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Amelia Gora August 2, 2011 at 10:14pm

A BRILLIANT AND COURAGEOUS STATEMENT

By Fidel Castro Ruz / editorweb@radioangulo.icrt.cu / Tuesday, 05 July 2011 08:26

Fidel Castro visited Hugo Chavez while under treatment in Havana. Photo: estudiosrevolucion

Attending to other matters that are now top priority, I momentarily strayed from the frequency with which I had been writing reflections in the year 2010; however, Hugo Chávez Frías’ proclamation last Thursday the 30th, obliges me to write these lines.

The president of Venezuela is one of the men who has done the most for the health and education of his people; since these are subjects where the Cuban Revolution has accumulated the most experience, we gladly collaborate to the maximum with this sister country in both areas.

It is by no means a matter of that country lacking doctors; quite the opposite. They had an abundance of doctors, among them there were even first-class professionals, just as in other Latin American countries. It is a social matter. The best medical doctors and the most sophisticated equipment could be placed at the service of private medicine, as it is in all capitalist countries. And often not even that, because in underdeveloped capitalism, like the type that used to exist in Venezuela, the wealthy class had sufficient means to go to the best hospitals in the United States or Europe, something that was and is customary and nobody can deny it.

Even worse, the United States and Europe have been noted for seducing the best specialists from any exploited Third World country to abandon their homeland and to emigrate to the consumer societies. Training doctors for that world in the developed countries implies fabulous sums of money that millions of poor Latin American and Caribbean families would never be able to pay. In Cuba, that used to happen until the Revolution took up the challenge, not just of training doctors capable of serving our own country, but also the other peoples of Latin America, the Caribbean or the world.

Never have we stolen the intelligences of other peoples. On the contrary; in Cuba we have trained tens of thousands of doctors and other top-level professionals, for free, in order to send them back to their own countries.

Thanks to the profound Bolivarian and Marti-inspired revolutions, Venezuela and Cuba are countries where health and education have been extraordinarily developed. Every citizen has the real right to receive general education and professional training at no cost, something that the United States has not been able to ensure for all its inhabitants. The reality is that the government of that country invests a billion dollars every year on its military machine and its war adventures. Furthermore, it is the greatest exporter of weapons and the instruments of death and the greatest market for drugs in the world. Because of this traffic, tens of thousands of Latin American lives are lost every year.

It is such a real and well-known fact that more than 50 years ago, a president having military origins bitterly denounced the decisive power accumulated by the military-industrial complex in that country.

These words would be superfluous if it were not for the intervention of the hateful and repugnant campaign unleashed by the massive Venezuelan oligarchy media, at the service of that empire, using the health problems being experienced by the Bolivarian President. We are united to the President with close and indestructible bonds of friendship that came into being from his first visit to our homeland on December 13th, 1994.

Some were surprised by the coincidence of his visit to Cuba with the necessity of seeking medical care. The Venezuelan President visited out country with the same aim that took him to Brazil and Ecuador. He had no intention of receiving medical care in our homeland.

It is well-known that for a few years now, a team of Cuban health specialists are providing their services to the Venezuelan President who, loyal to his Bolivarian principles, never considered them to be undesirable foreigners, but sons and daughters of the Great Latin American Homeland on behalf of which The Liberator fought, right up to his last living breath.

The first contingent of Cuban doctors left for Venezuela when the Vargas Stadium tragedy occurred, taking thousands of this noble country’s lives. This action of solidarity was nothing new; it made up a tradition well-established in our country from the first years of the Revolution, from the time almost half a century ago when Cuban doctors were sent to recently-independent Algeria. That tradition grew stronger while the Cuban Revolution, in the midst of a cruel blockade, was training internationalist doctors. Countries such as Peru, Somoza’s Nicaragua and other countries in our hemisphere and in the Third World were suffering from tragedies as a result of earthquakes or other causes that required Cuba’s solidarity. So, our country became the nation in the world that had the highest rate of doctors and specialized health personnel, with extremely high levels of experience and professional capabilities.

President Chávez put a great emphasis in relating with our health personnel. This way, a bond of confidence and friendship was born between him and the Cuban doctors who were always very sensitive to the treatment of the Venezuelan leader; and he was able to create thousands of health centres and outfit them with the necessary equipment in order to provide free services for all Venezuelans. There was no other government in the world that did so much, in such a short time, for the health of its people.

A large percentage of Cuban health personnel provided services in Venezuela and many of them also acted as teachers in certain subjects that were being taught to train more than 20,000 young Venezuelans who began to graduate as medical doctors. Many of them began their studies in our country. The internationalist doctors, members of Battalion 51, graduates of the Latin American School of Medicine, have earned solid prestige in carrying out complicated and difficult missions. On these bases my relations in this field with President Hugo Chávez were built.

I should add that in the course of more than twelve years, since February 2, 1999, the president and leader of the Venezuelan Revolution has not rested one single day and thus he occupies a unique place in the history of this hemisphere. All of his energy has been dedicated to the Revolution.

One could say that for every extra hour Chávez dedicates to his work, the president of the United States rests for two hours.

It was difficult, almost impossible, that his health would not suffer some sort of breakdown and this is what happened in the last few months.

