Obama projects Pacific power

What's the real story behind Washington sending a bunch of marines to Australia? Pepe Escobar Last Modified: 22 Nov 2011 10:30

US Marines being dispatched to station in northern Australia are meant to symbolise a new focus on the Pacific  [Getty] "The United States is a Pacific power, and we are here to stay." That was US President Barack Obama, in his current Asia-Pacific swing, addressing the Australian Parliament. One would expect a Pacific/peaceful power to promote, well, diplomacy and peace. Not really. Not when the key scriptwriters of the President's offensive - "turning our attention to the vast potential of the Asia-Pacific" - come from the Pentagon. Washington may not be on the verge of an Occupy Australia gambit - but one's got to start somewhere. The start is 250 US Marines deployed as part of an Air-Ground Task Force to bases in Australia's Northern Territory, including Darwin - which is a stone's throw from Indonesia, and thus, Southeast Asia. US Air Force fighter jets will also be in the house, with the Marines on six-month tours starting in the summer of 2012 up to an eventual rotation of 2,500 troops. Then comes the whopper. The marines will be conducting war games on Australian soil "out of the reach of Chinese ballistic missiles". And no one told an unsuspecting world that Beijing was about to establish a unilateral no-fly zone to conduct "humanitarian" bombing Down Under. Here's the scene The hardly subtle Obama spin is that China must "play by the rules of the road", and stop its "military advances". This Washington narrative implies a benign superpower - the US - intervening to protect an Asia under siege. Reality tells a completely different story; the "rules" - imposed by the US - assume that Washington has the right to (aggressively) police the whole planet. Beijing, for its part, is planning, long-term, how to defend its multiple national security interests in the South China Sea, the Indian Ocean and the Western Pacific. No less than 85 per cent of China's imported oil and gas travels across the Indian Ocean, through the extremely sensitive Malacca Strait, towards China's ports in the Pacific. Sure, China is investing heavily in Pipelineistan from Central Asia and from Siberia and is increasing energy imports from Africa. Still, two of China's three top energy sources are Saudi Arabia and Iran (the other one is Angola). This means China needs to build its own defence/protection mechanisms for an immense merchant fleet plying the Indian Ocean - and the Western Pacific. It's an utmost matter of national security. To rely on the US Navy to defend Chinese national interests would be suicidal. The junction of the Indian Ocean with the Western Pacific - where the South China Sea meets the Java Sea - is, for Beijing, the holy of the holies. That's the bottleneck its energy imports coming from the Middle East and Africa must imperatively negotiate. And that converges with a wealth of untapped oil in the South China Sea that Beijing plans to exploit. Here's the agenda Now imagine if Beijing decided to set up a base, say, in Catalina Island off the coast of California, or even in Hawaii, to patrol the Eastern Pacific. None of this warmongering, though, is new. Not only the map, but the figures tell the story. Almost 90 per cent of world trade and almost 70 per cent of oil travel by sea. Half of all the world's shipping container traffic crosses the Indian Ocean. And from the Middle East to the Pacific, 70 per cent of all global oil trade flows through the Indian Ocean. The US Navy 2007 maritime strategy calls for a "sustained presence" in the Indian Ocean and the Western Pacific. The US Marine Corps 2008 "Vision and Strategy" programme - which goes all the way to 2025 - stresses the Indian Ocean and environs will be a major area of conflict. So when Obama said the US is a Pacific power, he also meant that the Pentagon wants to be not only that, but also the top South Asian power. Forever. For all practical purposes the Pentagon has extended its self-described "arc of instability" to the confluence of the Indian Ocean and the Western Pacific. To top it off, it's gaming a new strategy, called AirSea Battle - which assumes that the People's Liberation Army (PLA) will "deny access" to US naval power in all the seas surrounding China. "Imagine if Beijing decided to set up a base, say, in Catalina Island off the coast of California, or even in Hawaii, to patrol the Eastern Pacific." This suggests the Pentagon will try to prevent - or at least intimidate - China in its quest for the untapped wealth of oil and minerals in the South China Sea. Reposition me, babe So it starts with 250 US Marines. Just like in Uganda it starts with a few Special Forces. That's how it started in Vietnam in the early 1960s. And still the US keeps over 40,000 troops in Japan and over 28,000 in South Korea - decades after the (war) facts. Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Liu Weimin, in a masterpiece of understatement, said the new US move "deserves to be debated". Now this is how Beijing really sees it - as well as dozens of countries part of the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM). The Pentagon calls it "repositioning". It's the warlike equivalent of the revolving door between Washington and Wall Street. We take you from Iraq or AfPak and we ship to you Africa or Australia. The cover story - sold by a compliant corporate media - is that the US is repositioning itself as "a leader on both economics and security in the fast-developing Asia-Pacific". Pentagonism, as applied to Asia-Pacific, is an extension of the Pentagon's Long War - which has been the "soft" denomination of the Global War on Terror (GWOT) since 2001. See it as Global War Inc. And the new locations of choice are Africa (from Libya to Central Africa) and Asia-Pacific. Washington's wars in Iraq and Libya offered mixed results. Iraq was a defeat of historical proportions - and China in the end was not locked out of the oil (on the contrary). Libya - for the moment - is a "victory", with China virtually locked out of any new oil and gas contracts. Now not only the Pentagon has launched a Cold War against Chinese commercial interests in Africa, it's encroaching on China's own maritime backyard. And by inverting all the rules of logic - posing as the usual, non-threatening benign outside power. Obama said explicitly that if Beijing does not respect "international rules", the US "will send a clear message to them that we think that they need to be on track in terms of accepting the rules and responsibilities that come with being a world power." Translation of this "clear message": "Occupy Australia" is just the beginning. There's no business like (expanding) Pentagon business. Pepe Escobar is the roving correspondent for Asia Times. His latest book is named Obama Does Globalistan (Nimble Books, 2009).

from http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2011/11/20111121134858987329.html

No to US Hegemony in South-East Asia

Was researching,  irate after hearing Obama's address to the Australian Parliament where he laid out his plans for a military presence in Australia and agressively asserted US power and control in the region and interest in it's resources and found this pithy paper. Published in 2003, it is dead on and even more relevant now in 2011. The US plan for global hegemony it describes has gone precicely according to plan, and this next step is an enormous threat to our liberty and security, despite Obama's silver-tongued, audaciously manipulative double-speak to the contrary. It defies logic that any country in the world should feel that it should hand it's power, land and resources over to America, which is both financially and morally bankrupt.
We need to oppose this as strongly as though our lives depended on it, as they just might. I agree with Bobby Tuazon [Peace researcher] 's closing statement with a deep conviction and believe in the need to take a stand and action to prevent the self appointed "world super-power" from waging an open ended "war against terror"  [read- war against anyone who stands in the way of American interests] "Let us instead turn America's "war of the century" into the "Century's War Against US Imperialism"."

Current US Hegemony In Asia Pacific      by Bobby Tuazon
Peace Researcher 28 – December 2003

This is based on a paper bearing the same title that was first read in a Power Point presentation during a Workshop on Asia-Pacific, sponsored by Bayan and the International League for Peoples' Struggle, at the Conference on War and Globalisation on March 1, 2003, held at the School of Economics, University of the Philippines, Quezon City, Philippines. The conference was sponsored by IBON Foundation. Bobby Tuazon works at the Center for Anti-Imperialist Studies. It was written during the build up to the Iraq War.

Over the past two decades particularly after the fall of the Soviet Union and the Eastern European revisionist bloc of countries, the United States has waged wars and covert operations in many countries. Unlike during the 40-year Cold War when such actions had to contend with impediments arising from the Soviet veto power in the United Nations and by the existence of strong liberation movements, the recent years saw the United States displaying its unipolar power with arrogance and self-righteousness.

We have seen this, for instance, in its wars against Afghanistan and Iraq where President George Bush, the Pentagon and the State Department have time and again declared or hinted that they will not be bound by international law, by institutions like the United Nations, or by world public opinion including appeals by Pope John Paul II and the former South African President, Nelson Mandela, as they decided the fate of Iraq in the pretext of disarming Saddam Hussein's regime of weapons of mass destruction (WMDs). And as the whole world knows, not one single WND has been found in Iraq by the US and its fellow colonisers. Ed.

To a growing number of people in the world today, however, it is clear who the greatest threat to international peace and security is. Eight out of ten Americans, according to a recent Time magazine poll, see the US as the world's greatest threat. Very distant second and third are North Korea and Iraq, respectively.

Many people, whether here at home or abroad, ask what really drove George Bush and other superhawks in their tenacity and arrogance to attack a nation of 26 million who continued to suffer the effects of the 1990-1991 Gulf War, years of economic sanctions and deprivation and continuous bombings despite fruitless calls from UN members to stop what appeared to be an insane war. A former Justice Minister of Germany likened Bush to Adolf Hitler. Nelson Mandela doubts that Bush can think coherently. These are of course remarks by leaders meant to warn the world about a cowboy and a Rambo gone berserk.

There is no question that the war on Iraq had another agenda to it, which is in relation to the control of oil and the perpetuation of American hegemony and world domination.

I will not dwell on the economics of the US war on Iraq and instead share some insights related to the greed of the Bush Administration to perpetuate American hegemony and world domination. First of all, the US war on Iraq, dubbed as the continuing "War On Terror," is part of a coherent world strategy that was conceived more than ten years ago.

