Biden and Powell Warn of a Generated Crisis

Nostradamus, eat your heart out! Colin Powell and Joe Biden, both on the same day, are talking about a crisis that will occur in January 2009, on or around the 22nd. Can someone define a “generated crisis”? All that's missing from these videos is reference to the four horsemen of the apocalypse.

There are compulsive liars, pathological liars, lying bastards and then there is the Bush administration...

You're gonna love this one. It exposes downright, blatant lying at the very highest level and a lot of really angry Americans sounding off at the powerful, including Sean Penn.

Iran - Condi takes a leaf from Powell's book

As I have previously mentioned elsewhere on this blog, any US attack on Iran will be preceded by a campaign for the minds of the US people. It started long before now, but here is Condi Rice yesterday speaking to the Senate Budget Committee:

"It's not just Iran's nuclear programme but also their support for terrorism around the world. They are, in effect, the central banker for terrorism." She added that Tehran was bent on "political subversion, terrorism, and support for violent Islamist extremism….It is Iran's regional policies that really are concerning as we watch them, with their sidekick Syria, destabilizing places like Lebanon and the Palestinian territories and, indeed, even in southern Iraq."

Rice is shortly off to the Middle East to hold talks with regional allies about containing Iran. And what’s the betting mention will be made of that Oil Bourse Iran intends to forge ahead with in march and how it would be bad news all round. No doubt this will later be followed by a speech to the UN that will reminiscent of Colin Powell’s scare mongering performance in February of 2003 when he begged the international community to give their blessing for the invasion of Iraq.

On Wednesday, Rice’s State Department asked Congress for $75m this year to support opponents of Tehran and to finance the first 24-hour official US television station broadcast in Farsi.

Meanwhile, her fellow war pimp, Dubya, is asking congress for another $65 billion for his war kitty. The request would raise war-related spending to nearly 400 billion dollars since September 1th 2001.

Interestingly, today it was revealed that China and Iran are close to finalising plans to develop Iran's Yadavaran oil field in a deal estimated to be worth $100 billion. A Chinese government delegation is expected to travel to Iran as early as March to formally sign an agreement allowing China Petrochemical Corp to develop Yadavaran. The thought of China controlling one of the bihggest oil fields in the Middle East must be causing a lot of sleepless nights for some in the US.
March? Hmmm….why does that month keep popping into my head?

Aftermath of the Tsunami: Querying “American Values in Action”

Realising that upwards of 100,000 of the estimated 165,000 victims of the Tsunami disaster were Muslims, the US wasted no time in sending US Secretary of State Colin Powell to the scene of the devastation. There was much to gain from this mission at a time when the US has been accused of an anti-Muslim crusade in the wake of the devastation it has wrought on Afghanistan and Iraq.

Powell was keen to show the world’s 1.2 billion Muslims that the Bush administration is not islamophobic, even if its military machine did seem to have a penchant for the slaughter of Muslims. He said “We’d be doing it [participating in the relief effort] regardless of religion, but I think it does give the Muslim world and the rest of the world an opportunity to see American generosity, American values in action.”

As for the US “values” Powell’s mission aimed to promote we need only mention Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo Bay for starters before moving on to the myriad international treaties, on gun control, nuclear proliferation, the environment, human rights etc. that the Bush administration has flicked the proverbial V’s to since 2000.

While Powell bangs on about US aid, it is worth remembering that 40 per cent of US aid goes to Israel, a US military ally, a country in breach of numerous UN resolutions, and given in contravention of a Congress ruling that no foreign aid goes to a nuclear power.

US “values” have prompted successive White House administrations to support dictators and tyrannical regimes on every continent, from Pol Pot and Suharto to Saddam Hussein and Papa Doc Duvaliere. Between 1945 and 1999, this same defender of the global well-being toppled 40 governments and helped crush 30 populist movements, assassinated scores of prominent individuals and perverted elections in every corner of the globe. During this same period the US has armed terrorists, trained right-wing guerrilla movements in the art of torture and financed armies intent on overthrowing democratically elected governments. Some values!

When asked on US television whether the death of 500,000 Iraqi children as a consequence of Western sanctions was acceptable, Madeleine Albright, Powell’s predecessor under President Clinton, replied: “I think this is a very hard choice, but the price - we think the price is worth it.”
It seems there are American “values” and “values”. Those Powell is charged with furthering are those of a corrupt elite operating in the interests of corporate America. He was certainly not sent to Indonesia on a show of hands of the US public. His attempt to seek political capital out of present US offers of help to the disaster region is thus opportunistic and utterly despicable, nay, nauseating.

