Neoliberalised feudal USA

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US budget deal sets stage for intensified assault on social programs

By Andre Damon and Barry Grey at WSWS, via American everyman.

The bill passed by Congress late Wednesday reopening the federal government and temporarily lifting the debt ceiling establishes the modus operandi for a bipartisan deal to deepen cuts in social spending and initiate an historic attack on the core social programs dating from the New Deal and Great Society periods—Social Security and Medicare.
 
The outcome of the 16-day government shutdown and threat of a US default was entirely predictable, following the pattern set in previous artificially created budget and debt crises in 2010, 2011 and 2012. Once again, the most right-wing elements in the Republican Party took the initiative and set the tone for a shift further to the right by the entire political establishment.

Behind the appearance of partisan gridlock and mutual recrimination, the crisis provided the means for the Obama administration and the Democratic Party to move ahead with their own agenda of savage cuts in social programs upon which tens of millions of working people depend. To the extent there was a conflict, it was over means and tactics, not goals. At issue was how best to escalate the onslaught against the working class.
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The Democratic-controlled Senate voted 81 to 18 to accept a deal that raises the debt ceiling through February 7, 2014 and funds the operations of the federal government until January 15.
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The bill mandates the formation of a conference committee headed by the chairs of the budget committees in the Senate and House to forge a bipartisan budget agreement by mid-December that will reduce the deficit and the national debt. This is to be achieved by implementing long-term “reforms” in basic entitlement programs such as Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid and extending cuts in “discretionary” social programs such as education, housing, nutrition, the environment, health and safety and infrastructure maintenance.
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At the same time, both the White House and congressional Republicans are insisting that any budget agreement include sweeping cuts in corporate tax rates.
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Later Wednesday evening, the Republican-controlled House of Representatives passed the bill by a vote of 285 to 144, with 87 Republicans joining all 198 Democrats in voting to approve. President Obama signed the bill into law early Thursday morning.
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Significantly, the bill extends the automatic across-the-board “sequester” cuts that began last March into the new year. This means the $85 billion in cuts enacted in 2013 will not be restored and the budget negotiations in the coming weeks will take as their starting point the $1 trillion in cuts over the next eight years mandated by the sequestration process. It is to be expected that the Democrats will, in the name of “ending” or “reforming” sequestration, seek to continue the cuts in discretionary social programs while restoring funding for the military, the intelligence agencies and the Homeland Security Department.
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Obama has already made it clear that he favors unprecedented cuts in Medicare and Social Security, including raising the eligibility age and introducing means testing for Medicare and slashing cost-of-living increases for Social Security beneficiaries.
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The so-called “Tea Party” Republicans, who provoked the shutdown by demanding that funding for government operations for the new fiscal year and any raising of the debt ceiling be tied to defunding the administration’s health care overhaul, dropped that demand in favor of calls for the gutting of Medicare and other social programs. This reflects the broad support for Obamacare within the corporate elite, which recognizes that the program will enable firms to slash corporate health care costs, dump workers onto Obama’s health care exchanges, and increase their profits.
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Once Wall Street cracked the whip to demand a resolution of the crisis in advance of the October 17 deadline for raising the debt ceiling—with a sharp fall in stock prices Tuesday and the threat from the Fitch rating firm to downgrade US debt—both parties, including leaders of the Tea Party faction, moved rapidly to facilitate an agreement.
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News that a deal was being worked out fueled a stock market rally Wednesday, sending the Dow Jones Industrial Average up by over 200 points and leaving it 1.6 percent higher than on September 30, the day before the government shutdown.
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The government shutdown—with hundreds of thousands of federal workers furloughed without pay, social programs for poor people, children and the elderly disrupted—demonstrated the contempt of the entire political establishment for the American people and the anti-democratic character of the political system.
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The media played its assigned role, giving the impression that millions of Americans were frustrated by the inability of the two parties to agree on imposing massive social cuts—knowing this to be the opposite of the truth.
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The process laid down by the temporary budget fix passed Wednesday is entirely undemocratic. Right-wing politicians of the two big business parties, headed by Democratic Senator Patty Murray and Republican Congressman Paul Ryan, will meet behind closed doors to work out brutal cuts with no input from the public, no public hearings, and no honest accounting of what their proposals will mean for working people.
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Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, a Democrat, hinted at the anti-working class mandate of the committee that will hammer out the budget deal, saying its members “must have open minds” and “be willing to consider every option, no matter how painful to their own political ideas and even to their own political parties.”
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Opinion polls made clear the widespread anger and disgust of the public over the shutdown and the attempt to make working people pay for the crisis. Yet the most striking feature of the entire process was the absence of any mass, organized expression of this opposition and the complete exclusion of the working class from the so-called “debate.”
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There was not a single mass organization that denounced the shutdown or opposed it. The trade unions are completely allied with the Obama administration and support its policies of austerity and war. Neither they nor the official civil rights organizations are capable of articulating a position that is in any way independent of the politics of the American plutocracy and its two parties.
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The outcome of the budget crisis has underscored once again the fundamental consensus between these parties for destroying all of the social gains won by the working class over the course of the twentieth century.

Bankrupt, has been USA....run by a 'house nigger' front of Wall Street

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Shutdown of US govt & ‘debt default’: Dress rehearsal for privatization of federal state system?

