so america says its beaten in iraq. don't count on it. The british empire daid it was leaving Sudan every year for 50 years during which it didn't leave.
why has Bush flipped? i dont know. Do you?
dermot
Saturday 26 July 2008
Wednesday 6 February 2008
AGRICOUNTRIES TERROR BLOWBACK
TERRORISM’S ACHILLES HEEL
How the gladiatorial war on terrorism is feeding oxygen to the fire and how remouving grounds for resentment is far less costly
THE ‘BLOWBACK’ TERRORIST THREAT CONSEQUENT UPON THE DEVASTATION OF THE AGRICULTURAL COUNTRIES AND THE AMERICAN RESPONSE OF STATIONING PERMANENT MILITARY FORCES THROUGHOUT THE POOREST PLACE, AFRICA - THE REQUIREMENT FOR DEFENCE/WAR AGAINST TERRORISM - AN UNDERSTANDING OF IT ALL
THE SMELL OF FEAR
A whiff of apprehension coming from the poorest areas in the world has worried the West. They are becoming places to fear, are being treated as sources of potential threat and given the highest strategic rating in the West’s War on Terror. It would appear that suffering the torture of hunger and increasing deaths from starvation, more deaths per day than died in World War 2, impels them to unreasoning desperation.
Unfortunately, we have, for 30 years, undermined and debilitated the peasant and farmer, the potential voter, the single group that would benefit by democracy and would therefore support it. Our agricultural subsidies and import tariffs have almost halved the sale price they get for their produce neutering him politically. We have supported in power, often through the ‘aid’ money we send, feudal undemocratic rulers who have robbed them.
There is massive evidence that unending years of terrorism threaten us. We have sewn the wind of the enfeebling of the salt of the earth and it seems that we will reap the whirlwind. The expectation expressed in the United States policy formulating National Security Strategy Report[1] that:
“poverty, weak institutions, and corruption can make weak States vulnerable to terrorist networks,”
Is being quietly actualized.
Michael Moore, head of the World Trade Organisation (WTO):
"Poverty in all its forms is the greatest single threat to peace, security, democracy, human rights and the environment,"[2]
THE US WAR MACHINE HAS RESPONDED WITH BASES AND PERMANENT MILITARY FORCES FOR AFRICA
More than most, the nine countries in the greater Horn of Africa have faced economic deprivation and the US military command has followed with their designation as “front line states in the war on terrorism.” For 50 years the US, the West’s unchallenged leader and defender has, since WW2 targeted the same 5 priority areas world-wide as prime war combatant commands. In 2007 it decreed a reorganization of the projected war map and the creation a 6th command area, Africa Command [Afcom]. Afcom recognized a new threat with a huge budget and more fire power than the continent has ever seen.[3] Most African countries have protested, but unavailingly. Liberia has offered itself as location for the HQ. The new bases will be big. The long term base in Bagdad, the green zone, cost over 1 billion dollars. The base in Kuwait occupies 1/3 of the country. What threat to the west are the long range planners anticipating?
UNDERSTANDING IT ALL
President George W. Bush:
“the first counter-attack to World War III [4]
“Some speak of an age of terror” [5]
Some who must speak to the President before a Joint Session of the US Congress, are his Secretaries of State and the CIA and other agencies. These, together, have the greatest capacity and power of research and forecasting known. Apparently the presidential advisers spoke of a cataclysmic time. He also said,
“I know many citizens have fears tonight,…..it is natural to wonder if America's future is one of fear”.
He has also many times talked of,
“a threat to our way of life”.
Aug. 10, 2004. And
“a struggle against terror that will last into the future”.
DR. ROBERT JAY LIFTON[6] spent his life studying people in extreme situations said:
''A war on terror, without limits on time or place, brings us one step closer to the use of apocalyptic violence. Our technology, our nuclear weapons, has made all this a lot easier. These weapons are apocalyptic in essence and bring this vision to the people who possess them. Islamist terrorists hunger for these weapons, maybe all the more so because we continue to embrace them.''
The truth that, ‘existence demands that man understands’[7] is emphasised by the danger of drift to WW3. By understands I mean awareness of the truth, access to or contact with the truth of and in our existence, of what is really so, of the actual reality. I hold it to be self evident that this is humanity’s highest value. I believe that this quest has been the force leading to civilization and that civilization testifies, not to the survival of the strongest, but to the enhancement of humanity’s progress by the love of fellowman by the finest which has seen more democracy today than ever. No greater lie have I experienced than the spin that we aid the 3rd world. Understanding it all, however, is the way to peace of mind.
THE LINK BETWEEN DEPRIVATION AND TERRORISM?
25,000 people die of starvation related causes every day[8] and the dead are not forgotten. A half billion strong army, made up of their families and relatives are a potential breeding ground for terrorism. Western expertise in conquest by economic means is supreme and includes that of the Soviet Union and most of the world. It has led to a response which the CIA aptly calls “blowback?”
Adverse response has arisen because subsidies have lowered the world price of the primary produce of the poor countries by amounts of up to 50%, in the case of sugar and cotton over 60%, and have undermined their economies. Having ordained that our produce undercuts the world market on price we then, in a cruel farce worthy of the Emperor Nero, decree that they must also allow us to cut prices on their home market. Mental and physical torture is not confined to Guantanamo. US frozen chicken imports sell at 1/6th of the price at which Haitians can offer their local chicken.
The continuing unrelenting impact for more than the last 20 years of subsidies has caused the 3rd world to be stricken by recession, grinding poverty and starvation. While the last 20 years have seen the agricultural countries suffer such deprivation that the death rate from starvation has risen from 20,000 per day to 25,000, there has been a huge increase in the wealth of the West.
World leaders have said that deprivation creates terrorism, particularly Jean Ziegler, official rapporteur to the UN Human Rights Commission who recently said:
“The World Trade Organisation, the American government, the Swiss bankers, the Bretton Woods institutions, all the neo-liberals, they say markets alone create riches, and one day these riches reach the bottom - the trickle-down effect. We say in the Human Rights Commission this idea is wrong, because it creates illegality, exclusion and immense riches in some hands and immense misery, because all social indicators for the 122 Third World countries - and specifically the 42 least developed countries - are in the red. It gets worse and worse: from the 100 poorest countries in the world, 81 in the last five years lost per capita income.”
Few would dispute that the outcome of our trade dominance of the industrial west during those 20 years has been great areas of deprivation in the agricture based regions of the world. The West’s economic conquest and the consequent world order dictated and maintained by us set the conditions of life or death for all the earth’s inhabitants. The only alternative for weaker countries to the world economic order regulated by us is outer darkness and ruin.
Dominance is achieved by military expenditure of 855.6 billion dollars and agrictural subsidy expenditure of 370 billion dollars . Aid[9] expenditure, a relatively small figure of 52 billion dollars is usually given in such a way as to gain support for our domination. Tariffs alone cost developing countries twice as much as they receive in aid.
Agricultural subsidies are our most powerful weapon. Without the constraints of atomic holocaust nor the reluctance of home voters to accept body bags and with very advantageous stealth we have devastated the 3rd world by economic means. We have never needed to admit that they were a punitive weapon of conquest. We could shrug off the biblical words “by their fruits you shall know them.” Our voters didn’t need to see the fruits, the destruction and deprivation we created was far away. For 25 years a continuously increasing disempowerment of the ordinary people has been evidenced by the falling GDP per capita and the number of starvation related deaths. The vitiation of their will, and the annihilation of their livelihoods, even of their lives, has been part of a world order we controlled. We passed the legislation that created and maintained that world order. We forced down agricultural prices. We enforced economic restructuring against their piteous protests adding merciless torture to the hideous destruction of their economies. We got what we wanted. We bought the blowback.
A Globescan poll showed:[10]
“Strong majorities of Africans (60% overall) believe that rich countries are not playing fair in trade negotiations with poor countries. Such views range from being very widespread in the Ivory Coast (88%) and Zimbabwe (72%), to being divided in Nigeria and South Africa. A clear majority (57% overall) also rejects the idea that poor countries benefit from trade as much as rich countries.
