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Category: Terrorism

World War III Watch

March 17, 2023

For me it started during the summer of 2021, approximately a year and a half ago. It wasn’t based on news or data, but only an intuitive feeling at the time. Throughout the morning that day I had been feeling a disturbing intuitive sense that something was off regarding international relations and global conflicts. Something bad was about to happen globally and it was major.

I walked into the kitchen where Princess Little Tree (PLT) was cooking all morning and I said “there’s going to be some kind of a war honey. Something big. Like a world war. I can feel it.” But Princess Little Tree is accustomed to my outlandish declarations. She responded by asking me if something had happened that led me to think that. I told her no, it’s just a really strong intuitive sense. As the feeling continued to intensify I continued to repeat to her throughout the day how I was sensing something big, some kind of major global altercation. At some point she said “well let’s note it and put it on the calendar”. So we did. On a hot august day in the summer of 2021. We wrote “PBJ (Prince Baby Joon) sees a world war coming”.

And that was it. Time passed. And we didn’t hear or see much in the way of anything that supported this idea. Until more than a year later when Russia invaded Ukraine. That in and of itself did not raise the hairs on the back of my neck. We had seen this movie too many times before, especially during the Obama years. Then it stopped once Trump was elected and Russia suddenly was on its best behavior. (Interesting that…) But for some reason it got everyone else alarmed. Especially the United states and Europe.

Once the United States and Europe started acting as if the safety and security of the entire world was being threatened by this Russian invasion of Ukraine (it’s not), I started commenting, softly and slowly at first and then more intensely, “this is the beginning of what I was seeing. We’re literally watching in real time what could easily throw us into a world war…”. It wasn’t Russia invading Ukraine. It was the fact that the US and most European countries were so willing to jump into the conflict by suddenly backing Ukraine as if they too were in a war against Russia.

Which of course they were, as the rest of us would soon begin to realize as the months wore on. Pretty soon it was hard to tell who was at war. Sure Ukraine held the little name badge showing they were an official team in the Russia-Ukraine conflict. But the United States is the country actually funding and weaponizing the whole thing. And this along with Europe’s contributions to Ukraine and directly opposing Russia was and will remain historically one of the biggest foreign policy errors in human history. And at this point anyone who claims that the United States is not at war with Russia is not paying attention. Or in denial. Or lying.

[Right here I’m going to tell you that exploring the reasons why the United States decided to go to war against Russia (simply put it’s payback to Zelensky for keeping his mouth shut to protect both Trump and Biden from the criminal repercussions they’d receive if the full stories of their past actions in and involving Ukraine were revealed) is vital but not pertinent to the bigger picture of this impending world war, because this has spiraled so far out of control now, in so many different directions that the US didn’t foresee, that even the strange and abnormal hero status and protection that the United States has bestowed upon Zelensky is not as important as everything else we’re witnessing that appears to be leading us into a large scale global super-conflict that threatens to be the biggest and deadliest in human history.]

Late yesterday, after a slew of concerning events that further showed how quickly the world is moving toward war, the president of Serbia gave a chilling warning about it: “…this is an escalation that has no end. I’m afraid that we may be heading towards the biggest conflict in the history of the world. I wonder if anyone is smart enough not to go through with this, and if anyone understands whatever the consequences of this will be,” Vucic said.

Friday March 17 2023 will go down in history books as the day that signaled the world was headed down a path toward another world war. Out of everything we heard through the newswires Friday that signaled this dark moment, perhaps none was more important nor more important than hearing that the International Criminal Court (ICC) of the Netherlands issued a formal arrest warrant for Russian President Putin for war crimes. It is one of the most surreal and ludicrous actions we’ve seen so far building up to the harsh realities now facing us.

Surreal because one cannot imagine anyone so short sighted to issue an arrest warrant against the president of a sovereign nation, especially not under the circumstances of said president being in the middle of a war with another country. The implications are immense. President Putin is immune to such an action. As any president of any other sovereign nation is. At best this is a foolhardy political ploy that will feed only the hearts and minds of celebrity-minded media maggots with nothing better to talk about. The same anchors reporters and pundits who play Who’s Popular with American politicians every night instead of reporting the news.

To see how ludicrous the action is imagine for a moment if the ICC issued an arrest warrant for American President Joe Biden. The United States would immediately issue a press release decrying the act as not legally binding and not lawfully applicable to the president. Just as the Kremlin did. They would also issue a warning to the ICC and the 123 member countries to not move forward with any such actions in that direction or face the consequences. Just as the Kremlin did.

