NATO’s War on Libya is Directed against China: AFRICOM and the Threat to China’s National Energy Security
Posted: September 26, 2011 Filed under: Imperial Power, World Hegemony | Tags: Africa, AFRICOM, China, Full Spectrum Dominance, Libya, NATO, Oil, Pentagon 8 CommentsThe Washington-led decision by NATO to bomb Gaddafi’s Libya into submission over recent months, at an estimated cost to US taxpayers of at least $1 billion, has little if anything to do with what the Obama Administration claims was a mission to “protect innocent civilians.” In reality it is part of a larger strategic assault by NATO and by the Pentagon in particular to entirely control China’s economic achilles heel, namely China’s strategic dependence on large volumes of imported crude oil and gas. Today China is the world’s second largest importer of oil after the United States and the gap is rapidly closing.
by F. William Engdahl
Published: Sep. 25, 2011 – Global Research
If we take a careful look at a map of Africa and also look at the African organization of the new Pentagon Africa Command—AFRICOM—the pattern that emerges is a careful strategy of controlling one of China’s most strategically important oil and raw materials sources.
NATO’s Libya campaign was and is all about oil. But not about simply controlling Libyan high-grade crude because the USA is nervous about reliable foreign supplies. It rather is about controlling China’s free access to long-term oil imports from Africa and from the Middle East. In other words, it is about controlling China itself.
FedEx and Pepsi Are Top Defense Contractors? 5 Corporate Brands Making a Killing on America’s Wars
Posted: September 11, 2011 Filed under: War on Terror | Tags: Military Industrial Complex, Multinational Corporations, Pentagon, US Military Spending 1 CommentLearn which “civilian” companies are making big bucks on today’s wars.
Published: Sep. 05, 2011 – AlterNet
Chances are, if you’ve ever sent a package overnight, bought a PC or a can of soda, you’ve paid your hard-earned money to a major Pentagon contractor. While large defense corporations that make fighter jets and armored vehicles garner the most attention, tens of thousands of “civilian” companies, from multi-national corporations hawking toothpaste and shampoo to big oil behemoths and even local restaurants scattered across the United States, all supply the Pentagon with the necessities used to carry on day-to-day operations and wage America’s wars. And they’ve made a killing doing it since 9/11.
The “War On Terror” Is A $6 Trillion Racket, Exceeding The Total Cost Of World War II
Posted: July 19, 2011 Filed under: Economy, Imperial Power, War on Terror, World Hegemony, World War III | Tags: Contractors, Military Industrial Complex, Obama's Wars, Pentagon, US Military Spending 3 Commentsby David DeGraw
First Published: Jul. 06, 2011 – Amped Status Report
When Obama launched his re-election propaganda campaign to trick the American public into thinking that he intends to end the Af-Pak War, he said that the “War on Terror” has cost $1 trillion over the past decade. While that is a staggering amount of money, he was being deceitful once again.
As you may have heard, a newly released study by the Eisenhower Research Project at Brown University revealed that the cost of the War on Terror is significantly greater than Obama has said. The little passing coverage the study received in the mainstream press cited $3.7 trillion as the total cost, which was the most conservative estimate. The moderate estimate, which the mainstream media ignored, was $4.4 trillion. In addition, interest payments on these costs will most likely exceed $1 trillion, which brings the total cost up to at least $5.4 trillion. The report also states that the following costs are not even included in this total:
Obama’s covert wars
Posted: August 16, 2010 Filed under: World Hegemony | Tags: CIA, Obama's Wars, Pentagon 1 Commentby Peter Symonds
Published: Aug. 16, 2010 – WSWS
A lengthy article in the New York Times on Sunday entitled “A Secret Assault on Terrorism Widens on Two Continents” has provided a glimpse into the extent of the Obama administration’s covert wars. Obama has not only continued, he has expanded the murderous operations that were waged under the banner of the “war on terror” by the CIA and Pentagon during the Bush administration.
AFRICOM and the Recolonization of Africa
Posted: April 15, 2010 Filed under: Imperial Power, World Hegemony | Tags: Africa, AFRICOM, Europe, Pentagon, USA 13 CommentsThe Legacy of the Berlin Conference of 1884
by Itai Muchena
First Published: Apr. 07, 2010 – The Herald (Zimbabwe)
The hodgepodge of geometric boundaries that today divide Africa into 50 plus irregular nations under Eurocentric subjugation all started in Berlin, Germany on November 15, 1884.
