Syria: Has Anyone Stepped Back from the Brink?
By Michael Jabara CARLEY | Strategic Culture Foundation | 26.12.2015
John Kerry, the US Secretary of State, recently visited Moscow to discuss the Syrian crisis with his colleague Sergei Lavrov and President Vladimir Putin. Journalists observed handshakes, smiles, even hearty laughter, between Kerry and his Russian counterparts. Syrian President Bashar al Assad does not have to resign immediately, Kerry declared, and the United States is not trying to isolate Russia. What good news, and what a surprise for the Russians. The Moscow show seemed a great success. Kerry strolled along Stariy Arbat Street, met smiling Russian pedestrians and bought souvenirs to take home. A few days later the UN Security Council passed a resolution, calling for a ceasefire and negotiations. Russian and western journalists alike now say there is some hope to avoid the worst in Syria. And as you may already know, if the United States wants a ceasefire, it’s because their «moderate» Jihadist allies are getting beaten up now by the Syrian Arab Army backed by Russian air support.
Is cautious optimism warranted about a Syrian peace? It is hard to see how. Kerry may say whatever he wants in Moscow, but when he gets back to Washington, he sings a different song, or his colleagues do. His boss, President Obama, said «Assad has to go» only a few days after Kerry returned home. And then there is the new phantasmagorical story published by Seymour B Hersh, the muckraking US journalist, who has revealed that not everyone inside the US government is brain dead. It’s a remarkable discovery when you think about US foreign policy. Some military officials, and no less than the former Chief of Staff, General Martin Dempsey, were actually indirectly, and very secretly, passing military intelligence to the Syrian government to help it fight Daesh, Al-Qaeda and allied Jihadist forces operating in Syria. At the same time, the CIA, with Obama’s support, was sending arms hither and thither in Syria to help the Jihadists overthrow the Assad government.
General Dempsey left office in September 2015 and was replaced by General Joseph Dunford, a true blue Russophobe, who says Russia is an «existential threat» to the United States. It is a classic Washington response: the US aggressor accuses its intended victim of aggression. Just the other day (22 December), the United States slapped on gratuitous new sanctions against Russia. It’s the same old pretext: Russian «aggression» in the Ukraine.
Yet another US provocation, you might think, as Russia searches for a peaceful settlement of the Syrian war. The Russian government is taking a sensible position, but in the present circumstances, is a negotiated peace a real possibility? If the war in Syria were simply a civil war, as is often repeated in the media, you could encourage the belligerents to put on suits and ties and sit down at a table to negotiate a settlement. Unfortunately, the war in Syria is not a civil war: it is rather a proxy war of aggression led by the United States, Britain, and France (until the Paris massacre in November), and pursued vigorously in the region by Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Jordan, and Apartheid Israel.
Turkey is playing a dirty, evil role. It provides arms and supplies across its borders for Daesh in Syria. Oil taken from Syrian wells by Daesh travels in the opposite direction, sold at cut rate prices, to provide revenue to the Jihadists for their war against Assad. It is estimated that Daesh was obtaining $40 millions a month from exported oil (before Russian intervention), but this is a bagatelle in terms of the money necessary for the Jihadists to wage war against Syria. Hundreds of millions are required. Saudi Arabia and Qatar are important suppliers and financiers of the Salafi Jihadist movement. Jordan permits training of Jihadists on its territory and allows passage across its frontiers into Syria. Israel also provides support from the occupied Golan territory, even providing medical care to wounded Jihadists. A coalition of states, four of which are NATO members, is waging a war of aggression against Syria. Against this array of deadly enemies, the Syrian government and the Syrian Arab Army, in a remarkable feat of arms, has been able to hold out for more than four years. President Assad has proven his courage and tenacity as a leader by refusing US summons to resign and by staying in Damascus to share the personal danger which all Syrians must endure simply to live in their country. No wonder Obama wants to get rid of Assad before talk about Syrian elections for he would almost certainly win them.
Sputnik in Moscow has estimated that there are as many as 70,000 foreign Jihadists fighting in Syria.
These forces appear for the most part are well motivated, supplied largely with US weapons and deeply entrenched in various parts of Syria. Since the Russian intervention on the side of the Syrian government, progress has been made in rooting out Jihadist forces, but as long as supply routes remain open across Turkey, Iraq, Jordan, Israel, even Lebanon, the war in Syria is not going to end.
