Imperialism // Current TV

OCCUPY WALL STREET! - Why this Rebellion Deserves our Support

On September 17, 2011, Occupy Wall Street (OWS), a diffuse group of mostly white... more

worrg
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North Korea: Reality Check! - the reality of a country that has fought for its independence and won; surviving, like a little Sparta

Democratic Peoples Republic of Korea (DPRK) have constantly been the subject of... more

worrg
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Celebrate Columbus Day if you take pride in genocide

Presidential Proclamation -- Columbus Day, 2011
COLUMBUS DAY, 2011

BY THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

A PROCLAMATION

On October 12, 1492, Christopher Columbus and his crewmembers sighted land after an ambitious voyage across the Atlantic Ocean. The ideals that guided them to this land -- courage, determination, and a thirst for discovery -- have inspired countless Americans and led to some of our Nation's proudest accomplishments. Today, we renew our commitment to fostering the same spirit of innovation and exploration that will help future generations reach new horizons.

Ten weeks before his arrival in the Americas, Columbus and his crewmembers set sail from Spain in search of a westward route to Asia. Though their journey was daring, it did not yield the trade route they sought. Instead, it illuminated a continent then unknown to Europe, and established an unbreakable bond between two distant lands.

These explorers, and countless others that followed them, encountered indigenous peoples that had lived in the Western hemisphere for tens of thousands of years. On this day, we also remember the tragic hardships these communities endured. We honor their countless and ongoing contributions to our Nation, and we recommit to strengthening the tribal communities that continue to enrich the fabric of American life.

Columbus returned to the Americas three more times after his first historic voyage, and his journey has been followed by millions of immigrants, including our Nation's earliest settlers and Founders. Born in Genoa, Italy, Christopher Columbus was the first in a proud tradition of Italians to cross the Atlantic to our shores. Today, we recognize their indelible influence on our country and celebrate the remarkable ways Italian-Americans have shaped the American experience.

The excitement Christopher Columbus and his crewmembers experienced that October morning is felt every day by today's pioneers: entrepreneurs and inventors, researchers and engineers. On the anniversary of Christopher Columbus's voyage, we celebrate the pursuit of discovery as an essential element of the American character. Embracing this heritage and inspiring young people to set their own sails, our Nation will reach the shores of an ever brighter tomorrow.

In commemoration of Christopher Columbus's historic voyage 519 years ago, the Congress, by joint resolution of April 30, 1934, and modified in 1968 (36 U.S.C. 107), as amended, has requested the President proclaim the second Monday of October of each year as "Columbus Day."

NOW, THEREFORE, I, BARACK OBAMA, President of the United States of America, do hereby proclaim October 10, 2011, as Columbus Day. I call upon the people of the United States to observe this day with appropriate ceremonies and activities. I also direct that the flag of the United States be displayed on all public buildings on the appointed day in honor of our diverse history and all who have contributed to shaping this Nation.

IN WITNESS WHEREOF, I have hereunto set my hand this seventh day of October, in the year of our Lord two thousand eleven, and of the Independence of the United States of America the two hundred and thirty-sixth.

BARACK OBAMAPresidential Proclamation -- Columbus Day, 2011 COLUMBUS DAY, 2011 BY THE... more

JanforGore
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Our Commando War in 120 Countries: Uncovering the Military's Secret Operations In the Obama Era

American secret commandos are carrying out raids in 70 countries--just today. By the end of the year, the number will probably be close to 120.

Somewhere on this planet an American commando is carrying out a mission. Now, say that 70 times and you’re done... for the day. Without the knowledge of the American public, a secret force within the U.S. military is undertaking operations in a majority of the world’s countries. This new Pentagon power elite is waging a global war whose size and scope has never been revealed, until now.

After a U.S. Navy SEAL put a bullet in Osama bin Laden’s chest and another in his head, one of the most secretive black-ops units in the American military suddenly found its mission in the public spotlight. It was atypical. While it’s well known that U.S. Special Operations forces are deployed in the war zones of Afghanistan and Iraq, and it’s increasingly apparent that such units operate in murkier conflict zones like Yemen and Somalia, the full extent of their worldwide war has remained deeply in the shadows.

Last year, Karen DeYoung and Greg Jaffe of the Washington Post reported that U.S. Special Operations forces were deployed in 75 countries, up from 60 at the end of the Bush presidency. By the end of this year, U.S. Special Operations Command spokesman Colonel Tim Nye told me, that number will likely reach 120. “We do a lot of traveling -- a lot more than Afghanistan or Iraq,” he said recently. This global presence -- in about 60% of the world’s nations and far larger than previously acknowledged -- provides striking new evidence of a rising clandestine Pentagon power elite waging a secret war in all corners of the world.