The infamous Berlin Conference still remains Africa’s greatest undoing in more ways than one, where colonial powers superimposed their domains on the African continent and tore apart the social, political and economic fabric that held the continent together.
By the time independence returned to Africa between 1956 and 1994, the African realm had acquired a colonial legacy of political fragmentation that could neither be eliminated nor made to operate wholly independent from the former colonial masters.
Your Tax Dollars at War: More Than 53% of Your Tax Payment Goes to the Military
Posted: April 15, 2010 Filed under: Economy, Imperial Power, World Hegemony | Tags: Obama's Wars, Pentagon, US Military Spending, USA 2 Commentsby Dave Lindorff
Published: Apr. 13, 2010 – Information Clearing House
If you’re like me, now that we’re in the week that federal income taxes are due, you are finally starting to collect your records and prepare for the ordeal. Either way, whether you are a procrastinator like me, or have already finished and know how much you have paid to the government, it is a good time to stop and consider how much of your money goes to pay for our bloated and largely useless and pointless military.
The budget for the 2011 fiscal year, which has to be voted by Congress by this Oct. 1, looks to be about $3 trillion, not counting the funds collected for Social Security (since the Vietnam War, the government has included the Social Security Trust Fund in the budget as a way to make the cost of America’s imperial military adventures seem smaller in comparison to the total cost of government). Meanwhile, the military share of the budget works out to about $1.6 trillion.
The US-NATO Conquest of Africa
Posted: March 22, 2010 Filed under: Imperial Power, World Hegemony | Tags: Africa, AFRICOM, NATO, Pentagon, US Army 19 CommentsMilitarization of the African Continent
by Rick Rozoff
First Published: Mar. 21, 2010 – Stop NATO
The world’s oldest extant military bloc (formed 61 years ago) and the largest in history (twenty eight full members and as many partners on five continents), the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, counts among its major member states all of Africa’s former colonial powers: Britain, France, Portugal, Spain, Italy, Germany and Belgium.
After World War II and the groundswell of anti-colonial sentiment throughout Africa and Asia, the European powers were forced to withdraw from most of the African continent, though Portugal retained its possessions until the 1970s.
Most every new African nation adopted some model of socialist-oriented economic and political development and the continent as a whole more closely aligned itself with the Soviet Union, which moreover had for decades supported the anti-colonial struggles in Africa, than with the West, both Western Europe and the United States.
With the end of the Cold War and the breakup of the Soviet Union nearly twenty years ago, the major Western powers on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean, united under the aegis of NATO, saw that as with the Balkans and the former republics of the Soviet Union itself, Africa was now wide open for penetration and domination.
Documentary – Enemy Image (2005)
Posted: March 18, 2010 Filed under: Propaganda | Tags: Documentaries, Iraq, Media, Pentagon, US Army, USA, Vietnam War 1 CommentThe invasion of Iraq was the most closely documented war ever fought. Lasting only 800 hours, it produced 20,000 hours of video, but those images were tightly controlled, producing a monolithic view of combat sanitised and controlled by the Pentagon.
Enemy Image traces the ways U.S. television has covered war, starting with Vietnam in the 1960s and shows how the military has devised ever-improving means of ensuring the American public never again has the real face of combat beamed directly into their living rooms.
Related Documentaries:
DOCUMENTARY – Militainment, Inc.: Militarism & Pop Culture
DOCUMENTARY– USA: War made Easy
DOCUMENTARY – Iraq The Hidden Story
DOCUMENTARY – FRONTLINE: In search of truth in war time by John Pilger (1983)
Calculating Life for a Dying Empire
Posted: March 2, 2010 Filed under: War Crimes | Tags: Afghanistan, Civilian Casualties, Obama's Wars, Pentagon 9 Commentsby Francis Shor
Published: Feb. 27, 2010 – CommonDreams.org
$2000 per dead child! That’s the amount of compensation offered by the Pentagon for the “collateral damage” which it has caused in Afghanistan. As the war escalates and more innocent victims of Washington’s aggressive actions accumulate in number, the US military calculates what it will take to placate grieving Afghan parents.
Eight years into a war deemed “necessary” by both Republican and Democratic Administrations, the death and destruction visited upon Afghan civilians seems reducible to neat and cheap compensation packages. And, yet, the real physical and psychological damage inflicted by the war-makers remains strangely abstract and without comprehension of the very real unintended consequences. The anger of Afghan families in the earliest days of US military intervention undoubtedly persists and may even fuel the continuing insurgency. According to a June 28, 2002 Los Angeles Times story about one Afghan who had lost his wife, mother and seven children to a US air attack, he bitterly lamented: “I put a curse on the Americans who did this. I pray that they will have the tragedy in their lives that I have had in mine.”
