Manufacturing Dissent is a documentary about the psychological-warfare by the media and political establishment of the west and their allies aimed at facilitating the US, European and Israeli agenda of getting rid of the current Syrian government. It demonstrates how the media has directly contributed to the bloodshed in Syria.
The documentary de-constructs the main allegations those actors have presented, namely that the Syrian government was systematically repressing peaceful protests and that it has lost legitimacy. It shows how such claims are supported by scant evidence and are therefore little more than propaganda to serve the foreign policy interests of their countries.
Manufacturing Dissent includes evidence of fake reports broadcasted/published by the likes of CNN, BBC, Al Jazeera and others and interviews with a cross section of the Syrian population including an actor, a craftsman, a journalist, a resident from Homs and an activist who have all been affected by the crisis.
Produced by journalists Lizzie Phelan and Mostafa Afzalzadeh.
Foreign Policy magazine has compiled a list of the 50 Republicans who have the greatest influence on the GOP’s foreign policy. “Politics is mostly about people — and nowhere is that more true than when it comes to foreign policy,” explains Foreign Policy in its introduction. With the U.S. presidential election looming, the magazine offers “to peel back the curtain on this rarefied part of the Establishment” to better inform American voters about “the advisers who will determine the country’s course in the world” in the event that they elect Mitt Romney. The FP 50, it says, are “all GOP partisans” from the different “ideological traditions” — namely, realism, neoconservatism, and “even” isolationism — that are “currently fighting for the soul of their party’s foreign policy.” A cursory look at the list, however, shows that a far more influential ideological tradition — Zionism — holds sway over the Republican Party.
Although only about 20% of American Jews supported the GOP in 2008, the FP 50 features as many as 20 Jewish partisans of Israel, including Weekly Standard editor William Kristol (#2), Brookings Institution senior fellow Robert Kagan (#4), and casino mogul and mega-donor Sheldon Adelson (#9) who make its top 10 most powerful Republicans on foreign policy. Also at number 8 is Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, the stridently pro-Israel chair of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, whose maternal grandfather was a “pillar” of Cuba’s Jewish community who helped found several synagogues there. More importantly, several of the most passionate Israel partisans are close advisors to the Romney team, including Kagan, Dan Senor (#13), Dov Zakheim (#27), Eliot Cohen (#29), and Elliott Abrams (#35).
Moreover, the careers of many of the non-Jewish individuals on Foreign Policy’s list have been inextricably linked to their staunch support of the Jewish state. Topping the FP 50 is Senator John McCain who not only continues the family tradition of covering up Israel’s deliberate June 8, 1967 attack on the USS Liberty but invariably leads the call — in unison with Senator Joe Lieberman — for U.S. intervention in countries surrounding the Jewish state. At number 26 is Senator Mark Kirk, “the Israel lobby’s favorite senator” whose office this year served as a conduit for an Israeli initiative to redefine Palestinian refugees out of existence. And coming in in 46th place is John Hagee, the founder and chairman of Christians United for Israel, which, as FP points out, “has done more than just about any other organization to make Israel a defining foreign-policy issue for evangelical Christians in the United States.”
Indeed, out of the 50 Republicans who have the greatest influence on the GOP’s foreign policy, Congressman Ron Paul — who, along with his son, Senator Rand Paul, is ranked #25 — appears to be one of the very few who could be relied upon to put U.S. interests ahead of Israel’s. Yet Foreign Policy, a division of the pro-Israel Washington Post, never explicitly refers to the decisive — and potentially catastrophic — influence Tel Aviv would have over a Romney administration. However, those familiar with the operations of the Israel lobby know that, as the magazine puts it, “the relentless lobbying and insider machinations of surprisingly few people can often end up defining the foreign policy of entire administrations.”
Syrian Foreign Minister Walid al-Moallem stressed that the United States is the major player in the ongoing crisis in the country, adding that the other countries are instruments.
“We believe that the US is the major player against Syria and the rest are its instruments,” al-Moallem told The Independent.
The daily quoted Moallem as saying that America was behind Syria’s violence.
