Flash ! Les rapaces sont de retour dans les rues africaines!

De Joël Léon

Global Research, juillet 31, 2014

Url de l'article:
http://www.mondialisation.ca/flash-les-rapaces-sont-de-retour-dans-les-rues-africaines/5394160

« Le XXIe siècle sera influencé par ce qui se passera non seulement à Rome ou à Moscou ou à Washington, mais aussi en Afrique. C’est la simple vérité d’une époque où nos connexions font disparaître les frontières entre les peuples. »

Barak Obama à Ghana, le 11 juillet 2009

Depuis quelques années, plus exactement au début du 21^ème  siècle, l’Afrique soudainement refait surface dans les médias de tous les pays riches de l’Occident. Cette fois-ci, le mobile n’est plus autour de l’aide pour combattre le SIDA,  ou  « blood diamond »,  la faim, la sécheresse et autres fléaux que la grande presse impériale  utilise inlassablement pour définir toute une race d’hommes et de femmes. À présent, on parle de préférence du vaste  marché africain. Les Chinois furent les premiers à se précipiter vers « la ruée vers l’or ». À un point tel que certains le qualifie de conquête chinoise, en fait une véritable bousculade dans les rues africaines à la recherche aveugle du profit. L’occident traditionnel proteste et contre-attaque. L’Afrique est à sa deuxième reconquête brutale. L’Africain est confus !

En octobre l’an 2000, s’était tenu la première grande conférence interministérielle sino-africaine à Beijing, Chine.  Le forum  a été rehaussé de la présence des deux plus grandes  personnalités politiques du régime de l’époque, dont le président  Jiang Zemin, le vice-président Hu Jintao et une pléiade de chefs d’État, de gouvernements et de ministres. Pékin dépensa une fortune à l’occasion de la réalisation de ce projet qui allait donner naissance à une puissante organisation d’échange du nom de « Forum China-Africa  coopération », ayant pour sigle FOCAC.

De l’an 2000 à 2012, 5 sommets furent organisés, soit un sommet tous les 3 ans, pour renforcer l’organisation, multiplier ses actions et renforcer ses structures à travers tous les pays Africains. D’ailleurs, la coopération sino-africaine a presque vu ses avoirs doubler, de 5 billions en 2006 à 10 billions en 2010, sous formes de prêts et de dons.  L’objectif de la FOCAC est « de renforcer les échanges et étendre la coopération dans une dynamique pragmatique. Et, promouvoir le dialogue politique et coopération économique tout en cherchant à s’entraider et coopérer mutuellement ».

Depuis lors, les états occidentaux qui font traditionnellement « main basse » sur le continent ont commencé à présenter  visiblement  des signes d’agacement. En particulier, les Etats-Unis d’Amérique. Jusqu’en 2009, les États-Unis furent le plus grand partenaire commercial de l’Afrique avant de se faire buter  le cul par la Chine. Aujourd’hui, cette dernière a investi plus de 215 billions de dollars dans tous les domaines : économiques, financiers,  touchant de plein fouet des pays comme l’Angola, le Zimbabwe, le Soudan, sous la baguette de 300 compagnies majoritairement venues du gouvernement chinois. L’occident a peur.

L’Afrique, encore une fois va  sauver l’occident et l’humanité d’une crise économique et financière sans précédent, comme ce fut le cas au 15^ème  siècle. C’est la visée des rapaces. L’Afrique est perçue comme le poumon de l’humanité à cause du sous-développement industriel. On la voit surtout comme la nouvelle panacée  à reconquérir, et ceci de façon précipitée. Si au 15^ème  siècle il y avait eu seulement des rapaces  européens, de nos jours il y a les Étasuniens et surtout les chinois. Eux,  que les occidentaux considèrent comme des lutins, en pointant du doigt l’agressivité et le pragmatisme avec lesquels ils opèrent.

Comme les Français, les Anglais, les Étasuniens…les Chinois sont tout aussi des rapaces. Ils investissent les lieux et occupent les terres. Donc, le continent est sur le point de vivre un autre pillage encore plus sévère que celui de  l’esclavage, vue l’engouement et le nombre de voraces.

Rappelons que l’esclavage, comme catastrophe humaine,  a fait plus de 15 millions de victimes, strictement dans le continent Africain, sans mentionner les filières sahariennes et Arabes, à un moment où la population mondiale était estimée à 500.000.000 d’habitants.

Aujourd’hui, à lui seul, le continent africain a une population estimée à 1 milliard d’âmes et, on prévoit un accroissement exponentiel  de 2 milliards en 2050 et de 4 milliards de personnes en moins d’un siècle. De façon contradictoire l’Occident est stagnant ou marche  à reculons sur le plan démographique.

Il y a un autre aspect qui mérite d’être pris en compte aussi, même quand il n’est pas d’actualité. Dans les années d’avant 1960, trois institutions contrôlaient les citoyens des pays occidentaux: la famille (père et mère), l’école (instituteurs et professeurs) et les prédicateurs (catholiques et protestants). A partir de l’assassinat de John Kennedy, en Novembre 1963, dont tous les détails ont été suivis à la télé, par tout un pays, en direct, jusqu’aux funérailles . Les parents, éducateurs et prédicateurs s’étaient fait piteusement remplacés par la télévision. D’où la naissance d’une « génération super star », c’est-à-dire qui vit au rythme des vedettes de la télévision, du sport, du cinéma et de la musique.  Une descendance individualiste et ingrate. Ce qui a marqué un tournant historique qui allait prendre plusieurs formes, dont la stérilité. L’Occident ne peuple plus. On dirait une affinité: « Autant une nation devient plus riche, autant elle peuple moins ». De là intervient la notion de l’immigration, où les populations des pays pauvres se sont expatriés à la recherche des biens volés par les « colons ». Cette fois, nous allons constater à une autre forte forme d’immigration, celle de l’occident vers l’Afrique, ou la richesse est sécurisée ou la pollution n’est pas aussi étendue. D’où la particularité de cette deuxième « ruée vers l’Afrique ».