Most importantly if anyone did take this arrest warrant seriously and do anything to president Biden, the US military would take such swift action to protect our president that it would be over in less than 30 minutes. It would also spell the beginning of the end for that country. One can only imagine the destruction that would befall said country should they do anything that stupid. The same thing would happen if anything were to happen to president Putin. As it should be. It would ring the bells of the first shots that began World War III. If we do not collectively honor the national sovereignty of other countries and their leaders, no matter how much we might disagree with them, then we don’t deserve freedom and liberty as a people. We might as well start building the jail cells to prepare for the forever-1984 world we’d be creating.

After nearly a year of talking about this, trying to get others to see what’s happening, how obvious it is, how deadly it’s going to be, we finally get some confirmation, someone else, someone with a little credibility on the world stage, warning of the same thing. Because it has become obvious now to anyone paying attention.

Many other countries around the world haven’t been as withholding and have already boldly stepped forward to declare their allegiance to one side or the other for all the world to see. Much of it has happened in the last month. I have been shocked how quickly it’s unfolding now. What started out as nothing more than a feeling, turned into a hunch, and then avalanched into a reality composed of a daily series of events that we can now track and dread.

The nations of the world are quickly forming alliances with each other, choosing which side they’re on and filing into place in preparation for this coming world war. The United States seems to be the only nation who hasn’t come clean with its citizens or the media or the rest of the world in admitting what they see happening and what they plan on doing about it.

My guess is that the powers that be in Washington know very well what’s happening, regardless of how dumb and clueless those in the White House, senate and congress appear to be to the rest of us. My hope is that those who need to know do know and they’re just playing it close to the vest to delay the chaos and panic that would ensue if it came out.

In the last month we’ve seen a multitude of incidents announced around the world that should be terrifying to those paying attention, which is the primary problem: not many people are paying attention. And I dont believe that even the events of this week’s news will change that. I’m guessing that for the most part people are waiting to be told by their favorite American news network that they need to be paying attention. Obviously a serious miscalculation for those who care about such things. (And who doesn’t?)

News networks have done a decent job of feeding us about 35% of the facts and news-bites that are important and pertinent to this impending global conflict, but none have dared to analyze the data and report what governments, think tanks and experts are surely already discussing behind closed doors. They’re still spending 99% of their airtime stupefyingly debating political nonsense about the American president or congress or senators they like or dislike. It’s beyond inane the way politics have turned into the favorite plaything of news-as-entertainment. It’s obliterated the way people view and think about world news.

Especially in the climate we’re in now. I’m nothing. A working class singer-songwriter. If someone like me can already start putting the pieces together and notice the world is getting damn close to the largest global conflict in world history, then surely journalists and news producers can. But they refuse to. Or better put they refuse to acknowledge they’re able or willing to. That’s a sure path to mutually agreed upon self destruction for both the media and the people and world they claim to serve.

The media and the government have been so preoccupied with their self professed war with Russia that they forgot the United States has already been in a Cold War with China for years. The potential for China, the second largest economy in the world and third largest super power, already at war with the United States and proud of it, to suddenly form an alliance with Russia, the second largest super power, was almost inevitable. But something we all hoped we’d never see.

That took place yesterday when we woke up to the news that China’s president Xi Jinping is heading off to Russia next week to sign new alliance agreements with Putin. This is the news that we have been dreading.

For context many people think the United States won World War II. What they forget is that Great Britain, France, the United States, along with Russia and China won World War II. So what is a World War III for the United States going to look like with those two superpowers fighting on the other side.

Lest we forget that the United States has a questionably spotty if not a downright bad record of being able to win wars on its own since the end of World War II. Korea, Vietnam, the Iran-Iraq war (which the United States initiated through funding Iraq with tens of billions of dollars and weapons while demanding that Iraq invade Iran until it realized that Iran was still winning after 5 years so they switched course and started secretly funding Iran with money and weapons (see Iran Contra Affair)).

Then came the US attacks of the Middle East in the 2000s where at one point the United States was engaged in a war with six different countries simultaneously but could not realistically make one victory speech about any of them even after 20 years because they couldn’t figure out how to win. Instead they let military personal and soldiers flounder for decades in the deserts not winning nor receiving the necessary support or escalated troop numbers they needed. Eventually the United States told the troops to come home, in Afghanistan for example, with their tail between their legs not having accomplished anything. Once again an American war that didn’t go as planned.

With Libya the US didn’t even bother to start a war. They just bombed the hell out of the country and killed its president and other leaders, which were the only thing keeping the country remotely stable, then abandoned the country and it’s people, leaving it to become one of the top training grounds for Islamic terrorism and ISIS in the world, which is what it is today. This was not winning a war. What it was careless and bad strategy.

These kind of global displays of reckless destruction and stupidity used to work for the United States. Or at least they were usually confident they’d get away with them and there’d be no serious repercussions. But things have changed over the last five to ten years.

