GlobalResearch I Book Series: Books 1, 2 and 3: Be Informed!

[Paul Kemp]

Libya and "The Arab Spring": Neoliberalism, "Regime Change" and NATO's "Humanitarian Wars"


ONLINE INTERACTIVE READER (I-BOOK No. 1)
by Michel Chossudovsky and Finian Cunningham and Mahdi Darius Nazemroaya


Global Research, December 25, 2011 - 2011-11-26


Note to Readers: Remember to bookmark this page for future reference.
Please Forward the GR I-Book far and wide. Post it on Facebook.

________Scroll Down for I-BOOK Table of Contents


GLOBAL RESEARCH ONLINE INTERACTIVE READER SERIES
_________________________________GR I-BOOK No. 1_________________________________

___________Libya and "The Arab Spring": Neoliberalism,
_______________________________"Regime Change"___________________

___________________and NATO's "Humanitarian Wars"_________________________


____________by Michel Chossudovsky, Finian Cunningham and Mahdi Darius Nazemroaya
____________________________________________November 2011


INTRODUCTION

First in Global Research's Interactive Reader Series, we bring to the attention of our readers a collection of Global Research articles on the "Arab Spring", covering recent developments in several countries across the Middle East and North Africa region. The Interactive Reader is a collection of previously published articles on Global Research. Its objective is to provide an overview as well as a comparative understanding of country-level experiences of the upheavals.

This selection of articles is intended to dispel the notion that the "Arab Spring" is just a pro-democracy movement spreading spontaneously from country to country, opening the way to a meaningful change in the political and economic landscape. The term "Arab Spring" is itself a Western-imposed term conjured up by people who appear to have little understanding of the complexities and realities of the region.

The double-standards of the U.S. and the European Union have become visible during the course of these tumultuous events. Both the US and the EU have kept silent about the brutal repression of unarmed civilian protesters in the Persian Gulf sheikhdoms, such as Bahrain and Saudi Arabia, while, by contrast, the Western powers have vehemently pushed for conflict with Libya and Syria.

America is no "role model" of democratization for the Arab World, comprising some 22 countries with a combined population of 300 million. US military presence imposed on Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Tunisia, and other Arab countries over decades, coupled with Washington-inspired "free market" reforms, are the root cause of state violence.

Washington's agenda for Egypt and Tunisia was to hijack the protest movement; what prevails in Egypt is the maintenance of a de facto military regime. In Tunisia, following the October 2011 parliamentary elections, the neoliberal policy framework remains unscathed.

From Washington's standpoint, regime replacement no longer requires the installation of authoritarian military rulers, as in the heyday of US imperialism. Regime change can be implemented by co-opting political parties, financing civil society groups, infiltrating the protest movement, and by manipulating national elections.

The ultimate objective is to sustain the interests of foreign powers and to uphold the "Washington consensus" of the IMF/World Bank economic agenda that has served to impoverish millions throughout the Arab World and beyond.

Moreover, Western powers have used "Political Islam" --including the Muslim Brotherhood and Al Qaeda-affiliated groups-- to pursue their hegemonic objectives. Covert operations are launched to weaken the secular state, foment sectarian violence and create social divisions throughout the Arab World.

In Libya, the "pro-democracy" rebels were led by Al Qaeda affiliated paramilitary brigades under the supervision of NATO Special Forces. The much-vaunted "Liberation" of Tripoli was carried out by former members of the Libya Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG).

Destabilization of sovereign states through "regime change" is closely coordinated with military planning.

War preparations to attack Syria and Iran have been in an advanced state of readiness for several years. The road to Tehran goes through Damascus. A US/NATO-sponsored war on Iran would involve, as a first step, a destabilization campaign ("regime change") including covert intelligence operations in support of rebel forces directed against the Syrian government.

A "humanitarian war" under the logo of "Responsibility to Protect" (R2P), as seen in Libya, is on the Western powers' agenda for Syria. Such a venture would also contribute to the ongoing destabilization of Lebanon.

Were a military campaign to be waged against Syria, Israel would be directly or indirectly involved in military and intelligence operations. The hitherto covert role of Saudi Arabia and Turkey in destabilizing Syria would also emerge as open aggression towards long-time regional rival Iran.

A war on Syria could quite possibly ignite a conflagration across the entire Middle East and North Africa, with repercussions on a global scale: Iran's historic allies, Russia and China, will be pitted against the US and NATO powers; and religious schisms across the region could vent into an explosion of internecine conflicts; also proxy wars currently being waged in East Africa by Western powers could escalate with untold human suffering in an already famine-hit region.

War plans directed against Syria are coordinated with those pertaining to Iran.

Iran's alleged nuclear weapons programme is the pretext and the justification. Tehran is also identified as a "State sponsor of terrorism", for allegedly supporting the Al Qaeda network.

In recent developments, what is unfolding is an integrated attack plan on Iran led by the US, with the participation of the United Kingdom and Israel.

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

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.

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

What this collection of essays demonstrates is that Western intervention in this pivotal world region is far from the benign rhetoric frequently spouted in Washington, London, Paris and Berlin, espousing universal human rights and democratic freedoms. Rather, we are witnessing a neo-imperialist intervention that is self-serving, expedient and ultimately setting the world on a path of incalculable destruction.




