Adrian Salbuchi: Venezuelan Elections. Chavez or Washington!

This Sunday's elections will pit incumbent President Hugo Chavez Frias against neoliberal pro-US opposition candidate Henrique Capriles Radonski. Opinion polls vary widely both ways, proof it will be a head to head race. This election is not only of vital importance to Venezuela, but to all of Latin America, as Chavez has been a veritable barrier against traditional US interventionism in the region. Get Chavez! That's been the rallying call in the mainstream Western media, demonizing Chavez's refusal to align Venezuela to the Western powers' geopolitical objectives throughout the world, something the US and its allies find very hard to swallow. That's why they've put all of their clout behind young upstart Henrique Capriles Radonski, as if he were a savior of democracy in Venezuela. But that's not quite the case when you consider that Capriles Radonski was very much involved in the failed US backed coup in April 2002 to oust Chavez, and even spent a short spate in jail for it. Chavez, in turn, is presented as "authoritarian and not democratic". And yet, when he lost the 2007 constitutional reform referendum or the 2010 congressional elections, his government fully heeded the electorate's will. No one today doubts that Sunday's elections will be transparent and fair. So why all the anger and fuss against Chavez? To those who haven't got the message yet. "It's his foreign policy, Stupid!" Irrespective of whether his domestic policies are good or bad, his foreign policies have held Venezuela's sovereignty and self esteem very high indeed, actively supporting all nations being savagely attacked by the US, UK, NATO or Israel. Such is Venezuela's support of the martyred people of Palestine, Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya, all flagrantly bombed, invaded and devastated by the Western powers based on outright lies, perverted distortions of the truth, and corporate greed to grab oil resources. It must be said. At the center of the "We Hate Chavez" movement is Israel, for here lies one of the clues to the sudden rise of Capriles Radonski.    

Jack A Smith: Obama's War Record!!!

When Senator Barack Obama ran for the presidency in 2008, many wishful thinking Democratic voters viewed him as a peace candidate, because he opposed the Iraq war, but voted yes on the war budgets while in the Senate. Some others assumed his foreign military policy would be along the lines of Presidents George H W Bush, whom Obama admired, or Bill Clinton. Some who identified as progressives actually thought his foreign and military policy might tilt to the left. Instead, center rightist that he is, Obama's foreign military policy amounted to a virtual continuation of George W Bush's Global War on Terrorism under a different name. He extended Bush's wars to Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia, Libya and elsewhere while greatly expanding the war in Afghanistan, hiking the military budget, encouraging the growth of militarism in US society by repeatedly heaping excessive praise on the armed forces, and tightening the military encirclement of China. Summing up sume of his military accomplishments a few months ago, Obama declared: "We've succeeded in defending our nation, taking the fight to our enemies, reducing the number of Americans in harms way, and we've restored America's global leadership. That makes us safer and it makes us stronger, and that's an achievement that every American, especially those Americans who are proud to wear the uniform of the United States Armed Forces should take great pride in." Obama actually has little to show for his war policy after nearly four years. Most important, Afghanistan, the war he supported with enthusiasm is predictably blowing up in his face. A symbol of the Bush-Obama 11 year Afghan folly is the recent 2,000th death of an American soldier, not at the hands of the Taliban, but a US trained Afghan police officer, our supposed ally. The truth is that public opinion in Afghanistan has always overwhelmingly opposed the invasion, and rightly so. 

F William Engdahl: The Greater Middle East Energy War!

