Arshin Adib-Moghaddam

Dr. Arshin Adib-Moghaddam is a political commentator and lecturer in the comparative and international politics of western Asia at the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London. He was born in the Taksim area of Istanbul to Iranian parents and raised in Hamburg/Germany. He studied at the University of Hamburg, American University and Cambridge. He is the author of The International Politics of the Persian Gulf: A Cultural Genealogy, Iran in World Politics: The question of the Islamic Republic and A metahistory of the Clash of Civilisations.

He is an Honorary Fellow of the University of Cambridge’s European Trust Society and he was the first Jarvis Doctorow Fellow at St Edmund Hall, University of Oxford.

His articles and commentaries have appeared on Guardian, CNN, Monthly Review, Independent, Open Democracy, Antiwar and Daily Star. His scholarly papers also have been published in “Critical Studies on Terrorism”, “Cambridge Review of International Affairs”, “Third World Quarterly” and “International Studies Journal.”

Dr. Adib-Moghaddam’s latest book “A Metahistory of the Clash of Civilisations: Us and Them Beyond Orientalism” was published in 2011 by the Hurst & Co. and Columbia University Press.

As described by Amazon.com, “Adib-Moghaddam’s investigation explains the conceptual genesis of the clash of civilizations and the influence of western and Islamic representations of the other. He highlights the discontinuities between Islamism and the canon of Islamic philosophy, which distinguishes between Avicennian and Qutbian discourses of Islam, and he reveals how violence became inscribed in western ideas, especially during the Enlightenment. Expanding critical theory to include Islamic philosophy and poetry, this metahistory refuses to treat Muslims and Europeans, Americans and Arabs, and the Orient and the Occident as separate entities.”

He joined me in an in-depth interview and answered my questions regarding the continued controversy over Iran’s nuclear program, the Western media’s black propaganda against Iran, the future of Iran-West relations and the prospect of Iran’s Green Movement.

What follows is the complete text of my interview with Dr. Arshin Adib-Moghaddam, political scientist and author.

Kourosh Ziabari: Over the past years, the United States and its European allies imposed several rounds of UN-authorized and non-authorized sanctions against Iran over its nuclear program. The general policy of West towards Iran brings to mind several questions. First of all, I would like to ask you, as a political scientist, that why is Iran singled out over its nuclear program? Who has put forward reliable evidence that Iran is developing nuclear weapons, or has the intention to do so? Does the West’s hostility toward Iran simply emanate from Iran’s nuclear program? If so, then why did the former U.S. President George W. Bush label Iran as part of an Axis of Evil under President Khatami who was a reformist and open-minded politician?

Arshin Adib-Moghaddam: You are right, and one has to stress that on every occasion, lest the lies that led to the invasion of Iraq will be repeated: There is no evidence that Iran is building a nuclear weapon. No IAEA report, not even national intelligence agencies hostile to the Iranian state such as the CIA and the Mossad in Israel have provided any evidence to that end. So the nuclear weapons allegation is a political mirage, a tactical maneuver to outflank Iran on other matters.

I think Chomsky is right when he says that it is Iran’s insistence on an independent foreign policy that is being punished. The allegation that Iran is developing nuclear weapons is a Trojan horse to legitimise the comprehensive sanctions regime and to contain Iran’s regional power. Having said that, I don’t believe that Iran is facing a coherent ‘western’ block. Even in the United States, where the image of Iran is professionally manufactured by anti-Iranian lobbying groups, there are differences of opinion on how to engage the country. There is a difference between Barak Obama and George W. Bush. In Europe too, we have been engaged in fostering a different kind of approach to Iran, one that is not reliant on myths, but the reality on the ground.

The fact remains that Iran is a regional superpower with influence in all the hotspots of the region. The sanctions policy, the policy of containment has largely failed. It has not changed Iranian behaviour on strategic matters. If anything, the politics of aggression has emboldened the rather more hawkish elements in the Iranian state, because it is them who thrive on the rhetoric of confrontation. You mention the axis-of-evil speech of George W. Bush. It came after the reformist President Mohammad Khatami made major concessions, offering support for the war against the Taliban in the aftermath of the terror attacks on 9/11. President Khatami went out of his way to offer medical support to US pilots who would be downed on Iranian territory, a major confidence building step. It was reciprocated with the axis of evil speech, one of the most disastrous and murderous foreign policy speeches in the history of the United States.

It should also be noted that Khatami suspended the enrichment of uranium in response to a deal with the European Union. But the EU, under the sway of Tony Blair and others, did not adhere to their side of the bargain. This was a major diplomatic blunder. Khatami was left with nothing. The right-wing in Iran was quick to capitalise on the situation. It was then when the Ahmadinejad faction accused the reformers of selling out the national interest of the country. With nothing to present, Khatami was robbed of a counter-case. Here he was talking about a dialogue amongst civilisation, condemning calls for the death of America in Iran, suspending the enrichment of uranium, supporting the campaign against al-Qaeda and the Taliban in Afghanistan, reaching out to the American people on CNN, only to be demonised and placed along Saddam Hussein and Kim-Jong Il in the axis of evil.

But there is no time to reminisce or to be apathetic. The apostles of war are preaching again and they are taking their orders from Netanyahu. It is an ongoing battle. They are inventing myth in order to advocate military aggression. We are working on the truth. They wield sword and sceptre above our heads. We stick to the pen and the lectern. Theirs is a case of hate and destruction. Ours is geared to peace and reconciliation. Their conscious is pragmatic, ours is principled. We resist, they exercise power.

KZ: Israel is the sole possessor of nuclear weapons in the Middle East. Several international organizations including the Federation of American Scientists have confirmed this fact. Why doesn’t the international community, especially the United States and its European friends, take action to legalize Israel’s nuclear program and investigate its atomic arsenal? Why doesn’t Israel comply with the UNSC resolution 487 which called on Tel Aviv to put its nuclear facilities under the IAEA safeguards?

AA: From a legal perspective, there is a nuance of course. Israel, like Pakistan and India never signed the Non Proliferation Treaty. But let’s leave that aside for a moment, for it doesn’t really answer why the Israeli state is treated different than the Iranian government. It is ironic that Israel has done everything Iran is accused of: Iran is accused of terrorism; Israel openly admits that it pursues a policy of assassination all over the world. Iran is accused of meddling in the affairs of Arab countries; Israel has launched two invasions against them in the past five years killing thousands of civilians in Gaza and Lebanon. Iran has been accused and sanctioned for developing nuclear weapons without any evidence; Israel has nuclear weapons and boasts of close trade ties with the United States and the European Union. Moreover, Israel is the only country in the world that colonises territory in clear violation of international law and under the auspices of the ‘international community.’ This is called the ‘settlement policy’ in the official jargon of the Netanyahu administration. Not even the condemnation of President Obama, important in its own right, changed the situation. So Israel is what Iran is punished for. It should be said that there are many dissidents in Israel itself that disagree with the policies of Netanyahu and the strategy of colonisation of Palestinian territory.

So far Israel has been shielded from international law by successive US administrations. It is the veto of the US that prevents any serious UNSC resolution against Israel. When it comes to Israel, and consequently western Asia and North Africa, the United States continues to be hostage to the pro-Israeli lobby in the country. However, the tide is turning. There are signs of a progressive counter-discourse gaining ground. Obama and Netanyahu are at odds, let there be no doubt about this. And there is resistance to the influence of the Israeli right-wing on US domestic politics and foreign affairs. But for the moment the political elites in the US are not sufficiently independent to think in terms of their national interest in western Asia and North Africa.

I have argued in “A metahistory of the clash of civilisations” that justice in world politics is the surface effect of a series of constellations that can be manipulated towards particular ends. So justice is a product of politics and diplomacy rather than an objective value that is universally applicable. At the same time I reject the notion that world politics has to be anarchic, that the Hobbesian idea of a war of all against all is inevitable. It was Europe and then the United States that constructed and supervised this unjust order. It is not due to some kind of natural law. So it can be changed. The Israeli nuclear programme must be seen within this larger context of an unjust world order that continues to produce hypocrisies on major issues facing human kind. I mean, it is not as if we could detach from all of this. Politics affects everything we do, from birth to death, cereal to nightgown. The reform of the international institutions must do away with the hierarchy inscribed in them. One way of dealing with this would be to turn the UNSC into a rather more representative body that would reflect the emerging non-western world order.

KZ: The sanctions of the United States and European Union against Iran have targeted Iran’s medical sector, oil and gas industry, energy sector and even automobile and food industries. Ordinary Iranians are deprived of having access to the most rudimentary necessities of their daily life as a result of these crippling sanctions. Tens of patients suffering from chronic disorders die each year because the foreign firms don’t allow their products to be exported to Iran Even the reformist leaders Mehdi Karroubi and Mirhossein Mousavi have condemned the crippling sanctions of the West against Iran. What’s your idea? Aren’t these sanctions some kind of violation of human rights?

AA: There are two assumptions in the question that I would like to challenge. First, I think the Iranian economy is doing well if we take into consideration that the country has been under international sanctions for three decades now and that it is absorbing the ‘baby boom’ generation after the revolution. There are many problems of course, unemployment, inflation, economic mismanagement, etc, but the macroeconomic indicators of Iran – economic growth, foreign direct investment – are sound. Recent reports by the World Bank, UNCTAD and the IMF indicate these positive economic trends quite clearly.
After all, Iran continues to be an affluent country. From my own experience in Iran there is no shortage of medical provision and the country continues to have an intricate and wide ranging social welfare system with several foundations and institutions that are dedicated to the plight of the poor. They continue to function against all odds. To my mind the sanctions policy has largely failed. A country like Iran with the second largest gas reserves in the world and the second highest production of crude oil cannot be effectively isolated. But I take your point that economic sanctions hurt civilians rather than the state. Especially in the aviation industry the sanctions policy is killing Iranians. In that sense, it is true that they violate human dignity.

Yet I don’t think that the sanctions have in any way ‘crippled’ Iran as Hillary Clinton and others put it. The term crippling is very discriminatory and distasteful by the way, given that many US soldiers come back disabled from the many wars that the US is engaged in. It is even more disrespectful than the so called ‘carrot and stick’ policy applied to Iran, a phrase that is used for donkeys. Terms and phrases like that indicate the discursive violence enveloping Iranian-American relations. It is equally prevalent in Iran, of course, for instance the calls of death to America. To my mind, progressive independence, independence that is not only material, but psychological too, begets that Iran does away with slogans demonising or praising any country.

As for the second part of the question: In fact the Iranian opposition is by far more hawkish on the issue of nuclear negotiations, for they do not hold the responsibly of power. As you know I have never accepted the discourse of human rights as a part of the foreign policy of the state. Human rights are the prerogative of civil society. The state is merely there to execute our demands in that regard. I don’t think any of us need Nicolas Sarkozy to enlighten us about human rights. But it should be said in the same breath that the human rights situation in Iran is problematic. Again, why would we look at the representations by the ‘west’ in order to assess how we treat each other? Isn’t this a form of dependency? And does it not invite the other side into Iranian affairs? What we need is a transparent, legally grounded policy of human rights that defines the dignity of Iranians and their rights within the context of the social, religious, cultural and ethnic realities of contemporary Iran. An autonomous human rights shura, if you want, not in order to present Iran as a particularly tolerant country to the outside, that would be an automatic side effect, but in order to assess why there are so many complaints about the human rights situation in Iran by Iranians living in the country itself. The weakness of the system in this regard has serious national and international repercussions. The national security of a country starts with the nation— the citizenry which is the most precious commodity for the security of a country. The revolution was quite clear on this aspect, the centrality of the “tudeh”, “mardom”, the “ummah”. Surely, we are not saying that other countries are responsible for the dignity of the Iranian people? There is a splendid excursus by Ali Shariati on this matter, on the differences between “bashariyat” and “insaniyat” between being human in biological terms and humaneness. “Insaniyat” or humaneness requires caring for the plight of the ‘other’, the hamsay-e or neighbour with whom we literally share our shadow, “ham – saye”. I have used this differentiation of Shariati to criticise the inhumane treatment of the prisoners at Abu Ghraib in Iraq by the US army. I don’t mean to sound too dramatic but I believe that we need the discourse of insaniyat in Iran today, probably more than ever.

KZ: Your articles and commentaries have appeared on several mainstream media outlets and you have been in close contact with a number of them. Don’t you believe that all of these media outlets have an anti-Iranian approach which prevents them from maintaining impartiality and objectivity? Don’t you trace the footsteps of a concerted anti-Iranian propaganda in these media? Why don’t they ever write anything of Iran’s rich and sophisticated culture? Why don’t they ever write anything about Iran’s scientific progresses? Why don’t they ever write about Iranian artists, scholars and scientists and the richness of Persian culture and literature? What we read of Iran in these media is simply confined to Iran’s alleged sponsorship of terrorism, nuclear program and violation of human rights. Why is it so?
AA: No I don’t think so. I certainly don’t see a concert of anti-Iranian propaganda. It is more of a cacophony. By that I mean that there is no government or agency that could control every aspect of the international media, otherwise the demand for some of my writings would not penetrate the mainstream as you put it. So I don’t think there is some kind of a conductor when it comes to the media concert on Iran. There is no monolithic coherence or a consensus that is all-encompassing. There is a real difference between Fox News and CNN, and there is a difference between The Sun and The Guardian of London. But it is true to say that there are many people shouting, and that the megaphones are readily available. It is surely easier to get published with a story that is anti-Iranian, rather than one that aspires to objectivity.

But the reason for that is not an all-encompassing conspiracy, but the composition of the mainstream media in the ‘west’ itself. At the margins there is room for dissent, but the bulk of the news stories have become a part of what Theodor Adorno aptly called a ‘culture industry’ decades ago. This culture industry reacts to market forces by far more than it reacts to the truth. As a current example: Here, in the UK the government of Prime Minister Cameron is currently grappling with a major corruption case involving several newspapers owned by Rupert Murdoch’s company News Corporation. There have been arrests; Murdoch and his son had to appear in front of a parliamentary commission and so on. The allegations range from bribery of police officers who leaked information to journalists to the illegal hacking of phones and computers. It is a right mess. Murdoch co-owns Fox News together with the Saudi Prince Al-Waleed bin Talal. Murdoch also owns The Sunday Times, The Times, and several tabloid papers. So there is a concentration of power here that creates its own political economy of truth. This is unhealthy for a democracy and it is unhelpful to understand complex countries such as Iran.

But again, from a critical perspective, and in this case it means self-criticism, one has to ask why it is so easy to write nonsense about Iran and why it is that Iran’s image is so far removed from the reality? I don’t think that the power of the mainstream media is analytically possible without the absence of a functioning counter-discourse. Why is the international media not flooded with experts from Iran itself? How many of Iran’s cultural attaches in the embassies do their job properly? How many conferences do they organise on the media representation of Iran? How much outreach is there? And what about the media landscape in Iran in terms of its international appeal? An image can only be manipulated if the resistance to that manipulation is not sophisticated enough. To put it in simple terms: Iranians in Iran are the best authors of their narrative, highly educated, internet-savvy, most of them truly brilliant, it is just a matter of disseminating their message, so that there is a second opinion on the country.

KZ: The critics of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad believe that he isolated Iran in the international community with his harsh policies and uncompromising stance, especially with regards to nuclear issue. They say that Iran has other important priorities than nuclear program and should not sacrifice its position and prestige in the international level by insisting on enriching uranium which is a sensitive issue for the Westerners. What’s your take on that?

AA: Success in international diplomacy is not merely dependent on the demand, in this case enriching uranium on Iranian soil, but on the way that demand is packaged. It is not what is in the package that is determining the reaction, but the way it is enveloped.

President Ahmadinejad stands accused of using the wrong wrapping paper. His rhetoric, his demeanour his overall discourse has been largely anti-diplomatic and confrontational. The Supreme Leader was quite aware of this at an early stage of the Presidency which is why he nominated a foreign policy council to oversee his performance. In that sense President Ahmadinejad is quite comparable to George W. Bush who was equally inept to articulate the national interest of the United States, which is why he plunged the country into a political and economic mess. Having said that, Iran is not isolated per se. Iran continues to be supported by those countries who are preparing for a new world order that will be distinctively multi-polar and non-western. The initiative of Turkey and Brazil is indicative of the future, the emergence of China as a global player is probably the most important factor, and the Arab revolts are very consequential too.

The puppets are falling and the puppet-master is running out of characters. The shah, Ben-Ali, Mubarak, their primary sin was that they were considered to be subservient to external demands. It was their colonial mindset, the notion that they simply can’t do it on their own that sealed their fate. The Iranian revolution has to be seen as a step in the direction of a multi-polar world order because it offered an alternative to superpower politics. In fact, the Cold War in Iran ended with the revolution.

KZ: The United States and Israel have long advocated a regime change in Iran and used every opportunity to sabotage Iran’s security by supporting terrorist groups such as PJAK and MKO or assassinating Iranian scientists and high-profile politicians. Don’t you believe that those Iranians living in Diaspora who support these American-Israeli efforts are betraying the cause of their compatriots living in Iran?

AA: To my mind, those fanatical opposition activists who cheer everything that is going wrong in Iran are delusional. They deserve compassion, not vitriol. Exile has a strange effect on the mind. It creates a dangerous duality. In terms of their mental habitat, many exiles continue to live in Iran. Yet because they are not there, everything that happens there appears in slow motion to them. They can’t keep up. You can take the individual from Iran, but you can’t take Iran out of the individual. Iran is like a magnetic nodal point that draws you in. It is really difficult to escape the lure of the country. Now if the duality of the exiled mind is not tempered with a good dose of reason, it creates a split personality, cultural schizophrenia in Dariush Shayegan’s words.

The idea that “they” have taken away “my” country from “me” turns into the idea that I have the right to take it back now. Iran is traded as a commodity that can be owned, rather than a bond that we all have to invest in, in order to yield results that are non-discriminatory. I don’t think, however, that any Iranian condones the murder of innocent scientists in their homeland.

There aren’t many of those delusional opposition activists left really, apart from the handful who have set up their satellite TV stations in their basement and who don’t really have serious influence on anything that is being said and written about Iran. But ideally, even they would be included in an extended parenthesis behind the meaning of contemporary Iran which would safeguard the right to contribute to the future of the country. Such a vast parenthesis would encompass all of those who identify themselves as Iranian, irrespective of political orientation, ethnic background, religious loyalties etc.

You are an Iranian if you say so, who am I to deny you the right to be one? Such an understanding of Iran as an open ended idea has a central function: It turns the politics of the country, including the dialectic between the Diaspora and Iranians living in Iran, from an antagonistic mode to an agonistic process of mutual acceptance, from the zero-sum politics of today, to the positive-sum policies of tomorrow, from the vilification of the political enemy to the acceptance of him/her as a legitimate competitor. The Iranian self, the “khodi” has always been cosmopolitan and politically promiscuous. Unless this reality is accepted, the politics of the country will be decided on a limited ground that does not encompass the transnational vastness of the meaning of Iran. After all, Iran transcends, that much we can all agree upon. Hence, a politics of transcendence, the maximal autonomisation of the meaning of Iran is merited.

KZ: The European Union has recently taken the name of MKO off its list of terrorist organizations. Moreover, MKO was legalized in the United Kingdom on 24 June 2008, six months after winning a court battle over its legality. The U.S. congressmen are also making efforts to persuade the government to remove MKO from its terror list. What’s your estimation of this action? Isn’t it contrary to the claims of the American and European politicians who usually boast of their loyalty to the Iranian people and their support for the freedom and democracy movement in the country?

AA: Of course it is. The MKO is a terrorist sect with rigid organisational structures that would make any fascist rise in applause. But why is the case against Iran easier to build than the case against other countries, for instance Brazil, Venezuela, Bolivia or Nicaragua, states that are allied to Iran? This is the real question that the political elites in Iran need to address. And then there is a second responsibility for what is happening: The primary reason why the MKO can act is the vacuum left behind by Iranian diplomacy in the last years. We can’t start the analysis with the effect. We have to look at the causes. Where are the cultural attaches protesting against the activities of the MKO? Where are their outlines for concerted PR campaigns that would reveal the atrocities that the MKO committed? How many international conferences have been organised on the links between the MKO and Saddam Hussein? Why is this little organisation an issue in the first place?
What is needed in order to safeguard Iran’s national interest is a politics of friendship and reconciliation that stretches as far as possible to the realms of international diplomacy: state to state, state to society, and most importantly civil society to civil society. The dialogue between societies encapsulates the true essence of the term dawat that was so central to the libertarian aspects of the Islamic revolution. Inviting the ‘Other’ to listen is a virtue. Obviously an invitation requires a language that is empathetic rather than confrontational. As a Persian proverb has it: betamarg, beshin and befarma all mean sit down, but the polite befarma will probably yield the best reaction.

KZ: And my final question is about the prospect of Green Movement in Iran. I strongly believe that the United States and European countries betrayed the Green Movement by explicitly supporting it and giving the hardliners an excuse to associate this reformist movement with the U.S. and Israel. The Western mainstream media also played their own role in this betrayal by portraying Mirhossein Mousavi and Mehdi Karroubi as opposition leaders, while they were simply reformist candidates who wanted to implement soft reforms within Iran’s current political establishment, not opposition leaders who wanted to subvert the regime. What’s your idea?

AA: I don’t see the causal link between western policies and/or media representations and events in Iran. The politics of the country has its own dynamics. There is too much focus on what the media in the ‘west’ says, as if a journalist in New York has more power to decide the future of Iran than a university student in Tehran. Here, I disagree with post-colonial theorists and the Radical Left who keep telling us that imperial power is all-encompassing. To believe that, is not only analytically flawed but it creates a dangerous self-fulfilling prophecy. As for the Green Movement: it is the reincarnation of previous reform outfits such as the Second Khordad movement named after the date Mohammad Khatami was elected President.

It is the surface effect of the demands of Iranian civil society which will continue to be articulated beyond personalities such as Mousavi and Karroubi who themselves are merely the effects of those demands for reform. And you are right to say that these are calls for reforms to the Islamic Republic and not for a fundamentally new order. At the height of the demonstrations I wrote that they did not amount to a revolution. Most people disagreed. When it comes to the Iran story the degree of hypocrisy and opportunism is staggering, sometimes it is depressing. But one shouldn’t feel helpless in the face of the colossal lies that are being printed about Iran. There is room to resist and to fight for the truth. To my mind, this is primarily an intellectual jihad which requires research, patience and a good dose of cross-cultural empathy. It is not enough to speak truth to power from the outside any anymore. It is necessary to perfect resistance strategies that penetrate power from within. And isn’t this what the brave activists from Tahrir Square in Cairo to Syntagma Square in Athens are demanding as we speak?

Kourosh Ziabari is an Iranian freelance journalist and writer and a member of World Student Community for Sustainable Development.

Articles and commentaries by Jeremy R. Hammond have been published on a variety of newspapers and websites including Palestine Chronicle, Dissident Voice, Counter Punch, Global Research, World News Trust, Turkish Weekly Journal, Pakistan Daily and Atlantic Free Press.

He has written extensively on subjects such as war, terrorism, media and propaganda, culture, society, energy, environment, U.S. foreign policy, Middle East, Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan and Turkey.

Over the past years, Jeremy has been running Foreign Policy Journal which has gained a reputation as a reliable and prestigious news website consisted of a team of veteran journalists and political analysts who write on a variety of issues pertaining to foreign relations and international developments.

Jeremy R. Hammond took part in an in-depth interview with me and answered my questions regarding Iran’s nuclear standoff, the renewed war threats of Israel and the United States against Iran, the prospect of Iran-West relations and also Israel’s underground nuclear program.

What follows is the complete text of my interview with Jeremy R. Hammond, political journalist and the editor of Foreign Policy Journal.

Kourosh Ziabari: The past decade has been witness to unending and unremitting clash between Iran and the West over Tehran’s nuclear program. The West has constantly accused Iran of trying to build nuclear bombs while Tehran has persistently denied the allegation. What do you think about the nature of Iran’s nuclear program? Why has it become so controversial and contentious? We already know that there are four nations in the world, who are not signatories of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, but nobody in the international community pressures them to halt their nuclear program and nobody investigates their nuclear arsenals. Why Iran is being singled out?

Jeremy R. Hammond: What I think about the nature of Iran’s nuclear program is that it is a peaceful program, the right to which is guaranteed under the nuclear non-proliferation treaty, of which Iran is a signatory. I don’t know as an absolute fact that Iran doesn’t have a nuclear weapons program, but that’s what the evidence– the lack thereof, rather– tells us. The legal standard that the West has applied to Iran is that it must prove itself innocent of attempting to produce a nuclear weapon. Like Iraq, Iran is being punished for failing to prove that it isn’t guilty of the charges the U.S. and its western partners accuse it of, like Iraq, without evidence. This policy persists despite the fact that the U.S.’s own intelligence community assessed in a 2007 National Intelligence Estimate that Iran had no active nuclear weapons program, and as Seymour Hersh just very recently reported in the New Yorker, an updated 2011 NIE reiterates that judgment.

The reason Iran’s nuclear program has become so controversial, therefore, has nothing to do with nuclear nonproliferation, any more than the war on Iraq had anything to do with weapons of mass destruction or terrorism. The problem with Iran is the same as that posed by Iraq, which is that it is too independent, too willing to defy orders from Washington, D. C. The U.S. used to support Iran’s nuclear program, when the country was under the Shah’s regime. The U.S. installed the Shah in 1953 after the CIA coup that overthrew the democratically elected Prime Minister Mohammed Mossadeq for nationalizing Iran’s oil industry, for standing up to the West and saying that Iran’s oil belonged to the Iranian people.

Iran is singled out because it defies Washington. Israel is the only country in the region that actually possesses nuclear weapons. Unlike Iran, it is not a member of the NPT. The Western media constantly repeats that Iran’s pursuit of nuclear weapons is a threat to the region, and that its nuclear program risks sparking a nuclear arms race in the Middle East. Israel’s nuclear weapons, for some inexplicable reason, do not threaten to spark a nuclear arms race.

For example, the fact that Saddam Hussein’s decision to pursue a nuclear weapon was a direct consequence of Israel’s decision to destroy Iraq’s Osirak nuclear reactor in 1981, which had been under the monitoring and supervision of the International Atomic Energy Agency, the nuclear watchdog that enforces the NPT, is just completely irrelevant. It can be forgotten, tossed down the Memory Hole. Never mind that the U.N. Security Council condemned the attack in a resolution that noted that Iraq’s nuclear program had been legal and that Israel’s attack threatened the very framework of the international non-proliferation regime. Never mind that U.S. intelligence assessed that Israel’s attack, along with its own possession of nuclear weapons, could spark an arms race and intensify efforts by Saddam Hussein and other Arab leaders to seek a nuclear deterrent to Israeli aggression.

You can on very rare occasions actually read about Israel’s attack on Osirak in U.S. political commentary. If it’s mentioned, it’s cited as an example of how effective the use of force is in deterring Israel’s neighbors in the region from obtaining nuclear weapons. I mean, it’s just an Orwellian fiction that turns reality completely on its head. So if it’s mentioned, it’s in that context. Otherwise, you can just forget it. Nothing to see there, no lessons to learn; down the Memory Hole.

Relevant facts just have no place in any discussion of Iran’s nuclear program, just as the fact that the IAEA had declared Iraq’s nuclear program totally dismantled had no place in the discussion in the mainstream media in the run-up to the war on Iraq, because the issue has nothing to do with non-proliferation. As with Iraq, that’s just the pretext under which the U.S. government justifies its policy, which is really a policy of regime change. This also explains why the U.S. government and media engaged in a propaganda disinformation campaign in an attempt to characterize Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s victory in Iran’s 2009 presidential election as having been fraudulent, not only without evidence, but contrary to all evidence indicating that Ahmadinejad legitimately won.