PART I TUNISIA: DICTATORSHIP AND NEOLIBERALISM




Dictatorship and Neo-Liberalism: The Tunisian People's Uprising
- by Mahdi Darius Nazemroaya - 2011-01-19

Tunisia is not free yet. The structure that kept Bin Ali in place still exists. The U.S. and France have still not forfeited their economic interests in Tunisia either.




Tunisia and the IMF's Diktats: How Macro-Economic Policy Triggers Worldwide Poverty and Unemployment
- by Michel Chossudovsky - 2011-01-20

Against a background of rising food prices, the IMF recommends the removal of subsidies...


PART II THE POPULAR UPRISING IN EGYPT: "REVOLUTION" AND "COUNTER-REVOLUTION"



The Protest Movement in Egypt: "Dictators" do not Dictate, They Obey Orders
- by Michel Chossudovsky - 2011-01-29

"Dictators" do not dictate, they obey orders. President Hosni Mubarak was a faithful servant of Western economic interests.




The Popular Uprising in Egypt: The Military Machine Remains Intact, The Political Status Quo Prevails
- by Mahdi Darius Nazemroaya - 2011-02-21

The same group of Egyptian generals running Cairo presently also formed the backbone of the Mubarak regime. There has been no real change in government. The military junta represents a continuation of the Mubarak regime.




Dictators are "Disposable": The Rise and Fall of America's Military Henchmen
- by Michel Chossudovsky - 2011-02-18

When dictators are no longer needed, they are replaced. The military machine prevails, combined with a ruthless form of capitalist development...


PART III BAHRAIN: THE FORGOTTEN "ARAB SPRING"



Bahrain: The Social Roots of Revolt Against Another US Ally
- by Finian Cunningham - 2011-02-18

The Bahraini authorities deployed helicopters and tanks, with army and police firing teargas and live rounds. Among the protesters were hundreds of women and children.




Slaughter in Bahrain
- by Finian Cunningham

There is little doubt that the regime received clearance from political allies in Washington, London and the other Gulf states to step up its four-week old repression against the civilian population.




Detained Bahraini Medics: Brutal Crackdown against Pro-Democracy Movement
- by Finian Cunningham - 2011-04-21

The families of medics unlawfully detained in Bahrain have accused the Royal College of Surgeons Ireland (RCSI) of putting financial investment interests above human rights.




Bahraini Rulers Play Sectarian Card in Bid to Trump Pro-democracy Movement
- by Finian Cunningham

Increasing attacks on Shia mosques in the Bahraini state's withering crackdown against the pro-democracy movement is a deliberate attempt to isolate the political opposition and amounts to a campaign of "sectarian cleansing",


PART IV LIBYA: NATO'S "HUMANITARIAN WAR"



Libya and the Big Lie: Using Human Rights Organizations to Launch Wars
- by Mahdi Darius Nazemroaya - 2011-09-29

The war against Libya is built on fraud. The UN Security Council passed two resolutions against Libya on the basis of unproven claims that Qaddafi was killing his own people in Benghazi...




When War Games Go Live: "Staging" a "Humanitarian War" against "SOUTHLAND"
- by Prof. Michel Chossudovsky - 2011-04-16

We were led to believe that the protest movement in Egypt and Tunisia had spread to Libya, but the war on Libya was planned months prior to the Arab protest movement...




"Our Man in Tripoli": US-NATO Sponsored Islamic Terrorists Integrate Libya's Pro-Democracy Opposition
- by Prof. Michel Chossudovsky - 2011-04-03

Concepts are turned upside down: The US-NATO military alliance is supporting a rebellion integrated by Islamic terrorists, in the name of the "War on Terrorism"...




"Operation Libya" and the Battle for Oil: Redrawing the Map of Africa
- by Prof Michel Chossudovsky - 2011-03-09

Libya is among the world's largest oil economies with approximately 3.5% of global oil reserves, more than twice those of the US.




The "Liberation" of Libya: NATO Special Forces and Al Qaeda Join Hands
- by Prof. Michel Chossudovsky - 2011-08-28

The jihadists and NATO work hand in glove. These "former" Al Qaeda affiliated brigades constitute the backbone of the "pro-democracy" rebellion.




Destroying a Country's Standard of Living: What Libya Had Achieved, What has been Destroyed
- by Prof. Michel Chossudovsky - 2011-09-20

A historical reversal in Libya economic and social development has occurred. An entire country has been destroyed, its people driven into abysmal poverty.


PART V YEMEN: REPUBLICAN DICTATORSHIP AT THE CROSSROADS



Yemen and The Militarization of Strategic Waterways
- by Prof. Michel Chossudovsky - 2010-02-07

The militarization of the Indian Ocean is a process of securing US control over Socotra Island and the Gulf of Aden.


PART VI SYRIA: NATO'S NEXT WAR




SYRIA: Who is Behind The Protest Movement? Fabricating a Pretext for a US-NATO "Humanitarian Intervention"
- by Prof. Michel Chossudovsky - 2011-05-03

The ultimate purpose is to spark sectarian violence and political chaos within Syria by covertly supporting Islamic terrorist organizations.




