Stephen Lendman

On November 14, the Northern California ACLU and National Lawyers Guild (NLG) sued the Oakland Police Department (OPD) in federal court for "egregious constitutional violations" against Occupy Oakland protesters.

A temporary restraining order was sought to stop them. On November 14, hundreds of riot gear clad police forcefully evicted encamped Oscar Grant Plaza protesters at 5:00AM. At a same day press conference, Mayor Jean Quan said:

"We have to bring the camp to an end."

The ACLU-NC and NLG sued OPD on behalf of videographer Timothy Scott Campbell. Other plaintiffs include Kerie Campbell, Marc McKinnie, Michael Siegel, and NLG Legal Observer Marcus Kryshka.

On November 2, all faced excessive force. Campbell said:

"I was filming police activity at Occupy Oakland because police should be accountable. Now I'm worried about my safety from police violence and about retaliation because I've been outspoken."

According to NLG attorney Rachel Lederman:

"OPD's unconstitutional actions against protesters were wholesale and flagrant violations of Oakland's Crowd Control Policy."

It strictly limits force and prohibits indiscriminate use of shot-filled beanbags and other projectiles against peaceful protesters and crowds.

In fact, authorities nationally want OWS demonstrations ended. On November 15, Occupy Wall Street.org countered, saying:

"You cannot evict an idea whose time has come. We are the 99%. We are everywhere. We are a global movement that is reclaiming our humanity and our future."

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Stephen Lendman

Replicating Libya's model, Western generated uprisings began in March. Since then, Syria's been ravaged by violence. Hundreds have been killed, many more injured.

Civilians and state security forces have been affected. Conflict rages daily. Casualties mount. Regime change is planned to establish another US client state.

At issue Washington's New Middle East agenda. One country at a time is ravaged toward achieving America's goal of unchallenged regional dominance to Russia's borders.

Constructive chaos aims to redraw regional lines according to US/Israeli/NATO geopolitical goals. All of it's been carefully planned, shifting from one target to the next.

Post-9/11, first Afghanistan in 2001, then Iraq, Libya, and now Syria

Previous articles mentioned General Wesley Clark's book titled, "Winning Modern Wars." In it he said Pentagon sources told him shortly after 9/11 that war plans were being prepared against Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Iran, Somalia, Sudan and Libya. Months earlier, they were finalized against Afghanistan.

Clark added:

"And what about the real sources of terrorists - US allies in the region like Egypt, Pakistan, and Saudi Arabia? Wasn't it repressive policies of the first, and the corruption and poverty of the second, that were generating many of the angry young men who became terrorists? And what of the radical ideology and direct funding spewing from Saudi Arabia?"

"It seemed that we were being taken into a strategy more likely to make us the enemy - encouraging what could look like a 'clash of civilizations' - not a good strategy for winning the war on terror."

Broadcast on FORA TV on October 3, 2007, Clark said America underwent a "policy coup" post-9/11. Hard-liners co-opted power with no public debate or acknowledgement.

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Frontier Post Editorial

Our people’s lives are very dear to us. Our tribal children are no less lovely than the American children.

The CIA’s new rules for its illegal and audacious drone attacks in Pakistan in reality represent no whittling down in its arrogant adventurism against a sovereign independent state, as has it projected to be by the American media. It just reflects an outcome of a heated inter-agency wrangling of America, specifically a triumph of sorts of US secretary of state Hillary Clinton’s doctrine of “smart power”. For furthering the US interests abroad, she has been pressing for lesser reliance on its brute power projection and more on diplomatic and development assistance initiatives, with the state department playing the central role in the entire gamut of America’s foreign domain. By using her immense stature, clout and status, she has already wrested a pivotal position for the state department in interacting with Iraq after the withdrawal of all the US troops by this year’s end. And the new CIA drone attack regime manifests she has secured a more decisive voice of her department in the conduct of the assaults as well.

But will that be of any real significance or consolation to this country, whose sovereignty and territorial sanctity is trashed by this spy service of a heady superpower so brazenly and whose innocent civilians are killed and maimed in these unlawful drone attacks so tragically? No sensible person would say it would. The new rules may have invested the state department with greater say in deciding the attacks. These may have also stipulated advance warning of attacks to the Pakistani authorities. So what? The infringement of our sovereignty would continue with impunity. More woefully, the slaughter of our innocent, including our children and women, would keep going on blithely. Whether it is the “smart power” or the “brutish power”, it is all the same. The carnage of our children, women and even the elderly would see no real let-up in it. But who cares in those high places in Washington?

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Krassimir Petrov

The oil stock exchange is part of a two-phase project ap-
proved by Iranian cabinet. First phase of Iran oil bourse in-
augurated on Kish island in the Persian Gulf in 2008.

[Originally published in 2006 by Energy Bulletin]

I. Economics of Empires

A nation-state taxes its own citizens, while an empire taxes other nation-states. The history of empires, from Greek and Roman, to Ottoman and British, teaches that the economic foundation of every single empire is the taxation of other nations. The imperial ability to tax has always rested on a better and stronger economy, and as a consequence, a better and stronger military. One part of the subject taxes went to improve the living standards of the empire; the other part went to strengthen the military dominance necessary to enforce the collection of those taxes.

Historically, taxing the subject state has been in various forms—usually gold and silver, where those were considered money, but also slaves, soldiers, crops, cattle, or other agricultural and natural resources, whatever economic goods the empire demanded and the subject-state could deliver. Historically, imperial taxation has always been direct: the subject state handed over the economic goods directly to the empire.

For the first time in history, in the twentieth century, America was able to tax the world indirectly, through inflation. It did not enforce the direct payment of taxes like all of its predecessor empires did, but distributed instead its own fiat currency, the U.S. Dollar, to other nations in exchange for goods with the intended consequence of inflating and devaluing those dollars and paying back later each dollar with less economic goods—the difference capturing the U.S. imperial tax. Here is how this happened.

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