Turkish President Erdogan is up to his ears in high crimes, internally and abroad, his rap sheet matching some of the world’s worst.
Self-determination is a universal right. Crimea is legally part of Russia, its population overwhelmingly voting by national referendum in March 2014 (by a 96.77% majority with an 83.1% turnout) to correct a historic mistake.
There’s no going back or legitimate reason for any nation to reject reality. Washington and likeminded regimes remain hardline, including Turkey – Erdogan directly aiding the formation of a Crimean Tatar battalion, tasked with committing sabotage and other forms of subversion. More on this below.
Last August, Erdogan met with anti-Russian Tatar resistance leaders Mustafa Dzhemilev and Refat Chubarov in Ankara – promising no Turkish recognition of Crimea as a Russian province, pledging aid to its subversive resistance.
Recently, he met with Dzhemilev and Chubarov in Konya Turkey, both men organizers of the failed Crimean food and electricity blockade. Discussions about a strategic alliance with Ukraine and possible naval blockade of the peninsula were held – with Turkey’s involvement.
Lenur Islyamov represents the illegitimate, unregistered “Majlis (or council) of Crimean Tatars” organization. He explained Ankara is actively involved in forming a Tatar battalion on the pretext of “protecting the Crimean frontier” – code language for plotting sabotage and subversion, operating as an enemy of Russia with direct Erdogan aid.
According to Islyamov, “(w)hile the Ukrainian defense ministry only scratches its head, (its) Turkish” counterpart is offering direct support – likely including weapons, munitions, funding and training to commit lawless acts against the Russian Federation.
Islyamov told Ukrainian television viewers, “(w)e now have more than a hundred people who have already entered the battalion as volunteers, but we hope that after all the ministry of defense and the armed forces of Ukraine, will create and allow the Crimean Tatars to have their own national battalion within the armed forces.”
He aims to enlist hundreds of fighters, able to wage guerrilla war on the pretext of defending Crimea’s borders, risking direct confrontation with Moscow, apparently part of Erdogan’s dirty scheme complicit with Washington, following his downing a Russian Su-24 bomber, a willful act of war.
Islyamov promised further efforts to isolate Crimea and ways to “liberate Tatars” within a year – returning the peninsula to Ukraine – a strategy of madness, making no more sense than attempting to liberate my home state of Illinois from America.
His notion of instituting a naval blockade with Turkish help, including “small boats (able) to attack ships carry(ing) goods to Crimea” has no chance to succeed.
In late November, Tatar insurgents destroyed parts of the southern Ukraine Kherson region electricity grid, supplying energy to Crimea – preventing repair crews from restoring power, leaving 1.8 million people in the dark for days.
Russia intervened responsibly, supplying energy amounts needed – the first stage of a so-called energy bridge weeks ahead of schedule.
Most Crimeans are ethnic Russians, Tatars at most about 12% of the population, their people not in conflict with other ethnic groups, a small rogue band entirely responsible.
Erdogan risks greater confrontation with Russia than already – by partnering in sabotage and subversion, more proof of his rogue credentials.
Legitimate Majlis Tatar officials reject Dzhemilev, Chubarov, Islyamov and other hardliners, saying “cooperation with extremist groups condemned by the whole progressive world has deprived them of their right to represent Crimean Tatars.”
“From now on, all their statements at any forums should be qualified as personal opinions” – not representing the views of the vast majority of Crimean Tatars.
They denounced rogue elements using Tatar national symbols, saying they’re “not a bargaining chip for political crooks. No one gave them the right to unilaterally use our relics at their discretion.”
Erdogan continues overstepping recklessly, already deeply involved in supporting ISIS, challenging Russia’s patience, perhaps sowing seeds of internal rebellion.
Stephen Lendman can be reached at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net.
His new book as editor and contributor is titled “Flashpoint in Ukraine: US Drive for Hegemony Risks WW III.”
http://www.claritypress.com/LendmanIII.html
December 29, 2015
Posted by aletho |
Deception | Crimea, Crimean Tatars, Erdogan, Russia, Turkiye |
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In the last few years, highly promoted drugs like Vioxx, Bextra, Baycol, Trovan, Meridia, Seldane, Hismanal, Darvon, Mylotarg, Lotronex, Propulsid, phenylpropanolamine (PPA), phenacetin, Raxar and Redux have been withdrawn for safety risks after millions used them. Sorry about that. Others like Avandia, Cylert, Ketek and Xarelto are under serious safety clouds.
But Big Pharma insists it is unaware of drugs’ true risks until a wide swath of the population uses them and “safety signals” emerge. Facts sometimes suggest otherwise.
In 1977, almost thirty years before Merck admitted its bone drug Fosamax caused jawbone death, its bone scientist observed the action in rats. (The “anti-fracture” drug also causes fractures.)
Years before the label of the antipsychotic Seroquel was changed in 2011 to warn the drug “should be avoided” in combination with at least 12 other medications because of heart risks, at least 99 articles in the U.S. National Library of Medicine linked the drug to “sudden death,” “QT prolongation” (a heart disturbance that can lead to death), “cardiac arrest” and “death.” In many cases, the Pharma companies “discover” the problems after the drug patent has conveniently expired.
Then there’s Paxil. Paroxetine was a top selling SSRI antidepressant drug for GSK during the “happy pill” craze when Big Pharma was telling everyone they had “depression.” But in 2004, soon after its approval, the New York Attorney General charged that research about the drug published in the Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry (known as “Study 329”) buried the drug’s true risks of suicide in adolescents.
And there were more questions about the research. Former Boston Globe reporter Alison Bass and others reported that the paper was not even written by the 22 doctors and researchers listed as “authors” but by a medical communication company hired by GSK. (Ghostwriting helped make Vioxx, Neurontin, hormone replacement therapy and even the flame retardant chemical deca [Deca-BDE] appear safe, according to published reports.) “You did a superb job with this,” wrote the Paxil paper’s first “author” Martin Keller of Brown University to Sally Laden, a ghostwriter working for Scientific Therapeutics Information. “It is excellent. Enclosed are rather minor changes from me.”
In 2006, “author” Martin Keller, former Professor Emeritus of Psychiatry at Brown, acknowledged that GSK had given him tens of thousands of dollars during and after the time the study was conducted.
There were also questions about where the research appeared. The Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry is a publication of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry which lists the funders of its “treatment guidelines” for children and adolescents with bipolar disorder as Abbott, AstraZeneca, Eli Lilly, Forest, Janssen, Novartis and Pfizer.
Almost fifteen years after the questionable research was published, the furor had not died down. In 2014, two members of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, Edmund Levin and George Stewart, asked the editor of the Academy’s journal why the discredited paper was still standing and had not been retracted. (A quick look at other scientific papers identified in the press as ghostwritten shows that few are retracted and most are standing, to deceive future generations.)
