The Driving Force Behind Anti-Americanism

by VIJAY PRASHAD
Al-Nass (The People), and other television channels of “Satellite Salafism,” broadcast news of a year old mediocre film trailer about the life of the Prophet Mohammad, made by an Israeli-Californian* and championed by a Florida-based Christian pastor. Across the waters, radicals spurred each other on. The reactions in Cairo and Benghazi were swift. Crowds formed in front of the US embassy in Egypt and the US consulate in Libya, storming them, and, in Benghazi, a rocket-fired grenade – it seems – killed four US officials, including the US ambassador to Libya, Christopher Stevens.

The crowds in both Cairo and Benghazi included not only radical Islamists, but also groups such as Egypt’s Ultras, the soccer fan club that played an important role in the 2011 revolution. The media has concentrated on the presence of bearded men and black flags to paint these protests as the work of Salafis, and to point the finger at Ansar al-Shariah and other fringe groups. The black flag (the banner of the eagle) does not, of course, belong solely to al-Qaeda or even to Islamic radicalism. It has become a commonplace symbol used by those who want a more robust Islamic presence in the public sphere as well as by those who want to live under an Islamic theocracy. Both claim the flag, so its presence is not conclusive about the currents that took part in this, and other such events. It will take time to fully understand the roots of such violent acts, after careful forensic reporting on those who came to the protests. Nevertheless, some preliminary observations can be made regarding the ongoing social convulsions, at least in the Libyan case.

Benghazi’s Long Resentment of the West

This is not the first such protest in Benghazi, the eastern city of Libya. Over the course of this year, tumult has been the order of the day. In January, a crowd stormed the headquarters of the National Transitional Council. In April, a bomb was thrown at a convoy that included the head of the UN Mission to Libya, and another bomb exploded at a courthouse. In May, a rocket was fired at the Red Cross office. A convoy carrying the head of the British consulate was attacked in June, and since then the consulate has been abandoned. In August, a pipe bomb exploded in front of the US consulate building. Frustration with the West is commonplace amongst sections of society, who are not Gaddafi loyalists, but on the contrary fought valiantly in the 2011 civil war against Gaddafi. The NATO intervention did not mollify a much more fundamental grievance they have against the US-UK, namely the sense of humiliation of the Arab world against the arrogance of Western domination in cultural and political terms.

An earlier incident helps to highlight this point. In late 2005, protests across the world took place in reaction to a Danish newspaper, Jyllands-Posten, publishing cartoons that demeaned the Prophet Mohammad. This upsurge came to eastern Libya in early 2006. An Italian minister, Roberto Calderoli, wore a t-shirt that bore that offensive cartoon. A demonstration of more than 1,000 people, mainly political Islamists and pious Muslims, gathered in front of the Italian consulate in Benghazi on 17 February 2006. The Gaddafi regime sent in its armed police, who opened fire, killing 11. After the police firing, a section of the middle-class that was not sympathetic to the Islamists turned against the Gaddafi regime. Intellectuals such as Fathi Terbil, Terbil Salwa and Idris al-Mesmari joined a platform to bring justice not only to the families of the slain in 2006, but also for the families of those members of the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG) and others who were massacred in Abu Salim prison in 1996.

To commemorate the slain on the fifth anniversary of the firing, on 17 February 2011, Terbil and others organized a demonstration in Benghazi. It was to block this protest that Terbil was arrested on February 15, and it was to demand his release that the crowds came out in Benghazi inaugurating the major upsurge against Gaddafi in 2011. Gaddafi lost control of the entire eastern part of the country within a week. The social roots of humiliation played an important part in the February Revolution in Libya.

Western Support for Gaddafi Not Forgotten

The protests were not just about the cartoons. They were also about the 1996 massacre in Abu Salim prison and about the collaboration of the Gaddafi regime with the War on Terror. From the late 1980s, Gaddafi’s regime had harshly repressed any signs of political Islam. Prisons were filled with bearded men, and there was no tolerance for any dissent amongst the population along Islamic lines. This is the reason why LIFG members fled the country for Saudi Arabia, Sudan, and of course Afghanistan and Pakistan. The Gaddafi regime was not able to reach the militants of the LIFG and associated bodies because it had no capacity to reach them in those far off locales.