It found that one out of three Africans have negative view of the effect of globalization on their lives.
OUR TOOLS OF DOMINANCE
In the various trade rounds we in the west used our effective control over the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund and World Trade Organisation to apply economic policies which serve our strategic interests willynilly to whole countries and continents. Rather than acknowledge that the daily humanitarian disaster of 25000 unnecessary deaths occurs under our watch we perform a superhuman gymnastic of simultaneous
Watchful Overlordship, While Looking the Other Way. [WOWLOW]
Pronounced like a wolf’s sharp bark: Wow! Low!, this is most usually found where the Western media’s mushroom contribution to democracy is practiced. Under this Orwellian culture you keep the people in the dark and throw them s***, which is, of course, the best way to grow mushrooms.
THE STATE OF THE AGRICULTURAL COUNTRIES.
Economic Dominance, [Dominomics] is seen in the extensive web of legislation, which was enacted by the western countries and which regulates the agricultural countries economically and the duress under which they have been forced into so-called voluntary trade agreements. The main Western devices of economic domination, subsidization and tariffication, create economically ruinous conditions for the agricultural countries by the almost halving of world food prices. Just as price competition of this level would, over years, reduce an industrial entity to a husk or shell, so has it undermined the economies of the agriculture based countries.
The OECD countries imports from low-wage countries represent only a derisory 1.5 per cent of total expenditure on goods and services.[11] Our “free trade“ policies, forcing the poor countries to open their markets have been self defeating. We have strengthened tyrannical rulers and weakened the farmer, the salt of the earth, by depriving him of Adam Smiths “natural price” through our subsidies. We have been softening democracy and hardening the centralization of the power of unelected elites and established ruling groups by buying alliances, markets and goodwill with the money we call aid.
Sales deficits of $10,000,000,000 have been accumulated over 1/3 of a century. The number of deaths has risen every day due to inability to build resources to deal with fire, flood or natural disaster or even to feed their people.
The massive size and scale of China and India, with one-third of the world’s population between them, has limited their vulnerability to trade dominance and i do not use the terms agricultural or poor countries to refer to them.
LIFE AND DEATH SCRAMBLE FOR SCARCE RESOURCES
A life and death scramble for scarce resources and vital interests followed by disease and pestilence has been the inevitable consequence of undermined economies. Political unrest and corruption have stemmed from deprivation. 300 years ago we put them in a compound and usually kept them fed. Today we build an invisible economic compound around them.
Johann Hari says:
“Africans are now as hobbled by our agricultural policies as slaves were by their white masters”[12]
INSIGNIFICANCE OF AID ALONGSIDE SUBSIDIES AND DEPRIVATION OF SALES
Am i underestimating the value of A1Dictation [AID], $50 Billion annually versus $350 Billion of subsidies? Subsidization and Tariffication is often falsely attributed to farm vote subservience and food security. The breakdown of International meetings by poor countries refusal of terms offered has led to ‘So-you-won’t-talk’ bilateral agreements where they are put under more direct pressure.
CONSEQUENCES OF DEVASTATION - THE REQUIREMENT FOR A WAR ON TERRORISM
A July 04 report commissioned by the US Congress, [Rising u.s. Stakes in africa], agonizes about the
“increasing” threat of terror in Africa to “vital US national interests.”[13]
Former President Clinton:
“Global poverty is a powder keg that could be ignited by our indifference.”[14]
The UN was told that in
“areas of poverty, despair and hopelessness where people see no future …terrorism spreads”. US Secretary Colin Powell
Former President Jimmy Carter said that:
Millions of Latin Americans could turn to: "radical and destructive"[15] behaviour unless their sub-standard living conditions improve and that "The greatest challenge of our time is the growing gap between the rich and poor,"
Former UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan:[16]
"No-one in this world can feel comfortable, or safe, while so many are suffering and deprived," he said.
President of the UN General Assembly, Han Seung-Soo, called the world's poorest countries
"the breeding ground for violence and despair".
Aristotle, 384-322, BC said:
"Poverty is the parent of revolution and crime." --
President Bush’s attitude after 9/11:
“I don’t care what the international lawyers say. We’re going to kick some ass.”[17]
The spectre of an ominous 3rd world debt of shame, repayable by reprisal, was hinted at in the words of US State Department Assistant Secretary, Ambassador F. X. Taylor, in april ’04.
“Our success against al Qaeda has brought on a new group of people that i believe will take a Generation to be (eradicated). This philosophy is almost like communism or fascism or totalitarianism in that it becomes its own kind of body politic.” [18]
This putative need has been so despite the already existing defence umbrella for the western world provided by its leader, the USA, extending from a chain of 800 fortified military bases and airfields ringing the earth to the ability to target any square metre of the earth’s surface from space.
How well defended are we? Long established US bases in western countries contribute to this ring of 800 hardened arsenals, military airfields and potential invasion incursion points encircling the earth. These are so well armoured as to be capable of resisting almost any level of terrorist attack and provide bridge-heads for armies to enter the battle-field.
| Picture Credit:-Peace Pledge Union-Table 1 |
The US, as western enforcer of WOWLOW, [watchful over-lordship, while looking the other way], has set up Africa Command at the top level of priority on a par with Central Command, which covers the Middle East. Table 1 allows a view of the all Africa increase in world military penetration the bases of Africom will achieve.
Having been spurned by slavery, colonization and exploitation the poorest region of the world is getting a 1000% rise in respect and recognition out of fear as a potential enemy. We retained control upon which the sun never set by replacing UK colonisation with Western Watchful Overlordship, While Looking the Other Way but when one must look away from inhuman indignity one has set the scene for blowback.
OUR LEADERS PESSIMISM IN THE 1ST PHASE OF THE WAR ON TERRORISM
US President Bush when Discussing the War on Terror in late 2006 said:
In five years since our nation was attacked, al Qaeda and terrorists it has inspired have continued to attack across the world. They've killed the innocent in Europe and Africa and the Middle East, in Central Asia and the Far East, and beyond.......................Five years after our nation was attacked the terrorist danger remains. We're a nation at war -—
President Bush in his State of the Union Message 2006 said:
“If we were to leave these vicious attackers alone, they would not leave us alone. They would simply move the battlefield to our own shores.”[19]
And in 2007:
"The war on terror we fight today is a generational struggle that will continue long after you and I have turned our duties over to others”[20]
That
The desperate need that we understand is emphasised by a comment from FOX News:
”The war on terror is 'endless' because the threat is infinite.”[21]
Expressing the consensus of the 16 US intelligence agencies, Director of US National Intelligence Mike mcconnell made public the National Intelligence Projection in July 2007, which warns
"A persistent and evolving terrorist threat over the next three years." February 2007.
Mcconell showed later[22] that they were not alarmist. In the face of the bush administration making Iran’s non existant nuclear bomb development an issue cited by President Bush as advancing the advent of “a third world war”,[23] they lifted this awesome threat from the people of the world by courageously admitting that the evidence showed their previous assessment alleging that development to be wrong.
UNDERSTANDING WHAT IS GOING ON - CAUSES OF THE WAR ON TERRORISM
To what extent should we be concerned by this terrorism which gives rise to these words from President Bush:
Any phenomenon that can inspire these words is worth understanding. Can we find from where it grows. Rather than accept the horrors of war and want for future generations as well as ourselves we must begin to understand the individual psychology of the terrorist, in particular the candidate for suicide or, as s/he would have it, martyrdom, and, even more the group dynamics of the cell. Only then can we hope to prevent the seeds from growing.
A priority is to understand what is going on. Does economic conquest plants seeds of terrorism and what might be done about it. Are our western defences adequate in strength and in depth? We need to measure the threat of terrorism and take stock of our power to repel it. We need to distinguish between causes of terrorism that arise from our near-non-negotiable self preservation needs, such as for oil, and those which stem from prejudice, unnecessary fear and perhaps greed.
