Imperialism is Alive and Well. Tearing down sovereign nations; replacing them with global system administrators. The British Empire (Vatican, Rothschilds and Royals) didn't just have a fleet that projected its hegemonic will across the planet, it possessed financial networks to consolidate global economic power, and system administrators to ensure the endless efficient flow of resources from distant lands back to London and the Vatican, into their monied elite. It was a well oiled machine, refined by centuries of experience.
Revolution in Riyadh & the Imminent Fall of Saudi Arabia's Regime: Bruce Riedel
Bruce Riedel, former deputy head of the CIA Gulf unit, has warned US
President Barack Obama about possible imminent overthrow of Saudi
Arabia's ruling monarchy, the House of Saud.
In a memo titled
"Revolution in Riyadh", he warns that the fall of the monarchy in Saudi
Arabia would be a severe setback for the position of the United States
in the region and could possibly lead to the partition of Saudi Arabia
into several states, including a separate Hejaz, an eastern one
controlled by pro-Iran Shias, and a central one controlled by hardline
Sunni Jihadis.
A brief history of George W. Obama, the Empire puppets
Has the same U.S. President been in office for the last 12 years?
Taken together, an examination of the Bush and Obama Administrations seems to reveal an adherence to the continuation of policies favorable to rampant corporatism, imperialism, secrecy, and the destruction of civil liberties.
The following timeline covers key events between 2001-2012, with a brief background beforehand to set the stage for what follows.
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Background:
March 8, 1992: "The Defense Planning Guidance", a blueprint for Pentagon spending priorities, is leaked to the New York Times. The document argues that the U.S. dominates the world as sole superpower, and to maintain that role, it "must maintain the mechanisms for deterring potential competitors from even aspiring to a larger regional or global role."
March 8, 1992: "The Defense Planning Guidance", a blueprint for Pentagon spending priorities, is leaked to the New York Times. The document argues that the U.S. dominates the world as sole superpower, and to maintain that role, it "must maintain the mechanisms for deterring potential competitors from even aspiring to a larger regional or global role."
October 11, 1996: The Daily Telegraph writes that energy reserves in Afghanistan are "huge" and remain "one of the greatest prizes of the 21st century".
December 4, 1997: Unocal (a now-defunct oil company which eventually merged with Chevron) invites representatives of the Taliban to their headquarters in Texas. The Taliban agree to a $2 million pipeline deal if the U.S. recognizes their regime; however, the U.S. remains reluctant.
February 12, 1998: Unocal sends Vice President John J. Maresca to testify before the House of Representatives. He says that until a single, unified government is established in Afghanistan, a pipeline deal cannot be achieved. He also suggests that with a pipeline through Afghanistan, the Caspian Basin could produce 20 percent of all the non-OPEC oil in the world by 2010.
July-August 1999: Various Taliban leaders visit the United States, some of whom have ties to al-Qaeda. They visit various locations throughout the country, including Mount Rushmore, with all expenses paid for by the U.S. government and the University of Nebraska.
July 1999: Randy Glass, a former con artist turned key informant in a sting operation involving Pakistani intelligence (ISI), claims that around this time, one ISI agent named Rajaa Gulum Abbas pointed to the World Trade Center and said, "Those towers are coming down." According to Glass, his concerns about this statement were "sanitized by the highest levels of government".
September 2000: Prominent neoconservatives, including Vice President Cheney, Florida Governor Jeb Bush, Defense Secretary Rumsfeld, Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, and Undersecretary of State John Bolton, issue a "blueprint" titled "Rebuilding America’s Defenses: Strategies, Forces and Resources for a New Century", which calls for the United States to overthrow Saddam Hussein in Iraq, instigate regime change in China, North Korea, Libya, Syria, Iran and other countries, and "play a more permanent role" in Gulf regional security. Still, the neoconservatives write that such changes are likely to take a long time, "absent some catastrophic and catalyzing event—like a new Pearl Harbor."
November 2000: Regardless of indications suggesting foul play, George W. Bush is nonetheless elected as President.
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May 23, 2001: Zalmay Khalilzad, a former Unocal employee, is appointed Special Assistant to the President and Senior Director for Gulf, Southwest Asia, and Other Regional Issues on the National Security Council. He is also a member of a prominent neoconservative think tank.
August 2, 2001: The U.S. State Department's Director of Asian Affairs, Christina Rocca, covertly meets the Taliban ambassador in Pakistan, attempting to make a final deal with them regarding a pipeline through Afghanistan.
August 2-3, 2001: Journalist Hamid Mir is told by the Taliban's Defense Minister that Americans are going to invade Afghanistan before October 15, 2001, because either the Taliban took control of Afghanistan, or as a result of a major attack against American interests.
The Bush Administration will have plans for the Afghanistan invasion drawn up and ready before the 9/11 attacks take place.
