Joseph Kony & More AFRICOM Wars over Oil

Source: Boiling Frogs Post
William Engdahl

A Major AFRICOM & US State Department Campaign to Undermine Chinese Influence in Central Africa

According to their website, the American NGO, Invisible Children, claims now to have had over 80 million viewers to their YouTube video, “Kony2012,” since its release on YouTube a few weeks ago. For anyone with the patience to sit through the entire YouTube of Kony2012, it is questionable how truthful the figure of 80 million viewers is. Eighty million is unprecedented in YouTube history by all accounts.

The video features such prominent Hollywood personalities as Angelina Jolie, George Clooney, Lady GaGa, Bill Gates, Bill Clinton, Sean “Puff Daddy” Combs and other notables. It’s a slick, sentimental story directed by Jason Russell, a 33-year-old now-hospitalized American filmmaker who apparently just underwent a bizarre mental disconnect on the streets of San Diego.[1] The YouTube video depicts a young Ugandan, Jacob Acaye, whom Russell claims he befriended some ten years earlier after Acaye escaped conscription into Joseph Kony’s Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) as an 11-year-old killer. The film portrays Kony as the world’s worst beast and terrorist, in effect, Africa’s Osama bin Laden. [2]

The Invisible Children NGO is itself opaque. It reportedly rakes in millions from sales of such things as buttons, Invisible Children T-shirts, bracelets and posters priced from $30-$250, but it ranks low on transparency regarding other donors. The group, which employs around 100 people, is expected to raise millions of dollars from their “Kony2012” video, but so far it refuses to say how much has been donated or how it will spend the money. The founders of the group, who advocate direct US military intervention in response to the LRA, had been previously criticized for posing with guns alongside members of the Sudan People’s Liberation Army (SPLA) in 2008, an organization widely accused of rape and looting. The group issued a statement in response: “We thought it would be funny to bring back to our friends and family a joke photo. You know, ‘Haha – they have bazookas in their hands but they’re actually fighting for peace’.” [3] HaHa…

After Libya, NATO Intervention Threatens To Destabilize Entire Region

Source: Frontline
John Cherian

Slipping into Chaos
 
One year after the NATO intervention, Libya faces disintegration as the oil-rich eastern region seeks semi-autonomy

Libya seems to be on the verge of disintegration one year after the military intervention by the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO). In the first week of March, leaders from its oil-rich eastern region, which includes Benghazi, the focal point of the Western-backed rebellion that ousted Muammar Qaddafi, announced their intention to seek “semi-autonomy” from the central government. The meeting in Benghazi, where the decision was taken, was attended by major political leaders, military commanders and tribal leaders from the region. The new “semi-autonomous” region, Cyrenaica, will extend from the central coastal city of Sirte, Qaddafi’s hometown, to the country’s border with Egypt. According to energy experts, the area holds around two-thirds of the country’s oil reserves.

Observers of the Libyan scene predict that the move is aimed at partitioning the country. At the Benghazi meeting, there was an open call for the re-adoption of the 1951 Constitution, which recognised Tripoli as the administrative capital and Benghazi as the financial capital of the country. 

Under King Idris, the pro-Western puppet ruler at the time, Libya was divided into three provinces, Cyrenaica in the east, Tripolitana in the west and Fezzan in the south. 

Benghazi, where the King resided, was the centre of decision making. The United States had military bases nearby while big Western oil companies monopolised the country’s oil resources. After Qaddafi came to power, he nationalised the oil industry and forced the U.S. to vacate its bases.

Former US Representative Patrick Kennedy Paid by Terrorists (Literally)

Source: Land Destroyer Report
Tony Cartalucci

Unimaginable treason, shamelessly defended.  

In an astounding interview uploaded on August 29, 2011 by Think Progress.org, former US Representative Patrick Kennedy is asked about his appearance at a rally on behalf of Mujahedin-e Khalq (MEK), a US State Department-listed foreign terror organization (#29). He shamelessly declares that not only was he paid a sum of 25,000 USD to appear at the rally, but that he also believes in MEK's "cause."

Kennedy would further astound us by claiming Iranians are "exporting" rocket propelled grenades and IED's (improvised explosive devices) to "kill Americans." He states, "you could never pay me enough to be on the side of any group that is killing Americans," apparently oblivious to the fact that MEK is listed as a terrorist organization specifically because it has indeed killed Americans.