Si au 15^ème  et 16^ème  siècle, les Européens s’entendirent pour coloniser les pays africains, on n’a pas la garantie qu’on parviendra à un accord pareil au 21^ème  siècle, car les ” peaux jaunes ” se sont invités de la partie. Ils sont confiants, ambitieux, orgueilleux et puissants. De ce fait, il est fort probable qu’on revive les anciennes méthodes de la guerre-froide à l’intérieur des frontières africaines. Qui plus est, une reconfiguration sur mesure de l’espace géographique africain en fonction des méandres des puissants. Ou, la guerre meurtrière, tout court.                                                                                                             Sans vouloir me verser dans le cynisme ou la démagogie, l’Afrique sera peut-être le catalyseur inconscient et involontaire de la 3^ème  guerre mondiale:  la plus effroyable et la plus sanguinaire des guerres, car les enjeux sont de taille.

Les projections sont très  sombres. Les Occidentaux, en tête les Etats-Unis d’Amérique, dénoncent « l’invasion chinoise » en Afrique. Effectivement, ils sont plus de 200.000 à prendre résidence sur le continent.  Ce qui inspire de l’effroi. Ils se renforcent diplomatiquement et culturellement. 18.000 bourses d’études sont à la portée des africains pour étudier en Chine, plus de 30.000 reçoivent des formations de base, tout cela pendant une période de deux ans. Les deux parties cherchent à renforcer leurs coopérations.

Jusqu’à présent,  les Chinois n’expriment aucune velléité soutenue de s’immiscer dans les affaires politiques des pays où ils sont présents. Mais, pour combien de temps cette « politique apolitique » va-t-elle tenir ? French Howard, un ancien correspondant du « New York Times » pour l’Afrique, dans une interview accordée au « Newyorker » a opiné de cette façon : « LesCchinois sont apolitiques dans le sens qu’ils ne sont porteurs d’aucun projet axé sur un système de valeur (chinois), qu’ils tentent d’imposer dans les pays où ils en sont opération. Cependant, ils sont politiques en termes de stratégies adoptées conformément à la réalité de chaque pays africain (…) ».  Ce que Howard French a négligé de mentionner, c’est que les Chinois pratiquent « l’art de la guerre » de Sun Tzu. L’économie et les finances d’abord, la politique ensuite. C’est-à-dire, laisser les Occidentaux s’empêtrer dans des conflits armés et religieux sans issus, tels que : coup d’état, génocide à la rwandaise, autant que possible, détruisant ainsi davantage leur crédibilité et leur position morale. Le Chinois s’imposera alors comme l’alternative du moment, en temps et lieu.

Les Chinois ne sont pas dans les rues africaines scandant des slogans maoïstes, ils travaillent avec d’autres objectifs. Profitant de ses succès économiques perceptibles, le régime chinois entend exploiter au maximum cette « manière de voir » son pays dans le monde. Pratiquement, la transition chinoise est réussie. Si on fait exception de la tache  liée au  « massacre de Tiananmen » en 1989, on peut dire que Deng Zao Ping a fait école. Tous les dirigeants d’après s’inspirent des idées de ce dernier. La Chine est en conquête. Les consignes des stratèges chinois sont simples. Sur le terrain, ils n’affrontent pas, ils sont mobiles et extrêmement rapides et tendent à s’unir aux africains comme «  le poisson dans l’eau ». Ils avancent des pions jour et nuit. L’Afrique fait partie de cette stratégie globale de s’imposer comme le nouvel empire mondial.

« La période des chevauchées permanentes » refait surface comme doctrine de domination économique, politique, militaire et culturelle. Les victimes d’hier, sont les victimes d’aujourd’hui. D’où l’importance d’une « démarche mémorielle »  pour contrecarrer la campagne psychologique impériale de reconquête africaine. Certains estiment qu’il est impossible de recoloniser le continent africain et imposer l’esclavage comme idéologie et mode de gouvernement. Ces penseurs oublient que le colonialisme n’a jamais été arrêté à aucun moment de l’histoire. Il a été reproduit en fonction d’un « colonialisme pour notre temps », ce qu’on appelle couramment le néocolonialisme. Au contraire, le colonialisme a dépassé les limites raciales pour devenir une affaire de classe,  se démarquant ainsi de la dimension nationale. Aujourd’hui, il est au service de quelques familles multinationales. D’où la grande complexité à cerner  cette réalité .

Le peuple africain, sorti de la dépendance directe de l’Europe, au cours des années 1960, est victime de ce qu’Antonio Gramsci a qualifié de « fausse conscience ». Le fait que les habitants des pays africains n’ont pas pu arriver à former une « conscience africaine », qui aurait donné lieu à une « pensée africaine », aujourd’hui se manifeste une ambiguïté teintée de confusion par rapport à ce sujet d’importance capitale qu’est la « reconquête africaine ». On a fait ce même constat partout, les peuples se désintéressent   des problèmes majeurs qui menacent l’existence humaine, tel que le réchauffement de la planète. Cette attitude est le résultat de «  l’hégémonie culturelle » impérialiste, c’est-à-dire les médias, le système scolaire, la religion, pour ne citer que ceux-là. Au lieu de s’unir pour se défendre contre cette nouvelle reconquête, dirigeants politiques et intellectuels africains se battent entre eux. Premièrement, à l’intérieur d’un même espace géographique ou intra-étatique, sous forme de coup d’état, d’insurrection populaire, lutte armée. Deuxièmement, au niveau interétatique, l’Africain s’affronte en se déstabilisant l’un, l’autre. Les deux stratégies sont conceptualisées dans des laboratoires de pensée impérialiste pour asseoir en permanence leur autorité exclusive. Les élites « nationales », foudroyées dans des échanges techniques et culturels avec l’Occident, n’arrivent pas à compléter leurs missions historiques de « mémoire » du continent. Finalement, nous avons au pouvoir des présidents comme Laurent Gbagbo qui finance les élections de Jacques Chirac, président français,  à coup de 3 millions de dollars. L’Africain défend les intérêts de l’oppresseur.