Powell further commented in Indonesia: "I've been in war and I've been through a number of hurricanes, tornadoes and other relief operations, but I've never seen anything like this." This from the man who rose to prominence trying to cover up the My Lai massacre in Vietnam, when US forces slaughtered 500 Vietnamese women and children in the village of My Lai; part of a larger conflict that left 2 million dead, many from the use of napalm and agent orange! We can only assume that Powell is suffering from selective amnesia.

He added: “I cannot imagine the horror that went through the families and all of the people who heard this noise coming and then had their lives snuffed out by this wave.” Neither, it would seem, could he imagine the horror of the thousands trapped in Fallujah as US planes bombed it, napalmed it and American artillery shelled it from every angle, raising that city – once with a population 300,000 – to the ground. And we can only assume that Powell was oblivious to the fact that the 100,000 dead of Indonesia is matched by the 100,000 Iraqis killed since the US invasion of Iraq.

While he feels a surge of pride in the knowledge the US government has promised $350 million to the stricken areas, what is to be made of the fact that this is only a minute fraction of the amount spent on the US invasion and occupation of Iraq? Or, to put it another way, the world is meant to applaud the Bush administration for paying out $350 million in one hand to save Asia’s Moslems, while forking out $150 billion (http://costofwar.com/) with the other to kill their counterparts in the Middle East.

If you consider that we err in comparing the war in Iraq with the rescue mission in the Indian Ocean, then remember the reason for the invasion of Iraq. Bush and Blair both claimed that this was a humanitarian intervention, a rescue mission, aimed at restoring democracy and freeing the Iraqi people from years of oppression. On this count it stands as the most expensive humanitarian mission in history, considering the size of the Iraqi population, and what does this make of the people who opposed that invasion, the 35 million across the world who marched and protested at the Bush/Blair rescue mission to Iraq in February of 2003?

When Jan Egeland, the UN emergency relief co-ordinator, criticised the initial US offer of $15 million in aid as “stingy”, Bush’s response was to claim Egeland was “very misguided and ill-informed”. Bush later had the figure raised to $35 million, with this figure later increased ten fold – a figure, incidentally now dwarfed by private donations in the US. All Egeland was saying was that in times of disaster Western governments do in fact appear parsimonious. Clearly Egeland was thinking of statistics compiled by the Paris-based Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development which reveal the amount of a country’s GDP given in overseas aid. Of the wealthiest countries in the world, none give more than 1% of their GDP in foreign development aid. Egeland was also aware that his own Norway had the best showing at 0.92% and that down at the bottom were the US of A with its "stingy" 0.14%.

Many radical commentators backed Egeland’s “stingy” claim, pointing out that the Bush administration would be spending far more on the president’s inaugural celebration on January 20th and how the Republican Convention in New York last year cost a staggering $166 million (inclusive of $70,000 for donuts and coffee for the press). We can perhaps better set the US aid promise in context by considering that the occupation of Iraq is costing the US an estimated $270 million per day, and that the Pentagon’s military budget is $1.5 billion per day – this spent with a view to killing people, not saving them. What else are guns and bombs, tanks and warships for? One F22 Raptor fighter costs $225 million. It does not carry food parcels and medicines but surface to air missiles and cannons. According to the US-based International Action Centre’s estimates, "for what the US is spending for less than one second of bombing and destruction, it could construct a system that could have prevented thousands of needless deaths [caused by the Tsunami]."

As in Britain, so to in the US have the general public humiliated their governments with their generosity. If we accept that the invasion of Iraq was a humanitarian step, that Bush and Blair were motivated solely by the plight of the suffering Iraqi people under Saddam, why did they not set up a charity and see how much the public would have donated to this mother of all rescue missions? Simple, because they realise that people, though often conned at election time, are just not that stupid, and that they couldn’t have collected enough to feed a regiment’s mascot goat.

The generosity shown towards the victims of the Tsunami disaster are not Bush administration “values”, which Powell seems to have been inferring in his damage limitation exercise in Indonesia, but rather the basic values of human beings in America, indeed, the world over. Unlike other animals, humans are endowed with the ability to sympathise and empathise with their fellow humans. Humans derive great pleasure from doing good, are at their best when faced with the worst and will go to extraordinary lengths to help alleviate the suffering of others. Across the US, as in other countries, there have been all manner of fundraising events, in all sections of society, inclusive of nursery schools, prisons, universities and impoverished communities. In some instances people have queued for over an hour to put money in a plastic collection bucket.

According to a survey by Independent Sector a US coalition of non-profit organisations, the percentage of volunteers in America is the largest of any country, almost 56%. The average hours volunteered per week by an individual is 3.5 hours. According to Charity America, donations to charity for 2002 were $241 billion, 76.3 per cent of this given by individuals.
If governments depended for their existence on us promoting our real values, they wouldn’t last a week. That is why they spend so much time trying to divide us as a class, lying to us, instilling in us false needs, a false consciousness, appealing to patriotism and the rest of the rot. When it comes to values, there are only class values, ours and theirs. That Powell had to go to Indonesia to try to hijack any US initiated relief effort, before it was credited to the workers of the US, shows perhaps that they fear not only class solidarity across the world but the very values that have come to the surface in recent weeks.