After 9/11, when the West wanted to outsource torture to prisons outside its direct control, Gaddafi (like Mubarak and Syria’s Assad) offered his services. In March 2004, the US opened a diplomatic mission in Tripoli, and the CIA opened up an office there as well. Later that month, Tony Blair came to Libya, the first British prime minister to visit the country since 1943, and he spent considerable time talking about commercial interests (to get Shell its oil concessions) and the “common cause” in fighting terrorism. Blair was excited to meet Gaddafi (the “Leader,” as the British faxes to Tripoli put it) in his tent because “journalists would love it. If this is possible, No. 10 would be grateful.” As quid pro quo, the British organized the “rendition” of LIFG militants into the hands of the Gaddafi regime. “This was the least we could do for you and for Libya to demonstrate the remarkable relationship we have built over the years,” wrote Sir Mark Allen, head of Britain’s MI6 to Gaddafi’s henchman Moussa Koussa on 18 March 2004. The specific matter here was the “safe arrival of Abu Abdallah Sadiq,” the nom de plume of Abdul Hakim Belhadj, former emir of LIFG and now leader of the al-Watan political party (and a crucial leader of the military part of the 2011 Revolution).

A comprehensive Human Rights Watch report, Delivered into Enemy Hands: US-Led Abuse and Rendition of Opponents to Gaddafi’s Libya, released last week details the stories of a number of the leading figures who were arrested around the world, tortured in US-run prisons in Afghanistan and elsewhere, and then delivered back to Libya. They were handed over to the Libyan authorities with full-awareness that they were going to be tortured or even killed. Belhadj and his wife, Fatima Bouchar (four months pregnant at the time), were picked up in Malaysia and allegedly tortured by the CIA in Bangkok, Thailand. Bouchar told Human Rights Watch, “They knew I was pregnant. It was obvious,” and yet, she, who had no affiliations with any militant groups, was chained up and given no food for five days. The couple were then taken to Libya. In one fax, the CIA thanks the Libyan security service for its “hospitality” and says that its visit was “very productive.” When the couple arrived in Libya, Moussa Koussa chillingly greeted Belhadj, “I’ve been waiting for you.”

In April 2012, Belhadj told the European Parliament, “All we seek is justice. We hope the new Libya, freed from its dictator, will have positive relationships with the West. But this relationship must be built on respect and justice. Only by admitting and apologizing for past mistakes can we move forward together as friends.” People like Belhadj stand for a social section that has had its dignity compromised by Western actions. A longing for dignity drives revolts. It is what compelled the rebellion against Gaddafi’s regime. It is what remains a major catalyst for unrest in the region against Western interests, particularly since there will be no apology for the rendition program or for the close, even servile, collaboration with the Gaddafi regime from, at least, 2003 to 2011. Gaddafi’s henchman, Moussa Koussa was spirited off on a British military plane in March 2011, payback for his services to MI6, and now lives in a comfortable bungalow in Doha, Qatar. Neither he, nor his friend Sir Mark Allen, nor the CIA’s Steve Kappes, will ever have to admit to what they did, apologize for it, or be charged with grave violations of international law.

The humiliations accumulate without outlet.

Libyan Rage Despite Elections

The elections in July heralded an opening for Libya. The results were celebrated in the West, since it seemed that unlike Tunisia and Egypt, the Islamists had not garnered the fruits of the revolts. The neo-liberal sections, led by Mahmoud Jibril’s National Forces Alliance won a majority. Jibril had been the political face of the Libyan Diaspora. After a career in the Gulf, he returned to Libya in the 2000s at the urging of Saif al-Islam Gaddafi, who wanted to convert his country into a “Kuwait on the Mediterranean.” When things did not work out as planned, Jibril got frustrated. He had no political base. When the rebellion broke out, Jibril threw in his lot with it, and thanks to NATO intervention, was able to use his affinity with the West to put himself into a position of political power. His victory in the polls vindicated NATO, which now felt that it had its man in charge – open to sweetheart deals for Western oil companies and eager to push further the neo-liberal agenda that was constrained five years ago.

The rules for the July elections provided Jibril’s Alliance with a clear road to victory. Only 80 of the parliament’s 200 seats could be contested by political parties, with the rest were to be filled with independents. That was always going to be an advantage for Jibril’s Alliance because it could attract these parliamentarians into its bloc. The whiff of proximity to the West, and the fears of Islamism, helped cement that linkage. Very strict rules against the Muslim Brotherhood’s use of its primary ideology constrained Belhadj’s political force, the Justice and Construction Party (JCP), from moving its own agenda. Furthermore, disagreements between two central Islamist leaders, Ali al-Salabi and Belhadj, prevented the JCP from fighting the election with robust unity.

Gaddafi’s anti-Islamist propaganda of the past two decades certainly has not dissolved, and with only 18 days to run an election campaign, it was clear that the JCP would not have been able to make inroads into sections who remain suspicious of it, and are yet sympathetic to its general orientation. That is to say, they might not share its tendency toward theocracy, but it does share its frustrations at what is perceived to be the Arab world’s enduring humiliation at the hands of the West. Jibril does not know how to address this humiliation, comfortable as he is with the Western agenda. The results of the July elections, therefore, are not representative of the social character of the country, where political Islam plays an important role. Talk of the “defeat” of the Islamists in the ballot box further inflames a section that believes that it remains integral to the future of Libya.

