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Oleg Smirnov
Dec 6, 2015, 11:59:27 AM12/6/15
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> Obama and company are indeed on the wrong side of history.
<https://consortiumnews.com/2015/12/06/obamas-credibility-crisis/>
Obama's Credibility Crisis December 6, 2015
Exclusive: Inside Official Washington's bubble, the Important People believe
their "group think" is the envy of the world, but the truth is that their
credibility has collapsed to such a degree that their propaganda can't even
match up with the head-chopping videos of the Islamic State crazies, writes
Robert Parry.
By Robert Parry
Like the old story of the little boy who cried wolf, the U.S. government is
finding out that - just when its credibility is most needed - it doesn't have
any. With all its "soft power" schemes of "perception management," funding
"citizen bloggers" and sticking with "narratives" long after they've been
discredited, the U.S. government is losing the propaganda battle against ISIS.
That was the conclusion of outside experts who examined the State Department's
online campaigns to undercut ISIS, according to an article by The Washington
Post's Greg Miller who wrote that the review "cast new doubt on the U.S.
government's ability to serve as a credible voice against the terrorist
group's propaganda." <http://wapo.st/1O52mUd>
In other words, even when the U.S. government competes with the creepy
head-choppers of ISIS, the U.S. government comes in second. Of course, the
State Department remains in denial about its collapse of credibility - and
typically won't release the details of the critical study.
Instead, Undersecretary of State for Public Diplomacy Richard Stengel insisted
that the State Department's messaging operation "is trending upward," although
acknowledging that his team is facing a tough adversary in ISIS and must "be
equally creative and innovative." [For more on Stengel's falsehoods, see
Consortiumnews.com's "Who's the Propagandist: US or RT?" <http://is.gd/rkiAxd>]
But the U.S. government's problem is much deeper than its inability to counter
ISIS propaganda. Increasingly, almost no one outside Official Washington
believes what senior U.S. officials say about nearly anything - and that loss
of trust is exacerbating a wide range of dangers, from demagogy on the 2016
campaign trail to terrorism recruitment in the Middle East and in the West.
President Barack Obama seems to want so desperately to be one of the elite
inhabitants of Official Washington's bubble that he keeps pushing narratives
that he knows aren't true, all the better to demonstrate that he belongs in
the in-crowd. It has reached the point that he speaks out so many sides of his
mouth that no one can tell what his words actually mean.
Indeed, Obama arguably suffers from the worst "credibility gap" among the
American people since Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon on the Vietnam War or
at least since George W. Bush on the Iraq War. As eloquent as he can be,
average folk in the U.S. and around the world tune him out.
White Rage
So, on the domestic side, when the President tells Americans that another
trade deal - this one with Asia - is going to be good for them, does anyone
outside the opinion pages of the elite newspapers and the big-shot think tanks
believe him?
America now has a swelling underclass of formerly middle-class whites who know
that they've been sold out as they face declining living standards and an
unprecedented surge in dying rates. <http://nyti.ms/1Q2zcuH> Yet, because they
don't trust Obama, these whites are easily convinced by demagogues that their
plight stems from government programs designed to help blacks and other
minorities.
This white rage has fueled the race-baiting and anti-immigrant campaigns of
billionaire Donald Trump and other political outsiders in the Republican
Party. Trump has soared to the top of the GOP presidential field because he
says a few things that are true - that rich people have bought up the
political process and that trade deals have screwed the middle class - giving
him an aura of "authenticity" that then extends to his uglier comments.
Americans are so starving for a taste of honesty - which they're not getting
from Obama or other members of the elite - that they will believe a
megalomaniacal huckster like Trump. After all, they know that what they get
from Obama and his clique is manipulative spin, treating them like dummies to
be tricked, not citizens of a Republic to be respected.
The hard truth is that the Great American Middle Class indeed has been sold
out, often by fast-talking neo-liberals like President Bill Clinton who - with
the help of many centrists and conservatives - pushed through trade deals and
banking "reforms" that gussied up Wall Street while boarding up Main Street.
The neo-liberals, working with Republicans, also promoted trade deals with
Mexico and other low-wage countries that sent millions of U.S. jobs overseas.
From this experience, many Americans see "guv-mint" to blame for their plight,
enticing them down the right-wing path that seeks to negate government power.
What these Americans don't grasp is that this Tea Party ideology is further
selling them out to the corporatists and the speculators who will be put in an
ever stronger position to gouge what's left of the Middle Class.
In other words, at a time when Americans need their government to collectively
represent their interests - to provide for "the general Welfare" as the U.S.
Constitution mandated - they have no faith that the government is theirs or
will protect their interests.
The Propaganda Imperative
A similar realization holds true with foreign policy. The U.S. government has
so thoroughly bought into the concept of "perception management"
<http://bit.ly/1xvdAyM> and "strategic communications" <http://bit.ly/1KLXoA6> -
blending psy-ops, propaganda and P.R. - that the government has decoupled from
facts. Information is just there to be exploited for geopolitical gain, usually
to pin some offense on the latest "designated villain."
We saw this in 2003 with the disinformation campaign about Iraq's WMD, but it
didn't stop there. The U.S. government has used its control of important media
levers to demonize a variety of world leaders who have gotten in the way of
Official Washington's desires. Meanwhile, equal or worse abuses by "our guys"
are downplayed or ignored.
For instance, Libya's secular dictator Muammar Gaddafi was mocked when he
warned of Islamist terrorists rampaging in eastern Libya. Indeed, Gaddafi's
vow to fight them became the pretext used for a "regime change" operation
under the "human rights" banner, "responsibility to protect."
That operation - promoted by then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton who
gloated over Gaddafi's murder ("We came, we saw, he died") - has transformed
Libya into a land of anarchy with the Islamic State and other terror groups
seizing ground and chopping off heads. But Clinton, like other architects of
this disaster, won't admit to a mistake.
Similarly, the Obama administration and the compliant mainstream U.S. media
pushed a propaganda campaign against Syria's secular leader Bashar al-Assad,
blaming him for virtually all the violence <http://chilp.it/e4d19a8> that
engulfed Syria despite the awareness of senior U.S. officials, including Vice
President Joe Biden, about the key role played by Sunni jihadists and terror
groups <http://vurl.com/v2B40> with the backing of Sunni-ruled Gulf states and
Turkey.
So, when a lethal sarin gas attack struck a suburb of Damascus on Aug. 21,
2013, the Obama administration and key "human rights" groups blamed Assad's
forces although some U.S. intelligence analysts and independent observers
quickly smelled a rat, the likelihood of a provocation sponsored by Al Qaeda
operatives - possibly aided by Turkish intelligence <http://migre.me/sk2ap> -
trying to induce the U.S. military to destroy Assad's army and clear the way
for a terrorist victory.
Though that "false flag" scenario became increasingly likely - as the case
against Assad's forces essentially collapsed <http://qr.net/bkksM> - Obama and
his administration have never corrected the record. They just left what now
appears to be a false narrative on the record, so it can still be cited by
neocon opinion leaders or "human rights" advocates and thus be used to mislead
the American public.
Some people defend Obama for not admitting a mistake because to do so would
undermine U.S. credibility, but I think the opposite holds true, that a frank
admission that there was a misguided rush to judgment would be refreshing for
Americans who are sick and tired of spin.
Similarly, there's the case of the July 17, 2014 shoot-down of Malaysia
Airlines Flight 17 over eastern Ukraine, which the Obama administration pinned
on ethnic Russian rebels and indirectly on Russian President Vladimir Putin.
The case whipped up a frenzy of Russia-bashing across the West and thus became
a valuable propaganda club.
But again, as U.S. intelligence analysts shifted through the evidence, some
moved off in a different direction <http://is.gd/Hll2Qr>, blaming a rogue
element of the Ukrainian government, according to a source briefed on these
findings.
Yet, instead of either correcting the record or presenting evidence to
buttress the initial judgment, the Obama administration has gone silent,
refusing to make public any evidence that it possesses about the killing of
298 people. That has allowed the West's mainstream media and some supposedly
"independent" bloggers to continue to push the Russia-did-it line.
<http://migre.me/sk2gu>
Shifting Blame
More recently, the Obama administration has reacted to overwhelming evidence
that some of its Mideast "allies" have been aiding and abetting the Islamic
State, Al Qaeda and other violent jihadists by trying to shift the blame to
the Syrian government and Russia. <http://wapo.st/1PWoB4I>
In other words, we're told not to blame the Saudis and the Qataris for funding
and arming these jihadists (despite admissions from Vice President Biden,
former Secretary of State Clinton and the Defense Intelligence Agency). Nor
should we notice that the Islamic State has been shipping its illicit oil into
Turkey in large truck convoys through Turkish border crossings which also
allow jihadist fighters to go back and forth.
The evidentiary record of Turkey's covert support <http://huff.to/1Iaatvo> for
these radical jihadists is a long one, including many admissions from Turkish
officials and reports from major Turkish media outlets. But we're told to
ignore all that evidence and trust that Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan
is doing all he can to seal off his border and stop the terrorists.
Instead, though the Syrian and Russian governments have been delivering heavy
blows to the jihadists, including Russia shaming the Obama administration into
belatedly joining in the bombing of those ISIS oil convoys, we're supposed to
believe that Damascus and Moscow are actually in cahoots with ISIS. This
storyline amounts to the U.S. government's own crazy conspiracy theory.
We're also supposed to believe that the Saudis, the Qataris and the Turks are
seriously engaged in the grand U.S. "coalition" - Obama has boasted of its 65
members - to fight ISIS, Al Qaeda and other terrorists. But these "allies" are
mostly just going through the motions.
The overall impact of the U.S. government's years and even decades of public
manipulation has been to "trifurcate" the American people into three groups:
those who still believe the official line, those who are open to real evidence
that goes against the official line, and those who believe in fact-free
conspiracy theories positing that nothing from any official source can be
true.
To say that such a division is not healthy for a democratic Republic is to
state the obvious. Indeed, a democratic Republic cannot long survive if
government officials insist on managing the people's perceptions through
propaganda and disinformation. Nor can it long survive if a significant part
of the population believes the craziest of conspiracy theories.
Yet, it seems that President Obama and other senior officials simply can't
resist taking the easy route of deception to reach a compliant consensus,
rather than engaging in the hard work of presenting clear evidence and
engaging the American people in serious debate.
Or, perhaps Obama and his advisers are too deep into the lies and thus fear
the consequences of admitting that many of their claims were false or
misleading. That would be like Toto pulling the curtain away from the Wizard
of Oz and the wizard immediately confessing. The instinct is to tell the
populace to ignore that man behind the curtain.
The Impossible Speech
I have long advocated that Obama should go on television in the style of
President Dwight Eisenhower's farewell address in 1961, sitting in the Oval
Office, hands-folded, none of Obama's glitzy stage-craft, and simply level
with the American people.
Before the speech, Obama could release the 28 pages from the congressional
9/11 report about Saudi support for the hijackers. He also could release other
U.S. intelligence analyses on the role of the Saudis, Qataris and Turks in
supporting Al Qaeda and ISIS. He could toss in what U.S. intelligence analysts
have concluded about the 2013 sarin gas attack in Syria and about the 2014
shoot-down of MH-17 in Ukraine.
To the degree that the U.S. government had misled the American people, the
President could fess up. He could explain how he and other government
officials were seduced by the siren song of the propagandists who promised to
line up public opinion behind a policy with no muss or fuss. He could admit
that such manipulation of U.S. citizens by the U.S. government is simply
wrong.
Obama could explain that he now realizes that elitism in the pursuit of the
people's subservience is incompatible with the principles of a Republic in
which the citizens are the sovereigns of the nation. He could ask our
forgiveness and recommit himself to the government transparency that he
promised during the 2008 election. (While at it, he could pardon and apologize
to the whistleblowers whom he has prosecuted and imprisoned.)
Having reestablished a foundation of trust - and repudiating the past decades
of deception - he could explain what has to be done in Syria. Most
significantly he could demand that Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Turkey and other
countries helping ISIS and Al Qaeda shut down that assistance immediately or
face severe financial and other consequences, "allies" or not.
Then, he could promise that - after reasonable stability is restored to
Syria - the people of Syria would be allowed to decide who they want as their
leaders. Right now, the key obstacle to a new power-sharing government in
Syria is the West's insistence that Assad can't compete in future democratic
elections. Yet, if President Obama is so sure that most Syrians hate Assad,
nothing could demonstrate that better than Assad's resounding defeat at the
polls. Why avoid that?
But it's become painfully obvious that Obama does not have it in him to give
that speech or take such actions. It would require defying Official
Washington's
neocon-dominated insider community and "allies," such as Turkey, Saudi Arabia,
Qatar and Israel. To appease those forces, he will continue to play word games
and to spin propaganda narratives. He is too much of an elitist to inform and
empower the American people.
Thus, the Obama administration's credibility gap won't be closed. Indeed, it
will widen into a chasm, with Official Washington sitting on one side and the
vast majority of humanity on the other. The undeserving winners will include
the terrorists of ISIS and Al Qaeda. There will be many losers who deserve
better.
(Obama has scheduled an Oval Office speech for Sunday night on the topic of
terrorism, to describe what he has been doing to protect Americans.)
Investigative reporter Robert Parry broke many of the Iran-Contra stories for
The Associated Press and Newsweek in the 1980s. You can buy his latest book,
America's Stolen Narrative, either in print here <http://bit.ly/1e1Bae7> or as
an e-book (from Amazon <http://amzn.to/1NgNymN> and barnesandnoble.com
<http://bit.ly/1QNY0rx>). You also can order Robert Parry's trilogy on the
Bush Family and its connections to various right-wing operatives for only $34.
The trilogy includes America's Stolen Narrative. For details on this offer,
click here <http://bit.ly/1itVqrt>.
> <http://www.phillip-butler.com/rant-to-end-all-obama-rants/>
>
> Is the World Sick of Obama Yet? I Am
<https://consortiumnews.com/2015/12/06/obamas-credibility-crisis/>
Obama's Credibility Crisis December 6, 2015
Exclusive: Inside Official Washington's bubble, the Important People believe
their "group think" is the envy of the world, but the truth is that their
credibility has collapsed to such a degree that their propaganda can't even
match up with the head-chopping videos of the Islamic State crazies, writes
Robert Parry.
By Robert Parry
Like the old story of the little boy who cried wolf, the U.S. government is
finding out that - just when its credibility is most needed - it doesn't have
any. With all its "soft power" schemes of "perception management," funding
"citizen bloggers" and sticking with "narratives" long after they've been
discredited, the U.S. government is losing the propaganda battle against ISIS.
That was the conclusion of outside experts who examined the State Department's
online campaigns to undercut ISIS, according to an article by The Washington
Post's Greg Miller who wrote that the review "cast new doubt on the U.S.
government's ability to serve as a credible voice against the terrorist
group's propaganda." <http://wapo.st/1O52mUd>
In other words, even when the U.S. government competes with the creepy
head-choppers of ISIS, the U.S. government comes in second. Of course, the
State Department remains in denial about its collapse of credibility - and
typically won't release the details of the critical study.
Instead, Undersecretary of State for Public Diplomacy Richard Stengel insisted
that the State Department's messaging operation "is trending upward," although
acknowledging that his team is facing a tough adversary in ISIS and must "be
equally creative and innovative." [For more on Stengel's falsehoods, see
Consortiumnews.com's "Who's the Propagandist: US or RT?" <http://is.gd/rkiAxd>]
But the U.S. government's problem is much deeper than its inability to counter
ISIS propaganda. Increasingly, almost no one outside Official Washington
believes what senior U.S. officials say about nearly anything - and that loss
of trust is exacerbating a wide range of dangers, from demagogy on the 2016
campaign trail to terrorism recruitment in the Middle East and in the West.
President Barack Obama seems to want so desperately to be one of the elite
inhabitants of Official Washington's bubble that he keeps pushing narratives
that he knows aren't true, all the better to demonstrate that he belongs in
the in-crowd. It has reached the point that he speaks out so many sides of his
mouth that no one can tell what his words actually mean.
Indeed, Obama arguably suffers from the worst "credibility gap" among the
American people since Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon on the Vietnam War or
at least since George W. Bush on the Iraq War. As eloquent as he can be,
average folk in the U.S. and around the world tune him out.
White Rage
So, on the domestic side, when the President tells Americans that another
trade deal - this one with Asia - is going to be good for them, does anyone
outside the opinion pages of the elite newspapers and the big-shot think tanks
believe him?
America now has a swelling underclass of formerly middle-class whites who know
that they've been sold out as they face declining living standards and an
unprecedented surge in dying rates. <http://nyti.ms/1Q2zcuH> Yet, because they
don't trust Obama, these whites are easily convinced by demagogues that their
plight stems from government programs designed to help blacks and other
minorities.
This white rage has fueled the race-baiting and anti-immigrant campaigns of
billionaire Donald Trump and other political outsiders in the Republican
Party. Trump has soared to the top of the GOP presidential field because he
says a few things that are true - that rich people have bought up the
political process and that trade deals have screwed the middle class - giving
him an aura of "authenticity" that then extends to his uglier comments.
Americans are so starving for a taste of honesty - which they're not getting
from Obama or other members of the elite - that they will believe a
megalomaniacal huckster like Trump. After all, they know that what they get
from Obama and his clique is manipulative spin, treating them like dummies to
be tricked, not citizens of a Republic to be respected.
The hard truth is that the Great American Middle Class indeed has been sold
out, often by fast-talking neo-liberals like President Bill Clinton who - with
the help of many centrists and conservatives - pushed through trade deals and
banking "reforms" that gussied up Wall Street while boarding up Main Street.
The neo-liberals, working with Republicans, also promoted trade deals with
Mexico and other low-wage countries that sent millions of U.S. jobs overseas.
From this experience, many Americans see "guv-mint" to blame for their plight,
enticing them down the right-wing path that seeks to negate government power.
What these Americans don't grasp is that this Tea Party ideology is further
selling them out to the corporatists and the speculators who will be put in an
ever stronger position to gouge what's left of the Middle Class.
In other words, at a time when Americans need their government to collectively
represent their interests - to provide for "the general Welfare" as the U.S.
Constitution mandated - they have no faith that the government is theirs or
will protect their interests.
The Propaganda Imperative
A similar realization holds true with foreign policy. The U.S. government has
so thoroughly bought into the concept of "perception management"
<http://bit.ly/1xvdAyM> and "strategic communications" <http://bit.ly/1KLXoA6> -
blending psy-ops, propaganda and P.R. - that the government has decoupled from
facts. Information is just there to be exploited for geopolitical gain, usually
to pin some offense on the latest "designated villain."
We saw this in 2003 with the disinformation campaign about Iraq's WMD, but it
didn't stop there. The U.S. government has used its control of important media
levers to demonize a variety of world leaders who have gotten in the way of
Official Washington's desires. Meanwhile, equal or worse abuses by "our guys"
are downplayed or ignored.
For instance, Libya's secular dictator Muammar Gaddafi was mocked when he
warned of Islamist terrorists rampaging in eastern Libya. Indeed, Gaddafi's
vow to fight them became the pretext used for a "regime change" operation
under the "human rights" banner, "responsibility to protect."
That operation - promoted by then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton who
gloated over Gaddafi's murder ("We came, we saw, he died") - has transformed
Libya into a land of anarchy with the Islamic State and other terror groups
seizing ground and chopping off heads. But Clinton, like other architects of
this disaster, won't admit to a mistake.
Similarly, the Obama administration and the compliant mainstream U.S. media
pushed a propaganda campaign against Syria's secular leader Bashar al-Assad,
blaming him for virtually all the violence <http://chilp.it/e4d19a8> that
engulfed Syria despite the awareness of senior U.S. officials, including Vice
President Joe Biden, about the key role played by Sunni jihadists and terror
groups <http://vurl.com/v2B40> with the backing of Sunni-ruled Gulf states and
Turkey.
So, when a lethal sarin gas attack struck a suburb of Damascus on Aug. 21,
2013, the Obama administration and key "human rights" groups blamed Assad's
forces although some U.S. intelligence analysts and independent observers
quickly smelled a rat, the likelihood of a provocation sponsored by Al Qaeda
operatives - possibly aided by Turkish intelligence <http://migre.me/sk2ap> -
trying to induce the U.S. military to destroy Assad's army and clear the way
for a terrorist victory.