The Pentagon's "Salvador Option": The Deployment of Death Squads in Iraq and Syria
- by Prof. Michel Chossudovsky - 2011-08-16

Recent developments in Syria point to a full-fledged armed insurgency, integrated by Islamist "freedom fighters" covertly supported, trained and equipped by foreign powers.




The Al Qaeda Insurgency in Syria: Recruiting Jihadists to Wage NATO's "Humanitarian Wars"
- by Prof. Michel Chossudovsky - 2011-09-02

The objective of this armed insurrection is to trigger the response of the police and armed forces, with a view to justifying a "humanitarian" military intervention by NATO


PART VII MILITARY ESCALATION AND THE BROADER WAR



A "Humanitarian War" on Syria? Military Escalation. Towards a Broader Middle East-Central Asian War?
- by Michel Chossudovsky - 2011-08-09

The road to Tehran goes through Damascus. A US-NATO war on Iran would involve, as a first step, a destabilization campaign ("regime change") directed against Syria.




America's Conquest of Africa: The Roles of France and Israel
- by Mahdi Darius Nazemroaya, Julien Teil. Introduction by Cynthia McKinney - 2011-10-06

Terrorists not only fight for Washington on the ground, they also act as frontmen for regime change through so-called human rights organizations that promote democracy.




The Powers of Manipulation: Islam as a Geopolitical Tool to Control the Middle East
- by Mahdi Darius Nazemroaya - 2011-07-02

As Washington and its cohorts march towards the Eurasian Heartland, they have tried to manipulate Islam as a geo-political tool. They have created political and social chaos in the process.




America's War in the Horn of Africa: "Drone Alley", A Harbinger of Western Power across the African Continent
- by Finian Cunningham - 2011-10-29

The US Military confirms Washington's secret new war in Somalia despite official denials.




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

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




Global Warfare: Targeting Iran: Preparing for World War III
- by Michel Chossudovsky - 2011-11-03
The military deployment of US-NATO forces is occurring in several regions of the World simultaneously. What is unfolding is an integrated attack plan on Iran led by the US, with the participation of the UK and Israel.



About the Authors

• 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.
  
• Mahdi Darius Nazemroaya is a Sociologist and an award-winning author based in Ottawa. He is a Research Associate at the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG), Montreal. He was a witness to the "Arab Spring" in action in North Africa. While on the ground in Libya during the NATO bombing campaign, he reported out of Tripoli for several Western media. He was Special Correspondent for Global Research and Pacifica's investigative radio program Flashpoints, broadcast out of Berkeley, California. His writings have been published in more than ten languages.

This Interactive Online Reader (I-Book no. 1) 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 TO GLOBALRESEARCH.ca CLICK HERE



NEW RELEASE: GLOBAL RESEARCH E-BOOK
Order directly from Global Research
Towards a World War III Scenario




For further reading, consult the following collections.

Each link contains an extensive archive of feature, research and news articles

ARAB PROTEST MOVEMENT
NATO'S WAR ON LIBYA
SYRIA: NATO'S NEXT
IRAN: THE NEXT WAR?
PAKISTAN
IRAQ REPORT
AFGHANISTAN
NUCLEAR WAR
CRIMINALIZE WAR

Global Research Articles by Michel Chossudovsky

Global Research Articles by Finian Cunningham

Global Research Articles by Mahdi Darius Nazemroaya

Subscribe to the Global Research E-Newsletter

Subscribe to the Global Research E-Newsletter



Global Research relies on the financial support of its
readers. Your endorsement is greatly appreciated





Join the discussion:
You must be logged in to post a comment. If you haven't registered yet, click here to register. (It's quick, easy and free. And we won't give your email address to anyone.)

[Paul Kemp]

Global Research I Book 2 ONLINE INTERACTIVE READER

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

ONLINE INTERACTIVE READER
by Michel Chossudovsky and Finian Cunningham


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

Note to Readers: Remember to bookmark this page for future reference.
Please Forward the GR I-Book far and wide. Post it on Facebook.

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.



Scroll Down for I-BOOK Table of Contents

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


INTRODUCTION


Scroll Down for Reader's Table of Contents

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.


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


Global Warfare


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.



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.


The Post 9/11 Era: America's Doctrine of Pre-emptive Warfare


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.


"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.


Spawning Militarism: "War is Normal"


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.


World War III Scenario


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.



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.


Military Escalation and Preview of this Book


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.



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


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



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.


Permanent Belligerence: The Globalization of War


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.


Building an Effective Antiwar Movement


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.



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.



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



Fall 1941: Pearl Harbor and The Wars of Corporate America- by Jacques R. Pauwels - 2011-12-11




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




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)




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




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.


PART II. NATO'S WAR IN THE BALKANS




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.




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




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


PART III. THE POST 9/11 ERA: AMERICA'S "WAR ON TERRORISM"



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.




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




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


PART IV. IRAQ AND THE AF-PAK WARS




America's Endless Wars in Afghanistan and Iraq
- by Jack A. Smith - 2011-10-25

The illusion of military success...




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




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




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




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


PART V. THE CONQUEST OF AFRICA




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




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




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."




