EMPIRE OF CHAOS
COUNTRIES
PAGE 9
SOMALIA
"U.S. involvement in Somalia
has a long history and reached a climax in the early 1990s, when
the U.S.-supported military dictatorship of Siad Barre was overthrown,
plunging the nation into civil war.
Thanks to Somalia's strategic location for global oil markets
at the mouth of the Red Sea, the U.S. became involved. Somalia
remained in a state of anarchy for 16 years until a coalition
of Islamic courts took over the capital in 2006. However, this
government was soon overthrown by Ethiopia with U.S. support.
Current U.S. anti-terrorism policy in Somalia, which includes
the use of airstrikes, has been blamed for worsening the nation's
conflict and its burgeoning humanitarian crisis, having driven
the nation into famine."
Whitney Webb
Somalia was invaded by mercenaries
ffrom Ethiopia, trained, financed, armed and directed by US military
advisers.
... More than one million people have been made internal refugees,
and 3.5 million people, half of Somalia's population, are facing
famine. Fighting has turned Mogadishu into a ghost town. About
700,000 people have fled - out of a population of up to 1.5 million.
James Petras, 2007
"Four U.S. oil companies
are quietly sitting on a prospective fortune in exclusive concessions
to explore and exploit tens-of-millions of acres of the Somali
countryside ... nearly two-thirds of Somalia was allocated to
American oil giants Conoco, Amoco, Chevron and Phillips in the
final years before Somalia's pro-U.S. president Mohammed Said
Barre' was overthrown. But, the Bush Administration and the State
Department insist that the U.S. military mission in Somalia is
strictly humanitarian. "
Michael Parenti, 1993
"Many European, US and
Asian shipping firms signed dumping deals in the early 1990s with
Somalia's politicians and militia leaders. This meant they could
use the coast as a toxic dumping ground. This practice became
widespread as the country descended into civil war. European companies
found it was very cheap to get rid of the waste."
Mike Whitney
"The Ethiopian invasion
of Somalia, which was sanctioned by the US government, has destroyed
virtually all the life-sustaining economic systems which the population
has built for the last fifteen years."
Abdi Samatar, professor of Global
Studies at the University of Minnesota
"One piracy was foreign
fishing piracy by foreign trawlers and vessels, who at the same
time were dumping industrial waste, toxic waste and, it also has
been reported, nuclear waste.
The other piracy is the shipping piracy. When the marine resources
of Somalia were pillaged, when the waters were poisoned, when
the fish was stolen. The fishermen felt that they had no other
possibilities or other recourse but to fight the properties and
the shipping of the same countries that have been carrying on
the fishing piracy and toxic dumping.
Toxic dumping, industrial waste dumping, nuclear dumping occured
in Somali waters in the '70s, in the '80s, in the '90s - companies
wanted to get rid of waste because of very strict environmental
rules in their countries. So these wastes have been carried to
Somalia.
The world knows, but it doesn't do anything about it."
Mohamed Abshir Waldo - a consultant
and analyst is Kenyan of Somali origin
"In 1991, the government
of Somalia collapsed. Its nine million people have been teetering
on starvation ever since - and the ugliest forces in the Western
world have seen this as a great opportunity to steal the country's
food supply and dump our nuclear waste in their seas."
Johann Hari, Independent UK, 2009
"The ICU [Islamic Courts
Union] was a relatively honest administration, which ended warlord
corruption and extortion in Somalia. Personal safety and property
were protected, ending arbitrary seizures and kidnappings by warlords
and their armed thugs. The ICU is a broad multi-tendency movement
that includes moderates and radical Islamists, civilian politicians
and armed fighters, liberals and populists, electoralists and
authoritarians. Most important, the Courts succeeded in unifying
the country and creating some semblance of nationhood, overcoming
clan fragmentation."
James Petras, 2008
"Somebody is dumping nuclear
material off the coast of Somalia. There is also lead, and heavy
metals such as cadmium and mercury. Much of it can be traced back
to European hospitals and factories, who seem to be passing it
on to the Italian mafia to "dispose" of cheaply."
Ahmedou Ould-Abdallah, the UN envoy
to Somalia
"The Islamic Courts that
brought six months of peace in Somalia, a semblance of peace,
the best Somalis have seen since the civil war has started, were
toppled by the Ethiopian government, the Ethiopian troops, with
the help of Bush administration."