Though that "false flag" scenario became increasingly likely - as the case
against Assad's forces essentially collapsed <http://qr.net/bkksM> - Obama and
his administration have never corrected the record. They just left what now
appears to be a false narrative on the record, so it can still be cited by
neocon opinion leaders or "human rights" advocates and thus be used to mislead
the American public.
Some people defend Obama for not admitting a mistake because to do so would
undermine U.S. credibility, but I think the opposite holds true, that a frank
admission that there was a misguided rush to judgment would be refreshing for
Americans who are sick and tired of spin.
Similarly, there's the case of the July 17, 2014 shoot-down of Malaysia
Airlines Flight 17 over eastern Ukraine, which the Obama administration pinned
on ethnic Russian rebels and indirectly on Russian President Vladimir Putin.
The case whipped up a frenzy of Russia-bashing across the West and thus became
a valuable propaganda club.
But again, as U.S. intelligence analysts shifted through the evidence, some
moved off in a different direction <http://is.gd/Hll2Qr>, blaming a rogue
element of the Ukrainian government, according to a source briefed on these
findings.
Yet, instead of either correcting the record or presenting evidence to
buttress the initial judgment, the Obama administration has gone silent,
refusing to make public any evidence that it possesses about the killing of
298 people. That has allowed the West's mainstream media and some supposedly
"independent" bloggers to continue to push the Russia-did-it line.
<http://migre.me/sk2gu>
Shifting Blame
More recently, the Obama administration has reacted to overwhelming evidence
that some of its Mideast "allies" have been aiding and abetting the Islamic
State, Al Qaeda and other violent jihadists by trying to shift the blame to
the Syrian government and Russia. <http://wapo.st/1PWoB4I>
In other words, we're told not to blame the Saudis and the Qataris for funding
and arming these jihadists (despite admissions from Vice President Biden,
former Secretary of State Clinton and the Defense Intelligence Agency). Nor
should we notice that the Islamic State has been shipping its illicit oil into
Turkey in large truck convoys through Turkish border crossings which also
allow jihadist fighters to go back and forth.
The evidentiary record of Turkey's covert support <http://huff.to/1Iaatvo> for
these radical jihadists is a long one, including many admissions from Turkish
officials and reports from major Turkish media outlets. But we're told to
ignore all that evidence and trust that Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan
is doing all he can to seal off his border and stop the terrorists.
Instead, though the Syrian and Russian governments have been delivering heavy
blows to the jihadists, including Russia shaming the Obama administration into
belatedly joining in the bombing of those ISIS oil convoys, we're supposed to
believe that Damascus and Moscow are actually in cahoots with ISIS. This
storyline amounts to the U.S. government's own crazy conspiracy theory.
We're also supposed to believe that the Saudis, the Qataris and the Turks are
seriously engaged in the grand U.S. "coalition" - Obama has boasted of its 65
members - to fight ISIS, Al Qaeda and other terrorists. But these "allies" are
mostly just going through the motions.
The overall impact of the U.S. government's years and even decades of public
manipulation has been to "trifurcate" the American people into three groups:
those who still believe the official line, those who are open to real evidence
that goes against the official line, and those who believe in fact-free
conspiracy theories positing that nothing from any official source can be
true.
To say that such a division is not healthy for a democratic Republic is to
state the obvious. Indeed, a democratic Republic cannot long survive if
government officials insist on managing the people's perceptions through
propaganda and disinformation. Nor can it long survive if a significant part
of the population believes the craziest of conspiracy theories.
Yet, it seems that President Obama and other senior officials simply can't
resist taking the easy route of deception to reach a compliant consensus,
rather than engaging in the hard work of presenting clear evidence and
engaging the American people in serious debate.
Or, perhaps Obama and his advisers are too deep into the lies and thus fear
the consequences of admitting that many of their claims were false or
misleading. That would be like Toto pulling the curtain away from the Wizard
of Oz and the wizard immediately confessing. The instinct is to tell the
populace to ignore that man behind the curtain.
The Impossible Speech
I have long advocated that Obama should go on television in the style of
President Dwight Eisenhower's farewell address in 1961, sitting in the Oval
Office, hands-folded, none of Obama's glitzy stage-craft, and simply level
with the American people.
Before the speech, Obama could release the 28 pages from the congressional
9/11 report about Saudi support for the hijackers. He also could release other
U.S. intelligence analyses on the role of the Saudis, Qataris and Turks in
supporting Al Qaeda and ISIS. He could toss in what U.S. intelligence analysts
have concluded about the 2013 sarin gas attack in Syria and about the 2014
shoot-down of MH-17 in Ukraine.
To the degree that the U.S. government had misled the American people, the
President could fess up. He could explain how he and other government
officials were seduced by the siren song of the propagandists who promised to
line up public opinion behind a policy with no muss or fuss. He could admit
that such manipulation of U.S. citizens by the U.S. government is simply
wrong.
Obama could explain that he now realizes that elitism in the pursuit of the
people's subservience is incompatible with the principles of a Republic in
which the citizens are the sovereigns of the nation. He could ask our
forgiveness and recommit himself to the government transparency that he
promised during the 2008 election. (While at it, he could pardon and apologize
to the whistleblowers whom he has prosecuted and imprisoned.)
Having reestablished a foundation of trust - and repudiating the past decades
of deception - he could explain what has to be done in Syria. Most
significantly he could demand that Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Turkey and other
countries helping ISIS and Al Qaeda shut down that assistance immediately or
face severe financial and other consequences, "allies" or not.
Then, he could promise that - after reasonable stability is restored to
Syria - the people of Syria would be allowed to decide who they want as their
leaders. Right now, the key obstacle to a new power-sharing government in
Syria is the West's insistence that Assad can't compete in future democratic
elections. Yet, if President Obama is so sure that most Syrians hate Assad,
nothing could demonstrate that better than Assad's resounding defeat at the
polls. Why avoid that?
But it's become painfully obvious that Obama does not have it in him to give
that speech or take such actions. It would require defying Official
Washington's
neocon-dominated insider community and "allies," such as Turkey, Saudi Arabia,
Qatar and Israel. To appease those forces, he will continue to play word games
and to spin propaganda narratives. He is too much of an elitist to inform and
empower the American people.
Thus, the Obama administration's credibility gap won't be closed. Indeed, it
will widen into a chasm, with Official Washington sitting on one side and the
vast majority of humanity on the other. The undeserving winners will include
the terrorists of ISIS and Al Qaeda. There will be many losers who deserve
better.
(Obama has scheduled an Oval Office speech for Sunday night on the topic of
terrorism, to describe what he has been doing to protect Americans.)
Investigative reporter Robert Parry broke many of the Iran-Contra stories for
The Associated Press and Newsweek in the 1980s. You can buy his latest book,
America's Stolen Narrative, either in print here <http://bit.ly/1e1Bae7> or as
an e-book (from Amazon <http://amzn.to/1NgNymN> and barnesandnoble.com
<http://bit.ly/1QNY0rx>). You also can order Robert Parry's trilogy on the
Bush Family and its connections to various right-wing operatives for only $34.
The trilogy includes America's Stolen Narrative. For details on this offer,
click here <http://bit.ly/1itVqrt>.
> <http://www.phillip-butler.com/rant-to-end-all-obama-rants/>
>
> Is the World Sick of Obama Yet? I Am
Oleg Smirnov
Dec 7, 2015, 11:36:07 PM12/7/15
to
<http://tinyurl.com/gshyv8x> consortiumnews.com
The Incredible Shrinking President
December 7, 2015
Exclusive: Trying to soothe American fears about "terrorism," President Obama
glossed over the dangerous contradictions in his own policy, particularly the
fact that Saudi Arabia, Turkey and other "allies" have been helping Al Qaeda
and ISIS, notes Daniel Lazare.
By Daniel Lazare ..
Is Al Qaeda Still Terrorist?
This tendency toward self-deception was evident in Obama's references to Al
Qaeda and ISIL (also known as ISIS, Islamic State and Daesh).
"Our military and counterterrorism professionals have relentlessly pursued
terrorist networks overseas," he said, "disrupting safe havens in several
different countries, killing Osama bin Laden, and decimating al Qaeda's
leadership." But then, a few minutes later, he added:
"In Iraq and Syria, airstrikes are taking out ISIL leaders, heavy weapons, oil
tankers, infrastructure. And since the attacks in Paris, our closest allies -
including France, Germany and the United Kingdom - have ramped up their
contributions to our military campaign, which will help us accelerate our
effort to destroy ISIL."
But wait - what happened to Al Qaeda? Obama's sleight of hand was designed to
obscure the fact that, while bombing ISIS, the U.S. has been standing by as
Turkey and Saudi Arabia, two of its closest regional "allies," have channeled
money and arms to Al Nusra <http://ind.pn/1jLcHMT>, Al Qaeda's official Syrian
affiliate, via an Islamist umbrella group calling itself the Army of Conquest.
The Obama administration didn't object when the Saudi-supplied Al Nusra Front
and its principal "Army of Conquest" ally, another jihadi group called Ahrar
al-Sham, used U.S.-made TOW missiles in an offensive to seize portions of
Idlib province. [See Consortiumnews.com's "Climbing into Bed with Al-Qaeda."
<http://bit.ly/1AzmGr2>
The administration didn't even speak up when Al Nusra issued an
Arabic-language video <https://youtu.be/eesdDYUs6Vw> thanking the U.S.-backed
and supposedly "moderate" Free Syrian Army for supplying it with advanced
weaponry, according to a new Israeli-Arab news organization known as Al-Masdar
<http://bit.ly/1YVzoh8>.
So, while bragging about killing bin Laden (in 2011) and "decimating" Al
Qaeda's
leadership, Obama forgot to mention that the U.S. is currently backing the
same forces as they seek to topple the Assad government in Damascus - or at
least backing groups that cooperate with Al Qaeda.
Obama noted that "groups like ISIL grew stronger amidst the chaos of war in
Iraq and then Syria" while also forgetting to mention growing reports
<http://nyti.ms/1YVzq8I> that it is not only chaos that has allowed ISIS to
grow, but donations from super-rich Arab gulf monarchies, which the U.S.
government considers its "allies."
"We're working with Turkey to seal its border with Syria," Obama added, when
in fact Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu has already given the proposal
the cold shoulder <http://bit.ly/1IQW3SD> - and Turkey's alleged
border-sealing effort is belied by evidence that giant convoys carrying ISIS
oil have been routinely entering Turkey without resistance. At least until
Russia essentially shamed the U.S. into joining in a bombing interdiction
campaign last month.
Obama bragged that "sixty-five countries . have joined an American-led
coalition" against ISIS, an unconscious echo of George W. Bush's claim that 48
nations had joined a "Coalition of the Willing" to invade Iraq. But Obama
neglected to note that the Saudis and other Gulf monarchies have all but
abandoned the effort <http://nyti.ms/1Hp27pP> in order to concentrate on their
sectarian war against Shi'ite Houthis in Yemen, where some 2,600 civilians
have died since air strikes began in March.
Obama also forgot to mention Russia, whose warplanes are pounding ISIS, Al
Nusra and other rebel forces. While promising to "continue to provide training
and equipment to tens of thousands of Iraqi and Syrian forces fighting ISIL on
the ground so that we take away their safe havens," Obama said nothing about
tens of thousands of Syrian army troops who have been battling ISIS, Al Nusra,
and other Salafist groups since at least 2012, despite sanctions from the U.S.
<http://nyti.ms/1TxyqEe> and other Western powers.
Obama also failed to mention Syrian President Bashar al-Assad even though
overthrowing his government is clearly America's prime goal. Somehow, Obama
has gotten it into his head that the best way to combat ISIS is by ridding it
of its foremost enemy, a case of self-deception raised to the nth degree.
The Saudi Brand of Islam
But Obama was perhaps at his most duplicitous in his comments about religion.
The killers in San Bernardino "embrac[ed] a perverted interpretation of
Islam," he said.
But, Obama added, Islamic State "does not speak for Islam. They are thugs and
killers, part of a cult of death, and they account for a tiny fraction of more
than a billion Muslims around the world, including millions of patriotic
Muslim Americans who reject their hateful ideology."
That is quite true. But then he went on to say:
"That does not mean denying the fact that an extremist ideology has spread
within some Muslim communities. This is a real problem that Muslims must
confront, without excuse. Muslim leaders here and around the globe have to
continue working with us to decisively and unequivocally reject the hateful
ideology that groups like ISIL and al Qaeda promote; to speak out against not
just acts of violence, but also those interpretations of Islam that are
incompatible with the values of religious tolerance, mutual respect, and human
dignity."
Yet, if Muslim leaders are to "continue" working to oppose such ideology, that
assumes that they are doing so already. But the Saudis, the dominant power
among the Arab Gulf states, is probably the most illiberal society on earth,
one that bars all religions other than ultra-conservative Wahhabist Islam,
arrests Christians <http://bit.ly/1N8jivn> for the "crime" of attending
underground religious services, and savagely represses <http://bit.ly/1NJE71a>
its own 15-percent Shi'ite minority.
In 2006, Freedom House and the Institute for Gulf Affairs, both eminently
conservative organizations, issued a joint report finding
<http://bit.ly/1QbQJkt> that Saudi textbooks instruct students to "hate"
Christians, Jews, polytheists, and unbelievers; teach that the Crusades are
still ongoing; advise students not to greet, befriend, imitate, or even be
courteous to non-Wahhabists; and state that "the struggle between Muslims and
Jews" will continue until judgment day and that "Muslims will triumph because
they are right."
What's more, Obama knows this reality because the State Department completed
its own comprehensive study of Saudi textbooks in 2012. Yet the administration
opted to suppress the report <http://thebea.st/1h5rGfY> for the same reason
that it has suppressed a 28-page chapter in the joint congressional report on
9/11 dealing with the question of Saudi complicity - because the alliance with
Riyadh is sacrosanct and trumps other "minor" issues such as religious bigotry
and the attack on the World Trade Center.
The Saudi Arabia also got a pass regarding its connection to the San
Bernardino massacre. Obama promised in his speech to "put in place stronger
screening for those who come to America without a visa so that we can take a
hard look at whether they've traveled to warzones."
But Tashfeen Malik, the woman who reportedly pledged allegiance to ISIS
shortly before embarking on a killing spree with her husband Syed Rizwan
Farook, did not travel to a warzone. She traveled and lived in Saudi Arabia.
Although Tashfeen Malik was of Pakistani origin, she spent most of her life in
Saudi Arabia, where she and her father drank deeply from the well of
Wahhabism. Relatives say her father emerged deeply conservatized from the
experience while Tashfeen was so thoroughly Saudi in her outlook that when she
returned to Pakistan to study pharmacology, she had difficulty adjusting
<http://nyti.ms/1SKTvuS> even on a campus notorious for its fundamental
Islamic influences.
"She told me, 'My parents live in Saudi Arabia, and I am not getting along
with my roommates and cannot adjust with them, so can you help me?'" one
faculty member told The New York Times. Yet no one thought to worry since
both Saudi Arabia and Pakistan are key U.S. "allies." ..
Obama's Bind
Barack Obama is thus a man caught in a bind. If his speech was rife with
contradictions, it's because he wants to have his cake and eat it, too. He
supports Sunni extremists in Saudi Arabia, Yemen and Syria, yet is shocked,
shocked, when they unleash their violence on innocent bystanders in Paris or
San Bernardino. ..
Read unabridged <http://tinyurl.com/gshyv8x>
The Incredible Shrinking President
December 7, 2015
Exclusive: Trying to soothe American fears about "terrorism," President Obama
glossed over the dangerous contradictions in his own policy, particularly the
fact that Saudi Arabia, Turkey and other "allies" have been helping Al Qaeda
and ISIS, notes Daniel Lazare.
By Daniel Lazare ..
Is Al Qaeda Still Terrorist?
This tendency toward self-deception was evident in Obama's references to Al
Qaeda and ISIL (also known as ISIS, Islamic State and Daesh).
"Our military and counterterrorism professionals have relentlessly pursued
terrorist networks overseas," he said, "disrupting safe havens in several
different countries, killing Osama bin Laden, and decimating al Qaeda's
leadership." But then, a few minutes later, he added:
"In Iraq and Syria, airstrikes are taking out ISIL leaders, heavy weapons, oil
tankers, infrastructure. And since the attacks in Paris, our closest allies -
including France, Germany and the United Kingdom - have ramped up their
contributions to our military campaign, which will help us accelerate our
effort to destroy ISIL."
But wait - what happened to Al Qaeda? Obama's sleight of hand was designed to
obscure the fact that, while bombing ISIS, the U.S. has been standing by as
Turkey and Saudi Arabia, two of its closest regional "allies," have channeled
money and arms to Al Nusra <http://ind.pn/1jLcHMT>, Al Qaeda's official Syrian
affiliate, via an Islamist umbrella group calling itself the Army of Conquest.
The Obama administration didn't object when the Saudi-supplied Al Nusra Front
and its principal "Army of Conquest" ally, another jihadi group called Ahrar
al-Sham, used U.S.-made TOW missiles in an offensive to seize portions of
Idlib province. [See Consortiumnews.com's "Climbing into Bed with Al-Qaeda."
<http://bit.ly/1AzmGr2>
The administration didn't even speak up when Al Nusra issued an
Arabic-language video <https://youtu.be/eesdDYUs6Vw> thanking the U.S.-backed
and supposedly "moderate" Free Syrian Army for supplying it with advanced
weaponry, according to a new Israeli-Arab news organization known as Al-Masdar
<http://bit.ly/1YVzoh8>.
So, while bragging about killing bin Laden (in 2011) and "decimating" Al
Qaeda's
leadership, Obama forgot to mention that the U.S. is currently backing the
same forces as they seek to topple the Assad government in Damascus - or at
least backing groups that cooperate with Al Qaeda.
Obama noted that "groups like ISIL grew stronger amidst the chaos of war in
Iraq and then Syria" while also forgetting to mention growing reports
<http://nyti.ms/1YVzq8I> that it is not only chaos that has allowed ISIS to
grow, but donations from super-rich Arab gulf monarchies, which the U.S.
government considers its "allies."
"We're working with Turkey to seal its border with Syria," Obama added, when
in fact Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu has already given the proposal
the cold shoulder <http://bit.ly/1IQW3SD> - and Turkey's alleged
border-sealing effort is belied by evidence that giant convoys carrying ISIS
oil have been routinely entering Turkey without resistance. At least until
Russia essentially shamed the U.S. into joining in a bombing interdiction
campaign last month.
Obama bragged that "sixty-five countries . have joined an American-led
coalition" against ISIS, an unconscious echo of George W. Bush's claim that 48
nations had joined a "Coalition of the Willing" to invade Iraq. But Obama
neglected to note that the Saudis and other Gulf monarchies have all but
abandoned the effort <http://nyti.ms/1Hp27pP> in order to concentrate on their
sectarian war against Shi'ite Houthis in Yemen, where some 2,600 civilians
have died since air strikes began in March.
Obama also forgot to mention Russia, whose warplanes are pounding ISIS, Al
Nusra and other rebel forces. While promising to "continue to provide training
and equipment to tens of thousands of Iraqi and Syrian forces fighting ISIL on
the ground so that we take away their safe havens," Obama said nothing about
tens of thousands of Syrian army troops who have been battling ISIS, Al Nusra,
and other Salafist groups since at least 2012, despite sanctions from the U.S.
<http://nyti.ms/1TxyqEe> and other Western powers.
Obama also failed to mention Syrian President Bashar al-Assad even though
overthrowing his government is clearly America's prime goal. Somehow, Obama
has gotten it into his head that the best way to combat ISIS is by ridding it
of its foremost enemy, a case of self-deception raised to the nth degree.
The Saudi Brand of Islam
But Obama was perhaps at his most duplicitous in his comments about religion.
The killers in San Bernardino "embrac[ed] a perverted interpretation of
Islam," he said.