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


PART VI. US NATO-ISRAELI THREATS: PRE-EMPTIVE WAR AGAINST IRAN AND SYRIA




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.




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





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




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




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




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




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


PART VII. THE GLOBALIZATION OF WAR




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




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.




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




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...




"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.




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.




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.




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



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.



This 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______

____________GlobalResearch.ca____________



THE GLOBAL RESEARCH ONLINE INTERACTIVE E-READER SERIES


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



GLOBAL RESEARCH E-BOOK SERIES (PDF)

Order directly from Global Research (click title for details)
NEW RELEASE: GLOBAL RESEARCH E-BOOK
Towards a World War III Scenario






Global Research Articles by Michel Chossudovsky

Global Research Articles by Finian Cunningham

Subscribe to the Global Research E-Newsletter



Please support Global Research
Global Research relies on the financial support of its readers.

Your endorsement is greatly appreciated







Join the discussion:
You must be logged in to post a comment. If you haven't registered yet, click here to register. (It's quick, easy and free. And we won't give your email address to anyone.)

[Paul Kemp]

Global Research I Book 3 ONLINE INTERACTIVE READER

Fukushima: A Nuclear War without a War: The Unspoken Crisis of Worldwide Nuclear Radiation

by Prof. Michel Chossudovsky Global Research, January 25, 2012



Note to Readers: Remember to bookmark this page for future reference.

Please Forward the GR I-Book far and wide. Post it on Facebook.

Scroll Down for I-BOOK Table of Contents

GLOBAL RESEARCH ONLINE INTERACTIVE READER SERIES

___________Fukushima: A Nuclear War without a War

The Unspoken Crisis of Worldwide Nuclear Radiation

________________________________________Michel Chossudovsky (Editor)
_______________________________________I-Book No. 3, January 25 2012

• Global Research's Online Interactive I-Book Reader brings together, in the form of chapters, a collection of Global Research feature articles and videos, including debate and analysis, on a broad theme or subject matter.
  
  
• In this Interactive Online I-Book we bring to the attention of our readers an important collection of articles, reports and video material on the Fukushima nuclear catastrophe and its impacts.
  
  
• To consult our Online Interactive I-Book Reader Series, click here.

INTRODUCTION


The World is at a critical crossroads. The Fukushima disaster in Japan has brought to the forefront the dangers of Worldwide nuclear radiation.

The crisis in Japan has been described as "a nuclear war without a war". In the words of renowned novelist Haruki Murakami:

"This time no one dropped a bomb on us ... We set the stage, we committed the crime with our own hands, we are destroying our own lands, and we are destroying our own lives."

Nuclear radiation --which threatens life on planet earth-- 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.

While the long-term repercussions of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster are yet to be fully assessed, they are far more serious than those pertaining to the 1986 Chernobyl disaster in the Ukraine, which resulted in almost one million deaths (New Book Concludes - Chernobyl death toll: 985,000, mostly from cancer Global Research, September 10, 2010, See also Matthew Penney and Mark Selden The Severity of the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Disaster: Comparing Chernobyl and Fukushima, Global Research, May 25, 2011)

Moreover, while all eyes were riveted on the Fukushima Daiichi plant, news coverage both in Japan and internationally failed to fully acknowledge the impacts of a second catastrophe at TEPCO's (Tokyo Electric Power Co Inc) Fukushima Daini nuclear power plant.

The shaky political consensus both in Japan, the U.S. and Western Europe is that the crisis at Fukushima has been contained.

The realties, however, are otherwise. Fukushima 3 was leaking unconfirmed amounts of plutonium. According to Dr. Helen Caldicott, "one millionth of a gram of plutonium, if inhaled can cause cancer".

An opinion poll in May 2011 confirmed that more than 80 per cent of the Japanese population do not believe the government's information regarding the nuclear crisis. (quoted in Sherwood Ross, Fukushima: Japan's Second Nuclear Disaster, Global Research, November 10, 2011)


The Impacts in Japan


The Japanese government has been obliged to acknowledge that "the severity rating of its nuclear crisis ... matches that of the 1986 Chernobyl disaster". In a bitter irony, however, this tacit admission by the Japanese authorities has proven to been part of the cover-up of a significantly larger catastrophe, resulting in a process of global nuclear radiation and contamination:

"While Chernobyl was an enormous unprecedented disaster, it only occurred at one reactor and rapidly melted down. Once cooled, it was able to be covered with a concrete sarcophagus that was constructed with 100,000 workers. There are a staggering 4400 tons of nuclear fuel rods at Fukushima, which greatly dwarfs the total size of radiation sources at Chernobyl." Extremely High Radiation Levels in Japan: University Researchers Challenge Official Data,( Global Research, April 11, 2011)

Fukushima in the wake of the Tsunami, March 2011



Worldwide Contamination


The dumping of highly radioactive water into the Pacific Ocean constitutes a potential trigger to a process of global radioactive contamination. Radioactive elements have not only been detected in the food chain in Japan, radioactive rain water has been recorded in California:

"Hazardous radioactive elements being released in the sea and air around Fukushima accumulate at each step of various food chains (for example, into algae, crustaceans, small fish, bigger fish, then humans; or soil, grass, cow's meat and milk, then humans). Entering the body, these elements - called internal emitters - migrate to specific organs such as the thyroid, liver, bone, and brain, continuously irradiating small volumes of cells with high doses of alpha, beta and/or gamma radiation, and over many years often induce cancer". (Helen Caldicott, Fukushima: Nuclear Apologists Play Shoot the Messenger on Radiation, The Age, April 26, 2011)

While the spread of radiation to the West Coast of North America was casually acknowledged, the early press reports (AP and Reuters) "quoting diplomatic sources" stated that only "tiny amounts of radioactive particles have arrived in California but do not pose a threat to human health."

