I am somewhat shocked to hear voices from the “left” refer to WW2 as our fight to defeat fascism. Surely they have some grasp of the history of this country. We didn’t go to war with Germany to defeat fascism, we went to war with that country to stop it being a rival or a threat to the resources of the British Empire, as was WW1.
WW1 had nothing to do with the shooting of a pompous Duke, it was all about the German Empire planning to build the Berlin to Baghdad railway. This would have give Germany tremendous influence in Iraq and other countries in that region, allowing it to move resources and troops in and out of that area much quicker than the British Empire, and Iraq was an oil rich country that the British claimed as theirs. So we super-doper imperialist would have to teach the nasty German Empire a lesson. Of course we all know it didn’t turn out quite like that, the conflict turned Europe into a bloody altar where the youth of nations soaked the soil of Europe in blood. The total number of military and civilian casualties in World War1, was around 40 million. There were 20 million deaths and 21 million wounded. The total number of deaths includes 9.7 million military personnel and about 10 million civilians.
The German Empire was decimated and that suited the British Empire, allowing it to lord it over a vast section of the world, pillaging and plunder land after land. Fast forward and along comes a guy whose intention is rebuild the German Empire, this posed a threat to the arrogant imperialist that control the British Empire. So once again our lords and masters decided to teach that nasty Germany Empire a lesson, and as they say, the rest is history, or it should be, not a truth lost in an illusion of imperialists propaganda. World War 2 was the deadliest military conflict in history. An estimated total of 70–85 million people perished, which was about 3% of the 1940 world population (est. 2.3 billion).
By now we should all know that the British state never goes to war to defeat fascism, it trades with them as long as it is beneficial to them, it goes to war to protect or enlarge its resources, power and wealth, and the people can go to hell in a hand cart.
It’s the the weekend, have some music.
Venezuela is in the news a lot at the moment, and it is the usual fabricated banal bullshit from the media puppets, handed to them by their political and corporate masters. The message goes something like this: "The people of Venezuela are in the grip of an evil despot, unlike us, here in the wonderful utopian free world, watched over by our guardian angel America. So we must do our duty and make that sacrifice, go in and bring them democracy, just as we have done to Libya, Iraq, Afghanistan and Syria, the poor suffering Venezuelans deserve no less than this from us."
The fact that across the world, in every country, poverty and deprivation are part and parcel of this economic system, doesn't seem to register in their twisted minds. It is all about power and control of world's limited resources. Lies, and the suffering of the people are all part of the power mongers' game, a price we pay for their wealth and power.
In the past days of "the great British Empire" Britain was the master of regime change and setting up of puppet governments around the world, now in the days of "The American Empire", that mantle has fallen to America, and it carries out that role with brutal savagery and total disrespect for the people in its target areas.
-------To be thorough, let’s look at the arguments being used to
advance this regime change operation. There is the contention that
Nicolas Maduro is not a legitimate president because last year’s
elections, where he was supported by 68% of those who turned out, lacked
transparency and were boycotted by certain opposition parties, whereas
Juan Guaidó is 100% legit in spite of him and his inconsequential
National Assembly being opposed by 70% of Venezuelans according to the
opposition’s own polling numbers. There were also some unfounded
allegations of “ballot-box stuffing”—except that the Venezuelans do not
use paper ballots, while according to international election-watcher and
former US president Jimmy Carter, “the election process in Venezuela is
the best in the world.” There is the contention that Maduro
has badly mismanaged Venezuela’s economy, leading to hyperinflation,
high unemployment, shortages of basic goods (medicines especially) and a
refugee crisis. There is some merit to this contention, but we must
also note that some of Venezuela’s neighbors are doing even worse in
many respects in spite of Maduro not being their president. Also, many
of Venezuela’s economic difficulties have been caused by US sanctions
against it. For instance, right now around 8 billion dollars of
Venezuela’s money is being held hostage and is intended to be used to
finance a mercenary army which would invade and attempt to destroy
Venezuela just as was done with Syria. Finally, a lot of
Venezuela’s predicament has to do with the oil curse. Venezuela has the
largest oil reserves in the world, but its oil is very viscous and
therefore expensive to produce. During a period of high oil prices
Venezuelans became addicted to the oil largess, which the government
used to lift millions of people out of abject poverty and to move them
out of slums and into government housing. And now low oil prices have
caused a crisis. If Venezuela manages to survive this period, it will be
able to recover once oil prices recover (which they will once the
fracking Ponzi scheme in the US has run its course). We will return to
the topic of Venezuelan oil later. As a side comment, a lot of
people have been voicing the opinion that Venezuela’s woes are due to
socialism. According to them, it’s fine if lots of people are suffering
as long as their government is capitalist, but if it is socialist then
that’s the wrong kind of suffering and their government deserves to be
overthrown even if they all voted for it. For example, the site
ZeroHedge, which often publishes useful information and analysis, has
been pushing this line of thinking ad nauseam. It is unfortunate that
some people imagine that they are being principled and right-thinking
whereas they are just being dumb jerks at best and somebody’s useful
idiots at worst. The politics of other nations are not for them to
decide and they should stop wasting our time with their nonsense.