“When the Americans say, ‘We are supplying the opposition with sophisticated instruments of telecommunications’, isn’t this part of a military effort, when they supply the opposition with $25m – and much more from the Gulf and Saudi Arabia?”
Addressing the US, the Syrian FM said: ‘You must read well what you did in Afghanistan and Somalia. I don’t understand your slogan of fighting international terrorism when you are supporting this terrorism in Syria’.”
“I tell the Europeans: ‘I don’t understand your slogan about the welfare of the Syrian people when you are supporting 17 resolutions against the welfare of the Syrian people,” Moallem addressed the European states.
As he stressed that about 60 percent of the violence going on in the country was from abroad, al-Moallem said: “Before I am a minister, I am a Syrian citizen, and I feel sad at seeing what’s happening in Syria, compared with two years ago.”
“There are many Syrians like me – eager to see Syria return to the old days when we were proud of our security,” he added.
The Independent reporter told the Syrian FM that the Emir of Qatar was enraged last year at what he called President Bashar al-Assad’s “lies”, claiming that the Syrian President had reneged on a deal to allow Muslim Brotherhood members to return home.
On this issue, Moallem said: “If you met the same Emir two years ago, he was praising Assad, and considered him a dear friend. They used to have family relations, spending family holidays in Damascus and sometimes in Doha. There is an important question: what happened? I met the Emir in Doha in, I think, November 2011, when the Arab League started their initiative [resulting in the sending of League observers to Syria] and we reached agreement … The Emir told me: ‘If you agree to this initiative, I will change the attitude of Al Jazeera and I will tell [Sheikh] Qaradawi [a popular prelate with a regular slot on the television chain] to support Syria and reconciliation, and I have put down some billions of dollars to rebuild Syria…’ .”
“At the same time, when I was waiting to enter a meeting, there was the head of the Tunisian party Ennahda and the Emir issued orders to pay Ennahda $150m to help his party in the elections. Anyway, this was their business. But I asked the Emir: ‘You were having very close relations with Muammar Gaddafi and you were the only leader in his palace when Gaddafi hosted you during the summit – so why are you sending your aircraft to attack Libya and be part of Nato?’ The Emir said simply: ‘Because we don’t want to lose our momentum in Tunis and Egypt – and Gaddafi was responsible for dividing Sudan’,” Moallem added.
On the relation between Syria, Iran, Hezbollah and Hamas, the Syrian FM said: “We were told by some Western envoy at the beginning of this crisis that relations between Syria and Iran, Syria and Hezbollah, Syria and Hamas are the major elements behind this crisis. If we settle this issue, they [the Americans] will help end the crisis. But no one told us why it is forbidden for Syria to have relations with Iran when most if not all the Gulf countries have very important relations with Iran.”
When asked about chemical weapons, Moallem said if Syria had such weapons, they would never be used against its own people.
“We are fighting armed groups inside Aleppo, in the Damascus suburbs, before that in Homs and Idlib and this means fighting within Syrian cities – and our responsibility is to protect our people,” he said.
From time to time it is important that one provide a teach-in to nonacademics and educate those who promote wrong and harmful ideas. As a history professor I would like to teach a history lesson to Mr. Dana Rohrabacher, the honorable Congressional Representative of California’s 46th District in Orange County where I live and work. On July 26, 2012 Mr. Rohrenbacher wrote a letter to the US Secretary of the State, Hillary Clinton, informing her that since the “people of Azerbaijan are geographically divided and many are calling for the reunification of their homeland after nearly two centuries of foreign rule,” the United States should help them reach that goal. He then goes on to say that: Russia and Persia divided the homeland of Azeris in 1828, without their consent. “The Azerbaijan Republic won its independence in 1991 when the Soviet Union collapsed,” continues the letter “Now it is time for the Azeris in Iran to win their freedom too.” Finally, Rohrabacher states: “Aiding the legitimate aspirations of the Azeri people for independence is a worthy cause in and of itself… yet, it also poses a greater danger to the Iranian tyrants than the threat of bombing its underground nuclear research bunkers.”