By Professor Chossudovsky at Globalreserach.com, via RT.com and American Everyman blog

The U.S. Capitol looms in the background of a sign on the National Mall reminding visitors of the closures to all national parks due to the federal government shutdown in Washington October 3, 2013. (Reuters/Kevin Lamarque)

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The ‘shutdown’ of the US government and the financial climax associated with a deadline date, leading to a possible ‘debt default’ by the federal government, is a money-making undertaking for Wall Street.
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Several overlapping political and economic agendas are unfolding. Is the shutdown – implying the furloughing of tens of thousands of public employees – a dress rehearsal for the eventual privatization of important components of the federal state system?
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A staged default, bankruptcy and privatization is occurring in Detroit (with the active support of the Obama administration), whereby large corporations become the owners of municipal assets and infrastructure.
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The important question: could a process of ‘state bankruptcy’, which is currently afflicting local level governments across the land, realistically occur in the case of the central government of the United States of America?
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This is not a hypothetical question. A large number of developing countries under the brunt of  IMF ‘economic medicine’ were ordered by their external creditors to dismantle the state apparatus,  fire millions of public sector workers as well as privatize state assets. The IMF’s Structural Adjustment Program (SAP-----merriam-webster: 2:  a foolish gullible person) has also been applied in several European countries.
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Will this gamut of deadly macro-economic reforms engineered by Wall Street and the Federal Reserve be conducive to widespread civil disorder across the United States?
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While the declaration of a national emergency or martial law is not envisaged, reports confirm that the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is currently “engaged in acquiring heavily armored tanks, which have been seen roaming the streets.” In the words of Ellen Brown, “somebody in government is expecting some serious civil unrest…”

Fiscal Collapse

Flashback to the meltdown of Wall Street in September 2008. In the wake of the economic crisis, a process of fiscal collapse was initiated.
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The evolving fiscal crisis had set the stage. It has a direct bearing on the issue of shutdown of the federal government and debt default.
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The Bush and Obama bank bailouts led to the appropriation of $1.45 trillion of US tax revenues. This money was channeled to Wall Street under Bush’s Troubled Assets Relief Program (TARP) and Obama’s bailout program initiated at the outset of his first term. This money was transferred to the banks.
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Meanwhile, ‘defense expenditure’ in support of a war economy had spiraled: $740 billion had been allocated (FY 2010) to fund a vast process of militarization including America`s wars in the Middle East and Central Asia.

‘Black budgets’

Of significance, there were several other unreported shadowy multibillion dollar bailouts which do not appear in government accounts, not to mention the Pentagon’s black budgets which are not included in the official expenditure accounts of the Department of Defense.
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According to Aviation Week in a 2009 report, “the Pentagon’s ‘black’ operations, including the intelligence budgets nested inside it, are roughly equal in magnitude to the entire defense budgets of the UK, France or Japan, and 10 per cent of the total.”

‘War and Wall Street’: Spiraling public debt

In the wake of the 2008 financial crisis, a new structure of public indebtedness had been created. Without accounting for the ‘black budgets’ and ‘shadowy bank bailouts’, reported defense expenditures plus the bank bailouts amounted to a staggering $2.35 trillion. Total revenue in FY 2010 was of the order of $2.38 trillion.
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In other words, these two categories of expenditure, namely War and Wall Street “had eaten up” (together with interest payments on the public debt) the totality of federal government revenues.
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The $2.35 trillion included the handouts to the banks plus military expenditure and the funding of the multibillion dollar DoD contracts with Lockheed Martin, Raytheon, Northrop Grumman, British Aerospace, et al.
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No money left from public purse to fund regular govt programs.
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What this warped budgetary structure implied (in FY 2009 and 2010) was that there was no money (i.e. residual funds) ‘left over’ from the public purse (tax revenues and other sources of federal government revenue) to fund regular government programs.
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All other categories of expenditure including Medicare, Medicaid, social security as well as public investments in infrastructure, etc. had to be financed through debt creation (emission of Treasury bills and government bonds), namely through a dramatic increase in the public debt from $9.9 trillion in FY 2008 to 16.7 trillion (October 2013), a staggering increase of almost 70 percent.
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In essence, the federal government has been financing its own indebtedness through generous handouts to Wall Street and the military industrial complex.

Widening budget deficit 

These developments are also characterized by a widening budget deficit in the wake of the 2008 financial crash. (See CBO graphs below, which indicate the figures for the budget deficit as well as the forecast for 2012-2022).
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The Congress Budget Office (CBO) contends that the ‘estimates’ for 2013-2022 are based on revised historical values of Gross Domestic Product by the Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA). This is a nonsensical statement. 
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Yet the Congress Budget Office (CBO) also acknowledges that “the federal budget deficits [2013-2022] are now expected to shrink dramatically.” These are not our words, but those of the CBO. And these ‘forecasts’ have nothing to do with revised historical values of GDP. They have to do with austerity measures and macro-economic policy. 

Budgetary shift: ‘Economic shock therapy’

In a matter of three years, according to the CBO forecast, the budget deficit will be reduced from 7 percent of GDP in 2012 to 2 percent in 2015.
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A budgetary shift of this nature can only be implemented by ‘economic shock therapy’ leading to socially devastating cuts in public expenditure, which will inevitably result in a wave of civil unrest.
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Built into these forecasts is the presumption that drastic austerity measures leading to major cuts in government spending will be carried out over a ten year period (2013-2022) thereby reducing the size of the budget deficit as well as its percentage ratio to GDP. We are not dealing with statistical concepts, the CBO forecasts through these 2013-20122 figures a process of fiscal disintegration and impoverishment of the American people.