Roots Of The Grand Strategy

The Bush regime's grand strategy for domination and hegemony of the world extends beyond the "War On Terror". This ambitious strategy can be traced in: the Defense Policy Guidance (DPG) of 1992 and the Project for a New American Century (PNAC), founded in 1997.

The DEFENSE POLICY GUIDANCE of 1992 is a top secret blueprint for world domination prepared by the Department of Defense (DoD), of then US President George Bush, Senior. Its vision is a world dominated by the unilateral use of US military power to ensure Pax Americana; to assert the US national interest; and prevent the rise of any possible power competitor for the future.

DPG particularly stresses that America will not be bound to its partners and to international laws and institutions while it stresses a more unilateral and pre-emptive role in attacking its perceived enemies (terrorist threats and confronting rogue states seeking weapons of mass destruction or WMDs).

The blueprint also says that a war on terrorism must be launched. This war to be launched by the American Empire must be seen as a façade and just a part of a bigger strategy of projecting US military power around the world, especially Eurasia, and cutting loose the multilateral bonds that have constrained Washington's freedom of action and power.

The PROJECT FOR A NEW AMERICAN CENTURY (PNAC, 1997), on the other hand, envisions to consolidate and preserve Pax Americana through the 21st Century primarily by military power/hegemony and secondarily, by economic hegemony. In other words, to create a truly global empire by military force. "At no time in history has the international security order been as conducive to American interests and ideals. The challenge of this coming century is to preserve and enhance this 'American peace,'" its vision partly says.

In 2000, an election year in the United States, the men behind PNAC came up with a report, "Rebuilding America's Defenses - Strategy, Forces and Resources for a New Century". Its authors acknowledged that the paper was based on the 1992 DPG.

Four Core Missions

The "Rebuilding" report has Four Core Missions for US military forces:

* Defend the American homeland;
* Fight and decisively win multiple, simultaneous major theatre wars;
* Perform the "constabulary" duties associated with shaping the security environment in critical regions;
* Transform US forces to exploit the "revolution in military affairs".

To carry out the Four Core Missions, the United States must:

* Maintain nuclear strategic superiority globally;
* Increase active-duty strength of today's force from 1.4 million to 1.6 million;
* Reposition US forces by shifting permanently-based forces to Southeast Europe and Southeast Asia, and by changing naval deployment patterns to reflect growing US strategic interests in East Asia;
* Modernise current US forces selectively (such as sending more attack submarines to Asia; more electronic support, helicopters and aircraft for the Marine Corps);
* Develop and deploy global missile defences in order to provide a secure basis for US power projection around the world;
* Control the new "international commons" of space and "cyberspace" and pave the way for the creation of a new military service - US Space Forces - with the mission of space control;
* Exploit the "Revolution in Military Affairs" (RMA)
* Increase defence spending gradually to a minimum level of 3.5% to 3.8% of Gross Domestic Product (GDP), adding $US15 billion to $US20 billion to total defence spending annually.

Specifically, the PNAC project also advocates:

* A much larger military presence spread over more of the globe, in addition to the roughly 140 nations in which US troops are already deployed;
* The US needs more permanent military bases in the Middle East, Southeast Europe, Latin America and in Southeast Asia (where no such bases exist);
* The US will consider developing biological weapons in decades to come;
* Iraq is just the beginning, a pretence for a wider conflict (probably more "regime removals") in the Middle East;
* In Iraq, according to PNAC co-chair Donald Kagan, the US will establish permanent military bases in a post-war Iraq. "We will probably need a major concentration of forces in the Middle East over a long period of time...If we have force in Iraq, there will be no disruption in oil supplies".
* Pinpoints Iraq, North Korea, Libya, Syria and Iran as "dangerous regimes".

The Brains Behind DPG & PNAC

DEFENSE POLICY GUIDANCE (1992):
* Defense Secretary Dick Cheney (now Bush's Vice President)
* Paul Wolfowitz (now US Deputy Secretary of Defense)
* I Lewis Libby (now Dick Cheney's chief of staff)

PROJECT FOR A NEW AMERICAN CENTURY (1997) Founding Members:

* Dick Cheney (now US Vice President)
* Donald Rumsfeld (now Bush's Secretary of Defense)
* Paul Wolfowitz (PNAC's ideologue, now Defense Deputy Secretary)
* Condoleeza Rice (now Bush's National Security Adviser)
* Zalmay Khalilzad (an Afghan Central Intelligence Agency [CIA] asset became senior director of the National Security Council; now Bush's special envoy in Kabul to follow up oil pipeline project)
* Jeb Bush (brother of George and now Governor of Florida)
* John Bolton (now Under Secretary of State)
* Stephen Cambone (now head of Pentagon's Office of Program, Analysis and Evaluation)
* Eliot Cohen & Devon Cross (now members of Defense Policy Board, which advises Rumsfeld)
* Dov Zakheim (now Comptroller for the Defense Department)
* Bruce Jackson (now with Lockheed Martin, a major defence contractor)
* William Kristol (of the conservative Weekly Standard which is owned by Rupert Murdoch, owner of international media giant Fox News and a leading supporter of the war against Iraq)
*  Donald Kagan (also ideologue, now co-chairs PNAC)

Some of the DPG and PNAC men are old Asia hands, i.e., those who have advocated a more aggressive and militarily-oriented US hegemony in Asia including Southeast Asia. The men behind DPG and PNAC, led by Bush himself, lead the elite circle of 100 powerful men who occupy the top positions of the US government bringing with them their connections to the oil industry and the military-industrial complex.

PNAC, meanwhile, gave birth to the Committee for the Liberation of Iraq, which funded anti-Saddam opposition and heir presumptive, Ahmed Chalabi (an Enron-like businessman wanted by Jordan for bank fraud).

For more on Chalabi, read Foreign Control Watchdog 102, May 2003; “Stop Thief: Sadly It’s A Common Story. A Desperate Addict Turns To A Life Of Crime”, by Murray Horton. It can be read at http://www.converge.org.nz/watchdog/02/06.htm. For more on Rupert Murdoch’s support for the Iraq War, read Watchdog 103, August 2003; “Who Owns New Zealand’s News Media? Can We Afford To Let Them Own Our News?”, by Bill Rosenberg. This can be read online at http://www.converge.org.nz/watchdog/03/07.htm  Ed.

PNAC is staffed by men linked to groups like Friends of the Democratic Center in Central America which backed the US's bloody covert operations in Nicaragua and El Salvador in the 1980s; and the Committee for the Present Danger, which during the 1980s under President Ronald Reagan pushed for a "winnable" nuclear war with the former Soviet Union.

Bush's Strategies And Doctrines

When George Bush took over as President of the United States in 2001, the DPG and PNAC became a reality. Translating the two blueprints for US global hegemony and domination in just two years of his presidency, Bush defined his government's military strategies and doctrines:

* National Security Strategy (NSS, September 17, 2002)
* Pre-Emptive Doctrine (June 2002, West Point speech)
* Nuclear Posture Review (January 2002)
* Quadrennial Defense Review of 2001 (September 30, 2001)
* Theory of Less Casualties, New Weapons Technology and the Training of Surrogate Armies
* Unilateralism and the Manipulation of Temporary Coalitions
* Regime Change or Regime Removal

Basically, the Bush regime's world strategies and military doctrines assert American internationalism (spreading America's "democratic values" throughout the world) and unilateralism in which the United States will not be bound by international law and global institutions or by invocations of national sovereignty and territorial integrity; warn against potential competitors who intend to challenge American unipolar power; the acquisition of more bases and military stations beyond Western Europe and Northeast Asia; the right of the US to strike first against security threats (pre-emptive doctrine) under which the US is justified to use nuclear weapons; increase America's forward deployed forces and the conduct of more military trainings and joint war exercises.

America's Economic, Geopolitical And Military Interests In Asia Pacific

For more than a century, America has considered itself the dominant hegemonic Power in Asia Pacific, having conquered American Samoa, Hawaii, Guam and the Philippines and invaded China to repress the 1900 Boxer Rebellion; it has also fought three major wars in Asia Vietnam, Korea and the Pacific War of World War 2. US trade with Asia Pacific surpasses that with Europe, with more than $US500 billion in trade and investment of more than $US150 billion. About 400,000 US non-military citizens live and conduct business in the region.

Meanwhile, SOUTHEAST ASIA (population: 525 million) has a combined Gross National Product (GNP) of $US700 billion and is America's fifth largest trading partner and $US35 billion direct investment (1998) in the Philippines, Thailand, Malaysia and Singapore; most of Fortune's Top 500 transnational corporations (TNCs) have significant interests in the region. There are vast oil and gas reserves in Indonesia and Brunei; as well as in Vietnam, Malaysia and the Philippines.

To the United States, furthermore, Southeast Asia is "a place of great geopolitical consequence" because it sits astride some of the world's most critical sea lanes. According to the Council on Foreign Relations which advises Bush, more than $US1.3 trillion in merchandise trade passed through the Straits of Malacca and Lombok in 1999 (nearly half of the world trade) including crucial supplies from the Persian Gulf to Japan, South Korea and China. The South China Sea, particularly the Spratly and Paracel island groups, are believed to have significant oil reserves".

These sea lanes are a strategic part of the network of oil extraction, production and distribution which is being consolidated by the United States linking the Caspian and Gulf regions, Asian oil and natural gas fields and markets and the American mainland.

