War, Abuse and Other Peoples: A Personal Account
By Tim Anderson | American Herald Tribune | April 17, 2018
Why support other peoples, especially during conflict? Some explanation seems necessary because wartime debates often degenerate into simplistic clichés, personal abuse and confusion. I am one of many who have been subject to this abuse. Even the sanity of the critics of war is attacked, in attempts to disqualify opposing voices. Confusion is sown through the extreme nature of war propaganda, and its invented pretexts.
In the most recent half dozen Middle East wars, all driven by Washington and its minions, it has become common to dismiss dissenters as ‘apologists’ for this or that enemy. In reality, whatever the virtues or flaws of these ‘regimes’, they are all independent, and targeted precisely for their independence. For this same reason they are branded ‘dictatorships’. Consequently the loyal western corporate and state media, on a war footing, replaces reasonable discussion with abuse and shows little interest in respect for other peoples under attack.
The clichés and abuse replicate the aggression of war mentality. People abandon their normal rules of verbal engagement, reducing discussion to combative point scoring. Having been subject to some of these attacks in recent years, mainly for my defence of Syria, here is a personal account of motives and some of that abuse.
As I see it, human society is founded on cooperation and reinforced by communities determining their own affairs and building their own social structures. We are social beings and our natural human urge is to help others. Social dysfunction comes after social cooperation, and the most toxic of all such dysfunctions is imperialism. Those outside interventions are always disastrous, destructive and tainted with the ambitions of the interveners. That is why uninvited interventions are rightly banned, these days, under international law.
I believe that support for popular self-determination, and the defence of peoples under attack, is an essentially human urge. In my opinion this comes before the pathological drive to dominate. The natural sense of support for other human communities must especially include support for formerly colonised peoples. That is consistent with human values such as respect for others, and not putting one’s voice in the place of others.
At any rate, that is the thinking behind my support for independent peoples under threat or attack. In my experience of recent decades this has included support for the peoples of Cuba, Venezuela, Papua New Guinea, East Timor, Palestine, Iraq, Iran and Syria. However I have refused to be part of the multi-billion dollar aid industry, remaining an independent writer, academic and volunteer.
This is not only altruism. Engaging with other peoples in this way is a rewarding learning experience, indeed a privilege. I believe in and remain open to learning from other cultures.
Yet imperial pathology is also a reality. Its demands, the refusal to listen, domineering, interventions and outright war represent a fundamentally anti-social mentality. From that perspective I came to see the wars of the 21st century – propaganda, economic and real wars – as a continuation of the older politics of imperialism, while often adopting the contemporary language of ‘human rights’.
I saw such abuses in my own country’s intervention in neighbouring East Timor, in 2006. There an internal conflict attracted Australian intervention, largely on false pretexts. Australian state media gave prominence to claims that East Timor’s then Prime Minister Mari Alkatiri had killed dozens of political opponents (Jackson 2006). The Prime Minister was deposed, the journalists involved were given awards; but the claims turned out to be quite false (Anderson 2006).
I spent years defending Cuba and Venezuela from a barrage of fake ‘human rights’ propaganda, including from supposedly independent agencies such as Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International (Anderson 2005; Anderson 2010, Anderson 2013).
Amnesty International, for example, attacked Cuba in 2003 for arresting several dozen US-paid agents (dubbed ‘dissidents’ in the US media), just as Havana anticipated that the mad emperor George W. Bush, having just invaded Iraq, was about to invade Cuba (Amnesty 2003). In fact, Cuba had documented US payments to these people as part of a Washington program to overthrow the Cuban government and its constitution (Elizalde and Baez 2003). There is virtually no state in the world that would not criminalise such activity.
Yet these agents became the ‘Cuban dissidents’ of Amnesty, which used ‘human rights’ as the pretext to back US aggression against its island neighbour (Barahona 2005; Anderson 2008; Lamrani 2014). That same human rights group took several years to say anything about the torture prison President Bush established at an illegally occupied part of Cuba, in Guantanamo Bay (Anderson 2009). The prisoners there (unlike the US agents in Cuba) faced no charges or trial, abuses that used to be the substance of Amnesty International’s activity.
Human Rights Watch (HRW), for its part, made repeated savage political attacks on Venezuela and Cuba, while saying next to nothing about the appalling human rights violations by Washington and its close allies. Many western liberals went along for the ride, but the partisan nature of HRW was obvious to any serious observer. A group of academics and writers assailed HRW over its heavily politicised reports on Venezuela (NACLA 2009). Later several Nobel Prize winners condemned HRW for its refusal to cut ties with the US Government (Alternet 2014).
So when this ‘human rights’ industry (Anderson 2018) turned on Libya and Syria I was half-prepared. I had already written on my own country’s shameful involvement in the aggressions against Afghanistan and Iraq, detailing Australian involvement in war crimes in both countries (Anderson 2005b; Kampmark 2008; Doran and Anderson 2011). [I would go on to document Australian war crimes against Syria (Anderson 2017a).]
However in early 2011 I did not have detailed knowledge about Libya or Syria. In March 2011 I had to look on a map to find Daraa, the border town where the violence in Syria began (Anderson 2013a). Further, I did not then know that the petro-monarchy Qatar – owner of the successful Al Jazeera media network – was funding and arming sectarian Islamist terrorists in both Benghazi (Libya) and Daraa (Syria) (Khalaf and Smith 2013; Dickinson 2014).
Once President Gaddafi was murdered and the state was destroyed, Amnesty International (France) would admit that most of the claims they had made against the Libyan President were baseless (Cockburn 2011). US analysts confirmed the fakery (Kuperman 2015).
The violence in both countries deserved scrutiny, especially when Washington, the main aggressor in the world, was urging ‘regime change’, and most independent countries were urging caution. I wrote a dozen articles against the war on Libya, over the NATO ‘double speak’, ‘regime change’ motives and NATO’s ‘humanitarian’ missile attacks (Anderson 2011a, 2011b). Yet that little country, with the highest living standards in Africa, was rapidly destroyed.
My first article on Syria in May 2011, ‘Understanding the Syrian Violence’, simply urged people to read more widely. The conflict was clearly not just ‘demonstrators v. police’ (Anderson 2011). After that I searched on a wider range of sources, of course including Syrian sources. I began to document the ‘propaganda war’, the deceptive doctrine of ‘humanitarian intervention’, the failures of the western ‘left’, and ‘the lies that fuel regime change’. I shared a detailed list of sources for ‘Reading Syria’ and began to explore several ‘false flag’ massacres (Anderson 2011c, 2012, 2012a, 2012b, 2012c).
There was very little western critical discussion of the conflict in Syria so, in 2012, a number of us, mainly Syrian-Australians, formed the group ‘Hands Off Syria’. Later that year I wrote of a ‘malignant consensus’ which had been created over Syria, one which supported a foreign-backed insurgency and a drive to wider war (Anderson 2012d). It was clear to me that a campaign of lies was afoot, just as there had been with the attacks on Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya.
