by cameron | Sep 16, 2009 | geopolitics, US politics
Do you really think America wasn’t involved in torture, secret prisons or wanton death and destruction before 9/11?
The record shows that they existed before. In fact, 9/11 was in many ways a REACTION to those things, not the cause of them. The USA has NEVER lived up to the virtues Temporal Flush mentions here. Read Zinn’s “People’s History”. The myth of America may survive in the minds of many Americans who don’t read the history of their own country, but outside if the US borders, many people know the other side of the story.
All 9/11 provided was justification to be more aggressive with programs that had been running for many decades in one form or another and continue today under the Obama administration.
There are two Americas – the mythical one that most Americans seem to believe is real, the country that are the good guys, the white knight, the protector of democracy and freedom – and then there is the real America, the one run by corporations and the wealthy elite, the one that, for the entire country’s history, has oppressed the poor and the weak in countries around the globe and at home. The one that stole land at the point of a gun, first from the Native Americans, then from the Mexicans, then from the Cubans, then from the Alaskans, then from the Hawaiins. The one that built its power and wealth on the back of the slave and segregation and imported Chinese labour. The one that did and does deal with the most despicable dictators around the globe to protect American corporate interests.
9/11 may have brought some of the other America to your attention, but it’s a mistake to think that it started then. It’s always been there. You just weren’t paying attention.
by cameron | Sep 2, 2009 | banksters, capitalism, geopolitics
I wonder how closely the names on this report map to the Bilderberg Group?
A recent analysis of the 2007 financial markets of 48 countries has revealed that the world’s finances are in the hands of just a few mutual funds, banks, and corporations. This is the first clear picture of the global concentration of financial power, and point out the worldwide financial system’s vulnerability as it stood on the brink of the current economic crisis.
A pair of physicists at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich did a physics-based analysis of the world economy as it looked in early 2007. Stefano Battiston and James Glattfelder extracted the information from the tangled yarn that links 24,877 stocks and 106,141 shareholding entities in 48 countries, revealing what they called the “backbone” of each country’s financial market. These backbones represented the owners of 80 percent of a country’s market capital, yet consisted of remarkably few shareholders.
The most pared-down backbones exist in Anglo-Saxon countries, including the U.S., Australia, and the U.K. Paradoxically; these same countries are considered by economists to have the most widely-held stocks in the world, with ownership of companies tending to be spread out among many investors. But while each American company may link to many owners, Glattfelder and Battiston’s analysis found that the owners varied little from stock to stock, meaning that comparatively few hands are holding the reins of the entire market.
via Research – ISNS.
by cameron | Oct 6, 2008 | Podcast
My guest on show #350 is American author (who now lives in Ireland) Richard J Moore, author of “Escaping The Matrix“. I was introduced to Richard’s work recently via an article he wrote about Russia, Georgia and South Ossetia.
Richard tells me that the kind of government we have in the USA, UK and Australia isn’t really democracy – and he suggests a way forward to creating the world’s first true participatory democracies.
Here’s a list of sites where you can read Richard’s writing and subscribe to his regular news alerts.
Richard’s “newslog” Google Group
http://cyberjournal.org
http://www.governourselves.org/
http://escapingthematrix.org/
http://www.wakingthephoenix.org/
If you want an independent media, you can support TPN by throwing me some cash to cover the bills or, if you’re tight on the cash front, by blogging or Twittering about the show or joining the G’Day World Facebook group. There is a list of things you can do to support the show here.
The G’Day World theme music:
Conquest
“Secrets of Life” (mp3)
from “End of Days”
(Dark Star Records)
More On This Album
by cameron | Aug 19, 2008 | geopolitics, US politics
I recently read this post by Richard Moore on the history between Russia and the West and I thought I should share it with you. It provides some interesting perspective on what’s happening over in Georgia at the moment. According to Moore, Georgie is just the latest in a long line of pawns being moved by the West to provide an excuse to ramp up another Cold War.
Here’s an excerpt:
The Cold War, an invention of the West, embodied two primary objectives. First and foremost, it provided an excuse for interventions all over the globe on the part of the US – ostensibly ‘protecting the free world from Communism’ – while in fact exploiting the hell out of what were deemed to be ‘underdeveloped’ nations. Secondarily, the Cold War amounted to a long-term attempt to destabilize the Soviet Union, which finally succeeded in 1990. The Cold War was perhaps the most successful of the historical series of attacks on Russia.
Russia, in concert with China, is beginning to eclipse the US-EU Axis in many areas, including manufacturing, control over energy supplies, productive economic activity, and monetary reserves. Only in military capability does the US continue to hold a #1 rating, and the actual military advantage slips day by day away from the Pentagon, as Russia and China develop their ‘asymmetric’ counter-measures.
This is the context in which US-NATO trained, armed, and encouraged Georgia to launch its brutal and illegal attack on South Ossetia, intentionally killing Russian citizens and peace-keepers, and intentionally targeting civilians generally. Nearly all of the casualties in the overall conflict were inflicted by Georgian forces at the outset of hostilities. The US and UK media refer to the total number of casualties, and imply that Russia is to blame for them. Such is the nature of our so-called ‘free press’.
Read the full post by Richard Moore.
It’s interesting to just quickly run your eyes over the list of headlines about Georgia in Google News to see how the Western press is depicting the events.
“Russians remain in Georgia”, TVNZ, New Zealand
“Deadline passes for Russian withdrawal from Georgia”, ABC Online, Australia
“US Says Russia Must Remove All Military Equipment From Georgia”, Voice of America
“Russia’s Might in Georgia Reflects Pattern, Rice Says”, Bloomberg
“Rice: NATO won’t let Russia succeed in Georgia”, San Diego Union Tribune
“Russia moves SS-21 missiles into Georgia: US defense official”, AFP
“US says Russia should withdraw from Georgia”, Reuters
“Despite Cease-Fire, Russia Stays In Georgia”, NPR
Any guesses who the bad guy is here?
Alternative headlines might read:
“Russia Continues To Defend South Ossetia Against Georgian Attacks”
But good luck finding that one.
