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Imperialism and the “Anti-Imperialism of the Fools”
James Petras
One of the great paradoxes of history are the claims of imperialist politicians to be engaged in a great humanitarian crusade, a historic “civilizing mission” designed to liberate nations and peoples, while practicing the most barbaric conquests, destructive wars and large scale bloodletting of conquered people in historical memory.
In the modern capitalist era, the ideologies of imperialist rulers vary over time, from the early appeals to “the right” to wealth, power, colonies and grandeur to later claims of a ‘civilizing mission’. More recently imperial rulers have propagated, many diverse justifications adapted to specific contexts, adversaries, circumstances and audiences.
This essay will concentrate on analyzing contemporary US imperial ideological arguments for legitimizing wars and sanctions to sustain dominance.
Obama's America: Tyranny and Permanent War
by Stephen Lendman
December 31, 2011 will be remembered as a day of infamy. More on it below. October 17, 2006 was an earlier one under Bush.
In a White House ceremony, he signed the infamous Military Commissions Act (MCA). It authorized torture as official policy.
It also enacted sweeping unconstitutional powers to arrest, interrogate, and prosecute alleged terrorist suspects and collaborators (including US citizens), detain them (without evidence) indefinitely in military prisons, and deny them habeas and other constitutional protections.
It lets presidents call anyone anywhere an "unlawful enemy combatant," order them arrested, detained and denied all rights.
On the same day, Bush quietly signed the FY 2007 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA). Included were hidden Sections 1076 and 333. Major media scoundrels ignored them.
Osho, on Lofty ambitions... and personal ruin, from Fame, Fortune and Ambition
Sarmad
“All so-called great thinkers and philosophers and theologians are stargazers. they don’t see that which is close; their eyes are fixed far away on an imaginary God, a paradise beyond death.
I don’t care at all about your gods, and I don’t care at all what happens to you after your death. My concern is what happens to you right now, to your consciousness. Because that will always be with you, beyond death, wherever you are. Your consciousness will carry the light that divides the wrong from the right.
Anything that makes you more alert, more conscious, more peaceful, more silent, more celebrating, more festive, is good.
Anything that makes you unconscious, miserable, jealous, angry, destructive, is wrong.
30 Statistics That Show That The Middle Class Is Dying Right In Front Of Our Eyes As We Enter 2012
Michael Snyder
Once upon a time, the United States had the largest and most vibrant middle class that the world has ever seen. Unfortunately, that is rapidly changing. The statistics that you are about to read prove beyond a reasonable doubt that the U.S. middle class is dying right in front of our eyes as we enter 2012. The decline of the middle class is not something that has happened all of a sudden. Rather, there has been a relentless grinding down of the middle class over the last several decades. Millions of our jobs have been shipped overseas, the rate of inflation has far outpaced the rate that our wages have grown, and overwhelming debt has choked the financial life out of millions of American families. Every single day, more Americans fall out of the middle class and into poverty. In fact, more Americans fell into poverty last year than has ever been recorded before. The number of middle class jobs and middle class neighborhoods continues to decline at a staggering pace. As I have written about previously, America as a whole is getting poorer as a nation, and as this happens wealth is becoming increasingly concentrated at the very top of the income scale. This is not how capitalism is supposed to work, and it is not good for America.
Ratcheting Up Middle East Tensions
by Stephen Lendman
Post-9/11, Washington's aggression created a Middle East cauldron. As a result, it's been on the boil. Things ahead look worse. Obama and key NATO allies threaten the entire region. In 2012, expect continued destructive violence.
Israel's partnered in this enterprise. On December 20, Jerusalem Post writer Yaakov Katz headlined, "US commander visits Israel to finalize missile drill," saying:
This spring, Washington and Israel will "hold the(ir) largest-ever missile defense exercise....amid Iranian efforts to obtain nuclear weapons."