The official war narrative – from Washington and its minions – was that ‘peaceful protestors’ were being slaughtered by the forces of a ‘brutal dictator’ intent on ‘killing his own people’. This was said to be a ‘civil war’, with no foreign aggression (see Anderson 2016: Chapter 3). It was an extraordinary claim, with little reason, but reliance on jihadist-linked sources and repetition of the claims made it effective, at least amongst western populations.
Yet sectarian Islamist insurrections, linked to the banned Muslim Brotherhood, had a long history in Syria. Since the 1950s such violence had always been backed by Syria’s enemies, particularly Washington and Israel. There was virtually no recognition of this in the loyal western media. Their governments demanded an extreme, fabricated story which could serve as a basis for ‘humanitarian’ intervention.
However the ‘peaceful protestor’ lie was contradicted by independent witnesses and fatally undermined by multiple admissions of US Government officials. The witnesses spoke of sectarian violence from the beginning, which drove political reform rallies off the streets. The leaked documents showed that Washington knew, from the beginning, that extremists were fomenting the violence, with the aim of imposing a religious state.
Regardless, Washington, Israel and the former colonial powers Britain and France armed these extremists, both directly and indirectly, through allies such as Saudi Arabia and Qatar (Anderson 2016: Chapters 2, 4, 6 and 12). The ‘peaceful protestors v regime’ fiction served as the basis for arming terrorists, while imposing a cruel economic blockade on the entire Syrian nation.
In late 2013 I helped organise an Australian delegation to Syria, to meet with government and non-government people to find out more about Syria and to express solidarity with a people under attack. Most of us stayed on after the official tour to meet new friends, exploring Damascus. On our return we were attacked by much of the Australian state and corporate media, in particular for a meeting we had with President Bashar al Assad, the principal target of mindless western demonization (Worthington 2013). I had expected criticism from those who backed the war, but the Murdoch media made some special efforts.
In January 2014 Christian Kerr from The Australian newspaper rang me up for a very brief interview about the trip. It lasted less than one minute. The next day Kerr published a 1,600 front page article ‘Academic with a murky past stirs fresh controversy with trip to Damascus’ (Kerr 2014). This was mainly a personal attack, with little reference to the actual visit. The reporter dishonestly claimed that I was on “a pilgrimage to honour a dictator”. The hit piece says I was an ‘extremist’ for supporting Cuba, Venezuela and Palestine, for opposing Aboriginal deaths in custody and for writing about the destructive role of the World Bank in the Pacific.
The Murdoch paper called on then then Education Minister, Christopher Pyne, to “remind” universities that they “should be partners” to the government in the goal to “build revenue … by growing the international student market … and ensure that their reputations support rather than hinder that ambition”. This meant that universities should distance themselves from controversy. Pyne presented a nice summary of the commercial imperatives placed by successive Australian governments on universities. These days that same commercialisation is regarded by an overwhelming majority (84%) of academics as at the root of a decline in the quality of Australian tertiary education (Evans 2017).
Soon after that the Channel Seven television program Today Tonight invited me into their studio for an interview with presenter Nick Etchells. However, once there, the Chanel Seven people placed me in a separate room of the same building, so that I could not hear Etchells’ introduction, which was a vicious personal attack on me. They had only pretended an interest in the Syria visit. They cut out any answers they did not like. The Australian and Channel Seven personal attacks show how closed the Australian corporate media was to hearing another side to the war in Syria.
Over 2014-2015 I wrote a book ‘The Dirty War on Syria’ (Anderson 2016), to address the western myths and to begin a documented history of the conflict. The book was published in Canada in January 2016 and, over the next two years, was translated into and published in ten languages (English, Arabic, German, Greek, Italian, Spanish, Bosnian, Swedish, Farsi and Icelandic). Over 2016-2018 I did an average of 4 or 5 interviews per week, from media in Iran, Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Korea, Italy, China, Canada, Germany, Russia and the USA. I was invited to speak at conferences in Greece, Iraq and Germany. There was less interest in my own country.
After September 2015, when Russia and Iran began a more direct involvement in the conflict, in defence of Syria, the tide of the war began to turn in Syria’s favour. But the propaganda war remained strong. Personal attacks against me and other prominent defenders of Syria became more organised. Dissident voices were seen as a threat to the war’s legitimacy.
Independent journalists Eva Bartlett (Canada) and Vanessa Beeley (England), in particular, attracted hostile attention for helping expose the grossly distorted western media coverage of the liberation of the city of Aleppo, in late 2016. The UK Guardian for example – a strong backer of the ‘humanitarian war’ against Syria – commissioned a long hit piece from a San Francisco based journalist with no experience in the Middle East (Solon 2017). Britain’s Channel 4 (Worrall 2016) and self-appointed ‘fact checkers’ – like the US family business ‘Snopes’ – pretended to debunk the consistent critical reports from Bartlett and Beeley. The would-be gatekeepers backed the Washington-led ‘humanitarian’ war story on Syria: this was a ‘civil war’ in which ‘we’ had to help the people of Syria overthrow their ‘brutal dictator’.
In early 2017 the new US President Donald Trump ordered a missile attack on Syria’s Shayrat airbase, after a chemical weapon provocation had been carried out by terrorist groups in Khan Sheikhoun (Idlib). This happened just as we were preparing an academic conference on the Syrian conflict at the University of Sydney (CCHS 2017). On social media I called Trump, Obama and Bush ‘the masterminds of terrorism in the Middle East’ (Anderson 2017).
The Murdoch media responded with another personal attack, running front page smears against myself and a colleague. This abuse began with a Daily Telegraph article by Kylar Loussikian (2017), titled ‘Sarin Gasbag: academic claims Trump a terrorist and tyrant Assad didn’t launch chemical attack’, next to a picture of me in Syria. This was a response to my assertions – based on detailed research – that chemical weapons claims against the Syrian Army were baseless (Anderson 2016: Chapter 9). There was not the slightest corporate media interest in evidence over the chemical weapons allegations. When we criticised journalist Loussikian on social media, he ran to university authorities, complaining he was a victim of a ‘personal attack’.
Underlining the absurdity of Trump’s 2017 attack, in 2018 the US Secretary of Defence admitted that, while ‘others’ were saying it, ‘we do not have evidence’ of Syria’s use of sarin gas (Wilkie 2018; Graphic 1). This had been one of the key pretexts for US aggression against Syria, over several years. But war propaganda was never concerned with evidence.
Graphic 1
A similar media attack occurred after I visited North Korea, in July 2017. By this time I had begun studying several countries subject to Washington-led ‘sanctions’. These included Cuba, Lebanon, Syria, Iran, Venezuela and North Korea (DPRK). Not that the loyal western media was interested in any such study.
