colonialism

Expansive Economies and Limited Economies: Industrial capitalism is characterized by population growth, economic growth, expansion and intensification. [1] Although there was a short-lived case of industrial capitalism between about 1585 and 1622 in the Netherlands, [2] industrial capitalism as we know it today really originated in England, based on the apparently limitless fossil reserves of coal and the presence of many landless people who had to live by their labour. [3] These vast reservoirs of fuel gave rise to technologies that permitted mass production and facilitated the conquest and settlement of lands all over the globe. In the 20th century petroleum oil replaced coal as the fuel of industrial expansion, particularly where wheeled transport was concerned, although coal remained a mainstay for electricity production. [This article is an extract from Sheila Newman, Demography Territory Law: The Rules of Animal and Human Populations, Countershock Press, 2013, which is part of a four-book series, of which the first two have so far been published.]
In contrast to Britain, America, Australia, Canada, with their larger landmasses, fuel reserves and well established trade links, small isolated islander societies had to learn to live within firmly fixed, immediate, territorial limits.

Any isolated island society which failed to do this must have perished quickly.

Two famous examples of reputed ‘failure’ to live within limits were Nauru and Easter Island (Rapanui). Nauru society had survived for many centuries, perhaps two or 3,000 years, but was quickly brought to its knees by capitalist ‘success’. Remarkable for its natural wealth and fertility, it did not survive the transformation of its phosphate and limestone coral-island base into a guano-mine for global-based agriculture, despite access to large but transient commercial wealth. [4]

From a well-watered densely vegetated, undulating Eden of native gardens, it was razed within about 62 years (between 1906 and it independence in 1968) by mining shovels to a flat, waterless desert, within a narrow fringe of marginal sandy coast. Rainfall ceased to gather on the island, but simply ran off the edges. The once self-sufficient nation now imports almost all food and water from Australia.

Nauru sought compensation in the 1990s through the ineffectual International Court of Justice but finally settled with Australia outside the court for a paltry $107 million.
Nauruans are now a spectacularly unhealthy and divided people, who have been obliged to rent out their devastated country as an international refugee camp to the colonial Australian government.

Although industrial economic exploitation for outside interests quite clearly destroyed Nauru, the wider industrialized world knows little of this. The press portrays the tragedy of Nauru as something the islanders brought on themselves.

Whereas the fate of Nauru is accessible to any who care to seek – although few do - the decline of prosperous Easter Island (Rapanui) has become shrouded in mystery and myth. It has become the subject of famous inconclusive investigations and explanations, including Thor Heyerdahl’s rafting experiment to test a theory that an earlier race of people built the famous giant statues on the island, and of Jared Diamond’s Collapse book among many others. Diamond popularized a theory with elements of biblical parable, not unlike Sodom and Gomorrah, but minus God.

Such theories leave the wider industrialized world with the idea that the Rapanuians were ironically the masters of their own destruction.

It seems, however, that Easter Island was, after all, like so many islands, including beautiful, rich Haiti, just another island victim of piracy and colonial forces in the European Trade Wars. The overwhelming evidence for this will be presented further on in Demography Territory Law: The Rules of Animal and Human Populations for Easter Island and in Book Three for Haiti.
Recognising the real causes of the destruction of Nauru, Easter Island, Haiti and similarly fated islands has far-reaching consequences.

For Jared Diamond, a North American, one reason to explore the failure to prosper of Easter Island and whole civilizations in the ‘developing world’ was to try to rationally dispel 20th century racist theories for persistent poverty and overpopulation among brown and black peoples. Another reason was because Diamond saw a parallel between the fate of Easter Island and the likely fate of capitalist growth economies, as doomed to collapse.

Diamond theorized that, like modern global citizens, the Easter Islanders failed to heed abundant signs that they were overpopulating and overexploiting their environment. For years this idea has been a popular subject of elaboration by ecologists like Tim Flannery in his book The Future Eaters [5] and bloggers and list-owners like Jay Hanson, who owned The Dieoff List [6] and pioneered EnergyResources among several famous resource depletion discussion lists. Just key Easter Island into an internet browser and you will find endless discussions about the mystery of the islanders eating themselves out of house and home as they continued to senselessly construct huge statues.

Ecological die-off writers’ theorise that the major difference between Easter Island and nations in the global economy is one of scale. The apparent inability of Easter Islanders to take stock in time contained a dramatic irony due to the tininess of their territory, which meant that the warning signs should have been inescapable to all but the willfully blind. In these days of sophisticated modern communications and widespread education, similarities can easily be drawn.

Why, ecologists ask, do modern humans also sit like proverbial experimental frogs in slowly heating water, and fail to jump out of the saucepan or turn off the gas? How is it that humans seem not to understand the incremental nature of systems failure, despite a myriad of gauges and dashboards, statistics and publications?

“Are we all doomed, like the Easter Islanders?” the cry goes out.

What if our fundamental assumptions are wrong and the Easter Islanders actually didn’t befoul and destroy their own nest after all? I will argue a need to abandon the parable that the Easter Islanders brought about their own doom because it probably is no more true than that the Nauruans brought about theirs. (More about this later.)

The untrumpeted and inarguable truth is that Easter Island, like many, many successful Pacific Island societies, managed to survive for thousands of years. The durability of Pacific Island settlements is born out by DNA records which show that the Lapita people and their societies have been around for between 40 and 60,000 years, notably in New Guinea.
Major exploration and European colonization of Pacific Islands occurred a century or two later than in many other areas, like South America and Africa. The transition in the Pacific from self-sufficiency and order to overshoot and disorganisation over the 19th and 20th centuries was therefore in many cases carefully and scientifically documented by anthropologists whose excellent work now lies in dusty tomes. Not all of it caught the limelight of controversy like Margaret Mead’s study of Samoa. [7]

If what emerges is that colonisation and capitalism destroyed these island cultures, does that mean that the same forces are now destroying the rest of the world as scientists like Jared Diamond and Tim Flannery seem to think?

Well, yes and no.

This book argues that there are two major systems in the industrial world. One of these systems is beyond the control of its citizens, but the other is not.

The work of Diamond, Flannery and others does not take significantly into account that the remorseless conditions of uncontrollable population growth and economic growth which are driving some major first world countries into overshoot do not really exist in the Western Continental European system.

Yes, Europe’s population is too big to maintain without fossil fuel despite nuclear supplements already in place and it is causing unsustainable environmental destruction beyond and within its own borders, but the Europeans know this and they are preparing to ‘downsize’ thorough natural attrition. In fact population growth in Europe slowed dramatically from the first oil shock in 1972-73.[8] The problem is that the populations of North America, Britain, Australia, Canada, etc – the Anglophone states – failed to slow their growth after the first oil shock, even though this was apparently desired by some of their leaders. [9]

Not only did they fail to slow down, they have actually increased their population growth rate on bases which have more than doubled since the 1970s, in the face of increasingly serious threats to democracy, international politics and environment.

Since the oil price-rises and global financial shocks at the beginning of the 21st century, the Anglophone states have hugely ramped up aggressive exploitation of their own, as well as other countries’ natural resources, with horrendous consequences to environment, democracy and international politics. (War with Iraq, Afghanistan, fracking for gas, blowing the tops off mountains for coal that had been considered uneconomic half a century prior, mining arctic national parks, etc.) These consequences have shocked and alarmed their own informed citizenry and the rest of the world. Yet the Anglophone states do not seem able to exert any more control over their fates than did the Easter Islanders, the Nauruans and the Haitians.

The problem of inertia in dealing with ‘overshoot’ in the Anglophone states is worsened by their institutional and commercial investment in continued population growth.
Europe’s Roman law system seems to contain a solution in its retention of some features of traditional local societies. Starting with France, the system has been adopted by nearly every country in Europe since the 19th century, making the Anglophone system a minority one.

The principle difference between the systems is that Anglophone state citizens have very little democratic power to organize to defend themselves against a Market and destructive corporate interests to which they and their governments have become captive. In continental Europe, however, citizens and the state have quite effective power against corporate interests, largely because the state still controls most of the land-use. In the Anglophone states, private and corporate ownership of land, resources and utilities rivals that of the state.

Industrialization looks increasingly like a short-lived phenomenon. Unlike the successful Pacific Islander societies, industrial society has no experience of economies or polities lasting thousands of years. Despite this, business as usual in industrial societies, depends on a widespread assumption that industrial capitalist society will go on forever. Moreover, it is believed that the future holds material utopias which will gradually fuse into some kind of total knowledge. A popular book by Ray Kurzweil, The Singularity, is an excellent example of this new religion. Central to Kurzweil’s thesis is an extrapolation of “Moore’s Law” where trends based on past rate and production of technological improvement go on exponentially forever. [10] This works fine as an isolated theory, but the author gives little consideration to practical problems. The major practical problem is the concomitant trends in material, social and environmental costs [11] that underlie those past trends and which extrapolation of those trends would also increase.

NOTES

[1] Burnham, Peter, 2003. Capitalism: The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Politics. Oxford University Press, p.64"Karl Polanyi concludes that capitalism did not emerge until the Poor Law Reform Act of 1834. Capital existed in many forms - commercial capital and money-dealing capital - long before industrialization. For this reason the period between the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries is often referred to as the merchant capital phase of capitalism. Industrial capitalism, which Marx dates from the last third of the eighteenth century, finally establishes the domination of the capitalist mode of production. In contrast to liberals, writers in the Marxist tradition understand twentieth-century developments in terms of the movement from the laissez-faire phase of capitalism to the monopoly stage of capitalism. On the basis of Lenin's famous pamphlet, Imperialism: The Highest Stage of Capitalism, the monopoly stage is said to exist when: the export of capital alongside the export of commodities becomes of prime importance; banking and industrial capital merge to form finance capital; production and distribution are centralized in huge trusts and cartels; international monopoly combines of capitalists divide up the world into spheres of interest; and national states seek to defend capitalist interests thus perpetuating the likelihood of war (see also imperialism).

[2] The Netherlands case is explored in detail in Book 2 of the Demography, Territory and Law2: Land-tenure and the Origins of Capitalism in Britain, series in the chapters related to the Trade Wars from the 14th century to the 19th century.

[3] This phenomenon of dispossessed labourers in Britain is a core subject of the second volume of Demography, Territory and Law.

[4] Mary Nazzal, April 2005. An Environment Destroyed and International Law, p.3. http://www.lawanddevelopment.org/docs/nauru.pdf. "By 1906, the Pacific Islands Company reached an agreement which granted them mining rights in Nauru at which point the company was renamed the Pacific Phosphate Company. It is interesting to note that at this time the Nauruans could already foresee the demise of their island. A traditional song created in 1910 illustrates this point:
By chance they discovered the heart of my home
And gave it the name phosphate
If they were to ship all phosphate from my home
There will be no place for me to go
Should this be the plan of the British Commission
I shall never see my home on the hill.'"

"[...]The Jaluit-Gesselschaft mining rights were transferred to the Pacific Phosphate Company for a cash payment of £2000, £12,500 worth of shares in the Pacific Phosphate Company and a royalty payment for every ton exported. While the Nauruans were not part of any formal agreement, the Germans paid the native landowners a very modest amount per ton of rock removed from their land."

After Germany was defeated, Nauru became part of a new political agenda designed at the 1919 Versailles and Australia occupied and administered the island.

