NbookNo1:WAR PLAN IRAN:Dispelling the Lies,Telling the Truth

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NbookNo1:WAR PLAN IRAN:Dispelling the Lies,Telling the Truth

Unread postby Paul Kemp » Wed Feb 29, 2012 7:36 pm

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WAR PLAN IRAN: Dispelling the Lies, Telling the Truth about Western Aggression in the Persian Gulf
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GR ONLINE NEWS READER
by Finian Cunningham and Michel Chossudovsky
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Global Research, February 16, 2012

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THE GLOBAL RESEARCH ONLINE NEWS READER
__________________________– the N-Book Series-
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Global Research announces a new project to our readers
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Global Research's Online News Reader (N-Book) aims to take a top story in world events and present the best of our recent archive to give readers a condensed and informed overview of the topic. It will include a mix of news, analysis and backgrounder. In that way, we hope that you can stay informed of the most important developments with this handy authoritative reference. The News Reader (N-Book) will come out regularly as crucial stories unfold.

The first in our new series deals with the rising tensions in the Persian Gulf between the West and Iran and what appears increasingly to be a collision course for war. We examine the heart of the matter in order to empower our readers with knowledge and truth about what is really happening in the region and why, and, more importantly, what is at stake.

By providing a focus on an important current news topic, the GR Online N-Book News Reader complements Global Research's Online Interactive I-Book Reader, which brings together, in the form of chapters, a collection of Global Research feature articles, including debate and analysis, on a broad theme or subject matter. To consult our Online Interactive I-Book Reader Series, click here.

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War Plan Iran
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Dispelling the Lies, Telling the Truth about
Western Aggression in the Persian Gulf

Finian Cunningham and Michel Chossudovsky (Editors)

GR Online News Reader Series

N-Book No. 1. 2012, January 16, 2012



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The year 2012 may become known as a watershed for humanity – the year when mankind was precipitated into a global conflagration involving nuclear weapons. The signs are indeed grimly ominous as formidable military forces converge on the Persian Gulf in the long-running stand-off between the United States and Iran.

On side with the US are its European allies in NATO, primarily Britain, Washington’s Middle East client states: Israel and the Arab monarchies of the Persian Gulf – all bristling with weapons of mass destruction. Recent naval exercises by Iran in the Strait of Hormuz have also displayed a fierce arsenal of missiles and military capability, and Iran has strategic alliances with Russia and China, both of whom will not stand idly by if their Persian partner is attacked.

As we have consistently analysed on Global Research, the conflict between the US-led powers and Iran has wider ramifications. It is part and parcel of Washington’s bid to engineer the social and political upheavals across the Arab World in order to redraw the region in its strategic interests. It is no coincidence that fresh from NATO’s conquest of and regime change in Libya, the focus has quickly shifted to Syria – a key regional ally of Iran. As Michel Chossudovsky has pointed out “the road to Tehran goes through to Damascus”. Regime change in Syria would serve to isolate Iran. Subjugating Iran and returning it to Western tutelage is the prize that Washington and its allies have been seeking for the past 33 years ever since their client the Shah, Mohammad Rezā Pahlavi, was deposed by the Islamic Revolution in 1979.

Iran is an energy-rich colossus, with oil and, more importantly, natural gas reserves that put it, with approximately 10% of global reserves, in the world’s top three oil economies alongside Washington’s client states of Saudi Arabia and Iraq. In sharp contrast, the US has less than 2% of global oil reserves.

The conquest of Iran's oil riches is the driving force behind America's military agenda.

The US-led conquest of Iraq – costing over a million lives in a nine-year occupation – is part of Washington’s long-held plans to dominate the globe’s vast energy resources that reside in the Persian Gulf and Central Asian regions. The decade-long war in Afghanistan is another flank in this US bid for hegemony over the fuel for the capitalist world economy. For nearly three decades, the US-led Western capitalist world has been deprived of exploiting Iranian energy wealth. The Islamic Republic has remained defiantly independent of Washington’s control, not just in terms of its vast hydrocarbon riches, but also politically. Iran is no puppet of the West as it was formerly under the despotic Shah Mohammad Rezā Pahlavi.

Tehran has shown itself to be a trenchant critic of Western imperialist meddling in the region and fawning over the criminal Israeli persecution of Palestinians. Another important source of Western animus towards Iran and the deeply held desire for regime change is the loss that the Iranian revolution implies for the lucrative American, British and French weapons industry. When Shah Mohammad Rezā Pahlavi was kicked out in February 1979, so too was a massive market for Western arms dealers. The recent $50 billion arms sales to Saudi Arabia – the “biggest-ever in history” – that had the Pentagon salivating, would be easily replicated in Iran, if a similar client regime could be installed there.

From the Western powers’ point of view, Iran is both an elusive prize and a frustrating obstacle. Bringing Iran back into the orbit of Western capitalist control has the added significance of depriving energy and other geopolitical advantages to rival powers, in particular Russia and China. In a strategic review earlier this month, Washington highlighted China as its pre-eminent global competitor in the coming decades. The militarized agenda towards China was also heralded by US President Barack Obama during his Asia-Pacific tour at the end of 2011. China is heavily dependent on Iranian oil. Some 20 per cent of all Iranian crude oil exports are traded with China. The latter has billions of dollars worth of energy investments in Iran, in particular the natural gas sector, which energy analysts view as the primary fuel in forthcoming decades. Washington’s policy of hostility and regime change towards Iran and furthering its hegemony over this vital region is as much about wresting control from its perceived competitors, Russia and China. That factor takes on added importance as America’s economic power wanes.