Si bien que le sénat français, par l’intermédiaire de la commission des affaires étrangères/de la défense et des forces armées,  a publié un rapport de 500 pages dactylographiées sur les relations France/Afrique, dans lequel de nombreuses réflexions et propositions ont été faites à la nation, au pouvoir public. Dans cet important document, qui se présente comme un projet sociétal pour le continent africain à travers une vision de la politique extérieure française, les rédacteurs font montre d’un réalisme temporel frémissant lorsqu’ils invitent à, et je cite : « Se départir des préventions postcoloniales et assumer le fait que l’Afrique n’est pas seulement partie prenante de notre histoire, mais aussi un élément clé de notre avenir ».   Le sénat français a insisté sur le retard accumulé par la politique française. Et met en garde pas seulement contre la Chine, « le démon rouge », mais aussi contre les autres pays émergeants, notamment le Brésil, qui sous la direction de l’ancien président Lula, a fait « une percée louverturienne » en Afrique. Encore une fois, l’avenir c’est l’Afrique.

Cependant, je ne constate pas encore le sursaut africain indispensable pour éviter une autre hécatombe. Il faut réaliser que tous les pays occidentaux, la Chine et les autres pays émergeants présentent une vision globale de l’Afrique. Cette dernière n’est pas prise sous forme morcelante de nationalités. Cela nous mène à la vision globale du « guide libyen » qui rêvait d’un gouvernement unique pour l’Afrique, Mouammar Kadhafi et bien avant lui, Kwameh Nkrumah du Ghana. Cela signifie que la résistance africaine doit être continentale. Aucun pays ne survivra seul l’assaut des rapaces. D’où la nécessité pour les États africains de se mettre ensemble pour présenter  un  front commun à travers une vision historique mémorielle et actuelle. C’est possible, parce que de l’Afrique du sud à la Tunisie, de l’Algérie au Mozambique, les problèmes que confrontent les peuples sont les mêmes. Donc, il est faisable d’imposer cette « pensée africaine » aux rapaces.

Nous sommes à la veille de grandes transformations mondiales. Le système imposé par l’impérialisme n’est plus acceptable. Les fissures sont internes et, il n’y a pas de solution réelle.  Dans sa quête de le rafistoler, l’Afrique doit être immolée pour une seconde fois.

Aujourd’hui il y a plus de rapaces, il est impossible de satisfaire tous ces appétits. La confrontation parait inévitable entre les anciens et les nouveaux colons. Seule une société civile robuste en Afrique et ailleurs dans le monde peut contraindre à l’échec ces froids calculs mercantilistes. Encore une fois et comme toujours, les peuples restent les maitres de leurs destins. Ce qui se passera en Afrique va définir la nouvelle civilisation que John Lennon a décrit dans « Imagine ».

Joël Léon

Livres/articles/rapports consultés :

1-les veines ouvertes de l’Amerique Latine (Eduardo Galeano)

2-The trans-atlantic slave database ( David Eltis)

3-financial times-Africa

4-“china in Africa: the new imperialist”, New Yorker (Alexis Okeowo)

5-Kurzbeitrage Reports: Henning Melber

6-Brookings –Africa

7-FOCAC-Forum China-Africa cooperation

8-“Little to fear but fear itself”. The economist

9-Startistic sur les investissements chinois-IMF

10-Chinese Investment in Africa : Checking the facts (Katarina Kobylinski)

11-Academia.edu

12-How China is taking over Africa-USA Today (Jacob Kushner)

13-United nations, department of economic and social affairs (2013)

14-Rapport d’information de la commission des affaires étrangères, de la défense et des forces armées –France (2013-2014)

15-Death of the west (Pat Buchanan)

Postponing Costs for Bad Decisions

consortiumnews.com/2014/07/30/postponing-costs-for-bad-decisions/

Politicians from Washington to Beijing to Tel Aviv like to put off the negative consequences of their decisions as long as possible, but that often adds to the eventual costs to their people and the world, writes ex-CIA analyst Paul R. Pillar.

By Paul R. Pillar

What do a plan by China to construct 50 coal gasification plants, and Israel’s pressure on the United States to reverse a security-based ban (since lifted) by the Federal Aviation Administration on commercial flights to Tel Aviv, have in common?

They both are examples of governments trying to shield their populations from immediate consequences of the government’s own destructive policies, and thus to shield themselves from political pressure to change those policies. While coddled constituencies are spared right now from effects that otherwise might have gotten them riled up, the harm is felt by other populations, by future generations of the same country’s population, or by the world at large.

President George W. Bush announcing the start of his invasion of Iraq on March 19, 2003.

The Chinese gasification project is intended to reduce the air pollution in the biggest Chinese cities, which results in large part from reliance on coal-fired power plants and which has become bad enough to be a major source of discontent among the politically relevant urban middle class. The air in the cities would not be so awful if they were electrified instead with coal-derived gas, but under the plan much pollution would simply be transferred to the less populous remote parts of the country where the gasification plants are being built.

Even worse, the gasification process produces huge amounts of carbon dioxide. According to one estimate, the 50 projected plants would release carbon dioxide equal to about one-eighth the amount currently released by all of China, which already is the world’s most profligate emitter of greenhouse gases. So global warming is accelerated and the planet, and its inhabitants, suffer accordingly while Chinese city-dwellers are kept sufficiently docile for now.