Bush Regime Strategic Thinkers/Advisers/Power Players Specialising In Asia Pacific

* RAND Corporation (funded by Pentagon particularly US Air Force; formerly chaired by Donald Rumsfeld with Zalmay Khalilzad as senior consultant);
* Council on Foreign Relations;
* Center for Security Policy (which is also identified with Rumsfeld) - headed by Frank J Gaffney Junior with eight top chief executive officers [CEOs] from defence contractors on its board);
* Carlyle Group (headed by Frank Carlucci, ex-Deputy Director of CIA and former Defense Secretary of Reagan; with former US President, George Bush Senior, and former Philippine President, Fidel Ramos, as Asian advisers). Carlyle is actually the US's 11th largest defence contractor with significant interests in Asia;
* Heritage Foundation (official Rightwing think tank of the Republican Party)

In 2001, RAND came up with a report, "The United States and Asia: Toward a New US Strategy and Force Posture" (Lead Author: Zalmay Khalilzad). This report recommends shifting US forces toward the Philippines, Guam, Southeast Asia and other countries close to Taiwan.

A year earlier, this think tank in a report, "The Role of Southeast Asia in US Strategy Toward China," also stressed that China's emergence as a major regional power over the next 10-15 years could intensify US-China competition in Southeast Asia and increase the potential for armed conflict. "Economic growth in the region, which is important to the economic security of the US, depends on preserving American presence and influence in the region and unrestricted access to sea lanes," RAND said.

The COUNCIL ON FOREIGN RELATIONS, on the other hand, in a Memorandum to Bush in May 2001 ("The US and Southeast Asia: A Policy Agenda for the New Administration") argued for a more assertive US military stance in the region: "The (Bush) Administration should preserve a credible military presence and a viable regional training and support infrastructure" specifying "high-priority efforts" in the areas of "joint and combined military training exercises and individual and small group exchanges and training".

The HERITAGE FOUNDATION also said that the "war against terrorism" would ultimately be pursued in Southeast Asia with or without the express approval of local governments.
Again, PNAC envisions some specific operative plans for Asia Pacific:
* In Asia, deploying more troops to beef up the presence of 100,000 US forces to address new challenges for the 21st Century;
* Key to coping with the rise of China to great-power status is the increase in military strength in East Asia and Southeast Asia;
* A heightened US military presence in Southeast Asia will provide the core around which a de facto military coalition (a la the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation [NATO]) will be formed;
* Reduce the frequency of aircraft carrier presence in the Mediterranean and the Gulf while increasing US Navy presence in the Pacific;
* For this reason, it is preferable, for strategic and operational reasons, to create a second major home port for a carrier battle group in the southern Pacific - in the Philippines or Australia;
* Establish a network of "deployment bases" or "forward operating bases" to improve the ability to project force to outlying regions. Prepositioned materiel would speed the initial deployment and improve the sustainability of US forces when deployed for training, joint training with the host nation, or operations in time of crisis. (e.g. the Military Logistics Supply Agreement, between the US and the Philippines).

The CARLYLE GROUP, which is worth $US13.5 billion, a private empire which operates in the shadows of government, military and industry and spans three continents including Asia; owns companies making tanks, aircraft wings and other military hardware.

In the company are former US President George Bush Senior (head of the Asia advisory board); former British Prime Minister John Major; Frank Carlucci, who was President Reagan's Defense Secretary; former Philippines President Fidel Ramos (Asia advisory board); and other world leaders.

Carlyle has large investments and big acquisitions in South Korea, Taiwan and China. Carlyle has a $US4 million infrastructure project in the southern Philippine island of Basilan, part of the joint US/Philippine military exercise, Balikatan 02-1.

Summary

At this point, let me summarise that most public declarations and policy statements made by the US government emphasise that the targets of America's current security objectives are to prevent the rise of a regional hegemonic Power like China, "regime change" in North Korea for possession of weapons of mass destruction (WMDs), to wage war against "transnational terrorism" and insurgencies and other security threats.

But the secret reports, security strategies and doctrines of the US government that give emphasis on the use of military power reveal beyond reasonable doubt that the main objective is to consolidate and preserve US hegemony and domination in Asia Pacific and the whole world. The objective is to prolong Pax Americana through the 21st Century.

Current US Hegemonic Operations In Asia-Pacific

* US maintains the largest military command here (US Pacific Command [PACOM]). PACOM interacts with the armed forces of 14 of Asia Pacific's 45 countries;
* The number of US troops on land and afloat in the region has surpassed those forward deployed in Europe: 100,000 troops are based in Japan (60,000) and South Korea (37,000), with the rest in Guam, afloat or on various attachments.
* US-Japan alliance - the lynchpin of US security in the region, with Japan playing an increasingly aggressive role;
* Bilateral military alliances with Australia, Thailand and the Philippines; reinforced by access or basing agreements with Malaysia, Singapore, Hong Kong and Sri Lanka;
* A stronger military partnership with Australia;
* New strategic partnership with India and Pakistan;
* Plan to reinstall its military bases in Southeast Asia (either in the Philippines, Vietnam, Australia, Indonesia or Singapore)
* Laying the ground for a regional military alliance or treaty in the guise of fighting terrorism

The September 11, 2001 events, which ignited Bush's "war without borders" (or "Operation Enduring Freedom") were seized upon by Bush to reverse the decline of the US military presence in Asia Pacific and to aggressively assert US hegemonic interests. They:
- Opened the "second front" in Bush's "war without borders" using the Philippines as a template (or model) for greater military presence and power projection in the region. The Philippines will serve as the epicentre in the new US military strategy in the circumference of Asia Pacific.
- Increased military aid to Taiwan, Indonesia, the Philippines and other countries; increased arms sales;
- Increased military training and funds to support these;
- Increased "forward deployed forces" and enhanced their capability through the deployment of Special Operations Forces, covert operations, war materiel and other equipment;
- Launched offensive moves against North Korea, hastened plan to build a missile defence system in the Korean Peninsula.

Conclusion

US hegemony in Asia Pacific is a reality and is the concrete expression of an American Empire that is undergoing consolidation with a vision that will last through the 21st Century.

I submit that the debate on whether there is really US imperialism or a global American Empire should now be put to rest. In the United States itself, there is a growing advocacy or acceptance even in many conservative circles, institutions, think tanks, universities and media that there is indeed an American Empire. The only distinction which they want the world to believe is that, unlike empires in past centuries, this American Empire is "benign" and "benevolent" and is performing a role which no other nation can in order to preserve "democracy and freedom" across the globe and resist threats posed by "evils," "rogue regimes" and forces of radicalism.

But this American Empire is something the American people themselves loathe simply because they also suffer under the rule of the US oligarchs and their freedoms and civil liberties continue to be threatened. It is an empire imposed upon the world by America's ruling regime on behalf of corporate giants, the military-industrial-media complex, oil oligarchs and other elite interests. It is an empire that is supported by Rightwing power players, militarists, free market ideologues, Jewish neo-conservatives, leaders of the Christian and Catholic Right and anti-socialists. Under Bush the military-industrial complex is no longer invisible - it has become the most visible, most articulate and most aggressive driving force behind America's wars for world hegemony and domination today.

In order to preserve the American Empire that will rule the world for as long as can be sustained, the strategists and politico-military leaders of this grand project are more and more relying on the use of military power precisely because America's economic power is on the decline. America's Rightwing leaders and militarists believe that economic impositions through the instruments of the Bretton Woods institutions (the International Monetary Fund, World Bank, General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade-World Trade Organisation) no longer suffice to preserve American hegemony and domination of the world. With arrogance and self-righteousness, they believe that the American Empire cannot exist under current international law, ethical concepts, multilateralism and global institutions like the United Nations because of the constraints and impediments that these pose on America's will and action. To them, concepts of national sovereignty, territorial integrity, self-determination and dignity are just concepts best learned only in school. To them, the concept of Pax Americana should be asserted through unipolar military superiority, warlordism, aggression, moral absolutism and a global ideological offensive using US media oligopolies. Their ideological offensive centres on drumming up an apocalyptic conflict between "Good and Evil".

It is clear how this strategy is being applied in Asia Pacific and across the globe under the Bush Administration and I personally do not see any change coming even if Bush is no longer President of the United States. Using the pretext of "war against terrorism" and other so-called threats to the security of the region, the US government is increasingly and steadily deploying its forces, rebuilding its military bases, securing stronger and more reliable military alliances and security partnerships, gaining more access to ports, airfields and air spaces. But soon the combat missions that we now see in the Philippines, particularly in Mindanao, will be replicated throughout the Philippines, in Southeast Asia and other parts of the Asia Pacific. America's objective in Asia Pacific is to maintain a strong military power never seen before in the entire history of the region.

US military power in the region addresses the American Empire's strategic objectives to contain the rise of power competitors such as - but not limited to - China, and deter the growth of other threats to its hegemony including revolutionary movements and the rise of independent regimes.

Because Asia Pacific is a vast mass of land and sea territory with huge economic and geopolitical potentials, and because it is contiguous to the American mainland and its Pacific territories, this region remains of strategic interest to the United States. Without a strong power projection in Asia Pacific, America's drive for global hegemony and domination will be threatened.

