Law and Disorder March 28, 2011

Afghanistan War, CIA Sponsored Terror, Civil Liberties, Habeas Corpus, Human Rights, Iraq War, Surveillance, Targeting Muslims, Torture, Truth to Power

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“Operation Libya” and the Battle for Oil: Redrawing the Map of Africa

The US and allied air strikes on Libya will have far reaching geopolitical and economic implications. Libya is the among the world’s largest oil economies with near 3.5 percent of global oil reserves, twice that of the United States. What’s going here? As Professor Michel Chossudovsky writes in his article “Operation Libya” and the Battle for Oil: Redrawing the Map of Africa.” there is no such thing as a just war. This is part of US imperialism as drafted in the 2000 Report of the Project of the New American Century entitled “Rebuilding Americas’ Defenses.” One of the main components of this military agenda is: to “Fight and decisively win in multiple, simultaneous theater wars”. Libya counts as the fourth theater of war along with Palestine, Afghanistan, Iraq. In all of this the mainstream media has used a massive disinformation in justifying this military agenda.

Professor Michel Chossudovsky:

  • This is not a humanitarian intervention. It is a carefully planned military operation.  This was on the drawing board of the Pentagon, well before the protest movements in Egypt.
  • It is a war theater, and should be viewed in the broader context of the war theater, namely Iraq, Afghanistan and Palestine.  It opens up a new area of militarization in North Africa. It has devastating consequences and is part of a global war.
  • The object of coming to the rescue of civilians by bombing with cruise missiles is an absurd proposition. They’re bombing civilian infrastructure. The same agenda as the previous war theaters, they have a list of targets and go ahead and bomb.  This whole notion of responsibility to protect is nonsense.
  • They’re getting away with it because the media is lying through their teeth.
  • Clearly there are Al-Qaeda elements that are supported by the CIA. Two years ago, the Gaddafi government made a deal with the CIA. We know that Al-Qaeda is an intelligence asset. It can be used precisely to create these conditions of insurrection as occurred in Bosnia and in Kosovo. We have to investigate a little more, who is behind the insurgency.  The insurgency is not there to win a civil war, the insurgency is there to create a pretext for an intervention.
  • I suspect this opposition is heavily divided in any event. Obama has ordered drone attacks in Pakistan.
  • The Chinese have sizable interests in Libya. This is also directed against France and Italy, its France and Belgium that are being shoved out of Central Africa.
  • Libya borders on Niger, its the entry into central Africa. Niger is important because it has large reserves of Uranium, which is in the hands of a French conglomerate.
  • The conquest of Libya is the battle for oil, the same logic as Iraq.
  • I estimated that Muslim countries have about 65-75 percent of global oil reserves. That is why we’re demonizing Muslims, they happen to inhabit.
  • Bahrain and Yemen peaceful protesters getting hit with nerve gas.

Guest – Professor Michel Chossudovsky, director of Global Research.ca , Center for Research on Globalization. An independent research and media organization based in Montreal,  Quebec, Canada.

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Community Service Society Report: Black Youth Unemployment

Unemployment in a jobless economic recovery has hit young African American men the hardest according to a recent report by the Community Service Society. PDF The highest unemployment rate in 2009 was among men 16-24 years of age—their overall unemployment rate hit 24.6 percent during the recession. Breaking it down by race, young black men had the highest unemployment rate in this group at 33.5 percent.  While only one in four black men ages 16-24 have a job in the city, that figure drops to an astounding one in ten for young black men without a high school diploma.

“The recession has created a landscape of the unemployed and underemployed with particular catastrophic consequences for young African American men,” said David R. Jones, president and CEO of the Community Service Society of New York. “We have long known the struggles of the more than 200,000 youth in New York City who are out of work and out of school. Now young black men between 16 and 24 years have become the banner of hopelessness, particularly here in New York City.”

David R. Jones:

  • Those who’ve never made the connection to work or those who’ve ceased trying. We’re talking hundreds of thousands of people involved here. African Americans constitute about a third of New Yorkers.
  • I think people have to recognize we’re in something totally new.
  • At least anecdotally, the Great Depression didn’t have this kind of impact on the black community that this recession is having on them.
  • New York in the Great Depression was a segregated city, were working exclusively in black communities or trades that were circumscribed.
  • You get pullman porters and restaurant work which were the reserves for African Americans before the civil rights movement hit. The homeless of New York were white on Bowery.
  • While we’re seeing a better recovery, the number of long term unemployed is actually greater than New York than other municipalities.
  • The trouble is you start to lose job skills, you lose hope, all sorts of with friends and employment start to disintegrate.
  • We did a report on security guards and I went back to look at it. There are 63 thousand security guards in the city of New York and virtually none of them are unionized, their average wage was $10 an hour, no health insurance, no paid sick leave.
  • New York has an usually high concentration of the working poor.
  • We’ve been focusing all our efforts, in terms of how we deal with poverty on the issue of on this nexus between work and getting to a position where they can support themselves and their families.
  • This is not limited to the South Bronx or Crown Heights, this is a national phenomenon.
  • We know when we did our report on disconnected youth, we had 200 thousand disconnected youth in New York, there were nearly 5 million disconnected youth scattered across the country before the recession.
  • We’re never going to go back, to the unemployment levels that we found unacceptable in New York of 5% again. That we’re going to back down from the 9.5 %.
  • It was always the expectation, if you worked really hard, there’s was going to be a way, sort of a seat at the table here. New York has one of the highest recidivism rates, we’re doing a couple of things, we’re making it impossible to get work,  once you’ve been incarcerated.
  • We are going to get a group of young people who feel betrayed.
  • I think this scapegoating that has taken on a really powerful voice, is partially because people want to blame someone for why they can’t get employment.

Guest – David Jones, President and Chief Executive Officer of the Community Service Society of New York , a nonpartisan, not-for-profit organization that promotes economic advancement and full civic participation for low-income New Yorkers.

Mr. Jones, an outspoken advocate for low-income New Yorkers, writes bi-weekly newspaper columns in the New York Amsterdam News and El Diario/La Prensa and a weekly blog on the Huffington Post website that serve to educate the public and government officials on issues of importance to minority and poor communities.

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