The FAA safety directive that the Israeli government did not like, and lobbied hard to reverse, was triggered by a Hamas-fired rocket that landed uncomfortably close to Ben Gurion International Airport. The government contended that those doing business with Israel need not worry and should continue to fly in and out of Tel Aviv without concern about their safety.
The Israeli government’s posture, as Mitchell Plitnick points out, involves a rather blatant contradiction: it is assuring business partners and other wanted visitors that all is safe and sound, while at the same time proclaiming that Hamas’s rockets so endanger Israel as to justify the deadly devastation that Israel has been wreaking on the Gaza Strip.
This contradiction is only a variation on the two faces of the current Israeli government’s posture toward the Palestinians that has prevailed even during what passes for normal times, and not just during upsurges of violence such as Operation Protective Edge.
Palestinians live under suffocating, debilitating blockade or occupation as well as regular applications of lethal Israel force, while just a few miles away most Israelis enjoy life in one of the more prosperous societies in the world. Most Israelis simply have not been made uncomfortable enough to press the government to change its policies. The government itself is determined that things stay that way.
China and Israel are not the only countries where governments structure things to keep their immediate constituents sufficiently content while the costs of their policies become externalities felt by others. We have seen something similar in the United States, particularly with costly overseas military expeditions. The all-volunteer military force has made it possible to conduct such expeditions while confining the direct American human costs to the small segment of the population that has worn the uniform.
Regarding the fiscal costs, the outstanding example is the launching of an extremely costly war of choice in Iraq while also enacting unaffordable tax cuts, quickly turning what had been a budget surplus into a ballooning deficit (with those who holler most loudly today about deficits evidently not giving a hoot about them back then).
The costs of China’s destructive energy policy will be borne by all of us, inhabitants of the planet Earth. The costs of Israel’s destructive policies toward the Palestinian territories are borne most directly and heavily, of course, by the Palestinians, but they also will be borne by future Israelis as long as they live in a country that leads itself into isolation and permanent war. The financial costs of mistakes of the United States, and the fiscal carelessness that has accompanied them, will be borne by future generations of Americans.
It is politically difficult to counter these tendencies, because short-sighted shoring up of support in what are considered to be the most immediately relevant constituencies is something politicians everywhere do. No single ameliorative approach fits all situations, because each situation is different. The Chinese environmental problem may be the most difficult one of the examples mentioned above. Besides international shaming of planet-damaging policies, perhaps we need to place hope in the Chinese middle class becoming sophisticated enough to know that the environmental damage to themselves and their children is not limited to the airborne particulates that their eyes can see and their lungs can feel right now.
Hope for change in Israeli policies should not be placed in sufficient numbers of Israeli civilians feeling physically endangered. Physical harm to Israeli civilians is unacceptable, just as is physical harm to Palestinian civilians. Economic discomfort, however, is another matter; the Israeli government’s objection to the FAA flight ban was ultimately driven by economic motivations. It has long been over-determined that an end to the automatic U.S. subsidy of over $3 billion annually that Israel receives no matter what it does would be a wise step (however politically unrealistic it seems in Washington).

It would be in the fiscal interest of the United States, and it would mean U.S. taxpayers would no longer be forced to pay for bombardment of apartment buildings in Gaza. And the more that Israeli taxpayers rather than U.S. taxpayers foot the direct bill for the destructive policies of their own government, the better would be the chance of meaningful pressure on that government to change the policies.

Fixing the short-sightedness embodied in such U.S. policies as expensive overseas military expeditions may mean institutionalizing a requirement to take longer-term costs into account. The proposal by Michael Cannon and Christopher Prebleto make advance funding of medical care for veterans a part of any decision to go to war is an example of the sort of idea worth considering.

Paul R. Pillar, in his 28 years at the Central Intelligence Agency, rose to be one of the agency’s top analysts. He is now a visiting professor at Georgetown University for security studies. (This article first appeared as a blog post at The National Interest’s Web site. Reprinted with author’s permission.)

It's Obama's presidency, but Bush's world

By Matt BaiJuly 3, 2014 4:37 AMYahoo News

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U.S. President Barack Obama speaks about Iraq in the Brady Briefing room of the White House on June 19, 2014 in …

Believe it or not, it was 10 years ago this month that Barack Obama, then a candidate for the U.S. Senate, introduced himself to America with a speech that shook the Fleet Center in Boston. The main theme of that Democratic convention was the litany of George W. Bush's failures — an unpopular and unending war in Iraq, a faltering image abroad, a stagnating middle class. Obama gave eloquent voice to those frustrations, arguing that all of them could be addressed if only we reunited the electorate.

Probably Obama himself would not have guessed then that he would ascend to the White House just four years later. But he certainly wouldn't have imagined that a full decade on, nearing the halfway point in his second term, he would find himself dragged down by precisely the same set of issues that vexed his predecessor.

After a month that saw Iraq unravel and job growth continue to plod along, while the stock market soared, the central paradox of the Obama years, as historians will undoubtedly view it, has never been clearer. It's Obama's presidency, but he's still governing in Bush's world.

Obama's critics will no doubt hear in this an excuse for his stymied agenda and limp approval ratings, but that's not the point. The fact is that it's always hard to assign credit or blame for conditions in the country to any president at any one time; the lines demarcating one presidency from the next are like arbitrary and porous borders, freely traversed by longer-term trends that don't neatly conform to the timelines of our elections.

Did the fault in Vietnam lie with John F. Kennedy (who committed troops in the first place), or with Lyndon B. Johnson (who escalated the war), or with Richard Nixon (who failed to end it)? Did we owe the '90s economic expansion to Bill Clinton, or did the recovery take root under George H.W. Bush?

The political reality is that a president has to own whatever happens on his watch, for better or worse, and without any whining. Polls show the voters now blame Obama more than George W. Bush for the painfully slow economic recovery, and after enduring five and a half years of constantly shifting rhetoric and strategy and White House staff, you really can't blame them.

But it's hard to think of any second-term president in the past century, at least, who's been so completely consumed by issues he inherited. With the notable exception of the health care law, which will stand as his signature initiative, Obama's agenda has been dominated by crises that predated his tenure and have eluded his grasp.

The most obvious of these at the moment is the situation in Iraq, which Obama had vowed to put behind us once and for all, and which is now devolving into a morass of tribal and sectarian warfare — an outcome that should have seemed inevitable to anyone who ever visited the country or bothered to read a history book. There's also the mess in Afghanistan and the cresting tide of Islamist militancy in Syria and throughout the region, all of which came in a package deal with Bush's global war on Terror.

Then you have to consider security conundrums closer to home, like domestic spying (which Obama had excoriated as a candidate) and the quasi-legal prison at Guantanamo Bay (which he had vowed to shutter). Turns out that it takes an awful lot of resolve for any president to turn off the giant sucking machine of high-tech intelligence once the government has turned it on. And what do you know: There's no good place to send the prisoners at Gitmo, after all — unless you want to unload them for an American prisoner of war, like the Marlins at the trading deadline. Obama hasn't yet solved either problem.

The defining issue of Obama's presidency remains an economic recovery that continues to leave behind most Americans while enriching a relative few, for which the president mostly blames Congress, almost six years after the Wall Street meltdown that helped propel him to the White House. The mounting debt Democrats derided as irresponsible in the Bush years has only intensified under Obama, with no greater clarity on how to get it under control.

