If the Asia-Pacific region is becoming, in the words of Hillary “We came, we saw, he died” Clinton, “the strategic and economic center of gravity,” then the South China Sea may just be the strategic center of that strategic center.
At first glance, there is nothing particularly remarkable about this area of the Pacific. Stretching from the southern shores of the People’s Republic of China and Taiwan in the north to Malaysia and Indonesia in the south, it covers about 3.5 million square kilometers and contains three archipelagos containing over 250 islands, reefs, shoals, atolls and sandbars, most of them containing no indigenous population, and many of them submerged for part or all of the year.

Upon closer inspection, however, the waters comprising the South China Sea are of central importance to the region. It is the second busiest sea lane in the world, and contains proven oil reserves of over 7 billion barrels, with an estimated 28 billion barrels total and 266 trillion cubic feet of natural gas.

In this episode of our EyeOpener Report James Corbett discusses the central importance of the waters comprising the South China Sea to the region, the growing tension in the South China Sea made possible by an increasingly assertive Chinese Navy, and the sea as a key piece of the chessboard for any would-be regional superpower.

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Recent developments in Mali illustrate both the way in which the Unites States and its Western allies directly project military and political power, as well as the role of terrorism as a necessary pretext for imperialist, neo-colonial domination. Beginning with the establishment of AFRICOM (US Africa Command) in 2007, incorporating the war in Libya and the military coup d’etat in Mali, and up to today’s consolidation of power by Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM), it has become clear that the United States has managed to successfully destabilize West Africa and achieve many of its long-term strategic objectives in the region.

While the Western media portrays the situation in West Africa as an “unintended consequence� of the imperialist aggression against Libya, the incontrovertible fact that the United States has, for years, attempted to expand its control of the region, has been made all the more apparent by the current instability and the “decisive action� that it necessitates. The spread of AQIM, which has now consolidated control over a vast swath of land in the Sahel region, rather conveniently provides the US with the crucial cover it needs to expand its military presence.

Recent Developments

Since the fall of the Gaddafi regime in Libya, Mali has been embroiled in a fierce civil war that has torn the country apart. The Tuareg fighters, who had fought on the side of Gaddafi and the Green Resistance, began to return home armed, battle-hardened, and bearing a grudge. This was, understandably, a recipe for war in Mali where the central government was seen as little more than a US puppet regime, touting democracy as it bowed to US military and corporate interests. The rebels began waging war against Bamako in hopes of creating their own independent state of Azawad in Northern Mali, a goal which has been stifled since Mali gained its own independence in 1960. Read more È

Yesterday I wrote a piece on the real lords of Afghan poppies and heroin operations. I am thankful to all your supportive feedback. Of course not all feedbacks were positive, and I truly understand and accept that. Many of the critics came from mainstream media and establishment’s loyal believers and followers. They found my article complicated and not rational. In various ways and using many different words-some not very pleasant,  they were asking if I was accusing the United Nations, NATO, the US Government, and mainstream media outlets such as the New York Times and Newsweek Magazine of selling lies?! All that made me recall a famous quote from a ruthless despot. Actually, I ended up using that quote in my nightly news roundup:

“All propaganda must be popular and its intellectual level must be adjusted to the most limited intelligence among those it is addressed to. Consequently, the greater the mass it is intended to reach, the lower its purely intellectual level will have to be.” –Adolf Hitler

I realized I had ignored that very important advice in trying to convey the important myths, inconsistencies, and facts on the global Afghan heroin business since 9/11. If the establishment media uses the Fuhrer’s tactic to sell lies and myth, why don’t we use that same tactic to put out facts and the truth? I did not adjust my article for those with the most limited intelligence who have been following our government and its mainstream media and their daily propaganda. I sincerely apologize for that. To show my sincerity I have gone back and produced an adjusted version of that article.

Here is my Afghan Heroin piece recapped and adjusted for the loyal establishment and mainstream followers to accommodate their comprehension capabilities (Our irate critical thinking minority may skip this piece all together-way too simple for you;-):

One- Let’s agree on what kind and size of trade we are talking about here. The very conservative and cautious estimate of the Global market value of Afghan heroin in 2009 given by mainstream sources puts it at somewhere between $60 Billion and $65 Billion.  I am going to cite two sources to make these mainstream-following critics of mine more comfortable: Read more È

Facts, Myths, Smugglers, and the International Dudes

Yesterday this so-not-news news made the headlines: Central Asia Key to Afghanistan Heroin Smuggling – UNODC. The headline was followed by these so-not-accurate descriptions and statements [emphasis mine]:

A new report by the United Nations drug agency sheds light on the nuts and bolts of narcotics transit from Afghanistan through Central Asia, highlighting the former Soviet republics’ lackluster efforts at interdiction.