This naked attempt at regime change would set a very dangerous
precedent for the US itself. The doctrine of legal precedent is by no
means universal. It comes to us from the dim dark ages of tribal English
common law and is only followed in former British colonies. To the rest
of the world it is a barbaric form of injustice because it grants
arbitrary power to judges and lawyers. The courts must not be allowed to
write or alter laws, only to follow them. If your case can be decided
on the basis of some other case that has nothing to do with you—well
then, why not let somebody else pay your legal fees and your fines and
serve out your sentence for you? But there is an overarching principle
of international law, which is that sovereign nations have a right to
keep to their own laws and legal traditions. Therefore, the US will be
bound by the precedents which it establishes. Let’s see how that would
work. The precedent established by the US government’s
recognition of Juan Guaidó allows Nicolas Maduro to declare Donald
Trump’s presidency as illegitimate for virtually all of the same
reasons. Trump failed to win the popular vote but only gained the
presidency because of a corrupt, gerrymandered electoral system. Also,
certain opposition candidates were unfairly treated within the electoral
process. Trump is also a disgrace and a failure: 43 million people are
on food stamps; close to 100 million are among the long-term unemployed
(circularly referred to as “not in labor force”); homelessness is
rampant and there are entire tent cities springing up in various US
cities; numerous US companies are on the verge of bankruptcy; and Trump
can’t even seem to be able to keep the federal government open! He is a
disaster for his country! Maduro therefore recognizes Bernie Sanders as
the legitimate president of the United States.
Pompous defender of privilege Duke of Wellington receives a touch of Glasgow Humour.
As you walk around our fair city of Glasgow, you get the impression that the ordinary people played no part in the development our the city. The city centre is festooned with statues, but none to the struggles of the ordinary people who tried to improve the conditions of the ordinary people and who fought inequality and injustice. Seldom do these people enter into the history curriculum in the education system, yes, I know, we have a statue to Mary Barbour, instead there is a catalogue of kings, queens, dukes and earls fighting for wealth and power, or it is the history of war mongers, who shed the blood of ordinary people to defend the wealth and power of the few, “captains” of industry or greedy entrepreneurs, we even have streets named after slave owners. Our city is littered with statues and plaques to these greed and power driven individuals, most of whom gained their fame and fortune on the blood and sweat of the ordinary people. It is encouraging to see various campaigns to have some of the statues of these symbols of power mongers removed. As far as I am concerned most should be scrapped, as they are symbols to the blood soaked defence of privilege, power and wealth, symbols of oppression of our people, and of people in the once blood soaked British Empire. The “British Empire” is just a sanitised name for the savage and brutal plunder of the planet for the benefit of the few, that army of parasites that control our lives. Nowhere do you see statues and plaques honouring those thousands of ordinary working class people who spent their lives struggling to change this society and free the ordinary people from poverty and oppression. That is our history, a history that we should rightly be very proud of, and do our utmost to keep alive to inspire us, our children and grand children to continue the struggle to bring justice to all and an end to poverty power and privilege.
One feature of Western foreign policy is that other countries can't create democracy without the might of the Western military and Western government intervention. The powers that be preach this idiotic message that for democracy to spread anywhere in the world, it needs the fire power of the West, of course ignoring the fact that we don't have democracy here. People across the world can't do that for themselves, the ordinary people of Pakistan and Yemen can't have democracy unless we go in with our drones and special forces. The West's big lie is that by its war on terror, it is spreading democracy, when in fact they are creating chaos in an attempt at permanent domination.
Who knows how many die from these attacks, since they are carried out
secretly by the CIA. And civilian casualties are falsely minimized by
counting every male of military age an enemy combatant. I guess
“Kill-them-all” is the policy at hand. Hundreds of non-combatants have
died, including a good many little girls and boys.
Obviously, this didn’t just start with Obama. Pakistan,
the sixth most populous country in the world and territorially home to
several ancient cultures, was artificially created in 1947 by the
British Empire. From the beginning, the country has been dominated by a
right-wing military, backed first by Great Britain and then the United
States.
Since the 1980s war in Afghanistan against the Soviet Union,
Pakistan’s state apparatus has been mixed up with the Islamic
fundamentalists in both countries. In fact, the Taliban was nurtured and
funded by the United States in Afghanistan. So much for the myth that
the U.S. brings secular democracy and women’s equality to the Middle
East.
Only the people themselves can do that, and they are trying
desperately. Before she was attacked, Malala said, “If the new
generation is not given pens, they will be given guns by the terrorists.
We must raise our voice.”
Forty-four years ago (1968) Pakistanis, with women in the
forefront, launched a stunning revolution. They forced a dictator to
abdicate and ran society for 139 days. Workers occupied factories,
peasants seized land, and students took over the schools and colleges.
This can happen again and I have no doubt that Malala Yousafzai, and
other determined young women and men like her, will be a part of that
struggle.
For those interested in history as a map to where we are now, this from, Land Destroyer, is worth a read.
Part 1: Imperialism is Alive and Well
February 18, 2012
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The British Empire 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 into the pockets of England's monied elite. It was a well
oiled machine, refined by centuries of experience.
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 & 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.