We need to read the lessons of the history of earlier times when, though our economic dominance was absolute we took contrasting actions. At the Treaty of Versailles in 1918, we bought another world war by our imposition of economic conditions, in 1945 we bought 60 years free of world conflict with the Marshall plan. We spend 1200 billion annually to maintain economic and military dominance. Between September 2001 and June 2006, the US Government provided a total of $432 billion in annual and supplemental appropriations under the heading 'global war on terrorism'. Are we getting value?
CHAPTER 2
CAUSES OF TERRORISM - OUR LEADERS APPREHENSION - GET THE FACTS - WHO?
CAUSES OF TERRORISM
Our leaders have declared that we are at war. If the struggle is life and death they dare not reveal their hand to us for fear of informing the enemy. Any good fighting man will always put out misinformation about his enemies. It’s just part of the battle and is aimed to range people against the terrorists. The explanation that ‘they hate us because we believe in freedom’ and other intangible reasons of why terrorists commit their violence given by President Bush and his team may be crafted fulminations of great propaganda value. They are of real use in the effort to keep people onside. Through 20 million years of war history there is no recorded instance of any sane leader putting out anything but disinformation about those who challenge him and whom he fights. President Bush is possessed of the self professed greatest misinformation agency in the history of the world, the CIA, and his pronouncements are routinely processed by it.
President Bush
Ours is a war against individuals who absolutely hate what America stands for[24]
The reasons given by the terrorists themselves are equally suspect. Of course, we, in the Western World give their arguments very little airtime on radio or TV. This is appropriate as we may be a participant in an armed struggle that may lead to Armageddon. So in the first confrontation of the problem of ‘Why Terrorism?,’ we generally don’t know what the terrorists themselves say.
President Bush says to us all, as Adolf Hitler did in 1939:
“Either you are with us or you are with the terrorists.”
Hitler, being less sophisticated in those days didn’t have a name for them and said ‘or you are against us. Perhaps in a desire to keep it simple Vice President Cheney repeated hitler verbatim.
Neither I nor my reader are with any terrorists. We are bystanders to these gargantuan forces. But we may need to question the fundamental assumptions of people ….. Most of the people, that is, from Warsaw to Seattle and Belfast to Gibraltar….. …..and to ask; ‘ WHY TERRORISM?’
Reasons which have been given are hatred of our way of life, religious fanaticism, American troops in the holy places, Palestinian intractability and clash of civilisations or religions.
We need to know what is going on. This is more important than what is said, so i give it capitals ‘Know What Is Going On’ [KWIGO]. With some limitations, we appoint our leaders so we must make a judgement as to how well they know what is going on.
WHY SO MUCH APPREHENSION OF TERRORISM?
At first sight Western power seems to dwarf the potential of any terrorist organisation. But the US supplied enormous bulwark of steel is at odds with the respect our leaders show for the countervailing power they experience in the war on terror. We must consider what they say.
Remarks by Central Intelligence Agency Director, Gen. Michael V. Hayden at the Council on Foreign Relations September 7, 2007
“We who study and target this enemy see a danger more real than anything our citizens at home have confronted since our Civil War.
We face an adaptive and resilient enemy who poses a heightened threat”[25]
Key Intelligence Central Intelligence Agency Judgments:
We judge the US Homeland will face a persistent and evolving terrorist threat over the next three years: we judge that the United States currently is in a heightened threat environment: We assess that al-Qa’ida will continue to enhance its capabilities to attack the Homeland through greater cooperation with regional terrorist groups.
The director of the US National Counterterrorism Center, retired Vice Admiral Scott Redd told NBC News that
“the U.S. is not “tactically” safer as a result of the Iraq war”
Testimony of Director of Central Intelligence Porter J. Goss Before the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence(as prepared for delivery)February 16, 2005
We need to make tough decisions about which haystacks deserve to be scrutinized for the needles that can hurt us most. And we know in this information age that there are endless haystacks everywhere.
Former U.S. senator Sam Nunn said:
The question is not whether we must prepare for terrorism or for attacks with nuclear, biological or chemical weapons. These two threats are not separate but interrelated and reinforcing, and if joined together, become our worst nightmare. We must close the gap between the threats and our response. [26]
UNDERSTANDING TERRORISM – THE LACK OF RESEARCH
“Know thine enemy” is the commonsense of antiquity and was a commitment of the British general, Bernard Law Montgomery, whose victory at El Alemainin in northern Africa turned the tide of world War 2. Montgomery’s greatness as a general derived not least from his study of the psychology of his opponent. He kept a picture of his German counterpart Field Marshall Rommel on the wall of his caravan.
Dr. Randy Borum, a consultant to the US Department of Defense Borum and author of ‘Psychology of Terrorism’ says:
“Research on the psychology of terrorism largely lacks substance and rigor. Cultural factors are important, but have not been studied.”
“Most of the existing research is not empirical or based on any data.”
“There are probably few areas in the social science literature in which so much is written on the basis of so little research.”[27]
Authors A. P Schmid., & A. J. Jongman, in ‘Political terrorism’ agree:
Perhaps as much as 80 percent of the literature is not research-based in any rigorous sense….” [28]
And
“With a few clusters of exceptions there is, in fact, a disturbing lack of good empirically grounded research on terrorism” (Gurr, 1988, p.2). [29]
Merari (1991[30]) sharply critisises the limitations of academic contributions to terrorism studies:
“Academic contributions on Psychology of Terrorism 66 have often been occasional and amateurish, lacking in factual knowledge of the subject matter. Many of them are too theoretical to have an applicability value and some are too speculative to be reliable.
Andrew Silke (2001[31]) was very pessimistic:
“Our knowledge of terrorism most certainly is deficient but the field shows no clear ability to improve this situation. After 30 years of study, we simply should know more about terrorism than we currently do. That we continue to languish at this level of ignorance on such a serious subject is a cause of grave concern.” [32]
General Montgomery certainly outclassed the war leaders of today. This failure is not because the Americans are transfixed by fear like a rabbit in the headlights. Living for two year amongst them while studying in this very area, behavioural science, at two of their greatest universities, does not necessarily qualify me to judge but it isn’t fear and it isn’t lack of attention to detail or assiduity. At this stage I must refer the reader to a greater authority than myself. Ask George Orwell!
I suppose I must put it in words. They don’t want to know! If you have taken the vast political party subscriptions or are part of the political party subscriber owned media and you don’t want to hear certain answers and it’s a nobrainer to avoid raising the question.
WHAT THE OTHER SIDE SAYS
Michael Scheuer, former head of the CIA ‘s Osama bin Laden unit, says:[33]
"the threat Osama bin Laden poses lies in the coherence and consistency of his ideas, their precise articulation, and the acts of war he takes to implement them."
Though his reasons may be spurious bin Laden has been tirelessly repeating why he fights us. His aims to end US support for corrupt Muslim regimes, to end US support for oppression of Muslims by Chinese, Russian, Indian, Philippine and other governments and to end US manipulation of oil prices through corrupt dictators are worth looking into. Some of what Bin Laden says he is fighting for does not seem life and death for us. Not so reasonable are his aim to end US aid to Israel, support a Palestinian state and withdraw US/Western military forces (not business) from the Arabian Peninsula and all Muslim countries worldwide.
He says of his war that it is not motivated by a desire to expand Islamic dominance beyond existing Muslim countries, and that he will follow us in de-escalation just as quickly as he is following us in escalation.
Says G. Brooks, Amazon reviewer:
It is because of what we do (our foreign policies that negatively affects Muslims), and not for who we are (our values and "freedoms" as Bush says).[34]
WHO ARE THE TERRORISTS? WHY DO THEY GIVE THEIR LIVES?
Why terrorism and who are the terrorists? Why do their people call suicide bombers martyrs?
July 1, 2007. Michael W. Burten, a 24-year-old former marine said:
“To this day, I am still haunted by the question of how the suicide bomber, who looked me squarely in the eye as he detonated himself, came to think that it was worth sacrificing his life to end mine.”[35]
Erez, Gaza Strip, Jan. 14 —
After her suicide attack Ms. Reyashi said that "it was always my wish to turn my body into deadly shrapnel.................[36] She left behind a son aged 3, and a year-old daughter.