Other nations around the earth have gotten tired of them. Traditionally they weren’t able to do anything to stop the US from its careless bullying and bomb dropping. Because they were too small and the United States has too large a military. But with newfound confidence from large economies and a thirst to break free from American global dominance once and for all, along with the advent of new anti-American policies by the second and third largest superpowers, Russia and China, other smaller nations are being heard and welcomed into this new multinational super-alliance. Fast. And the one thing that all of these nations share in common is a hatred of all things Western.

Consider for a moment how many hundreds of millions of people in the Middle East alone who have been dreaming about taking deadly revenge against the United States for the last 23 years. With both Iran and Saudi Arabia forming new alliances with Russia and China in the last few weeks it appears that vision is ever closer for them. The fact that the Saudis would even dare dream of doing such a thing when the US, for better or worse, created the country in the first place and has supported this family of viscous dictators for almost a hundred years is unthinkable. But they did it. Just a week ago. That’s not something the United States ever counted on happening.

Why else would the White House permit the prince of Saudi Arabia MBS to chop up the body of an American journalist, Jamal Kashogi, into tiny pieces and stuff it into a suitcase with no consequences? What would be a capital offense for anyone else is permissible for the Saudis. Because ostensibly we need need each other. But that’s officially changed over the last month. We may still need them. But they don’t need us anymore.

Obviously the worst of all possible outcomes would be if these countries decided to break the United States’ monopoly on oil and the petro dollar, something that’s been contemplated and announced by both and China through newswires several times this year already. The US dollar would plummet instantly. The biggest challenge the United States faces is that it has one of the weakest economies in the world now, very different than 20-25 years ago. They have the largest national debt in human history and a debt to GDP ratio well over 100%.

Normally when a country reaches a Debt/GDP ratio of 60%, they are forced into brutal austerity measures by other countries around the world and are never able to rebuild their economy again. This is because statistical models show that once over 60% it’s impossible for any country to rebuild from that. The debt/GDP ratio of the US now is almost double that. The only thing keeping the United States afloat at this point is it’s large multinational military presence i.e. fear, and it’s monopoly over oil and world currency — the latter would immediately end if the other large superpowers convinced the Saudis it was okay to break this longstanding agreement with the US. The question now is what’s stopping them with new alliances with Russia and China?

The United States can never borrow enough to get out of its debt even by a little because no one else has that kind of money to loan them. The US could theoretically gather every billionaire in the country and strong arm them into assisting it in lowering its debt or in helping it increase its purchasing power. But even if they took every penny every billionaire in America possesses, it wouldn’t make a dent in the 22 trillion dollars of debt the United States has on its books now.

And that’s yesterdays news compared to the latest implosion of small and midsized banks across America, a path that as worrying and traumatizing as it is for most of us to witness, is just getting started. This poses another threat for the United States in being able to fund a full scale war against the new Communist Alliance. Although one may consider that due to how profitable war is for many parties, securing funding shouldn’t be a problem.

At this point only a war can save the United States. A war they would need to win. It’s how they got out of their last debt crisis, the Great Depression. If it weren’t for World War II it’s not likely the United States would’ve come out of the Great Depression to become the largest superpower in the world.

What’s important to piece together is who will be purportedly fighting who. Who are the Allied Powers now? The new Communist Alliance we’re seeing come together now is China, Russia, North Korea, Saudi Arabia, Iran, Syria, and several smaller Eastern European nations. Will China invade Hong Kong and Taiwan soon and force them to fight in the conflict? Or will the United States come to their aid and start a war with China to defend these important economic houses? Does that imply they would fight with The Western Alliance?

Who is the Western Alliance? The United States, Canada, Great Britain, France, Italy, Germany, Australia, Japan (yes it’s ironic how all the tables have switched sides since the last Great War), the Scandinavian nations, Turkey will fall on that side since they’re so indebted to the US, et al. Think NATO. One can easily see a potential problem. This isn’t the early 20th century. None of these once grand superpowers are as strong or powerful as they once were. Only Germany still poses an authoritative threat militarily to anyone besides the U.S.

It’s important to note that the United States has over 1500 military bases and black ops sites all over planet earth at this time. The second largest mass is that of Russia who only have 640 sites in total. This gives the United States a healthy advantage strategically going in.

One of the later events of yesterday that appeared in the news to add fire to the flames of an impending world war was the announcement that Finland has now decided to join NATO, against numerous warnings against that action at this time by other NATO countries, and Turkey publicly stated they were willing to ratify it. Talk about poking the bear. Not even the United States was willing to consider this, nor the membership of Ukraine for that matter (despite their incessant pleading for it) because everybody knows that was the main reason given by Putin as to why he invaded Ukraine. He doesn’t want Mother Russia to be unfairly surrounded by NATO member countries on his border. Which makes perfect sense. It’s a justifiable concern. Which is why major western countries have been unwilling to let Finland or Ukraine join NATO. It would only fan the flames of an already angry Russia. The fact that this too was announced yesterday was another step toward the wrong direction if what we all want is world peace.