On seeing some social media photos, Murdoch reporter Loussikian penned another smear story, titled ‘Sydney University’s Tim Anderson praises North Korean leader Kim Jong Un during a solidarity visit’. An introductory paragraph read:
“A controversial Sydney University lecturer who backed Syria’s murderous al Assad regime has travelled to Pyongyang and pledged “solidarity with the North Korean dictatorship against “aggression” from the west (Loussikian 2017a).
It certainly was a solidarity visit, but the lie behind the headline and its sub-head should have been obvious. There was no quote in Loussikian’s article to justify that claim that I had praised any North Korean leader. I did not even mention them. Nor had I mentioned solidarity with the government (‘dictatorship’). In principle, solidarity is always with peoples.
Further, the night before the article Loussikian had asked me, by email: “It was unclear whether you were expressing concern about warfare … or whether you had a view in supporting the North Korean Government”. Because of his previous dishonesty over Syria I did not reply.
This sort of abuse, mostly launched because of my defence of Syria, also came from some of the western ‘left’; or rather what many of us now call ‘the imperial left’. These are small groups of Trotskyists and Anarchists who swallowed the Washington line that the conflicts in Libya and Syria were popular ‘revolutions’. They repeated the western state and corporate media clichés that the highly internationalised conflict in Syria was a ‘civil war’, and that the fanatical jihadist-terrorists were ‘revolutionaries’ (e.g. Karadjis 2014; and in Norton 2014).
Some of these people – having observed that some extreme right wing figures also questioned the war on Syria, or supported Russia, or opposed Israel – decided to smear me with the lie that I ‘work with’ or am ‘friends’ with fascists. The ‘evidence’ they show for this is that some extremist and right figures attended some of my many public talks; and that those figures and I both attended a funeral wake for the murdered Russian Ambassador to Turkey, at the Russian consulate in Sydney. On that basis I was said to ‘work with Nazis’ (see Graphic 2).
Graphic 2
My first response to this sort of childish abuse was to just ignore it. Now I think there might be some educational value in showing others the worst cases.
Such attacks do not mean much from tiny groups, barely relevant except when they oppose imperial wars. Yet many western liberal-leftists today join with Washington, NATO, the Saudis, Israel – and their fanatical, reactionary mercenaries – against the remaining independent states of the Middle East.
What these left-liberals miss is that the new fascism in the world is precisely that chain of wars aimed at destroying independent African, Arab and other West Asian states. Western cheer squads for these wars are necessary to minimise opposition and keep imperial plans alive.
This century’s military, economic and propaganda wars against Afghanistan, Iraq, Iran, Lebanon, Libya and Syria have successfully conscripted western liberals, leftists, NGOs and of course the corporate and state media. Very few question the war narrative; and those who do are abused.
But that is not the future. The world is changing. BRICS and other regional groupings and states, especially in Africa, Asia and Latin America, are on the rise. In my opinion, support and respect is due to all independent peoples. It is not about whether we agree with everything they do. It is about respect for other peoples. Their self-determination is also our human responsibility.
Sources:
Alternet (2014) ‘Nobel Peace Laureates Slam Human Rights Watch’s Refusal to Cut Ties to U.S. Government’, 8 July, online: https://www.alternet.org/world/nobel-peace-laureates-slam-human-rights-watchs-refusal-cut-ties-us-government
Amnesty International (2003) ‘Cuba: Massive crackdown on dissent’, April, AMR 25/008/2003, online: https://www.amnesty.org/download/Documents/104000/amr250082003en.pdf
Anderson, Tim (2005) ‘Contesting ‘Transition’: the US plan for a Free Cuba’, Latin American Perspectives, Vol 32, No 6, November, pp.28-46
Anderson, Tim (2005a) ‘Cuba: the propaganda offensive’, Online Opinion, 15 March, online: http://www.onlineopinion.com.au/view.asp?article=3243&page=0
Anderson, Tim (2005b) ‘Indictment and prosecution of John Winston Howard’, The Guardian, Sydney, 17 August, p.2, online: http://www.cpa.org.au/guardian-pdf/2005/Guardian1241_17-08-2005_screen.pdf
Anderson, Tim (2006) ‘Timor Leste: the second Australian intervention’, Journal of Australian Political Economy, December, pp.62-93
Anderson, Tim (2008) ‘Cuba and the ‘independent journalists’, Green Left Weekly, 24 May, online: https://www.greenleft.org.au/content/cuba-and-independent-journalists
Anderson, Tim (2009) ‘Hypocrisy over Cuba’s ‘political prisoners’, Green left Weekly, 19 September, online: https://www.greenleft.org.au/content/hypocrisy-over-cubas-political-prisoners
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Anderson, Tim (2011a) ‘The Double Speak on Libya: conflict resolution or regime change?’, Facebook, March 19, online: https://www.facebook.com/notes/tim-anderson/the-double-speak-on-libya-conflict-resolution-or-regime-change/10150125374666234
Anderson, Tim (2011b) ‘Humanitarian attack on Libya – first volley, 112 tomahawk missiles hit two cities’, Facebook, 20 March, online: https://www.facebook.com/notes/tim-anderson/humanitarian-attack-on-libya-first-volley-112-tomahawk-misiles-hit-two-cities/10150126117161234
Anderson, Tim (2011c) ‘Propaganda war rages over Syrian violence’, Facebook, 8 August, online: https://www.facebook.com/notes/tim-anderson/propaganda-war-rages-over-syrian-violence/10150273915031234
Anderson, Tim (2012) ‘Humanitarian Intervention and the Left in Imperial Cultures’, Facebook, 1 March, online: https://www.facebook.com/notes/tim-anderson/humanitarian-intervention-and-the-left-in-imperial-cultures/10150603967576234
Anderson, Tim (2012a) ‘The lies that fuel intervention and ‘regime change’ – Iraq, Timor Leste, Libya, Syria’, Facebook, 8 May, online: https://www.facebook.com/notes/tim-anderson/the-lies-that-fuel-intervention-and-regime-change-iraq-timor-leste-libya-syria-/10150806025926234
Anderson, Tim (2012b) ‘Reading Syria’, Facebook, 24 May, online: https://www.facebook.com/notes/tim-anderson/reading-syria/10150862173381234
Anderson, Tim (2012c) ‘Massacres in Syria: the awful truth’, Facebook, online: https://www.facebook.com/notes/tim-anderson/massacres-in-syria-the-awful-truth/10150895942696234
Anderson, Tim (2012d) ‘The malignant consensus on Syria’, The Conversation, 19 September, online: https://theconversation.com/the-malignant-consensus-on-syria-9565
Anderson, Tim (2013) ‘Hugo Chávez, Venezuela and the Corporate Media’, Online Opinion, 9 April, online: http://onlineopinion.com.au/view.asp?article=14882&page=0
Anderson, Tim (2013a) ‘Syria: how the violence began, in Daraa’, OpEd Opinion, 13 May, online: https://www.opednews.com/articles/Syria-how-the-violence-be-by-Tim-Anderson-130513-875.html
Anderson, Tim (2016) The Dirty war on Syria, Global Research, Montreal
Anderson, Tim (2017) ‘Masterminds of terrorism in the Middle East.’, Twitter, 7 April, online: https://twitter.com/timand2037/status/850516689036861440
