Pipelineistan and the end of Empire

As the number of deaths of British service-people mounts and the British MSM focuses on the mounting mortality rates the BBC's Question Time was bound to discuss the topic. Normally, Question Time is so tightly controlled by David Dimbleby's team that there is very little likelihood that either the panel or the audience might express a view challenging the right-wing establishment status quo. The panel speakers themselves are carefully picked in a way where anyone resembling a leftie has little or no chance of getting on.

But it's difficult to control everyone all the time and more so a bolshy audience. And on the subject of Afghanistan, last Thursday night's audience was bordering on the bolshy. The celebrity Trisha Goddard surprised me with saying some sensible things about Afghanistan and even going so far as to conclude that it had become our Vietnam. The Libdems' Lembit Opik cut in saying that maybe we shouldn't have trained Osama Bin Laden in the first place to which Dimbelby could only reply "That's hindsight for you."

As usual, the discussion was initiated by a question from the audience about whether British forces should be given more helicopters in order to reduce road-side casualties. The essential question about what Britain is doing there in the first place was studiously avoided. Along with our rulers the British MSM takes it as a given what it has been told about the threat to British security from ghostly Al Qaeda terrorists who would take over Afghanistan if 'our brave heroes' weren't out there. The real, geostrategic reasons about the need to safeguard Pipelineistan's oil and gas in the interests of the multinationals (ie "western security") is taboo. For that the reader needs to look around carefully on the Internet for articles by Tom Engelhardt and the like. Or read Brzezinski's The Grand Chessboard: American Primacy and its Geostrategic Imperatives.

The idea of hegemonizing the European Heartlands came first from Halford Mackinder and was adopted as a key strategy in British imperial foreign policy in the early 1900's. US historian Guido Giacomo Preparata, in his eye-opener of a book, Conjuring Hitler, illustrates how the British used the Heartlands geostrategic blueprint as a diplomatic weapon to draw Germany into two wars against the Anglo-Americans. Brzezinski went on to develop the blueprint for the inheritors of the British Empire, the USA, in its misnamed 'Pax Americana' and it is clearly a key aspect of the Neocons' Project for the New American Century, total world domination.

The Project (or PNAC) is what Bush II and his sidekick, Tony Blair, enthused about so much. And through understanding how the Bush II regime was so influenced by the Neocons we can see how 911 was used to justify an entirely fake 'War on Terrorism' and the subsequent occupation of both Afghanistan and Iraq. To be explicit: the fake War on Terror was never more than a cover for Anglo-American ambitions for global domination through military force.

Neither the invasion of Iraq or Afghanistan were wars in the sense of two roughly equal nations fighting each other. Instead they were invasions which led to the massacre of what now amounts to millions of civilians. These were never intended as wars to be won. Their purpose, as we can see now eight years later, is to be long-term military occupations intended to keep both countries tightly under the control of the US. That is why we are constantly told to expect a rise in the death toll of military personnel in an endless war.

You'll never hear this version of events spoken of on the MSM and for obvious reasons. The prospect of an endless list of mortalities in a war that goes on forever is intolerable and would not be accepted to any public. Instead, the MSM dons a fake face of concern that the problem is really about a lack of helicopters!

It appears that the public continues to be at a loss to why we are in Afghanistan at all. A few, just a few, seem to have sniffed the rotting carcass of British imperialism beneath it. Instead the focus has been on an incompetent government that has let down its soldiers and we see British generals running to Downing Street with a shopping list of weaponry as if that is going to solve the dilemma.

The dilemma will never be solved outside of the total withdrawal of British forces. But even that would be only the first step, the second being a fundamental re-drawing of British foreign policy which looks to the reality of a multipolar world beyond the mirage of the neocons' desire for global domination.

Just as the Nazi defeat at Stalingrad marked the final folly of Hitler's attempt to dominate Eurasia it looks like Afghanistan will mark the end of the Anglo-American empires of evil.

Europe and Islamophobia

A Danish newspaper publishes a cartoon portraying the prophet Mohammed as a terrorist. French President Sarkozy calls for a ban on the burqa. An Egyptian immigrant is murdered in a German court by an Islamophobe. Why are Muslims being targeted in Europe? And is Islamophobia the new anti-semitism?

