On March 26 President Erdogan of Turkey “harshly criticized” foreign diplomats for being present at the trial of two journalists in Istanbul. At a meeting of businessmen he erupted in fury and expostulated that “The consul-generals in Istanbul attended the trial. Who are you? What business do you have there? Diplomacy has a certain propriety and manners. This is not your country. This is Turkey.”
President Erdogan had made it clear that “this is Turkey” by declaring, before the trial even began, that the accused journalists will “pay a heavy price” for reporting that his National Intelligence Agency (MİT) had been smuggling weapons to rebel groups in Syria. Naturally, there was international interest in such a judicial process and, as is usual around the world, foreign diplomats attended the hearing in order to report to their governments the facts of the case as presented in court.
But the President of Turkey informed the world that diplomats accredited to his country are not expected to be present in his country’s law courts to witness judicial proceedings. He went even further by telling foreign diplomats in Istanbul that they “can move inside the Consulate building and within the boundaries of the Consulate. But elsewhere is subject to permission.”
Mr Erdogan is telling the world that international law means nothing to him. He rejects with contempt the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations which lays down that in all countries foreign diplomats are to be granted “freedom of movement and travel” provided, of course that these should be “subject to laws and regulations concerning zones, entry into which is prohibited or regulated for reasons of national security.”
Prohibited zones do not include courts of law. And the trial of the journalists, who had been in solitary confinement for half their 90-day detention, has nothing to do with national security — only national dishonesty.
Western media reporting of Mr Erdogan’s violation of international rules and values has been low-key to the point of self-induced evaporation and there has been little condemnation of his open scorn for the basic principles of diplomatic conduct — and none at all from the Consul General of the United States in Istanbul, Mr Charles F Hunter, on whose website on the day of Mr Erdogan’s abusive outburst the main headline was:
WORLD ERUPTS OVER
RUSSIA’S UNJUST SENTENCE
OF UKRAINIAN PILOT
Mr Hunter wrote that “the global community has been quick to condemn the 22-year sentence handed out by a Russian court to Ukrainian pilot and parliamentarian Nadiya Savchenko,” which was absolute nonsense, because even the western media had not given the trial much cover. Not only that, but Mr Hunter omitted to mention that Savchenko’s status as a “parliamentarian” had been granted by the Ukrainian government after the prosecution had begun. Ms Savchenko had never set foot in Ukraine’s parliament, but Wikipedia, an easily manipulated online information site, describes her as “a Ukrainian politician and former Army aviation pilot in the Ukrainian Ground Forces.”
As part of the anti-Russian propaganda campaign about Savchenko, US State Department spokesman John Kirby stated that Russia has “blatant disregard for the principles of justice,” which is an absurd declaration, coming from the nation that for fifteen years has maintained a prison camp in a colonial enclave in Cuba in which not a single wretched captive has been permitted access to the process of international law. It’s a bit much, too, coming from a nation that refuses to release the thousands of photographs that were taken of torture by its soldiers.
Some photos were published in the media, but the really horrible ones have never been seen, except by some selected Senators and Members of Congress who were sworn to secrecy.
The US Supreme Court agreed with the “the judgment of the President and the Nation’s highest-ranking military officers that disclosure of the photographs at issue here would pose a substantial risk to the lives and physical safety of United States and allied military and civilian personnel in Iraq and Afghanistan.”
Given the policy of the US Establishment — the President, the Congress and the Supreme Court — concerning the importance of concealing disgusting and potentially embarrassing facts it is not surprising that there has been no criticism in Washington of President Erdogan for his persecution of journalists who revealed embarrassing facts about his illegal action in supplying Syrian-based terrorist groups with weapons, or about his insulting diatribe concerning the presence of a US diplomat at their trial.
On March 18 the UK’s Independent newspaper reported that “the President of Turkey has said democracy and freedom have ‘absolutely no value’ in the country after calling for journalists, lawyers and politicians to be prosecuted as terrorists.” But this means nothing to the US or British governments which both support President Erdogan without demur. While at the recent (and totally useless) summit on nuclear security in Washington on March 31, five days after he insulted their country, Mr Erdogan met with both the president and vice president of the United States.
Following the meetings, the Voice of Americareported that President Obama “assured his Turkish counterpart of American commitment to the security of Turkey” and “extended condolences to Erdogan for a terrorist attack earlier in the day in the Kurdish-majority south-eastern city of Diyarbakir.” And Vice President Biden “reaffirmed the close alliance between the United States and Turkey . . [and] discussed ways to further deepen our military cooperation.” So Mr Erdogan felt free to continue his anti-democratic diatribes after he returned home.
Like many national leaders who have managed to get to a rank and position whose demands vastly exceed their modest capabilities, Mr Erdogan continued to justify his erratic behaviour by abusing “those who attempt to give us lessons in democracy and human rights.” On April 4 he said that the press was free in Turkey and claimed that some publications had branded him a “thief” and a “killer” without being shut down and that “Such insults and threats are not permitted in the West.”
Then he said that Turkey’s Constitutional Court had ‘betrayed its very existence’ because it had ordered release from pre-trial custody of the two journalists who, as noted above, he had declared would “pay a heavy price” for reporting that his Intelligence operatives had been smuggling weapons to rebel groups in Syria.