He would then go on to implicate several other co-lobbyists working with him, claiming that he stands with "a whole array of military leadership" in his support of MEK.

Kennedy's support of MEK - being a designated terrorist organization - is in direct violation of USC § 2339A & 2339B - providing material support or resources to designated foreign terrorist organizations. It is a crime under US law that carries with it a penalty up to and including life imprisonment.

Chinese Coup Watching

Source: Foreign Policy

Last week, controversial politician Bo Xilai, whose relatively open campaigning for a seat on China's top ruling council shocked China watchers (and possibly his elite peers, as well), was removed from his post as Chongqing's party secretary. He hasn't been seen since. Rumors of a coup, possibly coordinated by Bo's apparent ally Zhou Yongkang, are in the air. 

Western media has extensively covered the political turmoil: Bloomberg reported on how coup rumors helped spark a jump in credit-default swaps for Chinese government bonds; the Wall Street Journal opinion page called Chinese leadership transitions an "invitation, sooner or later, for tanks in the streets." The Financial Times saw the removal of Bo, combined with Premier Wen Jiabao's strident remarks at a press conference hours before Bo's removal as a sign the party was moving to liberalize its stance on the Tiananmen square protests of 1989. That Bo staged a coup is extremely unlikely, but until more information comes to light, we can only speculate on what happened. 

Reading official Chinese media response about Bo makes it easy to forget how much Chinese care about politics. The one sentence mention in Xinhua, China's official news agency, merely says that Bo is gone and another official, Zhang Dejiang, is replacing him.  But the Chinese-language Internet is aflame with debate over what happened to Bo and what it means for Chinese political stability. 

Mainland media sites have begun to strongly censor discussion of Bo Xilai and entirely unsubstantiated rumors of gunfire in downtown Beijing (an extremely rare occurance in Beijing). Chinese websites hosted overseas, free from censorship, offer a host of unsupported, un-provable commentary on what might have happened in the halls of power. Bannedbook.org, which provides free downloads of "illegal" Chinese books, posted a long explanation of tremors in the palace of Zhongnanhai, sourced to a "person with access to high level information in Beijing," of a power struggle between President Hu Jintao, who controls the military, and Zhou, who controls China's formidable domestic security apparatus. The Epoch Times, a news site affiliated with the Falun Gong spiritual movement (which banned in China), has published extensively in English and Chinese about the coup. 

Mexican Earthquake Coincides With Drill Based Around Exact Same Scenario

Source: Prison Planet
Paul Joseph Watson

Fears amongst some that governments are experimenting with technology that can trigger seismic events have heightened following the bizarre occurrence of yesterday’s Mexican earthquake coinciding with a government drill that was scheduled to take place at precisely the same time simulating an earthquake of the exact same magnitude.

The video above documents how Mexican Civil Protection (CP) authorities had planned to stage a response drill to an earthquake measuring 7.9 on the Richter scale on March 20 at 12 noon local time, which is precisely when an earthquake hit Mexico yesterday.

After having initially been reported as 7.9 on the Richter scale, the earthquake was later revised to measure 7.4.

The exercise was being run under the auspices of Mexico’s State Emergency Committee, the government department tasked with responding to natural disasters.

“As part of preparations for the next megasimulacro March 20, state authorities of Civil Protection (CP) performed exercise tests before a cabinet to simulate the response to a contingency situation, an earthquake measuring 7.9 degrees on the scale Richter,” states a translated report out of Mexican newspaper El Heraldo, which ran the story on March 2.

A poster to publicize this “megasimularco” was also published by authorities, announcing the date of the drill to take place on March 20.

Another Mexican newspaper, La Voz del Norte, also reported on the “megasimularco,” on March 13, noting that three departments of “government are prepared to carry out the Mega Drill to be held on March 20 at about 12 o’clock.”

Yesterday’s earthquake hit precisely at 12:02PM local time in the region of Oaxaca, according to the USGS.

The bizarre coincidence has prompted claims that the event could have been a seismic experiment.