Sadia Ali Aden, Somali American
writer and human rights activist
"George W Bush backed Ethiopia
in an invasion of Somalia, basically an Ethiopian-US invasion
of Somalia. Now Obama is pumping in new arms, new weapons, into
the midst of the killing and chaos there. The already disastrous
level of hunger and starvation is increasing. Obama's body count
probably exceeds that of Bush."
Allan Nairn, 2010
"In 2006, the Bush Administration
pushed Ethiopia to invade Somalia with an eye on crushing the
Union of Islamic Courts," which is exactly what happened,
and Somalia has been a 'failed state' mired in civil war ever
since."
Andrew Gavin Marshall, 2011
"The estimate of the true
number of people killed in Somalia since 2006 must be somewhere
between 500,000 and 850,000, with most likely about 650,000 violent
deaths."
Nicolas JS Davies, 2018
"Somalia on the Horn of
Africa was invaded by US forces in the early 1990s and for the
past three decades has been destabilized by relentless American
military aggression from naval, air and drone strikes in a so-called
'war on terror'."
Finian Cunningham
"The Somalia piracy is
a symptom; it's not the disease. The piracy is resulted from illegal
fishing and toxic waste dumping, nuclear waste dumping. And what
the international community needs to do is introduce a resolution
banning all these nations to stop the illegal fishing and the
illegal toxic waste dumping in Somalia."
Sadia Ali Aden, Somali American
writer and human rights activist
"The piracy that has exploded
in the waters off of Somalia are a result of the massive toxic
waste dumping and over-fishing done by European and American and
other major shipping lines, and have served as an excuse for the
militarization of the waters."
Andrew Gavin Marshall, 2011
"European ships have been
looting Somalia's seas of their greatest resource: seafood. We
have destroyed our own fish stocks in Europe by overexploitation
- and now we have moved on to theirs. More than $300million-worth
of tuna, shrimp, and lobster are being stolen every year by illegal
trawlers. The local fishermen are now starving."
Ahmedou Ould-Abdallah, the UN envoy
to Somalia
SUDAN & SOUTH
SUDAN
"In April 2005 Sudan's
government announced it had found oil in South Darfur, a major
geopolitical event which major US and European media "forgot"
to mention when discussing the sudden new "Darfur conflict."
Washington, using US Secretary of State Colin Powell, an African-American,
to deliver the message, began accusing the Khartoum regime of
"genocide" in Darfur, though no independent proof was
given. Only Washington and the NGO's close to it used the term
"genocide" to describe Darfur. If they could get a popular
acceptance of the charge of genocide, it opened the possibility
for drastic "regime change" interventions by NATO and
by Washington in Sudan's sovereign affairs. The Washington Darfur
smear campaign soon enlisted Hollywood stars like George Clooney
in this effort. Washington and NATO launched a campaign to argue
for a de facto NATO occupation of the region.
In 2004, Chad's dictator Idriss Deby launched the initial strike
that set off the conflict in Darfur, using members of his elite
Presidential Guard who originate from the province. He provided
all-terrain vehicles, arms and anti-aircraft guns to Darfur rebels
fighting the Khartoum government in southwest Sudan. The US military
support to Deby was the trigger for the Darfur bloodbath. Khartoum
reacted and the ensuing tragic debacle was unleashed in full force.
... In 2011 a new "republic" was declared in southern
Sudan titled The Republic of South Sudan. It (conveniently for
the Pentagon) controlled a major part of Sudan's oil flows to
China."
F. William Engdahl, 2014
"The U.S. pushed South
Sudan to secede from Sudan in 2011, as South Sudan held 75 percent
of Sudan's oil reserves - the largest oil reserves in all of Africa.
Analysts argued that the U.S. sought to create an independent
South Sudan in order to dislodge Chinese claims to Sudanese oil,
as the Chinese had previously signed oil contracts with the (now
Northern) Sudanese government.
Just two years later, however, South Sudan dissolved into a deadly
civil war that has killed tens of thousands and displaced more
than 1.5 million."
Whitney Webb , 2017
"US policy was instrumental
in the break-up of Sudan into Northern and Southern states in
2011-2012. That, in turn, has wrecked the economies of both states
and fomented conflicts, leading to massive displacement of communities.
It can never be underestimated the extent of underdevelopment
that Africa has been historically hobbled with from American and
European colonial and neocolonial economic exploitation."