Turkey is in chaos. As Human Rights Watch records, its ruler “ has demonstrated a growing intolerance of political opposition, public protest, and critical media. Government interference with the courts and prosecutors has undermined judicial independence and the rule of law.”
When they met with President Erdogan, neither President Obama nor Vice President Biden offered the mildest criticism of him for his hysterical outbursts rejecting democracy and international law.
Perhaps their advisers pointed out to them that Mr Erdogan had a reasonable point to make, in that “those who attempt to give us lessons in democracy and human rights must first contemplate their own shame.”
The Syrian ceasefire is hanging in the balance, former Republican congressman Ron Paul and political analyst Daniel McAdams note in their Liberty Report; however, Washington continues to push ahead with its military program aimed at training and arming the so-called Syrian rebels.
To complicate matters further, there is enough evidence that the moderates have repeatedly teamed up with al-Qaeda affiliate al-Nusra Front on the ground, calling it a “marriage of necessity.”
Even State Department spokesman Mark Toner has recognized that “there is some co-mingling” of al-Qaeda militants and the US-backed Syrian rebels.
Commenting on the issue, Daniel McAdams, the Executive Director of the Ron Paul Institute for Peace and Prosperity, referred to the Wall Street Journalarticle that shed some light on Washington’s plans to send various types of anti-aircraft weapons to Syrian rebels.
“Throughout this ceasefire the US is taking the opportunity to provide a lot of arms to the so-called moderates — three thousand tons by one estimate. But the logic is insane: [these arms] only will be available if the ceasefire fails. That is like telling a kid: ‘You only get a cookie if you don’t eat your broccoli’,” McAdams noted.
But what looks even more suspicious is that the CIA has been supplying advanced anti-tank and anti-aircraft systems to the Syrian rebels. There is no doubt that these types of weapons are primarily aimed against Bashar al-Assad’s tanks and aircraft, not at Daesh’s Toyota trucks.
“The CIA agenda is definitely not anti-ISIS [Daesh], it’s primarily anti-Assad. And I think that is evident by the kinds of weapons they provided. They provided TOW missiles which are only effective against the Syrian government’s tanks. The Manpads, the shoulder fired missiles, which shot down two Syrian Air Force planes over the past couple of weeks. And even the Soviet-era “Grad” rockets, which are used to fight against the Syrian [Arab] Army. So, the types of weapons, I think, tell us a lot about what the CIA is focused on,” McAdams remarked.
Therefore, the CIA is turning a blind eye to the fact that the Syrian rebels and al-Nusra Front’s terrorists are “co-mingled.”
There is yet another issue that prompts concern: it seems that the CIA and the Pentagon have two different agendas regarding Syria.
To add to the confusion, the CIA is supporting one faction of the Syrian rebels, while the Pentagon is backing another group of fighters.
It turns out that in February, 2016 the CIA-armed group Knights of Righteousness was attacked by the Pentagon-backed Syrian Democratic Forces in Syria.
“One hand of our government does not even know what the other hand is doing,” Dr. Ron Paul noted.
The former US congressman expressed his concerns regarding Washington’s unstoppable militarism in the region.
“What if what we are doing is making things worse — worse for us, worse for the people, worse for the cause of peace?” Paul asked.
However, this question remains largely neglected by the US policymakers. The lessons of the past remain unlearnt and what Washington is doing right now in Syria and Iraq is “the reactivation of the militarism,” he stressed.
The former Republican congressman emphasized that while pursuing the idea of regime change overseas, the US establishment is not bothered by the fact that the nations’ current governments may be better than anything Washington is going to suggest.
“We are sending more weapons in [Syria] because the foreign policy remains the same: it is a militant foreign policy of intervention, it’s based on the assumption that we are responsible for the world at large, that we are policemen of the world, and chaos would break out if we weren’t there to bring about order. And all you have to do is look at history and look at the Middle East, chaos, you know, follows our interventions,” Paul underscored.
Eight activists standing trial for disrupting the world’s biggest arms fair, held in London last September, have been found not guilty. The court ruled they were acting to prevent a greater crime, according to an anti-arms trade group.
In his ruling, the judge said there was clear, credible and largely unchallenged evidence of wrongdoing at Defence & Security Equipment International (DSEI), according to Campaign Against the Arms Trade (CAAT).
He said there is “compelling evidence” that arms sold at DSEI are used for repression and human rights abuses.
Ham & High reporter Rachel Roberts said the judge dismissed the argument, put forward by the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS), that a not guilty verdict will “open floodgates” to anarchy in the UK.
Instead he accepted that all eight defendants acted reasonably and proportionally to try and prevent the sale of illegal arms and war crimes, Roberts tweeted.
The ruling is a victory for anti-arms trade activists, who sought to highlight the UK’s complicity in war crimes committed by repressive regimes around the world.
The eight activists issued a statement through CAAT in which they called on the public to join the campaign to shut down DSEI.
“Over the week, we have put DSEI and the arms trade on trial and we have proven them to be illegitimate. Our only regret is that we didn’t succeed in shutting down DSEI,” they said.