Anderson, Tim (2017a) ‘Implausible Denials: The Crime at Jabal al Tharda. US-led Air Raid on Behalf of ISIS-Daesh Against Syrian Forces’, Global Research, 17 December, online: https://www.globalresearch.ca/implausible-denials-the-crime-at-jabal-al-tharda-us-led-air-raid-on-behalf-of-isis-daesh-against-syrian-forces/5623056
Anderson, Tim (2018) ‘Syria: the human rights industry in ‘humanitarian war’’, Centre for Counter Hegemonic Studies, Research Paper 1/18, online: https://counter-hegemonic-studies.net/humanitarian-war-rp-1-18/
Barahona, Diana (2005) ‘Reporters Without Borders Unmasked’, Counter Punch, 17 May, online: https://www.counterpunch.org/2005/05/17/reporters-without-borders-unmasked/
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Cockburn, Patrick (2011) ‘Amnesty questions claim that Gaddafi ordered rape as weapon of war’, The Independent, 23 June, online: https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/africa/amnesty-questions-claim-that-gaddafi-ordered-rape-as-weapon-of-war-2302037.html
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Doran, Chris and Tim Anderson (2011) ‘Iraq and the case for Australian war crimes trials’, Crime, Law and Social Change: An Interdisciplinary Journal, 23 August, online: http://www.mapw.org.au/files/downloads/doran-anderson-war-crimes-2011%20%282%29.pdf
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Kuperman, Alan J. (2015) ‘Obama’s Libya Debacle’, Foreign Affairs, March/April, online: https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/libya/obamas-libya-debacle
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Loussikian, Kylar (2017) ‘Sarin Gasbag: academic claims Trump a terrorist and tyrant Assad didn’t launch chemical attack’, Daily Telegraph, Sydney, 10 April
Loussikian, Kylar (2017a) ‘Sydney University’s Tim Anderson praises North Korean leader Kim Jong Un during a solidarity visit’, Daily Telegraph, 4 September
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Solon, Olivia (2017) ‘How Syria’s White Helmets became victims of an online propaganda machine’, The Guardian, 18 September, online: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/dec/18/syria-white-helmets-conspiracy-theories
Wilkie, Ian (2018) ‘Now Mattis admits there was no evidence Assad used poison gas on his people’, Newsweek, 8 February, online: http://www.newsweek.com/now-mattis-admits-there-was-no-evidence-assad-using-poison-gas-his-people-801542
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Dr. Tim Anderson is a Senior Lecturer in Political Economy at the University of Sydney. He researches and writes on development, human rights and self-determination in the Asia-Pacific, Latin America and the Middle East. He has published dozens of articles and chapters in academic journals and books, as well as essays in a range of online journals. His work includes the areas of agriculture and food security, health systems, regional integration and international cooperation.
Missile Attack on Syria Is a Salute to “Russiagate” Enthusiasts, Whether They Like It or Not
By Norman Solomon | CounterPunch | April 16, 2018
Politicians, pundits and activists who’ve routinely denounced President Trump as a tool of Vladimir Putin can now mull over a major indicator of their cumulative impacts. The U.S.-led missile attack on Syria before dawn Saturday is the latest benchmark for gauging the effects of continually baiting Trump as a puppet of Russia’s president.
Heavyweights of U.S. media — whether outlets such as CNN and MSNBC or key newspapers like the New York Times and the Washington Post — spent most of the last week clamoring for Trump to order air strikes on Syria. Powerful news organizations have led the way in goading Trump to prove that he’s not a Putin lackey after all.
One of the clearest ways that Trump can offer such proof is to recklessly show he’s willing to risk a catastrophic military confrontation with Russia.
In recent months, the profusion of “war hawks, spies and liars” on national television has been part of a media atmosphere that barely acknowledges what’s at stake with games of chicken between the world’s two nuclear superpowers. Meanwhile, the dominant U.S. news media imbue their reporting with a nationalistic sense of impunity.
On Saturday morning, the top headline on the New York Times website was “U.S. Attacks Syria in Retaliatory Strike,” while the subhead declared that “Western resolve” was at work. The story led off by reporting that Trump “sought to punish President Bashar al-Assad for a suspected chemical attack near Damascus last weekend that killed more than 40 people.”
Try putting the shoe on the other foot for a moment. Imagine that Russia, with a similar rationale, fired missiles at U.S. ally Saudi Arabia because the Kremlin “sought to punish King Salman for his country’s war crimes in Yemen” — with such reportage appearing under a headline that described the Russian attack as a “retaliatory strike.”
The latest U.S. air attack on Russia’s close ally Syria was as much politically aimed at Moscow as at Damascus. And afterwards, the televised adrenalin-pumped glee was as much an expression of pleasure about striking a blow at Putin as at Assad. After all, ever since Trump took office, the U.S. media and political elites have been exerting enormous pressures on him to polarize with Russia.
But let’s be clear: The pressures have not only been generated by corporate media and the political establishment. Across the United States, a wide range of people including self-described liberals and progressives — as individuals and organizations — have enthusiastically participated in the baiting, cajoling and denouncing of Trump as a Putin tool. That participation has stoked bellicose rhetoric by congressional Democrats, fueling the overall pressure on Trump to escalate tensions with Russia.
What’s really at issue here is not the merits of the Russian government in 2018, any more than the issue was the merits of the Soviet government in 1967 — when President Lyndon Johnson hosted an extensive summit meeting in Glassboro, New Jersey, with Soviet Premier Alexi Kosygin, reducing the chances of nuclear war in the process.
If you keep heading toward a destination, you’re likely to get there. In 2018, by any realistic measure, the escalating conflicts between the United States and Russia — now ominously reaching new heights in Syria — are moving us closer to World War III. It’s time to fully recognize the real dangers and turn around.
Senseless and Futile Strike Against Syria Achieves Nothing
Photo credit – AFP
By Alex GORKA | Strategic Culture Foundation | 16.04.2018
The West’s unity is cracking and the United States’ world leadership is being questioned. The alleged but never proven “chemical attack” in Syria offers an opportunity to become a unifying factor. By striking that country, the US administration pursued the goal of solidifying its image as the world number one leading other nations in an effort to stand up to “evil”. It wanted to display the West’s unity, bolster its standing in the Middle East and boost the president’s approval ratings at home. Russia was portrayed as a rogue state backing the “animal” Assad and allied with Iran to pose a common threat. Has the mission been accomplished?