But, Obama added, Islamic State "does not speak for Islam. They are thugs and
killers, part of a cult of death, and they account for a tiny fraction of more
than a billion Muslims around the world, including millions of patriotic
Muslim Americans who reject their hateful ideology."
That is quite true. But then he went on to say:
"That does not mean denying the fact that an extremist ideology has spread
within some Muslim communities. This is a real problem that Muslims must
confront, without excuse. Muslim leaders here and around the globe have to
continue working with us to decisively and unequivocally reject the hateful
ideology that groups like ISIL and al Qaeda promote; to speak out against not
just acts of violence, but also those interpretations of Islam that are
incompatible with the values of religious tolerance, mutual respect, and human
dignity."
Yet, if Muslim leaders are to "continue" working to oppose such ideology, that
assumes that they are doing so already. But the Saudis, the dominant power
among the Arab Gulf states, is probably the most illiberal society on earth,
one that bars all religions other than ultra-conservative Wahhabist Islam,
arrests Christians <http://bit.ly/1N8jivn> for the "crime" of attending
underground religious services, and savagely represses <http://bit.ly/1NJE71a>
its own 15-percent Shi'ite minority.
In 2006, Freedom House and the Institute for Gulf Affairs, both eminently
conservative organizations, issued a joint report finding
<http://bit.ly/1QbQJkt> that Saudi textbooks instruct students to "hate"
Christians, Jews, polytheists, and unbelievers; teach that the Crusades are
still ongoing; advise students not to greet, befriend, imitate, or even be
courteous to non-Wahhabists; and state that "the struggle between Muslims and
Jews" will continue until judgment day and that "Muslims will triumph because
they are right."
What's more, Obama knows this reality because the State Department completed
its own comprehensive study of Saudi textbooks in 2012. Yet the administration
opted to suppress the report <http://thebea.st/1h5rGfY> for the same reason
that it has suppressed a 28-page chapter in the joint congressional report on
9/11 dealing with the question of Saudi complicity - because the alliance with
Riyadh is sacrosanct and trumps other "minor" issues such as religious bigotry
and the attack on the World Trade Center.
The Saudi Arabia also got a pass regarding its connection to the San
Bernardino massacre. Obama promised in his speech to "put in place stronger
screening for those who come to America without a visa so that we can take a
hard look at whether they've traveled to warzones."
But Tashfeen Malik, the woman who reportedly pledged allegiance to ISIS
shortly before embarking on a killing spree with her husband Syed Rizwan
Farook, did not travel to a warzone. She traveled and lived in Saudi Arabia.
Although Tashfeen Malik was of Pakistani origin, she spent most of her life in
Saudi Arabia, where she and her father drank deeply from the well of
Wahhabism. Relatives say her father emerged deeply conservatized from the
experience while Tashfeen was so thoroughly Saudi in her outlook that when she
returned to Pakistan to study pharmacology, she had difficulty adjusting
<http://nyti.ms/1SKTvuS> even on a campus notorious for its fundamental
Islamic influences.
"She told me, 'My parents live in Saudi Arabia, and I am not getting along
with my roommates and cannot adjust with them, so can you help me?'" one
faculty member told The New York Times. Yet no one thought to worry since
both Saudi Arabia and Pakistan are key U.S. "allies." ..
Obama's Bind
Barack Obama is thus a man caught in a bind. If his speech was rife with
contradictions, it's because he wants to have his cake and eat it, too. He
supports Sunni extremists in Saudi Arabia, Yemen and Syria, yet is shocked,
shocked, when they unleash their violence on innocent bystanders in Paris or
San Bernardino. ..
Read unabridged <http://tinyurl.com/gshyv8x>
Oleg Smirnov
Dec 12, 2015, 9:57:59 AM12/12/15
to
<http://tinyurl.com/orydzwz> TruePublica
Dead, Disabled, Displaced or Destroyed - Democracy Delivered
Graham Vanbergen 10th December 2015
Six months ago, the Washington DC-based Physicians for Social Responsibility
(PRS) released a landmark study over the death toll from 10 years of the "War
on Terror" since the 9/11 attacks. It was largely ignored by the world's
press.
The 97-page report accompanied by hundreds of studies, reports and
investigations by the Nobel Peace Prize-winning doctors' group is the first to
tally up the total number of civilian casualties from US-UK led interventions
in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan. This article uses much of the content from
that report <http://bit.ly/1DFxwl3> called the IPPNW Body Count publication.
A poll carried out by the Associated Press (AP) two years ago found that, on
average, U.S. citizens believe that only 9,900 Iraqis were killed during the
2003-2011 occupation of Iraq by the US, UK and allied forces.
Random spot checks have suggested that more than two-thirds of all violent
deaths that occurred in Baghdad between 2003 and 2007 did not appear in the
media, and were therefore not included in official statistics distributed by
the Iraq Body Count (IBC). The IBC has a media-centered approach to counting
and documenting the deaths and is considered very unreliable as a result but
is much quoted by the establishment and mainstream press the world over.
For instance, evidence of the 27,000 bombs that were dropped in just the first
year during the invasion of Iraqi cities is practically non-existent in the
IBC database.
In many cases, the occupying powers explicitly blocked journalists from
investigating instances where the British or American forces were accused of
mass killings. Numerous journalists in Iraq who tried to report on the
activities of the occupation troops and their consequences were killed or
arrested.
In Iraq itself, only a small number of casualties made it to the central
hospitals or morgues where they could be registered. That proportion decreased
the more intense the military battles were and the more the violence between
various sections of the population escalated. Since Islam requires a funeral
within one day, relatives generally had no choice but to bury their dead
directly - either in their yards or close to their homes.
Moreover, the occupying power often forbade the hospitals and morgues from
making their numbers public.
The fate of Iraqi physicians is one area that is very well documented.
According to data from the independent Iraqi Medical Association, of the
34,000 registered physicians, almost 2,000 were killed and 20,000 left the
country. In its database, IBC lists only 70 Iraqi physicians. Even though this
may in part be due to a lack of data on the profession of the victims, this
piece of evidence alone suggests very large gaps in IBC's calculations.
According to the Najaf governorate's spokesperson Ahmed Di'aibil (member of
the Supreme Islamic Council of Iraq), in this city alone, which has a
population of close to 600,000, 40,000 non-identified corpses were buried
since the start of the war. The IBC database documents only 1,354 victims in
Najaf, barely 3% of the actual.
In a September 2009 speech, Samir Sumaidaie, the Iraqi ambassador to the U.S.
installed by the occupation power, talked about 500,000 newly widowed persons
in Iraq. A February 2007 BBC poll in the region came to the conclusion that
17% of all Iraqi households have lost at least one member through violence
since 2003. Given the total population at the time of some 27 million, this
too suggests that more than 500,000 Iraqis fell victim to the war and its
consequences just in the first four years.
By 2008, the number of refugees from Iraq in foreign countries and internally
displaced persons had risen to 5 million.
Such a high number of victims - reaching genocidal dimensions - represented a
massive indictment of the U.S. administration, British government and its
allies that they simply could not allow to stand. Hence, the findings of this
study was furiously criticized. Even though nearly all the experts in the
field, including the scientists of the British administration, confirmed the
accuracy of the study, it was slandered by governments and main stream
establishment media.
Dr. h.c. Hans-C. von Sponeck, UN Assistant Secretary General & UN Humanitarian
Coordinator for Iraq (1998-2000); UN Resident Coordinator for Pakistan (1988-
94) covering also Afghanistan said in his report:
"The U.S.-led Multinational Force have carefully kept a running total of
fatalities they have suffered. However, the military's only interest has been
in counting "their" bodies."
"Since U.S. and other foreign military boots are only intermittently and
secretly on the ground in Pakistan, mainly in the northern tribal areas, there
are no body count statistics for coalition force casualties available for
Pakistan. The picture of physically wounded military personnel for both war
theatres is in- complete. Only the U.S. military is identified: (a) 32,223
were wounded during the 2003 Iraq invasion and its aftermath, and (b) until
November 2014 20,040 were wounded in Afghanistan."
No figures are known for mental disorders involving military personnel who
have been deployed in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan but US veteran soldiers
are still committing suicide at the rate of 22 per day
<http://huff.to/1xBX7Hu>.
Officially ignored are casualties, injured or killed, involving enemy
combatants and civilians together. This, of course, comes as no surprise. It
is not an oversight but a deliberate omission. The U.S. authorities have kept
no known records of such deaths. This would have destroyed the arguments that
freeing Iraq by military force from a dictatorship, removing Al-Qaeda from
Afghanistan and eliminating safe-havens for terrorists in Pakistan's tribal
areas has prevented terrorism from reaching the U.S. homeland, improved global
security and advanced human rights, all at "defendable" costs.
The IPPNW Body Count publication must be seen as a significant contribution
to narrowing the gap between reliable estimates of victims of war,
especially civilians in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan and tendentious,
manipulated or even fraudulent accounts.
After 58,000 dead US soldiers and 2 million civilian deaths in Vietnam, the
Reagan Administration sought to resolve the negative public opinion problem by
utilizing obeisant client states or surrogate forces, epitomized by the
"Contra" armies and death squads deployed in Central America and Southern
Africa instead of using its own attacking forces. With the end of the Cold
War, U.S. policymakers triumphantly pronounced the end of the "Vietnam
Syndrome," and ushered in a new era of American "boots on the ground" that led
ultimately to the debacle in Iraq, Afghanistan and the surrounding region.
This investigation and report comes to the conclusion that the war has,
directly or indirectly, killed around 1 million people in Iraq, 220,000 in
Afghanistan and 80,000 in Pakistan, i.e. a total of around 1.3 million. The
figure is approximately 10 times greater than that of which the public,
experts and decision makers are aware of and propagated by the media and major
NGOs. And this is only a conservative estimate. The total number of deaths in
the three countries named above could easily be in excess of 2 million.
For some degree of context - should the number of Iraqis killed from the 2003
U.S. invasion until 2012 actually be around one million, this would represent
5% of the total population of Iraq. By contrast, during World War II Germany
lost around 10% of its population.
In Iraq, results from statistical surveys conducted by the Johns Hopkins
University, published in 2004 and 2006 in the medical journal The Lancet, (The
basis of the Lancet study, which was executed by a U.S.-Iraqi team led by
renowned scientists was a survey of a representative selection of 1,850 Iraqi
households across Iraq) as well as by the British polling institute Opinion
Research Business (ORB) in 2007 suggest that already by 2008 over one million
Iraqis had died as a result of war, occupation and their indirect
consequences. many more have died since.
Moreover, and in addition to the appalling numbers, according to the
International Commission on Missing Persons (ICMP), between 250,000 and
one million persons are missing in Iraq, presumed dead.
For an estimate of the current casualty numbers, one has to interpolate. The
U.S. NGO Just Foreign Policy does exactly this with its Iraqi Death Estimator,
where it multiplies the number of victims of violence determined by the Lancet
study as of June 2006 by the increase in the number since then as provided by
IBC. From the relation between the current number given by IBC and the one
given for the end of June 2006 (43,394), it concludes that the number of
Iraqis killed up to September 2011 is at around 1.46 million.
One development of the scale of bombing was that the health care system
largely collapsed. Diseases spread because of the lack of access to drinking
water and the contamination of rivers. Almost three million people became
internal refugees; as a consequence, large parts of once reasonably affluent
cities turned into slums.
The long-term consequences through the poisoning of the environment brought
about by the war must also be taken into consideration. Many areas of Iraq
that were subjected to furious attacks by the occupying forces show a dramatic
increase in the number of diseases. In many areas, the number of occurrences
of various forms of cancer, of miscarriages and abnormal and deformed babies
multiplied. A major reason for this is likely to be the massive use of
ammunition containing depleted uranium.
According to the Landmine and Cluster Munition Monitor of the International
Campaign to Ban Landmines (ICBL) and the Cluster Munition Coalition (CMC),
since 2003, U.S. and UK troops have used around 13,000 cluster bombs in Iraq.
Iraq is littered with high levels of nuclear and dioxin contamination. These
have disseminated their sub-ammunition - almost 2 million bomblets - widely in
and around the fought-over cities. In addition, the 20 million bomblets from
the 61,000 cluster bombs dropped in 1991 have also still not all been cleared.
This makes Iraq one of the countries with the highest contamination of highly
explosive unexploded ordnance in the world.
Evidence of this can be seen in child mortality that multiplied in the
following years, the number of occurrences of cancer quadrupled, and the
number of cases of leukemia increased by a factor of 40.
Afghanistan and Pakistan
There have so far been no representative studies on the number of victims from
the ongoing UN-mandated NATO war in Afghanistan. The few investigations that
exist on deaths as a result of that war are all based on passive observation.
In Pakistan, the number of killed civilians and combatants is much harder to
determine than in Afghanistan. Even data based on passive observation are
barely existent. Taking all sources and factors into account, a total number
of 300,000 war deaths in the AfPak War-Theatre until 2013 seems realistic.
Libya
Estimates of deaths in the fall of Libya as a result of US/UK/NATO bombing and
subsequent civil war between March 2 and October 2, 2011 vary. An exact figure
is hard to ascertain, partly due to a media clamp-down by the Libyan
government. Some conservative estimates have been released of around 25,000.
NATO holds itself to no standard of measurement whatsoever in this regard. If
Iraq and Afghanistan are anything to go by this number could easily be over
100,000. Some of the killing "may amount to crimes against humanity"
according to the United Nations Security Council and as of March 2011, is
under investigation by the International Criminal Court.
Conclusion
It is impossible to calculate the death, destruction and decay incurred by the
people of these countries. It is fair to say two million are dead, another one
million presumed dead with many more deaths as a result of disease, lack of
medical care, child birth, birth defects, cancer care and the like. One should
not forget, these countries continue to feel the after effects of current
governance and a lack of control over security that culminates in many
bombings, shooting, kidnapping, murders and suicides.
The current death toll in Syria is reported at 250,000 and counting with 6.5
million displaced <http://bit.ly/1HJWB1b>.
Finally, as the FT reported in February "In all, more than 100,000 people,
perhaps a third or more civilians, died violently in conflicts in Syria, Iraq,
Libya, Yemen and the Gaza Strip in 2014, making it one of the bloodiest years
in the Middle East's history" <http://on.ft.com/1O1fShA>. Death continues at a
horrific rate.
Read the full IPPNW report HERE <http://tinyurl.com/h994x5p>
Dead, Disabled, Displaced or Destroyed - Democracy Delivered
Graham Vanbergen 10th December 2015
Six months ago, the Washington DC-based Physicians for Social Responsibility
(PRS) released a landmark study over the death toll from 10 years of the "War
on Terror" since the 9/11 attacks. It was largely ignored by the world's
press.
The 97-page report accompanied by hundreds of studies, reports and
investigations by the Nobel Peace Prize-winning doctors' group is the first to
tally up the total number of civilian casualties from US-UK led interventions
in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan. This article uses much of the content from
that report <http://bit.ly/1DFxwl3> called the IPPNW Body Count publication.
A poll carried out by the Associated Press (AP) two years ago found that, on
average, U.S. citizens believe that only 9,900 Iraqis were killed during the
2003-2011 occupation of Iraq by the US, UK and allied forces.
Random spot checks have suggested that more than two-thirds of all violent
deaths that occurred in Baghdad between 2003 and 2007 did not appear in the
media, and were therefore not included in official statistics distributed by
the Iraq Body Count (IBC). The IBC has a media-centered approach to counting
and documenting the deaths and is considered very unreliable as a result but
is much quoted by the establishment and mainstream press the world over.
For instance, evidence of the 27,000 bombs that were dropped in just the first
year during the invasion of Iraqi cities is practically non-existent in the
IBC database.
In many cases, the occupying powers explicitly blocked journalists from
investigating instances where the British or American forces were accused of
mass killings. Numerous journalists in Iraq who tried to report on the
activities of the occupation troops and their consequences were killed or
arrested.
In Iraq itself, only a small number of casualties made it to the central
hospitals or morgues where they could be registered. That proportion decreased
the more intense the military battles were and the more the violence between
various sections of the population escalated. Since Islam requires a funeral
within one day, relatives generally had no choice but to bury their dead
directly - either in their yards or close to their homes.
Moreover, the occupying power often forbade the hospitals and morgues from
making their numbers public.
The fate of Iraqi physicians is one area that is very well documented.
According to data from the independent Iraqi Medical Association, of the
34,000 registered physicians, almost 2,000 were killed and 20,000 left the
country. In its database, IBC lists only 70 Iraqi physicians. Even though this
may in part be due to a lack of data on the profession of the victims, this
piece of evidence alone suggests very large gaps in IBC's calculations.
According to the Najaf governorate's spokesperson Ahmed Di'aibil (member of
the Supreme Islamic Council of Iraq), in this city alone, which has a
population of close to 600,000, 40,000 non-identified corpses were buried
since the start of the war. The IBC database documents only 1,354 victims in
Najaf, barely 3% of the actual.
In a September 2009 speech, Samir Sumaidaie, the Iraqi ambassador to the U.S.
installed by the occupation power, talked about 500,000 newly widowed persons
in Iraq. A February 2007 BBC poll in the region came to the conclusion that
17% of all Iraqi households have lost at least one member through violence
since 2003. Given the total population at the time of some 27 million, this
too suggests that more than 500,000 Iraqis fell victim to the war and its
consequences just in the first four years.
By 2008, the number of refugees from Iraq in foreign countries and internally
displaced persons had risen to 5 million.
Such a high number of victims - reaching genocidal dimensions - represented a
massive indictment of the U.S. administration, British government and its
allies that they simply could not allow to stand. Hence, the findings of this
study was furiously criticized. Even though nearly all the experts in the
field, including the scientists of the British administration, confirmed the
accuracy of the study, it was slandered by governments and main stream
establishment media.
Dr. h.c. Hans-C. von Sponeck, UN Assistant Secretary General & UN Humanitarian
Coordinator for Iraq (1998-2000); UN Resident Coordinator for Pakistan (1988-
94) covering also Afghanistan said in his report:
"The U.S.-led Multinational Force have carefully kept a running total of
fatalities they have suffered. However, the military's only interest has been
in counting "their" bodies."
"Since U.S. and other foreign military boots are only intermittently and
secretly on the ground in Pakistan, mainly in the northern tribal areas, there
are no body count statistics for coalition force casualties available for
Pakistan. The picture of physically wounded military personnel for both war
theatres is in- complete. Only the U.S. military is identified: (a) 32,223
were wounded during the 2003 Iraq invasion and its aftermath, and (b) until
November 2014 20,040 were wounded in Afghanistan."
No figures are known for mental disorders involving military personnel who
have been deployed in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan but US veteran soldiers
are still committing suicide at the rate of 22 per day
<http://huff.to/1xBX7Hu>.
Officially ignored are casualties, injured or killed, involving enemy
combatants and civilians together. This, of course, comes as no surprise. It
is not an oversight but a deliberate omission. The U.S. authorities have kept
no known records of such deaths. This would have destroyed the arguments that
freeing Iraq by military force from a dictatorship, removing Al-Qaeda from
Afghanistan and eliminating safe-havens for terrorists in Pakistan's tribal
areas has prevented terrorism from reaching the U.S. homeland, improved global
security and advanced human rights, all at "defendable" costs.
The IPPNW Body Count publication must be seen as a significant contribution
to narrowing the gap between reliable estimates of victims of war,
especially civilians in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan and tendentious,
manipulated or even fraudulent accounts.
After 58,000 dead US soldiers and 2 million civilian deaths in Vietnam, the
Reagan Administration sought to resolve the negative public opinion problem by
utilizing obeisant client states or surrogate forces, epitomized by the
"Contra" armies and death squads deployed in Central America and Southern
Africa instead of using its own attacking forces. With the end of the Cold
War, U.S. policymakers triumphantly pronounced the end of the "Vietnam
Syndrome," and ushered in a new era of American "boots on the ground" that led
ultimately to the debacle in Iraq, Afghanistan and the surrounding region.