“Our thoughts are with the people who suffer as a result of the arms trade and the survivors of repressive regimes, torture, war and conflict. We call on more people to join us in our efforts to shut down DSEI 2017 and take collective action to end the arms trade.”
The campaigners were arrested after blocking the road leading to the arms fair last September, preventing tanks and weaponry from entering.
The activists used the defense of necessity, insisting their actions were justified because they intended to prevent greater crimes taking place around the world.
CAAT said the trial highlighted UK complicity in war crimes in Yemen, where the British military is offering support to the Saud-led coalition waging war against Houthi rebels.
It also raised awareness about British complicity in human rights abuses in Bahrain and the slaughter of Kurdish civilians by Turkey, according to the group.
2015’s DSEI event featured stalls from more than 1,500 exhibitors, including arms giants Lockheed Martin, BAE Systems, Finmeccanica and others.
Customers included representatives from Saudi Arabia, Israel, Bahrain and Egypt.
Russia proposes deploying international observers at Turkey’s border with Syria to monitor the situation, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said Friday.
“Since Turkey itself denies the very existence of the problem, we suggest, not formally at this point, a draft resolution or another decision so that Turkey invites independent international observers to its territory to monitor the actual situation on the border,” Lavrov told reporters.
Russia hopes that the West will be able to get clear answers from Ankara regarding the possibility of deploying observers, he said.
“US officials assure us that they are also concerned about the problem on the border and are working with Ankara to solve it,” Lavrov added.
The parliamentary Syrian elections taking place in Syria this week prove once more the indomitable resilience of the Syrian people, who are resisting one of the most brutal neo-colonial wars in modern history. Since foreign backed, unknown snipers opened fire on protesters and police on the 17th of March in the city of Daraa, the people of Syria have been defending their country from an armed invasion of brutal, and drugged, Takfiri death squad – all financed by Israel, the Gulf Cooperation Council, and NATO.
The objective of the terrorist invasion of Syria is to conquer the country, by pitching Sunni fanatics against their Shia and Christian brethren. The broader goal of NATO’s genocidal war is to balkanize the proud, multi-cultural and highly united, Arab nationalist states. This strategy of chaos is being carried out in accordance with Israel’s geopolitical objectives in the Middle East, which requires breaking up and destroying all Arab nations contiguous to Israel; this ensures the regional and global supremacy of the Jewish State. It is a long and dirty war, one which could drag on for several decades.
Zionism’s plans for the region are incontrovertibly demonstrated by two documents in particular: the 1982 paper published by the Israeli government official Oded Yinon entitled ‘A Strategy For Israel in the 1980s’, and the 1996 US neo-con document ‘A Clean Break: a New Strategy for Securing the Realm’. Both these testaments prove that Israel intends to destroy all countries who refuse to submit to Zionism’s regional hegemony. Syria has always been at the forefront of anti-Zionist resistance.
The elections today prove to the world once more that Syria is a democracy, and that it is far more democratic than any of the countries waging war against it. The will of its people is sovereign, inalienable and inviolable. Most importantly, the elections cogently illustrate the triumph of national liberation over neocolonialism, of people-power over tyranny.
There are well-intentioned youths in Paris demonstrating for democracy against anti-popular legislation and the power of money over politics. But these youths have no understanding of the real reasons why their liberties and social security are being stolen from them. They have no idea of the genocide the French and American governments are orchestrating throughout the Southern Hemisphere nations of this planet. They have no idea that they are being led by the same ‘intellectuals‘ who support this colonial war against Syria.
If the ‘nuit debout’ democracy movement in Paris is to become radical, to demand real social change, it will be that moment when they wave in solidarity the flags of the Syrian Arab Republic in Place de la Republique, and proclaim that Syria is a democracy and that the French people must call for ‘regime change’ here and not in Damascus. Until people understand who the real tyrants are, there will be neither peace nor justice in the world.
What surprised me most about the Iraq War wasn’t how wrong the expectation of happy Iraqis showering American troops with flowers was or even how badly the war would turn out – all that was predictable and indeed was predicted. But what I didn’t expect was that the U.S. government would ever admit that there were no WMD stockpiles.
I assumed that the U.S. government would do what it usually does: continue the lie to protect its “credibility.” Because that is what “credibility” has become, powerful institutions and people maintaining the aura of being right even when they’re completely wrong.
There is even a national security argument to be made: If the U.S. government must justify its actions to the American people and the world with propaganda themes, it can’t simply admit that previous ones were lies because then it would lose all “credibility.” The next time, the public might not be as open to the propaganda. The people might catch on.
So, in a sick kind of way, it makes more sense to stick with the lie and rely on a corrupted mainstream media to hold the line. Anyone who dares challenge the falsehoods then can be discredited or marginalized.
That’s why I was surprised when the U.S. government admitted that there were no WMD stockpiles in Iraq and no active nuclear-weapons program, either. I was expecting that President George W. Bush’s team would assemble some buckets of chemicals found at Baghdad swimming pools – pile them up in front of a credulous media – and announce, “we got here just in time!”
After all, the U.S. government rarely corrects its misstatements and outright lies, no matter how significant they may be. For instance, there’s never been a formal admission that the Gulf of Tonkin claims, which launched the Vietnam War, were false.