The world did not rush to display its support. UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres wants no escalation in Syria. China opposed the use of force. Indonesia expressed concern over the attack not mandated by the UN. Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic warned the strikes could lead to a global conflict. Bolivian President Evo Morales slammed the act of aggression.
Formally, NATO approved the strikes but reservations followed regarding the stance on Russia. For instance, German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier warned against demonizing Moscow on April 15 saying that there should be no animosity between the West and Russia amid growing tensions. He insists a dialogue should be maintained. Germany approved the operation but refused to participate.
British opposition Labor Party leader Jeremy Corbyn criticized the move and said the UK joined the strikes under US pressure. Only a quarter of Britons approve the UK’s participation in the operation. 43% of them disapprove it.
French President Macron has come under criticism from the right as well as from the left for his decision to join the operation. Italy refused to let the allies use its territory for launching the strikes. Luxembourg’s Foreign Minister Jean Asselborn questioned the legality of the attack. The SYRIZA party, the larger member of Greece’s ruling coalition, condemned the strikes. Finland, Cyprus and Switzerland expressed concern over the use of force against Syria. Finland’s Foreign Minister Timo Soini still believes peace would have a chance in Syria if international law were observed.
There was no unanimous support of the attack inside the US. The move came under harsh criticism from the two sides of the aisle. For instance, Sen. Tim Kaine, D-Va., believes that the attack launched without Congress’s approval is illegal and reckless. This view was backed by Rep. Justin Amash, R-Mich. Sen. Tom Udall, D-NM., issued a special statement to strongly disagree with the president’s decision to use force. He thinks Donald Trump is dangerously escalating the situation by acting without legal authority. The influential Arms Control Association slammed the strikes as a short-sighted and illegal action, violating domestic legislation and international law.
The largest Arab nations did not approve the strikes. The Iraqi government believes that the strikes marked “a very dangerous development” to give terrorists another opportunity to strengthen their positions. Egypt expressed “deep concern” saying the strikes undermined the prospects for peace in Syria. Algeria condemned the move. Lebanon raised its voice to strongly oppose the act of aggression.
The military one-off operation rather divides than unites the world, including the “collective West”. The British government has failed to rally popular support. Instead, it made its position weaker than it had been. The NATO, as well as EU, backing was mainly vocal. Only three nations actually joined the operation. The contribution of Great Britain and France was very limited. The US administration is in for a lot of questions on its strategy in Syria.
The legality of the act is universally questioned and many governments realize that international law does not protect anyone from US-led attacks and prompts them seek to weapons to defend themselves. As Syria’s experience shows, Russia has a lot to offer not only as arms supplier but also as an alternative pole of power.
The situation in Syria has not changed. Its government retains the capability to continue its successful offensive on all fronts. The strikes have not diminished Moscow’s and Tehran’s unswerving support of Damascus. The air strike has achieved nothing. It only demonstrated how limited is the US ability to influence the events in Syria, putting into question its claims to global leadership.
Bob Parry: Holding Government to Account
A memorial was held on Saturday for Robert Parry, the late founder and editor of this web site. Among the speakers paying tribute to Bob was Joe Lauria, the new editor of Consortium News.
By Joe Lauria
If you watch Bob’s various talks available on YouTube you’ll see that he was often asked why he started Consortium News. Bob says, essentially, that he got fed up with the resistance he faced from editors who put obstacles in the way of his stories, often of great national significance. One editor at Newsweek told him they were suppressing a story for “the good for the country.” The facts he’d unearthed went too far in exposing the dark side of American power. His editor was speaking, of course, about what was for the good of the rulers of the country, not the rest of us. As we just heard from John Pilger, Bob created a consortium for journalists who ran up against similar obstruction from their editors: a place for them to publish what they could not get published in the mainstream.
Sixteen years after Bob launched Consortium News with Sam and Nat I became one of those journalists. I’d had similar experiences. When I covered the diplomacy at the U.N. leading up to the 2003 invasion of Iraq for a Canadian chain that published the Montreal Gazette, Ottawa Citizen, and other papers, I gave equal weight in my stories to the German, French and Russian opposition on the Security Council to the invasion. So the chain’s foreign editor called me up one day from Ottawa to berate me for not supporting the war effort in my reporting.
He told me his son was a marine. I told him I was certain he was proud of him, but my job was not to support the war but to report objectively on what was happening at the Security Council. The Bush administration never got their resolution. But they invaded anyway. It was illegal under international law as Kofi Annan finally said after being pressured by a BBC interviewer. Annan was then hounded to the point of a near nervous breakdown by the likes of then UN Ambassador John Bolton, who, unfortunately. has since gotten a promotion. I, on the other hand, on the day of the invasion was fired.
Later, while covering the U.N. for The Wall Street Journal, I found that several of my stories were suppressed or inconvenient facts were getting edited out. One was a story I twice had rejected on a declassified Defense Intelligence Agency document that predicted the rise of ISIS back in 2012 but was ignored in Washington. It said the U.S. and its allies in Europe, Turkey and the Gulf were supporting a Salafist principality in eastern Syria that could turn into an Islamic State. Such a story would undermine the government’s war on terrorism.
In another instance, my editors repeatedly removed from my stories, on the UN vote on Palestine’s observer status, a line indicating that 130 nations had already recognized Palestine. At that point I realized the Journal had an agenda—not to neutrally report complex international events from multiple sides, but to promote US interests abroad. So I turned to Bob and he accepted a piece from me on that Palestine issue in late 2011, the first of many of my articles that he eventually published.
Bob was without doubt the best editor I’ve ever had. He was the only one who really understood—or accepted–what I was writing about.
Bob was a supreme skeptic, but he never descended to cynicism. His legacy, which I am committed to carry on, was of a principled, non-partisan approach to journalism. He took a neutral stance reporting on international issues, which some wrongly saw as anti-American. Bob knew never to take a government official’s word for it, especially an intelligence official. He knew people in all governments lie. But there are two other parties involved: the press and the public. He understood that the press had to act as a filter, to verify and challenge government assertions, before they are passed on to the public. Bob became distraught, and in his last piece poignantly said so, about the state of American journalism, where careerism and vanity had aligned the profession with those in power, a power through which too many reporters seem to live vicariously.
The press’ power is distinct from the government’s, it is the power to hold government accountable on behalf of the public. Bob understood that the mainstream media’s greatest sin was the sin of omission: leaving out of a story, or marginalizing, points of view at odds with a U.S. agenda, but vital for the reader to comprehend a frighteningly complex world.
The viewpoints of Iranians, Palestinians, Russians, North Koreans, Syrians and others are never fully reported in the Western media, though the supposed mission of journalism is to tell all sides of a story. It’s impossible to understand an international crisis without those voices being heard. Routinely or systematically shutting them out also dehumanizes people in those countries, making it easier to gain popular support in the U.S. to go to war against them.