Finian Cunningham
"Failing in its attempt
to pressure Sudan to break its ties with China, Washington turned
its guns on Khartoum directly. They launched a massive campaign
to save Darfur.
... Washington and its NGOs chargeed Khartoum with genocide, as
a pretext for bringing UN/NATO troops into the oil fields of Darfur
and southern Sudan. Oil, not human misery, was behind Washington's
new interest in Darfur."
F. William Engdahl
SYRIA
"In Syria, by 2017, after
more than six years, the war had created untold destruction of
Syria's cities, deaths into many hundreds of thousands, more than
6 million internally displaced within Syria, and almost 5 million
refugees outside of Syria, in Turkey, and across the EU."
F. William Engdahl
"The National Security
Establishment created the Syrian crisis as part of a long term
strategy to defend Israel and help effectuate its racist, expansionist
policies, while gobbling up the region's resources and countering
Russian influence."
Douglas Valentine, 2017
"In 2009, Bashar Assad
announced that he would refuse to sign an agreement to allow a
Qatar/Turkey pipeline to run through Syria.
Assad further enraged the Gulf's Sunni monarchs by endorsing a
Russian-approved pipeline running from Iran's side of the gas
field through Syria and to the ports of Lebanon. This pipeline
would make Shiite Iran, not Sunni Qatar, the principal supplier
to the European energy market and dramatically increase Tehran's
influence in the Middle East and the world.
... Secret cables and reports by the U.S., Saudi and Israeli intelligence
agencies indicate that the moment Assad rejected the Qatari pipeline,
military and intelligence planners quickly arrived at the consensus
that fomenting a Sunni uprising in Syria to overthrow the uncooperative
Bashar Assad was a feasible path to achieving the shared objective
of completing the Qatar/Turkey gas link. In 2009, soon after Bashar
Assad rejected the Qatar pipeline, the CIA began funding opposition
groups in Syria."
Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., 2016
"In Yemen the U.S. and
France are helping Saudi Arabia in its massive air war against
Houthi Shi'ites. And it's the case in Syria, the scene of the
most destructive war game of them all, where Saudi Arabia and
other Arab Gulf states are channeling money and arms to Al Qaeda,
the Islamic State (also known as ISIS, ISIL and Daesh), and similar
forces with the full knowledge of the U.S."
Daniel Lazare , 2015
"[The Syrian conflict as
a war for control of the region's resources with] the west, Gulf
countries and Turkey supporting Assad's opposition, while Russia,
China and Iran support the regime.
If the situation unravels, there is the possibility of establishing
a declared or undeclared Salafist principality in eastern Syria,
and this is exactly what the supporting powers to the opposition
want in order to isolate the Syrian regime."
a study by the U.S. Defense Intelligence
Agency - August 12, 2012
"Two members of the Turkish
parliament, high-level American sources and others admitted that
the Turkish government - a NATO country - carried out the chemical
weapons attacks in Syria and falsely blamed them on the Syrian
government; and high-ranking Turkish government admitted on tape
plans to carry out attacks and blame it on the Syrian government."
Washington's Blog March 30, 2016
"The reason ISIS is in
Iraq and Syria is that the US equipped ISIS and sent ISIS to overthrow
Assad when the British Parliament and the Russian government blocked
Obama's planned invasion of Syria. ISIS is Washington's creation,
just as is Al Qaeda."
Paul Craig Roberts, 2017
"Syria has been in the
throes of a U.S.-led regime change effort for the better part
of six years - a conflict that has ravaged one of the most prosperous
nations in the Middle East and turned it into the latest battleground
for a proxy war between the U.S. and Russia.
Since the 2011 "uprising," the U.S. has continuously
funded and armed opposition groups in Syria along with several
extremist groups, many of which have since joined terrorist organizations
like Daesh (ISIS) and the al-Nusra Front."
Whitney Webb , 2017
"It is estimated that at
least 1.5 million people have been killed so far in Syria."
Nicolas JS Davies, 2018
"The Syrian White Helmets,
a so-called "first emergency responder" NGO, was a fake.
It was created by an ex-British military intelligence officer
and financed by the US government via the CIA-tied United States
Agency for International Development (USAID). White Helmets operators
were repeatedly exposed filming fake videos of sarin poison gas
victims, all aimed to build a case for war crimes and genocide
against al-Assad."