He is a person used to the rigors of military life and he would stoically put up with the aches and pains that were plaguing him with ever increasing frequency. Given the friendly relations developed and the constant exchanges between Cuba and Venezuela, added to my personal health experience that I underwent since the proclamation of July 30, 2006, it is not unusual that I should have noticed the need for a strict medical check-up for the President. He is far too generous in granting me any special merit in this matter.

Of course, I admit that it was no easy task that I set for myself. It wasn’t difficult for me to notice that he had some health problems. Seven months had gone by since his last visit to Cuba. The medical team devoted to caring for his health had pleaded for me to take up the matter. From the very first moment, the President’s attitude was one of informing the people, with complete clarity, about the state of his health. That was why, at the point by then of returning, via his minister of Foreign Affairs, he informed the people about his health up to that instant and he promised to keep them informed in detail.

Each treatment was accompanied by rigorous cellular and laboratory analyses, of the kind that are done under such circumstances.

One of the tests, several days following the first surgery, showed results that determined more radical surgery and special treatment for the patient.

In his dignified message on June 30th, the noticeably recovered President speaks about the state of his health with absolute clarity.

I admit that it was no easy task for me to inform my friend about the new development. I could see the dignity with which he received the news that --while his mind was dealing with so many important tasks, among them the celebrations commemorating the Bicentennial and the formalization of the agreement on Latin American and Caribbean unity – much more than the physical suffering that radical surgery would imply, signified a test, as he put it, that he compared to the difficult moments he had to face in his lifetime as an unyielding combatant.

Along with him, the team of persons caring for him and who he described as sublime fought a magnificent battle which I have witnessed.

With no hesitation whatsoever, I state that the results are impressive and that the patient fought a decisive battle that shall lead him and Venezuela along with him, to a great victory.

One has to make sure that his declaration is communicated word for word in every language, but especially it should be translated and subtitled into English; this is a language that can be understood on this Tower of Babel into which imperialism has transformed the world.

Now the external and internal enemies of Hugo Chávez are at the mercy of his words and his initiatives. Without a doubt there shall be surprises in store for them. Let us wish him our most steadfast support and trust. The lies of the empire and the treason of the quislings shall be defeated. Today there are millions of militant and aware Venezuelans who shall never be made to submit to the oligarchy and the empire.

Fidel Castro Ruz

July 3, 2011

4:12 p.m.

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Lies and Mysteries Surrounding Bin Laden’s Death (09 May 2011)

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A Fire that Could Burn Everyone

By Fidel Castro Ruz / editorweb@radioangulo.icrt.cu / Thursday, 28 April 2011 15:40

Fidel Castro exposes NATO. Photo: Alex Castro

You may agree or not with Gaddafi’s political ideas, but no one has the right to question the existence of Libya as an independent state and member of the United Nations.

The world has not yet reached the point which, in my view, is an essential condition for the survival of our human species: access by all the peoples to the material resources of this planet. There is no other in the Solar System that we know that has the most elemental conditions for life.
The United States itself always tried to be a melting pot of all races, all beliefs and all nations: white, black, yellow, the Indians and mixed races, with no other differences than those between the masters and slaves, the rich and poor; but all within its borders: To its North was Canada; to the South, Mexico; to the East, the Atlantic Ocean and to the West, the Pacific Ocean. Alaska, Puerto Rico and Hawaii were simple historical accidents.

What makes the issue complicated is that it does not imply the noble wish of those fighting for a better world, which deserves as much respect as the peoples’ religious beliefs do. It would only take some kind of radioactive isotopes that stemmed from the enriched uranium used by
thermonuclear plants in relatively small amounts—since they do not exist in nature—to put an end to the fragile existence of our species. Keeping those wastes in increasing volumes, under reinforced concrete and steel coffins, is one of the major challenges for technology.

Events like the Chernobyl accident or the earthquake in Japan have revealed those mortal risks.
This is not the issue I’d like to address today, but how amazed I was yesterday to see, on Walter Martinez’s show “Dossier” on Venezuelan television, the filmed images of the meeting between the chief of the US Department of Defense Robert Gates and the U.K. Defense Minister, Liam
Fox, who visited the United States to discuss the criminal war unleashed by NATO against Libya. It was something difficult to believe, the British minister won an “Oscar”; he was a bundle of nerves, he was tense and spoke like crazy; and he gave the impression that he was just spitting out the words.

Of course, he first got to the entrance of the Pentagon, where Gates was awaiting him with a smile. The flags of both countries, the one of the ancient British colonial empire and that of its stepson, the United States Empire, flew high on both sides as the two national anthems were played.

Right hand on chest, the rigorous and solemn military salute of the ceremony given by the host country. This was the initial act. Later, the two ministers stepped into the US Defense building. They are supposed to have spoken for a long time, given the images I saw, as each of them
returned with a speech in hand, undoubtedly prepared in advance.

The context of this entire scenario was made up by personnel in uniform. On the left I could see a tall, slim young soldier, who seemed to have a shaved redhead, wearing a cap with the black peak pulled nearly down to his throat, presenting his bayoneted rifle. He did not blink nor
seem to breathe, like the figure of a soldier ready to shoot a rifle bullet or a nuclear rocket with a destructive capacity of 100 thousand tons of TNT. Gates spoke showing the smile and natural manners of a host.