And let's not forget the toxic, paralyzing political atmosphere Bush bequeathed his successor. Obama's central promise as a candidate was to unstick us from all of that (hope and change, etc.), but his presidency has been swallowed by it, instead. Now he's resorted to exactly the same type of governing by executive fiat for which Democrats assailed Bush.

The question great thinkers will long debate, of course, is exactly why Obama has remained so imprisoned by his predecessor's choices. Will history treat Obama as a victim of dire circumstance? Or was he too little prepared for what his first chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel, once described to me as the "shit sandwich" he inherited?

You'd have a hard time arguing that Obama didn't underestimate or mishandle a lot of the challenges that have shaped his presidency. His economic policies may well have averted the worst-case scenario, which seemed very real and very scary in 2009, but it's also clear that the administration managed to do very little to change the long-term trajectories in housing and education, where rising costs are changing what it means to be middle class.

It was nice to talk about rebuilding America's tarnished image in the world, and when Obama was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2009 for no other reason than having succeeded Bush, it seemed imminently achievable. But whatever moral standing Obama had to work with was probably squandered by his own inconstancy in foreign crises and revelations that he has expanded America's spying apparatus around the world, rather than reining it in.

But the larger miscalculation here, and Obama's advisers were hardly alone in making it, was to see the destabilization of the Bush years as just another political cycle, the result of policy choices that could be readily reversed by some other set of policy choices. The mistake was in seeing the period before Obama as a moment that would pass, rather than as the onset of an entirely new era of governance, beyond any one president's control.

Bush didn't create the uncorking of religious and nationalist extremism, or the rise of borderless capital and the decline of American industry, or the retirement of the boomers, or the steadily rising temperatures in the Arctic. It's true he didn't seem very well-equipped to deal with any of them, and his policy solutions — democratization by force, bottomless tax cuts, the deregulation of industry — mostly made things worse. But we were going to have to reckon with these challenges no matter what, and no set of simple, short-term solutions exist.

Just as the end of World War II ushered in both the Cold War and the industrial boom that would define American politics for the better part of 50 years, so too did the terrorist attacks of 2001 and the subsequent economic crisis mark the arrival of what you might call the era of globalization — an era of often agonizing transformation that will span several presidencies and demand some very fundamental reforms before it's through.

Ultimately, history will likely record both Bush and Obama as presidents grappling in different ways with the same array of overarching change, at the dawn of a long period of readjustment. We may yet find some national consensus about how to confront it. In the meantime, we might as well settle in.

The Emperor’s Rage: Let Chaos Envelop the World!

By Prof. James Petras

Global Research, July 29, 2014

Url of this article:
http://www.globalresearch.ca/the-emperors-rage-let-chaos-envelop-the-world/5393817

Chaos reigns and spreads as enraged leaders in the US, Europe and their clients and allies pursue genocidal wars.

Mercenary wars in Syria; Israel’s terror bombing on Gaza; proxy wars in the Ukraine, Pakistan, Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya and Somalia.

Tens of millions of refugees flee scenes of total destruction.  Nothing is sacred.  There are no sanctuaries.  Homes, schools, hospitals and entire families are targeted for destruction.

Chaos by Design

            At the center of chaos, the wild-eyed President Obama strikes blindly, oblivious of the consequences, willing to risk a financial debacle or a nuclear war.  He enforces sanctions against Iran; imposes sanctions on Russia; sets up missile bases five launch minutes from Moscow; sends killer drones against Pakistan, Yemen and Afghanistan; arms mercenaries in Syria; trains and equips Kurds in Iraq and pays for Israel’s savagery against Gaza.

            Nothing works.

The Chaos President is blind to the fact that starving one’s adversaries does not secure submission:  it unites them to resist.  Regime change, imposing proxies by force and subterfuge, can destroy the social fabric of complex societies:  Million of peasants and workers become uprooted refugees. Popular social movements are replaced by organized criminal gangs and bandit armies.

Central America, the product of decades of US direct and proxy military interventions, which prevented the most basic structural changes, has become a chaotic, unlivable inferno for millions.  Tens of thousands of children flee from their ‘free market’- induced mass poverty and militarized state and gangster violence.  Children refugees at the US border are arrested in mass, and imprisoned in makeshift detention camps, subject to psychological, physical and sexual abuse by officials and guards on the inside.  On the outside, these pitiful children are exposed to the racist hatred of a frightened US public unaware of the dangers these children are escaping and the US government’s role in creating these hells.

The US-backed Kiev aviation authorities re-directed international passenger airlines to fly over war zones bristling with anti-aircraft missiles while Kiev’s jets bombed the rebellious cities and towns.  One flight was shot down and nearly 300 civilians perished.  Immediately an explosion of accusations from Kiev blaming Russian President Putin flooded Western media with no real facts to explain the tragedy/crime.  War-crazy President Obama and the slavering prime ministers of the EU ejaculated ultimatums, threatening to convert Russia into a pariah state.  ‘Sanctions, sanctions, everywhere . . .  but first… France must complete its $1.5 billion sale to the Russian navy.’  And the City of London exempts the Russian oligarchs from the ‘sanctions’, embedded as they are in London’s money-laundering, parasitical FIRE (Fire, Insurance and Real Estate) economy. The Cold War has returned and has taken an ugly turn… with exceptions…for business.

Confrontation among nuclear powers is imminent:  And the maniacal Baltic States and Poland bray the loudest for war with Russia, oblivious to their positions on the front lines of incineration…

Each day Israel’s war machine chews up more bodies of Gaza’s children while spitting out more lies.  Cheering Israeli Jews perch on their fortified hills to celebrate each missile strike on the apartments and schools in the densely populated Shejaiya neighborhood of besieged Gaza. A group of orthodox and secular entrepreneurs in Brooklyn have organized group tours to visit the Holy Sites by day and enjoy the Gaza pyrotechnics by night . . . night goggles to view the fleeing mothers and burning children are available at a small extra charge…

Again the US Senate votes unanimously in support of Israel’s latest campaign of mass murder – no crime is depraved enough to ruffle the scruples of America’s leaders.  They hew close to a script from the 52 Presidents of the Major American Jewish Organizations.  Together they embrace a Beast from the Apocalypse gnawing on the flesh and bones of Palestine.

