Egypt: Tug Of War

As the crisis in Egypt develops, it is becoming increasingly clear what it is not about. It is not about the proposed constitution, many of whose provisions opposition members put their signatures to, before changing their minds and walking out of the drafting committee. Negotiations on the contentious clauses have been offered and rejected. Nor is it about the date of the referendum, which the Egyptian justice minister, Ahmed Mekki, offered to postpone. Again, this was rejected. Nor even is it about the temporary but absolute powers that the Egyptian president,Mohamed Morsi, assumed for himself – which will lapse the moment the referendum is held whatever the result.

Urging the opposition to shun dialogue, Mohamed ElBaradei said that Morsi had lost his legitimacy. So the target of the opposition National Salvation Front is not the constitution, or the emergency decree, but Morsi himself. What follows is a power battle in which the aim is to unseat a democratically elected president, and to prevent a referendum and fresh parliamentary elections being held, both of which Islamists stand a good chance of winning. Morsi, for his part, is determined that both polls be held as soon as possible to reaffirm the popular mandate which he still thinks he has.

In weighing who occupies the moral high ground, let us start with what happened on Wednesday night. That is when the crisis, sparked by Morsi's decree when he was at the height of his domestic popularity over the role he played in stopping the Israeli assault on Gaza, turned violent. The Muslim Brotherhood's Freedom and Justice party sanctioned a violent assault on a peaceful encampment of opposition supporters outside the presidential palace. But lethal force came later, and Islamists were its principle victims. Five of the six people killed in Cairo were members of the Brotherhood and one came from the opposition. Two more Islamists were killed outside the capital. Brotherhood offices were attacked up and down the country, while no other party offices were touched. This does not fit the opposition's narrative to be the victims of Islamist violence. Both sides are victims of violence and the real perpetrators are their common enemy.

Morsi undoubtedly made grave mistakes. In pre-empting a decision by the constitutional court to derail his constitution, his decree was cast too wide. The final draft of the constitution has many faults, although none are set in stone. The opposition on the other hand has never accepted the results of freely held elections, parliamentary or presidential, and is doing everything to stop new ones being held.

Via: "The Guardian"

Agent Provocateur

Posted by guest blogger "Sayf Maslul"


Traditionally, an agent provocateur (plural: agents provocateurs, French for "inciting agent(s)") is an agent employed by the police or other entity to act undercover to entice or provoke another person to commit an illegal act. More generally, the term may refer to a person or group that seeks to discredit or harm another by provoking them to commit a wrong or rash action.

An agent provocateur may be a police officer or a secret agent of police who encourages suspects to carry out a crime under conditions where evidence can be obtained; or who suggests the commission of a crime to another, in hopes they will go along with the suggestion and be convicted of the crime.

A political organization or government may use agents provocateurs against political opponents. The provocateurs try to incite the opponent to do counter-productive or ineffective acts to foster public disdain—or provide a pretext for aggression against the opponent (see Red-baiting).

Historically, labor spies, hired to infiltrate, monitor, disrupt, or subvert union activities, have used agent provocateur tactics.

Agent provocateur activities raise ethical and legal issues. In common law jurisdictions, the legal concept of entrapment may apply if the main impetus for the crime was the provocateur.

United States

In the United States, the COINTELPRO program of the Federal Bureau of Investigation had FBI agents pose as political radicals to disrupt the activities of political groups in the U.S., such as the Black Panthers, Ku Klux Klan, and the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee.

New York City police officers were accused of acting as agents provocateurs during protests against the 2004 Republican National Convention in New York City.

Denver police officers were also found to have used undercover detectives to instigate violence against police during the 2008 Democratic National Convention. This ultimately resulted in the use of pepper spray against their own infiltrating agents.

Europe

At the 2001 G8 summit in Genoa, police and security services infiltrated black blocs with agents provocateurs. Allegations first surfaced after video footage in which "men in black were seen getting out of police vans near protest marches"

Francesco Cossiga, former head of secret services and Head of state of Italy, advised the 2008 minister in charge of the police, on how to deal with the protests from teachers and students:

He should do what I did when I was Minister of the Interior. [...] infiltrate the movement with agents provocateurs inclined to do anything [...] And after that, with the strength of the gained population consent, [...] beat them for blood and beat for blood also those teachers that incite them. Especially the teachers. Not the elderly, of course, but the girl teachers yes.

It is alleged by British Liberal Democrat MP Tom Brake that the Metropolitan Police made use of agents provocateurs during the G20 Protests in London.

After the 2011 anti-cuts protest in London, a video filmed by the BBC was distributed throughout the internet, which might show an alleged agent provocateur being passed through police lines after displaying his identification to the officers. 

Canada
On August 20, 2007, during meetings of the Security and Prosperity Partnership of North America in Montebello, three protesters were accused of being police provocateurs by Dave Coles, president of the Communications, Energy and Paperworkers Union of Canada. The three masked protesters, one of whom was notably armed with a large rock, were asked to leave by protest organizers. After the three protesters breached the police line, they were brought to the ground, handcuffed, and taken away. The evidence that the arrested people were police provocateurs was circumstantial, including the fact that they were wearing boots identical to those worn by police.

After the protest, the police force initially denied then later admitted that three of their officers disguised themselves as demonstrators; however, they denied that the officers were provoking the crowd and instigating violence. The police released a news release in French where they stated "At no time did the police of the Sûreté du Québec act as instigators or commit criminal acts," "It is not in the police force's policies, nor in its strategies, to act in that manner." "At all times, they responded within their mandate to keep order and security." 