The British man, however, did so in the way I explained. I have not often seen anything more horrifying than this; he was releasing hatred, frustration, fury and using threatening language against
the Libyan leader and urging his unconditional surrender. He looked indignant because the powerful NATO warplanes had not been able to crush the Libyan resistance in 72 hours.
He was only missing the exclamation: “blood, sweat and tears,” just like Winston Churchill when he calculated the price to be paid by his country in the fight against the Nazi warplanes. But in this case, the Nazi-fascist role is being played by NATO with its thousands of bombing missions by the most modern aircraft ever known by the world.

To cap it all came the decision by the US administration to authorize the use of drones to kill Libyan men, women and children, like in Afghanistan, thousands of kilometers from Western Europe, but this time against an Arab and African country, before the eyes of hundreds of millions of Europeans and no less than in the name of the United Nations Organization.

Russia’s Prime Minister Vladimir Putin yesterday said that these acts of war were illegal and they are outside the framework of the accords adopted by the UN Security Council.

The crude attacks against the Libyan people, which have taken on a Nazi-fascist character, may be used against any Third World nation.

I am really amazed at the resistance posed by Libya.

The belligerent organization now depends on Gaddafi. If he resists and does not yield to their demands, he will enter history as one of the great figures of the Arab nations.

NATO is poking a fire that could burn everyone!

Fidel Castro Ruz
April 27, 2011
7: 34 p.m.

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CIA Releases Files on Invasion of Cuba

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The Unsustainable Position of the Empire

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The Unsustainable Position of the Empire

By Fidel Castro Ruz / editorweb@radioangulo.icrt.cu / Friday, 20 May 2011 15:46

Nobody can assure us that in its agony, the empire won’t be dragging human beings down to catastrophe.

As we know, while our species remains alive, everybody has the sacred duty to be optimistic. Ethically, any other behaviour wouldn’t be admissible. I remember well that one day, almost 20 years ago, I said that there was an endangered species: Man.

In front of a select group of bourgeois government leaders, flatterers of the empire, among them being the immense well-fed bulk of the German Helmut Kohl, and others like those forming the chorus of Bush Sr., less dismal and alienated than his own son, W. Bush, I couldn’t help but express that truth which I was seeing as being very real, even though it was more distant than it is today, with the greatest sincerity possible.

Turning on the television at about 12:15 at midday, because someone told me that Barack Obama was giving his announced speech on foreign policy, I paid attention to his words.

I don’t know why, despite the piles of dispatches and news I listen to on a daily basis, not one of them mentioned that the guy would be speaking at that time. I can assure the readers that there are not a few stupidities and lies that, among the dramatic truths and facts of all kinds, I read, I hear or see in pictures every day. But this case was something special.

What was the guy going to say at that time in this world overwhelmed with imperial crimes, massacres or unmanned planes dropping deadly bombs, that not even Obama, now master of some life and death decisions, was imagining when he was a student at Harvard just a few decades ago?

Of course nobody should suppose that Obama is master of the situation; he merely handles some important words that the old system in its origin granted the “Constitutional President” of the United States. At this point, 234 years after the Declaration of Independence, the Pentagon and the CIA still have the basic instruments of the imperial power created: technology capable of destroying the human race in a matter of minutes, and the means to penetrate those societies, dupe them and manipulate them shamelessly for as long as they need to do so, thinking that the power of the empire is boundless. They trust they are handling a docile world,
without even a single disturbance, for all future time.

It is the absurd idea upon which they base tomorrow’s world, under “the kingdom of liberty, justice, equal opportunities and human rights”, incapable of seeing what is really happening with poverty, the lack of the basic services of education, health, jobs and something worse: meeting
life’s needs such as food, drinking water, house and many others.

Strangely enough, can anyone wonder for example what would happen with the 10 thousand dead per year as a result of drug-related violence, basically in Mexico, to which we could add the countries of Central America and several of the most populated countries in the southern part of the continent?

I harbour absolutely no intention of offending those peoples; my purpose is just to point out what is happening to others almost on a daily basis.

There is one question that has to be asked almost immediately: what is going to happen in Spain where crowds are protesting in the country’s main cities against the unemployment of 40% of the young people, just to quote one of the causes of the demonstrations of that fighting people? Could it be perhaps that they are going to start bombing that NATO country?

Nevertheless, at this time, at 4:12 p.m., they still haven’t published the blessed official Spanish version of Obama’s speech.

I hope you will forgive me for this improvised reflection. I have other things to take care of.

Fidel Castro Ruz
May 19, 2011
4:16 p.m.

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The Playa Giron Battle (Part II) (04 July 2011)
The Playa Girón Battle (Part I) (03 July 2011)
The Unsustainable Position of the Empire (20 May 2011)
Lies and Mysteries Surrounding Bin Laden’s Death (09 May 2011)
The Assasination of Osama bin Laden (05 May 2011)

CIA Releases Files on Invasion of Cuba

Cuba defeated the US led invasion by the Bay of Pigs in barely three days. Photo: JR

Pressured by a lawsuit, the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) on Monday released another group of files of its so-called official history of the U.S.-organized invasion of Cuba 50 years ago at Playa Giron. However, the CIA still refuses to declassify the fifth of five volumes that make up its history of the April 1961 events, known in the United States as the Bay of Pigs invasion.