But, Sacre Bleu!  France’s Zionists have prevailed on the ‘President-Socialiste’ Hollande.  Paris bans all anti-Israel demonstrations despite the clear reports of genocide.  Demonstrators supporting the Gazan resistance are gassed and assaulted by special riot police – ‘Socialist’ Hollande serves the demands of powerful Zionist organizations while trashing his country’s republican traditions and its sacred ‘Rights of Man’.

The young protestors of Paris fought back with barricades and paving stones in the finest traditions of the Paris Commune waving the flags of a free Palestine.  Not a single ‘red banner’ was in sight:  The French ‘left’ were under their beds or off on vacation.

There are ominous signs away from the killing fields.  The stock market is rising while the economy stagnates.  Wild speculators have returned in their splendor widening the gap between the fictitious and real economy before the ‘deluge’, the chaos of another inevitable crash.

In industrial America’s once great Detroit, clean water is shut-off to tens of thousands of poor citizens unable to pay for basic services.   In the midst of summer, urban families are left to defecate in hallways, alleyways and empty lots.  Without water the toilets are clogged, children are not washed.  Roscoe, the master plumber, says the job is way beyond him.

According to our famed economists, the economy of Detroit is ‘recovering . . . profits are up, it’s only the people who are suffering’.  Productivity has doubled, speculators are satisfied; pensions are slashed and wages are down; but the Detroit Tigers are in first place.

Public hospitals everywhere are being closed.  In the Bronx and Brooklyn, emergency rooms are overwhelmed.   Chaos! Interns work 36 hour shifts . . . and the sick and injured take their chances with a sleep-deprived medic.  Meanwhile, in Manhattan, private clinics and ‘boutique’ practices for the elite proliferate.

Scandinavians have embraced the putschist power grab in Kiev.  The Swedish Foreign Minister Bildt bellows for a new Cold War with Russia.  The Danish emissary and NATO leader, Rasmussen, salivates obscenely at the prospect of bombing and destroying Syria in a replay of NATO’s ‘victory’ over Libya.

The German leaders endorse the ongoing Israeli genocide against Gaza; they are comfortably protected from any moral conscience by their nostalgic blanket of ‘guilt’ over Nazi crimes 70 years ago.

Saudi-funded Jihadi terrorists in Iraq showed their “infinite mercy” by… merely driving thousands of Christians from ancient Mosul.  Nearly 2,000 years of a continuous Christian presence was long enough!  At least most escaped with their heads still attached.

Chaos Everywhere

Over one hundred thousand agents of the US National Security Agency are paid to spy on two million Muslim citizens and residents in the USA.  But for all the tens of billions of dollars spent and tens of millions of conversations recorded, Islamic charities are prosecuted and philanthropic individuals are framed in ‘sting operations’.

Where the bombs fall no one knows, but people flee.  Millions are fleeing the chaos.

But there is no place to go!  The French invade half a dozen African countries but the refugees are denied refuge in France.  Thousands die in the desert or drown crossing the Med.  Those who do make it, are branded criminals or relegated to ghettos and camps.

Chaos reigns in Africa, the Middle East, Central America and Detroit.  The entire US frontier with Mexico has become a militarized detention center, a multi-national prison camp.  The border is unrecognizable to our generation.

Chaos reigns in the markets.  Chaos masquerades as trade sanctions:  Iran yesterday, Russia today and China tomorrow. Washington, Watch out!  Your adversaries are finding common ground, trading, forging agreements, building defenses; their ties are growing stronger.

Chaos reigns in Israel. War-obsessed Israelis discover that the Chosen People of God can also bleed and die, lose limbs and eyes in the alleyways of Gaza where poorly armed boys and men stand their ground.  When the cheers turn to jeers, will they re-elect Bibi, their current kosher butcher?  The overseas brethren, the fundraisers, the lobbyists and the armchair verbal assassins will automatically embrace some new face, without questions, regrets or (god forbid!) self-criticism –if it’s ‘good for Israel and the Jews’ it’s got to be right!

Chaos reigns in New York.  Judicial rulings favor the pirates and their vulture funds demanding one-thousand percent returns on old Argentine bonds.  If Argentina rejects this financial blackmail and defaults, shock waves will ripple throughout global financial markets.  Creditors will tremble in uncertainty:  Fears will grow over a new financial crash.  Will they squeeze out another trillion-dollar bailout?

But where’s the money?  Printing presses are working day and night. There are only a few life boats . . . enough for the bankers and Wall Street, the other ninety-nine percent will have to swim or feed the sharks.

The corrupted financial press now advises warlords on which country to bomb and politicians on how to impose economic sanctions; they no longer provide sound economic information or advise investors on markets.  Their editorial rants will incite an investor flight to buy king-sized mattresses for stuffing as the banks fail.

The US President is on the verge of a mental breakdown: He’s a liar of Munchausen proportions with a bad case of political paranoia, war hysteria and megalomania.  He’s gone amok, braying, ‘I lead the world: its US leadership or chaos’.  Increasingly the world has another message:  ‘It’s the US and chaos.’

Wall Street is abandoning him.  The Russians have double-crossed him.  The Chinese merchants are now doing business everywhere we used to be and we ought to be.  They’re playing with loaded dice.  The stubborn Somalis refuse to submit to a Black President:  they reject this ‘ML King with drones’ . . . The Germans suck on their thumbs in total stupor as Americans monitor and record their every conversation…for their own safety!  “Our corporations are ingrates after all we have done for them”, the First Black President whines.  “They flee from our taxes while we subsidize their operations!”

Final Solutions: The End of Chaos

The only solution is to move on:  Chaos breeds chaos. The President strives to project his ‘Leadership’.  He asks his close advisers very hard questions:  “Why can’t we bomb Russia, just like Israel bombs Gaza?  Why don’t we build an ‘Iron Dome’ over Europe and shoot down Russian nuclear missiles while we fire upon Moscow from our new bases in Ukraine? Which countries will our ‘Dome’ protect?  I am sure that the people of East Europe and the Baltic States will gladly make the supreme sacrifice.  After all, their leaders were at the very front frothing for a war with Russia.  Their reward, a nuclear wasteland, will be a small price to ensure our success!”