Source: "WkikiPedia"

Cop Watch - Oakland Chief Of Police Admits Using Infiltrators:



In this clip we see the Chief of the Oakland Police Department openly admitting his intent to infiltrate the Occupy Wall Street groups with provocateurs. The intent, of course, is to disrupt egal and peaceful public demonstrations.

The First Amendment of the Constitution protects the peoples right to peaceably gather to redress grievances. Any attempt to deny this right by a public official is treason. 

Unfortunately, this mindset is the single guiding mentality of law enforcement. To disrupt, destroy, weaken, poison, distract, and general obliterate any and all effort towards social progress. 

Homegrown Terror Threat “Manufactured”

NYU Study

Courtesy Of "The Right Perspective"

The threat of homegrown terror in America has been “manufactured” by entrapping Muslim men into crimes they otherwise would not commit, a recent study from the New York University School of Law has concluded.

The study, Targeted and Entrapped: Manufactuing the “Homegrown Terror Threat” in the United States, focuses on three recent convictions of Muslim-Americans who attempted to commit acts of terror on US soil. The cases are: a man convicted in 2006 of plotting to blow up the Herald Square subway station; five men convicted in 2008 of conspiring to kill soldiers at Fort Dix, N.J.; and four others convicted last year of trying to bomb two synagogues in the Bronx and planning to fire missiles at military aircraft.

The study, published by the law school’s Center for Human Rights and Global Justice and the school’s International Human Rights Clinic, shows that government informants egged on the Muslims to try to commit the acts of terror. While  juries concluded the men committed the actions on their own accord, the judge overseeing one of the cases remarked that there was “something decidedly troubling about the government’s behavior” and that the informant went to great lengths to goad one defendant into taking part in the plot.

“Since September 11, 2001, the U.S government has targeted Muslims in the United States by sending paid, untrained informants into mosques and Muslim communities,” the study says. “This practice has led to the prosecution of more than 200 individuals in terrorism-related cases.”

Ed Koch

The study was published last May and got little notice until former New York City Mayor Ed Koch came across it, reports The New York Times. Koch, an N.Y.U. graduate, tried to get the school to disavow the report and publish rebuttal he got Long Island Congressman Peter King to write up. The school’s dean, Richard L. Revesz, told Koch no, and the former Mayor took his battle public.

“Academic freedom doesn’t mean you have the right to distribute false reports, and when called to your attention, to do nothing about it,” Koch told the paper. “The dean doesn’t seem to care whether it’s factual or not.”

The Times finds that the difference between the two sides comes down to wording found in the study. For example, what King describes — as did prosecutors — as one group of defendants’ paramilitary training, the N.Y.U. report calls “recreational activities.”And while the report clearly states that “more than 200 individuals” have been prosecuted based on the actions of government informants, Smita Narula, an author of the report and a faculty director of the two groups behind it, said it “never claims that 200 people were entrapped.”

What the study does say is that “the types of evidence relied upon by the government in terror-related prosecutions are highly prejudicial, and build on the conflation of Muslim religious practice, political opinions critical of U.S. foreign policy, and terrorism.

“The prejudicial nature of relying on such evidence is magnified in the context of an entrapment defense, when the defendant’s predisposition to commit the charged crimes is at issue.”

The West Is Offering Lessons In Democracy To New Libya; How To Avoid The Chaos We Ourselves Inflicted On The Iraqis

By Robert Fisk
Tuesday, 23 August 2011
Courtesy Of "The Independent"

The remaining Arab potentates and tyrants have spent a second sleepless night. How soon will the liberators of Tripoli metamorphose into the liberators of Damascus and Aleppo and Homs? Or of Amman? Or Jerusalem? Or of Bahrain or Riyadh? It's not the same, of course.

The Arab Spring-Summer-Autumn has proved not just that the old colonial frontiers remain inviolate – an awful tribute to imperialism, I suppose – but that every revolution has its own characteristics. If all Arab uprisings have their clutch of martyrs, some rebellions are more violent than others. As Saif al-Islam Gaddafi said at the start of his own eventual downfall, "Libya is not Tunisia, it's not Egypt...It will become civil war. There will be bloodshed on the streets." And there was.

And so we gaze into the crystal ball. Libya will be a Middle East superpower – unless we impose an economic occupation as the price of Nato's "liberating" bombardment – and a less African, more Arab country now that Gaddafi's obsession with central and southern Africa has disappeared. It may infect Algeria and Morocco with its freedoms. The Gulf states will be happy – up to a point – since most regarded Gaddafi as mentally unstable as well as mischievous. But unseating tyrannical Arab rulers is a dangerous game when unelected Arab rulers join in. Who now remembers the forgotten 1977 war in which Anwar Sadat sent his bombers to pulverise Gaddafi's airbases – the very same airbases Nato has been attacking these past months – after Israel warned the Egyptian president that Gaddafi was planning his assassination? But Gaddafi's dictatorship outlived Sadat by 30 years.