More later. This is just the first in what will surely be more notes about this deeply concerning issue.

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America at War, Current Events, Economics, Iran, Politics and Government, Terrorism America, American imperialism, China, Iran, North Korea, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Ukraine, World War II, World War III

What the United States Government Doesn’t Say About Iran

September 17, 2019

Just did a refresher study on the exile and last year of the (second) shah of Iran. Was specifically interested in it’s effects on U.S. relations and global stability then and now.

As we already know, Great Britain and the the United States through the CIA with a little help from France perpetrate a coup d’etat in 1953 to topple the democratically elected prime minister of Iran, who had run on a platform of not giving away Iranian oil to Great Britain at below market costs anymore. These three western powers then reinstall the Shah of Iran’s son into power and reinstate monarchic rule in iran. Just what the Iranian people wanted. NOT. Great Britain, France and the US form a new big oil conglomerate from all this free oil they’re about to come into and call it BP, British Petroleum. In exchange they will prop up and support the monarchy in Iran militarily against the wishes of the people and keep down any revolts.

And so begins a renewed relatively stable alliance between Iran and western nations. Iran becomes more and more westernized. Brits move there in droves to run the oil plants. Iranian kids go to British schools and learn English. Highways and streets in Tehran are renamed Eisenhower Boulevard and Kennedy Street.

After a few decades of watching the so called “royals”, elites and western nations blow through all their wealth and natural resources the Iranian people begin to get angry. Like revolution angry. It’s the 1970s. The situation is not helped by the fact that a well educated and well spoken radical Islamic cleric named Khomeini is constantly preaching revolution from exile in France, encouraging the people to rise up against western domination. Protests in the streets begin, calling for an “end to control by America”.

In the late 70s, the presidents of the United States, Great Britain, France and Germany secretly meet in Guadalupe to discuss what they’re going to do about the Shah because their oil contracts are soon to expire and they don’t want to start paying more. Do they depose the Shah? Take him out? Support him and squash the protests and use their support to bargain their prices low for another 50 years? Before they can decide they’re informed that the Shah has cancer from one of their informants. Ah hah! Perfect! Let’s not support him during these turbulent times, we’ll force him into exile and put someone else in power who will give us even more control and lower oil prices.

It’s getting dangerous for the Shah now. He calls his US and British allies to ask for help and they inform him they won’t be able to help him. He should leave if he has to. So he does. First to Egypt. Then Morocco. Then the Bahamas. Then Mexico. By now Khomeini has returned to Iran as a revolutionary hero. Promising an end to monarchy, western rule and a return to democracy. He very quickly kills everyone ever employed by the shah’s government and names himself Supreme Leader for Life. He obviously had watched Star Wars one too many times.

By now the Shah is very sick. In his defense, US president Carter, though he ruthlessly betrayed his ally for his country’s selfish gain, did want to help the Shah in his illness. But the Iranian people were not going to tolerate the US harboring the Shah, healing his illness and then reinstating him again in a year or two. So they stormed the American embassy in Tehran and took a bunch of American hostages and demanded the Shah return to face trial and a return of all the Iranian assets that the Federal Reserve, the US Treasury, American banks and American corporations had seized during the protests. (Some of this money was eventually returned to Iran by US president Barack Obama 40 years later, who also acknowledged and apologized for the 1953 coup, which is what created the current mess the Iranian people are still in today.)

President Carter at this point just wants those American hostages back. He realizes he made a huge mistake by ousting the Shah and allowing this Islamic cleric Khomeini to waltz in and take over Iran. But he cant get enough of his colleagues to agree to give Iran all their assets back. So the hostages are stuck as pawns there in a dangerous political game. The Rockefellers, who are holding billions of Iranian assets in their banks, don’t want to let go of all that money but they do offer to provide doctors and medical support to try to save the Shah’s life. So they secretly fly him to New York. An operation is performed. It’s botched. He gets sicker. They then become fearful the American hostages will be endangered if they continue to help the Shah. So they fly him to Texas and then force him on Panama, using the recently completed Panama Canal deal as a bargaining chip. But Panama too is afraid of retaliation by this crazy mad Khomeini. So they cut a secret deal with Khomeini to extradite the Shah back to Iran to stand trial and be executed.

But Egypt’s Sadat swoops In to rescue his old friend and offers him sanctuary in Egypt. So off they fly to Egypt. The Carter administration calls Khomeini and says “we’ve put the Shah on a CIA plane to Egypt. We’ll trade you the Shah for our hostages. Do what you want with him.” Obviously getting cheap oil is no longer a priority. And neither is loyalty to longtime allies.