On a smaller scale, I encountered something similar when I was covering the U.S. invasion of Grenada in 1983. The Reagan administration massively exaggerated the discovery of some useless World War I era rifles in a musty-smelling warehouse to claim that the little Caribbean island was about to be transformed into the hub of terrorism for the Western Hemisphere.
As absurd as the claim was, it worked well enough amid a well-staged propaganda campaign complete with American students kissing the tarmac when they returned to the United States and members of Congress waving around some Grenada government contracts — in Russian.
Dig in the Heels
We are now seeing similar dig-in-the-heels strategies regarding Syria and Ukraine. Though I’m told that U.S. intelligence knows that the Obama administration’s propaganda is no longer operative on the 2013 sarin gas attack outside Damascus and the 2014 shoot-down of the Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 in eastern Ukraine, the storylines won’t be retracted or corrected.
To do so – to say that President Bashar al-Assad’s forces weren’t responsible for the sarin attack and that the Russians weren’t behind the MH-17 catastrophe – would destroy the propaganda narratives that have been useful in justifying the shipment of arms to Syrian rebels and the launching of a new Cold War against Moscow.
If the American people and the world public were informed that they had been misled on such sensitive topics – and that the real guilty parties might include people getting American support – that could devastate U.S. government “credibility” and disrupt future plans.
Therefore, mounting evidence that Assad didn’t cross President Obama’s “red line” against using chemical weapons on Aug. 21, 2013, must be brushed aside or forgotten.
In a classic show of cognitive dissonance, The Atlantic’s Jeffrey Goldberg recently reported that Director of National Intelligence James Clapper told Obama that U.S. intelligence had no “slam dunk” evidence of Assad’s guilt. But Goldberg then continued his long article on Obama’s foreign policy as if Clapper’s warning never happened and as if Assad were indeed guilty.
Since then, major American columnists writing about Goldberg’s article have simply ignored the Clapper revelation, which tended to confirm earlier reporting at some independent Web sites, including Consortiumnews.com, and by investigative reporter Seymour Hersh, who traced the sarin to a likely operation by Islamic radicals aided by Turkish intelligence. But those Assad-didn’t-do-it reports were almost universally ignored, except for the occasional ridicule.
The problem for the columnists – and for the rest of Official Washington’s insider community – was that Everyone Who Mattered had already declared as flat fact that Assad crossed Obama’s “red line” with the sarin attack. So what would happen to their “credibility” if they admitted that they were wrong again, since many also had been famously wrong about Iraq’s WMD?
Plus, who could force these Important People to face up to their own misfeasance and malfeasance? Does anyone expect that Secretary of State John Kerry, who sought war against Syria in retaliation for the sarin attack, will retract what he claimed repeatedly that “we know” about Assad’s guilt? What would that do to Kerry’s “credibility”?
Kerry also was on the front lines pointing the finger of blame at Russia for the MH-17 shoot-down on July 17, 2014. He rushed off to the Sunday TV shows just three days after the tragedy over eastern Ukraine that killed 298 people and made the case that Moscow and the ethnic Russian rebels were to blame.
A source who had been briefed by U.S. intelligence analysts in that same time frame was telling me that it was already clear to them that an element of the Ukrainian military was responsible. But hanging the slaughter of all those innocents around Russian President Vladimir Putin’s neck was just too tempting – and served U.S. propaganda needs to get Europe to join in economic sanctions against Russia and to let the U.S. government rev up a new and costly Cold War.
Going Dutch
But those U.S. propaganda desires have put the Dutch in a difficult spot, since they are leading the investigation into the crash which departed from Amsterdam and carried many Dutch citizens en route to Kuala Lumpur. Part of the Dutch problem is that Dutch intelligence has confirmed that the only Buk or other anti-aircraft missiles in eastern Ukraine capable of hitting a commercial airliner at 33,000 feet belonged to the Ukrainian military.
Recently, the Obama administration also had to decide how to respond to a letter from Thomas Schansman, the father of the only U.S. citizen killed in the crash, Quinn Schansman. In a letter dated Jan. 5, 2016, Schansman asked Secretary Kerry to release the radar and other evidence that he claimed to have in summer 2014 that supposedly showed where the missile was fired, a basic fact that the Dutch investigation has yet to nail down.
One of the many anomalies of the MH-17 case was Kerry’s assertion within three days of the crash that the U.S. government had precise information about the launch but then has left Dutch investigators struggling to figure out that detail for nearly two years.
On July 20, 2014, Kerry appeared on NBC’s “Meet the Press” and declared, “we picked up the imagery of this launch. We know the trajectory. We know where it came from. We know the timing. And it was exactly at the time that this aircraft disappeared from the radar.”
At a news conference on Aug. 12, 2014, Kerry made similar claims: “We saw the take-off. We saw the trajectory. We saw the hit. We saw this airplane disappear from the radar screens. So there is really no mystery about where it came from and where these weapons have come from.”
As the months wore on – passing the first anniversary of the crash and then after last October’s inconclusive report by the Dutch Safety Board – Thomas Schansman finally reached out to Kerry directly with his Jan. 5 letter. More weeks and months passed before Schansman received Kerry’s reply on March 24, although the letter was curiously dated March 7.
