WordWarrior: Yoani Sánchez - Blogger, mercenary or traitor?

Friday, February 22, 2013

Yoani Sánchez - Blogger, mercenary or traitor?

Yoani Sánchez

Timothy Bancroft-Hinchey

And so the international tournée of the Cuban "blogger" Yoani Sánchez gets under way. Who? The 37-year-old who has made hundreds of thousands of dollars spreading bad will and muck-raking against her own Government in Cuba and who has said absolutely nothing about its very positive humanitarian record.

Yoani Sánchez claims that she represents the Cuban people, yet earns from her foreign mentors the equivalent of 1,488 years of the Cuban mínimum salary. It's a bit like the village Priest claiming he should be the Pope, or the head of the local "I saw the Virgin Mary's Spaceship, twice" society claiming to be the President.

Let us be honest. Yoani Sánchez created her "blog" Generación Y in 2007 and has since then sent thousands of communications presenting a negative image of Cuba to her friends outside the country, who then post her comments onto the blogsite. The idea is to humiliate her country and tarnish its image in the international community.

No mention of the fact that the "system" in her country, Cuba, allowed her father enough social mobility to start his life as a labourer on the State railroad system and then move on to be an engineer. No mention of Cuba's healthcare programme overseas, in which Cuban medical expertise and medical facilities are made available for free in developing countries. No mention of Cuba's exportation of its education system and literacy programmes which have taught thousands upon thousands of people to read in tens of languages around the world.

No mention of Cuba's democratic system, which, were she to bother to explain it properly, would appear not to be anti-democratic but rather, the very paragon of democracy.

Brazilians threw fake dollars at Yoani

But why should Yoani Sánchez bother explaining anything as it is, when she can make a pretty penny writing sentences such as this: "Writing a travel log is as difficult as studying for a math test in a nightclub" in an article entitled Brazil... Ah! Brazil? But...but...but if Cuba is so oppressive, why did the authorities allow her to pass unhindered from José Marti airport, Havana, on her world tournée, knowing full well what she intended to do?

And let's be honest here. In the USA, she would have been imprisoned for doing the same thing, for 20 years (instigating the overthrow of the Government or established order), or 10 years (proffering declarations affecting the relationship of the country with others) or 3 years (maintaining correspondence with foreigners with the intention to influence regarding a conflict or controversy with the USA). In Italy her activities would have seen her incarcerated for between 3 and 10 years, in Spain, between 4 and 15.

So how can this Yoani Sánchez, who claims the Cubans are repressed but manages to go globe-trotting with income far and above higher than any average mortal, who claims that the Cuban people don't have access to the Internet but manages to make hundreds of thousands of dollars by slagging off her country, be taken seriously?

Maybe she should go back to the nightclub?

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The New Yorker Stresses Cuba Medical Cooperation against Ebola

Washington—An article published on the US publication The New Yorker said that Cuba is the country with the first-level response in the world before the international crisis that have appeared over the past years.

Entitled Cuba´s Ebola Diplomacy, the article signed by journalist Jon Lee Anderson stresses the significant contribution by Cuba to the fight against Ebola, even over developed countries like the United States, the U.K. and China.

“All of these countries are following the lead of Cuba,” reads the article and adds that the island “ has long been known for its roving teams of medical doctors and nurses. Indeed, Cuba, an island nation of eleven million people, with eighty-three thousand trained doctors—one of the highest proportions of doctors in the world.”

Anderson also said that when Cuban authorities requested volunteers to fight Ebola in Western Africa, over 15 thousand professionals offered to go, including intensive care doctors and nurses. He recalled that Cuba sent hundreds of doctors to Pakistan in the aftermath of the 2005 quake that hit that nation as well as to Haiti following a devastating earthquake in 2010.

“There are an estimated fifty thousand Cuban doctors working in slums and rural areas in as many as thirty other developing nations around the world,” the journalist noted and also referred to the hundreds of thousands students from Africa, Asia, Latin America and the United States who are taking medical courses at Havana’s Latin American School of Medicine (ELAM)

And as to Cuba’s assistance to Africa now, Anderson says that “ Cuba’s outsize gesture in West Africa has not gone unnoticed, and may pave the way for the start of some Ebola diplomacy between Havana and Washington.”