The release of four volumes of the secret CIA papers was in response to a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit filed by the independent National Security Archive on the 50th anniversary of the failed attack.

"These are among the last remaining secret records of this act of U.S. aggression against Cuba," said Peter Kornbluh, director of the Cuba Documentation Project at the Archive, according to a press release on the archive's website.

Volume 2, posted on the Archive website on Monday, is "Participation in the Conduct of Foreign Policy," and contains details on CIA negotiations with Guatemala, Nicaragua, Panama and the United Kingdom on support for the invasion.

"Volume 5 is a rebuttal to the stinging CIA's Inspector General's report, done in the immediate aftermath of the paramilitary assault, which held CIA officials accountable for a wide variety of mistakes, miscalculations and deceptions that characterized the failed invasion," the Archive press release says.

The National Security Archive obtained the declassification of the ultra-secret Inspector General's report in 1998.

"Volume 3 of the Official History was previously declassified under the Kennedy Assassination Record Act; and volume 4 was previously declassified to the CIA historian, Jack Pheiffer, who wrote the study in the late 1970s and early1980s," Kornbluh said in the press release.

The Archive will post a detailed assessment of the declassified history, along with two other volumes, the press release said.

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Nicaragua to Mark Triumph of Sandinista Revolution

Nicaragua to Celebrate Anniversary of Sandinista Revolution

Nicaraguans are readying Tuesday's celebrations of the 32nd anniversary of the Sandinista Revolution, and the 50th of the Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN).

The July 19, 1979 overthrow of the four-decade-long Somoza dictatorship is the most important event on the Sandinista calendar and coincides this year with the 50th anniversary of the FSLN's founding in 1961, as the organization that led the Nicaraguan people´s independence struggle.

In the last few days, FSLN local committees, and especially the 19th of July Sandinista Youth groups, have celebrated the event with many and diverse activities nationwide, with mass participation.

Most recently, a mass was celebrated Sunday in Esteli and attended by retired Gen. Moises Omar Hallesleven, vice presidential candidate in the upcoming November elections for the Sandinistas, who are running President Daniel Ortega for re-election.

The festivities will culminate Tuesday in a central event in Plaza de la Fe, close to Xolotlan Lake, where preparations have been underway to receive tens of thousands of Nicaraguans who will hear Ortega speak.

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Pirates and Emperors - Schoolhouse Rock

A political schoolhouse rock cartoon about terrorist/robbers/killers and US leaders.

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Amelia Gora > Amelia Gora August 4, 2011 at 11:29pm

THE WISDOM FUND

TWF.org

This global presence - in about 60% of the world's nations and far larger than previously acknowledged - provides striking new evidence of a rising clandestine Pentagon power elite waging a secret war in all corners of the world.--Nick Turse, "A secret war in 120 countries," atimes.com, August 5, 2011

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August 1, 2011

More War! The Road to Armageddon

By PAUL CRAIG ROBERTS

[Paul Craig Roberts was an editor of the Wall Street Journal and an Assistant Secretary of the U.S. Treasury. His latest book, HOW THE ECONOMY WAS LOST, was published by CounterPunch/AK Press. This article is from the Summer 2011 issue of the Trends Journal, a publication of Gerald Celente's Trends Research Institute.]

As the second decade of the 21st century began, the US economy had not recovered from the Great Recession that began in December 2007.

The economy's failure to recover was despite the largest fiscal and monetary stimulus in the country's history. There was a $700 billion bank bailout, a $700 billion stimulus program, a couple of trillion in "quantitative easing," that is, in debt monetization or the printing of money to finance the government's expenditures. In addition the Federal Reserve's balance sheet had expanded by trillions of dollars as the Fed purchased troubled mortgage bonds and derivatives in its effort to keep the financial system solvent and functioning. According to the Government Accountability Office's audit of the Federal Reserve released by Senator Bernie Sanders, the Federal Reserve provided secret loans to US and foreign banks totaling $16.1 trillion, a sum larger than US Gross Domestic Product (GDP).

Despite the enormous fiscal and monetary stimulus, the economy remained dead in the water.

In 2011 the deficit in the federal government's annual expenditures was 43 percent of the budget. In other words, the US government had to borrow, or the Fed had to monetize, 43 percent of federal expenditures during fiscal year 2011. Despite this unprecedented fiscal and monetary stimulus, the economy did not recover.

At the end of the first decade of the 21st century, the economy's decline was temporarily halted by federal subsidies for car and home purchases. The $8,000 housing subsidy helped newlyweds purchase starter homes as the subsidy was a big chunk of the down payment in a depressed housing market. The car purchase subsidy moved future demand into the present. When these subsidies expired, the economy's life support was turned off.

Problems with the statistical reporting of unemployment, inflation, and GDP disguised the worsening economy. Seasonal adjustments used to smooth the data over the course of the year were not designed for prolonged recession. Neither was the "birth-death" model used by the US Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) to estimate non-reported jobs from new start-up companies and losses from companies that have gone out of business. The birth-death model was designed for a growing economy and during downturns overestimates the number of new jobs created.