The anthem of the defeated written by English poet John Milton may give a glimpse of insight into the suicide mind:
"What though the field be lost? All is not lost. The unconquerable will and study of revenge, immortal hate and courage never to submit nor yield."
Our people can be very disturbed if they feel there could be a suicide bomber among them. It is such an extraordinary form of attack that it has caught us unprepared. The transformation of society, particularly in the US, caused by this terror has been much greater than was the response to the fear of the Soviet nuclear arsenal.
US projections of the future are today more dire than at any time since100 years. Is our leader scared? Just how strong is America? A Gallup poll showed
“that the proportion of Americans thinking that the country is "not strong enough" remains high: 46 percent.”[37]
It seems the words of America’s wonderful singer Cher,
“I don’t think you’re strong enough”
came true in relation to their perception of country for many Americans.
Global Terrorism and Failed States, a think tank says:
As international concern about terrorism has grown, researchers and policymakers have increasingly sought to understand terrorism by looking at the social, economic, and political characteristics of countries. Lafree, Dugan, and Fahey examine connections between a newly available measure of terrorist attacks—the Global Terrorism Database (GTD) covering the period between 1970 and 1997—and state failure, defined by the Political Instability Task Force as including “civil conflicts, political crises, and massive human rights violations that are typically associated with state breakdown.”
Neither the U.S. State Department nor the FBI definition of terrorism includes threats of force. Yet as Bruce Hoffman points out,
“Terrorism is as much about the threat of violence as the violent act itself.”
It would never occur to me to let President Bush jerk my strings to the extent of my attempting to define Terrorism but for those who like moving targets and undulating playing fields this seems a lacuna. Momentarily assuming the absurd: State Terrorism, I think the threat of economic violence is second only to actual deprivation of livelihood in the armoury of weapons used.
INSTEAD OF THE OSTRITCH POSE OF FEAR WE MUST LISTEN FOR THE CHINKS IN THEIR ARMOUR, FOR THEIR WEAK UNDERBELLY
A senior professional, [name withheld], who identifies with the terrorists said:
“The Westerners conquered us. We had fought off their armies between ‘45 and ’75. We got them out of Africa and the world and stopped them in Korea and Vietnam. The 70s were to be our golden hour.
But they had another play and they won by economic conquest. It was simple. They had a monopoly on airplanes, ships, computers and the like which we desperately needed. Generously, joyously, they pressed their excess petro dollars on us in the late 70s and 80s, but on a horrendous tallyman [extortionate lender] basis.
Then they crashed the price of everything we produced. They doubled and then trebled production of their own agricultural production and flooded our markets subsidizing the price down to half. With commodity prices forced to half and the vital supply of oil priced up to three times we never had the money to repay.
There was no bankruptcy and start again because by then they had us trapped in a ring of economic steel. These western nations were now a cartel or syndicate and their unity was a monopoly backed by awesome military power that exercised absolute dominance over us.
Taking advantage of their immunity from counter attack they had 5th columns at their disposal in almost every country and supplied guns to almost every one of us so that, as death followed scarcity and a desperate scramble for resources, armed struggles between ourselves invited their control and obscured their conquest. They supplied military armaments to 53 of the 54 African states. Deprivation of food led to our dying like flies, 20000 daily of starvation. We had no redress. From the eighties for another 30 years death stalked our lands rising the total for every day of weakened bloated debilitated corpses to between 25000 and 50000.
Wantonly, they had their way with us. They did whatever they liked with us. Took our oil, uranium, gold, copper, bauxite, zinc and much more at at prices they effectively dictated. They took our food at half price.
They bought and sold our governments, and all the while kept telling us and their own people how concerned they were for our plight, how they were trying to help us solve our own problems and above all how generous they were with aid. This aid was less than 10% of what they were stealing from us, legally robbing, under their own laws framed to make it legal. It almost always has strings attached to our disadvantage and is money paid to buy cooperation to their selfish interests. But its huge PR at home for them.
And still they savage the price of our goods in the market using means, which, if used in their own countries would be illegal and morally abhorred.
Some of us in agony, self immolated exploding our bodies and killing them and spattering our blood on them. The flood of our blood will come, one for every 10000 starvation deaths ordained by their over lordship until those who walk the streets of London or New York cannot erase the spatter from their bodies before it comes again. Perhaps the fiction of Ghandi will become fact but don’t count on it. There is no basic difference between a Stealth bomber and a suicide bomber. They both kill innocent people for political reasons.
He quoted the vice president of Ghana as saying that US food aid was an economic weapon of mass destruction. He finished with the words. ‘We know that our being beaten will go on until morale improves.’
CHAPTER 3
OUR STRENGTH - WESTERN MILITARY POWER - IF WE BRACE OURSELVES WILL BRUTALITY WIN ? - OIL STRANGLEHOLD - ECONOMIC DOMINANCE – HE WHO SUSTAINS WAR COSTS LONGEST WINS – SUBSIDIES – WW3 - COMPROMISE
What is the strength of our defences?
Western values have given us greater freedom of information than any people in the history of the world. We have access to the knowledge of Godfather America’s almost invincible power that protects us. That power cannot live without oil but enough has never been enough and now there isn’t enough.
Using tactical nuclear weapons the US could erase life outside the West almost instantly and it is only the human psychological self restraints of those same Western values along with self preservation that prevent this. We must also ask: what is the strength of the threat?
The US has located bases in the oil reserve countries of the world stretching across Latin America, Africa, the middle east south east and central Asia.[38] 37,000 US soldiers who have been garrisoning South Korea for 50 years are included in a 500 million payroll worldwide, ¼ million men under arms and ¼ million support personnel, stationed on foreign soil by uncle Sam. The pursuit of the war on terrorism is backed by a 15000 nuclear bomb arsenal.[39] The resolution and determination of the U.S, the front line soldier of the west, is demonstrated by its threat to initiate nuclear war at least eight times to preserve its control of the world's oil reserves, and in the period up to 2003, its initiation of covert operations in the territory of 80 other countries.[40]
The military aim of ‘Full Spectrum Dominance‘ is officially published by the US government in policy documents Joint Vision 2010 and 2020; the guideline the United States Department of Defence follows. That aim is "freedom to operate in all domains - space, sea, land, air and information. ...... And the ability to rapidly project power worldwide in order to achieve Full Spectrum Dominance." Space Command's Vision for its 2020 Report states the aim to "control" space to "dominate" earth.[41] any hostile earth or space device can be picked off from space. US ships with a deck area equivalent to 100 football pitches carrying 1000 planes each and hundreds of guided missiles are linked and coordinated with the network of land installations.
SO WHAT IS THERE TO FEAR? UNDERSTANDING TERRORISM INVOLVES UNDERSTANDING THE POLITICS OF OIL
We need to fear the continued militarization and economic subjugation of the 3rd world community and its commodification by corporate governance and by Western governments.
All the economic growth of the last 10,000 years has taken place in the last 200. Our western people would still be living at subsistence level but for our science which enabled us to tap the energy stored for millions of years in fossil fuels. Our way of life is totally dependent on adequate supplies of oil to provide energy. The single greatest essential to each of us in making a living is oil. Oil is our essential lifeline and consequently our most vulnerable exposure before an enemy. Oil is wealth worth warring for. Without oil our factories and roads would be silent, our homes cold and the fighting machine built up by the United States would be struck immobile. Peak oil is when world consumption begins to exceed the discovery of new reserves. From that point, about now, the world’s tank is running out of gas and there is no place to fill up. The apparent bankruptcy to date of that same science and, at best, a requirement of many years of lead time make problematical the reduction of our dependence by substitutes.
Dominance is pursued economically through control of the supply from 70% the world's reserves of oil, which are located in economically vulnerable countries other than the continental countries of China Russia and India, is assured by US 'overseas presence forces' The massive economic size of India, China and Russia and the relative lack of a colonial background of the latter two countries place them in a different situation from the other weaker countries in what has been called the 3rd world countries.
