Militarism and a Uni-polar World

by Lenora Foerstel

Global Research, August 26, 2008
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=9946

The Trilateral Commission was founded in 1973 by David Rockefeller as an off-shoot of the Council of Foreign Relations (CFR). David Rockefeller was chairman of the CFR in 1970 and subsequently became the founding chairman of the Trilateral Commission. Soon the membership of the Commission had grown to 300 members, including prominent political figures like Zbigniew Brzezinski. Most members of the Trilateral Commission are bankers, media moguls, or corporate CEOs, primarily from North America, Europe and Japan, while all members of the CFR are U.S. Citizens.

The Commission seeks to extend its influence abroad and is careful to avoid the scrutiny of congressional investigations. The CFR on the other hand, focuses on the control of American media.

When American media discuss globalism, they rarely mention that the Trilateral Commission sets most global economic goals, primary among them being the creation of a one-world system of trade. It is basically a form of fascism in which global corporations and their elite CEOs determine the policies and direction of world governments. The creation of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank after World War II was intended to encourage Third World countries to borrow money from wealthy nations, so long as they agreed to the imposition of a wide range of “structural adjustment policies.” Any nation borrowing money from either organization would not be allowed to nationalize its natural resources and would be unable to prevent foreign corporations from buying or controlling those resources.

Shortly before World War II, Hjalmer Schacht, a German banker, toured the United States soliciting American corporate support for Hitler’s new fascist state. U.S. corporations not only agreed to support Germany against the socialist economic system of the Soviet Union, but also declared their opposition to the strong labor movement arising in the United States and Europe.

General Motors was prominent among the corporations that supported the Nazi government, investing $20 million in industries owned or controlled by Herman Goering and other Nazi officials. Other US multinational corporations that profited from and supported Hitler’s industrial war machine included General Electric, Standard Oil, Texaco, International Harvester, ITT and IBM. Today, Standard Oil of New York is unabashed in honoring its chemical cartel that manufactured Zyklon-B, the poison gas used by the Nazi gas chambers. (1)

Among the eminent business leaders backing these multinational corporations were the Rockefellers and Prescott Bush, father of George Bush and grandfather of George W. Bush. Prescott Bush worked with his father-in-law, George Herbert Walker, in the family firm Union Banking Corporation to raise $50 million by selling German bonds to American investors from 1924 to 1930.

Even though the United States helped to defeat Nazi Germany in World War II, many of the powerful elite families continued to support Hitler’s fascist ideology after the war. John Rockefeller III was an uncritical believer in the doctrine of Thomas Robert Malthus, who claimed that population always increased at a geometric rate while food supply increased at the slower arithmetic rate. Malthus therefore concluded that population growth had to be rigidly controlled. Today, his theory is widely criticized for failing to take into account the vast technological advances in agriculture and food production.

Rockefeller also accepted Hitler’s concept of an Aryan race, leading him to propose population control on the poor and people of color, whom he believed were producing children of inferior intelligence. In an effort to support such views, the Rockefeller family became involved with Eugenics, a fascist doctrine that advocated breeding a superior race by eliminating the mentally ill, physically handicapped, and racially inferior.

Georgia and Kosovo: A Single Intertwined Crisis

August 25, 2008
Stratfor

By George Friedman
http://www.stratfor.com/weekly/georgia_and_kosovo_single_intertwined_crisis

The Russo-Georgian war was rooted in broad geopolitical processes. In
large part it was simply the result of the cyclical reassertion of
Russian power. The Russian empire -- czarist and Soviet -- expanded to
its borders in the 17th and 19th centuries. It collapsed in 1992. The
Western powers wanted to make the disintegration permanent. It was
inevitable that Russia would, in due course, want to reassert its
claims. That it happened in Georgia was simply the result of
circumstance.

There is, however, another context within which to view this, the
context of Russian perceptions of U.S. and European intentions and of
U.S. and European perceptions of Russian capabilities. This context
shaped the policies that led to the Russo-Georgian war. And those
attitudes can only be understood if we trace the question of Kosovo,
because the Russo-Georgian war was forged over the last decade over
the Kosovo question.
Yugoslavia broke up into its component republics in the early 1990s.
The borders of the republics did not cohere to the distribution of
nationalities. Many -- Serbs, Croats, Bosnians and so on -- found
themselves citizens of republics where the majorities were not of
their ethnicities and disliked the minorities intensely for historical
reasons. Wars were fought between Croatia and Serbia (still calling
itself Yugoslavia because Montenegro was part of it), Bosnia and
Serbia and Bosnia and Croatia. Other countries in the region became
involved as well.

