Banks in Front Line of Nuclear Arms Campaign

Source: Asia Times
Thalif Deen

The world's nuclear weapons industry is being funded - and kept alive - by more than 300 banks, pension funds, insurance companies and asset managers in 30 countries, according to a new study.

And these institutions have substantial investments in nuclear arms producers.

Released by the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN), the 180-page study says that nuclear-armed nations spend over US$100 billion each year assembling new warheads, modernizing old ones, and building ballistic missiles, bombers and submarines to launch them.

Much of this work, the report points out, is carried out by corporations such as BAE Systems and Babcock International in the UK, Lockheed Martin and Northrop Grumman in the United States, Thales and Safran in France, and Larsen & Toubro in India.

"Financial institutions invest in these companies by providing loans and purchasing shares and bonds," says the report, described as the first of its kind.

Titled "Don't Bank on the Bomb: The Global Financing of Nuclear Weapons Producers", the study provides details of financial transactions with 20 companies heavily involved in the manufacture, maintenance and modernization of US, British, French and Indian nuclear forces.

A coordinated global campaign for nuclear weapons divestment is urgently needed, it says.

Such a movement could help put a halt to modernization programs, strengthen the international norm against nuclear weapons, and build momentum towards negotiations on a universal nuclear weapons ban, it adds.

Russia Accuses Libya of Training Syrian Rebels

Source: Lacrosse Tribune

Russia demanded Wednesday that NATO apologize for civilian casualties during the uprising in Libya last year and accused the Libyan government of supporting a training center for Syrian rebels, provoking a sharp response from the U.S. and Libya’s prime minister.

The sparring was another indication of how deeply divided the international community remains over the turmoil in the Middle East, particularly the bloody uprising in Syria.

Russia and China have accused NATO of overstepping its Security Council mandate to protect civilians in Libya during the uprising last year, and have strongly opposed any similar action in Syria.

Russia’s U.N. Ambassador Vitaly Churkin said his country has received information that “a special training center for Syrian revolutionaries” has been established in Libya with support from government authorities.

He did not elaborate but expressed concern about “the uncontrolled proliferation of Libyan arms in the region” and said training fighters to attack Syria’s government was undermining stability in the Middle East.

Why Putin is Driving Washington Nuts

Source: Asia Times
Pepe Escobar

Forget the past (Saddam, Osama, Gaddafi) and the present (Assad, Ahmadinejad). A bet can be made over a bottle of Petrus 1989 (the problem is waiting the next six years to collect); for the foreseeable future, Washington's top bogeyman - and also for its rogue North Atlantic Treaty Organization partners and assorted media shills - will be none other than back-to-the-future Russian President Vladimir Putin.

And make no mistake; Vlad the Putinator will relish it. He's back exactly where he wants to be; as Russia's commander-in-chief, in charge of the military, foreign policy and all national security matters.

Anglo-American elites still squirm at the mention of his now legendary Munich 2007 speech, when he blasted the then George W Bush administration for its obsessively unipolar imperial agenda "through a system which has nothing to do with democracy" and non-stop overstepping of its "national borders in almost all spheres"." 

So Washington and its minions have been warned. Before last Sunday's election, Putin even advertised his road map The essentials; no war on Syria; no war on Iran; no "humanitarian bombing" or fomenting "color revolutions" - all bundled into a new concept, "illegal instruments of soft power". For Putin, a Washington-engineered New World Order is a no-go. What rules is "the time-honored principle of state sovereignty".

No wonder. When Putin looks at Libya, he sees the graphic, regressive consequences of NATO's "liberation" through "humanitarian bombing"; a fragmented country controlled by al-Qaeda-linked militias; backward Cyrenaica splitting from more developed Tripolitania; and a relative of the last king brought in to rule the new "emirate" - to the delight of those model democrats of the House of Saud.

More key essentials; no US bases encircling Russia; no US missile defense without strict admission, in writing, that the system will never target Russia; and increasingly close cooperation among the BRICS group of emerging powers.