It is too early to make a full judgment about the attack on the US consulate. Details are slowly emerging about the nature of the protest and the firing of the grenade at the consular building itself. But it is not too early to assert that the protest emerged out of a long-standing sense of humiliation and anger, at the sanctification of Islamophobia in the West and at the failure of the political institutions in the new North Africa to take into consideration the sacrifices and the programs of the Islamists.

Vijay Prashad’s new book, Arab Spring, Libyan Winter , is published by AK Press.

This article originally appeared in Al-Akhbar.
* The actual origin of this film is still being determined at the moment of this writing

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A Conversation with Ingar Solty and Max Bohnel on the Republican National Convention

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~(((( T h e B u l l e t ))))~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

From August 27 to 30th, the Republican National Convention (RNC) took place in Tampa, Florida, where the party officially nominated Mitt Romney as the Republican presidential candidate and Paul Ryan as his running mate for vice-president. The U.S. foreign-correspondent for German-speaking public radio networks and progressive newspapers, Max Bohnel from New York (previously a Middle East foreign correspondent in Jerusalem), travelled to Tampa and reported on the convention. His conversation with Ingar Solty is a slightly reworked version of a piece published in the print as well as the online edition of the German daily newspaper Neues Deutschland.

…in the United States elections are won in the first instance by money, and in view of the high abstention rate, in the second, by mobilization of the base. ”

IS: The party elite reacted to this tricky situation with a demonstration of its power. In short succession all party bigwigs endorsed Romney: George H. W. Bush, George W. Bush, John McCain, Jeb Bush, Marco Rubio, Eric Cantor, Kevin McCarthy, Paul Ryan. In addition, at the start of March party strategists Ross Douthat and David Frum appeared to have taken advantage of a sexism scandal on the part of the right-wing populist and secret kingmaker Rush Limbaugh, to discipline the entire right-wing of the party. From that moment onwards Romney had the support of the right-wing. At the party convention Romney will thus find the right words to excite the party’s base. He is aware in the United States elections are won in the first instance by money, and in view of the high abstention rate, in the second, by mobilization of the base.

MB: How do you assess Romney’s decision to choose Paul Ryan as his running mate in this context?

IS: Romney’s decision in favor of the market radical Paul Ryan as his vice-presidential running mate should help to electrify the base close to the Tea Party. At the same time, with this decision Romney has probably done a disservice to his campaign, because Ryan is the extra ammunition Obama needs to be re-elected. The 2012 election boils down to a negative electoral campaign. This has to do with the fact that on the one hand about half the population rejects Romney, but Obama in view of the sluggish economic situation and the remaining unpopularity of his policies including the health care reform cannot undertake a positive campaign. On the other hand, the decision of the Supreme Court regarding campaign financing encourages this very development. The newly legalized campaign funds known as “Super-PACs” though not allowed to directly support candidates, are permitted to provide unlimited money for negative campaigning. Thanks to Ryan, Obama, as a moderate neoliberal politician espousing austerity, can now warn about the specter of the right-wing libertarian Ryan, who with his policy approach antagonized even the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops.

MB: How can we conceive of a right-wing intellectual who advises Romney or does the preliminary work for him and the republicans in the media or academically?

IS: Romney’s brain trust reflects his origin as an elite republican. Connections to the right-wing fringe exist only with the advisor Jim Talent. It is striking that Romney does not have any political-economic vision. In 2008 Obama early on surrounded himself with many economists with different positions, from the classic neoliberals with Wall-Street connections (Paul Volcker, Lawrence Summers, Timothy Geithner) via the Third-Way neoliberalism of Austan Goolsbee up to moderate Keynesianism (Jared Bernstein, Christina Romer and at the beginning also James K. Galbraith). In contrast, in Romney’s team the Hayek ideologue Ryan, who intended to privatize the popular Social Security and Medicare systems for retirees and only backpaddled in his RNC speech now regarding Medicare, corresponds most closely to a high-profile economic expert.

Otherwise Romney’s advisors are distinguished as being a crude mix of party cadres close to him from his time as the governor of Massachusetts and Bush administration remnants. Figures such as Cofer Black, Max Boot, Michael Chertoff, Eliot A. Cohen, Norm Coleman, Michael Hayden, Kim Holmes, Robert Kagan, Eric Lehman, Dan Senor, Vin Weber and Dov S. Zakheim originate mainly from the ‘neocon’ milieu. Most of them have a connection to the “Project for a New American Century” and to the Heritage Foundation, and come from the security apparatuses or the academic departments connected to them. Insofar as large sections of the security apparatuses were privatized during the “War on Terror,” with a Romney victory one can expect a return of the revolving-door principle in which high-ranking managers from profit-oriented private security firms such as Chertoff, Black and Hayden will (once again) assume positions in the state. To give just one example, Black is the chairman of Total Intelligence Solutions, a sister company of the Prince Group, the world’s largest security and mercenary company which during the Bush administration plundered the state by means of untendered public contracts, and was jointly responsible for the cost explosion of the over $4-trillion “War on Terror.” Next to them, there is only a number of obscure exile-Cuban lobbyists with whom Romney evidently wishes to appeal to Hispanics, in particular in the populous southern swing-states with large electoral colleges such as Florida.