This investigation and report comes to the conclusion that the war has,
directly or indirectly, killed around 1 million people in Iraq, 220,000 in
Afghanistan and 80,000 in Pakistan, i.e. a total of around 1.3 million. The
figure is approximately 10 times greater than that of which the public,
experts and decision makers are aware of and propagated by the media and major
NGOs. And this is only a conservative estimate. The total number of deaths in
the three countries named above could easily be in excess of 2 million.
For some degree of context - should the number of Iraqis killed from the 2003
U.S. invasion until 2012 actually be around one million, this would represent
5% of the total population of Iraq. By contrast, during World War II Germany
lost around 10% of its population.
In Iraq, results from statistical surveys conducted by the Johns Hopkins
University, published in 2004 and 2006 in the medical journal The Lancet, (The
basis of the Lancet study, which was executed by a U.S.-Iraqi team led by
renowned scientists was a survey of a representative selection of 1,850 Iraqi
households across Iraq) as well as by the British polling institute Opinion
Research Business (ORB) in 2007 suggest that already by 2008 over one million
Iraqis had died as a result of war, occupation and their indirect
consequences. many more have died since.
Moreover, and in addition to the appalling numbers, according to the
International Commission on Missing Persons (ICMP), between 250,000 and
one million persons are missing in Iraq, presumed dead.
For an estimate of the current casualty numbers, one has to interpolate. The
U.S. NGO Just Foreign Policy does exactly this with its Iraqi Death Estimator,
where it multiplies the number of victims of violence determined by the Lancet
study as of June 2006 by the increase in the number since then as provided by
IBC. From the relation between the current number given by IBC and the one
given for the end of June 2006 (43,394), it concludes that the number of
Iraqis killed up to September 2011 is at around 1.46 million.
One development of the scale of bombing was that the health care system
largely collapsed. Diseases spread because of the lack of access to drinking
water and the contamination of rivers. Almost three million people became
internal refugees; as a consequence, large parts of once reasonably affluent
cities turned into slums.
The long-term consequences through the poisoning of the environment brought
about by the war must also be taken into consideration. Many areas of Iraq
that were subjected to furious attacks by the occupying forces show a dramatic
increase in the number of diseases. In many areas, the number of occurrences
of various forms of cancer, of miscarriages and abnormal and deformed babies
multiplied. A major reason for this is likely to be the massive use of
ammunition containing depleted uranium.
According to the Landmine and Cluster Munition Monitor of the International
Campaign to Ban Landmines (ICBL) and the Cluster Munition Coalition (CMC),
since 2003, U.S. and UK troops have used around 13,000 cluster bombs in Iraq.
Iraq is littered with high levels of nuclear and dioxin contamination. These
have disseminated their sub-ammunition - almost 2 million bomblets - widely in
and around the fought-over cities. In addition, the 20 million bomblets from
the 61,000 cluster bombs dropped in 1991 have also still not all been cleared.
This makes Iraq one of the countries with the highest contamination of highly
explosive unexploded ordnance in the world.
Evidence of this can be seen in child mortality that multiplied in the
following years, the number of occurrences of cancer quadrupled, and the
number of cases of leukemia increased by a factor of 40.
Afghanistan and Pakistan
There have so far been no representative studies on the number of victims from
the ongoing UN-mandated NATO war in Afghanistan. The few investigations that
exist on deaths as a result of that war are all based on passive observation.
In Pakistan, the number of killed civilians and combatants is much harder to
determine than in Afghanistan. Even data based on passive observation are
barely existent. Taking all sources and factors into account, a total number
of 300,000 war deaths in the AfPak War-Theatre until 2013 seems realistic.
Libya
Estimates of deaths in the fall of Libya as a result of US/UK/NATO bombing and
subsequent civil war between March 2 and October 2, 2011 vary. An exact figure
is hard to ascertain, partly due to a media clamp-down by the Libyan
government. Some conservative estimates have been released of around 25,000.
NATO holds itself to no standard of measurement whatsoever in this regard. If
Iraq and Afghanistan are anything to go by this number could easily be over
100,000. Some of the killing "may amount to crimes against humanity"
according to the United Nations Security Council and as of March 2011, is
under investigation by the International Criminal Court.
Conclusion
It is impossible to calculate the death, destruction and decay incurred by the
people of these countries. It is fair to say two million are dead, another one
million presumed dead with many more deaths as a result of disease, lack of
medical care, child birth, birth defects, cancer care and the like. One should
not forget, these countries continue to feel the after effects of current
governance and a lack of control over security that culminates in many
bombings, shooting, kidnapping, murders and suicides.
The current death toll in Syria is reported at 250,000 and counting with 6.5
million displaced <http://bit.ly/1HJWB1b>.
Finally, as the FT reported in February "In all, more than 100,000 people,
perhaps a third or more civilians, died violently in conflicts in Syria, Iraq,
Libya, Yemen and the Gaza Strip in 2014, making it one of the bloodiest years
in the Middle East's history" <http://on.ft.com/1O1fShA>. Death continues at a
horrific rate.
Read the full IPPNW report HERE <http://tinyurl.com/h994x5p>
Oleg Smirnov
Dec 12, 2015, 10:06:01 PM12/12/15
to
As I already said, the US-led 'West' has ultimately come to moral bankruptcy.
After the anti-constitutional coup in the Ukraine, and, today, due to the
Syria mess, Obama, or any other Western politician talking about democracy is
deserved to have been spat in his or her face repeatedly big time.
In the case of Syria the situation is especially unsightly since most of the
regional powers that back the Syrian insurgency and fund the mercenaries and
jihadis are themselves pretty ugly dictatorships.
<https://consortiumnews.com/2015/12/12/blocking-democracy-as-syrias-solution/>
Blocking Democracy as Syria's Solution
By Robert Parry December 12, 2015
Exclusive: The long-cherished neocon dream of "regime change" in Syria is
blocking a possible route out of the crisis - a ceasefire followed by
elections in which President Assad could compete. The problem is there's no
guarantee that Assad would lose and thus the dream might go unfulfilled,
writes Robert Parry.
The solution to the crisis in Syria could be democracy - letting the people of
Syria decide who they want as their leaders - but it is the Obama
administration and its regional Sunni "allies," including U.S.-armed militants
and jihadists, that don't want to risk a democratic solution because it might
not achieve the long-held goal of "regime change."
Some Syrian opposition forces, which were brought together under the auspices
of the Saudi monarchy in Riyadh this past week, didn't even want the word
"democracy" included in their joint statement. The New York Times reported
<http://nyti.ms/1TF2rC4> on Friday, "Islamist delegates objected to using the
word 'democracy' in the final statement, so the term 'democratic mechanism'
was used instead, according to a member of one such group who attended the
meeting." ..
But the prospects of Assad and his government just agreeing to cede power to
the opposition remains highly unlikely. An obvious alternative - favored by
Assad and Russian President Vladimir Putin - is to achieve a ceasefire and
then have internationally supervised elections in which the Syrian people
could choose their own leaders.
Although President Barack Obama insists Assad is hated by most Syrians - and
if that's true, he would presumably lose any fair election - the U.S. position
is to bar Assad from the ballot, thus ensuring "regime change" in Syria, a
long-held goal of Official Washington's neoconservatives.
In other words, to fulfill the neocons' dream of Syrian "regime change," the
Obama administration is continuing the bloody Syrian conflict which has killed
a quarter million people, has created an opening for Islamic State and Al
Qaeda terrorists, and has driven millions of refugees into and through nearby
countries, now destabilizing Europe and feeding xenophobia in the United
States. ..
A key problem appears to be that the Obama administration has so demonized
Assad and so bought into the neocon goal of "regime change" that Obama doesn't
feel that he can back down on his "Assad must go!" mantra. Yet, to force Assad
out and bar him from running in an election means escalating the war by either
further arming the Sunni jihadists or mounting a larger-scale invasion of
Syria with the U.S. military confronting Syrian and now Russian forces to
establish what is euphemistically called "a safe zone" inside Syria. A related
"no-fly zone" would require destroying Syrian air defenses, now supplied by
the Russians.
Obama has largely followed the first course of action, allowing Saudi Arabia,
Qatar, Turkey and other Sunni "allies" to funnel U.S. weapons to jihadists,
including Ahrar al-Sham which fights alongside Al Qaeda's Nusra Front as the
two seek to transform Syria into a Islamic fundamentalist state, a goal shared
by Al Qaeda's spinoff (and now rival), the Islamic State.
Retired U.S. Army Lieutenant General Michael Flynn, the former head of the
Defense Intelligence Agency, has termed Obama's choice of aiding the jihadists
a "willful decision," even in the face of DIA warnings about the likely rise
of the Islamic State and other extremists. ..
Now, even though the Syrian crisis has become a tsunami threatening to engulf
Europe with a refugee crisis and the United States with anti-Muslim hysteria,
Obama can't accept the most obvious solution: compel all reasonable sides to
accept a ceasefire and hold an internationally supervised election in which
anyone who wants to lead the country can stand before the voters.
If Obama is right about the widespread hatred of Assad, then there should be
nothing to worry about. The Syrian people will dictate "regime change" through
the ballot box.
Democracy - supposedly one of the U.S. government's goals for Middle East
countries - can be the answer to the problem. However, since democracy can be
an unpredictable process, it might not guarantee "regime change" which
apparently makes democracy an unsuitable solution for Syria.
After the anti-constitutional coup in the Ukraine, and, today, due to the
Syria mess, Obama, or any other Western politician talking about democracy is
deserved to have been spat in his or her face repeatedly big time.
In the case of Syria the situation is especially unsightly since most of the
regional powers that back the Syrian insurgency and fund the mercenaries and
jihadis are themselves pretty ugly dictatorships.
<https://consortiumnews.com/2015/12/12/blocking-democracy-as-syrias-solution/>
Blocking Democracy as Syria's Solution
By Robert Parry December 12, 2015
Exclusive: The long-cherished neocon dream of "regime change" in Syria is
blocking a possible route out of the crisis - a ceasefire followed by
elections in which President Assad could compete. The problem is there's no
guarantee that Assad would lose and thus the dream might go unfulfilled,
writes Robert Parry.
The solution to the crisis in Syria could be democracy - letting the people of
Syria decide who they want as their leaders - but it is the Obama
administration and its regional Sunni "allies," including U.S.-armed militants
and jihadists, that don't want to risk a democratic solution because it might
not achieve the long-held goal of "regime change."
Some Syrian opposition forces, which were brought together under the auspices
of the Saudi monarchy in Riyadh this past week, didn't even want the word
"democracy" included in their joint statement. The New York Times reported
<http://nyti.ms/1TF2rC4> on Friday, "Islamist delegates objected to using the
word 'democracy' in the final statement, so the term 'democratic mechanism'
was used instead, according to a member of one such group who attended the
meeting." ..
But the prospects of Assad and his government just agreeing to cede power to
the opposition remains highly unlikely. An obvious alternative - favored by
Assad and Russian President Vladimir Putin - is to achieve a ceasefire and
then have internationally supervised elections in which the Syrian people
could choose their own leaders.
Although President Barack Obama insists Assad is hated by most Syrians - and
if that's true, he would presumably lose any fair election - the U.S. position
is to bar Assad from the ballot, thus ensuring "regime change" in Syria, a
long-held goal of Official Washington's neoconservatives.
In other words, to fulfill the neocons' dream of Syrian "regime change," the
Obama administration is continuing the bloody Syrian conflict which has killed
a quarter million people, has created an opening for Islamic State and Al
Qaeda terrorists, and has driven millions of refugees into and through nearby
countries, now destabilizing Europe and feeding xenophobia in the United
States. ..
A key problem appears to be that the Obama administration has so demonized
Assad and so bought into the neocon goal of "regime change" that Obama doesn't
feel that he can back down on his "Assad must go!" mantra. Yet, to force Assad
out and bar him from running in an election means escalating the war by either
further arming the Sunni jihadists or mounting a larger-scale invasion of
Syria with the U.S. military confronting Syrian and now Russian forces to
establish what is euphemistically called "a safe zone" inside Syria. A related
"no-fly zone" would require destroying Syrian air defenses, now supplied by
the Russians.
Obama has largely followed the first course of action, allowing Saudi Arabia,
Qatar, Turkey and other Sunni "allies" to funnel U.S. weapons to jihadists,
including Ahrar al-Sham which fights alongside Al Qaeda's Nusra Front as the
two seek to transform Syria into a Islamic fundamentalist state, a goal shared
by Al Qaeda's spinoff (and now rival), the Islamic State.
Retired U.S. Army Lieutenant General Michael Flynn, the former head of the
Defense Intelligence Agency, has termed Obama's choice of aiding the jihadists
a "willful decision," even in the face of DIA warnings about the likely rise
of the Islamic State and other extremists. ..
Now, even though the Syrian crisis has become a tsunami threatening to engulf
Europe with a refugee crisis and the United States with anti-Muslim hysteria,
Obama can't accept the most obvious solution: compel all reasonable sides to
accept a ceasefire and hold an internationally supervised election in which
anyone who wants to lead the country can stand before the voters.
If Obama is right about the widespread hatred of Assad, then there should be
nothing to worry about. The Syrian people will dictate "regime change" through
the ballot box.
Democracy - supposedly one of the U.S. government's goals for Middle East
countries - can be the answer to the problem. However, since democracy can be
an unpredictable process, it might not guarantee "regime change" which
apparently makes democracy an unsuitable solution for Syria.
Black Lies Matter
Dec 13, 2015, 5:55:55 AM12/13/15
to
On Sun, 13 Dec 2015 03:05:37 -0000, "Oleg Smirnov" <os...@netc.eu>
wrote:
>As I already said
Talking to yourself again?
wrote:
>As I already said
Talking to yourself again?
Oleg Smirnov
Dec 13, 2015, 6:26:31 AM12/13/15
to
<http://tinyurl.com/ovbmyrh> telam.com.ar
Serbian president accuses Western powers of wanting to "overthrow" Al Assad
as they did with Milosevic
.. "I support the bombing of IS, but I will never support bombing of a state
which government was legitimately elected. Is it more important to bring down
IS or President Al Assad?" Nikolic asked during an interview with Telam.
"I was living in Yugoslavia. At the time NATO said the most important thing
was to oust President Milosevic and that justified the bombing of the people
of Yugoslavia," he said. ..
The president did not hesitate to question the policy of the EU towards the
nearly one million refugees and immigrants to European shores from the Middle
East and Africa. .. ".. the problem is that the war makes the places
unlivable. Even if the war is ended in Syria today it will be difficult to
live there. Neither in Libya nor in Iraq nor in Afghanistan .. All countries
that have been bombed and destroyed can not provide a decent life for their
citizens .."
...
But it's romantic to revolt and bomb something, it's like a shooting game.
Serbian president accuses Western powers of wanting to "overthrow" Al Assad
as they did with Milosevic
.. "I support the bombing of IS, but I will never support bombing of a state
which government was legitimately elected. Is it more important to bring down
IS or President Al Assad?" Nikolic asked during an interview with Telam.
"I was living in Yugoslavia. At the time NATO said the most important thing
was to oust President Milosevic and that justified the bombing of the people
of Yugoslavia," he said. ..
The president did not hesitate to question the policy of the EU towards the
nearly one million refugees and immigrants to European shores from the Middle
East and Africa. .. ".. the problem is that the war makes the places
unlivable. Even if the war is ended in Syria today it will be difficult to
live there. Neither in Libya nor in Iraq nor in Afghanistan .. All countries
that have been bombed and destroyed can not provide a decent life for their
citizens .."
...
But it's romantic to revolt and bomb something, it's like a shooting game.
Governor Swill
Dec 13, 2015, 3:42:25 PM12/13/15
to
On Sun, 13 Dec 2015 03:05:37 -0000, "Oleg Smirnov" wrote:
><https://consortiumnews.com/2015/12/12/blocking-democracy-as-syrias-solution/>
What a pile this is!
Swill
--
The difference between being ruled by a central government
or the 1% is that the government is ultimately answerable
to the voters - the 1% are answerable to no one.
<http://www.treasurydirect.gov/govt/reports/pd/histdebt/histdebt_histo5.htm>
><https://consortiumnews.com/2015/12/12/blocking-democracy-as-syrias-solution/>
What a pile this is!
Swill
--
The difference between being ruled by a central government
or the 1% is that the government is ultimately answerable
to the voters - the 1% are answerable to no one.
<http://www.treasurydirect.gov/govt/reports/pd/histdebt/histdebt_histo5.htm>
Governor Swill
Dec 13, 2015, 3:44:42 PM12/13/15
to
On Sun, 13 Dec 2015 11:23:03 -0000, "Oleg Smirnov" <os...@netc.eu>
wrote:
But Milosovec was a-ok because he was engaged in ethnic cleansing. The
US was late into that conflict and provided air support on behalf of
the EU which all but begged us to help them out. The result was an
end to the killing and new elections which led to governments that
remain at peace in the region.
I have to wonder why you only support dictators, one party states and
genocidal regimes, Oleg.
wrote:
US was late into that conflict and provided air support on behalf of
the EU which all but begged us to help them out. The result was an
end to the killing and new elections which led to governments that
remain at peace in the region.
I have to wonder why you only support dictators, one party states and
genocidal regimes, Oleg.
Oleg Smirnov
Dec 14, 2015, 4:06:55 AM12/14/15
to
Governor Swill, <news:g2mr6b59vtih9tr9f...@4ax.com>
The most of the unsightly deeds happened after beginning of the
NATO's aggression against Serbia, which itself greatly radicalized
and antagonized the situation.
Yet more ethnic cleansing happened after 'pacification', more than
200 thousands of the Serbs and Roma had been cleansed from Kosovo
through pogroms and terror under NATO's patronage.
The Kosovo-related issues have deep roots in entangled history. The
situation requited somewhat more delicate solution. What the US-led
Western powers have done in this case is just a sort of blatant
barbarism under the slogans of humanitarian concerns, democracy and
shit like that.
> The US was late into that conflict and
> provided air support on behalf of the EU which all but
> begged us to help them out. The result was an end to the
> killing and new elections which led to governments that
> remain at peace in the region.
The result was a transformation of Kosovo into a shithole governed
by mafia / organize-crime figures engaged in "murder, kidnapping and
trafficking in human organs" <http://politi.co/1CQRoTk>
The Kosovars are so happy of liberation that their greatest dream is
to leave their brand new homeland. They provide the highest number of
asylum applicants to the EU, more than a half as much against the
Syrians <http://vurl.com/M8zy5>. And "more than two-thirds of Kosovar
Albanians [are] already living outside Kosovo" <http://bit.ly/1ukkeBs>
In a broader sense the result of the Yugoslavian adventure was the
beginning of process of moral bankruptcy of the US, which is coming to
its logical end today.
> I have to wonder why you only support dictators, one
> party states and genocidal regimes, Oleg.
I have to wonder why the US-baked 'freedom fighters' are always like
these: the kidnappers and organ traffickers in Kosovo, the neo-Nazi
and corrupt oligarchs in the Ukraine, the jihadists in Syria etc etc
> On Sun, 13 Dec 2015 11:23:03 -0000, "Oleg Smirnov"
NATO's aggression against Serbia, which itself greatly radicalized
and antagonized the situation.
Yet more ethnic cleansing happened after 'pacification', more than
200 thousands of the Serbs and Roma had been cleansed from Kosovo
through pogroms and terror under NATO's patronage.
The Kosovo-related issues have deep roots in entangled history. The
situation requited somewhat more delicate solution. What the US-led
Western powers have done in this case is just a sort of blatant
barbarism under the slogans of humanitarian concerns, democracy and
shit like that.
> The US was late into that conflict and
> provided air support on behalf of the EU which all but
> begged us to help them out. The result was an end to the
> killing and new elections which led to governments that
> remain at peace in the region.
by mafia / organize-crime figures engaged in "murder, kidnapping and
trafficking in human organs" <http://politi.co/1CQRoTk>
The Kosovars are so happy of liberation that their greatest dream is
to leave their brand new homeland. They provide the highest number of
asylum applicants to the EU, more than a half as much against the
Syrians <http://vurl.com/M8zy5>. And "more than two-thirds of Kosovar
Albanians [are] already living outside Kosovo" <http://bit.ly/1ukkeBs>
In a broader sense the result of the Yugoslavian adventure was the
beginning of process of moral bankruptcy of the US, which is coming to
its logical end today.
