NATO GANGSTERISM

It is no coincidence that NATO’s war for the demolition of the Libyan State began less than two months after the African Union Summit, on January 31, 2011, which started the creation of the African Monetary Fund to be realized within the year. This is proven by emails from the Obama administration’s Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, brought to light later by WikiLeaks: United States and France wanted to eliminate Gaddafi before he used Libya’s gold reserves to create a pan-African currency, alternative to the dollar and the CFA franc (currency imposed by France on its 14 former colonies). This is proven by the fact that, before the bombers went into action in 2011, the banks went into action: they seized the 150 billion dollars invested abroad by the Libyan State, most of which disappeared. In the great robbery, Goldman Sachs, the most powerful US investment bank of which Mario Draghi had been vice president, stood out.

ERIC ZUESSE—Adherents to the U.S. empire don’t get to see that type of reporting. The same billionaires — U.S. billionaires — who control America’s ‘news’-media and ‘defense’ contractors and politicians, control also America’s vassal nations indirectly; and if such international dictatorship exists, then can a given vassal nation actually be a democracy? Is this what the international corporations are bringing — a global dictatorship?

The official story is Russia hacked into U.S. “government networks, including in the Treasury and Commerce Departments,” as David Sanger of The New York Times reported. But plenty of things are uncertain. First, Sanger wrote last Sunday that “hackers have had free rein for much of the year, though it is not clear how many email and other systems they chose to enter.”

The motive of the hack is uncertain, as well what damage may have been done.

“The motive for the attack on the agency and the Treasury Department remains elusive, two people familiar with the matter said,” Sanger reported. “One government official said it was too soon to tell how damaging the attacks were and how much material was lost.”

BRIAN CLOUGHLEY-NATO’s Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg told Politico he considers that growing challenges are being posed by China and that in consequence “To protect Europe, we need the transatlantic bond, we need North America, the U.S. and Canada… we all realize that the global balance of power is changing in a fundamental way. The rise of China is really changing the security environment we face.” He warned that the Chinese government was “investing heavily in new capabilities, including nuclear weapons, missiles, new technologies.”

The absurdity of his warning about nuclear weapons, alone, is enough to destroy his entire argument, which is based solely on finding reasons to try to justify the posture and even expansion of the U.S.-NATO military grouping which, although for the past years has focused on trying to intimidate Russia, is now seeking fresh fields to justify its continuing existence.

BARBARA MACLEAN—Even before I became a socialist, I never bought that the US went into other countries to bring them the fruits of civilization. But I didn’t understand how US foreign policy was connected to the workings of capitalism. When capitalists have a unionized working class and they must compete with other capitalists for land, both of these conditions limit the rate of profit for capitalists. Capitalists are also constrained by the natural resources in their home territory. All three of these limitations are overcome when capitalists become imperialists, seizing cheap land and non-unionized cheap labor abroad.