The Fateful Geological Prize Called Haiti
Posted: January 31, 2010 Filed under: Illegal Occupation | Tags: Gas, Haiti, Multinational Corporations, Oil, Pentagon, USA 7 CommentsPresident becomes UN Special Envoy to earthquake-stricken Haiti.
A born-again neo-conservative US business wheeler-dealer preacher claims Haitians are condemned for making a literal ‘pact with the Devil.’
Venezuelan, Nicaraguan, Bolivian, French and Swiss rescue organizations accuse the US military of refusing landing rights to planes bearing necessary medicines and urgently needed potable water to the millions of Haitians stricken, injured and homeless.
by F. William Engdahl
Published: Jan. 30, 2010 – Global Research
Behind the smoke, rubble and unending drama of human tragedy in the hapless Caribbean country, a drama is in full play for control of what geophysicists believe may be one of the world’s richest zones for hydrocarbons-oil and gas outside the Middle East, possibly orders of magnitude greater than that of nearby Venezuela.
Haiti, and the larger island of Hispaniola of which it is a part, has the geological fate that it straddles one of the world’s most active geological zones, where the deepwater plates of three huge structures relentlessly rub against one another—the intersection of the North American, South American and Caribbean tectonic plates. Below the ocean and the waters of the Caribbean, these plates consist of an oceanic crust some 3 to 6 miles thick, floating atop an adjacent mantle. Haiti also lies at the edge of the region known as the Bermuda Triangle, a vast area in the Caribbean subject to bizarre and unexplained disturbances.
This vast mass of underwater plates are in constant motion, rubbing against each other along lines analogous to cracks in a broken porcelain vase that has been reglued. The earth’s tectonic plates typically move at a rate 50 to 100 mm annually in relation to one another, and are the origin of earthquakes and of volcanoes. The regions of convergence of such plates are also areas where vast volumes of oil and gas can be pushed upwards from the Earth’s mantle. The geophysics surrounding the convergence of the three plates that run more or less directly beneath Port-au-Prince make the region prone to earthquakes such as the one that struck Haiti with devastating ferocity on January 12.
An Undisciplined Defense: Understanding the $2 Trillion Surge in US Defense Spending
Posted: January 20, 2010 Filed under: Imperial Power | Tags: Contractors, Obama's Wars, Pentagon, US Military Spending 5 Comments(full text .pdf file with charts and appendices) (executive summary) by Carl Conetta, PDA Briefing Report #20, 18 January 2010.
by Carl Conetta
First Published: Jan. 18, 2010 – Project on Defense Alternatives
Review of the Report
Since 1998 the Pentagon has spent more than $6.5 trillion. More than $2 trillion of this sum was above the levels set in 1998. But only half of the $2 trillion in added funds was for recent wars and military operations. Among other things, the surge in spending has allowed the Defense Department to re-inflate its workforce to Cold War levels. And almost all the expansion is contractor labor.
These are among the findings of two 18 January reports on the dynamics of recent defense spending from the Project on Defense Alternatives, a small think tank with offices in the Washington area and Cambridge, Massachusetts.
US aid for Israel tied to arms sales: 75% of the aid must be used to buy military material made in the US
Posted: January 5, 2010 Filed under: Imperial Power | Tags: AIPAC, Israel, Military Industrial Complex, Obama's Wars, Pentagon, USA, Yemen 2 Commentsby Anne Davies
Published: Jan. 04, 2009 – Uruknet.info
WASHINGTON: Just before Christmas, the US President, Barack Obama, signed into law one of his country’s biggest aid pledges of the year. It was bound not for Africa or any of the many struggling countries on the World Bank’s list.
It was a deal for $US2.77 billion ($3 billion) to go to Israel in 2010 and a total of $US30 billion over the next decade.
Israel is bound by the agreement to use 75 per cent of the aid to buy military hardware made in the US: in the crisis-racked US economy, those military factories are critical to many towns.
Escalating War in Afghanistan Apt to Hurt Fragile U.S. Economy
Posted: December 26, 2009 Filed under: Economy, War on Terror | Tags: Obama's Wars, Pentagon, USA 4 Comments
by Sherwood Ross
Published: Dec. 25, 2009 – Global Research
If Iraq war spending helped plunge the U.S. economy into its worst slump since the Depression, what does President Obama think his escalation of the Afghan war will do it?