…

The 106-page report by the UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), released this month, describes how smugglers traffic heroin and opium from Afghanistan, the world’s largest producer, to Russia, the world’s largest consumer. Ninety tons of highly pure heroin, roughly a quarter of the substance exiting Afghanistan, passes through Central Asia annually. Yet in 2010 authorities in the region seized less than 3 percent of it. And despite international efforts to help, that number keeps falling.

…

You see, these kinds of reports never reveal the so-called culprit smugglers. And somehow these reports always get the role of the so-called international efforts backwards.  What do I mean? How do you describe the situation when the smugglers are high-level international dudes, the large part of the international efforts are to increase not decrease the smuggling exerted by the same smuggling international dudes, and the international cosmetic show put on in pretense of international efforts to decrease smuggling are performed by the same international smuggler dudes who’s efforts are to increase the smugglings? Read more È

Mental State Appears to be Only Relevant to Great White Men of the West

I was sipping my first morning coffee while staring at the headlines on the latest massacre committed by our military in Afghanistan. The phrase of the day to describe this latest massacre which resulted in more than a dozen innocent people – sleeping children and women – being viciously murdered and set on fire is ‘Man Gone Berserk.’ That’s right. Unfortunately Oprah is not around any longer, otherwise she’d have a session on this: bring in the Berserk Man’s parents and grandparents to talk about his less than perfect childhood; showcase dozens of PhD psychologists to talk about his ‘tough’ experiences in Iraq;  introduce his buddies from the ‘fields’ to talk about his ‘rough’ encounters … But no worries. The Pentagon, their tentacles in the networks, their pet puppets and madams like Huffington are doing their best to compensate for Oprah’s absence. The crafty stories are coming out: PTSD, depression, isolation, brain damage, head injuries, concussions, not enough candy or lollipops in childhood, too early start in potty training, chronic  constipation, severe allergies, recent hernia operation … or for the common men and women of America, ‘A Man Gone Berserk,’ and that, justifiably so: Read more È

As the U.S. becomes more and more the kind of country it has traditionally opposed, the answer to where we are headed may lie more in the arcane traditions of a dim past than in a bright future.

“‘We’re the dark matter. We’re the force that orders the universe but can’t be seen,’ a strapping Navy SEAL, speaking on condition of anonymity, said in describing his unit.�

If anyone (correctly) thought that the war on terror and Washington’s response to it had taken on a fantastical otherworldly quality, this recent quote on the front page of the Washington Post seemed to confirm it.

Following 9/11the elected government of the United States of America delivered the country to a whole department (of Homeland Security) dedicated to expanding the government’s fear of darkness into everybody’s life (remember the 2003 duct tape and plastic sheeting craze?) Now we also have a top secret military operation known as the Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) that thinks it is the dark.

Begun as a modest hostage rescue team, JSOC has morphed into a veritable heart of darkness, with the power to murder at will and with immunity from American legal jurisdiction (which apparently still maintains that such assassinations are illegal).

Even within the military, JSOC operates as a “Stovepipe,� operation, meaning that it operates completely in the black, reports to no one and continues to employ rogue ex-CIA professionals such as indicted Iran Contra operative Dewey Clarridge.  The Navy Seal Team that took out Osama bin Laden operated under JSOC. Retired military personnel refer to JSOC as “Murder, Incorporated� and the “most dangerous people on the face of the earth.�  

But if JSOC’s reputation for secrecy, vengeance and death from above can’t be explained from within the context of traditional U.S. military operations or U.S. law, then what set of rules is it operating from? Or is it simply that the traditions of rationalism and law that most Americans took for granted about the United States are subject to deeper, religious, or perhaps even mystical rules, whose anachronistic logic has found a renewed acceptance in an irrational world of  personal, private and holy war?

No one less than the legendary Cold Warrior, Time Magazine’s Henry Luce understood that his passion for defeating Communism constituted “a declaration of private war,� which, in citing the example of  the privateer Sir Francis Drake made it not only “unlawful,� but “probably mad.�  As the child of American missionaries, Luce was committed to the militant spread of Christian Capitalism while viewing its ultimate triumph over the world as an inevitable consequence of God’s will.

Known to its 19^th century advocates as mystical imperialism, the term can be traced to both Britain and Russia’s 19^th century efforts to establish dominion through a mix of imperialism and Christian zeal. The competition came to a dead stop in Afghanistan with the end of the Great Game in 1907. The Bolshevik Revolution of 1917 complicated matters by infusing a heavy dose of socialist realism. But with the advent of the Cold War and the mysterious and intoxicating god-like qualities inherent in nuclear weapons, a new iteration of mystical imperialism came into being. Read more È

Leading scholars and human rights groups from a range of fields – including psychology, medicine, law, military, and intelligence – have joined together in spearheading a broad-based effort to annul and delegitimize the American Psychological Association’s deeply flawed 2005 Report of the Presidential Task Force on Psychological Ethics and National Security (the PENS Report). In a joint declaration the coalition states:

Despite evidence that psychologists were involved in abusive interrogations, the PENS Task Force concluded that psychologists play a critical role in keeping interrogations “safe, legal, ethical and effective.� With this stance, the APA, the largest association of psychologists worldwide, became the sole major professional healthcare organization to support practices contrary to the international human rights standards that ought to be the benchmark against which professional codes of ethics are judged- the “do no Harm� standard.