The letter offered no new information as Kerry stuck to the old story. Recently, I was told that a possible explanation for the delay in the letter’s delivery was that a discussion was underway inside the Obama administration about whether to finally come clean about MH-17 even if that would clear Russia and the ethnic Russian rebels and shift the blame onto a rogue or poorly disciplined unit of the Ukrainian military.
But the decision was made to stand pat, the source said, explaining that otherwise “the narrative would be reversed,” throwing the U.S.-backed Ukrainian government on the defensive and negating some of the propaganda advantages gained against Russia.
Plus, if the U.S. government admitted that it had played such a cynical propaganda game, which also smacks of obstruction of justice by giving the actual culprits nearly two years to make their escape and cover their tracks, there would be a loss of “credibility” in Washington.
Apparently, it made more geopolitical sense to keep the heat on Russia and then to lean on the Dutch authorities to fit their investigative findings around the needs of the NATO alliance. That is, after all, how the U.S. government usually operates. It’s also why I was so surprised that the truth finally was told about Iraq not possessing the WMD.
Investigative reporter Robert Parry broke many of the Iran-Contra stories for The Associated Press and Newsweek in the 1980s. You can buy his latest book, America’s Stolen Narrative, either in print here or as an e-book (from Amazon and barnesandnoble.com).
The Canadian government is under fire for secretly approving a deal, possibly the largest in the country’s history, to sell arms to Saudi Arabia, turning a deaf ear to concerns about how the weapons will be used.
The newly-revealed documents from Global Affairs Canada, obtained by CBC News, confirm that none other than Foreign Affairs Minister Stéphane Dion has signed off on export permits to ship $11 billion worth of the $15-billion vehicle sale to Riyadh, which is accused of gross human rights violations.
Canada’s Liberal government has refused to cancel the controversial sale since coming to power in November, claiming that it was a “done deal” (arranged by a previous Conservative administration of Stephen Harper) which could not be abolished without triggering severe penalties and job losses.
The Globe and Mail reported that Dion issued export permits for the bulk of the arms shipments as recently as last Friday. According to the newspaper, the department of Global Affairs Canada document (stamped ‘secret’ and obtained by a law university professor challenging the Saudi deal in court) shows Dion’s signature beside the words ‘I concur’ below the memo.
The permits reportedly cover light armored vehicles, spare parts and “associated weapon systems,” the memo signed by Dion says, adding that the fighting vehicles will be equipped with machine guns and anti-tank weapons.
The documents reportedly note how rare it is for a foreign affairs minister to personally sign off on export permits, with an exception made because the deal is so high profile and worth a fortune.
The documents also acknowledge concerns over Saudi Arabia’s human rights record, reportedly mentioning “the reported high number of executions, suppression of political opposition, the application of corporal punishment, suppression of freedom of expression, arbitrary arrest, ill-treatment of detainees, limitations of freedom of religion, discrimination against women and the mistreatment of migrant workers.”
Despite all this, Saudi Arabia appears to be Canada’s “key military ally supporting international efforts to counter ISIS [Islamic State or IS] in Iraq and Syria as well as countering instability in Yemen,” CBC has cited the document as saying.
“The acquisition of state-of-the-art armored vehicles will assist Saudi Arabia in these goals, which are consistent with Canada’s defense interests in the Middle East.”
The documents reportedly go on to say that Canada has “sold thousands of LAVs [light armored vehicles] to Saudi Arabia since the 1990s, and, to the best of the department’s knowledge, there have been no incidents where they have been used in the perpetration of human rights violations.”
The New Democratic Party (NDP) has accused the Liberals of deceiving Canadians.
NDP leader Thomas Mulcair said “the government lied to Canadians about who signed what when in the Saudi arms deal, and that is a very serious matter.”
Fighting in Yemen has killed nearly 6,400 people – most of them civilians – and seen over 30,000 injured since Saudi Arabia launched its intervention against Iranian-backed Houthi rebels in March 2015, the UN’s Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs said.
“If the preponderance of the evidence is that it could be used against civilian populations… then the deal has to be off,” Conservative MP Tony Clement said, adding that Canada’s export controls do not require firm evidence of breaches, only an assessment of a risk of abuse, AFP reported.
Fifteen of the 9/11 “hijackers” from Saudi Arabia were CIA agents working for the United States government , which was seeking to destroy the Middle East for Israel and to double the American military budget, says Dr. Kevin Barrett, an American academic who has been studying the events of 9/11 since late 2003.
Dr. Barrett, a founding member of the Scientific Panel for the Investigation of 9/11, made the remarks in a phone interview with Press TV on Wednesday, after a number of US lawmakers called on the White House to declassify documents that shed light on Saudi Arabia’s possible complicity in the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks.
The former congressmen say the 28-page classified document proves two Saudi nationals who were behind the 9/11 attacks received support and assistance from Riyadh while in the United States.
“It appears that Release the 28 Pages movement has succeeded or at least it is on the brink of success. We heard on Monday from an Obama administration source that the president is planning to finish the review process, presumably meaning he would be declassifying these pages before the end of his presidency,” Dr. Barrett said.