The omission of such news day after day in newspapers and on television adds up over the decades to what Bob called the Lost History of post-war America. It is a dark side of American history—coups overthrowing democratically-elected leaders, electoral interference, assassinations and invasions. Omitting that history, as it continues to unfold nearly everyday, gives the American people a distorted view of their country, an almost cartoonish sense of America’s supposed morality in international affairs, rather than it just pursuing its interests, too often violently, as all great powers do.
These things aren’t normally mentioned in polite society. But Bob Parry built his extraordinary career telling those truths. And I’m going to do my damnedest to continue, and honor, his legacy.
Thank you.
Caught in a lie, US & allies bomb Syria the night before international inspectors arrive
“If there were chemical weapons, we would not be able to stand here”
A Syrian firefighter inside the destroyed Scientific Research Center in Damascus, Syria April 14, 2018 © Omar Sanadiki / Reuters
By Eva Bartlett | RT | April 15, 2018
The US, Britain and France trampled international law to launch missiles against Syria, claiming to have “evidence” of the government’s use of chemical weapons. That evidence is based on terrorist lies.
After a week of outrageous tweets and proclamations by POTUS Trump, which included continued accusations that Syria’s president ordered a chemical weapons attack on civilians in Douma, east of Damascus, with Trump using grotesque and juvenile terminology, such as “animal Assad,” the very evening before chemical weapons inspectors of the OPCW were to visit Douma, America and allies launched illegal bombings against Syria. The illegal bombings included 103 missiles, 71 of which Russia states were intercepted.
For the past week, we were told that the US had ‘evidence’ and the UK had ‘evidence’ that Syria had used chemicals. The ‘evidence’ largely relied on video clips and photos shared on social media, provided by the Western-funded White Helmets (that “rescuer” group that somehow only operates in Al-Qaeda and co-terrorist occupied areas and participates in torture and executions), as well as by Yaser al-Doumani, a man whose allegiance to Jaysh al-Islam is clear from his own Facebook posts, for example of former Jaysh al-Islam leader, Zahran Alloush.
This, we were told, was ‘evidence.’ This and the words of the highly partial, USAID-funded, US State Department allied Syrian American Medical Society, which, like Al-Qaeda’s rescuers, only supports doctors in terrorist-occupied areas.
On April 12, even US Secretary of Defense James Mattis told the House Armed Services Committee that the US government does not have any evidence that sarin or chlorine was used, that he was still looking for evidence.
Syria, finding the claims to be lies and the sources tainted, requested that the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) immediately come to Syria to investigate the claims. Accordingly, the OPCW agreed to send a team—the visas for which Syria granted immediately—which arrived in Damascus on April 14.
President Trump, instead of waiting for an investigation to confirm his ‘evidence,’ chose the very night before this investigative team would arrive in Syria to inspect the allegations, to bomb Syria. The timing of the attacks is more than just a little timely. And the bombings were illegal.
General Mattis tried to dance around the legality, stating, “the president has the authority under Article II of the Constitution to use military force overseas to defend important United States national interests.”
But he is wrong, this does not permit the US to illegally bomb a sovereign nation, and he knows it. So does Russia. In a statement on April 14, Russian President Vladimir Putin declared the attacks as illegal, noting:
“Without the sanction of the Security Council of the United Nations, in violation of the UN Charter, norms and principles of international law, an act of aggression against a sovereign state that is at the forefront of the fight against terrorism has been committed.”
What if chemicals had been at targeted locations?
In the same Pentagon briefing, General Joseph Dunford specified the US and allies’ targets in Syria, alleging they were “specifically associated with the Syrian regime’s chemical weapons program.” One target, at which 76 missiles were fired, was the Barzeh scientific research centre in heavily-populated Damascus itself, which Dunford claimed was involved in the “development, production and testing of chemical and biological warfare technology.”
This ‘target’ is in the middle of a densely-inhabited area of Damascus. According to Damascus resident Dr. (of business and economy) Mudar Barakat, who knows the area in question, “the establishment consists of a number of buildings. One of them is a teaching institute. They are very close to the homes of the people around.”
Of the strikes, Dunford claimed they “inflicted maximum damage, without unnecessary risk to innocent civilians.”
If one believed the claims to be accurate, would bombing them really save Syrian lives, or to the contrary cause mass deaths? Where is the logic in bombing facilities believed to contain hazardous, toxic chemicals in or near densely populated areas?
Regarding the actual nature of the buildings bombed, Syrian media, SANA, describes the Pharmaceutical and Chemical Industries Research Institute as “centered on preparing the chemical compositions for cancer drugs.” The destruction of this institute is particularly bitter, as, under the criminal western sanctions, cancer medicines sales to Syria are prohibited.
Interviews with one of its employees, Said Said, corroborate SANA’s description of the facility making cancer treatment and other medicinal components. One article includes Said’s logical point: “If there were chemical weapons, we would not be able to stand here. I’ve been here since 5:30 am in full health – I’m not coughing.”
Of the facility, the same SANA article noted that its labs had been visited by the OPCW, which issued two reports negating claims of any chemical weapons activities. This is a point Syria’s Ambassador al-Ja’afari raised in the April 14 UN Security Council meeting, noting that the OPCW “handed to Syria an official document which confirmed that the Barzeh centre was not used for any type of chemical activity” that would be in contravention to Syria’s obligations regarding the OPCW.
Bombings based on Al-Qaeda and Jaysh al-Islam Claims
The entire pretext of the US and allies’ illegal bombings of Syria is immoral and flawed. There is no evidence to the claims that Syria used chemicals in Douma. Numerous analysts have pointed out the obvious: that Syria would not benefit from having used chemical weapons. But America, Israel and allies would benefit from staged attacks.
The website Moon of Alabama noted discrepancies in the videos passed around on social media as “evidence” of Syria’s culpability, including the following:
“The ‘treatment’ by the ‘rebels’, dousing with water and administering some asthma spray, is unprofessional and many of the ‘patients’ seem to have no real problem. It is theater. The real medical personnel are seen in the background working on a real patient.”
Russia’s Defense Ministry has released interviews with two men who were included in the footage alleging a chemical attack has occurred. One of the men, Halil Ajij, said he worked in the hospital in question, they had treated people for smoke poisoning, saying: “We treated them, based on their suffocation,” also noting: “We didn’t see any patient with symptoms of a chemical weapons poisoning,” he said.
In an April 14 interview on Sky News, the former British Ambassador to Syria, Peter Ford, argued that the most elementary stage in the accusations game is to allow the actual inspection to occur.
“The evidence that chemical weapons were dropped is non-existent. Let the inspectors go in and possibly within days we will have a verdict but the jury is still out. … I’m totally confident that the inspectors will not produce one shred of evidence to back up the assertions of the Americans. If the Americans had proof, they’d have brought it forward. What they’re saying and what Mrs. May is saying, is just ‘take our word for it, trust us’. There’s not even a dodgy dossier this time.”
