OLD WAR MOVIES

OLD WAR MOVIES

OLD WAR MOVIES

...The 20th century has been characterized by three developments of great political importance: The growth of democracy, the growth of corporate power and the growth of corporate propaganda against democracy.

Saturday, February 25, 2012

Robinson Crusoe / MISSION IMPOSSIBLE III

 


File:RobinsonCrusoe1954.jpg

 

On 30 September 1659, the aristocratic British Robinson Crusoe's ship sinks and he miraculously survives on a deserted island somewhere in South America. He retrieves a dog, Rex, and cat, Sam, from the shipwreck together with some supplies, weapons, clothes and tools and builds a shelter. He soon learns how to survive by cooking, farming, harvesting the crops. Then the loneliness begins to haunt him, especially after the loss of Rex. When he sees a group of cannibals in the island, tension and fear become part of his life. Later he saves the life of a savage that was going to be eaten by the cannibals; he names him Friday and they become friends. When Robinson Crusoe sees Caucasians on the island, he finds that Captain Oberzo was the victim of a mutiny and he helps him to retrieve his ship. Written by Claudio Carvalho, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

 

File:The Rock (movie).jpg

 

 

The Rock is a 1996 action film that primarily takes place on Alcatraz Island and in the San Francisco Bay area. It was directed by Michael Bay, director of Bad Boys, and stars Sean Connery, Nicolas Cage and Ed Harris. It was produced by Don Simpson and Jerry Bruckheimer, producers of Top Gun and Crimson Tide, and released through Hollywood Pictures. The film is dedicated to Simpson,[2] who died five months before its release. This was the first film on which Cage and Bruckheimer worked together.

A group of rogue Force Recon Marines led by disenchanted Brigadier General Francis X Hummel (Harris) seize a stockpile of deadly VX gas–armed rockets from a heavily guarded military bunker, reluctantly leaving one of their men to die in the process. The next day, Hummel and his men seize control of Alcatraz Island during a guided tour and take 81 tourists hostage in the prison cells. Hummel then threatens the Pentagon with launching the stolen rockets against the population of San Francisco unless the government pays ransom and reparations to the families of Recon Marines who died on illegal, clandestine missions under his command and whose deaths were not honored. The Pentagon and FBI develop a plan to retake the island with a Navy SEAL Team, enlisting chemical weapons specialist Dr. Stanley Goodspeed (Cage), who initially thinks he's consulting the team, but soon learns he's being recruited due to his specialisation in chemical warfare.

Recognizing that any surface approach will be seen by Hummel's men, FBI Director Womack (John Spencer) is forced to turn to Federal prisoner John Mason (Connery), a former MI6 Agent and SAS Captain whom Womack has illegally detained for decades and the only inmate of Alcatraz to ever successfully escape through Alcatraz's uncharted tunnels. Mason, while in custody under the supervison of Special Agent Ernest Paxton (William Forsythe) manages to escape to see his estranged daughter (Claire Forlani). Goodspeed arrives and feigns to Mason's daughter that he is aiding the FBI, convincing Mason to cooperate to develop a plan for infiltration. Womack soon recognizes that the team would only succeed with Mason on the mission as well.

The team infiltrates Alcatraz, through the underground tunnels with Mason's guidance. They are ambushed by Hummel's marines in a shower room, killing all the SEALs and leaving only Mason and Goodspeed alive. Paxton plans to abort the mission, but Womack, who is aware of Mason's MI6 and SAS background, agrees to let them continue saying that Mason and Goodspeed are their last hope. Mason attempts to leave the prison, but Goodspeed manages to convince him to help him defuse the rockets. Using Mason's knowledge of the prison, they quietly eliminate several small teams of marines and disable 12 of the 15 rockets, until Hummel threatens over the loudspeaker to execute a hostage if the remaining "Navy SEALs" do not surrender and return the guidance chips from the rockets. Only Mason surrenders to Hummel, trying to buy Goodspeed some time. Though Goodspeed manages to disable another rocket, the Marines capture him shortly thereafter. With the incursion team lost, the military readies a backup plan: an air strike by F/A-18's with Thermite plasma, that will neutralize the poison gas but kill everyone on the island including the hostages.

As Mason uses his unique experience to escape from their cells, he reveals why he was held there for so many years — for stealing a microfilm of the United States' most closely guarded secrets, including the Roswell UFO incident and the John F. Kennedy assassination. While they search for the final two rockets, Hummel fires one of them but changes the coordinates at the last second causing the rocket to crash land harmlessly out to sea. Facing Captains Frye and Darrow's (Gregory Sporleder & Tony Todd) frustration, Hummel explains that their bluff failed and that he refuses to harm innocent civilians. He orders them to exit Alcatraz with a few hostages and the remaining VX rockets to cover their retreat, while he'll stay, personally assuming blame. Realizing that they will not be paid, Frye and Darrow, along with Sergeant Crisp (Bokeem Woodbine) go rogue and gun down Hummel and his second-in-command Major Tom Baxter (David Morse), proceeding with the plan to fire on San Francisco. With his last breath, Hummel tells Goodspeed the location of the last rocket. As the jets approach, Darrow is killed when Goodspeed fires the last disarmed rocket into him. Goodspeed takes a loose gas pearl from the warhead, but is then attacked by Frye who begins to strangle Goodspeed to death. Using the VX to defend himself, Goodspeed shoves the gas pearl into Frye's mouth, exposing both of them to the gas. Goodspeed injects himself in the heart with atropine as Frye dies from the VX gas. Goodspeed then lights green flares to signal that the threat is over, but only after one of the pilots fires, sending Goodspeed's body flying into the sea. The early detonation hits the back of the island and harms no-one else.

Mason reappears to pull the unconscious Goodspeed to shore. When he recovers, Goodspeed suggests that Mason escape before the FBI arrive, as Womack tore up his pardon from prison; Goodspeed will tell Womack that Mason was "vaporized". Mason thanks Goodspeed, and gives him a note that holds the location of where he had stashed the microfilm. The film ends with Goodspeed and his pregnant bride Carla (Vanessa Marcil) in Fort Walton, Kansas, recovering the microfilm with a half century of state secrets, including who actually killed John F. Kennedy.

[edit] Cast







 

Mission: Impossible III


Theatrical release poster

Directed by
J. J. Abrams

Produced by
Tom Cruise
Paula Wagner

Written by
Alex Kurtzman
Roberto Orci
J. J. Abrams

Starring
Tom Cruise
Philip Seymour Hoffman
Ving Rhames
Billy Crudup
Michelle Monaghan
Jonathan Rhys Meyers
Keri Russell
Maggie Q
Laurence Fishburne

Music by
Michael Giacchino
Main Theme:
Lalo Schifrin

Cinematography
Dan Mindel

Editing by
Maryann Brandon
Mary Jo Markey

Studio
Cruise/Wagner
Bad Robot Productions
MI 3 Film

Distributed by
Paramount Pictures

Release date(s)
May 5, 2006 (2006-05-05) (US)

Running time
125 minutes

Country
United States

Language
English

Budget
$150 million[1]

Box office
$397,850,012 (worldwide)

Mission: Impossible III (also known as M:I-3) is a 2006 action film directed by J. J. Abrams, his first film as a director, starring Tom Cruise as agent Ethan Hunt of the IMF, who also served as a producer. It was first released on April 26, 2006 at the Tribeca Film Festival, and widely released in the United States on May 5, 2006. The film was a box office success, and it received mostly positive critical reviews Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise) has retired as a team leader at the IMF and instead taken to training new recruits while settling down with his fiancée Julia Meade (Michelle Monaghan), a nurse at a local hospital who is unaware of Ethan's past. At a party, Ethan is approached by his fellow IMF agent John Musgrave (Billy Crudup), who secretly relays a mission to him: to rescue one of Ethan's protégés, Lindsey Farris (Keri Russell), who was captured while on a mission to investigate the infamous black market dealer Owen Davian (Philip Seymour Hoffman). Musgrave has already prepared a team for Ethan, consisting of Declan Gormley (Jonathan Rhys Meyers), Zhen Lei (Maggie Q), and his old partner Luther Stickell (Ving Rhames), ready to meet him in Berlin, Germany.