Most of this was already implied in Putin's previous road map - his paper A new integration project for Eurasia: The future in the making. That was Putin's ippon - he loves judo - against the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), the International Monetary Fund and hardcore neo-liberalism. He sees a Eurasian Union as a "modern economic and currency union" stretching all across Central Asia.

Stop KONY 2012, LulzSec FBI, Fukushima Anniversary - New World Next Week

Source: Corbett Report and Media Monarchy

Welcome to http://NewWorldNextWeek.com – the video series from Corbett Report and Media Monarchy that covers some of the most important developments in open source intelligence news. This week:

Story #1: Joseph Kony Viral Video Campaign Clouded In Controversy
http://ur1.ca/8khpo
'Get Kony' Goes Viral: Questions Raised About Charity's Social Media Blitz
http://ur1.ca/8khpq
Joseph Kony Is Not In Uganda
http://ur1.ca/8khps
Invisible Children, The Next Chapter
http://ur1.ca/8khpy
Related: Breitbart Autopsy Leaves More Questions Than Answers
http://ur1.ca/8khq3
After Ohio Primary, Kucinich Loses Seat in Congress
http://ur1.ca/8khq5

Story #2: LulzSec Hackers Charged after Ringleader Turns Informant
http://ur1.ca/8khqb
Flashback: One In Four US Hackers 'Is An FBI Informer'
http://ur1.ca/8khs6

Story #3: Children Wait Another Year for UN Radiation Study
http://ur1.ca/8khqh
Related: Iran Tops Agenda of UN Nuclear Inspectors' Meeting in Vienna
http://ur1.ca/8khqn
Flashback: Toxic link - the WHO and the IAEA
http://ur1.ca/4n25n

Bonus: Food World Order on Corbett Report Radio
http://ur1.ca/8khqu
The 2010 Video Archive DVD from Corbett Report
http://ur1.ca/8khqw

Visit http://NewWorldNextWeek.com to get previous episodes in various formats to download, burn and share. And as always, stay up-to-date by subscribing to the feeds from Corbett Report http://ur1.ca/39obd and Media Monarchy http://ur1.ca/kuec Thank you.

Kony 2012: Wrapping Imperialism in "Activism"

Source: NileBowie
Nile Bowie

Editor's Note: It is worth mentioning the background of "Invisible Children's" CEO, Ben Keesey and that he was formally pursuing a career at JP Morgan before suddenly becoming an advocate for a US AFRICOM invasion of resource rich Africa.

Like other fraudulent NGOs including Avaas.org who's founder is formally of Fortune 500-funded, George Soros and Zbignew Brzezinski's International Crisis Group (page 5) as well as the Soros-affiliated MoveOn.org, they exist within one degree of separation from the most depraved corporate-financier interests on earth, promoting identical agendas of invasion, war, occupation, and foreign meddling.

Youth Movement Promotes US Military Presence in Central Africa

Edward Bernays believed that society could not be trusted to make rational and informed decisions on their own, and that guiding public opinion was essential within a democratic society. Bernays founded the Council on Public Relations and his 1928 book, Propaganda cites the methodology used in the application of effective emotional communication. He discovered that such communication is capable of manipulating the unconscious in an effort to produce a desired effect – namely, a capacity to manufacture mass social adherence in support of products, political candidates and social movements. Nearly a century after his heyday, Bernays’ methodology is apparent in almost every form of civic and consumer persuasion. The platform of social media is being used in unprecedented new ways, one such example is a new online documentary about the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA), an extremist rebel group operating in Central Africa.

The documentary is unprecedented, not for its educational attributes but for its capacity to use visual branding, merchandising and highly potent emotional communication to influence the viewer to support US military operations in resource rich Central Africa under the pretext of capturing the LRA’s commander, Joseph Kony. The Lord’s Resistance Army was originally formed in 1987 in northwestern Uganda by members of the Acholi ethnic group, who were historically exploited as forced laborers by the British colonialists and later relegated by the nation’s dominant ethic groups following independence. Together with the Holy Spirit Movement, the LRA represented the armed wing of a resistance faction aiming to overthrow the government of current Ugandan President and staunch US military ally, Yoweri Museveni.