See also, TED (Trade Environment Database) Case Studies: Case Number: 412, Case Mnemonic: Nauru, Case Name: Phosphate Mining in Nauru, Case Author: Michael E. Pukrop, May, 1997. http://www1.american.edu/ted/NAURU.htm.

[5] The passage you are reading is from Sheila Newman, Demography Territory Law: The Rules of Animal and Human Populations, Countershock Press, 2013. The second book in the series is, Sheila Newman, Demography Territory Law2: Land-tenure and the Origins of Capitalism in Britain, Countershock Press, 2014. The volume in the series that includes remarks on Haiti is still being edited. It will be published by Countershock Press as Sheila Newman ,Demography Territory Law2: Land-tenure and the Origins of Democracy in France, probably in 2018.

[6] Tim Flannery, 1994. The Future Eaters, 1994, Reed Books, Melbourne.

[7] This was a yahoo list about energy resources that was popular in the late 1990s and which was one of the first run by Jay Hanson in a series of yahoo lists with an international membership. There is an associated Dieoff website at http://www.dieoff.com. Jay Hanson has a facebook page at http://www.facebook.com/JayInHawaii [Since these old addresses don't have SSL certificates, I have not activated links to them.]

[8] Sykes, Brian, 2002. The Seven Daughters of Eve: The Science That Reveals Our Genetic Ancestry, Corgi Press, UK.

[9] This slowing was a precautionary response to the prospect of oil depletion, which threatens the survival of the unprecedentedly large post-war populations. See Chapter 7 of Newman, S.M., 2002. The Growth Lobby and its Absence in Australia and France. Environmental Sociology Research thesis, Swinburne University, 2002. https://researchbank.swinburne.edu.au/file/a3115a39-c50a-4504-8d1f-4aca21be26fd/1/Sheila%20Newman%20Thesis.pdf, Chapters 6 and 7. [Note that the virtual location of this thesis at the universitiy changes from time to time, so if you cannot find it there, I suggest you use a search engine to find its new address or other copies that exist on the internet. ]

[10] Stephen D. Mumford, 1996. The Life and Death of NSSM 200: How the Destruction of Political Will Doomed a U.S. Population Policy, Centre for Research on Population and Security, Research Triangle Park, North Carolina, pp.179-352. This study also contains an appendix recommending population growth reduction as a method of combatting fossil fuel depletion.. (Appendix 2.) NSSM 200 stood for National Security Study Memorandum. This was an interagency study of world population growth, US population growth, and the potential impacts on national security. In this work evidence was given to support an argument that population policy initiatives failed largely due to interference from a lobby group of Catholic bishops in the United States. See pp.179-352).

Aristide R. Zolberg, 1993. Are the Industrial Countries under siege. In G. Luciani, (Ed), Migration Policies in Europe and the United States. Kluwer Academic Publishers, Netherlands, pp.53-82, p. 61 : "In the 1970s, mounting objections by conservative segments of the citizenry to the presence of culturally and often somatically distinct minorities, as well as the oil crisis and ensuing economic crisis, prompted the governments of the industrial countries to undertake a drastic reevaluation of ongoing immigration, but the difficulty of reducing the flows to the desired level, as well as to restoring the status quo, precipitated renewed fear of 'invasion'. In the United States, in the 'stagflation' 1970s, estimates of illegal immigrants escalated to as high as twenty million, on the basis of which it was argued that the nation had 'lost control of its borders'. The major solution proposed was to impose sanctions on employers of unauthorized labour, but this failed of enactment because of resistance by organized business interests, so that in 1979 the Congress established a commission to overhaul the entire immigration system."

[11] Ray Kurzweil, 2005. The Singularity, Penguin Group, USA. Review by Robert D. Steele. www.amazon.com/Singularity-Near-Humans-Transcend-Biology/product-reviews/0670033847/ref=pr_all_summary_cm_cr_acr_txt?ie=UTF8&showViewpoints=1.

[12] Energy costs in fuel and materials, plus the social costs of the politics of wealth distribution (piracy, slavery, environmental impoverishment, third world inequality, destruction of whole peoples through colonization, loss of biodiversity, rise in pollution, social engineering etcetera.)

As it goes through the motions of acknowledging the centenary of the birth of John Fitzgerald Kennedy on 29 May 1917, the mainstream media will, of course, continue to conceal the true significance of his life and his achievements as United States' President and, before that, as an elected representative in both the United States' House of Representatives and Senate. Heroically, on at least two occasions, JFK overruled plans by the United States' Joint Chiefs of Staff to launch a first strike nuclear war against the Soviet Union. For that alone, the debt of gratitude owed by humanity to JFK cannot be repaid.

President John F. Kennedy's Commencement Address of 10 June 1963 at the American University is included below. It was linked to from an article by Paul Craig Roberts, JFK at 100 (24/5/17). (The video of this speech could not be embedded here. It can be found here on the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum.

One hundred years ago, on 29 May 1917, John Fitzgerald Kennedy, better known to us as 'JFK', was born to the business magnate Joseph P. Kennedy Senior and Rose Kennedy. At that time, most advanced industrial countries, including Australia, were fighting each other in the 'War to End All Wars' of 1914-1918. The United States was to join that war shortly afterwards. A total of 18 million lives were lost in that war by one estimate. That includes 116,708 from the United States and 60,000 from Australia.

In subsequent years, the Second World War of 1931-1945 followed the supposed 'War to End All Wars'. In that war JFK's elder brother Joseph P. Kennedy Junior was to die heroically in 1944 test-flying a BQ-8 "robot" bomber or drone, which had been converted from a B-24 bomber.

JFK himself, after overcoming a medical disability, which prevented him from joining the U.S. Navy Reserve in 1940, took command of the PT-109 Patrol Torpedo boat in October 1943. Lieutenant Kennedy's courageous conduct as commander of PT-109 in the fight against the Japanese in the Solomon Islands was to be subsequently depicted in the book PT-109 and film of the same name.

After the war, JFK was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives in 1946. From 1953 until he assumed the Office of President, JFK served as Senator. During that time JFK became renowned as a supporter of political movements by colonial peoples for independence, notably the Algerian FLN which was waging a guerrilla war for independence from France.

One of the most carefully researched, widely published and officially ignored speeches Senator Kennedy ever delivered was his address in 1957 outlining the interest of the West in a negotiated solution for eventual self-determination in Algeria. The speech proved to be substantially and in some ways distressingly prophetic in subsequent years, but it was bitterly criticised at the time in Washington as well a Paris. his name and speech, he later discovered, were hailed throughout Africa—and an American correspondent who visited the Algerian camp related to the Senator his surprise at being interviewed by weary, grimy rebels on Kennedy's chances for the Presidency. There was, however, no Algerian vote in this country and reporters looked hard for motives.

In retrospect, Kennedy never agreed with critics who felt he should not have spoken on this subject—although "independence" sounded too precise for his purposes, he admitted—nor with those who felt he was insincerely searching for headlines. As a junior Senator, he could do no more than raise his voice, ...

The Algerian speech was consistent with the Senator's long-standing convictions about the dangers of Western colonialism and with two earlier speeches he had given on Indochina. ₁ The longer the independence of the Vietnamese people was postponed, he said in 1953 and 1954, and the longer we believed repeated French and American predictions of an imminent French victory, the more difficult the future would be for Vietnam and her sister states once they were fully free. He could not then have foreseen how deeply he would be involved in those correctly involved difficulties—Algeria, Indochina, India, Poland, Latin America and defence—Kennedy's speeches well ahead of both his colleagues and the headlines. (from Kennedy - the Classic Biography (1965) by Ted Sorrenson, p65)

If JFK were alive today, he would be just as strongly opposed to the meddling in Syria, Iran, Yemen, Ukraine, Somalia, etc. by the current rulers of the United States.

The true historical significance of President Kennedy, as partially described above and below, above will be glossed over, ignored or denied by the mainstream news media, as will, of course, the vast mountain of evidence of the conspiracy by the deep state, including the CIA and FBI, to murder President Kennedy on 22 November 1963

President John F. Kennedy's Commencement Address of 10 June 1963 at the American University

President Anderson, members of the faculty, board of trustees, distinguished guests, my old colleague, Senator Bob Byrd, who has earned his degree through many years of attending night law school, while I am earning mine in the next 30 minutes, distinguished guests, ladies and gentlemen:

It is with great pride that I participate in this ceremony of the American University, sponsored by the Methodist Church, founded by Bishop John Fletcher Hurst, and first opened by President Woodrow Wilson in 1914. This is a young and growing university, but it has already fulfilled Bishop Hurst's enlightened hope for the study of history and public affairs in a city devoted to the making of history and the conduct of the public's business. By sponsoring this institution of higher learning for all who wish to learn, whatever their color or their creed, the Methodists of this area and the Nation deserve the Nation's thanks, and I commend all those who are today graduating.

Professor Woodrow Wilson once said that every man sent out from a university should be a man of his nation as well as a man of his time, and I am confident that the men and women who carry the honor of graduating from this institution will continue to give from their lives, from their talents, a high measure of public service and public support.

"There are few earthly things more beautiful than a university," wrote John Masefield in his tribute to English universities--and his words are equally true today. He did not refer to spires and towers, to campus greens and ivied walls. He admired the splendid beauty of the university, he said, because it was "a place where those who hate ignorance may strive to know, where those who perceive truth may strive to make others see."

I have, therefore, chosen this time and this place to discuss a topic on which ignorance too often abounds and the truth is too rarely perceived--yet it is the most important topic on earth: world peace.

What kind of peace do I mean? What kind of peace do we seek? Not a Pax Americana enforced on the world by American weapons of war. Not the peace of the grave or the security of the slave. I am talking about genuine peace, the kind of peace that makes life on earth worth living, the kind that enables men and nations to grow and to hope and to build a better life for their children--not merely peace for Americans but peace for all men and women--not merely peace in our time but peace for all time.

I speak of peace because of the new face of war. Total war makes no sense in an age when great powers can maintain large and relatively invulnerable nuclear forces and refuse to surrender without resort to those forces. It makes no sense in an age when a single nuclear weapon contains almost ten times the explosive force delivered by all the allied air forces in the Second World War. It makes no sense in an age when the deadly poisons produced by a nuclear exchange would be carried by wind and water and soil and seed to the far corners of the globe and to generations yet unborn.

Today the expenditure of billions of dollars every year on weapons acquired for the purpose of making sure we never need to use them is essential to keeping the peace. But surely the acquisition of such idle stockpiles--which can only destroy and never create--is not the only, much less the most efficient, means of assuring peace.

I speak of peace, therefore, as the necessary rational end of rational men. I realize that the pursuit of peace is not as dramatic as the pursuit of war--and frequently the words of the pursuer fall on deaf ears. But we have no more urgent task.

Some say that it is useless to speak of world peace or world law or world disarmament--and that it will be useless until the leaders of the Soviet Union adopt a more enlightened attitude. I hope they do. I believe we can help them do it. But I also believe that we must reexamine our own attitude--as individuals and as a Nation--for our attitude is as essential as theirs. And every graduate of this school, every thoughtful citizen who despairs of war and wishes to bring peace, should begin by looking inward--by examining his own attitude toward the possibilities of peace, toward the Soviet Union, toward the course of the cold war and toward freedom and peace here at home.

First: Let us examine our attitude toward peace itself. Too many of us think it is impossible. Too many think it unreal. But that is a dangerous, defeatist belief. It leads to the conclusion that war is inevitable--that mankind is doomed--that we are gripped by forces we cannot control.