MB: So no great minds in Romney’s campaign?

IS: Well, let’s say Romney’s campaign does not possess a real intellectual superstructure. His oldest and closest advisor Beth Myers – party member and wife of another very wealthy hedge fund manager – appears to be in line with the policy approach that Romney would follow: politically practical neoliberal policies domestically, and aggressive policies in matters of foreign affairs. The problem is that Obama leaves him little room to breathe on both levels. This is so because since the collapse of the green-capitalist reform agenda Obama has been pursuing a competitive export-oriented strategy based on an intensified exploitation of the American workforce domestically. This is flanked by an aggressive geopolitical strategy in the Middle East, in Central Asia and in the Asia-Pacific region. The aim is to ensure that the rise of China takes place under the global hegemony of the United States and that the U.S. option of a maritime continental blockade of China will dispel any idea of a challenge to the U.S. dollar as the global reserve currency. Romney distinguishes himself only marginally from this aggressive approach to the integration and containment of China.

MB: Are there parallels between American and European right-wing populism?

IS: Right-wing populism as a manifestation of the crisis of political representation in neoliberalism is a multinational phenomenon in the advanced welfare-state capitalist countries. At the same time, it is differentiated in part by its social bases and its worldviews. In countries where right-wing populism has a stronger working-class base, such as in the Netherlands, France or Austria, it takes this fact into account insofar as it combines nationalist with anti-neoliberal demands such as opposing the raising of the retirement age.

Furthermore, as in the French National Front or the Swedish Democrats, its roots are still in part located in anti-Semitic right-wing extremism/classical fascism, while in the United States it presents itself as an authoritarian radicalization of a neoliberalism headed into crisis, and as Islamophobic instead of anti-Semitic. It is this ‘right-wing libertarianism’ flanked with Islamophobic and classist authoritarianism to which the future of the radical right belongs. In Germany, in contrast, state repression, the historic debt mortgage of the right, and the Nazi nostalgia appear to have slowed down the import of ‘right-wing libertarian’ ideology from the United States; with Thilo Sarrazin, Peter Sloterdijk, Henryk M. Broder, Ralph Giordano etc., its ideas enter society rather through the established parties of the so-called center. Right-wing populism in the United States, unlike in Europe, does not have its own political party. This is both a strength and a weakness; a strength because it can take advantage of the established republicans, a weakness because institutionalization (as the Tea Party caucus in the Congress) is usually accompanied by a de-radicalizing co-optation.

MB: What does that entail for the future of right-wing populism in the United States? Doesn’t that turn it into a dog that barks but can’t bite?

IS: It is generally the case that right-wing populism as a reactionary political project in the United States as well as in Europe, does not have an independent and coherent political project available to it, but ultimately runs on naked resentment. Incidentally, this is also why it is often futile to try and hold a ‘rational’ discussion with the right-wing populist’s core base, because the resentment fulfils a basic social-psychological need of people who are subjectively and sometimes even objectively powerless (think of the isolated small-business owner struggling under capitalist competition etc.). This is the need to channel the rage against the system, which has put them into this situation, against those further down below.

The reactionary nature of right-wing populism and, as a result, the lack of a coherent political project also explains its historical intellectual weakness. The internal contradictions are enormous and they even run through their most important ‘intellectuals.’ In the U.S., right-wing populists like Michael Savage are simultaneously protectionist nationalists and enthusiastic supporters of the American Empire, while Ron Paul promotes free trade, but as a ‘non-interventionist’ rejects the military preservation of global capitalism in the context of the American Empire. For this reason U.S. right-wing populists – analogous with historical fascism – have up to now been viewed sceptically by the ruling classes, even if, similarly to Hitler’s Nazi Party in Germany, which was financed early on by Fritz Thyssen and other large capitalists, their organizations have been generously financed by some of the richest men and women in the United States.