These issues form the bigger picture that explains the drive for war in the Persian Gulf, which the mainstream media has chosen to carefully ignore. The broader implications of this war are either trivialized or not mentioned. People are led to believe that war is part of a "humanitarian mandate" and that both Iran as well as Iran's allies, namely China and Russia, constitute an unrelenting threat to global security and "Western democracy"

While the most advanced weapons system are used, America's wars are never presented as "killing operations" resulting in extensive civilian casualties. While the incidence of "collateral damage" is acknowledged, US-led wars are heralded as an unquestionable instrument of "peace-making" and "democratization".

The selection of articles below is intended to give readers a condensed overview of the events and issues at stake in the so-called stand-off between the US, its allies, and Iran. We have selected articles with a news emphasis while also providing a historical background.

In Part I, Playing with Fire: Covert Acts of Aggression, Provocation and War, our reports and analyses show how the military build-up in the Persian Gulf has an alarming deliberation and potential for an all-out regional conflict. We also expose Washington’s criminal covert war against Iran, including the assassination of Iranian scientists and the incursion of the country’s territory with spy drones. However, we don’t merely report the occurrence of these events, our writers show how this mainly US-led militarization is part of the wider strategy for American global dominance.

We also demonstrate in Part II, War-Making is a Crime: The Latest Episode in America’s Long Record, that the belligerent policy of Washington and its allies is criminal. Before even firing a shot, the Western powers are violating international laws and protocols of diplomacy. Equipped with this legal insight and knowledge is essential for citizens to mount an effective anti-war movement. In this section, we also provide a historical background showing that Washington’s hostility towards Iran is but the latest episode in a long history of criminal war-making by the US.

Central to the Western powers' avowed rationale in the Persian Gulf is their presentation of Iran as a threat to world peace, in particular from its alleged development of nuclear weapons. In Part III, Media Manipulation: Lies, Distortions and Selling Yet Another War to the Public, we dispel the myths, fog and fabrications behind these allegations to show that Iran does not have, nor is intending to build, nuclear weapons. Its “nuclear ambitions” (a phrase so often said with sinister connotations) are to develop civilian energy and medical capabilities – well within the provisions and entitlements of the Non-Proliferation Treaty. Countless inspections over several years by the United Nations’ nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), have not found any evidence to support Western claims. Yet these well-worn and hollow claims continue to be recycled in the mainstream media. The IAEA has also shown itself to have become a willing political tool for Western governments and intelligence agencies by casting sinister doubt on the Iranian nuclear programme even though the IAEA has not found any proof to justify such doubts. We show that the supposed nuclear threat feared by the Western powers is a specious pretext for their otherwise criminal aggression towards Iran and its 80 million people.

Finally, in Part IV Towards a Global Conflagration, we point to the very real danger of a horrendous cataclysm – if Western governments persist in their criminal drumbeat for war in the Persian Gulf. Russia and China are fully aware that a war on Iran is a stepping stone towards a broader war. The Russian government, in a recent statement, has warned the US and NATO that "should Iran get drawn into any political or military hardships, this will be a direct threat to our national security.”

The region is on a hair-trigger for a conflagration that would involve nuclear weapons and the collision of global powers in what would constitute World War III. The consequences are barely imaginable for the loss of life in such a scenario and for the very future of the planet. Yet all the while, the mainstream media has served to justify this march to war or to downplay its horrific possibilities.

The complacency of Western public opinion --including segments of the US anti-war movement-- is disturbing. No concern has been expressed at the political level as to the likely consequences of a US-NATO-Israel attack on Iran, using nuclear weapons against a non-nuclear state.



Such an action would result in "the unthinkable": a nuclear holocaust over a large part of the Middle East. It should be noted that a nuclear nightmare would occur even if nuclear weapons were not used. The bombing of Iran's nuclear facilities using conventional weapons would contribute to unleashing a Chernobyl-Fukushima type disaster with extensive radioactive fallout.

The "Globalization of War" involving the hegemonic deployment of a formidable US-NATO military force in all major regions of the World is inconsequential in the eyes of the Western media.

War is not front page news in comparison to the most insignificant issues of public concern, including the local level crime scene or the tabloid gossip reports on Hollywood celebrities. The broader implications of this war on Iran are either trivialized or not mentioned. People are led to believe that war is part of a "humanitarian mandate" and that both Iran as well as Iran's allies, namely China and Russia, constitute an unrelenting threat to global security and "Western democracy".

In the face of ceaseless media disinformation, We at Global Research are committed to raising public awareness of the injustice and criminality being perpetrated by Western governments. We began this News Reader by saying that 2012 could be a watershed year for ominous reasons. It could also be a watershed year for a better future in which citizens rise up to avert war and overthrow their oppressive governments, to create societies that are worthy of human beings. In order to achieve that, we first need to know what is at stake and why. This Online News Reader (N-Book) aims to do that.

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Finian Cunningham, Michel Chossudovsky, Global Research, January 6, 2012

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___________________________TABLE OF CONTENTS
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PART I Playing with Fire: Covert Acts of Aggression, Provocation and War
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Beating the Drums of War: Provoking Iran into "Firing the First Shot"?
- by Michel Chossudovsky - 2012-01-14
Very few people in America are aware or informed regarding the devastation and massive loss of life which would occur in the case of a US-Israeli sponsored attack on Iran.