We need not accept that view. Our problems are manmade--therefore, they can be solved by man. And man can be as big as he wants. No problem of human destiny is beyond human beings. Man's reason and spirit have often solved the seemingly unsolvable--and we believe they can do it again.

I am not referring to the absolute, infinite concept of peace and good will of which some fantasies and fanatics dream. I do not deny the value of hopes and dreams but we merely invite discouragement and incredulity by making that our only and immediate goal.

Let us focus instead on a more practical, more attainable peace-- based not on a sudden revolution in human nature but on a gradual evolution in human institutions--on a series of concrete actions and effective agreements which are in the interest of all concerned. There is no single, simple key to this peace--no grand or magic formula to be adopted by one or two powers. Genuine peace must be the product of many nations, the sum of many acts. It must be dynamic, not static, changing to meet the challenge of each new generation. For peace is a process--a way of solving problems.

With such a peace, there will still be quarrels and conflicting interests, as there are within families and nations. World peace, like community peace, does not require that each man love his neighbor--it requires only that they live together in mutual tolerance, submitting their disputes to a just and peaceful settlement. And history teaches us that enmities between nations, as between individuals, do not last forever. However fixed our likes and dislikes may seem, the tide of time and events will often bring surprising changes in the relations between nations and neighbors.

So let us persevere. Peace need not be impracticable, and war need not be inevitable. By defining our goal more clearly, by making it seem more manageable and less remote, we can help all peoples to see it, to draw hope from it, and to move irresistibly toward it.

Second: Let us reexamine our attitude toward the Soviet Union. It is discouraging to think that their leaders may actually believe what their propagandists write. It is discouraging to read a recent authoritative Soviet text on Military Strategy and find, on page after page, wholly baseless and incredible claims--such as the allegation that "American imperialist circles are preparing to unleash different types of wars . . . that there is a very real threat of a preventive war being unleashed by American imperialists against the Soviet Union . . . [and that] the political aims of the American imperialists are to enslave economically and politically the European and other capitalist countries . . . [and] to achieve world domination . . . by means of aggressive wars."

Truly, as it was written long ago: "The wicked flee when no man pursueth." Yet it is sad to read these Soviet statements--to realize the extent of the gulf between us. But it is also a warning--a warning to the American people not to fall into the same trap as the Soviets, not to see only a distorted and desperate view of the other side, not to see conflict as inevitable, accommodation as impossible, and communication as nothing more than an exchange of threats.

No government or social system is so evil that its people must be considered as lacking in virtue. As Americans, we find communism profoundly repugnant as a negation of personal freedom and dignity. But we can still hail the Russian people for their many achievements--in science and space, in economic and industrial growth, in culture and in acts of courage.

Among the many traits the peoples of our two countries have in common, none is stronger than our mutual abhorrence of war. Almost unique among the major world powers, we have never been at war with each other. And no nation in the history of battle ever suffered more than the Soviet Union suffered in the course of the Second World War. At least 20 million lost their lives. Countless millions of homes and farms were burned or sacked. A third of the nation's territory, including nearly two thirds of its industrial base, was turned into a wasteland--a loss equivalent to the devastation of this country east of Chicago.

Today, should total war ever break out again--no matter how--our two countries would become the primary targets. It is an ironic but accurate fact that the two strongest powers are the two in the most danger of devastation. All we have built, all we have worked for, would be destroyed in the first 24 hours. And even in the cold war, which brings burdens and dangers to so many nations, including this Nation's closest allies--our two countries bear the heaviest burdens. For we are both devoting massive sums of money to weapons that could be better devoted to combating ignorance, poverty, and disease. We are both caught up in a vicious and dangerous cycle in which suspicion on one side breeds suspicion on the other, and new weapons beget counterweapons.

In short, both the United States and its allies, and the Soviet Union and its allies, have a mutually deep interest in a just and genuine peace and in halting the arms race. Agreements to this end are in the interests of the Soviet Union as well as ours--and even the most hostile nations can be relied upon to accept and keep those treaty obligations, and only those treaty obligations, which are in their own interest.

So, let us not be blind to our differences--but let us also direct attention to our common interests and to the means by which those differences can be resolved. And if we cannot end now our differences, at least we can help make the world safe for diversity. For, in the final analysis, our most basic common link is that we all inhabit this small planet. We all breathe the same air. We all cherish our children's future. And we are all mortal.

Third: Let us reexamine our attitude toward the cold war, remembering that we are not engaged in a debate, seeking to pile up debating points. We are not here distributing blame or pointing the finger of judgment. We must deal with the world as it is, and not as it might have been had the history of the last 18 years been different.

We must, therefore, persevere in the search for peace in the hope that constructive changes within the Communist bloc might bring within reach solutions which now seem beyond us. We must conduct our affairs in such a way that it becomes in the Communists' interest to agree on a genuine peace. Above all, while defending our own vital interests, nuclear powers must avert those confrontations which bring an adversary to a choice of either a humiliating retreat or a nuclear war. To adopt that kind of course in the nuclear age would be evidence only of the bankruptcy of our policy--or of a collective death-wish for the world.

To secure these ends, America's weapons are nonprovocative, carefully controlled, designed to deter, and capable of selective use. Our military forces are committed to peace and disciplined in self- restraint. Our diplomats are instructed to avoid unnecessary irritants and purely rhetorical hostility.

For we can seek a relaxation of tension without relaxing our guard. And, for our part, we do not need to use threats to prove that we are resolute. We do not need to jam foreign broadcasts out of fear our faith will be eroded. We are unwilling to impose our system on any unwilling people--but we are willing and able to engage in peaceful competition with any people on earth.

Meanwhile, we seek to strengthen the United Nations, to help solve its financial problems, to make it a more effective instrument for peace, to develop it into a genuine world security system--a system capable of resolving disputes on the basis of law, of insuring the security of the large and the small, and of creating conditions under which arms can finally be abolished.

At the same time we seek to keep peace inside the non-Communist world, where many nations, all of them our friends, are divided over issues which weaken Western unity, which invite Communist intervention or which threaten to erupt into war. Our efforts in West New Guinea, in the Congo, in the Middle East, and in the Indian subcontinent, have been persistent and patient despite criticism from both sides. We have also tried to set an example for others--by seeking to adjust small but significant differences with our own closest neighbors in Mexico and in Canada.

Speaking of other nations, I wish to make one point clear. We are bound to many nations by alliances. Those alliances exist because our concern and theirs substantially overlap. Our commitment to defend Western Europe and West Berlin, for example, stands undiminished because of the identity of our vital interests. The United States will make no deal with the Soviet Union at the expense of other nations and other peoples, not merely because they are our partners, but also because their interests and ours converge

Our interests converge, however, not only in defending the frontiers of freedom, but in pursuing the paths of peace. It is our hope-- and the purpose of allied policies--to convince the Soviet Union that she, too, should let each nation choose its own future, so long as that choice does not interfere with the choices of others. The Communist drive to impose their political and economic system on others is the primary cause of world tension today. For there can be no doubt that, if all nations could refrain from interfering in the self-determination of others, the peace would be much more assured.

This will require a new effort to achieve world law--a new context for world discussions. It will require increased understanding between the Soviets and ourselves. And increased understanding will require increased contact and communication. One step in this direction is the proposed arrangement for a direct line between Moscow and Washington, to avoid on each side the dangerous delays, misunderstandings, and misreadings of the other's actions which might occur at a time of crisis.

We have also been talking in Geneva about the other first-step measures of arms control designed to limit the intensity of the arms race and to reduce the risks of accidental war. Our primary long range interest in Geneva, however, is general and complete disarmament-- designed to take place by stages, permitting parallel political developments to build the new institutions of peace which would take the place of arms. The pursuit of disarmament has been an effort of this Government since the 1920's. It has been urgently sought by the past three administrations. And however dim the prospects may be today, we intend to continue this effort--to continue it in order that all countries, including our own, can better grasp what the problems and possibilities of disarmament are.

The one major area of these negotiations where the end is in sight, yet where a fresh start is badly needed, is in a treaty to outlaw nuclear tests. The conclusion of such a treaty, so near and yet so far, would check the spiraling arms race in one of its most dangerous areas. It would place the nuclear powers in a position to deal more effectively with one of the greatest hazards which man faces in 1963, the further spread of nuclear arms. It would increase our security--it would decrease the prospects of war. Surely this goal is sufficiently important to require our steady pursuit, yielding neither to the temptation to give up the whole effort nor the temptation to give up our insistence on vital and responsible safeguards.

I am taking this opportunity, therefore, to announce two important decisions in this regard.

First: Chairman khrushchev, Prime Minister Macmillan, and I have agreed that high-level discussions will shortly begin in Moscow looking toward early agreement on a comprehensive test ban treaty. Our hopes must be tempered with the caution of history--but with our hopes go the hopes of all mankind.

Second: To make clear our good faith and solemn convictions on the matter, I now declare that the United States does not propose to conduct nuclear tests in the atmosphere so long as other states do not do so. We will not be the first to resume. Such a declaration is no substitute for a formal binding treaty, but I hope it will help us achieve one. Nor would such a treaty be a substitute for disarmament, but I hope it will help us achieve it.

Finally, my fellow Americans, let us examine our attitude toward peace and freedom here at home. The quality and spirit of our own society must justify and support our efforts abroad. We must show it in the dedication of our own lives--as many of you who are graduating today will have a unique opportunity to do, by serving without pay in the Peace Corps abroad or in the proposed National Service Corps here at home.

But wherever we are, we must all, in our daily lives, live up to the age-old faith that peace and freedom walk together. In too many of our cities today, the peace is not secure because the freedom is incomplete.

It is the responsibility of the executive branch at all levels of government--local, State, and National--to provide and protect that freedom for all of our citizens by all means within their authority. It is the responsibility of the legislative branch at all levels, wherever that authority is not now adequate, to make it adequate. And it is the responsibility of all citizens in all sections of this country to respect the rights of all others and to respect the law of the land.

All this is not unrelated to world peace. "When a man's ways please the Lord," the Scriptures tell us, "he maketh even his enemies to be at peace with him." And is not peace, in the last analysis, basically a matter of human rights--the right to live out our lives without fear of devastation--the right to breathe air as nature provided it--the right of future generations to a healthy existence?

While we proceed to safeguard our national interests, let us also safeguard human interests. And the elimination of war and arms is clearly in the interest of both. No treaty, however much it may be to the advantage of all, however tightly it may be worded, can provide absolute security against the risks of deception and evasion. But it can--if it is sufficiently effective in its enforcement and if it is sufficiently in the interests of its signers--offer far more security and far fewer risks than an unabated, uncontrolled, unpredictable arms race.

The United States, as the world knows, will never start a war. We do not want a war. We do not now expect a war. This generation of Americans has already had enough--more than enough--of war and hate and oppression. We shall be prepared if others wish it. We shall be alert to try to stop it. But we shall also do our part to build a world of peace where the weak are safe and the strong are just. We are not helpless before that task or hopeless of its success. Confident and unafraid, we labor on--not toward a strategy of annihilation but toward a strategy of peace.