The Rise of the Military’s Secret Military

Born of a failed 1980 raid to rescue American hostages in Iran, in which eight U.S. service members died, U.S. Special Operations Command (SOCOM) was established in 1987. Having spent the post-Vietnam years distrusted and starved for money by the regular military, special operations forces suddenly had a single home, a stable budget, and a four-star commander as their advocate. Since then, SOCOM has grown into a combined force of startling proportions. Made up of units from all the service branches, including the Army’s “Green Berets” and Rangers, Navy SEALs, Air Force Air Commandos, and Marine Corps Special Operations teams, in addition to specialized helicopter crews, boat teams, civil affairs personnel, para-rescuemen, and even battlefield air-traffic controllers and special operations weathermen, SOCOM carries out the United States’ most specialized and secret missions. These include assassinations, counterterrorist raids, long-range reconnaissance, intelligence analysis, foreign troop training, and weapons of mass destruction counter-proliferation operations.

One of its key components is the Joint Special Operations Command, or JSOC, a clandestine sub-command whose primary mission is tracking and killing suspected terrorists. Reporting to the president and acting under his authority, JSOC maintains a global hit list that includes American citizens. It has been operating an extra-legal “kill/capture” campaign that John Nagl, a past counterinsurgency adviser to four-star general and soon-to-be CIA Director David Petraeus, calls "an almost industrial-scale counterterrorism killing machine." This assassination program has been carried out by commando units like the Navy SEALs and the Army’s Delta Force as well as via drone strikes as part of covert wars in which the CIA is also involved in countries like Somalia, Pakistan, and Yemen. In addition, the command operates a network of secret prisons, perhaps as many as 20 black sites in Afghanistan alone, used for interrogating high-value targets.

Continue with Page 2 here:
http://www.alternet.org/story/151904/our_commando_war_in_120_countries%3A_uncovering_the_military%27s_secret_operations_in_the_obama_era/?page=2American secret commandos are carrying out raids in 70 countries--just today. By the... more

Schnookums
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Unification the Key to the End of Nationalism, Genocide, AIDS, Imperialism Racism Sexism, Nuclear Proliferation, and Nuclear War

Ian K. Judge-Lord 10/16/2004-4/16/07 “Any society that would give up... more

Judgian12365
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8 months ago
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#1 Whistleblower | Adbusters

How might history have changed had Wikileaks been around?

Mulcahey
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11 months ago
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4 comments

Ronald McDonald and Other Clowns

Libya’s Muammar Qaddafi announced the other day that the problems in Libya were... more

joeeddy
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11 months ago
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For Money, For Oil? Why Wars Really Happen

Many discussions of lies that launch wars quickly come around to the question... more

Schnookums
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11 months ago
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Sylvia Pankhurst film trailer

This is the trailer for the inspiring new feature length documentary Sylvia Pankhurst:... more

worldwrite
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12 months ago
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Haitian Activist Patrick Elie: "Haiti is Controlled by Foreign Governments and Foreign Interests"

Video of interview with former Haitian Minister of Security.

mollymew
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US empire could collapse at any time with more actions like these by Veterans for Peace!

On Thursday December 16th 2010, snow fell as 131 people were arrested in a Civil Disobedience at the White House protesting the continuing wars in Afghanistan, Pakistan and in Iraq. Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, Chris Hedges provides an extraordinary anti-war soliloquy which is inter-cut with interview of Veterans of the recent wars and with Daniel Ellsberg, who leaked the top secret Pentagon Papers. This action was organized by the Veterans Peace http://www.veteransforpeace.org/ Stop These Wars http://www.stopthesewars.org/ Read an interview with Chris Hedges just after the speech on the RawStory. And another Interview on Democracy Now where he discusses his most recent book, "Death of the Liberal Class" http://www.democracynow.org

