Stop! Decency demands we smoke out the real perpetrators of war crimes against Aleppo and Gaza
By Stuart Littlewood | Dissident Voice | October 14, 2016
As Western outrage erupts over the relentless destruction of Aleppo and its people, why is there no similar clamour for a halt to the more prolonged pulverising of Gaza and the continuing slaughter of civilians there?
The UK’s Permanent Representative to the UN, Matthew Rycroft, said the other day:
“Russia’s actions in recent weeks have exposed just how hollow Russia’s commitment to the political process is. Today we have seen that commitment for what it really is; a sham….
“I echo the words of the Archbishop of Canterbury who described the destruction of Aleppo as the absolute contempt for the human spirit, for the dignity of the human being…. There can be no military justification for aerial attacks that indiscriminately hit civilians, and their homes and their hospitals.”
Aleppo or Gaza: what’s the difference?
A few days later we were treated to the spectacle of our recently-appointed Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson calling for anti-war protesters to demonstrate outside the Russian embassy in London. Russia, he said, risks becoming a pariah nation and should be investigated for war crimes in Aleppo. He predicted those responsible for war crimes in Syria would eventually face charges before the international criminal court.
Johnson was speaking in a Commons debate in which he apparently rejected the idea of a no-fly zone, warning that we might have to confront and perhaps shoot down Russian and Syrian planes or helicopters that violate the zone. In other words: go to war. “We need to think very carefully about the consequences.” Too right, Boris. All the same, he’s looking at “kintetic” options such as military action as well as intensifying sanctions against the Assad regime and Russia. Perhaps he has forgotten how the last proposal for air strikes in Syria, in 2013, was thrown out by the Westminster Parliament.
One is immediately prompted to ask why Boris Johnson busies himself accusing Russia of war crimes and drumming up demos outside its embassy while remaining stoically silent about the diabolical crimes of top pariah state Israel. Shouldn’t he be at least evenhanded in his criticism of regimes that repeatedly violate all decent norms of human behaviour?
Why won’t Boris go “kinetic” over Gaza?
Israel and its terrorist founders have been slaughtering and robbing the Palestinian people for nearly 70 years. The Tel Aviv regime continues to illegally occupy Palestinian territory and keep its defenceless citizens bottled up in the shredded left-overs of their homeland, and even commits murder and piracy on the high seas to prevent visitors reaching them. Yet we’ve seen no NATO ships or warplanes off the Gaza coast, no no-fly zones imposed over the still-occupied Holy Land, no boots on the ground, and no arms or military advisers for the Palestinian resistance. In fact, nothing that could be described by Boris as “kinetic”.
Israel, whose “absolute contempt for the human spirit” is extremely profitable, simply doesn’t attract the same high-level indignation. So the evil regime’s demolition of thousands of Palestinian homes for so-called administrative and planning reasons, its wholesale destruction of businesses and infrastructure, its excessive violence against non-combatants, its abductions, imprisonments and assassinations, and especially its programme of blitzkriegs on Gaza slaughtering thousands including many hundreds of children, and reducing the place to rubble… they all go unpunished. None of these crimes can be justified on grounds of defence or security. And in the Palestinians’ case they have nowhere to run. They cannot escape. To the best of my knowledge Boris Johnson has never called for those responsible to be brought before the ICC. He hasn’t even threatened sanctions.
Nor is he likely to. For he’s a “very outspoken friend of Israel” according to former ambassador to London Daniel Taub. Yessir, “he is a very enthusiastic supporter, and his relationship with Israel goes back a long way”. Taub also says Johnson’s enthusiasm is such that “he jumped on our idea of an Israeli cultural festival in London, and thanks to his backing it will be happening next year”. We all know how eagerly Britain’s Foreign Office supports the EU-Israel Association Agreement despite Israel’s blatant violation of its key conditions from the very start.
On his visit to Israel last November some Palestinian groups refused to meet Boris after he dismissed British supporters of BDS (that’s the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement) as “lefty academics who have no real standing in the matter and I think are unlikely to be influential… ” BDS is civil society’s non-violent response not just to the international community’s inaction but the major powers’ perverse habit of rewarding Israel for its crimes. Boris said he couldn’t think of “anything more foolish” than to boycott Israel, which he described as “the only democracy in the region, the only place that has in my view a pluralist open society.”
So amusing. But if the boycotts are foolish and ineffectual, as Boris claims, why so many frantic efforts around the world to have BDS outlawed?
Let’s face it. Boris Johnson is a very senior member of the Conservative Party in which 80% of MPs, it is said, are signed-up Friends of Israel. As PM Theresa May recently proclaimed, “the Conservative Party would not be the Conservative Party without CFI [Conservative Friends of Israel].” They wax lyrical about the odious foreign power whose flag they wave in Parliament, as do their fellow stooges in Washington. The insane focus on regime-change in Syria is primarily for the benefit of Israeli expansionism, and the army of highly-placed useful idiots have their orders.
By being part of this grotesque admiration society, and one of Israel’s keenest rewarders, Boris has become the buffoon he always pretended to be. And nudging us towards a second cold war with Russia just to tick another box for Israel’s grisly ambition confirms him as dangerous as well as daft.