The IMF team raids the warehouse where Lindsey is kept, release her and collect two computer laptops during their escape. As they flee on a helicopter, Lindsey warns them of a micro-explosive implanted in her head, and before Ethan can use a defibrillator to disable the device, it goes off, killing Lindsey. Ethan and Musgrave are reprimanded by IMF director Theodore Brassel (Laurence Fishburne) for the loss of an agent, and the poor condition of the stolen laptops. Ethan learns that Lindsey had mailed him a postcard before her capture. Showing it to Luther in private, they discover a magnetic microdot under the stamp, which Luther takes to his contacts to decode.

IMF technician Benji Dunn (Simon Pegg) is able to recover enough from the damaged laptops to find that Davian is going to Vatican City to receive a mysterious object called the "Rabbit's Foot". Ethan plans the mission to capture Davian and the device without seeking Brassel's or Musgrave's approval. Before leaving, he expresses his love to Julia, and they have an impromptu marriage at the hospital's chapel. At Vatican City, the team successfully infiltrates the secured facility, and Ethan disguises himself as Davian after his capture. The team uses an explosive-rigged car to cover their escape and make Davian's bodyguards believe he is dead.

On the flight back to the United States, Davian wakes up and refuses to divulge what the Rabbit's Foot is, instead threatening to kill everyone Ethan holds dear; Ethan threatens to drop Davian out of the plane if he does not cooperate. After landing, the team travels with a convoy escorting Davian across the Chesapeake Bay Bridge-Tunnel. En route, Luther receives the decoded message from the microdot, a video of Lindsey to Ethan warning him that Davian has received calls from Director Brassel's office and believes him to be a mole. The escort is suddenly attacked by a heavily armed drone, and in the chaos, Davian is freed. Ethan suddenly worries for Julia's safety and races to the hospital, arriving too late to find she has been taken by one of Davian's agents. As Davian calls Ethan, giving him only 48 hours to recover the Rabbit's Foot for Julia's life, Ethan is captured by IMF for his rogue actions.

Ethan is secured to a gurney and interrogated about his unauthorized mission. Musgrave takes part, but allows Ethan to lip-read further instructions to travel to Shanghai, China where the Rabbit's Foot is located, and provides him with the means to escape IMF. Ethan makes his way to the instructed location, finding his team waiting for him, and they plan a raid of the building where the Rabbit's Foot is secured. Through a desperate car chase, Ethan is able to contact Davian just under the deadline that they have the Rabbit's Foot. Ethan goes to deliver the Rabbit's Foot alone, and is knocked unconscious by Davian's men, who implant a micro-explosive device in his head. Ethan recovers to find Davian gloating over him while holding Julia at gunpoint. Despite Ethan asserting that the device is the real Rabbit's Foot, Davian kills Julia and then leaves the devastated Ethan behind.

Minutes later, Musgrave arrives, and explains to Ethan this was all a setup, revealing that Julia was Davian's incompetent translator (Bahar Soomekh) in a mask — the execution having been faked to confirm that Ethan was telling the truth — and Julia is nearby, alive. Musgrave reveals himself as the mole, arranging for Davian to acquire the Rabbit's Foot to sell to terrorist groups, after which IMF would have reasonable cause to launch a preemptive strike, making Musgrave a hero and Davien richer. Ethan escapes and steals Musgrave's phone, using it to contact Benji to track down a number Musgrave recently called, the likely location where Julia is being kept. Inside, Ethan finds Davian and his men waiting, and is able to kill them all, including Davian by throwing him in front of a oncoming truck, but not before they trigger the micro-explosive. Freeing Julia, he instructs her to electrocute him, killing him shortly but deactivating the explosive, from which she can revive him, as well as to protect herself with a gun. Julia follows Ethan's instructions, and while he recovers, is forced to shoot and kill Musgrave when he arrives. Julia successfully gives CPR to Ethan, reviving him, and they leave together as he explains his true IMF career to her.

Back home, Brassel congratulates Ethan, and suggests that there is another mission that Ethan has been requested for, but Ethan insists on going on his honeymoon with Julia and is unsure if he will return to the IMF. Brassel promises that he'll tell Ethan what the Rabbit's Foot is if Ethan will promise to return. Ethan smiles and walks off with Julia.

Cast

[edit] Production





Thursday, February 23, 2012

WORLD WAR III

 

 

WORLD WAR III  

A New World War would be a global war waged by a global ruling class against the citizens of the world, with the aim of maintaining and reshaping hierarchical society to serve their own interests. It would indeed symbolize a New World War for a New World Order. In a globalized world, all conflict has global implications; the task at hand is whether the people can realize that war is not waged against a “distant” or “foreign” enemy, but against all people of the world.

Herman Goering, Hitler’s second in command, explained the concept of war when he was standing trial at the Nuremberg Trials for war crimes, when he stated, “Why, of course, the people don’t want war,” and that, “Naturally, the common people don’t want war; neither in Russia nor in England nor in America, nor for that matter in Germany. That is understood. But, after all, it is the leaders of the country who determine the policy and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy or a fascist dictatorship or a Parliament or a Communist dictatorship.”

Soviet paratroopers drop into Alaska to sabotage the oil pipeline in retaliation against a United States grain embargo. A skirmish occurs at a pumping station, lightly defended by Col. Jake Caffey and a National Guard reckon unit. A stalemate ensues while the possibility of World War III hangs in the balance. The danger escalates as the Russian leaders and the American President play a cat-and-mouse game

 





 

The fallout from this may never enter the public domain and will certainly be banned from both the public media or discussions by “authoritative” officials.

We are simply offering to the world scientific, political and intelligence community, the military of the world, that the last 11 years of history are unquestioningly related to a decision made by those speaking for the American people.

They believed that the detonation of multiple thermonuclear weapons on American soil and the murder of thousands, with first responders dying of radiation sickness every day, was excusable in accordance with either their religious or geopolitical beliefs.

We simply offer irrefutable proof only to those capable of caring for such things more than the comfort of delusion. Personally, I expect action, be it silent. You have my personal blessing.

 

A quasi-official group, headquartered in New York, with ties to government has been discovered manipulating world oil and gas markets as part of a project to destabilize the United States and Western Europe.  The group is using vast computer capabilities within Geneva, Switzerland (unnamed but we can easily name them) that are the most classified in the world.

We are unaware of who has tasked this group.  Members are young, some in their teens and use highly classified software that is predictive in nature.  One large and very unstable Wall Street bank and two brothers known for their extremist views have profited most from this.

Without these efforts, oil would be under $74 per barrel or have collapsed entirely.  Those involved are all “hackers” and are very unlikely to survive the project.

 

 

Of late, it is impossible to note that the US government has passed a number of regulations that  suspend constitutional rights, give the president full control over all industries.

There has been no reporting, votes in congress have been very one sided without debate, those who know will recognize what I am saying.

Additionally, the FBI and other organizations have been caught infiltrating and even establishing domestic terror organizations.

The “Hutaree” trial in Michigan has exposed FBI criminal acts and, unless the judge is silenced, it is likely the FBI’s program will come under scrutiny.

A similar effort in Arizona and elsewhere has been uncovered, FBI agents and/or informants planning car bombing attacks, attacks on police and public buildings have been uncovered.

This may well be the pre-staging of a domestic nuclear attack which could lead to disbanding congress.

As an American and constitutionalist, I find this idea frightening but as an American citizen who generally disapproves of congress and finds its actions a threat to the security of the United States, frankly I am not sure how to react.  If something very bad happens and I stand by America and congress is jailed or disbanded, is that a bad thing? Maybe not.

The photo below is of a second generation fission weapon first tested in 1959:

As you can see, the DOE lied to the 9/11 commission.  This is an actual weapon, not a “mock-up” or Pentagon paperweight. It was called the ‘Davey Crockett’…

According to government nuclear weapons designers, this is the size of a typical thermonuclear weapon available after 1991, shown in representative size only as a popular consumer soft drink:

Size Comparison Only, Copyright Coca Cola Corporation

This, according to government scientists is the current size of a thermonuclear device, a hydrogen bomb, containing a small amount of uranium or plutonium, no larger than a coin, a supply of deuterium, tritium and a highly classified “nano-laser,” probably chemically fired to replace the otherwise required fission reaction.