KZ: Over the past years, the United Nations Security Council, under the pressure of the United States and its European allies, imposed four rounds of crippling economic sanctions against Iran over its nuclear program. These sanctions targeted Iran’s oil and gas sector, aviation industry,  health and medicine sector, consular affairs and in a nutshell, every aspect of the daily life of the Iranian citizens who had been trying to rise from the ashes of the devastating war with Iraq in 1980s. What do you think about these sanctions and their impact on the life of the Iranian citizens? Don’t these sanctions resemble some kind of human rights violation? Iranian people are deprived of having access to the most essential commodities of their daily life as a result of these sanctions. What’s your take on that?

JRH: The sanctions are a violation of the U.N. Charter and Iran’s rights under the NPT. The NPT obliges member nations to accept the safeguards regime of the IAEA, which the treaty explicitly states shall implement its duties without hampering Iran’s economic or technological development.  Article IV of the NPT states explicitly that nothing within it may prejudice Iran’s right to develop, research, and use nuclear technology for peaceful purposes, including uranium enrichment.

The U.N. sanctions originate from U.N. Security Council resolution 1996 of 2006, which expressed concern that Iran had not taken certain steps requested of it by the IAEA and called on Iran to suspend enrichment activities. Iran had previously suspended its uranium enrichment on a voluntary basis, as a show of good faith to the West, and to go out of their way to create an atmosphere conducive to negotiations with the European Union. Part of that agreement was that the EU would offer Iran security guarantees. Yet the EU failed to fulfill its obligation and the U.S. and Israel continued to threaten Iran with military force. The West also stalled on negotiations, with the Bush administration refusing to engage Iran diplomatically and instead issuing the ultimatum that Iran must end enrichment as a precondition to talks—which would, of course, defeat the whole point of negotiating for Iran.

As result, Iran ended its voluntary cessation of enrichment activities and resumed research.
The IAEA then called upon Iran to once again implement a voluntary cessation. That IAEA resolution in fact did not find Iran to be in violation of any of its obligations under the NPT, and in fact explicitly recognized Iran’s inalienable right under the NPT to develop, research, and produce nuclear energy, without prejudice. It merely expressed concern that Iran had been disinclined to acquiesce to the agency’s requests that it once again voluntarily suspend enrichment. It’s important to emphasize again that this was not a legal obligation under the NPT, but a voluntary unilateral action demonstrating good faith on Iran’s part. That IAEA resolution is the legal foundation for U.N. Resolution 1696 and subsequent resolutions imposing sanctions on Iran. In other words, the U.N. sanctions against Iran have no legal basis whatsoever. On the contrary, they are themselves a violation of the U.N. Charter and the NPT.

This is further illustrated by the fact that Resolution 1696 was passed under Article 40 of Chapter VII of the U.N. Charter. It states that the Security Council may call upon parties to comply with provision measures as it deems necessary, but only under two conditions. The first is in cases where the Council has determined that a threat to the peace exists, which the U.N. has not done in the case of Iran. The second condition is that if a threat to the peace is determined to exist, any measures the U.N. takes shall be without prejudice to the rights, claims, or position of Iran. That includes Iran’s “inalienable right” under the NPT to enrich uranium.

KZ: With their sophisticated intelligence apparatus, the United States and its European allies should have come to the conclusion that Iran does not have the intention of building nuclear bombs nor does it have the capability to build one. Iran has repeatedly stated that it will publicly announce once it decides to build an atomic bomb because it is afraid of nobody. Is the pressure on Iran over its nuclear program part of an agenda to derail Iran’s status as a regional superpower and isolate it internationally, or is it really a matter of ignorance and unawareness on the side of the West?

JRH: In fact, U.S. intelligence has judged that Iran has no active nuclear weapons program, in both its 2007 and 2011 NIEs, as I mentioned before. But facts like that just don’t matter, as far as U.S. policy is concerned, because the policy has nothing to do with non-proliferation. It’s partly a matter of ignorance, but it’s willful ignorance. Take, for example, the claim that has long been virtually obligatory for any U.S. mainstream commentary on Iran’s nuclear program, that Ahmadinejad has threatened Israel with a nuclear holocaust. This claim stems in part from the claim that Iran has a nuclear weapons program, and also from the claim that Ahmadinejad threatened to “wipe Israel off the map”. But that claim is false.

First, it’s a dubious translation of a comment Ahmadinejad made in a speech in October 2005. Professor Juan Cole and journalist Jonathan Steele, among others, pointed out at the time that what he actually said would be better translated as “the regime occupying Jerusalem must vanish from the pages of time”, or something more akin to that. Second, Ahmadinejad was quoting Ayatollah Khomeini. Third, the context of the quote is not irrelevant. He was talking about the need for oppressive regimes to come to an end. He cited three examples. The first was the Shah’s regime in Iran. The second was Saddam Hussein’s regime in Iraq. The third was the Zionist regime in Israel, which had been occupying Palestinian territory, including East Jerusalem, for four decades.

It’s perfectly well understood among knowledgeable western commentators that the “nuclear holocaust” claim is pure fiction, nothing more than a fabrication for Western propaganda purposes, misquoted and taken completely out of context. So you have the BBC acknowledging that there’s no direct translation for the English expression “to wipe” something “off the map”, but insisting on using that translation anyhow. And so you have the New York Times acknowledging that Juan Cole’s and Jonathan Steele’s translations are actually more accurate, that he said “regime occupying Jerusalem”, not “Israel”, and that he said “pages of time or history”, and not “map”, but insisting that it was nevertheless right and proper to say he threatened “to wipe Israel off the map”, which is, needless to say, the way the New York Times and the rest of the U.S. mainstream media have reported it ever since, often in the same sentence as the claim that Iran is attempting to build a nuclear bomb. This is virtually obligatory in the U.S. media. So, yes, there is ignorance, but it’s willful ignorance.

No doubt many commentators actually believe their own propaganda, but it’s the same way many government officials and analysts believed that Iraq had WMD, which was a conclusion that could only be arrived at by dismissing all the relevant facts and willfully choosing not to make any effort whatsoever to actually seriously examine the claims made. I mean, anyone who knows how to use an internet search engine can find this stuff out for themselves. Anyone can Google it. But facts are just irrelevant.

Again, the situation is comparable to that of Iraq prior to the invasion, such as the claim that Iraq had sought aluminum tubes to manufacture centrifuges to enrich uranium for a nuclear bomb. The IAEA said they couldn’t be used for such a purpose, but were rather intended for a conventional rocket program. The U.S.’s top experts at the Department of Energy said they couldn’t be used for centrifuges, but were intended for an existing rocket program that just so happened to use tubes of the exact same dimensions. The State Department’s intelligence bureau agreed with the assessment of the DOE. Yet you had government officials like National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice or President George W. Bush publicly declaring that the tubes were intended for centrifuges, that they couldn’t possibly have any other purpose, and that we couldn’t wait for the “smoking gun” that Iraq was pursuing the bomb to come “in the form of a mushroom cloud”. There is ignorance, yes, but it’s willful ignorance. The facts just don’t matter, no matter how uncontroversial they may actually be. The truth gests too much in the way of the policy.

KZ: Israel is said to be the sole possessor of nuclear weapons in the Middle East. With a declared policy of deliberate ambiguity, it has prevented the international community from investigating its arsenals, and the global organizations such as the UNSC in turn have shown little interest in focusing on Israel’s dossier. Why can Israel enjoy immunity from international law and be exempted from being held accountable before the public opinion?

JRH: I’ve already briefly touched on that, but to reiterate, it’s the same reason Israel can enjoy immunity from international law in regard to its ongoing occupation of the Palestinian territories and illegal settlement activity. Or the same reason Israel can enjoy immunity from international law in regard to its continued violence against the Palestinians, such as its 22-day full-scale military assault on Gaza from December 27, 2008 to January 18, 2009.

The narrative in the U.S. basically stated that Hamas committed a coup against the Palestinian government, had incessantly fired rockets at Israeli towns, and had violated a ceasefire with Israel. Thus, Israel responded to defend itself against the Hamas terrorist attacks. The truth is that the U.S. and Israel conspired to overthrow the democratically elected Hamas government by financing and arming Fatah, the party of P.A. President Mahmoud Abbas. Hamas’s takeover of the Gaza Strip was a consequence of the fact that the U.S. illegally financed Fatah’s election campaign, pressured Abbas to illegally dismiss the Hamas government, and armed Fatah to use force to overthrow Hamas and expel them from government. So that was what was called the “Hamas coup” in the Western media. All of this is completely uncontroversial.

On June 19, 2008, Israel and Hamas began a 6-month ceasefire, under which Israel was supposed to lift its siege on Gaza, which it implemented to collectively punish the Palestinians for having Hamas as their leadership. Israel perpetually violated the ceasefire. It refused to lift the siege. Israeli soldiers shot across the border at Palestinian farmers attempting to reach their own land.

Two elderly men were injured in such attacks in June, and an unarmed 18-year old was killed in July. Israel stepped up operations against Hamas and other militant groups in the West Bank, provoking limited rocket fire from groups in Gaza, which Hamas actively pressured to abide by the ceasefire, including by making arrests.

On November 4, Israel launched an airstrike and ground incursion against Gaza, killing half a dozen members of Hamas. Up until that time, Hamas had fired not a single rocket at Israel, but had strictly observed the ceasefire. Israel’s violation effectively ended the ceasefire. Its official end came on December 19, the expiration of the six-month period. Hamas offered to extend the truce if Israel would lift the siege, but Israel refused the offer and instead proceeded to launch a full-scale military operation it had been planning since before the truce had gone into effect.

Again, all totally uncontroversial. So it just isn’t mentioned. The New York Times, for example, reported the November 4 Israeli violation at the time, but in subsequent accounts employed euphemisms like just saying that the ceasefire “broke down” in early November, without any further discussion as to why it “broke down”, which was because Israel violated it. As a simple thought experiment, had Hamas been the one to violate the ceasefire, the Times would never have reported that it just “broke down”. It would have been absolutely obligatory to note that Hamas had violated it. But the opposite truth is just too inconvenient, so it just isn’t mentioned.

That was “Operation Cast Lead”, which targeted the civilian population of Gaza. Israel targeted homes, mosques, schools, hospitals, and U.N. facilities. It used white phosphorus munitions over civilian areas. It leveled entire areas of Gaza and killed about 1,400 Palestinians, mostly civilians, including around 300 children. The devastation was wrought by U.S.-provided F-16s, Apache helicopters, Hellfire missiles, and white phosphorus munitions. It was bought and paid for by the U.S. taxpayers through over $3 billion in annual military grants to Israel, which is in addition to billions in loan guarantees the U.S. provides, which basically means that if Israel were to ever default on a loan, the U.S. taxpayers would be liable to cover the debt.

The condemnation of Israel’s actions was universal. The Israeli human rights organization B’Tselem, Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, and numerous U.N. reports stated the prima facie case that Israel’s conduct had been in violation of international law. The U.N. launched an investigation headed up by Richard Goldstone, which found both Israel and Hamas guilty of war crimes and made recommendations on how to obtain justice for the victims. The U.S. stood alone in condemning not Israel, but the U.N. report, and proceeded to act to block its findings and recommendations from being adopted by the Security Council.

So this is just one illustration of why Israel can enjoy immunity. It’s because the U.S. unconditionally supports Israeli crimes, financially, militarily, and diplomatically. This is why the Israeli-Palestinian conflict persists. This is why the international consensus on a two-state solution is not implemented, because the U.S. and Israel stand against the entire rest of the world in rejecting and blocking it.

KZ: During the recent years, Israel has been incessantly threatening Iran against a nuclear strike and a preemptive war. The United States also has chanted the same slogans with a different frequency. Don’t these threats exemplify violation of the UN Charter and Geneva Convention? Do you take seriously these threats? Overall, do you think that either of these two stalwart allies will finally attack Iran?

JRH: The U.N. Charter is explicit in forbidding member nations, which includes both the U.S. and Israel, from not only the use of force, but threatening the use of force in international relations. There are only two circumstances under which a resort to the use of force is considered legitimate under international law. The first is the use of armed force in self-defense against an armed attack. The second is if there is explicit authorization for the use of force under an explicit mandate from the U.N. Security Council. So every time a U.S. or Israeli government official threatens Iran with a military attack against its nuclear program, that is in fact a violation of international law, of the U.N. Charter.

The threats should be taken very seriously. It’s a serious threat, not to be taken lightly. It may just be posturing by the U.S. and Israel, but both nations have repeatedly shown a willingness to reject diplomacy and use military force to pursue their respective policies. The illegality and the question of morality aside, there are plenty of reasons for the U.S. and/or Israel not to attack Iran, and such considerations are certainly a factor in policymakers’ decision making. I don’t think either country will attack Iran in the near future, but it’s an ongoing threat. The threat is real, and it is serious.

KZ: Some critics of the foreign policy of President Ahmadinejad administration believe that he isolated Iran in the international stage with his radical policies toward the West. They also say that he failed to direct Iran’s nuclear program in the right path and thus lost many opportunities including a cordial and amiable relation with the United States and Europe. Do you agree with them?

JRH: No, I don’t agree with them, because that entire narrative is based on fiction, as I’ve already discussed, such as the false claims about Ahmadinejad’s threats to “wipe Israel off the map”, and so on. It’s not uncommon for U.S. media commentators to state that Ahmadinejad has openly declared his intention to obtain the bomb. Ahmadinejad has in fact constantly reiterated that it is Iran’s policy not to seek a nuclear weapon. He has repeatedly urged the U.S. and the rest of the western community to cooperate on the creation of a nuclear-free zone in the Middle East, for another example. But that would mean Israel would need to be disarmed and join the NPT regime. So you can forget it. It’s off the table, and Iran must be punished for its insolence for making such outrageous proposals.

KZ: What do you think of the prospect of Iran’s nuclear standoff? Will the upcoming U.S. Presidential elections have a serious impact on the course of events related to Iran’s nuclear program? Some critics of Iran’s foreign policy believe that Iran was lucky that Barack Obama won the 2008 elections because every other candidate would certainly attack Iran if won the elections. What’s your viewpoint?

JRH: The upcoming election could have a serious impact if Ron Paul were to be voted into office, but short of that, I don’t foresee any change in the U.S. policy towards Iran. Obama talked a lot different than Bush, but rhetoric aside, his actual policy towards Iran is exactly the same as his predecessor’s. Obama’s main opponent, John McCain, was certainly even more radical in his position on Iran. On one occasion, he thought it was funny to sing “Bomb bomb bomb, bomb bomb Iran” to the tune of the Beach Boys’ “Barbara Ann”, and his tune was pretty much the same when he was being perfectly serious. So there may be some truth to the argument that if Obama hadn’t won, the U.S. would have bombed Iran by now.

But it has to be emphasized that Obama’s policy is not meaningfully different than Bush’s. The difference is semantic. So Bush refused to have negotiations with Iran unless they stopped enriching uranium as a precondition. Obama’s stated position early in his term in office was that the U.S. would talk to Iran, but Iran would have to accept that the end result would be its cessation of uranium enrichment. Okay, so that’s the difference between Bush’s policy and Obama’s policy. In other words, the two policies are virtually indistinguishable, apart from the meaningless rhetoric. Aside from Ron Paul, I don’t know of any candidates who have rejected that ongoing policy and offered a more reasonable alternative, like actually sitting down with Iranians and having a serious and mutually respectful and non-prejudicial discussion about the concerns of the international community over Iran’s nuclear program, with the purpose of also listening to and trying to meet Iran’s needs and legitimate aspirations.

Kourosh Ziabari is an Iranian freelance journalist and writer. He has interviewed numerous prominent individuals, including former Mexican President Vicente Fox, and linguist and political commentator Noam Chomsky. His work has been published in Tehran Times, Global Research, Foreign Policy Journal, Turkish Weekly Journal and Eurasia Review and on Press TV. Mr. Ziabari is a member of World Student Community for Sustainable Development.

Katsiaficas has a Ph.D. of sociology from the University of California, San Diego. Since 1990, he has taught sociology at the Wentworth Institute of Technology’s Department of Humanities and Social Sciences. During the period between 2006 and 2008, he was an Associate in Research at the Harvard University and Korea Institute.

He specializes in social movements, Asian politics, the U.S. foreign policy, comparative and historical studies and has written numerous books in these fields.

In 2003, he won the American Political Science Association’s Special Award for Outstanding Service and in 2008, received the Fulbright Senior Scholar Research Fellowship.

Among his major books are “The Battle of Seattle” by the New York’s Soft Skull Press, “Liberation, Imagination and the Black Panther Party” by New York’s Routledge Press and “South Korean Democracy: Legacy of the Gwangju Uprising” by London’s Routledge Press.

What follows is the complete text of interview with Dr. George Katsiaficas on the recent uprising in the Arab world, its impacts on the international developments and its implications for the United States and its European allies.

Kourosh Ziabari: After Tunisia and Egypt in which the revolutionary forces and people on the ground succeeded in ousting the U.S.-backed puppets, several other Arab nations joined them and staged massive street demonstrations to call for civil liberties, improved living conditions, freedom and democratic governments. Now the whole Arab world is in a state of turmoil and unrest and the U.S.-backed dictators are facing the bitter reality that their autocracies are about to fail and collapse. What factors led to the extension of anti-government protests to the whole Arab world? Can we interpret this collective uprising a result of the explosion of strong pan-Arabist sentiments?

George Katsiaficas: No one could have predicted that the suicide of a vegetable vendor in rural Tunisia would unleash long pent-up frustrations on such a scale. If we take a long historical view, the Arab world went into a steep decline after Europeans discovered how to round Africa and established direct trade with the East. While oil has provided a huge stimulus for recovery in the 20th century, its effects have been drastically mitigated by elite corruption. The Arab people are finally awakening from a long slumber. The masses of ordinary Arabs today know in their hearts that they are more intelligent than their rulers. They know that they could all live better lives if they could get rid of the corrupt and often stupid elites trampling on their freedoms and hogging the money that rightfully belongs to everybody.

The phenomenon of uprisings spreading from place to another and drawing in ever more sectors of the population is one that I first uncovered when I studied the global movement of 1968. Unlike armed insurrections of the early part of the 20th century, the New Left involved a rapid proliferation of popular unarmed revolts—historically a new phenomenon. As I pulled together my empirical studies, I was stunned by the spontaneous spread of revolutionary aspirations in a chain reaction of uprisings and the massive occupation of public space—the sudden entry into history of millions of ordinary people who acted in a unified fashion, intuitively believing that they could change the direction of their society. Although they were not united by any centralized organization or even loosely tied together by any coordinating body, everyone was inspired by the heroic struggle of Vietnam. All over the world—from Paris to Prague, Chicago to Mexico City, and Dhaka to Beijing—people’s revolutionary aspirations and actions were not only synchronized, but they were also remarkably similar to each other in their international solidarity and desire for self-government.

After analyzing the proliferation of the global movement, especially the strikes of May 1968 in France and May 1970 in the US, I coined the term the “eros effect” to explain the rapid emergence of global solidarity and love. From my case studies, I came to understand how in moments of the eros effect, universal interests become generalized at the same time as the dominant values of society are negated (such as national chauvinism, hierarchy, and individualism). At that time, for example, opinion polls consistently showed that Ho Chi-minh was more popular than Richard Nixon on American college campuses. See The Imagination of the New Left: A Global Analysis of 1968 (Boston: South End Press, 1987.)

At first glance, the current revolt appears to be confined to the Arab world, but in fact, it has already had a much wider effect: Gabon, Iran, and China have all felt the tremors from the rising in Egypt. Even workers in Wisconsin, who are fighting cutbacks in their standard of living, expressed admiration for, and inspiration from, the Egyptian uprising. Certainly pan-Arab sentiments are a driving force, yet they are not essential. People feel in their bones that change is possible—and not only in the Arab world.

KZ: Many Iranians believe that the uprisings of Tunisia and Egypt have been inspired by Iran’s Islamic Revolution of 1979. They compare the overthrowing of U.S.-backed Mubarak and Ben Ali to the dissolution of Mohammad Reza Shah’s government which was unconditionally supported by the United States and its European allies. Do you find such a relationship between these revolutions which took place during an interval of 32 years?

GK: Revolutions and popular uprisings have unexpected results—and not necessarily immediate ones. Even generations later, people’s memories and psyches assimilate lessons from previous eaves of struggles. The courage of Iranians in 1979, their withstanding of ferocious repression by the Shah and his forces, was evident for people all over the world, and inspired Haitians and Filipinos to overthrow their dictators. In 1987, I wrote that, “In the epoch after 1968, popular movements have internalized the New Left tactic of the occupation of public space as means of social transformation, and this tactic’s international diffusion led to the downfall of the Shah, Duvalier, and Marcos…the significance of the eros effect and the importance of synchronized world-historical movements will only increase.”

KZ: In your recent article, you’ve compared the new Middle East revolutions to the Korea’s 1987 June Uprising when after 19 consecutive days of massive street demonstrations, people could finally bring down the 26-year autonomy of military forces and hold direct presidential elections. In what ways are these movements similar to each other?

GK: In both cases, people basically fought with bare hands against mighty police forces and defeated them. Thousands of ordinary citizens claimed the right to remain together in public and refused to go home when ordered to do so. Small informal leadership circles emerged in the course of popular struggles, drawn initially from extant activist circles but also porous enough to admit many newcomers from a variety of constituencies. Most significantly, both revolts were quickly ended by the peaceful retirement of the incumbent president and vague promises made by the military—which in both cases remained in power as the uprising subsided. It took South Koreans another five years of struggle before the first civilian was elected president, and it took until 1996 to put the previous dictators in prison. While one agreed to the order to return some US$300 million that he had stolen from the public, Chun Doo-hwan famously testified he had less than $100 to his name—thereby losing his honor but keeping a fortune of perhaps $700 million. Both sums pale in comparison to the estimated fortune amassed by Mubarek. It remains to be seen how much of the Mubarek family holdings will be recovered—or, more importantly, whether or not Egypt will move toward substantive democracy. The longer people adopt a “wait and see” attitude, the less chance there is of change. Millennia of pharonic rule and dictatorships are not easily undone.

KZ: The Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi is said to have deposited $90 billion in Italian and other European banks. Since 1990s, the European states moved towards normalizing their ties with the dictator and supported him both politically and financially. Now, these Western states with which the Libyan dictator was once a close friend are calling for a unified international action against him. The old friend has now become a bitter enemy. Isn’t this an exercise of double standards by the Western governments?

GK: This double standard is nothing new. The US has a long history of riding on the backs of dictators in Third World countries and then tossing them away like a used car once they have outlived their usefulness. Longtime Philippines president Ferdinand Marcos was ousted with US approval in 1986; the CIA maintained real time connection to the rebels and provided them with invaluable intelligence information. Much earlier, in 1961, Rafael Trujillo, who had ruled the Dominican Republic with an iron fist for decades, was assassinated. Many people suspect the CIA provided the assassins with the weapons they used. In 1963, Ngo Dinh Diem, who had faithfully served US interests in South Vietnam from 1956 to 1963, was overthrown in a military coup about which the US had advance knowledge, and US refusal to assist him led to his assassination. Many people believe long-time US ally Park Chung-hee, ruler of South Korea from 1961 to 1979, was killed with advance US approval.

KZ: The media have reported that the mercenaries of Colonel Gaddafi have so far killed more than 6,000 protesters in Tripoli and other cities of Libya. What’s your prediction for the political future of Libya? Gaddafi has vowed to remain in power and “die as a martyr”; however, the protesters, despite the large-scale crackdown by the government haven’t retracted from their stance and are still calling for the ouster of the old dictator. What will be the outcome of these tumultuous clashes in Libya? Will the revolution finally end in the overthrowing of Muammar Gaddafi?

KZ: That is a life and death question for thousands of Libyans. It is too early for us to tell whether or not the armed revolt will prevail. With the US and NATO already overextended in Iraq and Afghanistan, the Joints Chiefs are resisting the call by conservatives here to implement a no-fly zone and come to the assistance of the rebels. We should not forget that Gaddafi has played ball with the US in recent years, and he is certainly calling in every favor he is owed. In 1980, the US encouraged Korean General Chun Doo-hwan to suppress the democratic popular uprising in Gwangju. There can be no doubt that it may well stand by and watch as Gaddafi crushes those opposed to his rule.

KZ: Prof. Rashid Khalidi believes that the recent uprisings in the Arab countries have transformed and changed the mainstream media’s portrayal of the Muslim world. The people that were once introduced as fanatic terrorists and extremists are now being called freemen who sacrifice their lives for the sake of achieving freedom and liberty. Do you agree with this viewpoint? Has the communal uprising of the Arab world changed the public’s viewpoint regarding the Arabs and Muslims?

GK: In my view, US public opinion has not really shifted much. The self-organization of armed resistance to Gaddafi astounds American journalists. American young people note with amusement that soccer and dating web sites were used by young Libyans to organize their uprising, but my students complain that they feel burdened by the region’s peoples looking to the US for help.

I suspect the change in Arabs’ own self-understanding is far more significant. For too long, the role of public opinion and the importance of ordinary people has been disregarded in the region, especially by insurgencies, which instead of seeking to stimulate popular movements and raise consciousness, instead pinned their hopes on elites or organized armed commando actions. The first and most influential shift occurred with the first Palestinian intifada in the late 1980s. The people’s uprising was ruthlessly crushed—remember Yitzhak Rabin’s orders to break bones of unarmed children—but the spirit of popular resistance was kindled throughout the region.

KZ: We already know that the authoritarian regimes of Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Tunisia, Jordan, Yemen, Bahrain and Libya are among the major human rights violators in the world; however, the United States and its European cronies who frequently boast of their concerns about the preservation of human rights and freedom have been long indifferent to the persecution of political activists, incarceration of journalists and bloggers and other abuses of human rights in these countries. On the other hand, the superpowers have always employed the excuse of human rights for pressuring the independent and non-aligned nations such as Iran. What do you think about this dualistic approach?

GK: From the very beginning, US human rights policy has been self-serving and duplicitous. In the name of democracy and enlightenment, the US exterminated millions of Native Americans. The US government broke nearly every treaty it ever signed with native peoples, a sad history known as the “Trail of Broken Treaties.” It would be laughable if it were not so tragic that a country based upon enslavement and murder of millions of Africans and genocide against Native Americans, a country that killed at least three million Koreans and more than two million Indochinese, a country that today is massacring thousands more in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan, could seek to instruct anyone on “human rights.” Yet it is precisely a self-righteous belief in American freedom and superiority that motivates continuing genocide.

President Jimmy Carter, with whom the modern version of human rights policy is thought to originate, collaborated with Indonesian generals in the bloody invasion of East Timor. Carter approved the suppression of the Gwangju Uprising at the cost of hundreds of lives. Years later, when evidence of his actions could be assembled, a Peoples Tribunal found Carter and 7 other high US officials guilty of “crimes against humanity for violation of the civil rights of the people of Gwangju.” Five months afterwards, Carter was awarded a Nobel Peace Prize. The hypocrisy continues unabated. Obama enlarges the war in Afghanistan and attacks Pakistan, and he, too, is awarded a Nobel Peace Prize. Should we be surprised that an award named after the inventor of dynamite provides international legitimation of Western imperialism and aggression?