“And now this is Wednesday, and Nancy Pelosi has called for releasing the 28 pages. It does appear that it actually is quite likely to happen very soon. This is fascinating news. It will certainly cause more issues in the relationship between the United States and Saudi Arabia, because it appears the 28 pages primarily focus on the support from Saudi ruling circles for some of the alleged 19 hijackers, who were in fact falsely blamed for the crimes of September 11, 2001,” he added.
“The real issue here is whether this will end up prying open the entire case of 9/11 or whether it could become a sort of a limited hang-out. It could be simply used to channel popular anger against the government of Saudi Arabia, perhaps create a little more distance in the US-Saudi relationship, but not really change anything,” he stated.
“And that would be a tragedy, because we need to reopen the entire 9/11 case. The actual relationship between the Saudis and 9/11 is certainly not one of having this Saudi ruling family completely controlling the 9/11 attacks and in charge of the plot; that’s ridiculous. Saudi Arabia is a US puppet state.”
15 Saudi men were ‘patsies’
“We know that the 15 hijackers who were Saudis, the alleged hijackers, because they were not on those planes – not one of the 19 hijackers, or any Arabs, were on any of the four planes, according to the passenger list, and according to all of the evidence that would be there if they were on the planes, but has not been produced,” Dr. Barrett said.
“So these 15 Saudi patsies, who were set up to take the blame for 9/11, were in fact CIA agents. We know this – I had this confirmed directly by a CIA source that these 15 Saudis entered, and repeatedly reentered on these supposedly – they call them employment visas, but there’s a special number for employment visas that are only given to CIA assets as a reward for their service to the Central Intelligence Agency, and this visa allows them to come to the US. Typically they’re paid for their work for the CIA in Saudi Arabia, and then they are given this special kind of visa which is disguised as an employment visa but it’s a of particular type,” he stated.
“And all 15 of these guys had that visa. That shows that they were in fact Central Intelligence Agency agents. Some of them were living with FBI people in California. So these 15 Saudis were not working against the United States government, they were working for the United States government, and they were set up so that Saudi Arabia could be potentially blamed for the September 11 attacks, which were actually perpetrated by Israel and its American assets,” he pointed out.
“The purpose was to make sure that Saudi Arabia didn’t leave the American orbit, as the king had threatened in August of 2001. Similarly Pakistan was also set up. The ISI chief was tricked, ordered, or whatever into sending money to Muhammad Atta. And then that was broadcast in an Indian newspaper. Pakistan likewise was threatening to leave the American orbit in 2001,” he said.
“Now the Zionist dominated imperial apparatus here in the United States didn’t want nuclear Pakistan, and oil-rich Saudi Arabia to become independent countries. So, it used 9/11 to herd them back into the imperial orbit, among other things,” the scholar observed.
What was chief purpose of 9/11?
“But of course the chief purpose of 9/11 was to destroy the seven countries in five years that General [Wesley] Clark talked about, that were enemies or threats to Israel. Will this full truth come out thanks to the release of these 28 pages, which could lead to the reopening of the 9/11 case?” Dr. Barrett said.
“Well if it reopens the fact that Building 7 – the most obvious demolition in New York was Building 7, but the Twin Towers as well were controlled demolitions. There were no hijackers on any of these planes, not one Arab name on any of these planes. Not one shred of evidence that any of them were on the planes,” he said.
“If these facts actually come out and we learn that September 11th was a cover and deception operation by Israel and its American assets, and that includes sort of quasi assets like [George W.] Bush, [Dick] Cheney, and [Donald] Rumsfeld, and so on, and it was designed as a New Pearl Harbor, designed not only to destroy the Middle East for Greater Israel but also to double the American military budget, and invigorate the American empire – well, it ended up killing the American empire,” he stated.
“It certainly did help Israel; they destroyed all of its neighbors, virtually. But the United States is now in terrible shape. In order to turn America around, we really need Donald Trump to keep his promise to reveal to the people who really knocked down the Twin Towers, and it was the Zionists,” the analyst noted.
“Once we learn that, we may be in a position to radically revamp the power structure here in the United States, taking it away from the Zionist dominated corporate structure — the banking, the investment industry, and the media apparatus — and take America back for the American people, end the American empire, and usher in a new multi-polar era of peace,” Dr. Barrett concluded.
From left to right a raucous chorus has emerged to denounce Republican Presidential primary frontrunner Donald Trump as a ‘fascist’. They cite his campaign promises to build an Israeli-style wall along the US border; his threats to expel eleven million undocumented immigrants; and to restrict foreign Muslims from entering the US, as well as the way his pugnacious face and arm resemble those of Benito Mussolini (‘he juts out his chin, he raises his arm’). They decry his extreme nationalism as ‘resembling Hitler’s policy’, by which they mean his opposition to detrimental free trade agreements and his slogan to “Make America Great… Again.”
In this article I will critically address the current cartoonish image of fascism with fascism’s historical reality, and then proceed to analyze the so-called “lesser evil” politics behind the re-invention of an American fascist in the guise of billionaire Donald Trump.
Fascism: Fact and Fiction
Historically, fascist politics involved organized mass movements, armed militia and paramilitary groups who assaulted political opponents and violently censored critical speech and suppressed the right to assemble. Fascists scapegoated minorities, especially Roma and Jews, and burned trade unions and leftist headquarters, assassinating their leaders and beating their members. Programmatically, they attacked pacifists and defended overseas wars and empires in the name of ‘living space’. Evoking a past imperial glory, they were not ‘isolationists’.