Obviously Mr. Rohrabacher is concerned with the immediate issues at hand in the Middle East and the interests of the US and Israel in a very twisted way, because he calls the MEK (Mojahedin Khalq Organization, an Iranian exile group on the US terrorist list), “Israel’s Friends.” This obviously demonstrates Mr. Rohrabacher’s political stance and the influence of its supporters which is detrimental to US policy in the Middle East. This shortsightedness and lack of knowledge about the region and its history is indeed exactly the reason for which the US has gotten involved in the Middle East (Iraq and Afghanistan), which has bankrupted us. The question is how this kind of interference in different countries and plans of dismantling nation-states, recognized by the UN, would help the US? Or does it simply just help other countries in the region? Well, the short answer is that it doesn’t help a bit! Last time I checked, it was the work of colonial powers in the nineteenth century which created and divided countries in Middle East. Even in Orange County it is taught that such ideas and actions were evil and have caused problems in the world for the past two centuries.
Mr. Rohrenbacher states that the Azeri people have been divided for the past two centuries by Russia and Persia in 1828 (I wonder how much travel he has had in the Republic of Azerbijan and Iran’s province of Azarbijan to make such a claim). Just a short glance in any preparatory college world history book will make it clear that the territory he is discussing was part of Iran (known as Persia then), which was invaded by Russians in 1828 and annexed through a peace treaty. But what is important is that the territory that Imperial Russia took as part of her victory over the Persians was never called Azerbaijan. It was the Soviet strongman, Stalin who in order to meddle in Iran’s affairs renamed the region of Arran (historical ancient Albania) as Azerbijan as a thorn on the side of Iran and those allies who disagreed with the USSR, namely US and the UK. It seems Mr. Rohrabacher is following Stalin’s footsteps!
As an ancient historian I am also tempted to give Mr. Rohrenbacher a history lesson about the very ancient past. The name Azerbaijan (Turkified as Azerbijan), comes from the name of the last Satrap (Persian word now existing in English, check it in any good dictionary) of the Achaemenid Persian Empire, named Aturpat, in the 4th Century BCE. His family stayed on as local rulers even after Alexander the Great’s conquest and hence the region became known as Azarbijan (Old Persian Aturpatakan). The Old Persian terms mean “Protector of Fire.” This, however, is only the region south of the Aras River (Iranian Azarbijan), while to the north; Arran was named Azerbaijan by Stalin. The Republic of Azerbaijan is a twentieth century creation. Hence, there was never historically a unity or connection between the two. The region was turkified in the medieval period and that is just one more ethnic group among many others in the modern nation-state of Iran and beyond.
But Mr. Rohrenbacher should also be told that it was the Azaris of Iran and Arran who in fact invented modern ideas of Iranian nationalism. Akhundzadeh, known in the Republic of Azerbijan as Akhundof, a national hero is the man who perpetuated the intellectual movement behind the idea of the greatness of Iran. Since then, many if not most Iranian statesmen and intellectuals have been of Azari background (Ayatollah Khamenei and the previous presidential candidate Mir-Hossein Mousavi are both from Iranian Azarbijan). Many of the most famous Iranian historians, linguists and scholars in modern times have also been ethnically Azari, but none have called for such a separation. I don’t know why Mr. Rohrenbacher and his handful of friends (Mojahedin Khalgh in Washington who are spending money trying to buy congressmen and congresswomen, along with Israel), are making such nonsensical statements. They are both incorrect and historically inaccurate.
Furthermore, the Iranian Azarbijan is not only inhabited by Turkic speaking, but also Kurdish people as well as the Christian Assyrian and few remaining Armenians. Mr. Rohrenbacher should read a bit on the consequence of promoting a single ethnicity in a multi-ethnic nation-state such as Iran. Lessons from Kosovo and Serbia-Bosnia Herzegovina, as well as Armenia-Azerbaijan wars among others, places have shown that such ethnic divisions lead to ethnic cleansing and horrific acts of violence. Iran has been a multi-ethnic civilization for the past 2,500 years. It is people like Mr. Rohrenbacher who have fallen into the trap of Israel and the Mojahedin Khalgh who seek such divisions for their own opportunistic aims.