He also recalled that on October 19th, Secretary of State John Kerry named Cuba as a nation that had made an “impressive” effort in the anti-Ebola campaign and that upon Returning from a fact-finding tour of the Ebola-struck countries, the U.N. Ambassador Samantha Power also pointedly praised the Cuban mission.

“The Ebola diplomacy follows a friendly handshake that Raul Castro and President Obama exchanged at Nelson Mandela’s funeral in South Africa, last December, and has added to anticipation that the Obama Administration may seek to finally lift the remaining restrictions in the United States’ trade embargo against Cuba.”

You can read The New Yorker article at: http://www.newyorker.com/news/daily-comment/cubas-ebola-diplomacy

Cuba-US Religious Leaders Advocate to Normalize Relations

HAVANA, Cuba, Nov 5 (acn) Cuban and US religious leaders expressed their commitment to continue working for the normalization of relations between the two countries, and the return home of three Cuban antiterrorist fighters imprisoned in US jails.

About to wrap up its visit to the island, the delegation headed by the Rev. John McCullough, president and executive director of Church World Service (CWS), announced the release of a joint statement with the Council of Churches of Cuba (CCC).

The joint call urges, too, for the finding of a solution to the case of Alan Gross, a US citizen arrested, tried and sentenced in Cuba to 15 years in prison for subversive activities, on which there is already a proposal by Cuba to have a prisoners swap.

Known is the opposition of McCullough to the illegal, irrational and genocidal blockade of the US government against the Caribbean nation, a position shared by his fellow travelers, Reverend Gradye Parsons, president of the Presbyterian Church in the United States, and Rabbi Schnitzer Elhanam, executive director of the Jewish Mission to Cuba.

They also defend the right of their citizens to travel freely to the island and, in the case of McCullough; he was one of the promoters of the letter sent to President Barack Obama by American religious leaders to remove Cuba from the list of state sponsors of terrorism.

The President of CWS also inaugurated the conference of Solidarity with the Five in Washington DC in the last two years and recently visited the Hero of the Republic of Cuba, Antonio Guerrero in Marianna federal prison in the state of Florida, where he is serving an unjust sentence.

Cuba Launches Portfolio of Medical Products and Services

Havana—The marketing agency of Cuban Medical Services launched its portfolio of products at the 32nd International Trade Fair, underway in Havana.

The portfolio is in tune with the clients’ demands and mirrors the strengths and particularities of the Cuban health system, with competitive programs in comparison to other services being offered at other markets, said doctor Yilian Jimenez, who heads the Cuban Medical Services marketing agency.

The entity, which was set up to foster cooperation relations between Cuba and the world, counts on a 54-hospital network where professionals implement modern and early diagnostic techniques, as well as 150 therapeutic procedures with a 95 percent effectiveness, said the doctor.

According to Jimenez, over 35 agencies from 101 countries, including Canada, Russia, China, Colombia, Japan, Angola and Costa Rica are currently requesting services to solve local health problems.

Cuban Medical Services offer treatment in 16 specialties or medical programs of high demand, including hemodialysis, stem-cell therapy, comprehensive attention of diabetic patients, cardiovascular disease treatment, and other programs on different health conditions.

The portfolio offers alliances with the tourist sector and its companies, including medical services and health services at airports and other terminals, as well as optical, pharmaceutical and natural medicine products.

Also on the portfolio is the hiring of personnel, advice, human capital training, and other programs like services for scientific forums.

The Cuban agency has operations in over 40 countries, while over 50 thousand 700 health professionals from the island are working in 66 nations.

Italy is Willing to Speed up Dialogue Between EU and Cuba

HAVANA, Cuba, Nov 5 (acn) Carlo Calenda, Deputy Minister for Economic Development of Italy, pledged today in this capital his country will help the speeding up of the reaching of a cooperation agreement between Cuba and the European Union, an organization of which his country holds the rotating presidency.