On October 3, 2012 the Turkish military launched repeated mortar shelling inside Syrian territory. The military action, which was used by the Turkish military, conveniently to establish a ten kilometer wide no mans land buffer zone inside Syria, was in response to the alleged killing by Syrian armed forces of several Turkish civilians along the border. There is widespread speculation that the one Syrian mortar that killed five Turkish civilians well might have been fired by Turkish backed opposition forces intent on giving Turkey a pretext to move militarily, in military intelligence jargon, a false flag operation. Turkey's Muslim Brotherhood friendly Foreign Minister, the inscrutable Ahmet Davutoglu, is the governments main architect of Turkey's self defeating strategy of toppling its former ally Bashar Al-Assad in Syria. According to one report since 2006 under the government of Islamist Sunni Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan and his pro-Brotherhood AKP party. Turkey has become a new center for the Global Muslim Brotherhood. A well informed Istanbul source relates the report that before the last Turkish elections, Erdogans AKP received a donation of $10 billion from the Saudi monarchy, the heart of world jihadist Salafism under the strict fundamentalist cloak of Wahabism. Since the 1950's, when the CIA brought leading members in exile of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood to Saudi Arabia, there has been a fusion between the Saudi brand of Whabism and the aggressive jihadist fundamentalism of the Brotherhood. The Turkish response to the single Syrian mortar shell, which was met with an immediate Syrian apology for the incident, borders on a full scale war between two nations which until last year were historically, culturally, economically and even in religious terms, closest of allies. That war danger is ever more serious.   

Chris Jones: Greece's Evolving Social Crisis: Black Shirt Fascists!

Sunday October 7 was a day of mixed emotions. First there was coming to terms with seeing black shirted fascists marching along the water front in Samos Town. When I first came here in 1995, I could never ever imagined such an event taking place on Samos. On Sunday it happened. But, there was also relief that the Golden Dawn (GD) presence was so small. I counted 35 in their ranks, of whom half appeared to be from outside Samos. They were the ones getting them sorted out in ranks of 3 in the car park, before they marched, and leading the chants. The others may have been from Samos, but none were recognized by those we were with, although later I was told by a close friend who lives and works in the town that she recognized 3 police men from Samos among the GD marchers. I think there were 3 or 4 women while the rest were men, mostly in their 20s and 30s dressed in jeans and black T shirts. Most of them seemed to be carrying a flag, lots of Greek and some Golden Dawn flags, which I supposed helped disguise their small turn out. GD called for the demonstration and had publicly invited all Greek Samians to protest against the re-opening and refurbishing of the Detention Center that had only been built around 8 years ago, but had been closed for some years as the flow of refugees moved to the land border to the north between Greece and Turkey and away from islands such as Samos, Lesbos and Chios. But as the land border has been hardened into a death trap for those who dare, so the older routes to Samos have re-opened. By the end of September, the cells across a number of police stations on the island were shamefully crammed with up to 9 adults living in rooms of less than 15 sq meters. Many of these recently arrived refugees, included significant numbers of young children. In the middle of September I went with a friend to take some food and drink to 8 Algerian refugees locked up in Karlovassi police station and being kept inside a single room 24/7 at a time when daytime temperatures were still very high.    

Prof. Michel Chossudovsky: Granting the Nobel Prize to the European Union!!

This year's Nobel Prize was granted to the European Union for its relentless contribution to "the advancement of peace and reconciliation, democracy and human rights in Europe." While the EU's  contribution to peace is debatable, the key issue is whether a union of states, which constitutes a political, economic, monetary and fiscal entity is an "eligible candidate" for the Peace Prize, in accordance with the mandate of the Norwegian Committee. The Olympic Games are "granted" to countries. But the Nobel Peace Prize cannot under any stretch of the imagination be granted to a nation state, let alone a union of nation states. The Norwegian Nobel Committee has a responsibility to ascertain "the eligibility of candidates" in accordance with the Will of Alfred Bernhard Nobel: "The whole of my remaining realizable estate shall be dealt with in the following way: the capital, invested in safe securities by my executors, shall have conferred the greatest benefit to mankind. The said interest shall be divided into five equal parts, which shall be apportioned as follows: one part to the person who shall have produced in the field of literature the most outstanding work in an ideal direction, and one part to the person who shall have done the most or the best work for fraternity between nations, for the abolition or reduction of standing armies, and for the holding and promotion of peace congresses. For champions of peace, the prize will be awarded by a committee of five persons, to be elected by the Norwegian Storting. It is my express wish that in awarding the prizes no consideration whatever shall be given to the nationality of the candidates, but that the most worthy shall receive the prize, whether he be a Scandinavian or not. Will of Alfred Bernhard Nobel, November 27, 1895.
    