US involvement in the Middle East, particularly in Iran in the twentieth century, with a highlight of the US backed coup in 1953 which dethroned the only democratically elected prime minister in that nation’s history has made modern Iran as it is today. I am sure the congressman has heard of the term “blowback,” meaning any shortsighted action could lead to long-term problems in the Middle East and for the US. It should be a lesson to Mr. Rohrenbacher to stay out of Iranian affairs and concentrate on unemployment, the broken educational system and poverty in his own county. He is needed more here in Orange County where things are falling apart. His similar ideas about partitioning Afghanistan have made him persona non grata in that country. Let’s save California, before others begin to call for its secession from the US!
Touraj Daryaee is Professor of History at University of California, Irvine. He can be reached at tdaryaee@yahoo.com
As he urged the Non Aligned Movement (NAM) members to stand against the sanctions imposed against the Islamic Republic, Iranian Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Salehi stressed that the foreign interference in the events taking place in our region was unacceptable.
“The NAM… should seriously confront unilateral sanctions of certain nations against some members of the NAM,” Salehi said in a speech opening days of preparatory meetings for the summit on Thursday and Friday.
“So far, the NAM has condemned these measures,” he noted, adding: “we take this opportunity to thank the NAM for its support to the legitimate rights” to nuclear activities.
“Regarding our peaceful nuclear program… we have always said that we are only seeking our legitimate rights” to nuclear energy as permitted under the Non-Proliferation Treaty, Salehi said.
The Iranian FM called for the active role of the NAM in annihilation of the weapons of mass destruction (WMDs), saying that the Zionist entity should be forced to respect the non-proliferation of WMDs.
“Israel’s refusal to sign Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) is a hurdle to the globalization of non-proliferation of nuclear weapons,” he added.
FOREIGN INTERVENTION
Talking about the regional events, and especially the Arab revolutions, Salehi said the foreign interference was unacceptable.
“We have learned from the events which our region has witnessed that any forces cannot ignore the legitimate demands of people.”
“The popular uprisings and the regional events that follow it, affect the consecutive developments on the International level,” Salehi added.
“The participation of the real independent political powers in a comprehensive dialogue needs a political operation based on the internal views of a country,” the Iranian FM stressed, noting that this operation should not be away from the foreign interference.
Salehi also said that the Palestinian issue, as the most important problem in the region, should be taken seriously during the ongoing NAM meeting and the “criminal measures of Israeli regime, as the biggest threat to the region” must be taken into consideration.
Israeli media and press circles were predicting an all-out civil war in Lebanon this week as fighting continues to rage in the northern Lebanese city of Tripoli.
The violence in the port city has so far killed 15 people, including women, children and religious leaders.
“The Syrian civil war has indeed and unprecedentedly infiltrated into Lebanon, and this time it appears to last. It will not stop so long as the Syrian crisis continues,” Channel 10 of Israeli news quoted unnamed Israeli political sources as saying.
“The fall of Assad’s regime would lead to a new era in Lebanon which will fluctuate between civil war and semi-stable security,” the source added.
It’s an oft-repeated prophecy told by Israeli politicians, particularly since the assassination of Lebanese political giant Rafik Hariri in 2005, which propelled the country into sporadic bouts of turmoil.
Lebanon’s civil war of 1975 to 1990 provided fertile ground for Israeli intervention, with the Jewish state invading the country from 1978 until well after the civil war in 2000. The Israeli occupation covered half the state at its peak in 1982.
A new study released by the National Security Studies Center in Tel Aviv concluded that “it would be inaccurate to consider that Lebanon survived the Arab spring, and regional shifts have definitely taken their toll on the country”.
Noting that Syrian events “which are unlikely to end any time soon, affect Lebanon negatively on many levels including economy, security and national unity”.