The regional bloc and the Caribbean nation are currently holding talks to normalize relations, a process initiated in June 2008, although more than 10 member countries have signed bilateral agreements with Cuba.

While inaugurating the Italian pavilion at the XXXII International Trade Fair of Havana, Calenda stressed that achieving this understanding is fundamental element to both sides at the political and economic level.

In the presence of senior officials of the Ministry of Foreign Trade and Foreign Investment (MINCEX) of Cuba, the deputy minister said that in mid-2015 he will visit Havana again, accompanied by representatives of large banks and companies in various sectors.

He announced further that shortly Italy will open an office in this city aimed at facilitating the entry of Italian companies in this Caribbean market and identifying new business opportunities.

Italy is a major partner of Cuba in areas such as agribusiness, construction materials and automatic; however there are many more potential that can be exploited by businessmen, Calenda considered.

According to Ileana Nunez, deputy minister of MINCEX, Italy ranks second among nations with the highest number of branches in the Caribbean country, and remains among its top 10 trading partners.

She said that both countries have identified new opportunities to increase trade, which will require updating the current credit and financial mechanisms.

Cuba and Uruguay Strengthen Relations

Havana, Nov 4—The foreign ministers of Cuba and Uruguay, Bruno Rodriguez and Luis Almagro, agreed to further strengthen cooperation relations between their nations.

Upon welcoming the Uruguayan government official at the Foreign Ministry,

Rodriguez said bilateral links are marked by important coincidence in international issues. He also thanked Uruguay for its stance against the US blockade of Cuba and he went on to ratify his government willingness to keep boosting joint efforts for regional integration.

Meanwhile, the Uruguayan minister stressed Cuba´s role in the international fight on Ebola epidemic, which is now affecting several western African nations, where over 250 Cuban medical specialists are offering their services.

Minister Almagro also thanked Cuba for its support in fields like health, which he described as an assistance that has filled a gap that Uruguayan society has not yet been able to fill.

Canadian Flight Opens Winter Season for Eastern Cuban Tourism

SANTIAGO DE CUBA, Cuba, Nov 6 (acn) The arrival of a Sunwing flight from Toronto, Ontario, marked the beginning of the winter season for tourism in the eastern Cuban province of Santiago de Cuba.

The vacationers were met at the Antonio Maceo International Airport by the Son Cristal Quintet, a band belonging to the Turarte Agency, which enlightened their welcome with Cuban traditional songs.

This first flight brought 86 travelers, including some that come often to Eastern Cuba looking for higher temperatures, and friendlier people, as they referred. They would stay at the Hotel Brisas Sierra Mar-Los Galleons complex in the mountainous municipality of Guama, and the Club Amigo Carisol in Baconao Park.

Sunwing will keep this flight every Wednesday till April 2015, and from next week another direct flight will arrive from Montreal with the same frequency.

The Globalization of War: The "Military Roadmap" to World War III

by Michel Chossudovsky and Finian Cunningham

INTRODUCTION

The Pentagon’s global military design is one of world conquest.

The military deployment of US-NATO forces is occurring in several regions of the world simultaneously.

The concept of the “Long War” has characterized US military doctrine since the end of World War II. The broader objective of global military dominance in support of an imperial project was first formulated under the Truman administration in the late 1940s at the outset of the Cold War.

In September 1990, some five weeks after Saddam Hussein’s Iraq invaded Kuwait, US President and Commander in Chief George Herbert Walker Bush delivered a historical address to a joint session of the US Congress and the Senate in which he proclaimed a New World Order emerging from the rubble of the Berlin Wall and the demise of the Soviet Union.

Bush Senior had envisaged a world of "peaceful international co-operation", one which was no longer locked into the confrontation between competing super powers, under the shadow of the doctrine of "Mutually Assured Destruction" (MAD) which had characterized the Cold War era.