Afghanistan, Argentina, Britain, Cayman Islands, Egypt, France, Germany, Israel, Italy, Jordan, Morocco, Russia .... all of these countries will warn the U.S. about an impending attack.
Nonetheless, on 9/11, four hijacked passenger planes breach U.S. airspace with one crashing in Pennsylvania, another plowing into the Pentagon, and two others colliding with the North and South World Trade Center towers in New York, resulting in the collapse of both buildings, along with a third building, World Trade Center 7, which was not hit by an airplane.
According to the American Civil Liberties Union, "many immigrants who had no connection to the terrorist attacks of September 11 languished in federal lock-up for months at a time under an official "no bond policy".
October 7, 2001: The United States begins bombing Afghanistan.
Estimates suggest that nearly 8,000 civilians will be slaughtered by U.S. attacks during the first year of the invasion (for some perspective, that's a casualty rate which is three times higher than the 9/11 attacks [3,000 deaths] in less than a year's time).
October 26, 2001: The Patriot Act is signed by George W. Bush, laying the foundation for "a domestic intelligence-gathering system of unprecedented scale and technological prowess", according to The Washington Post. Warned the United States Commission on Civil Rights, the Patriot Act "risks establishing a new generation of racial profiling in which a person’s ethnicity or national origin significantly increases his or her chance of being scrutinized by local law enforcement or detained at an airport".
February 2002: President Bush orders the CIA to start focusing on Iraq and to find evidence that Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein has weapons of mass destruction.
September 20, 2002: Originally opposing it, President Bush changes course and backs the creation of the 9/11 Commission to examine the 9/11 attacks. One of the 9/11 victim's relatives says this decision is "carefully crafted to make it look like a general endorsement but it actually says that the commission would look at everything except the intelligence failures."
March 17, 2003: In a televised address to the nation, President George W. Bush justifies the need to use military force against Iraq, asserting that the U.S. has "pursued patient and honorable efforts to disarm the Iraqi regime without war," but that Iraq "has uniformly defied Security Council resolutions demanding full disarmament." He maintains that Iraq "continues to possess and conceal some of the most lethal weapons ever devised" and "has aided, trained, and harbored terrorists, including operatives of al-Qaeda." Bush then gives Saddam Hussein an ultimatum, warning the Iraqi leader that if he and his sons do not leave Iraq within 48 hours, the U.S. will use military force.
Around this time, C.I.A. researcher Michael Scheuer combs through about 19,000 documents going back nine or 10 years, concluding that "there was no connection between [al-Qaeda] and Saddam."
March 19, 2003: 250,000 U.S. forces augmented by 45,000 British troops and small contingents from Poland, Australia, and Denmark begin attacking Iraq.
The invasion ultimately results in 3,000 U.S. military deaths, and, according to Wikileaks, more than 50,000 Iraqi civilian deaths.
Also in March, 2003, 9/11 Commission Executive Director Philip Zelikow, who has close ties to Secretary of State Condi Rice, completes an outline of the 9/11 Commission's final report weeks before the staff even begins working on it.
April 2003: 9/11 Commission Executive Direction Philip Zelikow refuses to thoroughly investigate possible Saudi Arabia connections to the attacks.
July 22, 2004: The 9/11 Commission completes its work and releases its final report, blaming incompetence for the reason why the U.S. government did not prevent the attack: "We believe the 9/11 attacks revealed four kinds of failures: in imagination, policy, capabilities, and management."
As reported by The Washington Post, "though openly dreaded for months by many Republicans and quietly feared by the White House, the report was much gentler on the Bush Administration than they feared. Rather than focus criticism on the Bush Administration, the commission spread the blame broadly and evenly across two administrations, the FBI, and Congress."
The Commission fails to answer many questions posed by the 9/11 families. These questions will remain unanswered throughout both Bush terms as well as the first Obama term.
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April 23, 2006: Tyler Drumheller, the CIA's former head of spying in Europe, tells CBS 60 minutes that the Bush Administration manipulated intelligence leading up to the war with Iraq: "The idea of going after Iraq was U.S. policy. ... It was going to happen one way or the other. ... The policy was set. The war in Iraq was coming. And they were looking for intelligence to fit into the policy, to justify the policy."
May 4, 2006: Former CIA senior analyst Paul Pillar says the Bush Administration's prewar allegations concerning Iraq were part of an "organized campaign of manipulation".
October 2007: U.S. General Wesley Clark gives a speech to the Commonwealth Club in San Francisco in which he denounces what he calls "a policy coup" engineered by neocons. Clark says that after 9/11 he was told about a Pentagon plan to attack not only Iraq, but also Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and Iran, over the course of five years.
November 2008: Obama, backed by Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan, Citigroup, Exxon, Chevron, BP, and, having received 34% more from the military-industrial complex than John McCain, wins the election.