KZ: As my final question, what’s your prediction for the future of Arab countries which have been engulfed by the waves of popular upsurge in the recent weeks? Will the autocratic regimes of the Persian Gulf region finally yield to the demands of the protesting revolutionaries?

GK: Unfortunately, my prognosis is that the region will continue to be burdened by corrupt elites, but also that existing rulers will have to permit larger circles of economic innovators to emerge and grant people a wider range of civil liberties. With a population of 90 million, Egypt barely managed to manufacture what Costa Rica (population 900,000) could produce. Historically speaking, uprisings have opened the doors to subsequent economic development, as we readily see today in East Asia.

I suspect that substantive democracy in the Arab world (nor practically anywhere else for that matter) is not in the cards—at least for now. Elections may well be permitted but, as in the US, candidates will reflect the dominant parties, not any meaningful alternative. Military spending will continue to be lavish and result in enormous waste of resources. Militarized nation-states armed with weapons of mass destruction, although widely understood as historical anachronisms, will continue to reign supreme. Ordinary people’s dreams of a world at peace reveals a wisdom that far surpasses their rulers’ capacity to think, yet the resultant contradiction requires a globally synchronized effort to result in real change.

In my view, the synchronicity of revolts and occupation of public space that began in 1968 is continually widening its circles. Besides the overthrow of communism in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union, we saw a wave of uprisings after Gwangju that spread in six years from 1986 to 1992 through the Philippines, Burma, Tibet, China, Taiwan, Bangladesh, Nepal, and Thailand. This most recent emergence of the eros effect in the Arab world indicates that popular movements are building to an even more intense climax, to a global uprising that might finally bring an end to the scandalous control of humanity’s collective wealth by a handful of billionaires.

Kourosh Ziabari is an Iranian freelance journalist and writer. He has interviewed numerous prominent individuals, including former Mexican President Vicente Fox, and linguist and political commentator Noam Chomsky. His work has been published in Tehran Times, Global Research, Foreign Policy Journal, Turkish Weekly Journal and Eurasia Review and on Press TV. Mr. Ziabari is a member of World Student Community for Sustainable Development.

Anthony DiMaggio

Anthony DiMaggio is a university professor, writer, political commentator and media expert. He is the author of numerous books, including Mass Media, Mass Propaganda (2008), When Media Goes to War (2010), and Crashing the Tea Party (2011).  He has taught U.S. and Global Politics at Illinois State University, and published articles and commentaries in a number of publications, including Z Magazine, Counterpunch, Truthout, Common Dreams, Alternet, Monthly Review, and Black Agenda Report.

Together with Paul Street, he co-edits the “Media-ocracy”, an online journal which describes itself as “committed to combating the entrenched media system.” Media-ocracy “caters to progressive intellectuals and activists, and is devoted to the study of mass media, public opinion, and social discourse.”

DiMaggio has taken part in an elaborate, in-depth interview with me to discuss the recent developments in the Middle East, the popular uprising of the people of Egypt, Tunisia, Yemen, Bahrain, Syria and the impacts of these developments on the political future of the United States and Israel. We have also discussed the U.S. foreign policy with regards to the Middle East and the double standards of the Western superpowers on human rights, democracy and freedom.
What follows is the complete text of my in-depth interview with Anthony DiMaggio, university professor and political analyst.

Kourosh Ziabari: as you may admit, the Egyptian revolution of 2011 began and progressed quite unexpectedly and unpredictably. After decades of U.S.-backed dictatorship under Hosni Mubarak, the people of Egypt took to the streets of Cairo and Alexandria all of a sudden and called for the dismissal of the dictator and the installation of a democratically-elected president. They successfully overthrew the tyrannical government of Mubarak and his allies in less than 20 days. What were the motives behind this revolution? What have been the motivations that laid the groundwork for the victory of Egyptian nation’s revolution?

Anthony DiMaggio: I think it’s fair to say that the Egyptian revolution took most people in the U.S., including myself, by surprise. In hindsight, it’s not entirely clear why this should have been the case, considering the multitude of factors that came together to establish a critical mass against the status quo.  I can’t speak authoritatively about the specific motivations of those who planned the Egyptian revolt since I haven’t had contact with them, but I think it’s fair to say that it’s not difficult to find the major reasons after a bit of critical investigation.

Any discussion of the rebellion in Egypt should concede that many forces came together at the same time to create the conditions needed for the successful overthrow of Mubarak. One important factor was the onset of the global economic crisis, which greatly contributed to growing poverty and desperation in Egypt and throughout the rest of the world. Other factors include the revolution in Tunisia. Reports on the ground in Egypt clearly showed that protestors were drawing inspiration from Tunisians’ success in overthrowing Ben Ali’s repressive government; a success that was readily broadcast through the immensely popular Arab news outlet Al Jazeera. Clearly, the success there has helped initiate a sort of contagion effect, as demands for democratization against U.S. and Western sponsored dictators have taken hold throughout much of the Arab-Muslim world. Furthermore, the technological revolution via developments such as the growth of Al Jazeera and growing public access to satellite communications, in addition to increased access to online networking groups like Facebook and Twitter have also played a key role in Egypt’s success and in challenging traditional communication systems dominated by repressive, centralized governments. Reliance on these networks greatly aided organizing efforts, and culminated in protests of the Egyptian regime that garnered more than one million people in the streets of Cairo in early 2011. These social networks clearly allowed activists to more easily coordinate demonstrations against the Mubarak regime.

Far more important in terms of long term grievances and causes of the rebellion, however, is the growing poverty and declining standard of living in Egypt, largely as a result of economic liberalization and government corruption, cronyism. Egypt is in a dire state with regard to unemployment. Dealing with a massive “youth bulge,” the country is unable to provide enough jobs for the young (60 percent of the population is under 25). Even the well educated are not immune, as the unemployment rate is ten times higher for college graduates as compared to those with an elementary school education. Each year in Egypt, 700,000 new college graduates seek employment in a country in which just 200,000 jobs are available.

Egypt’s revolt is not new; it has been ongoing for many years. The country experienced more than 3,000 labor protests from 2004 through the end of the decade, as a social movement emerged that was dedicated to challenging growing unemployment and poor working conditions, benefits that coincided with the rise of the privatization and neoliberalization of Egypt’s economy over the last twenty years.

Neoliberalism has had disastrous consequences for the masses. Mandated by the International Monetary Fund and World Bank, and embraced by Mubarak, neoliberalization included the mass privatization of formerly public assets and services, in addition to mass layoffs in an effort to increase profitability in newly privatized companies, strong wage controls which amounted to pay cuts for workers in light of inflation, and a wholesale assault on basic food subsidies, cash transfers, and other government subsidies that were once the norm prior to the onset of “structural adjustment” (a.k.a. “free marketization”) under the IMF and World Bank in 1991.

This privatization is widely associated with the emergence of a small, super-wealthy group of political elites tied to the former Mubarak regime. Mubarak and his sons alone were said to be worth between $15 to 30 billion, with the vast majority of that wealth thought to be tied to the corrupt siphoning off of public funds in relation to privatization schemes in recent decades. Egypt’s masses continued to suffer as Mubarak and his cronies got rich, with the poor unable to pay even for food in light of the 17 percent increase in food prices from 2010 to 2011 alone.  Average incomes declined for years, while Mubarak implemented deep cuts in the social welfare safety valve.

Basic food and fertilizer subsidies, cash transfers, and other government aid to the poor fell dramatically in the last two decades in Egypt. Available World Bank data verified this trend, with subsidies as a percent of GDP falling by 11 percent from 1982 to 1995. By 1995, food subsidies specifically had declined to one-third of the level allocated during the 1980s. As a percent of total government spending, food subsidies fell from 19.5 percent in the early 1980s to less than seven percent by 1997. The effects of these cuts were not hard to foresee, considering that Egypt also burst into riots in the late 1970s following major cuts to bread subsidies for the masses. Such riots are common throughout the third world, where the poor rely on these subsidies to survive.

Supporters of “free markets” have made much of Egypt’s seven percent annual economic growth. What they consistently ignore is that the masses have not shared in the material benefits of this growth under neoliberalization. The minimum wage has been frozen at four pounds since the early 2000s. By the end of 2010, more than 40 percent of Egyptians, 80 million people, were living in poverty, on less than $2 a day (compared to twenty percent who earned as much in 1991). At the same time, the wealthy have seen their incomes increase dramatically. In 2004, Mubarak instituted a new tax cut that dropped the top tax rate from 42 to 20 percent of personal income essentially instituting a flat tax in which the country’s poorest paid the same proportion of their incomes as that paid by millionaires. In short, “free market” reforms in Egypt have produced fabulous wealth for the opulent few, at the direct expense of the masses.

Much of the anger at Mubarak was also understandably based on his government’s suppression of anyone who tried to do anything about these developments. Attacks on labor were routine. The Egyptian government closed the offices of numerous trade union services dedicated to advising workers over their rights to organize and protest in support of increased wages and benefits. Protests were regularly met by government violence. Such attacks against labor have been labeled “a serious blow to Egyptian civil society and workers’ rights” by human rights advocates.

Of course, the violation of human rights hardly stops with labor. Mubarak’s repression included many other infringements on basic civil and human rights. The country has suffered under a martial law “state of emergency” for decades, with the government free to make arbitrary arrests and hold citizens without charge.  An estimated 10,000 people, as of the late 2000s, remained in prolonged detention without charge. Police regularly relied on false confessions, gained through torture against suspected “enemies” of the state. Egypt itself served as one of a number of sites for secret torture interrogations of U.S. and allied detainees in the “War on Terror.”  National press have been censored by a government law that allowed for the detainment of any reporters who criticized Mubarak or friendly foreign leaders, while the government had essentially declared war on the homeless and street children.

These children have typically committed no crimes, yet they are regularly and arbitrarily detained under the charge of “being vulnerable to delinquency,” and faced, according to human rights reporting, “beatings, sexual abuse, and extortion by police and adult suspects, and police [who] at times deny them access to food, bedding, and medical care.” Torture had been growing worse in recent years.As Gasser Abdel Razek of Human Rights Watch explained about the country’s problem with police-sponsored torture: “fifteen years ago, we used to say that this or that police station is bad, or if that you were an Islamist and you got picked up after a bombing, you could count on being tortured. Today, I can’t name a single police station that’s good.  And the victims are middle-class, they’re educated, they’re homeless. It doesn’t make any difference.”

KZ: After Tunisia and Egypt, in which the revolutionary forces and people on the ground succeeded in ousting the U.S.-backed puppets, several other Arab nations joined them and staged massive street demonstrations to call for civil liberties, improved living conditions, freedom and democratic governments. Now the whole Arab world is in a state of turmoil and unrest and the U.S.-backed dictators are facing the bitter reality that their autocracies are about to fail and collapse. What factors led to the extension of anti-government protests to the whole Arab world? Can we interpret this collective uprising a result of the explosion of strong pan-Arabist sentiments?

AD: I think it’d be naïve to deny the role of pan-Arabist sentiment in fueling rebellions throughout the Middle East at a time when Egyptians’ solidarity extends as far as Madison, Wisconsin. I was proud to have participated in those protests, which were directed at a similar, although relatively less extreme, type of repression of labor as led by the Republican Party and business interests in the U.S. and aided greatly by Democrats.

In the case of Egypt, there is of course the now famous statement of Kamal Abbas, general coordinator for Egypt’s Center for Trade Unions and Workers Services, in which he indicated about Wisconsin’s protests: “We want you to know that we stand on your side. Stand firm and don’t waiver. Don’t’ give up on your rights. Victory always belongs to the people who stand firm and demand their rights.”

With regard to the issue of a regional Arab-Muslim rebellion, the cause appears to be driven by the obvious culprit: U.S. supported repression on the part of regional dictatorships. Public animosity against these governments has been in the making for decades. Much of my work in the area of U.S. foreign policy has been dedicated to elaborating upon the long-standing grievances of those living in the Middle East, expressed against the United States and its preferred dictators. A number of recent and important books have also explored this point in detail, including James Zogby’s Arab Voices, Juan Cole’s Engaging the Muslim World, and Steven Kull’s Feeling Betrayed. As should now be apparent to all, the primary anger throughout the Arab-Muslim world is with the U.S. and its client dictators’ complete contempt for democracy.

Support for renewed democratization appears in surveys done across the region.  A 2010 poll by the Global Pew Research Center found that majorities throughout every Muslim country surveyed with the exception of Pakistan find democracy to be preferable to competing types of government. Of course most throughout the region think that a primary hindrance to freedom is the United States. A 2007 poll by the Program on International Policy Attitudes found that 79 percent of those in Muslim countries surveyed felt that “the U.S. goal is to divide and weaken the Muslim world.”  The most common reasons given by survey respondents were: the positioning of U.S. bases in holy lands such as Saudi Arabia, support for Israeli Zionism, which excludes Palestinian Israelis from full citizenship rights, and consistent U.S. and allied attacks on Muslim majority countries/nations such as Iraq, Afghanistan, Iraq, Iran, and Palestine. Polling from the Gallup organization has similarly found that most surveyed throughout the Arab-Muslim world “simply don’t think that the U.S. and the nations of the West have respect for Arabs or for Islamic culture of religion. The people of these Islamic cultures say that the West pays little attention to their situation, does not attempt to help these countries, and makes few attempts to communicate or to create cross-cultural bridges.”  U.S. support for brutal dictators is also a common source of frustration, as found in a 2004 Pentagon Defense Science Board study of Arab-Muslim opinion concluded that “Muslims do not ‘hate our freedom,’ but rather they hate our policies…when American public diplomacy talks about bringing democracy to Islamic societies, this is seen as no more than self-serving hypocrisy” in light of the U.S. record of blocking democracy in the region.

KZ: Many Iranians believe that the uprisings of Tunisia and Egypt have been inspired by Iran’s Islamic Revolution of 1979. They compare the overthrowing of U.S.-backed Mubarak and Ben Ali to the dissolution of Mohammad Reza Shah’s government which was unconditionally supported by the United States and its European allies. Do you find such a relationship between these revolutions which took place during an interval of 32 years?

AD: As someone who is not an expert on Iran and recent developments there, including the 2009 uprising and mass protests against the government of Khamenei, I can’t do much but speculate on this question. My initial thoughts were that the uprisings in Iran in 2009 and this year can be viewed very much as fitting comfortably within the other protests throughout the Arab-Muslim world, in terms of resisting repressive governments seen as widely unresponsive to the public.  Iran’s government retains a detestable human rights record, as documented in great detail by human rights groups such as Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch. Recent developments in Iran have seen a resurgence of demonstrations against the government, with thousands taking to the streets this year in protest of President Ahmadinejad and the established order. Reports of police brutality as directed against the protestors in the form of beatings, use of tear gas, and other attacks have no doubt increased public animosity, although I can’t speak with any authority about the extent to which this year’s protests are supported by the larger Iranian public.

I think there is room to argue that there is a role for the Iranian 1979 revolution with regard to the recent uprising in the broader context of U.S. responsibility. The Shah of Iran and his repressive secret service (SAVAK) were widely detested by the Iranian people, considering the role both played in the torture and murder of thousands. U.S. installation of, and longstanding support for this dictator contributed greatly to Arab and Muslim ill-will against the United States. That ill-will is now being manifested again in the uprisings across the region, which is intimately driven by a distrust of the U.S. and its favored dictators. In this sense, then, I think you can definitely make a connection between the events of 1979 and current protests.

KZ: Professor Rashid Khalidi believes that the recent uprisings in the Arab countries have transformed and changed the mainstream media’s portrayal of the Muslim world. The people that were once introduced as fanatic terrorists and extremists are now being called freemen who sacrifice their lives for the sake of achieving freedom and liberty. Do agree with this viewpoint? Has the communal uprising of the Arab world changed the public’s viewpoint regarding the Arabs and Muslims?

AD: There is a long-known axiom in the study of U.S. media that goes as such: the spectrum of views observed in the mass media is directly dependent upon the spectrum of views expressed in Washington. I’ve documented this connection for years, highlighting the many ways in which critical points of view are only embraced in the mass media after they are first accepted by elites holding political and economic power.

My impression of coverage of the Egyptian uprising is that the U.S. media has generally framed the people as rising up against a corrupt dictator. In this sense, I would agree with Khalidi that there has been a change in coverage. In the past, this type of reporting and framing of Egyptian politics would not have been embraced in the U.S. media.  But it’s important to consider the reason for why this message has been sustained today.  The repression and corruption emanating from Mubarak’s regime had become so extreme that it could no longer be denied in light of the massive protests throughout Egypt.  Recognizing this basic fact, American officials realized their support for this butcher was no longer sustainable or logical.  At the point in which the regime’s downfall appeared imminent, Obama and company then switched from their long-standing policy of supporting this dictator to calling for major reforms and for his ouster.  The mass media has simply responded to this change in the official line by echoing the switch-over in official policy.

Notice there hasn’t been any corresponding transformation in U.S. reporting on rebellions in other friendly states which haven’t reached the critical mass and success of Egypt yet, as seen in examples such as Saudi Arabia and Bahrain but not in an “enemy” state like Syria, in which critical coverage of government repression is to be expected, and in fact, is commonplace in reporting. U.S. reporters have remained largely silent on the dramatic disparity between U.S. “support for democracy” in Egypt and active U.S. military and logistical support for repression against democratic change in other corrupt oil monarchies in the Middle East. I don’t hear any reporters or pundits calling for a change in policy in terms of opposing or replacing these regimes. Scarcely anything critical has been said about the Obama administration’s cynical new policy of “regime alteration,” rather than regime change, as intended to apply to favored U.S. dictators who remain in firm power. Of course, the “alteration” has proven to be little more than cosmetic, as the U.S. continues to rhetorically call for greater moderation of human rights violations as practiced by Saudi Arabia and Bahrain, while concurrently supporting that repression behind the scenes. As one administration official describes Obama’s “new” “regime alteration” policy, the U.S. will continue on a path “toward emphasizing stability [a euphemism for support for corrupt dictators] over majority rule.”

With regard to the American public, I don’t know that public opinion about the uprisings changed opinion dramatically, although more people certainly seem to be paying attention today. Most Americans appeared to genuinely hope that something like democracy would eventually emerge in the case of Iraq during the time when the U.S. was escalating its occupation, although when surveyed they also explained that they felt that “democracy promotion” in and of itself was an insufficient justification for going to war.  More recently, the Program on International Policy Attitudes found in their 2011 survey that 65 percent of Americans feel it would be “mostly positive” for the U.S. “if the countries of the Middle East become more democratic.”

Importantly, 57 percent felt that they “would want to see a country [in the region] become more democratic even if this resulted in the country being more likely to oppose U.S. policies,” which (at least theoretically) bodes well for the idea of regional independence from the U.S.

KZ: We already know that the authoritarian regimes of Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Tunisia, Jordan, Yemen, Bahrain and Libya are among the major human rights violators in the world; however, the United States and its European cronies who frequently boast of their concerns about the preservation of human rights and freedom have been long indifferent to the persecution of political activists, incarceration of journalists and bloggers and other abuses of human rights in these countries. On the other hand, the superpowers have always employed the excuse of human rights for pressuring the independent and non-aligned nations such as Iran. What do you think about this dualistic approach?

AD: The dualistic approach is a reflection of the conflict between U.S. rhetoric and reality. As with all political leaders, their promises typically contradict their observed behavior. The U.S. has one standard when it comes to human rights: it prefers countries that suppress their populations in the name of providing the U.S. with cheap access to raw materials and resources and a favorable investment climate for American businesses. U.S. leaders will never openly admit this, but on some level – whether it’s conscious or subconscious is irrelevant – they understand that the U.S. cannot succeed in controlling global resources without supporting some very unsavory characters, or by engaging in atrocities themselves.  The Iraq war was a classic example of such brutality, with the U.S. openly engaging in collective punishment in the name of “pacifying” communities such as Fallujah and Ramadi, so as to actively turn them against the insurgency.  The notorious “Salvador Option,” in which the U.S. trained Iraqi death squads to target suspected sympathizers with the insurgency and engage in torture and murder of these individuals, was a powerful example of active U.S. contempt for basic human rights.  Predictably, the implications of these actions for human rights in Iraq were consistently ignored by U.S. intellectuals, journalists, and political/business elites.

One can’t maintain an empire without engaging in some very unpleasant and nasty actions against the world’s poor and downtrodden. This was openly conceded by Bush near the end of his administration and as he celebrated the “surge” of U.S. troops and U.S. counter-insurgency violence and announced that a withdrawal from Iraq was unacceptable because of the U.S. interest in retaining unimpeded control over Iraq’s oil resources.

Of course, rationalizations of state violence are always a part of the equation. I have no doubt that Bush and other imperialists justified using violence to control Iraqi oil under the assumptions that privatization and “free markets” would inevitably create a rising tide that lifts all boats, and that the U.S. could be better trusted than the “terrorists” to control this vital resource. We’ve seen the poverty of these claims, in reality, in light of the widespread understanding of Iraqis (revealed continuously in polls) that they saw the U.S., rather than foreign Islamists or insurgency members, as the primary threat to Iraqi and regional peace.  We’ve also seen such rationalizations thoroughly debunked in the case of Egypt, which has witnessed living standards for the masses rapidly deteriorate under a neoliberal regime.  Regardless of the justification, the larger point is that you don’t become the most powerful military and economic force in the world without repressing local populations.  Most people, after all, tend to opposed to occupations, violent domination, and neoliberal cronyism/extortion, as exercised by the U.S. and its preferred dictators. The only way to get them to go along is through violence and coercion.

I don’t think the U.S. is “indifferent” to abuses in Saudi Arabia and other friendly states, but actively supportive of, and committed to those abuses. In the case of Saudi Arabia, it is granted carte blanche to engage in human rights violations and terrorism, so long as it continues to provide the U.S. with cheap oil.  Its actions, as you correctly suggest, are repulsive. It’s been the consistent recipient of U.S. military, economic, and political aid despite its recent outlawing of protest, its violent attacks on peaceful protesters, and its longstanding attacks on human rights. Of course, U.S. leaders can plead ignorance to these transgressions, but such claims are complete absurdities. You can simply read in the Washington Post reports from on the ground in Saudi Arabia from those suffering under this medieval regime, in which Shi’ite protesters are subject to “increasing detentions, beatings, and surveillance” in the government’s war on dissent.  Then of course there’s the long record of abuses chronicled by groups like Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch. The Saudi dictatorship is notorious for its denigration of women, who are seen as third class citizens at best. Human Rights Watch reports that the government’s many practices include “arbitrary detention, torture and ill-treatment, and [reliance on] the death penalty” for those who engage in theft, homosexuality, witchcraft, prostitution, and other criminal activities, real or imagined. Saudi police are known for breaking into individuals’ homes without a warrant in relation to charges as dubious as suspected alcohol possession and engaging in non-Muslim religious worship.

Then there’s U.S. support for Saudi Arabia’s active suppression of Shi’ite majorities throughout the Arabian Peninsula. The Wikileaks revelations were extremely valuable among other findings in that they showed that U.S. diplomats were well aware of Saudi Arabia’s responsibility for bombing civilians in its counter-insurgency war in Yemen. The monarchy has also used violent intervention in Bahrain (not to mention on Saudi soil) in order to suppress Shi’ite revolts against repressive minority Sunni governments.  As Wikileaks showed, U.S. diplomats largely dismissed Saudi responsibility for killing civilians in Yemen under the claim that the regime was allegedly doubling its efforts to minimize collateral damage. Such rationalizations are largely disingenuous in light of the United State’s own responsibility for the deaths of tens to hundreds of thousands in Iraq due to U.S. bombing and military operations in Iraq, all also pursued under the promise of minimizing “collateral damage”, and in light of Saudi Arabia’s escalation of human rights violations on its own soil. It’s been easy for the U.S. to ignore the unpleasantness of U.S. and allied policies. When confronted with the ugly consequences of their “bombing for democracy” campaign, George Bush’s response was simply to dismiss the figures suggesting U.S. responsibility in mass killing as irrelevant and unfounded, despite the fact that those who engaged in these studies used widely recognized statistical methods ranging from collecting news reports on the dead to engaging in cluster survey sampling, as is typically done when estimating wartime casualties. He could count on a compliant media to promptly drop the issue, considering the complete refusal of Democrats and fellow Republicans to explore the issue.

In the end, humanitarian rhetoric is, realistically speaking, a weapon to be wielded by the powerful against their enemies, rather than a serious concern in its own right. Media scholars like Noam Chomsky and Edward Herman have performed a vital service by documenting this trend – whereby humanitarian rhetoric is used by politicians and journalists to condemn American enemies who engage in human rights violations. Conversely, U.S. allies are consistently given a pass and embraced despite their many transgressions and regular terror.  This politicization of human rights is at times manifested quite perversely, as seen when the Bush and Obama administrations’ loud public pronouncements of support for democracy and human rights, accompanied by their many efforts to court the Saudi king in public by holding hands, kissing, and bowing to him in a sign of mutual respect.

KZ: What will be the impacts of Arab world’s uprising on the power equations in the Middle East? Will the U.S., Israel and their European cronies suffer damages as a result of the Middle East revolutions? Who is the real winner of this power game?

AD: This is hard to predict, especially over the long term, without the benefit of a crystal ball. Scholars like Michael Klare predict that this new era of rebellion will represent the end of cheap oil, in light of the rising demands throughout the region for improved living standards, to be paid for through oil revenues. Of course, the end of cheap oil already appears to be over in the U.S., and this is largely due not to supply disruptions or to OPEC nations “stepping out of line” by demanding wild price increases, but due to domestic speculation on Wall Street, where investors have taken advantage of regional instability in the Middle East in order to gouge American consumers. Whether the rebellions throughout the Middle East will be successful will depend on how effective local dictators are in putting down these rebellions, how much these dictators concede to their increasing unruly subjects and on the duration and intensity of future protests. One thing, however, is certain. The U.S. is certainly not going to concede to demands for democratization without a bitter fight to the end. Any victories for democracy in the region will be long fought and the product of bottom-up pressures from the masses.

I think that it’s true that the U.S. and Israel will ultimately end up being the biggest losers in light of the uprisings. I used to speak regularly with a Palestinian friend about the deplorable state of the Middle East in the wake of the disaster known as the Iraq war. Regional tensions had become so inflamed in light of the Bush administration’s blatant contempt for popular will throughout the region, seen in the pursuit of a war of aggression, defended by bogus claims regarding Iraqi WMD, as witnessed in the coercion directed against Iran, seen in Bush’s belligerent rhetoric and saber rattling, and as observed in U.S. ongoing contempt for the Israeli-Palestinian “peace process,” which has angered Arab-Muslim masses for decades. In my discussions with my Palestinian friend, it was pretty much conceded that the region was a power-keg waiting to explode.  We predicted at the time (from 2006 to 2008) that the explosion would follow what at the time seemed like an imminent U.S.-Israeli attack on Iran.  Instead, the explosion has been far more encouraging, as seen in the mass uprisings. What seems clear is that the governments of the region can no longer afford to ignore their people in preference of siding with U.S. business, political, and military interests. This development was seen most dramatically in Iraq, where the government responded to growing public anger against the U.S. by demanding a Status of Forces Agreement (in 2008) forcing an unwilling Bush into a firm withdrawal date by the end of 2011. Growing rebellion was also evident in the Iraqi government’s refusal to auction off Iraqi oil fields to the lowest bidder, as was the U.S. plan all along under the Bush administration. These failures were hugely embarrassing to the Bush administration and its unilateral imperial approach to dealing with the Middle East. They represent hope for a renewed democratization throughout the region, putting the peoples’ demands ahead of those of U.S. investors and military planners.