Israel and America benefit from the attacks… and are guilty of chemical weapons use
While the world’s eyes have been glazed over by chemical weapons script-reading journalists of corporate media, little notice is given to the ongoing Israeli slaughter and maiming of Palestinian unarmed demonstrators, targeted assassinations that last re-began with the March 30 murders of at least 17 unarmed Palestinians protesting in Gaza’s eastern regions. Israel’s murder of these unarmed youths, women and men got only mild tut-tuts from the UN, and was relegated to “clashes” by slavish corporate media. Israel is literally getting away with murder, as eyes are turned elsewhere.
According to Secretary Mattis, the US-led illegal attack on Syria “demonstrates international resolve to prevent chemical weapons from being used on anyone under any circumstances in contravention of international law.”
The irony? Both America and its close ally Israel have used chemical weapons on civilians. The US has attacked civilians in Vietnam and Iraq, to name but two countries, with chemical weapons.
In 2009, I was living in Gaza and documenting Israel’s war crimes when Israel bombed civilians all over Gaza with white phosphorous. These were civilians with nowhere to run or hide, including civilians who had fled their homes and taken shelter in a UN-recognized school. I myself documented numerous instances of Israel’s use of white phosphorous.
If this doesn’t outrage American citizens, the billions of US taxpayers’ dollars sent to Israel and spent on the bombing of sovereign nations — and not on America’s impoverished, nor on affordable health care — should outrage.
However, as author Jonathan Cook noted, the issue is not merely Trump’s threats to Syria:
“There is bipartisan support for this madness. Hillary Clinton and the Democratic leadership in the US, and much of the parliamentary Labour party in the UK, are fully on board with these actions. In fact, they have been goading Trump into launching attacks.”
By not attacking Russian forces in Syria this time, the US narrowly avoided a direct military confrontation with Russia, one which would have had global ramifications, to say the least.
The question now is: will the regime-change alliance be stupid and cruel enough to support yet another false flag chemical attack in their unending efforts to depose the Syrian president, or will they give up the game and allow Syria’s full return to peace? The US and allies claim their concern for Syrian civilians, but do everything in their power to ensure civilians suffer from terrorism and sanctions.
Read more:
On the Reaction to the U.S. Strike in Syria
By Gilbert Doctorow | Consortium News | April 15, 2018
The arguments between Secretary of Defense James Mattis and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Joseph Dunford before the Syrian air strikes, and between them and President Donald Trump and his ultra-hawk national security adviser, John Bolton, ended with “precision strikes” early Saturday morning in Damascus and near the city of Homs.
Some 103 tomahawks and other cruise missiles were launched from US navy vessels and British and American warplanes. Seventy-one of these were claimed by the Russian Ministry of Defense to have been shot down by Syrian air defense batteries. The more modern and effective Russian-manned S400 systems at their Tartus naval base and Khmeimim air base were not brought into play.
There was material damage to some Syrian military storage facilities and particularly to a research center, which the US-led coalition claimed was used for fabrication of chemical weapons. Employees at the site said they were producing antidotes to snake venom, not chemical weapons. No deaths were reported and only six people were injured. The targets were all well clear of known positions of Russian and Iranian personnel in Syria. And while the Pentagon denied Russia had been told the targets, there’s speculation that the missiles’ flight paths had been made known to Moscow.
‘Mission Accomplished?’
Mattis said the mission was over but the U.S. stood ready to strike again if Assad once more used chemical weapons, though whether he did last weekend in Duma, a Damascus suburb, has yet to be proven. The U.S.-led air strikes took place hours before a team of specialists from the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons were to begin its investigation at the site to determine if chemicals were used, and which chemicals they may been.
In his address to the nation when launching the attack, Trump used the same unproven allegations and maudlin, propagandistic evocation of the horrors of chemical weapons that his ambassador to the United Nations, Nikki Haley, had used earlier in the day Friday when responding to specific charges of violating international law and a possibly non-existent chemical attack, which the Russian ambassador, Vasily Nebenzya, had leveled against the U.S. in the UN Security Council chamber.
Schumer: ‘No end game.’
The narrowly focused and seemingly ineffectual nature of the strikes is unlikely to satisfy anyone in the U.S. political classes. Even those who have been encouraging Trump to stand tall in Syria and punish Damascus for the alleged, but unproven, use of chemical weapons, like New York Senator Chuck Schumer (D), gave him only tepid support for the action taken, complaining of no overall administration strategy for Syria or an end game.
Others posit that the timing of the attack was driven solely by Trump’s urgent need to deflect public attention from personal and political scandals, especially after the F.B.I. seizure earlier in the week of the papers and possibly his taped conversations in the offices of his lawyer, Michael Cohen.
For the Russians there could only be outrage. They were on the receiving end of what was a publicly administered slap in the face to President Vladimir Putin, who was named and supposedly shamed in Trump’s speech for providing support to the “animal” Assad. Putin had been calling upon the U.S. and its allies to show restraint and wait for the conclusion of the OPCW investigation in Duma.
Russia’s ambassador to Washington, Anatoly Antonov, repeated after the attacks Moscow’s prior warning that there would be “grave consequences” for the U.S. and its allies. These were not spelled out. But given Putin’s record of caution, it would be surprising if Moscow did anything to exacerbate the situation.
What comes next?
That caution left the U.S. exposed as an aggressor and violator of international law. Since we are in a New Cold War, habits from the first Cold War are resurfacing. But the roles are reversed today. Whereas in the past, it was Washington that complained to high heaven about the Soviet military intervention in Hungary and Czechoslovakia, today it is Russia that will go on the offensive to sound off about US aggression.
But is that all we may expect? I think not. Putin has a well-earned reputation as a master strategist who takes his time with every move. He also knows the old saying that revenge is a dish best served cold. He has frequently advocated “asymmetric” responses to Western moves against Russian interests. The question of counter moves had already been on his mind since the U.S. Treasury introduced new and potentially harsh economic sanctions on Russia with effect from April 6.
In fact, Russian legislators were busy preparing to introduce in the Duma on Monday a bill empowering the Russian president to issue counter-sanctions. These include an embargo on the sale of critical components to the U.S. aircraft industry which is 40 percent dependent on Russian-sourced titanium for production of both military and civilian planes. There is also the proposed cancellation of bilateral cooperation in space where the Russians supply rocket engines used for U.S. commercial and other satellite launches, as well as a total embargo on sales of U.S. wines, spirits and tobacco in the Russian Federation.
Aside from the withdrawal of titanium sales, these and other enumerated measures pale in significance to the damage done by the U.S. sanctions on the Rusal corporation, the world’s second largest producer and marketer of aluminum, which lost $12 billion in share value on the first day of sanctions. But that is to be expected, given that the United States is the world’s largest economy, measuring more than 10 times Russia’s. Accordingly its ability to cause economic damage to Russia far exceeds the ability of Russia to inflict damage in return.