U.S. Says Russia Bombed Convoy Even If It Didn’t
By Brandon Turbeville | Activist Post | September 28, 2016
Throughout the entirety of the Syrian crisis, Western media outlets have misrepresented facts and presented outright lies to their audiences regarding virtually every aspect of the war but, particularly when it comes to specific occurrences used to gin up support for greater Western intervention in Syria, these outlets kick it up a notch, launching flurries of disinformation and misinformation designed to leave imprints of false narratives in the minds of half attentive audiences.
With the recent bombing of an aid convoy in Urm al-Kubra near Aleppo, the Western media (as well as the governments it speaks for) is conflating the convoy that was attacked with a convoy that never actually entered Syria and which appears to have been attacked by America’s rebels. Now, rogue generals within the U.S. military are declaring that the Russians are responsible for the attack despite having no evidence for their claims. In addition, these generals and the Secretary of Defense are saying that, even if the Russians didn’t drop the bombs, the Russians are guilty of attacking the convoy.
Seriously, they actually said that.
Chairman of the Join Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Joe Dunford lobbed the first nonsensical claim to the Senate Armed Services Committee when he stated that “There is no doubt in my mind that the Russians are responsible, we just don’t know whose aircraft dropped the bombs.”
Really? How do you know the Russians bombed a convoy if you admittedly don’t know who dropped the bombs?
Dunford even stated “I don’t have the facts.”
It’s good to know that military policy is decided without facts and that determinations are made regardless of them, isn’t it? Dunford’s statement was essentially “We want to blame the Russians and, regardless of who bombed this convoy, we will blame the Russians. Fuck the facts.”
Yet Secretary of Defense Ashton “Ash” Carter (appropriately named “Ash” since that will be all that is left of the world by the time the U.S. Empire is finished provoking every country in the world including nuclear powers) was not to be outdone by Dunford.
“[The] Russians are responsible for this strike whether they conducted it or not because they associated themselves with the Syrian regime,” he said.
Now, that’s an interesting point. Let’s say for the sake of argument that the Syrian “regime” was “killing its own people,” “bombing civilians,” and “torturing” Syrian civilians as the U.S. government claims it is. To be clear, there is no evidence of any of this but, for the sake of argument, let’s say the alternate universe of the Western corporate media and the State Department is reality for a second. If the Russians are then responsible for the behavior of the Syrian government, wouldn’t the United States be responsible for the behavior of the “rebels” because the U.S. is associating itself with them?
Indeed, by the logic of Ashton Carter (an oxymoronic statement to say the least), the United States is responsible for untold executions, implementation of violent Sharia law, genocide, rape, child molestation, beheadings, torture, and, of course, cannibalism. Ironically, whether we follow the logic of Ashton Carter or not, the end result is the same – the United States is indeed responsible for all of these crimes and more in Syria.
The Russians responded with a slight jab at the U.S. government with Igor Konashenkov stating:
Unlike the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff of the U.S. Armed Forces, we do have the ‘facts’, that is, data of objective control of the aerial situation in Aleppo on Sept. 19. And these facts unequivocally confirm the presence of an American unmanned fighting air vehicle Predator, launched from the Incirlik air base, in the area of the convoy’s passing by Urum al-Kubra.
Unfortunately, Konashenkov must be unaware that the facts don’t matter to the United States government or to the Western corporate media.
If facts mattered, the fact that there is no evidence of Russian or Syrian or any aerial bombardment of the Syrian Red Crescent convoy would be adequately reported. Indeed, evidence that the bombing was an attack against a completely different convoy than what the American media has painted as the actual victim and the fact that the Western-backed terrorists were the most likely culprits would be discussed all over the airwaves right now.
But, of course, if the facts actually mattered, America’s “moderate” rebels would have never been labeled “moderate,” “peaceful,” or “democratic.” Nor would America have armed “rebels” in the first place. Or invaded Libya. Or Iraq. Or Afghanistan. Unfortunately, however, facts and logic are an endangered species in America these days.
Brandon Turbeville – article archive here – is the author of seven books, Codex Alimentarius — The End of Health Freedom, 7 Real Conspiracies, Five Sense Solutions and Dispatches From a Dissident, volume 1 andvolume 2, The Road to Damascus: The Anglo-American Assault on Syria, and The Difference it Makes: 36 Reasons Why Hillary Clinton Should Never Be President.
Atlantic’s New Editor Was IDF Prison Guard, Beat Palestinians
Goldberg in a meeting with President Obama. | Photo: Wikimedia Commons
teleSUR | October 12, 2016
“In five years, however, I believe that the coming invasion of Iraq will be remembered as an act of profound morality.”
These are the not-so-prescient words of Jeffrey Goldberg, named this week the new chief editor of the 159-year-old Atlantic Magazine, one of the most famous journalistic institutions in U.S. history.
The openly-Zionist Goldberg moved to Israel nearly 25 years ago and served in the Israeli Defense Forces. Since then, he has been the opening speaker for numerous Zionist functions, including the American Jewish Committee conference and Zionism 3.0.