Besides forcing taxpayers to cough up fresh billions to enable the Pentagon to chase down a few hundred Taliban fighters, the Afghan war is liable to continue to inflate oil prices—and this means more than the ongoing swindle of motorists at the pump.
Higher oil prices also slow the global economy, causing our trading partners to buy fewer Made-in-USA goods, thus reducing demand for our products and leading to layoffs.
Pentagon’s Role in Global Catastrophe: Add Climate Havoc to War Crimes
Posted: December 21, 2009 Filed under: Global Warming?, War Crimes, World Hegemony | Tags: Agent Orange, Crimes Against Humanity, NATO, Pentagon, US Army Leave a comment
by Sara Flounders
First Published: Dec. 18, 2009 – International Action Center
In evaluating the U.N. Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen — with more than 15,000 participants from 192 countries, including more than 100 heads of state, as well as 100,000 demonstrators in the streets — it is important to ask: How is it possible that the worst polluter of carbon dioxide and other toxic emissions on the planet is not a focus of any conference discussion or proposed restrictions?
By every measure, the Pentagon is the largest institutional user of petroleum products and energy in general. Yet the Pentagon has a blanket exemption in all international climate agreements.
The Pentagon wars in Iraq and Afghanistan; its secret operations in Pakistan; its equipment on more than 1,000 U.S. bases around the world; its 6,000 facilities in the U.S.; all NATO operations; its aircraft carriers, jet aircraft, weapons testing, training and sales will not be counted against U.S. greenhouse gas limits or included in any count.
A New World War for a New World Order
Posted: December 18, 2009 Filed under: II Cold War, Imperial Power, New World Order, Propaganda, World Hegemony, World War III | Tags: AfPak, Africa, Central Asia, China, CIA Coups, CIA Destabilization Operations, Georgia, Henry Kissinger, Hounduras, Hugo Chavez, IMF, Iran, Latin America, Media, Multinational Corporations, NATO, Neocons, Obama's Wars, Oil, Pentagon, Russia, School of the Americas, US Army, World Bank, Zbigniew Brzezinski 26 CommentsThe Origins of World War III: Part 3
This article is Part 3 in the Series, “The Origins of World War III.”
Part 1: An Imperial Strategy for a New World Order: The Origins of World War III
Part 2: Colour-Coded Revolutions and the Origins of World War III
by Andrew Gavin Marshall
Published: Dec. 17, 2009 – Global Research
Introduction
In Parts 1 and 2 of this series, I have analyzed US and NATO geopolitical strategy since the fall of the Soviet Union, in expanding the American empire and preventing the rise of new powers, containing Russia and China. This Part examines the implications of this strategy in recent years; following the emergence of a New Cold War, as well as analyzing the war in Georgia, the attempts and methods of regime change in Iran, the coup in Honduras, the expansion of the Afghan-Pakistan war theatre, and spread of conflict in Central Africa. These processes of a New Cold War and major regional wars and conflicts take the world closer to a New World War. Peace can only be possible if the tools and engines of empires are dismantled.
The Great Game: U.S., NATO War In Afghanistan
Posted: December 7, 2009 Filed under: Illegal Occupation, World Hegemony, World War III | Tags: Afghanistan, AfPak, British Army, NATO, Obama's Wars, Pakistan, Pentagon, US Army 7 CommentsFifty or more countries in a single war theater
by Rick Rozoff
First Published: Dec. 05, 2009 – Stop Nato
The U.S. (and Britain) began bombing the Afghan capital of Kabul on October 7, 2001 with Tomahawk cruise missiles launched from warships and submarines and bombs dropped from warplanes and shortly thereafter American special forces began ground operations, a task that has been conducted since by regular Army and Marine units. The bombing and the ground combat operations continue more than eight years later and both will be intensified to record levels in short order.
The combined U.S. and NATO forces would represent a staggering number, in excess of 150,000 soldiers. By way of comparison, as of September of this year there were approximately 120,000 U.S. troops in Iraq and only a small handful of other nations’ personnel, those assigned to the NATO Training Mission – Iraq, remaining with them.
“Secretary Gates has made clear that the conflicts we’re in should be at the very forefront of our agenda. He wants to make sure we’re not giving up capabilities needed now for those needed for some unknown future conflict. He wants to make sure the Pentagon is truly on war footing….For the first time in decades, the political and economic stars are aligned for a fundamental overhaul of the way the Pentagon does business.”