"According to the news agencies, the unnamed sources have access to data from a network of measuring stations run by the United Nations’ Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty Organization. ...

... Greg Jaczko, chair of the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, told White House reporters on Thursday (March 17) that his experts “don’t see any concern from radiation levels that could be harmful here in the United States or any of the U.S. territories”.

The spread of radiation. March 2011


Public Health Disaster. Economic Impacts


What prevails is a well organized camouflage. The public health disaster in Japan, the contamination of water, agricultural land and the food chain, not to mention the broader economic and social implications, have neither been fully acknowledged nor addressed in a comprehensive and meaningful fashion by the Japanese authorities.

Japan as a nation state has been destroyed. Its landmass and territorial waters are contaminated. Part of the country is uninhabitable. High levels of radiation have been recorded in the Tokyo metropolitan area, which has a population of 39 million (2010) (more than the population of Canada, circa 34 million (2010)) There are indications that the food chain is contaminated throughout Japan:

• Radioactive cesium exceeding the legal limit was detected in tea made in a factory in Shizuoka City, more than 300 kilometers away from the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant. Shizuoka Prefecture is one of the most famous tea producing areas in Japan.
  
  
• A tea distributor in Tokyo reported to the prefecture that it detected high levels of radioactivity in the tea shipped from the city. The prefecture ordered the factory to refrain from shipping out the product. After the accident at the Fukushima nuclear power plant, radioactive contamination of tea leaves and processed tea has been found over a wide area around Tokyo. (See 5 More Companies Detect Radiation In Their Tea Above Legal Limits Over 300 KM From Fukushima, June 15, 2011)

Japan's industrial and manufacturing base is prostrate. Japan is no longer a leading industrial power. The country's exports have plummeted. The Tokyo government has announced its first trade deficit since 1980.

While the business media has narrowly centered on the impacts of power outages and energy shortages on the pace of productive activity, the broader issue pertaining to the outright radioactive contamination of the country's infrastructure and industrial base is a "scientific taboo" (i.e the radiation of industrial plants, machinery and equipment, buildings, roads, etc). A report released in January 2012 points to the nuclear contamination of building materials used in the construction industry, in cluding roads and residential buildings throughout Japan.(See FUKUSHIMA: Radioactive Houses and Roads in Japan. Radioactive Building Materials Sold to over 200 Construction Companies, January 2012)

A "coverup report" by the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry (May 2011), entitled "Economic Impact of the Great East Japan Earthquake and Current Status of Recovery" presents "Economic Recovery" as a fait accompli. It also brushes aside the issue of radiation. The impacts of nuclear radiation on the work force and the country's industrial base are not mentioned. The report states that the distance between Tokyo -Fukushima Dai-ichi is of the order of 230 km (about 144 miles) and that the levels of radiation in Tokyo are lower than in Hong Kong and New York City.(Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry, Impact of the Great East Japan Earthquake and Current Status of Recovery, p.15). This statement is made without corroborating evidence and in overt contradiction with independent radiation readings in Tokyo (se map below). In recent developments, Sohgo Security Services Co. is launching a lucrative "radiation measurement service targeting households in Tokyo and four surrounding prefectures".



"A map of citizens' measured radiation levels shows radioactivity is distributed in a complex pattern reflecting the mountainous terrain and the shifting winds across a broad area of Japan north of Tokyo which is in the center of the of bottom of the map."


Radiation limits begin to be exceeded at just above 0.1 microsieverts/ hour blue. Red is about fifty times the civilian radiation limit at 5.0 microsieverts/hour. Because children are much more sensitive than adults, these results are a great concern for parents of young children in potentially affected areas.

SOURCE: Science Magazine



The fundamental question is whether the vast array of industrial goods and components "Made in Japan" -- including hi tech components, machinery, electronics, motor vehicles, etc -- and exported Worldwide are contaminated? Were this to be the case, the entire East and Southeast Asian industrial base --which depends heavily on Japanese components and industrial technology-- would be affected. The potential impacts on international trade would be farreaching. In this regard, in January, Russian officials confiscated irradiated Japanese automobiles and autoparts in the port of Vladivostok for sale in the Russian Federation. Needless to say, incidents of this nature in a global competitive environment, could lead to the demise of the Japanese automobile industry which is already in crisis.

While most of the automotive industry is in central Japan, Nissan's engine factory in Iwaki city is 42 km from the Fukushima Daiichi plant. Is the Nissan work force affected? Is the engine plant contaminated? The plant is within about 10 to 20 km of the government's "evacuation zone" from which some 200,000 people were evacuated (see map below).