Most garishly, he worked as a prison guard at Ktzi’ot, Israel’s largest detention camp for Palestinian political prisoners, where he boasted of helping beat Palestinian political prisoners. Ktzi’ot is one of Israel’s largest detention camps and has long been criticized for its inhumane conditions, which include frequent beatings, lack of drinking water and forced labor.
In his 2006 book Prisoners, Goldberg describes a scene at the detention camp, in which his friend repeatedly hits a Palestinian prisoner in the head with a sharp-edged object, beating him to a bloody pulp, a beating that Goldberg described “was prompted by something (the prisoner) said.” Goldberg covered up the crime by saying, “I found another military policeman, and handed off the wobbling prisoner, who was by now bleeding on me. ‘He fell,’ I lied.”
Goldberg himself took part in beatings, justifying them by saying, “Unlike (Goldberg’s camp guard friend), I never hit a Palestinian who wasn’t already hitting me.”
Additionally, his credibility as a journalist is most unsavory. At the New Yorker magazine, Goldberg authored dozens of articles that were later discovered to be false but provided the United States with a pretense for invading Iraq. In 2002, Goldberg also published a two-part series in the New Yorker in which he alleged that the Lebanese resistance movement Hezbollah was running a black market cigarette ring on U.S. soil to finance a terrorist operation. No evidence of any such activity has since been discovered. Indeed, the new head honcho of one the United States’ most prominent publications has become so fringe in his shilling for Israel and the U.S. empire, that even former key conservatives and staunch Zionists such as former New Republic Editor Andrew Sullivan have heavily criticized him.
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Putin: We know who destroyed aid convoy in Aleppo, Syria
RT | October 12, 2016
The attack on a UN humanitarian aid convoy near the Syrian city of Aleppo last month, which Washington has blamed on Russia, was actually carried out by one of the terrorist groups present in the area, Russian President Vladimir Putin has said.
“It was one of the terrorist groups. And we know that, say, the Americans know it too, but prefer to take a different position, to falsely accuse Russia. This is not helping,” Putin said at an economic forum in Moscow.
The aid convoy was attacked on the night of September 20. The International Committee of the Red Cross reported 20 civilians killed and 18 vehicles destroyed.
The Pentagon alleged that the convoy was destroyed from the air and that Russian warplanes were present in the area, concluding that it was a Russian strike that was responsible.
Russia denied the accusation and said a US drone was monitoring the convoy, so Washington should know the truth about the attack.
Putin also commented on the disagreement at the UN Security Council that eventually led to the cancellation of his visit to France. Paris indicated that it wouldn’t be comfortable hosting the Russian leader after Moscow blocked a resolution it had submitted.
“It’s not our partners who should take offense over us vetoing the French resolution. I’d say we are the offended party here,” Putin said.
He said French Foreign Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault had raised the idea of the resolution when he visited Moscow last week. Ayrault was told the draft pinned too much blame for the Aleppo violence on the Syrian government, but that if France made some amendments, the document could still pass.
However, as Ayrault visited Washington on the eve of the UNSC meeting, no changes were made to the draft and France also “accused Russia of all the deadly sins,” Putin said.
“Knowing our position, and not discussing it with us, they didn’t chuck in the resolution so it would pass, but [did it] to get the veto. What for? To exacerbate the situation and to whip up anti-Russian hysteria in media under their control, and to deceive their own citizens,” he added.
The situation in Syria will be discussed on Saturday in Lausanne, Switzerland, where top diplomats from the US, Russia, Iran, Turkey and Saudi Arabia are to gather for a meeting.
Debate Moderator Distorted Syrian Reality
By Robert Parry | Consortium News | October 11, 2016
How ABC News’ Martha Raddatz framed her question about Syria in the second presidential debate shows why the mainstream U.S. news media, with its deep-seated biases and inability to deal with complexity, has become such a driving force for wider wars and even a threat to the future of the planet.
Raddatz, the network’s chief global affairs correspondent, presented the Syrian conflict as simply a case of barbaric aggression by the Syrian government and its Russian allies against the Syrian people, especially the innocents living in Aleppo.
ABC News’ correspondent Martha Raddatz
“Just days ago, the State Department called for a war crimes investigation of the Syrian regime of Bashar al-Assad and its ally, Russia, for their bombardment of Aleppo,” Raddatz said. “So this next question comes through social media through Facebook. Diane from Pennsylvania asks, if you were president, what would you do about Syria and the humanitarian crisis in Aleppo? Isn’t it a lot like the Holocaust when the U.S. waited too long before we helped?”
The framing of the question assured a response from former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton about her determination to expand the U.S. military intervention in Syria to include a “no-fly zone,” which U.S. military commanders say would require a massive operation that would kill many Syrians, both soldiers and civilians, to eliminate Syria’s sophisticated air-defense systems and its air force.