> I have to wonder why you only support dictators, one
> party states and genocidal regimes, Oleg.
these: the kidnappers and organ traffickers in Kosovo, the neo-Nazi
and corrupt oligarchs in the Ukraine, the jihadists in Syria etc etc
Governor Swill
Dec 14, 2015, 7:06:14 PM12/14/15
to
On Mon, 14 Dec 2015 09:06:35 -0000, "Oleg Smirnov" <os...@netc.eu>
wrote:
Do you not know what a civil war is? Did you not realize that NATO,
including the US, was there to protect native Muslims who were being
exterminated by orthodox Christians perpetrating a religious based
genocide? Too soon after the Nazis to let something like that happen.
>Yet more ethnic cleansing happened after 'pacification', more than
>200 thousands of the Serbs and Roma had been cleansed from Kosovo
>through pogroms and terror under NATO's patronage.
Payback is a bitch? Is that what you're saying?
>The Kosovo-related issues have deep roots in entangled history. The
>situation requited somewhat more delicate solution. What the US-led
>Western powers have done in this case is just a sort of blatant
>barbarism under the slogans of humanitarian concerns, democracy and
>shit like that.
And yet the region is at peace, economic activity is returning, the
locals aren't killing each other en masse and the lesson has been
taught again. If you try to exterminate your population and your
neighbors can stop you, they will.
>> The US was late into that conflict and
>> provided air support on behalf of the EU which all but
>> begged us to help them out. The result was an end to the
>> killing and new elections which led to governments that
>> remain at peace in the region.
>
>The result was a transformation of Kosovo into a shithole governed
>by mafia / organize-crime figures engaged in "murder, kidnapping and
>trafficking in human organs" <http://politi.co/1CQRoTk>
Which is far better than state sanctioned mass murder because they
didn't like where you prayed.
>The Kosovars are so happy of liberation that their greatest dream is
>to leave their brand new homeland. They provide the highest number of
>asylum applicants to the EU, more than a half as much against the
>Syrians <http://vurl.com/M8zy5>. And "more than two-thirds of Kosovar
>Albanians [are] already living outside Kosovo" <http://bit.ly/1ukkeBs>
They should stay home and make their nation the kind of place they
want to live instead of going elsewhere. The upside of course, is the
brain drain. The smartest, best educated and those with the most
resources are the ones leaving. This is death to those societies, but
like so many African tribes who fought to destroy each other, when the
game is finally over, there won't be anybody left to do any work.
>In a broader sense the result of the Yugoslavian adventure was the
>beginning of process of moral bankruptcy of the US, which is coming to
>its logical end today.
BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!
America's "moral bankruptcy" as you would seem to define it, started
many decades earlier. You're just spouting crap now because you've
lost the point and you know it.
>> I have to wonder why you only support dictators, one
>> party states and genocidal regimes, Oleg.
>
>I have to wonder why the US-baked 'freedom fighters' are always like
>these: the kidnappers and organ traffickers in Kosovo, the neo-Nazi
>and corrupt oligarchs in the Ukraine, the jihadists in Syria etc etc
Maybe because what you think is news is actually Russian propaganda?
wrote:
including the US, was there to protect native Muslims who were being
exterminated by orthodox Christians perpetrating a religious based
genocide? Too soon after the Nazis to let something like that happen.
>Yet more ethnic cleansing happened after 'pacification', more than
>200 thousands of the Serbs and Roma had been cleansed from Kosovo
>through pogroms and terror under NATO's patronage.
>The Kosovo-related issues have deep roots in entangled history. The
>situation requited somewhat more delicate solution. What the US-led
>Western powers have done in this case is just a sort of blatant
>barbarism under the slogans of humanitarian concerns, democracy and
>shit like that.
locals aren't killing each other en masse and the lesson has been
taught again. If you try to exterminate your population and your
neighbors can stop you, they will.
>> The US was late into that conflict and
>> provided air support on behalf of the EU which all but
>> begged us to help them out. The result was an end to the
>> killing and new elections which led to governments that
>> remain at peace in the region.
>
>The result was a transformation of Kosovo into a shithole governed
>by mafia / organize-crime figures engaged in "murder, kidnapping and
>trafficking in human organs" <http://politi.co/1CQRoTk>
didn't like where you prayed.
>The Kosovars are so happy of liberation that their greatest dream is
>to leave their brand new homeland. They provide the highest number of
>asylum applicants to the EU, more than a half as much against the
>Syrians <http://vurl.com/M8zy5>. And "more than two-thirds of Kosovar
>Albanians [are] already living outside Kosovo" <http://bit.ly/1ukkeBs>
want to live instead of going elsewhere. The upside of course, is the
brain drain. The smartest, best educated and those with the most
resources are the ones leaving. This is death to those societies, but
like so many African tribes who fought to destroy each other, when the
game is finally over, there won't be anybody left to do any work.
>In a broader sense the result of the Yugoslavian adventure was the
>beginning of process of moral bankruptcy of the US, which is coming to
>its logical end today.
America's "moral bankruptcy" as you would seem to define it, started
many decades earlier. You're just spouting crap now because you've
lost the point and you know it.
>> I have to wonder why you only support dictators, one
>> party states and genocidal regimes, Oleg.
>
>I have to wonder why the US-baked 'freedom fighters' are always like
>these: the kidnappers and organ traffickers in Kosovo, the neo-Nazi
>and corrupt oligarchs in the Ukraine, the jihadists in Syria etc etc
Oleg Smirnov
Dec 15, 2015, 11:51:11 AM12/15/15
to
Governor Swill, <news:tilu6bhu0f8hsjcl0...@4ax.com>
The conflict wasn't so religious but rather nationalistic
and related to historical legacies. The mass killings and
ethnic cleansing in the region was a usual business in the
WW2 time, when Kosovo was annexed under fascist rule of
the Axis powers - about 400 thousands of the Serbs were
cleansed by the Albanians that en masse collaborated with
the Axis. A 'soft' cleansing continued from the 1970s.
America and NATO resembled the Nazis, not the opposite.
The US also resembled the Nazis in the Ukraine.
It's a pattern.
>> The Kosovo-related issues have deep roots in entangled
>> history. The situation requited somewhat more delicate
>> solution. What the US-led Western powers have done in
>> this case is just a sort of blatant barbarism under the
>> slogans of humanitarian concerns, democracy and shit
>> like that.
>
> And yet the region is at peace, economic activity is
> returning, the locals aren't killing each other en masse
> and the lesson has been taught again. If you try to
> exterminate your population and your neighbors can stop
> you, they will.
<http://tinyurl.com/pj448mj>
"A repeated justification for NATO's bombing of the
Serbian military was to prevent ethnic cleansing .. The
NATO bombing campaign was launched to stop Serb aggression
against Kosovars. Instead, after the bombing began, the
Serbs stepped up their effort to drive Kosovars out of
Kosovo."
What a nice way of thought indeed.
>> In a broader sense the result of the Yugoslavian
>> adventure was the beginning of process of moral
>> bankruptcy of the US, which is coming to its logical end
>> today.
>
> BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!
>
> America's "moral bankruptcy" as you would seem to define
> it, started many decades earlier. You're just spouting
> crap now because you've lost the point and you know it.
The point is exactly like I said. You may be proud of your
dull bulling but don't pretend that you have a moral ground.
In your heart you know America is evil and you are a part.
> On Mon, 14 Dec 2015 09:06:35 -0000, "Oleg Smirnov"
and related to historical legacies. The mass killings and
ethnic cleansing in the region was a usual business in the
WW2 time, when Kosovo was annexed under fascist rule of
the Axis powers - about 400 thousands of the Serbs were
cleansed by the Albanians that en masse collaborated with
the Axis. A 'soft' cleansing continued from the 1970s.
America and NATO resembled the Nazis, not the opposite.
The US also resembled the Nazis in the Ukraine.
It's a pattern.
>> The Kosovo-related issues have deep roots in entangled
>> history. The situation requited somewhat more delicate
>> solution. What the US-led Western powers have done in
>> this case is just a sort of blatant barbarism under the
>> slogans of humanitarian concerns, democracy and shit
>> like that.
>
> And yet the region is at peace, economic activity is
> returning, the locals aren't killing each other en masse
> and the lesson has been taught again. If you try to
> exterminate your population and your neighbors can stop
> you, they will.
"A repeated justification for NATO's bombing of the
Serbian military was to prevent ethnic cleansing .. The
NATO bombing campaign was launched to stop Serb aggression
against Kosovars. Instead, after the bombing began, the
Serbs stepped up their effort to drive Kosovars out of
Kosovo."
>> In a broader sense the result of the Yugoslavian
>> adventure was the beginning of process of moral
>> bankruptcy of the US, which is coming to its logical end
>> today.
>
> BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!
>
> America's "moral bankruptcy" as you would seem to define
> it, started many decades earlier. You're just spouting
> crap now because you've lost the point and you know it.
dull bulling but don't pretend that you have a moral ground.
In your heart you know America is evil and you are a part.
Oleg Smirnov
Dec 20, 2015, 11:47:13 AM12/20/15
to
<http://tinyurl.com/hvlagnf>
Neocons Object to Syrian Democracy
Robert Parry / December 19, 2015
Exclusive: President Obama has infuriated Official Washington's neocons by
accepting the Russian stance that the Syrian people should select their own
future leaders through free elections, rather than the neocon insistence on a
foreign-imposed "regime change," reports Robert Parry.
The Washington Post's editorial board is livid that President Barack Obama
appears to have accepted the Russian position that the Syrian people should
decide for themselves who their future leaders should be - when the Post seems
to prefer that the choice be made by neoconservative think tanks in Washington
or other outsiders.
So, in a furious editorial on Friday <http://wapo.st/1Rsh8L7>, the Post
castigated Secretary of State John Kerry for saying - after a meeting with
Russian President Vladimir Putin in Moscow - that the Obama administration and
Russia see the political solution to Syria "in fundamentally the same way,"
meaning that Syrian President Bashar al-Assad could stand for election in the
future.
The Post wrote: "Unfortunately, that increasingly appears to be the case - and
not because Mr. Putin has altered his position. For four years, President
Obama demanded the departure of Mr. Assad, who has killed hundreds of
thousands of his own people with chemical weapons, 'barrel bombs,' torture and
other hideous acts. Yet in its zeal to come to terms with Mr. Putin, the Obama
administration has been slowly retreating from that position."
The Russian position, which Obama finally seems to be accepting, is that the
Syrian people should be allowed to choose their own leaders through fair,
internationally organized elections, rather than have outside powers dictate
who can and who can't compete in a democratic process. Obama's previous stance
was that Assad must be prevented from running in an election
<http://bit.ly/1P3PWAN>.
But that meant the Syrian bloodshed and resulting chaos - now spreading across
Europe and into the U.S. political process - would continue indefinitely as
the United States took the curious position of opposing democracy in favor of
an insistence that "Assad must go," a demand favored by U.S. neocons and
liberal interventionists, Israel and regional Sunni "allies," such as Saudi
Arabia, Turkey and Qatar.
To the chagrin of the Post's editors, Obama finally ceded to the more
democratically defensible position that the Syrian people should pick their
own leaders. After all, if Obama is right about how much the Syrian people
hate Assad, elections would empower them to implement their own "regime
change" through the ballot box. But that uncertain outcome is not what the
Post's editors want. They want a predetermined result - Assad's ouster -
regardless of the Syrian people's wishes.
And regarding the editorial, you also should note the reference to Assad
killing "his own people with chemical weapons," an apparent allusion to the
now-discredited - but still widely accepted (inside Official Washington at
least) - claim that Assad was behind a lethal sarin gas attack outside
Damascus on Aug. 21, 2013.
To this day, the U.S. government (or, for that matter, the Washington Post)
has not presented any verifiable evidence to support the Assad-did-it
allegation, but it nevertheless has become an Everyone-Knows-It-To-Be-True
"group think" based on endless repetition, much as Official Washington
concluded that Iraq's Saddam Hussein had WMD stockpiles, based on the fact
that it was stated as flat fact by lots of Important People, including the
Post's editorial writers.
Official Washington's epistemology seems to be that if enough Important People
say something is true, then it becomes true - regardless of where the actual
evidence leads. [See Consortiumnews.com's "The Collapsing Syria-Sarin Case."
<http://bit.ly/1ULHmqM>]
Hypocritical Outrage
Other parts of the Post's attacks are equally dubious in that the Post's
editors - who were all-in for the "shock and awe" bombing of Iraq and wouldn't
think of sharing blame for the hundreds of thousands of Iraqis killed as a
result of President George W. Bush's Washington Post-endorsed invasion - are
now outraged over Syria's homemade "barrel bombs" and blame Assad for all the
deaths, even though many of the dead were Syrian soldiers killed by Islamic
jihadists, armed and financed by U.S. "allies," Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Turkey
and others.
And, by the way, some torture blamed on Syria was carried out in coordination
with the Bush administration's "extraordinary rendition" program as part of
the "global war on terror." For instance, Canadian citizen Maher Arar, who was
seized by the U.S. government at New York's Kennedy International Airport in
September 2002 while on his way home to Canada, was shipped to Syria as a
suspected Al Qaeda member. Arar was tortured in Syria before being cleared of
suspicions by both Syria and Canada, according to a later Canadian
investigation.
But, hey, you don't expect The Washington Post's neocon editors to give you
any honest context, do you?
The more immediate issue is the Post's fury over the prospect that the Syrian
people would be allowed to vote on Assad's future rather than have it dictated
by neocon think tanks, Islamic jihadist rebels and their
Turkish-Saudi-Qatari-Israeli-CIA backers.
The Post's editors wrote, "On Tuesday in Moscow, Mr. Kerry took another big
step backward <http://apne.ws/225lbRo>: 'The United States and our partners
are not seeking so-called regime change,' he said. He added that a demand by a
broad opposition front that Mr. Assad step down immediately was a
'non-starting position' - because the United States already agreed that Mr.
Assad could stay at least for the first few months of a 'transition process.'"
Kerry "now agrees with Mr. Putin that the country's future leadership must be
left to Syrians to work out," the Post's outraged editors wrote. Yes, you read
that correctly.
Though the Post predicted on Friday morning that the notion of the Syrian
people being allowed to decide their future leaders was "a likely recipe for
an impasse," later on Friday the United Nations Security Council voted
unanimously in favor of a roadmap for a cease-fire in Syria, negotiations on a
transitional government and elections within 18 months after the start of
talks.
The agreement makes no reference as to whether Assad can or cannot run in the
new U.N.-organized elections, meaning apparently that he will be able to
participate - surely to the additional dismay of the Post's editors.
Many Obstacles
Obviously, the U.N. plan faces many obstacles, especially the continued
insistence on "regime change" from Saudi Arabia, Turkey and other Sunni-led
regional governments, which disdain Assad who is an Alawite, an offshoot of
Shia Islam. Further condemning Assad in their eyes, he seeks to maintain a
secular government that protects Christians, Alawites, Shiites and other
minorities.
The Saudis, Turks and Qataris have been among the leaders in supporting
violent Sunni jihadists, including Ahrar al-Sham and Al Qaeda's Nusra Front,
which operate under the Saudi umbrella called the Army of Conquest, which has
received hundreds of sophisticated U.S.-made TOW missiles that have proved
devastating in killing Syrian government troops. Israel also has provided some
support to these jihadists operating along the Golan Heights.
While Turkey, a member of NATO, denies assisting terrorists, its intelligence
services have been implicated in helping Nusra Front operatives carry out the
Aug. 21, 2013 sarin gas attack outside Damascus, with the goal of pinning the
blame on Assad and tricking Obama into ordering a devastating series of air
strikes against Syrian government forces. [See Consortiumnews.com's "Was
Turkey Behind Syria Sarin Attack?" <http://bit.ly/1J0UbvU>]
Turkey also has allowed the hyper-brutal Islamic State to transit through
nearly 100 kilometers of openings on the Syrian-Turkish border, including
passage of vast truck convoys of Islamic State oil into Turkey for resale, a
reality that Obama recently raised with Turkish President Recep Tayyip
Erdogan, who has long promised but failed to seal the border. [See
Consortiumnews.com's "A Blind Eye Toward Turkey's Crimes."
<http://bit.ly/1Ypk5jR>]
At home, President Obama also faces political difficulties from Israel and
from Official Washington's alliance of neoconservatives and liberal
interventionists who have made Assad's ouster a cause célèbre despite the
disastrous experiences overthrowing other secular regimes in Iraq and Libya.
In the past, Obama has been highly sensitive to criticism from this group,
including nasty comments on the Post's editorial page. But the Post's ire on
Friday suggests that - at least for the moment - Obama is putting pragmatism
(i.e., the need to stop the Syrian killing and the global insecurity that it
is causing) ahead of neocon/liberal-hawk ideological desires.
Investigative reporter Robert Parry broke many of the Iran-Contra stories for
The Associated Press and Newsweek in the 1980s. You can buy his latest book,
America's Stolen Narrative, either in print here <http://bit.ly/1e1Bae7> or as
an e-book (from Amazon <http://amzn.to/1NgNymN> and barnesandnoble.com
<http://bit.ly/1QNY0rx>).
> <http://tinyurl.com/orydzwz>
Neocons Object to Syrian Democracy
Robert Parry / December 19, 2015
Exclusive: President Obama has infuriated Official Washington's neocons by
accepting the Russian stance that the Syrian people should select their own
future leaders through free elections, rather than the neocon insistence on a
foreign-imposed "regime change," reports Robert Parry.
The Washington Post's editorial board is livid that President Barack Obama
appears to have accepted the Russian position that the Syrian people should
decide for themselves who their future leaders should be - when the Post seems
to prefer that the choice be made by neoconservative think tanks in Washington
or other outsiders.
So, in a furious editorial on Friday <http://wapo.st/1Rsh8L7>, the Post
castigated Secretary of State John Kerry for saying - after a meeting with
Russian President Vladimir Putin in Moscow - that the Obama administration and
Russia see the political solution to Syria "in fundamentally the same way,"
meaning that Syrian President Bashar al-Assad could stand for election in the
future.
The Post wrote: "Unfortunately, that increasingly appears to be the case - and
not because Mr. Putin has altered his position. For four years, President
Obama demanded the departure of Mr. Assad, who has killed hundreds of
thousands of his own people with chemical weapons, 'barrel bombs,' torture and
other hideous acts. Yet in its zeal to come to terms with Mr. Putin, the Obama
administration has been slowly retreating from that position."
The Russian position, which Obama finally seems to be accepting, is that the
Syrian people should be allowed to choose their own leaders through fair,
internationally organized elections, rather than have outside powers dictate
who can and who can't compete in a democratic process. Obama's previous stance
was that Assad must be prevented from running in an election
<http://bit.ly/1P3PWAN>.
But that meant the Syrian bloodshed and resulting chaos - now spreading across
Europe and into the U.S. political process - would continue indefinitely as
the United States took the curious position of opposing democracy in favor of
an insistence that "Assad must go," a demand favored by U.S. neocons and
liberal interventionists, Israel and regional Sunni "allies," such as Saudi
Arabia, Turkey and Qatar.
To the chagrin of the Post's editors, Obama finally ceded to the more
democratically defensible position that the Syrian people should pick their
own leaders. After all, if Obama is right about how much the Syrian people
hate Assad, elections would empower them to implement their own "regime
change" through the ballot box. But that uncertain outcome is not what the
Post's editors want. They want a predetermined result - Assad's ouster -
regardless of the Syrian people's wishes.
And regarding the editorial, you also should note the reference to Assad
killing "his own people with chemical weapons," an apparent allusion to the
now-discredited - but still widely accepted (inside Official Washington at
least) - claim that Assad was behind a lethal sarin gas attack outside
Damascus on Aug. 21, 2013.
To this day, the U.S. government (or, for that matter, the Washington Post)
has not presented any verifiable evidence to support the Assad-did-it
allegation, but it nevertheless has become an Everyone-Knows-It-To-Be-True
"group think" based on endless repetition, much as Official Washington
concluded that Iraq's Saddam Hussein had WMD stockpiles, based on the fact
that it was stated as flat fact by lots of Important People, including the
Post's editorial writers.