The "substitution effect" used in the consumer price index (CPI) underestimates inflation by assuming that consumers substitute cheaper foods for those that rise in price. For example, if the price of New York strip steak rises, this does not show up in the CPI, because of the assumption that people shift their purchases to a less expensive cut such as round steak.

Cooking the Books

The widely used "core inflation" measure does not include food or energy. Core inflation is a useful measure for those who want to put an optimistic spin on the outlook.

By underestimating inflation, the government can overestimate real GDP growth, thus creating a fictional rosy outlook. Similarly, by using the employment measure known as U.3, the government underestimates unemployment.

The "headline" unemployment rate, the one emphasized by the media and the financial press, stood at 9.2 percent in June, 2011. But this rate does not include any discouraged workers. A discouraged worker is a person who has ceased looking for a job, because there are no jobs to be found. A discouraged worker is not considered to be in the work force and is not counted among the U.3 unemployed. The federal government knows that this is phony and has a U.6 measure of unemployment that counts the short-term discouraged. This measure, seldom reported by the media, stood at 16.2 percent in June, 2011.

Statistician John Williams (shadowstats.com) continues to count also the long-term discouraged workers according to the way it was officially done in 1980. In June, 2011, this full measure of the US unemployment rate was 22.7 percent.

In other words, by 2011 between one-fifth and one-fourth of the US work force were without jobs.

As 2011 progressed, the United States faced three simultaneous economic crises. One crisis arose from the loss of US jobs, GDP, consumer income, and tax base caused by corporations off-shoring their production for the US market. Instead of making their products at home with American labor and providing Americans with jobs and states and localities with tax revenues, US corporations provided countries such as China, India, and Indonesia with GDP, jobs, consumer income and a tax base. This practice meant that economic stimulus was unable to revive the US economy as Americans cannot be called back to work jobs that have been moved abroad.

Another crisis was the financial crisis resulting from deregulation, fraud, and greed. Securitization of mortgages meant that issuers of mortgages no longer had any incentive to ascertain the credit worthiness of the borrower, because the issuers sold the mortgages to third parties who combined the mortgages with others and sold them to investors.

As mortgages were issued for fees, the more mortgages issued, the higher the income from fees. In order to collect fee income, some issuers faked credit reports for borrowers. With the housing market booming, many people took mortgages in order to make money on the resale of the properties. With housing prices rising rapidly, down payments and credit worthiness became concerns of the past. The financial crisis was made worse by the ability of investment banks to get around capital requirements and, thereby, leverage their equity by incurring enormous debt. When all the bubbles burst, the house of cards collapsed.

Economic Armageddon

The third crisis was the $1.5+ trillion annual federal budget deficits, which were too large to be financed without the Federal Reserve buying the Treasury's new debt issues. Known as monetizing debt, the Federal Reserve purchased the Treasury's bills, notes, and bonds by creating a checking account, which the Treasury would then draw upon to pay the government's bills. The outpouring of Treasury debt raised concerns about the dollar's exchange value and role as reserve currency, and it raised fears of inflation. Gold and silver prices rose as the dollar declined in foreign exchange markets.

Any one of these crises was serious. All together, they implied economic Armageddon.

There was no obvious way out, but even if one could be found, the government was focused elsewhere -- on wars.

In addition to ongoing military operations in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia, the US and NATO began military operations against Libya on March 19, 2011. As with the existing wars, the real purpose of the aggression against Libya was not acknowledged, but it became clear that the war's purpose was to evict China from its oil investments in eastern Libya. Unlike the previous Arab protests, the Libyan rebellion was an armed uprising in which some saw the CIA's hand.

The Libyan war upped the risk, because although hiding behind the veil of Arab protest, the US was actually confronting China. Similarly, in the US-supported armed rebellion in Syria, Washington's target was the Russian naval base at Tartus. Overthrowing the Assad government in Syria and installing a US friendly regime would put paid to Russia's naval presence in the Mediterranean.

By hiding its purposes behind Arab protests in Libya and Syria that it might have initiated, Washington avoided face-to-face conflicts with China and Russia, but nevertheless the two powers understood that Washington was striking at their interests. This elevated the recklessness of Washington's aggressive policies by initiating confrontation with two nuclear powers, one of which held financial power over the US as America's largest foreign creditor.

China's oil investments in Angola and Nigeria were another target. To counter China's economic penetration of Africa, the US created the American African Command in the closing years of the first decade of the 21st century. Disturbed by China's rise, the US undertook to prevent China from having independent sources of energy. The great game that in the past has always led to war is being played out once again.

September 11, 2001, provided Washington with a new "threat" to replace the Soviet threat, which had expired in 1991. Despite the absence of the Soviet threat, the military/security budget had been kept alive for a decade. September 11, 2001, injected rapid growth into the military/security budget. A decade later the budget stood at approximately $1.1 trillion annually, or approximately 70 percent of the federal deficit which was crippling the dollar and threatening the US Treasury's credit rating.

Focused on Middle Eastern wars, Washington was losing the war for the US economy.

As the expectation of economic recovery evaporated over the course of 2011, the need for war became more imperative.

MORE: THE ENEMY IS WASHINGTON

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June 4, 2010
The Washington Post

U.S. 'Secret War' Expands Globally

by Karen DeYoung and Greg Jaffe

Beneath its commitment to soft-spoken diplomacy and beyond the combat zones of Afghanistan and Iraq, the Obama administration has significantly expanded a largely secret U.S. war against al-Qaeda and other radical groups, according to senior military and administration officials.