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Terror Attacks, U.S.-Israeli War Games Raise the Prospects for War with Iran
- by Tom Burghardt - 2012-01-14

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Assassination in Iran: Obama Administration is CEO of "Murder Inc"Clinton denies US involvement in murder of nuclear scientist
- by Finian Cunningham - 2012-01-13

Iran Says It Has Evidence CIA Was Behind Assassination Of Scientist- 2012-01-15

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The Geo-Politics of the Strait of Hormuz: Could the U.S. Navy be defeated by Iran in the Persian Gulf?
- by Mahdi Darius Nazemroaya - 2012-01-08
The Pentagon’s own war simulations show that a war in the Persian Gulf with Iran would spell disaster for the U.S. Navy.

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FINANCIAL WARFARE: US Sabotage of Iran’s Currency: A New Twist of the Screw to War
- by Finian Cunningham - 2012-01-03

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War Plan Iran: China Snubs Washington's Best-Laid Plans to Destabilize Iran's Oil Industry
- by Finian Cunningham - 2012-01-10

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Building Another Pretext to Wage War on Iran: US Court Holds Tehran Responsible for the 9/11 Attacks $100 billion in damages
- by Dr. Ismail Salami - 2011-12-27

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Downed CIA Stealth Drone Marks Another Step Towards America's War On Iran
- by Finian Cunningham - 2011-12-07

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Pearl Harbor: 70 Years on, Is Iran the New Japan?
- by Finian Cunningham - 2011-12-08

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PART II War-Making is a Crime: The Latest Episode in America’s Long Record
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War Plan Iran: The US Finally Admits Its Criminal Bankruptcy.
- by Finian Cunningham - 2012-01-09
“Are they trying to develop a nuclear weapon? No.” says US Defence Secretary Leon Panetta. So if Iran is not even trying to develop a nuclear weapon, what then is the criminal US warmongering predicated on?

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Waging War against Iran is a Criminal Act, in Violation of International Law
The death toll from World War III will be incalculable...
- by Prof. Francis A. Boyle - 2012-01-07

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US Obligated to Take Iran Dispute to International Arbitration
- by Sherwood Ross - 2012-01-07

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Manipulation of the UN Security Council in support of the US-NATO Military Agenda
Coercion, Intimidation & Bribery used to Extort Approval from Reluctant Members
- by Carla Stea - 2012-01-10


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PART III Media Manipulation: Lies, Distortions and Selling Yet Another War to the Public
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VIDEO: Faking It: How the Media Manipulates the World into War
- by James Corbett - 2012-01-02
The centuries-long history of how media has been used to whip the nation into wartime frenzy, dehumanize the supposed enemies, and even to manipulate the public into believing in causes for war that, decades later, were admitted to be completely fictitious.

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Israel: "Wiped off The Map". Rumor of the Century, Fabricated by the US Media to Justify An All out War on Iran
- by Arash Norouzi - 2012-01-04

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Using Fake Intelligence to Justify War on Iran
- by Michel Chossudovsky - 2011-11-09

Washington is in the process of concocting a new string of lies pertaining to Iran's nuclear program with a view to justifying the implementation of punitive bombings.

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Media Manipulation and the Drums of War: How Media is used to Whip the Nation into Wartime Frenzy
- by James Corbett - 2012-01-03

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PART IV Towards a Global Conflagration
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World War III: The Launching of a Preemptive Nuclear War against Iran
- by Michel Chossudovsky - 2011-12-04
World War III is not front-page news. The mainstream media has excluded in-depth analysis and debate on the implications of these war plans.

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IRAN: The Next War on Washington’s Agenda Politics
- by Dr Paul Craig Roberts - 2012-01-13

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The American-Iranian Cold War in the Middle East and the Threat of A Broader War
- by Mahdi Darius Nazemroaya - 2012-01-01
A Cold War between Tehran and Washington has been raging across the Middle East from Lebanon to Iraq and the Persian Gulf with the use of spies, drones, assassinations, and perception campaigns.

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"When War Games Go Live. Preparing to Attack Iran. "Simulating World War III"
- by Michel Chossudovsky - 2012-01-08
With ongoing war games on both sides, armed hostilities between the US-Israel led coalition and Iran are, according to Israeli military analysts, "dangerously close".

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Imperial Military Adventurism: Tensions Rise as the U.S. Imposes the 'Nuclear Option' on Iran's Economy
Blocking oil Shipments through the Strait of Hormuz...
- by Tom Burghardt - 2012-01-02

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Preparing to Attack Iran with Nuclear Weapons: "No Option can be taken off the Table."
- by Michel Chossudovsky - 2011-12-26

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Red Lines and Ticking Clocks: U.S. War Plans Against Iran
The possibility of Russia's Military Involvement...
- by Tom Burghardt - 2011-12-26

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Why Attacking Iran Will Not Work in 2012. Failure could Result in a US-Israel Military and Economic Tailspin
- by Patrick Henningsen - 2012-01-05

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Why Not Attack Iran?
Iran will retaliate against U.S. troops and Israel
- by David Swanson - 2012-01-06

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Obama's New Military Strategy: Targeting Nations which Challenge US Hegemony
- by Stephen Lendman - 2012-01-07

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IMPLOSION OF THE MIDDLE EAST: Destabilizing Iraq and Syria, Recalibrating America's War Plans directed against Iran
- by Dr. Ismail Salami - 2012-01-06

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For more background analysis consult our latest Online Interactive I-Book
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The Globalization of War: The "Military Roadmap" to World War III
ONLINE INTERACTIVE READER
- by Michel Chossudovsky, Finian Cunningham - 2012-01-31

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We call upon college, university and high school teachers to bring this N-Book to the attention of their students.

