Greece is the Word

I admit to some amusement over the current situation in Greece.

I am not anti-EU. I am, however, deeply opposed to the way in which faceless bankers and unelected powers behind the scenes appear to be pulling the strings ever more openly on the world scene, and am a tad frightened by the fact that they no longer seem to feel the need to even try to hide the fact. We have whole countries now being governed by "technocrats", completely bypassing the whole democratic process with barely so much as a murmur being heard in protest.

The faceless ones are demanding that Greece implements an austerity package to comply with the terms of their bailout. In other words, despite not being answerable to the Greek electorate nor even Greek they assume for themselves the right to determine Greek political and social policy.

But there was one very small impediment to their plans that appears to have seemed to them so irrelevant that it may have been entirely overlooked, and that was that the Greek electorate didn't actually want the austerity programme imposed on them. That electorate took a savage revenge on the international financial establishment by massively rejecting Pasok, the party that had dominated Greek politics for most of the past four decades, leaving it with just 41 seats in a parliament of 300.

Now the financial powers that be are left scratching their heads wondering what went wrong, and in the absence of a coalition with a working majority Greece may be heading back to the polls to see whether it can get it right the second time around.

Sadly voters in the UK are unable to exercise a similar power of veto as the faceless ones have effective control of all the major political parties, as well as the mainstream media which is able to downplay or to rubbish any attempt from beyond the approved parties to challenge their hegemony.

And so, whilst we enjoy a veneer of democracy and indeed even retain the right to bomb and invade other countries which may feel inclined to do things differently, in truth the international financial establishment enjoys a stranglehold which it doesn't yet have over the good people of Greece.

No doubt they will think of something to avert their Greek tragedy, but it has been fascinating to watch all the same. Interesting times.

The Boy Who Cried Wolf

I am quite pleased that the Russians and Chinese have vetoed the West's resolution at the United Nations condemning the actions of the Syrian government in its clampdown against protesters seeking to overthrow the Assad regime.

It's not that I have any sympathy for President Assad in the way that he is handling the protests. It is just that I feel the West needs to reminded again and again of the consequences of gaining a reputation as a dishonest broker.

Russia and China saw the resolution as a first step towards Western military intervention in Syria. Western governments say it was no such thing, of course, but they also claimed their military action against Libya was about protecting civilians and nothing to do with regime change. Six months later French aircraft, under NATO jurisdiction, set up a legitimate head of state for a grotesque summary execution by a mob of Western-backed insurgents - all in the name of "democracy".

The UN resolution on Libya imposed the condition that there would be no NATO "boots on the ground". Last month British authorities admitted that the SAS were involved in the thick of the insurgency. In all likelihood they were there before the UN resolution as agents provocateurs, stirring up the protests that provoked the conflict in the first place.

Western politicians seem uniquely incapable of comprehending the very simple truism that those who lie the first time are very much less likely to be believed the second time. I have found this in local politics every bit as much as it is evident on the national and international stage. They seem to expect to be trusted even when they have demonstrated in the past that they clearly cannot be, and assume a veneer of injured innocence when they are not. The moral of the fable The Boy Who Cried Wolf seems completely lost on the entire political class in the UK, as well as in other Western "democracies".

In Syria, as in Iran, the rest of the world distrusts the motives of the Western powers whether or not they happen to have honourable intentions this time around. We are told Iran is developing a nuclear military capability, but the same people told us Iraq had Weapons of Mass Destruction that could be unleashed upon our forces within forty minutes. It turn out to be a lie, but the war ostensibly fought to relieve Iraq of the weapons it didn't have continued as though nothing had happened, with barely a murmur from the British media or from the then government's so-called "opposition".

Even if Iran is developing a nuclear bomb it can hardly be blamed for so doing. North Korea has an atomic capability and has been left well alone. Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya didn't have and look what became of them.

The Iranian authorities will have figured, not without good reason, that the West has imperialistic intentions in the region and that having a nuclear arsenal will deter it from attacking them. Protestations that the West has no intention of attacking Iran will be meaningless, because the Western "democracies" have already demonstrated quite clearly that they lie with absolute impunity and cannot therefore be trusted.

All the apprehension and uncertainty over Iran's nuclear intentions is entirely the fault of Western leaders and their OCD-like compulsion to speak in forked tongues every time they open their mouths.

Can the Old System Survive Social Media and the Age of Mass Communication?

This evening a new poster at the Brentford TW8 community forum expressed the desire that more independents should be elected to Parliament but regretted that, in his view, this will never happen.