“The fall of Assad’s regime would certainly weigh heavily on Lebanon, since the departure of Assad and his group from the political scene would reshape the political map in Lebanon, and give those who led the Cedar Revolution, new-found strength and confidence,” the study added. … Full article
On August 17, America’s two leading newspapers featured strikingly similar opinion pieces, providing further evidence of a coordinated effort by Israel and its American partisans to induce the United States into waging another disastrous Middle East war. In the Washington Post, former chief of Israeli military intelligence Amos Yadlin helpfully suggested “5 steps Obama can take to avert a strike on Iran”; while President Obama’s former top Middle East advisor Dennis Ross advised readers of the New York Times “How America Can Slow Israel’s March to War.” Perhaps the most notable difference between the two op-eds was that the latter proposed a mere four steps Washington supposedly needs to take in order to appease the allegedly trigger-happy Israelis.
Yadlin and Ross both begin by citing recent Israeli statements such as Benjamin Netanyahu’s warning that “Time to resolve this issue peacefully is running out,” conveying the impression that Tel Aviv’s patience with diplomacy is wearing thin, and that, as a consequence, this autumn, as Yadlin put it, “all the boxes will be checked for an Israeli attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities.” Three months ago, Ross admitted during a panel discussion with Yadlin on “U.S.-Israel Relations in a Changing Middle East” at a conference held by the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, where he is now a counselor, that such alarmist public pronouncements by Israeli officials should be understood not as an indication of the Jewish state’s likelihood to strike the Islamic Republic but as a ploy “to motivate the rest of the world to act.” Now, however, he confidently asserts: “The words of Israeli leaders are signaling not just increasing impatience with the pace of diplomacy but also Israel’s growing readiness to act militarily on its own against Iranian nuclear facilities.”
Both op-ed contributors also make it a point to stress that the United States shares Israel’s strategic goal of preventing Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons capability, while noting that they only differ over, in the words of Yadlin, “the timeline for possible military action against Iran.” Like the former Israeli intelligence chief, Ross touts Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak’s “zone of immunity” argument that Israel must act while Iran’s nuclear facilities are still vulnerable to an Israeli military strike.
Framing their arguments as attempts to prevent, or at least postpone, an Israeli attack, Yadlin and Ross offer, respectively, their five- and four-point plans for “peace.” Yadlin, currently director of Israel’s Institute for National Security Studies, urges the Obama administration to take “five immediate steps to convince allies and adversaries alike that military action is real, imminent and doable,” which he assures are “key to making it less likely”:
First, Obama should notify the U.S. Congress in writing that he reserves the right to use military force to prevent Iran’s acquisition of a military nuclear capability. This would show the president’s resolve, and congressional support for such a measure is likely to be strong. Forty-four senators signed a bipartisan letter to Obama in June, urging him to “reevaluate the utility of further talks at this time” and focus instead on sanctions and “making clear that a credible military option exists.”
Second, Washington should signal its intentions via a heightened U.S. military presence in the gulf, military exercises with Middle East allies and missile defense deployment in the region. Media coverage of these actions should be encouraged.
Third, Washington should provide advanced military technology and intelligence to strengthen Israel’s military capabilities and extend the window in which Israel can mortally wound Iran’s program. This support would be contingent on Israeli pledges to give sanctions and diplomacy more time to work.
Fourth, U.S. officials should speak publicly about the dangers of possible Iranian nuclear reconstitution in the wake of a military strike. Perhaps the most cogent argument against a unilateral Israeli strike is that it would quickly lead to the disintegration of Western sanctions. Without the inhibitions of a sanctions regime, Iran could quickly reconstitute its nuclear program — this time bunkered entirely underground to protect against aerial strikes. If Iran sees military action by Israel or the West as an absolute end to its nuclear ambitions, it will be more reluctant to risk things.
Fifth, Obama should publicly commit to the security of U.S. allies in the gulf. This would reassure jittery friends in the region and credibly anchor the U.S. last-resort military option to three powerful interests: U.S. national security, Israeli security and the security of allied states.
Living up to his reputation as a reliable “advocate” for Israel, Ross presents his remarkably similar four-step plan which he claims is necessary in order “to extend the clock from an Israeli standpoint” as well as “to synchronize the American and Israeli clocks so that we really can exhaust diplomacy and sanctions before resorting to force”:
First, the United States must put an endgame proposal on the table that would allow Iran to have civil nuclear power but with restrictions that would preclude it from having a breakout nuclear capability — the ability to weaponize its nuclear program rapidly at a time of Tehran’s choosing. Making such a proposal would clarify whether a genuine deal was possible and would convey to Israel that the American approach to negotiations was not open-ended.
