terrorist ideas and doctrines there is another new doctrine that we heard about a few days ago and I would like to take this opportunity to inform my people through the media.

“On the 17th of this month, a meeting of some Latin Americans and some US congressmen in the United States was held, a forum, which stated that there was danger in the Andes, threats to democracy, to human rights and inter-American security.

“…Congresswoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen said that in recent years we have been observing with concern the efforts of several countries in the region, such as Hugo Chavez in Venezuela, Evo Morales in Bolivia, Daniel Ortega in Nicaragua , Rafael Correa in Ecuador, which are trying to consolidate their power at any cost, the ALBA Alliance members with Chavez at the head, one after the other manipulating the democratic systems of their countries to serve their own autocratic goals.

“Perhaps we should tell that congresswoman that we didn’t win, like in the US by a margin of one percent or two, here we win by more than 50 percent, or more than 60 percent, and in some regions by more than 80 percent and that is real democracy.

“What does the agenda say about Daniel Ortega, but the coca agenda promoted by Evo Morales, it is a brand new alliance with Iran and Russia, the case of Rafael Correa, the doubtful constitutional reforms with anti-American candidates.

“…under my leadership Bolivia will have agreements, alliances with the entire world; nobody can stop me because we have that right, we are a cultura of dialogue.”

“…without stable democratic partnerships we cannot have regional security: regional security or security for the United States? Now, more than at any other time, is when the US supports its enemies or weakens its enemies; now is the time for the OAS to absolve its legacy of double standards and finally makes its member states comply with the principles and obligations in the inter-American Democratic Charter; it would be a good idea to review the Inter-American Charter.

“The second congressman (he is talking about Connie Mack, and he explains his ideas in these words), I have everything he wrote, all his speeches, but to save time I shall try to summarize, I’d like to speak about some observations for the last six years as member of this Congress, I have frankly seen two administrations: the Republicans and the Democrats.

“Along these lines I think that this idea both the administrations have had in regards to Hugo Chávez, is that we shall not intervene, let’s just sit back and let him implode by himself; and the other thought is, what if Hugo Chávez is crazy, and what does he say, I don’t go for any of these ideas so I don’t think Hugo Chávez is crazy and I don’t think the approach of letting him implode is going to work, Hugo Chávez is a threat to freedom and democracy in Latin America and around the world.”

“…this is what concerns me most, I hope therefore that we become the following majority in the next Congress, as chairman of the subcommittee we shall do just that, we shall look after Chávez, whether defeating him politically or exploding him physically.”

Next, Evo states:

“I would say that this congressman Connie Mack is a self-confessed murderer or conspirator against our comrade brother the president of Venezuela, Hugo Chávez.

“If anything should happen to the life of Hugo Chávez, the only person responsible will be this US congressman. He says it publicly and it is written in the media and in his speech.”

“Comrade, brother secretary general of the OAS, you have to throw us out of Venezuela, Ecuador and Bolivia and also another place, also Nicaragua, and apply sanctions: what does that mean? Surely it is an economic blockade like the one against Cuba.”

“I think that’s what the sanctions refer to, so how can some of us countries in the Americas guarantee security and peace when these are the proposals being made by some congressmen, by some Latin Americans.

“I was looking over in this respect, the reason why they had expelled Cuba in 1962, supposedly for being Leninist, Marxist and Communist, Cuba is thrown out of the OAS; now the new doctrine is an anti-ALBA doctrine since, in these countries, we greet Fidel and Chávez and other presidents, since having an instrument such as ALBA is having an instrument for integration, solidarity, unconditional solidarity, sharing instead of competing, practicing policies of complimentarism and not competition.

“…within that competition only small groups benefit and not the majorities who aspire to that from their presidents.

“Within these policies of competition and not complimentarism, not even capitalism is the solution for capitalism – that is the financial crisis.

“…the new doctrine much like earlier there were the doctrines from the School of Panama, the southern command was trainning our military, they shut that down thanks to the struggles of the people and now the School of the Americas is no longer around; what do we have now? Joint operations with special forces.”

“…I admire some of the officers of my Armed Forces who give details about those training sessions that they carry out each year on a rotational basis in the different countries of the Americas; what are they for? To propose to them how to wipe out those revolutionary countries, countries that are making profound changes in democracy, training sessions even to rehearse or teach snipers to kill the leaders.

“…with great indignation I had seen some pictures of these joint operations with special forces that rotate from country to country; of course Bolivia no longer participates, as long as I am the president, in these types of joint operations to keep on attacking democracy.

“…for the indigenous peoples’ movement […] this planet, or Pachamama, can exist without human beings, but we human beings cannot live without the planet, without Pachamama.”

“…capitalism is not private ownership because sometimes they try to confuse us and they say that President Evo is questioning capitalism; they are going to take away our homes, our cars; no, private ownership is guaranteed.”

“…the new constitution guarantees a plural economy and that plural economy ensures private ownership, it ensures communal ownership, state ownership and that of all the other social sectors, but when we are talking about capitalism we are talking about this irrational, irresponsible and unlimited growth.”