I responded to the contrary but feel others may wish to contribute to the debate, which they can do either at the forum or through the Comments section below.

My post on the forum is reproduced verbatim:

"The party system has changed surprisingly little over hundreds of years. The Tories have become the Conservatives, the Whigs have become the Liberals, the latter (largely) merged with the SDP to form the Liberal Democrats and about a century or so ago the Labour Party joined the private members' club and, after a short time as the third party, replaced the Liberals as one of the two major forces in parliamentary politics.

"But in terms of form and substance, it has been the same old same old for centuries.

"However one should never underestimate the power of the Internet. The 'net is probably the most significant invention in the history of man since the wheel. It completely transforms our ability to receive information, and in some cases at least it gives us a chance to better understand that information which we receive.

"The UK and western news media still pumps propaganda quite relentlessly at us, but if we want another perspective Russia Today and al-Jazeera (just to give an example) are just a click away. "Little" people like you and I, with just a modicum of Internet savvy, can spread our own news and views virally through the use of social media, blogs and forums.

"What has this got to do with anything? Well it means both news and opinion will become increasingly more difficult for the political establishment to channel in the direction in which it wishes it to go. Okay, our governments are still conducting wars under false pretences and are by and large getting away with it but a significant - and more importantly, growing - minority are beginning to ask questions.

"Far fewer people blindly follow the official line of their favoured party than was once the case (although as you can see from this forum there are still those who do).

"What has this all got to do with anything? Well it is my view that the political system as it is currently configured cannot survive a cultural sea change as radical as the one we are currently undergoing. Either our "democracy" has to adapt and embrace more real and meaningful public input on a truly massive scale, or else it will reveal itself to the majority for what it has always truly been and die.

"Independents of one kind or another will dominate our politics within a generation. Most reasonable people would regard this as a positive development. Those who don't either have a selfish personal stake in sustaining the inequalities and injustices of the current system or else they are simply stupid.

"This forum is blessed with some fine examples of both."

Playing the New World Order's Tune

The forces of the Libyan "revolution".  Will you tell him or shall I?

____________________________________________________

There was a time, in a previous life, when I was happy to sing the praises of the almost-but-not-completely-deposed Libyan leader Colonel Muammar Gaddafi.

It was a time, after all, when I dealt solely in absolutes and, having read the Green Book and marvelled at its convoluted strategy for total democracy, I would hear nothing that suggested revolutionary Libya was any less a paradise on Earth in practice than it was in theory. The Third Universal Theory, to lend it its correct title.

Of course in truth Gaddafi's Libya was anything but a paradise. Power games, between tribes as well as politicians and army generals, and some simple realities about human nature and the personal ambitions, and innate corruptability, of some ensured that not everybody stuck to the manual. Clearly it became a dictatorship with an idea, and one which wasn't too fussy about some of the friends it made around the world in its efforts to carve for itself an ideological niche that would challenge the twin evils of capitalism and communism for the hearts of minds of the people of the world.

But the diet of lies, so barely concealed as to be insulting to the intelligence, that has been fed to the British public in respect of the current NATO campaign has led me instinctively to sympathise with the pro-Gaddafi elements as they continue their desperate, impossible fight against hopeless odds in those few isolated Libyan cities that remain outside of "rebel" (i.e. NATO) control.

From the moment the United Nations gave them the green light for intervention the NATO bombing campaign has quite obviously had nothing whatsoever to do with "protecting civilians" and everything to do with regime change. The fact that there remain up to 10,000 civilians holed up in Sirte, and that NATO is bombing their city relentlessly whilst turning a blind eye to the completely indiscriminate rocket attacks being made upon them by the inexpert and untrained "rebels" provides us with indisputable evidence of this.

Yes Gaddafi was a dictator, a murderous one to boot, but considerably less so than many of the rulers in the region whom the West is actually arming as well as doing regular business with. The difference is of course that Gaddafi was a dictator with a political ideology that, in times of real economic strife such as those we would seem to be heading into, presented a real danger of being taken seriously. After all, who wants a Third World leader who, unlike us it would seem, was able to provide an efficient free healthcare service and universal access to education without increasingly prohibitive tuition fees?

How embarrassing was it for our political establishment to see Abdelbaset al-Megrahi, the man convicted of the Lockerbie bombing and released on compassionate grounds two years ago due to his terminal cancer, still alive after all this time thanks to a drug that is freely available in Third World Libya but had been kept quiet about and withheld from British cancer sufferers because it is too expensive to issue?