Second, America should begin discussions with the permanent members of the United Nations Security Council and Germany (the so-called P5+1) about a “day after” strategy in the event that diplomacy fails and force is used. This would signal to both Israel and Iran that we mean what we say about all options being on the table.
Third, senior American officials should ask Israeli leaders if there are military capabilities we could provide them with — like additional bunker-busting bombs, tankers for refueling aircraft and targeting information — that would extend the clock for them.
And finally, the White House should ask Mr. Netanyahu what sort of support he would need from the United States if he chose to use force — for example, resupply of weapons, munitions, spare parts, military and diplomatic backing, and help in terms of dealing with unexpected contingencies. The United States should be prepared to make firm commitments in all these areas now in return for Israel’s agreement to postpone any attack until next year — a delay that could be used to exhaust diplomatic options and lay the groundwork for military action if diplomacy failed.
While noting that these proposals may be seen as making war more likely next year, Ross claims “they are almost certainly needed now in order to give Israel’s leaders a reason to wait.” Similarly, Yadlin argues that “if the United States wants Israel to give sanctions and diplomacy more time, Israelis must know that they will not be left high and dry if these options fail.”
“A long-standing principle of Israeli defense doctrine,” Yadlin asserts, “is that it will never ask the United States to fight for it.” While it may be technically true that Tel Aviv never directly asks Washington to dispose of regional rivals on its behalf, these two op-eds attest that the Jewish state has more subtle ways of inducing America to do its dirty work for it.
Photo released August 15, 2012 shows NY State Sen. David Storobin (L) and his chief of staff, Paul Gullo, (R) with Israeli Gen. Shmulik Olansky (C) on Syrian border
A New York state senator has taken up arms while posing for a picture in an Israeli army uniform on the Syrian border during an official trip to Israel.
A New York state senator has been photographed with a weapon in his hands and posing for a picture in an Israeli army uniform on the Syrian border during an official trip to Israel.
A photo posted online on August 15 showed State Sen. David Storobin in an Israeli army uniform and with a rifle in his hands side-by-side with Israeli officers.
Storobin, who is running for reelection as a Republican, is seen standing next to Gen. Shculik Olansky, who is in charge of Israel’s Golan Heights Armor Division.
Storobin’s chief of staff, Paul Gullo, also appears in the image released by Storobin’s campaign.
The provocative move is the latest show of US support for armed gangs attempting to topple the Syrian government.
Syria has been experiencing unrest since March 2011. Damascus says outlaws, saboteurs, and armed terrorists are the driving factor behind the unrest and deadly violence while the opposition accuses the security forces of being behind the killings.
The Syrian government says that the chaos is being orchestrated from outside the country, and there are reports that a very large number of the armed militants are foreign nationals, mostly from Egypt, Algeria, Saudi Arabia, and Afghanistan.
In US political circles, the Syria conflict is increasingly being presented as a discussion pertaining to Israeli interests. This attitude is not substantially different from the way US politicians and media weighed in on the Egyptian January 25 revolution and its aftermath. Egypt mostly matters because of the US-brokered Camp David treaty of 1979, which benefited Israel beyond all expectations. The treaty had ushered in a false period of peace; it turned Egypt into an American ally, largely alienating it from its Arab political context.
When it comes to US foreign policy in the Middle East, Israel represents a point of departure for many in the US political establishment. Neoconservative groups have long defined US foreign policy in the region. Their most crucial and unifying concern is Israel’s security and any threat, real or imagined, to Israel’s regional domination.
The neocons clustered through various organizations and think tanks. Most visible among them was the Project for the New American Century (PNAC), which included very influential foreign policy individuals. PNAC’s ‘vision’ was seen as the roadmap that guided George W. Bush in his war against Iraq, the sanctions against Iran, and the overall hostile relationship that defined (and continues to define) US foreign policy in the Middle East. Tainted by the disastrous foreign policy, PNAC folded, only to be reinvented two years ago with the advent of the Foreign Policy Initiative (FPI).