November 28, 2008: President-Elect Obama selects Timothy Geithner to be Treasury Secretary. Geithner played a supporting role to Henry Paulson, former CEO of Goldman Sachs, in the decision to bail out AIG.
December 14, 2008: U.S. President George W. Bush signs a security pact with Iraq, establishing that U.S. combat forces will withdraw from Iraqi cities by June 30, 2009, and that U.S. forces will be completely out of Iraq by December 31, 2011.
In 2011, the Obama Administration will push to keep thousands of U.S. troops in Iraq to "counter Iranian influence". These efforts will eventually fall through, however, after the U.S. fails to obtain legal immunity for U.S. troops in the country from Iraqi laws.
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January 2009: Obama on reviewing Bush-era crimes and offenses: "We need to look forward".
Also in January, 2009, Libya's President Muammar Gaddafi speaks with Georgetown University students via satellite and suggests that Libyan oil reserves -- the largest in Africa -- "maybe should be owned by national companies or the public sector at this point, in order to control the oil prices, the oil production or maybe to stop it." Asked Forbes: "Is Libya about to take the lead of its friends in Venezuela and Russia and launch a new round of energy-sector nationalism? The thought sends a shiver through the collective spines of ConocoPhillips, Marathon Oil, Occidental Petroleum, Amerada Hess, and Royal Dutch Shell. All have made massive new investments in Libya since Gaddafi renounced his nuclear weapons program, made reparations for past terrorist activities like the Lockerbie jetliner bombing and returned to the fold of seemingly responsible nations."
This was also the month that Obama nominated the Vice President of Raytheon (defense company) as his deputy Secretary of Defense.
February 2009: President Barack Obama, in his first major military decision, authorizes the Pentagon to send an extra 17,000 troops to Afghanistan. This "surge" is supported by Bush-era neocons Bill Kristol, Robert Kagan, and Dan Senor.
March 2009: The same neoconservatives who pushed for a bloated military budget and war in Iraq via the "Project for the New American Century" form a new "think tank" called "Foreign Policy Initiative" (FPI). As summarized by History Commons, FPI's mission statement explains how the United States remains the world's "indispensable nation", warning that "strategic overreach is not the problem and retrenchment is not the solution" to Washington's current financial and strategic woes. FPI calls for "continued engagement—diplomatic, economic, and military—in the world and rejection of policies that would lead us down the path to isolationism." The statement by FPI also lists a number of threats to U.S. security, including "rogue states", "failed states", "autocracies", and "terrorism", but focuses primarily on the "challenges" posed by "rising and resurgent powers" of which only China and Russia are named."
April 2009: A "confidential" cable sent from the U.S. embassy in Madrid to the State Department—one of the 251,287 cables obtained by WikiLeaks—details how around this time, the Obama Administration, working with Republicans, shielded Bush officials from a torture inquiry.
May 2009: The Obama Administration blocks efforts by families of 9/11 victims to charge Saudi Arabia in court for their involvement with the 9/11 attacks. In one press release, the families will say that the Obama Administration "filed in the Supreme Court a document that expressed the Administration's decision to stand with a group of Saudi princes and against the right of American citizens — 9/11 family members — to have our day in court. Let there be no doubt: The filing was political in nature and stands as a betrayal of everyone who lost a loved one or was injured on September 11, 2001."
August 2009: Around this time, 3,300 corporate health lobbyists -- six lobbyists for each of the 535 members of the House and Senate -- begin their efforts to impact "Obamacare", efforts which are considered to be "the biggest since the successful 1986 effort to overhaul the tax code". Every one of the ten biggest lobbying firms by revenue will be involved in an effort "that could affect 17 percent of the U.S. economy".
December 17, 2009: U.S. cruise missiles are fired at what officials in Washington claim are al-Qaeda training camps in Yemen, killing over 60 civilians, 28 of them children.
February 2010: Obama accelerates the Bush-era aerial drone program.
According to the Associated Press and the New York Times, the President acts as the final decision maker, at least with respect to the decision to carry out "personality strikes" targeting named individuals.
An exposé in the New York Times reveals that the Obama Administration considers "all military-age males [killed] in a strike zone" to be "combatants ... unless there is explicit intelligence posthumously proving them innocent."
According to The Bureau of Investigative Journalism, President Obama will carry out more than five times the number of drone strikes in one term than Bush did in two.
January 2010: Obama appoints Monsanto lobbyist Michael Taylor to the FDA.
March 2010: Obama extends Patriot Act provisions which "allow the government, with permission from a special court, to obtain roving wiretaps over multiple communication devices, seize suspects' records without their knowledge, and conduct surveillance of a so-called "lone wolf", or someone deemed suspicious but without any known ties to an organized terrorist group.