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The Globalization of War:The "Military Roadmap" to World War

Unread postby Paul Kemp » Thu Mar 01, 2012 1:45 am

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Global Research I Book 2 ONLINE INTERACTIVE READER
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The Globalization of War: The "Military Roadmap" to World War III
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ONLINE INTERACTIVE READER
by Michel Chossudovsky and Finian Cunningham

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Global Research, March 10, 2012 - 2011-12-18

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Bush declared emphatically at the outset of what became known as "the post-Cold War era" that:

“a new partnership of nations has begun, and we stand today at a unique and extraordinary moment. The crisis in the Persian Gulf, as grave as it is, also offers a rare opportunity to move toward an historic period of cooperation. Out of these troubled times… a new world order can emerge: A new era freer from the threat of terror, stronger in the pursuit of justice and more secure in the quest for peace. An era in which the nations of the world, east and west, north and south, can prosper and live in harmony.”

Of course, speeches by American presidents are often occasions for cynical platitudes and contradictions that should not be taken at face value. After all, President Bush was holding forth on international law and justice only months after his country had invaded Panama in December 1989 causing the deaths of several thousand citizens – committing crimes comparable to what Saddam Hussein would be accused of and supposedly held to account for. Also in 1991, the US and its NATO allies went on to unleash, under a “humanitarian” mantle, a protracted war against Yugoslavia, leading to the destruction, fragmentation and impoverishment of an entire country.

Nevertheless, it is instructive to use Bush Senior’s slanted vision of a “New World Order” as a reference point for how dramatically the world has changed in the intervening 20 years of the so-called post-Cold War era, and in particular how unilaterally degenerate the contemporary international conduct of the US has become under the Clinton, G. W. Bush Junior and Obama administrations.

Bush Senior's "promise" of world peace has opened up, in the wake of the Cold War, an age of continuous warfare accompanied by a process of economic dislocation, social devastation and environmental degradation.

In a bitter irony, this concept of peaceful international co-operation and partnership was used as a pretext to unleash The Gulf War, which consisted in "defending the sovereignty" of Kuwait and “upholding international law” following the Iraqi 1990 invasion.

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GLOBAL RESEARCH ONLINE INTERACTIVE READER SERIES

GR I-BOOK No. 2

The Globalization of War

The "Military Roadmap" to World War III
Michel Chossudovsky and Finian Cunningham (Editors) December 2011

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INTRODUCTION
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The Pentagon’s global military design is one of world conquest.

The military deployment of US-NATO forces is occurring in several regions of the world simultaneously.

The concept of the “Long War” has characterized US military doctrine since the end of World War II. The broader objective of global military dominance in support of an imperial project was first formulated under the Truman administration in the late 1940s at the outset of the Cold War.



In September 1990, some five weeks after Saddam Hussein’s Iraq invaded Kuwait, US President and Commander in Chief George Herbert Walker Bush delivered a historical address to a joint session of the US Congress and the Senate in which he proclaimed a New World Order emerging from the rubble of the Berlin Wall and the demise of the Soviet Union.

Bush Senior had envisaged a world of "peaceful international co-operation", one which was no longer locked into the confrontation between competing super powers, under the shadow of the doctrine of "Mutually Assured Destruction" (MAD) which had characterized the Cold War era.

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George H Walker Bush addressed a Joint Session
of the US Congress and the Senate, September 1990


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Global Warfare
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We are dealing with a global military agenda, namely “Global Warfare”. Far from a world of peaceful cooperation, we are living in a dystopian world of permanent wars – wars that are being waged in flagrant contravention of international law and against public opinion and interest.

Far from a “new era more secure in the quest for peace” we may see a world more akin to George Orwell’s 1984, dominated by perpetual conflict, insecurity, authoritarian surveillance, doublethink and public mind control.

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A problem for many citizens is that “doublethink and mind control” have become so deeply embedded and disseminated by the mass media, including the so-called quality free press, such as The New York Times and The Guardian.

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The Post 9/11 Era: America's Doctrine of Pre-emptive Warfare
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Allegedly sponsored by Al Qaeda, the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon played a central role in molding public opinion. One of the main objectives of war propaganda is to "fabricate an enemy". The "outside enemy" personified by Osama bin Laden is "threatening America".

Pre-emptive war directed against "Islamic terrorists" is required to defend the Homeland. Realities are turned upside down: America is under attack.

In the wake of 9/11, the creation of this "outside enemy" served to obfuscate the real economic and strategic objectives behind the American-led wars in the Middle East and Central Asia. Waged on the grounds of self-defense, the pre-emptive war is upheld as a "just war" with a humanitarian mandate.

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"The Outside Enemy" Osama bin Laden, portrayed by the mainstream media

From the outset of the Soviet-Afghan war in the early 1980s, the US intelligence apparatus has supported the formation of the "Islamic brigades". Propaganda purports to erase the history of Al Qaeda, drown the truth and "kill the evidence" on how this "outside enemy" was fabricated and transformed into "Enemy Number One".

The US intelligence apparatus has created it own terrorist organizations. And at the same time, it creates its own terrorist warnings concerning the terrorist organizations which it has itself created. Meanwhile, a cohesive multibillion dollar counterterrorism program "to go after" these terrorist organizations has been put in place.

Instead of “war” or “state terrorism”, we are told of “humanitarian intervention” directed against "terrorists".

Instead of “offence”, we are told of “defense” or “protection”.

Instead of “mass murder” we are told of “collateral damage”.

A good versus evil dichotomy prevails. The perpetrators of war are presented as the victims. Public opinion is misled: “We must fight against evil in all its forms as a means to preserving the Western way of life.”