Entitlement programs: Medicare, Medicaid, social security

The so-called CBO ‘estimates’ for 2013-2022 are based on the assumption that austerity measures (which have not yet been formally adopted) will lead to the downsizing, phasing out and/or privatization of a large number of state programs, including Medicare, Medicaid and social security. How else would it be possible to slash the budget deficit from 7 to 2 percent of GDP in three fiscal years?
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Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security represented in FY 2012, 45 percent of total government expenditure (see CBO Chart on Federal Government Spending for FY 2012, below).
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Meanwhile, legislation has been launched in the House of Representatives to curtail the Food Stamp program drastically over a 10-year period (FY 2013-2022). “The US House of Representatives has passed a bill that would slash food stamp funding by nearly $40 billion over 10 years, kicking 4 million people off the program next year. The food stamp bill would cut $39 billion from the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) over 10 years. It would force adults between 18 and 50 to either work or attend work training to reapply for benefits, and would also institute drug testing for recipients.”
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It is highly unlikely that the budget of the Department of Defense (19 percent) will be used to reduce the budget deficit.

Quantitative Easing: ‘Keeping the ship afloat’

In a bitter irony, while the Wall Street financial institutions were the recipients of the bailouts, they are also the creditors of the federal government, which had been precipitated into a structure of deficit financing controlled by Wall Street. This deficit financing – which was facilitated by Quantitative Easing – is distinct from the Keynesian framework. It is controlled by the creditors. It does not create employment, it is not expansionary. It has little bearing on the real economy.
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This post-2008 fiscal structure has had a fundamental impact on the process of debt formation. Tax and other federal government revenues had been assigned in 2008-2009 to bailing out the banks while relentlessly funding the war economy, including the financing through black budgets of a growing number of private military and security companies (PMSC). 
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The public debt has increased by almost 70 percent in five years, from 9.9 trillion in 2008 to 16.7 trillion in 2013 (October 2013 estimate of the debt ceiling, see graphs above). 
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The various phases of  Quantitative Easing (QE) throughout the Obama presidency were largely intended by Wall Street to keep the ship afloat, with an increasingly larger share of the debt owned by the Federal Reserve (in the form of  Treasury bills). The Fed has largely been involved in propping up its assets. 
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Under QE, tens of billions of dollars are injected into financial markets. Quantitative easing has not resulted in a positive stimulus of the real economy. “The real goal of the Federal Reserve is to guarantee the continual profitability of Wall Street and the personal incomes of the super-rich.”
The Fed is not a publicly-owned central bank; it is a network of 12 private US banks, with the New York Federal Reserve Bank playing a key role. Operating under a semi-secret veil, major Wall Street financial institutions (including the big four) are the ‘stakeholders’ of the Federal Reserve, which ultimately call the shots on Capitol Hill. At the outset of the Obama administration in 2009, the Federal Reserve Banking system (which is an unaccountable private entity) has been granted increased authority in its management of the US economy, overshadowing the prevailing system of public regulation of the financial system, as well as reinforcing the subordinate role of the US Treasury in relation to Wall Street.
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Policies pertaining to the shutdown of the government and the statutory debt ceiling are determined by Wall Street and the Federal Reserve, the US government’s largest creditor. The Federal Reserve Banks currently hold $2.1 trillion of US public debt. Japan and China respectively own $1.1 trillion and $1.3 trillion of the US public debt. Based on Jun 2012 figures, the Federal Reserve owns 16 percent of the federal debt held by the public.
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The New York Federal Reserve Bank (the largest of the Federal Reserve banks) holds a significant portion of the total holdings of the Federal Reserve system, composed of 12 constituent banks. (source: www.nationalpriorities.org) 

Were the Federal Reserve to be a publicly-owned central bank, quantitative easing would have an entirely different dynamic: the government rather than the Fed (acting on behalf of Wall Street) would be calling the shots. Under a publicly-owned central banking arrangement, $2 trillion worth of public debt could be canceled, thereby creating conditions for the funding of social programs.
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The result of these macroeconomic reforms has been mass unemployment. The American people – including the middle class – have been impoverished by the Wall Street establishment, which ultimately decides on debt default and the statutory ceiling placed on the public debt.
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Under pressure from Wall Street and the Federal Reserve, the choices of the US government are limited to the following options: “State programs can either be downsized, phased out or transferred out of the public purse to the private corporate sector, implying in all cases the layoff of tens of thousands of public employees.”
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No major reforms of the structure of indebtedness are contemplated by the US Congress, which could meaningfully change the government’s relationship to the Federal Reserve and its Wall Street handlers. The creditors ultimately decide.
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What are contemplated are marginal modifications of the status quo including legislation to push the debt limit to December 31st 2014.
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This token arrangement would temporarily increase the federal government’s borrowing ability through the issuing of Treasury bills and government bonds by about $1 trillion. Under this scheme, however, the powers of the Wall Street Banks and the New York Federal Reserve would not only be maintained they would be reinforced.
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The ultimate objective is to develop a full-fledged proxy State under the helm of the financial establishment. Both the Executive as well as the US Congress are to remain under the control of Wall Street.

Privatization of the American state?

The inevitable scenario established in the wake of the 2008 crisis is fiscal collapse, leading to “the possible phasing out and/or curtailment of social programs, the privatization of large sectors of public sector activity.”
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The fiscal ceiling having now been reached, possibly with a deadline, the government is being pressured by its Wall Street handlers – who control decision-making in the US Congress – to curtail and downsize social programs, as well as initiate the transfer of public assets and institutions into the hands of private corporations. There is also a movement to cut as well as privatize social security and Medicare.
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The privatization of public monuments, museums, national parks, the post office etc. has been raised in recent media reports as a possible ‘solution’ to the debt crisis. But let us not be misled: the process of acquisition of federal public property including infrastructure and state institutions is likely to go much further.
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The public sector is up for grabs. Wall Street will eventually go on a buying spree picking up state-owned assets at rock bottom prices. 
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Ironically, the money transferred by the US government to Wall Street under the bailouts in 2008-2009 can now be used by Wall Street to buy out state property and assets. What this means is that the federal government not only finances its own indebtedness, it is also financing the privatization program (at taxpayers’ expense), leading to the demise of federal government programs.