Candidate Trump has not organized anything resembling a mass movement, let alone an armed militia. There are no ‘Trumpeting Brown Shirts’. At most, the police and a handful of his (often elderly) white supporters have punched a few KKK-dressed provocateurs who have physically disrupted and threatened Trump’s public meetings and his exercise of free speech. In fact, the ‘fascist’ disruption of democratic freedoms seems to be mostly organized and practiced by his political rivals.
Trump, far from scapegoating the powerful Jewish minority in this country, gave a shamelessly Israel-centric speech and received a standing ovation from nearly 18,000 mostly prominent Jews at the March 2016 meeting of the major pro-Israel lobby (AIPAC).
His rhetoric, concerning the expulsion of 11 million undocumented workers from Mexico and Central America and the building of a border wall, is a far cry from the practice of imprisoning and violently expelling over two million undocumented Latinos under the Clinton-Bush-Obama/Clinton regimes. At its worst, Trump promises to continue the existing federal policy on immigration and not create a ‘fascist’ rupture with past administrations. Is a ‘rhetorical cement wall’ worse than the real wall of armed border police, helicopters and armed carriers that have operated under the Presidencies of Clinton – Bush – Obama/Clinton with its hundreds of migrant deaths in the desert? Are declarations of a repressive immigration policy more ‘fascist’ coming from Trump’s loud mouth than the actual official practice of violently seizing undocumented workers from their homes and workplaces with long-term imprisonment and expulsion? Expelling youth, raised and educated in this country, or violently splitting up productive, well-integrated families and imprisoning their main breadwinners for lack of documents…that’s the official policy of the current and past three administrations.
There is far less of the truly fascist embrace of pre-emptive war and invasion in Trump’s speeches than in the actual policies pursued by the Clinton-Bush-Obama/Clinton regimes. In fact, among Trump’s numerous critics, especially his Republican rivals and the Hillary Clinton camp, we hear the loudest denunciations of his non-interventionist foreign policy (isolationism), which is “out of line” with the interventionist, overseas wars of current and past Republican and Democratic administrations. Trump’s critics and media pundits are ‘horror-struck’ at his apparent willingness to co-operate with Russian President Putin against common enemies, such as ISIS. Is his pragmatic regard of Russia more or less fascist than his rivals’ support for the Ukrainian putsch, orchestrated by the Obama regime in alliance with bona fide armed anti-Semitic Ukrainian fascists? His calls to dump NATO as an expensive drain on US treasure and manpower have the elite howling in outrage!
The propagandists, who paint Trump as a modern American fascist, cite his crude sexist remarks as ‘examples of a misogynist totalitarian’ while pointing favorably to Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton as potentially the ‘first feminist President’. In regard to his alleged misogyny, ‘the Donald’ pointed to Madame First Lady, Senator and Secretary Clinton’s promotion and critical role in US wars against Libya, Iraq and Syria where well over one million women have been rendered refugees, raped, injured or killed. Which is worse, one may ask: Crude locker room jokes or millions of orphaned boys and girls denied parents, homes, education and any future in the Middle East and North Africa? That is the world Midwife Hillary Clinton had helped to deliver.
Misogyny is the in the eye of the deceiver.
Are Trump’s verbal attacks on the practice of US multi-nationals relocating abroad to avoid US taxes and Wall Street financial houses hiding billions of the US elites’ obscene wealth in offshore tax shelters, more detrimental to ‘American values’ (as charged) than Hillary Clinton’s pandering to Wall Street while pocketing over $300,000 for each 45 minute sycophantic performance (marketed as her ‘policy lectures’), or her decades of actively promoting globalization – including the US job-destroying NAFTA?
Clearly Trump currently lacks program, organization and practice that define a fascist politician. At the very worst, he parrots the general line of attack against immigrants and Muslims. So far he would just bar them from the US but not bomb them ‘to the stone-age’. This should be contrasted with the actual policies carried out by the war-criminals Clinton/Bush/Obama-Clinton. It would be hard for Donald to ‘trump’ Hillary when she threatened to ‘obliterate Iran’ and its scores of millions of citizens because of Iran’s fictitious ‘nuclear program’.
On the other hand, Trump’s own meetings and rallies have been the victim of repeated disruption by organized groups acting like fascist thugs. Role reversal in real life: Trump, the target of rabid sustained mass media attacks, is pronounced the fascist …
Bashing Trump: Backdoor Backing of Hillary the Militarist Psychopath
If the objective case for labeling Trump ‘a fascist’ is weak or non-existent, why do so many prestigious academics and journalists play this stupid game of name-calling?
The commonsense explanation of their ruffled bluster is because they are setting up ‘Trump-the-Straw-Dragon’ in order to promote the poisonous Madame Secretary Hillary Clinton as the ‘lesser evil candidate’ for President of the United States.
No serious observer minimally aware of Clinton’s carnal embrace of multiple simultaneous disastrous and destructive wars in Ukraine, Iraq, Afghanistan, Yemen, Syria and Libya, could possibly support her – unless if they are convinced that a greater danger looms on the horizon and “we have to defeat fascist Trump at all cost”? No serious democrat or wage and salaried employee can ignore Madame Clinton’s role as Wall Street’s most shameless pimp unless they ‘believe’ that a loud-mouth New York ‘fascist is worse than Wall Street’.