But Raddatz’s loaded question was also a way of influencing – or misleading – U.S. public opinion. Consider for a moment how a more honest and balanced question could have elicited a very different response and a more thoughtful discussion:
“The situation in Aleppo presents a heartrending and nettlesome concern. Al Qaeda fighters and their rebel allies, including some who have been armed by the United States, are holed up in some neighborhoods of eastern Aleppo. They’ve been firing rockets into the center and western sections of Aleppo and they have shot civilians seeking to leave east Aleppo through humanitarian corridors.
“These terrorists and their ‘moderate’ rebel allies seem to be using the tens of thousands of civilians still in east Aleppo as ‘human shields’ in order to create sympathy from Western audiences when the Syrian government seeks to root the terrorists and other insurgents from these neighborhoods with airstrikes that have killed both armed fighters and civilians. In such a circumstance, what should the U.S. role be and was it a terrible mistake to supply these fighters with sophisticated rockets and other weapons, given that these weapons have helped Al Qaeda in seizing and holding territory?”
Siding with Al Qaeda
Raddatz also could have noted that a key reason why the recent limited cease-fire failed was that the U.S.-backed “moderate” rebels in east Aleppo had rebuffed Secretary of State John Kerry’s demand that they separate themselves from Al Qaeda’s Nusra Front, which now calls itself the Syria Conquest Front.
Instead of breaking ties with Al Qaeda, some of these “moderate” rebel groups reaffirmed or expanded their alliances with Al Qaeda. In other words, Official Washington’s distinction between Al Qaeda’s terrorists and the “moderate” rebels was publicly revealed to be largely a myth. But the reality of U.S.-aided rebels collaborating with the terror group that carried out the 9/11 attacks complicates the preferred mainstream narrative of Bashar al-Assad and Vladimir Putin “the bad guys” versus the rebels “the good guys.”
If Raddatz had posed her question with the more complex reality (rather than the simplistic, biased form that she chose) and if Clinton still responded with her recipe of a “no-fly zone,” the obvious follow-up would be: “Wouldn’t such a military intervention constitute aggressive war against Syria in violation of the United Nations Charter and the Nuremberg principles?
“And wouldn’t such a strategy risk tipping the military balance inside Syria in favor of Al Qaeda and its jihadist allies, possibly even its spinoff terror group, the Islamic State? And what would the United States do then, if its destruction of the Syrian air force led to the black flag of jihadist terror flying over Damascus as well as all of Aleppo? Would a Clinton-45 administration send in U.S. troops to stop the likely massacre of Christians, Alawites, Shiites, secular Sunnis and other ‘heretics’?”
There would be other obvious and important questions that a more objective Martha Raddatz would ask: “Would your no-fly zone include shooting down Russian aircraft that are flying inside Syria at the invitation of the Syrian government? Might such a clash provoke a superpower escalation, possibly even invite nuclear war?”
But no such discussion is allowed inside the mainstream U.S. media’s frame. There is an unstated assumption that the United States has the unquestioned right to invade other countries at will, regardless of international law, and there is a studied silence about this hypocrisy even as the U.S. State Department touts the sanctity of international law.
Whose War Crimes?
Raddatz’s favorable reference to the State Department accusing the Syrian and Russian governments of war crimes further suggests a stunning lack of self-awareness, a blindness to America’s own guilt in that regard. How can any American journalist put on such blinders regarding even recent U.S. war crimes, including the illegal invasion of Iraq that led to the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Iraqis?
While Raddatz referenced “the heart-breaking video of a 5-year-old Syrian boy named Omran sitting in an ambulance after being pulled from the rubble after an air strike in Aleppo,” she seems to have no similar sympathy for the slaughtered and maimed children of Iraq who suffered under American bombs – or the people of Yemen who have faced a prolonged aerial onslaught from Saudi Arabia using U.S. aircraft and U.S.-supplied ordnance.
Regarding Iraq, there was the case at the start of the U.S.-led war when President George W. Bush mistakenly thought Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein might be eating at a Baghdad restaurant so U.S. warplanes leveled it, killing more than a dozen civilians, including children and a young woman whose headless body was recovered by her mother.
“When the broken body of the 20-year-old woman was brought out torso first, then her head,” the Associated Press reported, “her mother started crying uncontrollably, then collapsed.” The London Independent cited this restaurant attack as one that represented “a clear breach” of the Geneva Conventions ban on bombing civilian targets.
But such civilian deaths were of little interest to the mainstream U.S. media. “American talking heads … never seemed to give the issue any thought,” wrote Eric Boehlert in a report on the U.S. war coverage for Salon.com. “Certainly they did not linger on images of the hellacious human carnage left in the aftermath.”
Thousands of other civilian deaths were equally horrific. Saad Abbas, 34, was wounded in an American bombing raid, but his family sought to shield him from the greater horror. The bombing had killed his three daughters Marwa, 11; Tabarek, 8; and Safia, 5 who had been the center of his life. “It wasn’t just ordinary love,” his wife said. “He was crazy about them. It wasn’t like other fathers.” [NYT, April 14, 2003]
The horror of the war was captured, too, in the fate of 12-year-old Ali Ismaeel Abbas, who lost his two arms when a U.S. missile struck his Baghdad home. Ali’s father, his pregnant mother and his siblings were all killed. As the armless Ali was evacuated to a Kuwaiti hospital, becoming a symbol of U.S. compassion for injured Iraqi civilians, the boy said he would rather die than live without his hands.