F. William Engdahl
"The American war against
Syria and its covert actions against Iran are part of a larger
strategy to weaken and encircle Russia.
... The goal of the American elite is to make Syria, and then
Iran, and then Russia join the ranks of Korea, Vietnam, Afghanistan,
Libya and Iraq. The plan is to smash it into ethnic and religious
lines, and to fuel fighting between these groups for many years."
Douglas Valentine, 2017
"The primarily UK Foreign
Office-funded White Helmets, since their creation in 2013, is
a faux first-responder organisation, established in Turkey and
trained by an ex-British military mercenary.
... The majority of Syrians living in the heavily populated areas
of Syria have never heard of the White Helmets.
... The White Helmets are one of the biggest propaganda heists
ever seen in recent colonialist history. To suggest this organisation
is "unarmed and neutral" is fraudulent. To suggest they
are humanitarian is inaccurate and misleading as their videos
demonstrate minimal paramedic expertise and maximum cinematic
exploitation. They are a rag tag collection of armed fighters,
co-opted into the terrorist and extremist gangs that are occupying
areas of Syria and persecuting the civilians of those areas.
... The real Syria Civil Defence has none of the funding of the
their US, British, NATO intelligence shadow state counterpart,
but they have ten thousand times the integrity. They are recognised
and respected by the Syrian people as the ones they call when
they are in trouble. They are the officially recognised Syria
civil defence that has received accolades for its global humanitarian
excellence. In Syria, they are irreplaceable, despite the best
efforts of the US, British, NATO and Gulf state organised crime
syndicate."
Vanessa Beeley, 2017
VENEZUELA
"Documents written by the
CIA clearly show knowledge of the detailed plans for the coup
against Hugo Chávez in 2002. Financial and advisory agencies
like the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), the International
Republican Institute (IRI), the National Democratic Institute
(NDI) and the Center for International Private Enterprise (CIPE)
financed all the groups, NGOs, trade unions, businesspeople, political
parties and the media involved in the coup."
Eva Golinger, 2008
"The Venezuelan opposition
has orchestrated economic sabotage, corporate smuggling, black
market currency manipulations, full scale hoarding of food and
essential products. They have closed highways, burned public buildings,
have dropped grenades from a helicopter on to the Supreme Court
offices, have assaulted, lynched and even burned alive young men
of dark skin "who looked Chavista". This is a violent
opposition steeped in racism and classism against their own people
and in the service of foreign powers and big oil."
Maria Páez Victor and Edu
Montesanti, 2017
"The Empire is afraid that
the people of the United States will find out the truth. that
a Bolivarian movement, or a Lincoln movement, or a movement of
conscious citizens could erupt in their own country and transform
the system."
Hugo Chavez
"The U.S. wants to overthrow
President Hugo Chavez to put Venezuela in line with their other
clients in Latin America and knock down the only government that
offers an alternative foreign policy for the whole region. They
don't want that alternative present.
That's why this coup was planned, directed, and financed by the
Bush administration. It wasn't just the CIA. The assistant secretary
of state for Western hemisphere affairs was involved - I'm talking
about the Cuban terrorist exile Otto Reich. I'm talking about
people like Elliot Abrams, who was in the Reagan administration
and involved in justifying the killings in Central America, which
amounted to 300,000 deaths. I'm talking about John Negroponte,
the U.S. ambassador to the UN, who was involved with the death
squads in Honduras.
You have thugs running U.S. policy in Latin America, who are capable
not only of overthrowing a government but engaging in the kind
of violent repression that was launched in those 24 hours of the
coup against Hugo Chavez."
James Petras interview, 2002
"Hugo Chavez re-founded
his country, freed it from colonial domination, thrust the invisible
poor permanently into the national spotlight, redistributed oil
revenues to benefit the Venezuelan majority, sharply reduced illiteracy
and poverty, radically improved public health, raised pensions
and the minimum wage, mandated pay for housework, established
health clinics, schools, cooperatives and popular councils throughout
the country, all this while making the stagnant Venezuelan economy
grow. He strengthened the hand of the oil-producing countries
against the international oil oligarchs, derailed Washington's
"free trade" market of the Americas (substituting an
alternative economic integration model based on mutual aid), and
laid the foundation for a new brand of socialism in the 21st century
when most people were loathe to even mention socialism."