Such weapons have existed for over 20 years, multiples of which were deployed on “ground zero” on 9/11 and have been used repeatedly as “very large conventional munitions” in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Radiation is only 3% of that of a normal weapon, undetectable by Geiger counter, unable to penetrate skin, with a half-life of under 48 hours but fatal if irradiated materials are ingested. 

Temperatures reach over 1 million degrees Fahrenheit and structural steel, concrete, human bodies or anything within 1-300 yards of “ground zero” is vaporized.

What goes on inside the coke can is described thusly:

Abstract

A consistent conventional theoretical description is presented for anomalous low energy deuterium nuclear fusion in micro/nano-scale metal grains and particles.

The theory is based on the Bose-Einstein condensate (BEC) state occupied by deuterons trapped in a micro/nano-scale metal grain or particle. The theory is capable of explaining most of the experimentally observed results and also provides theoretical predictions. Experimental tests of theoretical predictions are proposed. Scalabilities of the observed effects are discussed based on theoretical predictions.

The lesson of history is that tough times often reward the desperate and dangerous, from angry demagogues to anarchists and nationalists, from seething mobs to expansionist empires.

Our world is poised on the edge of perhaps the most important 12 months for more than half a century. If our leaders provide the right leadership, then we may, perhaps, muddle through towards slow growth and gradual recovery.

But if the European elite continue to inflict needless hardship on their people; if the markets continue to erode faith in the euro; and if Western politicians waste their time in petty bickering, then we could easily slip further towards discontent and disaster.

The experience of 1932 provides a desperately valuable lesson. As a result of the decisions taken in those 12 short months, millions of people later lost their lives.

Today, on the brink of a new year that could well prove the most frightening in living memory, we can only pray that our history takes a very different path.

The seismic events which have seen the near-destruction of the investment banking sector and the collapse of insurance giant AIG are on the scale of the Great Crash of 1929.

That was such a disaster because it created conditions for the emergence of fascism in continental Europe and then World War II.

Although it is hard to predict the consequences, we should expect ramifications of equal significance — including the re-emergence of violent Far Right parties across the globe.

Some experts were talking this week as if the financial crisis was nearly over. They
could not be more wrong. The downturn has only just begun — and for most citizens
uninvolved with finance the consequences have not been felt at all.

But they will be felt very soon and very brutally. The British economy is in the same position as the Texan coast earlier this month as Hurricane Ike approached — apparently calm, with life going on as normal, but an almighty storm is raging just
over the horizon and heading our way with terrifying speed.

We can expect a sharp increase in personal bankruptcies. Yet the numbers will not peak until this time next year at the earliest.

Hundreds of thousands of people will lose their jobs, with many forced to sell their houses. Property prices will slump.

There will be extreme human suffering, panic and despair. Many careers will be
destroyed. This is considerably worse than the downturn of the early 1990s.

The orthodoxy from the British Government, the Confederation of British Industry and elsewhere that there will be a mild slowdown ending late next year is nonsense.

This crisis is vicious, dynamic and only just beginning.

Even those of us lucky enough not to lose our jobs and our homes will have friends and relatives who do.

Let us examine, first, the fate of City bankers from firms such as Lehman Brothers — all summarily dismissed when their firm went under this week.

They will receive no severance payment and almost no chance ever again of benefiting from the six-figure salaries and massive bonuses they have taken for
granted over the past few years.

That means they cannot service the huge mortgages they have taken out on hugely expensive houses. So this weekend they have become forced sellers — which means that thousands of new For Sale signs will be going up in London and the South-East
in the coming weeks.

Traders work at Lehman Brothers

Personal bankruptcy:Traders and investment bankers face an uncertain future

If these unemployed investment bankers had the misfortune to buy anywhere near the top of the market, they now face the prospect of personal bankruptcy.

This is because they will find that their houses are worth much less than they paid for
them, and will therefore be unable to repay their loan.

With so many vendors on the market obliged to sell at any price, it can be assumed that any London house will fetch 25 per cent less this weekend than it would have done this time last week.

Many of the younger bankers — those in their 20s and 30s with young families — now face utter disaster.

Of course, there is scant public sympathy for these former ‘masters of the universe’ who enjoyed good times.

But we already know that Thursday’s merger of Lloyds Bank and HBOS (supposing it
is completed: contrary to statements by Chancellor Alistair Darling, this is by no means certain) will lead directly to the loss of some 40,000 jobs among
bank workers.

There will be bloodletting on every High Street where there is both an HBOS and Lloyds outlet — one branch will undoubtedly be closed.

But that body-blow is just the start. Over the coming months, the financial typhoon will mercilessly spread outwards and wreak devastation on the economy.

Banks will foreclose on thousands of small businesses.Massive corporate failures are inevitable.

These disasters will then rebound on the financial sector, as company bankruptcies
and plunging house prices force fresh balance sheet write-downs and yet more sackings.

Unemployment — already rising fast and up 80,000 over the summer — is set to surge ahead and will increase well above the two million predicted by economists.

This will produce a vicious spiral. Every worker out of a job means less tax receipts and higher welfare payments.

In last March’s Budget (a work of fiction when it was published), Alistair Darling forecast borrowing this year of £43 billion. Even at the time, this figure was shockingly large.

It meant that only Egypt, Pakistan and Hungary among significant world economies had more profligate government spending than Britain.

Why would a handful of wealthy central banking families want to impoverish the US and render its citizens penniless? Our conclusion is simple: World government is on the way and the American culture is still resistant to the kind of hyper-regulatory corporatism that is necessary to support this kind of governance.

America (the West, generally) has apparently been under attack by an organized cabal of inter-generational banking families and corporate, business and military enablers for at least 200 years now, and perhaps 300 years. In the past 50 years, the pace has accelerated.

One by one, the UN, IMF, World Bank, BIS, ICC (international court), WHO and countless other globalist organizations have been put in place. The mainstream media treats this evolution as inevitable. It cannot be. Each evolution must be planned, funded and promoted. When it comes to politics of this sort, there are no coincidences, as FDR once observed.

We have taken to calling what has evolved “directed history” – in which events including wars are planned to ensure maximum destruction of the culture as it is in order to further militarize, globalize (and impoverish) what remains.

Because America was a “great exception” – founded as a republic with a culture that was relentlessly entrepreneurial and agricultural – America has been under sustained attack to ensure that its culture is Europeanized and recreated as what we call “regulatory democracy.”

Regulatory democracy is one word for what has evolved. Corporatism is another. Fascism (of a sort) would be a third. No matter what word is used, the current Western model for nation states relies heavily on unelected bureaucrats, intelligence agencies and a military industrial complex that basically reports to the aforementioned elites and is not affected by voting or other democratic elements.

The modern nation state is funded by central banks, also seemingly controlled by these elite families, and the ultimate goal is formal global governance. Some question why a formal international government is necessary. The answer is that the elites like to work within a “lawful” environment of their own creation. The more that reality corresponds to their notions and plans, the easier it is to continually consolidate power.

Nothing else – no other sociopolitical model – seems to explain what has happened to America and Europe. The EU is a disaster and the euro has proven to be a currency that has brought ruin on the Southern crescent of that artificial entity. The one-size-fits all central banking policies of the union continue to collapse jobs and economies – something we’ve been forecasting for several years now.

European elites are on record as anticipating the disaster and welcoming it because it will allow for the creation a closer “political union.” But in the Internet era, people are not so easily manipulated as they were in the 20th Century. The pushback to elite plans is extreme. The fate of the EU is by no means pre-determined. Events could easily spin out of control.

In the US, the great merger between Canada, Mexico and America has been all-but-abandoned – for the time being. However, one of the primary figures behind that putative merger is Texas governor Rick Perry who spent much time and political energy in the early 2000s trying create a “North American Union.” In our view it is no accident that he was once a front-runner for the presidency.