The US suddenly brings the plane down on some Portuguese islands in order to secretly hand the Shah over to Iran without telling him (they tell him they have to refuel. They dont), but Khomeini doesn’t trust the U.S. so the deal gets broken at the last minute. The Shah ends up back in Egypt. He very soon dies from complications from his botched American surgeries. The Ayatollah Khomeini does eventually release the American hostages but waits to do it until Carter is ousted from Washington just to twist the knife a little and make his point clear.

He believes he may have found at least a frenemy in new US president Ronald Reagan, who very soon will militarily and financially support a newly American installed ruthless dictator in Iraq named Hussein who is immediately and secretly ordered by the US to attack and overtake Iran. Which he does. In the 8 year Iran-Iraq war. Of course, Reagan, not wanting to play favorites also secretly supports Iran by supplying them with weapons of war to kill the Iraqis, assuming that no matter who wins they’ll just become their ally and help them get rid of the other guy. They both have plenty of oil after all.

Eventually this plan backfires as both countries begin to realize that neither of them want to be subservient lapdogs of the wicked western imperialists. The US eventually takes Iraq out 20 years later. Along with a few other pesky Muslim nations. Only Iran remains, steadfast in their desire for self deterministic rule and autonomy, albeit under excruciatingly unhappy circumstances under a brutal authoritarian rule.

There’s more to the story. There always is. But it all goes back to ‘53 and ‘79. American greed, selfishness,

very poor judgment and ill advised strategy. And here we all are. Happy days.

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Alternative History, American Terrorism, Current Events, Human Rights, Politics and Government, Terrorism 1953, American hostage crisis, American imperialism, Ayatollah Khomeini, Barack Obama, BP, British petroleum, CIA, coup d'etat, egypt, Iran, Iran Contra Affair, Iran Iraq war, Iranian revolution, Iraq, mosadegh, president Carter, Reza Shah, ronald reagan, Saddam Hussein, Shah of Iran

Remembering September 11th Eighteen Years Later

September 11, 2019

When it first happened I was at a spanish language school for a semester down in Costa Rica. With a bunch of mainly Europeans. We watched it happening live on the news like everyone. The Euros immediately jumped at the chance to make comments like “serves them right” or “it was only a matter of time”. And though I understood the sentiment, it was too horrific for me to go down that path in that moment. I was more in shock, and worried about all my friends in NYC.

The only other American at the school, a college kid named Heath, and I got called to the American Embassy in San Jose, where we stayed with a bunch of other Americans, tourists and fishermen mostly, for a number off hours. Eventually released and told it would be a few days before we could fly back to the US. Told not to go out and cause any trouble. Keep a low profile.

So off we went to a brothel where we spent the next two days passing the time trying to drink and fuck the pain away. What the Euros at our school didn’t understand was that although we were every bit as aware of and cynical about the last two-hundred years of violent American imperialism, America was still our home. Americans were still our friends family and neighbors.

When i got back to the States we hit the studio to finish working on the Sleep With You album. But we interrupted those sessions to record a song to help donate to various 9/11 charities. That songs being “Rebuild America”. What I was taken with the most back then was how resilient the country was in the face of such a horrific event. How much it unified us. We didn’t get down or depressed. We got all flagged up, amped up and proud. At the time it felt better than going dark.

So the song ended up being more patriotic and uplifting than our normal fare. I still find it hard to believe that a song called “Rebuild America” is associated with us/me in any way. If you would have told me five to ten years before that that I’d have a single out in the future called Rebuild America i would have asked “is it ironic? Did I lose my mind? Or go mad? Did i lose my cool?” If you would have then replied “no not at all. America got attacked. Like Pearl Harbor scale attack. You did the song in earnest.” Yeah. Perhaps I would understand.

Critics used the song as easy pickings to chastise me for a few years after. Implying that it betrayed “coolness”. Perhaps it does. But I don’t regret it. Because it was real. You had to be there. I always thought that was a cheap shot. Because that event was such a viscerally upsetting moment for many of us. And we needed the release. Regardless of where we lined up on the political fence, it hurt.

There was, looking back now, such a strong subconscious react to that kind of intense shock and violence that manifested in extreme positivity and patriotism. Even for those of us who knew the dark seedy underbelly of United States foreign policy. I had never seen anything like it, that kind of avid patriotism. Maybe Rocky IV Cold War era stuff.