The phony scaremongering about Trump’s “fascism” just serves to cover up Clinton’s most servile promotion of traitorous wars for the benefit of Israel. One should envision the thousands of desperate Syrian refugees clinging to decrepit boats in the Mediterranean when reading excerpts of Clinton’s private e-mails: According to WikiLeaks, Hillary declared that “the best way to help Israel deal with Iran’s growing nuclear capability (sic) is to help (sic) the people of Syria overthrow the regime of Bashar Assad. … The fall of the House of Assad could well ignite a sectarian war between the Shiites and the majority Sunnis of the region drawing in Iran, which, in the view of Israeli commanders would not be a bad thing for Israel and its Western allies”. Not a bad thing for Israel – but a cruel and criminal policy against a sovereign nation and multi-ethnic society. Madame Clinton followed through with these demented pronouncements, which can only be viewed as genocidal! Clinton promoted the most violent proxy war, uprooting over half of the civilian population of Syria and killing hundreds of thousands, while shredding a sovereign nation. She thus pandered to her Israeli mentors and Pluto-Zionist funders.
To justify backing a serial war monger, a US Secretary of State who has served Israel’s interests, and a politician who has carnalized her ‘feminist principles’ with Wall Street billionaires, Hillary Clinton’s smarmy supporters have had to invent an opponent who is even worse: Creating and then denouncing “Trump the Fascist” serves as a backdoor justification for supporting a proven political psychopath!
The Israeli Defense Minister Moshe Yaalon said that the Zionist entity does not oppose erecting a bridge that links Egypt to Saudi, noting that the project obtained Israel’s prior approval.
Yaalon added that Saudi sent the Zionist entity a document that conveys the former’s commitment to Camp David pact which was concluded between Israel and Egypt in 1979, considering Tiran strait and Aqaba Gulf as international waterways that will keep open to maritime and aerial navigation.
The Israeli official pointed out that an agreement was concluded between KSA, Egypt, US, and Israel to transfer the power on the islands to Saudi as long as it will be included in the military appendix military appendix of Israel-Egypt Camp David Treaty.
Tzachi Hanegbi who heads the Knesset’s Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee also signaled on Tuesday the Zionist entity did not oppose Egypt’s return of two Red Sea islands to Saudi Arabia, viewing it as a chance to draw closer to Riyadh against the axis of resistance in the region.
John Pilger, Ken O’Keefe and Gearoid O’Colmain discuss the causes/government complicity in the Friday 13th, 2015 false flag Paris terror attacks and the absolutely incontrovertible facts that make clear that so-called ISIS is an extension of western so-called “intelligence services”… and therefore, any attack by “ISIS”/“IS”/“ISIL”/ etc is in fact an attack by our own western governments against the people of the nations these traitors are meant to represent.
This site is provided as a research and reference tool. Although we make every reasonable effort to ensure that the information and data provided at this site are useful, accurate, and current, we cannot guarantee that the information and data provided here will be error-free. By using this site, you assume all responsibility for and risk arising from your use of and reliance upon the contents of this site.
This site and the information available through it do not, and are not intended to constitute legal advice. Should you require legal advice, you should consult your own attorney.
Nothing within this site or linked to by this site constitutes investment advice or medical advice.
Materials accessible from or added to this site by third parties, such as comments posted, are strictly the responsibility of the third party who added such materials or made them accessible and we neither endorse nor undertake to control, monitor, edit or assume responsibility for any such third-party material.
The posting of stories, commentaries, reports, documents and links (embedded or otherwise) on this site does not in any way, shape or form, implied or otherwise, necessarily express or suggest endorsement or support of any of such posted material or parts therein.
The word “alleged” is deemed to occur before the word “fraud.” Since the rule of law still applies. To peasants, at least.
Fair Use
This site contains copyrighted material the use of which has not always been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. We are making such material available in our efforts to advance understanding of environmental, political, human rights, economic, democracy, scientific, and social justice issues, etc. We believe this constitutes a ‘fair use’ of any such copyrighted material as provided for in section 107 of the US Copyright Law. In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, the material on this site is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. For more info go to: http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml. If you wish to use copyrighted material from this site for purposes of your own that go beyond ‘fair use’, you must obtain permission from the copyright owner.
DMCA Contact
This is information for anyone that wishes to challenge our “fair use” of copyrighted material.
If you are a legal copyright holder or a designated agent for such and you believe that content residing on or accessible through our website infringes a copyright and falls outside the boundaries of “Fair Use”, please send a notice of infringement by contacting atheonews@gmail.com.
We will respond and take necessary action immediately.
If notice is given of an alleged copyright violation we will act expeditiously to remove or disable access to the material(s) in question.
All 3rd party material posted on this website is copyright the respective owners / authors. Aletho News makes no claim of copyright on such material.
Eight activists standing trial for disrupting the world’s biggest arms fair, held in London last September, have been found not guilty. The court ruled they were acting to prevent a greater crime, according to an anti-arms trade group.
Aletho News