The Rick Perry story is certainly illustrative of how the elites work. Perry actively supported a superhighway of some 20 lanes plus railroad tracks that was (and is) planned to bisect the US, running from Mexico to Canada. It would effectively turn the country into two separate halves, both of which would be economic backwaters, as trade and prosperity flowed between Canada and Mexico.

Perry also supported a kind of international health-care in which the US would subsidize medical treatments for Mexicans. He tried to portray this as a rare opportunity to address flaws in the health care system that a bi-national program would counteract. But in reality, it was more internationalism.

Perry was and is a globalist; he is likely a candidate of the elites and it is perhaps no coincidence that he is suddenly a leading GOP choice to run for president. Perry’s globalist sympathies were so evident in Texas that he had to write a book renouncing them.

In his book, from what we can tell, he basically repurposes most if not all of libertarian presidential candidate Ron Paul’s message of small government and reliance on the private sector. Perry’s statements were so extreme, however, that he has made himself a target on both sides of the aisle.

Perry is just one more unmoored and unprincipled politician, willing to undermine his country and its hundreds of millions for personal gain. (Some have compared him to a used car salesman and claimed in another, less corrupt era he would never have achieved his current position.) He has become a millionaire several times over during his political career, and no doubt millions more await him if he does by some chance become president.

Meanwhile, the larger American economy continues to suffer. Critics in the mainstream media will have plenty of explanations for how their country came to be in the shape that it is in. But from our humble perspective, there can only be one explanation; it’s part of a larger plan, at least to some degree. Here’s some more from the article, above:

The poverty rate for all Americans rose in 2010 for the third consecutive year, matching the 15.1% figure in 1993 and pushing many more young adults to double up or return to their parents’ home to avoid joining the ranks of the poor. Taken together, the annual income and poverty snapshot released Tuesday by the U.S. Census Bureau underscored how the recession is casting a long shadow well after its official end in June 2009 …

The total number of Americans who fell below the official poverty line last year rose from 43.6 million in 2009. Of the 2.6-million increase, about two-thirds of the people said they did not work even one week last year. Those with jobs were much less likely to be poor, but the recession and weak recovery have wiped out income gains of prior years for a broad spectrum of workers and their families.

Inflation-adjusted median household income — the middle of the populace — fell 2.3% to $49,445 last year from a year ago and 7% from 2000. “It’s a lost decade for the middle class,” said Sheldon Danziger, a poverty expert at the University of Michigan. The number of poor children younger than 18 reached its highest level since 1962, said William Frey, a demographer at the Brookings Institution.

This is an unmitigated disaster, and it is hitting young people the hardest. Overall, the number of 25- to 34-year-old men and women who were living with their parents last spring totaled 5.9 million, the article tells us, and this is a 25.5% increase since the recession began in 2007.

Of course, we note the words that are used in the article to describe the current conflagration, specifically the “R” word, recession. This is no recession, from what we can tell. Nor has there been a “weak recovery.”

With 50 million or so Americans relying on food stamps and unemployment realistically hovering at least in the 20 percent area (we think its closer to 30 percent), one can use any words one wants to – even “banana” – but a depression is a depression.

The elites, of course, fear depression. While it is important to remove prosperity from people’s lives in order to make them malleable, too much hardship can cause social chaos and the kind of pushback that puts “civilized” institutions at risk. During the Great Depression, the elites were most worried about armed insurrection in America and Europe, especially because there were so many young men with military experience as a result of World War One.

But depression is the logical outcome of the economic system now in place throughout the West. Driven by central bank fiat money divorced from underlying value, powered by taxes, visible and invisible, that take up to 50 percent of the average person’s income, and rigorously controlled by a blizzard of incomprehensible and destructive regulations, the system in place now is Babylonian in its devious intricacy and seemingly beyond redemption.

Add in five or six regional wars in the Middle East and Africa (with more doubtless coming) and the general militarization of the population and the larger model of corporatism, and the results become clear. The economy of the West has been so distorted that price signals are simply not available. No one knows what to invest in because government subsidies, regulation and fiat money have made it impossible to tell a healthy enterprise from a fraudulent one.

There is an easy way out of the depression that is gradually lengthening over the West like a malevolent shadow. Return to free and unregulated markets, disband central banks and let money freely compete and circulate, especially gold and silver.

Stop distorting the economy with endless government fixes, phony wars and the saddlingof the larger culture with the inevitable failing prescriptions of “wise men.” These are simple solutions. They have worked in the past and sooner or later they will work again. The elites, as powerful as they are, cannot forever hold back the logic of the larger market.

It is, in fact, inevitable in our view. In this era of the Internet Reformation, it is likely impossible for the elites to fully complete their globalist campaign. Too much is known about what’s planned and as a result, the great families are turning more and more (ineffectively) to repression, wiretapping and violence to achieve their ends.

Conclusion: This is evidence of the weakness of their position and we have seen no evidence that their situation can much improve either in the long or short term. In the 21st Century we would tend to believe that people may not prove so malleable as the elite has hoped. The Internet Reformation proceeds apace, bringing to the West more and more that is unexpected and hard to control. Directed history is harder and harder to implement. “Things fall apart,” novelist Chinua Achebe once observed. Not just in Africa.

Africa and AFRICOM

During the Cold War, Africa was an imperial battleground between the USSR and the US-NATO powers, with the ultimate goal being the control over strategic resource-rich areas. Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, Russia’s influence in Africa largely dissipated, and with that, came the neo-imperial struggle among the western powers for control over key strategic points. Now, the great battle in Africa is between the NATO powers, primarily the United States, and China, which has had exponential growth and influence on the continent.

The 1990s saw the Rwandan genocide as a key event in Africa, which was, in actuality, a struggle between France and the United States over the key strategic location of Rwanda. The World Bank and IMF laid the groundwork for conflict, creating the economic conditions that exacerbated colonial-era ethnic tensions. Meanwhile, the United States, through its proxy state of Uganda, funded military operations and trained the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF), which conducted military operations from Uganda into Rwanda. The Civil War waged from 1990-1993, with the US funding all sides of the conflict. In 1994, the RPF shot down the plane carrying the Presidents of Rwanda and Burundi, which sparked the genocide. Following the genocide, the US-trained puppet, Paul Kagame, became President of Rwanda.

Following these events, the US had two protectorates in Central Africa, Uganda and Rwanda, both of which bordered the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). This was the ultimate prize in the area. From both Rwanda and Uganda, military operations were funded and paramilitary forces were trained by the United States to venture into the DRC, which erupted in coups and Civil War. However, western, primarily American and Canadian corporations were plundering the resource-rich Congo, while millions of Congolese civilians died.[118]

In April of 2001, Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney held a hearing on Western involvement in the plunder of Africa, in which she stated, “at the heart of Africa’s suffering is the West’s, and most notably the United States’, desire to access Africa’s diamonds, oil, natural gas, and other precious resources . . . the West, and most notably the United States, has set in motion a policy of oppression, destabilization and tempered, not by moral principle, but by a ruthless desire to enrich itself on Africa’s fabulous wealth.”[119]

In the New World Order, Africa has not lost its significance as a geopolitical prize for the great powers. While the Middle East, save Iran, is largely under the influence of the United States and its NATO allies, Africa is the main battleground between the US and China. Imperialism in Africa goes under many names: the “War on Terror”, military assistance, economic aid, and “humanitarian intervention” to name a few.

U.S. Strategy in Africa

In 2005, the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), the main policy-planning group of the US elite, published a Task Force Report on US strategy in Africa called, More Than Humanitarianism: A Strategic U.S. Approach Toward Africa. In the report, it was stated that:

Africa is becoming more important because of its growing role in supplying the world with oil, gas, and non-fuel minerals. Now supplying the United States with 15 percent of oil imports, Africa’s production may double in the next decade, and its capacity for natural gas exports will grow even more. In the next decade, Africa could be supplying the United States with as much energy as the Middle East.

The report stated that, “The United States is facing intense competition for energy and other natural resources in Africa,” identifying India and primarily China as its main competitors “in the search for these resources and for both economic and political influence on the continent.” In particular, “China presents a particularly important challenge to U.S. interests.”