Yet like all the others, Libya suffered from the cancer of the Arab world: financial – and moral – corruption. Will the future be any different? We have spent far too much time honouring the courage of Libyan "freedom fighters" as they scurried across the desert floor, far too little time examining the nature of the beast, the glutinous Transitional National Council whose supposed leader, Mustafa Abdul Jalil, has still been unable to explain if his own chums connived in the murder of their own army commander last month. Already, the West is offering lessons in democracy to New Libya, indulgently telling its unelected leadership how to avoid the chaos which we ourselves inflicted on the Iraqis when we "liberated" them eight years ago. Who will get the backhanders in the new regime – democratic or not – once it is in place?

And just as all new regimes contain dark figures from the past – Adenauer's Germany as much as Maliki's Iraq – so Libya will have to accomodate Gaddafi's tribes. The scenes in Green Square yesterday were painfully similar to the crazed adoration on display at the same location for Gaddafi just a few weeks ago. Recall, then, the day De Gaulle was asked by an aide how the crowds greeting him after the 1944 liberation of France were as large as the crowds applauding Pétain a few weeks earlier. "Ils sont les mêmes," De Gaulle is said to have replied. "They are the same."

Not all. How soon will the world be knocking on the door of the supposedly dying Abdulbaset al-Megrahi, the Lockerbie bomber – if indeed he was guilty of the crime – to discover the secret of his longevity and of his activities within Gaddafi's secret service? How soon will the liberators of Tripoli get their hands on the files of Gaddafi's oil and foreign ministries to find out the secrets of the Blair-Sarkozy-Berlusconi love affairs with the author of the Green Book? Or will British and French spooks beat them to it?

And how soon, we must ask, before the people of Europe demand to know why, if Nato has been so successful in Libya – as Cameron and his mates now claim – it cannot be used against Assad's legions in Syria, using Cyprus as a territorial aircraft-carrier, devastating the regime's 8,000 tanks and armoured vehicles as they besiege the country's cities. Or must we heed the neighbours; Israel still secretly hopes (as it shamefully did in the case of Egypt) that the dictator will survive to be a friend and make an ultimate peace over Golan.

Israel, which has been so skewed and immature in its response to the Arab awakening – why on earth did its leaders not welcome the Egyptian revolution, opening their arms to a people who showed they wanted the democracy which Israel always boasts of, instead of shooting dead five Egyptian soldiers in the latest Gaza shoot-out? – has much to ponder.

Ben Ali gone, Mubarak gone, Saleh more or less gone, Gaddafi overthrown, Assad in danger, Abdullah of Jordan still facing opposition, Bahrain's minority Sunni monarchy still suicidally hoping to rule for eternity. These are massive historical events to which the Israelis have responded with a kind of appalled, hostile apathy. At the very moment when Israel might be able to claim that its Arab neighbours are only seeking the freedoms that Israelis already possess – that there is a brotherhood of democracy that might go beyond frontiers – it sulks and builds more colonies on Arab land and continues to delegitimise itself while accusing the world of trying to destroy it.

But the Ottoman empire cannot be forgotten at so critical an hour. At the height of its power, you could travel from Morocco to Constantinople without papers. With freedom in Syria and Jordan, we could travel from Algeria to Turkey and onwards into Europe without so much as a visa. The Ottoman Empire reborn! Except for the Arabs, of course. Be sure they will still need visas.

We are not there yet. How soon will the Shiites of Bahrain and the listless Saudi masses, sitting atop so much wealth, ask why they cannot control their own countries and press on to overthrow their effete rulers? How gloomily Maher al-Assad, brother of Bashar and commander of Syria's infamous 4th Brigade, must have listened to al-Jazeera's last phone call to Mohammed Gaddafi. "We lacked wisdom and foresight," Mohammed complained to the world before gunfire broke across his voice. "They are in the house!". Then: "God is great." And the line went dead.

Every unelected Arab leader – or any Muslim leader "elected" through fraud – will have pondered that voice. Wisdom is certainly a quality much lacking in the Middle East, foresight a skill which the Arabs and the West have both neglected. East and West – if they can be divided so crudely – have both lost the ability to think of the future. The next 24 hours is all that matters. Will there be protests in Hama tomorrow? What is Obama to say on prime time? What is Cameron to say to the world? Domino theories are a fraud. The Arab Spring is going to last for years. We better think about that. There is no "end of history".

From Civil To Savage: Buy A Gun

Our Nation Is Getting Desperate. When Will Chaos Rise In Our Streets?

By Joseph McBrennan
Source: "Taipan Daily"
August 19, 2011
Courtesy Of "Information Clearing House"


Buy a weapon to prepare for what may be the most devastating economic downturn our nation has ever faced. As one trained in economics, I never thought I'd write those words.


However, I'll repeat them. Buy a gun.


The coming storm will not only impose financial hardships for those unprepared, but also entail a physical threat to you, your family and your property.


The threat will come from inside the halls of government with the constant attack on savings and investments through inflation, monetary gimmickry and, eventually, the destruction of our currency.


These events will be led by welfare programs gone awry. A recent nearby incident, and events in London, forced me to confront a reality too few wish to believe. Here's what FT.com's Gautam Malkani had to say:

The speed of the disintegration said everything. It took less than 48 hours for London to descend from self-styled capital of the world into a circuit of burning dystopian hells. The speed of BlackBerry messaging; the speed of kids on BMXs; the speed of Molotovs and petrol. Never mind the police, even the media couldn't keep up.

The world around us is deteriorating every day: socially and economically. It's not limited to London.
England seems pretty distant, but when the chaos rears up in your backyard, literally, you begin to prioritize and prepare. I suggest you do the same.