One conflict became particularly brutal. Bosnia had a large area
dominated by Serbs. This region wanted to secede from Bosnia and
rejoin Serbia. The Bosnians objected and an internal war in Bosnia
took place, with the Serbian government involved. This war involved
the single greatest bloodletting of the bloody Balkan wars, the mass
murder by Serbs of Bosnians.

Here we must pause and define some terms that are very casually thrown
around. Genocide is the crime of trying to annihilate an entire
people. War crimes are actions that violate the rules of war. If a
soldier shoots a prisoner, he has committed a war crime. Then there is
a class called "crimes against humanity." It is intended to denote
those crimes that are too vast to be included in normal charges of
murder or rape. They may not involve genocide, in that the
annihilation of a race or nation is not at stake, but they may also go
well beyond war crimes, which are much lesser offenses. The events in
Bosnia were reasonably deemed crimes against humanity. They did not
constitute genocide and they were more than war crimes.

Another one in the archive of speculations on Georgia. What is very interesting about this one is that the biggest winners become the war-hawks in the US.

WINNERS, LOSERS AND JOKERS OF GEORGIA WAR
By Linda S. Heard

Online Journal
Aug 20, 2008, 00:20

Now that a peace accord has been signed by both parties to the
Georgian-Russian conflict, it's time to reflect on gains and
losses. With hundreds, if not thousands, dead and upwards of 100,000
refugees, ordinary people have once again borne the brunt of reckless
decisions made by their governments.

As the fog of war dissipates, it's obvious that the biggest loser was
its instigator. Georgia's US and Israeli-trained and armed military has
been humiliated and the lack of resolve of its allies exposed. It's
further clear that Georgia's sovereignty rests entirely on Moscow's
goodwill.

As I write, there are Russian tanks just 25 miles from the Georgian
capital Tbilisi. Their very presence signals who's in charge; they
don't even have to fire a shot. Unfortunately, President Mikheil
Saakashvili still hasn't got the message. He's still claiming his
country will never surrender (although it has) and he gets no marks
for diplomacy after calling the Russians 21st century barbarians.

Moreover, the breakaway Georgian provinces of South Ossetia and
Abkhazia that Saakashvili promised to return to the national fold
are probably lost forever as under the terms of the peace accord,
Russian peacekeepers have a right to not only control the enclaves
but a lso a corridor within Georgia proper outside the disputed zones.

In the end, Saakashvili gained nothing by his foolish misadventure
except the temporary support of his own electorate, which had little
choice other than to back him up while under siege. Once the Russians
have left, the Georgian president is likely to pay a heavy political
cost.

While nominating the biggest loser is relatively simple, working out
who is the biggest winner warrants rather more analysis. Let's start
with Russia.

As speculative readings of political realities go, this article is an interesting account of geo-political chess. -rg

Putin Hits Georgia, Bloodies Bush
>From Russia with Love...
By MARWAN BISHARA

http://www.counterpunch.org/bishara08222008.html
August 22, 2008

The geopolitics of Russo-American relations is best portrayed by an old
Swahili proverb that says 'when the elephants fight, the grass gets
crushed, and when elephants make love the grass gets crushed'.

In that way, post-Cold War rapprochement between Washington and Moscow
allowed the latter to brutally crush Chechnya and for Putin to
neutralise political dissent with little opposition from Washington.

It also allowed the Pentagon to use Moscow's military bases in the
former republics of the Soviet Union for various aggressive operations
and paved the way for the invasion of Iraq and Afghanistan.

On the other hand, renewed tension and conflict between the old Cold
War nemeses has opened the way for the destruction and mayhem in
Georgia. If continued, it will lead to a deterioration of the situation
in the Middle East and trigger or escalate conflicts and arms races
around the world.

Who started it?

While the bullying of smaller, weaker countries has been a feature of
the international system since communities organised into states, it is
imperative to determine who started the war in Georgia in order to
chart where this conflict is heading.

Mikhail Saakashvili, the Georgian president, blames the Russians for
starting the war by amassing great military power on the border
in the
beginning of August while he was in Italy.

But many reckon the ambitious pro-Western Georgians started the
military escalation and timed it as international media attention was
focused on the Olympic games in Beijing.

Saakashvili's "foolishness", says the Economist, has backfired.