March 26, 2010: The Cheonan, a South Korean ship, is conducting a routine naval patrol when an explosion unexpectedly tears into it, splitting the vessel in half and killing 46 sailors. Shortly after, western powers blame North Korea for the attack, though North Korea denies responsibility. The attack gives the United States an opportunity to prolong its control over South Korean forces until 2015, and also extend its stay at nearby Japanese military bases.
May 2010: Bradley Manning, a 22-year-old U.S. Army Private accused of leaking classified documents to WikiLeaks, is detained at the U.S. Marine brig in Quantico, Virginia for five months — and for two months before that in a military jail in Kuwait — under conditions that constitute cruel and inhumane treatment.
Summer 2010: The Obama Administration launches a wave of cyber attacks against Iranian nuclear facilities, attacks which are by the Pentagon's own definition an act of warfare.
August 2010: A U.S. drone in Pakistan kills 20 people, "with at least four women and three children among the slain". At least 13 other civilians are also reported wounded, including a number of other children.
September 30, 2010: The White House announces President Barack Obama's intention to nominate Thomas Nides, Chief Operating Officer of Morgan Stanley, to be the next Deputy Secretary of State for Management and Resources.
March 2011: The U.S. participates in the bombing of Libya to overthrow Libyan President Muammar Gaddafi, slaughtering dozens of civilians in the process.
After briefly consulting with Obama, Prominent Bush-era neoconservative and proud armchair warrior William Kristol was happy to declare that the President is now a "born-again neocon".
May 2011: Just hours before the announcement that Osama Bin Laden had been killed in Pakistan, Saif al-Arab, 29, and three of Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi's grandchildren, all reported to be under 12, are butchered by NATO/U.S. bombs in Libya.
October 2011: Two U.S. citizens are executed without trial by U.S. drones in Yemen: one is Anwar al-Awlaki, allegedly linked with al-Qaeda; the other U.S. citizen is Abdulrahman al-Awlaki, the 16-year-old son of Anwar.
December, 31, 2011: On New Years Eve, Obama signs the NDAA, which essentially authorizes indefinite detention of U.S. citizens without trial.
June 2012: The "Obamacare" mandate -- designed to force U.S. citizens to purchase health insurance -- is pushed through Washington, despite the fact that Obama was originally against it.
August 2012: Obama authorizes the CIA to fund al-Qaeda-linked Syrian "rebels" in an effort to overthrow the Syrian government.
The Obama Administration eliminates the last possibility that any criminal charges will be brought as a result of the brutal interrogations carried out by the CIA during the Bush era.
On August 30, 2012, Obama deploys U.S. Marines to Guatemala to "help fight the drug war".
In respect to the "drug war" within the U.S., it is reported during this time that Obama's DEA has raided over four times the number of medical marijuana dispensaries Bush raided in eight years.
September 14, 2012: Obama announces the deployment of U.S. troops to both Libya and Yemen.
September 25, 2012: According to the New York Times, a unit of U.S. Army Special Operations soldiers are deployed to Iraq and more U.S. soldiers may soon be on their way.
October 9, 2012: The U.S. sends a "task force" of more than 150 "planners and other specialists" to Jordan.
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What will the next four years be like? Will it be more of the same, or a break from the status quo? You can leave the answer to that question up to the politicians in Washington who have so clearly represented your interests over the last twelve years, or you can abandon the false political system and answer it yourself.
Who we fight
Firewall: the Defense of a Nation States
1932: The story of the United States
While every schoolchild learns about the British Empire, it seems a common modern-day political malady for adults to believe that reality is organized as their history books were in school - in neat well defined chapters. This leads to the common misconception that the age of imperialism is somehow a closed-chapter in human history. Unfortunately, this is far from the truth. Imperialism did not go extinct. It simply evolved.
Imperialism is alive and well.
There are several pertinent examples illustrating how imperialism is still alive and well, and only cleverly disguised with updated nomenclatures. What we know today as "free trade" actually derives its origins from economic concessions the British frequently extorted from nations under its "gunboat diplomacy" strategy - that is, anchoring gunboats off the coast of a foreign capital, and threatening bombardment and military conquest if certain demands were not met.
In the mid-1800's, Thailand, then the Kingdom of Siam, was surrounded on all sides by colonized nations and in turn was made to concede to the British 1855 Bowring Treaty. See how many of these "gunboat policy" imposed concessions sound like today's "economic liberalization:"
1. Siam granted extraterritoriality to British subjects.
2. British could trade freely in all seaports and reside permanently in Bangkok.
3. British could buy and rent property in Bangkok.
4. British subjects could travel freely in the interior with passes provided by the consul.
5. Import and export duties were capped at 3%, except the duty-free opium (British Monarchy monopoly) and bullion (Rothschild monopoly).