To the peoples of Asia Pacific however the threat to their independence and security is and will always be US imperialism. So much blood has been spilled because of US imperialism, which has been asserting itself here for more than a century. The independence, sovereignty, freedom, self-determination and economic growth of many nations - including the possible reunification of countries divided by post-WW2 US intervention in the region - are always threatened because of US imperialism. Tensions and instabilities particularly in the Korean Peninsula, between China and Taiwan, and other hot spots in the region are heightened because of US interventionism.

But, just as the previous world wars led to the rise of independence and liberation movements throughout the world, the US "war on terrorism" has led to the reawakening of the peoples of Asia Pacific to the real threat to humanity. More and more peoples are standing up against US imperialism. Especially in Muslim countries, the "war against terrorism" is beginning to appear as a war against the world particularly against Muslims who oppose foreign domination. Today, the more US imperialism displays its arrogance and military power, the more resistance it will generate.

George Bush has declared a "war against terrorism" - a "war without borders" and without time limit. This, he said, is America's "war of the century." Let us instead turn America's "war of the century" into the "Century's War Against US Imperialism".

"war against terrorism", "Century's War Against US Imperialism", Current US Hegemony In Asia Pacific, Bobby Tuazon,

The Sleep of Reason Produces Monsters

 

Artist    Francisco de Goya
Year    c. 1797
Type    Etching, aquatint, drypoint and burin
Dimensions    21.5 cm × 15 cm (8 7/16 in × 5 7/8 in)

Bridgette Meinhold AirDrop House Emergency Shelter for Flood-Afflicted Areas

The Airdrop House is a complete housing kit made from sponge-like material that starts at 1 meter in diameter. Capable of being carried by a standard military aircraft, the spheres are dropped from the air into the water and weighted so they land right-side up. The spheres are light enough to move around, and as they travel they soak up and filter the polluted flood waters.

Once the houses are set, they begin to take root into the ground and can expand up to 7 meters in diameter – as they dry the spongy material hardens. Seeds are embedded in the foam polymer that begin to bud once they hit the silt rich flood waters, eventually providing shade for the home and a source of food production.
Andrew Maynard and his team dreamed up the Air Drop House as a concept, although they don't expect this it to ever be designed or manufactured. If you are concerned about the victims of floods, consider donating to AMA's favorite charity, Medecins Sans Frontieres, which provides aid through direct local action.

A very cool idea-- I think all houses should be designed with these design concepts in mind.

Read more: AirDrop House Emergency Shelter for Flood-Afflicted Areas Andrew Maynard Air Drop House – Inhabitat - Green Design Will Save the World

The call for a planetary patriotism

Environmental historian Angus Wright calls for planetary patriotism and collective action in the face of climate change.

Angus Wright has a way of saying things we may not want to hear in a way that's hard to ignore.

An example: During a meeting of environmentalists about shaping the public conversation on our most pressing ecological crises, folks were wrestling with how to present an honest analysis in accessible language. We needed to figure out how to talk about the bad news and the need for radical responses, without turning people off. During the discussion about the effects of climate change, Wright offered a simple suggestion for a slogan: "No more water, the fire next time".

Those words from a black spiritual, made famous by James Baldwin's borrowing for his 1963 book The Fire Next Time, are usually invoked metaphorically. Wright was suggesting that we might want to consider the phrase literally.
After a summer of drought and forest fires in Texas where I live, Wright's comment reminded me that climate disruption isn't part of some science-fiction future, but is unfolding around us in ways that are both complex and hard to predict, but devastating simple: We're in deep trouble, ecologically and culturally, as we try to face up to unprecedented planetary problems in a society in denial.

Wright is one of our most astute observers of these troubles. His willingness to face these issues, and his ability to grasp the interplay of complex systems, is no surprise to readers of his book The Death of Ramon Gonzalez: The Modern Agricultural Dilemma, first published in 1990 and revised for a 2005 edition. Looking at one region in Mexico, Wright explains how political and economic power, combined with the arrogance of experts who believe they have all the answers, have radically changed people, communities and land - mostly for the worse.

Though Wright speaks bluntly about these grim realities, he hasn't given up trying to change the trajectory of a society that so often denies or minimises the threat.
A retired professor of environmental studies at California State University, Sacramento, Wright is the chair of the board of The Land Institute, which is committed to the research and organising necessary for a truly sustainable agriculture. His writing also focuses on those issues - he is co-author of To Inherit the Earth: The Landless Movement in the Struggle for a New Brazil (with Wendy Wolford) and Nature's Matrix: Linking Agriculture, Conservation, and Food Sovereignty (with Ivette Perfecto and John Vandermeer).

Because Wright has a knack for presenting complex ideas in plain language, I asked him to respond to some crucial questions about how to understand our predicament and options. Can we face reality honestly without feeling overwhelmed? Wright suggests we can.

Robert Jensen: Your invocation of "the fire next time", with its Biblical roots, suggests a moral warning and the potential catastrophe if we are not up to the moral task. Before we get to questions of politics and science, what do you think is the right moral framework for understanding the ecological crises?

Angus Wright: There certainly is a moral question, but I think we in the environmental movement have wasted a lot of time dealing with it at the wrong level. I get frustrated with the deep tendency of so many Americans to be more worried about the task of saving their souls rather than solving the problem. I am not as interested in the purity of intention or personal practice as I am concerned about correctly identifying the nature of problems and getting to work in an organised way to solve them. The emphasis, for example, on whether individuals are hypocritical when their personal consumption is out of sync with their political/ecological views has been a diversion. It undermines effective organisation and helps to maintain the myth that it is personal rather than collective action that really matters. When we think we are saving ourselves, we tend to become self-righteous in ways that separate us from the other people we need to work with in order to effect societal change. The important moral question is social, not individual. How do we collectively figure out ways to live that don't require that we destroy the planet's capacity to sustain life?

RJ: What are the two or three most important things we need to understand about humans, psychologically and politically, if we are to avoid that destruction?

AW:Humans are capable of immense creativity and sacrifice, which has been demonstrated in crisis situations such as wars, famines, migrations and in the building and defence of homes and communities. In my work, I have been frequently reminded of the incredible sacrifices Mexican immigrants make to earn a little money to send back to their families over years, sacrifices that have both an individual and a community aspect. Many of us know how hard and how creatively our parents and ancestors worked to provide us with the lives we now take for granted. Of course, such effort can have negative as well as positive aspects - for example, the creation of the majority European culture of the Americas at the expense of Native Americans and Africans. People are also capable of stunning complacency, greed, and divisiveness. The secret we seek is what inspires humans to act positively and creatively in the face of huge challenges. As humanity faces the environmental crisis, this is its greatest challenge: How do we elicit the kind of collective and individual action and creativity that will be needed? I think previous experience implies that it cannot be fear alone, nor opportunity alone, nor persuasion alone, nor organisation alone, but a blend of these elements, with much else. We have been able to lump these things together successfully in the past in something called patriotism - a powerful force for good and ill - and now we need something like a planetary patriotism. But no planetary patriotism can be built without acknowledging and dealing with the major things that divide us as well as the challenge that must unite us. Putting on a happy face won't cut it.

Extreme weather is one example of the effects of climate change we are already seeing today [GALLO/GETTY]

RJ: If we have a considerable body of knowledge concerning the seriousness of the ecological crises and we have the capacity to respond to threats, what are the key impediments to change? Is the problem in the political leadership of recent decades? The economic system? Something we can't yet identify?

AW: One problem is an economic system that impels each company within it to pursue growth - each company must seek new investment funds by demonstrating greater growth potential than its competitors. Another problem is a political system that is so heavily corrupted by corporate cash, exacerbated by the absurd legal fiction that a corporation is a person with constitutional rights to free speech. Without those problems, we could have the kind of largely publicly funded campaigns adopted by other countries. I also think that for all its virtues, the constitutional checks and balances built into our system have brought us to gridlock - we really might want to consider the advantages of a parliamentary system in which the executive branch is headed by the leader of the majority party, as in England and many other parliamentary democracies. We have to be enlightened enough to take aggressive and expensive actions primarily for the benefit of our children and grandchildren. While individuals and families have been able to do this throughout history, it has proven very difficult for whole societies to do so. All these barriers are so daunting that we become overwhelmed by the sheer magnitude of it all. Here we face fundamental philosophical and psychological problems at both the individual and collective levels.

RJ: You said the solutions aren't going to be individual. But how do you evaluate the efforts of people who focus on their everyday lives? That can range from being diligent about recycling, to buying "green", to biking to work, to planting a vegetable garden. If we don't naively believe those things can solve all our problems, are they worth doing?

AW:Our most important problems can only be solved by collective action - new policies and laws taken by government. That requires that we act, above all, as citizens. I have watched over the past 40 years as nearly every important institution in our society has gradually shifted to encouraging us to see ourselves as individuals and consumers as opposed to group participants and citizens. We are all aware of this in advertising, but it has also become a powerful trend in education and in government itself. We are encouraged to believe that we can bring the changes we need by exercising our "consumer vote" in the marketplace more effectively than by exercising our citizenship - not just in voting, but also in public debate, in participating in political parties, in the exercise of our professional judgment, in educating our children, in participation in labour unions and professional associations, in speaking out in our communities. Our "vote" through marketplace purchases can only bring about very limited change, and by thinking of ourselves more as consumers than as citizens we diminish our very dignity as human beings. We become a mouth that eats rather than a voice that speaks. That said, I am all for making the changes at the individual level that can help to create a culture of frugality, help us realise that we don't really need the great quantity of junk our civilisation produces, help us understand that we can make major social changes while actually improving our lives. Most of us want sociability and conviviality more than we want consumer goods. We can set a good example for others by showing that we can live more happily by consuming less. All of this can also help us live within a discipline of conscious choice rather than of allowing advertising to manipulate us.