US Role in Georgia Crisis

Published on Friday, August 15, 2008 by Foreign Policy in Focus
by Stephen Zunes

The international condemnation of Russian aggression against Georgia -
and the concomitant assaults by Abkhazians and South Ossetians against
ethnic Georgians within their territories - is in large part
appropriate. But the self-righteous posturing coming out of Washington
should be tempered by a sober recognition of the ways in which the
United States has contributed to the crisis.

It has been nearly impossible to even broach this subject of the U.S.
role. Much of the mainstream media coverage and statements by American
political leaders of both major parties has in many respects resembled
the anti-Russian hysterics of the Cold War. It is striking how quickly
forgotten is the fact that the U.S.-backed Georgian military started
the war when it brutally assaulted the South Ossetian capital of
Tskhinvali in an attempt to regain direct control of the autonomous
region. This attack prompted the disproportionate and illegitimate
Russian military response, which soon went beyond simply ousting
invading Georgian forces from South Ossetia to invading and occupying
large segments of Georgia itself.

The South Ossetians themselves did much to provoke Georgia as well by
shelling villages populated by ethnic Georgians earlier this month.
However, Georgian president Mikheil Saakashvili ruled out signing a
non-aggression pact and=2
0repeatedly refused to rejoin talks of the Joint
Control Commission to prevent an escalation of the violence.
Furthermore, according to Reuters, a draft UN Security Council
statement calling for an immediate cease fire was blocked when the
United States objected to `a phrase in the three-sentence draft
statement that would have required both sides `to renounce the use of
force.''

I am posting this not for its information or vision, but by the simple fact that the author served as an assistant secretary of treasury under Reagan. I find it incredible the degree to which the Bush years have polarized the political situation both within and outside the US. What remains to be pondered is why within the political framework within the US, only a watered down version of that polarization comes out? The schism between sentiments by everyday people as well as people who formerly believed (naively, one is lead to say) in a "system" of "checks and balances" and those who work to protect power/money - the government (or "the police" as Jacques Ranciere like to refer to them) only points to signs of further turmoil which may not be solved in the short term with a new president. -rg

The Neocons Do Georgia
Humanity's Greatest Enemy?

http://www.counterpunch.org/roberts08152008.html
August 15, 2008
By PAUL CRAIG ROBERTS

The success of the Bush Regime's propaganda, lies, and deception with
gullible and inattentive Americans since 9/11 has made it difficult for
intelligent, aware people to be optimistic about the future of the
United States. For almost 8 years the US media has served as Ministry
of Propaganda for a war criminal regime. Americans incapable of
thinking for themselves, reading between the lines, or accessing
foreign media on the Internet have been brainwashed.

As the Nazi propagandist, Joseph Goebbels, said, it is easy to deceive
a people. You just tell them they have been attacked and wave the flag.

It certainly worked with Americans.

The gullibility and unconcern of the American people has had many
victims. There are 1.25 million dead Iraqis. There are 4 million
displaced Iraqis. No one knows how many are maimed and orphaned.

Iraq is in ruins, its infrastructure destroyed by American bombs,
missiles, and helicopter gunships.

We do not know the death toll in Afghanistan, but even the American
puppet regime protests the repeated killings of women and children by
US and NATO troops.

We don't know what the death toll would be in Iran if Darth Cheney and
the neocons succeed in their plot with Israel to bomb Iran, perhaps
with nuclear weapons.

Why Did You Leave Poetry Alone?
Ghassan Charbel Al-Hayat - 11/08/08//

Well done!
A few more years, a bunch of months, a handful of days would have all been meaningless. Knights never beg from Master Time. This is the Master's mission since sand was created. It is a swordsman and a woodcutter. It hates tall men, loud songs, and long shadows. It designs traps and snares, embracing and feeling its dagger, and then the hour comes. Hiding does not become a big boxer. He can only head to face the knockout. The scent of soil follows.
Well done!
You corrected a chronic mistake. This is a heart that needs too many bodies to bear it. This is an imagination that needs more loyal veins. These are poems that need a less solemn dictionary. What was the fault of this heart to bear the weights of all this passion? What was the fault of these veins to exhaust them with scarves and songs? What was the fault of the dictionary to reveal torches and butterflies?
Well done!
You are the eternal escapee. The map was caged, and you were hit by the curse of escaping cages. You enter countries only to bid them farewell. You enter a capital to secretly peek at Jerusalem. You sleep in Beirut to smell the scent of Galilee; you scold Damascus but you never forget that it is Damascus; you stay the night up in Cairo to listen to the Nile's reports. In your bag, you carry the tears of Baghdad where the death toll competes with the number of date trees. You wake up early in Amman to avoid waiting at the edge of the bridge.
You are the eternal complainer. The heart complains of its cage, the body. The imagination complains of its cage, the brain. The word complains of the rhyme in the poem; the poem complains of its cage, the dictionary; the dictionary complains of the limits of language and the checkpoints set at its borders. It is the destiny of the poet to resist all these cages; to let the fire free out of its prisons, the birds out of the fortresses, the words out of interrogation and torture chambers. It is the destiny of the poet to free maps of the ink of occupation, the homeland of settlements, the nation of the past, the universities of the darkness, and the international conscience of its endless vacation. The bird is eventually exhausted of challenging the cages. He plants a dot at the end of the line and goes to sleep.