6. British merchants were to be allowed to buy and sell directly with individual Siamese.
A more contemporary example would be the outright military conquest of Iraq and Paul Bremer's (CFR) economic reformation of the broken state. The Economist enumerates the neo-colonial "economic liberalization" of Iraq in a piece titled "Let's all go to the yard sale: If it all works out, Iraq will be a capitalist's dream:"
1. 100% ownership of Iraqi assets.
2. Full repatriation of profits.
3. Equal legal standing with local firms.
4. Foreign banks allowed to operate or buy into local banks.
5. Income and corporate taxes capped at 15%.
6. Universal tariffs slashed to 5%.
Nomenclatures aside, nothing has changed since 1855 as far as imperialist "wish-lists" go. The Economist argued, as would any 18-19th century imperialist, that Iraq needed foreign expertise to catch up, justifying the evisceration of their national sovereignty and the foreign stewardship (theft) of their resources. Unlike Siam, Iraq refused to concede to the "gunboats" of modern-day Wall Street & London, and often as the British did during the "glory days" of the empire, they made good on their threats.
Image: The Anglo-Zulu War. Causus belli - diamonds & imperial expansion.
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And just as the British did when they found diamonds beneath Zululand during the late-1800's, spurring them to invent a causus belli to justify the destruction of the Zulu Kingdom, the schemers of modern-day global imperialism likewise invented a dubious pretext to invade Iraq before commencing its plundering.
Image: Anglo-Zulu War. Mission accomplished. The city of Ulandi burns and the British go about dividing Zululand into 14 chiefdoms led by compliant, obedient proxies. The British took great care to cultivate rivalries between the 14 chiefdoms to ensure they would never again unite and challenge British hegemonic ambitions throughout the region.
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At the conclusion of the Anglo-Zulu War, the British despoiled Zululand, divided it into 14 separate cheifdoms, each led by a proxy obedient to the British Empire. The British ensured that these 14 cheifdoms harbored animosities toward one another and fostered petty infighting between them to ensure British interests would never again be challenged by a unified Zulu threat. Today we see what seems to be the "accidental" consequences of military interventions leadeing to vicious, protracted fighting and in some cases civil wars, in Iraq, now in Libya (which also had a direct proxy installed as PM), Pakistan where plans exist to literally carve up the nation Zululand-style, and Syria. These are not accidental but intentional. Divide and conquer is a classic military stratagem that has not escaped the interests and attention of Wall Street & London.
Video: Dwight D. Eisenhower exit speech on January 17, 1961, warning us of the military industrial complex.
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If people can study history and see today's events are simply the relabeled repeating of what empire has been doing for centuries, the public as a whole will be less likely to go along with what is in reality an exploitative, murderous crime spree of global proportions - merely sold to us as justified intervention. One need only look at how Iraq has been despoiled and the profits that have been garnered by Fortune 500 corporations, while soldiers and Iraqis alike pay the price with their minds, bodies, blood, futile destinies, and lives.British Imperial Administration (proto-NGOs)
A book of invaluable use in understanding British imperial administration is "Colonial Georgia: A Study in British Imperial Policy in the Eighteenth Century." Published by the University of Georgia Press and written by Trevor Reese, it successfully endeavored to illustrate "practically every facet of British colonial policy" using Georgia as a case study.
The colony of Georgia, in what is now the southern United States, was founded by what is essentially a proto-NGO - and in this case an organization dedicated to "prison reform." What it really did, was assess suitable prisoners in London who could be sent to Georgia to fulfill the needs of the Crown. Beginning as the "Associates of Dr. Bray" and later becoming the "Trustees for the Establishment of the Colony of Georgia in America," or simply the Georgia Trustees, it encapsulates perfectly the use of noble-intentioned networkers to exploit human tragedy for the benefit of the elite.
Image: One face of the Georgia Trustee's seal. It featured the Latin motto, "Non Sibi Sed Aliis" which means, "Not for self, but for others." Truly a proto-NGO, a "system administrator." The significance of the mulberry leaf, the silkworm, and the cocoon? The silk that Britain's new colony of Georgia was going to export to London to enrich the empire. "For others" indeed.
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While many may argue that prisoners in London were better off being shipped to Georgia, the underlying point is the dictation of one's destiny for the benefit of another, irregardless of whether or not such exploitation results in a thriving new life in Georgia, or death defending British expansion in the New World. The same cost/benefit analysis could also be made for slavery, but done so in spite of its essential immorality.