Bush declared emphatically at the outset of what became known as "the post-Cold War era" that:

“a new partnership of nations has begun, and we stand today at a unique and extraordinary moment. The crisis in the Persian Gulf, as grave as it is, also offers a rare opportunity to move toward an historic period of cooperation. Out of these troubled times… a new world order can emerge: A new era freer from the threat of terror, stronger in the pursuit of justice and more secure in the quest for peace. An era in which the nations of the world, east and west, north and south, can prosper and live in harmony.”

Of course, speeches by American presidents are often occasions for cynical platitudes and contradictions that should not be taken at face value. After all, President Bush was holding forth on international law and justice only months after his country had invaded Panama in December 1989 causing the deaths of several thousand citizens – committing crimes comparable to what Saddam Hussein would be accused of and supposedly held to account for. Also in 1991, the US and its NATO allies went on to unleash, under a “humanitarian” mantle, a protracted war against Yugoslavia, leading to the destruction, fragmentation and impoverishment of an entire country.

Nevertheless, it is instructive to use Bush Senior’s slanted vision of a “New World Order” as a reference point for how dramatically the world has changed in the intervening 20 years of the so-called post-Cold War era, and in particular how unilaterally degenerate the contemporary international conduct of the US has become under the Clinton, G. W. Bush Junior and Obama administrations.

Bush Senior's "promise" of world peace has opened up, in the wake of the Cold War, an age of continuous warfare accompanied by a process of economic dislocation, social devastation and environmental degradation.

In a bitter irony, this concept of peaceful international co-operation and partnership was used as a pretext to unleash The Gulf War, which consisted in "defending the sovereignty" of Kuwait and “upholding international law” following the Iraqi 1990 invasion.

Global Warfare

We are dealing with a global military agenda, namely “Global Warfare”. Far from a world of peaceful cooperation, we are living in a dystopian world of permanent wars – wars that are being waged in flagrant contravention of international law and against public opinion and interest.

Far from a “new era more secure in the quest for peace” we may see a world more akin to George Orwell’s 1984, dominated by perpetual conflict, insecurity, authoritarian surveillance, doublethink and public mind control.

A problem for many citizens is that “doublethink and mind control” have become so deeply embedded and disseminated by the mass media, including the so-called quality free press, such as The New York Times and The Guardian.

The Post 9/11 Era: America's Doctrine of Pre-emptive Warfare

Allegedly sponsored by Al Qaeda, the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon played a central role in molding public opinion. One of the main objectives of war propaganda is to "fabricate an enemy". The "outside enemy" personified by Osama bin Laden is "threatening America".

Pre-emptive war directed against "Islamic terrorists" is required to defend the Homeland. Realities are turned upside down: America is under attack.

In the wake of 9/11, the creation of this "outside enemy" served to obfuscate the real economic and strategic objectives behind the American-led wars in the Middle East and Central Asia. Waged on the grounds of self-defense, the pre-emptive war is upheld as a "just war" with a humanitarian mandate.

From the outset of the Soviet-Afghan war in the early 1980s, the US intelligence apparatus has supported the formation of the "Islamic brigades". Propaganda purports to erase the history of Al Qaeda, drown the truth and "kill the evidence" on how this "outside enemy" was fabricated and transformed into "Enemy Number One".

The US intelligence apparatus has created it own terrorist organizations. And at the same time, it creates its own terrorist warnings concerning the terrorist organizations which it has itself created. Meanwhile, a cohesive multibillion dollar counterterrorism program "to go after" these terrorist organizations has been put in place.

Instead of “war” or “state terrorism”, we are told of “humanitarian intervention” directed against "terrorists".

Instead of “offence”, we are told of “defense” or “protection”.

Instead of “mass murder” we are told of “collateral damage”.

A good versus evil dichotomy prevails. The perpetrators of war are presented as the victims. Public opinion is misled: “We must fight against evil in all its forms as a means to preserving the Western way of life.”

Breaking the "Big Lie" which presents war as a humanitarian undertaking, means breaking a criminal project of global destruction, in which the quest for profit is the overriding force. This profit-driven military agenda destroys human values and transforms people into unconscious zombies.

