An Inspector Lohmann 'Crystal Ball of Prescience' Award Goes To...

Summary:

Global Research Editorial Note

The US has initiated a new military aggression against a sovereign country, in defiance of international law, using the threat of "Islamic terrorism" as a pretext. The threat of this illusive outside enemy is fabricated. Washington's hidden agenda is to create instability in the Horn of Africa, a region rich in oil resources, with a view to eventually justifying military intervention under a bogus UN humanitarian mandate.

Washington's justification for bombing two sites in Somalia is that members of Al Qaeda were allegedly "fleeing" through Somalia, when we know for a fact that Al Qaeda, which is a creation of the US intelligence apparatus, has consistently, throughout the post-Cold war era been covertly supported by US intelligence and its Pakistani counterpart, the Inter Services Intelligence (ISI) The White House has not confirmed the attack and nobody in Washington is asking questions.

Who could have foreseen such an out-of-the-blue attack?

Here, now... The Winning Entry:

Then: December 13 2001	Now: January 10 2007
Will Somalia be next? U.S. targets another poor country	U.S. forces pummel al-Qaeda targets in Somalia
An article filed with the Telegraph of London by Robert Fox and Jessica Berry on Dec. 2 reported "Britain has been asked by America to help prepare military strikes against Somalia in the next phase of the global campaign against Osama bin Laden's Al Qaeda network. ... A team of senior British military officers who visited U.S. Central Command in Tampa, Fla., last week was asked to prepare the strategy for attacks on sites in Somalia." The rationale for all these military preparations is said to be Somalia's harboring of terrorists. But a report by BBC Africa analyst Elizabeth Blunt on Dec. 4 said "Somalia may still be a patchwork of feuding factions, but when a BBC team visited Mogadishu last week it found everyone united in asserting that there were no terrorist training camps in the country and that any American attack would be a great mistake." ⋅ ⋅ ⋅ If Bush spreads his war of exploitation and plunder to Africa, he will only further antagonize another huge section of the world's people, including many millions of workers here in the United States. That is probably why Washington is asking London to do some of the dirty work. But for the U.S. to get Britain, the world's biggest former colonial power, to attack Somalia only exposes both imperialist ruling classes as robbers bent on world domination.	The strikes appear to mark a very public escalation of U.S. military involvement, previously limited to tacit support of Ethiopia's December invasion of Somalia. It also underscores the willingness of U.S. President George W. Bush to wage war wherever a possible terrorist emerges. ⋅ ⋅ ⋅ After weeks of staying determinedly in the shadows while its ally Ethiopia invaded Somalia with thousands of troops, tanks and helicopter gunships, the sudden decision by the Bush administration to publicly raise the profile of its operations in the country suggests a deliberate change in policy. U.S. Special Forces and the Central Intelligence Agency have paid close attention to Somalia since 2001, and Washington is believed to have provided covert intelligence assistance to Ethiopia's military effort over the past few weeks.

Congratulations to

Deirdre Griswold, and Michel Chossudovsky and his Centre for Global Research

for their intelligence, realism, and foresight. Their deep understanding of how the world really works has easily earned them this award.


Want to understand what's going on? I can't think of a better book than Michel Chossudovsky's America's "War on Terrorism" to help you fill in the pieces of the puzzle.

Here's a nice excerpt from pages 116-117. Hopefully it will be enough to whet your curiosity so you'll buy the book with all speed.

The American Empire

The onslaught of the US-led war also coincides with a worldwide depression, leading to the impoverishment of millions of people. While the civilian economy plummets, extensive financial resources are funneled towards America's war machine. The most advanced weapons systems are being developed by America's military-industrial complex with a view to achieving a position of global military and economic dominance, not only in relation to China and Russia, but also in relation to the European Union, which Washington considers as an encroachment upon America's global hegemony.

Behind America's "war on terrorism" is the militarization of vast regions of the world, leading to the consolidation of what is best described as the "American Empire". Since the 1999 war in Yugoslavia, an Anglo-American military axis has developed, based on a close coordination between Britain and the US in defense, foreign policy and intelligence. Israel is the launch pad of the Anglo-American axis in the Middle East. The objective behind this war is to "re-colonize" not only China and the countries of the former Soviet block, but also Iran, Iraq and the Indian peninsula.

War and globalization go hand in hand. The powers of the Wall Street financial establishment, the Anglo-American oil giants and the US-U.K. defense contractors are undeniably behind this process, which consists in extending the frontiers of the global market system. Ultimately, the purpose of "America's New War" is to transform sovereign nations into open territories (or "free trade areas"), both through "military means", as well as through and imposition of deadly "free market" reforms.

Defined under Washington's 1999 SRS [the Silk Road Strategy "outlines a framework for the development of America's business empire along an extensive geographical corridor" through Central Asia and the South Caucasus], America's war is intent upon destroying an entire region, which, in the course of history, was the cradle of ancient civilizations linking Western Europe to the Far East. In turn, covert support to Islamic insurgencies (channeled by the CIA through Pakistan's ISI) in the former Soviet Union, the Middle East, China and India has been used by Washington as an instrument of conquest — ie, deliberately destabilizing national societies and fostering ethnic and social divisions.

More generally, war and "free market" reforms destroy civilization by forcing national societies into abysmal poverty.