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This process of privatization of the state is nothing new, it has been applied in developing countries under the helm of the IMF, whereby state corporations are auctioned off and transferred into the hands of foreign corporations. It has also been applied in Eastern Europe, as well more recently in several countries of the European Union.
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The proceeds of the privatization program are channeled to the state treasury to meet outstanding debt obligations. In Brazil in the 1990s, important state assets in mining and forestry were purchased by Citi Group, which was Brazil’s largest foreign creditor bank. Ironically, the proceeds of the privatization of the assets purchased by Citi Group were channeled back to Citi Group in the form of debt servicing.
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Existing state programs are transferred to private corporations either through outright sale of state assets or through outsourcing of government services to the private sector.
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Large numbers of government employees would be laid off as a result of restructuring and privatization. Government services would be sold to the public at a much higher price.

Privatization of American cities

The takeover of State assets in America is well under way largely at the municipal and state level. We recall Orange County, California, which went bankrupt in 1994, Jefferson County, Alabama, which filed for Chapter 9 bankruptcy in 2011, and more recently Detroit, Michigan, in 2013. In these and other county/municipal bankruptcies, public assets, lands and infrastructure are sold off to private investors. Across the US, more than 100 municipalities are facing bankruptcy.
The bankruptcies of local level governments immediately backlash on pension funds. The privatization of federal State assets on a significant scale, as well as the takeover and privatization of public services is the next stage of this socially devastating economic restructuring process.

Speculative onslaught

There is another related agenda, which will be the object of a forthcoming article.
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The uncertainty underlying the government shutdown and debt default is the object of a wave of speculative activity on major markets.
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Wall Street financial institutions not only exert a decisive influence in the formulation of the administration’s fiscal and monetary agenda, they also control the movement of currency markets, commodity and stock markets through large scale operations in derivative trade.
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Most of the key actors in the US Congress and the Senate involved in the shutdown debate are controlled by powerful corporate lobby groups including, of course, Wall Street. The latter are those which ultimately decide on the outcome. They are not only in a position to influence the results of the congressional process, they also have foreknowledge of the nature and timing of key decisions and they are in a position to reap multibillion dollar speculative gains in the derivative markets by speculating on policy outcomes of which they have advanced knowledge.
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Those who determine the government’s debt policy, namely the Wall Street creditors, also have ‘inside information’ or prior knowledge of the chronology and outcome of the government shutdown impasse. They will make billions of dollars in windfall profits.
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While Wall Street is instrumental in triggering the debt ceiling impasse, major financial institutions will also be placing their bets in large scale speculative transactions.

al-Qaeda marching on for Etrez Israel

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Jihadist Rebels See Syria as ‘Just the Beginning’

Al-Qaeda, Allies Aim to Spread War Region-Wide

By Jason Ditz at antiwar.com

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As Syria’s civil war continues on, it has taken on an increasingly sectarian nature, and the rebellion is now dominated by factions affiliated either directly or ideologically with al-Qaeda, including the assorted al-Qaeda in Iraq (AQI) and Jabhat al-Nusra factions.
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Though there are surely Syrian Islamists fighting in these groups, large numbers of the jihadist fighters are foreigners, and their motivations don’t begin or end at the Syrian border.
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Far from seeing Syria as a special case, these rebels see Syria as the beginning of a region-wide religious war, with the goal of installing ultra-conservative theocracies across the Muslim world.
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The imposition of Taliban-style Sharia law in parts of northern Syria has been a major culture shock for Syrians, who have for centuries had relatively secular governments.
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Most of the non-Sunnis in those towns are simply fleeing, since the foreign fighters are eager to call any religious minorities, from Alawites to Christians, pro-Assad infiltrators. Those who are staying behind are seeing very awkward attempts by al-Qaeda to do “outreach” to sell the locals on their style of rule. Those towns in the Aleppo Province are now ground zero for a region-wide war.

'al-CIA-duh' and the Jews

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LUNCH WITH THE FT - AL QAEDA'S GENERAL MANAGER, NASSER AL WUHAYSHI  by aangirfan

Nasser

I meet the General Manager of al Qaeda, Nasser Wuhayshi, at a restaurant in Souq Waqif in Doha.

We order ‪.٢‬فحسة : المكونات ( لحم مبشور مع بهارات يمنية‪(‬

Nasser (alias Abu Basir) comes from Yemen and is apparently Jewish.

Yemeni Jews.

Nasser tells me that, in Yemen, the local population converted to Judaism at some point in the late fourth century.

Nasser is the boss of al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP)

Nasser explains that he once served as Osama bin Laden's secretary.
Al Qaeda's plan is to weaken all Moslem countries by splitting them up. 

One of Nasser's CIA body guards brings to our table a bottle of Yarden wine, which comes from Israel's vineyards on Mount Hermon.

As we eat our meal of meat, egg, rice and potato, I ask Nasser about al Qaeda's plans for the future.

"We aim to split up all the Moslem countries," says a smiling Nasser. "Libya is already split up. 

"Syria will soon have a Sunni state, an Alawite state, a Kurd state and a Druze city state.

"Iraq will have a Shit state and a Turd state."

Al Qaeda's plan is to weaken all Moslem countries, including Syria and Iraq, by splitting them up. 