Spawning Militarism: "War is Normal"

In truth, as this new Interactive Reader from Global Research will demonstrate, we are living in an era hallmarked by “The Globalization of War” conducted by the very states that proclaim to be defenders of democratic rights and international law.

The chief protagonist of this globalized war is the United States of America. The US, along with its allies in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), Britain, France, Canada and Germany among others, as well as an array of proxies – such as the Persian Gulf Arab states – is now emboldened to strike militarily in any region of the world.

It should be noted that on a tour of the Asia-Pacific region in November 2011, US President Barack Obama’s rhetoric was laden with bellicose statements towards China, citing the latter as a military threat to the hemisphere that the United States was ready to confront. Obama’s aggressive rhetoric towards Beijing should have been widely seen as unprecedented and unacceptable. But from a reading of the Western mainstream media, the warmongering by the US president was somehow made into normal, reasonable discourse.

This spawning militarism is rationalized with a variety of seemingly palatable pretexts: securing the world against "Islamic terrorism", as in Afghanistan; securing the world against "weapons of mass destruction", as in Saddam’s Iraq and currently Iran; defending human rights, as in Libya; humanitarian intervention, as in Somalia; and protecting small nations, as in confronting China on behalf of Southeast Asian states, or constructing a Ballistic Missile Defense system along the Eastern European borders of Russia. And again, the Western mainstream media plays a huge role in rationalizing the irrational, normalizing the abnormal, justifying the unjustifiable – akin to the Ministry of Truth in Orwell’s 1984.

We may accept these pretexts at face value and attempt to “normalize” a world of seemingly chaotic conflicts, as the Western mainstream media would have us. Or we can choose to see the world as it really is, that is, one where such wars and war-making are correctly understood as abominations of international law and human relations.

It is our objective in this Interactive Reader to help citizens free themselves from the indoctrinated doublethink of “wars as normal”. In a global survey, we will show that the US and its allies are fulfilling an agenda of “full spectrum dominance” in which no nation deemed to be obstructing that agenda for domination by the US and its allies is tolerated, and is in fact made a target for war.

The dynamic for globalized war has deep historical roots in the imperialism of capitalist governments. Rivalry for the raw materials of capitalist economies and geopolitical control were at the root of World Wars I and II - See the essays by Jacques Pauwels on the role of corporate America in supporting both Britain and Nazi Germany. The same impetus lay behind countless invasions and proxy wars in Latin America, Asia and Africa by the US since World War II under the guise of “defending the free world from the Evil Soviet empire”.

But with the collapse of the Soviet Union as a countervailing power, the US and its allies have become uninhibited over the past two decades to “go it alone” to assert imperial dominance. This dynamic has only been reinforced by the economic exhaustion of the capitalist powers since the onset of the financial crisis of 2008. Indeed, the rise of militarism can be seen as a compensatory corollary of their economic demise – a demise that is structural and deeply protracted beyond anything that may be deemed as the usual “end of business cycle”. We are perhaps witnessing an historic collapse in the capitalist system far greater in scope than the Great Depression. And with that, disturbingly, the rise of militarism takes on a much greater significance.

Crucial to the global control of resources are the raw materials of energy: oil and gas. Whether it is wars in Iraq, Afghanistan or Libya, or confrontation with Iran, China, Russia and Venezuela, the fundamental point of contention is control over this lifeblood of the capitalist economy. All other espoused pretexts are mere window dressing, regardless of what the mainstream media would have us believe.

World War III Scenario

The launching of an outright war using nuclear warheads against Iran – which has the world’s third largest known reserves of oil behind Saudi Arabia and Iraq – has been on the drawing board of the Pentagon since 2005.

If such a war were to be launched, the entire Middle East/Central Asia region would be drawn into a conflagration. Humanity would be precipitated into a World War III scenario.

Incredibly, the very real danger of World War III is not front-page news. The mainstream media has excluded in-depth analysis and debate on the implications of these war plans. The onslaught of World War III, were it to be carried out, would be casually described as a “no-fly zone”, an operation under NATO’s “Responsibility to Protect” (R2P) with minimal “collateral damage” or as “surgical” punitive bombings against specific military targets, all of which purport to support “global security” as well as “democracy” and human rights in the targeted country.