Then, in September 2015, when many reporters, psychiatrists, researchers and professors had given up the Paxil fight, the British Medical Journal (BMJ) published a reanalysis that amounted to a reversal of the original study. The new research demonstrated that Paxil indeed increases risks of suicide in young people and adolescents.
The reanalysis of Paxil’s suicide risks in the young is a victory for safety activists, medical reporters, the public and freedom of the press. But many pro-pill doctors continue to fight evidence of Paxil’s suicide risks and similar SSRIs. “There is a very reasonable possibility that it has discouraged patients from taking antidepressants and physicians from prescribing these medications [and] the government should rescind the black-box warning on antidepressants altogether,” Richard A. Friedman, a professor of clinical psychiatry at Weill Cornell Medical wrote in the New York Times a month before the Paxil reanalysis.
December 29, 2015
Posted by aletho |
Corruption, Deception, Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular | New York Times, United States |
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No other country, with the exception of maybe China, gets as much of a look in as Russia does from the Washington Post’s editorial board.
It’s hardly strange that the newspaper would focus some of its attention on Russia, an increasingly influential global player, but it does seem to have a bit of a bee in its bonnet about the old enemy.
Reading the Post’s editorials on matters of global affairs is like an exercise in understanding the very worst imaginable interpretation of American exceptionalism — and the latest dispatch on Syria is a perfect example. The headline reads: “A UN resolution on Syria is shattered – and Russia is to blame.”
The UN resolution referred to by the Post stated that all parties must “immediately cease any attacks against civilians and civilian objects” as well as “any indiscriminate use of weapons, including through shelling and aerial bombardment.” Leaving aside the laughable notion that the US itself would adhere to such a resolution and “immediately cease” anything whatsoever, let’s take a look at what concerned the Post.
Two days after the resolution was passed, the editorial says, Russia carried out strikes in the northern Syrian provincial capital of Idlib “killing scores of civilians”. It is not for this writer to judge the authenticity of that claim or to question the word of the Post’s reporter in Beirut — and it would be ludicrous to claim Russia’s strikes have killed not one civilian, but it is at least worth noting that one of the newspaper’s original sources for the story was The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, an ‘organization’ run out of a home in Coventry by one man who hasn’t visited Syria in 15 years, has received “small subsidies” from the European Union, and whose reports are at best, unreliable. Nevertheless, SOHR has become one of the single-most important “sources” of information on Syria in the Western press.
Irony lost
The Post continues on, unabashed. Secretary of State John Kerry, they chide, should be embarrassed by “this outrage” which “shattered” the UN resolution. They say this without so much of a hint of irony as the US continues to wage its illegal bombing campaign in the country they purport to care so very deeply about. They always care, you see. The more they care, the more bombs they want to drop.
And in the Post’s world, the UN is important and should be respected. Unless you’re the United States, in which case, go ahead and do whatever you want. Ever the pen-wielding champions for the spreading of good old freedom and democracy, they are always there, on the frontlines, cheering on America’s wars. It’s awfully easy to be in favor of ‘humanitarian’ military interventions when you comfort yourself with the knowledge that it’s okay, because you’re the good guys — always. But still, the board likes to be outraged (!) — and it needs to get its outrage fix from somewhere.
At least they’re consistent
Enter Russia. You have to at least hand it to the Post for its consistency. Russia and Putin continue to be the scapegoats for all seasons. There is nothing Moscow can’t be blamed for and nothing it can do right. If the Kremlin produced a cure for cancer tomorrow, the Post would re-imagine it as a sinister plot devised by Putin to put Western oncologists out of jobs.
In early October, the board warned Obama: Don’t green light Mr. Putin’s Syria project. That piece argued that the “moderate” opposition to Assad — which in the real world includes Al-Qaeda’s Syria affiliate Al Nusra, should be given more US anti-tank missiles and that Putin should be given “red lines”.
In November, after the Paris attacks, sensing that things were moving in Putin’s favor, and that an international anti-ISIS coalition might be in the making, they jumped in to ensure no one thought that was a good idea with a piece headlined: Teaming up with Russia in Syria could be a dangerous.
And of course, when Turkey shot down a Russian jet near the Syrian border after claiming that it had violated Turkish airspace, the Post did its bit to make sure no one was left with the wrong impression about who exactly was responsible for the incident: Russian “provocations” and “dangerous behavior of Vladimir Putin’s regime.” Reading that, you’d be forgiven for thinking that it was Russia recklessly shooting planes out of the sky. One wonders would the Post’s reaction have been the same if an American warplane had been shot down in Syria? It’s certainly unlikely (to say the least) that the Post would be calling the US’s illegal flights over the war-torn country “provocations” and demanding accountability.
Occasionally, the newspaper likes to dabble in wishful thinking. Not the editorial board, but an opinion piece published by the Post in late November asked: Is Syria the beginning of the end of Putinism?
It’s our world. Everyone else just lives in it.
The Post’s penchant for US exceptionalism extends far beyond Syria. Here, they lament, Obama just “doesn’t understand” Putin’s “Eurasian ambitions”. Apparently it’s not worth noting that Russia is in fact a massive Eurasian country, unlike say, the US.
And God forbid any other countries might think they could act independently of Washington in any arena. Obama was “right to order a sail-by” in the South China Sea because “failure to respond” to the “aggression” of other countries is always the greatest sin. Meanwhile, Iran “steps up its aggression” in the Middle East. The list goes on and the Washington Post’s editorial board fails, time and again, to see the irony.
That’s the kind of world the Post’s editors live in: Black and white. Good and evil. We’re always right, you’re always wrong. Do what we say, not as we do. The destruction this kind of thinking leaves in its wake is always someone else’s problem to solve.
Danielle Ryan is an Irish freelance journalist and media analyst. She has lived in the US and Germany and is currently based in Moscow. She previously worked as a digital desk reporter for the Sunday Business Post in Dublin. She studied political reporting at the Washington Center for Politics & Journalism in Washington, DC and also has a degree in business and German. She focuses on US foreign policy, US-Russia relations and media bias.
December 29, 2015
Posted by aletho |
Deception, Mainstream Media, Warmongering | John Kerry, Russia, Syria, United States, Washington Post |
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Like children’s fairy tales, foreign policy myths are created, told and retold for a purpose.
The Boy Who Cried Wolf imparts a life lesson while entertaining your five year-old niece. Unfortunately foreign policy myths are seldom so benign.
The tale told about Romeo Dallaire illustrates the problem. While the former Canadian General rose to prominence after participating in a failed (assuming the purpose was as stated) international military mission, he’s widely considered a great humanitarian. But, the former Senator’s public persona is based on an extremely one-sided media account of his role in the complex tragedy that engulfed Rwanda and Burundi two decades ago.
