Events seem to be unfolding at such a pace that even the most dedicated of bloggers will have difficulty in keeping up. On the western borders of Russia, NATO seems intent on provoking Russia into a military confrontation. But how would the United States feel if a foreign power was intent on encircling them with a hostile military alliance? Would they care for Russian military manoeuvres on their Mexican or Canadian borders? I think not. And remember when the Soviet Union dared to put a missile defence system on Cuban soil?

American Imperialism went apoplectic and very nearly dragged the entire planet into a nuclear Armageddon. But when the European Union backed by NATO forces, seeks to lure the Ukraine into the western alliance through economic bribery and a thinly disguised political coup, and Russia makes a predictable counter move, the Pentagon starts beating the war drums… Well in any case, I’m damn sure the military industrial complexes, east and west, are rubbing their hands with glee at the prospect of a renewed military east-west conflict.

Then there are the civil wars in Egypt, Libya, Iraq and, Syria. All, it might be argued are the ripple down effects of the illegal US and British invasions of Iraq. And why did western imperial powers invade? Simple because Saddam Hussain refused to continue to play the totally compliant dictator. But it could be said that these civil wars have their origins even further back, when in 1914, the main global empires slugged it out for four bloody years in an endeavour to thwart each other’s ambitions. The Ottoman Empire was one of the big losers and the ramifications of its dissolution are still being played out to this day. And while Britain and America insist on supporting the expansionist Israeli state (a US client state if ever there was one) at the expense of the legitimate interests of the Palestinians, there will be no shortage of recruits for Islamic jihad.

Of course the type of barbarism emanating from the Islamic State phenomenon is not new. When US imperialism tried to bomb Cambodia back to the stone-age in the 1970’s for the simple misdemeanour of siding with Vietnam in its anti-colonial struggle, the end result was the murderous Pol Pot with his nihilistic Year Zero policies. It was the same story when US imperialism tried to counter the progressive direction of Afghanistan. And when the Soviet Government was asked by the Afghan government to intervene on behalf of that progressive Afghan revolution, the knee-jerk reaction by the US imperialists was to arm and train the counter-revolutionaries. This so called Afghan Mujahedeen quickly morphed into today’s Taleban, a bunch of cut-throats who consider bombing schools that teach school girls a religious duty.

So, from Pol Pot to the Taleban and now onto the Islamic State. All the product of a US imperialist policy that has absolutely nothing to do with nurturing democracy and everything to do with protecting and expanding their military-industrial empire. When the US ruling elite throw their hands in the air in mock horror at Islamic State brutality they may wish to pause to consider from whence that brutality derived. Murdering some half a million Iraqis under the spurious pretext of eliminating non-existent Iraqi WMD’s was always going to result in a blow-back. And one can’t help suspect that that blow-back has only just begun. As Saddam Hussein prophetically remarked immediately after the second US invasion of Iraq, This was going to be the Mother of all battles.

So in our Orwellian world the USA, since the conclusion of the Second World War, has managed to murder, either directly or by proxy, some two million Koreans, three million Vietnamese, one million Cambodians, half a million Indonesians, over one million South and Central Americans and now, more recently, half a million Afghans and half a million Iraqis. By my estimation that pushes Hitler and Stalin into competing for second and third place. In true Orwellian Double Speak, war is dressed up as peace, tyranny masquerades as democracy and US state terror takes on the mantle of global policeman . While Islamic State Fascists grotesquely behead a few hostages, US Imperialism beheads entire nations. And all the while, Israeli forces kill with impunity.

And while all these ‘foreign wars for democracy’ are playing themselves out, the oligarchs, sheiks and City of London manipulators are squirreling their billions away in tax havens, the biggest of which is not Switzerland or the Cayman Islands but the City of London itself. London has become the money laundering capital of the world and all the main British political parties along with the Mayor of London are in cahoots with those well suited City lawyers, accountants and fellow gangsters. The financial elites continue to pay themselves massive bonuses as if the financial collapse, of which they alone were responsible, had never happened.

And the main political parties in Britain, instead of rooting out the corruption and tightly regulating the financial industry so it might actually act for the social good, merely compete with each other on who can demonise the working class the most. I can’t help but sympathise with Russell Brand who adopted the policy; ‘Don’t vote it only encourages them’. Dan Jones has a new book out detailing just how the elites pull off this global scam. Entitled, ‘The Establishment: And How They Get Away With It’, ought to be on everyone’s reading list but it will probably only get read by those who already understand how the system works. Still, I might just buy a dozen copies and give them out as Christmas gifts. It’s time to Occupy Christmas.