Footnote[s]

1. ↑ From General Giap Knew (30/8/13) | Kennedys and King by Mani Kink :

Vo Hong Nam, General Giap's youngest son, ... stated in a very clear and firm voice, "He was withdrawing from Vietnam." Momentarily surprised by what I had just heard, I then quickly asked him to repeat what he had just said so as to be sure I had heard right. He then stated in a very clear and firm voice, "President Kennedy was withdrawing from Vietnam in late 1963." I was beyond a loss for words and sat transfixed at what I had just heard. The son of General Vo Nguyen Giap, sitting just a few feet across from me, had just unequivocally confirmed what many scholars and experts had pieced together and been saying for years, only to be dismissed by the Establishment as "wishful thinkers" and starry-eyed idealists or, in some cases, as "Kennedy apologists". Some had even been challenged as to the validity of their sources although many correctly cited the available U.S. government record from the Kennedy Administration papers as well as the National Security Action Memorandums (NSAMs) signed by President Kennedy in October 1963. Yet, here was the most astonishing and perhaps unimpeachable source of proof, right in front of my eyes. What could be a more credible and original direct source than the former "enemy", General Vo Nguyen Giap (represented by his son), confirming that its rival's leader, U.S. President John F. Kennedy, was indeed logistically carrying out a de-escalation policy for American personnel to withdraw in phases (until there would be virtually no military advisors left by 1965). ...

by Elena Gromova. Originally published on VoltaireNet on 5 Dec 2012.

History stutters: the new leader of the Syrian National Coalition, knighted by the West, is none other than the grand-son of one of the chief collaborators of the French occupation of Syria in the 20s. Formerly, the French colonial power resorted to religious leaders to teach submission to the people under its domination; today it relies on clerics to overthrow the secular regime of the Syrian Arab Republic.

A photograph taken in 1941, when Syria was still under the rule of French colonisers, has recently been circulating on social networking sites. In the worn black and white photograph, French General Georges Catroux is walking next to an elderly man with cunning eyes, Nur-Eddin al-Khatib.

More than 70 years has passed and the grandson of this Nur-Eddin – Mouaz al-Khatib, a former preacher at the Umayyad mosque in Damascus and now a deserter and traitor – has been elected head of the “Qatar Coalition” which was created on 11 November at a meeting in Doha.

France has shown its gratitude to the third-generation collaborator al-Khatib, whose grandfather collaborated with the colonisers, for his faithful service. Namely the former colonial power has been the first to recognise the “Qatar Coalition” as a legitimate representative of the Syrian people. It is no surprise that the flag of the “opposition” – green, white and black with three stars – is the same as the flag from the time when Syria was under French mandate.

No sooner had Syria gained their freedom from Turkish rule than it immediately fell under the authority of the French in 1920, and the League of Nations gave France a mandate to control Syria. The French occupation army, headed by General Henri Gouraud, faced weak opposition from an armed Syrian army which had only just been formed and had nothing except rifles and machine guns, while the French had heavy artillery and aircraft. The conflict was one-sided.

General Yusuf al-’Azma 1883-1920

The Syrian Minister of War Yusuf al-’Azma accepted the battle, knowing it would be impossible to win, but being a true patriot of his homeland, he was unable to allow the French to take Damascus without a fight. The battle took place 23 kilometres from Damascus, in the mountainous region of Maysalun. Yusuf al-’Azma personally took part in the one-sided battle. The soldiers fought for a whole day, but the superiority of the French was just too great. Only when all the Syrian soldiers had been killed were the French able to advance on Damascus.

Syrians and Druses rose up against the French occupiers in 1925 and even managed to liberate Damascus, but the French used their military strength to quash the uprising in 1927. The first shot of the uprising was fired on 7 June 1925 – a hero of the uprising, Hussein Murshid Radwan, wounded a French officer when he ordered a peaceful anti-French demonstration to be broken up.

Syria reveres its heroes and at the beginning of November, a magnificent monument was erected in the city of Suwayda in Hussein Murshid Radwan’s honour. The sculptor, Fuad Naim, has paid particular attention to the hero’s enormous sword which he has clenched in his mighty hand while challenging the French to battle.

In the centre of Damascus, meanwhile, there is a monument in honour of the Syrian Defence Minister Yusuf al-’Azma, a hero of the Battle of Maysalun Pass. Here we have genuine insurgents who fought for a free Syria. Now, however, the word “insurgent” has been completely defiled and is used today to refer to all sorts of rubbish recruited from all corners of the world who are high on drugs and murdering Syrians for money.

Until quite recently there was another monument in honour of al-’Azma which stood near the General Staff building. On 3 September this year, however, during an attack on the General Staff building, terrorists did not spare this monument. The vandals destroyed it. Can Syria’s history really be that dear to these mercenaries? Or to the descendants of those who collaborated with the occupiers?

70 years has passed since France lost Syria as one of its colonies and was forced to recognise its independence. As recent events have shown, however, France just cannot ignore the colonial itch. It is doing everything to regain its sovereignty, although this time around, even if they conquer Syria, it would no longer be full sovereignty since France would have to share it with the USA, Turkey and other NATO partners. This is not troubling Hollande, however, who is backing every reprobate in Syria so long as the reprobate’s position falls within the neocolonial plans of France’s false socialists.

Back in the summer, French Prime Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault did not hesitate in saying that France was supplying Syrian fighters with communication equipment and other technology. He spoke as though the equipment was not for the purpose of killing. But it is all the same – is it really not going to aid the murderers?

And now the pseudo-socialist François Hollande has held a meeting with the old collaborator’s grandson, Mouaz al-Khatib. After the meeting in Paris, the ambassador of the Syrian terrorists showed up – a certain Munzir Makhous who, together with his boss, was part of the delegation who visited the Élysée Palace and implored Hollande to supply the fighters with heavy artillery. Hollande promised to bring the matter up for discussion with the countries of the EU.

Earlier, Hollande had announced his intentions to create a “buffer” zone and a “no-fly” zone in Syria. At that time, however, his own foreign secretary threw cold water on his plans by announcing that such zones could only be created by a decision of the UN Security Council. And the position of the UN Security Council is clear – Russia and China will not give the go ahead for yet more ventures like the ones that have already ruined Libya. Knowing this, however, Hollande is trying to raise the morale of the terrorists operating within Syria. In order to do this, he is promising to create a “no-fly zone” – the relentless bombardment of Syria, in other words – and this is the one thing that the terrorists want. They are putting themselves at risk every time they place an improvised explosive device near a school, a hospital, a shopping centre, a mosque. Obviously they want to get support from the air so that they no longer have to risk their lives.

While the Syrian government and the Syrian people are placing monuments in honour of their heroes, the so-called “opposition members” are collaborating with the neocolonialists, making much of the colonialists’ flags while killing soldiers and civilians. France recognises these murderers and terrorists as “legitimate representatives of the Syrian people”. The only question is whether “representatives” like these are what the Syrian people really need.

The events of “Arab Spring” have given the United States an opportunity to reevaluate our entire foreign and military policy. That reevaluation has not yet happened, but it must. End the empire!

See also: thepatriots.us.

The events of “Arab Spring” have given the United States an opportunity to reevaluate our entire foreign and military policy. That reevaluation has not yet happened, but it must.

Candobetter Editor: We welcome essays and papers from Dr Robert Bowman. Robert Bowman was in charge of the program to build an outer space missile defense shield in the early 1970s under Presidents Ford and Carter. He retired in 1978. In 1980, when President Reagan took over the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI) it was put into the hands of a group of people who wanted to turn it into a means to launch a first strike nuclear attack against the Soviet Union. Many of the top brass under Reagan were opposed to this but could not speak out publicly. Robert Bowman, as he was already retired, was free to speak without incurring any penalty. Because he was free to speak, the top generals, who themselves felt unable to speak up, appealed to Robert Bowman to use his voice to stop the SDI. Bowman gave thousands of public speeches against the SDI and, of his own efforts, turned American public opinion around, so that the SDI, as a first strike weapon, had to be abandoned.

Arab Spring

Most of the revolts of 2011 have been popular uprisings against aging dictators who have for decades kept their people in poverty and without a voice in their governance. The successful revolt against Hosni Mubarak in Egypt is a good example. It was a genuine popular uprising of ordinary people. The protesters were unarmed and mostly peaceful. They quickly gained the support of people all across the country and from all walks of life. Even the Army refused to fire on them. The media called them “pro-democracy” forces, but most of the demonstrators had little interest in “democracy” as such, and little understanding of what it is. What they wanted was a better life. They were demonstrating against unemployment, poverty, and hunger. And they succeeded. It is doubtful that any meaningful democracy will result, but the Egyptian people at least have a chance for a better standard of living. The dictator they overthrew, Hosni Mubarak, was an ally of the United States and Israel. But he was not deemed essential to our elites. We did not interfere. After all, puppet dictators come and go. Once in a while, you have to throw one of them under the bus.

It’s another story in Yemen and Bahrain, where the local dictators have given us military bases and active cooperation in our “War on Terror.” In these countries, the dictators are brutally repressing the demonstrators and killing unarmed civilians, with our tacit approval and probably with the assistance of the CIA. Having armed these dictators, we don’t have to send troops in to help them (that the American people would not stand for). But we certainly won’t help the “pro-democracy” demonstrators. For them, “Arab Spring” is nothing but a long, hard winter of discontent.

Libya

So what’s goin on in Libya? Why are the vast majority of the Libyan people standing behind Moammar Khaddafi? And why are we sending the full air power of NATO to assist a small band of armed revolutionaries in Libya?

The answers are simple. First, Khaddafi has been, for the most part, a benevolent dictator. He has enormously bettered the lives of his people until their standard of living is the highest in the Arab world. Education is free. Medical care is free. Housing is free. Automobiles are heavily subsidized, as is the gasoline to run them. Young married couples start wedded life with a $50,000 subsidy. Every Libyan man, woman, and child gets something like $500 a year directly from the oil profits. Khaddafi has built the world’s largest public works project, pumping rivers of fresh water from aquifers under the desert of southern Libya north to the cities along the Mediterranean where the people live. This has allowed the people to have clean drinking water, and has enabled agriculture. In short, the economic factors behind most of the revolts of “Arab Spring” are absent in Libya. No wonder the people, for the most part, support him (democracy or no).

Then who are the armed rebels, and why are we supporting them? Easy. They are Islamist malcontents. Some of them are unhappy that Khaddafi is taking a leading role in uniting African countries. They look down on black Africans, and want Libya to align itself with Europe. Some have long been CIA operatives, fighting against the Russians in Afghanistan, and now against the Americans (like so many “Al Qaeda”). Having no political loyalties, they are happy to accept CIA and NATO help in taking over Libya as an Islamist state.

For our part, we are using them to get rid of a thorn that has long been in our side. All of the dictators (former puppets of ours or not) that we have turned on (Saddam Hussein, Manuel Noriega, all the way back to Mossadegh in Iran) have committed one of these two cardinal sins: (1) they have nationalized the oil industry, denying the Western oil companies billions in profits, or (2) they have declared independence from the global banking cartel, refusing to borrow from the IMF and World Bank. This has cost the banks billions in interest, and prevented them from imposing harsh austerity measures which impoverish the people and make them permanent debt slaves. Khaddafi committed BOTH of these cardinal sins. First, he nationalized the oil industry, kicking out the western corporations. Instead of having a central bank under the thumb of the Rothschilds (like the US, Greece, Ireland, etc), Khaddafi printed his own money, backing it with gold from oil sales. He used the money to better the lives of his people.