The only logical outcome of further escalations of U.S. economic measures would be for Russia to respond in the one area where it has something approaching full equality with the United States: its force of arms. That is to say, at a certain point in time purely economic warfare could well become kinetic. This is a danger the U.S. political leadership should not underestimate.
Considering the just inflicted U.S. insult to Russia by its attack in Syria, Moscow may well choose to respond by hitting U.S. interests in a very different location, where it enjoys logistical superiority and also where the counter-strike may be less likely to escalate to direct crossing of swords and the unthinkable—possible nuclear war.
A number of places come to mind, starting in Ukraine where, in an extreme reaction, Russia has the option of removing the regime in Kiev within a 3-day campaign, putting in place a caretaker government until new elections were held. That would likely lead to armed resistance, however, and a Russian occupation, which Moscow neither wants nor can afford.
The Media Reacts
The media reaction to the air strikes has been distinct in the U.S. from Europe, and even more so, naturally, in Russia.
U.S. mainstream reaction, in particular in The New York Times, The Washington Post and the cable TV networks, has been an uncritical platform for the Pentagon view of what it achieved. Both papers barely made mention that the missiles rained down as the OPCW team was about to begin its work. Parading out their retired generals, often with unmentioned contracts as lobbyists for the military industry, the cable networks resumed their cheerleading for American war and materiel.
In France, Le Monde largely followed the Pentagon line in declaring the mission a success, while in Germany leading newspapers attempted a more independent line. Die Welt discussed how the U.S. and Europe used the mission to test the battleground effectiveness of some of their latest weaponry. The Frankfurter Allgemeine called the Pentagon “the last bastion of sense” in the Trump administration and reported that the Russians want to open a strategic dialogue with the U.S. over arms control.
A commentary in the British Guardian claimed that Mattis, and not Trump, “is calling the shots.” Another piece reported on Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn’s call for a “check on military intervention” by insisting that Parliament vote on a War Powers act.
The Times of London ran fewer articles on the Syria strike and instead led with a piece predicting that to punish the United Kingdom for its role in the Skripal case and in Syria, Moscow will unleash a barrage of hacked, damaging confidential materials relating to government ministers, members of Parliament and other elite British personalities. In response, May’s cabinet is said to be considering a cyber-attack against Russia.
The TV station Euronews, whose motto is “Euronews. All Views,” unusually for Western media, gave Russians equal time to set out their totally diametrically opposed positions: on whether any chemical attacks at all occurred in Duma, and on the U.S. violation of international law.
On Saturday Euronews exceptionally gave nearly complete live coverage to Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov as he spoke in Moscow to the 26th Assembly of the Council of Foreign and Defense Policy. During this talk, Lavrov divulged the findings of the Swiss laboratory which had examined samples of the chemicals gathered in Salisbury in relation to the Skripal poisonings, findings which he said pointed not to Novichok, as was claimed by Boris Johnson, but to a nerve agent developed by the United States and produced also in Britain. Lavrov likened the faked attack in Salisbury to the faked chemical attack in Duma.
Letting the Russians deliver extensively their views on what happened in Syria without commentary by their own journalists might be considered extraordinary by Euronews or any other European broadcaster’s standards.
In Russia, the news channel Rossiya-1 on Saturday broadcast a special edition of the country’s leading political talk show hosted by Vladimir Solovyov. His panelists said that in Damascus, where the most modern air defenses are installed, including the latest BUK series, the Syrians shot down 100 percent of incoming missiles. This contradicts, however, the fact that a research facility in the center of Damascus was bombed. Elsewhere in the country, where there are older systems in place, fewer missiles were hit.
In the wake of the U.S.-led air strikes, Moscow has apparently now decided to supply the Syrian army their next to latest generation of air defense, the S300. It was reported earlier that because of the war, there was a great shortage of trained technicians on the Syrian side so that shipment of such equipment previously would have made no sense. However, now that the military situation of the Assad government has stabilized, the personnel problems are no longer so acute and the Russians can proceed with delivering materiel and training the Syrians to defend themselves. This will substantially change the equation with respect to Syrian defense capability should the U.S. and its allies think of returning.
Protests in the West
One must ask why there have been no anti-war protests in the West in reaction to the strike on Syria. That it lasted less than an hour may have something to do with it. But the U.S. is at war in about seven nations and there is no sustained, anti-war movement. Part of the reason is the virtual collapse the anti-war Left in the West that fueled protests in America and Europe in the 1960s anti-Vietnam war movement and the 1980s protests against the deployment of cruise missiles in Europe to counter Soviet intermediate range SS20 missiles.
From the 1990s leftist political parties both in the U.S. and Europe have suffered terrible losses of voter support. What charismatic leaders emerge to challenge the centrist, global hegemony politicians have been almost uniformly categorized as extreme Right or populists. The peace movements have been nearly extinguished. So-called progressives are today notoriously anti-Russian and in step with the Neocons on what the legitimate world order should look like.
For these reasons, it is quite remarkable that early reactions to the US-led bombing in Syria have come from social media and internet portals that may be loosely categorized as establishment left or progressive. Dislike for Trump, for Bolton and for the crew of madmen who constitute the administration has finally outweighed hatred for Putin, “the authoritarian,” the Alpha male, the promoter of family and Orthodox Christian values and the so-called thief who stole the U.S. election. On-line petitions now being circulated, even by the Democratic Party-friendly MoveOn.org, reveal some comprehension that the world has moved closer to utter destruction due to the U.S.-Russia confrontation.
Another sign that the antiwar movement may be stirring out of its slumber and going beyond virtual protests, is that the Massachusetts Peace Action chapter, heirs to the SANE franchise, the country’s largest anti-nuclear weapons organization from the middle of the first Cold War, called on its members to rally in Cambridge (home to Harvard University and MIT) to protest the U.S. strikes in Syria. It also calls on Congress to reclaim its War Powers.
These are admittedly small steps with little political weight. But they are encouraging sparks of light in the darkness.
Gilbert Doctorow is an independent political analyst based in Brussels. His latest book, Does the United States Have a Future? was published on 12 October 2017.
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From the Archives
The great ADHD swindle
By Daniel Ken | TCW Defending Freedom | May 20, 2023
Over more than two decades in the classroom I’ve taught thousands of children and teenagers: some were lovely and lots were hard-working. On the other hand, quite a number were disruptive and argumentative, and a number were violently opposed to learning. But I don’t think I’ve taught more than a handful of kids who could be properly described as having the symptoms of ADHD. And that handful could just as easily have had something else wrong with them. Because here’s the thing: despite the fact that the best part of a million children are medicated for the condition, ADHD doesn’t exist.
There’s no definitive medical test for it, experts can’t agree on what it actually means, and most of the symptoms disappear if the child in question has lots of exercise, good diet and, crucially, a set of clear behavioural boundaries, preferably set early in childhood and, for the boys at least, enforced by a stable adult male living at home. … continue
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