Further, “To compete more effectively with China, the United States must provide more encouragement and support to well-performing African states, develop innovative means for U.S. companies to compete, give high-level attention to Africa, and engage China on those practices that conflict with U.S. interests.”[123]

In analyzing the threat China poses to the US in Africa, the report hypocritically and misleadingly states that one of its main concerns is that China uses “its seat on the UN Security Council to protect some of Africa’s most egregious regimes from international sanction, in particular Sudan and Zimbabwe.”[124] This conveniently ignores the United States doing the same thing in regards to Israel, as well as its tacit, overt and covert support for brutal regimes across the world, not simply in Africa.

The report explained that much of China’s growing influence is due to its “soft loans,” meaning that Chinese loans to African countries do not come attached with “conditions” as in World Bank and IMF loans, which make them much more attractive to African countries. China is also heavily invested in the oil of Sudan, specifically in Darfur, which the West does not have access to.

In analyzing how the War on Terror had been brought to Africa, the report stated:

Post-9/11, the U.S. counterterror approach to Africa has been led by the U.S. military: CENTCOM in the Horn; EUCOM in West, Central, and southern Africa; and the U.S. Special Operations Command (SOCOM). More quietly, U.S. intelligence cooperation with key states has expanded in parallel with the enlargement of the U.S. military’s role.

As the Guardian reported in June of 2005, “A new ‘scramble for Africa’ is taking place among the world’s big powers, who are tapping into the continent for its oil and diamonds.” A key facet of this is that “corporations from the US, France, Britain and China are competing to profit from the rulers of often chaotic and corrupt regimes.”

Somalia

In May of 2006, the Washington Post reported that the US has been “secretly supporting secular warlords who have been waging fierce battles against Islamic groups for control of the capital, Mogadishu.”

In December of 2006, Ethiopia, heavily backed and supported by the US, invaded and occupied Somalia, ousting the Islamist government. The US support for the operations was based upon the claims of Somalia being a breeding ground for terrorists and Al-Qaeda. However, this was has now turned into an insurgency. Wired Magazine reported in December of 2008 that, “For several years the U.S. military has fought a covert war in Somalia, using gunships, drones and Special Forces to break up suspected terror networks

– and enlisting Ethiopia’s aid in propping up a pro-U.S. “transitional” government.”

However, there is naturally more to this than fighting “terrorists.” Civil war has raged in Somalia since 1991, creating destabilization and political instability. The UN intervened between 1992 and 1995, and the US sent in Special Forces in 1993. As the Los Angeles Times revealed in 1993, “four major U.S. oil companies are quietly sitting on a prospective fortune in exclusive concessions to explore and exploit tens of millions of acres of the Somali countryside.” According to the article, “nearly two-thirds of Somalia was allocated to the American oil giants Conoco, Amoco, Chevron and Phillips in the final years before Somalia’s pro-U.S. President Mohamed Siad Barre was overthrown and the nation plunged into chaos in January, 1991.”

Further:

Conoco Inc., the only major multinational corporation to maintain a functioning office in Mogadishu throughout the past two years of nationwide anarchy, has been directly involved in the U.S. government’s role in the U.N.-sponsored humanitarian military effort.

Conoco, whose tireless exploration efforts in north-central Somalia reportedly had yielded the most encouraging prospects just before Siad Barre’s fall, permitted its Mogadishu corporate compound to be transformed into a de facto American embassy a few days before the U.S. Marines landed in the capital, with Bush’s special envoy using it as his temporary headquarters. In addition, the president of the company’s subsidiary in Somalia won high official praise for serving as the government’s volunteer “facilitator” during the months before and during the U.S. intervention.[129]

The Ethiopian troops occupied Somalia for a couple years, and in January of 2009, the last Ethiopian troops left the capital city of Mogadishu. In 2007, the UN authorized an African Union (AU) peacekeeping mission in Somalia. In March of 2007, Ugandan military officials landed in Somalia. Essentially, what this has done is that the more overt Ethiopian occupation of Somalia has been replaced with a UN-mandated African Union occupation of the country, in which Ugandan troops make up the majority. Since Uganda is a proxy military state for the US in the region, the more overt US supported Ethiopian troops have been replaced by a more covert US-supported Ugandan contingent.

Africom

In 2007, Newsweek reported that, “America is quietly expanding its fight against terror on the African front. Two years ago the United States set up the Trans-Sahara Counterterrorism Partnership with nine countries in central and western Africa. There is no permanent presence, but the hope is to generate support and suppress radicalism by both sharing U.S. weapons and tactics with friendly regimes and winning friends through a vast humanitarian program assembled by USAID, including well building and vocational training.” The Pentagon announced the formation of a new military strategic command called “Africom” (Africa Command), which “will integrate existing diplomatic, economic and humanitarian programs into a single strategic vision for Africa, bring more attention to long-ignored American intelligence-gathering and energy concerns on the continent, and elevate African interests to the same level of importance as those of Asia and the Middle East.”

The article gave brief mention to critics, saying that, “Not surprisingly, the establishment of a major American base in Africa is inspiring new criticism from European and African critics of U.S. imperial overreach.” Some claim it represents a “militarization of U.S. Africa policy,” which is not a stretch of imaginations, as the article pointed out, “the United States has identified the Sahel, a region stretching west from Eritrea across the broadest part of Africa, as the next critical zone in the War on Terror and started working with repressive governments in Chad and Algeria, among others, to further American interests there.”

As Newsweek further reported:

The problem is that, increasingly, African leaders appear not to want Africom. They see it as the next phase of the War on Terror—a way to pursue jihadists inside Africa’s weak or failed states, which many U.S. officials have described as breeding grounds for terror. They worry that the flow of arms will overwhelm the flow of aid, and that U.S. counterterrorism will further destabilize a region already prone to civil wars.

Africom is the new American military command designed to control Africa, which currently sits as an important neo-colonial battleground between the US and China. Africa still remains a major front in the imperialist adventures of the dominant powers of the New World Order. Its rich wealth in resources makes it an important strategic location for the world powers to seek hegemony over.

Conclusion

The continuation of the Cold War stances of the West versus the East remain and are exacerbated, in what can be referred to as a “New Cold War.” At the same time, global regional conflicts continue to be waged and expanded, be it in the Middle East, Central Africa or Central Asia, with coups and regime change being furthered in Eastern Europe, South America and across the globe. However, these two major global issues: regional wars and conflict and the New Cold War, are not separate, but inherently linked. An exacerbation of conflict, in any and all regions, will only serve to strengthen the political-strategic conflict between the US-NATO alliance and the Russia-China alliance.

All that is required for a new major world war is just one spark: whether it comes in the form of a war between Pakistan and India, or a military strike on Iran, in which case China and Russia would not sit idly by as they did with Iraq. A strike on Iran, particularly with nuclear missiles, as is proposed, would result in World War III. So why does strategy on the part of the US and NATO continue to push in this direction?

As George Orwell once wrote:

The war is not meant to be won, it is meant to be continuous. Hierarchical society is only possible on the basis of poverty and ignorance. This new version is the past and no different past can ever have existed. In principle the war effort is always planned to keep society on the brink of starvation. The war is waged by the ruling group against its own subjects and its object is not the victory over either Eurasia or East Asia, but to keep the very structure of society intact.

A New World War would be a global war waged by a global ruling class against the citizens of the world, with the aim of maintaining and reshaping hierarchical society to serve their own interests. It would indeed symbolize a New World War for a New World Order. In a globalized world, all conflict has global implications; the task at hand is whether the people can realize that war is not waged against a “distant” or “foreign” enemy, but against all people of the world.

Herman Goering, Hitler’s second in command, explained the concept of war when he was standing trial at the Nuremberg Trials for war crimes, when he stated, “Why, of course, the people don’t want war,” and that, “Naturally, the common people don’t want war; neither in Russia nor in England nor in America, nor for that matter in Germany. That is understood. But, after all, it is the leaders of the country who determine the policy and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy or a fascist dictatorship or a Parliament or a Communist dictatorship.” When Goering was corrected that in a democracy, “the people have some say in the matter through their elected representatives,” Goering responded:

Oh, that is all well and good, but, voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same way in any country.