These actions sealed Khaddafi’s fate. The West has been waiting decades for an opportunity to take him out. The NATO “no fly zone” and the incessant bombing of Tripoli have nothing to do with protecting civilians from the Libyan army. They, like all our military adventures since World War II, have to do with protecting the global financial interests of multinational corporations and banks and the billionaires who own them. It’s a desperate attempt to maintain the financial empire which owes no loyalty to this or any other country, which pays no taxes to our government, but which somehow has gotten control of our government and both major political parties, uses our sons and daughters as cannon fodder in their wars of aggression, and (believe it or not) gets us taxpayers to pay for it all!

Are we stupid or what?

Syria

As we write this in mid-June, it appears that Bashar al-Assad of Syria may be the next dictator to feel the wrath of US military power. He and his father Haffez al-Assad before him have been closer to Russia than to the West, allowing Russia access to Naval bases on the Mediterranean. They have also been supporters of Hezbollah and Hamas. But they have (like their fellow Ba’athist in Iraq, Saddam Hussein) also opposed militant Sunni Islamists, and allowed significant religious freedom to their Christian minority (about 10%).. That did not save Saddam, and it won’t save Assad.

Afghanistan

Our ten-year war against Afghanistan has nothing to do with 9/11 or our national security. It is a war to secure the oil pipeline through Afghanistan that the Taliban refused to give to Unocal. It was planned in detail before the attacks on 9/11 (which the Taliban had nothing to do with). (According to the FBI, we don’t even have any evidence that Osama bin Laden had anything to do with 9/11.) Like all the others, it is a war of Empire.

Iraq

The war against Iraq had even less justification than that on Afghanistan. Since there was no connection whatsoever between Iraq and 9/11, the G. W. Bush administration invented the WMD (Weapons of Mass Destruction) excuse — one they knew was false. Would our generals have massed 150,000 troops in one spot in Kuwait if they thought there was any chance Saddam had even one WMD that could wipe out our entire force with one attack? No. But Iraq was the centerpiece of the grand plan of the Empire to establish 14 permanent military bases in Iraq, from which they (according to their own PNAC document) could control the entire Middle East and its tens of trillions of dollars in oil and gas.

End the Empire

We have hundreds of thousands of troops on over 700 bases in nearly 200 countries. After 56 years, we are still occupying Germany and Japan. It’s time to end the Empire, bring all our troops home, end the corporate wars of aggression, give up our foreign military bases, abolish the CIA, and adopt a Constitutional foreign and military policy that uses our Armed Forces to protect our borders and our people — period. No more puppet dictators. Let the corporations and banks protect their own financial interests, and pay for it out of their own ill-gotten profits. We must take political power away from the corporations, banks, and billionaires so we can, once and for all, end the Empire!

By Dr. Bob Bowman, Lt. Col., USAF, ret.
National Commander, “The Patriots”
[email protected]

See also: thepatriots.us. (In spite of not being as current as Dr. Bowman would wish, it is, nevertheless, a fantastic resource.)

The islamist Libyan 'rebels', recognised by Australian Foreign Minister Kevin Rudd as the legitimate government of Libya and who are cheered on by phoney socialist organisations, intend to bring back the Sharia Law that Libyan President Muammar Gadhaffi abolished when he came to power in 1969. The rights enjoyed by women in Libya today, taken for granted by women in any modern western democracy would taken away if the NATO-backed "Transitional National Council" were to become the government of Libya. Gadhaffi's strongest supporters, amongst the overwhelming majority of Libyans who express their support for him every day at popular demonstrations, are the women of Libya who have no wish to return to domestic servitude.

Original article of 27 Jul 11 on Global Research by Susan Lindauer author of Extreme Prejudice: The Terrifying Story of the Patriot Act and the Cover Ups of 9/11 and Iraq.

For European bankers, it's a war for Libya's Gold. For oil corporations, it's a war for Cheap Crude (now threatening to destroy Libya's oil infrastructure, just like Iraq). But for Libya's women, it's a fierce, knock down battle over the Abaya— an Islamic style of dress that critics say deprives women of self-expression and identity.

Hillary Clinton and President Sarkozy might loath to admit it, but the desire to turn back the clock on women rights in Libya constitutes one of the chief goals for NATO Rebels on the Transitional Council.

For NATO Rebels—who are overwhelmingly pro-Islamist, regardless of NATO propaganda (see www.obamaslibya.com) — it's a matter of restoring social obedience to Islamic doctrine. However the abaya is more than a symbol of virtue and womanly modesty. It would usher in a full conservative doctrine, impacting women's rights in marriage and divorce, the rights to delay childbirth to pursue education and employment—all the factors that determine a woman's status of independence.

That makes this one War Libya's women cannot afford to lose. For those of us who support Islamic modernity, there are good arguments that Gadhaffi would be grossly irresponsible to hand over power to a vacuum dominated by NATO Rebels. Given the savagery of their abuses against the Libyan people (www.obamaslibya.com) —and the Rebel's agenda to reinstate Shariah and retract women's rights, Gadhaffi has an obligation to stand strong and block them for the protection of the people.

Indeed, it's somewhat baffling that France or Italy would want to hand power to Rebels, outside of an election scenario. Elections would be a safeguard that would empower Libyan women to launch a leadership alternative that rejects the Abaya. That's exactly what the Rebels fear, and it accounts for their deep, abiding rejection of the election process. Democracy poses a real threat to NATO's vision of the "New Libya."

The abaya carries so much weight in the battle for Islamic modernity that Gadhaffi pretty much banned Islamic dress from the first days of his government. Getting rid of the abaya was part of Gadhaffi's larger reform package supporting women's rights—one of the best and most advanced in the entire Arab world. The transformation of women's status has been so great that the Ayatollah Khomeini in Iran imposed a fatwa against Gadhaffi years ago, declaring his government blasphemous to Islamic traditions.

To gain insider perspective on Gadhaffi's reforms for women, members of a fact-finding delegation in Libya spoke with Najat ElMadani, chairwoman of the Libyan Society for Culture and Sciences, an NGO started in 1994. They also interviewed Sheikh Khaled Tentoush, one the most prominent Imams in Libya. Imam Tentoush has survived two NATO assassination attempts, one that was particularly revealing.

Tentoush said that he and 12 other progressive Imams were traveling to Benghazi to discuss a peaceful end to the conflict. They stopped for tea at a guest house in Brega--- and NATO dropped a bomb right on top of them, killing 11 of the 13 Imams, who had embraced Islamic reforms that empower women's rights and modernity.

There were no military installations or Gadhaffi soldiers anywhere nearby that would have justified NATO bombing. This was a deliberate assassination of Islamic leaders who give religious legitimacy to Gadhaffi's modernist policies, and therefore pose a great threat to the conservative ambitions of Islamic Rebels. NATO killed them off.

What's got radical Islamists so upset in Libya? Here's a primer on women's rights under Gadhaffi:

No Male Chaperones in Libya

• In Libya, women are allowed to move about the city, go shopping or visit friends without a male escort. Unbelievable as it sounds, throughout most of the Arab world, such freedoms are strictly forbidden. In much of Pakistan, for example, a 5 year old male child would be considered a suitable chaperone for an adult woman in the marketplace. Otherwise she'd better stay home.  In Saudi Arabia and Kuwait, women are frequently locked in their apartments while their husbands, brothers or fathers go off to work. Yes, there are exceptions. Some families individually reject these practices. However, before readers protest this characterization, you must be honest and acknowledge that the Taliban in Afghanistan and the Saudis/Kuwaitis aren't the only groups that constrain women's freedoms in the Arab world. This is common social behavior throughout large swaths of Arab society.

• In Libya, women are never locked in their homes, while their husbands, fathers and brothers go to work. Gadhaffi forbids restricting women's mobility.

• In Libya, women have full legal rights to drive cars—unlike their sisters in Saudi Arabia. In a lot of Arab countries, a woman's husband holds her passport. So she cannot travel outside of the country without his approval.

Marriage Rights

• Tragically, in Kabul, Afghanistan, a young woman can be locked in Prison for rejecting her father's choice of husband. Until she changes her mind, her prospective mother in law visits the prison every day, demanding to know why her son is not "good enough" for this girl. Why does she disobey those who know what's best for her?  That poor woman stays locked up in Kabul prison until she changes her mind. And it happens right under the noses of American and NATO soldiers. A NATO Occupation won't protect Libyan women, either.

• All over the Arab world—from Yemen to Jordan to Saudi Arabia to Iran— fathers and brothers decide what age a young woman will be given away in marriage, usually as soon as she hits puberty— She has no choice in the most important decision of her life. Frequently a young girl gets married off to one of her father's adult friends or a cousin. Throughout the Arab world, it's socially acceptable for a shopkeeper to ask a young Muslim girl if she has started to menstruate. A good Islamic girl is expected to answer truthfully.

• Not in Libya. To his greatest credit, bucking all Islamic traditions—from the first days of government, Gadhaffi said No Way to forced marriages. Libyan woman have the right to choose their own husbands. They are encouraged to seek love marriages. Under strict Libyan law, without exception no person can force a Libyan woman to marry any man for any reason.

• Forced marriages have been such a problem throughout the Arab world, that in Libya, an Imam always calls on the woman if there is an impending marriage. The Imam meets with her privately, and asks if any person is forcing her to marry, or if there's any reason she's marrying this person other than her desire to be with this man.  Both Najat and Imam Tentoush were very adamant on these points.

• In Libya, the Imams are expected to protect the woman from abuse by relatives.

Right to End a Marriage

• Divorce is brutally difficult for a woman throughout the Arab world. A husband can beat or rape his wife, or commit adultery or lock her in a room like a prison. No matter what a woman suffers, as a wife she has no legal rights to leave that marriage, even for her own protection.  When her father negotiates that marriage contract, she's stuck for life. A man can divorce a woman in front of two witnesses by repeating three times: "I divorce you. I divorce you. I divorce you." He can text that message on a cell phone, and it's over. The woman has no reciprocal freedom. She's stuck in that marriage until her husband lets her go.

• Not so in Libya.  A Libyan woman can leave a marriage anytime she chooses. A woman simply files for divorce and goes on with her life.  It is very similar to U.S. laws, in that a man has no power to stop her. It's completely within her control to initiate a divorce.

• In Libya, if a woman enters a marriage with her own assets and the marriage ends, her husband cannot touch her assets. The same is true of the man's assets.  Joint assets usually go to the woman.

These "abnormal" marriage rights stir deep anger among conservative Libyan men. Rebels particularly hate Gadhaffi's government for granting marriage rights to women. But consider how delaying marriage impacts women's opportunities in society.

Delayed marriage means delayed childbirth, which empowers young women to continue education and gain employment. Not surprisingly then, Libyan women enjoy some of the best opportunities in the Arab world. That might also cause simmering resentments among conservative Libyan men.

Education of Libyan Women

• In Libya more women take advantage of higher education than men, according to Najat.  There are professional women in every walk of life.  Many Libyan women are scientists, university professors, lawyers, doctors, government employees, journalists and business women.  Najat attributes that freedom and the range of choices to Gadhaffi, and his government's insistence that women must be free to choose their lives and be fully supported in those choices.  Najat and Tentoush said that some Imams in Libya would like it to be otherwise—especially those Imams favoring the Rebels— but Gadhaffi has always over ruled them. For example there are many women soldiers, and they are very strong and fully capable of contributing to the military defense of the country.