Phony 2012: Empire, Power and People - Episode 11

Source: Boiling Frogs Post
Andrew Gavin Marshall

What are the broader motivations and implications behind the Kony 2012 video? Taking a look at the geopolitics of the region, its recent history, and Western subsidies for dictatorships (“dictatorship by franchise”) as well as profiting off of genocide (such as in the Congo), the Kony 2012 video is designed as an emotional appeal for military intervention in Uganda to purportedly stop a conflict which had stopped several years ago. Taken with the context of major oil reserves having been discovered in Uganda, along with the U.S. Africa Command (AFRICOM) program to militarize foreign policy for the continent, the video is a propaganda ploy designed to expand U.S. imperial hegemony in the region. This is no less evident from the fact that the most interviewed person in the video, John Prendergast, was a former State Department and National Security Council official during the Clinton administration, responsible for overseeing U.S. imperial policy in the region, and has since mobilized campaigns of celebrity personalities to promote foreign intervention. Coincidence or consistency?

Soros-funded HRW Jumps on Kony2012 Africom Crusade

Source: Land Destroyer Report
Tony Cartalucci

Another video of "Africans" begging the US to invade & occupy Africa.  

Human Rights Watch (HRW) during the height of the Kony 2012 hysteria, dusted off one of its old propaganda videos titled, "Joseph Kony - LRA" uploaded on November of 2010, to try and capitalize on the attention Invisible Children raised earlier this month. However, the Kony 2012 campaign imploded just as fast, and perhaps even more spectacularly than it rose - with vast numbers of people pointing out the untenable narrative it attempted to peddle and the fact that it served as nothing more than a pretext for an expanded US AFRICOM presence in Africa.

Both Human Rights Watch and Invisible Children are funded by Wall Street speculator George Soros through his Open Society Institute and the myriad of corporate-funded foundations it funnels money through. At least one foundation behind Invisible Children (.pdf, page 22), "Enough," who is also involved in the George Clooney promotion of a US AFRICOM intervention in oil-rich Sudan, actually counts Human Rights Watch a partner.



Image: HRW's partners include Wall Street speculator George Soros' Open Society Institute which also funds Invisible Children through a myriad of proxy foundations. Note on the right-hand side the "Dear Obama" video which is featured below. It was originally uploaded in 2010, but has just recently been featured on HRW's website in the midst of the recent Kony 2012 hysteria.

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After Invisible Children collapsed under the weight of overexposure - simply the sheer volume of people scrutinizing and exposing the fraud being peddled - we can begin to appreciate the necessity the Wall Street-London elite see in cultivating a vast array of redundant "human rights" fronts. This is to compartmentalize catastrophes like Invisible Children, and just like a ship that loses an entire section to flooding, it can be sealed off and the agenda kept afloat. In this case, the AFRICOM agenda can still keep moving forward even with "all hands lost" at Invisible Children.

Fast and Furious: The Hidden History of the Drug War

Source: Corbett Report and Global Research

As US troops deploy to the Mexican border to deal with the fallout of Fast and Furious, details continue to emerge about this flagrantly illegal operation to arm Mexican drug lords in a supposed sting operation. But as veteran investigative journalist Bill Conroy points out, operations like this were going on years prior to Fast and Furious and this latest scandal is just another example of a drug war that is not what it is believed to be. This is the GRTV Feature interview with your host James Corbett and our special guest, Bill Conroy.

 

U.S.-Iran: From War Of Nerves To Full-Scale War?

Source: Voice of Russia

Boris Volkhonsky

Iran – U.S.: game of nerves and muscles

As reported by The Los Angeles Times, The U.S. Navy is upgrading its defensive and offensive capabilities in the Persian Gulf to counter threats from Iran to seize the Strait of Hormuz and block the flow of oil.

Admiral Jonathan W. Greenert told reporters that the Navy will add four more mine-sweeping ships and four more CH-53 Sea Stallion helicopters with mine-detection capability. The Navy is also sending more underwater unmanned mine-neutralization units to the region.

On the other hand, according to reports, the Iranians have boasted that they could “swarm” large U.S. ships with their smaller, fast-moving craft. They have also reportedly been laying mines along their coastline.

In January, the chief of the Iranian army warned the U.S. not to send another ship to the Persian Gulf after the aircraft carrier John C. Stennis departed. Another carrier, the Abraham Lincoln, entered the gulf weeks later without incident.