RJ: In my experience, academics tend to focus on narrow questions they think they can answer. You seem to gravitate toward big questions that defy definitive conclusions. I wonder if that's because of your training and teaching - you're a historian who taught environmental studies. We might say that the object of your inquiry has been everything that happened before today, and the interconnectedness of everything happening today. What lessons have you learned about intellectual life from your career?

AW: When Wes Jackson (president of The Land Institute) recruited me to help him create an environmental studies programme at Cal State-Sacramento, I was the all-purpose humanities and social science person in a small core faculty. I learned all I could from Wes about biology and genetics, and from other colleagues about oil and mineral depletion, nuclear power, city and regional planning, environmental law. It was a wonderful kind of second graduate school experience that lasted through an entire career. I had always been attracted academically to what might be called the "pan-disciplines" such as geography, anthropology and history - disciplines that can reasonably take on almost any topic in human affairs. Salina, our small Kansas city, was known nationally for having one of the best public libraries of its size, and I spent a lot of time camped out in its stacks. My parents - intensely intellectual people who were too poor to go to college - assumed that any reasonable and moral person would be interested in nearly everything, and they hadn't been beaten into submission by professors to think differently. They were good models who were eager for knowledge of all kinds. They were looking for clear words and straightforward thinking, and they assumed that good thinking led to social responsibility and political action, to which they were dedicated.

RJ: Thinking about that need for clarity, one last question: As an environmentalist, you can't ignore the stark reality of the data about our ecological crises. As a historian, you can't ignore the record of human successes and failures. When you weigh all that up, what advice do you have for how we should face the future? Many people find it hard to face the changes that are likely coming, which I once heard you describe as "dramatic and potentially highly unpleasant". Are we facing "the fire next time"? Is there a way out of the trap we've set for ourselves?

AW: I don't know if there is a way out, but we have to try. My own expectations are pessimistic because I don't see enough people having sufficient awareness, understanding and determination to bring about the major changes we need. And of course, contradicting what I just said, we don't really have to try. We only really have to try if we want to maintain our self-respect. If we want to stumble forward drunk while whistling in the dark, we could choose that. I maintain a certain faith that many people are going to make the right choices, and we can hope that is enough. I think Gramsci had it right when he said that he lived with "pessimism of the intellect, optimism of the will". And you have to take that seriously from a guy who wrote while in prison for his political beliefs.

Robert Jensen is a professor at the School of Journalism at the University of Texas, Austin. His latest book is titled, All My Bones Shake: Seeking a Progressive Path to the Prophetic Voice.

Where there's a will...

An old Italian gentleman lived alone in New Jersey . He wanted to plant his annual tomato garden, but it was very difficult work, as the ground was hard. His only son, Vincent, who used to help him, was in prison. The old man wrote a letter to his son and described his predicament:

Dear Vincent, I am feeling pretty sad because it looks like I won’t be able to plant my tomato garden this year. I’m just getting too old to be digging up a garden plot. I know if you were here my troubles would be over. I know you would be happy to dig the plot for me, like in the old days. Love, Papa

A few days later he received a letter from his son.

Dear Papa, Don’t dig up that garden. That’ s where the bodies are buried. Love, Vinnie

At 4 a.m. The next morning, FBI agents and local police arrived and dug up the entire area without finding any bodies. They apologized to the old man and left. That same day the old man received another letter from his son.

Dear Papa, Go ahead and plant the tomatoes now. That’s the best I could do under the circumstances.
Love you,
Vinnie

from VegSource.com

Vertical forests

Designed by Stefano Boeri - architect, academic and former editor of design and architecture magazine Domus - his Bosco Verticale is a towering 27-story structure, currently under construction in Milan, Italy. Once complete, the tower will be home to the world's first vertical forest.
 he Bosco Verticale is a system that optimizes, recuperates, and produces energy. Covered in plant life, the building aids in balancing the microclimate and in filtering the dust particles contained in the urban environment (Milan is one of the most polluted cities in Europe). The diversity of the plants and their characteristics produce humidity, absorb CO2 and dust particles, producing oxygen and protect the building from radiation and acoustic pollution. This not only improves the quality of living spaces, but gives way to dramatic energy savings year round.
Each apartment in the building will have a balcony planted with trees that are able to respond to the city’s weather — shade will be provided within the summer, while also filtering city pollution; and in the winter the bare trees will allow sunlight to permeate through the spaces. Plant irrigation will be supported through the filtering and reuse of the greywater produced by the building. Additionally, Aeolian and photovoltaic energy systems will further promote the tower’s self-sufficiency.
The design of the Bosco Verticale is a response to both urban sprawl and the disappearance of nature from our lives and on the landscape. The architect notes that if the units were to be constructed unstacked as stand-alone units across a single surface, the project would require 50,000 square meters of land, and 10,000 square meters of woodland. Bosco Verticale is the first offer in his proposed BioMilano, which envisions a green belt created around the city to incorporate 60 abandoned farms on the outskirts of the city to be revitalized for community use.

The West's tragedy of capital

While Rome burns citizens should not fiddle, but believe another world may be possible and work together for that world. Pepe Escobar

 The one per cent's counter-revolution against protests has begun, and 'it will be beyond ruthless' [GALLO/GETTY] Here's a crash course on global finance 2.0. The debt is in the Atlanticist, wealthy North. The resources are in the global South. And the (reluctant) supreme banker of the last resort is the Middle Kingdom, as personified by the Almighty Hu (Jintao).

The name of the game - Marx revisited by Occupy the World - is class struggle. It's casino capitalism, aka finance turbo-neoliberalism, as practiced by a liquid modernity elite of one per cent, versus the have-a-little-something, have-nots and have-nothing, aka the 99 per cent. There could not be a more graphic demonstration than last week's Greek tragedy takeover of the Cannes debt festival of Slavoj Zizek's thesis that the marriage of capitalism and democracy is over.

If there is something capable of terminally terrorising the European Union (EU) oligarchy it is the concept of a popular referendum. How dare you consult the "rabble" about our Austerity Forever policy, the only one capable of satisfying the financial markets! This is enough to make unelected zombies such as European Central Bank (ECB) President Mario Draghi (formerly vice-president of Goldman Sachs International), European Council President Herman van Rompuy (member of the Trilateral Commission and the Bilderberg club) and European Commission (EC) head Joao Manuel Barroso to dream of a drone-heavy, Special Forces-filled, NATO no-fly zone to enforce their will.

 Surrender or else The made in Frankfurt ECB screenplay is brought to you by the TINA ("there is no alternative") school. The dull, monochromatic action predictably mixes savage privatisations with social devastation. "Democratic" Europe functions just like in good old Brezhnev times; a troika - IMF, ECB, UE - exercising totalitarian rule, even if in a shambolic way. "'Merkozy' - that mongrel/robotic cross-pollination... can only emit a baleful cry: 'Coon ... traaaact'." "Merkozy" - that mongrel/robotic cross-pollination of German Prime Minister Angela Merkel and neo-Napoleonic French President Nicolas Sarkozy - can emit only a baleful cry: "Coon .... traaact". "Coon ... traaaact" - as in EU-prescribed endless monetary and fiscal contraction.
 It doesn't matter that Italy has a primary surplus. It doesn't matter that Italy's combined private and public debt is 250 per cent of its GDP - much lower than France, the UK, the US and Japan. Italy is now under the volcano because the EU "Cooon ... traaact" monster has thrown it into recession. And regime change won't make it any less different. No wonder the top candidate for succeeding Prime Minister Silvio "bunga bunga" Berlusconi is Mario Monti; a former top director at the EC, European president of the Trilateral Commission and a member of the Bilderberg group. Yet another quintessential one per cent luminary. "Europe" - as in a sub-sect of Franco-German oligarchies - thought the eurozone could be saved by the Orwellian-named European Financial Stability Facility (EFSF). But now even that blob - which is nothing but a bunch of "guarantees" lavished on a shell company in Luxembourg - is about to be devoured by the Supreme Zombie, the God of the Market. So a monster bailout fund set up as a Goldman Sachs-style racket now risks being in dire need of a bailout itself. You can't make this stuff up - even in Hollywood.

Meanwhile, the IMF's bag lady, the sartorially irreprehensible Christine Lagarde, is currently hitting BRICS members Russia and China for some pocket money. But Madame Lagarde, mired in soliloquy with her Dior buttons, knows very well this won't fly, and it won't be enough to "save" the model the IMF, the ECB and "Merkozy" insist on applying. Look South, young man The global indignados - from Greece and Spain to the US and beyond - at least are very much aware of the one per cent's machinations. As in learning about the astonishing performance of Goldman Sachs' commodities index - the top traded across the world. This quintessential one per cent index doubles and even triples the cost of wheat, rice and corn, thus plunging hundreds of millions among the 99 per cent across the globe into terminal hunger. How not to think that another world must be possible? The only solution to the recession the one per cent can come up with is austerity for the 99 per cent [GALLO/GETTY] The Occupy the World 99 per cent are dreamers in a very May 1968 sense - "be realist, demand the impossible". Dreamers in a refreshingly horizontal - not vertical or pyramidal - way. They want to rescue politics - when politicians have lost all legitimacy - as a debate of ideas, not egos or ideology. The pathetic G20 farce last week showed once again they're right. They want a Republic of common sense. They want a popular assembly in every neighbourhood and every village. Against money as a moral value and casino finance as an irate God, they want to rescue the power of collective intelligence. What they need now is to reach critical mass all across the world.