KZ: Let’s talk a little about the recent developments concerning the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. It was on the news that Fatah and Hamas signed an agreement to form a national unity government. How much does this conciliatory gesture jeopardize the interests of Israel? Does this unity between two fractions which have been long at odds threaten the security and existence of Israel?

AD: I think the unity government poses a very real threat to Israeli and American interests in that it will make Israel’s dominance of the Occupied Territories more difficult. The divide-and-conquer strategy pursued by the U.S. and Israeli officials, in which they long encouraged and provided arms and funding for Mahmoud Abbas and Fatah to declare war on Hamas and engage in a Palestinian civil war, appears to be backfiring.  However, the Hamas-Fatah agreement also provides new opportunities for the U.S. and Israel to continue the colonization of the West Bank, as both powers will begin to fall back on a familiar refrain that Hamas represents a “national security” and “terrorist” “threat” to Israel’s survival.  The U.S. National Security Council, for example, immediately responded to the Hamas-Fatah deal by declaring that Hamas “is a terrorist organization which targets civilians,” and that “to play a constructive role in achieving peace, any Palestinian government must renounce violence, abide by past agreements, and recognize Israel’s right to exist.”
The U.S.-Israeli attacks on the agreement will no doubt be defended by citing the fact that Hamas’ charter and its officials have called for the destruction of Israel, and considering Hamas officials’ ambiguity with regard to recognizing the Israeli state. Of course, Washington’s preferred depiction of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is complicated by the fact that the current “threat” to Israel from the Palestinian people is non-existent. There hasn’t been a single Palestinian suicide bombing undertaken against Israelis in the last three years, to put the “threat” into better perspective.

The extraordinary safety within Israel has been quietly acknowledged by U.S. officials.  As Wikileaks recently revealed, just one year after the last Palestinian suicide bombing in 2008, U.S. diplomats were already concluding that “Israelis are enjoying the best security situation since the outbreak of the Second Intifada, the result of Israeli intelligence successes in destroying the suicide bombing network in the West Bank as well as good security cooperation with the Palestinian Authority’s security forces.”  In short, even U.S. leaders now admit that the entire “Israel is under assault” paradigm is unsustainable.

Hamas officials have at times suggested or implied that they are willing to recognize Israel within the 1967 Israeli-Palestinian borders, and in fact have already recognized Israel despite Israeli officials’ own contempt for these borders. Of course, Hamas has also continued to reiterate its resistance to an Israeli state, as expressed in the recent comments made by the group’s leader Khaled Mashaal as he arrived in Cairo to sign a Fatah-Hamas unity agreement. Probably the best interpretation of these seemingly conflicting developments is to recognize that Hamas has indicated a potential willingness to recognize Israel (or at least promote long-term peace), contingent upon Israeli recognition of a Palestinian state. Whether Hamas is serious with regards to such an agreement is not known for sure since Israel has worked at every turn over the last forty years to ensure that an independent Palestinian state will never emerge. Furthermore, Israel and the U.S. have refused to take Hamas up on its 10-year peace offer (tied to the establishment of a Palestinian state). This refusal ensures that peace will be impossible short of the systematic annihilation of Hamas. Ironically, U.S. politicians and pundits refused to criticize Israel for demanding the complete destruction of Hamas, while Hamas has consistently been derided by these same people for “obstructing peace,” despite its repeated peace offerings.

I’ve written at length in the past on Israel’s complete contempt for a Palestinian state, as seen in its stubborn refusal to dismantle the illegal colonies in the West Bank, its dismissal of negotiations on the right of return for Palestinian refugees, its opposition to negotiations on the sharing of Jerusalem as an international capital for both Israel and Palestine, its rejection of efforts to dismantle the Israel “security wall” which illegally annexes upwards of ten percent of the West Bank, its opposition to dismantling the roads and “security” checkpoints that connect the illegal colonies in the West Bank and which create a series of Bantustans that ensure the indefinite cantonization of Palestine, and finally Israel’s refusal to negotiate in favor of a Palestinian state that would exercise full control over its borders, airspace, land, and allow Palestine to maintain its own armed forces.  Such features are basic prerequisites of any real state, and Israel’s refusal to agree to these terms is an indication of its contempt for Palestinian statehood.

There is no reason to think that long-standing Israeli contempt for a Palestinian state will change following the Hamas-Fatah agreement.  
The major change is likely to be rhetorical, with Israeli and American leaders no longer even pretending to be interested in the peace process as based on a two-state solution.  Defense Minister Ehud Barak announced after the agreement that “Hamas is a terrorist organization that fires rockets at Israeli towns,” suggesting that Israel will continue to use the Hamas “threat” in order to impede peace and prevent a renewed freeze on illegal colony construction in the West Bank. The Obama administration has refused (during official negotiations at least) to even follow through with the Bush administration’s rhetorical promises to recognize Israel and Palestine within their pre-1967 borders. This should leave little doubt about American and Israeli plans for the future.

Regardless of how the agreement plays out, Israeli-American rejectionism of a Palestinian state will continue unabated.  The Bush administration gained infamy under the recently released “Palestine Papers” for its complete contempt for the right of return for Palestinian refugees to Israel, with Condoleezza Rice suggesting that these refugees should be sent to South America instead.  The papers also revealed Rice’s blatant contempt for dismantling illegal colonies in the West Bank.  With regard to the West Bank colony of Ma’ale Adumim, Rice went on record warning a Palestinian peace negotiator that Palestinians “won’t have a state” unless there are willing to concede that no “Israeli leader is going to cede” that colony. Rejectionism was further reinforced by Israeli officials, such as former Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni, who the Palestine Papers recorded as stating that “The Israel policy is to take more and more land day after day and that at the end of the day we’ll say that [a withdrawal of the colonies] is impossible, we already have the land and we cannot create the [Palestinian] state.”

KZ: You are well aware of the influence of Zionist lobby on the U.S. administration, congress and senate. All of the decisions which may to some extent contradict the interests of Israel will be stifled and no politician with an anti-Zionist mindset is allowed to come to power as a congressman, lawmaker or president. What is the source of this enormous power which the Zionist lobby possesses? How does Israel control and direct the long-term foreign policy of the United States?

AD: The Israel-Zionist lobby does exercise significant power in the U.S. in its attacks on the few political leaders and academics who dare to offer substantive criticisms of Israel or U.S. foreign policy toward Israel.  I had the privilege of researching the origins of the American-Israeli relationship for a number of years when I was in graduate school, although I was explicitly advised against pursuing this research agenda any further (at least at the scholarly level) by sympathetic peers and mentors nonetheless. The concern was pragmatic, as they worried that I would be the subject of unfair and vicious attacks (a la Norman Finkelstein) if I decided to publish and speak publicly on this issue.

Having said this, I have continued to speak about the issue in progressive media, although I abandoned any possibility of trying to publish in professional academic settings on these issues.  My findings were pretty illuminating with regard to the origins of the U.S.-Israeli relationship, if for no other reason than because they cast doubt on the long-held notion on the left that the U.S. government is the “occupied territory” of the Israel lobby.

To sum up those findings here: the source of Israel’s privileged position in receiving U.S. support and aid largely arises from its strategic value in pursuing U.S. material interests throughout the Middle East.  In aiding the U.S. secure military control of the region and more importantly, control over the region’s oil, Israel has been awarded great latitude in its activities in the Occupied Territories of the West Bank and Gaza Strip.  These lands traditionally have little strategic value for U.S. leaders, hence the Israel lobby’s impressive power in intimidating any potential critics with regard to the Israel-Palestinian conflict.

None of the privilege enjoyed by Israel, however, can be divorced from its vital status as a U.S. proxy military force in the Middle East.  The importance of Israel as a regional “cop on the beat” (the Nixon administration’s preferred term for describing Israel) has been reiterated regularly by U.S. presidents.  Those interested in this policy record can look more closely at my historical review of U.S. presidential and national security policy planning documents, which go into more detail on the issue. (Anthony DiMaggio, “A Strategic Relationship: Obama and the Israel Lobby, Part II,” Z Magazine, 13 August 2009, http://www.zcommunications.org/a-strategic-relationship-by-anthony-dimaggio)

Other problems also remain with regard to the theory that the Israel lobby is all powerful in U.S. politics independent of its services to U.S. military interests in the Middle East. As I describe in great detail in my previous empirical research, there is no statistically significant correlation between campaign contributions from members of the Israel lobby and favorable voting toward Israel on issues arising in the U.S. Congress.  Furthermore, contributions from the Israel lobby amount to a miniscule portion (.1 percent) of all contributions provided to members of Congress in the period I examined (post-2000). Even those officials most reliant on contributions from the Israel lobby receive a very small percentage of their contributions on average one to three percent from the group.  Monetarily, then, the case for the Israel lobby’s power as based upon campaign contributions and lobbying is extremely weak.

On another level, my research found that there was no systematic relationship between Jewish population concentrations by state and favorable voting on pro-Israel legislation in Congress. In short, those states that have the largest size Jewish populations are no more likely to see their Senators or Representatives vote in favor of pro-Israel legislation when compared to states with smaller Jewish populations.  This makes short work of the claim that constituency forces play a role in pressuring Congressmen/women to support Israel.

On the other hand, my historical analysis did find a strong, statistically significant relationship between Israeli aggression (against neighboring countries and people) and increases in U.S. foreign aid.  Reinforcing the notion that the U.S.-Israeli relationship is strategic in origin, I found that the U.S.-Israeli relationship materialized largely during the Cold War, specifically during the late 1960s through the early 1970s.  A close examination of these years finds that annual increases in aid to Israel immediately followed attacks made by Israel against surrounding Arab states deemed to be hostile to U.S. strategic interest.  The five largest increases in U.S. aid from 1960 to 2008 measured in the percent increase in aid from one year to the next are described in more detail in my original study, but clearly indicate that the institutionalization of the U.S.-Israeli relationship was largely a function of Israel’s strategic-military value to the U.S. (Anthony DiMaggio, “Origins of Power: Obama and the Israel Lobby, Part I,” Z Magazine, 12 August 2009, http://www.zcommunications.org/origins-of-power-by-anthony-dimaggio)

KZ: The United States has long put a lethal pressure on Iran over what is claimed to be Tehran’s violation of human rights and its pursuance of a nuclear weapon. At the same time, the staunch allies of the United States in the Persian Gulf, namely Bahrain, Yemen and Saudi Arabia, which have the blackest human rights records in the region, are massacring their own people and executing their opponents. Israel is also said to be the sole possessor of nuclear weapons in the Middle East. How is it possible to justify these double standards?

AD: I don’t think it is possible to justify this hypocrisy, as I argued above. U.S. leaders, however, will always find a way to rationalize their opposition to democracy and human rights. The only question remaining, in my mind, is whether Americans and those throughout the Middle East will continue to put up with U.S. propaganda, misinformation, and deceptions. Clearly, U.S. propaganda is rejected by the vast majority of those throughout the Middle East and has been for decades.

Such propaganda is increasingly questioned in the U.S. as well. The Iraq war was opposed by the majority of Americans as early as late 2004, due to public concerns over American lives lost, anxiety over the destructiveness of the counter-insurgency campaign, and due to the incredible costs of the war in light of a worsening economic crisis. The war in Afghanistan has also been incredibly unpopular, rejected by the majority of Americans for a number of years.  By the time of the “humanitarian intervention” in Libya this year, Americans were preemptively expressing overwhelming skepticism of even a limited military campaign.  A March 2011 poll from the Pew Research Center found that just 27 percent of Americans supported a U.S. intervention in Libya, compared to 63 percent who were opposed.  Majority support was barely reached for sanctions (51 percent supported them), while minorities supported more intense interventions such as implementing a no-fly zone (supported by just 44 percent), sending arms to rebels (23 percent), bombing Libyan air defenses (16 percent) or sending troops (just 13 percent).  As should be expected during the onset of war, support for Obama grew substantially once the U.S. actually started to engage in military operations against Qaddafi.  Support, however, remains tepid at best.  As of April 2011, just 39 percent of Americans supported Obama’s handling of the Libyan conflict.  Fifty-six percent supported the implementation of the no-fly zone, which most seem to think is necessary as a means of preventing full blown humanitarian disaster.  At the same time, however, just 18 percent support increasing U.S. military involvement in Libya by further escalating U.S. military activities.

Political scientists have long spoken of the “Vietnam Syndrome,” in which Americans are increasingly unwilling (post-Vietnam) to commit large numbers of troops to bloody and costly long term conflicts with uncertain outcomes.  The recent growth in public suspicion of foreign wars represents a major progression in the intensity of the Vietnam Syndrome.  If public opposition continues to grow as it has, it will be very difficult for the U.S. to escalate another military conflict anytime in the near future.  I think this growth in skepticism is obvious on a very basic level.  Most people I talk to are simply fed up with the endless “War on Terror.”  They see that we have dramatic problems at home, and in light of the recent U.S. assassination of Osama bin Laden, are ready to see the “War on Terror” come to a close.

Kourosh Ziabari is an Iranian freelance journalist and writer. He has interviewed numerous prominent individuals, including former Mexican President Vicente Fox, and linguist and political commentator Noam Chomsky. His work has been published in Tehran Times, Global Research, Foreign Policy Journal, Turkish Weekly Journal and Eurasia Review and on Press TV. Mr. Ziabari is a member of World Student Community for Sustainable Development.

Psychiatrists in Iran have prescribed several drugs for my friend and he has been taking them over the past years; however, when I met him a few weeks ago, he informed me of a shocking, unanticipated incident which I’m still unable to believe. My friend told me that the Canadian and Italian manufacturers of his medicines have ceased exporting their products to Iran following the imposition of United Nations Security Council’s fourth round of sanctions against Iran and it’s possible that they refuse to export their other pharmaceutical products to the country as a result of the sanctions, as well. He told me that his psychiatrists are not able to prescribe the high-quality, original medicines for him anymore and this may seriously jeopardize his mental health and even put his family life into risk.

My instinctive reaction to what my friend told me was nothing but perplexity and confusion. I couldn’t understand the relationship between a set of sanctions which are aimed at what is claimed to be Iran’s “controversial” nuclear program and the mental health of thousands of patients who are suffering from different kinds of psychoses all around the country.

At the first glance, what should be noted is that the four rounds of sanctions which were imposed on Iran by the UNSC so far are entirely illegal, unfounded and baseless as the International Atomic Energy Agency has repeatedly pointed out in its reports that Iran has never diverted toward enriching uranium to the extent that is utilizable in the atomic weapons;. The reports of intelligence services in the United States also confirm that Iran has never had the intention of producing nuclear weapons and thus should not be penalized with sanctions and other punitive measures. The National Intelligence Estimate report of the November 2007 has clearly expressed that Iran does not have a nuclear arsenal and is not moving towards producing nuclear weapons; therefore, bringing up Iran’s nuclear dossier in Security Council and imposing several rounds of crippling sanctions against its people has been merely politicizing Iran’s case which should have been investigated from a legal and scientific viewpoint, not a political one.

However, what is of high importance is the hypocritical and inhuman approach of the United States and its allies concerning Iran’s nuclear program which is turned into an opportunity to confront with the Iranian nation and curb its scientific and political developments.

We have been witness to the fact that, under the pretext of abiding by the UNSC sanctions, several countries in Europe, Asia and Northern America have adopted a counterproductive stance toward Iran and ceased their ordinary financial transactions with Tehran.

Canada, Australia, Japan, South Korea and EU member states are among the countries which imposed unilateral, extra-resolution sanctions against Iran and caused several problems for the Iranian nation. Refusing to refuel the Iranian planes in the European airports, suspending the accounts of Iranians in foreign banks and financial institutions, delaying the issuance of visas for the Iranians who want to travel abroad, banning the Iranian students from studying certain fields in the foreign universities and ceasing the exportation of vital goods including foodstuff, medical facilities, fruits and medicines to Iran are among the belligerent policies which these countries have adopted against the people of Iran.

With this unconstructive approach, however, the belligerent countries who have stood against the nation of Iran demonstrated their dishonesty and proved that are not worthy of being trusted. First and foremost, they showed that their claims of being a friend of Iranian nation are entirely futile and pointless. They demonstrated that their “Nowrouz” greeting messages and stretched hands are fake and deceitful. They can not come to terms with the Iranian nation and are fated to be the enemies of Iran, because it’s in their interests to spread animosity and hostility to retain their influence and power.

Secondly, these countries have clearly demonstrated that they have the least respect for human rights and what they claim to be their exclusive realm. A country that deprives the mental patients of another country, which is in dire need of high-quality medication to meet its pharmaceutical needs, of its medical products cannot be called a defender of human rights. Thousands of innocent civilians are suffering here in Iran, and they should be punished by the supercilious, arrogant powers simply because these powers favor being at odds with the independent and self-determining nations.

Canadian Foreign Minister Lawrence Cannon regularly lashes out at other countries for what he claims to be their abuses of human rights; however, his own country, with a long period of abusing the rights of its ethnic minorities, refuses to export medicines to Iran because it wants to “abide by the UNSC resolutions.” It might be interesting to know Mr. Cannon’s viewpoints regarding human rights and the way his country glorifies the humankind. Thousands of mental patients are suffering in a remote country and those who promote themselves as the harbingers of human rights, deprive these “humans” from their most essential right which is a proper medication. How is it possible to justify the Canadian style of respecting the human rights, we don’t know!

This was only a simple instance of how the pioneers of human rights fail to respect and venerate what they consider to be their first and foremost social value. Who knows about the real, on-the-ground abuses of human rights by them?

Kourosh Ziabari is an Iranian freelance journalist and writer. He has interviewed numerous prominent individuals, including former Mexican President Vicente Fox, and linguist and political commentator Noam Chomsky. His work has been published in Tehran Times, Global Research, Foreign Policy Journal, Turkish Weekly Journal and Eurasia Review and on Press TV. Mr. Ziabari is a member of World Student Community for Sustainable Development.

Doris Leuthard speaking during the session 'Threats to the Global Trading System' at the Annual Meeting of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, January 26, 2008. Photo/Flickr

A year of transitions began with Doris Leuthard becoming the President of the Swiss Confederation on New Year’s Day and ended with the swearing in of Willi Tevali as Prime Minister of Tuvalu on December 24, 2010. Between those two events another twenty-six executive transitions occurred around the world.^[i] Where did these changes take place? What were the circumstances of the incumbents leaving office? How did their replacements come to power? What can be said about the new leaders?

The answers to these questions provide some of the most important information about the political climate in the countries concerned. Turnover or the lack thereof, among the top leadership in a state is one of the best indicators of the nature of a political system. Routine transitions according to recognized and institutionalized processes are usually associated with a degree of social and political stability. Irregular transitions suggest just the opposite.

The twenty-eight new leaders who came to office last year represent twenty-six countries with Kyrgyzstan and Tuvalu having experienced two transitions. Nearly an equal number of executive changes occurred in Europe (9), Latin America (8), and the Asia-Pacific region (8). Only three took place in Africa and none in the U. S. or Canada.^[ii] Political changes in four of these states, Tuvalu, Barbados, Suriname, and Solomon Islands, are not likely to have much international significance in that they have a population of less than a million.

Most of the incumbents who left office in 2010 did so according to institutionalized processes which included term limits (7), not seeking re-election (5), normal parliamentary politics (5), and losing a re-election bid (4). Death ended the careers of three executives. In two instances the causes were natural (Umaru Musa Yar’Adua of Nigeria and David Thompson of Barbados). The third death was that of President Lech Kazynski of Poland who did in a plane crash.

Changes in the nature of the political system brought about the departure of Sekouba Konate of Guinea and Roza Otunbayeva of Kyrgyzstan. General Konate relinquished office to a newly elected civilian government. Otunbayeva transferred executive authority from her position as president to a prime minister as a result of a constitutional change to a parliamentary system. She remained as chief of state. This was the second of the two transfers in Kyrgyzstan.

Only two the incumbent executives left office in an irregular process. President Mamadou Tandja of Niger was ousted in a military coup. The first governmental change in Kyrgyzstan involved Kurmanbek Bakiyev’s resignation and exile in the face of a popular uprising.

The means of acquiring power in 2010 were at least as institutionalized as the processes of leaving office. Twenty-six of the twenty-eight new leaders were elected either directly or through a recognized parliamentary procedure. Only in Niger did the changing of the guard clearly violate the accepted norms of transitions. There a mid-level officer, Salou Djibo overthrew the government in the year’s only military coup.

Kyrgyzstan’s first transition is somewhat more difficult to categorize. The popular uprising leading to the ouster of President Bakiyev was violent and thus irregular. However, his successor Roza Otunbayeva, a former cabinet member, appears to have been the consensus choice of the leaders of the opposition.

Two characteristics of this group of leaders are noteworthy. Most are new to their positions and a large number are women. Twenty-four of the twenty-eight had never held the top office in their countries. The first two exceptions to this generalization are Victor Orban (Hungary) and Maatia Tofa (Tuvalu) both of whom served previously as prime minister. Almazbek Atambayev of Kyrgyzstan, the third, held the position of prime minister for a few months in 2007 but at that time the president was the effective chief executive.

Finally, Suriname’s Desire Delano Bouterse had at least eight years’ experience as the de facto leader of his country. He became Chairman of the National Military Council following a coup in early 1980 and held that position into the late 1980’s even though there was a president. In spite of having been sentenced in absentia by a Dutch court to eleven years in prison and a pending trial in Suriname, he was elected president in August, 2010.

One fourth of the new chief executives are women. Five of them, Julia Gillard (Australia), Laura Chinchilla (Costa Rica), Roza Otumbayeva (Kyrgyzstan) Iveta Radicova (Slovakia), and Kamla Persad-Bissessar (Trinidad and Tobago) are the first women to hold the top office in their countries. Two others, Doris Leuthard (Switzerland) and Mari Kiviniemi (Finland) had female predecessors.^[iii]

By any standards 2010 was a year of peaceful and regular transfers of executive authority, but that was not the case with two incomplete elections last year. The first round of the Haitian presidential election was marred by two-thirds of the candidates alleging fraud. A specific charge was that the government backed candidate had not made the run-off as originally certified by election officials.

The situation in Ivory Coast at the end of the year was even more problematic. Virtually all participants and observers agree that opposition leader Alassane Outtre won the October election defeating incumbent Laurent Gdagbo who has been in power since 2000. Gdagbo has refused to relinquish his office in spite of international recognition of Outtre as the new President. The controversy has resulted in a number of deaths in Ivory Coast as well as a large number of refugees fleeing to neighboring countries.

2011 began positively with Brazil and Switzerland routinely swearing in new chief executives on New Years’ day. The situation in Tunisia was less than regular. Popular protests including a number of deaths forced longtime President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali into exile. WikiLeaks disclosures about the corruption of the president’s family and regime fuelled the protests. Unfortunately this may have been the only way to bring about a change given that Ben Ali had been in power for nearly a quarter century.

Donn M. Kurtz II, Ph. D., taught political science at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette from 1969 until his retirement in 2007. He lives in Grand Coteau, Louisiana.

________________________________________

[i] The two principal sources for changes in leadership are the CIA publication World Leaders https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/world-leaders-1/index.htmland and  Zárate’s Political Collections (ZPC) “© Copyright ZPC, Roberto Ortiz de Zárate, 1996-2010″.

[ii] I follow the BBC’s designation of world regions.  See http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/.

[iii] Both Switzerland and Brazil elected female heads of government in late 2010 but because they were not sworn in until January 1, 2011 they are not included in this tabulation.

I: The CIA, BCCI & The Origins of Al Qaeda

Now that we have an understanding of how the Global Banking Intelligence Complex ran operations through BCCI, let’s look at how some of BCCI’s key players kept operating after the bank was finally shut down. As discussed in the last chapter, during the 1980s and early ’90s, the CIA worked in partnership with BCCI in what was, at the time, the agency’s largest covert operation ever, pumping an estimated $10 billion into funding the Afghan Mujahideen. Through this operation, Osama bin Laden’s al Qaeda network was formed. Bin Laden had accounts in BCCI and ran CIA/BCCI-funded camps.

In “ Modern Jihad:Tracing the Dollars Behind the Terror Networks,” investigative reporter Loretta Napoleoni described the origins of the al Qaeda network:

“[During the Afghan-Soviet war,] potential Arab warriors traveled to Pakistan where they resided in guesthouses. These hostels did not keep any records and not a single organization listed the names of the fighters, where they had gone to fight and if they had been injured or killed. The lack of vital information caused distress among relatives. At that time bin Laden was in charge of several guesthouses and was embarrassed by the hundreds of calls requesting information. Hence, he decided to keep track of whoever stayed at the hostels and that record came to be known as the Record of al-Qaeda. This is how al-Qaeda, which means the base or the scroll, was born.”

Throughout this time period, bin Laden’s mentor was a man named Gulbuddin Hekmatyar. In “Afghanistan 1979-1992: America’s Jihad,” William Blum reported some background information on Hekmatyar:

“His followers first gained attention by throwing acid in the faces of women who refused to wear the veil. CIA and State Department officials I have spoken with call him ’scary,’ ‘vicious,’ ‘a fascist,’… ‘definite dictatorship material’…. His name was Gulbuddin Hekmatyar. He was the head of the Islamic Party and he hated the United States almost as much as he hated the Russians. His followers screamed ‘Death to America’ along with ‘Death to the Soviet Union’… some of them had kidnapped the American ambassador in the capital city of Kabul, leading to his death in the rescue attempt… these same people shot down civilian airliners and planted bombs at the airport… anti-American mobs had burned and ransacked the US embassy in Islamabad and American cultural centers in two other Pakistani cities… their brother Islamic fundamentalists in next-door Iran seized the US Embassy in Teheran… and held 55 Americans hostage for over a year.”

Supporting acknowledged terrorists and enemies presented the US government with a huge public relations problem. So the White House and CIA went to work on the propaganda front. The United Sates Information Agency (USIA) launched the “Afghan Media Project.” The project was run by Joachim Maitre, a man who also worked with Oliver North to make TV ads attacking government officials who were against giving aid to the Contras during the BCCI-financed Iran-Contra Affair.

Reporting in “Covert Action: The Afghan Pipeline,” Steve Galster revealed the hypocrisy of the US propaganda campaign:

“Widespread corruption also exists among the [Afghan] rebel leaders but has gone practically unnoticed in the United States thanks to CIA propaganda. The same kinds of things that tarnished the Contras’ image, such as killing civilians, drug smuggling and embezzlement are practiced by many Afghan rebels. Taking no prisoners, assassinating suspected government collaborators, destroying government-built schools and hospitals, killing ‘unpious’ civilians are just a few of the inhumane acts they have carried out. But the picture we receive of the rebels in the United States is of an uncorrupt, popular group of freedom-loving people who aspire toward a democratic society.”

In “Jihad International Inc.,” Eqbal Ahmad further exposed the propaganda effort:

“They also invested in this Jihad the legitimacy of their enormous power, and the luster of their media-made glory. On one especially memorable occasion when Afghanistan’s hard-line Islamists visited the White House, President Ronald Reagan described them as the Muslim world’s ‘moral equivalent of our founding fathers.’ Similarly, the American and European media played up the war in Afghanistan as the greatest story of the eighties. Foreign correspondents combed the Hindu Kush for stories of ‘Mooj’ heroism. Competition for Jihad narrative was so great that in one instance a major network, CBS, paid handsomely to film a staged battle between Islam and Communism. As the western media carries great importance and authority in the third world, its Afghanistan war coverage made an enormous impact, especially on Muslim youth.”