Because of the horrors inflicted on Iraq – and the resulting chaos that has now spread across the region and into Europe – Raddatz could have asked Clinton, who as a U.S. senator voted for the illegal war, whether she felt any responsibility for this carnage. Of course, Raddatz would not ask that question because the U.S. mainstream media was almost universally onboard the Iraq War bandwagon, which helps explain why there has been virtually no accountability for those war crimes.
Letting Clinton Off
So, Clinton was not pressed on her war judgments regarding either Iraq or the Libyan “regime change” that she championed in 2011, another war of choice that transformed the once-prosperous North African nation into a failed state. Raddatz’s biased framing also put Republican Donald Trump on the defensive for resisting yet another American “regime change” project in Syria.
Trump was left muttering some right-wing talking points that sought to attack Clinton as soft on Syria, trying to link her to President Barack Obama’s decision not to bomb the Syrian military in August 2013 after a mysterious sarin gas attack outside Damascus, which occurred six months after Clinton had resigned as Secretary of State.
Trump: “She was there as Secretary of State with the so-called line in the sand, which…
Clinton: “No, I wasn’t. I was gone. I hate to interrupt you, but at some point…
Trump: “OK. But you were in contact — excuse me. You were…
Clinton: “At some point, we need to do some fact-checking here.
Trump: “You were in total contact with the White House, and perhaps, sadly, Obama probably still listened to you. I don’t think he would be listening to you very much anymore. Obama draws the line in the sand. It was laughed at all over the world what happened.”
In bashing Obama for not bombing Syria – after U.S. intelligence expressed suspicion that the sarin attack was actually carried out by Al Qaeda or a related group trying to trick the U.S. military into attacking the Syrian government – Trump may have pleased his right-wing base but he was deviating from his generally less war-like stance on the Middle East.
He followed that up with another false right-wing claim that Clinton and Obama had allowed the Russians to surge ahead on nuclear weapons, saying: “our nuclear program has fallen way behind, and they’ve gone wild with their nuclear program. Not good.”
Only after attacking Clinton for not being more militaristic did Trump say a few things that made sense, albeit in his incoherent snide-aside style.
Trump: “Now, she talks tough, she talks really tough against Putin and against Assad. She talks in favor of the rebels. She doesn’t even know who the rebels are. You know, every time we take rebels, whether it’s in Iraq or anywhere else, we’re arming people. And you know what happens? They end up being worse than the people [we overthrow].
“Look at what she did in Libya with [Muammar] Gaddafi. Gaddafi’s out. It’s a mess. And, by the way, ISIS has a good chunk of their oil. I’m sure you probably have heard that.” [Actually, whether one has heard it or not, that point is not true. During the ongoing political and military strife, Libya has been blocked from selling its oil, which is shipped by sea.]
Trump continued: “It was a disaster. Because the fact is, almost everything she’s done in foreign policy has been a mistake and it’s been a disaster.
“But if you look at Russia, just take a look at Russia, and look at what they did this week, where I agree, she wasn’t there, but possibly she’s consulted. We sign a peace treaty. Everyone’s all excited. Well, what Russia did with Assad and, by the way, with Iran, who you made very powerful with the dumbest deal perhaps I’ve ever seen in the history of deal-making, the Iran deal, with the $150 billion, with the $1.7 billion in cash, which is enough to fill up this room.
“But look at that deal. Iran now and Russia are now against us. So she wants to fight. She wants to fight for rebels. There’s only one problem. You don’t even know who the rebels are. So what’s the purpose?”
While one can’t blame Raddatz for Trump’s scattered thinking – or for Clinton’s hawkishness – the moderator’s failure to frame the Syrian issue in a factual and nuanced way contributed to this dangerously misleading “debate” on a grave issue of war and peace.
It is surely not the first time that the mainstream U.S. media has failed the American people in this way, but – given the stakes of a possible nuclear war with Russia – this propagandistic style of “journalism” is fast becoming an existential threat.
Is Andrew Mitchell MP really suggesting we start WWIII?
OffGuardian | October 11, 2016
The House of Commons is set to have an “emergency debate” on the declaration of a no-fly zone over Syria, specifically to “defend Aleppo from Russia”. The debate, called by Andrew Mitchell, will be over whether or not NATO planes should confront, and attack, Russian jets. Speaking on the BBC’s Today programme Mitchell said:
… what we do say is that the international community has an avowed responsibility to protect and that protection must be exerted. If that means confronting Russian air power defensively, on behalf of the innocent people on the ground who we are trying to protect, then we should do that.”
He added:
I think that Britain should explore with its allies how it would enforce a no-fly zone.”
Well, we can save Britain and her allies some time here, there’s nothing to “explore”. There is only one way to enforce a no-fly zone, and that is by shooting down any plane that violates it. There is literally no other action to be taken.