• Women receive education scholarships equal to the men's. All Libyans can go abroad and study if they so desire— paid for by Gadhaffi's government. Single women usually take a brother or male relative with them, and Najat said all expenses are covered for both the woman and her companion.

• In Libya, women are not required to seek a husband's permission to hold a job, and any type of job is available to her. In contrast, many employment opportunities are proscribed in many other Arab countries, because work puts women in daily proximity to men who are not their husbands. That eliminates many types of job opportunities.

Bashing Women's Rights

These are some of the reasons why Rebels consider Gadhaffi an "infidel." They frequently express a desire to reinstate the Shariah. It's an open secret in Arab circles. In ignoring this point, NATO resembles the three monkeys. See no truth. Hear no truth. Speak no truth. But the Arab community understands this dynamic. Rebels are going to pat Hillary Clinton and Sarkozy on the head right up until they capture power. Then they're going to do exactly what they started out to do. Reinstate Islamic law—under the protection of the United States and NATO governments. Conservative social codes will be enforced just like Afghanistan.

Libyans understand this point, even if Americans and Europeans are lost in denial. It should surprise no one, therefore, that some of Gadhaffi's greatest support comes from Libyan women. Nor should it surprise Libya watchers that Gadhaffi's not exactly "clinging to power" as the corporate media likes to suggest. Quite the contrary, Gadhaffi's support has skyrocketed to 80 or 85 percent during this crisis. President Obama, Sarkozy and Bersculoni would be thrilled to enjoy such intense popular support.

NATO bombing has backfired and alienated the Libyan people from the Rebel cause, destroying community infrastructure that Libyans are truly proud of. Rebels are chasing pro-Gaddhaffi families out of Benghazi, a sort of political cleansing. But they have no street credibility that would give them power in negotiations with other Libyans, because losers don't get to dictate the terms. NATO can propagandize until Sarkozy falls over in a fit, but the people have resoundingly rejected these Rebels.

NATO is pushing a political resolution, because Europe wants off the merry-go-round. In truth, the music is getting uglier every day. NATO never should have jumped on this bandwagon in the first place. There's no sense to it. They're fighting Al Qaeda in Afghanistan, and embracing Al Qaeda and conservative Islam in Benghazi.

Those of us who support Islamic modernity should be relieved that Libya's people are smarter and savvier than NATO bureaucrats. And we should all say a prayer that Gadhaffi holds on.

Susan Lindauer covered Libya and Iraq at the United Nations from 1995 to 2003, and started negotiations for the Lockerbie Trial. Lindauer is the author of Extreme Prejudice: The Terrifying Story of the Patriot Act and the Cover Ups of 9/11 and Iraq.

Global Research Articles by Susan Lindauer

Here is a very topical, historical account by E.J. Hobsbawm of the rise of Islam in the so-called undeveloped world which occurred in reaction to the disruption caused by colonialism. People who are interested in why there is still apparent opposition between Western “democracy” and capitalism and Islam, might find it interesting.

Great revival of Islam in the period of 1789-1848 [1]

“In purely numerical terms it is evident that all religions, unless actually contracting, were likely to expand with the rise in population. Yet two types showed a particular aptitude for expansion [over the period of the massive colonisation during the British Industrial Revolution]: Islam and sectarian Protestantism. This expansionism was all the more striking as it contrasted with the marked failure of other Christian religions – both Catholic and Protestant – to expand, in spite of a sharp increase in missionary activity outside Europe, increasingly backed by the military, political, and economic force of European penetration. […]

Islamic expansion among peoples disorganized by colonialism and slavery

As against this, Islam was continuing that silent, piecemeal and irreversible expansion unbacked by organized missionary endeavour or forcible conversion which is so characteristic of that religion. It expanded both eastwards, in Indonesia and North-western China, and westwards from the Sudan towards Senegal and, to a much smaller extent, from the shores of the Indian Ocean inland. When traditional societies change something so fundamental as their religion, it is clear that they must be facing major new problems. The Moslem traders, who virtually monopolized the commerce of inner Africa with the outside world and multiplied with it, helped to bring Islam to the notice of new peoples. The slave trade, which broke down communal life, made it attractive, for Islam is a powerful means of reintegrating social structures. [2] At the same time the Mohammedan religion appealed to the semi-feudal and military societies of the Sudan, and its sense of independence, militancy, and superiority made it a useful counterweight to slavery. Moslem Negros made bad slaves: the Haussa (and other Sudanese) who had been imported into Bahia (Brazil) revolted nine times between 1807 and the great rising of 1835 until, in effect, they were mostly killed or deported back to Africa. The slavers learned to avoid imports from these areas, which had only recently been opened to the trade.

Islamic resistance to colonialism in South East Asia

While the element of resistance to the whites was clearly very small in African Islam (where there were as yet hardly any), it was by tradition crucial in South-east Asia. There Islam – once again pioneered by traders – had long advanced against local cults and the declining Hinduism of the Spice Islands, largely as a means of more effective resistance against the Portuguese and the Dutch, as ‘a kind of pre-nationalism,’ though also as a popular counterweight to the Hinduized princes. As these princes increasingly turned into narrowly circumscribed dependents or agents of the Dutch, Islam sunk its root more deeply into the population. In turn, the Dutch learned that the Indonesian princes could, by allying with the religious teachers, unleash a general popular rising, as in the Java War of the Prince of Djokjakarta (1825-1830). They were consequently time and again driven back to a policy of close alliance with the local rulers, or indirect rule. Meanwhile the growth of the trade and shipping forged closer links between south-east Asian Muslim and Mecca, served to increase the number of pilgrims, to make Indonesian Islam more orthodox, and even to open it to the militant and revivalist influence of Arabian Wahhabism.

Within Islam the movements of reform and revival, which in this period gave the religion much of its penetrative power, can also be seen as reflecting the impact of European expansion and the crisis of the old Mohammedan societies (notably of the Turkish and Persian empires) and perhaps also of the growing crisis of the Chinese empire. The puritanical Wahhabites had arisen in Arabia in the mid-eighteenth century. By 1814 they had conquered Arabia and were ready to conquer Syria, until halted by the combined force of the Westernizing Mohammed Ali of Egypt and Western arms, though their teachings spread eastwards into Persia, Afghanistan and India. Inspired by Wahhabism an Algerian holy man, Sidi Mohammed ben Ali el Senussi, developed a similar movement which from the 1840s spread from Tripoli into the Sahara desert. In Algeria Abd-el-Kader, in the Caucasus Shamyl, developed religio-political movements of resistance to the French and Russians respectively (see chapter 7) and anticipated a pan-Islamism which sought not merely a return to the original purity of the Prophet but also to absorb Western innovations. In Persia, an even more obviously nationalist and revolutionary heterodoxy, the Bab movement of Ali Mohammed, arose in the 1840s. It tended, among other things, to return to certain ancient practices of Persian Zoroastrianism and demanded the unveiling of women.

Expansion of Protestantism

The ferment and expansion of Islam was such that, in terms of purely religious history, we can perhaps best describe the period form 1789 to 1848 as that of world Islamic revival. …The expansionist movement of Protestant sectarianism differs from that of Islam in that it was almost entirely confined to the countries of developed capitalist civilization. […]

New Protestant sects in Anglo-countries mirrored rise of Atheism in Catholic Europe

[… ] The reasons for the geographical and social limits of Protestant sectarianism are evident. Roman Catholic countries provided no scope for and tradition of public sects. There the equivalent break with the established church or the dominant religion was more likely to take the form of mass dechristianisation (especially among the men) than of schism. (Conversely, the Protestant anti-clericalism of the Anglo-Saxon countries was often the exact counterpart of the atheist anti-clericalism of continental ones.)”

Egypt and revolutions

“Nationalism in the East was thus the eventual product of Western influence and Western conquest. This link is perhaps most evident in the one plainly Oriental country in which the foundations of what was to become the first modern colonial nationalist movement [other than the Irish] were laid: in Egypt. Napoleon’s conquest introduced Western ideas, methods, and techniques, whose value an able and ambitious local soldier, Mohammed Ali (Mehemet Ali), soon recognized. Having seized power and virtual independence from Turkey in the confused period which followed the withdrawal of the French, and with French support, Mohammed Ali set out to establish an efficient and Westernizing despotism with foreign (mainly French) technical aid. European left-wingers in the 1820s and 30s hailed this enlightened autocrat, and put their services at his disposal, when reaction in their own countries looked too dispiriting. The extraordinary sect of the Sain-Simonians, equally suspended between the advocacy of socialism and of industrial development by investment bankers and engineers, temporarily gave him their collective aid and prepared his plans of economic development. […] They thus also laid the foundation for the Suez Canal (built by the Saint-Simonian de Lesseps) and the fatal dependence of Egyptian rulers on vast loans negotiated by competing groups of European swindlers, which turned Egypt into a centre of imperialist rivalry and anti-imperialist rebellion later on. But Mohammed Ali was no more a nationalist than any other Oriental despot. His Westernization, not his or his people’s aspirations, laid the foundations for later nationalism. If Egypt acquired the first nationalist movement in the Islamic world and Morocco one of the last, it was because Mohammed Ali (for perfectly comprehensible geopolitical reasons) was in the main paths of Westernization and the isolated self-sealed Sherifian Empire of the Moslem far west was not, and made no attempts to be. Nationalism, like so many other characteristics of the modern world, is the child of the dual revolution.”[3]

NOTES

[1] The source of this article is a highly readable and famous book by historian, E.J. Hobsbawm, The Age of Revolution 1789 to 1848, New American Library Publishing, 1962, pp.268-270. This was also the period of the rise of the Industrial Revolution and British imperialism, which won out over other contenders in the European trade and slaving wars that had gone on since the 14th century due to the chance coincidence of huge stores of coal and iron on that island, plus an army of dispossessed workers who could be forced to dig it up and man the foundries.

[2] The writer gives as his reference for this statement, J S Trimmingham, Islam in West Africa, Oxford, 1959, p.30. I am personally not aware of the reasons given there and would welcome comment or articles on why this might be so.

[3] Source, E.J. Hobsbawm, The Age of Revolution 1789 to 1848, New American Library Publishing, 1962, p.177.

Burial at sea?
Osama bin Laden's body should never have been disposed of without extensive evidence of death and identity being made available to the public. How is anyone to believe reports of his death? Cui bono?

Dialysis in the desert

I agree with Paul Craig Roberts in his article, "Osama bin Laden’s Second Death." Reports on Osama bin Laden's death do sound like an April Fool's joke. I don't have the same problem as Roberts does with the idea of bin Laden having renal dialysis in the desert or having problems transferring funds. Portable renal dialysis machines exist and rich people move money around in many forms, including as drugs, all over the world.

Poor taste

I don't pretend to know how Osama bin Laden lived or moved his money nor when he died. I don't find the media reports of 2nd May 2011 very believable and I didn't enjoy watching the President of the United States saying how great it was they had killed someone. I could have written that speech better, maybe starting with, "Regretfully, we announce that we found we had no alternative ..." But, can we believe anything the U.S. government says about international politics these days?

Where's the body?

What really gets me is the lack of a body. Burial at sea? How is anyone to accept that?