In a particularly egregious example of media bias, criticism of Dallaire’s actions in Rwanda have been almost entirely ignored even though his commander published a book criticizing the Canadian general’s bias. According to numerous accounts, including his civilian commander on the UN mission, Dallaire aided the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF), which invaded Rwanda with decisive Ugandan support and quiet US backing. Gilbert Ngijo, political assistant to the civilian commander of United Nations Assistance Mission for Rwanda (UNAMIR), summarizes the criticism: “He [Dallaire] let the RPF get arms. He allowed UNAMIR troops to train RPF soldiers. United Nations troops provided the logistics for the RPF. They even fed them.”
In his 2005 book Le Patron de Dallaire Parle (The Boss of Dallaire Speaks), Jacques-Roger Booh Booh, a former Cameroon foreign minister and overall head of UNAMIR, claims Dallaire had little interest in the violence unleashed by the RPF despite reports of summary executions in areas controlled by them. RPF soldiers were regularly seen in Dallaire’s office, with the Canadian commander describing the Rwandan army’s position in Kigali. This prompted Booh Booh to wonder if Dallaire “also shared UNAMIR military secrets with the RPF when he invited them to work in his offices.” Finally, Booh Booh says Dallaire turned a blind eye to RPF weapons coming across the border from Uganda and he believes the UN forces may have even transported weapons directly to the RPF. Dallaire, Booh Booh concludes, “abandoned his role as head of the military to play a political role. He violated the neutrality principle of UNAMIR by becoming an objective ally of one of the parties in the conflict.”
Dallaire doesn’t deny his admiration for RPF leader Paul Kagame who was likely responsible for shooting down the plane carrying both Rwandan Hutu President Juvénal Habyarimana and Burundian President Cyprien Ntaryamira on April 6, 1994. (That event triggered mass killing and an environment of deep instability that facilitated the RPF’s rise to power in Kigali.) In Shake Hands with the Devil, published several years after Kagame unleashed terror in the Congo that’s left millions dead, Dallaire wrote: “My guys and the RPF soldiers had a good time together” at a small cantina. Dallaire then explained: “It had been amazing to see Kagame with his guard down for a couple of hours, to glimpse the passion that drove this extraordinary man.”
Dallaire’s interaction with the RPF was certainly not in the spirit of UN guidelines that called on staff to avoid close ties to individuals, organizations, parties or factions of a conflict.
A witness at the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) actually accused Dallaire of complicity in a massacre. A Rwandan national testifying under the pseudonym T04, reported Tanzania’s Arusha Times, “alleged that in April 1994, Gen. Dallaire allowed members of the rebel Rwandese Patriotic Front (RPF, now in power in Kigali), to enter the national stadium and organize massacres of Hutus. Several people, including the witness, took refuge there following the assassination of Rwandan President Juvenal Habyarimana.”
But, criticisms of Dallaire’s actions in Rwanda have been almost entirely ignored by the Canadian media. Le Patron de Dallaire Parle went largely unnoticed, or at least not commented upon. A Canadian newswire search found three mentions of the book (a National Post review headlined “Allegations called ‘ridiculous’: UN boss attacks general,” an Ottawa Citizen piece headlined “There are many sides to the Rwanda saga” and a letter by an associate of Dallaire). Other critical assessments of Dallaire’s actions in Rwanda have fared no better including Rwanda and the New Scramble for Africa and Enduring Lies: The Rwandan Genocide in the Propaganda System, 20 Years Later in which Edward Herman and David Peterson “suggest that Dallaire should be regarded as a war criminal for positively facilitating the actual mass killings of April-July, rather than taken as a hero for giving allegedly disregarded warnings that might have stopped them.”
On the other hand, a Canadian newswire search of “Romeo Dallaire Rwanda” elicited over 6,000 articles that generally provide a positive portrayal of Dallaire. Similarly, a search for mention of Dallaire’s 2003 book Shake Hands with the Devil elicited 1,700 articles.
The complex interplay of ethnic, class and regional politics, as well as international pressures, which spurred the “Rwandan Genocide” has been decontextualized. Instead of discussing Uganda’s aggression against its much smaller neighbour, the flight of Hutus into Rwanda after the violent 1993 Tutsi coup in Burundi and economic reforms imposed on the country from abroad, the media focuses on a simplistic narrative of vengeful Hutus killing Tutsis. In this media fairy tale, Dallaire plays the great Canadian who attempted to save Africans.
While two decades old, the distortion of the Rwandan tragedy continues to have political impacts today. It has given ideological cover to dictator Paul Kagame’s repeated invasions of the Congo and domestic repression. In addition, this foreign policy myth has been used to justify foreign military intervention as is the case with the current political crisis in Burundi. The myth of Dallaire in Rwanda is also cited to rationalize the Responsibility to Protect doctrine, when, in fact the true story illustrates the inevitable duplicitousness of foreign interventions.
Unlike in bedtime stories, in foreign policy making things up is usually harmful.
December 28, 2015
Posted by aletho |
Deception, Mainstream Media, Warmongering | Africa, Burundi, RPF, Rwanda |
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European politicians don’t say publicly anything sensible about the standoff with Russia, which they do in private, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said.
“Sometimes the things they say from a podium contradict what they tell you in one-on-one talks, when nobody can overhear them,” the minister told Zvezda TV channel. “Alone most of EU members tell me things I find quite sensible, said Lavorov: that it was wrong to confront Russia over Ukraine, which, in fact, fell victim to this European Union policy that forced it to chose between the two.
“They all say, let things quiet down a bit and we can go back to normal relations, the strategic partnership. But when they all gather together and speak in public, they just can’t say those things,” he said.
Lavrov said such ambiguity puzzles him and puts in doubt the wisdom and foresight of EU officials.
The European Union and Russia came into conflict over Ukraine’s plan to open its market to European producers. Moscow warned this deal would leave Russia’s free trade zone with Ukraine in jeopardy, as Moscow would have to protect its markets from European competition.
The warning made the government of President Victor Yanukovich pause the deal, a move that triggered mass public protests in Ukraine widely supported by European officials. The standoff escalated into violence and an armed coup in February 2013, which imposed an anti-Russian government in Kiev declaring integration with EU one of its primary goals.
The new authorities launched a military crackdown on its citizens in eastern Ukraine, who opposed the coup. Ukraine’s economy plunged into a crisis, and social benefits were cut to secure loans from the International Monetary Fund. The country also de facto defaulted on its sovereign $3-billion debt to Russia. The free trade deal with the EU failed to boost Ukraine’s exports to European nations and forced Russia to impose custom fees, as it had warned.
December 28, 2015
Posted by aletho |
Deception, Economics | European Union, Russia, Ukraine |
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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 multi-polar 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 and early 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 Russia 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.
December 28, 2015
Posted by aletho |
Deception, Timeless or most popular | Al-Nusra, al-Qaeda, Middle East, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Turkiye, UK, United States |
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John Ellis “Jeb” Bush may wear an American flag on his lapel but his loyalty is to the Zionist financiers who made him rich, most notably the Rothschild family of Britain.