In a sense, it's as if there's been a collective reading of Albert Camus's The Rebel, published six decades ago. The one per cent of the time very much despised what they saw as a little Algerian, son of a domestic worker and without a diploma, posing as a philosopher. But way before the Google and Twitter generation Camus showed how revolt inevitably migrates from the individual to a collective response, enshrined in his beautiful formulation "I revolt, therefore we are". Yet make no mistake. Turbo-capital's one per cent counter-revolution is already on - and it will be beyond ruthless. History shows that every crisis of capitalism is "solved" by outright repression. What's pressing is the search for effective strategies. This includes everything from calls for a general strike to the debate preceding the creation of new political groups. We are all responsible South America, which has outlived torrents of IMF's dreadful "structural adjustments" and is now slowly forging its integration and independence, always denied by the neocolonial one per cent and their local satraps, can be quite helpful.

In a very enlightening discussion with leaders of the Brazilian MST - the Landless Peasant Movement, one of the most important social movements in the world - they explained to me how they have adjusted from fighting for an agrarian reform to fighting a much more nuanced battle against the current, powerful transnational agro-business interests who have forged an intricate alliance with the Lula government. "[For the] irresponsible citizenship... the exercise of political rights is just a ceremony of renouncing political will." - Alvaro Garcia Linera This shows how even a broad social movement with an enormous popular base has to be constantly calibrating its strategic struggle. On a parallel front, there must be an urgent English translation of La Potencia Plebeya ("The Plebeian Power"), a collection of essays by Bolivian vice-president Alvaro Garcia Linera, one of the most crucial intellectuals at work in Latin America. Linera essentially charges how the one per cent and its minions have "sold" the concept of public interest as a separate sphere of civil society. And how civil society can only exist as political if subordinated to mediators or political priests. This, Linera argues, is an archaism that goes back to Hobbes and Montesquieu. And the 99 per cent should be aware of it - and fight it. Linera coins the concept of "irresponsible citizenship" to describe the discombobulated voting masses under the spell of a neoliberal farce. For the "irresponsible citizenship", the "exercise of political rights is just a ceremony of renouncing political will, and will to govern, to place it in the hands of a new caste of private proprietors of politics, which attribute to themselves the knowledge of sophisticated and impenetrable techniques of ruling and governing". So the crucial fight is against these "private proprietors of politics" - and their one per cent masters, be it in Cairo or Manhattan, Madrid or Lahore. G20? Forget it; it's more like G7 billion. If we are truly indignados towards a system that must be toppled, we are all responsible.

Pepe Escobar is the roving correspondent for Asia Times. His latest book is named Obama Does Globalistan (Nimble Books, 2009). The views expressed in this article are the author's own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera's editorial policy.

source//// al jazeera

Garbage Warrior

What do beer cans, car tires and water bottles have in common? Not much unless you're renegade architect Michael Reynolds, in which case they are tools of choice for producing thermal mass and energy-independent housing. For 30 years New Mexico-based Reynolds and his green disciples have devoted their time to advancing the art of "Earthship Biotecture" by building self-sufficient, off-the-grid communities where design and function converge in eco-harmony. However, these experimental structures that defy state standards create conflict between Reynolds and the authorities, who are backed by big business. Frustrated by antiquated legislation, Reynolds lobbies for the right to create a sustainable living test site. While politicians hum and ha, Mother Nature strikes, leaving communities devastated by tsunamis and hurricanes. Reynolds and his crew seize the opportunity to lend their pioneering skills to those who need it most. Shot over three years and in four countries, Garbage Warrior is a timely portrait of a determined visionary, a hero of the 21st century.

Some gold from http://animalsbeingdicks.com/page/91

Occupy London Swells

Despite starting as a single demonstration in a US financial centre, the "Occupy Wall Street" protests have since spawned a global movement, as citizens of countries across the world came out to voice their frustration with what they deem to be shortfalls with democratic political processes. They are angry at those they perceive to be "corporate criminals", who continued to profit while their alleged misdeeds crashed the planet's interwoven economy, leaving hundreds of thousands unemployed and facing homelessness. In just one such example, several hundred protesters, young and old, have camped out in the inclement London weather since Saturday October 15, turning the churchyard in front of the famed St Paul's Cathedral into a vibrant embodiment of democracy in action. A mass rally on November 5, the 407th anniversary of Guy Fawkes' attempt to blow up the Houses of Parliament - a plot led by Catholic religious extremists intended to strike back against lawmakers who were endorsing the persecution of their religious minority - attracted thousands of protesters.

Keep it up bretheren!! [ from al jazeera ]

What do we want?!

The brain- remixed

All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace

    

All Watched Over By Machines Of Loving Grace by Richard Brautigan





I like to think (and
the sooner the better!)
of a cybernetic meadow
where mammals and computers
live together in mutually
programming harmony
like pure water
touching clear sky.

I like to think
(right now, please!)
of a cybernetic forest
filled with pines and electronics
where deer stroll peacefully
past computers
as if they were flowers
with spinning blossoms.

I like to think
(it has to be!)
of a cybernetic ecology
where we are free of our labors
and joined back to nature,
returned to our mammal
brothers and sisters,
and all watched over
by machines of loving grace.


 This title is also shared by a BBC documentary series by Adam Curtis, a series of films about how humans have been colonized by the machines they have built. Although we don’t realize it, the way we see everything in the world today is through the eyes of the computers. It claims that computers have failed to liberate us and instead have distorted and simplified our view of the world around us.


1. Love and Power. This is the story of the dream that rose up in the 1990s that computers could create a new kind of stable world. They would bring about a new kind global capitalism free of all risk and without the boom and bust of the past. They would also abolish political power and create a new kind of democracy through the Internet where millions of individuals would be connected as nodes in cybernetic systems – without hierarchy.

2. The Use and Abuse of Vegetational Concepts. This is the story of how our modern scientific idea of nature, the self-regulating ecosystem, is actually a machine fantasy. It has little to do with the real complexity of nature. It is based on cybernetic ideas that were projected on to nature in the 1950s by ambitious scientists. A static machine theory of order that sees humans, and everything else on the planet, as components – cogs – in a system.

3. The Monkey in the Machine and the Machine in the Monkey. This episode looks at why we humans find this machine vision so beguiling. The film argues it is because all political dreams of changing the world for the better seem to have failed – so we have retreated into machine-fantasies that say we have no control over our actions because they excuse our failure.

Adam Curtis is a documentary film maker, whose work includes The Power of Nightmares, The Century of the Self, The Mayfair Set, Pandora’s Box, The Trap and The Living Dead.


 Well worth watching.

 

Dead Men Tell No Tales: The CIA, 9/11, and the Awlaki Assassination

Dead Men Tell No Tales: The CIA, 9/11, and the Awlaki Assassination
by Tom Burghardt / October 10th, 2011

