U.S. Using Anti-Terror War to Gain World Oil Reserves — Soviet Intelligence Chief

On the pretext of fighting international terrorism the United States is trying to establish control over the world’s richest oil reserves, Leonid Shebarshin, ex-chief of the Soviet Foreign Intelligence Service, who heads the Russian National Economic Security Service consulting company, said in an interview for the Vremya Novostei newspaper.

Using the anti-terrorist cause as a cover the United States has occupied Afghanistan, Iraq and will soon move to impose their “democratic order” on the Greater Middle East, Shebarshin said. “The U.S. has usurped the right to attack any part of the globe on the pretext of fighting the terrorist threat,” Shebarshin said.

Referring to his meeting with an unnamed al-Qaeda expert at the Rand Corporation, a nonprofit research organization in the U.S., Shebarshin said: “We have agreed that [al-Qaeda] is not a group but a notion.”

“The fight against that all-mighty ubiquitous myth deliberately linked to Islam is of great advantage for the Americans as it targets the oil-rich Muslim regions,” Shebarshin emphasized.

With military bases in Afghanistan, Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan, Shebarshin said, the United States has already established control over the Caspian region — one of the world’s largest oil reservoirs.
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it has ALL to do with oil and NOTHING to do with democracy and "terrorists" and the "war on terror" (which i call the war OF terror").

zbigniew brzezinski's "The Grand Chessboard" explains U.S. foreign policy very well.
the one who controls the Caspian Sea Oil Basin controls Eurasia, and thus, the rest of the world.

U.S. Quits Agreement on Access to Diplomats

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The United States has withdrawn from an international agreement that guarantees jailed foreigners the right to talk to consular officers, a protocol that has been used by opponents of capital punishment, The Washington Post reported on Thursday.
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...the land of the "free"...HA! USA is becoming more and more the land of SLAVES!

Inflation and Unemployment Down in Venezuela

Caracas, Venezuela, March 1, 2005— Inflation fell from1.9% in January, 2005 to .2% in February, 2005 reaching, according to a report released by the Central Bank of Venezuela (BCV), its lowest level in seventeen years. Unemployment also decreased 3.6% between January, 2004 when 19.1% of population was unemployed and January, 2005, when 15.5% of the population was registered as unemployed.

The deceleration of the inflation index was attributed to a lower price variation of products subject to supply and demand, from 2.7% in January to negative .3% in February, and to a lower price variation of government regulated products, that went from 1.1% in January to .7% in February. According to the Central Bank, "the contraction of non-controlled prices is due to a fall of 3.5% in food prices." In particular, the Central Bank cited a drop in prices of vegetables, red meat, chicken, pork, pasteurized milk, and cheese.

The Central Bank reported that inflation between February 2004 and February 2005 was 16.9%, significantly lower than the figure registered between February 2003 and February 2004 of 21.9%.

The Minister of Planning and Development, Jorge Giordani, announced in a TV program that he expects inflation to wind up in single digits by the end of 2005. "We have figures that reveal the existence of a sustained economic growth in Venezuela," stated Giordani, referring to the 17.3% growth in the gross domestic product in 2004. Government officials are estimating that the economy will grow by 5% in 2005.

According to figures released by the Venezuelan National Institute of Statistics, 15.5% of the population, or approximately 1.8 million Venezuelans were registered as unemployed for the month of January, 2005. In comparison with figures for the corresponding month of the previous year, unemployment dropped 3.6%, from 19.1% to 15.5%. The government predicts that unemployment will further drop over the course of the upcoming year as the economy to continues to grow.
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and who says left wing economics does not work????

and what is all the talk in the U.S. of Venezuela being a "potentially unstable country in 2005" about? The U.S. will very likely attempt to assasinate Chavez this year.

Here in Germany, according to latest results, we have an unemployment rate of 12,6%.
http://www.vwd.de/vwd/news.htm?id=23523784&navi=home&sektion=topthemen
according to some experts the number of unemployed will continue to increase.

and here in the EU, we have a very neo-liberal free market economic system (though not as extreme as in the U.S.)

Venezuela and Uruguay Sign Strategic Cooperation Agreements

After Venezuela, Chile, Argentina, and Brazil, Uruguay becomes the fifth left-leaning state in South America.

What Chile and Brazil still need to do is to give up their orthodox free market economics, and the U.S. hegemony in their traditional backyard will decicively crumble.

A rosy future for the U.S. eh? (Ain't that a shame!!)

