World Analysis Newswire Archive

On the last night of August, the US president used an Oval Office speech to boost a policy of perpetual war.

Attached is a audio version of a talk given by Michael Parenti in May 2010 at the Understanding Deep Politics Conference held in Santa Cruz,  http://understandingdeeppolitics.org/conference-video

Tony "I would do it again" Blair, announced, on 16th August, he is to give his entire £4.6 million advance on his book: "My Journey", to the Royal British Legion, for support of British soldiers in need. As the ungracious calls for his "journey" to be to The Hague get louder - with some suggesting a far less civilized ordeal - it seems timely to assess British "achievements" in Iraq.

"More than half the population either dead, wounded, traumatized, in prison, internally displaced, or in foreign exile ... The air, soil, water, blood and genes drenched with depleted uranium ... the most awful birth defects ... unexploded cluster bombs lie in wait for children to pick them up ... a river of blood runs alongside the Euphrates and Tigris ... through a country that may never be put back together again."

Wikileaks offered its first release since the controversial distribution of documents related to the United States effort in Afghanistan.

The current leak was posted to their web site on August 25. It is titled CIA Red Cell Memorandum on United States “exporting terrorism,” 2 Feb 2010.

The leak describes Red Cell as a CIA unit created by the director to develop “out-of-the-box” analysis offering “alternative viewpoints” on key intelligence issues.

This document doesn’t disappoint in being out-of-the-box.

In slightly over a month, on October 7, the U.S.-led war in Afghanistan will enter its tenth year.

The conflict represents the longest continuous combat operations in the history of the United States and Afghanistan alike. With the North Atlantic Treaty Organization for the only time in its existence activating its Article 5 mutual military assistance clause in September 2001 and thus entering the Afghan fray, European nations that had not been at war since the Second World War are now engaged in an endless combat mission.

There are 150,000 foreign troops in Afghanistan, 120,000 of them under the command of NATO's International Security Assistance Force (ISAF). Military personnel from over a quarter of the 192 members of the United Nations. They include soldiers from almost every European country, several Asia-Pacific states, and nations in the Americas and the Middle East.

"Iraq and Afghanistan are U.S. imperial wars. Imperialism means simply invading other people’s homelands and killing them in order to secure something that our rulers want. This is how they are “removed,” or otherwise encouraged to get the hell out of the way. This is the “mission” of the troops. Forget “Democracy,” liberation, “nation building,” bravery, heroes, anything you hear from the talking head “experts” you may have heard on some NPR talk show, or any other pretty words on the subject."

A senior US advisor has threatened Lebanese army commander, Jean Qahwaji that should his army initiate additional fire exchanges with Israel, the Israeli army "would completely destroy the Lebanese army’s bases, centers and offices within four hours".

Akbayan (Citizens Action Party) on the the Ill-fated Hostage Taking Incident at the Quirino Grandstand and the Necessary Reformation of the Police Force

"Heated arguments have exploded around religion, tolerance, democracy, etc.---everything except the only fact that matters: 9/11 was a false flag operation, courtesy of the Bush-Cheney administration, carried out by an elite consensus, in order to justify the “war on terrorism”, and everything that came with it. Mass murder. Unending resource conquest. A police state within US borders. Open criminality.

The perpetual threat posed by a fabricated outside enemy, and a militarized, fearful populace, remain the centerpieces of elite policy, and they have been consistently maintained by both Bush/Cheney and Obama administrations. The demonization of Muslims continues to facilitate pillage."

"Assange, however, quickly laid the blame on the Pentagon. He stated that he had been warned by Australian intelligence to be on guard against “honey traps”—the time-honored ploys that intelligence services use to lure a target into a sexual encounter with someone who then uses the encounter to damage the target’s reputation. Earlier today, however, Assange reversed course on these charges, telling the Sydney Morning Herald, “We don’t have direct evidence that this is coming from a U.S. or other intelligence service, but we can have some suspicions about who will benefit, but without direct evidence I won’t be making direct allegations.”
The Pentagon quickly denounced the charges as “absurd.” But there is no doubt that the Pentagon is seeking to gain from them in its information war with WikiLeaks: when the case first emerged, the accusations were aggressively spread by the Pentagon via Twitter.
As I wrote in “WikiLeaks: The National-Security State Strikes Back,” a highly classified Army Counterintelligence Center 32-page memorandum noted that to eliminate the threat presented by WikiLeaks, the United States would have to strike not simply servers and databases, but against the individuals who were critical to the operation of WikiLeaks. It repeatedly identifies Assange as a target, describes the leaks as criminal acts and advocates “successful prosecutions” to “destroy the center of gravity” of WikiLeaks. The suspicions raised by Assange are thus hardly unwarranted—they match the Pentagon’s own plan to take WikiLeaks out of action. However, there is as yet no direct evidence for the claim that the accusations leveled at Assange were the work of some intelligence service, and even if there were, Assange has plenty of governments anxious to shut him down aside from the United States. But as this incident makes clear, the war on WikiLeaks will be fought with unconventional tools and those following the story are advised to accept nothing at face value."