Official Washington's epistemology seems to be that if enough Important People
say something is true, then it becomes true - regardless of where the actual
evidence leads. [See Consortiumnews.com's "The Collapsing Syria-Sarin Case."
<http://bit.ly/1ULHmqM>]
Hypocritical Outrage
Other parts of the Post's attacks are equally dubious in that the Post's
editors - who were all-in for the "shock and awe" bombing of Iraq and wouldn't
think of sharing blame for the hundreds of thousands of Iraqis killed as a
result of President George W. Bush's Washington Post-endorsed invasion - are
now outraged over Syria's homemade "barrel bombs" and blame Assad for all the
deaths, even though many of the dead were Syrian soldiers killed by Islamic
jihadists, armed and financed by U.S. "allies," Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Turkey
and others.
And, by the way, some torture blamed on Syria was carried out in coordination
with the Bush administration's "extraordinary rendition" program as part of
the "global war on terror." For instance, Canadian citizen Maher Arar, who was
seized by the U.S. government at New York's Kennedy International Airport in
September 2002 while on his way home to Canada, was shipped to Syria as a
suspected Al Qaeda member. Arar was tortured in Syria before being cleared of
suspicions by both Syria and Canada, according to a later Canadian
investigation.
But, hey, you don't expect The Washington Post's neocon editors to give you
any honest context, do you?
The more immediate issue is the Post's fury over the prospect that the Syrian
people would be allowed to vote on Assad's future rather than have it dictated
by neocon think tanks, Islamic jihadist rebels and their
Turkish-Saudi-Qatari-Israeli-CIA backers.
The Post's editors wrote, "On Tuesday in Moscow, Mr. Kerry took another big
step backward <http://apne.ws/225lbRo>: 'The United States and our partners
are not seeking so-called regime change,' he said. He added that a demand by a
broad opposition front that Mr. Assad step down immediately was a
'non-starting position' - because the United States already agreed that Mr.
Assad could stay at least for the first few months of a 'transition process.'"
Kerry "now agrees with Mr. Putin that the country's future leadership must be
left to Syrians to work out," the Post's outraged editors wrote. Yes, you read
that correctly.
Though the Post predicted on Friday morning that the notion of the Syrian
people being allowed to decide their future leaders was "a likely recipe for
an impasse," later on Friday the United Nations Security Council voted
unanimously in favor of a roadmap for a cease-fire in Syria, negotiations on a
transitional government and elections within 18 months after the start of
talks.
The agreement makes no reference as to whether Assad can or cannot run in the
new U.N.-organized elections, meaning apparently that he will be able to
participate - surely to the additional dismay of the Post's editors.
Many Obstacles
Obviously, the U.N. plan faces many obstacles, especially the continued
insistence on "regime change" from Saudi Arabia, Turkey and other Sunni-led
regional governments, which disdain Assad who is an Alawite, an offshoot of
Shia Islam. Further condemning Assad in their eyes, he seeks to maintain a
secular government that protects Christians, Alawites, Shiites and other
minorities.
The Saudis, Turks and Qataris have been among the leaders in supporting
violent Sunni jihadists, including Ahrar al-Sham and Al Qaeda's Nusra Front,
which operate under the Saudi umbrella called the Army of Conquest, which has
received hundreds of sophisticated U.S.-made TOW missiles that have proved
devastating in killing Syrian government troops. Israel also has provided some
support to these jihadists operating along the Golan Heights.
While Turkey, a member of NATO, denies assisting terrorists, its intelligence
services have been implicated in helping Nusra Front operatives carry out the
Aug. 21, 2013 sarin gas attack outside Damascus, with the goal of pinning the
blame on Assad and tricking Obama into ordering a devastating series of air
strikes against Syrian government forces. [See Consortiumnews.com's "Was
Turkey Behind Syria Sarin Attack?" <http://bit.ly/1J0UbvU>]
Turkey also has allowed the hyper-brutal Islamic State to transit through
nearly 100 kilometers of openings on the Syrian-Turkish border, including
passage of vast truck convoys of Islamic State oil into Turkey for resale, a
reality that Obama recently raised with Turkish President Recep Tayyip
Erdogan, who has long promised but failed to seal the border. [See
Consortiumnews.com's "A Blind Eye Toward Turkey's Crimes."
<http://bit.ly/1Ypk5jR>]
At home, President Obama also faces political difficulties from Israel and
from Official Washington's alliance of neoconservatives and liberal
interventionists who have made Assad's ouster a cause célèbre despite the
disastrous experiences overthrowing other secular regimes in Iraq and Libya.
In the past, Obama has been highly sensitive to criticism from this group,
including nasty comments on the Post's editorial page. But the Post's ire on
Friday suggests that - at least for the moment - Obama is putting pragmatism
(i.e., the need to stop the Syrian killing and the global insecurity that it
is causing) ahead of neocon/liberal-hawk ideological desires.
Investigative reporter Robert Parry broke many of the Iran-Contra stories for
The Associated Press and Newsweek in the 1980s. You can buy his latest book,
America's Stolen Narrative, either in print here <http://bit.ly/1e1Bae7> or as
an e-book (from Amazon <http://amzn.to/1NgNymN> and barnesandnoble.com
<http://bit.ly/1QNY0rx>).
Oleg Smirnov
Dec 20, 2015, 5:40:21 PM12/20/15
to
<http://tinyurl.com/zcodgnr> independent.co.uk
Saudi Arabia more of a threat to UK than Russia, says Ken Livingstone
'We now face a threat from Muslim fundamentalism - most of which has been
funded by Saudi Arabia, our principal ally'
David Connett Thursday 10 December 2015
Russia is not as much a threat to Britain and the West as Saudi Arabia, Ken
Livingstone has claimed at a conference in Moscow hosted by the pro-Kremlin
television station Russia Today.
"The simple fact is, the West doesn't face a threat from Russia," the former
Mayor of London said. "We now face a threat from Muslim fundamentalism. Most
of which has been funded by Saudi Arabia, our principal ally, which has funded
the most intolerant strand of Islam which bears no relation to the teaching of
the Prophet Mohammed."
US funding of mujhadeen in Afghanistan was responsible for 9/11 he claimed.
Russia was getting a bad press and President Vladimir Putin was being
demonised he also claimed. "In Britain no one is told about the discrimination
against Russian-speaking people in the Baltic States, no one is told that it
was actually pressure from the EU that insisted to the then Ukrainian
president that they wouldn't sign a trade deal unless they stopped negotiating
a trade deal with Russia, and then when the president decided that he wouldn't
do that, oddly enough he was overthrown."
During a panel discussion Mr Livingstone added that the "right things" were
not being done to stop Islamic terrorism.
"The right thing isn't being done, almost all Muslim fundamentalism has been
funded by the Saudis and the Qataris, going back 70 years, spreading a
particularly hate-filled Wahabi strand of Islam and Britain and America should
be saying to them 'You've got to stop funding this or you cannot be our
ally'."
Only now has Washington just begun to see that it needed to cooperate with
Iran and Russia to combat Muslim terrorism, he said. "We need a broad
coalition. The West is discredited after the fiasco over the wars in
Afghanistan and Iraq. We need to bring in not just Russia and Iran but China,
Nigeria and Brazil as well. It needs to be the world standing together. That's
what the UN was created for."
Mr Livingstone warned the world was at a turning point. "I think if we don't
recognise the threat and if we don't recognise our real allies then this could
on for decades."
Saudi Arabia more of a threat to UK than Russia, says Ken Livingstone
'We now face a threat from Muslim fundamentalism - most of which has been
funded by Saudi Arabia, our principal ally'
David Connett Thursday 10 December 2015
Russia is not as much a threat to Britain and the West as Saudi Arabia, Ken
Livingstone has claimed at a conference in Moscow hosted by the pro-Kremlin
television station Russia Today.
"The simple fact is, the West doesn't face a threat from Russia," the former
Mayor of London said. "We now face a threat from Muslim fundamentalism. Most
of which has been funded by Saudi Arabia, our principal ally, which has funded
the most intolerant strand of Islam which bears no relation to the teaching of
the Prophet Mohammed."
US funding of mujhadeen in Afghanistan was responsible for 9/11 he claimed.
Russia was getting a bad press and President Vladimir Putin was being
demonised he also claimed. "In Britain no one is told about the discrimination
against Russian-speaking people in the Baltic States, no one is told that it
was actually pressure from the EU that insisted to the then Ukrainian
president that they wouldn't sign a trade deal unless they stopped negotiating
a trade deal with Russia, and then when the president decided that he wouldn't
do that, oddly enough he was overthrown."
During a panel discussion Mr Livingstone added that the "right things" were
not being done to stop Islamic terrorism.
"The right thing isn't being done, almost all Muslim fundamentalism has been
funded by the Saudis and the Qataris, going back 70 years, spreading a
particularly hate-filled Wahabi strand of Islam and Britain and America should
be saying to them 'You've got to stop funding this or you cannot be our
ally'."
Only now has Washington just begun to see that it needed to cooperate with
Iran and Russia to combat Muslim terrorism, he said. "We need a broad
coalition. The West is discredited after the fiasco over the wars in
Afghanistan and Iraq. We need to bring in not just Russia and Iran but China,
Nigeria and Brazil as well. It needs to be the world standing together. That's
what the UN was created for."
Mr Livingstone warned the world was at a turning point. "I think if we don't
recognise the threat and if we don't recognise our real allies then this could
on for decades."
bookoflife.org
Dec 20, 2015, 5:52:42 PM12/20/15
to
On Monday, December 14, 2015 at 4:06:14 PM UTC-8, Governor Swill wrote:
dude, you inspired the san bernardino attacks you fucking hidden terrorist inspirationist.
Muslims are directed by Allah to kill fagogs like you, all pagans. So treating them nice does 100% NOTHING. al fagdaddi isis leader allows pedastry and your child boy sex clubs are why you support the radical barbarians, FOAD
stop using encryptin fuckwad
dude, you inspired the san bernardino attacks you fucking hidden terrorist inspirationist.
Muslims are directed by Allah to kill fagogs like you, all pagans. So treating them nice does 100% NOTHING. al fagdaddi isis leader allows pedastry and your child boy sex clubs are why you support the radical barbarians, FOAD
stop using encryptin fuckwad
Jonathan
Dec 20, 2015, 6:42:02 PM12/20/15
to
On 12/20/2015 5:39 PM, Oleg Smirnov wrote:
> <http://tinyurl.com/zcodgnr> independent.co.uk
>
> Saudi Arabia more of a threat to UK than Russia, says Ken Livingstone
> 'We now face a threat from Muslim fundamentalism - most of which has been
> funded by Saudi Arabia, our principal ally'
Russian dumb-bombs killed 250 civilians in Syria
> <http://tinyurl.com/zcodgnr> independent.co.uk
>
> Saudi Arabia more of a threat to UK than Russia, says Ken Livingstone
> 'We now face a threat from Muslim fundamentalism - most of which has been
> funded by Saudi Arabia, our principal ally'
last month.
ISIS killed 200 civilians last month.
Wanna see /some/ of the pictures of the
'terrorists' Putin/Assad team is killing
or worse?
These pictures only go back to DEC 7 and
are mostly from JUST ONE CITY - Douma
https://twitter.com/search?q=%23DOUMA&src=typd
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CVx9uH0XAAAJCoV.jpg
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CVx9vTLWsAAPQwS.jpg
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YEvriHq1s_Y
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CWIypztWwAEhclX.jpg
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CWIMQwBUEAEzSe-.jpg
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CWhSK6GUEAE66Bi.jpg
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CWr0dCfWwAA4Bdr.jpg
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CWImgTGWEAAwYYo.jpg
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CWImf-SWwAADxyf.jpg
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CWGnoGSWIAA7JG4.png
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CV2VhcbWEAAE6UK.jpg
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CV2JFp2WcAAFBnM.jpg
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CV0OslNWEAApYgu.jpg
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CV0ND8SWwAA-4mt.jpg
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CWVXv4hXIAAJS1J.jpg
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CWH1TtjU8AALLii.jpg
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CWHMOKBW4AAFwRG.jpg
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CWHLF4ZWwAAn1jZ.jpg
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CWHLF30WUAALqwT.jpg
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CWGoGEIWwAApqXW.jpg
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CVx9u4oXIAA0mV2.jpg
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CVqi7HpWoAEFeZt.jpg
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CVohAvFWUAI6rnR.jpg
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CVdxk2aWEAAugy-.jpg
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CVjENzxXAAASD1l.jpg
Assad's running crimes...
http://www.buzzfeed.com/maryanngeorgantopoulos/photos-depicting-torture-in-syria-shock-viewers-at-un#.rdjVnZ3az
S
Oleg Smirnov
Dec 20, 2015, 8:22:10 PM12/20/15
to
Jonathan, <news:TZWdnZgrqvdUoerL...@giganews.com>
<http://tinyurl.com/pg4v67w>
<http://tinyurl.com/orwvwkv>
<http://tinyurl.com/ng9wnao>
<http://tinyurl.com/pl2xpze>
<http://tinyurl.com/gujyolm>
<http://tinyurl.com/oc7nr8x>
> https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CVx9uH0XAAAJCoV.jpg
Hardly someone could say for sure where exactly this
picture was taken, meanwhile I recall you were pretty
indifferent to photos of killed children in Donbas.
Your crocodile tears aren't much convincing, Jonthy.
> On 12/20/2015 5:39 PM, Oleg Smirnov wrote:
>> <http://tinyurl.com/zcodgnr> independent.co.uk
>>
>> Saudi Arabia more of a threat to UK than Russia, says
>> Ken Livingstone 'We now face a threat from Muslim
>> fundamentalism - most of which has been funded by Saudi
>> Arabia, our principal ally'
>
>
> Russian dumb-bombs killed 250 civilians in Syria
> last month.
>
> ISIS killed 200 civilians last month.
>
>
>
> Wanna see /some/ of the pictures of the
> 'terrorists' Putin/Assad team is killing
> or worse?
>
> These pictures only go back to DEC 7 and
> are mostly from JUST ONE CITY - Douma
>
> https://twitter.com/search?q=%23DOUMA&src=typd
These links tell about how they are brainwashing you.
>> <http://tinyurl.com/zcodgnr> independent.co.uk
>>
>> Saudi Arabia more of a threat to UK than Russia, says
>> Ken Livingstone 'We now face a threat from Muslim
>> fundamentalism - most of which has been funded by Saudi
>> Arabia, our principal ally'
>
>
> Russian dumb-bombs killed 250 civilians in Syria
> last month.
>
> ISIS killed 200 civilians last month.
>
>
>
> Wanna see /some/ of the pictures of the
> 'terrorists' Putin/Assad team is killing
> or worse?
>
> These pictures only go back to DEC 7 and
> are mostly from JUST ONE CITY - Douma
>
> https://twitter.com/search?q=%23DOUMA&src=typd
<http://tinyurl.com/pg4v67w>
<http://tinyurl.com/orwvwkv>
<http://tinyurl.com/ng9wnao>
<http://tinyurl.com/pl2xpze>
<http://tinyurl.com/gujyolm>
<http://tinyurl.com/oc7nr8x>
> https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CVx9uH0XAAAJCoV.jpg
Hardly someone could say for sure where exactly this
picture was taken, meanwhile I recall you were pretty
indifferent to photos of killed children in Donbas.
Your crocodile tears aren't much convincing, Jonthy.
Oleg Smirnov
Dec 22, 2015, 4:59:08 AM12/22/15
to
<http://www.lrb.co.uk/v38/n01/seymour-m-hersh/military-to-military>
What happened, according to Hersh:
a.. The Joint Chiefs of Staff, America's senior-most military leaders, in
summer 2013 discovered that Turkey had "co-opted" the CIA's rebel-arming
program, redirecting the US aid to extremists including Jabhat al-Nusra (an
al-Qaeda branch) and ISIS.
b.. The Joint Chiefs also discovered that viable moderate Syrian rebels did
not exist and that the opposition consisted nearly uniformly of extremists.
c.. The Joint Chiefs decided in the fall of 2013 to begin secretly
"providing US intelligence to the militaries of other nations, on the
understanding that it would be passed on to the Syrian army." They sent US
intelligence to Germany, Russia, and Israel, which sent it to Assad.
d.. The goal of their secret alliance with Assad was to subvert Obama's
Syria efforts, prop up Assad, and aid him in destroying ISIS and other
extremists.
e.. In return, the Joint Chiefs asked that Assad 1) "restrain" Hezbollah
from attacking Israel; 2) renew negotiations with Israel over the Golan
Heights, a territory that Israel had seized from Syria decades earlier; 3)
agree to accept any Russian assistance; and 4) hold elections after the war
ended.
f.. In summer 2013 the Joint Chiefs tricked the CIA into shipping obsolete
weapons to Syrian rebels. Hersh says this was intended as a show of good faith
to Assad, to convince him to accept their offer.
g.. The secret Joint Chiefs alliance with Putin and Assad, we are told,
ended this September when its chief architect, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs
Martin Dempsey, retired.
What happened, according to Hersh:
a.. The Joint Chiefs of Staff, America's senior-most military leaders, in
summer 2013 discovered that Turkey had "co-opted" the CIA's rebel-arming
program, redirecting the US aid to extremists including Jabhat al-Nusra (an
al-Qaeda branch) and ISIS.
b.. The Joint Chiefs also discovered that viable moderate Syrian rebels did
not exist and that the opposition consisted nearly uniformly of extremists.
c.. The Joint Chiefs decided in the fall of 2013 to begin secretly
"providing US intelligence to the militaries of other nations, on the
understanding that it would be passed on to the Syrian army." They sent US
intelligence to Germany, Russia, and Israel, which sent it to Assad.
d.. The goal of their secret alliance with Assad was to subvert Obama's
Syria efforts, prop up Assad, and aid him in destroying ISIS and other
extremists.
e.. In return, the Joint Chiefs asked that Assad 1) "restrain" Hezbollah
from attacking Israel; 2) renew negotiations with Israel over the Golan
Heights, a territory that Israel had seized from Syria decades earlier; 3)
agree to accept any Russian assistance; and 4) hold elections after the war
ended.
f.. In summer 2013 the Joint Chiefs tricked the CIA into shipping obsolete
weapons to Syrian rebels. Hersh says this was intended as a show of good faith
to Assad, to convince him to accept their offer.
g.. The secret Joint Chiefs alliance with Putin and Assad, we are told,
ended this September when its chief architect, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs
Martin Dempsey, retired.
Jonathan
Dec 22, 2015, 7:55:09 PM12/22/15
to
On 12/22/2015 5:01 AM, Oleg Smirnov wrote:
> <http://www.lrb.co.uk/v38/n01/seymour-m-hersh/military-to-military>
>
> What happened, according to Hersh:
>
This article shows how Putin is a bald-faced liar
> <http://www.lrb.co.uk/v38/n01/seymour-m-hersh/military-to-military>
>
> What happened, according to Hersh:
>
and also a war criminal.
Putin votes for a UN resolution banning the bombing
of civilian targets in Syria, then two days later
bombs a market place and courthouse killing dozens
of civilians. Nothing accidental about it either.
Putin's word is worth nothing at all, his crimes
and lies only show his increasing desperation
in Syria.
Quagmire? What happened to Putin's claim his
intervention should only need a couple of months?
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/a-un-resolution-on-syria-is-shattered/2015/12/21/069c0f66-a803-11e5-9b92-dea7cd4b1a4d_story.html
s
Governor Swill
Dec 23, 2015, 1:00:00 PM12/23/15
to
On Tue, 22 Dec 2015 19:55:30 -0500, Jonathan wrote:
>On 12/22/2015 5:01 AM, Oleg Smirnov wrote:
>> What happened, according to Hersh:
>This article shows how Putin is a bald-faced liar
>and also a war criminal.
And hypocrite. Don't forget hypocrite.
>On 12/22/2015 5:01 AM, Oleg Smirnov wrote:
>> What happened, according to Hersh:
>This article shows how Putin is a bald-faced liar
>and also a war criminal.