Protestantism for England was also a precursor to modern day NGOs. Religious denominations were divided directly along political lines in 18th century Europe, and when shiploads of Protestants were sent to Georgia, so followed the political networks they represented. Again, noble-intentions were, and to this day are, in the forefront of many devoted to these political functionaries, and much good has been done in their names, but ultimately the purpose of each empire's church was to establish a bottom-up network of people who believed they were fulfilling noble, higher intentions, when in reality they were simply serving the elite of their respective empires. Unfortunately, despite the noble intentions and great works of many of these people, when the time came for the Crown to use these networks for less than noble causes, organizational indoctrination was used to marshal men to it. And just like modern NGOs today, Protestant organizations interfaced with and supported directly the primary regional administrators, in Georgia's case, the Georgia Trustees.
In Reese's book, he even notes on page 21, "in sanctioning the Georgia project the British Government was not motivated by any such charitable intentions as inspired the Trustees. The Ministry was not much interested in the plight of insolvent and unemployed debtors, but it was concerned about the defense of the empire." Similarly today, NGOs have truly dedicated people "inspired" as the "Trustees" were, but ultimately they are carrying water for their sponsors, who almost always end up being George Soros, the OCED, the US State Department's National Endowment for Democracy, and other purveyors of global corporate-fascist imperialism.
The British Empire's interests in Georgia were economic, while the rouse used to fill and administer the colony was altruistic. Another key characteristic to imperialism is keeping subjects dependent. Reese offers on page 27, "the danger of these [private or charter provinces] lay in the scope they provided for the construction of independent authorities, and this was contradictory to the whole principle of colonization."
This, within the contest of mercantilism - essentially the exportation of raw materials from the colonies, which would be refined in Europe, and then imported back into the colonies as manufactured goods - meant servile dependency, both politically and economically - despite the fact that even then, many features of "democracy" could be found throughout the colonies. Today's concept of "free-trade" agreements ensure that resources, manufacturing, refinement, and consumption are equally interdependent on a global scale despite the fact that technology now exists to make any state or province, let alone nation, fully independent economically.
Image: Despite the good intentions, the religious causes, and loyalty to the crown, the ultimate destination of all these good intentions wrought was the "Board of Trade" which managed the unending flow of wealth out of Britain's colonies and into London.
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Like NGOs of today, the administrative networks that made up the British Empire were in many cases entirely dependent on grants from London, as local contributions were almost never adequate. Reese notes on page 39, "constant need of money made the Trustees permanently dependent on Parliament, without whose support their colony could not be maintained." The British Empire maintained a careful balancing act to ensure that its networks received enough resources to fulfill their purpose, but never enough to become independent. Financial policy conformed to imperial standards and while local policy was set by local administrators, it interlocked with the Board of Trade back in London - just as local NGOs now interlock with international organizations in accordance to rule and norms defined by international institutions.
Reese quotes Vincent Harlow in his epilogue, who said of Georgia's eventual independence from Great Britain, "men's minds indeed conceive new thoughts and plan new projects, but out of ancient thinking and under potent influence of long-established characteristics."
Re-imagining Imperialism for the 21st Century
We have already seen some examples of how imperialism is very much alive and well. We also saw how imperialism was implemented by the British, but how exactly is it being implemented today? And why are people willingly going along with it?
Video: Thomas Barnett describes the building of an army of "system administrators" (aka civil society) to expand into "peace spaces" while US global military conquers "battle spaces." Soros' Revenue Watch along with the National Endowment for Democracy have created just such an army of NGOs. And just as soldiers witlessly promote imperialism believing they are fighting for "freedom," these NGOs expand Wall Street and London's global hegemony, believing they are promoting "human rights."
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One takes down the existing networks of targeted nations through air campaigns, special operations, or invasions, and consists of military assets including armor, fighters and bombers. The other consists of system administrators who then build upon the ashes left by the "Leviathan force" or the chaos sown by a foreign-backed destabilization. The system administrators consist of everything from NGOs, international organizations, and contractors, to civil affairs officers (psychological warfare), and when necessary, soldiers and Marines.
Barnett warns that if anyone attempts to interfere with the construction of the West's "system administrator" networks, the "Marines are going to come over and kill you." This perhaps like British garrisons did to tamp down dissatisfaction amongst their colonies.
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The talk was given in 2008, and already we see solid steps being taking to expand and utilize just such a force. Barnett said of the special operations "trigger pullers" that he wanted the rules to be "as loose as possible." Just recently, the Corbett Report and Media Monarchy reported the expanded role proposed for "elite" military forces. Admiral William McRaven of Special Operations Command was said to be seeking "more autonomy to position his forces and their war-fighting equipment where intelligence and global events indicate they are most needed."
Video: Special Operations Command is looking for more "autonomy" in deploying where "intelligence and global events indicate they are most needed." This "loosening of rules" was part of building the double edged sword of neo-imperial conquest, the global army & system administrators.