Breaking the "Big Lie" which presents war as a humanitarian undertaking, means breaking a criminal project of global destruction, in which the quest for profit is the overriding force. This profit-driven military agenda destroys human values and transforms people into unconscious zombies.

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Spawning Militarism: "War is Normal"
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In truth, as this new Interactive Reader from Global Research will demonstrate, we are living in an era hallmarked by “The Globalization of War” conducted by the very states that proclaim to be defenders of democratic rights and international law.

The chief protagonist of this globalized war is the United States of America. The US, along with its allies in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), Britain, France, Canada and Germany among others, as well as an array of proxies – such as the Persian Gulf Arab states – is now emboldened to strike militarily in any region of the world.

It should be noted that on a tour of the Asia-Pacific region in November 2011, US President Barack Obama’s rhetoric was laden with bellicose statements towards China, citing the latter as a military threat to the hemisphere that the United States was ready to confront. Obama’s aggressive rhetoric towards Beijing should have been widely seen as unprecedented and unacceptable. But from a reading of the Western mainstream media, the warmongering by the US president was somehow made into normal, reasonable discourse.

This spawning militarism is rationalized with a variety of seemingly palatable pretexts: securing the world against "Islamic terrorism", as in Afghanistan; securing the world against "weapons of mass destruction", as in Saddam’s Iraq and currently Iran; defending human rights, as in Libya; humanitarian intervention, as in Somalia; and protecting small nations, as in confronting China on behalf of Southeast Asian states, or constructing a Ballistic Missile Defense system along the Eastern European borders of Russia. And again, the Western mainstream media plays a huge role in rationalizing the irrational, normalizing the abnormal, justifying the unjustifiable – akin to the Ministry of Truth in Orwell’s 1984.

We may accept these pretexts at face value and attempt to “normalize” a world of seemingly chaotic conflicts, as the Western mainstream media would have us. Or we can choose to see the world as it really is, that is, one where such wars and war-making are correctly understood as abominations of international law and human relations.

It is our objective in this Interactive Reader to help citizens free themselves from the indoctrinated doublethink of “wars as normal”. In a global survey, we will show that the US and its allies are fulfilling an agenda of “full spectrum dominance” in which no nation deemed to be obstructing that agenda for domination by the US and its allies is tolerated, and is in fact made a target for war.

The dynamic for globalized war has deep historical roots in the imperialism of capitalist governments. Rivalry for the raw materials of capitalist economies and geopolitical control were at the root of World Wars I and II - See the essays by Jacques Pauwels on the role of corporate America in supporting both Britain and Nazi Germany. The same impetus lay behind countless invasions and proxy wars in Latin America, Asia and Africa by the US since World War II under the guise of “defending the free world from the Evil Soviet empire”.

But with the collapse of the Soviet Union as a countervailing power, the US and its allies have become uninhibited over the past two decades to “go it alone” to assert imperial dominance. This dynamic has only been reinforced by the economic exhaustion of the capitalist powers since the onset of the financial crisis of 2008. Indeed, the rise of militarism can be seen as a compensatory corollary of their economic demise – a demise that is structural and deeply protracted beyond anything that may be deemed as the usual “end of business cycle”. We are perhaps witnessing an historic collapse in the capitalist system far greater in scope than the Great Depression. And with that, disturbingly, the rise of militarism takes on a much greater significance.

Crucial to the global control of resources are the raw materials of energy: oil and gas. Whether it is wars in Iraq, Afghanistan or Libya, or confrontation with Iran, China, Russia and Venezuela, the fundamental point of contention is control over this lifeblood of the capitalist economy. All other espoused pretexts are mere window dressing, regardless of what the mainstream media would have us believe.

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World War III Scenario
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The launching of an outright war using nuclear warheads against Iran – which has the world’s third largest known reserves of oil behind Saudi Arabia and Iraq – has been on the drawing board of the Pentagon since 2005.

If such a war were to be launched, the entire Middle East/Central Asia region would be drawn into a conflagration. Humanity would be precipitated into a World War III scenario.

Incredibly, the very real danger of World War III is not front-page news. The mainstream media has excluded in-depth analysis and debate on the implications of these war plans. The onslaught of World War III, were it to be carried out, would be casually described as a “no-fly zone”, an operation under NATO’s “Responsibility to Protect” (R2P) with minimal “collateral damage” or as “surgical” punitive bombings against specific military targets, all of which purport to support “global security” as well as “democracy” and human rights in the targeted country.


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NATO's "Humanitarian Intervention"
Mandate defined in an ICISS report on R2P


Public opinion is largely unaware of the grave implications of these war plans, which contemplate the use of nuclear weapons, ironically in retaliation to Iran's non-existent nuclear weapons program. Moreover, 21st Century military technology combines an array of sophisticated weapons systems whose destructive power would overshadow the nuclear holocausts of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Lest we forget, the United States is the only country to have used nuclear weapons against civilians.

Militarization at the global level is instrumented through the US military’s Unified Command structure: the entire planet is divided up into geographic Combatant Commands under the control of the Pentagon. According to former NATO Commander General Wesley Clark, the Pentagon’s military road-map consists of a sequence of war theaters: “[The] five-year campaign plan [includes]... a total of seven countries, beginning with Iraq, then Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Iran, Somalia and Sudan.” Like a cancer, the US war unleashed in 2003 on Iraq is mutating into a global disease.

While The New York Times and other mainstream media outlets hailed 15 December 2011 as marking the “official” end of the nearly nine-year US war in Iraq, in reality that devastated country will remain an American war theater for the foreseeable future. Pentagon military advisers and contractors will continue to reside there and the people of Iraq will for generations be left with a legacy of US-imposed conflict and barbarity. The Pentagon’s “shock and awe” campaign in Iraq may have subsided, but its repercussions and criminal precedents are still very much extant, not only in Iraq but in the wider region and, increasingly, globally.