Let me explain.


Last Saturday night, in a very upscale neighborhood a few blocks from where I live, a horde of what can only be described as feral youth descended upon a very upscale outdoor shopping area called the Country Club Plaza.


They arrived around 11 p.m. after their cellphones alerted them that this upper-middle-class shopping district, two miles from the third-richest residential area in the country, was the target for that evening.


Within an hour, shots were fired by one group of kids at another and three children were hospitalized.


It's not the first flash mob to hit Kansas City and likely won't be the last. If our city's mayor had not coincidentally been on the scene, our local media would have swept it under the rug.


As you could expect, they've attributed the "disturbance" to kids not having enough activities "like night basketball." In other words, the middle class needs to entertain these hooligans or they'll entertain themselves by robbing and terrorizing the productive class.


Philadelphia's mayor has been dealing with these thugs for 24 months. Here's the recent reaction from Mayor Michael Nutter:

"You've damaged yourself, you've damaged another person, you've damaged your peers and, quite honestly, you've damaged your own race."

Mayor Nutter didn't stop there. He blasted the youth and their parents of Philadelphia with:

Take those God darn hoodies down, especially in the summer. Pull your pants up and buy a belt 'cause no one wants to see your underwear or the crack of your butt. Nobody.

If you walk into somebody's office with your hair uncombed and a pick in the back, and your shoes untied, and your pants half down, tattoos up and down your arms and on your neck, and you wonder why somebody won't hire you? They don't hire you 'cause you look like you're crazy!

The Immaculate Conception of our Lord Jesus Christ took place a long time ago, and it didn't happen here in Philadelphia. So every one of these kids has two parents who were around and participating at the time. They need to be around now.

Parents who neglect their children, who don't know where they are, who don't know what they're doing, who don't know who they're hanging out with, you're going to find yourself spending some quality time with your kids in jail.

To fathers: "If you're not providing the guidance, and you're not sending any money, you're just a sperm donor."


That's powerful stuff, but I dare say many wish it were said sooner. I would also suggest that too many should have said it, but feared being labeled a racist if they utter such cutting, yet accurate, remarks.
If London, Kansas City or Philadelphia were isolated events, I'd not bother mentioning it. It's occurring everywhere. The signs of our crumbling civilization are all around us. The same stories are being reported from Chicago to Miami and from coast to coast.


It's even occurring in what is considered one of the most civilized countries in the world. The Associated Press reported Aug. 17 that Swedish police say unrest erupted overnight in Goteborg, the country's second-largest city, as several officers were attacked by youths hurling rocks and Molotov cocktails.


I've heard all the theories of why this group or that group should be excused for animal-like behavior.


And, like Mayor Nutter, I'm calling those excuses what they are. B.S.


The root cause is the destruction of family by the federal government and its welfare policies. Fathers are no longer needed, or even economically beneficial, when Big Brother steps in and pays unwed mothers more, monthly, for each fatherless child they drop from their wombs.


If you look at the numbers, it's a lucrative cottage industry in some parts of the United States.


Combine these destructive policies of the federal government with the costliest "free" education on the planet that teaches nothing except that you're a victim, sprinkle a little left-wing media propaganda, and you have the perfect formula for a civil unrest.


Economically speaking, we had far more poor during the Great Depression than we do today, so please don't tell me it's because our poor are so underprivileged. We also had far less crime in the '30s.


The real facts tell a very different story.


The United States has no significant amount of real poor. By this I mean destitute, suffering from malnutrition or without material goods. By most standards, our poor are very well off.


The so-called poor of our country are angry, though their rage is baseless. They have received without contribution, and take without merit.


The ones who should be outraged in our country are the middle classes. They should be rioting.


Our retirements are stolen. They'll either nationalize it on the next major market drop, or it'll be eaten up by Big Ben's inflation. Either way, it's locked into worthless dollar-denominated investments through the government regulations that assume we are too irresponsible to take care of our own lives.


Of course we know the Social Security we've paid into for a lifetime has been stolen right out from under our noses. There's nothing there but Treasury IOUs, now rated AA+.


And all the while we face these delights, we're browbeaten by Obama into believing we are not paying our "fair share."


Everything we hold sacred, family, honesty, hard work, religion, savings and the Constitution, is snickered at by the elite of Washington and the puppet masters on Wall Street.


Their game is nearly over. Their world of social engineering and financial gimmickry is ending. The fabric of all nations is disintegrating before our eyes.


In February I wrote:

Our World Is Unraveling...[my theme has been one of] safety, capital preservation and self-reliance. We even recommended purchasing raw agriculture land as an alternative, or supplement, to precious metals.

Everything we've discussed from land to offshore banking was to prepare you without scaring you. It appears my time frame may have been overly optimistic. We have less time than I thought.

Now, six months later, our message is more urgent than ever.

In troubled times like these, the prepared will prosper, and so I'll return to my constant message: secure rock-solid investments, have a reserve of cash on hand, maintain a reliable alternative to the dollar, consider a retreat outside major metropolitan area, and...


Buy a gun.


P.S. I am sure I've disturbed some of the social-justice crowd with the above. I welcome your emotionally based responses atjoseph@taipandaily.com.


Publisher's Note: Joseph is not the only one at Taipan raising a red flag. Another of our insiders -- a U.S. dollar expert -- believes the U.S. will see riots like those we saw in London.


Anything could be the trigger that sets off these riots.


