NP a view from abroad, on this glorious 4th of July

[Doug Millison]

THE ROGUE STATE
Legendary foreign correspondent JOHN PILGER on America's bid to control the
world


" [...] The capacity of the American military machine to smash impoverished
countries was never in dispute - conditional, that is, on the absence of
American ground troops and their substitution by "allied" forces, like the
Royal Marines. (During the heyday of the British Empire, Indian and other
colonial troops were used in a similar role, although the British, unlike
the Americans, were also prepared to sacrifice their own soldiers).

Since last October, Afghan leaders have reported American aircraft
destroying villages "too small to be marked on any map" with "more than 300
people killed" in one night. In a family of 40, only a small boy and his
grandmother survived, reported Richard Lloyd Parry of the Independent.

Out of sight of the television cameras "at least 3,767 civilians were
killed by US bombs between October 7 and December 10...an average of 62
innocent deaths a day", according to a study carried out at the University
of New Hampshire in the US. This is now estimated to have passed 5,000
civilian deaths: almost double the number killed on September 11.

There is no evidence that a single leader of al-Qaeda has been captured or,
to anyone's knowledge, killed. Neither has the leader of the Taliban. The
change in Afghanistan is minimal compared with the murderous feudalism that
ruled during the 1990s, and before the Taliban came to power.

[...]

There is a desperate edge to most of America's rogue actions. The Christian
"free market" fundamentalists running Washington are worried. The US
current account deficit is running at a record $34billion. Foreign
purchases of the huge US debt are falling rapidly. The US stockmarket is
heavily over-valued, and the dollar is uncertain.

As one commentator has put it, the "Bush doctrine" looks like "one last
attempt to order the world entirely around the requirements of US monopoly
capital, before it can long hope to do so".

IN other words this may well be the last throw of the dice before the US
economy goes into serious decline - as yesterday's dramatic fall in the
stock markets indicated.

This means controlling the oil and fossil fuel riches in Central Asia. It
means attacking Iraq, installing a replacement Saddam Hussein and taking
over the world's second-largest source of oil. It means surrounding a new
economic challenger, China, with bases, and intimidating the leaders of its
principal economic rival, Europe, by undermining NATO, and setting off a
trade war.

I have just visited the United States, and it is clear many people there
are worried. And many dare not say so. Their views are seldom reported in
the American mainstream media, which is self-censored and controlled,
perhaps as never before.

Instead, the air is thick with the views of the likes of Charles
Krauthammer, of the Washington Post. "Unilateralism is the key to our
success," he wrote, in describing the world of the next fifty years: a
world without protection from nuclear attack or environmental damage for
the citizens of any country except the United States; a world where
"democracy" means nothing if its benefits are at odds with American
"interests"; a world in which to express dissent against these "interests"
brands one a terrorist and justifies surveillance and repression.

There is only one way such rogue power can be resisted. It is by speaking
out and urgently. If our government won't, we must. "


http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/allnews/page.cfm?objectid=12005343&method=full&site
id=50143