Nuclear Energy and Nuclear War



The crisis in Japan has also brought into the open the unspoken relationship between nuclear energy and nuclear war.

Nuclear energy is not a civilian economic activity. It is an appendage of the nuclear weapons industry which is controlled by the so-called defense contractors. The powerful corporate interests behind nuclear energy and nuclear weapons overlap.

In Japan at the height of the disaster, "the nuclear industry and government agencies [were] scrambling to prevent the discovery of atomic-bomb research facilities hidden inside Japan's civilian nuclear power plants".1 (See Yoichi Shimatsu, Secret Weapons Program Inside Fukushima Nuclear Plant? Global Research, April 12, 2011)

It should be noted that the complacency of both the media and the governments to the hazards of nuclear radiation pertains to the nuclear energy industry as well as to to use of nuclear weapons. In both cases, the devastating health impacts of nuclear radiation are casually denied. Tactical nuclear weapons with an explosive capacity of up to six times a Hiroshima bomb are labelled by the Pentagon as "safe for the surrounding civilian population".

No concern has been expressed at the political level as to the likely consequences of a US-NATO-Israel attack on Iran, using "safe for civilians" tactical 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 and Central Asia. A nuclear nightmare, however, would occur even if nuclear weapons were not used. The bombing of Iran's nuclear facilities using conventional weapons would contribute to unleashing another Fukushima type disaster with extensive radioactive fallout. (For further details See Michel Chossudovsky, Towards a World War III Scenario, The Dangers of Nuclear War, Global Research, Montreal, 2011)


The Online Interactive I-Book Reader on Fukushima: A Nuclear War without a War

• In view of the official cover-up and media disinformation campaign, the contents of the articles and video reports in this Online Interactive Reader have not trickled down to to the broader public. (See Table of contents below)
  
  
• This Online Interactive Reader on Fukushima contains a combination of analytical and scientific articles, video reports as well as shorter news reports and corroborating data.
  
  
• Part I focusses on The Fukushima Nuclear Disaster: How it Happened? Part II pertains to The Devastating Health and Social Impacts in Japan. Part III centers on the "Hidden Nuclear Catastrophe", namely the cover-up by the Japanese government and the corporate media. Part IV focusses on the issue of Worlwide Nuclear Radiation and Part V reviews the Implications of the Fukushima disaster for the Global Nuclear Energy Industry.

• In the face of ceaseless media disinformation, this Global Research Online I-Book on the dangers of global nuclear radiation is intended to break the media vacuum and raise public awareness, while also pointing to the complicity of the governments, the media and the nuclear industry.
  
  
• We call upon our readers to spread the word.
  
  
• We invite university, college and high school teachers to make this Interactive Reader on Fukushima available to their students.
  
  Michel Chossudovsky, January 25, 2012

TABLE OF CONTENTS

PART I The Fukushima Nuclear Disaster: How it Happened



The Fukushima Nuclear Disaster: What Happened on "Day One"?
- by Yoichi Shimatsu - 2011-04-16




Fukushima is the greatest nuclear and environmental disaster in human history
- by Steven C. Jones - 2011-06-20




Nuclear Apocalypse in Japan
Lifting the Veil of Nuclear Catastrophe and cover-up
- by Keith Harmon Snow - 2011-03-18




VIDEO: Full Meltdown? Japan Maximum Nuclear Alert
Watch now on GRTV
-by Christopher Busby- 2011-03-30




Fukushima: Japan's Second Nuclear Disaster
- by Sherwood Ross - 2011-11-10




Secret Weapons Program Inside Fukushima Nuclear Plant?
U.S.-Japan security treaty fatally delayed nuclear workers' fight against meltdown
- by Yoichi Shimatsu - 2011-04-12
The specter of self-destruction can be ended only with the abrogation of the U.S.-Japan security treaty, the root cause of the secrecy that fatally delayed the nuclear workers' fight against meltdown.




Fukushima: “China Syndrome Is Inevitable” … “Huge Steam Explosions”
“Massive Hydrovolcanic Explosion” or a “Nuclear Bomb-Type Explosion” May Occur
- by Washington's Blog - 2011-11-22




Accident at Second Japanese Nuclear Complex: The Nuclear Accident You Never Heard About - by Washington's Blog - 2012-01-12




VIDEO: New TEPCO Photographs Substantiate Significant Damage to Fukushima Unit 3
Latest report now on GRTV
- by Arnie Gundersen - 2011-10-20


PART II The Devastating Health and Social Impacts in Japan



VIDEO: Surviving Japan: A Critical Look at the Nuclear Crisis
Learn more about this important new documentary on GRTV
- by Chris Noland - 2012-01-23




Fukushima and the Battle for Truth
Large sectors of the Japanese population are accumulating significant levels of internal contamination
- by Paul Zimmerman - 2011-09-27




FUKUSHIMA: Public health Fallout from Japanese Quake
“Culture of cover-up” and inadequate cleanup. Japanese people exposed to “unconscionable” health risks
- by Canadian Medical Association Journal - 2011-12-30




FUKUSHIMA: Radioactive Houses and Roads in Japan. Radioactive Building Materials Sold to over 200 Construction Companies - 2012-01-16