The 2000 Project for the New American Century (PNAC), which was the backbone of the NeoCon's agenda, was predicated on “waging a war without borders”. The PNAC's declared objectives were to “fight and decisively win multiple, simultaneous major theater wars” in different regions of the world as well as perform the so-called military “constabulary” duties “associated with shaping the security environment in critical regions”. Global constabulary implies a worldwide process of military policing and interventionism, including covert operations and “regime change”.


This diabolical military project formulated by the NeoCons was adopted and implemented from the very outset of the Obama administration. With a new team of military and foreign policy advisers, Obama has been far more effective in fostering military escalation than his White House predecessor, George Bush Junior, who has recently been condemned by the Kuala Lumpur War Crimes Tribunal for “Crimes against the Peace”.

This continuum of the military agenda testifies to the fact that the two governing parties in the US, Democrat and Republican, are but two sides of a centrally planned military-industrial complex that is impregnable to the opinions, desires and interests of the American electorate.

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Military Escalation and Preview of this Book
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Contrary to the myth of “the good war”, we show in this Interactive Reader that the US entry into World War II was a deliberate strategy for self-serving imperialist gains. While the men and women who fought that war may have had moral convictions, the planners in Washington were operating on calculations of geopolitical control that had little to do with morals or legal principles – see the essays by Jacques Pauwels. The dropping of atomic bombs on Japan by the US in August 1945, obliterating hundreds of thousands of civilians, was an act of heinous barbarity that reflected the callousness of America's imperial design. The nuclear holocaust also set the nefarious parameters of the subsequent Cold War that gripped the world for nearly five decades following World War II. Essays by Brian Willson, Alfred McCoy and Michel Chossudovsky illustrate how the Pentagon’s genocidal wars in Asia were a continuation of America’s imperialist design – albeit under the cover of the Cold War against the Soviet Union.


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Hiroshima mushroom cloud. By executive order of President
Harry S. Truman, the U.S. dropped the nuclear bomb "Little Boy"
on Hiroshima, Monday, August 6, 1945

Time Pilgrimage in Memory of Hiroshima

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Nagasaki, August 9, 1945
Time Pilgrimage in Memory of Hiroshima


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Survivors: August 1945. In the wake of Hiroshima
Time Pilgrimage in Memory of Hiroshima


The fall of the Soviet Union may have brought an end to the Cold War, but soon the US would find new pretexts for waging war on the world and asserting hegemony on behalf of its capitalist allies. These new pretexts included “upholding international law” as in the First Gulf War against Iraq that Bush Senior embarked on in 1990, presaging the Second Gulf War that Bush Junior would reprise in 2003. And the US planners innovated the “humanitarian” pretext for the invasion of Somalia in 1991 and NATO’s war on Yugoslavia – see the essay by Sean Gervasi among others. In many ways, the “humanitarian war” in Yugoslavia served as the prototype for NATO’s 2011 military attack on Libya and what appears to be an imminent onslaught against Syria – see essays by Rick Rozoff and Mahdi Darius Nazemroaya.

To the Pentagon’s silo of propaganda justifying “wars without borders” we have the additional pretexts of the “global war on terrorism” and “pre-emptive strikes against weapons of mass destruction”. Fittingly, as Washington’s wars multiply, so too it seems have the phony pretexts for these wars, as the essays on Iraq and Afghanistan by Felicity Arbuthnot and Jack Smith reveal.

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Permanent Belligerence: The Globalization of War
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In Part VII, which also serves as the title of this Online Interactive E-Reader, The Globalization of War, we show how American-led imperialism has evolved from bloody bouts of episodic militarism over several decades to the present day state of permanent belligerence, with wars or war-making stretching from North and East Africa into the Middle East and Central Asia and beyond to Eurasia (Russia), the Far East (China) and Arctic (Russia again) – See the essays by James Petras, Rick Rozoff, Peter Dale Scott, F. William Engdahl, Finian Cunningham, the interview with Fidel Castro, Michel Chossudovsky and Jules Dufour.

Of most immediate concern are the ongoing American-led war plans within the broader Middle East/Central Asian region involving coordinated actions against Iran, Syria and Pakistan – see essays by Michel Chossudovsky, Tom Burghardt, Rick Rozoff and Mahdi Nazemroaya.

Were these war plans to be carried out, this would lead to an extended regional war theater. The three existing and distinct war theaters (Iraq, Afghanistan and Palestine) would merge into a broad regional war extending from the Lebanese-Syrian East Mediterranean coastline to the Afghanistan-Pakistan border with Western China. Israel, Lebanon and Turkey would be engulfed in a conflict that would herald World War III.

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Building an Effective Antiwar Movement
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Meanwhile, the antiwar movement is in crisis: civil society organizations are misinformed, manipulated or co-opted. A large segment of “progressive” opinion is supportive of NATO’s R2P “humanitarian” mandate to the extent that these war plans are being carried out with the “rubber stamp” of civil society.

There is an urgent need to rebuild the antiwar movement on entirely new premises.

The holding of mass demonstrations and antiwar protests is not enough. What is required is the development of a broad and well-organized grassroots antiwar network, across the land, nationally and internationally, which challenges the structures of power and authority. People must mobilize not only against the military agenda – the authority of the state and its officials must also be challenged.