The Audacity of Ethnic Cleansing: Obama’s plan for Afghanistan
Posted: December 5, 2009 Filed under: Illegal Occupation, Imperial Power, World Hegemony | Tags: Afghanistan, AfPak, Bosnia, Central Asia, Hamid Karzai, NATO, Obama, Obama's Wars, Pashtuns, Pentagon, Taliban 18 Comments“Today, we Afghans remain trapped between two enemies: the Taliban on one side and US/NATO forces and their warlord hirelings on the other.” Malalai Joya “A Woman Among the Warlords” Scribner Publishing, New York
by Mike Whitney
Published: Dec. 04, 2009 – Information Clearing House
The Bush administration never had any intention of liberating Afghanistan or establishing democracy. The real aim was to remove the politically-intractable Taliban and replace them with a puppet regime run by a former-CIA asset. The rest of Afghanistan would be parceled-off to the warlords who assisted in the invasion and who had agreed to do much of the United States dirty-work on the ground. In the eight years of military occupation which followed, that basic strategy has never changed. The U.S. is just as committed now as it was at the war’s inception to establish a beachhead in Central Asia to oversee the growth of China, to execute disruptive/covert operations against Russia, to control vital pipeline routes from the Caspian Basin, and to maintain a heavy military presence in the most critical geopolitical area in the world today.
The World’s Least Powerful Man: The Obama Puppet
Posted: December 2, 2009 Filed under: Economy, Imperial Power, Israeli Apartheid, War Crimes, War on Terror | Tags: Afghanistan, AIPAC, Bush, Illegal Israeli Settlements, Iraq, Israel, Israeli Nuclear Program, Military Industrial Complex, Obama, Oil, Palestine, Pentagon, Tony Blair, USA, Wall Street 9 Comments
by Paul Craig Roberts
Published: Dec. 01, 2009 – Information Clearing House
It didn’t take the Israel Lobby very long to bring President Obama to heel regarding his prohibition against further illegal Israeli settlements on occupied Palestinian land. Obama discovered that a mere American president is powerless when confronted by the Israel Lobby and that the United States simply is not allowed a Middle East policy separate from Israel’s.
Obama also found out that he cannot change anything else either, if he ever intended to do so.
The military/security lobby has war and a domestic police state on its agenda, and a mere American president can’t do anything about it.
President Obama can order the Guantanamo torture chamber closed and kidnapping and rendition and torture to be halted, but no one carries out the order.
Essentially, Obama is irrelevant.
“Why we fight”: The Nature of Modern Imperialism
Posted: November 23, 2009 Filed under: Economy, Imperial Power, World Hegemony | Tags: Africa, British Army, Central Asia, China, Globalisation, IMF, Military Industrial Complex, Multinational Corporations, NATO, Oil, Pentagon, Russia, UK, United Nations, US Army, USA, World Bank 24 CommentsAggressive and exclusive military alliances like NATO should be disbanded
by Alan Mackinnon
First Published: Nov. 17, 2009 – Scottish Left Review
The world of war is today dominated by a single superpower. In military terms the United States sits astride the world like a giant Colossus. As a country with only five per cent of the world’s population it accounts for almost 50 per cent of global arms spending. Its 11 naval carrier fleets patrol every ocean and its 909 military bases are scattered strategically across every continent. No other country has reciprocal bases on US territory – it would be unthinkable and unconstitutional. It is 20 years since the end of the Cold War and the United States and its allies face no significant military threat today. Why then have we not had the hoped-for peace dividend? Why does the world’s most powerful nation continue to increase its military budget, now over $1.2 trillion a year in real terms? What threat is all this supposed to counter?
The Pentagon Budget: Largest Ever and Growing
Posted: November 20, 2009 Filed under: Economy, Imperial Power, World Hegemony | Tags: Military Industrial Complex, Multinational Corporations, Pentagon, US Army, USA 25 Comments
by Sara Flounders
First Published: Nov. 07, 2009 – International Action Center
On Oct. 28, President Barack Obama signed the 2010 Defense Authorization Act, the largest military budget in U.S. history.
It is not only the world’s largest military budget but is larger than the military expenditures of the whole rest of the world combined. And it is growing nonstop. The 2010 military budget–which doesn’t even cover many war-related expenditures–is listed as $680 billion. In 2009 it was $651 billion and in 2000 was $280 billion. It has more than doubled in 10 years.
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