Having coped with Libya, the West is ready to hunt down new victims, Syria and Iran being next on the hit list. The campaign against Syria runs into major roadblocks as the country’s leader Bashar al-Assad offered the society a package of reforms which are indeed long overdue, while Russia and Iran prevented the UN Security Council from passing a resolution that could expose Syria to an intervention modeled on the one recently faced by Libya. As a result, the West’s plans for Syria are being adjusted to current circumstances, and at the moment the West’s bet is on destabilizing the country from within by combined efforts of the Western intelligence community, foreign mercenaries, and the local fifth column. A revolution was similarly attempted in Iran but met with well-organized resistance, and the international sanctions imposed on Iran may create certain problems but are not lethal to its economy. Moreover, the enforcement of “democracy” in Iraq and Libya had a sobering effect even on Iran’s pro-western political forces. Yet, the impression is that at the moment the Western leaders simply cannot wait for new revolution opportunities to arise.

The collapse of the USSR, which, by the way, did not result from natural causes, made the world sway towards unipolarity, but it came into being in the form of an order completely different from what Anglo-Saxon geopolitical thinkers like Alfred Mahan, Halford John Mackinder, or Nicholas John Spykman used to dream of. Their expectation was that global dominance in the future world would stem from marine power, but it became clear instead at the dawn of the XXI century that the world is ruled by the groups running global finances. Those at the helm are a conglomerate of 147 interwoven kinships controlling the global financial sector and the emission of the US dollar, the latter being a mechanism of keeping national elites across the entire world on a short leash. The Rockefeller and Rothschild clans along with the Vatican are known to play the key roles in the shadowy authority network. In the early XX century, a secret convention of US financial operators held at a US island adopted the so-called Marburg Plan premised in the assumption that power was essentially an asset, but the costliest one and as such had to belong to the richest. The plan could not materialize as long as the USSR was in place and became completely realistic after its collapse. As of today, the keys to the international politics are in the hands of the global financial oligarchy with its network of financial centers, national and transnational banks, governance bodies like the IMF and the World Bank, research centers, and secret political headquarters, and with its own money-printing press officially titled the US Federal Reserve. The objectives of the global financial oligarchy, already accomplished or currently pursued, are:

•    Setting money as the core value of human existence and the main value for nations and societies;

•    Linking all national currencies, along with the national economies, to the US dollar;

•    Inducing the transparency of national borders for financial flows, products, and services;

•    Forming controllable “elites” that act in the interests of the global financial community and the dispatch of the “elites” to positions of authority worldwide;

•    Achieving total control over individual and collective conduct in the economic and political spheres.

The arsenal of instruments employed by the global financial oligarchy is enormous and includes corruption, arranged bankruptcies, defamation, and terrorism along with the elimination of nation states and the unleashing of wars. The system as a whole, therefore, deserves to be regarded as a global financial dictatorship equipped with an ideology of fascism. The underlying formula of this type of rule is that everything is doable with money.

* * *

Since the 1990ies, the world saw a sweeping attack on all types of proponents of the socialist experiment and on all opponents of the global world order which gives unlimited power to a group of bankers. Yugoslavia was devastated as a country which searched for its own development model and continued to regulate the domestic circulation of the US dollar at the time when the rest of Europe had no intention to defy the grip of the financial empire. Iraq came under fire as it similarly probed into the feasibility of an Arab brand of socialism under S. Hussein, rolled out a plan to reject the US dollar as the currency for its oil business, and generally showed untamed independence. In Libya’s case, the Western intervention followed as M. Gadhafi worked towards an African Union and drafted ambitious plans from switching the continent’s economy to the gold dinar to creating the African Union’s own armed forces. At the moment, the West is undermining the regime in Syria, mercenaries are flowing into the country, and US diplomats urge the opposition to brush off Bashar al-Assad’s reform offers and to put up armed resistance due to the fact that Syria did not bow to the new world order. The financial dictators have no problems with regimes like those running the Persian Gulf countries where rulers keep their money in Western banks and take commands from Washington readily, or with countries like Somalia, Iraq, and Afghanistan which are locked in permanent domestic conflicts.

For Wall Street, Iran is the main opponent of the global financial dictatorship in the Middle East. There was a time when Turkey staked a bid for some amount of independence, but the impression is that the Turkish premier R. Erdogan and foreign minister A. Davutoğlu failed to break out of control and now Ankara is taking part in bringing down Syria and supports tighter sanctions against Iran.

Iran is the target of an operation aimed at destroying its sovereign and the island of stability it used to be despite being strategically located on the line of instability stretching from the Balkans to Pakistan. Tehran faces punishment for defying the control of the global governance system and, particularly, for ignoring the US dollar.

Notably, an offensive against Iran would be much harder to implement than the recent campaign against Libya. NATO air raids will likely prove inefficient in Iran, plus Europe with its lingering crisis is unprepared for costly efforts and sacrifices. In the meantime, the global financial elite is confronted with serious challenges; the zone of the US dollar circulation is shrinking and the Occupy Wall Street moment is gaining momentum, China and India are rising economically and militarily, Latin America is en route to deeper integration, and regional groups – the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, BRICs, ASEAN, APEC are growing increasingly active. Even Russia’s administration is implicitly steering a course towards ever greater independence from the global financial centers. For the oligarchy, the solution in sight is to launch a powerful strike that would safeguard the US dollar and those whose might it props up, weaken China and Europe, and show to the whole world who is in charge.

There are indications that an attack against Iran is a decided matter. The IAEA report based on intelligence data from obscure sources and portraying Iran as a country struggling to become nuclear-armed is supposed to convince the US taxpayers and the international community that no alternative to a military campaign exists… Since B. Obama as a winner of the Nobel Prize for Peace and a re-election hopeful has limited space for maneuver, the strike against Iran will be initiated by Israel. The fear that the Israeli nuclear monopoly in the Middle East may come to an end is meant to push Israel’s population towards accepting the plan. The Israeli administration and media uphold the theme of the Iranian nuclear threat and call for a strike on Iran as instructed by the Wall Street Big Brother. Chances are high that the plan will materialize as public protests are easy to handle for the police and the unipolar world is ruled by money, with the international law or moral concerns playing no role. Like Yugoslavia, Iraq, and Libya, Iran can have to pick up the challenge with no allies whatsoever – unless North Korea sends a bunch of soldiers to help it, which clearly would not change the outcome. Maintaining a sizable army, Iran still has nothing comparable to the US military might, nor has the potential to counter the Israeli air raids. Classic forms of defense would not work for Iran in a fight with the immensely superior enemy. What Tehran would need is an asymmetric response that would cause massive damage to the enemy, not necessarily on the enemy territory, and put the very existence of the state of Israel in jeopardy. It is unclear whether Iran has a plan of the kind.

Beijing should realize that an attack on Iran would derail China’s development, considering that a conflict in the region, especially a nuclear one, would disrupt oil supplies to China. As for Europe, it will be getting limited supplies of crude at $300-400 per barrel, which would imminently result in the collapse of the EU. In other words, part of the plan for an attack against Iran is to defeat Europe, China, and India as the economic rivals of the US, as well as to weaken the Muslim world which would see its development and revolutionary activity de-energized once its inflow of petrodolars dwindles.

A look into history should help to predict the future.

The systemic crisis of the early XX-century predatory capitalism led to revolutionary situations in Russia and Europe and triggered two world wars. The world became bipolar in the wake of the defeat of fascism in World War II, the colonial system fell, and opportunities opened up for scores of nations to chose between various development models. The above clearly reflected a profound trend in the global evolution, meaning that the current attempts to impose financial fascism on mankind are doomed. It will, however, take time and sacrifices for the healthy forces to prevail, and Iran, with its resistance to neofascism, will lay the foundations of the future victory. Other nations will follow the lead. The East and the West’s anti-globalist forces will eventually become aware of the need for a higher form of organization, and a leading civilization – evidently, Russia – will offer mankind a new model of the global arrangement, civilized coexistence, and individual harmony with the world. The US as the driver of the new fascism will suffer more than others in the coming conflict – it carries too much negative energy which always attract trouble.