Curiously, when the Today host John Humphrys pointed out – very reasonably – that this is tantamount to declaration of war, Mitchell disagreed:
It’s not a declaration of war against Russia but it is an absolute declaration that we will seek to protect the innocent victims of these war crimes.”
…. without any reference to that fact that, from Russia’s POV, it would DEFINITELY be an act of war.
This debate is, at best, some ridiculous macho-posturing from an idiot who wants to be seen as “tough”, and at worst an indication that the British political class are literally, totally divorced from reality. Either way it is a highly dangerous situation, because whatever the intentions of Mitchell and the Commons at large, there’s no telling how or when the lunatics in the Pentagon will pick up this ball and run with it. There are crazy hawks in Washington who genuinely want a war with Russia, and it is the responsibility of all people with any sense to box in this element and limit their opportunities to incite chaos.
If nothing else the debate is the first real test of Jeremy Corbyn since his re-election as Labour leader. Will he stand up to the increasingly bizarre and dangerous view of the Syrian conflict being presented in the Western press? Or will he vacillate and equivocate in the worst traditions of Britain’s soft-left non-opposition?
Watch this space.
Boris Johnson calls for Russian Embassy protests during Syria debate
RT | October 11, 2016
UK Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson has used his debut at the House of Commons dispatch box to accuse Russia of bombing an aid convoy in Aleppo, and asked why anti-war activists have not mounted protests outside the Russian Embassy in London.
“Where is the Stop The War coalition at the moment? Where are they?” asked Johnson, during an emergency parliamentary debate on the situation in Aleppo, Syria.
“All the available evidence therefore points to Russian responsibility for the atrocity,” said Johnson, referring to the bombing of the UN aid convoy on September 20 that resulted in the deaths of 20 people, and the destruction of 18 trucks, which he had previously called a “war crime.”
“There is no commensurate horror, it seems to me, amongst some of those anti-war protest groups,” said Johnson.
“If Russia continues in its current path, then I believe that great nation is in danger of becoming a pariah nation,” said the Foreign Secretary, who was appointed by Theresa May in July.
Johnson also called for further sanctions against Russia, which is already under several Western embargoes over Crimea, and the conflict in eastern Ukraine.
“We’ve got to make sure we have innovative ways of getting aid into Aleppo, and as several members have said, we have to step up the pressure on Assad’s regime through sanctions and on the Russians through sanctions,” said the Conservative politician.
He also raised the possibility of an international legal effort to bring to justice those allegedly responsible for war crimes in Syria, a day after France and UN Secretary Ban Ki-Moon made the same appeal.
“I’m personally very attracted to the idea of getting these people [war criminals] to come before the International Criminal Court. That’s certainly something I would like to pursue,” said Johnson.
How the US Manipulates Humanitarianism for Imperialism #Aleppo
By Steven Chovanec | Reports From The Underground | October 6, 2016
The United States is manipulating humanitarian concern in an effort to protect its proxy militias and its imperial regime-change project in Syria. The media and intellectual classes are dutifully falling in line, promoting a narrative of military aggression under the cover of “protecting civilians.” These same “responsibility to protect” arguments led to the invasions of Iraq and Libya, exponentially increasing the massacres, chaos, and proliferation of violent extremism within those countries. They are hypocritical, designed to further interests of conquest and domination, and will lead to more death and destruction in Syria as well.
The United States has no stake in the wellbeing of Syrian civilians, despite their condemnations of Russia’s offensive in Aleppo. This is clearly shown in the fact that the people they are supporting are guilty of the same crimes they accuse Russia and Syria of: indiscriminate attacks, targeting of civilians, destruction of schools, hospitals, etc. Furthermore, the offensive in Aleppo is really no different from what the US did in Manbij, where they are said to have incorporated a “scorched earth policy” while they liberated the city from ISIS, whereby the civilian population was treated “as if they were terrorists or ISIS supporters.” Arguably their conduct was even worse, as they there earned the distinction of launching the deadliest single airstrike on civilians out of the entire 5-year conflict, massacring at least 73 where no ISIS fighters were present. The Manbij operation elicited no moral outcry from the media and punditry, understandably since these were “unworthy victims” given that they were our victims and not those of our enemies. The same can be said about the US operations in Kobani and Fallujah, whereby the entire towns were essentially reduced to rubble without any uproar.
Saudi Arabia as well has no concern for Syrian civilians, as they have been ruthlessly besieging and bombing Yemen, with the support and help of the United States, for two years without any concern for civilian lives. Their assault has led to a humanitarian situation even more dire than in Syria, leaving at least 19 million in need of humanitarian assistance; in Syria it is estimated that a total of 18 million are in need of aid.
Turkey as well is not concerned, as is evidenced by their conduct towards their Kurdish population, yet the recent quiet by Erdogan over the fate of Aleppo is indicative of an understanding reached between him with President Putin, whereby Turkey establishes a presence in northern Syria and blocks the advance of the Kurds, and in return limits its support to the rebels and the insurgents in Aleppo.