Of course it all went down hill quickly from there and we turned all that patriotism into more violence and empire building. Used it as an excuse to finally take over the rest of the Middle East region of the globe sans Iran, and Saudi Arabia, where the attacks actually originated from, but as they say thou dost not shit in your own backyard and the United States has had Arabia in its backyard for fifty years. Hence allowing one little family to prop up a dictatorship and add their name “Saudi” to the name of an entire country. Disgraceful. But whatever.

further on down the road we learned about the dubious nature of the events themselves… and many now believe it to be an inside job. See the documentaries called Loose Change on youtube. But for a brief moment at least we saw potential in America. It just didn’t last. Very sad.

I saw the planes crash into us

I saw the people cry

I saw the buildings come crumbling

I saw the rescuers sigh

I saw the president weep

On national TV

I saw the volunteers sweeping

To clean the New York City streets

As we try

Yes we try

To rebuild America

The land of our fathers

The land of our mothers

America

We are not alone

“Rebuild America” by Ed Hale & the Transcendence

youtu.be/sf8W8CEJaSs

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Shocked and Horrifed

September 18, 2001

Blowback Strikes – Shocked and Horrified

By Larry Mosqueda

Like all Americans, on Tuesday, 9-11, I was shocked and horrified to watch the WTC Twin Towers attacked by hijacked planes and collapse, resulting in the deaths of perhaps up to 10,000 innocent people.

I had not been that shocked and horrified since January 16, 1991, when then President Bush attacked Baghdad, and the rest of Iraq and began killing 200,000 people during that “war” (slaughter). This includes the infamous “highway of death” in the last days of the slaughter when U.S. pilots literally shot in the back retreating Iraqi civilians and soldiers. I continue to be horrified by the sanctions on Iraq, which have resulted in the death of over 1,000,000 Iraqis, including over 500,000 children, about whom former Secretary of State Madeline Albright has stated that their deaths “are worth the cost”.

Over the course of my life I have been shocked and horrified by a variety of U.S. governmental actions, such as the U.S. sponsored coup against democracy in Guatemala in 1954 which resulted in the deaths of over 120,000 Guatemalan peasants by U.S. installed dictatorships over the course of four decades.

Last Tuesday’s events reminded me of the horror I felt when the U.S. overthrew the governments of the Dominican Republic in 1965 and helped to murder 3,000 people. And it reminded me of the shock I felt in 1973, when the U.S. sponsored a coup in Chile against the democratic government of Salvador Allende and helped to murder another 30,000 people, including U.S. citizens.

Last Tuesday’s events reminded me of the shock and horror I felt in 1965 when the U.S. sponsored a coup in Indonesia that resulted in the murder of over 800,000 people, and the subsequent slaughter in 1975 of over 250,000 innocent people in East Timor by the Indonesian regime with the direct complicity of President Ford and Secretary of State Henry Kissinger.

I was reminded of the shock and horror I felt during the U.S. sponsored terrorist contra war (the World Court declared the U.S. government a war criminal in 1984 for the mining of the harbors) against Nicaragua in the 1980s which resulted in the deaths of over 30,000 innocent people (or as the U.S. government used to call them before the term “collateral damage” was invented–“soft targets”).

I was reminded of being horrified by the U. S. war against the people of El Salvador in the 1980s, which resulted in the brutal deaths of over 80,000 people, or “soft targets”.

I was reminded of the shock and horror I felt during the U.S. sponsored terror war against the peoples of southern Africa (especially Angola) that began in the 1970’s and continues to this day and has resulted in the deaths and mutilations of over 1,000,000. I was reminded of the shock and horror I felt as the U.S. invaded Panama over the Christmas season of 1989 and killed over 8,000 in an attempt to capture George H. Bush’s CIA partner, now turned enemy, Manuel Noriega.

I was reminded of the horror I felt when I learned about how the Shah of Iran was installed in a U.S. sponsored brutal coup that resulted in the deaths of over 70,000 Iranians from 1952-1979. And the continuing shock as I learned that the Ayatollah Khomeni, who overthrew the Shah in 1979, and who was the U.S. public enemy for decade of the 1980s, was also on the CIA payroll, while he was in exile in Paris in the 1970s.

I was reminded of the shock and horror that I felt as I learned about the how the U.S. has “manufactured consent” since 1948 for its support of Israel, to the exclusion of virtually any rights for the Palestinians in their native lands resulting in ever worsening day-to-day conditions for the people of Palestine. I was shocked as I learned about the hundreds of towns and villages that were literally wiped off the face of the earth in the early days of Israeli colonization. I was horrified in 1982 as the villagers of Sabra and Shatila were massacred by Israeli allies with direct Israeli complicity and direction. The untold thousands who died on that day match the scene of horror that we saw last Tuesday. But those scenes were not repeated over and over again on the national media to inflame the American public.

The events and images of last Tuesday have been appropriately compared to the horrific events and images of Lebanon in the 1980s with resulted in the deaths of tens of thousand of people, with no reference to the fact that the country that inflicted the terror on Lebanon was Israel, with U.S. backing. I still continue to be shocked at how mainstream commentators refer to “Israeli settlers” in the “occupied territories” with no sense of irony as they report on who are the aggressors in the region.