As bin Laden himself would later say in his 1997 interview with CNN, “I have benefited so greatly from the Jihad in Afghanistan that it would have been impossible for me to gain such benefit from any other chance…”

Thanks to CIA funding and weapons, delivered through BCCI’s “black network” with the help of Pakistan’s intelligence service the ISI, bin Laden and al Qaeda were off and running. In 1992, just after BCCI had been shut down in a global sweep, the Afghan-Soviet war finally came to an end. The war resulted in the death of 1.3 million Afghans, three million were disabled, and 5.5 million became refugees – in total, about half the population.

When BCCI was shut down, most of its major players were allowed to walk away without being held accountable, due to the fact that BCCI was deeply entwined within the upper echelons of US intelligence. Elements of BCCI would then evolve into al Qaeda, as the Washington Post revealed in 2002:

“William F. Wechsler, who monitored bin Laden’s finances at the National Security Council during the last two years of the Clinton administration, told Congress in September that bin Laden initially rose to prominence for building ‘a financial architecture that supported the Mujaheddin in Afghanistan against the Russians.’

‘It’s this financial architecture that continued with him when he turned to terrorism, and it’s this financial architecture that is at the heart of how al Qaeda today gets its finances,’ he said.

Much of that architecture, according to French, Pakistani and American investigators, is modeled on the Bank of Credit and Commerce International (BCCI)…. In the 1980s it was used to launder drug money, harbor terrorist funds and buy illegal weapons. Its collapse in 1991 was a major global financial scandal.

The CIA used BCCI to funnel millions of dollars to the fighters battling the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan. Bin Laden had accounts in the bank, U.S. officials said….

The BCCI Model

A 70-page French intelligence report, prepared for Parliament in October and obtained by The Washington Post, outlined some details of this network. ‘The financial network of bin Laden, as well as his network of investments, is similar to the network put in place in the 1980s by BCCI for its fraudulent operations, often with the same people (former directors and cadres of the bank and its affiliates, arms merchants oil merchants, Saudi investors),’ the report said. ‘The dominant trait of bin Laden’s operations is that of a terrorist network backed up by a vast financial structure.’

A senior U.S. investigator said U.S. agencies were looking into these ties because ‘they just make so much sense, and so few people from BCCI ever went to jail. BCCI was the mother and father of terrorist financing operations.’

The report identifies dozens of companies and individuals who were involved with BCCI and were found to be dealing with bin Laden after the bank collapsed. Many went on to work in banks and charities identified by the United States and others as supporting al Qaeda.”

BCCI’s Chief Operations Officer and the man the US Senate Intelligence Committee considered to be “the most powerful banker in the Middle East,” Khalid bin Mahfouz, was let off with a fine and would become a major al Qaeda funder.

As the Washington Post report continued:

“The French report highlighted the role of Saudi banker Khalid bin Mahfouz, a former director of BCCI, whose sister is married to bin Laden. In 1995 bin Mahfouz paid a $225 million fine in a settlement with U.S. prosecutors for his role in the BCCI scandal and went on to serve as director of the National Commercial Bank, one of Saudi Arabia’s largest….

Saudi officials, at the urging of the United States, audited his bank and found that millions of dollars were being funneled through the bank to charities controlled by bin Laden, U.S. officials and the French document said…. U.S. intelligence officials said Washington pushed for the audit of bin Mahfouz’s bank but was never allowed to question him.

Saudi officials ‘weren’t willing to let us talk to him,’ said one U.S. source with direct knowledge of events, ‘and we asked at a very senior level.’”

One vital point that most of the US mainstream media obscured when revealing bin Mahfouz as a key al Qaeda funder was his heavy ongoing involvement with top US officials and oil companies throughout BCCI’s reign and after the bank’s collapse.

Editor’s Note: In an earlier version of this posting, we accepted an unreliable Boston Herald report of December 10th, 2001, which we reproduced without having access to a retraction published by the newspaper on February 19th, 2002. Our attention has been drawn to factual inaccuracies concerning the ownership of assets by an international business figure from which certain inappropriate conclusions were drawn by the newspaper. We have, therefore, removed this short section of the original article out of concern for accuracy and we apologize for any unintended distress caused to the individual concerned.

II: “The Strategy of the Silk Route” & 9/11

One of the world’s richest oil fields is on the eastern shore of the Caspian sea, just northwest of Afghanistan. The Caspian oil reserves are of top strategic importance in the quest to control the earth’s remaining oil supply. The U.S. government developed a policy called “The Strategy of the Silk Route.” The strategy was designed to lock out Russia, China, and Iran from the oil in this region. This called for U.S. corporations to construct an oil pipeline running through Afghanistan. Since the mid 1990s, a consortium of US oil companies led by Unocal, which was later bought by Chevron, have been pursuing this goal. The plan was to build a Trans-Afghanistan Pipeline from Turkmenistan’s natural gas fields to Pakistan. Unocal partnered with Saudi Delta Oil, which was owned by al Qaeda funder Khalid bin Mahfouz, and they formed Central Asia Gas Pipeline, Ltd. (CentGas).

A feasibility study for the Central Asian pipeline project was performed by Enron. This study concluded that as long as the country was split among fighting warlords the pipeline could not be built. Stability was necessary for the $4.5 billion project and the US believed that the Taliban would impose the necessary order. U.S. intelligence and Pakistan’s ISI then continued the close relationship that they established through BCCI and agreed to funnel arms and funding to the Taliban in their war for control of Afghanistan. Until 1999, US taxpayers paid the entire annual salary of every single Taliban government official. The U.S., Saudi and Pakistani alliance established within BCCI reunited to facilitate the rise of the Taliban.

The American oil interests at the heart of this pipeline deal took control of the White House on January 20, 2001, when George Bush Jr. became president. As previously mentioned, Enron was heavily involved in this oil deal. Enron CEO Ken Lay was an old Bush family friend and was Bush Jr.’s biggest campaign contributor. Donald Rumsfeld, who became the Secretary of Defense, was a large stockholder in Enron. Thomas White, former vice-chairman of Enron, became the Secretary of the Army. Condoleezza Rice, a former Chevron board member, became National Security Advisor and then Secretary of State. A major benefactor of the CentGas deal was going to be Halliburton. Dick Cheney, who became Vice President, was Halliburton’s CEO. Richard Armitage, who worked as a key lobbyist for Unocal, became Under Secretary of State. Hamid Karzai, who would later become Afghanistan’s Prime Minister, was a top Unocal adviser.

Shortly after taking office, the Bush Administration was quickly losing faith in the Taliban’s ability to control Afghanistan and be a reliable partner in the pipeline deal. James Baker, who was also a key BCCI player, having served as Treasury Secretary, Bush Sr.’s Secretary of State and Chief of Staff during BCCI’s reign, was a leading player in developing the “Strategy of the Silk Route.” In April 2001, Baker and the Council on Foreign Relations demanded immediate action and publicly released a Task Force Report entitled, “Strategic Energy Policy Challenges For The 21st Century,” by the James A. Baker III Institute. They stressed the urgency of the pipeline project and openly called for the Bush Administration to “quickly facilitate higher exports of oil from the Caspian Basin region…” and they reiterated the basic premise of the “Strategy of the Silk Route,” stating, “the exports from oil discoveries in the Caspian Basin could be hastened if a secure, economical export route could be identified swiftly.” That “export route,” as previously planned, would need to run through Afghanistan and into Pakistan.

The tangled web of conflicts of interests within the Bush Administration, oil industry, Taliban and al Qaeda were concisely summed up by investigative reporter Loretta Napoleoni:

“The CentGas deal never came to fruition. The Taliban’s inability to commit to any agreement, coupled with public recognition of the exploitive nature of their regime, contributed to its failure. For years, the Taliban skilfully conducted simultaneous negotiations with two potential oil companies: Argentinean Bridas [later bought by BP] and Unocal/CentGas. Both companies showered the Taliban with gifts and money, flying their delegations to the US to win them over. On one occasion, a group of Taliban met high-ranking executives of Unocal in Texas. Parties, dinners and trips to the local shopping malls were organized. At the same time, Zalmay Khalizad, who was working for Unocal, lobbied the Clinton administration to ‘engage’ with the Taliban. The press reported some of these ‘informal’ meetings between US officials and rulers of Afghanistan: ‘Senior Taliban leaders attended a conference in Washington in mid-1996 and US diplomats regularly traveled to Taliban headquarters,’ wrote the Guardian….

‘The United States wants good ties [with the Taliban] but can’t openly seek them while women are oppressed,’ reported CNN. None the less, negotiations carried on more or less openly until 1998, when bin Laden’s associates bombed US embassies in Africa. Clinton launched cruise missiles at bin Laden’s supposed whereabouts in Afghanistan, an act that convinced the oil lobby that, for the moment, the pipeline deal could not go ahead….

Corporate America continued to do business with people who supported Islamist insurgency. The oil industry, in particular, continues to be run by a very small group of American and Saudi families with close financial relations. Among them were the Bush family, the bin Laden family and Osama bin Laden’s Saudi sponsors. The ties among these people go back a long way….

Naturally, as soon as George W. Bush was elected president, Unocal and BP-Amoco, which had in the meantime bought Bridas, the Argentinean rival, started once again to lobby the administration, among whom were several of their former employees. Unocal knew that Bush was ready to back them and resumed the consortium negotiations. In January 2001, it began discussions with the Taliban, backed by members of the Bush administration among whom was Under Secretary of State Richard Armitage, who had previously worked as a lobbyist for Unocal. The Taliban, for their part, employed as their PR officer in the US Laila Helms, niece of Richard Helms, [BCCI player] former director of the CIA and former US ambassador to Iran. In March 2001, Helms succeeded in bringing Rahmatullah Hashami, Mullah Omar’s adviser, to Washington…. As late as August 2001, meetings were held in Pakistan to discuss the pipeline business….

While negotiations were underway, the US was secretly making plans to invade Afghanistan. The Bush Administration and its oil sponsors were losing patience with the Taliban; they wanted to get the Central Asian gas pipeline going as soon as possible. The ‘Strategy of the Silk Route’ had been resumed….

Paradoxically, 11 September provided the Washington with a casus belli to invade Afghanistan and establish a pro American government in the country. When, a few weeks after the attack, the leaders of the two Pakistani Islamist parties negotiated with Mullah Omar and bin Laden for the latter’s extradition to Pakistan to stand trial for the 11 September attacks, the US refused the offer. Back in 1996, the Sudanese Minister of Defence, Major General Elfaith Erwa, had also offered to extradite Osama bin Laden, then resident in Sudan, to the US. American officials declined the offer at that time as well. ‘Just don’t let him go to Somalia,’ they added…. When Erwa disclosed that he was going to Afghanistan, the American answer was ‘let him go’….

In November 2001… Hamid Karzai was elected [Afghanistan’s] prime minister…. Yet very few people remember that during the 1990’s Karzai was involved in negotiations with the Taliban regime for the construction of a Central Asian gas pipeline from Turkmenistan through western Afghanistan to Pakistan. At that time he was a top adviser and lobbyist for Unocal… In the early 1990’s, thanks to his [Karzai's] excellent contacts with the ISI, he moved to the US where he cooperated with the CIA and the ISI in supporting the Taliban’s political adventure.

President Bush’s special envoy to the newly formed Afghanistan state is a man named Zalmay Khalilzad, another former employee of Unocal. In 1997, he produced a detailed analysis of the risks involved in the construction of the Central Asian gas pipeline. Khalilzad also worked as a lobbyist for Unocal and therefore knows Karzai very well. In the 1980s… President Reagan named Khalilzad special adviser to the State Department; it was thanks to his influence that the US accelerated the shipment of military aid to the Mujahedin.”

Yet another interesting conflict of interest: the Chairman of the 9/11 Commission investigation was Thomas Kean. Kean was also a key player in this pipeline deal as a director of Hess Corp., which was in a joint venture called Delta Oil, with Khalid Bin Mahfouz. It is also important to mention that James Baker, who had a lead role in developing the “Strategy of the Silk Route” and BCCI operations, was hired by these same BCCI/Saudi/al Qaeda oil interests to defend them against lawsuits brought by families of 9/11 victims.

As mentioned in the last chapter, George Bush Sr.’s role in the BCCI Affair cannot be overstated. Even George Bush Jr. had oil companies that were funded by these same BCCI/Saudi/al Qaeda interests. To make matters even worse, the same person who played a pivotal role in covering-up and derailing investigations into BCCI at the Justice Department, was the person who was put in charge of the FBI on September 4, 2001, Robert Mueller – and he is still running the FBI under Obama.

In summation, the CentGas oil consortium that connected all of these interests with Bush Jr.’s administration are undeniably suspect, at best. All of these players and interests are so incestuous that the heated debate over whether or not 9/11 was an inside job is almost irrelevant when you understand the history behind it. Whether it was an attack by al Qaeda or a false flag covert intelligence operation to win public support and trillions of taxpayer dollars for the never-ending “War on Terror” and control of Central Asian oil is essentially a non-issue. The main point, which cannot be legitimately argued, is that 9/11 would never have happened if it wasn’t for an out-of-control intelligence apparatus, and we now know the people who were operating that intelligence apparatus. All of the players involved were part of the same banking intelligence network known as BCCI. Al Qaeda and 9/11 were a direct outgrowth and evolution of BCCI intelligence operations. It was the same people, continuing to do what they had been doing all along, except this time their target was on US soil.

And this same out-of-control intelligence apparatus was the biggest beneficiary of 9/11, having had their funding budgets more than doubled since the attack. Knowing how uncontrollable the intelligence world was leading up to 9/11, let’s look again at this report from the Washington Post:

“The top-secret world the government created in response to the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, has become so large, so unwieldy and so secretive that no one knows how much money it costs, how many people it employs, how many programs exist within it or exactly how many agencies do the same work…. After nine years of unprecedented spending and growth, the result is that the system put in place to keep the United States safe is so massive that its effectiveness is impossible to determine…. The U.S. intelligence budget is vast, publicly announced last year as $75 billion, 2 1/2 times the size it was on Sept. 10, 2001. But the figure doesn’t include many military activities or domestic counterterrorism programs.”

III: The Road to World War III

The war for a pipeline to extract oil from the Caspian Sea is far from over. China, a country US oil interests were determined to block out of the region, has been making moves to take control and has clearly established the upper hand. In a TomDispatch report entitled, “Pipelineistan’s New Silk Road,” Asia Times correspondent Pepe Escobar reports:

“Future historians may well agree that the twenty-first century Silk Road first opened for business on December 14, 2009. That was the day a crucial stretch of pipeline officially went into operation linking the fabulously energy-rich state of Turkmenistan (via Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan) to Xinjiang Province in China’s far west….

The bottom line is that, by 2013, Shanghai, Guangzhou, and Hong Kong will be cruising to ever more dizzying economic heights courtesy of natural gas supplied by the 1,833-kilometer-long Central Asia Pipeline, then projected to be operating at full capacity…. When the Bush administration’s armchair generals launched their Global War on Terror, this was not exactly what they had in mind.

Meanwhile, in the New Great Game in Eurasia, China had the good sense not to… get bogged down in an infinite quagmire in Afghanistan. Instead, the Chinese simply made a direct commercial deal with Turkmenistan and, profiting from that country’s disagreements with Moscow, built itself a pipeline which will provide much of the natural gas it needs.

No wonder the Obama administration’s Eurasian energy czar Richard Morningstar was forced to admit at a congressional hearing that the U.S. simply cannot compete with China when it comes to Central Asia’s energy wealth. If only he had delivered the same message to the Pentagon….

If China has so far proven masterly in the way it has played its cards in its Pipelineistan ‘war’, the U.S. hand — bypass Russia, elbow out China, isolate Iran — may soon be called for what it is: a bluff.”

If you have wondered why so many US/NATO/private military troops have been deployed to the Af-Pak region, just consider that China, which shares a border with Pakistan and Afghanistan, has also begun moving troops into the region (it is also important to note that Iran is surrounded by Afghanistan and Iraq). As a New York Times report stated:

“[Pakistan] is handing over de facto control of the strategic Gilgit-Baltistan region in the northwest corner of disputed Kashmir to China.

The entire Pakistan-occupied western portion of Kashmir stretching from Gilgit in the north to Azad (Free) Kashmir in the south is closed to the world, in contrast to the media access that India permits in the eastern part, where it is combating a Pakistan-backed insurgency. But reports from a variety of foreign intelligence sources… reveal two important new developments in Gilgit-Baltistan: a simmering rebellion against Pakistani rule and the influx of an estimated 7,000 to 11,000 soldiers of the [Chinese] People’s Liberation Army.

China wants a grip on the region to assure unfettered road and rail access to the Gulf through Pakistan. It takes 16 to 25 days for Chinese oil tankers to reach the Gulf. When high-speed rail and road links through Gilgit and Baltistan are completed, China will be able to transport cargo from Eastern China to the new Chinese-built Pakistani naval bases at Gwadar, Pasni and Ormara, just east of the Gulf, within 48 hours.”

As the war in Afghanistan continues to escalate over the border into Pakistan, you can be assured that China, Russia and Iran will become more militarily involved in defense of their region’s resources. Pakistan is already becoming increasingly hostile to an escalation of US drone and NATO strikes within its borders, and have even begun to openly aid the Taliban by cutting off key NATO supply lines. Pakistan has also recently deployed anti-aircraft missiles on its border with Afghanistan. Current intelligence leads one to conclude that the war will continue to expand further into Pakistan, which will lead to China and Iran becoming more involved in what is essentially a proxy war against US/NATO/private military forces.

The bottom line, and one of the main themes of this book, is that we have entered a period of major wars over declining resources. The Af-Pak operations are only initial moves in an attempt to control the earth’s remaining oil supply.

Any talks of troop withdrawals from the Af-Pak region and Iraq are psychological operations. US/NATO/private military contractors are still in the process of building the world’s largest military bases in this region, they are not going to abandon these newly constructed mega-bases. These bases are designed to be operational and, as oil continues to become more scarce, they will be used to militarily control the remaining supply throughout this region.

Chris Martenson, a former Vice President at intelligence company SAIC, recently wrote the following in an analysis entitled, “Future Chaos: There Is No ‘Plan B’:”

“The future is likely to be more chaotic than you probably think. This was the primary conclusion that I came to after attending the most recent Association for the Study of Peak Oil & Gas (ASPO) in Washington, DC in October, 2010…. The impact of Peak Oil on markets, lifestyles, and even national solvency deserves our very highest attention…. Rear Admiral Lawrence Rice… presented the findings of the 2010 Joint Operating Environment (a forward-looking document examining the trends, contexts, and implications for future joint force commanders in the US military), which spends 76 pages summarizing the key trends and threats of the world…. Peak Oil dominates the discussion. Among the conclusions (on page 29), we find this:

‘By 2012, surplus oil production capacity could entirely disappear, and as early as 2015, the shortfall in output could reach nearly 10 MBD.’”

The  Joint Operating Environment report goes on to reveal:

“To meet climbing global requirements, OPEC will have to increase its output from 30 MBD to at least 50 MBD. Significantly, no OPEC nation, except perhaps Saudi Arabia, is investing sufficient sums in new technologies and recovery methods to achieve such growth. Some, like Venezuela and Russia, are actually exhausting their fields to cash in on the bonanza created by rapidly rising oil prices….

A severe energy crunch is inevitable without a massive expansion of production and refining capacity. While it is difficult to predict precisely what economic, political, and strategic effects such a shortfall might produce, it surely would reduce the prospects for growth in both the developing and developed worlds….”

Increasing OPEC output up to 50 MBD from the current level of 30 MBD is simply not possible, in fact it’s absurd to even consider that as a possibility. Once you disregard that, as the report states, “A severe energy crunch is inevitable.” To make matters even worse, we are much more likely to see a steady decline in output. So war with Pakistan, China, Russia and Iran, along with continued military operations in Afghanistan and Iraq, is increasingly probable, and their planned strategy.

Their strategy becomes all the more apparent when you consider the ramp up in military exercises and drills around China, which has included a series of massive 86,000-troop war games throughout the Korean Peninsula. Add in the recent record-setting $123 Billion in weapons sales to Gulf nations, with Saudi Arabia getting $67.8 Billion in weapons, which was the largest US arms deal ever. Israel also recently purchased 20 F-35 fighter jets for $2.5 billion, and has recently conducted their largest ever joint military exercises with the US. [See Moves Upon the Grand Chessboard for more information. In the next part of this series, we will take a close look at how Iraq fits into this picture.]

Now that we have a basic understanding of how much effort has gone into controlling Middle East and Caspian oil, and as demand for oil increases as production decreases, we can easily see how this is going to become an increasingly dangerous and hostile situation. If we stay on this present course, the “Strategy of the Silk Route” leads us straight down the road to World War III.

IV: War Racket: The Global Banking Intelligence Complex Business Plan

One of the reactions a person may have after learning this information, is to believe that perhaps these wars to control the earth’s remaining oil supply are beneficial to the US population. It may even eventually be a clever propaganda strategy to paint these wars as preserving the American way of life and our standard of living by obtaining these vital resources. Coming to this belief would be tremendously naïve.

As recent history has proved, US oil interests and the bankers behind them are global in nature and they don’t have any loyalty to the American people. As their actions have clearly demonstrated, they use the oil, and the obscene profits obtained from it, for their own short-sighted personal gain, at the brutal expense of the overwhelming majority of humanity and at the extraordinary expense of the earth’s ecosystem. Americans are shielded from the enormous inhumanity of millions of maimed and dead bodies as a result of their addiction to power. If these wars continue to escalate, they will inevitably lead to more attacks on American soil.

The profits from these wars are also a primary driving factor in having them in the first place, and is a major incentive to keep them going. Billions of taxpayer dollars are thrown around in the “fog of war,” in what is called a “free-fraud zone.” The military companies and the bankers behind them reap huge profits in the process. So fighting these highly profitable wars, for highly profitable resources, is the ultimate win-win situation, and the deliberately chosen business model for the Global Banking Intelligence Complex.

A point that clearly demonstrates the parasitic nature and pure insanity of this: the world’s #1 polluter and consumer of oil is the US/NATO/private military machine. So while they so desperately fight for oil, they are burning up significant amounts of it in the process.

The fact that the average American never gets the information presented in this report via mainstream media proves how tightly controlled the corporate media is. It also clearly demonstrates the blatant fact that the Global Banking Cartel doesn’t want American citizens to have even a basic understanding of geo-strategic interests and how power really functions. Above all, the American public must be kept in its place, as the cartel emphatically believes that they are the kings and we are the serfs, and it is none of our business how they conduct themselves. If you are not already a multi-millionaire or billionaire, you have now been marked for either servitude or slow death. That is a very harsh truth, but in the new world of declining resources, looted economies and environmental upheaval, this is the unfortunate reality of the situation. Until the American public can wake up to this new reality, turn off the television and fight back, our living standards will continue to decline at an increasing rate.

Editor’s Note: In an earlier version of this story, we cited a report published in the Boston Herald on Dec. 10th, 2001. The report contained inaccuracies and the Herald retracted portions of it on Feb. 19, 2002. However, the retracted version was not immediately accessible and we relied upon the original Dec. 10, 2001 story when preparing this investigative report. We were made aware of the factual inaccuracies concerning the ownership of assets by an international business figure from which erroneous conclusions were reached by by the Herald. We have, therefore, removed that portion of the story apologize for any unintended distress caused to the individual concerned.

The next part of this series will be posted in a few days. Stay tuned for “The Covert Origins of the Iraq War: BCCI, Kissinger Associates, SAIC, & Robert Gates.”

David DeGraw, a regular contributor to The Public Record, is an investigative journalist whose work has been featured in numerous publications and websites. He is the founder and editor of AmpedStatus.com, editorial director of MediaChannel.org and author of The Economic Elite Vs. The People of the United States. To be notified via email about further articles from this series, subscribe here.

Editor’s Note

To get a more complete understanding of our current crisis, we need to look at the history of events that led up to it. We need to peer deeply into the inner workings of the Global Banking Intelligence Complex. Without acknowledging and exposing the covert forces that are aligned against us, we will not be able to effectively overcome them.

In the past I have shied away from going too deeply into the details of the intelligence world out of fear of being written off and dismissed as a conspiracy theorist. If I hadn’t spent the majority of the past 20 years investigating global financial intelligence operations, I certainly wouldn’t believe half of this myself. Given the severity of our current crisis and the imminent devastating implications, I now realize that I must go deeper into covert activities than I publicly ever have. The information I am about to report is very well-sourced and documented, and needs to be covered before we can proceed to exposing present operations.

I: All Roads Go Through BCCI

Here is a partial list of the economic and political scandals that I investigated throughout the 1980s and early ’90s:

The Savings & Loan scandal;

Stock market manipulation and money laundering;

Iran-Contra Affair;

The October Surprise and Iran hostage crisis;

Iraqgate-BNL and the rise and funding of Saddam Hussein;

Pakistan’s nuclear program and the selling of bomb-making technology to Libya, Iran and North Korea;

The rise and funding of the Afghan Mujahideen (founding and funding of the Taliban and Osama bin Laden’s Al Qaeda network);

Illegal weapon sales to Iran and Saudi Arabia;

The proliferation of Middle Eastern terrorism;

The international drug trade run by people like Manuel Noriega and Pablo Escobar.

All of these scandals had one vital thing in common, the Bank of Credit and Commerce International (BCCI).

In December 1992, the US Senate Foreign Relations Committee on Terrorism, Narcotics and International Operations delivered a report on their investigation into the bank, entitled “The BCCI Affair.” The report would disclose the largest political corruption case in the history of the global economy. As the Senate Committee summed it up:

“BCCI’s criminality included fraud by BCCI and BCCI customers involving billions of dollars; money laundering in Europe, Africa, Asia, and the Americas; BCCI’s bribery of officials in most of those locations; support of terrorism, arms trafficking, and the sale of nuclear technologies; management of prostitution; the commission and facilitation of income tax evasion, smuggling, and illegal immigration; illicit purchases of banks and real estate; and a panoply of financial crimes limited only by the imagination of its officers and customers.

Among BCCI’s principal mechanisms for committing crimes were its use of shell corporations and bank confidentiality and secrecy havens; layering of its corporate structure; its use of front-men and nominees, guarantees and buy-back arrangements; back-to-back financial documentation among BCCI controlled entities, kick-backs and bribes, the intimidation of witnesses, and the retention of well-placed insiders to discourage governmental action.”

The BCCI scandal gave citizens of the world a rare glimpse into the inner workings of the covert global banking intelligence power structure, revealing power politics in its purest form. BCCI was modeled after the world’s most powerful intelligence agencies and multinational corporations. It represented the evolution of organized crime into the new world of the global economy, rendering nation-states obsolete. BCCI transcended religions and nationalities; it cut across the entire political spectrum, uniting countries and groups that, on the surface, were considered rivals, yet were unified in their pursuit of power.

BCCI consisted of a complex alliance of intelligence agencies, multinational corporations, weapons dealers, drug traffickers, terrorists, global bankers and high-ranking government officials. It involved leaders from 73 countries and formed what was described as “an elaborate corporate spider web.”

As former US Senate investigator Jack Blum described it:

“The problem that we are all having in dealing with this bank is that… it had 3,000 criminal customers and every one of those 3,000 criminal customers is a page one story. So if you pick up on one of [BCCI's] accounts you could find financing from nuclear weapons, gun running, narcotics dealing, and you will find all manner and means of crime around the world in the records of this bank.”