Swill
>Putin votes for a UN resolution banning the bombing
>of civilian targets in Syria, then two days later
>bombs a market place and courthouse killing dozens
>of civilians. Nothing accidental about it either.
>
>Putin's word is worth nothing at all, his crimes
>and lies only show his increasing desperation
>in Syria.
>
>Quagmire? What happened to Putin's claim his
>intervention should only need a couple of months?
>
>
>https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/a-un-resolution-on-syria-is-shattered/2015/12/21/069c0f66-a803-11e5-9b92-dea7cd4b1a4d_story.html
>
>
>
>s
Oleg Smirnov
Dec 23, 2015, 1:15:22 PM12/23/15
to
Governor Swill, <news:j6ol7b1hp4c6o9cso...@4ax.com>
made up by the MSM, you never know what
exactly 'Putin' said, promised etc.
> On Tue, 22 Dec 2015 19:55:30 -0500, Jonathan wrote:
>> This article shows how Putin is a bald-faced liar
>> and also a war criminal.
>
> And hypocrite. Don't forget hypocrite.
You're sheep living in a dream world
>> This article shows how Putin is a bald-faced liar
>> and also a war criminal.
>
> And hypocrite. Don't forget hypocrite.
made up by the MSM, you never know what
exactly 'Putin' said, promised etc.
Oleg Smirnov
Dec 23, 2015, 2:59:08 PM12/23/15
to
<http://www.frontline.in/world-affairs/a-forgotten-genocide/article8017859.ece>
A forgotten genocide
BY JOHN CHERIAN
Millions of Communists were killed in a U.S.-backed pogrom in Indonesia 50
years ago, but the government continues to disallow discussions or film
screenings relating to the massacre.
Many historians describe the massacre of more than a million Indonesians 50
years ago as one of the worst genocides of the 20th century. Some historians
and survivors say that the number of those killed is even higher. The
Indonesian army officer Maj. Gen. Sarwo Edhie, who participated in the
supervising of the pogrom, has claimed that three million were killed. The sad
and gruesome chapter in Indonesian history began on September 30, 1965, after
an attempted military coup by a section of the armed forces. There was a power
struggle brewing between progressive forces under the titular leadership of
President Sukarno, who was at the time backed by the Communist Party of
Indonesia (PKI), and sections of the armed forces. On the opposing side were
conservative political parties and leading army generals who had had the
backing of the West since the mid-1950s.
The events that shook Indonesia unfolded at the height of the Cold War. At the
time, the PKI was the second biggest Communist Party in Asia after the Chinese
Communist Party. In 1965, the PKI had around three million members. Trade
unions and women and student organisations affiliated to the party had another
15 to 20 million more supporters. The PKI, under the leadership of Dipa
Nusantara Aidit, was a peaceful unarmed organisation adhering broadly to a
parliamentary path. It was playing a key role in keeping Sukarno, one of the
architects of the Non-Aligned Movement and a towering figure of the
decolonisation struggle, in power in the last years of his presidency.
Sukarno incurred the wrath of the West after he insisted on following an
independent foreign policy. He had taken a strong stance against the remnants
of British, French and Dutch colonialism in the region. By the mid-1950s, he
had nationalised foreign-owned oil companies. In early 1965, he expelled the
World Bank and the International Monetary Fund from the country. The Central
Intelligence Agency (CIA) of the United States had made several attempts to
overthrow Sukarno and foment secession, in cahoots with friendly governments
in the region. Among those who worked for the CIA in Indonesia was Benigno
Aquino, father of the present President of the Philippines.
The U.S. role
The U.S. and its allies continuously demonised Sukarno and his perceived tilt
towards China and the socialist bloc. They also covertly backed right-wing
parties in the country and encouraged top army generals to step in and prevent
the PKI and its allies from taking power through the ballot box.
In early 1965, the Dutch Ambassador to Indonesia wrote to his government that
Sukarno would continue to lead his country until his death and that it was "no
longer possible to keep Indonesia from slipping into the Left".
Sukarno was ailing at the time and was not expected to live long. Meanwhile,
convinced that he would remain dependent on the PKI until the very end for his
political survival, the U.S. was already planning to bring about regime change
in Indonesia. Secret channels were established by U.S. with the right-wing
army leadership by 1964 to prepare for pre-emptive action.
A coup attempt by a few left-leaning army officers on September 30 was crushed
within days. But the death of six top army generals at their hands gave the
military and its supporters an excuse to launch an all-out exercise to rid the
country of Left-wing groups, trade unionists, sympathisers and even the next
of kin and relatives of those suspected of having left-wing tendencies.
The two most senior officers of the Indonesian army at the time, Gen. Abdul
Harris Nasution and Gen. Suharto, took over the leadership of the army and
presided over the bloodletting that followed. Both these generals had
undergone training in the U.S. and despite being on the hit list of the coup
plotters, had escaped unscathed. The September coup attempt, according to many
historians, might have been intended to forestall a right-wing coup that was
being hatched by a cabal of top army officers that included the slain generals
along with Nasution and Suharto.
Sukarno, who may or may not have had knowledge of the coup, was soon reduced
to a figurehead and eventually completely sidelined. After the coup attempt,
Sukarno had refused to ban the PKI, despite the demands of the army
leadership. In the following months, he was gradually divested of almost all
powers. ..
The British philosopher Bertrand Russell accused the American government of
being "directly involved in the day to day events" in the silent slaughter.
In its December 17, 1965, edition Time said: "Communists, red sympathisers and
their families are being massacred by the thousands. Backland army units are
reported to have executed thousands of communists, after interrogation in
remote jails. Armed with wide bodied blades called 'prangs', Moslem bands
crept at night into the homes of Communists, killing entire families and
burying their bodies in shallow graves. The murder campaign became so brazen
in parts of East Java, that Moslem bands placed the heads of victims on poles
and paraded them through villages. The killings have been on such a scale that
the disposal of the corpses has created a serious sanitation problem in East
Java and parts of Northern Sumatra where the humid air bears the reek of
decaying flesh. Travellers from these areas tell of small rivers and streams
that have been literally clogged with bodies. River transportation has at
places been seriously impeded." The U.S. magazine, despite its known hostility
to Sukarno and the Left, was one of the few Western media outlets to
occasionally report the truth about the horrific situation that prevailed in
Indonesia at the time. ..
Read it in full <http://vurl.com/BBZKN>
A forgotten genocide
BY JOHN CHERIAN
Millions of Communists were killed in a U.S.-backed pogrom in Indonesia 50
years ago, but the government continues to disallow discussions or film
screenings relating to the massacre.
Many historians describe the massacre of more than a million Indonesians 50
years ago as one of the worst genocides of the 20th century. Some historians
and survivors say that the number of those killed is even higher. The
Indonesian army officer Maj. Gen. Sarwo Edhie, who participated in the
supervising of the pogrom, has claimed that three million were killed. The sad
and gruesome chapter in Indonesian history began on September 30, 1965, after
an attempted military coup by a section of the armed forces. There was a power
struggle brewing between progressive forces under the titular leadership of
President Sukarno, who was at the time backed by the Communist Party of
Indonesia (PKI), and sections of the armed forces. On the opposing side were
conservative political parties and leading army generals who had had the
backing of the West since the mid-1950s.
The events that shook Indonesia unfolded at the height of the Cold War. At the
time, the PKI was the second biggest Communist Party in Asia after the Chinese
Communist Party. In 1965, the PKI had around three million members. Trade
unions and women and student organisations affiliated to the party had another
15 to 20 million more supporters. The PKI, under the leadership of Dipa
Nusantara Aidit, was a peaceful unarmed organisation adhering broadly to a
parliamentary path. It was playing a key role in keeping Sukarno, one of the
architects of the Non-Aligned Movement and a towering figure of the
decolonisation struggle, in power in the last years of his presidency.
Sukarno incurred the wrath of the West after he insisted on following an
independent foreign policy. He had taken a strong stance against the remnants
of British, French and Dutch colonialism in the region. By the mid-1950s, he
had nationalised foreign-owned oil companies. In early 1965, he expelled the
World Bank and the International Monetary Fund from the country. The Central
Intelligence Agency (CIA) of the United States had made several attempts to
overthrow Sukarno and foment secession, in cahoots with friendly governments
in the region. Among those who worked for the CIA in Indonesia was Benigno
Aquino, father of the present President of the Philippines.
The U.S. role
The U.S. and its allies continuously demonised Sukarno and his perceived tilt
towards China and the socialist bloc. They also covertly backed right-wing
parties in the country and encouraged top army generals to step in and prevent
the PKI and its allies from taking power through the ballot box.
In early 1965, the Dutch Ambassador to Indonesia wrote to his government that
Sukarno would continue to lead his country until his death and that it was "no
longer possible to keep Indonesia from slipping into the Left".
Sukarno was ailing at the time and was not expected to live long. Meanwhile,
convinced that he would remain dependent on the PKI until the very end for his
political survival, the U.S. was already planning to bring about regime change
in Indonesia. Secret channels were established by U.S. with the right-wing
army leadership by 1964 to prepare for pre-emptive action.
A coup attempt by a few left-leaning army officers on September 30 was crushed
within days. But the death of six top army generals at their hands gave the
military and its supporters an excuse to launch an all-out exercise to rid the
country of Left-wing groups, trade unionists, sympathisers and even the next
of kin and relatives of those suspected of having left-wing tendencies.
The two most senior officers of the Indonesian army at the time, Gen. Abdul
Harris Nasution and Gen. Suharto, took over the leadership of the army and
presided over the bloodletting that followed. Both these generals had
undergone training in the U.S. and despite being on the hit list of the coup
plotters, had escaped unscathed. The September coup attempt, according to many
historians, might have been intended to forestall a right-wing coup that was
being hatched by a cabal of top army officers that included the slain generals
along with Nasution and Suharto.
Sukarno, who may or may not have had knowledge of the coup, was soon reduced
to a figurehead and eventually completely sidelined. After the coup attempt,
Sukarno had refused to ban the PKI, despite the demands of the army
leadership. In the following months, he was gradually divested of almost all
powers. ..
The British philosopher Bertrand Russell accused the American government of
being "directly involved in the day to day events" in the silent slaughter.
In its December 17, 1965, edition Time said: "Communists, red sympathisers and
their families are being massacred by the thousands. Backland army units are
reported to have executed thousands of communists, after interrogation in
remote jails. Armed with wide bodied blades called 'prangs', Moslem bands
crept at night into the homes of Communists, killing entire families and
burying their bodies in shallow graves. The murder campaign became so brazen
in parts of East Java, that Moslem bands placed the heads of victims on poles
and paraded them through villages. The killings have been on such a scale that
the disposal of the corpses has created a serious sanitation problem in East
Java and parts of Northern Sumatra where the humid air bears the reek of
decaying flesh. Travellers from these areas tell of small rivers and streams
that have been literally clogged with bodies. River transportation has at
places been seriously impeded." The U.S. magazine, despite its known hostility
to Sukarno and the Left, was one of the few Western media outlets to
occasionally report the truth about the horrific situation that prevailed in
Indonesia at the time. ..
Read it in full <http://vurl.com/BBZKN>
Oleg Smirnov
Dec 23, 2015, 8:03:52 PM12/23/15
to
<http://tinyurl.com/hd3xmvf> theamericanconservative.com
The Administration's Crocodile Tears Over Yemen
By DANIEL LARISON . December 22, 2015
The Obama administration's crocodile tears over Yemen <http://durl.me/axs48f>
are impossible to take seriously:
Grim briefing on #Yemen today. Yemen's future on the line: over 700 schools
destroyed/damaged; 2x increase in malnourished kids in just 9mo
- Samantha Power (@AmbassadorPower) December 22, 2015
As I noted in a response <http://durl.me/axs4if> to this, all of these things
have been enabled and supported by the Obama administration. Washington's
concern for "Yemen's future" has not been much in evidence for the last nine
months. Instead, the administration has armed and fueled the Saudi-led
coalition's planes, helped <http://chilp.it/e6c8eb3> the Saudis to cover up
their likely war crimes at the U.N., and stood by while the coalition
blockaded an entire country to the point of famine. As it has done since
March, the administration feigns concern over the disaster caused by the war
that they have actively supported. U.S. officials have avoided criticizing the
coalition's campaign in public, and there is not much reason to believe that
there has been much pressure on Riyadh in private to scale back or halt the
campaign. Power isn't likely to publicize that the U.N. holds
<http://migre.me/svole> the Saudi-led coalition responsible for causing a
"disproportionate" share of the civilian casualties in the last nine months,
since the U.S. is partly responsible for causing those deaths. If the
administration were interested in responding seriously to the grim news coming
out of Yemen, it would cut off its support for the war and apply as much
pressure as it could to get the blockade lifted, but it isn't going to do any
of that.
The Administration's Crocodile Tears Over Yemen
By DANIEL LARISON . December 22, 2015
The Obama administration's crocodile tears over Yemen <http://durl.me/axs48f>
are impossible to take seriously:
Grim briefing on #Yemen today. Yemen's future on the line: over 700 schools
destroyed/damaged; 2x increase in malnourished kids in just 9mo
- Samantha Power (@AmbassadorPower) December 22, 2015
As I noted in a response <http://durl.me/axs4if> to this, all of these things
have been enabled and supported by the Obama administration. Washington's
concern for "Yemen's future" has not been much in evidence for the last nine
months. Instead, the administration has armed and fueled the Saudi-led
coalition's planes, helped <http://chilp.it/e6c8eb3> the Saudis to cover up
their likely war crimes at the U.N., and stood by while the coalition
blockaded an entire country to the point of famine. As it has done since
March, the administration feigns concern over the disaster caused by the war
that they have actively supported. U.S. officials have avoided criticizing the
coalition's campaign in public, and there is not much reason to believe that
there has been much pressure on Riyadh in private to scale back or halt the
campaign. Power isn't likely to publicize that the U.N. holds
<http://migre.me/svole> the Saudi-led coalition responsible for causing a
"disproportionate" share of the civilian casualties in the last nine months,
since the U.S. is partly responsible for causing those deaths. If the
administration were interested in responding seriously to the grim news coming
out of Yemen, it would cut off its support for the war and apply as much
pressure as it could to get the blockade lifted, but it isn't going to do any
of that.
Oleg Smirnov
Dec 23, 2015, 8:16:07 PM12/23/15
to
<http://tinyurl.com/jbwqph3> salon.com
From bad to worse to delusional: The real story about Syria that the New York
Times won't tell you / The Times' coverage of anything that challenges the
mythology of American primacy just gets worse
PATRICK L. SMITH / DEC 23, 2015
.. The U.N. Security Council, as last weekend's headlines announced, passed a
resolution Friday providing for a settlement in Syria and-important to
note-the sequence in which steps are to be taken. ..
In brief, the U.N. resolution calls for a cease-fire binding all parties to
the conflict with the exceptions so far of the Islamic State and al Nusra, the
Syrian offshoot of al-Qaida. .. Then come negotiations on a constitutional
rewrite that addresses the sources of the current conflict. .. Last are
national elections. ..
Do not miss this, finally: The U.N. resolution makes no mention of President
Assad. There is no stipulation that he is to step down, or aside, or do
anything else as a precondition of a settlement. Syrians are left to determine
for themselves what place, if any, Assad has in their future political
formations.
Recognize any of this? Readers of this column should. These provisions vary
little from a settlement plan Sergei Lavrov put on the table in Vienna last
October, when a new round of talks among more than a dozen of the Russian
foreign minister's counterparts began.
On the other hand, readers of our corporate media, notably the New York Times,
will be terribly confused at this point. They have been reading for some time
that the U.N. resolution last Friday in New York was the consequence of
Secretary of State Kerry's arduous diplomacy. Facts being facts, the record
the record, and history being history, this takes a lot of forgetting. ..
The Times' coverage of anything that challenges the mythology of American
primacy goes from bad to worse to delusional.
We have witnessed a force-feeding over the past three months all right, but
forget about whatever Kerry has been telling colleagues - and you by way of
correspondents who behave like clerks attending to the State Department's
bulletin board. Turning things upside down as one often must, Russia - with
France's assistance post-Paris - has patiently forced the U.S. to abandon its
obsession with toppling Assad, accept settlement terms based on the principle
of self-determination and put the threat of the Islamic State before
great-power advantage, as it should have more than a year ago.
Referencing the shameful tragedies the U.S. has made of Iraq and Libya, Lavrov
said this after the Security Council concluded its business last week: "We
should try to avoid the mistakes we have made. Only the Syrian people are
going to decide their own future. That also covers the future of the Syrian
president."
I want to know why the man standing next to Lavrov, my secretary of state, is
incapable of saying such things. ..
Read it in full <http://tinyurl.com/jbwqph3>
From bad to worse to delusional: The real story about Syria that the New York
Times won't tell you / The Times' coverage of anything that challenges the
mythology of American primacy just gets worse
PATRICK L. SMITH / DEC 23, 2015
.. The U.N. Security Council, as last weekend's headlines announced, passed a
resolution Friday providing for a settlement in Syria and-important to
note-the sequence in which steps are to be taken. ..
In brief, the U.N. resolution calls for a cease-fire binding all parties to
the conflict with the exceptions so far of the Islamic State and al Nusra, the
Syrian offshoot of al-Qaida. .. Then come negotiations on a constitutional
rewrite that addresses the sources of the current conflict. .. Last are
national elections. ..
Do not miss this, finally: The U.N. resolution makes no mention of President
Assad. There is no stipulation that he is to step down, or aside, or do
anything else as a precondition of a settlement. Syrians are left to determine
for themselves what place, if any, Assad has in their future political
formations.
Recognize any of this? Readers of this column should. These provisions vary
little from a settlement plan Sergei Lavrov put on the table in Vienna last
October, when a new round of talks among more than a dozen of the Russian
foreign minister's counterparts began.
On the other hand, readers of our corporate media, notably the New York Times,
will be terribly confused at this point. They have been reading for some time
that the U.N. resolution last Friday in New York was the consequence of
Secretary of State Kerry's arduous diplomacy. Facts being facts, the record
the record, and history being history, this takes a lot of forgetting. ..
The Times' coverage of anything that challenges the mythology of American
primacy goes from bad to worse to delusional.
We have witnessed a force-feeding over the past three months all right, but
forget about whatever Kerry has been telling colleagues - and you by way of
correspondents who behave like clerks attending to the State Department's
bulletin board. Turning things upside down as one often must, Russia - with
France's assistance post-Paris - has patiently forced the U.S. to abandon its
obsession with toppling Assad, accept settlement terms based on the principle
of self-determination and put the threat of the Islamic State before
great-power advantage, as it should have more than a year ago.
Referencing the shameful tragedies the U.S. has made of Iraq and Libya, Lavrov
said this after the Security Council concluded its business last week: "We
should try to avoid the mistakes we have made. Only the Syrian people are
going to decide their own future. That also covers the future of the Syrian
president."
I want to know why the man standing next to Lavrov, my secretary of state, is
incapable of saying such things. ..
Read it in full <http://tinyurl.com/jbwqph3>
Governor Swill
Dec 24, 2015, 12:01:05 PM12/24/15
to
On Wed, 23 Dec 2015 19:54:55 -0000, "Oleg Smirnov" <os...@netc.eu>
wrote:
><http://www.frontline.in/world-affairs/a-forgotten-genocide/article8017859.ece>
>
>A forgotten genocide
>
>BY JOHN CHERIAN
>
>Millions of Communists were killed in a U.S.-backed pogrom in Indonesia 50
>years ago, but the government continues to disallow discussions or film
>screenings relating to the massacre.
And good riddance. The world becomes a better place every time a
communist dies.
Swill
wrote:
><http://www.frontline.in/world-affairs/a-forgotten-genocide/article8017859.ece>
>
>A forgotten genocide
>
>BY JOHN CHERIAN
>
>Millions of Communists were killed in a U.S.-backed pogrom in Indonesia 50
>years ago, but the government continues to disallow discussions or film
>screenings relating to the massacre.
communist dies.