But all our research leads us to the same conclusion: The event with the single highest probability for triggering an all-out collapse of civility in the next 180 days is explained in this groundbreaking video report that you can access right here.


Joseph McBrennan is Editor, Taipan Publishing Group

'Let Them Have Anarchy'

Flying the flag for change ... Abdullah al-Qadi waves the Egyptian flag while being carried by anti-government demonstrators during celebrations of his wedding to Sonia al-Beali in Tahrir Square in Cairo. Photo: AFP


By Jason Koutsoukis
February 10, 2011
Courtesy Of "The Sydney Morning Herald"

EGYPTIAN police received direct orders from the then interior minister, Habib al-Adly, to leave their posts on Saturday, January 29, following the ''day of rage'' in which democracy supporters occupied Tahrir Square.

Confirmation of the order to vacate the streets was provided to the Herald by a police officer from Kafr el-Meselha, 70 kilometres north-west of Cairo, where the President, Hosni Mubarak, was born and raised.

''The order was very clear: disappear. Go back to your homes. Let the protesters experience anarchy,'' the police officer said.

The policeman, who asked for a ride to Kafr el-Meselha after giving directions on how to get there, said that many police officers had been afraid to come back to their posts.

''Many policemen feel great shame, and are afraid, because we abandoned our posts when the people needed us,'' he said.

The same day police were ordered to abandon their posts, looters took to the streets in Cairo, Alexandria and Suez, robbing thousands of shops, businesses and homes.

''We were mainly concerned about our jobs, getting food, so that is why we followed the orders,'' the policeman said.

As Mr Mubarak hung on to power, demonstrators turned out in force on Tuesday, with hundreds of thousands gathering in Cairo's main square.

Washington urged Egypt to lift its 30-year-old emergency law and introduce democratic reforms as protesters staged their biggest show of defiance against Mr Mubarak in a three-week-old revolt.

But the Vice-President, Omar Suleiman, warned that hasty reforms could spell ''chaos''. He said ''we can't put up with'' continued protests in Tahrir Square for a long time and that the crisis must be ended as soon as possible, in a sharply worded sign of increasing regime impatience with the mass demonstrations.

At a meeting between Mr Suleiman and the heads of state and independent newspapers, he said there would be ''no ending of the regime'' and no immediate departure for Mr Mubarak, the state news agency MENA reported. He also told them the regime wanted dialogue to resolve protesters' demands for democratic reform, adding in a veiled warning: ''We don't want to deal with Egyptian society with police tools.''

But with thousands of demonstrators still camped out in the square yesterday, after the huge turnout on Tuesday, they seem set for the long haul. After signs that the protests were were losing momentum, organisers have set Tuesdays and Fridays as the main days of action and have vowed to maintain their occupation of Tahrir Square until Mr Mubarak heeds their call to leave office.

''We leave when you leave'', says a huge sign hanging in the square.

with agencies

Egypt's Interior Minister's Involvement In Church Attack

By Essam Fadl
Special to Daily News Egyp
February 8, 2011, 12:10 am
Courtesy Of "The Daily News-Egypt"

The High State Security Prosecution office will investigate on Tuesday the alleged involvement of former Minister of Interior in the Alexandria Church attack on New Year’s, a source at the General Prosecutor’s office said.

The source didn’t want to be named because he wasn’t authorized to speak to the media.

Coptic lawyer Mamdouh Ramzy had filed on Monday a complaint to General Prosecutor Abdel-Meguid Mahmoud accusing former minister Habib El-Adly of organizing “militias of security personnel, former inmates and members of extremists organizations” that were responsible for bombing of the Church of Two Saints in Alexandria.

The attack that took place in the first hours of the new year killed 24 and left over 90 injured.

Ramzy told Daily News Egypt that he was summoned for questioning on Tuesday at the High State Security Prosecution after the General Prosecutor referred his complaint for investigation.

Ramzy said he based his complaint on press reports that quoted leaked British intelligence documents allegedly describing Al-Adly “militias”. According to Ramzy, the documents said these militias would wreack havoc in the country if the regime is threatened.

The Dark Side Of America's “Friendship” with South Africa

Precipitating Chaos and Misery For The African People

By M. J. Molyneaux
November 12, 2010
Courtesy Of "Global Research"

The hidden agenda behind the humanitarian aid programs and interventions carried out by the United States in troubled parts of the world has been insightfully exposed by Dr Paul Craig Roberts:

”Most Americans believe that their government is the best on earth, that it is morally motivated to help others and to do good, that it rushes aid to countries where there is famine and natural catastrophes……The persistence of these delusions is extraordinary in the face of daily headlines that report US government bullying of, and interference with, virtually every country on earth.” [1]

One of the most significant examples of this buying off and overthrowing, is the relentless interference of the governments of the US and Great Britain in the Republic of South Africa to recover control over the vast reserves of the world’s strategic minerals in that country. [2]

Rick Rozoff explains: “An April 2009 report to Congress by the National Defence Stockpile Center made clear that ensuring access to mineral markets around the world is of vital interest to national security." [3]

British and American imperialism has been around for centuries but the recent re-colonization of South Africa is a classic case and still one of the best kept secrets, generally unrecognized by the world’s journalists and political analysts because it requires an extraordinary amount of investigation and perceptive analysis to identify and track the shadowy characters, financiers and their agents and “bought” political players in South Africa. Some of them feature in Frederick Van Zyl Slabbert’s book “The Other Side of History.” [4] The secret motive behind Anglo-American sponsorship of Nelson Mandela and his ANC party’s dramatic rise to power in South Africa was the expected payback in terms of bolstering US hegemony over strategic minerals on a global scale. [5]