Adrian Salbuchi: Venezuelan Elections: Chavez or Washington!

This Sunday's elections will pit incumbent President Hugo Chavez Frias against neoliberal pro-US opposition candidate Henrique Capriles Radonski. Opinion polls vary widely both ways, proof it will be a head to head race. This election is not only of vital importance to Venezuela, but to all of Latin America, as Chavez has been a veritable barrier against traditional US interventionism in the region. That's been the rallying call in the mainstream Western media, demonizing Chavez's refusal to align Venezuela to the Western powers' geopolitical objectives throughout the world, something the US and its allies find very hard to swallow. That's why they've put all of their clout behind young upstart Henrique Capriles Radonski, as if he were the savior of democracy in Venezuela. But that's not quite the case when you consider that Capriles Radonski was very much involved in the failed US backed coup in April 2002 to oust Chavez, and even spent a short spate in jail for it. Chavez, in turn, is presented as "authoritarian and not democratic". And yet, when he lost the 2007 constitutional reform referendum or the 2010 constitutional reform referendum or the 2010 congressional elections, his government fully heeded the electorate's will. No one today doubts that Sunday's elections will be transparent and fair. So why all the anger and fuss against Chavez? To those who haven't got the message yet: "It's his foreign policy, Stupid!" Irrespective of whether his domestic policies are good or bad, his foreign policies have held Venezuela's sovereignty and self esteem very high indeed, actively supporting all nations being savagely attacked by the US, UK, NATO, or Israel. Such is Venezuela's sovereignty and self esteem very high indeed, actively supporting all nations being savagely attacked by the US, UK, NATO or Israel. Such is Venezuela's support of the martyred peoples of Palestine, Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya, all flagrantly bombed, invaded and devastated by the Western powers, based on outright lies, perverted distortions of the truth, and corporate greed to grab oil resources!!

Michel Chossudovsky: Afghanistan's Vast Reserves of Minerals!

The War is Worth Waging, Afghanistan,'s vast reserves of Minerals and Natural Gas. US and NATO forces invaded Afghanistan eleven years ago, yet Afghanistan is defined as a state sponsor of terrorism. The war in Afghanistan continues to be heralded as a war of retribution in response to the 9/11 attacks. This article, first published in June 2010, points to the "real economic reasons" why US NATO forces invaded Afghanistan eleven years ago. The legal argument used by Washington and NATO to invade and occupy Afghanistan under "the doctrine of collective security" was that the September 11 2001 attacks constituted an undeclared armed attack from abroad by an unnamed foreign power: The 2001 bombing and invasion of Afghanistan has been presented to world public opinion as a just war, a war directed against the Taliban and Al Qaeda, a war to eliminate "Islamic terrorism" and instate Western style democracy. The economic dimensions of the "Global War on Terrorism" are rarely mentioned. The post 9/11 counter terrorism campaign has served to obfuscate the real objectives of the US NATO war. The war on Afghanistan is part of a profit driven agenda: a war of economic conquest and plunder, "a resource war". While Afghanistan is acknowledged as a strategic hub in Central Asia, bordering on the former Soviet Union, China and Iran, at the crossroads of pipeline routes and major oil and gas reserves, its huge mineral wealth as well as its untapped natural gas reserves have remained, until June 2010, totally unknown to the American public. According to a joint report by the Pentagon, the US Geological Survey (USGS) and USAID, Afghanistan is now said to possess "previously unknown" and untapped mineral reserves, estimated authoritatively by the New York Times, to be on the order of one trillion dollars. The previously unknown deposits, including huge veins of iron, copper, cobalt, gold and critical industrial metals like lithium, are so big and include so many minerals that are essential to modern industry that Afghanistan could eventually be transformed into one of the most important mining centers in the world, the United States officials believe!!!