The real reason the US is decrying the Russian operation is the fact that they are staring aghast at the near-term possibility that their proxy insurgency in Aleppo will be defeated. Not only will this mark the decisive turning point in the war, the rebels all-but being fully overcome with the Syrian government in control of all the populated city centers except Idlib, but others have argued that it could as well mark the end of US hegemony over the entire Middle Eastern region in general. In other words, the US is trying to turn global public opinion against the Russian effort in an attempt to halt the advance and protect their rebel proxies trapped in Aleppo.
So, who are these rebels?
In short, they are an array of US-supported groups in alliance with and dominated by al-Qaeda. During the past ceasefire agreement these rebels refused to break ties with al-Qaeda and instead reasserted their commitment to their alliances with the group. The UN’s special envoy for Syria recently explained that over half of the fighters in eastern Aleppo are al-Nusra (al-Qaeda’s Syria affiliate), while according to the US Department of Defense, it is “primarily Nusra who holds Aleppo.”
Expert analysis concurs, as Fabrice Balanche of the Washington Institute details how these rebel alliances indicate “that the al-Nusra Front dominates more different rebel factions, including those considered ‘moderate.’” He explains that al-Qaeda’s “grip on East Aleppo has only increased since the spring of 2016.”
It is these fighters, al-Qaeda and their affiliates, that the US is trying to protect from the Russians, and as well other US intelligence operatives that are likely embedded with them. The narrative that Russia is committing a humanitarian catastrophe is intended to hide this fact, as well as to shift the blame for the suffering in Aleppo off of the US’ shoulders. Yet it was the US support to the rebels that is primarily responsible for the suffering.
To illustrate this, the people of eastern Aleppo never supported the rebels nor welcomed them. The rebels nonetheless “brought the revolution to them” and conquered the people against their will all the same. Of the few reporters who actually went to the city, they describe how Aleppo has been overrun by violent militants through a wave of repression, and that the people only “saw glimmers of hope” as the Syrian army was driving them from the area. The people decried this “malicious revolution” and characterized the rebel’s rule as a “scourge of terrorism.” This, of course, was of no concern to the US at the time, who now proclaims to be the “protectors” of the civilians in Aleppo.
Around 200-600,000 of the original population fled and relocated in the government-held western part of the city. Of the civilians who remain, they are primarily the families of the fighters, who themselves are paid to stay and fight. The official numbers for those remaining are 200,000, yet the actual number is likely much lower, around 40-50,000.
Nonetheless, the remaining civilians who were trapped within this warzone were prevented from leaving.
During the first ceasefire, humanitarian corridors were opened and the civilians were encouraged by the Syrian army to leave, yet the rebels stopped them, with reports saying they went as far as to shoot at those who tried. The attempt to evacuate the civilians was condemned by the US, who argued that the innocent people “should be able to stay in their homes.” The radical groups were using the civilian population as human shields in order to protect themselves, and the US was supporting it. Further corroborating this is the special UN envoy Steffan de Mistura, who quotes reports indicating that the rebels have been utilizing “intentional placement of firing positions close to social infrastructure, aside and inside civilian quarters.” This is because it has always been the policy of the Syrian government to separate civilians from insurgents, as it is simply much more militarily effective to fight against an enemy that is not ensconced within a civilian population. Likewise, it has always been US and rebel policy to prevent this separation.
According to a knowledgeable individual with contacts with high level Syrian officials, the US and EU always rejected the Syrian governments proposals to separate civilians from the fighters, as they explained, “because doing so will be helping you win.” This makes sense, given that if all of the civilians from eastern Aleppo were evacuated there would then be nothing stopping the Syrian army from crushing the remaining fighters, and there as well would be no international outcry over them doing so. The source explains: “Syria’s war is an urban war theater. [The] only way for insurgents to compete is to use residential areas to hide and operate out of. This is in direct contrast to [the] Syrian army who would like to fight a theater totally void of civilians.”
Those claiming to be protecting Aleppo’s civilians from the Russian and Syrian onslaught are in actuality using them as a means to protect their success on the battlefield.
Given this, the strategy of the Syrian government has been to bomb sporadically in order to scare the civilians and force them to flee from areas controlled by the militants. This is also why the Syrian army just recently halted their advance in order to allow civilians to evacuate; they wanted the civilians out of the picture so they could militarily defeat the rebels more quickly and easily.
If one actually were concerned about saving the civilians in eastern Aleppo it is pretty straight forward that one would try to evacuate the civilians from the area, and that the backers of the rebel groups would put pressure on them to allow this to happen. From there it would follow that all sides abide by the UN Security Council resolutions of which they agreed to, which call for the suppression of financing, fighters, and support to al-Qaeda, for the suppression of al-Qaeda “and all other entities associated” with them, and “to eradicate the safe haven they have established over significant parts of Syria,” of which Aleppo is one of the largest.
Unfortunately, it is only Syria and Russia who are following through on these commitments, while the US and its allies are consciously blocking them. The media and intellectual opinion are as well falling in line, obscuring from the narrative all of these inconvenient truths that do not support the interests of the policy planners in Washington. In this way, the media are shown to be completely subservient to state power, drumming up support for another aggressive war based on falsities and half-truths in the exact same way that led to the continuing catastrophes in Libya and Iraq. When the US was driving ISIS from Manbij, just as Syria is now driving al-Qaeda from Aleppo, killing hundreds of civilians at a time, there was not so much as a debate about it, much less an international outcry.