I ask Nasser about the Arab Spring.

"The point about the Arab Spring was that it allowed the CIA, Mossad and MI6 to get rid of the leaders in Egypt, Tunisia and Yemen who had resisted al-Qaeda."


Al Qaeda's plan is to weaken all Moslem countries, including Saudi Arabia, by splitting them up. 

Nasser continues: "We are working with the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt. Our aim is to break up Egypt.

"We control almost all the rebels in Syria.
"We are continuing to break up Iraq.
"Nearly a thousand civilians have been killed in Iraq in the last few months."

Al Qaeda's home base in Langley.

As we finish our salad of cucumber mixed with buttermilk, I raise the question of the 'caliphate'.

"This is one of our objectives," says Nasser, "to pretend that we're fighting for a caliphate. This helps us to recruit mad young fools from around the world."

 

I suggest that al Qaeda's aim is to destroy the Moslem world.

"Exactly," says Nasser. "We are creating an 'arc of instability' across the Sahara and the Sahel. We are causing chaos in Nigeria, Kenya, Somalia, Mali and elsewhere.

"Who gains? Israel and its friends."

Zawahiri, crypto-Jew
I ask Nasser about Pakistan. 

"Our main bases are still in places such as Langley, Tel Aviv and London. 

"However, we have bases of course in North Waziristan."

Finally, I ask Nasser about reports that he is in fact dead.

"Yemeni military officials reported that I was killed in 2011. But, you must remember that all the guys who work for the CIA have their body doubles."

Propaganda Actress for the Globalists.

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And the Manufactured Hero of the Year Award Goes to….. LOVE MALALA!!! (yea?)

. By Scott Creighton at American everyman.
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Little Malala. She was cute and perky and dreamed of being a doctor at one time, till her greedy, scheming daddy decided to use her to advance his own lot in life. Now, she gives speeches as lifeless and as contrived as any ever delivered by the dreaded dark queen herself, Hillary Clinton. It’s all about the Education First Global initiative, bringing for-profit Western education to the savages in countries like Pakistan and Afghanistan and elsewhere at a cost of billions per year paid by the likes of you and me.
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God knows they can’t be left to their own devices to educate their own kids. Hell, they might develop some wrong ideas about Shock Therapy economics, globalization and Walmart.....(and Child labor)
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Ironically, perhaps tragically, LOVE MALALA! the campaign, won the Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought the other day beating out other manufactured heroes like Pussy Riot, the Russian oligarch who stole billions from the people  during the Yeltsin days of Shock TherapyMikhail Khodorkovsky ,  “Edward Snowden” and three “activists” in Belarus Ales Bialatski, Eduard Lobau and Mykola Statkevich.
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Thus is the company Malala keeps.
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To understand the purpose behind the nomination of those three “dissidents” from Belarus, it takes but a few moments of research:

“Lukashenko’s resistance to Western-backed “shock therapy” during the post-Soviet transition has met great resistance from the U.S. and Europe. Belarus is labelled as ‘Europe’s last dictatorship’ by much of the West.Western governments accuse Lukashenko of an authoritarian style of government” Wiki

Last year the “prize” went to a couple regime change “activists” in Iran who did their level best the year before to help the Green Revolution look as legit as possible.  The year before that, 5 “won” the award, with three of them being ‘activists” involved in the “revolutions” in Libya and Syria (two from Syria). The year before that a “dissident” in Cuba… two years before that, one from China.
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Starting to see a pattern?
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I wonder what it does to a little girl who starts off being asked by daddy to run a stupid blog, actually written by others, and then she gets to be the star of some New York Times documentary for her 3 months of ‘work”. Who then finds herself in the midst of a staged lie she is going to be expected to continue her entire life. Not only continue with it, but to be hailed as a hero for it across the globe.
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I wonder what it does to a little girl who wanted nothing more than to be a doctor, respected and educated and helping people, to be forced by daddy to be the politician he told her she would be, lying through her teeth and accepting awards for the lies she tells.
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Then she gets the “Freedom of Thought” award and goes on the Daily Show with another liar pretending together, lying to the world some more.
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How can that kind of programing not produce a monster? A vain-glorious, self-absorbed monster capable of saying and doing just about anything to keep the lie going to keep the attention flowing? Talk about a world-class diva in the making. What is she going to demand from her father when her grasp outreaches his? When she really becomes daddy’s little girl?
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Yesterday she got her little “prize” and stood there talking out of the side of her mouth during her acceptance speech, pushing for more money for for-profit education programs in more countries that could use an “education” from the West.
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But, all that aside, today your Manufactured Hero of the Year award goes to LOVE MALALA! and we can only wait and see what it’ll do to her.

Objective non-colonial, non-Imperialist Education.

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There is nothing wrong in Western interests pouring money into education for Third World countries, along with their fronts into schools, colleges and universities.

However if these schools are the base for indoctrination, domination, subversion and elite training of future leaders of the Third World country, then such Western 'philanthropy' is obviously not good.

Kim Jong-un of North Korea was recruited by the CIA, when he attended an elite school for the rich children of the Capitalist class in the West. His mission for the CIA is to keep North Korea backward, closed, brutal and aggressively opposed to national reconciliation with South Korea...which would benefit the WHOLE peninsula, and every Korean, and would see the end of USA military occupation of South Korea with its 90 American military bases. (Afghanistan 100, and Germany 180 American military bases.)

