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Somalia: US Foreign Policy and Gangsterism + Leaked MI6 emails

Justin Raimondo + Henk Ruyssenaars | 29.12.2006 21:39 | Analysis | Globalisation | Repression | World

The failed UN/US intervention of 1993 led directly to the triumph of the warlords, who plundered, raped, and murdered their way through the streets of Mogadishu, the Somalian capital, and reduced the country to Mad Max territory. The same deadly chaos - made in the US - now again foments more hate. Tax paid MI6 'helps'...

CIA IN SOMALIA: REPEATING THE 'BLACK HAWK DOWN' BLOWBACK

US mainstream media globally are repeating the propaganda lies about Ethiopia 'feeling threatened' by Somalia. Trying to tell us that the for a decade US/CIA trained, dressed and equipped Ethiopian armed forces, seen as one of the best in that part of the world, was threatened by a dirt poor country with no army?

MEMORIES OF A MASSACRE

Intro by Henk Ruyssenaars - Ex Africa correspondent

FPF comment - Dec. 29th 2006 - Not only is the CIA for the US managers repeating the same mistake in Somalia as in 1993, but the horrible role they and their henchmen execute (literally) reminds of the same tactics used by Hitler's SS Leader Reinhard Heydrich. On September 1, 1939, World War Two began with the Nazi invasion of Poland. As a prelude to the invasion, Heydrich had engineered a fake Polish attack on a German radio station at Gleiwitz, Germany, a mile from the Polish border, thus giving Hitler an excuse for military retribution. Heydrich and spin Meister Joseph Goebbels (Hitler's 'Karl Rove') had the corpses dressed in fake Polish uniforms. Heydrich's Nazi buddy Gehlen after that war helped starting the CIA, so they got a lot of experience.*

Like now the US mainstream media globally are repeating that Ethiopia felt 'threatened.' So the US trained, dressed and equipped Ethiopian army was threatened by a dirt poor country with no army? Give people a break! This far the US junta and the CIA again only fully succeeded in making themselves still more hated, and a couple of more million people very angry. Because a couple of thousand innocent people in Somalia are very dead, many are wounded, and they all have family and friends. And all know and understand it's not the Ethiopian or Ugandan people as such, but the US/CIA with their brainwashed 'leaders' and by them armed mercenaries which are responsible for the misery and killings. Paid for by taxes extorted from the US americans and EU/NATO victims.

Look at the leaked emails: the dirty trick of this geopolitical fight is easy to understand of you know some of the people involved. Here are some on the US/CIA/MI6 side - the junta's interests - who were stupid and/or greedy enough to start another illegal US war machine invasion. - Url.  http://tinyurl.com/y358a9

THEY'LL FIGHT BACK

And believe me, I've lived there long enough: they'll understandably take revenge the very second they can. Even if it's ten years or a century later. I remember especially one of the thousands of stories about the 'code of honor': an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth. It was the father of a Palestinian boy of 9 in Ghaza who was shot as some 'collateral damage'. His son!. And if you know what a son also means in some other cultures on some other continents - without care for the elderly by tax payers - you'll understand what he felt. It took nearly 10 years before he opened the front door of his house wide again and asked the neighbours and everybody passing by to come in. People who wanted to, could pay their respect and condolences now, he said: "because we have killed some of them."

And revenge they'll get. When occupying forces have no respect for their lives: why should they have respect for the root of all evil? So be sure: they'll fight back, which according to the Geneva Conventions - being still valid outside the US junta's sphere of malignant influence - is their legal right and plight concerning occupants.

As a former Africa correspondent during ten years I've said and written about this inhuman matter the same as Justin Raimondo does in the interesting article below. I agree in this case with him. Raimondo describes what really happened, the sheer stupid inhumanity again resulting within short in the umpteenth 'blowback' for the CIA and it's managers. But the managers 'the others' never die: only human beings do. - [The 'others':  http://tinyurl.com/v49l3] - I've seen the immense suffering in this continent too, caused by foreign invasions, their usuring systems and the inhuman way people are treated and die because of them. For every dollar ''invested'' in Africa, at least SEVEN dollars are taken out. And the World Trade Organization (WTO) which the warlords in London run is proud of it. The turnover in capital is OK. Human beings like you and me are never counted. To the bookkeepers we are units. Kleenexes, used and thrown away. Even if we think we're 'well of'.