Of course, the largest and most shocking war crime of the second half of the 20th century was the U.S. assault on Indochina from 1954-1975, especially Vietnam, where over 4,000,000 people were bombed, napalmed, crushed, shot and individually “hands on” murdered in the “Phoenix Program” (this is where Oliver North got his start). Many U.S. Vietnam veterans were also victimized by this war and had the best of intentions, but the policy makers themselves knew the criminality of their actions and policies as revealed in their own words in “The Pentagon Papers,” released by Daniel Ellsberg of the RAND Corporation. In 1974 Ellsberg noted that our Presidents from Truman to Nixon continually lied to the U.S. public about the purpose and conduct of the war. He has stated that, “It is a tribute to the American people that our leaders perceived that they had to lie to us, it is not a tribute to us that we were so easily misled.”

I was continually shocked and horrified as the U.S. attacked and bombed with impunity the nation of Libya in the 1980s, including killing the infant daughter of Khadafi. I was shocked as the U.S. bombed and invaded Grenada in 1983. I was horrified by U.S. military and CIA actions in Somalia, Haiti, Afghanistan, Sudan, Brazil, Argentina, and Yugoslavia. The deaths in these actions ran into the hundreds of thousands.

The above list is by no means complete or comprehensive. It is merely a list that is easily accessible and not unknown, especially to the economic and intellectual elites. It has just been conveniently eliminated from the public discourse and public consciousness. And for the most part, the analysis that the U.S. actions have resulted in the deaths of primarily civilians (over 90%) is not unknown to these elites and policy makers. A conservative number for those who have been killed by U.S. terror and military action since World War II is 8,000,000 people. Repeat–8,000,000 people. This does not include the wounded, the imprisoned, the displaced, the refugees, etc. Martin Luther King, Jr. stated in 1967, during the Vietnam War, “My government is the world’s leading purveyor of violence.” Shocking and horrifying.

Nothing that I have written is meant to disparage or disrespect those who were victims and those who suffered death or the loss of a loved one during this week’s events. It is not meant to “justify” any action by those who bombed the Twin Towers or the Pentagon. It is meant to put it in a context. If we believe that the actions were those of “madmen”, they are “madmen” who are able to keep a secret for 2 years or more among over 100 people, as they trained to execute a complex plan. While not the acts of madmen, they are apparently the acts of “fanatics” who, depending on who they really are, can find real grievances, but whose actions are illegitimate.

Osama Bin Laden at this point has been accused by the media and the government of being the mastermind of Tuesday’s bombings. Given the government’s track record on lying to the America people, that should not be accepted as fact at this time. If indeed Bin Laden is the mastermind of this action, he is responsible for the deaths of perhaps 10,000 people-a shocking and horrible crime. Ed Herman in his book The Real Terror Network: Terrorism in Fact and Propaganda does not justify any terrorism but points out that states often engage in “wholesale” terror, while those whom governments define as “terrorist” engage is “retail” terrorism. While qualitatively the results are the same for the individual victims of terrorism, there is a clear quantitative difference. And as Herman and others point out, the seeds, the roots, of much of the “retail” terror are in fact found in the “wholesale” terror of states. Again this is not

to justify, in any way, the actions of last Tuesday, but to put them in a context and suggest an explanation.

Perhaps most shocking and horrific, if indeed Bin Laden is the mastermind of Tuesday’s actions; he has clearly had significant training in logistics, armaments, and military training, etc. by competent and expert military personnel. And indeed he has. During the 1980s, he was recruited, trained and funded by the CIA in Afghanistan to fight against the Russians. As long as he visited his terror on Russians and his enemies in Afghanistan, he was “our man” in that country.

The same is true of Saddam Hussein of Iraq, who was a CIA asset in Iraq during the 1980s. Hussein could gas his own people, repress the population, and invade his neighbor (Iran) as long as he did it with U.S. approval.

The same was true of Manuel Noriega of Panama, who was a contemporary and CIA partner of George H. Bush in the 1980s. Noriega’s main crime for Bush, the father, was not that he dealt drugs (he did, but the U.S. and Bush knew this before 1989), but that Noriega was no longer going to cooperate in the ongoing U.S. terrorist contra war against Nicaragua. This information is not unknown or really controversial among elite policy makers. To repeat, this not to justify any of the actions of last Tuesday, but to put it in its horrifying context.