On September 30, the CIA and Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) assets under the Agency’s control, assassinated the alleged “external operations” chief of the Afghan-Arab database of disposable Western intelligence assets, also known as Al-Qaeda, Anwar al-Awlaki, and a second American citizen, Samir Khan, the 25-year-old editor of Inspire magazine, in a drone strike in Yemen. As The Washington Post reported last month, the “commingling” of CIA officers, JSOC paramilitary troops and contractors “occupy an expanding netherworld between intelligence and military operations” where “congressional intelligence and armed services committees rarely get a comprehensive view.” Or any “view” at all, which is precisely what the CIA and Pentagon have long desired; an oversight-free zone where American policymakers operate, as Dick Cheney infamously put it, on the “dark side,” a position fully-embraced by the “hope and change” administration of Barack Obama. Awlaki’s state-sponsored killing, like the May 2 murder of Osama Bin Laden in Abbottabad, Pakistan, resurfaces many unanswered questions concerning the 9/11 attacks, the so-called trigger for America’s global “War on Terror.” But before turning to those issues, it is necessary to take a detour and examine administration actions; specifically the deliberations undertaken by Obama’s national security team which culminated in Awlaki’s death. White House “Death Panel” Unlike the fantasies of the corporate-controlled Tea Party who charged during the run-up to the White House sell-out of health care reform that the administration would create “death panels” to deny care to the elderly, it has since emerged that Team Obama has stood-up the authentic article. According to The Washington Post, President Obama’s Justice Department “wrote a secret memorandum authorizing the lethal targeting” of Awlaki. The Post reports that the memorandum “was produced following a review of the legal issues raised by striking a U.S. citizen and involved senior lawyers from across the administration. There was no dissent about the legality of killing Aulaqi.” That memorandum, according to The New York Times, was drafted in June 2010, some six months after Awlaki had been placed on the White House hit list, by Office of Legal Counsel attorneys “David Barron and Martin Lederman.” Both former OLC lawyers are prominent “liberals” from prestigious universities; Barron at Harvard and Lederman at Georgetown University. Ironically enough, in several scholarly articles they had railed against the previous administration’s adaptation of the “Unitary Executive Theory” promulgated by “torture memo” authors Jay Bybee and John Yoo. Under Bush, OLC opinions were used to justify everything from warrantless wiretapping, the domestic deployment of the military to arrest Americans, to the torture and indefinite detention of “terrorist” suspects at the Guantánamo Bay prison gulag and CIA “black sites.” This, of course, begs the question: if Awlaki’s murder was “legal,” why then was the authorization to do so reached in camera by officials following a deliberative process which can’t be shared with the public because of “national security”? The answer should be chilling and shocking to all Americans: because the nucleus of a death squad state recalling those stood up in Chile and Argentina during the “dirty war” period of the 1970s may now exist. Reuters disclosed that Americans “are placed on a kill or capture list by a secretive panel of senior government officials, which then informs the president of its decisions, according to officials.” “There is no public record of the operations or decisions of the panel,” reporter Mark Hosenball wrote, “which is a subset of the White House’s National Security Council. … Neither is there any law establishing its existence or setting out the rules by which it is supposed to operate.” According to Reuters, “targeting recommendations are drawn up by a committee of mid-level National Security Council and agency officials. Their recommendations are then sent to the panel of NSC ‘principals,’ meaning Cabinet secretaries and intelligence unit chiefs, for approval.” A “former official” told Hosenball that “one of the reasons for making senior officials principally responsible for nominating Americans for the target list was to ‘protect’ the president,” i.e., provide Obama legal cover under the thin veneer afforded by “plausible deniability.” McClatchy News reported that “broadly speaking” White House orders to kill Awlaki were based on claims that “the nation’s inherent right of self-defense [is] recognized under international law.” However, “international law also imposes limits: Targeted killing is banned except to protect against ‘concrete, specific and imminent’ danger.” And although the administration now claims that Awlaki was targeted for death because “his role in AQAP had gone ‘from inspirational to operational’,” Reuters disclosed that “officials acknowledge that some of the intelligence purporting to show Awlaki’s hands-on role in plotting attacks was patchy.” In fact, the White House has failed to provide any proof whatsoever that Awlaki posed an “imminent danger” to the United States, although there is considerable evidence that he was on the radar of U.S. and allied secret state intelligence agencies for more than a decade, had close ties to several of the 9/11 hijackers and could have been picked up and indicted at any time. Instead, federal law enforcement officials gave Awlaki a green light to leave the United States, unlike thousands of innocent Muslim-Americans swept-up and detained by the FBI in the post-9/11 hysteria that followed the attacks. A “former military intelligence officer who worked with special operations troops to hunt down high-value terrorism targets,” told the right-wing Washington Times: “I think it’s pretty easy to understand why they didn’t take him alive. Would you want to deal with the hassle of trying to put him on trial, an American citizen that has gotten so much press for being the target of a CIA kill order? That would be a nightmare. The ACLU would be crawling all over the Justice Department for due process in an American court.” That about sums up the dominant mindset of an Empire in sharp decline: the rule of law and due process for criminal suspects reduced to a “hassle.” Slouching Towards Dictatorship Obama’s national security team justified whacking Awlaki, as with their earlier hit on Osama Bin Laden, by referencing the Bush-era Authorization for Use of Military Force (AUMF), hastily passed by Congress in the wake of the 9/11 attacks. “A decade later,” McClatchy reported, “the Obama administration contends that this wartime authority remains even if it’s evolved for reasons the administration won’t fully elucidate.” The relevant section of AUFM reads: “IN GENERAL — That the President is authorized to use all necessary and appropriate force against those nations, organizations, or persons he determines planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001, or harbored such organizations or persons, in order to prevent any future acts of international terrorism against the United States by such nations, organizations or persons.” (emphasis added) Readers will undoubtedly note that in passing the resolution, Congress not only ceded its authority to declare war to the Executive Branch but also planted the seeds of the administration’s preemptive war doctrines along with an unprecedented expansion of its domestic surveillance powers. More pertinently is the reason why the administration “won’t fully elucidate” how the Bush-era AUMF “evolved” chiefly due to the fact that secret annexes now exist which authorize the killing of Americans, not only in Yemen or other “War on Terror” fronts, but right here in the United States itself? After all, it’s not beyond the Obama administration to play fast and loose with the truth or hide repressive policies under layers of top secret presidential “findings” or a multitude of CIA and Pentagon black programs, as did the previous Bush government. Recall that during the run-up to the reauthorization of three expiring provisions of the USA Patriot Act, civil libertarians decried the use of secret legal memos justifying everything from unchecked access to internet and telephone records to the deployment of government-sanctioned malware on private computers during “national security” investigations. Recall too, that the Obama administration, as The New York Times disclosed in June, handed the FBI “significant new powers to its roughly 14,000 agents, allowing them more leeway to search databases, go through household trash or use surveillance teams to scrutinize the lives of people who have attracted their attention.” These “news rules,” the Times averred, will give agents “more latitude” to investigate citizens even when there is no evidence they have exhibited “signs of criminal or terrorist activity.” It gets worse. Last month, The New York Times revealed that the FBI “is permitted to include people on the government’s terrorist watch list even if they have been acquitted of terrorism-related offenses or the charges are dropped.” Under these new standards, the Bureau may deem someone a “known or suspected terrorist,” not based on evidence gathered through a criminal investigation, but solely if officials have “particularized derogatory information,” including that derived from First Amendment protected activities, to support to support an individuals’ watch listing or placement on a “no-fly” list. One administration wag, speaking on condition of anonymity because to do otherwise would reveal “closely held deliberations within the administration,” but did so anyway because this was clearly a sanctioned leak to stenographer Peter Finn, told The Washington Post that “what constitutes due process in [the Awlaki case] is a due process in war.” “The administration officials refused to disclose the exact legal analysis used to authorize targeting Aulaqi,” Finn wrote, “or how they considered any Fifth Amendment right to due process.” We now know, thanks to Reuters, that authorization came from a White House death panel, an extra-constitutional committee of anonymous officials operating outside the rule of law. As we have seen since Barack Obama took office, as under the previous Bush government, the Constitution is a meaningless scrap of paper with some words on it, duly trotted out on national holidays only to be cast aside in practice; that is, when it isn’t used as a rhetorical hammer against assorted “new Hitlers” or geopolitical rivals whose resources corporate America seek to “liberate.” Dead Men Tell No Tales As toxic to democratic norms and the rule of law as the Awlaki affair clearly is, there are underlying parapolitical themes surrounding his murder which strengthen suspicions that what took place in Yemen on September 30 is more than just another story about an overt power grab by the Executive Branch. While the government and media continue to cover-up the role played by the CIA and other secret state agencies in alleged intelligence “failures” leading up to the 9/11 attacks, evidence suggests that the Awlaki killing, as with last May’s murder of former bête noire and on-again, off-again ally, Osama Bin Laden, may have been a “clean-up” operation designed to remove inconvenient witnesses with knowledge of Agency involvement in the plot. As Antifascist Calling reported nearly two years ago in the wake of the aborted 2009 bombing of Northwest Airlines Flight 253 on Christmas Day over Detroit, a plot for which Awlaki was accused of orchestrating, though evidence can’t be supplied because it’s “secret,” The Washington Post disclosed that Awlaki had extensive contacts with 9/11 hijackers Nawaf Alhazmi, Khalid Almihdhar and Hani Hanjour who “had spent time at his mosques in California and Falls Church.” In a series of 2010 articles (here, here, here and here), I reported on the stark parallels between September 11 and the Flight 253 affair. And as with the 2001 attacks we were told “changed everything,” far from being a failure to “connect the dots,” intelligence and law enforcement officials possessed sufficient information that should have prevented accused bomber, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, from boarding that plane and placing the lives of nearly 300 air passengers at risk. And while Awlaki wasn’t given a free pass by the administration in that botched attack, earlier government failures to apprehend him certainly set the stage. According to History Commons, “shortly before the [FBI] investigation [into Awlaki's alleged ties