From Wikipedia:

"No official comprehensive biography on Kim Jong-un has yet been released. Therefore, the only known information on his early life comes from defectors and people who have claimed to witness him in countries, such as Switzerland. Some of the information has been conflicting and contradictory since his brother Kim Jong-chul was attending school in Switzerland around the same period. Nevertheless, there has been some consensus on information about his early life. North Korean authorities have stated that his birthdate is 8 January 1982, but South Korean intelligence officials believe the actual date is a year later. Dennis Rodman said that the birthdate is 8 January 1983 after meeting the young leader in early September 2013.
According to reports first published in Japanese newspapers, he went to school in Switzerland near Bern. First reports claimed he attended the private English-language "International School" in Gümligen near Bern under the name "Chol-pak" or "Pak-chol" from 1993 until 1998. He was described as shy, a good student who got along well with his classmates and was a basketball fan. He was chaperoned by an older student, who was thought to be his bodyguard."


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Pakistani’s Distrust of the Malala Story Goes Mainstream

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By Scott Creighton AT American everyman.
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The Pakistani people have a lot of reason to distrust the “LOVE Malala!” story many of which I have covered here on American Everyman since the whole thing began.
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For awhile I was getting a lot of traffic from Pakistan. People were coming here thanking me for covering it the way I did and telling me many Pakistani people were having a hard time buying into it all.
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But while the empty noggins over at the Daily Show oooo and aaaaa over the performance she and Jon gave the other night, the people of Pakistan know something is amiss in the story and they rightly suspect it was fabricated to serve a purpose.

“For many of her compatriots, Malala Yousafzai is a stooge of the United States and a CIA agent, a symbol of the West’s evils and a global conspiracy to bring down her native Pakistan.”
“Social media sites are brimming with insulting messages. “We hate Malala Yousafzai, a CIA agent,” says one Facebook page.” Reuters

The government of Pakistan, not really a favorite of the U.S., cut a deal with the Taliban to allow them to control the SWAT valley a while ago. Certain “business minded” individuals didn’t like that arraignment and so they got the military to forge their own little war on the Taliban back then.
(Not exactly correct. The Taliban is run by the Pakistan army/ISI for the CIA. The military under Kiyani wanted POWER back from the civilians, even though they already had/have a lot of power as back seat, deep state drivers. BUT the military under Kiyani missed the good old days of Musharaf, and they hatched a plot to create the SWAT VALLEY Taliban, complete with an army supplied radio station spewing their propaganda. The Neo-liberal Barak Hussein Obama administration in this specific case did not like the idea of the military officially coming back into power, because they thought they could get greater mileage/leverage through a civilian corrupt government headed by Zardari bhen vis a vi American 'interests' in the region---destabilization, narcotics, weapons sales, military presence/projection in the region. The 3000 AK-47 armed Taliban marched towards Islamabad, whilst the 1.1 million military stood by and did nothing...'helpless'. Then the Americans told the Gunga Din Chamars to intervene, and lo and behold, the Pakistan military flattened the once beautiful SWAT VALLEY, after it had been ravaged already by the ISI run Taliban. The SWAT VALLEY ironically so beautiful, was once used as a backdrop for a Hollywood movie called 'LOST HORIZON'.) 


The for profit school Malala’s daddy ran, was actually ransacked by the Pakistani military who destroyed a lot of schools back then during the fighting to retake SWAT. (and not rebuilt by the Pakistan military either)
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Reuters gets part of the story correct:

“The picturesque valley was overran by the Taliban, who imposed strict Islamic laws and kept its people in fear, in 2007. It is now controlled by the Pakistani army. Mingora, a dusty town of windy roads surrounded by jagged hills, is festooned with billboards reading “Long live the Pakistan Army!” Reuters

The fact is, many Pakistanis would rather live under the rule of the Taliban than the corrupt brutal Pakistani military and with good reason.
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The ISI/Army, is practically owned by MI5 and the CIA. Their brutality is legendary.(Most of the Pakistan army 'WARS' are against their own unarmed people for foreign strategic interests since independence...the senior officers are trained in the West, and ALL terrorism in the country is carried out by them, including the ACTS of Terrorism by the so called SWAT Taliban, Pakistan Taliban and other fundamentalist groups such as HuJ, LeT and so forth )
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Little Malala can’t go back to Pakistan. She’s unwelcome there. Even in her old school, far from the Taliban, they rarely mention her name. And that is because many Pakistanis know she is just a tool of our imperialist agenda in their country. While little American girls practically play with Malala dolls or write stories for competitions about how the STORY of Malala changed their lives, little girls in Pakistan know the truth is something very different for them.

“At Khushal Public School, a three-storey building where she studied, many avoided mentioning her name altogether.” Reuters

When someone in Pakistan is openly linked to the CIA, that’s bad. The CIA kills children on a regular basis in that country with their drone strikes and no little girls are staying up late in the States to watch Jon Stewart lionize them.
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You’ll notice that the Reuters article mentions some of the “conspiracy theories” surrounding Malala, but fails to mention what most Pakistanis have come to understand, that she was used by the West, sold by her father, to advance their Western form of “education” in their country and to help justify more drone strikes and killings by the CIA and Pakistani military as they clamp down on that area of Pakistan.
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Lost in all of this is the story of the SWAT valley and those left behind to live in the wake of the Malala psyop. At least their problems are getting some attention, if not much.

The Afghan Heroin/Opium plantation for the CIA, Pentagon and their Wall Street MASSA....BOSS.

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Throw the Pentagon/CIA drug peddlers out of Afghanistan.

Tajiks and traitors to the Afghan people will never be safe under foreign puppet rule, whether they are tools of the CIA funded ISI, or the Northern Alliance.

Afghan's of Ariana must be fully independent.