Michael K. Smith
"Of the 92 elections that
we've monitored, I would say that the election process in Venezuela
is the best in the world."
former President Jimmy Carter,
2012
"In Venezuela, voters touch
a computer screen to cast their vote and then receive a paper
receipt, which they verify and deposit in a ballot box. Most of
the paper ballots are compared with the electronic tally. This
system makes vote-rigging nearly impossible: to steal the vote
would require hacking the computers and then stuffing the ballot
boxes to match the rigged vote."
Mark Weisbrot, 2012
"The funding of political
groups in Venezuela, and others throughout Latin America that
promote US agenda, has increased since the April 2002 coup against
President Chávez. Through two principal Department of State
agencies, USAID and the National Endowment for Democracy (NED),
the US government has channeled more than $50 million to opposition
groups in Venezuela since 2002. The USAID/NED budget to fund groups
in Venezuela in 2010 is nearly $15 million, doubled from last
year's $7 million. This is a state policy of Washington, which
the Obama Administration plans to amp up. They call it "democracy
promotion", but it's really democracy subversion and destabilization...
Through USAID and NED, and their "partner NGOs" and
contractors, such as Freedom House, International Republican Institute,
National Democratic Institute, Pan-American Development Foundation
and Development Alternatives, Inc., hundreds of political groups,
parties and programs are presently being funded in Venezuela to
promote regime change against the Chávez government."
Eva Golinger interviewed by Mike
Whitney, 2009
"When the Venezuelan president,
Hugo Chavez, tried to take more direct policy control of the Venezuelan
state oil company, the Bush administration attempted a covert
coup."
William Engdahl in his book "A
Century of War"
"In Venezuela voter registration
is now at 97%."
Mark Weisbrot, 2012
"Washington wants to get
rid of the Venezuelan government because it is independent of
US designs for the region and because Venezuela has the greatest
proven oil reserves in the world and uses its oil revenue to improve
the quality of ordinary lives. Venezuela remains a source of inspiration
for social reform in a continent ravaged by an historically rapacious
U.S.."
John Pilger
"The Venezuelan Bolivarian
Revolution and its commitment to the poor as the most important
movement on the planet. [Hugo] Chavez fully embraces the values
that inspired by [Martin Luther] King to help the poor and marginalized.
Corporate media will continue to distort and misrepresent what
is going on there, as it will with respect to every non-capitalist,
cooperative effort."
William F. Pepper in his book "An
Act of State: the Execution of Martin Luther King"
"Living standards of the
majority of Venezuelans have dramatically improved under [Hugo]
Chávez. Since 2004, when the government gained control
over the oil industry and the economy had recovered from the devastating,
extra-legal attempts to overthrow it (including the 2002 US-backed
military coup and oil strike of 2002-2003), poverty has been cut
in half and extreme poverty by 70%. And this measures only cash
income. Millions have access to healthcare for the first time,
and college enrolment has doubled, with free tuition for many
students. Inequality has also been considerably reduced. By contrast,
the two decades that preceded Chávez amount to one of the
worst economic failures in Latin America, with real income per
person actually falling by 14% between 1980 and 1998."
Mark Weisbrot, 2012
"The Venezuelan government
has a [distinct] set of measurements to determine true poverty
including: access to education, access to clean drinking water,
access to adequate housing, and other factors. In Venezuela, poverty
is not a measure of income, but of quality of life."
Eric Draitser, 2013
"Hugo Chavez more than
anyone drawing a breath, carries on and expands [Martin Luther]
King's struggle on behalf of the wretched of the earth. He is
a revolutionary)' leader deeply committed, as was {Martin Luther]
King, to liberating the poor from the impoverishment, physical
deprivation, and exclusion that denies all life in the face of
the challenge to survive."
William F. Pepper in his book "An
Act of State: the Execution of Martin Luther King"
"Through USAID and NED,
and their "partner NGOs" and contractors, such as Freedom
House, International Republican Institute, National Democratic
Institute, Pan-American Development Foundation and Development
Alternatives, Inc., hundreds of political groups, parties and
programs are presently being funded in Venezuela to promote regime
change against the Chávez government."
Eva Golinger, 2009
"The Israeli elite repeatedly
criticise Hitler's actions against the Jews, and indeed Hitler's
actions must be criticised, not just against the Jews but against
the world. It's also fascism that Israel is doing to the Palestinian
people ... terrorism and fascism."
Hugo Chavez