to the now-shuttered Holy Land Foundation] is closed,” in 2000, Awlaki “is beginning to associate with hijackers Nawaf Alhazmi and Khalid Almihdhar shortly before the investigation ends.” “For instance,” History Commons avers, “on February 4, one month before the FBI investigation is closed, al-Awlaki talks on the telephone four times with hijacker associate [and suspected Saudi intelligence agent] Omar al-Bayoumi.” “The 9/11 Commission will later speculate that these calls are related to Alhazmi and Almihdhar, since al-Bayoumi is helping them that day, and that Alhazmi or Almihdhar may even have been using al-Bayoumi’s phone at the time. Al-Bayoumi had also been the subject of an FBI counterterrorism investigation in 1999.” Keep in mind that at least two of the hijackers, Nawaf Alhazmi and Khalid Almihdhar, figure prominently in recent revelations by researcher Kevin Fenton, the author of Disconnecting the Dots. In a recent conversation with Boiling Frogs Post’s Sibel Edmonds and Peter B. Collins, Fenton said that during the course of his investigation, drawn from the Congressional 9/11 Joint Inquiry, the 9/11 Commission, the Justice Department’s Inspector General’s report, and the CIA’s still-redacted Inspector General’s report, he discovered that the CIA had deliberately withheld information from the FBI that the future hijackers had entered the United States with multiple entry visas issued in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. Even though the Agency had identified the pair as international terrorists who attended a 2000 Al-Qaeda summit in Malaysia where they and others, including Khalid Shaikh Mohammed and Khallad Bin Attash, one of the principle architects of the 1998 U.S. Embassy bombings in Kenya and Tanzania, planned the assault on the USS Cole and the 9/11 attacks, they kept this from the FBI, information that could have led straight to the heart of Al-Qaeda’s “planes operation.” Fenton provides substantial evidence that the CIA’s Alec Station Director Richard Blee and deputy, Tom Wilshire, concealed intelligence from investigators, concluding this “information was intentionally omitted in order to allow an al-Qaeda attack to go forward against the United States.” As part of this continuing cover-up, Awlaki’s ties to the 9/11 hijackers were far more extensive than secret state officials have led us to believe. In fact, although the Obama administration has justified killing Awlaki with false claims that he was AQAP’s “external operations” chief, his role before 9/11 was substantially more significant from an investigatory perspective: that of a “fixer,” first in San Diego where he assisted Saudi spook Omar al-Bayoumi in “settling” Alhazmi and Almihdhar, and later in Falls Church, Virginia, where he did the same for Hani Hanjour. In 2002, Newsweek revealed that “some federal investigators suspect that al-Bayoumi could have been an advance man for the 9-11 hijackers, sent by Al Qaeda to assist the plot that ultimately claimed 3,000 lives.” “Two months after al-Bayoumi began aiding Alhazmi and Almihdhar,” Newsweek disclosed, “al-Bayoumi’s wife began receiving regular stipends, often monthly and usually around $2,000, totaling tens of thousands of dollars. Payments arrived “in the form of cashier’s checks, purchased from Washington’s Riggs Bank by Princess Haifa bint Faisal, the daughter of the late King Faisal and wife of Prince Bandar, the Saudi envoy who is a prominent Washington figure and personal friend of the Bush family.” With startling similarities to the Awlaki case, ten days after the attacks, al-Bayoumi is picked up by British authorities in London, where he had relocated in July 2001, at the request of the FBI. Although his phone calls, bank accounts and associations are scrutinized, the Bureau claim they found no connections to terrorism. The Washington Post will report that by 2002 the FBI had concluded, the same year Awlaki leaves the U.S., “that no evidence could be found of any organized domestic effort to aid the hijackers.” Recall that new information linking some members of the Saudi royal family and its intelligence apparatus to the attacks has recently surfaced. Last month, The Miami Herald revealed that two weeks before the kamikaze assaults on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, a Saudi family “abruptly vacated their luxury home near Sarasota, leaving a brand new car in the driveway, a refrigerator full of food, fruit on the counter–and an open safe in a master bedroom.” Investigative reporters Anthony Summers and Dan Christensen learned that “law enforcement agents not only discovered the home was visited by vehicles used by the hijackers, but phone calls were linked between the home and those who carried out the death flights–including leader Mohamed Atta–in discoveries never before revealed to the public.” “Ten years after the deadliest attack of terrorism on U.S. soil,” Summers and Christensen wrote, “new information has emerged that shows the FBI found troubling ties between the hijackers and residents in the upscale community in southwest Florida, but the investigation wasn’t reported to Congress or mentioned in the 9/11 Commission Report.” In a follow-up piece that significantly advanced the story, researcher Russ Baker reported on the WhoWhatWhy web site “that those alleged confederates were closely tied to influential members of the Saudi ruling elite.” Building on information first disclosed by the Herald, Baker, the author of Family of Secrets, reports that this “now-revealed link” between those who consorted with the hijackers in Florida “and the highest ranks of the Saudi establishment, reopens questions about the White House’s controversial approval for multiple charter flights allowing Saudi nationals to depart the U.S., beginning about 48 hours after the attacks, without the passengers being interviewed by law enforcement–despite the identification of the majority of the hijackers as Saudis.” Is there a pattern between the hands-off treatment afforded well-connected Saudis and Anwar al-Awlaki’s casual, and inexplicable, flight from the United States? “After 9/11″ History Commons points out, “the FBI will question al-Awlaki, and he will admit to meeting with Alhazmi several times, but say he does not remember what they discussed. He will not claim to remember Almihdhar at all.” Other accounts suggest that the relationship was much closer. “The 9/11 Congressional Inquiry,” History Commons avers, “claim that Alhazmi and Almihdhar ‘were closely affiliated with [al-Awlaki] who reportedly served as their spiritual adviser during their time in San Diego. … Several persons informed the FBI after September 11 that this imam had closed-door meetings in San Diego with Almihdhar, Alhazmi, and another individual, whom al-Bayoumi had asked to help the hijackers’.” “Around August 2000,” History Commons reports, “al-Awlaki resigns as imam and travels to unknown ‘various countries.’ In early 2001, he will be appointed the imam to a much larger mosque in Falls Church, Virginia. During this time frame, Alhazmi, Almihdhar, and fellow hijacker Hani Hanjour will move to Virginia and attend al-Awlaki’s mosque there.” Anecdotally, in 2003 Newsweek reports: “Lincoln Higgie, an antiques dealer who lived across the street from the mosque where Aulaqi used to lead prayer, told Newsweek that he distinctly recalls the imam knocking on his door in the first week of August 2001 to tell him he was leaving for Kuwait. ‘He came over before he left and told me that something very big was going to happen, and that he had to be out of the country when it happened,’ recalls Higgie.” The antiques dealer later told The New York Times, that when he learned that Awlaki would be permanently leaving San Diego, “he told the imam to stop by if he was ever in the area–and got a strange response.” Higgie said, “‘I don’t think you’ll be seeing me. I won’t be coming back to San Diego again. Later on you’ll find out why’.” Although the FBI suspected Awlaki “had some connection with the 9/11 plot,” authorities claim there wasn’t enough evidence to charge him, nor can he be deported because he’s an American citizen. And when the Bureau hatched an ill-conceived plan to arrest him on an obscure charge of “transporting prostitutes across state lines,” that plan collapsed when Awlaki left the U.S. in March 2002. “But on October 10, 2002,” History Commons reports, “he makes a surprise return to the U.S.” Although his name is on a terrorist watch list and he is detained by Customs’ officials when he lands in New York, they are informed by the FBI that “his name was taken off the watch list just the day before. He is released after only three hours.” “Throughout 2002,” History Commons informs us, Awlaki is the “subject of an active Customs investigation into money laundering called Operation Greenquest, but he is not arrested for this either, or for the earlier contemplated prostitution charges. At the time, the FBI is fighting Greenquest, and Customs officials will later accuse the FBI of sabotaging Greenquest investigations.” Awlaki again leaves the U.S., this time for good. Although the FBI admits they were “very interested” in Awlaki, they fail to stop him leaving the country. One FBI source told U.S. News and World Report, “We don’t know how he got out.” Inexplicably however, it was not until 2008 that secret state officials concluded that Awlaki was an Al-Qaeda operative! This beggars belief, and raises the question as to why he was allowed to leave in the first place. It certainly can’t be for lack of evidence or that when Awlaki set-up shop, first in London and finally in Yemen, he is continually under surveillance by British, Yemeni and American intelligence agencies. Although interviewed four times by the FBI after September 11, the Bureau concluded, according to The New York Times, that Awlaki’s “contacts with the hijackers and other radicals were random.” Other investigators, however, disagreed. “One detective,” the Times reported, whose name has been scrubbed from 9/11 Commission files, told staff that he believed Awlaki “was at the center of the 9/11 story.” At the time of the Flight 253 affair, I wrote that “despite, or possibly because of these dubious connections he was allowed to leave the country.” In fact, the curious disinterest exhibited by authorities in bringing Awlaki to ground following September 11, were neither “errors in judgement” nor “mistakes” by overtaxed investigators but are rather, a modus operandi which suggests that Awlaki and others were part of a CIA domestic operation which allowed the 9/11 plot to go forward. • • • Nothing in what I have written above should be construed as justification for the extrajudicial assassination of Anwar al-Awlaki. In fact, the opposite conclusion can be drawn. The available evidence indicates that Awlaki could have been arrested multiple times. At the least serious end of the criminal justice spectrum he could have been charged with providing “material support to a designated foreign terrorist organization,” to whit, Al-Qaeda, and legally taken out of circulation. That he wasn’t and continued to operate freely as a propagandist, despite substantial corroboration from multiple law enforcement sources that he was a key figure in the pre-9/11 domestic support network, suggests that Awlaki may have been a double agent, albeit one who had decidedly gone “off the reservation.” Awlaki’s handling by authorities raise serious questions about just how extensive U.S. support for Al-Qaeda was prior to, and possibly even after the September 11 attacks, particularly in resource-rich global hot-spots. As numerous journalists and researchers have painstakingly documented, Al-Qaeda, allied terrorist outfits and international narco-trafficking networks have a long, sordid history of supporting U.S. covert operations that targeted America’s geopolitical rivals even as Bin Laden’s far-flung organization plotted to attack the United States itself. In this light, Awlaki’s “targeted killing” as with the earlier hit on Osama Bin Laden, may be part of a larger CIA/Pentagon operation to remove inconvenient participants and witnesses from the scene who might have a thing or two to say about the crimes and intrigues hatched by the imperialist Empire. After all, dead men tell no tales…

Tom Burghardt is a researcher and activist based in the San Francisco Bay Area. His articles are published in many venues. He is the editor of Police State America: U.S. Military "Civil Disturbance" Planning, distributed by AK Press.


from http://dissidentvoice.org/2011/10/dead-men-tell-no-tales-the-cia-911-and-the-awlaki-assassination/