Special Operations forces have grown both in number and budget, and are deployed in 75 countries, compared with about 60 at the beginning of last year. In addition to units that have spent years in the Philippines and Colombia, teams are operating in Yemen and elsewhere in the Middle East, Africa and Central Asia.

Commanders are developing plans for increasing the use of such forces in Somalia, where a Special Operations raid last year killed the alleged head of al-Qaeda in East Africa. Plans exist for preemptive or retaliatory strikes in numerous places around the world, meant to be put into action when a plot has been identified, or after an attack linked to a specific group.

The surge in Special Operations deployments, along with intensified CIA drone attacks in western Pakistan, is the other side of the national security doctrine of global engagement and domestic values President Obama released last week.

One advantage of using "secret" forces for such missions is that they rarely discuss their operations in public. . . .

The Obama administration has rejected the constitutional executive authority claimed by Bush and has based its lethal operations on the authority Congress gave the president in 2001 to use "all necessary and appropriate force against those nations, organizations, or persons" he determines "planned, authorized, committed, or aided" the Sept. 11 attacks.

Many of those currently being targeted, Bellinger said, "particularly in places outside Afghanistan," had nothing to do with the 2001 attacks.

FULL TEXT

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Realpolitik and Terrorism

Parveez Syed, "CIA: Covert US Warriors Examined," Shanti RTV News Agency, March 28, 1997

Eric Margolis, "CIA Claims of Cancelled Assassination Campaign are Hogwash," Toronto Sun, July 19, 2009

[The US has authorised a sweeping expansion of covert military operations in the Middle East and Africa, aimed at destroying terrorist networks in the region, and preparing the ground ahead of any presidential decision to attack Iran.--Rupert Cornwell, "US to launch covert strikes on terror targets," Guardian, May 26, 2010]

Tim Reid and Michael Evans, "Obama secretly deploys US special forces to 75 countries across world," Sunday Times, June 5, 2010

Ghaith Abdul-Ahad, "How Somalia's civil war became new front in battle against al-Qaida," Guardian, June 7, 2010

Jacob Sullum, "License to Kill: Obama blurs the line between warfare and summary execution," reason.com, June 9, 2010

Rod Nordland, "NATO Carries Out Air Strikes Inside Pakistan," nytimes.com, September 27, 2010

Sheldon Richman, "U.S. Covert War Provokes Terrorism in Yemen," fff.org, November 2, 2010

Declan Walsh, "US embassy cables reveal elite American troops secretly embedded with Pakistan military to hunt down militants," atimes.com, November 30, 2010

James Glanz and John Markoff, "U.S. Underwrites Internet Detour Around Censors," nytimes.com, June 12, 2011

[This global presence - in about 60% of the world's nations and far larger than previously acknowledged - provides striking new evidence of a rising clandestine Pentagon power elite waging a secret war in all corners of the world.--Nick Turse, "A secret war in 120 countries," atimes.com, August 5, 2011]

Amelia Gora > Amelia Gora August 4, 2011 at 11:37pm

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/South_Asia/MH05Df01.html

South Asia

Aug 5, 2011

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A secret war in 120 countries
By Nick Turse

Somewhere on this planet an American commando is carrying out a mission. Now, say that 70 times and you're done ... for the day. Without the knowledge of the American public, a secret force within the United States military is undertaking operations in a majority of the world's countries. This new Pentagon power elite is waging a global war whose size and scope has never been revealed, until now.

After a US Navy SEAL put a bullet in Osama bin Laden's chest and another in his head while storming his compound in Pakistan, one of the most secretive black-ops units in the American military suddenly found its mission in the public spotlight. It was atypical. While it's well known that US Special Operations forces are deployed in the war zones of Afghanistan and Iraq, and it's increasingly apparent that such units operate in murkier conflict

zones like Yemen and Somalia, the full extent of their worldwide war has remained deeply in the shadows.

Last year, Karen DeYoung and Greg Jaffe of the Washington Post reported that US Special Operations forces were deployed in 75 countries, up from 60 at the end of the George W Bush presidency. By the end of this year, US Special Operations Command spokesman Colonel Tim Nye told me that number will likely reach 120. "We do a lot of traveling - a lot more than Afghanistan or Iraq," he said recently. This global presence - in about 60% of the world's nations and far larger than previously acknowledged - provides striking new evidence of a rising clandestine Pentagon power elite waging a secret war in all corners of the world.

The rise of the military's secret military
Born of a failed 1980 raid to rescue American hostages in Iran, in which eight US service members died, US Special Operations Command (SOCOM) was established in 1987. Having spent the post-Vietnam years distrusted and starved for money by the regular military, special operations forces suddenly had a single home, a stable budget, and a four-star commander as their advocate.

Since then, SOCOM has grown into a combined force of startling proportions. Made up of units from all the service branches, including the army's "Green Berets" and Rangers, Navy SEALs, Air Force Air Commandos, and Marine Corps Special Operations teams, in addition to specialized helicopter crews, boat teams, civil affairs personnel, para-rescuemen, and even battlefield air-traffic controllers and special operations weathermen, SOCOM carries out the United States' most specialized and secret missions.