Public opinion is largely unaware of the grave implications of these war plans, which contemplate the use of nuclear weapons, ironically in retaliation to Iran's non-existent nuclear weapons program. Moreover, 21st Century military technology combines an array of sophisticated weapons systems whose destructive power would overshadow the nuclear holocausts of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Lest we forget, the United States is the only country to have used nuclear weapons against civilians.

Militarization at the global level is instrumented through the US military’s Unified Command structure: the entire planet is divided up into geographic Combatant Commands under the control of the Pentagon. According to former NATO Commander General Wesley Clark, the Pentagon’s military road-map consists of a sequence of war theaters: “[The] five-year campaign plan [includes]... a total of seven countries, beginning with Iraq, then Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Iran, Somalia and Sudan.” Like a cancer, the US war unleashed in 2003 on Iraq is mutating into a global disease.

While The New York Times and other mainstream media outlets hailed 15 December 2011 as marking the “official” end of the nearly nine-year US war in Iraq, in reality that devastated country will remain an American war theater for the foreseeable future. Pentagon military advisers and contractors will continue to reside there and the people of Iraq will for generations be left with a legacy of US-imposed conflict and barbarity. The Pentagon’s “shock and awe” campaign in Iraq may have subsided, but its repercussions and criminal precedents are still very much extant, not only in Iraq but in the wider region and, increasingly, globally.

The 2000 Project for the New American Century (PNAC), which was the backbone of the NeoCon's agenda, was predicated on “waging a war without borders”. The PNAC's declared objectives were to “fight and decisively win multiple, simultaneous major theater wars” in different regions of the world as well as perform the so-called military “constabulary” duties “associated with shaping the security environment in critical regions”. Global constabulary implies a worldwide process of military policing and interventionism, including covert operations and “regime change”.

This diabolical military project formulated by the NeoCons was adopted and implemented from the very outset of the Obama administration. With a new team of military and foreign policy advisers, Obama has been far more effective in fostering military escalation than his White House predecessor, George Bush Junior, who has recently been condemned by the Kuala Lumpur War Crimes Tribunal for “Crimes against the Peace”.

This continuum of the military agenda testifies to the fact that the two governing parties in the US, Democrat and Republican, are but two sides of a centrally planned military-industrial complex that is impregnable to the opinions, desires and interests of the American electorate.

Military Escalation and Preview of this Book

Contrary to the myth of “the good war”, we show in this Interactive Reader that the US entry into World War II was a deliberate strategy for self-serving imperialist gains. While the men and women who fought that war may have had moral convictions, the planners in Washington were operating on calculations of geopolitical control that had little to do with morals or legal principles – see the essays by Jacques Pauwels. The dropping of atomic bombs on Japan by the US in August 1945, obliterating hundreds of thousands of civilians, was an act of heinous barbarity that reflected the callousness of America's imperial design. The nuclear holocaust also set the nefarious parameters of the subsequent Cold War that gripped the world for nearly five decades following World War II. Essays by Brian Willson, Alfred McCoy and Michel Chossudovsky illustrate how the Pentagon’s genocidal wars in Asia were a continuation of America’s imperialist design – albeit under the cover of the Cold War against the Soviet Union.

The fall of the Soviet Union may have brought an end to the Cold War, but soon the US would find new pretexts for waging war on the world and asserting hegemony on behalf of its capitalist allies. These new pretexts included “upholding international law” as in the First Gulf War against Iraq that Bush Senior embarked on in 1990, presaging the Second Gulf War that Bush Junior would reprise in 2003. And the US planners innovated the “humanitarian” pretext for the invasion of Somalia in 1991 and NATO’s war on Yugoslavia – see the essay by Sean Gervasi among others. In many ways, the “humanitarian war” in Yugoslavia served as the prototype for NATO’s 2011 military attack on Libya and what appears to be an imminent onslaught against Syria – see essays by Rick Rozoff and Mahdi Darius Nazemroaya.