 
 

The War in Georgia was designed to escalate tensions between NATO and Russia, using the region as a means to create a wider conflict. However, Russia’s decision to end the combat operations quickly worked to its benefit and had the effect of diminishing the international tensions. The issue of NATO membership for Georgia is very important, because had it been a NATO member, the Russian attack on Georgia would have been viewed as an attack on all NATO members. The war in Afghanistan was launched by NATO on the premises of ‘an attack against one is an attack against all.’

It also was significant that there was a large pipeline deal in the works, with Georgia sitting in a key strategic position. Georgia lies between Russia and Turkey, between the Caspian Sea and the Black Sea, and above Iran and Iraq. The significance of Georgia as a strategic outpost cannot be underestimated. This is true, particularly when it comes to pipelines.

The Baku Tblisi Ceyhan (BTC) Pipeline, the second largest pipeline in the world, travels from Baku, the capital of Azerbaijan, through Tbilisi, the capital of Georgia, to Ceyhan, a Mediterranean port city in Turkey. This pipeline creates a route that bypasses both Iran and Russia, to bring Caspian Basin oil resources “to the United States, Israel and Western European markets.” The US company Bechtel, was the main contractor for construction, procurement and engineering, while British Petroleum (BP), is the leading shareholder in the project.[49] Israel gets much of its oil via Turkey through the BTC pipeline route, which likely played a large part in Israel’s support for Georgia in the conflict,[50] as a continual standoff between the West and the East (Russia/China) takes place for control of the world’s resources.

Zbigniew Brzezinski, co-founder, with David Rockefeller, of the Trilateral Commission, and Jimmy Carter’s National Security Adviser who played a key role in the creation of the Afghan Mujahideen, which became known as Al-Qaeda, wrote an op-ed for Time Magazine at the outbreak of the Russia-Georgia conflict. Brzezinski, being a Cold War kingpin of geopolitical strategy, naturally blamed Russia for the conflict. However, he also revealed the true nature of the conflict.

He started by blaming Russia’s “invasion of Georgia” on its “imperial aims.” Brzezinski blamed much of this on the “intense nationalistic mood that now permeates Russia’s political elite.” Brzezinski went on to explain Georgia’s strategic significance; stating that, “an independent Georgia is critical to the international flow of oil,” since the BTC pipeline “provides the West access to the energy resources of central Asia.” Brzezinski warned Russia of being “ostracized internationally,” in particular its business elite, calling them “vulnerable” because “Russia’s powerful oligarchs have hundreds of billions of dollars in Western bank accounts,” which would be subject to a possible “freezing” by the West in the event of a “Cold War-style standoff.”[51] Brzezinski’s op-ed essentially amounted to geopolitical extortion.

Regime Change in Iran

There was, for many years, a split in the administration of George W. Bush in regards to US policy towards Iran. On the one hand, there was the hardliner neoconservative element, led by Dick Cheney, with Rumsfeld in the Pentagon; who were long pushing for a military confrontation with Iran. On the other hand, there was Condoleezza Rice as Secretary of State, who was pushing for a more diplomatic, or “soft” approach to Iran.

In February of 2006, Condoleezza Rice introduced a new Iran strategy to the Senate, “emphasizing the tools of so-called soft diplomacy. She called for ramping up funding to assist pro-democracy groups, public diplomacy initiatives, and cultural and education fellowships, in addition to expanding U.S.-funded radio, television, and Internet and satellite-based broadcasting, which are increasingly popular among younger Iranians.” She added that, “we are going to work to support the aspirations of the Iranian people for freedom in their country.” There were three main facets to the program: “Expanding independent radio and television”; “Funding pro-democracy groups,” which “would lift bans on U.S. financing of Iran-based nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), trade unions, human rights groups, and opposition candidates”; and “Boosting cultural and education fellowships and exchanges,” which “would help pay Iranian students and scholars to enroll in U.S. universities.”[52]

This marked a significant change in U.S. foreign policy with Iran, which would have the effect of making Iran’s domestic situation “more intense,” or as one expert put it, “this is the thing that can undo this regime.” Another expert stated that if the strategy failed, “we will have wasted the money, but worse than that, helped discredit legitimate opposition groups as traitors who receive money from the enemy to undermine Iran ‘s national interest.”[53]

In March of 2006, the Iraq Study Group was assembled as a group of high level diplomats and strategic elites to reexamine US policy toward Iraq, and more broadly, to Iran as well. It proposed a softer stance towards Iran, and one of its members, Robert Gates, former CIA director, left the Group in November of 2006 to replace Donald Rumsfeld as Secretary of Defense. Cheney had fought to keep his ally in the Pentagon, but had failed in not only that, but also in preventing Robert Gates from being his replacement.[54]

In February of 2006, the Guardian reported that the Bush administration received “a seven-fold increase in funding to mount the biggest ever propaganda campaign against the Tehran government,” and quoted Secretary Rice as saying, “we will work to support the aspirations of the Iranian people for freedom and democracy in their country.” The “US is to increase funds to Iranian non-governmental bodies that promote democracy, human rights and trade unionism,” which started in 2005 for the first time since 1980, and that, “the US would seek to help build new dissident networks.”[55]

In April of 2006, the Financial Times reported that, “The US and UK are working on a strategy to promote democratic change in Iran,” as “Democracy promotion is a rubric to get the Europeans behind a more robust policy without calling it regime change.”[56] Christian Science Monitor reported that the goal of the strategy was “regime change from within,” in the form of “a pro-democracy revolution.”[57]

In July of 2007, it was reported that the White House had “shifted back in favour of military action,” at the insistence of Cheney.[58] Josh Bolton, former US Ambassador to the United Nations, said in May of 2007, that US strategy consisted of three options: the first was economic sanctions, the second was regime change, and the third was military action. Bolton elaborated that, “we’ve got to go with regime change by bolstering opposition groups and the like, because that’s the circumstance most likely for an Iranian government to decide that it’s safer not to pursue nuclear weapons than to continue to do so. And if all else fails, if the choice is between a nuclear-capable Iran and the use of force, then I think we need to look at the use of force.” Ultimately, the aim would be “to foment a popular revolution.”[59]

In September of 2007, it was reported that the Bush administration was pushing the US on the warpath with Iran, as “Pentagon planners have developed a list of up to 2,000 bombing targets in Iran.” It was even reported that Secretary Rice was “prepared to settle her differences with Vice-President Dick Cheney and sanction military action.” It was reported that Rice and Cheney were working together to present a more unified front, finding a middle ground between Rice’s soft diplomacy, and Cheney’s preference to use “bunker-busting tactical nuclear weapons” against Iran.[60]

That same year, in 2007, the United States launched covert operations against Iran. ABC broke the story, reporting that, “The CIA has received secret presidential approval to mount a covert “black” operation to destabilize the Iranian government.” The President signed an order “that puts into motion a CIA plan that reportedly includes a coordinated campaign of propaganda, disinformation and manipulation of Iran’s currency and international financial transactions.” The approval of these covert operations marked a temporary move away from pursuing overt military action.[61]

As the Telegraph reported in May of 2007, “Bush has signed an official document endorsing CIA plans for a propaganda and disinformation campaign intended to destabilise, and eventually topple, the theocratic rule of the mullahs.” As part of the plan, “the CIA [has] the right to collect intelligence on home soil, an area that is usually the preserve of the FBI, from the many Iranian exiles and emigrés within the US,” as “Iranians in America have links with their families at home, and they are a good two-way source of information.” Further, “The CIA will also be allowed to supply communications equipment which would enable opposition groups in Iran to work together and bypass internet censorship by the clerical regime.”[62]

“Soft” power became the favoured policy for promoting regime change in Iran. David Denehy, a senior adviser to the State Department’s Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs, was “charged with overseeing the distribution of millions of dollars to advance the cause of a more democratic Iran.” He was responsible for disbursing the $75 million that Ms. Rice asked the Senate for in February of 2006. The appropriations included “$36.1 million into existing television and radio programs beaming into Iran,” and “$10 million would pay for public diplomacy and exchange programs, including helping Iranians who hope to study in America,” and “$20 million would support the efforts of civil-society groups — media, legal and human rights nongovernmental organizations — both outside and inside Iran.” The administration was requesting an additional $75 million for 2008.[63]

In 2008, award-winning journalist Seymour Hersh revealed in the New Yorker that in late 2007, Congress approved “a request from President Bush to fund a major escalation of covert operations against Iran, according to current and former military, intelligence, and congressional sources.” While the Cheney hard-liners in the Bush administration were long pushing for a direct military confrontation with Iran, the military had to be reigned in from being controlled by the neo-conservatives. Robert Gates, a former CIA director, had replaced Donald Rumsfeld as Defense Secretary, and while still saber rattling Iran, had to take a more strategic position, as many military leaders in the Pentagon felt “that bombing Iran is not a viable response to the nuclear-proliferation issue.”