Surely with such an important corpus delecti - well, deceased person - the world is entitled to the most careful handling, with forensic examination, identification and finally a formal ceremony agreed to by world leaders, perhaps even with consultation with his family. The outcome of such a ceremony could have agreed to any form of disposal of the body, but the body should never have been disposed of without extensive evidence of death and identity being made available to the public.

It might help if we were to hear the accounts of the witnesses involved. Were there any independent journalists involved at the actual event of disposal of the body? Truly the whole thing strikes me as dreamlike and unbelievable, but it did from the beginning, anyway, when I woke up one day after working a nightshift and saw an incredible Hollywood-like production of aeroplanes sailing into skyscrapers. I waited and waited for King Kong to appear and stop them, but he never did. Instead we got that wil'o'the-wispy mastermind with renal failure, Osama bin Laden.

Cinema

But Osama bin Laden was never physically connected with the acts against the World Trade Center tower himself. Almost immediately after the event, on a cinematographic time-frame, it seemed, the US came up with pictures of the 18 men who were supposed to have executed the attack on the New York CBD under the orchestration of Osama bin Laden. Four of those men have since claimed still to be alive. It never seemed clear who was supposed to be the leader in this raid.

In the absence of a full investigation

One waited for a full investigation.
It never came.

For me, that was the clincher.[1] I initially simply accepted what I was told on the news, but when the inadequacy of the inquiry into 9/11 was put to me, I could not argue it away. Why didn't the USA seriously engage in a full investigation, demonstrating for all to see, why those 18 men were implicated and why we should believe Osama bin Laden's claim to be responsible?

Later many people identified the United States Government itself as a suspect in this tragedy of 9/11. A lot of the arguments for that were somewhat circumstantial, but so were the arguments implicating Osama bin Laden, even if he had claimed responsibility. There were many possible motives on both sides, involving big business in the United States on the one hand, and victims of big business in the Arab world, on the other.

Motives

Some of the accusations against the US Government allege that the destruction of the World Trade Center buildings served big-business interests that wanted to make money out of war, businesses collecting on insurance on the buildings, and CIA secrets that might have been destroyed conveniently in the buildings. Huge corporations like Halliburton and KPMG certainly made billions out of the war on Iraq, which was more or less contracted out to them by the US Government[2] - to the extent that the U.S.government has been unable to regulate corrupt financial practices and conduct of elections during the war, since it was found that it had abrogated its powers to oversee military conduct in one related hearing. [3] Halliburton is also involved in Afghanistan. KPMG has offices in Afghanistan and Pakistan.[4] Corporations do business everywhere, but we should not entrust them with war.

On the other side, the continuous exploitation of the Arab World by European industrial colonial forces, then by corporate colonial forces after the independence of those countries in the 1970s, furnishes an undeniable motive.

The current democratic struggles in the Arab world to get rid of governments (Bahrain, Egypt, ...) backed by the same international hegemonies looks like a reflection of this motive although that doesn't make it linked to 9/11. (Where to put Libya in this group is not easy. To this writer it still looks as if most Libyans consider Gadafi to be better than the internationally backed alternatives, or it would be easy to extract him. One therefore suspects the whole movement against him. I thought this article from Global Research about Libya was good.)

Conspiracy theory, motive and opportunity

How much in control of the US is the US Government? Part of the political and forensic mystery of 9/11 is the apparent bemusement of government leaders who look as if they are reading from incomplete scripts. I am not much of a conspiracy theorist. My preferred methodology is "Cui bono?" In order to explain the continuation of trends that make life unpleasant for many people, you can generally find parties, companies and economic sectors that actually derive focused benefit from the continuation of such trends. Dig deeper and you will find them lobbying on their behalf, using questionable arguments.

In this case, however, because the beneficiaries of 9/11 are also the beneficiaries of an immense crime, for the destruction of the towers was not a legal business operation, you are going to have to admit that a conspiracy must exist somewhere. Either you accept that Osama bin Laden -- or some other outsider or outsiders to the Western World -- benefited from 9/11 and orchestrated it for political reasons, or you suspect an "inside job."

Like good detectives, or world jury-members, we obviously seek to understand "who benefits" from 9/11 and we have two excellent theories: big business and its friends in government vs the victims of big business and its friends in government.

Whichever case seems more likely to you, unless you personally know something that I don't, without a proper investigation, neither case may be proven.

In the absence of suspects being brought to trial, you and I can only advance theories and argue them more or less persuasively. Governments and international bodies can, however, capture suspects, collect evidence, and do forensic tests. They can bring people and corporations to trial.

The fact that the US government has never done this in relation to the events of 9/11 is suspicious. Frankly, it makes me favour the theory of the "inside job" on the basis of cui bono. I have to ask myself, is the US Government protecting some influential 'friends' by not investigating 9/11 properly?

Dr. Paul Craig Roberts, author of "Osama bin Laden's second death," suggests that a motive for finding Osama bin Laden lies in the likelihood that the US is running out of money to keep the war in Afghanistan going.

Disposing of the evidence

Why, however, did the soldiers who claim to have killed bin Laden dispose of the body?

I'm afraid that it makes me more suspicious. Call me imaginative, if you like, but surely a proper world-policing task-force would have seized the evidence, along with the body, to bring them back for the long awaited investigation and trial, in good faith, to demonstrate to the world, once and for all, what really happened.

Getting rid of the body and blowing up bin Laden's alleged headquarters look to me like getting rid of the evidence. Cui bono?

Well, exactly.

This seems to bring us all back to where we started.

Ready for the next episode.

Enter the minotaur. Or the prophet. Or the son of God.
They are still looking for his body, too.

Will Obama bin Laden come back from the dead?
(Again?) [5]

It's that time of year. (Easter just past.)

How will the two sides of this quasi-mythical Hollywood-Corporate Press production continue to harness the power of the masses, with the help of mainstream press manufacture of consensus, presumably to protect the interests of the world's elites?

Many people in Australia likely to be suspicious too

In Australia there was a strong indication that the masses actually find the storyline a little unbelievable, going by such instances as the massive support for Australian maritime unionist Kevin Bracken's views. But politicians seem infinitely more credulous - going by Prime Minister Gillard's and her peers' response to Bracken's views. The Australian Press predictably denounced all questioning of the official bed-time story and, when if found, to its horror, that people wanted to discuss the matter, it simply stopped reporting. See "Free speech defenders 'persecute' Jon Faine"and Report on Jon Faine/Kevin Bracken interview and subsequent fall-out

Who's paying for the next production

Whose taxes are paying for this production now, if bin Laden's millions are no longer financing it? If they were ever financing it.

Do we have a choice?

One thing is for sure, if you take an extraordinary but material event out of the realms of the material and confirm it as a myth, no-one is going to expect a serious investigation. The way has been prepared for the 9/11 crime to be handed over to priests and the tourist circuits. It is a religion in the making, fit to shore up differences between muslims and christians, capitalists, communists and anarchists, for a long time to come.

If we choose to believe.

NOTES

[1] There was an almost immediate announcement of who the guilty parties were, after unbelievably speedy identification of suspects, but actual public investigation was avoided for nearly 2 and a half years, despite obvious demand. For comparison, the bombing of Pearl Harbour and President Kennedy's assassination were both investigated almost immediately. Ditto for the investigation of Clinton's affair with Monica Lewinski, which was provided with a great deal more money than the 9/11
investigation, when it eventually occurred. Against all principles of a democratic public justice system, the public were denied careful and detailed establishment of evidence and reasons for allocation of guilt. The motive, of a fanatical racist religious ideologue with unlimited funds in the desert of Afghanistan, financing alienated muslims to carry out spectacular acts against United States infrastructure and bystanders for his own purposes, did need careful evidencing, to say the least.

The investigation seemed pro forma to observers, with numerous matters left uncovered. A notable hole in the report which came from the investigation was that it said nothing about the collapse of the World trade center tower number 7. This occurred a few hours after Towers one and two (the "Twin towers"), but the main difference was that no plane flew into it and it was located about half a kilometer away from the towers hit by the planes. It was as if the sudden death with head injuries of a man standing in the next street hours after two men who were shot by guns held to their heads in another street was ascribed to the impact of bullets on the first two men. So far no theory of why Tower 7 collapsed has sustained scientific criticism. That does not say that no relationship will ever be found, but it makes it unlikely. The principle of Occams razor would suggest that a separate cause of the collapse of the 7th building is likely. Another notable hole was the lack of questions about the failure of the US Defence system to halt any of these attacks in part or in full.

There may have been an explanation, but the world has never heard it. At best it might show up the US military system as asleep on the job. At worst it might show that it was in on the job.

[2] A representative of the FBI has reportedly said there is "no hard evidence connecting Bin Laden to 9/11."

On June 5, 2006, the Muckraker Report contacted the FBI Headquarters, (202) 324-3000, to learn why Bin Laden's Most Wanted poster did not indicate that Usama was also wanted in connection with 9/11. The Muckraker Report spoke with Rex Tomb, Chief of Investigative Publicity for the FBI. When asked why there is no mention of 9/11 on Bin Laden's Most Wanted web page, Tomb said, "The reason why 9/11 is not mentioned on Usama Bin Laden's Most Wanted page is because the FBI has no hard evidence connecting Bin Laden to 9/11." Source

Even today, after the FBI has updated its wanted poster for bin Laden as "Deceased" the crimes of 9/11 are not among those listed: Murder of U.S. Nationals outside the United States; Conspiracy to Murder U.S. Nationals Outside the United States; Attack on a Federal Facility Resulting in Death."

[3] Naomi Klein, in The Shock Doctrine, (p.355) quotes, 'Michael Fleisher, the founder of the Chicago School based Shock Doctrine', saying in 2003 of Iraq that ‘protected businesses never, never become competitive’, and she comments: “he appeared to be impervious to the irony that Halliburton, Bechtel, Parsons, KPMG, RTI, Blackwater and all the other US corporations that were in Iraq to take advantage of the reconstruction were part of a vast protectionist racket whereby the US government had created their markets with war, barred their competitors from even entering the race, then paid them to do the work, while guaranteeing them a profit to boot – all at taxpayer expense. The Chicago School crusade, which emerged with the core purpose of dismantling the welfare statism of the New Deal, had finally reached its zenith in this corporate New Deal. It was a simpler, more stripped down form of privatisation – the transfer of bulky assets wasn’t even necessary: just straight-up corporate gorging on state coffers. No investment, no accountability, astronomical profits. The double standard was explosive, as was the systematic exclusion of Iraqis from the plan.” See also pp. 362-378 for shocking stuff on conduct in Iraq.

[4] "WASHINGTON — Vice President Dick Cheney's (search) former company already has garnered more than $600 million in military work related to the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, and potentially could earn billions more without having to compete with other companies.

As the Army's sole provider of troop support services, Halliburton's Kellogg Brown & Root subsidiary has received work orders totaling $529.4 million related to the two wars under a 10-year contract that has no spending ceiling.

Rather than put the Iraq work up for bidding, the government has used the 2001 Halliburton contract to place the various work orders in Iraq, prompting criticism from some Democrats that Cheney's former company is receiving favored treatment.