Take a look at ‘what is going on’. Don’t mind what they say. The common denominator of all humans is money. Follow the money. The fact of Middle East connection to terrorism and oil needs no words.
Iraq has 115 billion barrels of known oil reserves.[42] That is more than five times the total in the United States. And, because of its long isolation, it is the least explored of the world’s oil-rich nations. A mere two thousand wells have been drilled across the entire country; in Texas alone there are a million. The immense research resources of the conservative think tank, The Council Of Foreign Relations, give an estimate that Iraq may have a further 220 billion barrels of undiscovered oil, another study puts the figure at 300 billion.[43] UN estimates have placed its probable but as yet unproven reserves at 214 billion barrels, perhaps the world’s largest pool of untapped oil.[44] Costs of extraction are about 1/20th per barrel that of Texas. Afghanistan, it is a focal point for oil trans-shipment as well as having significant reserves of gas in its north-western provinces in the Caspian Basin).
Says motherjones.com website:
If these estimates are anywhere close to the mark, Iraq has one quarter of the world’s oil resources. The value of Iraqi oil, largely light crude with low production costs, would be of the order of $30 trillion at today’s prices. For purposes of comparison, the projected total cost of the US invasion/occupation is around $1 trillion.
Greatest Oil Reserves by Country, 2006
| Rank | Country | Proved reserves | US Military Bases |
| 1. | Saudi Arabia | 264.3 | 3 |
| 2. | Canada | 178.8 | 3 |
| 3. | Iran | 132.5 | N/A |
| 4. | Iraq | 115.0 | 10 |
| 5. | Kuwait | 101.5 | 1 [covers 1/3 of country] |
| 6. | United Arab Emirates | 97.8 | 2 |
| 7. | Venezuela | 79.7 | N/A |
| 8. | Russia | 60.0 | N/A |
| 9. | Libya | 39.1 | 1 |
| 10. | Nigeria | 35.9 | 0 |
| 11. | United States | 21.4 |
Iraq's reserves alone are equal, by some estimates, to the combined reserves of Russia, the United States, China, and Mexico.[45]
Other reserves
| 12. | China | 18.3 |
| 13. | Qatar | 15.2 |
| 14. | Mexico | 12.9 |
| 15. | Algeria | 11.4 |
| 16. | Brazil | 11.2 |
| 17. | Kazakhstan | 9.0 |
| 18. | Norway | 7.7 |
| 19. | Azerbaijan | 7.0 |
| 20. | India | 5.8 |
| | | |
| Top 20 countries | 1224.5 (95%) | |
| Rest of world | 68.1 (5%) | |
| World total | 1,292.6 | |
The Middle East accounts for two thirds of the world's proven oil reserves. Over 27 percent of oil used in the US comes from the Middle East.
THE FUTURE IN THE CONTEXT OF PEAK OIL CLIMATE CHANGE AND BIO FUELS.
As mentioned, “Peak oil” describes the tipping point when world oil resources reach projected maximum output which will be quite soon. Gas reserves will peak in about a decade. Coastal plains have attracted more than seventy percent of the world's population and the coast or estuaries eleven of the world's fifteen largest cities. We have gained affluence at the cost of Longer droughts, more floods, and more intense hurricanes which are coming primarily to the 3rd World. An International Food Policy Institute report says that by subsidizing their domestic agriculture and their biofuels industries, the OECD countries are raising the price of grains and feedstock in their own countries and are distorting the opportunities for biofuel production and trade in developing countries.
WINNING MEANS SUSTAINING THE WAR COSTS FOR LONGER THAN THE ENEMY
Winning this war on terrorism depends on the economic ability to sustain the annual costs for longer than the enemy can maintain the struggle. The aim of dominance would be meaningless were it not pursued in the economic sphere. The historian shows that British primacy in the 20th century was preceded by a period of economic dominance.[46] Economic Dominance by the US led western alliance was the power which defeated the Soviet Union. The World-wide truth is:
“It’s the economy, stupid!”
Every cost is paid out of the national economy. We need to meet the war costs that support the war on terror. This includes the 855 billion US dollars [47] we spend on our Western war machine. There are payments by government into the private sector which greatly strengthen the war front and are all part of the dominance war including arms export subsidies, Airplane development subsidies,[48] Space technology development, economic supports for industry. I estimate to amount to 700 billion US dollars but the research is not yet complete. The west’s prosperity and strength is dependent on the benefits accruing from its economic dominance of most of the remaining world. The maintenance of economic dominance through agricultural subsidies 350 billion US dollars annually is a western co-operative success that can be added to the required War machine costs of 855 billion US dollars plus 700 billion US dollars private sector supports so that costs essential to continuance of the war effort totals 1905 billion US dollars. The aim of this book is to show that security can be bought more cheaply and with greater certainty. We will return again often to the measurement of the value for money we get for that almost 2 trillion dollars.
SUBSIDIES - THE MOST POWERFUL WEAPON IN THE ENTIRE ARSENAL OF ECONOMIC DOMINANCE
The airplane industry is witness that there is no defence against the single most powerful weapon of economic dominance: subsidies. Boeing had a long standing name for innovation and reliability. It had a world wide market franchise. It dominated the world sales of large passenger aircraft. How did airbus come in a few short years to challenge it? The answer is $10 billion plus in subsidies![49]
The US governments carelessness about where the subsidy money went other than that it would reach the donors of 17 million friendly political dollars in a year Illustrated by a Washington Post excerpt.[50] The Post's nine-month investigation found
“Farm subsidy programs that have become so all-encompassing and generous that they have taken much of the risk out of farming for the increasingly wealthy individuals who dominate it.
The farm payments have also altered the landscape and culture of the Farm Belt, pushing up land prices and favoring large, wealthy operators.
The system pays farmers a subsidy to protect against low prices even when they sell their crops at higher prices. It makes "emergency disaster payments" for crops that fail even as it provides subsidized insurance to protect against those failures. And it pays people such as Matthews for merely owning land that was once farmed.”
CHAPTER 4
ECONOMIC DOMINANCE IN PRACTICE - SUSTAINING WAR COSTS - THE PRICE OF DOMINANCE - DOMINANCE AND AMERICAN VALUES - COMPROMISE – THE MEASURE OF SUBSIDY’S EFFECT - WE CAN RETAIN OUR WORLD ORDER WHILE ALEVIATING THE CAUSES OF TERRORISM[51] NO STRANGE EXCHANGE. FOOLS TO FIX IT - WHAT IF? US PREDICTIONS OF GROWING INEQUALITY
ECONOMIC DOMINANCE IN PRACTICE /SUSTAINING WAR COSTS
Economic dominance enables sustaining the cost of war and of an economic order in which others give agreement because the alternative is ruin.
Karl Marx stated the obvious:
"All wars are economic wars."
The ability to dictate the rules across the full spectrum of trading activity is ultimately ensured by Teddy Roosevelt’s "Speak softly but carry a big stick." The West’s big stick is wielded by its US gladiator and his ‘Full Spectrum Dominance. Trade is war with rules confining it to the economic sphere. That "economic war" was conducted by American companies against their foreign competitors was concluded by a federal judge but he said this was allowed by the anti-dumping law.[52] It was inevitably a US publication, Forbes Magazine, that put the reality of economic dominance succinctly in one line:
“International trade and capitalism is a form of warfare where domination is the objective.[53]”
As in any war each side hides its true intentions from the other and puts out such misinformation as will advance its dominance and get support from neutrals and its own people. After the quarter century of the benign Marshall plan and the relatively benevolent years up to the 1970s the west kept the story the same while the reality changed. 30 years later it is very practical to ascertain what was going on then and I will seek to put the facts before you in later chapters. As with oil it follows that the west, usually with the US in the lead, and has sought economic dominance over commodities generally and trade. Mudd and Diesendorf in an evidence backed paper refer to “the largely western economic control of the global uranium industry.”[54] That control affects the full range of commodities and therefore most countries internal political decisions.
THE PRICE OF DOMINANCE
Every year, every American family will contribute the equivalent of 30,000 air miles, 15 fridges, or a short break and a full sunshine holiday to enable the dominance war.