1. The brutal revival of realpolitik
2. Georgian leader chose his moment (some background)

-----------------------------------
1. The brutal revival of realpolitik

August 11, 2008

As billions watched China stake its claim to being the 21st century's leading
power, with a stunning opening ceremony at the Beijing Olympics, its former
Cold War partner was pursuing its ambitions in an altogether more traditional
way. Russia's brutal demonstration of power in South Ossetia, a breakaway
region of its southern neighbour Georgia, marks the latest - and most alarming
- sign of the Kremlin's determination to reclaim control over former Soviet
states.
These former satellites have now been left in no doubt that Russia must be
regarded as "glavniy", or No. 1, if they wish to avoid the fate of Georgia.
Central to Vladimir Putin's nationalistic policy is a conviction that the power
of the West - seemingly unassailable at the end of the Cold War - is on the
wane. The current crisis demonstrates that the Cold War has not been replaced
by common values between East and West, but by the revival of hard
realpolitik.
Mikhail Saakashvili, Georgia's President, might have been unwise to employ
force against the pro-Russian separatists in South Ossetia last week, but that
is not the point. The Russian forces and the Kremlin hoped he would behave as
he did. The episode is an application of "reflexive control": the defeat of
an adversary through his own efforts. It is also an application of Carl von
Clausewitz's maxim that war is a tool of policy.
The aim of Russia's policy, expressed in 1992, is to "be leader of stability
and security on the entire territory of the former USSR". What has changed is
not the aim but the "correlation of forces". As Boris Yeltsin declared to
Russia's intelligence services in 1994, "global ideological confrontation has
been replaced by a struggle for spheres of interest in geopolitics". Back
then, Russia had little to struggle with. That is no longer the case.
If Western interests are not to be irreparably damaged, we will need to
understand that they are being tested on three levels: local, regional and
global. Georgia is not just a square on a chessboard, but an important country in
its own right. For two reasons, the West cannot be indifferent to what happens
there. First, Georgia's political culture is democratic, its people
pro-Western, and its sense of national identity almost indestructible. Georgia can be
defeated by Russia, but it can no longer submit to it, and therefore war
between Georgia and Russia would be a frightening prospect even if no wider
interests existed. Second, the only energy pipeline in the former USSR
independent of Russian control passes through Georgia. There will be no meaningful
energy security, let alone diversification of energy supplies, if these pipelines
become vulnerable to sabotage, like those in Iraq, or to takeover by
businesses fronting for Russian interests.

A Short Vacation
by Mahmoud Darwish

I thought that I died on Saturday
I said: I must stipulate something in my will
I did not find anything
I said: I have to invite a friend
to tell him that I am dead,
but I did not find anyone
I said: I must go to my grave
to fill it, but I did not find the way
and my grave remained empty
I said: I must do what I must:
write the last line on shades,
but the water spilled onto the letter
I said: I must do something
here and now,
but I did not find an act worthy of a dead man

I screamed: This death has no meaning!
absurdity and chaos in the senses
I will not believe that I have died a full death
perhaps I am in between?
perhaps I am a retired dead man
spending his short vacation in life!

TRAVELERS' LAPTOPS MAY BE DETAINED AT BORDER
by Ellen Nakashima

Washington Post
August 1, 2008

WASHINGTON - Federal agents may take a traveler's laptop computer or
other electronic device to an off-site location for an unspecified
period of time without any suspicion of wrongdoing, as part of border
search policies the Department of Homeland Security recently disclosed.

Also, officials may share copies of the laptop's contents with
other agencies and private entities for language translation, data
decryption or other reasons, according to the policies, dated July
16 and issued by two DHS agencies, U.S. Customs and Border Protection
and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

"The policies . . . are truly alarming," said Sen. Russell Feingold
(D-Wis.), who is probing the government's border search practices. He
said he intends to introduce legislation soon that would require
reasonable suspicion for border searches, as well as prohibit profiling
on race, religion or national origin.

