Old Game, New Obsession, New Enemy
by JOHN PILGER

Countries are “pieces on a chessboard upon which is being played out a great game for the domination of the world,” wrote Lord Curzon, Viceroy of India, in 1898. Nothing has changed. The shopping mall massacre in Nairobi was a bloody façade behind which a full-scale invasion of Africa and a war in Asia are the great game.

The al-Shabaab shopping mall killers came from Somalia. If any country is an imperial metaphor, it is Somalia. Sharing a common language and religion, Somalis have been divided between the British, French, Italians and Ethiopians.  Tens of thousands of people have been handed from one power to another. “When they are made to hate each other,” wrote a British colonial official, “good governance is assured.”

Today, Somalia is a theme park of brutal, artificial divisions, long impoverished by World Bank and IMF “structural adjustment” programmes, and saturated with modern weapons, notably President Obama’s personal favourite, the drone. The one stable Somali government, the Islamic Courts, was “well received by the people in the areas it controlled,” reported the US Congressional Research Service, “[but] received negative press coverage, especially in the West.”  Obama crushed it; and in January, Hillary Clinton, then secretary of state, presented her man to the world. “Somalia will remain grateful to the unwavering support from the United States government,” effused President Hassan Mohamud, “thank you, America.”

The shopping mall atrocity was a response to this — just as the attack on the Twin Towers and the London bombings were explicit reactions to invasion and injustice.  Once of little consequence, jihadism now marches in lockstep with the return of unfettered imperialism.

Since Nato reduced modern Libya to a Hobbesian state in 2011, the last obstacles to Africa have fallen. “Scrambles for energy, minerals and fertile land are likely to occur with increasingly intensity,” report Ministry of Defence planners. They predict “high numbers of civilian casualties”; therefore “perceptions of moral legitimacy will be important for success”.  Sensitive to the PR problem of invading a continent, the arms mammoth, BAE Systems, together with Barclay Capital and BP, warn that “the government should define its international mission as managing risks on behalf of British citizens”. The cynicism is lethal. British governments are repeatedly warned, not least by the parliamentary intelligence and security committee, that foreign adventures beckon retaliation at home.

With minimal media interest, the US African Command (Africom) has deployed troops to 35 African countries, establishing a familiar network of authoritarian supplicants eager for bribes and armaments. In war games, a “soldier to soldier” doctrine embeds US officers at every level of command from general to warrant officer. The British did the same in India. It is as if Africa’s proud history of liberation, from Patrice Lumumba to Nelson Mandela, is consigned to oblivion by a new master’s black colonial elite whose “historic mission”, warned Frantz Fanon half a century ago, is the subjugation of their own people in the cause of “a capitalism rampant though camouflaged”. The reference also fits the Son of Africa in the White House.

For Obama, there is a more pressing cause — China. Africa is China’s success story. Where the Americans bring drones, the Chinese build roads, bridges and dams. What the Chinese want is resources, especially fossel fuels. Nato’s bombing of Libya drove out 30,000 Chinese oil industry workers. More than jihadism or Iran, China is now Washington’s obsession in Africa and beyond. This is a “policy” known as the “pivot to Asia”, whose threat of world war may be as great as any in the modern era.

This week’s meeting in Tokyo of US secretary of state John Kerry and defence secretary Chuck Hagel with their Japanese counterparts accelerated the prospect of war with the new imperial rival. Sixty per cent of US and naval forces are to be based in Asia by 2020, aimed at China. Japan is re-arming rapidly under the right-wing government of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, who came to power in December with a pledge to build a “new, strong military” and circumvent the “peace constitution”. A US-Japanese anti-ballistic missile system near Kyoto is directed at China. Using long-range Global Hawk drones, the US has sharply increased its provocations in the East China and South China seas, where Japan and China dispute the ownership of the Senkaku/Diaoyu islands. Advanced vertical take-off aircraft are now deployed in Japan; their purpose is blitzkrieg.

On the Pacific island of Guam, from which B-52s attacked Vietnam, the biggest military buildup since the Indochina wars includes 9,000 US Marines.  In Australia this week, an arms fair and military jamboree that diverted much of Sydney, is in keeping with a government propaganda campaign to justify an unprecedented US military build-up from Perth to Darwin, aimed at China. The vast US base at Pine Gap near Alice Springs is, as Edward Snowden disclosed, a hub of US spying in the region and beyond; it also critical to Obama’s worldwide assassinations by drone.