Almost simultaneously, U.S. President Barack Obama issued an executive order titled “National Defense Resources Preparedness.” The executive order, published on the official White House website, “delegates authorities and addresses national defense resource policies” “in times of national emergency.” Several media have already labeled the document as an attempt to impose a state of emergency in peacetime. In any case, this is definitely a new indication of the U.S. readiness for any course of development in the most volatile region of the world.

And, as if to further strengthen the impression, The New York Times reported on Monday that “a classified war simulation held this month to assess the repercussions of an Israeli attack on Iran forecasts that the strike would lead to a wider regional war, which could draw in the United States and leave hundreds of Americans dead.”

Declining, Desperate U.S. Intensifies China-Bashing

Source: Beijing Review
Chen Xiangyang - Deputy director of the Institute of World Political Studies at the China Institutes of Contemporary International Relations

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International political rules consist of diplomatic practices, public international law and norms of international relations, the core principle of which are respecting state sovereignty and non-interference in a nation’s internal affairs. “Humanitarian intervention” and the “responsibility to protect,” though highly advocated by Western powers in recent years, have yet to become universally accepted.

The United States has long considered itself the rule maker for the world. American lawmakers often hold hearings on other countries’ domestic affairs. The U.S. Government regularly releases reports on foreign governments’ policies ranging from human rights and religious freedom to monetary policies.

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Playing the blame game

As the sole superpower, the United States is the biggest beneficiary of current international rules. Taking advantage of its dominant status in the international system, Washington has recently adopted a new tactic when dealing with Beijing: It has bashed the country with “international rules,” calling China a challenger and a violator of established rules.

When meeting with visiting Chinese Vice President Xi Jinping in February, U.S. leaders once again urged China to follow the U.S. version of international rules.

There are several reasons why the United States has intensified its China-bashing rhetoric. Since the outbreak of the global financial crisis, China has continued to develop swiftly while the United States is mired in financial and fiscal crises. China’s catching up has caused a sense of anxiety in the United States. Also, in a U.S. election year, candidates from both parties tend to make China a scapegoat to court voters. They have attributed U.S. troubles to China’s unfair competition and violation of international rules. For instance, Republican presidential hopeful Mitt Romney has repeatedly accused China of being a “currency manipulator.”

A Year Later, HRW Admits Syrian Rebels Guilty of Atrocities

Source: Land Destroyer Report
Tony Cartalucci

Kidnapping, Torture, & Murder of Civilians by Syrian Opposition Confirmed.

Human Right Watch (HRW), just as it did in Libya, waited until the very last possible moment to admit what the alternative media had been reporting for over a year - that Syria's rebels are craven, torturing, kidnapping, murdering terrorists committing widespread and systematic atrocities not only against security forces, but against anyone suspected of supporting the Syrian government as well as randomly targeted civilians.


Image: Human Rights Watch knew all along that Syria's opposition was armed and conducting a systematic campaign of kidnapping, torture, and mass murder but waited until the last possible moment to acknowledge it. As we can see, HRW is funded by George Soros' Open Society as well as a myriad of corporate-funded foundations all disingenuously leveraging the cause of human rights to carry out their agenda of achieving global corporate-financial hegemony. (click on image to enlarge)

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The HRW report titled, "Syria: Armed Opposition Groups Committing Abuses," is broken into three parts, kidnapping, torture, and executions. And while the report attempts to focus mainly on atrocities carried out against security forces and government supporters, the mention of civilian victims is made as well. The report states:

"Abuses include kidnapping, detention, and torture of security force members, government supporters, and people identified as members of pro-government militias, called shabeeha. Human Rights Watch has also received reports of executions by armed opposition groups of security force members and civilians."

Ron Paul blasts Obama for killing Americans

Source: RT

Presidential hopeful Ron Paul has publically attacked the Obama administration’s abolishment of due process in a new editorial, calling the move a turning point in American history.

Responding to Attorney General Eric Holder’s recent justification for the extrajudicial killings of three American citizens on foreign soil, Republican Party candidate Ron Paul has penned a scathing op-ed condemning the White House for circumventing the US Constitution. Earlier this month Holder spoke at Chicago’s Northwestern Law School to discuss last year’s execution of alleged terrorist Anwar al-Awlaki and two other US-born clerics in Yemen, a decision he says the White House still defends despite criticism from citizens and lawmakers alike. 

