Michael Parenti - Imperialism 101

Imperialism is older than capitalism. The Persian, Macedonian, Roman, and Mongol empires all existed centuries before the Rothschilds and Rockefellers. Emperors and conquistadors were interested mostly in plunder and tribute, gold and glory. Capitalist imperialism differs from these earlier forms in the way it systematically accumulates capital through the organized exploitation of labor and the penetration of overseas markets. Capitalist imperialism invests in other countries, transforming and dominating their economies, cultures, and political life, integrating their financial and productive structures into an international system of capital accumulation.

A central imperative of capitalism is expansion. Investors will not put their money into business ventures unless they can extract more than they invest. Increased earnings come only with a growth in the enterprise. The capitalist ceaselessly searches for ways of making more money in order to make still more money. One must always invest to realize profits, gathering as much strength as possible in the face of competing forces and unpredictable markets. FULL STORY

Dan Glazebrook - War for Africa: 'Libya key to new US bases, cheap labor & resources' (Interview)

Michel Chossudovsky - The Global Financial Crisis (Lecture)

John Molyneux - The Contradictions of Capitalism

First there is the contradiction between the forces of production and the relations of production. Capitalism has developed the forces of production to a degree inconceivable under any previous economic system but because they are based on alienated labour the more they develop the more they turn into forces of destruction, either in the form of weapons of unimaginable power or through the destruction of the environment on which our survival depends.

As capitalism drives the productive forces forward, so the need becomes ever more urgent for the social ownership and democratic planning of the economy – one thing capitalism, by its nature, cannot deliver. FULL STORY

Terence McKenna - Culture is Your Operating System

Reading List: Gene Sharp - From Dictatorship to Democracy (PDF)

Guidebook used in numerous pro-western revolutions around the world


Some of Sharp’s key points are:

-Develop a strategy for winning freedom and a vision of the society you want
-Overcome fear by small acts of resistance
-Use colours and symbols to demonstrate unity of resistance
-Learn from historical examples of the successes of non-violent movements
-Use non-violent “weapons”
-Identify the dictatorship’s pillars of support and develop a strategy for undermining each
-Use oppressive or brutal acts by the regime as a recruiting tool for your movement
-Isolate or remove from the movement people who use or advocate violence


GENE SHARP - FROM DICTATORSHIP TO DEMOCRACY - PDF

Fidel Castro - 1967 Interview

NATO Nations Set to Reap Spoils of Libya War

By: Rachel Shabi (aljazeera.com)

Leaving aside the massive profits from the rebuilding that Libya is now going to need, there are vast oil spoils to distribute. The Libyan oil industry produced 1.6 million barrels a day prior to the war. The country is thought to have 46 billion barrels of reserves - the largest in Africa. FULL STORY

Reading List: Smedley D. Butler - War Is a Racket (PDF)

Waris a racket. It always has been.

It is possibly the oldest, easily the most profitable, surely the most vicious. It is the only one international in scope. It is the only one in which the profits are reckoned in dollars and the losses in lives.

A racket is best described, I believe, as something that is not what it seems to the majority of the people. Only a small "inside" group knows what it is about. It is conducted for the benefit of the very few, at the expense of the very many. Out of war a few people make huge fortunes.

SMEDLEY D. BUTLER - WAR IS A RACKET - PDF

The 25 Most Vicious Iraq War Profiteers

The Iraq war is many things to different people. It is called a strategic blunder and a monstrous injustice and sometimes even a patriotic mission, much to the chagrin of rational human beings. For many big companies, however, the war is something far different: a lucrative cash-cow. The years-long, ongoing military effort has resurrected fears of the so-called “military-industrial complex.” Media pundits are outraged at private companies scooping up huge, no-questions-asked contracts to manufacture weapons, rebuild infrastructure, or anything else the government deems necessary to win (or plant its flag in Iraq). No matter what your stance on the war, it pays to know where your tax dollars are being spent.