Syria - on the wrong side of history

"What I said to him [President Bashar al-Assad of Syria] very clearly is that there are things we believe he should do if he wants a better relationship with the United States, if he wants to play a helpful role in solving the crisis in the region. So if President Assad chooses not to respond, if he chooses to dissemble, if he chooses to find excuses, then he will find that he is on the wrong side of history." (US Sec. of State Colin Powell, following a visit to Syria, May 11)

"I made it very clear to the prime minister [Ariel Sharon], like I have consistently done, that Israel's got a right to defend herself, that Israel must not feel constrained in defending the homeland." (President Bush, summarizing his conversation with Ariel Sharon after the Israeli attack on Syria, Oct. 6)

"I am happy to see the message was delivered to Syria by the Israeli air force, and I hope it is the first of many such messages." (Defence Policy Board member Richard Perle, in Israel, Oct. 14)

"We tolerate nuclear weapons in Israel for the same reason we tolerate them in Britain and France. We don't regard Israel as a threat." (A high-ranking administration official, identified by the Guardian as leading US neocon John Bolton)

On October 5th, Five months after Powell laid down the law to Bashar al-Assad, two weeks after Bolton's report and, as the press were reporting that Congress would adopt sanctions against Syria, Israel bombed what it claimed to be a "terrorist training camp" in Syria, ten miles north of Damascus.

Damascus insisted the camp had been discarded seven years ago and seemingly there were no casualties. Syrians, however, have expressed bewilderment at the attack, ostensibly in retaliation for a suicide bomb attack in Haifa which killed 21 people, and for which the Palestinian group Islamic Jihad had since claimed their part in.

Syria, of course, had to be attacked. It was after all a Jenin woman lawyer (Jenin is in Israel, incidentally), who most likely had never travelled to Damascus in her life, who blew up herself and 21 innocent Israelis – a suicide bombing which needed no terrorist camp training. Israel, though, is simply following in the footsteps of the US. Was not Afghanistan the first to bear the brunt of the US retaliation for 9-11, in spite of the fact that 15 of the 16 terrorists known to have hijacked the planes that day were from Saudi Arabia? And was not every attempt made to link Iraq with al-Qaeda, actually hours after the attacks on the Twin Towers and the Pentagon, despite the fact that Iraq is a secular state and al-Qaeda a militant Islamic fundamentalist organisation.

Typical of the vociferous US neocons is Richard Perle. His quote, above, is from his talk to reporters and delegates at the inaugural "Jerusalem Summit,” on October 21, a gathering of Israelis and mainly American Jewish and Christian analysts and politicians opposed to conceding a Palestinian state. Perle, who was honoured at the event, praised Israel highly for the air attack on the alleged terrorist camp in response to the suicide bombing in Haifa. The Jerusalem Post the following day quoted Perle as saying: "President Bush transformed the American approach to terrorism on September 11th, 2001, when he said he will not distinguish between terrorists and the states who harbour them. I was happy to see that Israel has now taken a similar step in responding to acts of terror that originate in Lebanese territory by going to the rulers of Lebanon in Damascus."

Perle’s sentiments at once reveal, of course, that the Israeli Attack upon Syria could not have happened without the support, or the expected support, of the USA and which came in the shape of the ‘Syria Accountability Act’, and which was finally passed, 398-5, by the House of Representatives on October 16.

The Voice of America reported House Majority Leader Tom DeLay as saying: “We will send a very clear message to President Assad and his fellow travellers along the 'axis of evil.' The United States will not tolerate terrorism, its perpetrators or its sponsors, and our warnings are not to be ignored."

In the weeks prior to the vote, speaker after speaker warned that Syria is the new threat previously posed by Iraq: that it has weapons of mass destruction, some with biological warheads, that it took delivery of Saddam’s elusive arsenal just before the invasion of Iraq in March.

Not so long ago Richard Perle and fellow neo-conservatives, stated in a report exclusively prepared for Benjamin Netanyahu and other radical Israeli Zionists (Study Group on a New Israeli Strategy Toward 2000) that "Israel can shape its strategic environment... by weakening, containing and even rolling back Syria... Syria challenges Israel on Lebanese soil. An effective approach, and one with which America can sympathize, would be if Israel seized the strategic initiative along its northern borders by engaging Hezbollah, Syria, and Iran." In other words, Sharon's script was written by those US neocons more interested in a Greater Israel than the blowback such Israeli military actions against its neighbours would create for the US at home and aboard..