BCCI would become known as the Bank of Crooks and Criminals with clientele such as Saddam Hussein, Manuel Noriega, Pablo Escobar, Abu Nidal, the Qassar brothers, Muammar Gaddafi, Ben Banerjee, Cyrus Hashemi, Ferdinand Marcos, Rodriguez Gacha, Alan Garcia, Daniel Ortega, Adolfo Calero, Adnan Khashoggi, Manucher Ghorbanifar, Sarkis Soghanalian, the Palestine Liberation Organization, Islamic Jihad holy warriors the Mujahideen, including Osama bin Laden and many others.

In a 1991 Time magazine article entitled, “The Dirtiest Bank of All,” investigative journalists Jonathan Beaty and S.C. Gwynne summed up BCCI this way:

“Nothing in the history of modern financial scandals rivals the unfolding saga of the Bank of Credit & Commerce International, the $20 billion rogue empire that regulators in 62 countries shut down early this month in a stunning global sweep. Never has a single scandal involved so much money, so many nations or so many prominent people.

Superlatives are quickly exhausted: it is the largest corporate criminal enterprise ever, the biggest Ponzi scheme, the most pervasive money-laundering operation and financial supermarket ever created for the likes of Manuel Noriega, Ferdinand Marcos, Saddam Hussein and the Colombian drug barons.”

In another report Beaty and Gwynne added:

“This is the story of how the wealthy and corrupt in Latin America managed to steal virtually every dollar lent to their countries by Western banks, creating the debt crisis of the 1980s; how heads of state… skimmed billions from their national treasuries and hid them in Swiss and Caymanian accounts forever free from snooping regulators; how Pakistan and Iraq got materials for nuclear weaponry and how Libya built poison-gas plants.”

II: BCCI & US Intelligence

Even though BCCI was a Middle Eastern-based bank, investigations by the US Senate, NY Attorney General Robert Morgenthau and several award-winning journalists revealed that BCCI was run by the CIA and top US officials. CIA covert operations were run through BCCI’s “black network.” Former CIA directors George Bush Sr., William Casey and Richard Helms, former Defense Secretary Clark Clifford and former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger were all key players and shielded the bank from investigations throughout its reign. BCCI founder Agha Hasan Abedi and former CIA director William Casey met secretly for years. BCCI’s Mohammed Irvani was partners with former CIA director Richard Helms. BCCI frontmen Kamal Adham and A.R. Khalil were top Saudi intelligence directors and primary CIA liaisons for the entire Middle East. Many high-ranking Republicans and Democrats were vital to the bank’s operations, along with top corporate executives at First American Bank, Bank of America, PR firm Hill & Knowlton, cable company TCI, and auditing firms Price Waterhouse and Ernst & Young – to name just a few US companies that played crucial roles.

The CIA, DIA, and NSC used BCCI as their own private bank, sending billions of dollars in covert funding and weapons to organizations and countries with which we are now in conflict – most notably the Mujahideen in Afghanistan (which evolved into Al Qaeda and the Taliban), Pakistan’s ISI, Saddam Hussein in Iraq and the government of Iran.

BCCI investigations gave us the most detailed and well-documented view into the inner workings of the “war racket” that we have ever had. The BCCI Affair blatantly exposed how global intelligence agencies and banking interests covertly fund terrorists and drug cartels all over the world. As investigative reporter Chris Floyd wrote, “Instead of stopping the drug-runners and terrorists, the CIA decided to join them, using BCCI’s secret channels to finance ‘black ops’ all over the world.”

Reporting in Time magazine, Beaty and Gwynne revealed some of the details:

“From interviews with sources close to B.C.C.I., TIME has pieced together a portrait of a clandestine division of the bank called the ‘black network,’ which functions as a global intelligence operation and a Mafia-like enforcement squad…. The black network — so named by its own members — stops at almost nothing to further the bank’s aims the world over.

The more conventional departments of B.C.C.I. handled such services as laundering money for the drug trade and helping dictators loot their national treasuries. The black network, which is still functioning, operates a lucrative arms-trade business and transports drugs and gold. According to investigators and participants in those operations, it often works with Western and Middle Eastern intelligence agencies. The strange and still murky ties between B.C.C.I. and the intelligence agencies of several countries are so pervasive that even the White House has become entangled. As TIME reported earlier this month, the National Security Council used B.C.C.I. to funnel money for the Iran-contra deals, and the CIA maintained accounts in B.C.C.I. for covert operations. Moreover, investigators have told TIME that the Defense Intelligence Agency has maintained a slush-fund account with B.C.C.I., apparently to pay for clandestine activities….

The black network was a natural outgrowth of B.C.C.I.’s dubious and criminal associations…. Its original purpose was to pay bribes, intimidate authorities and quash investigations. But according to a former operative, sometime in the early 1980s the black network began running its own drugs, weapons and currency deals….

Sources have told investigators that B.C.C.I. worked closely with Israel’s spy agencies and other Western intelligence groups as well, especially in arms deals. The bank also maintained cozy relationships with international terrorists, say investigators who discovered suspected terrorist accounts for Libya, Syria and the Palestine Liberation Organization in B.C.C.I.’s London offices….

U.S. intelligence agencies were well aware of such activities. ‘B.C.C.I. played an indispensable role in facilitating deals between Israel and some Middle Eastern countries,’ says a former State Department official. ‘And when you look at the Saudi support of the contras, ask yourself who the middleman was: there was no government-to-government connection between the Saudis and Nicaragua.’”

III: Af-Pak Covert Operations

The CIA worked in partnership with BCCI in what was, at the time, the agency’s largest covert operation ever, pumping an estimated $10 billion into funding the Afghan Mujahideen’s anti-Soviet Jihad.

In a 1992 article entitled, “The Riyadh Connection,” Time magazine reported:

“B.C.C.I. was similarly entwined in another key U.S. intelligence operation of the 1980s: the supply of arms and money to the Afghan rebels. While such clandestine support was legally condoned, B.C.C.I. officials have told reporters that CIA Director William Casey… struck a deal that included off-the-books operations never reported to the U.S. Congress.”

Pakistan would play a pivotal role in support of the Afghan Mujahideen. Pakistan was run by a corrupt militant oligarchy and was the operational home of BCCI. In “ Modern Jihad: Tracing the Dollars Behind the Terror Networks,” investigative reporter Loretta Napoleoni revealed details:

“As soon as Abedi’s bank [BCCI] came on board, all [CIA] covert operations were passed to its ‘black network’, virtually a secret banking institution within the bank. Its headquarters were in Karachi and it was from this city that the underground network acted as a full-service bank for the CIA. With about 15,000 employees, it operated in a similar fashion to the Mafia. It was a fully integrated organization; it financed and brokered covert arms deals among different countries, it shipped goods using its own fleet, insured them with its own agency and provided manpower and security en route. In Pakistan, BCCI officials knew whom to bribe and when to do it. They also knew where to channel the funds. Richard Kerr, the former CIA director who admitted that the CIA had secret BCCI accounts in Pakistan, confirmed that those accounts had been opened to distribute the CIA funds to Pakistani officers and members of the Afghan resistance. By the mid-1980s, the black network had gained control of the port of Karachi and handled all customs operations for CIA shipments to Afghanistan, including the necessary bribes for the ISI [Pakistan’s intelligence service]. It was BCCI’s job to make sure that cargoes of arms and equipment were discharged quickly….

As the war progressed, costs soared. There was constant shortage of money along the pipeline to supply the Mujahedin and so the ISI and CIA began looking for additional sources of income. One that proved viable was drug smuggling. Soon the narcotics-based economy took over the traditional agrarian economy of Afghanistan…. Within two years the Pakistan-Afghanistan borderland had become the biggest centre for the production of heroin in the world and the single greatest supplier of heroin on American streets, meeting 60 per cent of the US demand for narcotics. Annual profits were estimated between $100 billion and $200 billion. . . . In 1995, the former CIA director of Afghan operations, Charles Cogan, admitted that the CIA had indeed sacrificed the drug war to fight the Cold War.”

In “Afghanistan 1979-1992: America’s Jihad,” investigative journalist Tim Weiner reported:

“The CIA’s pipeline leaked. It leaked badly. It spilled huge quantities of weapons all over one of the world’s most anarchic areas. First the Pakistani armed forces took what they wanted from the weapons shipments. Then corrupt Afghan guerrilla leaders stole and sold hundreds of millions of dollars’ worth of anti-aircraft guns, missiles, rocket-propelled grenades, AK-47 automatic rifles, ammunition and mines from the CIA’s arsenal. Some of the weapons fell into the hands of criminal gangs, heroin kingpins and the most radical faction of the Iranian military…. While their troops eked out hard lives in Afghanistan’s mountains and deserts, the guerrillas’ political leaders maintained fine villas in Peshawar and fleets of vehicles at their command. The CIA kept silent as the Afghan politicos converted the Agency’s weapons into cash.”

Through this operation Osama bin Laden’s Al Qaeda network was formed. Bin Laden had accounts in BCCI and ran a CIA/BCCI-funded camp. [I'll go into further detail on this aspect of the BCCI Affair in the next report.]

BCCI also funded Pakistan’s nuclear weapons program when they set up the Khan Institute of Engineering Sciences and Technology. Pakistan then went on to sell the technology to Libya, Iran and North Korea. As a Chicago Sun Times report summed it up:

“[Pakistan's] President Pervez Musharraf has pledged that the disgraced founder of Pakistan’s nuclear weapons program can keep the vast wealth he accumulated selling bomb-making technology to rogue states around the world. Just days after Musharraf provoked worldwide consternation by pardoning Abdul Qadeer Khan for supplying nuclear expertise to Libya, Iran and North Korea, he told the Sunday Telegraph he would also spare the scientist’s property or assets. ‘He can keep his money,’ Musharraf said, adding there had been good reason not to investigate the origin of Khan’s suspicious wealth before 1998, when Pakistan successfully tested its first nuclear weapon. ‘… you have to ask yourself whether you act against the person who enabled you to get the bomb.’ Khan is thought to have earned millions of dollars from his sale of nuclear know-how, beginning in the late 1980s. Much of the money was funneled through [BCCI] bank accounts in the Middle East.”

IV: Iran-Contra Affair

George Bush Sr. and current Secretary of Defense Robert Gates were key players in the BCCI financed Iran-Contra Affair. As the US Independent Counsel For Iran/Contra Matters investigation stated:

“Robert M. Gates was the Central Intelligence Agency’s deputy director for intelligence (DDI) from 1982 to 1986. He was confirmed as the CIA’s deputy director of central intelligence (DDCI) in April of 1986 and became acting director of central intelligence in December of that same year. Owing to his senior status in the CIA, Gates was close to many figures who played significant roles in the Iran/contra affair and was in a position to have known of their activities.”

Leslie Alan Aspin, a British CIA agent who was killed in 1989, had classified documents proving Bush Sr.’s involvement in illegal covert weapon sales to Iran. A 1991 report in New York Magazine by Christopher Byron revealed some details and was later summed up in The Reference Shelf:

“In a ten-page statement dated May 1. 1987, Aspin describes how he organized a 1984 BCCI financed TOW missile shipment from Portugal to Iran on behalf of Oliver North. Though North was at that time on the staff of the National Security Council, his recently declassified diaries indicate that he was spending much of his time working for Bush.”

Key Iran-Contra asset Oliver North was involved in the operations and was working directly for Bush Sr., who was Vice President at the time. North maintained several accounts in BCCI which he used to finance his covert operations. As Time magazine reported:

“… the National Security Council used B.C.C.I. to funnel money for the Iran-contra deals…. When American arms destined for Iran and Iraq passed through Israel, for example, B.C.C.I. was frequently the broker and financier…. There was, for example, the highly sensitive question of B.C.C.I.’s direct involvement in the secret arms-for-hostages deals in Iran during the 1980s, in which it acted as a broker and financier of weapons sales. Ollie North maintained three accounts at the B.C.C.I. Paris branch, and B.C.C.I. was used to transfer money to the contras.”

George Bush Sr. would go on to pardon convicted Iran-Contra figures – former Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger and five former CIA employees; Elliott Abrams, Robert McFarlane, Duane Clarridge, Alan Fiers, and Clair George. Robert Gates then went on to serve as Director of the CIA under Bush Sr., and is currently serving as Secretary of Defense under President Obama, having been selected to that position by former President George Bush Jr..

V: Kissinger Associates & Iraqgate-BNL

George Bush Sr. and former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger were also heavily involved in another illegal covert operation run through an Italian BCCI-linked bank called Banca Nazionale del Lavoro (BNL). BNL was used to covertly funnel billions of dollars to Saddam Hussein. This scandal would become known as Iraqgate.

In April 1992, former Congressmen Henry B. Gonzalez (TX-20) stated the following in the Congressional Record:

“Kissinger Associates, Scowcroft, Eagleburger, Stoga, Iraq, and BNL

Mr. GONZALEZ: ‘Mr. Speaker, today I will talk about Henry Kissinger, his consulting firm Kissinger Associates, two former Kissinger Associates directors, Lawrence Eagleburger and Brent Scowcroft, and the chief economist at Kissinger Associates, Alan Stoga.

I will explore their links to Banca Nazionale del Lavoro [BNL] and Iraq, and the Bush administration’s handling of the BNL scandal. But first, I will provide some background information on the BNL scandal….

The $4 billion plus in BNL loans to Iraq between 1985 and 1990 were crucial to Iraqi efforts to feed its people and to build weapons of mass destruction. In addition, the BNL loans were crucial to Reagan and Bush administration efforts to assist Saddam Hussein….

It is truly amazing that the BNL scandal went on as long as it did. Various agencies within our Government knew of BNL’s role in bankrolling Iraq–yet they supposedly did not know that the loans were unauthorized or not properly reported….

Several of BNL’s high level friends in the United States should have been aware of the BNL loans to Iraq. The high level patrons that I am referring to are Henry Kissinger, and his Kissinger Associates compadres, Brent Scowcroft and Lawrence Eagleburger….

I will reveal that both Mr. Eagleburger and Mr. Scowcroft played a key role in the Bush administration’s handling of the BNL scandal, even though BNL was a paying client of Kissinger Associates just months prior to the BNL scandal becoming public….

Kissinger Deliberately Misleads Public

Until recently, Mr. Kissinger was a member of the BNL’s international advisory board and during the height of the BNL-Atlanta scandal BNL was a paying client of Kissinger Associates.

While Henry Kissinger was a paid member of the BNL’s advisory board for international policy between 1985 and June 1991, he received at least $10,000 for attending each meeting of the BNL advisory board.

Other BNL advisory board members included David Rockefeller, the chairman of the Rockefeller Group and a director of Chase Manhattan Bank, Pierre Trudeau, the former Prime Minister of Canada, Lord Thornycroft, the former British Minister of Defense, and other politically well-connected international notables.

After my April 25, 1991, floor statement on Mr. Kissinger, he told the Financial Times newspaper that he had resigned from the BNL advisory board a week before the BNL indictment in February 1991 because `he did not want to answer questions about such incidents.’

Two weeks ago, the prominent TV show, ‘60 Minutes,’ revealed that Kissinger had not resigned from the BNL advisory board in February 1991, as he had told the Financial Times. In fact, `60 Minutes’ reported that Mr. Kissinger served on BNL’s advisory board until his contract expired in the summer of 1991, more than 4 months after the date he had previously reported.

Mr. Kissinger was not the only Kissinger Associates employee that dealt with BNL. Mr. Brent Scowcroft, the vice chairman and Mr. Lawrence Eagleburger, the president of Kissinger Associates also had relationships with BNL.

Brent Scowcroft, BNL, and Iraq

One of the most prominent of the Kissinger Associates alumni is Brent Scowcroft, President Bush’s current National Security Adviser and head of the NSC staff. . . .

Scowcroft often took charge of the National Security Council while Kissinger was fulfilling his duties as Secretary of State, and in 1975 he succeeded Kissinger as National Security Adviser to President Ford….

In 1982, Scowcroft joined Kissinger in setting up Kissinger Associates. Scowcroft served as vice chairman and head of Kissinger Associate’s Washington, DC, office until becoming the head of the National Security Council under President Bush in January 1989….

Alan Stoga–Kissinger Associates

Another link between Kissinger Associates, BNL and Iraq is Alan Stoga. Alan Stoga is a former economist at First Chicago Bank and is currently a director of Kissinger Associates. Mr. Stoga is said to be an expert in country risk analysis and international finance. He has been interested in the Middle East for many years and has made extensive visits to the area….

Conclusion

BNL was a client of Mr. Scowcroft’s while he was the vice-chairman of Kissinger Associates. Mr. Scowcroft regularly provided advice to BNL’s management and received hefty fees in return.

Mr. Scowcroft and his staff at the National Security Council, along with the State Department, masterminded the Bush administration’s handling of the BNL scandal in order to mitigate the damage it would have caused to United States-Iraq relations. In the process they trampled on United States law enforcement efforts and repeatedly misled the Congress and the American public about the United States policy toward Iraq….

As for Mr. Kissinger, he misled the public about his relationship with BNL and about his firm’s contact with Saddam Hussein. Mr. Stoga misled the Banking Committee about the reasons for his trip to Iraq in the summer of 1989 when he met with Saddam Hussein to discuss Iraq’s debt problems.’”

Kissinger and his firm Kissinger Associates played a key role throughout BCCI’s entire existence. The Senate investigation report had an entire chapter focusing on Kissinger’s role, entitled “BCCI And Kissinger Associates.” After the report was released to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Henry Kissinger got them to redact several sections from the Government Printing Office’s final hardcopy version.

VI: The Ultimate Conspiracy: The BCCI Cover-Up

In Jonathan Beaty and S.C. Gwynne’s ground-breaking book on BCCI, entitled “The Outlaw Bank,” they detailed the overwhelming evidence proving the dominant role US intelligence, governmental agencies and global banking interests played in BCCI operations and in covering up the bank’s scandalous and illegal activities. As they reported:

“Perhaps the most disturbing aspect of the BCCI affair in the United States was the failure of U.S. government and federal law enforcement to move against the outlaw bank. Instead of swift retribution, what took place over more than a decade was a cover-up of major, alarming proportions, often orchestrated from the very highest levels of government. When the Justice Department finally moved decisively against BCCI in late 1991, it did so reluctantly.”

As the US Senate report revealed:

“The political connections of BCCI’s U.S. lawyers and lobbyists were critical to impeding Congressional and law enforcement investigations from 1988 through 1991, through a variety of techniques that included impugning the motives and integrity of investigators and journalists, withholding subpoenaed documents, and lobbying on Capitol Hill to protect BCCI’s reputation and discourage efforts to close the bank down in the United States.”

As Beaty and Gwynne revealed in detail, government documents exposing BCCI’s criminality went back to 1979. As they wrote, “authentic, unambiguous information” on the bank’s illegal activity was presented to the State Department, Justice Department, Drug Enforcement Agency, Internal Revenue Service, Commerce Department, Customs Department, Central Intelligence Agency, National Security Agency, Defense Intelligence Agency, Department of Energy, and the White House’s National Security Council.

Perhaps more than anyone, the Treasury Department and Federal Reserve had extensive information on BCCI’s criminal activities. As investigations revealed, “the detail of information was exceptional.” During pivotal BCCI years, James Baker, after serving as President Reagan’s Chief of Staff, was Treasury Secretary from 1985 – ‘88. After Baker left the Treasury Department, he became Bush Sr.’s Secretary of State from 1989 – ‘92. At the Federal Reserve, Alan Greenspan, after serving as a director at the Council on Foreign Relations, became Fed Chairman in 1987 and served in that position throughout BCCI’s reign.

VII: Wall Street & US Banking Industry

BCCI penetrated deeply into Wall Street and the US banking industry. With the help of former Defense Secretary Clark Clifford, BCCI secretly owned Washington’s largest bank, First American, and Bank of America was a vital BCCI lifeline. As Beaty and Gwynne revealed:

“B.C.C.I. even accomplished a Stealth-like invasion of the U.S. banking industry by secretly buying First American Bankshares, a Washington-based holding company with offices stretching from Florida to New York….

Five of Bank of America’s senior officers were either on BCCI’s board of directors or helped to manage Abedi’s bank. For the next decade the two banks would move billions of dollars a week through each other’s international offices, and the Bank of America would be an invaluable, if hidden, ally, since it would continue to accept BCCI’s letter-of-credit business after virtually no other Western bank would touch it. Indeed, it could be argued that Bank of America became the single most important financial institution helping BCCI stay afloat.

In the United States alone, Bank of America transferred more than $1 billion a day for BCCI until the moment of BCCI’s global seizure in July 1991.

Thus Bank of America acted as a sort of global vacuum cleaner, sucking up many BCCI branch deposits and thereby providing the fuel Abedi needed to keep his Ponzi scheme alive.”

Stock Market Manipulation & Money Laundering

Long before the Commodities Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) was covering-up wide-scale manipulation of the stock market during this economic crisis, they were working overtime to conceal BCCI money laundering and market manipulation. As the 1992 US Senate Report stated:

“In the entire BCCI affair, perhaps no entity is more mysterious and yet more central to BCCI’s collapse and criminality than Capcom, a London and Chicago based commodities futures firm which operated between 1984 and 1988. Capcom is vital to understanding BCCI because BCCI’s top management and most important Saudi shareholders were involved with the firm. Moreover, Capcom moved huge amounts of money — billions of dollars — which passed through the future’s markets in a largely anonymous fashion.

Capcom was created by the former head of BCCI’s Treasury Department, Ziauddin Ali Akbar, who capitalized it with funds from BCCI and BCCI customers…. Additionally, the company employed many of the same practices as BCCI, especially the use of nominees and front companies to disguise ownership and the movement of money. Four Americans, Larry Romrell, Robert Magness, Kerry Fox and Robert Powell — none of whom had any experience or expertise in the commodities markets — played important and varied roles as frontmen….

The commodities markets in the U.K. and the U.S. are not restricted, regulated or supervised as stringently as the banking industry or the securities markets.

Moreover, the commodities markets can sustain almost limitless volume, a necessary prerequisite for crime on the scale of that contemplated by BCCI since fraudulent transactions may be hidden in a multitude of legitimate ones. In a letter to the directors, the Chairman of Capcom, Larry Romrell, reported 165 million in trading during the first four months of operation, and profits of 883,393. That trend continued until 1988 leading Akbar to boast to agent Mazur: ‘We have contracted 165,000 contracts totaling $53 billion with Drexel Burnham,’ and later, ‘we have done over $90 billion total in 1988.’

While the number of contracts and dollar volume seems unbelievable, a commodities company can artificially create massive volume by many small or no-risk trading methods. Indeed, the volume generated by Capcom helped it to generate respectability and acceptance with reputable banks and brokers. For example, listed under ‘Auditors and Advisers’ in Capcom’s 1987 Annual Report were the following major international banks: Manufacturers Hanover Trust Company, London, National Westminster Bank Plc, Manufacturers Hanover Trust Company, New York, Deutsche Westminster Bank, A.G., and National Westminster Bank, plc. Elsewhere, Capcom noted its ties to Dean Witter Reynolds, American Express Bank, Refco, Prudential Bache Trading Corp., and Sumitomo Trust and Banking, Ltd.”

Also, long before the modern techniques of market manipulation and money laundering, like high frequency trading, round trip trading and quote stuffing, BCCI mastered a technique called “mirror image trading.”

The Senate report continued:

“Capcom and Money Laundering

There is evidence that Capcom engaged in money laundering for a variety of clients both in the United States and in London. For example, some 50 transactions were identified in the Futures, Inc. accounts with insufficient or no supporting documentation regarding the source or disposition of funds. These transactions totaled more than $125,000,000.

In testimony to the Subcommittee, Customs agent Robert Mazur testified how Akbar used ‘mirror-image’ trading to launder huge sums of money. Mirror image trading involves buying contracts for one account while selling an equal number from another account. Since both accounts are controlled by the same individual any profit or loss is effectively netted. According to Mazur, Akbar explained that because these ‘mirror image’ transactions can be lost among many millions of dollars worth of legitimate transactions ‘it would take forever for anyone to ever find it.’

Using mirror-image trading, Akbar bilked the BCCI Treasury accounts and laundered money for one of Capcom’s most notorious clients, General Manuel Antonio Noriega. Although complex, the series of transactions involving Noriega, BCCI and Capcom provide an illustration of textbook money laundering….

Conclusion….

In terms of the broader lessons of Capcom, regulation of the futures markets need to be greatly strengthened. Even a cursory background check on Akbar would have revealed that he had managed the Treasury accounts at BCCI which lost $400 million in the futures markets in the early eighties. Moreover, regulators who appeared before the Subcommittee testified on the one hand that annual audits of Capcom US turned up nothing irregular, but that Capcom’s books and records were a mess. That such a contradiction was allowed to continue for four years indicates that the CFTC needs to critically review the effectiveness of the various exchange audits. Finally, money laundering should be made a crime under the Commodities Futures Trading Act.”

VIII: The Savings and Loan Scandal

The Savings and Loan scandal was a significant part of the BCCI Affair. Looking back through piles of documents and research I’ve gathered, it is stunning how similar that crisis was to our current crisis. Both operations were put into motion as a result of the deregulation of key sectors of the financial system; in both of these cases the real estate sector was a main component. This is a clear pattern in financial intelligence operations. The first essential mission is to create legislation that allows for the creation of dark spaces, or “dark pools,” within key areas of the financial system where intelligence operations can then be executed without oversight or accountability.

To show you how history repeated itself, here’s an excerpt from the 1993 book, “Banking Scandals: The S&Ls and BCCI,” edited by Robert Emmet Long:

“The Savings and Loan debacle – the greatest scandal in the history of American banking – first came to national attention in the mid-1980’s. At that point, the failure of the thrifts, as S&Ls are sometimes known, appeared to be a controllable and containable situation. Both government officials and representatives of the Savings and Loan industry gave assurances that the S&L industry was still sound, and both worked to head off a full-scale investigation.… The delay in confronting the situation cost taxpayers billions of dollars. The price tag for bailing out the failed banks steadily escalated, from estimates of $50 billion at first to $500 billion and then $750 billion or even a staggering $1 trillion.…

The Savings and Loan scandal was unparalleled in the extent of its chicanery and in its ultimate cost to taxpayers, who will be paying for it for decades to come… In a series of steps beginning in 1980, the S&Ls were deregulated at the same time that the Federal Savings and Loan Insurance protection for depositors rose from $40,000 to $100,000. The combination stimulated get-rich-quick investments of a highly speculative nature on the part of bankers, who looted the treasuries of the institutions they were entrusted to protect.”

It was also George Bush Sr. who, then as Vice President, oversaw the “task force on deregulation and bank supervision” that led directly to the S&L crisis. In fact, his son, Neil Bush became known as the “poster boy” of the S&L crisis. Neil was nicknamed “the Silverado Kid” after he cost US taxpayers $1.3 billion while running Silverado Banking, Savings & Loan. In 1989, after becoming president, George Bush Sr. promptly bailed out the S&L industry, costing taxpayers hundreds of billions of dollars.

Many of the failed S&L thrifts served as secret intelligence shell companies and were traced back to BCCI and the CIA. In a study entitled, “Organized Crime, The CIA and the Savings and Loan Scandal,” Criminal Justice Professor Gary W. Potter explains:

“It is not our intent to discuss the unethical and even illegal business practices of the failed savings and loans and their governmental collaborators. The outlandish salaries paid by S & L executives to themselves, the subsidies to the thrifts from Congress which rewarded incompetence and fraud, the land ‘flips’ which resulted in real estate being sold back and forth in an endless ‘kiting’ scheme, and the political manipulation designed to delay the scandal until after the 1988 presidential elections are all immensely interesting and important. But they are subjects for others’ inquiries. Our interest is in the savings and loans as living, breathing organisms that fused criminal corporations, organized crime, and the CIA into a single entity that served the interests of the political and economic elite in America. Let us begin by quickly summarizing the most blatant examples of collaboration between financial institutions, the mob, and the intelligence community….