STOLEN LIVES, LANDS AND PROPERTY FROM THE MILLIONS

And for ages foreign groups have enriched their circles with the stolen lives, lands and property from the millions of people trying to make a living. Now the US junta with the usurped war machine, including their United Nations, NATO etc. wants to 'create their own reality' at the cost of anybody or anything on earth. What they 'create' is a 'reality' in which human beings don't count. And never have counted. People are used for profit as #1 war criminal and junta consigliere Heinrich Kissinger said about the troops being used: they're dumb animals to be used as pawns and slaughtered. And two legged catastrophes like the disgusting greedy Geldof and belligerent Bono praise murderers like Bush & Blair while drowning the global usury and ongoing genocide in a tsunami of music. - Url.:  http://tinyurl.com/ycudvd

After the start of more illegal US junta wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, Lebanon and the permanent holocaust of the Palestinians by Israel which has been going on for half a century, the oil and natural gas rich eastern part of the African continent is deliberately set on fire. Latin America by the way ought to be next. The US/CIA - while we all are looking at Africa and the disaster growing there - starting a war with Venezuela to get the oil and to terminate president Chavez' life, his Bolivarian policy and humane philosophy. Which is unknown in the US. That human beings count, and not only for profit. And while the by the US junta run United Nations and some colonies say they will 'help', (they never pay, only extort) this 'help' has been going on for ages too. Dropping for instance the life expectancy for people in many African countries to below forty five years of age. They help'm in their massgraves. That's why USAID was renamed USAIDS... The effect always is the same: if you can not pay the medicine 'they' say you need, you can die. 'They' can fly Green Giant's 'corn on the cob' out of Burkina Faso in North Africa to our tables in Japan, Europe, the US, Canada and so on, but people get killed protesting this system. We eat and pay...

And all over the world there is NOT ONE country to be found where I as an independent foreign correspondent have found or seen - what they always claim - that thanks to the US and it's financial 'support' as it's called: the 'International Murder Fund' IMF or the World Bank - the standard of living for the LOCAL people has become any better. One way or the other. On the contrary: the countries and it's people are taken as lambs to the not so kosher slaughter and bled to death. And this group is doing it to the US americans too. Like Norman Montague who orchestrated the Great Depression, the people running the 'war theaters' have no loyalty to the US. They only use and abuse the US American passport. The people in power lie and millions die. And because of the propaganda most people don't even know what they are sacrificed for. Why their blood was turned into 'the others' gold. And those who are guilty are absolutely untouchable they have decided.:  http://tinyurl.com/y6xmed

All over the world the group in power deliberately foments wars and murder wherever a profit is to be seen.* Be it (blood) diamonds - with the market in Antwerp and Amsterdam now moving to India where 'they' have orchestrated the lowest wages and paying NO tax again - gold, silver, oil, natural gas or any other resource which is not too heavy or hot to handle. And if they think it's good for business or they want to cover up something via their massmedia they'll do another 9/11 and similar 'false flag' operations. Or to get a high propaganda 'Nielsen rating' hang their buddies like Saddam Hussein too. Who compared to Bush and his junta is like a nasty boy scout. But it's a good thing Justin Raimondo has seen the light at the end of the tunnel and - like most of us - he writes because he doesn't want 'them' to switch it off, everywhere. They themselves must be 'switched off.' A soon as is possible.

SOMALIA: US FOREIGN POLICY AND GANGSTERISM

WHY THE US SUPPORTS THE WARLORDS

by Justin Raimondo

December 29, 2006 - In our Orwellian age, no one is surprised when American foreign policy takes a U-turn, and, suddenly, we are at war with Eastasia – because, you see, we have always been at war with Eastasia. Yet even the most jaded observers are bound to raise an eyebrow over our embrace of the Somalian warlords, whose disarmament and capture was our announced goal the last time we intervened. That failed effort, you’ll recall, was dubbed "Operation Restore Hope."

Now we are back, albeit semi-covertly – using Ethiopia, a major recipient of American arms and technical support, as our proxy – in a new project that ought to be named Operation Abandon All Hope Ye Who Enter Here. In the post-9/11 Bizarro World alternate universe that our leaders and policy makers seemed to have slipped into, the Bad Guys have become the Good Guys, and the formerly fiendish Somalian warlords are now part of the "anti-terrorism coalition" that the U.S. is assembling in the region.

A little history: The failed UN/U.S. intervention of 1993 led directly to the triumph of the warlords, who plundered, raped, and murdered their way through the streets of Mogadishu, the Somalian capital, and reduced the country to Mad Max territory. In response, an "Islamic courts" movement sprang up to impose some sort of cohesion on a rapidly disintegrating social order. The business community and public opinion rallied behind these courts, which were and are all that stand between civilization and savagery in Somalia.