The Totalitarianizing of Britain: How Free Speech is being Suppressed

This video well illustrates the totalitarian nature of our rulers. It gives the lie to the myth of 'free speech' and 'living in a democracy'. One of the few freedoms the British people secured from their rulers, the freedom to demonstrate, is being rapidly eroded by an oppressive police force as is illustrated in this video. Their excuse is, "You have to be processed" ...

Biased BBC reporting

The BBC/Guardian poll highlighted today by the Today Programme has 47% against and 46% in support of the [Afghanistan] war. That's roughly a 50-50 divide *according to you*. Whether those figures are true or not is another matter.

But the important point is that BBC representation of the two arguments is TOTALLY BIASED in favour of the war, and any thinking person knows that this is because in non-totalitarian countries which are not governed by naked force but by various other factors, control and influence over what people think is vital - the so-called hearts and minds issue. In this struggle, the BBC, founded as the propaganda arm of the British Empire in 1922 to bind the Empire together and justify its existence, play a key role, which is why the BBC -- and indeed much of the rest of the UK mainstream -- are now pulling out all the stops, including all the sentimentality stories about soldiers' families, the dead returning home, the comrades' paeans of praise and thanks etc in order to keep the public on side.

Over the past EIGHT YEARS the BBC has NOT given its viewers and listeners an EQUAL and BALANCED representation of the arguments for and against the war. In particular the BBC has utterly FAILED to point up the link between the war and 9/11. WE ARE THERE BECAUSE OF 9/11. That was the justification for going in. The deeper and more sinister reasons go back to the late 1990s, to the ideas of Brzezinski ("The Grand Chessboard", 1997) and his backers, to the imperial programme of Cheney-Perle-Wolfowitz-Feith gang and PNAC. BUT THE JUSTIFICATION WAS 9/11. And the Bush regime official conspiracy theory of 9/11 was a complete LIE. The BBC has colluded with this LIE for EIGHT YEARS by its totally unbalanced representation of that event. The British political class, with a few honourable exceptions, has also colluded in this LIE.

Our 18 year old soldiers and all the other soldiers are actually dying along with tens of thousands of Afghans because of: 1) the US determination to anchor itself geostrategically in the region, in accordance with the long-range strategy goals laid out by Brzezinski and others, 2) the US determination to push pipelines from Turkmenistan and the Caspian down to the Indian ocean through Afghanistan and Pakistan. The Taliban had refused the UNOCAL deal for this, so as so often in the past, US megacorporations turned to the US military for help. 3) The desire of the British military high command and of British intelligence services a) to stay sweet with the Americans and maintain 'British credibility' with them (see General Sir Richard Dannett's statements - which stank of reality - in The Independent 1st June 2009) and b) the army high command's desire to give their troops real live combat experience, now that 30 years of fighting in N.Ireland and 6 years in Iraq are over, 4) profits and employment for the arms industry.

THAT is what this war is about, and all your BBC talk about elections, democracy, education for girls, burqas, 'we have to finish the job now we're there', 'honouring the troops' sacrifices', 'we have a duty to leave the place better than we found it' etc is frankly, all flannel designed to deceive the public in classic official propaganda tradition.

On this issue you need to distinguish yourselves from the communist media of the Cold War era and stand up for the truth! If you can't do that, then at least give us a REAL 50-50 balance of the REAL arguments that reflects REAL public opinion and not just the interests outlined in the 4 points above.

Terry, MEDIALENS

Nice one Terry, and don't forget that the BBC gave even less coverage to the "anti-war" crowd before the Iraq invasion than Fox News. The BBC is indeed the propaganda arm of a mendacious govt, passing on its lies as news. This applies to the "wars", the ME, Israel, elections in other countries (in particular Iran and Venezuela but not Egypt or Saudi Arabia which has never had an election), the economy, and a lot more.

Incidentally, the events in Iraq and Afghanistan are not "wars", they are invasions. They are imperialistic, illegal, immoral, racist, and cowardly (bombing people from 10,000 metres instead of on a man-to-man basis, overwhelming them with barbarous new weapons) invasions and occupations.

What makes me really want to puke is the holier than thou attitude of Boaden, Thomson et al. and the obscene salaries they get for toeing the govt line while pretending to be independent and neutral.