The terror attacks of 9-11 and the subsequent wars in Afghanistan and Iraq are immense crimes that have greatly shaped our current political reality. In spite of the historical importance of these events, for nearly fourteen years the U.S. government and mainstream media have engaged in a conspiracy to promote a blatant cover-up about what happened on September 11, 2001.
While we may want to close the book on the sordid saga of 9-11, and the awful wars that followed, and get on with our lives by pretending that we live in a normal political situation, that would be living in denial.
We should understand that the 9-11 cover-up is an ongoing crime that has to be maintained by the criminal cabal that is behind it. The real culprits need to maintain the official deception of what happened on 9-11. They can’t allow the truth about 9-11 to come out, for if it does they’re toast, so they have no alternative but to maintain the cover-up. As they say, no rest for the wicked.
For the real perpetrators, controlling the executive branch of the government is essential to maintain the 9-11 cover-up. The criminal cabal achieves this by making sure that one of their agents occupies the office of the president of the United States. The president decides who serves at the highest levels of the Department of Justice and the Federal Bureau of Investigation, so by controlling the president the criminal cabal can prevent its crimes, like 9-11, from being investigated and prosecuted.
The real criminals, therefore, desperately need to control the White House in order to maintain the 9-11 deception because they are culpable for the false-flag terror atrocity and the two wars of aggression that followed in its wake. Only by controlling the U.S. president can the criminal gang behind 9-11 and these illegal wars avoid prosecution, which is essential for the survival of their criminal regime.
For the American people and our republic, however, it is of vital importance that we put an end to this criminal regime, which has hijacked our nation – as soon as possible – by investigating and prosecuting those who are truly behind the terror attacks of 9-11. It is unrealistic to expect our government, which is controlled by this criminal cabal, to investigate 9-11 when it has promoted the cover-up for the past 13 years. This is why a proper criminal investigation and prosecution of the crimes of 9-11, which is what one would expect in a normal functioning state, would be completely revolutionary in America. Such an investigation and purge would bring down the criminal regime that controls our government. This is why I say that the revolution begins with 9-11 truth.
The election of 2016 is actually a struggle for the very survival of the American republic. This is why the presidential election of 2016 began so early, more than two years before the election, with the names of the two leading controlled candidates bubbling up into our political consciousness, courtesy of the controlled press. The two names that were foisted on the American people: John Ellis “Jeb” Bush and Hillary Clinton, are, of course, members of two of America’s most prominent criminal families. The criminal and treasonous character of the Bush and Clinton families should be known to anyone who has followed American politics for the past few decades.
It is absolutely preposterous that either Jeb Bush or Hillary Clinton should be president and the idea would be laughable, if the situation weren’t so serious. These people have virtually no popular support and are only candidates for the highest office in the land because they are vigorously promoted by the moneyed special interest groups that dominate U.S. politics and their controlled press. While there are other candidates in the field, Bush and Clinton are leading in the polls although the first primary is still more than 6 months away.
One might very well wonder why Jeb Bush or Hillary Clinton would even run for president. Neither has a great following or stands for anything that the public is very interested in. So, why are they running?
The answer is fairly simple. Both Bush and Clinton are members of families that are tied to the ruling criminal cabal through their involvement in criminal activity. They are rewarded with filthy lucre as payment and are expected to do exactly as they are advised because, in reality, they don’t have any other option. While Hillary Clinton and her treachery and Zionist connections are fairly well known, much less is known about Jeb Bush.
For those of us who seek truth and justice for the crimes of 9-11, and a restoration of lawful government in the United States, we need to understand who is behind Jeb Bush and how that influence would be used to maintain the 9-11 cover-up if he were to occupy the White House.
Firstly, we can be sure that Jeb Bush would not support the criminal prosecution of his brother for conspiring, planning, and waging wars of aggression against Iraq or Afghanistan. Secondly, we can be fairly sure that he would not call for a proper criminal investigation of 9-11, based on his support for Israel, and particularly its extreme right-wing leader, Benjamin Netanyahu, one of the chief suspects of the false-flag terror attacks.
As the New York Times reported in an article entitled “Jeb Bush on the Issues” on June 15, 2015:
Mr. Bush calls himself “an unwavering supporter” of Israel and its prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, and distanced himself from recent comments by an adviser, former Secretary of State James A. Baker III, that were critical of Mr. Netanyahu.
Mr. Netanyahu is known for saying that 9-11 was “very good,” on the very day of the attacks, and telling Israeli audiences that Israel has benefitted from 9-11 and America’s struggle in Iraq. Netanyahu is also a war-monger who tells brazen lies in his efforts to push the United States into waging war against Iran. Jeb Bush takes the same hard-line position on Iran as Netanyahu, as the New York Times reports:
He has called the Obama administration’s framework of an agreement with Iran to curb its nuclear program a “horrific deal” and, like fellow Republican contenders, said he would most likely cancel any final agreement reached by the administration should he become president.
To understand why Jeb Bush supports hard-line Zionist extremists like Benjamin Netanyahu, we need to consider what Bush has done since he left the governor’s mansion in Florida. When Bush left public office in 2007, he went to work for Michael Bloomberg and Lehman Brothers, the disgraced investment firm at the epicenter of the financial crisis of 2008-2009.
When the London-based Barclays, a foreign bank controlled by the Rothschild family, announced that it would take over Lehman Brothers – the day after its collapse – Jeb Bush effectively became a highly-paid adviser to the Rothschild-controlled bank. During the time that Jeb Bush was paid more than $1 million a year at Barclays, the disgraced British bank was run by Marcus Agius, who is married to Katherine de Rothschild, daughter of Edmund Leopold de Rothschild, former head of the Rothschild financial dynasty of England.
Agius is also Senior Independent Director for the Executive Board of the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) and was the first non-executive director appointed to the BBC’s new Executive Board in December 2006. He is also one of the three current trustees of the Bilderberg Group.
ROTHSCHILD BANKSTERS FLEECE AMERICA – Marcus Agius, the son-in-law of Edmund Rothschild, was CEO of Barclays bank, which took over Lehman Brothers after its collapse led to the massive taxpayer-funded bailout of 2008-2009. George W. Bush was president and Jeb Bush was a highly-paid adviser at both Lehmans and Barclays, the Rothschild-controlled bank that received $8.5 billion – from the U.S. taxpayer. He is also a senior director of the BBC.
It should be noted that Barclays received about $8.5 billion from the U.S. taxpayer-funded bail-out during the last few months of the administration of George W. Bush, Jeb’s older brother:
AIG disclosed payments of $105.3 billion between September and December 2008. And some of the biggest recipients were European banks. Societe Generale, based in France, was the top foreign recipient at $11.9 billion, Deutsche Bank of Germany got $11.8 billion and Barclays, based in England, was paid $8.5 billion.