The covert operations that were approved ran at a cost of approximately $400 million dollars, and “are designed to destabilize the country’s religious leadership. The covert activities involve support of the minority Ahwazi Arab and Baluchi groups and other dissident organizations. They also include gathering intelligence about Iran’s suspected nuclear-weapons program.” The operations were to be expanded under both the CIA and JSOC (the Joint Special Operations Command). The focus was “on undermining Iran’s nuclear ambitions and trying to undermine the government through regime change,” of which a major facet was “working with opposition groups and passing money.” Hersh elaborated:

Many of the activities may be being carried out by dissidents in Iran, and not by Americans in the field. One problem with “passing money” (to use the term of the person familiar with the Finding) in a covert setting is that it is hard to control where the money goes and whom it benefits. Nonetheless, the former senior intelligence official said, “We’ve got exposure, because of the transfer of our weapons and our communications gear. The Iranians will be able to make the argument that the opposition was inspired by the Americans. How many times have we tried this without asking the right questions? Is the risk worth it?” One possible consequence of these operations would be a violent Iranian crackdown on one of the dissident groups, which could give the Bush Administration a reason to intervene.

Included in the strategy was to use ethnic tensions to undermine the government; however, this strategy is flawed. Unlike Pakistan, Lebanon, and Iraq, Iran is a much older country, “like France and Germany—and its citizens are just as nationalistic. The U.S. is overestimating ethnic tension in Iran.” This turned out to be an important point in regards to the elections in the summer of 2009.

 

A neutron bomb, also called Enhanced Radiation Warhead,  specialized type of small thermonuclear weapon that produces minimal blast and heat but which releases large amounts of lethal radiation. The neutron bomb delivers blast and heat effects that are confined to an area of only a few hundred yards in radius. But within a somewhat larger area it throws off a massive wave of neutron and gamma radiation, which can penetrate armour or several feet of earth. This radiation is extremely destructive to living tissue. Because of its short-range destructiveness and the absence of long-range effect, the neutron bomb would be highly effective against tank and infantry formations on the battlefield but would not endanger cities or other population centres only a few miles away. It can be carried in a Lance missile or delivered by an 8-inch (200-millimetre) howitzer, or possibly by attack aircraft.

In strategic terms, the neutron bomb has a theoretical deterrent effect: discouraging an armoured ground assault by arousing the fear of neutron bomb counterattack. The bomb would disable enemy tank crews in minutes, and those exposed would die within days. U.S. production of the bomb was postponed in 1978 and resumed in 1981.



 

Upshot-Knothole Grable, a test carried out by the U.S. military in Nevada on May 25, 1953. A 280mm nuclear shell was fired 10km into the desert by the M65 Atomic Cannon, detonating in the air, about 500 feet above the ground, with a resulting 15 kiloton explosion.

 

Click here to find out more!

 

A longer-exposure photograph of the Trinity explosion seconds after detonation on July 16, 1945. (U.S. Department of Defense)

 

 

A massive column of water rises from the sea as the U.S. detonate an atom bomb at Bikini Atoll in the Pacific in the first underwater test of the device, July 25, 1946. (AP Photo)

A huge mushroom cloud rises above Bikini atoll in the Marshall Islands on July 25, 1946 following an atomic test blast, part of the U.S. military's Operation Crossroads. The dark spots in foreground are ships that were placed near the blast site to test what an atom bomb would do to a fleet of warships. (AP Photo)

On November 16, 1952, a B-36H bomber dropped a nuclear bomb over a point north of Runit Island in the Enewetak atoll, resulting in a 500 kiloton explosion -- part of a test code-named Ivy. (U.S. Department of Defense)

Operation Greenhouse took place in the spring of 1951, consisting of four explosions at the Pacific Proving Grounds in the Pacific Ocean. This photo is from the third test, George, on May 9, 1951, the first thermonuclear bomb test, yielding 225 kilotons. (U.S. Department of Defense)

 

During Plumbbob test at the Nevada Test Site on August 30, 1957, the Franklin Prime shot is detonated from a balloon in Yucca Flat at an altitude of 750 feet. (National Nuclear Security Administration / Nevada Site Office)

The test explosion of a hydrogen bomb during Operation Redwing over the Bikini Atoll on May 20, 1956. (AP Photo)

Ionization glow surrounds the cooling fireball of the Diablo shot, fired in Yucca Flat at 4:30 a.m. Monday, July 15, 1957. (National Nuclear Security Administration / Nevada Site Office)

 

The fireball of the Priscilla shot, fired on June 24, 1957, as a part of the Operation Plumbbob series. (National Nuclear Security Administration / Nevada Site Office)

 

 

A view of the Arkansas test, part of Operation Dominic, a series of over 100 nuclear test explosions in Nevada and the Pacific in 1962. (U.S. Department of Defense)

 

The rising fireball of the Aztec test, part of Operation Dominic, a series of over 100 nuclear test explosions in Nevada and the Pacific in 1962. (U.S. Department of Defense)

 

Shot during Fishbowl Bluegill, this is an image of an explosion of a 400 kiloton nuclear bomb taking place in the atmosphere, 30 miles above the Pacific, as viewed from above, in October 1962. (U.S. Department of Defense)

 

Expanding rings surround a mushroom cloud, during the Yeso test explosion, part of Operation Dominic, a series of over 100 nuclear test explosions in Nevada and the Pacific in 1962. (U.S. Department of Defense)

 

A 1971 photo of a nuclear bomb detonated by the French government at the Mururoa atoll, French Polynesia. (AP Photo)

 

A photo of a nuclear bomb detonated by the French government at the Mururoa atoll, French Polynesia. Original here. (Pierre J. / CC BY NC SA)

 

   

25

Hiroshima atomic bombing survivors receive emergency treatment by military medics, on August 6, 1945. (AP Photo) #

 

Warning:
This image may contain graphic or
objectionable content
Click to view image

27

A badly burned nuclear bomb victim lies in quarantine on the island of Ninoshima in Hiroshima, Japan, 9,000 meters from the hypocenter on August 7, 1945, one day after the bombing by the United States. (AP Photo/The Association of the Photographers of the Atomic Bomb Destruction of Hiroshima, Yotsugi Kawahara) #

28

A Japanese soldier walks through a completely leveled area of Hiroshima in September of 1945. (NARA) #

 

30

"Fat Man" was dropped from the B-29 bomber Bockscar, detonating at 11:02 AM, at an altitude of about 1,650 feet (500 m) above Nagasaki. An estimated 39,000 people were killed outright by the bombing a further 25,000 were injured. (USAF) #

31

This picture made shortly after the August 9, 1945 atomic bombing, shows workers carrying away debris in a devastated area of Nagasaki, Japan. This picture obtained by the U.S. Army from files of Domei, the official Japanese news agency, was the first ground view of the nuclear destruction in Nagasaki. (AP Photo) #

32

The only recognizable structure remaining is a ruined Roman Catholic Cathedral in background on a destroyed hill, in Nagasaki, Japan in 1945. (NARA) #

33

Dr. Nagai, medical instructor and x-ray specialist at Nagasaki Hospital, a victim of atomic radiation caused by the nuclear bombing. A few days after this photo was made, Dr. Nagai passed away. (USAF) #

34

People walk through the charred ruins of Nagasaki, shortly after an atomic bomb destroyed much of the city. The explosion generated heat estimated at 3,900 degrees Celsius (4,200 K, 7,000 °F). (USAF)