“We have to inform the British to keep them on side,” an assistant US secretary of state McGeorge Bundy once said, “You in Australia are with us, come what may.” Australian forces have long played a mercenary role for Washington. However, there is a hitch. China is Australia’s biggest trading partner and largely responsible its evasion of the 2008 recession. Without China, there would be no minerals boom: no weekly mining return of up to a billion dollars.

The dangers this presents are rarely debated publicly in Australia, where prime minister Tony Abbott’s patron, Rupert Murdoch, controls 70 per cent of the press. Occasionally, anxiety is expressed over the “choice” that the US wants Australia to make. A report by the Australian Strategic Policy Institute warns that any US plan to strike at China would involve “blinding” Chinese surveillance, intelligence and command systems. This would “consequently increase the chances of Chinese nuclear pre-emption … and a series of miscalculations on both sides if Beijing perceives conventional attacks on its homeland as an attempt to disarm its nuclear capability”.

In his address to the nation last month, Obama said, “What makes America different, what makes us exceptional is that we are dedicated to act.”

John Pilger’s new film, Utopia, is released in cinemas in the UK on 15 November and is launched in Australia in January. He can be reached through his website: www.johnpilger.com.

CONTRIBUTED BY ANNA MANZO

by Stephen Lendman

Both countries want peace, not war. America threatens them. Defensive readiness is prioritized. Forewarned is forearmed. NATO’s a global alliance. Washington heads it. It’s a geopolitical threat. It menaces humanity. It’s expanding worldwide. It’s allied for offense, not defense. It plans war, not peace.

It’s comprised of 28 member states, 22 partner ones, seven Mediterranean Dialogue allies, four Istanbul (Gulf) Cooperation Council Initiative states, and eight other global Partners. It works cooperatively with the UN, EU, and Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe. South American and African expansion is planned.

Stop Nato’s Rick Rozoff told Progressive Radio News Hour listeners it’s a “global missile.” It’s aimed at humanity’s heart. It threatens potential armageddon. Stopping its rogue agenda matters most. It threatens world peace. It’s expanding to Russian and Chinese borders. Encroaching US bases surround them. Moscow and Beijing are mindful. They’re allied defensively. They’re preparing for scenarios they hope to avoid. They’re readying for possible global war.

On December 7, 2011, the EU Times headlined “China Joins Russia, Orders Military to Prepare for World War III.”

A Beijing Ministry of Defense bulletin said then President Hu “agreed in principle” that deterring US-led Western aggression’s only possible by “direct and immediate military action” or threat thereof.

He ordered his naval forces to “prepare for war.” BBC reported the same story. He wants stepped up preparation and readiness. He told military officials that China’s navy should “accelerate its transformation and modernisation in a sturdy way, and make extended preparations for warfare in order to make greater contributions to safeguard national security.”

Chinese Rear Admiral Zhang Zhaozhong warned unequivocally. “China will not hesitate to protect Iran even with a Third World War,” he said.

Hopefully he means it. Hopefully Washington and Israel take heed. Hopefully it deters their planned aggression. Hopefully a nightmarish scenario’s avoided.

Russian General Nikolai Makarov said:

“I do not rule out local and regional armed conflicts developing into a large-scale war, including using nuclear weapons.”

Beijing’s bulletin discussed a US-planned “ultimate (Middle East) solution.” It’s readied in case of regional nuclear war. It said Washington will attack Syria and Iran with lethal biological weapons. They’re “intended to kill tens of millions of innocent civilians.”

Dutch virologist Ron Fouchier revealed it. He discovered that five avian flu virus mutations spread far more easily. Doing so makes them the “most lethal killer(s) of mankind ever invented.”

US capabilities were based on Russian intelligence examination of Lockheed Martin’s RQ-170 Sentinel Drone. It was downed over Iranian territory.  “Russian made Avtobaza ground-based electronic intelligence and jamming system was used. Evidence showed it was equipped with a sophisticated aerosol delivery system.”