Karzai cannot sign any agreements with the foreign occupiers, when they openly thwart his plans for peace and national reconciliation with the ISI (CIA) run Taliban PUPPETS based in the Pakistani safe haven of Quetta.
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Whilst the occupiers pretend to have peace talks with the ISI/CIA run Taliban.
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Unless Karzai is a complete puppet of the USA.

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Today is the 12th Anniversary of the Invasion And Occupation of Afghanistan
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By Information Clearing House and Interventions Watch

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 -  And the supposed liberators continue to kill and abuse civilians.
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Anyone else find it rather strange that we are constantly being implored – including by some sections of the left – to show support for and solidarity with those in Syria struggling against the Assad regime, and can even be fingered as morally and politically suspicious if we’re not seen to be doing this to a sufficient degree?
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But that similar calls for solidarity with those in Afghanistan who are struggling against a brutal, murderous and repressive Occupation regime foisted on them by *our own government* seem very thin on the ground?
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When was the last time the Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan – for non-violence, against the Occupation and it’s proxy militias, just as they were against the Soviet Occupation, and against the Taliban as well – were mentioned in corporate media, for example? When was the last time someone pointed out that, contrary to the pervasive propaganda, most of the fighters in Afghanistan are not actually Taliban monsters anyway, but rather local people fighting for a number of reasons, among them what they perceive to be an unjust and invasive Occupation of their lands, and that they deserve the support of progressives?
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My point here isn’t necessarily that people should be supporting armed resistance to the Occupation, as it happens. My point is that some people seem much happier to support the victims of Official Bad Guys than they do the victims of our own Government, who are being virtually ignored. Far less career risk in supporting Syrian rebels and cheering on the killing of Syrian regime troops than in supporting Afghan rebels and cheering on the killing of British or American troops, I guess.
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With that in mind, here’s the full statement that the Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan have released to mark the 12th anniversary of the invasion:

‘With the aggression of the US and NATO occupiers on October 7, 2001 in our homeland, it has been twelve years now that our country is facing war, destruction, and the killing of thousands of its innocent civilians. The US used the terrorist attacks of 9/11 as a pretext to change the regime in Afghanistan and pave the way for its long-term military presence in the region. For the first time in their history, Afghanistan’s people, who were tired and fed up from the crimes of the Jehadi pigs and the brutalities of the Taliban, did not react to an occupier force.

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The US government and its allies promised our people democracy, but imposed upon them the most undemocratic, corrupt, and mafia government of our history; they spoke of ‘war on terror’ but brought the murderers and terrorists of the Northern Alliance, gun-lords and drug kingpins to power, and have now extended their hands in friendship to the Taliban; the US used human rights and women’s rights as an excuse, but Afghanistan still faces the worse kinds of human rights violations and horrifying catastrophes against its women; they promised our people liberation and freedom, but practically turned our country into a narco-state and the center of their longest-running criminal war.

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http://www.whale.to/b/afghanistan_h1.html
 

From the very start, the democratic forces of Afghanistan and peace-loving elements of the world had recognized the US’s war in Afghanistan as part of its imperialist policies. They announced that that this superpower was only invading Afghanistan to compete with its emerging contenders and was cementing its military bases in the heart of Asia towards this purpose.

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Twelve years of our country’s occupation proves the validity of this prediction. In these years, not only did the justice-seeking people of the US and world protest against the war, but a significant number of soldiers also stood up against their government’s inhumane and hypocritical policies, and started a vast and glorious anti-war movement.

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The people of Afghanistan soon noticed the false nature of the US and NATO’s ‘war on terror’, when against their demand, the criminal Taliban terrorists were replaced with the misogynist terrorist gangs of the Northern Alliance. In addition to providing staunch support to the Jehadi and technocrat traitors, the US has taken the service of a group of intellectual sellouts, and have created a band of lackeys out of them by stuffing Dollars down their filthy throats. If in the past, being on the payroll of a foreign country was seen as treachery and disgrace, today this group has become so shameless and devoid of conscience that they proudly flaunt off their servitude to the US and other foreign intelligences. Karzai and those surrounding him, confessed, in an unseen blatant fashion, that they took bags of Dollars from the CIA, Vavak (Iranian Intelligence), MI5, RAW, ISI and others, and branded them as ‘useful’ so that their masters would continue pouring in money. The so-called Jehadi leaders have also tied themselves on the leashes of foreign countries and continue to demolish our country at their orders. This way, Afghanistan has practically become the battlefield of the intelligence services of superpowers and neighboring countries. The threat to our sovereignty and national assets grows with each passing day.

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After bringing calamity upon Afghanistan and its people, the US informed the world of the withdrawal of its forces in 2014, and started a widespread propaganda that without the US presence, Afghanistan will sink into crisis and a civil war. With this false propaganda through tens of media channels, the US is manipulating and threatening the public sentiment, and trying to get the puppet Karzai government to sign the strategic pact – which would guarantee the US’s long-term presence – as soon as possible. All the reactionary forces and a group of mercenary intellectuals know that their very existence depends upon this pact and are begging for it to go through, so they can escape our people and the claws of justice under the protective wing of their military master. But the progressive and independence-seeking forces and elements of our country and all the intellectuals with a conscience, who know the bullying and fascist nature of the ruling US system, see the permanent bases not only as a threat to Afghanistan but to the region and the world, and protest against them. In an interview with Waging Nonviolence, Noam Chomsky said about this pact, “This is a global program of world militarization.”