Source: “AIG ships billions in bailout abroad” by Eamon Javers, March 15, 2009
http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0309/20039.html
When Jeb left public office in 2007 he is reported to have been worth about $1.3 million. After seven years working for Bloomberg, Lehman, and Barclays, Bush is now worth about $29 million – half of it coming from the Rothschild-controlled Barclays, as Charles Gasparino reported in his recent article, “Jeb Bush’s Big Lehman Brothers Problem”:
Not much is known about what Bush actually did for Lehman—the firm that went belly-up in 2008 and sparked the wider financial crisis, and Barclays, the bank that purchased Lehman out of bankruptcy and continues to work out of its midtown Manhattan headquarters. He began working for the former after his term as Florida governor ended in 2007, and continued working for the latter until the end of 2014, when he decided to run for president.
The two banks were his biggest sources of income in recent years: Bush earned more than $14 million working for Lehman and then Barclays, which based on my understanding of simple math accounted for nearly half of the $29 million he made after he left government.
Source: “Jeb Bush’s Big Lehman Brothers Problem”
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2015/07/02/jeb-bush-s-big-lehman-brothers-problem.html
Jeb Bush’s work as an adviser at Lehman Brothers and Barclays puts him squarely in the middle of two of the largest financial crimes in recent history:
While it seems like less of a political detriment since Bush is an adviser rather than a principal, his Barclays work isn’t without potential controversy. Writes the FT: “Mr Bush, who served as an adviser to Lehman Brothers before its collapse during the financial crisis, has rarely spoken about his work at the British bank, which has been ensnared by scandals such as the manipulation of key benchmark interest rates and the mis-selling of payment protection insurance in recent years.”
Source: “Jeb Bush Signals Business Wind-Down with Barclays Departure,” Bloomberg.com, December 18, 2014
http://www.bloomberg.com/politics/articles/2014-12-18/jeb-bush-leaving-barclays-report-says
For the past four years, Jeb Bush has also served on the board of Michael Bloomberg’s foundation, Bloomberg Philanthropies, which has donated millions of dollars to Bush’s educational foundation:
Four companies and nonprofits that appointed Bush to their boards of directors or advisory boards backed the educational foundation [of Jeb Bush]. One, Bloomberg Philanthropies, was among the most frequent supporters, making seven donations worth between $1.2 million to $2.4 million. Bush served on Bloomberg’s board from 2010-14.
Source: “Backers of Bush nonprofit include banks, schools, lottery,” AP, July 1, 2015
http://news.yahoo.com/backers-bush-nonprofit-banks-schools-lottery-174449361–election.html#
Rupert Murdoch’s media giant News Corp. has also donated generously to Jeb Bush’s educational foundation. Murdoch’s News Corp. has reportedly made three contributions, at $500,001 to $1 million apiece.
The fact that Jeb Bush has become quite wealthy since leaving public office in Florida in 2007 is not the important thing for 9-11 truth; it’s more important to understand who made him wealthy. More than half of his wealth came from the corrupt Rothschild-controlled Barclays bank, while much of the rest came from Michael Bloomberg.
Michael Bloomberg is a leading Zionist agent who oversaw the suppression of 9-11 truth in New York City for 12 years after the false-flag terror attacks. Bloomberg is very supportive of Benjamin Netanyahu and the ruling right-wing Likud coalition of Israel.
The Rothschild family is the original financial and ideological founder of the Zionist state in Palestine. In Britain, the Lord Rothschild is considered the head of British Jewry. In 1998, senior partners of a wholly-owned Rothschild subsidiary, known as Global Technology Partners, LLC, authored a document entitled “Catastrophic Terrorism”, which was published in Foreign Affairs, the journal of the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR). This document discussed the possibility of a catastrophic terror attack on the United States and what should be done if it were to happen.
This article put the idea of a 9-11 type attack into the minds of the American people, and provided a kind of blueprint for how the government should respond when it did. Less than three years later, the catastrophic event that the authors imagined became real. Today, the lead author of that article is the U.S. Secretary of Defense, Ashton B. Carter. Like Jeb Bush, Carter worked for years as a paid agent of the Rothschild family of Britain. (See more on this read “The Zionist Network behind 9-11”)
Understanding Jeb Bush’s ties to Michael Bloomberg and the Rothschild family of Britain helps us understand his support of Benjamin Netanyahu and the extreme right-wing Zionist movement he heads in Israel. These connections reveal how the Zionist financial cabal that is behind the 9-11 cover-up controls our political leaders and why we cannot expect our controlled government to ever investigate 9-11 until this foreign criminal element is purged from the U.S. government.
Sources and Recommended Reading:
“AIG ships billions in bailout abroad” by Eamon Javers, Politico.com, March 15, 2009
http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0309/20039.html
“Are there any more skeletons, Mr Agius?”, The Telegraph (UK), July 9, 2012
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/comment/jeffrandall/9385765/Are-there-any-more-skeletons-Mr-Agius.html
“Backers of Bush nonprofit include banks, schools, lottery” by Ronnie Greene and Steve Peoples, AP, July 1, 2015
news.yahoo.com/backers-bush-nonprofit-banks-schools-lottery-174449361–election.html#
Barclays, Wikipedia, July 8, 2015
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barclays
Edmund Leopold de Rothschild, Wikipedia, July 8, 2015
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edmund_Leopold_de_Rothschild
“Former Barclays chairman on payroll until March 2014”, The Guardian (UK), November 7, 2013
http://www.theguardian.com/business/2013/nov/07/barclays-resigned-chairman-marcus-agius-consultancy-libor
“Jeb Bush Paid By Bank That Violated Cuba Sanctions”, BuzzFeed.com, December 18, 2014
http://www.buzzfeed.com/andrewkaczynski/jeb-bush-paid-by-bank-that-violated-cuba-sanctions#.jx9leXeB2R
“Jeb Bush Signals Business Wind-Down with Barclays Departure”, Bloomberg.com, December 18, 2014
http://www.bloomberg.com/politics/articles/2014-12-18/jeb-bush-leaving-barclays-report-says
“Jeb Bush’s banking career ripe for attack”, CNN, December 18, 2014
http://edition.cnn.com/2014/12/18/politics/bush-barclays-bailout/
“Jeb Bush’s Big Lehman Brothers Problem” by Charles Gasparino, TheDailyBeast.com, July 2, 2015
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2015/07/02/jeb-bush-s-big-lehman-brothers-problem.html
“Jeb Bush’s Rush to Make Money May Be Hurdle”, New York Times, April 20, 2014
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/04/21/us/politics/jeb-bushs-rush-to-make-money-may-be-hurdle.html?_r=0
“Jeb Bush to resign from Barclays in preparation for 2016 campaign” by Philip Rucker, Washington Post, December 18, 2014
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/post-politics/wp/2014/12/18/jeb-bush-to-resign-from-barclays-in-preparation-for-2016-campaign/
Marcus Agius, Wikipedia, July 8, 2015
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marcus_Agius
“The Zionist Network behind 9-11,” Bollyn.com, December 7, 2006
www.bollyn.com/the-zionist-network-behind-9-11/
December 27, 2015
Posted by aletho |
Corruption, Deception, False Flag Terrorism, Timeless or most popular, Wars for Israel | Hillary Clinton, Jeb Bush, UK, United States, Zionism |
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JunkScience.com got NOAA scientist e-mails via FOIA? Why can’t Congress?