Although both US President Barack Obama and the CIA signed off on the airstrike that killed the American citizens, Washington has been relatively quiet on the matter until Holder spoke earlier this month. 

After Attorney General Holder justified the assassination of Americans, a congressional inquiry revealed that Robert Mueller, director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, wasn’t certain that the same laws could be applied to killing Americans on US soil. With the FBI and Oval Office both hiding behind vague verbiage to allow the assassination of their own citizens, Ron Paul is critiquing what he calls a complete disregard of the Constitution.

“It is particularly bizarre to hear the logic of the administration claiming the right to target its citizens according to some secret selection process, when we justified our attacks against Iraq and Libya because their leaders supposedly were targeting their own citizens,” writes Rep. Paul. “We also now plan a covert war against Syria for the same reason.”

Mexico Presidential Candidate Vows to End Drug War

Source: StopTheDrugWar

Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador (AMLO), the candidate-in-waiting of the center-left Democratic Revolution Party (PRD), said last week that he would end the US-backed war on drugs in Mexico if he is elected president. He said his government would instead concentrate on creating jobs and fighting corruption.

His comments come as the region is awash in criticism of US-style drug wars and calls for a discussion of alternatives, including decriminalization and legalization. Regional heads of state will meet to discuss the issue later this month, and it looks likely to be on the agenda at the Summit of the Americas in Colombia next month.

AMLO was also the PRD candidate in the 2006 elections, barely losing to National Action Party (PAN) candidate Felipe Calderon in a hotly contested election. At least in part to strengthen his stature amid accusations of election fraud, Calderon called out the military to fight Mexican drug trafficking organization shortly after taking office. Since then, more than 50,000 people have been killed in prohibition-related violence, shaking the country's confidence in its institutions.

Lopez is currently trailing the Institutional Revolutionary Party's (PRI) candidate Enrique Pena Nieto and PAN nominee Josefina Vazquez Mota in national polls. In one poll early this month, Pena Nieto had 36%, Vazquez Mota had 29%, and AMLO had 17%. In another, the figures were Pena Nieto at 49%, Vazquez Mota at 28%, and AMLO at 19%.

"We're going to stop the war (against organized crime) and justice will be procured," if he is elected, AMLO said in remarks reported by the Mexico City daily La Jornada. "We are not going to use this strategy because it has not produced results. There will be jobs, we'll fight corruption and calm down the country. We know how to do it, I'm sure," he said.

He also vowed to end impunity and criticized the government's use of high-profile arrests and heavily-covered presentations of captured capos to the media as evidence it was actually achieving anything in its battle with the drug cartels.

A Wave of Legislation Ushers in Martial Law in America

Source: WideAwakeNews.com

Coup in Beijing, Says Chinese Internet Rumor Mill

Source: Epoch Times

UPDATE: Words Related to ‘Coup’ in Beijing Censored on Weibo

Over the night of March 19 and early morning of March 20, Bejing local time, a message about a large number of military police showing up in Beijing spread widely across microblogs in mainland China.

The key figures in the action are said to be: Hu Jintao, the head of the CCP; Wen Jiabao, the premier; Zhou Yongkang, who has control of the People’s Republic of China’s police forces; and Bo Xilai, who was dismissed from his post as head of the Chongqing City Communist Party on March 15 by Wen Jiabao, after a scandal involving Bo’s former police chief.

Li Delin, who is on the editorial board of Securities Market Weekly and lives in Dongcheng District of Beijing, wrote on his microblog a report that confirmed unusual troop movements: “There are numerous army vehicles, Changan Street is continuously being controlled. There are many plainclothes police in every intersection, and some intersections even had iron fences set up.”

According to the message that went viral on China’s Internet, a military force with unknown designation quickly occupied many important places in Zhongnanhai, the Chinese leadership compound in Beijing, and Beijing in the early morning of March 20, with the cooperation of Beijing armed police.

The troops entered Beijing to “get and protect Bo Xilai,” according to the message.
A mainland Chinese reader has told The Epoch Times that a military coup has taken place in Beijing.

It is still unknown who, if anyone, has been arrested.