These include assassinations, counter-terrorist raids, long-range reconnaissance, intelligence analysis, foreign troop training, and weapons of mass destruction counter-proliferation operations.

One of its key components is the Joint Special Operations Command, or JSOC, a clandestine sub-command whose primary mission is tracking and killing suspected terrorists. Reporting to the president and acting under his authority, JSOC maintains a global hit list that includes American citizens. It has been operating an extra-legal "kill/capture" campaign that John Nagl, a past counter-insurgency adviser to four-star general and soon-to-be Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) director David Petraeus, calls "an almost industrial-scale counter-terrorism killing machine".

This assassination program has been carried out by commando units like the Navy SEALs and the Army's Delta Force as well as via drone strikes as part of covert wars in which the CIA is also involved in countries like Somalia, Pakistan, and Yemen. In addition, the command operates a network of secret prisons, perhaps as many as 20 black sites in Afghanistan alone, used for interrogating high-value targets.

Growth industry
From a force of about 37,000 in the early 1990s, Special Operations Command personnel have grown to almost 60,000, about a third of whom are career members of SOCOM; the rest have other military occupational specialties, but periodically cycle through the command.

Growth has been exponential since September 11, 2001, as SOCOM's baseline budget almost tripled from $2.3 billion to $6.3 billion. If you add in funding for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, it has actually more than quadrupled to $9.8 billion in these years. Not surprisingly, the number of its personnel deployed abroad has also jumped four-fold. Further increases, and expanded operations, are on the horizon.

Lieutenant General Dennis Hejlik, the former head of the Marine Corps Forces Special Operations Command - the last of the service branches to be incorporated into SOCOM in 2006 - indicated, for instance, that he foresees a doubling of his former unit of 2,600. "I see them as a force someday of about 5,000, like equivalent to the number of SEALs that we have on the battlefield. Between [5,000] and 6,000," he said at a June breakfast with defense reporters in Washington. Long-term plans already call for the force to increase by 1,000.

During his recent senate confirmation hearings, Navy Vice Admiral William McRaven, the incoming SOCOM chief and outgoing head of JSOC (which he commanded during the bin Laden raid) endorsed a steady manpower growth rate of 3% to 5% a year, while also making a pitch for even more resources, including additional drones and the construction of new special operations facilities.

A former SEAL who still sometimes accompanies troops into the field, McRaven expressed a belief that, as conventional forces are drawn down in Afghanistan, special ops troops will take on an ever greater role. Iraq, he added, would benefit if elite US forces continued to conduct missions there past the December 2011 deadline for a total American troop withdrawal. He also assured the Senate Armed Services Committee that "as a former JSOC commander, I can tell you we were looking very hard at Yemen and at Somalia".

During a speech at the National Defense Industrial Association's annual Special Operations and Low-intensity Conflict Symposium earlier this year, Navy Admiral Eric Olson, the outgoing chief of Special Operations Command, pointed to a composite satellite image of the world at night. Before 9/11, the lit portions of the planet - mostly the industrialized nations of the global north - were considered the key areas. "But the world changed over the last decade," he said. "Our strategic focus has shifted largely to the south ... certainly within the special operations community, as we deal with the emerging threats from the places where the lights aren't."

To that end, Olson launched "Project Lawrence", an effort to increase cultural proficiencies - like advanced language training and better knowledge of local history and customs - for overseas operations. The program is named after the British officer, Thomas Edward Lawrence (better known as "Lawrence of Arabia"), who teamed up with Arab fighters to wage a guerrilla war in the Middle East during World War I. Mentioning Afghanistan, Pakistan, Mali and Indonesia, Olson added that SOCOM now needed "Lawrences of Wherever".

While Olson made reference to only 51 countries of top concern to SOCOM, Nye told me that on any given day, Special Operations forces are deployed in approximately 70 nations around the world. All of them, he hastened to add, at the request of the host government.

According to testimony by Olson before the House Armed Services Committee earlier this year, approximately 85% of special operations troops deployed overseas are in 20 countries in the CENTCOM area of operations in the Greater Middle East: Afghanistan, Bahrain, Egypt, Iran, Iraq, Jordan, Kazakhstan, Kuwait, Kyrgyzstan, Lebanon, Oman, Pakistan, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, United Arab Emirates, Uzbekistan, and Yemen. The others are scattered across the globe from South America to Southeast Asia, some in small numbers, others as larger contingents.

Special Operations Command won't disclose exactly which countries its forces operate in. "We're obviously going to have some places where it's not advantageous for us to list where we're at," says Nye. "Not all host nations want it known, for whatever reasons they have - it may be internal, it may be regional."

But it's no secret (or at least a poorly kept one) that so-called black special operations troops, like the SEALs and Delta Force, are conducting kill/capture missions in Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, and Yemen, while "white" forces like the Green Berets and Rangers are training indigenous partners as part of a worldwide secret war against al-Qaeda and other militant groups.

In the Philippines, for instance, the US spends $50 million a year on a 600-person contingent of Army Special Operations forces, Navy Seals, Air Force special operators, and others that carries out counterterrorist operations with Filipino allies against insurgent groups like Jemaah Islamiyah and Abu Sayyaf.