Further, the coalition points out the inherent bias in the Presidential Task Force membership, where six of the nine voting members were on the payroll of the U.S. military and/or intelligence agencies, and five having served in chains of command accused of prisoner abuses. The group cites other significant conflicts of interest by the Task Force’s unacknowledged participants, such as the spouse of a Guantánamo intelligence psychologist and several high-level lobbyists for the Department of Defense, and direct funding for psychologists by the CIA.

Professor Stephen Soldz, clinical psychologist and one of the coalition’s active leaders, had the following statement in an exclusive interview with Boiling Frogs Post:

“We now know that psychologists played a central role in design and implementation of the US torture program and the PENS Report was the crucial document that protected this involvement. Without the involvement of psychologists the torture program as we know it could not have gone forward. The PENS Report was a black mark for the profession of psychology and a devastating blow against human rights worldwide. We are calling on people from around the world – psychologists, other professionals, and ordinary citizens concerned with human rights – to join us in calling for the Report to be annulled as a step to ending torture everywhere.�

Professor Soldz is also one of the contributing authors in the recently released book -The CIA on Campus: Essays on Academic Freedom and the National Security State, edited by Dr. Philip Zwerling.

The Coalition has launched a petition calling for the annulment of the APA’s PENS Report as part of their joint effort to remove psychologists from torture and abusive interrogations. So far the list of prominent signatories includes more than 300 scholars, intelligence experts and activists. Here are a few names from the petition’s signatory list:

Philip Zimbardo, President, American Psychological Association (2002); Professor Emeritus, Department of Psychology, Stanford University

Leonard Rubenstein, Senior Scholar, Center for Public Health and Human Rights, Johns Hopkins School of Public Health

Noam Chomsky, Institute Professor (ret.), Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Michael Wessells, PhD, APA PENS Task Force Member, Professor of Clinical Population and Family Health, Columbia University

Steven Reisner, PhD, Candidate for APA President; Clinical Assistant Professor, NYU Medical School; Faculty and Supervisor, International Trauma Studies Program, New York City

David DeBatto, former US Army Counterintelligence Special Agent and Iraq war veteran

Michael Ratner, President Emeritus, Center for Constitutional Rights

Manfred Nowak, Professor for International Law and Human Rights, University of Vienna; Director, Ludwig Boltzmann Institute of Human Rights

David Remes, Appeal for Justice; Guantánamo habeas attorney since 2004

Nora Sveaass, UN Committee Against Torture; Associate Professor, Department of Psychology, University of Oslo, Norway

Sibel Edmonds, Founder & Director, National Security Whistleblowers Coalition

Coleen Rowley, retired FBI agent and former Minneapolis FBI Legal Counsel

The petition is now open to the public. People are encouraged to visit the coalition’s website for more information and background, and sign the petition here.

*We just recorded an in depth interview with Professor Soldz. The interview will be published in two weeks as part of our new series on ‘CIA on Campus,’ based on a recently released book -The CIA on Campus: Essays on Academic Freedom and the National Security State, edited by Dr. Philip Zwerling. Here is a brief preview of our interview:

Preview - Interview with Professor Soldz [ 4:22 ] Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

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Dr. Nafeez Ahmed provides us with an overview of the role played by US military and intelligence practices in the creation of terrorism, particularly Al-Qaeda. He tells us about the status of investigations into the Blair government’s complicity with the Bush administration in supporting the invasion of Iraq. He discusses possible factors behind Americans’ long-held denial and dismissal of dark US foreign policy practices as conspiracies. Mr. Nafeez talks about the Obama administration, the ongoing posture of US corporate interests and the desire to dominate world energy supplies, the so-called liquid bombing plot and how it was mythologized in the US, and more.

Dr. Nafeez Ahmed is a bestselling author and political analyst. He is the Executive Director of the Institute for Policy Research & Development, and has taught courses in contemporary history and international relations theory at the University of Sussex. His Doctoral thesis investigated the radicalization processes and dynamics of violent conflict in the context of hierarchical social systems in the modern world. Dr. Ahmed has also published extensively on international security issues, including The London Bombings; The War on Truth; Behind the War on Terror; and The War on Freedom. He has been an expert commentator for BBC News 24, BBC World Today, Al-Jazeera English, among others. He is currently advising the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst on engaging British Muslim communities. Visit Dr. Nafeez’ website.

Here is our guest Nafeez Ahmed unplugged!

Interview with Dr. Nafeez Ahmed [ 1:15:51 ] Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

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