Following is a detailed rundown of the 25 companies squeezing the most profit from this controversial conflict:

THE LIST - The 25 Most Vicious Iraq War Profiteers

Simón Trinidad - FARC Child Soldiers

"In our statutes we have decided that we can recruit 15 year-olds and up. In some fronts there may have been some younger, but a short time ago we decided to send them back home. But what is the cost? In the last year a girl arrived at the office in San Vicente, 14 years-old and wanting to join the guerrillas. When the mother found out that she had joined she contacted the guerrillas and cried and said her daughter is only 14 years-old. In March she was sent back home because the FARC’s Central Command said they would return to their parents all those younger than fifteen. Two weeks ago I met this girl and asked her what she was doing. She said she was working in a bar from 6pm until sunrise. I asked what she was doing in this bar and she said, ‘I attend to the customers.’ When I asked in what way does she attend to the customers, she lowered her head and started to cry. She is a whore. She is 14 years old. A child prostitute. She was better in the guerrillas. In the guerrillas we have dignity, respect and we provide them with clothes, food and education.

And there are millions of others like this girl in Colombia that are exploited in the coal mines, the gold mines, the emerald mines, in the coca and poppy fields. They prefer that children work in the coca and poppy fields because they pay them less and they work more. It sounds beautiful when you say that children shouldn’t be guerrillas, but the children are in the streets of the cities doing drugs, inhaling gasoline and glue. They are highly exploited ... These children meet the guerrillas and they don’t have parents because the military or the paramilitaries killed them and they ask the guerrillas to let them join."

-FARC-EP Commander Simón Trinidad

Mumia Abu-Jamal - What "Jobs" Really Means

Jeremy Scahill - Coalition of the Billing

Who Are The Real Terrorists?

The Story of Your Enslavement

"The Revolution Business" (Documentary)

Democratic change has been demanded across the Middle East. But was what seems like a spontaneous revolution actually a strategically planned event, fabricated by ‘revolution consultants’ long in advance?

Michael Parenti - The Real Causes of World War II

El Che Vive!

'On October 9, Guevara asked to see the "maestra" (school teacher) of the village, 22-year-old Julia Cortez. Cortez would later state that she found Guevara to be an "agreeable looking man with a soft and ironic glance" and that during their conversation she found herself "unable to look him in the eye", because his "gaze was unbearable, piercing, and so tranquil." During their short conversation, Guevara pointed out to Cortez the poor condition of the schoolhouse, stating that it was "anti-pedagogical" to expect campesino students to be educated there, while "government officials drive Mercedes cars" ... declaring "that's what we are fighting against."

Later that morning on October 9, Bolivian President René Barrientos ordered that Guevara be killed. The order was relayed by Félix Rodríguez despite the U.S. government’s desire that Guevara be taken to Panama for further interrogation. The executioner was Mario Terán, a half-drunken sergeant in the Bolivian army who had requested to shoot Che on the basis of the fact that three of his friends from B Company, all named "Mario", had been killed in an earlier firefight with Guevara's band of guerrillas. To make the bullet wounds appear consistent with the story the government planned to release to the public, Félix Rodríguez ordered Terán to aim carefully to make it appear that Guevara had been killed in action during a clash with the Bolivian army. Gary Prado, the Bolivian captain in command of the army company that captured Guevara, said that the reasons Barrientos ordered the immediate execution of Guevara is so there would be no possibility that Guevara would escape from prison, and also so there would be no drama in regard to a trial.

Moments before Guevara was executed he was asked by a Bolivian soldier if he was thinking about his own immortality. "No", he replied, "I'm thinking about the immortality of the revolution." When Sergeant Terán entered the hut, Che Guevara then told his executioner, "I know you've come to kill me. Shoot, coward! You are only going to kill a man!" Terán hesitated, then opened fire with his semiautomatic rifle.

In 2006, Terán was treated for free under a false name for cataracts by Cuban physicians in the Cuba-Venezuela Operación Milagro (Operation Miracle) program, which restored his sight.

This was first revealed when Terán's son wrote a letter to the Santa Cruz de la Sierra newspaper El Deber thanking the Cuban doctors. In 2007 Granma (Cuban newspaper) opined on the treatment, stating:

"Four decades after Mario Terán attempted to destroy a dream and an idea, Che returns to win yet another battle. Now an old man, he [Terán] can once again appreciate the colors of the sky and the forest, enjoy the smiles of his grandchildren."'

HASTA LA VICTORIA SIEMPRE