Like India, Brazil, Great Britain and others, the social and economic inequalities of the class system in South Africa were very real. But in South Africa these were made more obvious by the way it was racially delineated. That made South Africa an easy target for criticism and bullying. While other more oppressive police states were ignored by the international community, corporate interests in the US and Great Britain mobilized sanctions against South Africa, supported terrorist action and whipped up internal strike actions, riots and economic chaos, driving the country to its knees. [5]

The new puppet ANC government ushered into power from 1991 to 1994 has been far more cooperative with the US and Great Britain than the previous white government but far more devastating than the old government in its mismanagement of justice, law and order and the social and economic problems in the country. [6] [7] As R. W. Johnson has documented, the only things propping up the chaotic rule of the incompetent and corrupt ANC government are the vast amounts of foreign aid that has been pouring into South Africa and the lucrative income it receives in taxation of diamond and precious metal sales. Nearly three quarters of the world’s known strategic mineral reserves are found in South Africa , [8] [9] [10] [11] And the mines are owned by?.....mainly Anglo-American corporations!

The United States is the largest bilateral donor to South Africa in terms of Development Assistance donating $98 million in 2003-03, $160 million in 2004 and $185 million in 2005. Since the ANC assumed power, the US has become the second largest source of foreign direct investment in South Africa after the United Kingdom. [12] [13] These two countries in particular had been systematically side-lined by the previous government; exactly the same way that Saddam Hussein had side-lined the British and US sponsors of his early political career and party. Many US companies in South Africa are now members of the American Chamber of Commerce.

No surprise – approximately 28 United States agencies manage cooperative programs in South Africa including the Department of Defence and precious metals and stones account for over 30% of total imports to the US from South Africa. (12) Hillary Clinton described as “extremely helpful” a recent meeting in Durban with South African president Jacob Zuma. The president said: “The two countries have always had good relations and we are taking that relationship higher.” [14] At what price?

Foreign interference in South Africa has produced token freedom and empowerment to indigenous black people previously exploited by the system of Apartheid, but precipitated a state of permanent chaos and dependence in the country with unemployment, illegal drugs and arms trade, poverty, disease, social misery and unrest now among the highest in the world. [6]

Nearly one million South Africans are estimated to have died as a result of political violence that evolved into a horrific crime culture since the start of foreign intervention in the 70’s and an equal number have left the country due to the intolerable conditions that resulted [6] - Thanks to United States and British aid and intervention. Without realizing it, Nelson Mandela had helped the United States achieve its unrivalled position in the world today. The extent to which his organization bowed to its international patrons can be seen from the fact that his was the only government ever to voluntarily dismantle a nuclear weapons program; something established [possibly with help from Israel] as a guarantee of self-preservation by the independent-minded government of the Afrikaner legacy. His ANC party has become the key hired agency in Africa that enables the USA to totally eclipse even Great Britain, the world’s previous superpower, and become the only unchallenged international bully today.

For the United States, the so-called “good relations” means that the US now achieves unfettered [but covert] control over the vast reserves of the world’s strategic minerals in Africa – a position absolutely essential to US global dominance. This piece of the puzzle is still missing from the archives of research centres and deserves special attention because it shows how clever, complex and well camouflaged the imperialist strategy has been.

Notes

1. The War on Terror, Paul Craig Roberts, October 16 2010 ,Global Research


2. South Africa : When Liberation Means Enslavement, Finnian Cunningham March 3, 2010 Global Research


3. New Colonialism, Rick Rozoff, May 5, 2010 , Global Research


4. The Other Side of History, F.Van Zyl Slabbert, [ 2006] Jonathan Ball Publisher


5. Hidden Agenda behind Nelson Mandela’s ANC rise to power, M. J. Molyneaux, 2010 www.uncensored.co.nz


6. Neo-liberalism in South Africa : Dead in the Water. Patrick Bond, October 6 2010 Global Research


7. South Africa ’s Brave New World; R. W. Johnson, Penguin Books 2009



8. National Economies Encyclopaedia, 2005


9. SOURCE: Lisa Corathers, the Manganese Commodity Specialist for the U.S. Geological Survey, 2005


10. Ferrochrome Facts 2007 Elsevier Engineering Information. Source: Financial Times Limited. 06/29/2007

11. Kermas South Africa (Pty) Ltd and Samancor Ltd (22/LM/Mar05) [2005] ZACT 41 ( 14 June 2005 )


12. Diplomatic Mission of the United States in South Africa [website August 6, 2007]


13 British Foreign & Commonwealth Office [website May 21 2007 ],


14. The Guardian, 9 August 2009 .

No World Order

Forget “the end of history,” “the new world order,” and “the clash of civilizations” — the force that most shapes the globe is not a paradigm, it’s simple nationalism.

By Leon Hadar
Courtesy Of "The American Conservative Magazine"

Since the end of geostrategic competition between the U.S. and the (former) USSR, pundits have been proposing new conceptual frameworks for understanding the evolving global political and economic balance — or imbalance — of power.