“Our comrades can no longer find water in the Amazon; when we start drilling in some region we have to go deeper and deeper to find very little water, and when we cannot ensure water on account of drought, exactly the result of global warming, that family must be left to fate, there are billions of them in the world, they are climatic migrants.

“We are not going to resolve that with the participation of the Armed Forces; we are not going to be able to resolve it with the participation of the ministers of defence or with cooperation; it is a structural world-based matter.”

“…we would like to resolve here, for the middle and long term, that the best solution is to put an end to disasters, or putting an end to natural disasters is putting an end to capitalism, changing those exaggerated industrialization policies.

“Of course all of our countries would like to become industrialized, to industrialize for life, to industrialize to be human beings and not to industrialize to end life and human beings; there are doctrines that proclaim and promote war, there are peoples or states living from war and that must end; and what we really have to end are those great weapons industries that put an end to life.”

“…I know that many ministers are bringing messages from their presidents, from their governments, their people; but let’s responsible to life, and being responsible to life means being responsible to the planet, or to Pachamama, our Mother Earth, and being responsible to Mother Earth, the planet or Pachamama is to respect the rights of Mother Earth.”

“…I would hope that the Americas, through you the ministers of defence, can lead the guaranteeing of the rights of Mother Earth in order to ensure human rights, life, humankind, not only for the Americas but for the entire world; I feel that we bear a great responsibility in this situation.

“I would like to acknowledge the participation of our Armed Forces, and to be honest with you, I was very much afraid, afraid in the year 2005, 2006, when I came to the Presidency, whether the Armed Forces would be with me or against me in this process.”

“…the Armed Forces taking part in social works, in structural changes, recovering the mines, supporting the policies for the recovery of the natural resources; these Armed Forces are now beloved by the Bolivian people.”

“…the people feel they have Armed Forces that are for the people; now we fortunately have two important bodies in the Plurinational State: the social movements that defend their natural resources and the Armed Forces are also defending their natural resources, and if we go back to 1810, it is obvious that the Armed Forces were born defending their natural resources, the identity and sovereignty of our peoples; only during some times were our Armed Forces used for evil, not to blame the commanders, but because of oligarchic interests or interests that were not of the people, and that obviously caused us a lot of harm.”

“…with policies being imposed from above and abroad, coming from the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank, privatizations, public companies being sold out to foreign interests.”

“…just the profits […] 18 percent was for the Bolivians and 82 percent went to the transnational corporations.

“On May the first of 2006, in a supreme decree, first we decided on State control of our natural resources and second, we are convinced that whoever invests has the right to recover their investment and has a right to have profits, and we said that now, with 18 % they could have profits and recover their investment; technicians showed this to me and from the first of May of 2006, 82 percent was for the Bolivians and 18 percent went to the investing corporations; so goes the nationalization in regards to their investments.”

Evo concludes his speech by contributing irrefutable information about the economic results achieved by the revolution.

“Before, the GDP in 2005 was 9 billion dollars, in 2010 it was 18.5 billion dollars of GDP.

“…with the World Bank and the IMF average income per person per year $1000 […] in our government it is $1,900.”

“…in 2005, Bolivia was the second to last country in international reserves and now we have improved from international reserves of $ 1.7 billion, to this year when we now have $9.3 billions…”

“…when we were dependent on US governments we could not even eradicate illiteracy; thanks to the unconditional cooperation of Cuba especially, and Venezuela, two years ago we declared Bolivia to be a territory free of illiteracy, after almost 200 years.

“In exchange for this cooperation, what does Cuba ask of us? Nothing. This is called solidarity; sharing the little we have and not sharing what is left over, that is what I learned from Comrade Fidel, a man I admire very much.”

Out of sheer modesty, Evo didn’t speak of the colossal advances obtained by the Bolivian people in matters of health. In the ophthalmological field alone, some 500,000 Bolivians had eye surgeries, health services reach all Bolivians and about 5,000 General Comprehensive Medicine specialists are being educated and will shortly be graduated. That sister country of Latin America has more than enough reason to feel proud.

Evo concludes:

“…without the IMF, I mean, if they don’t impose economic policies of privatizations, of auctions, we could be better off in democratic matters, if we didn’t depend on the United States we would improve our democracy in Latin America, it is the result of these last five years that I have been president.”

“Of course by saying this I am not saying that Bolivia now no longer needs cooperation, Bolivia still needs international loans, international cooperation, I acknowledge the European countries cooperating in Latin America, facilitating loans because we are in a process of profound transformations …”

“…that the peoples have the right to decide by themselves alone about their democracy, about their security, but while we have interventionist attitudes for any excuse […] we shall surely have to wait for the liberation of the people and as we can see they are going to keep on rebelling.

“For that reason, I am sure of rebellion towards revolution, of revolution towards decolonization …”

After Evo’s speech, a mere 48 hours later, Chávez’ speech fell like a bolt from the skies. The lights of rebellion are illuminating the skies of Our America.