:-)

peace, love

Maximum pain is aim of new US weapon

The US military is funding development of a weapon that delivers a bout of excruciating pain from up to 2 kilometres away. Intended for use against rioters, it is meant to leave victims unharmed. But pain researchers are furious that work aimed at controlling pain has been used to develop a weapon. And they fear that the technology will be used for torture.
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only crazy police state fascists need such weapons...

Pharisee Nation

good article on faithless USA...

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A Culture of Pharisees

We have become a culture of Pharisees. Instead of practicing an authentic spirituality of compassion, nonviolence, love and peace, we as a collective people have become self-righteous, arrogant, powerful, murderous hypocrites who dominate and kill others in the name of God. The Pharisees supported the brutal Roman rulers and soldiers, and lived off the comforts of the empire by running an elaborate banking system which charged an exorbitant fee for ordinary people just to worship God in the Temple. Since they taught that God was present only in the Temple, they were able to control the entire population. If anyone opposed their power or violated their law, the Pharisees could kill them on the spot, even in the holy sanctuary.

Most North American Christians are now becoming more and more like these hypocritical Pharisees. We side with the rulers, the bankers, and the corporate millionaires and billionaires. We run the Pentagon, bless the bombing raids, support executions, make nuclear weapons and seek global domination for America as if that was what the nonviolent Jesus wants. And we dismiss anyone who disagrees with us.

We have become a mean, vicious people, what the bible calls “stiff-necked people.” And we do it all with the mistaken belief that we have the blessing of God.

In the past, empires persecuted religious groups and threatened them into passivity and silence. Now these so-called Christians run the American empire, and teach a subtle spirituality of empire to back up their power in the name of God. This spirituality of empire insists that violence saves us, might makes right, war is justified, bombing raids are blessed, nuclear weapons offer the only true security from terrorism, and the good news is not love for our enemies, but the elimination of them. The empire is working hard these days to tell the nation--and the churches--what is moral and immoral, sinful and holy. It denounces certain personal behavior as immoral, in order to distract us from the blatant immorality and mortal sin of the U.S. bombing raids which have left 100,000 Iraqis dead, or our ongoing development of thousands of weapons of mass destruction. Our Pharisee rulers would have us believe that our wars and our weapons are holy and blessed by God.

In the old days, the early Christians had big words for such behavior, such lies. They were called “blasphemous, idolatrous, heretical, hypocritical and sinful.” Such words and actions were denounced as the betrayal, denial and execution of Jesus all over again in the world’s poor. But the empire needs the church to bless and support its wars, or at least to remain passive and silent. As we Christians go along with the Bush administration and the American empire, we betray Jesus, renounce his teachings, and create a “Church of Christ without Christ,“ as Flannery O’Connor foresaw.

Relativity, LA Times Style

typical mainstream propaganda vs. reality...

basically (and especially) in the U.S. media, Palestinian lives are worthless to that of the Israelis...

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The headline proclaims: “Palestinian Suicide bomber Shatters Calm of late.” The lead sentence then goes on to state that this bomber “shattered a months-long period of relative calm...”

The fact is, however, that the truce and this “calm” were shattered long before this. The last suicide bombing against Israeli civilians was Nov. 1, 2004. It took three Israeli lives. Since that time, while Israelis have basked in “relative calm,” 170 Palestinian men, women, and children have been killed.

During this LA Times’ “relative calm,” another 379 Palestinian men, women, and children were injured and maimed. Anyone who has been to the West Bank or Gaza knows what this means: leg bones splintered, intestines torn open, teeth shattered.

Also, of course, during this “calm” over 8,000 Palestinians have been sitting in Israeli prison cells, routinely abused and grotesquely humiliated; over 300 of them children.

Terrorism in Israel

here's yet another excellent analysis by xymphora on the state of affairs in Israel...

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"On Sunday, Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon said there will be 'no diplomatic progress' in the Israeli-Palestinian peace process unless the Palestinian Authority takes 'vigorous action' against local terrorists. (Full story)

He said then that Friday's attack was believed to have been ordered by terrorists based in Syria, but that the Palestinian Authority was still obligated to take action.

'The immediate test for the Palestinian Authority will be in vigorous action against Islamic Jihad members,' he said."