DHS officials said the newly disclosed policies â€" which apply
to anyone entering the country, including U.S. citizens â€" are
reasonable and necessary to prevent terrorism. Officials said such
procedures have long been in place but were disclosed last month
because of public interest in the matter.

Civil liberties and business travel20groups have pressed the government
to disclose its procedures as an increasing number of international
travelers have reported that their laptops, cellphones and other
digital devices had been taken â€" for months, in at least one case
â€" and their contents examined.

The policies state that officers may "detain" laptops "for a reasonable
period of time" to "review and analyze information." This may take
place "absent individualized suspicion."

The policies cover "any device capable of storing information
in digital or analog form," including hard drives, flash drives,
cellphones, iPods, pagers, beepers, and video and audio tapes. They
also cover "all papers and other written documentation," including
books, pamphlets and "written materials commonly referred to as
'pocket trash' or 'pocket litter.' "

Reasonable measures must be taken to protect business information and
attorney-client privileged material, the policies say, but there is
no specific mention of the handling of personal data such as medical
and financial records.

The Hamdan War Crimes Trial: An Illusion of Justice

The Huffington Post
August 7, 2008

After 7 years, the Bush administration got its first war crimes
conviction but not of anyone who plotted the 9/11 attacks, but that of
Osama bin Laden's driver. Yemeni national Salim Ahmed Hamdan's crime
was to chauffeur bin Laden in Afghanistan, which the government argued
allowed bin Laden to plot attacks against the United States. Hamdan
was convicted for material support for terrorism and could spend the
rest of his life in prison. In fact, whatever sentence a court may
determine, the Bush administration claims that it has the authority
to hold him indefinitely as an "enemy combatant" until the cessation
of hostilities in the so-called "war on terror."

Hamdan, who has a fourth-grade education and was earning $200 a month
as one of Osama bin Laden's drivers, has been detained for almost
seven years now. It was Hamdan's case in 2006 that led the Supreme
Court to rule that President Bush lacked the authority to constitute
military tribunals, but Congress subsequently enacted the Military
Commissions Act (MCA) to re-constitute those tribunals, rendering
Hamdan's victory worthless to him.

I observed Hamdan's trial in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba for Human Rights
First. At trial, a parade of government criminal investigators

testified that Hamdan was not involved in any terrorist attacks,
such as the USS Cole bombing, the Kenya embassy bombings, and or
even 9/11. But Hamdan was charged with conspiracy and providing
material support to a terrorist organization. The six-member jury,
however, convicted him of material support of terrorism. Material
support and conspiracy are prosecutable under federal criminal law
and many persons have been prosecuted in federal courts under such
crimes post 9/11. Hamdan could thus very well have been prosecuted in
federal court but the government instead decided to make such offenses
war crimes. This in legal terms is ex post facto application of the
law-making something a crime when it was not a crime at the time it
was committed â€" and is prohibited by the U.S. Constitution.

To make the case that military commissions are prosecuting war
crimes, the government has argued, as it did in the case of Hamdan,
that the United States and al Qaeda have been at war since the early
1990s. This is remarkable since most Americans never heard of al Qaeda
until 2000. But the government's view is that al Qaeda in its speeches,
websites, and fatwas declaring war on the United States were sufficient
to trigger the laws of war. At Hamdan's trial, the government debuted
"The al Qaeda Plan"-a made to order $20,000 movie comprised of al
Qaeda propaganda videos found on the Internet to prove, amon g other
things, the government's analysis of when the armed conflict with al
Qaeda began. This interpretation of when an armed conflict begins or
ends is a dangerous stretch, as it would allow any group to say that
it is at "war," and would thus trigger a state of armed conflict.

Dear All, this is sad and shocking news - we should all mourn his death. anjx

3 obituaries for Mahmoud Darwish

------------------------------------------------------
1.

A war for war's sake
What we are now seeing is the expression of the will of a people that has no choice but to resist, writes Mahmoud Darwish
This is a war for war's sake, since it has no other aim than its self-perpetuation. Everyone knows this; and, once again, the sword will prove incapable of crushing the spirit. The Arabs have offered Israel a collective peace in return for Israeli withdrawal from a fifth of our historical homeland. Israel's answer to this generous offer was to declare all-out war against the Palestinian people, and against the Arabs' very imagination.