Last October, the New York Times published this dire op-ed on ocean acidification, supposedly authored by NOAA chief Richard Spinrad and his UK counterpart Ian Boyd.
Curious, I submitted a Freedom of Information Act request to NOAA for the e-mail related to the development and publication of the op-ed. I received 443 pages of e-mail in return.
First, the op-ed was actually written by NOAA staff Madelyn Applebaum, not Spinrad or Boyd. The purpose was to tout NOAA not inform the public about ocean acidification.
Second, the New York Times initially rejected the op-ed for its U.S. print edition and web site, the e-mails show. NOAA staff then submitted the op-ed to the International NYTimes staff in London (because Madelyn knew the INYT staff) where it was placed in the International NYTimes print edition and NYTimes.com.
Next, NOAA staff was appalled at the New York Times-selected title, which was a lot different than the NOAA-picked titled:
But the most notable e-mails stand in stark contrast to the information presented in the NYTimes op-ed.
Specifically, NOAA’s Dr. Shallin Busch insists the op-ed exaggerates the ocean acidification problem:
Below are clips of Busch doing so:
JunkScience has maintained for years now that there is no evidence that ocean “acidification” is causing harm. Glad to see that a top NOAA scientist sees it the same way.
BTW, we were about to FOIA scientist e-mail from NOAA. Not sure why Congress can’t get it and Judicial Watch has to sue for it.
December 27, 2015
Posted by aletho |
Deception, Environmentalism, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Science and Pseudo-Science | New York Times, United States |
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“Ukraine is trying to discredit DPR media by creating false sites of the republic”
Novorossiya – Ukrainian media, feeling powerless in the information war, is resorting to new tricks. This time false websites allegedly belonging to the republics have been created which are spreading false information. This was reported by the technical service team of Donetsk News Agency.
“They [these fake sites] are registered in the Ukrainian domain zone and their names sometimes refer to the DPR or to a city controlled by the republic’s forces. ‘Donetsk People’s Republic’ is written without quotation marks, thus attracting the attention of gullible supporters of the DPR. However, the content of the publications is false and sometimes of an absurd character. A number of extremely ‘yellow’ Ukrainian media outlets are using new data resources referring to ‘separatist’ publications,” the information agency noted.
The deputy director of state information policies of the Ministry of Information of the DPR, Natalya Pershina, commented on this move by Ukraine in the information war:
“Those who are associated with this project are mired in their own lies and are harming Ukraine’s media, not the republic’s,” she said.
The authorities of the DPR have repeatedly urged a cautious approach to Ukrainian media, especially information which is posted about Donbass. There are no Ukrainian journalists in the DPR and they do not have access to documents of the republic. In addition, Ukrainian media and journalism have little in common.
December 25, 2015
Posted by aletho |
Deception, Mainstream Media, Warmongering | Donbass, Ukraine |
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The US Supreme Court is mulling a case on appropriating $2 billion of Iranian assets frozen in a bank in New York.
Over 1,300 Americans are reportedly pressing the US government, judiciary and Congress to pay them billions of dollars in awarded damages over two bombings in Beirut and Saudi Arabia in 1983 and 1996.
Iran has dismissed any role in the attacks and rejected the US judicial system’s ruling to let the purported plaintiffs use Bank Markazi’s almost $2 billion held in Citibank accounts.
The case has reportedly moved to the Supreme Court, with the Obama administration urging it not to overturn the decisions of US circuit and appeals courts to award the plaintiffs.
The White House and US congressional Republicans and Democrats reportedly agree on the case.
In 2012, President Barack Obama issued an executive order blocking all of Bank Markazi’s assets held in the US in order to prevent Tehran from repatriating them.
At the same time, Congress passed a law which included a provision making it easier for the Americans to use Iranian funds frozen in the US.
Iran says the action was unconstitutional because Congress was encroaching on the power of the judiciary.
Iran’s Bank Markazi says the US Congress passed the law to change the outcome of the case. It has asked the US federal courts to decide whether that violates the constitutional separation of powers.
With the case moved to the US Supreme Court now, the outcome is set to affect a landmark nuclear agreement between Iran and the West.
Tehran is already disappointed by Obama’s signing of a Congress bill aimed at limiting tourist travels to Iran, saying it violates the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) as the nuclear accord is called.
On Thursday, US media said each of the 53 hostages held during the 1979 takeover of the American embassy in Tehran by Iranian students would receive compensation under a spending bill passed last Friday.
The budget bill reportedly includes a provision authorizing each of the 53 hostages to receive $10,000 for each day of the 444 spell they were held captive.
In addition, spouses and children would separately receive a one-time payment of $600,000. Thirty-eight of the former hostages are still alive, US media said.
December 25, 2015
Posted by aletho |
Deception, Progressive Hypocrite | Iran, Obama, Sanctions against Iran, United States |
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Report makes wild allegations of war crimes without substantiating evidence
Amnesty International has just released a report accusing the Russian authorities of “shamefully concealing” large numbers of civilian deaths caused by Russian air strikes in Syria.
The report also says the Russians might be committing war crimes in Syria.
The Russians have responded to the report by saying it is littered with cliches.
Having read the report, I can say it provides no evidence a court could use.
As Amnesty says, its report was researched “remotely”.
That means there was no field work. No investigators visited the six places where Amnesty says the attacks by the Russians discussed in the report took place.
The report is based entirely on reports of alleged eye witnesses and video evidence provided to Amnesty by third parties.
This in itself is worrying. Given that Syria is in a state of civil war with a long history of evidence being manipulated by both sides – especially by the rebels – in pursuit of their objectives, this is a fragile reed upon which to build a report like this.
As it happens, detailed examination of the six incidents shows there is no conclusive evidence linking the Russians to any of them.
An attack on Talbisseh on 30th September 2015 is said to have been the result of “suspected Russian air strikes on Karama Street”. Use of certain munitions is attributed to the Russians because “Syrian government forces are not considered capable of delivering them” (“considered” by whom and what if that assumption is wrong?). An attack on Darat Izzah is attributed to a “suspected Russian sea-launched cruise missile”. Civilian deaths on Nuqeyr “purportedly involved cluster munitions”. An attack on Al-Ghantu involved “suspected Russian air strikes”. Two missiles that attacked Sermin were “fired by suspected Russian warplanes”.