Food subsidies are a weapon which destroys 3rd world economies in order to gain their resources for us cheaply. The self deceit and pervasive state of denial involved in this is parallel with the obesity and disease stemming from obesity which has become a major concern for the West.
As the Communist Manifesto put it,
"The cheap prices of its [capitalism's] commodities are the heavy artillery with which it batters down all Chinese walls, with which it forces the barbarians' intensely obstinate hatred of foreigners to capitulate."
As the money the west must pay to maintain Dominance, military and economic, is approximately 1905 billion US dollars, a saving of almost 20% would be gained if agricultural subsidies were discontinued.
DOMINANCE - AMERICAN VALUES
David Postman quotes former U.S. House Speaker Newt Gingrich 15.July ’06:
“America is in World War III and President Bush should say so.”
Gingrich said in the coming days he plans to speak out publicly, and to the administration, about the need to recognize that America is in World War III.
"This is World War III," Gingrich said. And once that's accepted, calls for restraint will fall away”:
The struggle for dominance is in the American blood stream. America competed for its foothold on the earth with 50 million native Indians and won. The expectation of success in competition contrasts with most Eastern nations who in their origin experienced a welcoming natural and nurturing environment and experienced relatively little need for competitive success against humans. Robert Wade shows the US peoples sincere belief in the primacy of competition clearly:
As a republic founded on ideals the US is keenly aware of the impact Of ideas on actions. Its foreign economic policy since the Second World War has sought to convince the world of the truth of liberal free market Ideology—all will benefit in the longer run from a political economy
Characterized by (1) competition in free markets for goods, services and
Capital, (2) corporations managed so as to maximize shareholder value, (3)
Stock markets used for buying and selling corporate control, (4) government
Intervention only in cases of obvious market failure (roads, defence,
Minimal social security safety nets). If the US can get this ideology
Embraced around the world to the point where powerful segments of
National elites want these same things for themselves, it can achieve its
Foreign economic policy objectives at much less cost than relying on more
Materially-based negotiation or coercion. In particular, the idea of the
Mutual benefits of free markets, if widely accepted, allows free market
Critics to be easily discredited as defenders of special interests at the Expense of the general good.[55]
Wade Shows that the World Bank has consistently adhered to this ideology stemming from the US Treasury, that top staff were forced out when they didn’t and that the exercise of dominance is implemented by the right of appointment of the President and the consistent support of other Western nations behind the US as largest [17%] shareholder
Recent American modest support for an increase in foreign aid stands in stark contrast to most recent surveys of public opinion on this issue. As recently as January, Americans rated attempting to reduce poverty with foreign aid as the least important of eight possible approaches to combating terrorism. (See the Pew Research Center's "Americans Favor Force in Iraq, Somalia, Sudan and...", Jan. 22, 2002).
On questions regarding responding to martyrdom attacks by economic means younger Americans express backing for increasing foreign aid. Nearly two-thirds of Americans under 30 (65%) approve of this policy decision, compared with less than half of those age 50 and older.
MEASURE SUBSIDY’S EFFECT COMPROMISE
Former President Jimmy Carter said:[56]
[The farm bill legislation] “encourages excess production while channeling enormous government payments to the biggest producers. This product of powerful lobbyists now punishes small-scale farmers in the United States and is devastating to families in many of the world's least affluent countries. It is embarrassing to note that, from 1995 to 2005, the richest 10 percent of cotton growers received more than 80 percent of total subsidies. The wealthiest 1 percent of American cotton farmers continues to receive over 25 percent of payouts for cotton, while more than half of America's cotton farmers receive no subsidies at all. American farmers are not dependent on the global market because they are guaranteed a minimum selling price by the federal government. American producers of cotton received more than $18 billion in subsidies between 1999 and 2005, while market value of the cotton was $23 billion. That's a subsidy of 86 percent! Overproduction in the United States leads to the dumping of U.S. cotton on global markets, which drives prices down. In recent years, cotton exported from the United States has been sold 61 percent below its cost of production.”
Carter spoke after 6 years of continuing deterioration. In 2001 the Belgian section of the Inter-Parliamentary Union reported:[57]
Today no-one can deny that fanatic terrorism stems from the world's inequalities, from unresolved local crises – sometimes for decades – and from populations without any prospects and in despair.....
The overall gap between the richest 20% and the poorest 20% of humanity has doubled from 1940 to 1990. Let us give just one example : in 1976, Switzerland was 52 times richer than Mozambique; in 1997 it was 508 times more. 1.3 billion people do not have access to running water and every day 40,000 children die of famine-related diseases. Life expectancy in places like Sub-Saharan Africa and Russia has dropped dramatically. More than a fifth of the world population still live in absolute destitution (with less than $1 a day), and half live with less than $2 a day. The 2.5 billion inhabitants of low-income countries still experience an infant death-rate exceeding 100 to 1,000 live births, whilst this same rate, for the 900 million inhabitants of high-income countries, is only 6 to 1,000. In low-income countries, there are on average still 40% illiterate persons.
COMPENSATION
Due to the potential enormity of the claims involved, the question of compensation for the damage done to the agricultural countries people will invite the response of a disturbed hornets’ nest. I will raise just one issue. In western countries it is against the law to sell under cost. A convicted person must pay. The equitable right to similar treatment raises the right of compensation for past breaches. A sum of 250 billion dollars would not be unreasonable and would clear the outstanding debts. The depiction as inadequate losers given by the appeal for cancellation of debts out of charity was always insulting and a bad mistake. It gave the ‘smilers-with-the-knife’ the prompt to switch terminology from the false euphemism, ‘developing,’ to the savage ‘highly indebted poor countries’ slur. This degradation is continued by the ‘power Jacks’ who are going to ‘lift’ people out of poverty. Dignity may be all that people have.
Michael Moore, WTO president:
“Poverty] is a time bomb lodged against the heart of liberty”[58]
WE CAN RETAIN OUR WORLD ORDER WHILE ALEVIATING THE CAUSES OF TERRORISM[59]
The figures from our own instruments of dominance, the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund and the World Trade Organisation show that an easing of the rules and a consequent foregoing of the gain from the weaker countries of $200 billion annually would save millions of lives. The massive new market for Western industrial goods which would have opened up in the weaker countries would probably have compensated for the full cost. But we would have lost some of the control we now have over those weak undermined economies and their wealth of oil and minerals. We would have less access to their commodity wealth. In the unlikely event that nothing had come back to the west it would have cost between 1 and 2% of our standard of living.
HUMAN GREED FOR INHUMAN TERRORISM - NO STRANGE EXCHANGE.
Insofar as human greed is a cause of inhuman terrorism we could do a good deal. We could trade justice in exchange for security. We could get a clearer run in the war on terror and the defense of our vital strategic interests. An embattled harassed future would not be inevitable. We could forego some of the huge cash earnings we get from the Clintonian “enormous economic weapon” and get, in exchange, a stifling of the growth of terrorism which would follow from lesser leveraging of trade dominance. We might gain a useful saving by restricting aid as much of it is of doubtful value.We would downsize the Armageddon juggernaut. We would trade-in approximately 1 ½ % reduction of our standard of living for the sake of an expectation of life for future generations.
The atmosphere of begging for aid, debt relief etc is self-defeating. It has failed. We have failed with this bankrupt policy. They die because we failed.
Now that even Oxfam have used the truth, have said that the destruction of 3rd world economies by under-cutting their prices through subsidising is 'robbery,' it is time to withdraw all that obsequiousness.