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What is definite is the fact that the people of Afghanistan did not see good times before 2014 and will surely not so after it. This is because, contrary to the claims of the rulers in the White House, no naïve person will accept that the US will stop its ominous intervention in Afghanistan. Even if the US soldiers are physically withdrawn, their ambitious spies and stooges will still be in power in Afghanistan and will only bring more destruction upon the country.( as in Iraq)

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It is clear that the situation will get worse after 2014, but not because of the withdrawal of the troops of the criminal US and NATO, but because the Taliban and Gulbuddini murderers will join the circle of other criminals who have been backed by the US and Karzai for many years now. Even now, the installation of the Gulbuddini rascals in important posts of the government and presidential palace has led to outrage and hatred from the people.

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For imperialist powers, the tears and blood of the poor world has no value. The Afghan nation is not the only victim of the vicious, warmonger, and plundering policies of the US and its allies. The treacherous support of the US given to the Al-Qaeda terrorists and other savage gangs in Syria and Libya and the reduction of these two countries to ruins and center of terrorism, has again proved the falsity of the US ‘war on terror’. It is the people of Syria who should decide their future. What the people of Afghanistan painfully experienced in the past decades is today happening in Syria.

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What Afghanistan and other countries experienced, shows that no nation can prosper with a foreign occupation and the military presence of a bullying and murderous superpower. A land with no independence cannot have democracy, freedom, elections, human rights, and other values, and shall only be a fake showpiece of these. Our ancestors were aware of this reality and never fell for the deceit of foreign invaders and their indigenous mercenaries. The English army suffered defeat at the hands of the Afghan warriors three times; the Soviet and their traitorous Khalq and Parcham regime could not break our people’s will with all their prisons and torture and finally suffered a humiliating defeat. Similarly, today the only way to liberate ourselves from these cruelties and slavery is by resolute struggle against invaders and their Afghan hyenas.

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The Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan (RAWA) will continue its struggle for the independence of the country and annihilation of the domination of national traitors and murderers, together with its blood-drenched and captive people. We have faith that the attainment of independence, freedom, democracy, social justice, and other values is only possible by the selfless resistance and struggle of our masses. Thus, it is upon all the patriotic and honorable forces and elements to struggle, at any level possible, for the emancipation of our land from foreign occupiers and their lackeys, and perform their conscionable duty towards their homeland’.

http://www.rawa.org/rawa/2013/10/06/rawa-statement-on-us-invasion-oct-2013-english.html
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This article was originally published at Interventions Watch

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See also -

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Francis Boyle: The Illegality and Evil of the War on Afganistan: I want to start out with my basic thesis that the Bush administration's war against Afghanistan cannot be justified on the facts or the law. It is clearly illegal. It constitutes armed aggression. It is creating a humanitarian catastrophe for the people of Afghanistan.

The renminbi

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China Looking To Reposition Renminbi As Global Currency 

By Information clearing house....and valuewalk.

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China has already made its aim to establish the renminbi as a global currency, possibly even replacing the American dollar as the world’s reserve currency. Recent moves to ramp up the gradual liberalization of the renminbi, which is currently allowed to trade only within a narrow trading band, and other actions suggest that China may be preparing for a major push to establish its currency as a major global reserve currency.

Business is now conducted on a global scale, with companies often managing operations in dozens of countries. Nearly every country is now intertwined in a complex network of international trade with goods and resources flowing from one spot to another. This has given rise to the need to for a global reserve currency to help conduct international transactions.

Dollar is the most widely used currency in the world

Traditionally speaking, the American dollar has acted as this reserve currency. The dollar is the most widely used currency in the world, and most commodities, such as oil, are priced in dollars. Many countries keep huge dollar reserves on hand to facilitate trade. China, for example, is believed to have some 3.2 trillion dollars worth of reserves. Even the tiny city-state Singapore has over 250 billion dollars in reserves.

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With the U.S. economy lagging, however, and as the American government continues to pile up debt, many parties are looking for alternatives to the dollar. OPEC, for example, plans to begin pricing oil using a basket of currencies and may start doing so as soon as 2018. Such moves suggest that the dollar may slowly be losing its position as the premier global reserve currency.

China has been working diligently to position the renminbi as a global alternative to the dollar. Already, China has set up direct currency swapping agreements with several countries, including Brazil, the US, and Japan. In regards to Japan and Brazil, this allows the two countries to conduct trade directly and without need of US dollars, which are normally used to price international transactions.

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China is also slowly liberalizing the renminbi itself, which is currently allowed to trade only within a narrow trading band. The new Shanghai free trade zone, for example, will allow for full convertibility, allowing companies to easily purchase and sell renminbi. If such reforms prove fruitful, they could be adopted on the national stage and eventually lead to full liberalization of the currency.

China has massive foreign services of its own

With the on-going problems in the Eurozone, the Chinese renminbi is now emerging as perhaps the biggest challenger to the U.S. dollar. The Chinese economy continues to record solid, if uninspiring, even amid a global slow down in the global economy. China has massive foreign services of its own, amounting to trillions of dollars of stashed wealth. Such massive reserves will allow China to regulate prices even in open markets.

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At the same time, Washington’s continued games in regards to reducing the deficit, controlling government spending, and raising debt levels, are making countries and institutions around the world nervous and ready to at least consider alternatives to the dollar. The Chinese government’s ability to literally command situations and adapt extremely quickly to changing circumstances, makes it an ideal alternative, at least from the standpoint of governance.

China taking steps to promote its currency

While the United States’ government is bogged down in infighting, the Chinese government still has an ability to rapidly react to dynamic circumstances. For nations looking for a stable alternative to the dollar, the renminbi will continue to grow more and more attractive, especially as China takes steps to promote its currency as a truly global currency.