As I’ve pointed out before, the long history of U.S. intervention in Somalia is a veritable case study of how and why American foreign policy always manages to generate the deadliest, most horrific "blowback," as the intelligence professionals put it. Blowback, a concept exhaustively explored in Chalmers Johnson’s classic book of the same title, means the unintended consequences of our bumbling, culturally tone-deaf, invariably unsuccessful efforts to manipulate local proxies to maximize our alleged national interests. In the 1990s, the Americans intervened in the name of "humanitarianism," against the warlords; in the new millennium, we have tossed aside humanitarian concerns in favor of the ruthless pursuit of "terrorists," real or imagined. The former "warlords" hunted by U.S. troops and blamed for Somalia’s shocking degeneration into pure chaos are now aided and abetted by the Americans and their Ethiopian cohorts.

This latest American turnabout – flooding Somalian warlords with money and arms – came about largely as the result of an imaginary confrontation between U.S. officials and supposed "terrorists." It happened a year ago, when U.S. government personnel investigating possible terrorist infiltration of Somalia landed at a makeshift airport just outside Mogadishu. No sooner had their plane set down uneasily on the tarmac than they heard shooting, and, assuming they were under fire, beat an unceremonious retreat. As far as the U.S. government was concerned, this was clearly an ambush, pulled off by terrorist elements possibly associated with al-Qaeda.

In reality, however, the Americans had stumbled into a conflict involving two rival clans, one of which controlled the airport, and the other which had recently purchased a large tract of land bordering the road to the airport. The former were outraged that this purchase would cut into their very profitable extortion and protection racket, and that their control over the heavy road traffic would be challenged. This led to an escalating series of threats and counter-threats, eventually exploding, on January 13, 2006, into open violence just as the American visitors touched down.

The protagonists in this dispute were characterized by the Washington Postas follows:

"Abukar Omar Adan was a devoutly Islamic and heavily armed clan elder with ties to the strict neighborhood religious courts that had brought a semblance of order to a city without a government.

His rival, Bashir Raghe, was a brash, younger man who had been a waste contractor with the U.S. military forces in Mogadishu before the United States pulled out."

GUESS WHICH ONE IS THE U.S. PROXY.

No, it’s not the bourgeois businessman and city father whose stature in the community as a force for order advertises him as the natural and only logical choice – it’s Senor Raghe, the street punk and gang leader, who, together with his fellow killers, has reduced Somalia to a kind of living hell.

When the warlords were driven out, the U.S. resorted to its ally in Addis Ababa to return its gangster-proxies to power. Washington has openly signaled its support for the Ethiopian invasion, which is shortly about to be billed as a "liberation" and a great "victory" in the "war on terrorism." The illusion can be maintained only so long as one squints one’s eyes sufficiently to blur the exact identity of these "liberators" – Somalian thugs and the army of Ethiopia’s dictator, "President" Meles Zenawi.

A former pro-Albania communist and leader of the Tigray People’s Liberation Front, comrade Zenawi morphed into George W. Bush’s staunchest ally in the Horn of Africa. U.S. military aid increased by leaps and bounds. Zenawi’s trajectory parallels Somalia’s Mohamed Siad Barre, the former Soviet client and avowed Marxist, who seized power in 1969, immediately became a Soviet client, and eventually led his Somalian Socialist Revolutionary Party into a military and political alliance with the U.S. (The Soviets had championed Barre's Ethiopian arch-enemies in the ongoing dispute over the Ogaden region.) One of Africa’s most brutal despots, Barre enjoyed Washington’s full support right up until he was driven from the country, in 1991, by numerous local uprisings.

Zenawi is a budding Barre. In the summer of 2005, his U.S.-trained-and-equipped army fired on student protesters who objected to the blatant rigging of the recent election: over 20 were killed, and many wounded. This same army has now turned its guns on the Somalian people, violated Somalian sovereignty, and set up a puppet Somalian "government" that virtually no one in Somalia recognizes –again, with full American support.

Our complete misunderstanding of Somalia, its culture and unique politics, has led us into the trap of making decisions based on ideological constructs rather than anything related to the facts on the ground. The blundering into a local clan dispute and mistaking it for an armed attack on U.S. interests is emblematic of the problem: in the end, it seems, it’s always about us. A foreign policy founded in the spirit of hubris, and based on pretensions to "global hegemony," is inevitably blinded by a disabling narcissism.

That is what’s really frightening about U.S. foreign policy and the decision-makers who have such an adverse impact on the lives of people around the world. These guys are wandering around in the dark, utterly clueless: i.e. they’re typical government employees.

