Two really good articles...

Sporadic Violence or Imperial Meddling?

By Mike Whitney
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article12117.htm
02/28/06 "ICH" -- -- The events of the last week have created considerable uncertainty among Iraq-watchers about what is actually taking place on the ground. It is increasingly difficult to know who is generating the violence and why. Particularly puzzling, is trying to identify the motives behind the destruction of the Golden Dome Mosque and the massive reprisals which occurred with such astonishing speed that they seemed to be pre-arranged.

And why were so many of those who were killed …“shot, knifed, garroted or suffocated by plastic bags over their heads”. (Washington Post) Many others were killed gangland-style with hands bound behind their backs and a gunshot wound to the head.

Is this the method of killing that we would normally expect from rampaging mobs, or is it more like a deliberate campaign of terror designed to spread fear throughout the community.

In Max Fuller’s seminal article, “For Iraq, ‘The Salvador-Option, becomes Reality”, Fuller points out that the Iraqi Interior Ministry’s death squads were, in fact, trained by agents from the CIA who had honed their skills in Vietnam and El Salvador. (Recently even the New York Times has admitted that these groups received American training) Fuller sees the same pattern appearing in Iraq as in other American-backed counterinsurgency operations. He says:

“In Iraq the war comes in two phases. The first phase is complete: the destruction of the existing state, which did not comply with the interests of British and American capital. The second phase consists of building a new state tied to those interests and smashing every dissenting sector of society.”

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article12099.htm
When Americans No Longer Own America

By Thom Hartmann

02/27/06 "ICH" -- -- The Dubai Ports World deal is waking Americans up to a painful reality: So-called "conservatives" and "flat world" globalists have bankrupted our nation for their own bag of silver, and in the process are selling off America.

Through a combination of the "Fast Track" authority pushed for by Reagan and GHW Bush, sweetheart trade deals involving "most favored nation status" for dictatorships like China, and Clinton pushing us into NAFTA and the WTO (via GATT), we've abandoned the principles of tariff-based trade that built American industry and kept us strong for over 200 years.

Ultimately, it's not about security -- it's about money. In the multinational corporatocracy's "flat world," money trumps the national good, community concerns, labor interests, and the environment. NAFTA, CAFTA, and WTO tribunals can - and regularly do - strike down local and national laws. Thomas Paine's "Rights of Man" are replaced by Antonin Scalia's "Rights of Corporate Persons."

FOREIGN OWNERSHIP OF SPECIFIC U.S. INDUSTRIES

INDUSTRY PERCENTAGE FOREIGN OWNED
Sound recording industries 97%
Commodity contracts dealing and brokerage 79%
Motion picture and sound recording industries 75%
Metal ore mining 65%
Motion picture and video industries 64%
Wineries and distilleries 64%
Database, directory, and other publishers 63%
Book publishers 63%
Cement, concrete, lime, and gypsum product 62%
Engine, turbine and power transmission equipment 57%