Revolution usually erupts over events that would, in normal circumstances, be considered meaningless or minor acts of injustice by the state. But once the tinder of revolt has piled up, as it has in the United States, an insignificant spark easily ignites popular rebellion. No person or movement can ignite this tinder. No one knows where or when the eruption will take place. No one knows the form it will take. But it is certain now that a popular revolt is coming.
As Libya again takes prominence again in the media with the increasing unrest even provoking a mobilization of U.S. Marines from Spain to Italy, across from Libya, hinting a potential military involvement in the already decimated state, it is important to review the foundational history of the current Libyan dilemma before the “disinfo” echo chamber of the mainstream media begins a new full-throttle propaganda blitz.
Those once celebrated as “rebels” and “revolutionaries” — by Obama, NATO states, UN bodies, Western media, and a range of liberal imperialist opinion along with those “socialists” who, after an extended period of internalized structural adjustment now model their thinking to better accord with neoliberal principles — are rarely if ever held up now as paragons of the “better future” that was to come.
Our roots, we are often reminded, are the anchor of our lives, both individually and collectively. But whose roots are they? Our roots are what define us, or so the theory goes. Living in Africa, I learned that the Ancestors are central to most peoples’ lives and although for me, a symbolic gesture, calling on the Ancestors for advice, creates an unbreakable link with one’s past. Moreover, a link that is in many respects, impervious to the propaganda of capitalism.
New research shows many so-called experts who appeared on television making the case for U.S. strikes on Syria had undisclosed ties to military contractors. A new report by the Public Accountability Initiative identifies 22 commentators with industry ties. While they appeared on television or were quoted as experts 111 times, their links to military firms were disclosed only 13 of those times.
Weaponizing “our” Wahhabi bastards is the sweetest deal for the industrial-military-Orwellian Panopticon complex. Sequestration? Tight budgets? Who cares? There’s a never-ending contractor bonanza in the Gulf – inbuilt in the narrative of the benign superpower “benefactor” of those helpless oil and gas monarchic monopolies defending them against assorted evildoers; one day the evildoer is Iraq, the next day Iran, the next day could be their own people, so one’s gotta be prepared.
WARNING: OFFENSIVE LANGUAGE A YouTube video has been posted of a man launching into a shocking racist attack on a London Underground train.
We wouldn’t usually publish this kind of thing but watching it made our blood boil. It is a truly shocking example of what we had hoped we would never have to witness in the 21st century. For those not familiar with the work of Mark Curtis, here’s a brief history of British complicity in the deaths of over 12 million people since 1945
Under the administration of Barack Obama, America is waging a global terror campaign through the use of drones, killing thousands of people, committing endless war crimes, creating fear and terror in a program expected to last several more decades. Welcome to Obama’s War OF Terror
This tool has turned into a “machine unto itself,” claims Vali Nasr, who served in the State Department during Obama’s first term and is now dean of the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies. “It becomes a rote habit,” he says, “operated by a bureaucracy that is always looking to close that last loophole. Pressure becomes the end, not the means.”
The last days of empire are carnivals of folly. We are in the midst of our own, plunging forward as our leaders court willful economic and environmental self-destruction. Sumer and Rome went down like this. So did the Ottoman and Austro-Hungarian empires. Men and women of stunning mediocrity and depravity led the monarchies of Europe and Russia on the eve of World War I. And America has, in its own decline, offered up its share of weaklings, dolts and morons to steer it to destruction.
‘The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.’
‘National security is the first duty of government. We will remain a first-rate military power.’
Countries are “pieces on a chessboard upon which is being played out a great game for the domination of the world,” wrote Lord Curzon, Viceroy of India, in 1898. Nothing has changed. The shopping mall massacre in Nairobi was a bloody façade behind which a full-scale invasion of Africa and a war in Asia are the great game.