Lastly, the report discusses an attack on Ariha without mentioning the Russians or providing any evidence they were involved at all.
Given the myriad number of air forces now operating in Syria, it is impossible to see how Amnesty can be sure that any of these incidents – if they even happened – involved the Russians.
Amnesty tries to get round this by saying the volume of noise of some of the attacks, and comparisons with post-attack reports provided by the Russians, indirectly confirms their involvement.
To say this is unconvincing would be an understatement.
As any investigator knows, relying on what a witness claims to have seen is problematic enough. Drawing deductions from the volume of sound a witness claims to have heard is hopeless.
As for the coincidence of some of the incidents to the post-attack reports the Russians have provided, that is interesting but hardly conclusive. It would after all be an obvious step for someone trying to fabricate evidence of atrocities by the Russians to try to match incidents to attacks the Russians have admitted being involved in.
In a particularly farfetched piece of reasoning, Amnesty tries to use a Russian denial of the destruction of the Omar Bin Al-Khattab mosque in Jisr Al-Sughour in order to “prove” its claim the Russians did actually destroy the Omar Bin Al-Khattab mosque.
The argument is that because the Russians denied they destroyed the mosque, but supported their denial by showing a picture of a different mosque, that somehow “proves” they destroyed the mosque.
That is a classic example of a non sequitur (“it does not follow”).
To see how bad this reasoning is, just consider what Philip Luther, Director of Amnesty’s Middle East and North Africa programme, has said about this incident:
“By presenting satellite imagery of an intact mosque and claiming it showed another that had been destroyed, the Russian authorities appear to have used sleight of hand to try to avoid reproach and avert scrutiny of their actions in Syria. Such conduct does not cultivate confidence in their willingness to investigate reported violations in good faith. Russia’s Ministry of Defence must be more transparent and disclose targets of their attacks in order to facilitate assessment of whether they are complying with their obligations under international humanitarian law.”
If there is a “sleight of hand” it is in this argument.
Firstly, it is a huge – and unwarranted – leap to say it proves bad faith because the Russians provided a photograph of the wrong mosque.
It is equally possible there was simply a mistake. That would be very likely if the Russians were confused about which mosque they were supposed to have destroyed – because they didn’t in fact destroy any mosque.
More fundamentally, what this argument does is try to prove a positive – that the Russians destroyed the Omar Bin Al-Khattab mosque – out of a negative – that the Russians showed a satellite image of the wrong mosque.
This is flawed reasoning by any measure, and it proves nothing. It does not prove that the mosque – if it was destroyed – was destroyed by the Russians. It could equally well have been destroyed by someone else. In a conflict like the one in Syria there is no shortage of others who might have done it.
The entire report is in fact riddled with this sort of bad reasoning. Besides its repeated use of the word “suspected” (“suspected” by whom?) exposes it for what it actually is – a tissue of guesses and suppositions.
The real concern must however be about the provenance of the information – such as it is – upon which the report is based.
When discussing the attack on Maasran the report says it arrived at its conclusions based on “images and reports sent to it by Syrian human rights activists and also documented by military and security organisations”.
Though Amnesty claims to have spoken to some of the alleged witnesses, it is likely most of the information in the report – and all the video evidence which Amnesty claims to have seen – comes from these sources.
This begs the obvious question of who these “Syrian human rights activists” and “military and security organisations” are, and how much reliance can be placed on them?
What criteria does Amnesty use to determine whether someone reporting out of Syria is a “human rights activist”?
The expression “human rights activist” implies someone whose primary concern is for human rights and who is therefore in some way detached from the political struggle.
Anyone who has followed the Syrian conflict with any care knows that no such people exist. Individuals and organisations who report about Syria claiming to be “human rights activists” – such as the Syrian Observatory of Human Rights – turn out invariably to be anti-Assad activists and members of the Syrian opposition. As such they cannot be assumed to be unbiased or impartial reporters of what is going on.
A reporter does not have to be impartial to be objective and accurate. Gleb Bazov and Colonel Cassad who report about the Ukrainian war from a militia perspective are neither unbiased nor impartial and make no pretence to be. However experience has shown them to be extremely reliable and accurate.
The same unfortunately is not true of the Syrian conflict. This has been proved countless times (see for example here my discussion about the Ghouta chemical attack of August 2013) whilst the fact that the people Amnesty is in contact with claim to be “human rights activists” as opposed to “opposition supporters” – which is what they really are – is in itself good reason to doubt what they say.
Far more disturbing than this reliance on “Syrian human rights activists” is however the reference to “military and security organisations”.
Who are these “military and security organisations”? Are they perhaps the intelligence agencies of the Western powers? If so, should Amnesty be getting its information from such a source?
It is comments like this that explain the concern of many people like me, who have strong historic links to Amnesty, and who are left wondering whether it bears any resemblance to the organisation they once knew?
I have dissected Amnesty’s report on the Russian campaign in Syria to expose its obvious flaws.
Doing so in a sense is however hardly necessary. There is no need to get lost in the detail.
The reality – as everyone knows – is that it is hardly conceivable Amnesty would ever publish a report about the Russian military campaign in Syria that gave it a clean bill of health.
The report in fact brings together two of Amnesty’s perennial villains – the Russian government and the Syrian government – and given what Amnesty routinely says about each of them, nothing different from the report Amnesty has just published could have been expected.
Ever since the start of the Syrian conflict Amnesty has campaigned against the Syrian government, calling for Western military intervention in Syria to “protect civilians”, for the establishment of “safe havens” and “no-fly zones” (as to what all that means see my discussion here) and has tried to orchestrate public campaigns against Russia’s support or perceived support for the Syrian government.
To expect Amnesty not to find fault with a Russian military intervention in Syria that is defeating all those objectives would be naive.
This is quite apart from the fact that Amnesty has a long history of hostility to the Russian government.
It has backed groups like Pussy Riot. It named people like the oligarch Mikhail Khodorkovsky – an individual the European Court of Human Rights says is guilty of massive tax evasion – “prisoners of conscience”.
Amnesty’s reporting of the Ukrainian conflict has also leaned heavily in favour of the Ukrainian government and against the east Ukrainian militia and Russia.
It has for example laid heavy stress on individual human rights violations it claims were committed by the militia whilst all but ignoring the Ukrainian army’s indiscriminate shelling of cities and its attempts to besiege them.
Amnesty has also vigorously supported the claims of Western governments that the Russian army is intervening on the militia’s side in the Ukrainian war – to the point of publishing actually inconclusive satellite pictures to prove it – as if it was itself an intelligence agency.
The report on the Russian campaign in Syria has to be read in this context.