America's military and economic empire could collapse at any time, but predicting the precise day, week or month of its potential demise is unattainable, according to a former New York Times war correspondent who spoke with Raw Story. "The when and how is very dangerous to predict because there's always some factor that blindsides you that you didn't expect," Pulitzer-winning journalist Chris Hedges said in an exclusive interview. "It doesn't look good. But exactly how it plays out and when it plays out, having covered disintegrating societies, it's impossible to tell." He explained that he learned this lesson as events unfolded around him in the fall of 1989. Then, members of the opposition to the Soviet Empire told him that they predicted travel across the Berlin Wall separating East from West Germany would open within the year. "Within a few hours, the wall didn't exist," he said. Hedges was one of the 131 activists were arrested in an act of civil disobedience outside the White House yesterday, even as Obama was unveiling a new report citing progress in the Afghanistan war. Speaking to Raw Story on Wednesday night, he said the signs of US collapse are plain to see and compared the country's course through Afghanistan to Soviet Russia's. "We're losing [the war in Afghanistan] in the same way the Red Army lost it," he said. "It's exactly the same configuration where we sort of control the urban centers where 20 percent of the population lives. The rest of the country where 80 percent of the Afghans live is either in the hands of the Taliban or disputed." "Foreigners will not walk the streets of Kabul because of kidnapping, and journalists regularly meet Taliban officials in Kabul because the whole apparatus is so porous and corrupt," he said. One day after this interview was conducted, reports hit the global media noting the CIA's warning to President Obama, that the Pakistan-supported Taliban could still regain control of the country. Hedges predicted that President Obama's war report released Thursday would "contradict not only [US] intelligence reports but everything else that is coming out of Afghanistan." His prediction came startlingly true: the CIA's own assessment was said to stand in striking contrast with President Obama's report. Defense Secretary Robert Gates, however, insisted that the US controlled more territory in Afghanistan than it did a year ago. 'A corporate coup d'état in slow motion' Hedges said he attended the protest and planned to get arrested because he is against the corporate powers that have enveloped the nation. "We've undergone a corporate coup d'état in slow motion," he said. "Our public education system has been gutted. Our infrastructure is corroding and collapsing. Unless we begin to physically resist, they are going to solidify neo-feudalism in this country." "If we think that Obama is bad, watch the next two years because these corporate forces have turned their back on him," Hedges warned. Hedges, author of "Death of the Liberal Class," said that his vision of America is one with a functioning social democracy, which stands in stark contrast to the nihilism of the corporate state. "American workers, as they are repeatedly told, will have to become competitive with prison labor in China," he said. "That's where we're headed, and all the pillars of the liberal establishment are complicit in this." "At least if you get sick in the UK, you don't go bankrupt or die," he added. Hedges said that another pressure point is the US dollar, which he pointed out had been dropped by Russia and China in favor of modified ruble/renminbi exchanges. "A few more deals like that, and our currency becomes junk," he said. Hedges continued, "As long as we have relative stability, these lunatic fringe movements can be held at bay, but if we don't undertake serious structural reform, which we're not doing, then it is inevitable that we will come to a tremendous crisis - economic and political as well as environmental."

Iraq Veterans Against The War Operation Recovery 678.986.0617 http://www.ivaw.org

This is a zgraphix production. Produced by Jeff Zavala. http://zgraphix.orgOn Thursday December 16th 2010, snow fell as 131 people were arrested in a Civil... more

ZGraphix
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Coke Conquers The World

Graphic about the underside of Coca-Cola

mollymew
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Over 100,000 Displaced Afghanis This Year

From United Nations news agency IRIN: Over 100,000 people have been forced out of... more

The_Global_Report
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US Weapons Sales to Middle East Skyrocket under Obama

"U.S. to Sell F-15s to Saudis." That was the Wall Street Journal's 8/9/10 front page headline. "The Obama administration... won't equip them with... weapons... opposed by Israel." But the "$30 billion, 10 year arms package" is still "one of the biggest single deals of its kind."

Obama "has championed advanced weapons sales to Gulf states as a way to check Iranian power." The U.S. sells weapons "to the United Arab Emirates and other Gulf states." The 8/12/10 NY Times reported that Obama plans to sell 200 Patriot intercepter missiles, worth $900 million, to Kuwait. The White House also supplies the Lebanese army and Palestinian security forces in the West Bank, training Fatah’s police in Jordan.

Massive sales to Arab “allies” started under Bush. Between 2001 and 2008, Kuwait bought $1.7 billion worth of arms, Egypt $10.4 billion. The U.A.E. purchased $10 billion. Sales to the Saudis brought in $10.5 billion. Pakistan bought $4.5 billion. Post the 2003 invasion, Bush’s Iraq sales came to $3.5 billion. According to the Journal, Bush saw these regimes “as a bulwark against Iranian expansionism, and the Obama administration has expanded the effort."