The neocons are duly challenged. Their critics in the establishments are the ‘realists’ (as described by former Secretary of State James Baker in a recent interview with Foreign Policy). The so-called realists are far less organized than the neocons. They were simply empowered by the latter’s mammoth failures. Now the neocons are making a comeback, thanks to the golden opportunities presented by ongoing conflicts throughout the Middle East.
“Our biggest threat today isn’t Syria, or even Iran, or Russia or China,” Baker told Foreign Policy. “Our biggest threat today is our own economy, and we cannot continue to be strong diplomatically, politically, and militarily and be weak economically” (August 9). Baker, of course, hasn’t completely abandoned Israel. The problem is that the pro-Israel camp is asking for a military intervention in Syria and an escalation against Iran, both of which come with a high political and financial price tag — one that the US cannot afford.
Another ‘realist’ is Aaron David Miller, a former US adviser on the Middle East (to six Secretaries of State) and a member of the US Advisory Council of Israel Policy Forum. Writing in the Philadelphia Inquirer on August 6, in an article entitled ‘Syria: Let’s Stay out of It’, Miller stated, “Syria today is a mess — but it’s a Syrian mess. Afghanistan and Iraq should teach us that America can’t control the world. It’s time for the United States to focus on fixing its own broken house instead of chasing the illusion that it can always help repair somebody else’s.”
However, this ‘realist’ estimation by Miller was further discussed in his article in Foreign Policy two days later. In ‘Winners and Losers of Syria’s Civil War,’ Miller argued that Israel was a possible winner in case of Bashar Al Assad’s fall.
“The good news for the Israelis is that Iran and Hezbollah will be weakened by Al Assad’s fall. The bad news is that like so much of the Arab Spring/ Winter, the impending transition brings with it enormous uncertainty.”
US intervention in Libya was a much easier decision for both neocons and realists. A letter was organized by the Foreign Policy Initiative and signed by 40 policy analysts, calling on President Barack Obama’s administration to arm Libyan rebels and to “immediately’ prepare for military action to bring down the Libyan regime under Muammar Gaddafi. The neocons’ calls at the time were hardly rejected as ‘unrealistic’. According to Jim Lobe, they were “a distinct echo of the tactics they pursued to encourage US intervention in the Balkans and Iraq.” Of course, they got what they asked for in Libya. Now, the neocons are pushing for another intervention in Syria.
“Washington must stop subcontracting Syria policy to the Turks, Saudis and Qataris. They are clearly part of the anti-Al Assad effort, but the United States cannot tolerate Syria becoming a proxy state for yet another regional power,” wrote Danielle Pletka, a leading neocon and vice-president of Foreign and Defence Policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute (Washington Post, July 20).
Despite immense hesitation from the Obama administration, the neocons are now trying to weasel in their version of an endgame in Syria. Their efforts are extremely focused and well-coordinated, making impressive use of their direct ties with the Israeli lobby, major US media and Syrian leaders in exile. Writing in CNN online, Elise Labott reported on a recent neoconservative push to upgrade American involvement in Syria, urging “the Obama administration to increase its support of the armed opposition” (CNN, August 1).
The ‘experts’ included Andrew Tabler of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy (WINEP), another pro-Israel conduit in Washington, established in 1985 as a research department for the influential Israeli lobby group, AIPAC. Obama obliged under pressure from the ‘experts’. According to CNN, he signed a secret order “referred to as an intelligence ‘finding,’ allow[ing] for clandestine support by the CIA and other agencies.”
More, On July 31, AIPAC urged all members of Congress to sign on a bill introduced by Ileana Ros-Lehtinen and Howard Berman. Entitled ‘The Iran Threat Reduction and Syria Human Rights Act (H.R.1905)’, the bill, if passed, “will establish virtual state of war with Iran,” according to the Council for the National Interest. The old neoconservative wisdom arguing for an unavoidable link between Syria, Iran and their allies in the region is now being exploited to the maximum. Their hope is to settle all scores left unsettled by the Bush administration.