Indeed, for close to two decades, scholars have been debating the direction that the “paradigm shift” in international relations would take. What would replace the obsolete bipolar international system and the strategic and ideological forces that had driven it?

From Francis Fukuyama’s “End of History” assuming a stable unipolar system under which the process of economic globalization and the spread of democratic and liberal values would widen to Samuel Huntington’s “Clash of Civilizations” forecasting a challenge to American power and values from the Muslim world and other civilizational blocs, and through other complementing and competing big and small ideas warning of (or hailing) the formation of rival trading blocs, the collapse of the nation-state, the New World Order, the Coming Anarchy, or the rise of a world government, we have been bombarded with a few useful and a lot of useless foreign-policy paradigms.

In a way, these ambitious models were fashioned in response to developments in the real world and seemed to enjoy brief popularity when this or that crisis seemed to be “confirming” one’s favored theory. Hence the fall of the Berlin Wall, the U.S. military victory in the First Gulf War, and China’s entry into the global economy made Fukuyama’s vision trendy. The civil war in the former Yugoslavia and radical Islamic terrorism transformed Huntington into an international celebrity and his “clash” paradigm was all the rage. The post-Maastricht Treatyconsolidation of the European Union (EU) and the establishment of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) was supposed to be a sign that regional economic blocs would dominate the international system, while the Zeitgeist of globalism — AKA the Spirit of Davos — seemed to reflect the eroding power of the nation-state.

More recently, the growing economic power of China and India coupled with the relative decline in American power have helped popularize the notion of the coming of the “post-American world” while against the backdrop of the heated debate over the so-called Ground Zero mosque and the rising electoral power of anti-Muslim political partiesin Western Europe it looks as though the Clash of Civilization thesis is once again very much “in.” The conventional wisdom is that the brief unipolar American moment is over and that U.S. allies are now hedging their strategic bets as the global environment is taking an elastic multipolar shape.

And so it goes. A new international economic or military crisis gives birth to a new instant paradigm only to be run over by the ensuing events that modify it or even make it obsolete. Recall that it was only a few years ago that booming energy prices led many observers to conclude that with its huge oil and gas reserves Russia would regain its position as a global superpower and that it would ally with China under the Shanghai Treaty Organization and theBRIC grouping to counter-balance American military and economic power. Didn’t happen!

Moreover, while Fukuyama, Huntington, and other pundits may have provided us with some valuable insights — capitalism and liberal democracy did emerge as winning economic and political systems in most of the West; culture and religion did become important elements in global politics; regional trading blocs did play an increasing role in global economics; globalization did challenge the power of the nation-state; failed states did produce anarchy — they have failed to provide all-encompassing explanations of the way the post-Cold War international system was working. In fact, many of these theories pretending to be grand proved to be quite insignificant in the larger scheme of things — not to mention the fact that they were full of intellectual holes. Or to put it in simple terms, reality failed to confirm the theory.

Hence the financial crisis and the growing economic and political discontent in the U.S. and Europe have demonstrated the continuing fragility capitalism and liberal democracy in the West. At the same time, the economic success of Chinese capitalist and non-democratic model is posing a long-term challenge to the American one. Notwithstanding the 9/11 terrorist acts and the ensuing war against terrorism, the notion that the West and Islam are sliding towards an historic global clash has proved to be nothing more than the figment of imagination — the Crusaders vs. the Caliphate — shared by American neoconservatives, European Islamophobes, and radical Islamists. In the real world, the U.S. is allied with the most important Muslim countries (Turkey, Indonesia, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia) while some of the deep and dangerous political divisions are inside the Muslim world (Sunnis vs. Shi’ites, for example).

And contrary to earlier grand expectations, the EU seems to be in the process of a slow and painful disintegration, pitting the prosperous German-led “North” against the poorer economies of the “South”; NAFTA has proved to provide limited benefits to its members and has not been extended to the rest of the hemisphere; and most of the economic groupings in the Pacific, including the APEC (Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation) forum serve as nothing more than useful talking shops.

If anything, notwithstanding the great hopes invested in such multilateral economic regimes, ranging from the old International Monetary Fund (IMF) to the newer Group of 20 major economies (and the continuing bombastic rhetoric in support of multilateralism), the trend among the large and small economic powers in the aftermath of the economic crisis is to protect their own national economic interests including by embracing protectionist policies. The latest drift towards “currency competition” involving the U.S., China, Brazil and other economies is just the latest example of this economic nationalist trend that included the failure in Copenhagen to achieve global consensus on climate change and the rising opposition in Germany to continue backing the euro as well as the stalemate in the Doha round of global trade liberalization negotiations. The spirit of Doha is no more…

There is no reason to assume the obstacles to global economic integration would disappear anytime soon, especially if the slow economic recovery in the U.S. and the EU would not gain momentum and expose growing economic structural problems and make it clear that it would be impossible for the U.S. and other economies to spend their way towards recovery, forcing them to embrace painful austerity measures. Under these conditions, the economically distressed members of middle class in North America and Europe and other parts of the developed world would be more inclined to vote into power political leaders and movements that favor more trade protectionism and anti-immigration policies.

In a way, even under the best-case scenario of a speedy economic recovery, the rising tide of nationalism — economic and military — is going to become the default option of the powerful and less powerful nation-states worried about growing threats to their security and prosperity. Nationalism has and could prove to be the most effective way for political leaders to win support and legitimacy from their people, a process that could even affect the pacifist nations of Germany and Japan that would drive nations to form partnerships based on interests and not on “civilizational” and other values. This new and messy world would not conform to any of the fashionable and neat paradigms of the last twenty years. But not to worry: An entrepreneurial intellectual would eventually come up with a new theory to explain why all of what is happening in the real world makes a lot of sense, theoretically speaking.