Last year, as an analysis of SOCOM documents, open-source Pentagon information, and a database of Special Operations missions compiled by investigative journalist Tara McKelvey (for the Medill School of Journalism's National Security Journalism Initiative) reveals, America's most elite troops carried out joint-training exercises in Belize, Brazil, Bulgaria, Burkina Faso, Germany, Indonesia, Mali, Norway, Panama, and Poland.

So far in 2011, similar training missions have been conducted in the Dominican Republic, Jordan, Romania, Senegal, South Korea, and Thailand, among other nations. In reality, Nye told me, training actually went on in almost every nation where Special Operations forces are deployed. "Of the 120 countries we visit by the end of the year, I would say the vast majority are training exercises in one fashion or another. They would be classified as training exercises."

The Pentagon's power elite
Once the neglected stepchildren of the military establishment, Special Operations forces have been growing exponentially not just in size and budget, but also in power and influence. Since 2002, SOCOM has been authorized to create its own Joint Task Forces - like Joint Special Operations Task Force-Philippines - a prerogative normally limited to larger combatant commands like CENTCOM. This year, without much fanfare, SOCOM also established its own Joint Acquisition Task Force, a cadre of equipment designers and acquisition specialists.

With control over budgeting, training, and equipping its force, powers usually reserved for departments (like the Department of the Army or the Department of the Navy), dedicated dollars in every Defense Department budget, and influential advocates in congress, SOCOM is by now an exceptionally powerful player at the Pentagon.

With real clout, it can win bureaucratic battles, purchase cutting-edge technology, and pursue fringe research like electronically beaming messages into people's heads or developing stealth-like cloaking technologies for ground troops. Since 2001, SOCOM's prime contracts awarded to small businesses - those that generally produce specialty equipment and weapons - have jumped six-fold.

Headquartered at MacDill Air Force Base in Florida, but operating out of theater commands spread out around the globe, including Hawaii, Germany and South Korea, and active in the majority of countries on the planet, Special Operations Command is now a force unto itself.

As outgoing SOCOM chief Olson put it earlier this year, SOCOM "is a microcosm of the Department of Defense, with ground, air, and maritime components, a global presence, and authorities and responsibilities that mirror the Military Departments, Military Services, and Defense Agencies".

Tasked to coordinate all Pentagon planning against global terrorism networks and, as a result, closely connected to other government agencies, foreign militaries, and intelligence services, and armed with a vast inventory of stealthy helicopters, manned fixed-wing aircraft, heavily-armed drones, high-tech guns-a-go-go speedboats, specialized Humvees and Mine Resistant Ambush Protected vehicles, or MRAPs, as well as other state-of-the-art gear (with more on the way), SOCOM represents something new in the military.

Whereas the late scholar of militarism Chalmers Johnson used to refer to the CIA as "the president's private army", today JSOC performs that role, acting as the chief executive's private assassination squad, and its parent, SOCOM, functions as a new Pentagon power-elite, a secret military within the military possessing domestic power and global reach.

In 120 countries across the globe, troops from Special Operations Command carry out their secret war of high-profile assassinations, low-level targeted killings, capture/kidnap operations, kick-down-the-door night raids, joint operations with foreign forces, and training missions with indigenous partners as part of a shadowy conflict unknown to most Americans. Once "special" for being small, lean, outsider outfits, today they are special for their power, access, influence, and aura.

That aura now benefits from a well-honed public relations campaign which helps them project a superhuman image at home and abroad, even while many of their actual activities remain in the ever-widening shadows. Typical of the vision they are pushing was this statement from Admiral Olson: "I am convinced that the forces ... are the most culturally attuned partners, the most lethal hunter-killers, and most responsive, agile, innovative, and efficiently effective advisors, trainers, problem-solvers, and warriors that any nation has to offer."

Recently at the Aspen Institute's Security Forum, Olson offered up similarly gilded comments and some misleading information, too, claiming that US Special Operations forces were operating in just 65 countries and engaged in combat in only two of them. When asked about drone strikes in Pakistan, he reportedly replied, "Are you talking about unattributed explosions?"

What he did let slip, however, was telling. He noted, for instance, that black operations like the bin Laden mission, with commandos conducting heliborne night raids, were now exceptionally common. A dozen or so are conducted every night, he said. Perhaps most illuminating, however, was an offhand remark about the size of SOCOM. Right now, he emphasized, US Special Operations forces were approximately as large as Canada's entire active duty military. In fact, the force is larger than the active duty militaries of many of the nations where America's elite troops now operate each year, and it's only set to grow larger.

Americans have yet to grapple with what it means to have a "special" force this large, this active, and this secret - and they are unlikely to begin to do so until more information is available. It just won't be coming from Olson or his troops. "Our access [to foreign countries] depends on our ability to not talk about it," he said in response to questions about SOCOM's secrecy. When missions are subject to scrutiny like the bin Laden raid, he said, the elite troops object. The military's secret military, said Olson, wants "to get back into the shadows and do what they came in to do."

Nick Turse is a historian, essayist, and investigative journalist. The associate editor of TomDispatch.com and a new senior editor at Alternet.org, his latest book is The Case for Withdrawal from Afghanistan (Verso Books). This article is a collaboration between Alternet.org and TomDispatch.com.

(Copyright 2011 Nick Turse.)

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