Sherwoodian, MEDIALENS

Actually, the Beeb AND successive administrations are both obedient executive arms of the self-perpetuating gic-class who have ruled Britain from way back (you can argue about starting points, but long ago, anyway) and still do now, behind the facade of 'democracy' -- so it seems to me, anyway.

Socio-political revolutions to establish real democracies here are still to do. And the Westminster circus, the BBC, and all the major organs of the current corporate media will need to be taken comprehensively in hand, removed from any stigma of commercial business purpose, and rebuilt from the foundations up, I think. We also need written constitutions for all the countries of the island, too.

It's interesting, though, that despite the constant deceit-blast of the Permanent Bullshit Blizzard, people like Terry above are legion; people who understand the realities behind the bollocks pretty well, from their own efforts at intellectual self-defence; to the point where a steady two-thirds of the common Brits are against the war DESPITE the worst efforts of the PBB operators in the media and amongst the pocket-pols.

Lying/self-delusional propaganda can only go so far before people's good sense peels off from the official BS line.

Rhisiart Gwilym, MEDIALENS


Reference Articles:

Wikileaks cracks NATO's Master Narrative for Afghanistan

Afghanistan: What are We doing There?

Afghanistan: The Dollar Line

Pre-revolutionary Britain?

Could the pre-conditions for revolutionary uprising be getting so worrying that the Beeb bosses feel the need to start propagandising against it?

Brown this morning is given lead-story reportage of his babbling about 'success' in Af-Pak. He's even quoted as talking about 'patriotism' (famously "the last refuge of the scoundrel").

With near 70% of Brits opposed to the USuk aggression there; with presumably some similar large majority still smarting about the pigs-at-the-trough (apologies to actual pigs) MP-expenses racket; with people -- my immediate neighbour for one -- becoming desperate at the lack of paid work, the draining away of their savings and the piling up of debts; and on and on -- you have to imagine that the steam pressure from the commons is building up steadily.

Seems to me that there has been a marked increase lately in ridiculous parades of military simpletons in desert-camo gear through the streets of various towns (no wonder all the little boys, and the over-grown boys who do 'sport' fishing and shooting, are all wearing it these days -- in wet, green Britain, for gods-sake! Together with that arch-symbol of US-worship, the base-ball cap).

There seems also to be an upsurge of media-images of these damnfool parades, with invariable shots of crowds of Union Jack wavers lining the streets -- entirely spontaneously, of course. Bit like that 'spontaneous' demonstration of joy by 'thousands' of Iraqis as US troops pulled down SH's statue in Baghdad.

And then there was that odd counter-demo by a handful of alleged 'Muslims', also in melodramatic fancy dress, at one of the early parades in -- where? -- Luton? Somewhere in Essex? South-East England anyway, where English-empire jingoism is traditionally at its most intense. Quite a stick in the hornets' nest that was. 'Scum' was one of the words being thrown about by the worst of the hacks -- just quoting comments by members of the public, of course; that same public of whom more than two-thirds are opposed to the aggression....

We can take it for granted that if there is indeed a build up of proto-revolutionary pressure in the Brit populace, we shan't be told by the corporate media until it's no longer ignorable. So how would we know about it, apart from anecdotal evidence from our own neighbourhoods, and of course by the increasing appearance of this kind of high-profile 'patriotism' bilge?

The BNP is making a mini bit of comic-opera headway too, and getting completely disproportionate attention from the corporate hacks for it.

But of course I'm just being fanciful. We all have it built in to our deepest levels of whole-life conditioning that such Third-Reich style melodramatic propaganda manipulations just couldn't happen in staid, mild, easy-going Britain, could they?

And as for false-flag operations........ oh really, come on!

Meantime, in the real world behind the indescribably-ridiculous jingo-screen, Britain's collapsing wealth continues it's headlong rush towards collision with relentlessly-rising food, commodity and energy prices; the old-order economists, pocket-pols and captains of industry are clueless about how to deal with the new epoch of permanent global scarcity; and the hopeless, already-lost, unadmitted resource-war in Central Asia begins its squalid endgame, still haemorrhaging blood and treasure all the while as it crashes.

If you were an English-empire gic, or one of their leading pocket-pols or editor-hacks, what would you do to try to damp down the grassroots discontent, if not 'put out more flags'? A certain weary inevitability about it all, isn't there.

Rhisiart Gwilym, Medialens