"The amount Halliburton could receive in the future is virtually limitless," said Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Calif., who disclosed the troop support work orders Thursday. "It is simply remarkable that a single company could earn so much money from the war in Iraq."" Source: http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,88122,00.html

[5] Klein, Shock Doctrine, pp. 357-358. The Custer Battles corruption case: "Two former employees of the security firm launched a whistle-blower lawsuit against the company, accusing it of cheating on reconstruction-related contracts with the CPA and defrauding the U.S. government of millions of dollars ,mostly for work done at the Baghdad International Airport. The case was based on documents produced by the company that clearly showed it was keeping two sets of numbers - one for itself, one for invoicing the CPA. retired Brigadier General Hugh Tant testified that the company's performance was 'probably the worst I've evern seen in my 30 yhears in teh army." (Among custer Battles' many alleged violations, it is said to have appropriated Iraqui-owned forklifts from the airport, repainted them and billed the CPA for the cost of leasing the machines.)

In March 2006 a federal jury in Virginia ruled against the company, finding it guilty of fraud, and forced it to pay $10 million in damages. The company then asked the judge to overturn the verdict, with a revealing defense. It claimed that the CPA was not part of teh U.S.S government, and therefeore not subject to its laaws, including the False Claims act. The implications of this defense were enormous: the Bush administration had indemnified U.S. corporations working in Iraq from any liability under Iraqui laws; if the CPA wasn't subject to U.S. law either, it meant that the contractors weren't subject ot any law at all - U.S. or Iraqui. [...] In other words, the U.S. governmetn presence in Iraq during the first year of its economic experiment had beena mirage - there had been no government, just a funnel to get U.S. taxpayer and Iraqi oil dollars to foreign corporations, completely outside the law. In this way, Iraq represented the most extreme expression of the anti-state counterrevolution - a hollow state, where, as the courts finally established, there was no there, there."

[6] See film of Pakistan politician Benazir Buto interviewed by David Frost in 2007 about her survival of an assassination attempt just prior to her actual assassination, where, in passing, she says that Osama bin Laden was murdered.

High on the list of causes of the Bahrain situation is mass immigration and related loss of indigenous political representation. Old British colonies and protectorates, notably the commodity economies of Australia and Canada, as well as the UK and the US should take heed.

Facebook democracy

On Friday 14th people in Bahrain rallied to a message in Facebook calling for "The Revolution on February 14 in Bahrain."

When they gathered in the streets the revolutionaries were savagely repressed by the police and the army. The opposition MP, Ali al-Aswad, said that Bahraini security forces, many of whom are recruited from Asian countries, had on Friday fired live bullets at more than one thousand people, who were trying to return to protests at Pearl Square. Nearly 100 were killed.

National General Strike

It seems that Bahrain unions then called for a National General strike, sheduled from Sunday. The Bahrain prince, Salman bin Hamad al-Khalifa, in order to avert riots, asked the army to allow people to gather in public places and express their political demands. The prince promised to listen to all the demands.

On Sunday a crowd of protesters gathered in the Pearl Square, Manama, to hear the opposition speak. The crowd was divided into men on one side and black-burka-swathed women on the other. Both sides had speakers and the crowds were noisy and animated. They called upon the Prime Minister, who is also the uncle of the King, to resign. He has been Prime Minister for 40 years. A man in the crowd told France 2 news that the King, Sheikh Hamad bin Isa Al Khalifa, and the Prince still have a chance, but they need to reform quickly.

Shi'ites and Sunnis

Shiites led the revolt, saying that they have been marginalised for years by powerful Sunni interests. The situation is not so simple, however.

They complained that the Prime Minister affects local politics and power by importing Jordanian, Syrian, and Egyptian immigrants and making them citizens, depriving the local Shi'ites of work and diluting their political participation. In the square people held up photos of the bullet riddled bodies of people they claimed were victims of the hated regime. According to"Royals seek dialogue as protesters press demands,"[1] the people are calling for a "real constitutional monarchy."

The crowds may have been encouraged by the removal on February 11 of the long-standing Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak.

History of Immigrant ruling-caste system

Bahrain is a small but strategic kingdom, once under British rule and a military outpost of the USA, which headquarters its 5th fleet there. All foreign powers since the times of the Portuguese slavers in the 14th C, have used an immigrant-composed caste system to repress the local people, who originated from the Arabian Peninsula and Iran.

According to Samah Soula, the France2 French News commentator, "More than anything the Bahrainis distrust the influence of their neighbour, Iran."

The US has a military outpost there, where it headquarters its 5th fleet, and has a huge interest in (the ruling) Al Khalifa family, according to Steven Sotloft.[2] The King of Bahrain relies on the US to provide insurance against Iran, which historically ruled Bahrain until the 1830s, when Bahrain became a British Protectorate, until 1971, when Bahrain became 'independent', along with many other oil-rich states at the time of the first oil shock. The US is likely therefore to undermine attempts to gain democracy for the people of Bahrain.[2]

According to some sources, if there were to be a democracy, the Shi'ite majority would reverse the current Sunni rule because a 70% majority of the indigenous population is Shi'ite. However, the situation is not just an 'ethnic quarrel' because the Shiites are actually supported by a lot of young Sunnis. This situation shows that the forces for reform are less religious than indigenous-citizen-led against domination by immigrants and foreign nationals for the ruling elites. It seems to be a youth-based movement of people in precarious economic situations who realise that the ruling class preference for immigrant labour is taking jobs which they would otherwise do and, at the same time, affecting their rights as citizens by strategically weighting elite political forces in the country.

For instance, the security forces are composed predominantly of foreign recruits who remain in the country because of excellent career opportunities and affordable housing, in which they are given massive preference over Shiites, who form only 3-5% of recruits. The immigrant-predominance in Bahrain's security forces make them a tool of the elites because the immigrant Bahrainis realise that their jobs and housing and welfare depend on the current political elite. The security forces cannot therefore be on the side of the citizenry. Nor can the US military. So if real democracy comes in, that means big changes for the composition of power and ethnicity and the influence of foreign power, which has been used abusively against the locals.[3]

The Saudis also have huge interests in shoring up the Bahrain status-quo. They have agreements to pump oil from Bahrain. They are in a vulnerable situation now that the Saudi supportive regime in Egypt has fallen.[3]

What kind of democratic institution should the Bahrainis go for?

The demands in Bahrain for Representative Monarchy evoke the constitutional demands at the beginning of the French Revolution, which began legally with a similar administration in mind (following events in Britain), until King Louis the 16th reneged on the agreement and launched royal troops on Paris. In fact the French finished up with something far better than a constitutional Monarchy. Their republic and their civil code (introduced by Napoleon) remain the model for most of Europe. Interalia, it would be a great pity for Europe and the rest of the world if the US, Vatican and Sarkosian forces may be wearing down that consciousness. A constitutional monarchy has not allowed the people of Britain a voice against a massive importation of immigrant labour and public housing occupants. Nor has the similarly constituted parliamentary democracy in Australia and Canada prevented Australians and Canadians from similar political and economic manipulation of immigration by powerful elites.

Other commodity economies with high rates of immigration should take heed

Like Australia and Canada, Bahrain, although it is small, has a major population problem due to massive immigration.

Although Bahrain is oil-rich, foreign investors and foreign elites, in which Britain and the US, along with the Saudis and others, are prominent, have enriched themselves at the expense of the local population. They were only able to do this by overwhelming local democracy through propaganda and high immigration, then raising the rights of immigrants over those of locals. Australia and Canada, which have strategic mineral wealth, should take heed, because their elites (including corporate-based powers in newspaper and the property and mining industries) are also promoting high immigration, and selling off property to moneyed foreign elites.

The multicultural-based populations of Australia and Canada need to join together, as have the Sunnis and the Shi'ites in Bahrain to demand a functional democracy.

NOTES
Sources: www.France2.fr, Sunday, 20 February, 2011, 2000hrs news
[1] Royals seek dialogue as protesters press demands."

[2] "If you look at the WikiLeaks cables, the king of Bahrain is recorded as saying “Iran must be stopped”. The king of Bahrain is the number one advocate of US strikes on Iran. He is so scared of Iran. Keep in mind Bahrain was a part of Iran in the Safavid dynasty [which ruled Persia from 1501 to 1736]. In the 1830s, the Al Khalifa family signed the first of many treaties establishing Bahrain as a British Protectorate. In 1971, Bahrainis voted for independence. They wanted their own state." Source: Interview with Steven Sotloff, "Big powers warily eye revolt in the world's smallest Arab nation,"

[3]Interview with Steven Sotloff, "Big powers warily eye revolt in the world's smallest Arab nation,"

Indonesian President Yudhoyono failed to board a flight to the Netherlands at the last moment because he had been warned that human rights groups had organised to have him arrested for alleged human rights abuses, this October 2010. New portable technology means that the violent oppression of West Papuan people whilst their land is stolen off them by new immigrants is no longer able to be concealed from the world. West Papuans are simply fighting against development - i.e. the insertion by town planners of new suburbs and populations into land inhabited for thousands of years by respectable swidden farmers.

Dispossession by any other name

Informed of this incident, Indonesian Foreign Minister Marty Natalegawa admitted it but said that the policy has changed from a "so-called security approach" to a "prosperity approach".

But dispossession, by any other name, must still entail violence. And there is no way that you can go in and take a clan's access to land they have held for thousands of years without killing them, either violently as you encounter their resistance, or slowly, through starvation and marginalisation. This 'prosperity' approach must be a very one-way kind.

Under Indonesia's policy of 'transmigration' armed forces are sent into forested areas to dispossess by force those who have lived in them for thousands of years. Primary industry, in the form of mines and timber-works, leads the charge, followed by the property developers, who build suburbs, and after this, Indonesians from urban centres in other parts of Indonesia purchase houses there and migrate.

Because there was a 'legal' arrangement in the 1960s, with the help of the UN, Indonesia can claim the 'legal' right to resettle millions of people in West Papua, over the dead bodies of the incumbent inhabitants. Shows you how little what's legal has to do with justice, doesn't it? Because West Papua is supposed to be Indonesian, what the armies and property developers do there can be politely recast as 'town planning' and invasion from other parts of Indonesia by millions of people can be called a 'sea change'. If it were not for armies and property developers which facilitate this legal invasion, of course, there would not be torture and genocide in Western Papua. Whilst torture and genocide are still illegal, the things that lead up to them - growth lobbies, growth economics, globalisation, industrial agriculture, smart growth, population 'building', property development, mining etc., and corporate colonisation, are legal. Once you create the problem legally, the illegal consequences become irresistable.

British film about West Papuan resistance fighters:

The modern day rise in large scale monocrop plantations such as palm oil and bananas, proposed for vast swathes of Dayak land held under customary rights, titles and claims in Indonesia, threaten the local political landscape in various regions in Borneo. Further problems continue to arise in part due to the shaping of the modern Malaysian and Indonesian nation-states on post-colonial political systems and laws on land tenure. The conflict between the state and the Dayak natives on land laws and native customary rights will continue as long as the colonial model on land tenure is used against local customary law. The main precept of land use, in local customary law, is that cultivated land is owned and held in right by the native owners, and the concept of land ownership flows out of this central belief. This understanding of t is based on the idea that land is used and held under native domain. Invariably, when colonial rule was first felt in the Kalimantan Kingdoms, conflict over the subjugation of territory erupted several times between the Dayaks and the respective authorities. ( From "Dyak people," Wikipedia.

Australian news report on genocide in West Papua

Jayapura: Indigenous West Papuans riot over Indonesian copper and gold mine ownership, March 2006

Jayapura is the largest town in Irian Jaya/West Papua. It has beautiful beaches and sprawling suburbs, and a long road out into the hinterlands promises many more years of violent dispossession if allowed to go ahead.