A West Cumbrian Councillor has proposed that Allerdale should withdraw from the dodgy process designed to force Cumbria into "geological disposal" of nuclear waste.
The new government like the last is desperate to have been seen to have solved the problem of nuclear waste - to pave the way for new nuclear build.

NATO is assisting the U.S. in building a new army in Iraq. This first fully American-created armed forces in the Middle East will be concentrating less on domestic security and more on regional geopolitics. The new proxy army is part of a broader U.S. strategy aimed in the first instance against Iran.

The encirclement, in fact the siege, of Iran continues apace and Iraq, which shares with it a 1,458-kilometer border, is slated to play a major role in plans to isolate, undermine and attack Iran, replicating the model used with devastating effect against Yugoslavia, Afghanistan and Iraq itself. NATO is actively assisting the U.S. and Israel with those war plans.

The July 7th Truth Campaign is happy to recommend to anyone interested in the events of 7/7 is one that updates and expands greatly on the information presented in Ludicrous Diversion, and also helps place the events of 7/7 in a wider historical and political context.

As the mainstream media spins it's wheels on the issue of the economy, few even consider the possibility that it's the entire economic system itself that is the problem.

"Truman himself, however, hypocritically declared at the time that the purpose of the two nuclear bombardments had been “to bring the boys home,” that is, to quickly finish the war without any further major loss of life on the American side. This explanation was uncritically broadcast in the American media and it developed into a myth eagerly propagated by the majority of historians and media in the USA and throughout the “Western” world. That myth, which, incidentally, also serves to justify potential future nuclear strikes on targets such as Iran and North Korea, is still very much alive - just check your mainstream newspaper on August 6 and 9!"

"And so now two powers have similar objectives in 2010. The U.S. wishes to tame and subdue a rebellious third world that yearns to throw off western systems that clearly do not serve their people’s needs. Zionist Israel knows that as Iran develops as a modern technological state it would have to be dealt with on a fare basis instead as a nation of inferiors as is the preference of rabid elites at the helm of Zionist society.

These conditions mean that we are back to an August 1945 scenario. However, the consequences of a U.S./Israel atomic attack on Iran will constitute the greatest crime in human history. To destroy Iran’s nuclear facilities will require the use of multiple nuclear weapons of various types delivered in diverse ways. The U.S./Israel will be guilty in real time of the very actions they claim to be defending the world from. The flow of oil from multiple regions of the world be at risk to say the least. Millions could die. World opinion might be cemented against us for a hundred years."

The US and its allies are preparing to launch a nuclear war directed against Iran with devastating consequences. This military adventure in the real sense of the word threatens the future of humanity. While one can conceptualize the loss of life and destruction resulting from present-day wars including Iraq and Afghanistan, it is impossible to fully comprehend the devastation which might result from a Third World War, using "new technologies" and advanced weapons, until it occurs and becomes a reality. The international community has endorsed nuclear war in the name of World Peace. "Making the World safer" is the justification for launching a military operation which could potentially result in a nuclear holocaust.

In an article for the Guardian on the anniversary of the dropping of the atomic bomb on Hiroshima on August 6, 1945, John Pilger describes the 'progression of lies' from the dust of that detonated city, to the wars of today - and the threatened attack on Iran.

"A new opinion poll finds that most people in the Arab world favor nuclear Iran amid growing distrust about the US government's policies in the Middle East.

According to the latest annual poll by the Washington-based Brookings Institution, "a majority of the Arab public now see a nuclear Iran as being better for the Middle East."

The dominant feature of the Arroyo administration was pervasive corruption, but its most destructive legacy in the long term will probably be its policy failures. The ascent to power of a new president, backed by a new Congress, provides the opportunity for a fundamental shift in policy in order to end poverty and re-launch the Philippines on the road to development.

Sixty-five years ago, U.S. President Harry Truman did not have to use the atomic bomb in order to force Japan to its knees, but he had reasons to want to use the bomb.

The atom bomb enabled the Americans to force Tokyo to surrender unconditionally, to keep the Soviets out of the Far East and - last but not least - to force Washington’s will on the Kremlin in Europe also. Hiroshima and Nagasaki were obliterated for these reasons, and many American historians realize this only too well.