First National Bank of Maryland…
Palmer National Bank…
Indian Springs Bank…
Vision Banc Savings…
Hill Financial Savings…
Sunshine State Bank…

All told at least twenty-two of the failed S & L’s can be tied to joint money laundering ventures by the CIA and organized crime figures. If the savings and loan scandals of the 1980s reveal anything, they demonstrate what has often been stated as a maxim in organized crime research: that corruption linking government, business, and syndicates is the reality of the day-to-day organization of crime. Investigations of organized crime in the United States, Europe, and Asia have all uncovered organized crime networks operating with virtual immunity from law enforcement and prosecution.”

For further details on BCCI and CIA connections to the S&L crisis, let’s return to “Banking Scandals: The S&Ls and BCCI:”

“The banking scandals involving S&Ls and the rogue Bank of Credit and Commerce International (BCCI) are linked through David Paul, former CEO of CenTrust Savings Bank, a Miami S&L that was seized in February 1990. Like S&L kingpin Charles Keating, Paul knew that he could ingratiate himself with politicians by helping them raise campaign money. Political intervention by the likes of Keating Five senators Alan Cranston of California and Donald Reigle of Michigan helped keep CenTrust open for two years after it otherwise would have been closed. CenTrust’s involvement with BCCI was even greater than its interaction with S&L scoundrels. By mid 1988, CenTrust owed its survival to BCCI and one of the bank’s alleged front men, Ghaith Pharaon, who helped win approval of a CenTrust bond issue that brought new capital into CenTrust and improved the condition of its books just in time for the thrift to pass a crucial examination by regulators….

Sunbelt Savings, Western Savings, and State Savings have all been named by the Houston Post as members of a daisy chain of failed thrifts with links to organized crime and even, perhaps, to the CIA. All three have collapsed, at a cost to taxpayers of over $3 billion.”

Once again, George Bush Sr.’s role in BCCI and the S&L crisis cannot be understated. To recap, over the course of BCCI’s entire reign, Bush Sr. led the CIA, then served as Vice President before becoming President. He had extraordinarily close relations with Saudi Arabia, the most oil-rich nation in the world. Kahlam Adham was a top BCCI executive and head of Saudi Arabian intelligence, he was known as “the godfather of Middle East Intelligence” and was the CIA’s main liaison to the region. BCCI’s Chief Operations Officer was Khalid bin Mahfouz, who also led Saudi Arabia’s largest national bank and was a major player in the oil industry. Mahfouz was known as “the most powerful banker in the Middle East.” As already mentioned, Saudi Arabian intelligence was mixed in tightly with Wall Street banking interests in BCCI’s Capcom money laundering operations in the futures market. George Bush Sr. also did everything within his power to conceal these operations, as investigative reporter Chris Floyd wrote:

“When a few prosecutors finally began targeting BCCI’s operations in the late Eighties, President George Herbert Walker Bush boldly moved in with a federal probe directed by Justice Department investigator Robert Mueller. The U.S. Senate later found that the probe had been unaccountably ‘botched’–witnesses went missing, CIA records got ‘lost,’… Lower-ranking prosecutors told of heavy pressure from on high to ‘lay off.’ Most of the big BCCI players went unpunished or, like [Khalib bin] Mahfouz, got off with wrist-slap fines and sanctions. Mueller, of course, wound up as head of the FBI, appointed to the post in July 2001–by George W. Bush.”

Robert Mueller, who has been running the FBI since September 4, 2001, under Bush Jr. and now Obama, was Bush Sr.’s go-to guy at the Justice Department in covering up BCCI and S&L operations. Back in 1992, Beaty and Gwynne reported the following in Time magazine:

“In the U.S. investigators now say openly that the Justice Department has not only reined in its own probe of the bank but is also part of a concerted campaign to derail any full investigation. Says Robert Morgenthau, the Manhattan district attorney, who first launched his investigations into B.C.C.I. two years ago: ‘We have had no cooperation from the Justice Department since we first asked for records in March 1990. In fact they are impeding our investigation, and Justice Department representatives are asking witnesses not to cooperate with us.’”

In summation, George Bush Sr., Henry Kissinger, James Baker, Robert Mueller, Robert Gates and Alan Greenspan were all heavily involved in BCCI activities. Former President Bill Clinton even played a crucial role in continuing the cover-up by killing follow-up investigations upon taking office. More stunning than the BCCI operations and the cover-up, was that even after the BCCI Affair was finally exposed, all of these major players were not held accountable. The fact that people like this not only got to walk away, but remained in top positions of power for years after the scandal was exposed, with Robert Gates now serving as the Secretary of Defense and Robert Muller still serving as the head of the FBI, tells you all you need to know about the rule of law in the United States.

When you look back at the S&L crisis and understand how that scandal worked, you can clearly see how that operation served as a forerunner to, and evolved into, our current economic crisis. Of course this time it would happen under the presidency of George Bush Jr., and the cover-up would be maintained by a different Democratic President, Barack Obama.

IX: The Lessons of BCCI

While investigating BCCI operations, I began to clearly understand for the first time how the Global Banking Intelligence Complex runs both political parties in the United States. After years of researching and investigating BCCI, I’ve come to understand how power really operates, who the real power players are and how the mainstream media, which is tightly controlled by these forces, keeps the American public in the dark and marginalized by never reporting on the roots of power. The harsh truth is that American democracy and the rule of law are an illusion.

Above all, the BCCI scandal taught me two major lessons. First, when there is blatant criminal activity that goes unpunished, global banking intelligence interests are behind it. Second, you always have to follow the money. At the heart of power is the money supply, the ability to create, issue and manipulate global currencies. This is what the most powerful have always known. As the old House of Rothschild maxim goes, “Let us control the money of a nation, and we care not who makes its laws.”

When you peel back all the layers, the ultimate power in this world lies within the Global Banking Intelligence Complex, or the “money powers” as our Founding Fathers and early presidents called them. If you research our forefathers, you will see that they understood this point very well. The main theme throughout American history has always been the war between democracy and the concentration of power within the banks.

This may seem obvious to some, but this very obvious point has been omitted from mainstream media and public consciousness within the United States. This very viewpoint has been completely removed from the debate surrounding our current economic crisis and the failed financial reform process. And when it comes to the funding of perpetual wars, the banking interests behind the scenes are never even mentioned.

So this long winding road has led me right into the heart of our current crisis. It has been from this viewpoint that I have closely watched this crisis unfold. I’ve been following all these power players for years now and it’s given me an insider’s view and front row seat into our current political environment. Watching old BCCI players and their protégés continue to maintain positions as top US government officials over the years reveals a very different reality when you consider significant issues like 9/11; the Af-Pak and Iraq wars; the private military complex; the Israeli-Palestinian conflict; Pakistani, Iranian and North Korean nuclear weapons programs; global weapons sales; mainstream media propaganda campaigns; campaign finance laws; lobbying efforts; electronic voting machines; the current economic crisis, along with the bailout and stock market manipulation.

When I think about the “War on Terror” and the modern global banking system, the BCCI Affair is child’s play in comparison. The Global Banking Intelligence Complex is on steroids and stronger than ever, with power and wealth concentrated in unprecedented fashion.

Now that we have a fundamental understanding of how financial intelligence operations worked throughout the 1980s and early ’90s, now that we’ve scratched just below the surface, I will now expose operations throughout the late ’90s and past decade.

David DeGraw, a regular contributor to The Public Record, is an investigative journalist whose work has been featured in numerous publications and websites. He is the founder and editor of AmpedStatus.com, editorial director of MediaChannel.org and author of The Economic Elite Vs. The People of the United States.

Editor’s Note: The following is Part I to David DeGraw’s new book, “The Road Through 2012: Revolution or World War III.” This is the second installment to a new seven-part series that we will be posting throughout the next few weeks. Read the introduction to the book here.

When we analyze our current crisis, focusing on the past few years of economic activity blinds us to the history and context that are vital to understanding the root cause. What we have been experiencing is not the result of an unforeseen economic crash that appeared out of the blue with the collapse of the housing market. It was certainly not brought on by people who bought homes they couldn’t afford. To frame this crisis around a debate on economic theory misses the point entirely. To even blame it on greedy bankers, while essentially accurate, also misses the most vital point.

This crisis is the direct result of a strategic economic attack on the existence of a middle class and democracy worldwide. The stock market and economy have become weapons of mass oppression manipulated by an imperial banking cartel to impose order and exploit the masses. This crisis boldly represents the manifest evolution of the fascist spirit reasserting itself as the dominant ideology.

Any fairytale notions of the United States being a democratic republic built on the rule of law have been utterly dispelled. As a nation we have been bred and conditioned to be dangerously naïve to the darker forces which operate beyond the spotlight of the mainstream media. We have been blinded to what has been developing throughout the world.

The economic imperialism that has now blown-back to the United States and Europe has been evolving for decades and can be directly traced back to the end of World War II, to the birth of the CIA, International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank.

For those of us who have been paying attention to economic imperial operations that have been carried out against countries throughout the world, this looks all too familiar. The IMF and global bankers have conquered the second and third world, and they have now moved on to countries within the first world. Western European and American working classes are in the cross-hairs now.

Economic and societal indicators, along with recent G-20 policy decisions, clearly demonstrate that they are carrying out and escalating systemic economic attacks throughout Europe and the US.

To put it in technical terms, the United States government has been taken over by a financial terrorism network. They have bought off leaders of both the Republican and Democratic parties, and have established a dominant role in all three branches of government and throughout the mainstream media. They have complete control of the economy, stock market, US Treasury, Federal Reserve, World Bank, IMF and global banking system. Free market capitalism has collapsed; it’s now a rigged global market. This is an organized criminal operation, an imperial fascist movement that is determined to destroy our very way of life.

A war has already been launched against us.

In just the past three years we have lost an unprecedented amount of national wealth, trillions upon trillions of our tax dollars have been looted by Wall Street, endless wars, enormous subsidies for the most profitable global corporations and tax cuts for the richest one percent of the population. Never before, in the history of civilization, has a nation been so thoroughly and systematically fleeced.

This is all the result of a coordinated economic attack by a global banking cartel against 99 percent of the US population.

Until we can become politically intelligent enough to see this as the reality and root cause of our current crisis, we will not be able to overcome it, our living standards will continue to decline and we will all be sentenced to a slow death in a neo-feudal system built on debt slavery.

The average American is horribly naïve to just how depraved, corrupt and addicted to power this banking cartel is. Through their control and domination of the mass media, they have kept their crimes against humanity out of public consciousness. We have been shielded from the global devastation and death toll that they have already wrought. The result is an unsuspecting population of confused and passive people having their future ripped out from under them, right before their eyes, without any organized defense or resistance.

II: Violence on the Horizon

As the entrenched global banking cartel continues to control domestic political policy, the next phase of this crisis will inevitably feature an escalation into mass violence. As the Army War College stated, the Pentagon is preparing for “violent, strategic dislocation inside the United States” and “widespread civil violence” due to “purposeful domestic resistance.”

In clear signs of what is to come, rioting and violence as a result of economic turmoil has already been experienced in many countries throughout the world. However, civil unrest has not yet occurred within the United States. There are many theories as to why there has been so little resistance from the US population thus far, and several factors play into it. The most significant factor is that social safety net programs have been vital in preventing people from resorting to extreme measures. Currently, a stunning number of Americans, 52 million, are receiving life-sustaining assistance from government “anti-poverty” programs, such as food stamps, unemployment benefits, Medicaid and Medicare. This has already stretched a social safety net system that is designed to handle significantly less people to its limit. This safety net system has now been drained of all reserve resources over the past two years, and is obviously not sustainable under current economic and political conditions.

As social safety net programs have been drained of reserves, many US citizens have also been burning through their personal savings. Over the past few years the percentage of Americans living paycheck to paycheck has dramatically increased. In 2007, 43 percent of Americans were living paycheck to paycheck. In 2008, the percentage increased to 49 percent. In 2009, the number skyrocketed up to 61 percent. The most recent number for 2010 has exploded to a shocking 77 percent. This means in our nation of 310 million citizens, 239 million Americans are one setback away from economic ruin and millions more are in danger of having to rely on government assistance for survival.

So as this prolonged economic crisis continues, these safety nets, that are already overwhelmed, will have to support more and more people and will inevitably break down. As we have just begun to see, budget cuts to vital social programs on the state and federal levels will become increasingly severe right at the point when many more Americans will need them. As the 52 million Americans currently surviving in “anti-poverty” programs are gradually cutoff from life-sustaining government assistance – and as the 239 million people now living paycheck to paycheck, buried in debt, stressing out and working their asses off just to make ends meet realize that things are not going to be getting any better — and are only going to get worse — social unrest and outbursts of violence will eventually start to bubble up to the surface and the ruling elite will no longer be able to maintain power by simply deceiving the masses via mainstream media propaganda.

When an overwhelming majority of the population directly feels negative effects upon their own living standards, the propaganda system collapses. The illusion comes crashing down and people will finally start to get wise to the horrific scam that is being played on them. When they wake from their media-induced American dream state and realize that they are now living in a nightmare, as crazy as it may sound, people will actually stop voting against their own interests. The apathetic majority, that doesn’t vote, will become active in the interests of self-preservation as their survival instincts kick in.

The handwriting is on the wall and the ruling class has to realize that by the time 2012 rolls around, their puppet politicians will be voted out of office, or their heads will roll, quite literally.

Looking at this from a purely technocratic sociological viewpoint, avoiding mass riots and violence while this many desperate people lose life-sustaining programs appears to be an impossible task, and given our current economic and political environment this seems inevitable.

In an article titled “A Planet at the Brink: Will Economic Brushfires Prove Too Virulent to Contain?” Michael T. Klare explained:

“As people lose confidence in the ability of markets and governments to solve the global crisis, they are likely to erupt into violent protests or to assault others they deem responsible for their plight, including government officials, plant managers, landlords, immigrants, and ethnic minorities. (The list could, in the future, prove long and unnerving.) If the present economic disaster turns into what President Obama has referred to as a ‘lost decade,’ the result could be a global landscape filled with economically-fueled upheavals.”

Former National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski expressed  his fears:

“I was worrying about it because we’re going to have millions and millions of unemployed, people really facing dire straits. And we’re going to be having that for some period of time before things hopefully improve. And at the same time there is public awareness of this extraordinary wealth that was transferred to a few individuals at levels without historical precedent in America….

And you sort of say to yourself: what’s going to happen in this society when these people are without jobs, when their families hurt, when they lose their homes, and so forth?”

Outbreaks of civil unrest are something that the US government and Pentagon have been expecting, and preparing for. Former US Director of National Intelligence Dennis Blair testified before the Senate Intelligence Committee stating that the greatest threat facing the US is not terrorism, it’s the current economic crisis:

“The primary near-term security concern of the United States is the global economic crisis and its geopolitical implications. The crisis has been ongoing…. Of course, all of us recall the dramatic political consequences wrought by the economic turmoil of the 1920s and 1930s in Europe, the instability, and high levels of violent extremism.”

Intelligence Committee Vice-Chair Christopher Bond said the economic crisis is now “the primary focus of the intelligence community.” As the Army War College has warned, the response to this coming phase of the economic crisis “might include use of military force against hostile groups inside the United States. Further, DoD [the Department of Defense] would be, by necessity, an essential enabling hub for the continuity of political authority in a multi-state or nationwide civil conflict or disturbance.”

Journalist Chris Hedges summed up this report:

“The specter of social unrest was raised at the US Army War College in November in a monograph titled ‘Known Unknowns: Unconventional ‘Strategic Shocks’ in Defense Strategy Development.’ …

The ‘widespread civil violence,’ the document said, ‘would force the defense establishment to reorient priorities in extremis to defend basic domestic order and human security.’

‘An American government and defense establishment lulled into complacency by a long-secure domestic order would be forced to rapidly divest some or most external security commitments in order to address rapidly expanding human insecurity at home,’ it went on….

In plain English, something bureaucrats and the military seem incapable of employing, this translates into the imposition of martial law and a de facto government being run out of the Department of Defense. They are considering it. So should you.”

III: The IMF Riot, Step 3.5

The International Monetary Fund is predicting a “social explosion” due to this crisis. The IMF and World Bank have a long history of creating social upheaval. Leaked documents from within the World Bank refer to the next phase of the crisis as the “IMF riot.”

Journalist Greg Palast obtained classified planning documents, which shed light on the covert economic imperial operations, Structural Adjustment Programs, that the IMF, World Bank and US Treasury have used in the past as a playbook for destabilizing and conquering foreign nations. In the UK newspaper The Observer, Palast interviewed Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz, who was a former World Bank Chief Economist and Senior Vice President, turned whistleblower. They revealed the four-step IMF plan. Though the strategy is slightly modified based on the nation being attacked, here in the United States we are currently about to enter a variation of step-three, which is currently being phased in throughout Europe. This step inevitably leads to a significant portion of the population losing the ability to obtain basic necessities essential for survival. Once this happens, riots inevitably occur, or as they put it: step 3.5 is executed.

Here is how Palast and Stiglitz summed it up:

“At this point, according to Stiglitz, the IMF drags the gasping nation to Step Three: market-based pricing – a fancy term for raising prices on food, water and… gas.

This leads, predictably, to Step-Three-and-a-Half: what Stiglitz calls ‘the IMF riot’.

The IMF riot is painfully predictable. When a nation is, ‘down and out, [the IMF] squeezes the last drop of blood out of them. They turn up the heat until, finally, the whole cauldron blows up,’…

What Stiglitz did not know is that Newsnight obtained several documents from inside the World Bank. In one, last year’s Interim Country Assistance Strategy for Ecuador, the Bank several times suggests – with cold accuracy – that the plans could be expected to spark ’social unrest’.”

To sum up, the interlocked IMF and World Bank set the conditions for ’social unrest’ and then once it occurs they move to step-four, which is the ultimate in disaster capitalism – they profit off the misery and the civilian population is then buried in a neo-feudal system of severe debt and poverty.

So what is the IMF saying right now about our situation in Europe and the US? A recent Telegraph report reads:

“IMF fears ’social explosion’ from world jobs crisis

America and Europe face the worst jobs crisis since the 1930s and risk ‘an explosion of social unrest’ unless they tread carefully, the International Monetary Fund has warned….

Olivier Blanchard, the IMF’s chief economist, said the percentage of workers laid off for long stints has been rising with each downturn for decades but the figures have surged this time. ‘Long-term unemployment is alarmingly high: in the US, half the unemployed have been out of work for over six months, something we have not seen since the Great Depression,” he said….

The IMF said there may be a link between rising inequality within Western economies and deflating demand. Historians say the last time that the wealth gap reached such skewed extremes was in 1928-1929…”

To show you how insidious the IMF is, they have recently launched a propaganda campaign to publicly decry deficit budget cuts and austerity measures. However, behind the scenes they have been forcing implementation of them and making their usual demands for cuts in vital social services and public spending, once those cuts are in place, the riots obviously follow.

A recent Washington Post report states:

“IMF issues broad call for US financial prudence
Cut Social Security. Ditch the deduction for interest on home mortgages. Tax gasoline.
The United States recently opened itself to the most intense scrutiny yet by the International Monetary Fund, and on Thursday was offered a bitter pill when the agency criticized some well-defended aspects of American culture — cheap fuel, subsidized housing, and a government retirement check…. “

Economist Dean Baker writes:

“The central bankers and their accomplices at the IMF are dictating policies to democratically elected governments. Their agenda seems to be the same everywhere, cut back retirement benefits, reduce public support for health care, weaken unions and make ordinary workers take pay cuts.”

In another report Baker adds:

“The IMF program calls for cutbacks in government support for healthcare, pensions, and a wide range of other public services. It also calls for weakening labor market regulations that provide workers with job security.

These recommendations are being given in a context where the world economy is suffering from a massive shortfall of demand. In other words, tens of millions of people are unemployed right now because there is not enough spending to keep them employed. The IMF’s program is almost certain to reduce spending further leading to even larger shortfalls in demand and more unemployment….

The IMF’s track record gives us reason not only to question the institution’s competence but also its motivations…. It is possible to see a similar pattern in the IMF’s latest set of policy recommendations to deal with the economic crisis.”

In an article entitled, “The Attack of the Real Black Helicopter Gang: The IMF Is Coming for Your Social Security,” Baker continues:

“Last week, the IMF told the United States that it needs to start getting its budget deficit down. It put cutting Social Security at the top of the steps that the country should take to achieve deficit reduction. This one is more than a bit outrageous for two reasons…

While the IMF has no problem warning about retired workers getting too much in Social Security benefits, it apparently could not find its voice when the issue was the junk securities from Goldman Sachs or Citigroup that helped to fuel the housing bubble.

The collapse of this bubble has not only sank the world economy, it also destroyed most of the savings of the near retirees for whom the IMF wants to cut Social Security. The vast majority of middle-income retirees have most of their wealth in their home equity. This home equity largely disappeared when the bubble burst.”

So the IMF and global banking cartel are setting the conditions for social unrest and pushing for policies that will provoke it, and the Pentagon is preparing for a military response. As scary and unbelievable as all this may sound, we are on a fast track to this scenario.

To Sum Up

The American and global economy have already been looted and destroyed beyond repair. Most serious economists will admit that governments have already exhausted their capital by bailing out the banks and taking on unprecedented amounts of debt. The bailouts and recent return to high profits were just the final phase of the looting and a further consolidation of wealth on an unprecedented scale. There are still tens of trillions of dollars in debt hidden off-the-books and hundreds of trillions of dollars in dark pools of derivative liability. As the downturn continues, there is nothing left to revive the economy, the reserves and safety nets have already been stretched to their limits.

We have a political and economic system that has been overrun by organized corruption and theft. Along with a mass media system that does not inform the populace and has effectively marginalized and isolated the majority of the population. Meanwhile, bubbling just under the surface is a very heavily armed population with a militia movement that has doubled in size over the past year, and their memberships continue to rapidly grow. Without the necessary general political intelligence or infrastructure to organize an effective mass non-violent movement, we are steamrolling toward spontaneous riots and outbursts of armed insurrection.

In other words, as this economic downturn continues, what is now a passive and confused population will eventually devolve into an explosion of violence. Without a coherent non-violent movement to provide a viable alternative, without an outlet for severe and legitimate grievances that provides any chance for urgently affecting necessary political change, people will resort to violence as a last desperate act of vengeance and frustration. As time passes, these forgotten and isolated people, tens of millions of them, are quickly running out of options, and they will act out just as exploited people throughout the world always have.

A man who sparked a revolution against the same banking cartel that has caused our crisis described the general attitude among a population that successfully rebelled through armed insurrection:

“The people are weary of being oppressed, persecuted, exploited to the maximum. They are weary of the wretched selling of their labor-power day after day — faced with the fear of joining the enormous mass of unemployed — so that the greatest profit can be wrung from each human body, profit later squandered in the orgies of the masters of capital….

The feeling of revolt will grow stronger every day among the peoples subjected to various degrees of exploitation, and they will take up arms to gain by force the rights which reason alone has not won them.”

Whatever your preconceptions of the man who said this may be, the voice of Che Guevara can now be clearly understood and related to by the overwhelming majority of people throughout the United States.

Already, despite intensive propaganda, a stunning 80 percent of the US population believes that the government has failed them. The health care and financial reform bills have proven that our politicians are much more concerned about the short-sighted necessity to please the Economic Elite and raise campaign funds, than they are to understand the consequences of millions of Americans being forced into situations where their very survival is threatened. In a system where most elected officials are millionaires, this lack of perspective and understanding is ultimately what will lead to violence. Whether it is by arrogance or ignorance, perhaps both, it appears that our ruling class has suicidal tendencies. Unless they quickly recognize the growing threat posed by the dispossessed masses, our puppet politicians will themselves be in harm’s way.

To show you how incredibly out of touch our current elected officials are, and to give you a clear indication of the prevailing attitude on Capitol Hill, a recent report from the Washington Post summed up their response to the recent news that a record number of Americans are now living in poverty:

“The reluctance of political leaders on both sides of the aisle to directly confront the fact that growing numbers of Americans are slipping into poverty reflects a stubborn reality about the poor: They are not much of a political constituency.

‘We talk to many people on Capitol Hill who do believe poverty is important and is a blight on our nation, but we are also up against a general recognition that poor people don’t vote in great numbers. And they certainly aren’t going to be making campaign contributions. That definitely puts them behind many other people and interests when decisions are being made around here.’”

And that sums up our current crisis, doesn’t it? The “poor people don’t vote” and they don’t make “campaign contributions.”

As the Rage Against the Machine song goes, “The riot be the rhyme of the unheard.”

IV: Bang the Drums of War

How will this imperial fascist banking cartel respond to revolt? How will they maintain their power over an increasingly radicalized and hostile US population?

In an attempt to stave off organized rebellion, they are already escalating their propaganda efforts in attempts to divide and distract the population. The tactics of their divide and conquer strategy are already on full display. Their mainstream media outlets have drastically increased coverage and focused attention on the rhetoric of division – using divisive issues like immigration, racism, religious bigotry, the “lazy unemployed,” “entitlement welfare” and gay marriage to divide and distract the population and prevent the masses from organizing against their true oppressors.

This propaganda effort is only a temporary measure and will not suffice over the long-term. As the economy continues to collapse, the banking elite risk being overthrown as a result of their own greed. So they will then turn to physical, military-based violence to suppress populations that can no longer be controlled through propaganda and economic coercion.

To paraphrase policy analyst Anatol Lieven, the classic strategy of an endangered oligarchy is to divert discontent among the population into nationalistic militarism. It is time, once again, to bang the drums of war and “whip the citizenry into a patriotic fervor.” The source of the following quote is unknown, but the evident wisdom of it is something that we have already experienced firsthand in the recent past:

“Beware the leader who bangs the drum of war in order to whip the citizenry into a patriotic fervor, for patriotism is indeed a double-edged sword. It both emboldens the blood, just as it narrows the mind. And when the drums of war have reached a fever pitch and the blood boils with hate and the mind has closed, the leader will have no need in seizing the rights of citizenry. Rather, the citizenry, infused with fear and blinded by patriotism, will offer up all of their rights unto the leader and gladly so.”

An increased external threat will lead to an increased internal crackdown, which creates the pretext and conditions for a police state. As we have already seen in the first phase of the crackdown on civil liberties since the “War on Terror” began, when rioting and outbursts of armed insurrection begin within the US, external threats, real or imagined, will again be presented to justify extreme measures to suppress American citizens, and to further repress and divert internal dissent. Without an external enemy to rally the population against, the population will rally against the pre-existing internal powers.

To put a slight twist on what Guy DeBord insightfully said back in 1988: the banking cartel “constructs its own inconceivable foe, terrorism. Its wish is to be judged by its enemies rather than by its results. The story of terrorism is written by the state and it is therefore highly instructive. But they must always know enough to convince them that, compared with terrorism, everything else must be acceptable, or in any case more rational and democratic.”

V:The Chinese Scapegoat: Trade & Currency Wars

As millions of Americans and the majority of the global population look for vengeance on those responsible for severely declining living standards, the global banking cartel are not going to blame themselves, so they will deflect blame to China, a most convenient target.

As a result of the crisis, national currencies are reeling, and the dollar, although currently one of the strongest paper currencies, is losing power as the crisis escalates. The IMF is working to replace the dollar as the world reserve currency and have begun discussing the possibility of making their Special Drawing Rights (SDRs) the new world reserve currency. A plummeting dollar will obviously put the American population in a severely desperate situation and the US-based banking cartel needs an excuse to divert political backlash. In China, the nation poised to replace the US as the preeminent global superpower, they have the perfect scapegoat.