Policy is made not only with imperfect knowledge but with a complete disdain for knowledge, as such. That’s for the "reality-based community," as one White House advisor put it to Ron Suskind – those vulgar empiricists who insist that American policy must have some anchor in factual knowledge, as opposed to the neo-Trotskyite wet-dreams of various neoconservative gurus and White House speechwriters.

This anti-realist methodology is precisely what lured us into Iraq. In the case of Somalia, yet another quagmire beckons with its siren song of "fighting terrorism." How long before Ethiopia requires the presence of U.S. "advisors" – in addition to those already there – can probably be measured by the time it takes to post this piece. No doubt U.S. "emergency" aid to Ethiopia is being rushed to Zenawi even as I write, and you can bet we won’t hear much protest anywhere. Certainly not from most Democrats in Congress. Anyone who doubts that the U.S. is acting out of motives other than those that are proclaimed will immediately be smeared as an enabler if not outright supporter of "terrorism." Congress hasn’t got the gumption to cut off aid to the death squad "government" of "liberated" Iraq – and I doubt they’ll deprive murdering dictator Zenawi of his blood money as compensation for their cowardice.

I WOULD LOVE IT, HOWEVER, IF I WERE TO BE PROVED MISTAKEN, BUT I’M NOT GOING TO HOLD MY BREATH.

The Islamic courts movement was a logical response to the condition of Somalian society, and the complete absence of any law enforcement whatsoever. For the Americans to hold up this movement as proof that "terrorism" has taken power in Somalia is the best evidence that, as Michael Scheuer puts it, the U.S. government is Osama bin Laden’s one "indispensable ally."

If al-Qaeda is credited with reversing the threat of a complete social breakdown in Somalia, and the gangster warlords we once held responsible for the country’s torment, in league with a foreign invader, is held up as the only alternative, then surely the terrorist leader is smiling somewhere in a deep dark cave, rubbing his hands together and chortling at his extraordinary good fortune.

Justin Raimondo

[andend] - You can find this article at:  http://tinyurl.com/y39c65

He is the author of several books, including:

* Reclaiming the American Right: The Lost Legacy of the Conservative Movement, Center for Libertarian Studies, June 1993. ISBN 1883959004

* An Enemy of the State: The Life of Murray N. Rothbard, Prometheus Books, July, 2000. ISBN 1573928097

FPF - RELATED LINKS:

* HR: ''CIA WITH ETHIOPIA VS SOMALIA: ANOTHER U.S. PROXY WAR'' - url.:  http://tinyurl.com/yl25w7

* NAZI SS GEHLEN AND THE CIA - Url.:  http://tinyurl.com/ykjb5c

* THE PROFITABLE WARS AND THE LONDON WAR LORDS - Url.:  http://tinyurl.com/hvtxo

THE CIA MARCHES ETHIOPIAN, UGANDAN AND OTHER MERCENARIES INTO SOMALIA: HOW DO THOSE WARS START? AND WHO PROFITS? - Here's the answer: 'Confessions of an economic hit man.' World Bank insider Perkins explains: "Jackals' are C.I.A. sanctioned people that come in and try to foment a coup or revolution. If it doesn't work, they perform assassinations, or try to." They steal billions for the World Bank, IMF, USAID, UNDP, AID etc. - It's your life too: Must watch Video Url.:  http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article8171.htm

* US "DEATH SQUAD PROTECTION ACT" - Url.:  http://tinyurl.com/6xdfw

* THE USE OF THE PHRASE 'ANTI SEMITISM' IS PURE NONSENSE - Url.:  http://tinyurl.com/y8fwhf

* The Dutch author this far has lived and worked abroad - never in an English speaking country - for more than 4 decades for international media as an independent foreign correspondent, of which 10 years - also during Gulf War I - in the Arab World and the Middle East. Seeing worldwide that every bullet and every bomb breeds more terrorism!

* FPF-COPYRIGHT NOTICE - In accordance with Title 17 U. S. C. Section 107 - any copyrighted work in this message is distributed by the Foreign Press Foundation under fair use, without profit or payment, to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the information. Url.:  http://liimirror.warwick.ac.uk/uscode/17/107.html

FOREIGN PRESS FOUNDATION
Editor: Henk Ruyssenaars
 http://tinyurl.com/gpr4j
The Netherlands
 fpf@chello.nl

-0-









Justin Raimondo + Henk Ruyssenaars
- Homepage: http://tinyurl.com/y39c65a

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