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It is quite clear that Barnett's proposal doesn't necessarily need the "US-enabled Leviathan force" to tear down targeted networks as seen in the US-funded Arab Spring. Fomenting unrest, up to and including armed insurrection falls short of overt military intervention and utilizes assets Barrent descibed in the Levithan force such as "trigger pulling" special operations, as well as civil affairs units, NGOs, and contractors from the system administration side.
In Libya for example, NGOs and civil affairs advisers began the unrest in February of 2011 while weapons were covertly moved in to arm fighters to overthrow the Qaddafi government. International organizations like the ICC were used to poison public opinion against the Libyan government using information supplied to them from NGOs, while NATO began preparing for a full scale air campaign. Once the bombing began, it was only a matter of incrementally increasing the torrent of special operations forces, arms, and other facilitators to fill in the void left by NATO's relentless air campaign. Thus the forces of Leviathan and the system administrators worked in tandem, one clearing a path through the old, the other building new networks to facilitate the installment of long-time US resident and Petroleum Institute chairman, Abdurrahim el-Keib, as PM.
In nations where military options like this are not an option and would be difficult if not impossible to ever justify, like Thailand for example, the full weight of Wall Street and London's support is thrown behind system administrators and suitable opposition movements that will make appropriate proxies if the targeted sovereign networks can be torn down.
In Thailand's case, that proxy is Thaksin Shinawatra, a former Carlyle Group adviser, and recipient of extensive US backing, including lobbying services from fellow Carlyle member James Baker and his firm Baker Botts, Bush's personal envoy to Iraq Robert Blackwill of Barbour Griffith & Rogers, and PNAC signatory Kenneth Adelman of Edelman. During Thaksin's term in office from 2001 until a coup ousted him in 2006, upon the eve of which he was literally reporting to the Council on Foreign Relations in New York, he had committed Thai troops to the US invasion of Iraq and allowed the CIA to use Thailand for its abhorrent rendition program.
He now currently leads the forces of a "color revolution," the stand-ins for Barnett's occupation force, since such a Western force is untenable. This included his documented use of armed militants in 2010 during an attempted insurrection. They are billed the "red shirts" or United Front for Democracy Against Dictatorship (UDD) and have met with Soros' Open Society-funded Human Rights Watch, the National Democratic Institute for International Affairs (NDI), National Endowment for Democracy (NED), and the U.S.–ASEAN Business Council in an April 2011 Washington D.C. visit.
Image: It is clear that NGOs and opposition movements many believe are spontaneous, indigenous, and independent are in fact part of a larger network for the sole purpose of imposing and maintaining global system administration. This is not a web of elaborate, vague associations. In each case there is direct path of funding leading back to Western foundations and the think-tanks that devise policy for them, all funded and chaired by the Fortune 500 of Wall Street and London.
Finally there are the NGOs like propaganda outfit Prachatai, which receives 1oo's of thousands of dollars a year from the US State Department via the National Endowment for Democracy, George Soros' Open Society, and USAID. NED also funds the Campaign Committee for Human Rights, the Cross Cultural Foundation (CrCF), and the Environmental Litigation and Advocacy for the Wants. In addition to sharing the same foreign sponsors, each cross-posts the other's work, each signs petitions on the others behalf and each perpetuate identical agendas. While their mission statements claim to promote "freedom," "democracy," and "human rights," one cannot help but wonder how they reconcile the backgrounds of their sponsors and the "international" organizations they interlock with, with the causes they allegedly promote, with the work they actually carry out.
Image: Clearly there are "strings attached" to NGO Prachatai's funding from the National Endowment for Democracy and Freedom House who regularly contributes posts, support, and award nominations to the Thai "independent journalists." It is also clear how these same interests are involved in the support of Thaksin Shinawatra, the imperial proxy of choice for Thailand.
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The National Endowment for Democracy and its subsidiary Freedom House features boards of directors much resembling a revolving door, with current and former members of Congress, the US State Department, corporate lobbying firms, and corporate board members of some of the largest corporations on earth including Exxon, Boeing, Ford, and Goldman Sachs constantly shifting in and out of government, big-business, and NGO positions. They are, just as the British were, "not motivated by any such charitable intentions," as inspire the well-intentioned people drawn into the cause of NGOs like Prachatai they fund.
Their hope is to eventually diminish the power and influence of Thailand's own indigenous networks, by gradually building up the capacity of Wall Street & London's system administrators. Just like in the example of Georgia, ignorance and good intentions are used to swell the ranks of these networks, and just like in Georgia, they are kept purposefully dependent on the constant and substantial support provided by Wall Street & London, as local contributions are almost never enough. And while many of these people may believe they are committed to a "higher cause," they are simply soldiers of another kind within an imperial system perfected over centuries of trial and error.
The activists on the ground may be of genuine good-intentions but surely there are some who realize the conflict between their stated mission and the insincere intentions of those funding them from abroad. Just like the army, this system of NGOs perpetuates itself on the ignorance of the general population - of those drawn in by their good intentions to contribute to what they believe is a noble cause, and those throughout society who see these networks spreading across the planet with no idea of what their true purpose is.