America’s nuclear, chemical, and biowarfare agenda is longstanding. Post-9/11, stepped up development was prioritized. Nuclear disarmament was spurned. So were Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) provisions.  The 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty (ABM) was abandoned. It expressly forbids development, testing and deployment of missile defenses. Doing so interferes with Washington’s offensive plans.

It refuses to adopt a proposed Fissile Material Cutoff Treaty (FMCT). It prohibits further weapons-grade uranium and plutonium production. It forbids adding new nuclear weapons to present stockpiles.

America spends more on military readiness than all other countries combined. Funding includes enormous congressional appropriations, outsized black budgets, others off the books, secret programs, huge amounts for intelligence, and other unknown initiatives.

Longstanding US policy calls for preventive, preemptive, and/or proactive wars. Global targets are involved. First-strike chemical, biological and nuclear weapons are planned. Anticipatory self-defense justifies doing so.   Washington rescinded the 1972 Biological Weapons Convention. Subverting its provisions preceded doing it.

Enhancing America’s offensive capability matters most. Doing so prepares for global war. At issue is unchallenged dominance. Anything goes is policy. Achieving it is prioritized. Potentially destroying life on Earth is risked. Advancing Washington’s imperium matters more. America has hugely destructive chemical, biological, nuclear and other arsenals.

Secret research and development programs upgrade them. Enormous amounts are spent doing so. Classified budgets conceal how much.  Hundreds of private biolabs operate nationwide. Fort Detrick, Lawrence Livermore, and other government facilities operate secretly. Research prioritizes offense, not defense.

Germ warfare once was science fiction fantasy. Today it’s a grim reality. So is chemical and/or mushroom shaped cloud annihilation. America plays hardball. It does so for keeps. Nuclear/chemical/biological trigger readiness is prioritized. Francis Boyle calls catastrophic biowarfare/bioterrorist incidents or accidents a “statistical certainty.”

It’s just a matter of time. Permanent war is official US policy. Total war risks annihilation. All weapons in America’s arsenal will be used. They’re planned to be as needed. Humanity’s more than ever threatened. Russia and China represent our last line of defense. Hopefully they’re up to the challenge.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago. He can be reached at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net.  His new book is titled “Banker Occupation: Waging Financial War on Humanity.”

http://www.claritypress.com/LendmanII.html

Visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com.

Listen to cutting-edge discussions with distinguished guests on the Progressive Radio News Hour on the Progressive Radio Network. It airs Fridays at 10AM US Central time and Saturdays and Sundays at noon. All programs are archived for easy listening.

http://www.progressiveradionetwork.com/the-progressive-news-hour

By Paul Craig Roberts

Besides a large, modern, well-trained army, China also has enormous “people’s militias” that include all able-bodied citizens. Conquering the nation conventionally is an impossibility.

Amitai Etzioni has raised an important question: “Who authorized preparations for war with China?” http://yalejournal.org/2013/06/12/who-authorized-preparations-for-war-with-china/Etzioni says that the war plan is not the sort of contingency plan that might be on hand for an improbable event. Etzioni also reports that the Pentagon’s war plan was not ordered by, and has not been reviewed by, US civilian authorities. We are confronted with a neoconized US military out of control endangering Americans and the rest of the world.

Etzioni is correct that this is a momentous decision made by a neoconized military. China is obviously aware that Washington is preparing for war with China. If the Yale Journal knows it, China knows it. If the Chinese government is realistic, the government is aware that Washington is planning a pre-emptive nuclear attack against China. No other kind of war makes any sense from Washington’s standpoint. The “superpower” was never able to occupy Baghdad, and after 11 years of war has been defeated in Afghanistan by a few thousand lightly armed Taliban. It would be curtains for Washington to get into a conventional war with China.

When China was a primitive third world country, it fought the US military to a stalemate in Korea. Today China has the world’s second largest economy and is rapidly overtaking the failing US economy destroyed by jobs offshoring, bankster fraud, and corporate and congressional treason.

The Pentagon’s war plan for China is called “AirSea Battle.” The plan describes itself as “interoperable air and naval forces that can execute networked, integrated attacks-in-depth to disrupt, destroy, and defeat enemy anti-access area denial capabilities.”