Right-wing populism nevertheless remains dangerous because the deeper the crisis of representation becomes, the less the political elite of the transnationalized bourgeoisie, to which Romney belongs, can keep the right-wing populists under control. Their precarious situation provides the desire to be more than simply cattle providing voters for the upper-class (party) elites. And the history of far-right movements has shown that the economically and politically dominant classes, when their grasp to power is at risk in the face of strong movements from the organized working-classes, may lose their hesitation to embrace the ‘vulgar’ people from the far right, whose hatred toward the organizations of the working-classes then comes in handy, quite quickly. •

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Editor’s Note: The contradictions that ostensibly baffle the author are simply rooted in the system’s inherent dynamic of social relations and its social imperatives, and by that I mean capitalism. Capitalist control and ownership of the government and the media-military complex has brought us to this infernal crossroads. And we have reached such a level of deterioration in all areas of society that at this point reforms cannot begin to restore a semblance of normalcy. The crisis is too deep, too radical, and therefore it can only accept a radical solution. Incidentally, the author says that Reagan marked a turning point for the worse in America, which is entirely correct, but his phraseology seems confusing. Reagan and his clique represent the moment when the more savage aspects of free-market capitalism began to come to the fore following the electoral and propaganda victories of the right, but capitalism was there all along. One last point, a lot of articles published on Veterans Today are permeated with blatant anti-semitism, while others give way (not surprisingly considering its original military audience) to outbursts of chauvinism, neither of which we approve nor endorse. That being said, VT is a large site with many non-establishment articulate voices speaking freely, many irrefutably progressive, including well-known left analysts and commentators who themselves are Jewish. It’s a contradictory place and it has its flaws, but as an informational ambit it’s a much more open resource than a local mainstream newspaper. In sum, we pick what we think is worthy of attention and leave the chaff out. —PG

By Sami Jamil Jadallah, Veterans Today

No need to wonder what went wrong with the “Right Nation”. Every thing that could go wrong with America did since Reagan aligned himself with Christian Evangelical Fundamentalists and their Zionist allies and adoption of Milton Freedman economic policies and the American capitalist system that is ruthless, reckless and elitist.

One has to wonder what went wrong with a nation that has all the fundamentals to be a great nation, great with its ideals of freedom and liberty for its people and the world, a right nation that abandoned its people to poverty, unemployment, lack of health care, expensive higher education, deteriorating infrastructure and abandoned and run down urban cities and rural areas that has seen better times even in the Great Depression. We became a nation where middle class citizens pay more in taxes than multi billion dollar corporations and where Congress and Wall Street declared war on the nation and its citizens.

America is a nation that can boast the best in higher education (albeit expensive and unaffordable to families and students) in the world with the majority of American universities in the top 500. While 85.5% finish high school only 22% earned bachelor degree, nothing to boast about.

America is a nation that boasts of the best of medical colleges and institutions attracting kings and heads of states p from around the world. Great institutions such as Mayo Clinic, Cleveland Clinic, Mount Sinai, and Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, among many private clinics and hospitals yet the majority of citizens hardly could afford medical care fit for this nation.

America is a nation that boasts the best business schools in the world such as Harvard, Yale, Michigan, Stanford, Chicago, Indiana, yet the leading crooks, thieves and corrupt leaders on Wall Streets are among the top graduates of the best business schools in the country. Wall Streeters, bankers and lawyer that took the nation and the people to ruin while earning tens if not hundreds of millions in salaries and bonuses. I wonder whatever happened to “business ethnics” courses we studied while in graduate schools? I guess greed and lost value system became the model of a corrupt and corrupting Wall Street.

America is a nation with best law schools in the world colleges such as Harvard, Yale, Columbia, Princeton, UCLA, Berkeley, Michigan, Chicago and Indiana with great constitutional scholars with many of the graduates heading to Wall Street to earn multi million dollars in annual fees charging corporations hundreds of millions of dollars in legal fees for single merger and acquisition, public offering among other services. Consumers of course end up paying for these billions charged by Wall Streets in the form of added costs to products and services. One has to question the rates and fees charged by these Wall Streeters without any added value to products or services.

America is a nation that boasts of having the best IT and engineering schools in the country such as MIT, Stanford, Illinois Institute of Technology, Purdue, Berkeley, Virginian Tech among others, yet our government entrust our national security to foreign companies and foreign citizens from country (you guessed it) that killed and murdered our citizens in cold blood, spies on us, endanger our national security, took us to many wars, yet this country and its citizens are at every level of our national government from the White House, to Congress, to Homeland Security, entrusted with the nation, its safety and yes endangering our lives and liberties.

America is a nation with a history of ingenuity, creativity, entrepreneurship that created such great companies as IBM, Boeing, Ford, GM, Dow Chemical, Google, Microsoft, Apple, Eastman Kodak, Hewlett Packard, with great geniuses entrepreneurship such as Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, Larry Page, Sergey Brin, Thomas Edison, Thomas J. Watson, Howard Hughes, among many of the great and greater who built this nation into an industrial power and the largest economy in the world and who created the best and highest paying jobs in the nation.