The Zionist lobby will insist our ‘Iron Dome’ covers Israel.  But the Saudis may try to bribe the Russians to spare the oil fields as Moscow targets the US missile bases near Mecca.  Our radio-active allies in the Middle East will just have to relocate to a new Holy Land.

Do Obama and his advisers imagine reducing the Asian population by a billion or two?  Do they plan several hundred Hiroshimas because the Chinese crossed the  President’s ‘red lines’:  China’s economy and trade grew too fast, expanded too far, it was too competitive, too competent, too successful at gaining market shares, and they ignored our warnings and our unparalleled military might.

            Most of Asia will inhale nuclear dust, millions of Indians and Indonesians will perish as collateral damage.  Their survivors will feast on ‘radiated fish’ in a glowing sea.

Beyond Chaos:  The New American Way:

            Because our ‘Iron Dome’ will have failed us, we will have to re-emerge out of toxic ashes and crawl from our bunkers, dreaming of a New America free from wars and poverty.  The Reign of Chaos will have ended.  The ‘peace and order’ of the graveyard will reign supreme.

The emperors will be forgotten.

            And we never will have found out who fired that missile at the doomed Malaysian airliner with its 300 passengers and crew.  We will have lost count of the thousands of Palestinian parents and children slaughtered in Gaza by the Chosen People of Israel.  We will not know how the sanctions against Russia panned out. 

            It won’t matter in the post-nuclear age, after the Chaos…

Copyright © 2014 Global Research

Collapse of Ukraine Government: Prime Minister Yatsenyuk Resigns amidst Pressures Exerted by the IMF

By Prof Michel Chossudovsky

Global Research, July 24, 2014

Url of this article:
http://www.globalresearch.ca/collapse-of-ukraine-government-prime-minister-yatsenyuk-resigns-amidst-pressures-exerted-by-the-imf/5393168

Global  Research, July 24, 2014

Ukraine’s Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk announced his resignation in the Rada (Parliament) and that of the entire Cabinet on Thursday, July 24.  This decision was taken following the withdrawal of two parties from the coalition government and the non-adoption of two important pieces of legislation, which had been demanded by the International Monetary Fund (IMF)

“I announce my resignation after the collapse of the coalition and the blocking of government initiatives …

“In connection with the breakup of the parliamentary coalition, as well as non-adoption of a number of important bills, I announce my resignation,”

The resignation of the Prime Minister signifies the collapse of the government and the resignation of the entire cabinet.

“But the cabinet members will continue fulfilling their duties until a new coalition is formed in the Rada.”

On July 24th, the Rada failed to support the government’s bill pertaining to the 2014 budget sequestration, which had been demanded by the IMF on behalf of Kiev’s external creditors. The disbursement by the IMF of the “Second Tranche” of a 17 billion dollar policy based loan was conditional upon the prior adoption of this legislation.

“The parliament must adopt amendments to the state budget needed to finance our army and also documents needed for cooperation with international financial institutions.[e.g. IMF, World Bank, EBRD]” said PM Yatsenyuk. (emphasis added)

The entire country is in an impasse. No money will be forthcoming from the IMF until this legislation is adopted. In the meantime, Ukraine remains on the blacklist of its external creditors.

Moreover, a controversial draft law on reforming the country’s gas transportation system was rejected (Itar-Tass, July 24, 2014).

Both bills were tied into the government’s negotiations with both the EU and the IMF.

What Happens Next?

The national economy is in crisis, the political structures of the country are in total disarray, all of which is occurring in the immediate wake of the Malaysian Airlines MH17 crash in Eastern Ukraine.

The two parties which left the coalition are The Neo-Nazi Svoboda party and the Centre Right Ukraine Democratic Alliance for Reform (UDAR) Party led by former champion boxer Vitali Klitschko.

President Poroshenko (left) has intimated that the resignation of the cabinet has paved the way for a process of meaningful political restructuring:  “Society wants a full reset of state authorities,” said Mr Poroshenko.

What is implied by Poroshenko’s statement is that the parliamentary process is slated to become defunct inasmuch as Rada is obligated to adopt the legislation demanded by the IMF and the European Union. And if the Rada does not adopt the legislation, the composition of the Parliament will be changed through a process of outright political manipulation.

The 2014 budget project demanded by the IMF includes massive cuts in social spending coupled with increased allocations to the Armed Forces. Its adoption will contribute (virtually overnight) to a further process of the impoverishment of the Ukraine population.

The speaker of the Rada, Mr. Oleksandr Turchynov confirmed that the Ukraine Democratic Alliance for Reform (UDAR) and Svoboda (Freedom) would be invited to propose a candidate to occupy the post of interim Prime Minister.

So much for democracy: the leader of a Neo-Nazi formation Oleh Tyahnybok (Image right) will play a key role in the appointment of an interim Prime Minister to replace Mr. Yatsenyuk. 

Parliamentary elections will only occur if the Rada fails to forge a new coalition government within the next 30 days:

The breakup of the coalition “was probably agreed on by political parties seeking elections and the president,” Yuriy Yakymenko, the head of political research at Kiev’s Razumkov Center, a non-governmental policy group, said by phone.

“Withdrawals from the coalition should not paralyze the parliament’s work,” Poroshenko said before Yatsenyuk announced his resignation.” (Business Week, July 24, 2014

Yatsenyuk intimated in his resignation speech that the State was bankrupt and that failure to abide by IMF demands would create social chaos:

“The fact is that today you failed to vote for the laws, and I have nothing (with which) to pay wages of policemen, doctors, teachers; nothing to buy a rifle with, nothing to fuel an armored personnel carrier with. Today you failed to take a decision to fill the gas storages to allow us to live through the winter, to at last free ourselves from dependence on Russian gas,” (Rada, July 24, 2014)

The IMF Program and the Interim Government

In the days following the Ukraine coup d’Etat of February 23, which led to the ousting of the duly elected president, Wall Street and the IMF–in liaison with the US Treasury and the European Commission in Brussels– had already set the stage for the imposition of the IMF’s “strong economic medicine”.