A FOOL TO FIX IT - THE FUTILE BEGGING BOWL IN PLACE OF DENUNIATION OF TRADE THIEVING REGARDLESS OF WHO IS OFFENDED
Safely and opulently ensconced in the western establishment, usually belonging to the 1% who own 50% of the worlds wealth and attracting adulation for their saintliness, an army of do gooders enjoy an orgy of emotion and tears and do practically no good at all. Prime examples are Messrs. Geldof, Bono and Sachs. Since long before the Pharisee in the bible there have been phoneys whose crocodile tears combined with hard nosed media manipulation propelled them to ‘priest’ status. As long as they are skilled in manipulating their own society, they do not need to understand the process of disembowelling, victimisation and emaciation of the 3rd world people. Almost all are power freaks. Where you see AID you should read A1Dictators because they all want to blindly throw scads of other peoples money at a problem they don’t understand. Media opportunity visits with a series of staged photographic takes keep them well separated from the problem and from the depredations of their hand in glove government contacts such as Anthony Blair, who separate people from their lives in order to rip off their oil uranium, diamonds, titanium copper bauxite and much more on the cheap.
How these rich gilded saints fall into the chasm of the 25 years of the hypocracy of western cries of regret as our real world absolute control forced the poor countries down the tubes requires an understanding of the power of the human capacity for denial. They deny the cause of this 2nd holocaust because they would not criticise their fine friends who are that cause, whose crocodile outpourings and promises have gone on for 20 years of vicious cruelty. They deny that this is a perpetrated holocaust just like the last one. These neo-deniers of the cause of holocaust are just one step short of being neo-holocaust deniers. This holocaust is motivated by the same rapacious desire for power and resources as the first. It is unending and is killing 4 times more people per day than the first.
Exhaustible resources such as oil and uranium are subject to unending escalating demand and have, over the long term, no price ascertainable by a market mechanism. Even the supine economists who allow a public relations superman like jeffrey sachs to trivialise the discipline by his avid posturing know this.
A fool to fix it has characterised recent years. They all have a fix for it – plug in the money and it will be all right. Lacking the world spotlight, the celebrity and the media geniuses the trade justice movement has battled through the dark night of neglect and disregard. Battered by police when they demonstrated they must have known in their hearts that they were challenging the prime weapon of dominance of the western world.
The fix-it power maniacs are detached from the human condition. For a million years human history is the story of a vicious continuous unrelenting dog-eat-dog fight for power and resources. And when a bunch of bullies get the lion’s share they want more whether they are barbarians, feudal lords, the British empire or Chicago gangsters. I think of the cartoon picture of an American soldier saying: “for every gallon you put in your SUV I have to kill another Wop.” Feudal warlordism has been the almost universal state of man. Just recently starting with the French revolution the people became strong and cooperated to contain the bullies and enforce some Democracy. But it’s a dog-eat-dog rocky road. Democracies regularly fight for revolting friends. We cleaved 3rd world bullies to our side in the face of Russians, Chinese and Muslims, whom we saw as threats. We made sure the bullies would have overwhelming strength in relation to their people by swingeing subsidies and trade barriers. Never in human history was ‘freak trade’ practised on such a scale. To make their support doubly sure and copper fasten their friendship we poured billions of aid dollars into their coffers.
‘Davids’ with names like Pilger Ferguson and Chomsky face the Murdoch-led 9-man mainstream media Goliath. Donations from Transnationals and their lobbiests play a rising part in Political control. US campaign donations from the leading recipient of subsidies, the sugar industry, have topped $3 million in each of the last four political cycles.
A WAY TO SEE A WORLD WITHOUT AGRICTURAL SUBSIDIES
Is ‘Free Trade,’ the magic mantra which has mesmerised the minds of the Western people, really a euphemism for ‘Freak Trade’? Despite all efforts the starvation deaths and hunger keep rising. The protests simply have not worked. This failure is largely due to the lack of an evidential basis linking cause and effect. We need something more palpable and tangible than NGO researched appeals.
What if there had been no agricultural subsidies?
A projection can answer the question ‘what if there had been no agricultural subsidies.’ The common projection based approach is constantly used by Governments and business. Projections are the basis of every forward plan. Projections or budgets have acceptance and are an established instrument in the public mind. Transnationals incessantly use projections. Belief in the value of projections is an article of faith in the transnational’s’ credo.
This would be an exercise in the academically recognised field of counterfactual history which aims to ascertain the relative importance of the event, incident or person the counterfactual hypothesis is negating. The highlighted event would be the giving, since 1977 of subsidies or the maintenance of tariffs along with the giving of subsidies.
According to an estimated casting such a projection would show treble the wealth, half the starvation deaths and twice the number of children receiving education in the agriculture based countries and that their economies have been weakened by deficits of as much as $10,000 billion, accumulated on a net present value basis over 30 years, thereby depriving them of the ability to build resources to deal with fire, flood or natural disaster or even to feed their people.
Fact based assumptions by businessmen of high public recognition and due diligence by internationally renowned experts would be necessary but such a projection can cost under $100,000.
The Long Range Plan
In 1998 a US government report called The Long Range Plan said:
"The United States will remain a global power and exert global leadership. Widespread communications will highlight disparities in resources and quality of life, contributing to unrest in developing countries. The global economy will continue to become more interdependent. Economic alliances, as well as the growth and influence of, will blur security agreements. The gap between 'have' and 'have-not' nations will widen, creating regional unrest. The United States will remain the only nation able to project power globally."
Almost 10 years ago the wind was sown with the seeds of terror and it was only necessary for good men to do nothing.
It is true that few things matter very much and in the long run that few things matter at all.
Does this matter to you?
[1]United States National Security Strategy Report 2002
[2] Michael Moore, head of the World Trade told conference delegates.
[3] New Africa Command To Counter Al Qaeda's Growing Presence CBS Evening News The Christian Science Monitor. Jan. 10, 2008 http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2007/01/05/world/main2333174.shtml?source=RSSattr=World_2333174
[4] "I I believe that [the revolt of passengers on the hijacked flight 93 on September 11, 2001] was the first counter-attack to World War III." (George W. Bush, May 6, 2006)
[5] “Some speak of an age of terror.” President George W. Bush. September 20, 2001
[6] PUBLIC LIVES By CHRIS HEDGES Published: January 14, 2003
DR. ROBERT JAY LIFTON professor emeritus City University of New York, visiting professor at Harvard Medical School written about Japanese survivors in Hiroshima, Vietnam veterans, Nazi doctors and members of terrorist cults.
[7] ‘Existence Demands That Man Understands’, 1st line of a poem by the author quoted in the Irish Times newspaper in 1969
[8] The United Nations estimates that 25,000 people die every day from hunger and hunger related diseases.
[9] International trade rules, says an Oxfam report, ‘Rigged Rules and Double Standards,’ are "rigged in favour of the rich." When developing countries export to rich country markets, they “face tariff barriers that are four times higher than those faced by rich countries. These barriers cost them $100bn (£70bn; €113bn) a year, twice as much as they receive in aid.
[10] A poll conducted December 2003 through January 2004 by the international polling firm GlobeScan (formerly Environics International) and analyzed in conjunction with the Program on International Policy Attitudes of the University of Maryland. The study was sponsored by the World Bank and the Royal African Society.
[11] The Report to the UN of the International Commission on Peace and Food. http://www.icpd.org/index.htm
[12] Johann Hari j.hari@independent.co.uk.
[13] july 04 [Rising u.s. stakes in africa], a report commissioned by the US Congress,
[14] Bill Clinton quotes (American 42nd US President (1993-2001), b.1946)
[15] Speech this year to the Organization of American States by former U.S. President Jimmy Carter
[16] UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan said it was in the interests of rich states to help poorer countries at the opening of the summit on Thursday, , 22 March, 2002, 11:37 GMT.
[17] Richard Clarke revealed that on the evening of 9/11, the President said this to him and Don Rumsfeld,
[19] President Bush, February 1, 2006. State of the Union 2006: Against the Isolationist Impulse.
[20] President Bush in his State of the Union Message 2007
[21] FOXNews.com: ”The war on terror is 'endless' because the threat is infinite.”
[22] Iran: Nuclear Intentions and Capabilities. November 2007. OFFICE OF THE DIRECTOR OF NATIONAL INTELLIGENCE. The Director of National Intelligence serves as the head of the Intelligence Community
(IC), overseeing and directing the implementation of the National Intelligence Program
and acting as the principal advisor to the President, the National Security Council, and the
Homeland Security Council for intelligence matters.