Challenging and defeating the US/NATO global war agenda is profoundly predicated on the mass of people in Western countries asserting democratic governance and the genuine “rule of the people”. It will involve the mass of people breaking out of the two-party charade that hitherto passes for “democracy” – not only in the US but also in other Western states ­– to form new political organizations that truly represent the needs and interests of the majority of people. War-making, as with servile abeyance to corporate and financial elites, is endemic to the dominant political parties. It must be realized that voting for these same parties has become futile as a means to effect democratic change.

One practical way forward is for citizens to empower themselves legally. It should be understood that whatever its justification, war is a “Crime against the Peace” under Nuremberg. George Walker Bush and former British Prime Minister Anthony L. Blair have been condemned by the Kuala Lumpur War Crimes Tribunal for waging a criminal war of aggression against Iraq. They are war criminals and citizens' initiatives that are growing across the world for the arraignment of Bush and Blair are one practical step towards mobilizing a popular challenge to the war system.

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War crimes, however, are not limited to the former US president and British prime minister. There are "New War Criminals on the Block". They include the current president of the United States, Barack Obama, among others. The acting heads of state and heads of government who support US-NATO-Israel wars of aggression are also war criminals under international law. This proposition, which consists in unseating the war criminals in high office, is central to the waging of an effective antiwar movement.

It is also our intention to show citizens that the root cause of war lies in the prevailing, but failing, global capitalist economic system – the very system that is not only destroying lives in foreign countries but which is destroying the material and moral foundations of Western society.

We hope that this Interactive Reader, The Globalisation of War, will empower citizens to mount an all-encompassing social movement against this diabolical military agenda and for the establishment of real democracy.

Michel Chossudovsky and Finian Cunningham, December 2011

In the face of blatant media disinformation, a "Re-Learning Process" must be launched.

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It is our hope that the Interactive Reader Series will become a useful tool for high school, college and university students.


TABLE OF CONTENTS

PART I. THE HISTORY OF WAR: FROM WORLD WAR II TO THE COLD WAR ERA
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Fall 1941: Pearl Harbor and The Wars of Corporate America- by Jacques R. Pauwels - 2011-12-11

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Why World War II ended with Mushroom Clouds
65 years ago, August 6 and 9, 1945: Hiroshima and Nagasaki
- by Jacques R. Pauwels - 2010-08-06

The unspoken objective of the atomic bomb was US Hegemony in Asia and the Pacific

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Korea and the "Axis of Evil"
- by Brian S. Willson - 2006-10-12

"Over a period of three years or so we killed off - what - twenty percent of the population [of North Korea]" (General Curtis Lemay)

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From Vietnam to Afghanistan: America and the Dictators
- by Prof. Alfred W. McCoy - 2010-04-18

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Who won the Vietnam War?
- by Prof. Michel Chossudovsky - 2005-04-26

Vietnam never received war reparations payments from the U.S. for the massive loss of life and destruction, yet an agreement reached in Paris in 1993 required Hanoi to recognize the debts of the defunct Saigon regime. This agreement is in many regards tantamount to obliging Vietnam to compensate Washington for the costs of war.

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PART II. NATO'S WAR IN THE BALKANS
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Why Is NATO In Yugoslavia?
- by Sean Gervasi - 2010-09-12

The late Sean Gervasi had tremendous foresight. He understood NATO enlargement several years before it actually unfolded into a formidable military force.

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NATO's Reign of Terror in Kosovo
- by Prof. Michel Chossudovsky - 2008-02-25

State Terrorism in Kosovo is an integral part of NATO's design

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NATO's Kosovo War, 11 Years Later
- by James Bissett - 2010-03-24

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PART III. THE POST 9/11 ERA: AMERICA'S "WAR ON TERRORISM"
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Al Qaeda and the "War on Terrorism"
- by Michel Chossudovsky - 2008-01-20

Ironically, Al Qaeda --the "outside enemy of America"-- is a creation of the CIA.

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The Central Role of Al Qaeda in Bush's National Security Doctrine
"Revealing the Lies" on 9/11 Perpetuates the "Big Lie"
- by Michel Chossudovsky - 2007-07-12

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9/11 Paved the Way for America's Permanent Wars of Aggression
- by Finian Cunningham - 2011-09-11

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PART IV. IRAQ AND THE AF-PAK WARS
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America's Endless Wars in Afghanistan and Iraq
- by Jack A. Smith - 2011-10-25

The illusion of military success...

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US Afghan Strategy: Senseless and Merciless
- by Rick Rozoff - 2011-07-22

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U.S. And NATO Escalate World’s Deadliest War On Both Sides Of Afghan-Pakistani Border
- by Rick Rozoff - 2011-03-01

Drone missile attacks conducted by the CIA killed in the neighborhood of 1,000 people in Pakistan last year

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The War on Iraq : Five US Presidents, Five British Prime Ministers, Thirty Years of Duplicity, and Counting....
- by Felicity Arbuthnot - 2010-08-06

Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait. He had walked into possibly the biggest trap in modern history

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US-NATO Military Agenda: The Destabilization of Pakistan
- by Prof. Michel Chossudovsky - 2009-04-17

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PART V. THE CONQUEST OF AFRICA
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America's War in the Horn of Africa: “Drone Alley” – a Harbinger of Western Power across the African Continent
US Military Confirms Washington’s Secret New War in Somalia Despite Official Denials
- by Finian Cunningham - 2011-10-29

US Military Confirms Washington’s Secret New War in Somalia Despite Official Denials

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Somalia: Western Media Indulge US and French Denials of New War in Famine-Hit Horn of Africa
- by Finian Cunningham - 2011-10-26

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Israel and Libya: Preparing Africa for the “Clash of Civilizations”
Introduction by Cynthia McKinney
- by Mahdi Darius Nazemroaya - 2011-10-11

"An attempt to separate the merging point of an Arab and African identity is underway."