As shocking as the events of last Tuesday were, they are likely to generate even more horrific actions by the U.S. government that will add significantly to the 8,000,000 figure stated above. This response may well be qualitatively and quantitatively worst than the events of Tuesday. The New York Times headline of 9/14/01 states that, “Bush And Top Aides Proclaim Policy Of Ending States That Back Terror” as if that was a rationale, measured, or even sane option. States that have been identified for possible elimination are “a number of Asian and African countries, like Afghanistan, Iraq, Sudan, and even Pakistan.” This is beyond shocking and horrific-it is just as potentially suicidal, homicidal, and more insane than the hijackers themselves.

Also, qualitatively, these actions will be even worse than the original bombers if one accepts the mainstream premise that those involved are “madmen”, “religious fanatics”, or a “terrorist group.” If so, they are acting as either individuals or as a small group. The U.S. actions may continue the homicidal policies of a few thousand elites for the past 50 years, involving both political parties.

The retail terror is that of desperate and sometime fanatical small groups and individuals who often have legitimate grievances, but engage in individual criminal and illegitimate activities; the wholesale terror is that of “rational” educated men where the pain, suffering, and deaths of millions of people are contemplated, planned, and too often, executed, for the purpose of furthering a nebulous concept called the “national interest”. Space does not allow a full explanation of the elites Orwellian concept of the “national interest”, but it can be summarized as the protection and expansion of hegemony and an imperial empire.

The American public is being prepared for war while being fed a continuous stream of shocking and horrific repeated images of Tuesday’s events and heartfelt stories from the survivors and the loved ones of those who lost family members. These stories are real and should not be diminished. In fact, those who lost family members can be considered a representative sample of humanity of the 8,000,000 who have been lost previously. If we multiply by 800-1000 times the amount of pain, angst, and anger being currently felt by the American public, we might begin to understand how much of the rest of the world feels as they are continually victimized.

Some particularly poignant images are the heart wrenching public stories that we are seeing and hearing of family members with pictures and flyers searching for their loved ones. These images are virtually the same as those of the “Mothers of the Disappeared” who searched for their (primarily) adult children in places such as Argentina, where over 11,000 were “disappeared” in 1976-1982, again with U.S. approval. Just as the mothers of Argentina deserved our respect and compassion, so do the relatives of those who are searching for their relatives now. However we should not allow ourselves to be manipulated by the media and U.S. government into turning real grief and anger into a national policy of wholesale terror and genocide against innocent civilians in Asia and Africa. What we are seeing in military terms is called “softening the target.” The target here is the American public and we are being ideologically and emotionally prepared for the slaughter that may commence soon.

None of the previously identified Asian and African countries are democracies, which means that the people of these countries have virtually no impact on developing the policies of their governments, even if we assume that these governments are complicit in Tuesday’s actions. When one examines the recent history of these countries, one will find that the American government had direct and indirect influences on creating the conditions for the existence of some of these governments. This is especially true of the Taliban government of Afghanistan itself.

The New York Metropolitan Area has about 21,000,000 people or about 8 % of the U.S. population. Almost everyone in America knows someone who has been killed, injured or traumatized by the events of Tuesday. I know that I do. Many people are calling for “revenge” or “vengeance” and comments such as “kill them all” have been circulated on the TV, radio, and email. A few more potentially benign comments have called for “justice.” This is only potentially benign since that term may be defined by people such as Bush and Colin Powell. Powell is an unrepentant participant in the Vietnam War, the terrorist contra war against Nicaragua, and the Gulf war, at each level becoming more responsible for the planning and execution of the policies.

Those affected, all of us, must do everything in our power to prevent a wider war and even greater atrocity, do everything possible to stop the genocide if it starts, and hold those responsible for their potential war crimes during and after the war. If there is a great war in 2001 and it is not catastrophic (a real possibility), the crimes of that war will be revisited upon the U.S. over the next generation. That is not some kind of religious prophecy or threat, it is merely a straightforward political analysis. If indeed it is Bin Laden, the world must not deal only with him as an individual criminal, but eliminate the conditions that create the injustices and war crimes that will inevitably lead to more of these types of attacks in the future. The phrase “No Justice, No Peace” is more than a slogan used in a march, it is an observable historical fact. It is time to end the horror. CP

Larry Mosqueda teaches at The Evergreen State College in Olympia, Washington

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Activism, Alternative History, American Terrorism, Current Events, Human Rights, New World Order, Politics and Government, Terrorism 2001, 9/11, Allende, American coup of Chile, American coup of Dominican Republic, American coup of Guatemala, American coup of Indonesia, american terrorism, Bill Clinton, CIA, Contra war in Nicaragua, False Flag operations, Iran, Larry Mosqueda, lebanon, Nixon, President George Bush, Twin Towers

A private little world for me… a private little world for you. The online journals and musings of singer-songwriter author and activist Ed Hale. The Transcendence Diaries have been posting regularly online since 2001. Comments are always welcomed. And so are YOU.

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