America is a nation in less than 10 years took man to the moon and back, and recently landed the space ship “Curiosity” on Mars. Great engineers, committed scientists, brave astronauts and test pilots defying gravity and failures, yet we are unable to upgrade our failing and deteriorating infrastructures of bridges, roads, railways, electrical grids and power lines that with the slightest of storms hundreds of thousands of homes remain without electricity for days if not weeks. A nation unable to reach down to earth and fix our own neighborhoods, streets and schools.

We are a nation of dedicated scientist, medical researchers, research institutions winning many Noble prizes, that succeeded in developing miracle medicine, vaccines and cures for many diseases, eradicating or controlling diseases such as polio, tuberculosis and small box among others yet we have failed so far and after years of research yet to succeed in finding cure for cancer, diabetes, malaria, Alzheimer among many of the diseases that kills hundreds if not millions of Americans every years. We even discovered the Genome of mankind the first nation in the world to do so, thanks to great-dedicated minds and private and public partnership and thanks to scientists and researchers such as Craig Venter and Francis Collins and yes, thanks to NIH and CDC for their contributions.

America is a nation that rose from soup lines, Great Depression; high unemployment went on to win the Great War, liberating hundreds of millions of people, rebuilding nations and cities destroyed. And with our help, Japanese and European cities such as Frankfurt, Hamburg, Munich, Dresden, Nagasaki, Hiroshima are now thriving cities, while our own cities that produced the machines and weapons to destroy these cities are dying of neglect, cities such as Detroit, Cleveland, Oakland, and St. Lewis among others. What a great contrast between those cities we help destroy and our now destroyed and run down cities.

We are a nation that declared War on Poverty and yet after 40 years the level of poverty in this nation is the highest ever in its history with some 40 millions below poverty lines. And tens of millions of our children suffer from malnutrition and could not afford a balanced breakfast. We declare War on Drugs yet our nation is infested with drugs that our leadership helps bring to this country by sponsoring drug lords in Afghanistan, perhaps in Columbia and Mexico. The only War America won is the one against America and the American people.

America is a country of declared equal opportunity and equal rights for its citizens yet our jails, corporations, Wall Street and universities tell us otherwise. Our schools are unequal in funding with such large disparity between schools in rich affluent districts and those of poor and ghetto neighborhood. Yet we want our kids to compete fairly and squarely in the job market. And worst we wonder why kids of poor neighborhoods turns to drugs, crimes and prostitution.

We are a nation that spent three trillions ($3,000,000,000,000) on illegal wars, thanks to George Bush and Israel, under false flag pretenses and lies taking the nations to financial ruins and putting generations of our citizens and tax payers under great financial burdens for decades to come, mortgaging our nation to countries like China, thanks to Wall Mart.

America is a country that claims freedom of speech, assembly and associations, yet our media is perhaps the most corrupt, biased, unfair in its reporting, beholding to foreign nation and ideology. With few exceptions nothing but garbage coming out of the likes of Fox News, CNN and the mouths of Rush Limbaugh, Bill O’Reilly and Howard Stern, guys who are paid tens of millions in annual salaries only to insult our sensibility and intelligence. A media that is embedded with government (the War on Iraq, and War on Terror) and act as a cover providing excuses for ill-conceived policies failed to inform the nation and people and stifled the debate on such important issues as war and peace, War on Terror and 9/11 and national security. Now mainstream media lost the courage to “news fit to print”.

We are a nation of generous people and yes decent, hard working and honest, who give and contribute more than $80 Billions annually, to charity at home and aboard. We are a nation of great philanthropists such as Bill and Melinda Gates who gave away billions and continue to give away billions fighting poverty and disease in developing countries and the likes of Warren Buffet. We must not forget foundations such as the Hewlett Foundation and the Ford Foundation that contributed millions if not hundreds of millions to worthy causes here at home and abroad.

The question that bothers me and I am sure bothers hundreds of millions of America if not the world why with so much talent, decency, and fairness, do we have corrupt incompetent if not criminal political, economic and financial leadership as we have. Republicans and Democrats, Liberals and Conservatives. A Congress under the control of lobbies and is for sale to the highest bidder and in collusion with financiers and Wall Street. Political, legal and financial system that produced the worst in America.

No one would believe that America’s business leadership does not give a damn about the nation with companies like such as GE, Boeing, Citigroup, AT&T paying their CEO tens of millions of annual fees and bonuses while paying hardly a dollar in taxes and worst, many receiving tax breaks. According to Freedom Tribune “Eighteen of the 26 companies received cash back or credits to apply against tax in the future”.
America is a nation of immigrant, a reminder to the White Supremacist, ADL and AIPAC. Early immigrants came here seeking freedom and new opportunity, others mainly the Blacks came here as slaves by Whites. Later many came seeking a better life, or escaping prosecutions like East European Jews. We the people of America, White, Black, Brown, Christians, Jews, Muslims Hindus, Sikh and we must not forget the rightful owners of this country, the American Indians we all what makes America such a great nation. Our diversity is our strength, enriching our nation and people, with many immigrants contributing to the greatness of this nation. Certainly not the Skin Heads, the KKK, the ADL or AIPAC that made this country a great powerful country in science in technology, in industry, in social science in medicine, and education.