US foreign policy in Syria is likely to become clearer once the signs of an endgame become easier to read. Until then, the neocons will continue to push for another campaign of intervention. For them, influencing the endgame in favor of Israel is much more beneficial than dealing with a divided country, which is ‘subcontracted’ to other regional powers, per Pletka’s unrelenting wisdom.
India has joined Japan in offering government-backed insurance for ships carrying Iranian crude in order to bypass European sanctions, the Washington Post reported.
The first Indian ship to carry oil from Iran with Indian insurance is scheduled to load up in Iran on Wednesday, a shipping company executive said. This is a breakthrough for the Indian government, which has scrambled to maintain vital Iranian oil imports after European sanctions blocked third-party insurance in July.
The MT Omvati Prem — a tanker contracted to carry 85,000 metric tons of crude oil from Iran for Indian state refiner Mangalore Refinery and Petrochemicals Ltd. — is scheduled to arrive in India by Aug. 25, said Kowshik Kuchroo, president of shipping for Mercator Ltd., an Indian shipping company.
“This being a government of India cargo, it has a different sense of importance. We’re not doing it just for business,” Kuchroo said Monday. “India is in definite need of the crude. At a short notice, we can’t just snap the supply.”
Mercator is insuring the ship with $50 million in hull and machinery insurance, which covers physical damage to the ship, from state-owned New India Assurance Co. It’s insuring the vessel with another $50 million in protection and indemnity insurance, which covers a broad range of liabilities, including environmental pollution and cargo damage, from government-backed United India Insurance.
Part One, The Record, treats the history of garlic as evidence. From the clay garlic bulb placed in an Egyptian grave nearly six thousand years ago, through the Ebers Papyrus, through Hippocrates, Dioscorides, Pliny and Galen, the Arab physicians under Avicenna, the medieval herbals, Culpeper, and the plague years, to the last era in which Western physicians prescribed garlic as a matter of course, which ran from 1850 to 1945. It closes with the living traditions that never stopped using it, and with the folklore of charms, vampires and the evil eye.
Part Two, The Chemistry and the Evidence, sets out what is known about why a clove has no smell until it is cut, and why the order of crush, rest and heat changes the medicine. It then reads the clinical evidence against the historical record — bacteria, blood and vessels, cancer epidemiology, metals and fatigue — and names the trials that went against garlic as directly as the trials that went for it, including the 2007 Stanford trial funded by the US National Institutes of Health which found that raw garlic, garlic powder and aged garlic extract moved LDL cholesterol no more than placebo did. It then turns to onion, garlic’s closest relative, and reads the newer evidence published since 2015, before closing with the whole of the record through the terrain lens.
Part Three, Why Medicine Set It Aside, asks the question directly. One chapter contrasts the pharmaceutical model of isolating a single active compound with the folk model of combining whole plants, and reports what the garlic evidence says about which model works better. One chapter examines the economics of research on a plant that cannot be patented. One chapter — Fire Cider — tells the story of a folk preparation whose name was taken into a United States trademark by a Massachusetts company in 2012, and won back by three herbalists in 2014 who documented forty years of prior use through Rosemary Gladstar and her students into the older tradition.
Part Four, Garlic in Practice, is the working manual — the kitchen pharmacy, traditional uses by body system, a full chapter on safety and interactions, and a complaint-by-complaint practical guide. The book closes with The Trial That Was Never Run — a one-chapter reading of the whole evidential architecture.
At the back: two appendices (a traditional list of uses, and a preparation quick-reference), a full bibliography, and a live index.
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Part One, The Record, treats the history of garlic as evidence. From the clay garlic bulb placed in an Egyptian grave nearly six thousand years ago, through the Ebers Papyrus, through Hippocrates, Dioscorides, Pliny and Galen, the Arab physicians under Avicenna, the medieval herbals, Culpeper, and the plague years, to the last era in which Western physicians prescribed garlic as a matter of course, which ran from 1850 to 1945. It closes with the living traditions that never stopped using it, and with the folklore of charms, vampires and the evil eye.
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