What is apparent is that there are two layers to the Bush administration – the oil baron faction, made up of the likes of Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld and Rice, and a second layer of neoconservatives (Richard Perle, Paul Wolfowitz, John Bolton etc) who unite a traditionalist domestic agenda with an futuristic, imperialist foreign policy that seeks to benefit from the U.S.'s post Cold War rise as the sole superpower. The neocons promote the "New American Century” philosophy, in which the US pursues its goal of "full spectrum dominance", making use of "pre-emptive" strikes against prospective challengers. A great part of their game plan is to reshape the Middle East, not only to guarantee the security of Israel as a US satellite but to secure future US supplies, and profits from, the region’s oil reserves. Despite the present nightmare their ongoing efforts have created in the region – particularly the Iraqi quagmire – their power goes unchallenged and they continue to promote the idea of regional regime change in US interests. Though highly influential, the neocons do not control the White house as yet and neither is the Bush administration motivated wholly by Sharon’s right wing designs. The simple fact is that Israel is an important regional ally of the US, chiefly in regard to the corporate, military and geopolitical aspirations of the US capitalist elite. Total US domination of Southwest Asia - a politically volatile but oil rich region - would give Washington enormous influence over time-honoured allies it now wants to "contain," and over any potential rivals. To date, Israel has played but a minor part in Bush's “War on Terror” and one would expect the Bush camp to insist it keeps to its occasional walk on role and not impede US designs on the region by escalating anti-US feeling in the Middle East. But globopolitics knows no set rules where profits are involved and you could beforgiven for thinking that any retaliation against Israel would give the US the pretext it needs to escalate its domination of the region viz-a-viz its continuing “War on Terror”.

As for Colin Powell and Co, it is our contention that it is they, the defenders of capitalism, the enemy of the working class who are on the “wrong side of history” – a history characterised by an archaic system of class rule in defence of the interests of a small, privileged minority. Their history is one of murder, exploitation and robbery. Real history, our history, begins when we put an end to their system and with it the wars and misery it spurns; when the resources of the world - that the Bush administration seem to think are theirs by divine design - are the common property of all.

Manifest Destiny

At the end of his State of the Union address, a speech hypocritically punctuated with references to the US as the champion of liberty and democracy, the saviour of oppressed people everywhere, President Bush declared that “the liberty we prize is not America’s gift to the world, but God’s gift to humanity.”

The message is simple. The US is enacting God’s will with its constant invasions of far away countries. It’s right to intervene anywhere it sees fit is conferred by divine right. This is hardly a new idea. Defending the US annexation of Texas in 1845, John O’Sullivan asserted that the US was simply fulfilling its ‘manifest destiny’ with ”the development of the great experiment of liberty and federated self-government.”

References to God and the US’s divine mission now fuse every speech Bush makes with reference to Iraq. His unique brand of divine right imperialism - his promise to bring democracy and freedom to the people of Iraq - now accompanies the usual rhetoric about ridding the world of a mad man.

We can only assume the writers of Bush speeches suffer massive bouts of historical amnesia, for this journal has several times in the past had cause to quote comments by senior US officials in relation to Iraq.

We need only observe Madeline Albright’s (former UN Ambassador) comment, when asked her opinion of the 500,000 Iraqis who had died since sanctions were imposed. She replied it was a “price worth paying.”

Colin Powell, now seated on the right hand of Bush, was once asked his opinion of the number of Iraqi civilians killed during the Gulf War. He replied: “Frankly, that’s not a figure that bothers me.” Indeed, the number of civilians killed overseas never bothers US policy makers. When Vietnam invaded Cambodia to put an end to Pol Pot's bloody massacre of 2 million civilians, it was the US who supported a Chinese invasion and the US who sided with the Khmer Rouge. And where was the US when 1 million civilians were being butchered in Rwanda? Again it was the US who propped up other murderers who massacred their own people in their tens of thousands - Noriega, Pinochet Mobuto, Sukarto, Sukarno, Amin, Trujillo, Marcos, Papa Doc and Savimbi. On top of this the US has helped topple 40 governments since 1945 and subverted elections in another 23 countries. Always to further the interests of their corporate elite and always to the detriment of human rights and civilians who desire only peace. Whilst Bush is keen to find a link between Saddam and Islamic terrorism it is to be remembered that during the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan, the US funded islamic zealots to the tune of $6 billion; training the terrorists of the future - some now prisoners of the US in Cuba - in US military bases such as Camp Peary, Camp Picket, Harvey Point and Fort Bragg. When it comes to human rights abuses and terrorism, the USA is top of the premiere league of rogues states. Bush's grievance with Saddam has nothing to do with saving lives and everything to do with securing US access to the region's oil and gas supplies