Who wants a Third World dictator who, in his own small way, had begun to build his own political power base in Africa to rival those of the US superpower or the almost-super powers of Russia and China? Not much we can do about the global machinations of such giants on the world stage, after all. But Libya?

Most of all, who wants a Third World dictator who threatened to trade his people's own oil in "African dinars", based upon gold reserves, as opposed to US dollars?

Understand this and you will understand how a man who was a political pariah in the 1980s and 1990s became cuddly Uncle Muammar in 2003, and how his elite forces became worthy of SAS training little more than a year ago, only for his "dictatorness" to be suddenly rediscovered earlier this year.

We are told the ground forces that are currently struggling to overwhelm Sirte in spite of their massive numerical superiority and unanswered NATO air support are "revolutionaries". But revolutions come from the people, they are not imposed by foreign powers. What has happened in Libya has not been a revolution, but an invasion.

Even now, after having taken Tripoli, the "revolutionaries" have been entirely dependent upon NATO air power in order to take a small city from the scattered remnants of an already defeated army. These guys may believe they are fighting for freedom, and their grudges against the old regime may be well-founded and very real, but they will discover before very long that they have in fact been the foot soldiers of a far more subtle and sinister dictatorship than their eccentric ex-Brother Leader could ever have imposed upon them.

Osama bin Laden is Dead

Of that I am in little doubt.

Inevitably the killing of the al-Qaeda leader by US Navy Seals and his almost instantaneous burial at sea has given rise to speculation that he is not really dead, that the media announcement of his demise was in fact a hoax and that he is really still alive and living in the Afghan mountains.

Personally I do not buy this.

According to Muslim burial requirements bin Laden's body needed to be laid to rest as quickly as possible. To have failed to have done this would not just have shown disrespect to bin Laden's memory but, far more importantly, to the entire Islamic faith.

A burial at sea is only permitted either when death has taken place at sea or when there would have been a significant danger that if buried under land the body would be exhumed or stolen. In bin Laden's case the latter obviously applies.

To announce his death when he was still alive would be an unacceptably high-risk strategy for Western leaders. He would only need to reappear at some later stage and their credibility, and that upon which the whole foundation of the New World Order is built, would be forever in tatters.

If any conspiracy theory has to be considered the only one with any legs is that that has it that bin Laden was already dead. Keeping him "alive" for several years in order to justify an relentlessly aggressive foreign policy does make some sense. As does "killing" him at a time when a war crime, already shielded from the world's news media to some extent by the Royal Wedding, has been committed in Libya by forces of the NWO bent on regime change for political, economic and strategic reasons.

The removal of bin Laden would in such an event serve the twin purpose of deflecting media attention from the Tripoli incident and of enabling the West, as soon as is practical and decent, to begin to close the book on the war with al-Qaeda at a time when Western foreign policy has shifted to the point where our "leaders" are to all intents and purposes making common cause with them in their war against Libya.

On balance I still tend to the view that bin Laden was killed last night, as per the official story. But what a shame it is that our leaders are so deceitful and untrustworthy then whenever something of this import occurs those of us who actually take the time and trouble to think for ourselves instinctively look for the "real" story before accepting the official one?

Meanwhile, the Plunder Begins...

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-12969004

Libya : Why a Two-State Solution Offers Civilians the Best Protection

I do realise that I am probably overdosing on articles about the situation in Libya. It is not, after all, a part of my community and it is upon events affecting my community that I do prefer to concentrate.

Nevertheless as I have said many times before I do feel strongly that honesty in politics is essential if our claim to uphold real democratic values and our expressed concern for protecting the public interest are to be taken at all seriously.

Where the current bombing campaign against Libya is concerned we are being lied to. Pure and simple. Lied to by a government and a national media that depends upon a perceived inherent inability of the British people - stupified by reality TV, soccer and soap operas (panet et circenses for the modern age) - to follow even short and simple sequences of events in a logical manner or to study the underlying causes of them.

It is my belief that the establishment's arrogance is misplaced. A recent poll conducted by the BBC showed that just 38% of British people, from a sample of a little over 2000, actually support this latest military crusade.

Think about that carefully - in the face of almost a month of unrelenting propaganda less than 4 out of every 10 UK citizens actually buy this latest war. The power of the Internet and the ability of its users to access information from all around the world and from literally any source is breaking the power of our lords and masters to exercise complete control.

And complete control, or something at least approaching it, is what the New World Order will need if it is to achieve its objectives without fear of disruption or significant dissent.