The LBJ-CIA Assassination of JFK
Robert Morrow
Lyndon Johnson made a dirty deal with CIA Republicans to murder John Kennedy in the 1963 Coup d’Etat. (People like Clint Murchison Sr., H.L. Hunt, Nelson Rockefeller, David Rockefeller, top Nelson Rockefeller aide Henry Kissinger, George Herbert Walker Bush and Gen. Edward Lansdale all are excellent candidates for elite sponsorship.) Lyndon Johnson and Allen Dulles may very well have been co-CEOs of the JFK assassination; with the CIA in charge of the killing of JFK, and Lyndon Johnson and (his close friend and neighbor of 19 years in Washington, DC) FBI director J. Edgar Hoover in charge of the cover up.
Clint Murchison, Sr – more so than even H.L. Hunt – was a key player in the JFK assassination because of his close ties to the inner core of US intelligence (Allen Dulles, Nelson Rockefeller, John J. McCloy), close ties to Lyndon Johnson and J. Edgar Hoover of the FBI, bankers Rockefellers; Murchison was even friends with key Kennedy-hater mafia godfather Carlos Marcellos of New Orleans. Not only that, Murchison, Sr. was a patient and partner of Dr. Alton Oschner, the former president of the American Cancer Society and who ran covert cancer research for the CIA. Oschner, likewise was a Kennedy-hater. John Simkin: “One of Ochsner's friends described him as being ‘like a fundamentalist preacher in the sense that the fight against communism was the only subject that he would talk about, or even allow you to talk about, in his presence.”
Palestinians must get their act together in 2012
By Khalid Amayreh
2011 was not a particularly bad year for Palestine. In this year, hundreds of Palestinian political and resistance prisoners were able to see the light, having been released from Israeli dungeons and detention camps.
Needless to say, many of these heroes would have spent the rest of their lives in Zionist jails, had it not been for the so-called Shalit deal and Israel's effective capitulation to Hamas's conditions for the release of the captive Zionist soldier.
Thanks to the deal, hundreds of Palestinian families, which had lost the hope for ever seeing their beloved ones alive again, breathed a sigh of relief as they were reunited with their children, brothers, husbands and daughters.
Ron Paul's Anti-Progressive Agenda
By Stephen Lendman
Compared to a rogue's gallery of Republican aspirants, supporters claim Paul looks good by comparison. Look again and think carefully about America in his hands.
True enough, he wants the Federal Reserve abolished. He calls it "dishonest, immoral, unconstitutional," and America's "great(est) threat to....security and prosperity."
"Out-of-control (and) secretive, (it) pumps money into the economy whenever it chooses and makes secret deals with Wall Street executives, foreign central banks, and other politically-connected insiders without any significant oversight from Congress."
State of Human Rights in Israel
by Stephen Lendman
Annually, the State Department publishes human rights reports for over 190 countries. Its latest April 8, 2011 Israel assessment noted serious human rights abuses, including:
(1) numerous NGO complaints about torture and other abuses in Gaza and the West Bank.
(2) Israel's High Court of Justice (HCJ) ruling against painful shackling. At issue is tightening restraints to inflict pain.
In Public Committee Against Torture in Israel v. Prime Minister, former HCJ President Aaron Barak said:
"A reasonable interrogation is an interrogation without torture, without cruel or inhuman treatment of the interrogee, and without a humiliating attitude thereto."
"It is forbidden to use brutal and inhuman measures during the course of the interrogation."
"Painful cuffing is a prohibited action. Moreover: other means exist to prevent escape from lawful custody or to protect the interrogators which do not involve pain and suffering to the interrogee."
Saudi Arabian State Terror
By Stephen Lendman
Annually, the State Department publishes human rights reports for over 190 countries. Its latest April 8, 2011 Saudi Arabia assessment discusses "significant human rights abuses and the inability of citizens to change its absolute monarchal rule. Abuses include:
- "torture and physical abuse;
- poor prison and detention center conditions;
- arbitrary arrest and incommunicado detention;
- denial of fair and public trials and lack of due process in the judicial system;
- political prisoners;
- restrictions on civil liberties such as freedom of speech (including the Internet);
- assembly, association, movement, and severe restrictions on religious freedom; and
- corruption and lack of transparency."
Also mentioned were inequality and violence against women, human trafficking, no labor rights, discrimination on the basis of gender, religion, sect and ethnicity, and violations of children's rights.
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