Now and since the criminal gangs of the NeoCons and the alliance of Evangelical Christian-Jewish Zionists took hold and control of this country, we became a country of hate, a country of many angry people who takes their failings and the nation failings on other simply because they looks different. Hate groups became an industry lead by over 25 different Jewish Zionist organizations the likes of ADL, AIPAC, Campus Watch well funded and well connected to the main stream media and Congress, incite little minded people to hate, anger, blames with some going further, shooting and killings.

However this racism and hate in this country is not limited to private organization, it has become mainstream with leading institutions such a the military (not like when I served) developing courses and teaching hate to military commanders and soldiers such the case of Lt. Colonel Mathew Dooley “ urging senior military officers to wage” total war” on Islam”. Colonel Dooley “spent weeks arguing that the US was at war with Islamic faith”. Of course any idiots would know that since the War on Iraq and Afghanistan was not War on Terror but war on Arabs and Muslims. False flag wars that killed millions of them and us, destroyed nations and almost destroyed our own country.

Just imagine how America would look like in 20 years if the Republicans and the likes of Romney and Paul Ryan and the majority of the Republicans in Congress and their allies on Wall Street and in Israel, succeed in taking over America for 10-20 years. We will be a nation with hundreds of millions unemployed, without health care and social security, with majority of the labor force earning minimum wage working at McDonald and Wall Mart. What remains of American industry will move overseas, thanks to tax incentives by a Republican control White House and Congress.

Unless there is a true American revolution, a revolution of ideas and minds, that brings America back to the right track, a revolution that re-invents America, its political and economic system,  and bring it back to the basic rules that made it such a great nation. Unless that happens and quickly, we are as a nation doomed forever. A good start would be to fire 1/3 of members of Congress in the next election and put the Tea Party out of business once and for all and then go after the other 1/3 and in 6 years have a completely new Congress, a truly representative of the people. Unless we do some major reforms on our political, financial and economic systems as practiced in Washington and Wall Street our nation will fail, just like the Communist system and the former Soviet Union.

Note: The Right Nation is a book published in 2004 by the British authors Adrian Wooldridge and John Micklethwait.

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ARCHIVES—Stories you should have read but didn’t the first time around—
He’s sought for a vague lesser crime of ‘sex by surprise’

By Kevin Spak,  Newser Staff

I feel as if I’m in a surreal Swedish movie being threatened by bizarre trolls. The prosecutor has not asked to see Julian, never asked to interview him, and he hasn’t been charged with anything.“- Mark Stephens, Assange’s lawyer

(Newser) – By now, you’ve probably heard that Julian Assange is wanted for “rape” in Sweden. Heck, you probably read it here on Newser. You can hardly blame us; sources from CNN to the New York Times have said that Assange is charged with “rape, sexual molestation, and unlawful coercion.” There’s just one problem: It’s not true. Assange’s lawyers tell Aol News that prosecutors have told them he’s wanted not for rape but for “sex by surprise,” a minor crime punishable only be a fine.

“We don’t even know what ‘sex by surprise’ even means, and they haven’t told us,” the lawyer says. It seems that two women have accused Assange only of not using a condom after they had asked him to do so, Fast Company explains, pointing to an old Daily Mail report indicating that in the first case, the condom simply broke. These complaints did initially lead to an arrest warrant for rape, but that warrant was swiftly canceled. The current warrant against him does not mention rape, but “sexual coercion.”

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New York Times backs reckless US intervention in South China Sea

WSWS.ORG, a socialist organization
Thank you, WSWS.ORG

The New York Times has once again stepped forward as the apologist for and promoter of the Obama administration’s aggressive foreign policy—this time in the South China Sea.

An editorial last weekend entitled “Asia’s Roiling Sea” drew attention to rising tensions in these strategic waters. Declaring that competition between China and its neighbours had become “a virtual free-for-all”, it warned: “Confrontations over territorial control are alarmingly frequent and could get out of hand, with dangerous consequences.”

The Times proceeds to blame China for this dangerous situation, stating: “There is no question that China’s economic power and its assertive use of its navy and commercial vessels to project influence has changed the regional dynamics and worried many of its neighbours.” It points to Beijing’s territorial claims in the South China Sea and to recent events, including the naval standoff near the disputed Scarborough Shoal and the stationing of a small Chinese garrison on its island of Yongxing.