US-based global corporations have been shifting their business to China and off-shoring millions of jobs to the region due to their extremely low worker wages. So the American population is already pre-disposed to blaming China, as opposed to the companies who are exploiting the cheap labor. US politicians have been conveniently shifting blame for unemployment from themselves to China. Meanwhile, China also owns a significant portion of US national debt. US Admiral Mike Mullen, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, has recently declared that the national debt is the number one security threat. As Mullen stated, “Tax payers will be paying around $600 billion in interest on the national debt by 2012.” A significant portion of this interest will be going to China.

As national governments attempt to survive in an increasingly hostile global economy, trade and currency wars will flare up and escalate. China is in perhaps the strongest position to win these conflicts. China and Japan have just engaged in a fierce currency battle. This currency battle is not to be underestimated. We are talking about the world’s second and third largest economies, after the United States. China has just overtaken Japan for the number two position. The militant rhetoric between these two nations is escalating. US politicians were quick to jump on the situation with calls to classify China as a “currency manipulator” and impose trade tariffs and penalties against them.

International economic reporter Barry Grey recently summed up the situation in an article entitled, “Economic crisis threatens to unleash global currency wars:”

“The eruption of currency exchange conflicts is bound up with mounting signs that the global economic crisis is systemic, rather than merely conjunctural, and growing fears that a genuine recovery is not in the offing. The European sovereign debt crisis and the weakening of US economic growth have led governments around the world to seek to secure a greater share of export markets. Under conditions of slowing growth and stagnant markets, this inevitably heightens trade conflicts between competing capitalist nations.

In particular, the US and the European Union, spearheaded by the export power Germany, have aggressively pursued a cheap currency policy in order to gain a trade advantage against their rivals. Of the major economic powers, Japan has suffered the greatest damage from these policies, as investors and speculators have shifted from dollar- and euro-denominated investments to the yen, driving up the currency’s exchange rate.

This has embittered relations between Japan and both the US and the EU. Japan has also denounced China for artificially keeping its currency low while bidding up the yen by increasing its purchases of Japanese government securities.”

The global banking cartel’s leading puppets on Capitol Hill, Senators Chris Dodd, Chuck Schumer and Richard Shelby were all quick to attack China. Barry Grey continued:

“In opening the Senate Banking Committee hearing, Chairman Christopher Dodd declared China a currency manipulator and said its ‘economic and trade policies’ present ‘roadblocks to our recovery.’ He went on to accuse China of stealing intellectual property, violating international trade agreements and dumping goods. He also denounced China for acquiring national resources in developing countries and building up its military.

In his opening statement, the ranking Republican on the committee, Richard Shelby of Alabama, declared, ‘There is no question that China manipulates its currency in order to subsidize Chinese exports. The only question is: Why is the administration protecting China by refusing to designate it as a currency manipulator?’

Senator Charles Schumer, a New York Democrat, said, ‘China’s currency manipulation is like a boot on the throat of our recovery and this administration refuses to try to get China to remove that boot.’”

On top of all this, China has now overtaken the US as the world’s top energy consumer. Michael T. Klare reports on China’s new position of power:

“The main point: by becoming the world’s leading energy consumer, China will also become an ever more dominant international actor and so set the pace in shaping our global future.

Because energy is tied to so many aspects of the global economy, and because doubts are growing about the future availability of oil and other vital fuels, the decisions China makes regarding its energy portfolio will have far-reaching consequences. As the leading player in the global energy market, China will significantly determine not only the prices we will be paying for critical fuels but also the type of energy systems we will come to rely on. More importantly, China’s decisions on energy preferences will largely determine whether China and the United States can avoid becoming embroiled in a global struggle over imported oil and whether the world will escape catastrophic climate change.”

China’s rise in power, mixed with the decline of western economies and the need for an external scapegoat sets up a global collision and inevitable confrontation between vying superpowers. Currency and trade wars will likely be a prelude to military confrontation.

VI: Moves Upon the Grand Chessboard

Based on early maneuvering it is evident that the masters of war have already drawn up sides. You may have missed it, but the US, Israel and the NATO Alliance have already put Iran, Lebanon, Syria, North Korea, Venezuela, Russia and China on notice. And the “withdrawals” from Iraq and the Af-Pak region are over-hyped. The occupation of these countries continues with no end in sight. In fact, they aren’t withdrawing as much as they are repositioning and shifting their forces, preparing for an escalation. In many ways the wars in Iraq and Af-Pak have only been the initial phase of a global attack, positioning forces and building massive military bases in pivotal geo-strategic locations. The operations in this region have essentially been a warm-up for much wider-ranging attacks against much stronger countries. While most of the US population is playing checkers, seeing the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan as one-off battles, the global banking cartel is playing chess, using these wars as only initial geo-strategic moves in a grand strategy toward total world domination.

The intensity of military maneuvering presently occurring is alarming. Read through these recent news reports pulled from the AmpedStatus database, all from just the past few weeks, and let me know if you think I’m being extreme in foreseeing World War III:

US to Fund Israeli Purchase of 20 F-35 Joint Strike Fighters

US Waging ‘Shadow War’ in Dozen Countries

S.Korea, US to stage massive joint war games

US Military Offensive Against the July 2011 Af-Pak Timetable

China PLA warns U.S. over fresh military drill in region

The dangers of mounting US-China rivalry

America’s Biggest Jobs Program — the U.S. Military

US Arms ‘Bonanza’ in the Middle East

Chinese Military: The Chinese People Won’t Stand for US Provocation

Israel bulldozes Muslim graves in Jerusalem

U.S. Supersizes Afghan Mega-Base

US concerned other countries won’t respect Iraq’s ‘sovereignty’

US cuts $100m aid to Lebanon military

U.S. won’t leave Iraq’s energy reserves untended

US plans to sell F-15 jets to Saudi Arabia: report

Blackwater: $220 million in new contracts

Congress Spends Another $600 Million for Border Militarization

U.S. worried by Hamid Karzai’s attempt to assert control over corruption probes

Palestinians Denied Access to Water

Gates: Iraq occupation could go on

Petraeus beats the drums for endless war in Afghanistan

Israel-US Increase Military Cooperation, Hold Biggest Joint Infantry Exercise Ever

US, South Korea to Stage Another Military Exercise

The Philippines: America’s New Launchpad for the Militarization of Southeast Asia

U.S. and UK help train Kazakh troops in Russia’s backyard

India to order large number of Javelin anti-tank missiles from US

More US-NATO Military Bases: US Armed Forces in Central Asia

US, Vietnam step up defence co-operation amid China concerns

Speculation, debate over possible strike against Iran

Russian Foreign Minister defends Iran nuclear power plant

Colombia Court Blocks U.S. Military Accord Behind Regional Fight, Restricts Access to 7 Military Bases

Venezuela says it will still send gasoline to Iran

Venezuela threatens oil cut to US

Iran: Venezuela Risks US Action

Chávez and China: Challenging U.S. Interests | AEI

Canada-Russia airspace ’showdown’ over Arctic

Canada intercepted two Russian bombers near Arctic

Japan, US plan naval drill near disputed islets: report

China Restricts Exports of Rare Earth Minerals by 70pc,Tension with US escalating on several fronts

Moscow warns US on issue of Israeli aerial strikes against Iran

U.S. Global Strategy Targets Any Potential Challenger In Eurasia

Obama Signs $600M Bill to Increase Militarization of US-Mexico Border

Castro Warns of Nuclear War; Admiral Mullen Threatens Iran; US-Israel Vs. Iran-Hezbollah

Doesn’t Appear Washington Wants Diplomatic Relations With Venezuela

US talks Israel out of attacking Iran (for now)

US stresses military role in Iraq, combat brigades under different name

US Withdrawal Plan Marks “Privatization of Military Occupation”

U.S. Military Intervention in Africa: The New Blueprint for Global Domination

Ahmadinejad vows global response if Iran attacked

Iran Opens Its First Nuclear Power Plant With Russian Help

In Mideast Talks, Scant Hopes From the Beginning

Iran hopes Russia’s next step will be delivery of S-300 missiles system: MP

Iran working against Iraqi democracy: US general

US combat brigades still in Iraq: report

Karzai Stands Firm on Disbanding Private Security

Iran’s new drone bomber is ‘messenger of death for the enemies of humanity’

Costa Rica: US Warships Cause Unease

Israel Knesset Member Declares “We Are Preparing For War”

Pakistanis Nabbed Taliban Boss to Stop Peace Talks

Iran condemns possible US military action

Iran Calls for Formation of Islamic Union to Start New World Order

Four Israeli air strikes on Gaza

Two Minutes to Midnight? The Bomb-Iran Debate From Hell

The last chance to avoid a global trade war

Al-Shabab vows ‘massive’ Somali war

We Must Be Ready for War With China

Mass Assassinations Lie at the Heart of America’s Military Strategy in the Muslim World

US deplores ‘particularly outrageous’ Mogadishu carnage

Philippines: Pawn In U.S. Encirclement of China

Global Food Security and Sovereignty Threatened by “Land Grabs” in Poor Countries

US to spend $1.3 billion on Afghanistan bases

America’s top Marine challenges Obama’s Afghan pullout deadline

CIA sees increased threat from al-Qaeda in Yemen

U.S. Weighs Expanded Strikes in Yemen

JSOC is Hiring Interrogators and Covert Operatives for ‘Special Access Programs’

Report: Kim Jong-Il Goes to China

Canada Intercepts Russian Bombers — Again

Kim Jong-il Visits China as Carter Waits in North Korea for Talks on Imprisoned American

China Slams Pentagon Report

Mexico Drug War Violence Rages, 28k Killed

Tensions emerge between Rwanda and Western backers, China’s influence grows

“Alarm bells” ring for Australian government over deepening China-East Timor ties

US lawmaker urges France not to arm Lebanon army

Chairman Of Joint Chiefs Of Staff Says National Debt Is Biggest Threat To National Security

18 nations wrap up mock terror exercise in Panama canal

U.S. Bid To Control Whole Korean Peninsula Threat To China, Russia

Canada Opens Arctic To NATO, Plans Massive Weapons Buildup

China announces navy drill ahead of U.S. show of force

Putin slams West for deceiving Russia

Putin: U.S. Rearming Georgia

Israel preparing to attack Syria: report

China Deploys Troops In Pakistani Kashmir

Israel Threatens War with Lebanon

U.S. expands sanctions on North Korea

Hamas targets Israeli-Palestinian talks by killing four Israelis

US drones will patrol entire southern border

Yellow Sea: U.S. Aegis Destroyers, S. Korean Subs In New Round of Drills

Pentagon report underscores rising US-China tensions

CIA Training Intelligence Agents For ‘State Sponsor Of Terrorism’ Sudan

Tony Blair: military intervention in rogue regimes ‘more necessary than ever’

France steps up military intervention in Sahel, Western Africa

German military report: Peak oil could lead to collapse of democracy

U.S.-Venezuela Links Teeter on the Brink

Pakistan’s Taliban threaten attacks in U.S., Europe

EU austerity policies risk civil war in Greece, warns top German economist

India to acquire advanced U.S.-made anti-ship missiles

Middle East Loses Trillions As U.S. Strikes Record Arms Deals

Is War About to Break Out on the Israeli-Lebanese Border?

NATO asks for 2000 more troops for Afghanistan

US ‘likely’ to keep troops in Iraq after 2011

U.S. Military Continues to Invest Hundreds of Millions in Iraq Bases

UN nuke agency warns monitoring of Iran hampered

Mideast talks a cover for US war preparations

Land grabs, biofuel demand raise global food-security risk

Anthrax War – the Malaysian Connection

Defense Contractor Money Fueling Push to Militarize the US-Mexico Border

US Government Report Argues for Police Force for American Interventions Overseas

730 F-35 planes to be sold to Britain, Italy, Netherlands, Turkey, Canada, Australia, Denmark, Norway

U.S. to wrap up $2.5 billion Israel F-35 deal, Japan deal next

Cheney’s Oily Dream – Redrawing the Map of the Middle East

US and China at odds over North Korea

Pentagon says USS George Washington to join military drills off Korean Peninsula

Clinton: Mexico drug war bordering on ‘insurgency’

Land Grabs in Poor Countries Set to Increase

India: troops on alert as border dispute with China heats up

India: U.S. Completes Global Military Structure

Report: US must deal with domestic radical problem

Experts: Terrorism threat to U.S. now more homegrown

New York Times Pushes Confrontation with Iran

Largest US arms deal ever: Congress to be told of $60-billion US-Saudi arms deal, shoring up Arab allies against Iran

China-South Africa deals highlight great-power rivalry in Africa

German armed forces “reform” reflects growth of militarism

IMF fears ’social explosion’ from world jobs crisis

US embassy in Jordan warns of ‘imminent threat’ around Aqaba

Record level of US airstrikes hit Afghan militants

Hamas: Israeli aircraft strike Gaza as leaders talk peace

Obama’s Generals Push War for Yemen

US drones prowl Mexico

China’s currency manipulation: Flipping off America

Asia: Pentagon Revives And Expands Cold War Military Blocs

U.S. And NATO Strengthen Positions Along Russia’s Southern Flank

Russia vs Canada: Race for Oil-Rich Arctic Seabed

Economic crisis threatens to unleash global currency wars

Saudi king meets top US, Canadian counter-terror officials

China, Energy, and Global Power

Somalia, The Next Afghanistan? UN’s top envoy warns on growing insurgency

Pentagon to funnel US arms to Yemen

China-Japan Tensions Escalate, As China Breaks Off High Level Contacts, Japanese Flag Burned In Protest

Gulf States Order $123 Billion of U.S. Weaponry to Counter Iran

Massive US Military Buildup Planned for Guam

So there we have it. The global Economic Elite have effectively looted and destroyed national economies worldwide, the propaganda system is quickly collapsing, and the masses are beginning to get restless. It’s time to move to the next phase of the attack. Preparations are already underway. We are on the road to World War III.

VII: Resource Wars

Add to this picture rapidly declining natural resources and an increasingly hostile and polluted environment with extreme weather events frequently pounding the globe. In the past decade the global corporate elite have already engaged in three major resource wars in Iraq, Af-Pak and Northern Africa.

With a growing global population and an increasing demand for declining resources, we have already crossed a tipping point and are now in the ecological red. For the first time in human history, we are now consuming resources faster than nature can produce them. As developing countries like China and India attempt to live like western countries, there are simply not enough resources. The global economy is built on an unsustainable foundation. Instead of evolving and changing course, the entrenched banking power base is digging in further, and they run NATO, the private military complex and the US government. Based on the current policies that are in place, they have clearly already decided that they want to keep living business as usual and refuse to evolve and adapt to a rapidly changing environment. With this decision, they have effectively already decided to further escalate their oppression of the overwhelming majority of humanity, and this will lead to the death of literally hundreds of millions of people.

The global banking cartel view the world’s limited resources as their property, and they have consistently proven that they have absolutely no hesitation in killing millions upon millions of people for these resources – just look at what they have already done in the recent past throughout Northern Africa, the Middle East and Latin America.

In the years since Northern Africa was discovered to be “the richest patch of earth” due to large deposits of natural minerals that are needed to power computer technologies, over five million Africans, in just that region, have died as a result of war.

The global elite have consistently used a strategy of arming and funding both sides of armed conflicts. While opposing populations kill each other off, they make off with their natural resources. When they confront a government that cannot be bribed or provoked into civil or regional war, they fund brutal death squads, attempt military coups and intimidate them by giving weapons to undemocratic neighboring regimes. If all that doesn’t work, they are declared a threat to national security and the US military, private contractors and NATO forces invade and occupy the country.

These terrorist strategies are not limited to the Middle East and Africa, just ask our neighbors throughout Latin America about the School of the Americas. Contrary to popular belief, the horrendous torture techniques inflicted upon people in Abu Ghraib, Iraq were not an isolated incident. Many of those brutal torture techniques were developed over years by torturing innocent civilians throughout Latin America.

The picture in Latin America today is one of inspiration. People throughout the region are rising up against the global corporate elite and claiming their rights and natural resources as their own, from Bolivia to Ecuador to Venezuela. This is another factor driving the “endangered oligarchy” into resorting to military desperation. The military coup in Honduras, the attempted coup in Venezuela, and the failed attempt to provoke Columbia and Venezuela into an armed conflict all clearly indicate where this situation is headed if the imperialist bankers get their way.

The average American is dreadfully unaware of just how depraved these people are. The little regard they have for human life is beyond common comprehension.

VIII: Private Military Complex

The global elite have already used the “War on Terror” as a pretext to drastically increase military spending and build a massive private military and intelligence complex on the backs of the American taxpayer. According to an extensive report from the Washington Post, a stunning 1.2 million private contractors work in this complex. Most Americans are not aware that 69 percent of the soldiers deployed in our name are private contractors, and 80 percent of them are foreign nationals, meaning they are not even from the United States. Half of the people we have deployed in our name, who are funded by our tax dollars, are not even fighting for our country, they are fighting for a paycheck.

Wars are a highly profitable racket, which gives an enormous incentive to keep them going. This is one of the reasons why the war in Afghanistan is now the longest war in US history. This system has led to a perpetual state of war. Military spending, although widely reported as being around $680 billion per year, is more accurately totaling over $1 Trillion per year. Of this staggering amount of annual spending, 25 percent of it goes unaccounted for, not counting the billions of our tax dollars lost to over-charging and all-out fraud.

This private military complex has become so out of control that politicians are now forced to admit that they have no idea what is happening within it. As the Washington Post report revealed:

“The top-secret world the government created in response to the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, has become so large, so unwieldy and so secretive that no one knows how much money it costs, how many people it employs, how many programs exist within it or exactly how many agencies do the same work.

These are some of the findings of a two-year investigation by The Washington Post that discovered what amounts to an alternative geography of the United States, a Top Secret America hidden from public view and lacking in thorough oversight. After nine years of unprecedented spending and growth, the result is that the system put in place to keep the United States safe is so massive that its effectiveness is impossible to determine.

The investigation’s other findings include:

* Some 1,271 government organizations and 1,931 private companies work on programs related to counterterrorism, homeland security and intelligence in about 10,000 locations across the United States.

* An estimated 854,000 people, nearly 1.5 times as many people as live in Washington, D.C., hold top-secret security clearances.”

There are so many unaccountable cells and competing factions within this complex, any one of them could go rogue and launch an attack on the US soil and make it look like another “terrorist” organization or nation executed it. This may sound too conspiratorial to the casual observer, but it would be stunningly naïve to think that in a massive complex like this, with so little oversight and accountability, given the huge sums of money at stake, that something tragic wouldn’t eventually occur. The implications are ominous, to say the least.

We already had a proven act of internal domestic terror occur with the Anthrax attacks in 2001. It is not a stretch to think that any moves away from a state of permanent war, and any cut to military spending that would threaten the existence of many of the world’s largest and most powerful and profitable corporations, would result in an attack in hopes of inciting a military conflict. Former President Dwight Eisenhower’s warning against the “unwarranted influence” of the military industrial complex, and “the potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power” pales in comparison to the modern private military complex. While many of these companies currently rely on US tax dollars, they are not part of the government, they are global private entities with their own interests at heart, similar to the Federal Reserve banking system. In fact, when you peel back the layers, many of these private military companies are funded by the global banking cartel.

When you understand the forces behind war, you must acknowledge the words of famed two-time Congressional Medal of Honor recipient US Brigadier General Smedley D. Butler. He accurately summed up the situation when he said:

“I spent 33 years in the Marines, most of my time being a high-class muscle man for big business, for Wall Street and the bankers. In short, I was a racketeer for Capitalism…. The general public shoulders the bill. This bill renders a horrible accounting. Newly placed gravestones, Mangled bodies. Shattered minds. Broken hearts and homes. Economic instability. Back-breaking taxation for generations and generations.”

To give just two brief examples of how the banking cartel operates behind the scenes during wars, consider the following. The genocidal carnage in Northern Africa that killed over 5.4 million people was enthusiastically supported by the IMF and World Bank. In a news report entitled, “The Business of War in the Democratic Republic of Congo,” Dena Montague and Frida Berrigan explained:

“The International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank have knowingly contributed to the war effort. The international lending institutions praised both Rwanda and Uganda for increasing their gross domestic product (GDP), which resulted from the illegal mining of DRC resources. Although the IMF and World Bank were aware that the rise in GDP coincided with the DRC war… they nonetheless touted both nations as economic success stories….”

In another example of grotesque profiting off massive levels of death, banking cartel members made a fortune on the production of cluster bombs. The Guardian revealed the details:

“The deadly trade in cluster bombs is funded by the world’s biggest banks who have loaned or arranged finance worth $20bn to firms producing the controversial weapons, despite growing international efforts to ban them.

HSBC… has profited more than any other institution from companies that manufacture cluster bombs. The British bank… has earned a total of £657.3m in fees arranging bonds and share offerings for Textron, which makes cluster munitions…. Campaigners maintain the deadly weapons can explode years after combat, killing or maiming innocent people….

Goldman Sachs, Bank of America, JP Morgan and UK-based Barclays Bank are also named among the worst banks [funding the production of cluster bombs]….

Goldman Sachs, the US bank which made £3.19bn proft in just three months, earned $588.82m for bank services and lent $250m to [cluster bomb manufactures] Alliant Techsystems and Textron.”

To sum all of this up, the global banking cartel and private military complex are a runaway virus that demands a permanent state of warfare. They are intrinsically parasitic in nature, they have devolved into a fascist enterprise that survives and profits off of destruction. If they don’t get a war, they will create one in the interest of their own self preservation. As former CIA Station Chief John Stockwell once explained: “Enemies are necessary for the wheels of the US military machine to turn.” This insight can now be extended to the global banking cartel. Enemies are now necessary for the wheels of the global banking cartel to turn.

Under the cover of the “War on Terror” they have launched a massive campaign of violence abroad and have been systematically looting our economy and stripping of us civil liberties at home.

So as the US and global population becomes more radical, and as the environment becomes more hostile, with increasingly limited natural resources, in a desperate attempt to maintain power the global banking cartel will escalate from economic attacks to worldwide military-based assaults. This is the clear path we are on – the road to World War III.

IX: History Repeats Itself

“History Repeats Itself, Coiling Down Into the Future.”
– Natural Born Killers

This may very well be a case of history repeating itself. Not to oversimplify an extremely complex situation, but this is all too similar to the origins of World War II. The looting of the masses by an unaccountable Wall Street elite led to the Great Depression and set the conditions for WWII. Desperate and impoverished populations increasingly supported more and more extreme leaders. The conditions are now so ripe for world war that Noam Chomsky has convincingly compared modern-day America to Weimar Germany prior to the outbreak of WWII. Research the history of pre-war societies and you will see for yourself how our current political environment fits historical precedent like a glove.

As mentioned before, the roots of our current crisis can be directly traced back to the aftermath of World War II. In the ruins of WWII grew global institutions like the IMF and World Bank. It also gave us the National Security Act and the CIA. All were central and pivotal in creating the crisis which we are now confronted with.

After analyzing our current crisis and studying well-established historical precedents, one must conclude that creating a world war is the last card the global bankers have left to play, other than conceding power, and history has taught us that the ruling class never concedes power. Of course the one-tenth of one percent of the global population hoarding our wealth could give back a significant amount of the $39 Trillion they looted from us (not counting what they have hidden in offshore accounts). That would certainly go a long way to fixing the crisis they have caused, but again, the ruling class has never conceded power, no matter how excessive and ill-gotten their gains.

So brace yourself… unless we significantly change our present course, we are on the road to World War III.

David DeGraw, a regular contributor to The Public Record, is an investigative journalist whose work has been featured in numerous publications and websites. He is the founder and editor of AmpedStatus.com, editorial director of MediaChannel.org and author of The Economic Elite Vs. The People of the United States.

Goff is referring to largely unknown reasons why top military officials initially claimed Pat had been killed by enemy forces when actually it was by so-called friendly fire.

But because of the Tillman family’s empathy and generosity, the film is also an opportunity for reality to break through concerning the plight of veterans.

As the film makes clear and many already know, the Pat Tillman Foundation has been established to provide academic scholarships to veterans. Mary “Dannie” Tillman (Pat’s mother) also serves on the board of the Patrick McCaffrey Foundation, which provides transitional housing and palliative services for veterans who served in Iraq or Afghanistan. The founder of that organization is Nadia McCaffrey, whose son was killed in Iraq.

Last Monday night Larry King devoted his entire show to the Tillman saga and film (premiering August 20 in New York and Los Angeles before opening wide). It was an extraordinary hour of television as the nation saw Pat’s amicably divorced parents appear together for the first time, along with former Army Rangers Russell Baer and Bryan O’Neal (both of whom served with Pat and are featured in the film), Karen Meredith (another Gold Star Mom whose son died in Iraq while engaged in combat) and McCaffrey.

Meredith and McCaffrey were included in the program to explain how – like the Tillmans – they were subjected to apparently false military accounts concerning the deaths of their respective sons.

When they finished at CNN, Meredith and McCaffrey dashed over to the Saban Theatre in Beverly Hills to attend a fundraiser for The Veterans Project featuring Rosanne Cash. Although Cash was there ostensibly for a discussion about her life and new memoir, she took great interest in the two Gold Star Moms. At the end of the night, she honored Meredith and McCaffrey when she spontaneously sang a heartfelt version of “Long Black Veil” backed by local favorite Lisa Finnie and her band (John McDuffie, Bob Gothar, John Palmer).

Also on hand at the fundraiser was Marine veteran (OIF/OEF) Rick Reyes and Judith Broder, the founder of a nonprofit group called The Soldiers Project which provides free and confidential mental health counseling to veterans, active duty personnel and their families.

Prior to Cash lending her support to the cause, Bruce Springsteen gave The Veterans Project permission to use his music in a video highlighting the deeply personal stories of three veterans who talk about their struggles with post-traumatic stress and how they were helped by Give an Hour (another nonprofit that provides confidential psychological treatment at no charge).

All of us whose mission it is to make sure veterans get the care they need and deserve, are heartened by the possibilities surrounding The Tillman Story. It makes a big difference when artists such as Springsteen and Cash endorse our efforts. But there’s something about a film that can raise awareness and influence public opinion like nothing else, especially when the protagonists are as likable, honest, intelligent and articulate as the Tillmans are. Moreover, Amir Bar-Lev’s taut documentary is a very moving human interest story with broad appeal. It’s likely to be embraced by hawks as much as doves, because the Tillman family is objecting not to American foreign policy, but to how they weren’t told the truth about what happened to Pat.

Thankfully, the film contains several light moments. At the press screening I attended, the audience of critics burst into laughter several times in response to the Tillmans’ colorful language. Likewise, I’ve found no lack of humor among most veterans and Gold Star parents whom I have the pleasure of knowing. If The Tillman Story is a box office hit, the public will become acquainted with even more of these inspiring people. That’s reason enough to check out the film. But after you’ve seen it, the more likely reason you’ll rave about it is that you loved it.

Jeff Norman is the Director of The Veterans Project, a non-profit group that promotes and supports organizations that help veterans – primarily those who fought in Iraq and/or Afghanistan – reintegrate into society when they come home. Its mission is to help remove the stigma associated with post-traumatic stress, and to raise operating funds for organizations providing psychological care and job training to veterans in the aftermath of war. He blogs at Citizen Jeff. He can be reached at jeff@citizenjeff.com.