In that 2001-08 period, Israel purchased $5.9 billion worth of American weaponry and now, at least until after November’s Congressional election, Democrat Obama and Likudnik Netanyahu are political and military pals.

The Gaza flotilla crisis bent the Turkish-Israeli partnership out of shape, but Washington and Ankara are still NATO military allies, even as Turkey continues to denounce anyone in Congress that dares to say that the Ottoman army committed genocide against Armenians during the 1st world war, or complains that today’s Turkey denies independence to millions of Kurds.

It is impossible to deeply understand any one aspect of Middle Eastern politics, Zionism and Palestine, or Iraq or Afghanistan, etc., without seeing it in its matrix, U.S. imperial involvement with the entire region.

READ ENTIRE ARTICLE AT LINK:
http://www.thestruggle.org/brenner_looking_back.html

http://filipspagnoli.files.wordpress.com/2008/11/us-arms-sales.gif"U.S. to Sell F-15s to Saudis." That was the Wall Street Journal's... more

pinkpanther
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Poll: Abolish the Tools of the Imperial Presidency? Do you agree?

In order to preserve the Republic, restore the Constitution, and uphold "the rule... more

toyotabedzrock
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1 year ago
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Chris Hedges: Fighting corporate rape of US

American journalist and Pulitzer winner Chris Hedges told RT the United States has... more

Vierotchka
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1 year ago
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Sarkozy has been accused of colonial nostalgia over today's Bastille Day parade. What do you think is the best way for a country to honor a complicated past?

More on this criticism of French President Nicolas Sarkozy.... more

joshuaheller
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1 year ago
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U.S. Men's World Cup Team Rides a Wave of Jingoism

By David Vine "The U.S. team is not an allegory for the nation. The team and... more

myfastweb
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McChrystal Scandal Shows Us the Military No Longer Protects America -- It Guards Empire | | AlterNet

The military is no longer protecting America only -- it's also defending an empire that will lead to more and more loss of American lives for no reason.
June 24, 2010 |

The Obama/McChrystal debacle is symptomatic of a wider divide -- the widening estrangement between our civilian elites and our military. McChrystal deserved to be fired and has been. But this event is a symptom of a bigger problem.

General McChrystal's disdain for President Obama did not arise in a vacuum. The context is: 1) the disconnect between our "all-volunteer military" -- that is now really a professional mercenary force by another name -- and the civilian political leadership with less and less personal military service experience. And 2) the fact that the Republican Party has wrapped itself in the flag while the Democrats have had a harder time distancing themselves from some voices that have been perceived as offensively anti-military within their big tent.

The real reason that Rolling Stone was able to quote so many highly placed military people's disdain for members of the Obama administration is because the military sees itself as more moral and better -- and certainly more conservative -- than the types who serve in civilian roles today, especially within a Democratic administration.

Disclosure: I'm someone who has experienced this "disconnect" first hand. When my son volunteered for the Marines it was a shock to me. As a typical member of the white upper middle classes, as a writer living in Boston and as someone who never served, I was shocked by his choice.

My son John and I wrote a book describing our journey together to a place where I came to value the military and he came to understand my post-Vietnam parental anxiety: Keeping Faith: A Father-Son Story About Love and the United States Marine Corps. What we both discovered is that class warfare is part of the equation. Our "kind" just don't volunteer much these days. I then co-authored another book (this time with former Clinton appointee Kathy Roth-Douquet) on this problem, AWOL: The Unexcused Absence of America's Upper Classes from Military Service -- and How It Hurts Our Country.

The political polarization between the so-called red and blue states has spilled over and helps reinforce the sense that from an upper middle class and often Democrat view point those who serve are the "other." And from the military point of view, the fact that most officers define themselves as Republicans these days means that they see the non-serving upper classes "the Hollywood Democrats" as alien politically as well as in other ways.

In 1976, most of the military identified as Independent, while 33 percent identified as Republican (still a larger proportion than the general public). But the armed services have abandoned this neutrality. Now 60 percent considered themselves Republican, and only seventeen percent considered themselves Independent. (The first figure is from data in the Foreign Policy Leadership Project conducted by Prof. Ole Holsti. The last year of the Holsti study was 1996. In that year, about 67 percent of military identified as Republican.)

More at the link:The military is no longer protecting America only -- it's also defending an... more

Monkey_Films
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Emergency Protest Against Israeli Attacks on Gaza Freedom Flotilla - Austin

Here, In Austin Texas in front of Whole Foods, at Sixth Street and Lamar, we spent the... more

ZGraphix
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