VIDEO: Cancer Risk To Young Children Near Fukushima Daiichi Underestimated
Watch this important new report on GRTV
- by Arnie Gundersen - 2012-01-19




VIDEO: The Results Are In: Japan Received Enormous Exposures of Radiation from Fukushima
Important new video now on GRTV
- by Arnie Gundersen, Marco Kaltofen - 2011-11-07




The Tears of Sanriku (三陸の涙). The Death Toll for the Great East Japan Earthquake Nuclear Disaster
- by Jim Bartel - 2011-10-31




The Severity of the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Disaster: Comparing Chernobyl and Fukushima
- by Prof. Matthew Penney, Prof. Mark Selden - 2011-05-24
Uncertainty about the long-term health effects of radiation

• Radioactivity in Food: “There is no safe level of radionuclide exposure, whether from food, water or other sources. Period,” - by Physicians For Social Responsibility - 2011-03-23
  
  
• 71,000 people in the city next to the Fukushima nuclear plant "We've Been Left to Die" - 2011-03-19
  
• Tokyo Water Unsafe For Babies, Food Bans Imposed - by Karyn Poupee - 2011-03-23

PART III Hidden Nuclear Catastrophe: Cover-up by the Japanese Government and the Corporate Media



VIDEO: Japanese Government Insiders Reveal Fukushima Secrets
GRTV Behind the Headlines now online
- by James Corbett - 2011-10-06




Fukushima and the Mass Media Meltdown
The Repercussions of a Pro-Nuclear Corporate Press
- by Keith Harmon Snow - 2011-06-20




Scandal: Japan Forces Top Official To Retract Prime Minister’s Revelation Fukushima Permanently Uninhabitable
- by Alexander Higgins - 2011-04-18




Emergency Special Report: Japan's Earthquake, Hidden Nuclear Catastrophe
- by Yoichi Shimatsu - 2011-03-13
The tendency to deny systemic errors - "in order to avoid public panic" - is rooted in the determination of an entrenched Japanese bureaucracy to protect itself...




VIDEO: Fukushima: TEPCO Believes Mission Accomplished & Regulators Allow Radioactive Dumping in Tokyo Bay
Learn more on GRTV
- by Arnie Gundersen - 2012-01-11




The Dangers of Radiation: Deconstructing Nuclear Experts
- by Chris Busby - 2011-03-31
"The nuclear industry is waging a war against humanity." This war has now entered an endgame which will decide the survival of the human race.




Engineers Knew Fukushima Might Be Unsafe, But Covered It Up …
And Now the Extreme Vulnerabilty of NEW U.S. Plants Is Being Covered Up
- by Washington's Blog - 2011-11-12




Engineers Knew Fukushima Might Be Unsafe, But Covered It Up …
And Now the Extreme Vulnerabilty of NEW U.S. Plants Is Being Covered Up
- by Washington's Blog - 2011-11-12




COVERUP: Are Fukushima Reactors 5 and 6 In Trouble Also?
- by Washington's Blog - 2011-11-14




Fukushima's Owner Adds Insult to Injury - Claims Radioactive Fallout Isn't Theirs

- by John LaForge - 2012-01-17


PART IV The Process of Worldwide Nuclear Radiation



VIDEO: Japan's Nuclear Crisis: The Dangers of Worldwide Radiation
- by Dr. Helen Caldicott - 2012-01-25




An Unexpected Mortality Increase in the US Follows Arrival of Radioactive Plume from Fukushima, Is there a Correlation?
- by Dr. Joseph J. Mangano, Dr. Janette Sherman - 2011-12-20
In the US, Following the Fukushima fallout, samples of radioactivity in precipitation, air, water, and milk, taken by the U.S. government, showed levels hundreds of times above normal...




Radioactive Dust From Japan Hit North America 3 Days After Meltdown
But Governments "Lied" About Meltdowns and Radiation
- by Washington's Blog - 2011-06-24




VIDEO: Fukushima Will Be Radiating Everyone for Centuries
New report now on GRTV
- by Michio Kaku, Liz Hayes - 2011-08-23




Fukushima: Diseased Seals in Alaska tested for Radiation - 2011-12-29




Radiation Spreads to France
- by Washington’s Blog - 2011-11-15



Radioactive rain causes 130 schools in Korea to close — Yet rain in California had 10 TIMES more radioactivity


PART V Implications for the Global Nuclear Energy Industry



Science with a Skew: The Nuclear Power Industry After Chernobyl and Fukushima
- by Gayle Greene - 2012-01-26




After Fukushima: Enough Is Enough
- by Helen Caldicott - 2011-12-05




VIDEO: Radiation Coverups Confirmed: Los Alamos, Fort Calhoun, Fukushima, TSA
New Sunday Report now on GRTV
- by James Corbett - 2011-07-04




VIDEO: Why Fukushima Can Happen Here: What the NRC and Nuclear Industry Don't Want You to Know
Watch now on GRTV
- by Arnie Gundersen, David Lochbaum - 2011-07-12




VIDEO: Safety Problems in all Reactors Designed Like Fukushima
Learn more on GRTV
- by Arnie Gundersen - 2011-09-26