It is not an impartial fact-based study carried out after careful field work on the ground. Rather it is simply part of the ongoing campaign in the West to turn Western public opinion against Russia’s military campaign in Syria.
That this is so is shown by the claim in the report that the Russians are deliberately targeting civilians and are therefore committing war crimes – an incendiary allegation Amnesty has also made against President Assad.
In the case of the Russians it makes no sense. Why would the Russians deliberately target civilians – something that can only provoke them to join the rebels – at the same time as they have been working hard to get a political process started to end the Syrian war? Surely the one contradicts – and completely undermines – the other?
None of this is to say that no civilians have died in Syria as a result of Russian air strikes. Some have certainly died and it would be absurd to pretend otherwise. However to claim there is a deliberate policy of targeting civilians defies logic, and finds no support in anything the Russians have said or done, or which appears in the report whose flaws I have dissected.
As it happens the report does give an account of one incident which might – if true – show how civilians might have been killed during a Russian air strike without the Russians intending it.
This is the attack on Al-Ghantu, in which several members of a single extended family sheltering in the basement of what the report calls a civilian building are alleged to have been killed as a result of a Russian air strike.
The report says the family “were related to a commander of a local armed group who was away at the time of the attack”.
Amnesty does not identify the man in question or the group he leads. One wonders why?
Regardless, this account sounds very like an attempt to kill a rebel commander which missed him but which killed instead members of his family.
The Russians have claimed on several occasions that they have killed rebel commanders in air strikes. It is entirely plausible that they target rebel commanders intentionally, and that this was an attempt to kill one.
If so then it obviously was not intended to kill civilians since the intended target was not the civilians but the rebel commander.
The Russians might have been guilty of recklessness about whether civilians were in the basement when they attacked it in the belief the rebel commander was there. Or they might have mistaken the basement for a bunker or command post. Or they might have thought only the commander and his guards were there.
In any of these cases the killing of the civilians would not have been deliberate. It would have been – in the horrible language of modern war – not intentional but “collateral”.
Some might argue – as I do – that trying to assassinate someone far from the battlefield in this way is wrong. However the point is that it is precisely what the Western powers do all the time – with barely any complaint from Amnesty.
To take one example amongst legions: during the 2011 Libyan campaign the Western military made what were obvious attempts to kill Gaddafi. The fact Gaddafi was being intentionally targeted was not even denied, though the Russian government complained about it.
One such attempt involved an air strike on a residential villa. It missed Gaddafi – who was not there – but killed one of his infant children and three of his grandchildren. Here is what I wrote about it.
At the time I called this an “ongoing descent into barbarism”.
If Amnesty condemned it I never heard about it, and I have found no record of it. If Amnesty did condemn it, they certainly don’t draw attention to it. Certainly they have not accused the Danish government – whose aircraft carried out the strike – of committing war crimes.
Why then does Amnesty find the attack on Al-Ghantu so much more objectionable?
The short answer – there is no other – is that it is because the attack on Gaddafi’s villa – like scores of other attacks on civilian facilities in any number of countries before and since – were carried out by the Western powers, whilst the attack on Al-Ghantu was – allegedly though not definitely – carried out by the Russians.
It is impossible to avoid the feeling that for the authors of the Amnesty report it is that – not the deaths of civilians – that is in the end what matters.
Amnesty International was once a universally respected organisation, greatly admired for its courage and integrity. Its founding purpose was to campaign for political prisoners – people imprisoned not for their crimes but for their beliefs – regardless of their political views or of the political views of those who had imprisoned them.
As someone who has supported Amnesty’s campaigns in the past, it pains me to see it departing so far from its founding purpose by taking sides in conflicts so openly and in such a brazenly political way.
I hope and believe there are still people in Amnesty who realise the folly of this, and who will fight back against it before it is too late.
As for the report about Russia’s military campaign in Syria that Amnesty has just published, it falls so far below its old standards that it has to be treated more as a piece of anti-Russian propaganda than as a serious critique of the Russian military campaign.
December 25, 2015
Posted by aletho |
Deception, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Timeless or most popular | Amnesty International, Human rights, Russia, Syria |
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A former Daesh militant now held captive by Kurdish forces has told of his experiences fighting for the terrorist organization, including the training he underwent in Turkey before returning to Syria.
A former member of Daesh has told Sputnik Turkey about his experiences as part of the terror group, including the time he spent with the organization in Turkey.
“In August 2014 I trained in Adana under a Daesh commander,” said 20-year-old Abdurrahman Adulhadi. He was captured by the Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG) earlier this month in the al-Hol region of eastern al-Hasakah Governorate, northeastern Syria.
“There were 60 of us, and we trained in a village not far from the airport. We got up in the morning and played sport. Once a week we had target practice, they taught us how to use Kalashnikovs, machine guns and other kinds of weaponry.”
“We were trained by Ahmet from Urfa (a city in the South Eastern Anatolia region of Turkey, close to the Syrian border), and a group member called Ibrahim was our interpreter.”
“The training took place in Turkey because the Daesh command thought that it was safer there than in Syria. It wasn’t possible to carry out training in Syria because of airstrikes.”
Adulhadi said that Daesh presented its training facility in Adana to local media as a camp of the Free Syrian Army (FSA), one of many opposition groups the Turkish government allows to have a base in Turkey; the FSA’s base is in the city of Hatay on the Turkish-Syrian border.
“In the media they wrote that we were training in an FSA military camp, but in fact, all 60 of us were members of Daesh. We were Syrian nationals, many of whom in the beginning moved to Turkey to earn some money, and then joined Daesh.”
Having undergone training, Adulhadi said his main responsibility was to persuade more Syrians to join the organization’s preparations in Turkey.
“I made contacts with Syrians on the internet, helped them to get to Turkey and begin training. After I undertook the training, for five months I lived together with a relative who was a Daesh commander in Adana. My task was to meet the new recruits arriving from Syria. After training we sent them to Urfa, and from there – to Raqqa. From Raqqa they distributed themselves across different regions of Syria.”
Daesh in Turkey was provided with arms from Iraq, which were transported across the border in ordinary cars under the pretense of carrying food and other humanitarian supplies.
“Heavy weapons were delivered from Ash-Shaddadi (a town in southern Al-Hasakah Governorate),” said Adulhadi. He explained that he had been sent by a Daesh commander to work for the group’s intelligence service in the town when he was captured by the YPG.
“I spent one night there, and the next night December 11 2015 YPG forces attacked our positions, and took both of us captive. In al-Hol the commander was a Frenchman called Abu Yahya.”
Adulhadi, whose brother is still fighting for the terrorist organization, added that he was left disillusioned by his time with the terrorist organization.
“What I read about Daesh, and what I was faced with in reality were absolutely different things,” he said.
December 24, 2015
Posted by aletho |
Deception, War Crimes | Da’esh, Free Syrian Army, FSA, Syria, Turkiye |
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