This why I truly believe that the fraudulent "democracy" that bases itself on the current two-party or three-party system will crash within the lifetimes of many people reading this blog, but I guess I am digressing somewhat. For the moment let's concentrate on Libya.

A QUESTION OF SOVEREIGNTY

The West has no right to tell the Libyan people whom they must have as leaders and which political system they must have in place in their country.

This notwithstanding it is obvious that a very large body of opinion in that country is opposed to Colonel Muammar Gaddafi and to his regime. This is particularly so in the east of the country, where tribal loyalties are not to Gaddafi and his entourage as they are in the west of Libya.

Whilst there would certainly seem to be a significant Al Qaeda element amongst the rebels and whilst it is clear the Islamists are waiting in the wings for their opponents on both sides to fight each other to a standstill, it is equally clear that there is a strong pro-Western element involved too. It is an uneasy alliance, which will probably turn on itself if and when the battle against the Gaddafi loyalists concludes in the rebels' favour.

Misrata excepted, this is self-evidently not the case in the west of the country and no amount of ridiculous nonsense from Western media sources telling us that hundreds of thousands of residents of Tripoli and Sirte wave green flags and dance in the streets under threat of being shot is going to change that. Whether their misrepresentations are deliberate or whether there is a genuine inability amongst Western leaders and their news media to understand that even dictators can be popular amongst their own, it is patently obvious that Gaddafi and his regime enjoys widespread support in large areas of the country, and in particular in the west of Libya.

THE WEST'S DILEMMA

All of this presents the forces of the NWO with a not inconsequential logistical problem. Even if they, with their special services, can arm and train a pitiful but motivated rag-tag army of rebels into a force capable, with the benefit of the air cover that they are already providing, of reversing its current fortunes and advancing to the gates of the capital, just how do they propose to defeat the citizens of Tripoli without the wholesale slaughter of hundreds or even thousands of civilians which would make a mockery of their already unconvincing pretence of involving themselves in this war to "protect civilians"?

Western military leaders will, of course, have worked this out for themselves already. Which is why they are already bombing Tripoli mercilessly on a daily and nightly basis in spite of the fact that the civilians they profess to be protecting are located several hundreds of miles due east. They are not targeting civilians but there will have been accidental civilian casualties as there always are in any war, particularly when the Americans are involved (in the conflict with Serbia, for instance, despite its boasts of "smart" pinpoint technology the US couldn't even manage to direct all its missiles to the right country). The official response has been to tell us that claims of civilian losses "cannot be verified", which of course they can't because the West doesn't have anybody on the ground in Tripoli to count the bodies and it routinely rejects claims of civilian losses by the government, possibly with good reason.

Even if, having artificially reversed the natural order of things from the air, the West then stands back and allows the rebels to sack Tripoli on their own, it will not be able to absolve itself of responsibility for any loss of innocent life.

LIBYA'S OWN TWO-STATE SOLUTION?

This is why I am persuaded, reluctantly, that the best and most bloodless solution must lie in the creation of a two-state Libya, east and west, with an NWO-approved regime in the east of the country with Benghazi as its capital and a regime in the west of the country, whether led by Gaddafi or somebody else, remaining true to the principles of the Third Universal Theory that he devised early into his tenure as leader - if, of course, that is what the citizens there want.

Whilst such a solution has the potential to create a state of permanent tension between the two "Libyas", my view is that fear of attack by the west will lead the east to seek cordial relations with its neighbour, whilst its own fear of attack by the US and its allies would deter any aggression by the western nation towards its neighbour. Some accommodation would have to be reached in respect of the country's natural resources, most particularly oil, but there is plenty enough of it to go round.

WOULD THIS SATISFY THE WEST?

To answer this question one needs first to be clear about the true objectives behind the West's involvement in Libya. I would suggest there is no one single objective, but rather at least four and possibly more:

1. Oil. Obviously. Just as was the case in Iraq, there is a great deal of evidence to be found in events leading up to the attack to suggest that Gaddafi was becoming rather too protective of his own natural resource and choosy about whom he decided to share it with than the West would have liked.

2. China. Whilst it may not enjoy the high profile that the old Cold War with the USSR had a few decades ago, there is a lot of concern over China's growing involvement and influence in Africa. The replacement of Gaddafi's regime with one under the effective ownership of the West would help address this situation.

3. Ideology. Despite widespread dissatisfaction and a well-earned growing distrust of the political system in the West, it is in my view unlikely that the Third Universal Theory would gain much currency in Europe or the USA. However the Western establishment has always been paranoid and may have considered a need to err on the side of caution. Capitalism is in its death throes and state socialism died many years ago. Something has to fill the vacuum.