Leon Hadar is a Cato Institute research fellow in foreign-policy studies and author, most recently, of Sandstorm: Policy Failure in the Middle East.

FBI Trained NJ Blogger As Agent Provocateur

Defense Attorney: FBI Had Trained NJ Blogger How To Incite Others When He Was An Informant

By KATIE NELSON
Source: AP News
Aug 18, 2009 14:51 EST
Courtesy Of Anti-War News Wire

A New Jersey blogger facing charges in two states for allegedly making threats against lawmakers and judges was trained by the FBI on how to be deliberately provocative, his attorney said Tuesday.

Hal Turner worked for the FBI from 2002 to 2007 as an "agent provocateur" and was taught by the agency "what he could say that wouldn't be crossing the line," defense attorney Michael Orozco said.

"His job was basically to publish information which would cause other parties to act in a manner which would lead to their arrest," Orozco said.

Prosecutors have acknowledged that Turner was an informant who spied on radical right-wing organizations, but the defense has said Turner was not working for the FBI when he allegedly made threats against Connecticut legislators and wrote that three federal judges in Illinois deserved to die.

"But if you compare anything that he did say when he was operating, there was no difference. No difference whatsoever," Orozco said.

Special Agent Ross Rice, a spokesman for the FBI in Chicago, said he would not comment on or even confirm Turner's relationship with the FBI.

Orozco spoke to reporters after a court hearing in Hartford on Tuesday. Turner, 47, of North Bergen, N.J., did not appear, because he is in federal custody in Illinois. His arraignment on the Connecticut charges was rescheduled to Oct. 19.

In June, Turner urged his readers to "take up arms" against Connecticut lawmakers and suggested government officials should "obey the Constitution or die," because he was angry over legislation — later withdrawn — that would have given lay members of Roman Catholic churches more control over their parish's finances.

He wrote in Internet postings the same month that the Illinois federal appeals judges "deserve to be killed" because they issued a ruling that upheld ordinances in Chicago and suburban Oak Park banning handguns. He included their photos and the room numbers of their chambers at the courthouse.

Orozco officially joined Turner's defense team in the Connecticut case on Tuesday, with approval from Superior Court Judge David Gold. Orozco said his Newark, N.J.-based firm has been representing Turner for the past five years, including during his FBI informant years.

Turner's Connecticut attorney, Matthew R. Potter, said it's too early to tell which trial will move forward first. Orozco said he plans First Amendment defenses in both cases.

Randall Samborn, a spokesman for the U.S. attorney's office in Chicago, said the office would not comment on Orozco's statements.

Radical Dutch Party Has Neocon Ties

By Muriel Kane
Published: June 5, 2009
Updated 1 day ago
Courtesy Of The Raw Story

The Freedom Party of Dutch anti-immigration radical Geert Wilders won a major victory in that nation’s voting for the European parliament on Thursday, taking 15% of the vote and four out of a total of 25 seats.

According to the Guardian, this represented a major gain over the 6% that Wilders’ party scored three years ago and brought them into second place, ahead of the Labour Party but still behind the Christian Democrats.

Wilders is well known in Europe for his radical positions. He has called for banning the Koran, deporting immigrants from the Netherlands, abolishing the European parliament, and kicking Romania and Bulgaria out of the European Union. In the United States, however, he has been warmly welcomed by conservative groups, who see him as a champion of free speech.

“The virulence of his anti-Islam and anti-immigrant activities saw him barred from entering Britain earlier this year,” the Guardian explains, “while the Dutch authorities are prosecuting him for inciting hatred. He is also under 24-hour security amid intense hostility to his statements on Islam, likening the Koran to Hitler’s Mein Kampf and making a film depicting Islam as a vehicle of violence and terrorism.”

Despite his controversial reputation, Wilders is held in high esteem by American conservatives. When he toured the United States last February, IPS News reported that “his chief sponsors during the trip have primarily been neoconservative organisations such as Frank Gaffney’s Centre for Security Policy, David Horowitz’s Freedom Centre, and Daniel Pipes’s Middle East Forum, which is also helping to raise money for Wilders’s legal defence. An event he held at a Boston-area synagogue was sponsored by the Republican Jewish Coalition, an influential group whose board members include casino mogul Sheldon Adelson, former White House press secretary Ari Fleischer, and neoconservative writer David Frum.”

“He also appeared on Bill O’Reilly’s and Glenn Beck’s popular right-wing TV shows,” IPS continued, “met privately with the Wall Street Journal editorial board, and hobnobbed with former U.N. ambassador John Bolton at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC).”

More recently, it was reported that a hotel in Nashville, TN had canceled the booking for an “Understand the Jihad” conference — which was to have been held a week ago with Wilders as the keynote speaker — on grounds of safety concerns.

The conference was sponsored by Rebecca Bynum of the New English Review, who writes on such topics as the threat posed by Kurdish and Somali refugees settling in Nashville and establishing Girl Scout and Boy Scout troups as “indoctrination centers for Muslim youth.” In the wake of the cancellation, Bynum’s website posted a statement claiming that the hotel had “succumbed to intimidation.”