[23] Bush speaks of third world war Thursday, 18 Oct 2007 09:09. US president George Bush has said the world faces the danger of a third world war if Iran is allowed to develop nuclear weapons. "I've told people that if you're interested in avoiding world war three, it seems like you ought to be interested in preventing them [Iran] from [having] the knowledge necessary to make a nuclear weapon," said Mr Bush.
[24] President's Eid al-Fitr Greeting to Muslims around the World. December 4, 2002
[25] The Terrorist Threat to the US Homeland
July 2007. OFFICE OF THE DIRECTOR OF NATIONAL INTELLIGENCE. The Director of National Intelligence serves as the head of the Intelligence Community(IC), overseeing and directing the implementation of the National Intelligence Program and acting as the principal advisor to the President.
[26] [2] NUNN, S., “Toward a New Security Framework”, speech delivered at the Woodrow
Wilson Center, October 3 (2001).
[27]. Randy Borum is Associate Professor in the Department of Mental Health Law & Policy University of South Florida, A consultant to the US Department of Defense, Department of Homeland Security, US Intelligence Community, Advisory Board Member for the FBI’s Behavioral Science Unit, and Instructor for the BJA’s State and Local Antiterrorism Training (SLATT) Program. He was the Principal Investigator on the "Psychology of Terrorism" initiative for a US government agency. He is Past-President of the American Academy of Forensic Psychology, and serves on the United Nations Roster of Experts in Terrorism: Borum, R. (2004). Psychology of terrorism. Tampa: University of South Florida.
[28] Schmid, A. P., & Jongman, A. J. (1988). Political terrorism: A new guide to actors, authors, concepts, data bases, theories, and literature. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Books.
[29] Crenshaw, M. (1992). Current research on terrorism: The Academic Perspective . Studies in Conflict and Terrorism , 15, 1-11.
[30] Crenshaw, M. (1992). Current research on terrorism: The Academic Perspective . Studies in Conflict and Terrorism , 15, 1-11.
[31] Bandura, A. (2004). The origins and consequences of moral disengagement: A social learning perspective. F. M. Moghaddam, & A. J. Marsella (Eds),
[33] An excerpt from Imperial Hubris: Why the West Is Losing the War on Terror by an active senior CIA officer -- and former head of the agency's Osama bin Laden unit.
[34] G. Brooks, Amazon reviewer on Why the West Is Losing the War on Terror by an active senior CIA officer -- and former head of the agency's Osama bin Laden unit. 14 Pe ace and Conf l ict 2 0 0 8 6.
[35] July 1, 2007. According to A Call Sounded, and Answered By LISA W. FODERARO. LARCHMONT, N.Y., MICHAEL W. BURTEN, a 24-year-old former marine, is sipping a glass of crisp white wine at an outdoor cafe here, trying to explain how strange and wonderful it is to be home from the war in Iraq. In the essay he submitted with his application to Columbia, he wrote, “To this day, I am still haunted by the question of how the suicide bomber, who looked me squarely in the eye as he detonated himself, came to think that it was worth sacrificing his life to end mine.”
[36] EREZ, Gaza Strip, Jan. 14 — Ms. Reyashi left behind a son aged 3, and a year-old daughter. The new York times reported that he said, after her attack that "it was always my wish to turn my body into deadly shrapnel against the Zionists and to knock on the doors of heaven with the skulls of Zionists." "Sheik Ahmed Yassin, the spiritual leader of Hamas, said this was the first time his group had dispatched a woman to be a suicide bomber.
[37] The Project on Defense Alternatives Briefing Memo #41 on 26 March 2007 quote Director of National Intelligence Mike McConnell.
[38] The Worldwide Network of US Military Bases. The Global Deployment of US Military Personnel by Prof. Jules Dufour. Global Research, July 1, 2007 http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=5564
[39] The Worldwide Network of US Military Bases. The Global Deployment of US Military Personnel by Prof. Jules Dufour. Global Research, July 1, 2007 http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=5564
[40] "Bush approved CIA covert operations in 80 countries around the world to stop and attack global terrorism." Dan Balz and Bob Woodward. "Willing to Let History Be the Judge", Washington Post National Weekly Edition, February 11-17, 2002.[40]
[41] Bush's War: Where it is Going & What We Should Do About It; for the Taking Our Message Home Conference, Boston, Mass. March 16, 2002 http://www.russfound.org/Enet/gerson2.htm"the Bush administration is actually planning to retain the potential to deploy not 1,700 to 2,200 nuclear weapons, but as many as 15,000."i
[42] NOTES: Proved reserves are estimated with reasonable certainty to be recoverable with present technology and prices. Source: Oil & Gas Journal, Vol. 103, No. 47 (Dec. 19, 2005). From: U.S. Energy Information Administration. Http://www.eia.doe.gov/emeu/international/petroleu.html .
[43] LRB 18 October 2007. It’s the Oil by Jim Holt
[44] US, UK, Australians Build Oil-Protection Base in Iraq By Patrick Martin November 15th, 2007 http://www.ukwatch.net/article/us_uk_australians_build_oil_protection_base_in_iraq
[45]http://www.motherjones.com/news/feature/2003/03/ma_273_01.html
[46] World Economic Primacy [46]
[47] Stockholm International Peace Research Institute Top 15 countries except China, India and Brazil.
[48]Cato Institute, Policy Analysis No. 225 May 12, 1995 Ending Corporate Welfare As We Know It. by Stephen Moore and Dean Stansel “Business subsidy programs cost federal taxpayers more than $85 billion annually.” No one knows precisely the total cost to American consumers of barriers to free trade. But several authoritative sources place the figure at $80 billion per year.[52]
WAR AT ANY PRICE? The Total Economic Costs of the War Beyond the Federal Budget. A Report by the Joint Economic Committee Majority Staff, Chairman, Senator Charles E. Schumer, Vice Chair, Rep. Carolyn B. Maloney
[48] Industrial Subsidies and the Politics of World Trade: The Case of the Boeing 7e7. David Pritchard and Alan MacPherson, Canada-United States Trade Center, State University of New York, Buffalo, NY 14261
[49] Industrial Subsidies and the Politics of World Trade: The Case of the Boeing 7e7. David Pritchard and Alan MacPherson, Canada-United States Trade Center, State University of New York, Buffalo, NY 14261
[50] Orin Kerr, July 2, 2006 at 6:41pm] Trackbacks
Wapo on Farm Subsidies: An excerpt: The front page of today's Washington Post has an interesting report on farm subsidies.
[52] Federal cases. 13) (13) Zenith Radio Corp. V. Matsushita Elec. Indus. Co., 513 F. Supp. 1100 (1981), p. 1333.
[53] Forbes.com/Lehmann Income Securities Investor A Golden Solution To The China Syndrome? Richard Lehmann, 07.27.05 http://www.forbes.com/investmentnewsletters/2005/07/27/china-gold-lehmann cz_rl_0727soapbox_inl.html
[54]http://nzsses.auckland.ac.nz/conference/2007/papers/MUDD-Uranium-Mining.pdf Sustainability Aspects of Uranium Mining : Towards Accurate Accounting ? Gavin M Mudd *,1, Mark Diesendorf 2 http://sociology.berkeley.edu/faculty/evans/evans_pdf/Wade.pdf
[55] Mon 9 Oct 00, 11 am version. wade@wiko-berlin.de. For New Left Review.
Us Hegemony and The World Bank: Stiglitz’s Firing and Kanbur’s Resignation Robert Wade Professor of Political Economy and Development, London School of Economics Fellow, Wissenschaftskolleg (Institute for Advanced Study), Berlin, 2000/01
[56] Subsidies' Harvest of Misery. Jimmy Carter Monday, December 10, 2007;
[57] Presentation given on 10 October 2001 during a symposium in the Brussels Parliament, organised by the Belgian Section of the Inter-Parliamentary Union by professor Jacques Nikonoff
[58] Michael Moore, head of the World Trade told conference delegates.
[59] Socialist worker archive > dated 10 November 2001 | issue 1774 http://www.socialistworker.org.uk/art.php?id =12099
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