Yes, what does that mean? It means many billions of dollars of more profits for the military/security complex while the 99 percent are ground under the boot. It is also clear that this nonsensical jargon cannot defeat a Chinese army. But this kind of saber-rattling can lead to war, and if the Washington morons get a war going, the only way Washington can prevail is with nuclear weapons. The radiation, of course, will kill Americans as well.

Nuclear war is on Washington’s agenda. The rise of the Neocon Nazis has negated the nuclear disarmament agreements that Reagan and Gorbachev made. The extraordinary, mainly truthful 2012 book, The Untold History of the United States by Oliver Stone and Peter Kuznick, describes the post-Reagan breakout of preemptive nuclear attack as Washington’s first option.

During the Cold War nuclear weapons had a defensive purpose. The purpose was to prevent nuclear war by the US and USSR each having sufficient retaliatory power to ensure “mutually assured destruction.” MAD, as it was known, meant that nuclear weapons had no offensive advantage for either side.

The Soviet collapse and China’s focus on its economy instead of its military have resulted in Washington’s advantage in nuclear weaponry that, according to two US Dr. Strangeglove characters, Keir Lieber and Daryl Press, gives Washington first-strike capability. Lieber and Press write that the “precipitous decline of Russia’s arsenal, and the glacial pace of modernization of China’s nuclear forces,” have created a situation in which neither Russia nor China could retaliate to Washington’s first strike.

The Pentagon’s “AirSea Battle” and Lieber and Press’ article in Foreign Affairs have informed China and Russia that Washington is contemplating pre-emptive nuclear attack on both countries. To ensure Russia’s inability to retaliate, Washington is placing anti-ballistic missiles on Russia’s borders in violation of the US-USSR agreement.

Because the American press is a corrupt government propaganda ministry, the American people have no idea that neoconized Washington is planning nuclear war. Americans are no more aware of this than they are of former President Jimmy Carter’s recent statement, reported only in Germany, that the United States no longer has a functioning democracy.

The possibility that the United States would initiate nuclear war was given reality eleven years ago when President George W. Bush, at the urging of Dick Cheney and the neocons that dominated his regime, signed off on the 2002 Nuclear Posture Review.

This neocon document, signed off on by America’s most moronic president, resulted in consternation and condemnation from the rest of the world and launched a new arms race. Russian President Putin immediately announced that Russia would spend all necessary sums to maintain Russia’s retaliatory nuclear capability. The Chinese displayed their prowess by knocking a satellite out of space with a missile. The mayor of Hiroshima, recipient city of a vast American war crime, stated: “The nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, the central international agreement guiding the elimination of nuclear weapons, is on the verge of collapse. The chief cause is US nuclear policy that, by openly declaring the possibility of a pre-emptive nuclear first strike and calling for resumed research into mini-nukes and other so-called ‘useable nuclear weapons,’ appears to worship nuclear weapons as God.”

Polls from all over the world consistently show that Israel and the US are regarded as the two greatest threats to peace and to life on earth. Yet, these two utterly lawless governments prance around pretending to be the “world’s greatest democracies.” Neither government accepts any accountability whatsoever to international law, to human rights, to the Geneva Conventions, or to their own statutory law. The US and Israel are rogue governments, throwbacks to the Hitler and Stalin era.

The post World War II wars originate in Washington and Israel. No other country has imperial expansionary ambitions. The Chinese government has not seized Taiwan, which China could do at will. The Russian government has not seized former constituent parts of Russia, such as Georgia, which, provoked by Washington to launch an attack, was instantly overwhelmed by the Russian Army. Putin could have hung Washington’s Georgian puppet and reincorporated Georgia into Russia, where it resided for several centuries and where many believe it belongs.

For the past 68 years, most military aggression can be sourced to the US and Israel. Yet, these two originators of wars pretend to be the victims of aggression. It is Israel that has a nuclear arsenal that is illegal, unacknowledged, and unaccountable. It is Washington that has drafted a war plan based on nuclear first strike. The rest of the world is correct to view these two rogue unaccountable governments as direct threats to life on earth.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Paul Craig Roberts has had careers in scholarship and academia, journalism, public service, and business. He is chairman of The Institute for Political Economy.