VIDEO: Proper Regulation of Nuclear Power has been Coopted Worldwide
Explore the issues on GRTV
- by Arnie Gundersen - 2011-10-05




VIDEO: New Nuclear Reactors Do Not Consider Fukushima Design Flaws
Find out more on GRTV
- by Arnie Gundersen - 2011-11-24




Nuclear Energy: Profit Driven Industry
“Nuclear Can Be Safe Or It Can Be Cheap … But It Can’t Be Both”
- by Washington's Blog - 2011-12-23




VIDEO: Fukushima and the Fall of the Nuclear Priesthood
Watch the new GRTV Feature Interview
- by Arnie Gundersen - 2011-10-22




Why is there a Media Blackout on Nuclear Incident at Fort Calhoun in Nebraska?
- by Patrick Henningsen - 2011-06-23



Startling Revelations about Three Mile Island Disaster Raise Doubts Over Nuke Safety
- by Sue Sturgis - 2011-07-24




Radioactive Leak at Fort Calhoun Nuclear Power Station
- by Rady Ananda - 2011-07-01




VIDEO: US vs Japan: The Threat of Radiation Speculation
Dangerous double standards examined on GRTV
- by Arnie Gundersen - 2011-06-25


TEXT BOX Nuclear Radiation: Categorization



At Fukushima, reports confirm that alpha, beta, gamma particles and neutrons have been released:

• "While non-ionizing radiation and x-rays are a result of electron transitions in atoms or molecules, there are three forms of ionizing radiation that are a result of activity within the nucleus of an atom. These forms of nuclear radiation are alpha particles (α-particles), beta particles (β-particles) and gamma rays (γ-rays).
  
  
• Alpha particles are heavy positively charged particles made up of two protons and two neutrons. They are essentially a helium nucleus and are thus represented in a nuclear equation by either α or . See the Alpha Decay page for more information on alpha particles.
  
  
• Beta particles come in two forms: and . particles are just electrons that have been ejected from the nucleus. This is a result of sub-nuclear reactions that result in a neutron decaying to a proton. The electron is needed to conserve charge and comes from the nucleus. It is not an orbital electron. particles are positrons ejected from the nucleus when a proton decays to a neutron. A positron is an anti-particle that is similar in nearly all respects to an electron, but has a positive charge. See the Beta Decay page for more information on beta particles.
  
  
• Gamma rays are photons of high energy electromagnetic radiation (light). Gamma rays generally have the highest frequency and shortest wavelengths in the electromagnetic spectrum. There is some overlap in the frequencies of gamma rays and x-rays; however, x-rays are formed from electron transitions while gamma rays are formed from nuclear transitions. See the Gamma Rays for more" (SOURCE: Canadian Nuclear Association)
  
  
  
• "A neutron is a particle that is found in the nucleus, or center, of atoms. It has a mass very close to protons, which also reside in the nucleus of atoms. Together, they make up almost all of the mass of individual atoms. Each has a mass of about 1 amu, which is roughly 1.6×10-27kg. Protons have a positive charge and neutrons have no charge, which is why they were more difficult to discover." (SOURCE: Neutron Radiation)
  
  
• "Many different radioactive isotopes are used in or are produced by nuclear reactors. The most important of these are described below:
  
  
• 1. Uranium 235 (U-235) is the active component of most nuclear reactor fuel.
  
  
• 2. Plutonium (Pu-239) is a key nuclear material used in modern nuclear weapons and is also present as a by-product in certain reprocessed fuels used in some nuclear reactors. Pu-239 is also produced in uranium reactors as a byproduct of fission of U-235.
  
  
• 3. Cesium (Cs-137 ) is a fission product of U-235. It emits beta and gamma radiation and can cause radiation sickness and death if exposures are high enough. ...
  
  
• 4. Iodine 131 (I-131), also a fission product of U-235, emits beta and gamma radiation. After inhalation or ingestion, it is absorbed by and concentrated in the thyroid gland, where its beta radiation damages nearby thyroid tissue (SOURCE: Amesh A. Adalja, MD, Eric S. Toner, MD, Anita Cicero, JD, Joseph Fitzgerald, MS, MPH, and Thomas V. Inglesby MD, Radiation at Fukushima: Basic Issues and Concepts, March 31, 2011)

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, Latin America and The Pacific, acted as adviser to governments of developing countries and as a consultant to 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.

Spread the word, reverse the tide of war, forward the N-Book to friends and family, post on facebook.

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



I-BOOKS SERIES
To consult our Online Interactive I-Book Reader Series, click here.







Subscribe to the Global Research E-Newsletter



Global Research relies on the financial support of its
readers. Your endorsement is greatly appreciated






Join the discussion:
You must be logged in to post a comment. If you haven't registered yet, click here to register. (It's quick, easy and free. And we won't give your email address to anyone.)

[Paul Kemp]

Time Pilgrimage in Memory of Hiroshima

_______________________

CLICK HERE TO VIEW THE PRESENTATION



Join the discussion:
You must be logged in to post a comment. If you haven't registered yet, click here to register. (It's quick, easy and free. And we won't give your email address to anyone.)

[Paul Kemp]