4. Pride. Within a day or two of the insurgency coming into being Western nations were writing off the man they had re-embraced in 2003 and his regime and were telling him to go whilst going to great lengths to ingratiate themselves with the rebels. Then suddenly it all went belly up, and the West's new friends found themselves staring military defeat in the face. How would that have worked out if the insurgency had been quashed for good? On one side embarrassed Western leaders and on the other a man with an awful lot of oil and the hump.

Would a two state solution address these Western concerns?

First of all a pro-West eastern Libya would, one assumes, be happy to supply oil to Europe and to the US. They may not have access to all of Libya's oil, but they would have access to a lot of it. So I guess this would depend on how greedy the Western leaders in fact are.

Secondly the NWO would at least have expanded its influence to another swathe of North Africa, and diminished that of China at the same time. Again, whether this would be acceptable would depend entirely on whether the West is in a mood to compromise.

Where ideology is concerned, history shows that an idea does not die with its creator. If the West finds itself discredited, at the time or in the future, by the wanton slaughter of thousands of civilians loyal to the government either by means of its own air campaign or through its arming of the rebels then some of that discredit will undoubtedly attach itself to the values held dear by Western governments. Thus a fight to the finish could have the effect of raising awareness of Gaddafi's ideology rather than extinguishing it. Western leaders should think well on this.

Lastly, the West could save face following its early championing of the insurgency by bringing about the creation of a new NWO-friendly eastern Libya. It would give some purpose to its intervention and would certainly have a "freedom" factor for those many Libyans who are at war with Gaddafi's regime.

There is a fifth objective that would undoubtedly be served by the creation of a two-state Libya, of course. That would be to greatly minimise loss of life as a result of this conflict from amongst the civilian population.

The fact that I have thrown this factor into the discussion almost as an afterthought will give the reader some idea as to how much credence I give to the "offical" reason for military intervension - to protect innocent civilians.

Nonetheless if I am wrong, and this was indeed the underlying ethic that inspired Western leaders to attack Gaddafi with the same enthusiasm as they have defended their pet dictators in the Gulf as they suppress their own rebellions with similar violence, then this would be the best argument of all for a two-state solution - that it would protect innocent life in a way that it would not be protected by a Libya either under a continuation of Gaddafi's regime or under a new government led by the rebels.

So here is the question - bearing in mind that the objective of the military campaign is to "protect civilians" and that Western leaders so desire to scrupulously observe a UN resolution which categorically does not provide for regime change from outside, would they be prepared to explore the feasibility of a two-state solution?

And if not, why not?

New World Order Prepares to Protect Sirte Residents From Themselves

It would appear that the Libyan "rebels", actively assisted by Western air power, have retaken the towns of Ajdabiya, Uqayla and Brega from Libyan government forces.

Obviously it is always difficult to decipher through propaganda and counter-propaganda quite what the situation is, but it seems likely that the Western-backed insurgents do enjoy some popular support, quite possibly majority support, in these particular towns.

According to the BBC the triumphant anti-government forces now intend to advance on Sirte.

Sirte is, without any shadow of a doubt, a town in which almost all if not all of the civilian population are loyal to the government. This fact is even acknowledged by the Western media.

In effect then the next job on the list for the insurgents and the coalition air forces, whose role seems to have morphed seamlessly from one of "protecting civilians" into one of pro-actively softening up targets before they are attacked by "rebels", will be to "liberate" a town the civilian population of which has no desire to be "liberated".

Assuming the people of Sirte hold their nerve, what this means in practice is that the coalition air forces will need to attack and batter the civilian population of the town to such an extent that it weakens their capacity or their determination to fight off the insurgents who will, the moment is right, subsequently invade.

Which really does give the concept of "protecting civilians" a whole new meaning, doesn't it?

In order to prepare Western opinion for this, expect lurid "discoveries" of mass rape, pillage and baby-eating by Gaddafi supporters, civilian as well as military, over the next few days.

And expect the usual suspects to lap it up gratefully as they do every single time.

However, the encouraging news is that a recent poll showed 46% of the British people to be opposed to military action in Libya, against a smaller percentage in favour. This is in the face of the barrage of pro-war propaganda to which they are unrelentingly subjected by politicians of all the major parties and the national media.

What a blessing the Internet, which enables people to access information from all sources and reduces dependence upon official media, allowing thinking people to make their own minds up, has turned out to be.