Swill
Oleg Smirnov
Dec 28, 2015, 12:06:05 AM12/28/15
to
<http://www.wnd.com/2015/12/obama-signature-on-present-middle-east-chaos/>
OBAMA SIGNATURE ON PRESENT MIDDLE EAST 'CHAOS'
'Hundreds of thousands' dead after 'dramatic shift in foreign policy toward
Muslim world'
The civil war in Syria could trigger a global conflict, as did Sarajevo in
1914, largely because of the "apocalyptic" aims of the "moderate Islamists"
President Obama has been supporting, according to a variety of observers.
"The world is presently teetering on the edge of World War III," Joel
Richardson told WND. "This is not an overly sensationalized statement."
The bestselling author of "The Islamic Antichrist" <http://is.gd/146wgG> is
not alone in his opinion.
Conservative commentator Pat Buchanan slammed <http://chilp.it/9ed19e6> the
anti-Russian stance of many Republican candidates during the most recent
presidential debate and warned of the potential for "Syria in 2016 to become
what Sarajevo became in 1914, the powder keg that explodes into a world war."
And political and religious leaders such as Mikhail Gorbachev, Pope Francis
and Michele Bachmann have issued recent warnings <http://migre.me/sxvhq> that
World War III could be imminent.
New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie declared, "We are already in World War III"
<http://cbsn.ws/1Prikem>. And the left-wing website Salon claims the
"apocalyptic worldviews" of actors in the Syrian conflict mean it could soon
spiral out of control <http://cbsn.ws/1YkgDSg>...
Richardson said "Obama's Middle East" began with American "meddling" in favor
of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt. Though the Muslim Brotherhood soon fell
from power, Richardson argues Obama's "inferno of change" had more
catastrophic effects in Libya, which Richardson calls an "ISIS hellhole."
"No honest party can justify what we did there," Richardson said. ..
Turkey has emerged as another major regional player with its own neo-Ottoman
regional aspirations. It wants to revive the Ottoman Empire and control once
again the whole Middle East. Thus, Turkey has been using ISIS
<http://qr.net/bpXPa> as its Sunni alternative to Iran's proxies. Turkey is
also using ISIS against the Kurds in Syria, which are also a thorn in Turkey's
side."
Turkey is quietly expanding its presence in Northern Iraq and is reportedly
providing important logistical support to ISIS <http://bit.ly/1PkeAgJ> ..
The emerging conflict between Turkey and Russia could easily draw in the
United States, as Turkey is a member of NATO. And even Democrats have charged
the Obama administration's support for overthrowing Assad is actually helping
Islamic extremists and increasing the possibility of war.
A Democrat member of Congress, Tulsi Gabbard of Hawaii, argued Obama's foreign
policy toward Syria "puts us in that position of a potential direct
head-to-head conflict with Russia . a potential World War III situation."
<http://is.gd/xQhNe7>
Indeed, some conservative commentators, notably Glenn Beck, have even alleged
the United States is acting as a de facto ally of ISIS. Beck recently charged
Obama is using ISIS as a "pawn." <http://chilp.it/a89bd66> Beck claimed
Obama's real goal is "Assad out and to have a proxy war with Iran and Russia,"
which he called "shocking" and "infuriating."
"This is not right-wing conspiracy theory nonsense," Richardson said of Beck's
claims. ..
> <http://tinyurl.com/jbwqph3>
>
> From bad to worse to delusional ..
OBAMA SIGNATURE ON PRESENT MIDDLE EAST 'CHAOS'
'Hundreds of thousands' dead after 'dramatic shift in foreign policy toward
Muslim world'
The civil war in Syria could trigger a global conflict, as did Sarajevo in
1914, largely because of the "apocalyptic" aims of the "moderate Islamists"
President Obama has been supporting, according to a variety of observers.
"The world is presently teetering on the edge of World War III," Joel
Richardson told WND. "This is not an overly sensationalized statement."
The bestselling author of "The Islamic Antichrist" <http://is.gd/146wgG> is
not alone in his opinion.
Conservative commentator Pat Buchanan slammed <http://chilp.it/9ed19e6> the
anti-Russian stance of many Republican candidates during the most recent
presidential debate and warned of the potential for "Syria in 2016 to become
what Sarajevo became in 1914, the powder keg that explodes into a world war."
And political and religious leaders such as Mikhail Gorbachev, Pope Francis
and Michele Bachmann have issued recent warnings <http://migre.me/sxvhq> that
World War III could be imminent.
New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie declared, "We are already in World War III"
<http://cbsn.ws/1Prikem>. And the left-wing website Salon claims the
"apocalyptic worldviews" of actors in the Syrian conflict mean it could soon
spiral out of control <http://cbsn.ws/1YkgDSg>...
Richardson said "Obama's Middle East" began with American "meddling" in favor
of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt. Though the Muslim Brotherhood soon fell
from power, Richardson argues Obama's "inferno of change" had more
catastrophic effects in Libya, which Richardson calls an "ISIS hellhole."
"No honest party can justify what we did there," Richardson said. ..
Turkey has emerged as another major regional player with its own neo-Ottoman
regional aspirations. It wants to revive the Ottoman Empire and control once
again the whole Middle East. Thus, Turkey has been using ISIS
<http://qr.net/bpXPa> as its Sunni alternative to Iran's proxies. Turkey is
also using ISIS against the Kurds in Syria, which are also a thorn in Turkey's
side."
Turkey is quietly expanding its presence in Northern Iraq and is reportedly
providing important logistical support to ISIS <http://bit.ly/1PkeAgJ> ..
The emerging conflict between Turkey and Russia could easily draw in the
United States, as Turkey is a member of NATO. And even Democrats have charged
the Obama administration's support for overthrowing Assad is actually helping
Islamic extremists and increasing the possibility of war.
A Democrat member of Congress, Tulsi Gabbard of Hawaii, argued Obama's foreign
policy toward Syria "puts us in that position of a potential direct
head-to-head conflict with Russia . a potential World War III situation."
<http://is.gd/xQhNe7>
Indeed, some conservative commentators, notably Glenn Beck, have even alleged
the United States is acting as a de facto ally of ISIS. Beck recently charged
Obama is using ISIS as a "pawn." <http://chilp.it/a89bd66> Beck claimed
Obama's real goal is "Assad out and to have a proxy war with Iran and Russia,"
which he called "shocking" and "infuriating."
"This is not right-wing conspiracy theory nonsense," Richardson said of Beck's
claims. ..
> <http://tinyurl.com/jbwqph3>
>
> From bad to worse to delusional ..
Oleg Smirnov
Dec 29, 2015, 3:09:16 AM12/29/15
to
<http://journal-neo.org/2015/12/28/syria-its-not-a-civil-war-and-it-never-was/>
Syria: It's Not a Civil War and it Never Was
Ulson Gunnar / 28.12.2015
The weapons are foreign, the fighters are foreign, the agenda is foreign. As
Syrian forces fight to wrest control of their country back and restore order
within their borders, the myth of the "Syrian civil war" continues on.
Undoubtedly there are Syrians who oppose the Syrian government and even
Syrians who have taken up arms against the government and in turn, against the
Syrian people, but from the beginning (in fact before the beginning) this war
has been driven from abroad. Calling it a "civil war" is a misnomer as much as
calling those taking up arms "opposition." It is not a "civil war," and those
fighting the Syrian government are not "opposition."
Those calling this a civil war and the terrorists fighting the Syrian state
"opposition" hope that their audience never wanders too far from their lies to
understand the full context of this conflict, the moves made before it even
started and where those moves were made from.
When did this all start?
It is a valid question to ask just when it all really started. The Cold War
saw a see-sawing struggle between East and West between the United States and
Europe (NATO) and not only the Soviet Union but also a growing China. But the
Cold War itself was simply a continuation of geopolitical struggle that has
carried on for centuries between various centers of power upon the planet. The
primary centers include Europe's Paris, London and Berlin, of course Moscow,
and in the last two centuries, Washington.
In this context, however, we can see that what may be portrayed as a local
conflict, may fit into a much larger geopolitical struggle between these
prominent centers of special interests. Syria's conflict is no different.
Syria had maintained close ties to the Soviet Union throughout the Cold War.
That meant that even with the fall of the Soviet Union, Syria still had ties
to Russia. It uses Russian weapons and tactics. It has economic, strategic and
political ties to Russia and it shares mutual interests including the
prevailing of a multipolar world order that emphasizes the primacy of national
sovereignty.
Because of this, Western centers of power have sought for decades to draw
Syria out of this orbit (along with many other nations). With the fall of the
Ottoman Empire, the fractured Middle East was first dominated by colonial
Europe before being swept by nationalist uprising seeking independence. Those
seeking to keep the colonial ties cut that they had severed sought Soviet
backing, while those seeking simply to rise to power at any cost often sought
Western backing.
The 2011 conflict was not Syria's first. The Muslim Brotherhood, a creation
and cultivar of the British Empire since the fall of the Ottomans was backed
in the late 70s andearly 80s in an abortive attempt to overthrow then Syrian
President Hafez al-Assad, father of current Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.
The armed militants that took part in that conflict would be scattered in
security crackdowns following in its wake, with many members of the Muslim
Brotherhood forming a new US-Saudi initiative called Al Qaeda. Both the
Brotherhood and now Al Qaeda would stalk and attempt to stunt the destiny of
an independent Middle East from then on, up to and including present day.
There is nothing "civil" about Syria's war.
In this context, we see clearly Syria's most recent conflict is part of this
wider struggle and is in no way a "civil war" unfolding in a vacuum, with
outside interests being drawn in only after it began.
The Muslim Brotherhood and its Al Qaeda spin-off were present and accounted
for since the word go in 2011. By the end of 2011, Al Qaeda's Syrian franchise
(Al Nusra) would be carrying out nationwide operations on a scale dwarfing
other so-called rebel groups. And they weren't this successful because of the
resources and support they found within Syria's borders, but instead because
of the immense resources and support flowing to them from beyond them.
Saudi Arabia openly arms, funds and provides political support for many of the
militant groups operating in Syria since the beginning. In fact, recently,
many of these groups, including allies of Al Qaeda itself, were present in
Riyadh discussing with their Saudi sponsors the future of their joint
endeavor.
Together with Al Nusra, there is the self-anointed Islamic State (IS). IS,
like the Syrian conflict itself, was portrayed by the Western media for as
long as possible as a creation within a vacuum. The source of its military and
political strength was left a mystery by the otherwise omniscient Western
intelligence community. Hints began to show as Russian increased its
involvement in the conflict. When Russian warplanes began pounding convoys
moving to and from Turkish territory, bound for IS, the mystery was finally
solved. IS, like all other militant groups operating in Syria, were the
recipients of generous, unending stockpiles of weapons, equipment, cash and
fighters piped in from around the globe.
The Syrian conflict was borne of organizations created by centers of foreign
interests decades ago who have since fought on and off not for the future of
the Syrian people, but for a Syria that meshed more conveniently into the
foreign global order that created them. The conflict has been fueled by a
torrent of weapons, cash, support and even fighters drawn not from among the
Syrian people, but from the very centers of these foreign special interests;
in Riyadh, Ankara, London, Paris, Brussels and Washington.
How to settle a civil war that doesn't exist?
If the Syrian conflict was created by foreign interests fueling militant
groups it has used for decades as an instrument of executing foreign policy
(in and out of Syria), amounting to what is essentially a proxy invasion, not
a civil war, how exactly can a "settlement" be reached?
Who should the Syrian government be talking to in order to reach this
settlement? Should it be talking to the heads of Al Nusra and IS who clearly
dominate the militants fighting Damascus? Or should it be talking to those who
have been the paramount factor in perpetuating the conflict, Riyadh, Ankara,
London, Paris, Brussels and Washington, all of whom appear involved in
supporting even the most extreme among these militant groups?
If Damascus finds itself talking with political leaders in these foreign
capitals, is it settling a "civil war" or a war it is fighting with these
foreign powers? Upon the world stage, it is clear that these foreign capitals
speak entirely for the militants, and to no one's surprise, these militants
seem to want exactly what these foreign capitals want.
Being honest about what sort of conflict Syria is really fighting is the first
step in finding a real solution to end it. The West continues to insist this
is a "civil war." This allows them to continue trying to influence the outcome
of the conflict and the political state Syria will exist in upon its
conclusion. By claiming that the Syrian government has lost all legitimacy,
the West further strengthens its hand in this context.
Attempts to strip the government of legitimacy predicated on the fact that it
stood and fought groups of armed militants arrayed against it by an axis of
foreign interests would set a very dangerous and unacceptable precedent. It is
no surprise that Syria finds itself with an increasing number of allies in
this fight as other nations realize they will be next if the "Syria model" is
a success.
Acknowledging that Syria's ongoing conflict is the result of foreign
aggression against Damascus would make the solution very simple. The solution
would be to allow Damascus to restore order within its borders while taking
action either at the UN or on the battlefield against those nations fueling
violence aimed at Syria. Perhaps the clarity of this solution is why those
behind this conflict have tried so hard to portray it as a civil war.
For those who have been trying to make sense of the Syrian "civil war" since
2011 with little luck, the explanation is simple, it isn't a civil war and it
never was. Understanding it as a proxy conflict from the very beginning (or
even before it began) will give one a clarity in perception that will aid one
immeasurably in understanding what the obvious solutions are, but only when
they come to this understanding.
Ulson Gunnar, a New York-based geopolitical analyst and writer especially for
the online magazine "New Eastern Outlook". <http://journal-neo.org/>
Syria: It's Not a Civil War and it Never Was
Ulson Gunnar / 28.12.2015
The weapons are foreign, the fighters are foreign, the agenda is foreign. As
Syrian forces fight to wrest control of their country back and restore order
within their borders, the myth of the "Syrian civil war" continues on.
Undoubtedly there are Syrians who oppose the Syrian government and even
Syrians who have taken up arms against the government and in turn, against the
Syrian people, but from the beginning (in fact before the beginning) this war
has been driven from abroad. Calling it a "civil war" is a misnomer as much as
calling those taking up arms "opposition." It is not a "civil war," and those
fighting the Syrian government are not "opposition."
Those calling this a civil war and the terrorists fighting the Syrian state
"opposition" hope that their audience never wanders too far from their lies to
understand the full context of this conflict, the moves made before it even
started and where those moves were made from.
When did this all start?
It is a valid question to ask just when it all really started. The Cold War
saw a see-sawing struggle between East and West between the United States and
Europe (NATO) and not only the Soviet Union but also a growing China. But the
Cold War itself was simply a continuation of geopolitical struggle that has
carried on for centuries between various centers of power upon the planet. The
primary centers include Europe's Paris, London and Berlin, of course Moscow,
and in the last two centuries, Washington.
In this context, however, we can see that what may be portrayed as a local
conflict, may fit into a much larger geopolitical struggle between these
prominent centers of special interests. Syria's conflict is no different.
Syria had maintained close ties to the Soviet Union throughout the Cold War.
That meant that even with the fall of the Soviet Union, Syria still had ties
to Russia. It uses Russian weapons and tactics. It has economic, strategic and
political ties to Russia and it shares mutual interests including the
prevailing of a multipolar world order that emphasizes the primacy of national
sovereignty.
Because of this, Western centers of power have sought for decades to draw
Syria out of this orbit (along with many other nations). With the fall of the
Ottoman Empire, the fractured Middle East was first dominated by colonial
Europe before being swept by nationalist uprising seeking independence. Those
seeking to keep the colonial ties cut that they had severed sought Soviet
backing, while those seeking simply to rise to power at any cost often sought
Western backing.
The 2011 conflict was not Syria's first. The Muslim Brotherhood, a creation
and cultivar of the British Empire since the fall of the Ottomans was backed
in the late 70s andearly 80s in an abortive attempt to overthrow then Syrian
President Hafez al-Assad, father of current Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.
The armed militants that took part in that conflict would be scattered in
security crackdowns following in its wake, with many members of the Muslim
Brotherhood forming a new US-Saudi initiative called Al Qaeda. Both the
Brotherhood and now Al Qaeda would stalk and attempt to stunt the destiny of
an independent Middle East from then on, up to and including present day.
There is nothing "civil" about Syria's war.
In this context, we see clearly Syria's most recent conflict is part of this
wider struggle and is in no way a "civil war" unfolding in a vacuum, with
outside interests being drawn in only after it began.
The Muslim Brotherhood and its Al Qaeda spin-off were present and accounted
for since the word go in 2011. By the end of 2011, Al Qaeda's Syrian franchise
(Al Nusra) would be carrying out nationwide operations on a scale dwarfing
other so-called rebel groups. And they weren't this successful because of the
resources and support they found within Syria's borders, but instead because
of the immense resources and support flowing to them from beyond them.
Saudi Arabia openly arms, funds and provides political support for many of the
militant groups operating in Syria since the beginning. In fact, recently,
many of these groups, including allies of Al Qaeda itself, were present in
Riyadh discussing with their Saudi sponsors the future of their joint
endeavor.
Together with Al Nusra, there is the self-anointed Islamic State (IS). IS,
like the Syrian conflict itself, was portrayed by the Western media for as
long as possible as a creation within a vacuum. The source of its military and
political strength was left a mystery by the otherwise omniscient Western
intelligence community. Hints began to show as Russian increased its
involvement in the conflict. When Russian warplanes began pounding convoys
moving to and from Turkish territory, bound for IS, the mystery was finally
solved. IS, like all other militant groups operating in Syria, were the
recipients of generous, unending stockpiles of weapons, equipment, cash and
fighters piped in from around the globe.
The Syrian conflict was borne of organizations created by centers of foreign
interests decades ago who have since fought on and off not for the future of
the Syrian people, but for a Syria that meshed more conveniently into the
foreign global order that created them. The conflict has been fueled by a
torrent of weapons, cash, support and even fighters drawn not from among the
Syrian people, but from the very centers of these foreign special interests;
in Riyadh, Ankara, London, Paris, Brussels and Washington.
How to settle a civil war that doesn't exist?
If the Syrian conflict was created by foreign interests fueling militant
groups it has used for decades as an instrument of executing foreign policy
(in and out of Syria), amounting to what is essentially a proxy invasion, not
a civil war, how exactly can a "settlement" be reached?
Who should the Syrian government be talking to in order to reach this
settlement? Should it be talking to the heads of Al Nusra and IS who clearly
dominate the militants fighting Damascus? Or should it be talking to those who
have been the paramount factor in perpetuating the conflict, Riyadh, Ankara,
London, Paris, Brussels and Washington, all of whom appear involved in
supporting even the most extreme among these militant groups?
If Damascus finds itself talking with political leaders in these foreign
capitals, is it settling a "civil war" or a war it is fighting with these
foreign powers? Upon the world stage, it is clear that these foreign capitals
speak entirely for the militants, and to no one's surprise, these militants
seem to want exactly what these foreign capitals want.
Being honest about what sort of conflict Syria is really fighting is the first
step in finding a real solution to end it. The West continues to insist this
is a "civil war." This allows them to continue trying to influence the outcome
of the conflict and the political state Syria will exist in upon its
conclusion. By claiming that the Syrian government has lost all legitimacy,
the West further strengthens its hand in this context.
Attempts to strip the government of legitimacy predicated on the fact that it
stood and fought groups of armed militants arrayed against it by an axis of
foreign interests would set a very dangerous and unacceptable precedent. It is
no surprise that Syria finds itself with an increasing number of allies in
this fight as other nations realize they will be next if the "Syria model" is
a success.
Acknowledging that Syria's ongoing conflict is the result of foreign
aggression against Damascus would make the solution very simple. The solution
would be to allow Damascus to restore order within its borders while taking
action either at the UN or on the battlefield against those nations fueling
violence aimed at Syria. Perhaps the clarity of this solution is why those
behind this conflict have tried so hard to portray it as a civil war.
For those who have been trying to make sense of the Syrian "civil war" since
2011 with little luck, the explanation is simple, it isn't a civil war and it
never was. Understanding it as a proxy conflict from the very beginning (or
even before it began) will give one a clarity in perception that will aid one
immeasurably in understanding what the obvious solutions are, but only when
they come to this understanding.
Ulson Gunnar, a New York-based geopolitical analyst and writer especially for
the online magazine "New Eastern Outlook". <http://journal-neo.org/>
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