As for the Obama administration, the Times presents its intervention into these disputes as guided by the purest of motives. “The United States is worried, and rightly so,” the newspaper declared, adding that it had to ignore China’s outbursts, “and continue to play a role in seeking a peaceful resolution to such disputes.”

The editorial represents the height of cynicism. The chief responsibility for inflaming tensions in the South China Sea, and throughout Asia, rests squarely with the Obama administration. During the 2008 presidential election campaign, Obama was backed by sections of the American foreign policy establishment that believed that President Bush’s preoccupation with the Middle East had allowed China’s influence in Asia to expand at Washington’s expense.

In mid-2009, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton declared at an Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN) summit that the US was “back in Asia”, launching what she has since dubbed a “pivot” from the Middle East to Asia. For the past three years, the Obama administration has built up American military forces in the region, strengthened alliances and strategic partnerships, and played a hand in removing political leaders—including Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd and his Japanese counterpart Yukio Hatoyama—who failed to fully support its aggressive moves. In a speech to the Australian parliament last November, Obama summed up his administration’s shift to Asia, bluntly declaring that “the United States is a Pacific power, and we are here to stay.”

The longstanding disputes in the South China Sea have been one of the issues that Washington has exploited to drive a wedge between China and countries in South East Asia. At an ASEAN summit in mid-2010, Clinton stated for the first time that the US had “a national interest” in ensuring “freedom of navigation” in the South China Sea. She also offered to mediate in the territorial disputes, effectively undermining a decade of Chinese diplomacy aimed at resolving the outstanding issues bilaterally with its neighbours.

Under the banner of “freedom of navigation”, the US is reasserting its naval dominance over strategic waters close to the Chinese mainland and, in doing so, encouraging countries like the Philippines and Vietnam to more aggressively press their territorial claims against China.

There is nothing benign or “neutral”—as the Times would have it—about Washington’s activities in the South China Sea. The US has fully backed its ally and former colony, the Philippines in its standoff with China. Clinton has hinted on several occasions that the US would come to the aid of the Philippines under their Mutual Defence Treaty in the event of conflict with China.

Moreover, the Obama administration has been actively strengthening the Philippines armed forces. In a recent confrontation with China over the disputed Scarborough Shoal, the vessel first deployed to the area was a former US coastguard cutter that had been supplied to the Philippines last year. Another is due to be provided soon, along with more sophisticated war planes and other military hardware.

Washington is also in discussion with Manila over an agreement to access Philippine military bases. This will be along the lines of an arrangement announced last November in Canberra that places Marines in Darwin and expands the US use of Australian naval and air bases. These moves are part of a comprehensive strategy that includes basing new American littoral combat ships in Singapore and seeking access to bases in Vietnam and Thailand. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta has announced plans to place 60 percent of US naval forces in the Asia-Pacific region.

American naval dominance of the South China Sea—as well as key “choke points” through South East Asia, such as the Malacca Strait—pose a direct threat to China, which relies on these shipping routes to import energy and raw materials from the Middle East and Africa. In the event of a conflict, the US could impose an economic blockade on China—similar to its oil embargo against Japan in 1941, which triggered the Pacific War.

Through its reckless actions, the Obama administration has transformed what were previously relatively minor maritime disputes into a major international issue involving the world’s two largest economies. The South China Sea has become another dangerous flashpoint in Asia—like the Korean peninsula and the Taiwan Strait.

The divisions were evident at last month’s ASEAN ministerial summit. On one side, the Philippines and Vietnam, supported by the US, pressed for a discussion on a regional “code of conduct”. The Philippines even insisted that its dispute with China over the Scarborough Shoal be mentioned in the final communiqué. These proposals were opposed by Cambodia, backed by China, and, for the first time in ASEAN’s history, no final joint statement was issued. It is little wonder that the US intervention has provoked an increasingly angry reaction in Beijing.

Nor is the South China Sea the only arena in which the US has deliberately stoked up tensions. The New York Times makes passing reference to the latest diplomatic row between China and Japan over the disputed Senkaku/Diaoyu islands in the East China Sea. Once again, with the Obama administration’s encouragement, the Japanese government has taken a far more aggressive stance. Most recently, Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda provocatively indicated that he might “nationalise” the islands by buying them from their private owner.

In concluding its editorial, the Times called on ASEAN to effectively thumb its nose at China and implement “a code of conduct”, declaring “Washington’s should not be the sole voice for a peaceful resolution” to the South China Sea disputes. All this demonstrates is that in the name of “peace”, the US is dangerously raising the political temperature in this trouble spot even as it prepares for a potentially catastrophic conflict with China. And the New York Times, along with the rest of the compliant American media, is acting as its accomplice, as it did during the criminal wars in Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya.

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