To the Pentagon’s silo of propaganda justifying “wars without borders” we have the additional pretexts of the “global war on terrorism” and “pre-emptive strikes against weapons of mass destruction”. Fittingly, as Washington’s wars multiply, so too it seems have the phony pretexts for these wars, as the essays on Iraq and Afghanistan by Felicity Arbuthnot and Jack Smith reveal.

Permanent Belligerence: The Globalization of War

In Part VII, which also serves as the title of this Online Interactive E-Reader, The Globalization of War, we show how American-led imperialism has evolved from bloody bouts of episodic militarism over several decades to the present day state of permanent belligerence, with wars or war-making stretching from North and East Africa into the Middle East and Central Asia and beyond to Eurasia (Russia), the Far East (China) and Arctic (Russia again) – See the essays by James Petras, Rick Rozoff, Peter Dale Scott, F. William Engdahl, Finian Cunningham, the interview with Fidel Castro, Michel Chossudovsky and Jules Dufour.

Of most immediate concern are the ongoing American-led war plans within the broader Middle East/Central Asian region involving coordinated actions against Iran, Syria and Pakistan – see essays by Michel Chossudovsky, Tom Burghardt, Rick Rozoff and Mahdi Nazemroaya.

Were these war plans to be carried out, this would lead to an extended regional war theater. The three existing and distinct war theaters (Iraq, Afghanistan and Palestine) would merge into a broad regional war extending from the Lebanese-Syrian East Mediterranean coastline to the Afghanistan-Pakistan border with Western China. Israel, Lebanon and Turkey would be engulfed in a conflict that would herald World War III.

Building an Effective Antiwar Movement

Meanwhile, the antiwar movement is in crisis: civil society organizations are misinformed, manipulated or co-opted. A large segment of “progressive” opinion is supportive of NATO’s R2P “humanitarian” mandate to the extent that these war plans are being carried out with the “rubber stamp” of civil society.

There is an urgent need to rebuild the antiwar movement on entirely new premises.

The holding of mass demonstrations and antiwar protests is not enough. What is required is the development of a broad and well-organized grassroots antiwar network, across the land, nationally and internationally, which challenges the structures of power and authority. People must mobilize not only against the military agenda – the authority of the state and its officials must also be challenged.

Challenging and defeating the US/NATO global war agenda is profoundly predicated on the mass of people in Western countries asserting democratic governance and the genuine “rule of the people”. It will involve the mass of people breaking out of the two-party charade that hitherto passes for “democracy” – not only in the US but also in other Western states – to form new political organizations that truly represent the needs and interests of the majority of people. War-making, as with servile abeyance to corporate and financial elites, is endemic to the dominant political parties. It must be realized that voting for these same parties has become futile as a means to effect democratic change.

One practical way forward is for citizens to empower themselves legally. It should be understood that whatever its justification, war is a “Crime against the Peace” under Nuremberg. George Walker Bush and former British Prime Minister Anthony L. Blair have been condemned by the Kuala Lumpur War Crimes Tribunal for waging a criminal war of aggression against Iraq. They are war criminals and citizens' initiatives that are growing across the world for the arraignment of Bush and Blair are one practical step towards mobilizing a popular challenge to the war system.

War crimes, however, are not limited to the former US president and British prime minister. There are "New War Criminals on the Block". They include the current president of the United States, Barack Obama, among others. The acting heads of state and heads of government who support US-NATO-Israel wars of aggression are also war criminals under international law. This proposition, which consists in unseating the war criminals in high office, is central to the waging of an effective antiwar movement.

It is also our intention to show citizens that the root cause of war lies in the prevailing, but failing, global capitalist economic system – the very system that is not only destroying lives in foreign countries but which is destroying the material and moral foundations of Western society.

We hope that this Interactive Reader, The Globalisation of War, will empower citizens to mount an all-encompassing social movement against this diabolical military agenda and for the establishment of real democracy.

Michel Chossudovsky and Finian Cunningham, December 2011

Global Research

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Friday, February 22, 2013

Yoani Sánchez - Blogger, mercenary or traitor?

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