The LRA was originally formed to combat ethic marginalization, but soon became dominated by Joseph Kony, a self-proclaimed spiritual messenger of the (Christian) Holy Spirit. Kony utilized his messianic persona to lead a syncretic spiritual movement based on Acholi tribal beliefs’ and extremist Christian dogma. It is claimed that LRA seeks to establish a theocratic state based on the Ten Commandments, however its inner ideological mythology is largely unknown. In an effort to mobilize a large scale armed resistance, the LRA routinely recruited child soldiers and forced them to commit heinous acts such as cannibalism and mutilation on others who resisted to join the rebel group during their extensive twenty-five year campaign.

KONY 2012 is directed by Jason Russell and runs just thirty minutes; the video has received over twenty million views on YouTube and Vimeo and it’s national support group on Facebook is said to gain 4,000 members each hour. The highly produced feature is narrated from the perspective of Russell and his attempt to explain the Lord’s Resistance Army to his infant son, Gavin. The video features footage from Russell’s trip to Uganda (prior to 2006, when the LRA was still operating in the region) and introduces the viewer to Jacob, a Ugandan boy who was formally recruited by the LRA as a child soldier. Russell presents various montages of ethically diverse groups of students raising their fists in the air, sporting KONY t-shirts, and scenes of mass celebration in response to President Obama signing the S. 1067: Lord's Resistance Army Disarmament and Northern Uganda Recovery Act of 2009.

Pentagon Launches Desperate Damage Control Over Shocking Panetta Testimony

Source: Prison Planet
Paul Joseph Watson

Alex Jones: “This represents absolute 100 per cent proof that the military industrial complex which runs the United States is under the control of foreign central banks who are imposing a military dictatorship.”

The Pentagon is engaging in damage control after shocking testimony yesterday by Defense Secretary Leon Panetta at a Senate Armed Services Committee congressional hearing during which it was confirmed that the U.S. government is now completely beholden to international power structures and that the legislative branch is a worthless relic.

During the hearing yesterday Panetta and Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Gen. Martin Dempsey brazenly admitted that their authority comes not from the U.S. Constitution, but that the United States is subservient to and takes its marching orders from the United Nations and NATO, international bodies over which the American people have no democratic influence.

Panetta was asked by Senator Jeff Sessions, “We spend our time worrying about the U.N., the Arab League, NATO and too little time, in my opinion, worrying about the elected representatives of the United States. As you go forward, will you consult with the United States Congress?”

The Defense Secretary responded “You know, our goal would be to seek international permission. And we would come to the Congress and inform you and determine how best to approach this, whether or not we would want to get permission from the Congress.”

Despite Sessions’ repeated efforts to get Panetta to acknowledge that the United States Congress is supreme to the likes of NATO and the UN, Panetta exalted the power of international bodies over the US legislative branch.

Empire, Power and People - Episode 9

Source: Boiling Frogs Post
Andrew Gavin Marshall

American Imperial Adventures in Asia

 

 

The American Empire had an early start in East and Southeast Asia, beginning with a U.S. Marine invasion of an Indonesian town in 1832, another Indonesian town in 1839, and a brief occupation of Danang (Vietnam) in 1846. From there, the United States sought to expand its commercial hegemony and establish trade relations in East and Southeast Asia. When a U.S. mission to Japan arrived in 1853, to establish a coaling station for American ships on their way to the lucrative market of China, this marked the “opening” of Japan, which had been isolated for over 200 years. From then on, the Japanese Empire and nation state formed, expanding with the colonization of Formosa (Taiwan) in 1895 and Korea in 1910. In the late 1890s, America established its first colony during the Philippine-American War (1899-1902), and thereafter, the American and Japanese empires expanded their commercial hegemony and military strength over the region, until an inevitable clash of empires took place in World War II, and thereafter established the United States as the reigning imperial hegemony of all East and Southeast Asia.