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Africa: Battleground For NATO's 21st Century Strategic Concept
- by Rick Rozoff - 2011-05-19

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PART VI. US NATO-ISRAELI THREATS: PRE-EMPTIVE WAR AGAINST IRAN AND SYRIA
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World War III: The Launching of a Preemptive Nuclear War against Iran
- by Michel Chossudovsky - 2011-12-04

World War III is not front-page news. The mainstream media has excluded in-depth analysis and debate on the implications of these war plans.

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Syria: The West's Strategic Gateway For Global Military Supremacy
- by Rick Rozoff - 2011-11-15

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U.S. Arms Persian Gulf Allies For Conflict With Iran
- by Rick Rozoff - 2011-11-18

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THE CLOCK IS TICKING: "Shadow War" Heating Up. War With Iran: A Provocation Away?
- by Tom Burghardt - 2011-12-05
Amid conflicting reports that a huge explosion at Iran's uranium conversion facility in Isfahan occurred last week, speculation was rife that Israel and the US were stepping-up covert attacks against defense and nuclear installations

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Using Fake Intelligence to Justify War on Iran
- by Michel Chossudovsky - 2011-11-09

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Iran: "Regime Change" or All Out War?
- by Mahdi Darius Nazemroaya - 2011-06-

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America's Next War Theater: Syria and Lebanon?
- by Mahdi Darius Nazemroaya - 2011-06-10

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PART VII. THE GLOBALIZATION OF WAR
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Obama Raises the Military Stakes: Confrontation on the Borders with China and Russia
- by Prof. James Petras - 2011-12-10

Obama has embraced a policy of encirclement and provocations against China, the world’s second largest economy and the US’s most important creditor, and Russia, the European Union’s principle oil and gas provider and the world’s second most powerful nuclear weapons power

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Conversations with Fidel Castro: The Dangers of a Nuclear War
- by Fidel Castro Ruz, Michel Chossudovsky - 2010-11-13

If a war breaks out in Iran, it will inevitably become a nuclear war and a global war.

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The Real Grand Chessboard and the Profiteers of War
- by Prof. Peter Dale Scott - 2009-08-11

The provision of private entrepreneurial violence and intelligence

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Why Moscow does not Trust Washington on Missile Defense. Towards a Pre-emptive Nuclear War?
- by F. William Engdahl - 2011-12-02

Most in the civilized world are blissfully unaware that we are marching ineluctably towards an increasingly likely pre-emptive nuclear war...

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"War Without Borders": Washington Intensifies Push Into Central Asia
- by Rick Rozoff - 2011-01-30

The U.S. and NATO have over 150,000 troops planted directly south of three Central Asian nations.

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Asia-Pacific: US Ramps Up Global War Agenda
- by Finian Cunningham - 2011-11-17

China’s “military advances” are prompting US concerns...Washington is the one beating the war drums.

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North American Integration and the Militarization of the Arctic
- by Prof. Michel Chossudovsky - 2007-08-20

The Battle for the Arctic is part of a global military agenda of conquest and territorial control, a New Cold War between Russia and America.

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Review Article: The Worldwide Network of US Military Bases
The Global Deployment of US Military Personnel
- by Prof. Jules Dufour - 2007-07-01

The Global Deployment of US Military Personnel

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About the Editors

Michel Chossudovsky is an award-winning author, Professor of Economics (Emeritus) at the University of Ottawa. He is the Founder and Director of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG), Montreal and Editor of the globalresearch.ca website. He is the author of The Globalization of Poverty and The New World Order (2003) and America's "War on Terrorism"(2005). His most recent book is entitled Towards a World War III Scenario: The Dangers of Nuclear War (2011). He has taught as Visiting Professor at universities in Western Europe, South East Asia and Latin America, acted as an adviser to governments of developing countries and as a consultant for the several international organizations. Prof. Chossudovsky is a signatory of the Kuala Lumpur declaration to criminalize war and recipient of the Human Rights Prize of the Society for the Protection of Civil Rights and Human Dignity (GBM), Berlin, Germany. He is also a contributor to the Encyclopaedia Britannica. His writings have been published in more than twenty languages.

Finian Cunningham is currently Global Research's Middle East and East Africa Correspondent. He has written extensively on international affairs. Previously, he was based in Bahrain and witnessed the upheavals in the Persian Gulf kingdom during 2011 as well as the subsequent Saudi-led brutal crackdown against pro-democracy protests. He is now based in East Africa.

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ImageThis Online Interactive E-Reader is made available to Global Research readers with a view to curbing the flow of media disinformation and war propaganda.

Our ultimate objective is to reverse the tide of war and restore World peace.

Please consider making a donation to Global Research.

________TO DONATE CLICK HERE______
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THE GLOBAL RESEARCH ONLINE INTERACTIVE E-READER SERIES

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Libya and "The Arab Spring": Neoliberalism, "Regime Change" and NATO's "Humanitarian Wars"
ONLINE INTERACTIVE E-READER
- by Michel Chossudovsky, Finian Cunningham, Mahdi Darius Nazemroaya - 2011-12-25

Forthcoming

The War on Iraq
ONLINE INTERACTIVE E-READER 3
January 2012

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To Believe - In a Day when hungar and war will pass away

Unread postby Paul Kemp » Sun Mar 04, 2012 7:15 am

To Believe in a Day when hunger and war will pass away
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"And a small child will lead them"

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