Yet now there are countless calling to “save” Syrians by bombing them and flooding the warzone with more weapons and fighters, ironically using “humanitarian” concern to call for policies that will lead to even more death and misery. The rebels are dominated by jihadi extremists, and any further support to them will further strengthen the radicals engaged in a project of ethnic cleansing, conquest, and reactionary theocratic governance. Bombing would only help to further descend Syria into chaos and death, just as it did in Iraq and Libya.
This is an international proxy war and humanitarian concerns are being manipulated unscrupulously in support of interests having nothing to do with concern for innocent lives. Don’t fall for this faux humanitarianism from which more war, imperialism, and thus more death and destruction will result.
New leak reveals extent of Clinton ties with US media
RT | October 10, 2016
Hillary Clinton has been revealed to have a very cozy relationship with the US media, which has been found to work closely with Clinton’s campaign to present her in a favorable, transparent light – even planting stories, new email leaks suggest.
These facts are laid bare in the latest cache of classified Clinton campaign emails seen by The Intercept, which in turn received them from Guccifer 2.0 – the hacker who’s reportedly behind several high-profile intrusions.
The cache of emails includes campaign strategies aimed at keeping the public perception of Clinton favorable, focusing particularly on her transparency, especially in light of the FBI investigation into her use of a private email server. The strategies sometimes reveal the campaign presiding over stylistic points and emphasizing what is to be described as “on the record.”
Of particular note is one January 2015 document which includes references to Maggie Haberman. Formerly of Politico, Haberman now covers the presidential election for the New York Times. According to the leaked document, she’s a “friendly journalist” who has “never disappointed” in painting a positive picture of Clinton.
Haberman was seemingly put to good use, emerging with two stories which were meant to shed light, among other things, on how Hillary Clinton’s thought process works and how successful her cabinet members were. The New York Times piece entitled ‘Hillary Clinton Begins Process of Vetting — Herself’, talks about how open Clinton is to researching herself and how committed to transparency that makes her. Especially given how her opponents mainly focus on her foundation work, or the millions she’s received in paid speech appearances, as well as her relationship to Wall Street.
Neither Merrill nor Haberman responded to the Intercept’s requests for comment, nor did they deny that the document exists.
One of the documents, entitled ‘The Press and Surrogate Plan’, talked of willing personnel in the media who could always be put to good use, at CNN or elsewhere. Clinton staffers were also careful in distinguishing between “progressive helpers” and those who were potentially friendly, but could be further coerced.
These so-called media surrogates would often include TV pundits whose roles would appear to be neutral, but who were enrolled by the campaign. The metadata for the ‘surrogate’ document traces it back to its author Jennifer Palmieri – the Clinton campaign communications director.
Furthermore, as described in an April 2015 memo, there would be secret get-togethers involving media big shots and celebrity TV personalities – a notable one would take place in the aftermath of Clinton’s running announcement at the home of one of her strategists on the Upper East Side. The informal cocktail party was completely off-the-record, and intended to coordinate how Clinton’s campaign would be presented to the American public.
The strategies were not specifically formulated for the Clinton campaign, however. According to a March 2015 memo by campaign manager Robby Mook, the tried and tested tactic of constantly feeding the press positive stories in order to take away its ability to react to constant outside accusations was particularly important.
These controversial strategies have also been employed by the Republicans, although this latest cache of documents is the first glimpse into just how coordinated the effort is to use the media to political advantage.
The revelations from the Intercept come just as the second round of debating between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump has wrapped up, looking colder than ever, with not so much as a handshake exchanged.
The leak also comes amid the latest official attack on Russia by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence. On Friday they released a statement claiming they are ““confident that the Russian government directed” the hacks of emails and documents and their posting on WikiLeaks, DCLeaks, and the blog of the hacker calling himself ‘Guccifer 2.0.’
Russia has been denying all complicity. The United States has still not presented any evidence of an official link to the Russian government.
Clinton Claims Russian Aggression Keeps War in Syria Going On
Sputnik — 10.10.2016
Russian ambitions and aggressiveness keep the conflict in Syria going on, US Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton said on Sunday, accusing Russia of sufferings of the Syrian people.
“I want to emphasize that what is at stake here is the ambitions and aggressiveness of Russia.
Russia has decided that it is all-in in Syria and they have also decided who they want to see become president of the United States too when it is not me,” Clinton said.
She put the blame for sufferings of the Syrian people on Russia, accusing it of destructive bombing of Aleppo.
“There is a determined effort by the Russian air force to destroy Aleppo in order to eliminate the last of the Syrian rebels who are really holding out against the Assad regime. Russia has not paid any attention to ISIS, they are interested in keeping Assad in power,” she added.
“But I do support the effort to investigate… war crimes committed by the Syrians and the Russians and try to hold them accountable,” Clinton said.
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