Trevor Reese leaves us with one more relevant observation concerning the state of imperialism in the 18th century that still very much applies today:
"In the Eighteenth century, colonial affairs were subsidiary issues in English political life; Sir John Seeley's dictum that the British people founded an empire in a fit of absence of mind is true in the sense that imperial expansion seldom commanded public attention. Although there wer always a few critics in the country who expressed anti-imperialist sentiments and feared that the empire would ultimately escape from the control of the mother-country, they represented only a small minority. Generally, when people thought about the colonies, which was not often, they regard them with mild approval, and believe in the advantage of an empire even though they knew little about it."In the same way, today many people remain in the dark about what Wall Street & London do overseas. While military interventions grab headlines and create a brief but confusing diversion for most, they are but mildly aware of the concept of NGOs, let alone how they work in tandem with the creeping war machine making its way from Tunisia to Thailand and everywhere in between.
While today's media is able to project images onto our perception of what an NGO is, with pictures of smiling Africans clutching bags of USAID rice, thriving wildlife, and sprouting, dew covered seedlings, in reality it is a centralized operation built to tear down the old world, and replace with a new one. One that does not answer to the people that inhabit it on anything but the most superficial of levels, but rather to the people that rule over it - the monied elite, as they always have, with the most vicious feeding their competitors ruthlessly into their maw and gladly expanding into the place left at the table.
Empire's Weakness is Independence
Empires require subjects. Without subjects there is no empire. There is no fleet, there are no Marines, there are no imperial administrators. There are no laborers to gather and send resources back to be refined, no one to refine them in the factories and send them back, and surely no one to buy these manufactured goods when they arrive.
Empire requires subjects to be preferable ignorant, easily manipulated, indoctrinated in a manner that motivates them to carry out their necessary function within the empire reliably. They need subjects that believe in the empire and most importantly, they need subjects who are hopelessly dependent on it. It is no coincidence then that nations declared their "independence" from England in pursuit of their freedom.
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Before the great battles of the American Revolution took place and the victory that followed, the Founding Fathers took it upon themselves to declare their independence not only by writ, but also by action. Our Founding Fathers ceased the import of British goods, they created their own monetary system, they assembled their own militias, and most importantly they formed their own government based upon their own values, not King George's self-interest.
This truly measurable independence turned out to be the key to their success, for independence is freedom, and freedom from tyranny is victory. The battle they fought was not one to free themselves, instead, it was fought to defend the freedom from the British system they had already achieved.
In "Real World Government" a list of the most common, reoccuring corporate-financier interests and the think-tanks they use to create, promote, publish, and execute their policy was provide. The article concluded by stating:
"These organizations represent the collective interests of the largest corporations on earth. They not only retain armies of policy wonks and researchers to articulate their agenda and form a consensus internally, but also use their massive accumulation of unwarranted influence in media, industry, [across a global network of NGOs,] and finance to manufacture a self-serving consensus internationally.
To believe that this corporate-financier oligarchy would subject their agenda and fate to the whims of the voting masses is naive at best. They have painstakingly ensured that no matter who gets into office, in whatever country, the guns, the oil, the wealth and the power keep flowing perpetually into their own hands."
Video: Voting is not an option. Noam Chomsky in 1993 regarding NED: "It's about what you would expect from a bipartisan democracy campaign - it's an attempt to impose what is called democracy, meaning rule by the rich and the powerful, without interference by the mob but within the framework of formal electoral procedures."
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This is confirmed in a talk given by Noam Chomsky in 1993, where he stated or the National Endowment for Democracy's work, "it's an attempt to impose what is called democracy, meaning rule by the rich and the powerful, without interference by the mob but within the framework of formal electoral procedures." Quite clearly it is, along with Open Society, and the vast network of system administrators being built up across the planet, working in witless tandem with NATO, building in the swath of destruction it leaves behind the homogeneous workings of a global corporate-financier-run empire.
If the world is indeed run by corporate-financier interests, and voting is not only futile but gives the population a false sense of security, what can we do instead to declare our independence from modern empire?
On a daily basis, across the planet, billions of people witlessly pay into this empire, buying their products, paying them their attention on diversions like TV, radio, and at the theater, and participating in systems, organizations, and causes that like the "Georgia Trustees" may have started out working for prison reform, ended up handing the empire another thriving colony to exploit. It is clear then that vast campaigning, elections, rallies, and protests are not necessary or even viable options in dismantling this system - rather our daily decisions to boycott their corporations, pull the plug on our TVs, switch off the radio, leave the theaters empty and refuse to recognize the legitimacy of corporate-backed institutions and organizations on both national and international levels.
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