Following the installation of the interim coalition government, Prime Minister Arseny Yatsenyuk dismissed the need to even negotiate with the IMF. He called for an  an unconditional acceptance of IMF shock therapy:

“We have no other choice but to accept the IMF offer”.

Yatsenyuk intimated that Ukraine will “accept whatever offer the IMF and the EU made” (voice of russia.com March 21, 2014, emphasis added)

In surrendering to the IMF at the outset of the interim government in March 2014, Yatsenyuk was fully aware that the proposed IMF-World Bank macro-economic reforms would brutally impoverish millions of people, including those who protested in Maidan against the Yanukovitch government.

The adoption of the more ruthless components of the IMF’s economic package requiring supportive legislation had been delayed until after the May 25 elections.

Cracking Down on the Party of Regions and the Communist Party

Meanwhile, the government is cracking down on the Ukraine Communist Party which is now illegal as well as on the Party of Regions, both of which were firmly opposed to the IMF policy reforms.

Ukraine as An Ally without NATO Status

In turn, the Ministry of Defense has raised the issue of direct US military support in the military campaign in Eastern Ukraine, where the Donbass militia have repealed the forces of the Kiev regime.

“The current situation testifies to clear Russian interference in Ukraine and its military support to terrorist groups active in Ukraine’s eastern regions… Right now, Ukraine’s armed forces need international support more than ever before”, said Deputy Defense Ihor Kabanenko to David Baldwin, commander of the California National Guard. (Kiev Post, July 24, 2014)

Commander Baldwin was in Kiev for high level consultations with the Ministry of Defense.  In the course of his meetings with DeputyDefense Minister Ihor Kabanenko, Baldwin announced on behalf of the US government that:

“The United States of America is considering the possibility of granting Ukraine the status of an ally without membership in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO).

… Baldwin said that the American side highly appreciates its cooperation with the Armed Forces of Ukraine and that it is ready to provide comprehensive support to them.

He stressed that a draft law on prevention of Russian aggression, adoption of which will allow Ukraine to obtain the status of an ally of the United States without NATO membership, is currently under consideration by the United States government.

… President Petro Poroshenko has asked the United States Congress to declare the self-proclaimed “People’s Republic of Luhansk” and “People’s Republic of Donetsk” as terrorist organizations and declare their members as terrorists.Poroshenko believes that when sanctions are not working, there are grounds for appeal to the United States Congress to grant Ukraine the special status of a major ally outside NATO (like Israel, Australia, and the Philippines) to enable it to solve its security problems. (Ukrainian News, July 24, 2014, emphasis added)

The granting of the “status of ally outside NATO” would set the stage for the possible deployment of US and NATO forces inside Ukraine in the context of joint military operations with the Ukraine Armed Forces and National Guard.

Copyright © 2014 Global Research

U.S. Intelligence No Closer to Pinning MH17 Downing on Russia

• BY SHANE HARRIS
• JULY 22, 2014 - 06:01 PM
•    

Five days after Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 was shot down over eastern Ukraine, U.S. intelligence officials are still not certain who fired the missile that felled the doomed airliner, nor have they conclusively linked the attack to Russian military forces, according to senior intelligence officials.

"The leading theory" at this point, said a senior intelligence official, is that pro-Russian separatists equipped and trained by Russia fired the deadly surface-to-air missile on July 17, killing all 298 passengers aboard. But U.S. analysts aren't sure whether the shooters were trained directly by Russian military forces or if they learned how to fire the missile while serving in the Ukrainian military, officials said.

In a briefing with reporters on Tuesday, three senior intelligence officials laid out the evidence and showed that the Obama administration is no closer to decisively pinning the blame for the shoot-down on Moscow or Russian President Vladimir Putin. A mountain of circumstantial evidencepoints to the Russian-backed separatists. But "there's no Perry Mason moment" in the intelligence, said one official.

The officials offered little new information about the MH17 investigation, except to say that U.S. intelligence analysts are now persuaded that the jet was downed by accident, likely by forces who believed they were taking aim at a Ukrainian military aircraft. The officials circulated widely available information, including photographs of the suspected missile launcher posted to social media in recent days, and pointed to voice recordings posted to YouTube of separatists acknowledging that they shot down a jet, which they later discovered was a civilian plane. One official stressed that analysts weren't relying solely on social media information, such as tweets and online videos. But nothing in the agencies' classified files has brought them any closer to definitively blaming Russia.

In the days since the shoot-down, President Barack Obama has made clear that he holds Putin responsible for, at the very least, creating the unstable and confused wartime conditions in eastern Ukraine that set the stage for such a tragedy. The president emphasizes Russia's "extraordinary influence" over the separatists, and that he expects Putin to rein them in and force them to negotiate a political settlement with Kiev. "Russia has urged [the separatists] on," Obama said in brief remarks at the White House on Monday. "Russia has trained them. We know that Russia has armed them with military equipment and weapons, including anti-aircraft weapons. Key separatist leaders are Russian citizens."

The senior intelligence officials likewise emphasized Russia's military support to the separatists and said this helped build a case against Moscow as being ultimately responsible for providing the missile launcher that was used to shoot down MH17. The officials showed reporters a satellite photo of what they said was a camp in Rostov, Russia, near Ukraine's eastern border, where separatists have been trained. A photograph taken Monday shows the camp apparently filled with military equipment, indicating that it remains an active training ground. The officials also said that as recently as Tuesday, intelligence showed that as many as 20 military vehicles were moving from Russia into Ukraine, indicating that Russia has little intention of scaling down its activity in the region.

The officials were especially concerned with countering various theories put forward in the Russian press that claimed Ukrainian military forces shot down MH17. Dismissing the stories as "propaganda," the officials spent about half of the briefing debunking claims that a Ukrainian SA-11 battery or an attack plane was the guilty culprit.

One official said the intelligence agencies wanted to avoid a repeat of the Russian invasion of Crimea, in which Russian media dispensed stories that the soldiers who'd occupied the territory weren't really directed by Russia -- a claim that has been widely debunked.

Rob Stothard / Getty Images News