In other words, the Syrians did it - so he, or his American stooges, can presumably retaliate against the Syrians - but the Israelis don't have to comply with the terms of the 'road map' until the Palestinians do something to stop it. Talk about having your falafel and eating it too. Remember, this was an attack which occurred in Tel Aviv! So no road map compliance for Israel until the Palestinians start guarding Tel Aviv discos against attacks by Syrian bombers. The attack occurred on Friday night, in the middle of the Jewish Sabbath, a time when 'real' Jews are presumably not going to discos. Three of the five people killed were members of an Israeli army unit serving in the West Bank, described as "the best of the best, Israel's elite", apparently some kind of covert assassination unit. Odd. Many of the most prominent bombings are very odd targets, and in areas which would not be likely to affect Israeli Jews. You really have to wonder why so many of the bombings are on bus routes frequented by Arabs and poor immigrant workers. In the McChina bombing the victims were mostly illegal immigrant workers, and "Most of the victims are believed to be foreign workers, not Israelis." An extremely strange target (as was the Taba Hilton). Another target, Mike's Place in Tel Aviv, is a bar frequented almost entirely by Americans, and the attack, by two British citizens (!) who conveniently associated with international peace activists, was thus used by the Israeli propagandists to attack the international peace movement. The Dolphinarium disco bombing victims were mostly Russian immigrants. I've got questions:

Why is there often no credible claiming of responsibility for terrorist attacks? The whole point of real terrorism is to achieve political goals by claiming responsibility for violence, and terrorism without the claiming of responsibility is senseless. Why would you waste precious resources and then keep quiet?

In a country hyper-sensitive to the dangers of terrorism, how do these terrorists of obvious Arab ethnicity carry massive loads of explosives attached to their bodies without being noticed?

Why do they fill the explosives with nails - an obvious cheap anti-personnel weapon - when the payloads are so huge they completely demolish automobiles across the street, and take all the sides and tops off buses? You don't need the extra weight of nails with that kind of payload.

Why do the worst attacks always occur when Sharon needs some cover for some atrocity he has committed or is about to commit?

It would be ridiculously simple to pay a Palestinian to walk across the street near an area frequented by non-Jews, and set off a remote-control car-bomb. The results produce a dead Palestinian 'suicide bomber', and more fuel for the Zionists to continue their state terrorism against the Palestinian people in their drive towards Greater Israel.

The Lebanese 'Orange Revolution'

Juan Cole puts the Lebanese 'Orange Revolution' into perspective:

". . . Al-Jazeerah is reporting that the Lebanese Opposition is now calling for the big demonstrations at Martyrs' Square to continue until all Syrian troops leave Lebanese soil.

You wonder what would happen if the Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza tried the same thing re: Ariel Sharon's military occupation that they face. They'd be crushed by the jackboot (with convenient allegations that they were a front for terrorism)."

The neocons have got a good thing going with the Ukrainian model of taking over countries by using manipulated calls for 'democracy' and 'freedom'. After all, who is going to argue with the establishment of democracy? Liberals have exactly the same intellectual problem with this form of propaganda as they have with radical religious fruitcakes hiding behind the concept of liberal tolerance in order to preach their anti-liberal hatred. The entire 'Orange' ruse is staged as a massive PR campaign, using both local and international mass media to create the illusion that all the people are united in a bottom-up plea for freedom. Of course, it is all an illusion. The removal of Syrian troops will just leave Lebanon open to occupation by Israeli troops, hardly an improvement for most of the population.

The complexity and sophistication of the campaign requires a considerable amount of planning by international PR experts. We are supposed to believe the call for removal of Syrian troops arose spontaneously on the assassination of Hariri, but the nature of the staged protests and synchronized media campaign proves that the planners knew in advance of the trigger event, the death of Hariri.
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excellent analysis.

here's the way it goes.

all these modern ("youth, student") revolutions (Yugoslavia, Ukraine Georgia, Lebanon, and soon to be Tajikistan) are all supported and funded by George Soros and Zbigniew Brzezinski. The Rose, Orange and Velvet Revolutions have already taken place in Ukraine Georgia, and Yugoslavia.

Ukraine - Pora - "It's Time"
Georgia - Kmara - "Open Resistance"
Yugoslavia - Otpor - "Resistance"

and a few day ago i read about the upcoming elections in Kyrgyztan, and how (Soros and co.) are expecting a "Lemon Revolution" codenamed Tulip there.

http://en.rian.ru/rian/index.cfm?prd_id=160&msg_id=5371773&startrow=1&date=2005-02-02&do_alert=0

U.S. Military Presence near Venezuela Raises Concerns

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Caracas, Venezuela. Mar 1 (Venezuelanalysis.com).- Venezuela’s Armed Forces are closely watching the unannounced presence of U.S. military vessels near the Caribbean island of Curacao, which was detected early Monday.
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"If you're not with us, you're against us..." - a famous white house idiot

To the U.S. government I can only say one thing. Their own arrogance will be their downfall, just as each ampire has crumbled through its own arrogance and ignorance.