Turkey’s role is particularly dangerous. It is a NATO member and it uses this privileged position to commit acts of aggression against Iraq and Syria. It shot down a Russian warplane in a well-planned ambush, likely with US connivance, and then ran to hide in NATO’s skirts. Apparently, the Turkish government hoped to sabotage budding European cooperation with Russia against Daesh, or to provoke a NATO-Russian war, as insane as that might seem. Other NATO members, the United States, France, and Britain, have also been deeply involved in the proxy war against Syria. Indeed, after the destruction of Libya, it has been reported that NATO planes were secretly used to transport Jihadists and Libyan arms to other Middle Eastern fronts. NATO members are effectively allied with Daesh and its Al-Qaeda derivatives against the Syrian government.
To be sure, the United States and its European vassals have attempted to cover up their links to the Jihadist war in Syria by launching make-believe air attacks on Daesh targets, occasionally bombing a caterpillar tractor here or there and blowing up a lot of sand in people’s eyes. Russian intervention exposed the double game of the United States and changed the balance of military forces in Syria.
Even now however, the US air force sends warning messages to Jihadist truck drivers to get away from their vehicles before it attacks them. Or it refuses altogether to attack trucks carrying Daesh oil, claiming it’s private civilian property. How preposterous! Since World War II, when has the United States hesitated to attack civilian targets? It is understandable that Obama and the CIA, having been caught red-handed in Syria, are furious with Putin for exposing them. Nevertheless, the Russian government has offered the United States, a porte de sortie, pushing for an anti-Jihadist alliance and peace talks to settle the war.
Peace is a marvelous idea and the US escape route, a practical gesture, but how is Foreign Minister Lavrov going to get Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Qatar, Jordan, and Israel, not to mention the United States and Britain, to stop supporting the Jihadist movement in Syria and Iraq? Talk about an impossible alliance: it’s like taking a writhing nest of asps to your breast and hoping they won’t bite you. Are such hopes realistic? «Maybe not but that’s diplomacy,» Lavrov might respond: «we have to try nevertheless». These days it takes infinite patience and great theatrical skills to be a Russian diplomat. Russia is trying to finesse the United States into dropping its support of «moderate» Jihadists. In fact, such moderates do not exist.
Neither does the so-called Free Syrian Army (FSA). The Jihadists decapitate a few hapless victims, and FSA volunteers run away in horror leaving their arms for Daesh. Or, they laugh at the infidels’ stupidity and go over, arms in hand, to the Jihadist side.
Even if Russia could get real commitments from the United States, which is as yet quite uncertain, what is to be done about Turkey, Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states? And what is to be done with all the foreign Jihadists in Syria? Are these terrorists and war criminals going to be encouraged to return to the 40+ different countries whence they came to stir up violence there? And what is to be done about the Syrian Jihadists, though there is no open source information about their numbers? Will they be allowed to remain at large, or worse, will they be recognised as a legitimate Syrian opposition?
Even an anti-Jihadist coalition of willing members will have hard work rooting out Daesh and its allies. But the coalition of asps which Russia is trying to organise is composed of Daesh supporters. How is that going to work? One fears not at all well since the would-be alliance members, with the possible exception of France, have not abandoned their backing of Daesh, whatever one hears to the contrary notwithstanding. The United States remains the chief culprit continuing to pursue its two-faced, dangerous policies.
«The four core elements of Obama’s Syria policy remain intact today», Seymour Hersh says: «an insistence that Assad must go; that no anti-IS (Islamic State) coalition with Russia is possible; that Turkey is a steadfast ally in the war against terrorism; and that there really are significant moderate opposition forces for the US to support».
Policy based on false premises invariably leads to failure. Obama’s policy is no exception. Assad is a courageous leader of Syrian resistance against the Jihadist invasion. The only possible successful coalition against Daesh, Al-Qaeda and their affiliates is with Assad and with Russia. Turkey is a dangerous provocateur, playing with matches amongst open kegs of gunpowder, trying to drag NATO into a deeper de facto alliance with Daesh or even war with Russia. Finally, there are no «moderate» Jihadist forces in Syria. The Free Syrian Army barely exists at all, and the so-called moderates are no less murderous than their Daesh allies.
One cannot fault the Russians for trying to organise an anti-Jihadist alliance in Syria, but their potential allies, apart perhaps from the apparently repentant French, are all snakes in the grass. And Obama, the Nobel Peace Prize winner, is the biggest snake of all. «Do you realise what you have done?» Putin asked at the UN in September. Not yet apparently, reports to the contrary notwithstanding. But then, as we know, there are none so blind as those who will not see.
The Syrian opposition circus comes to town
By Sharmine Narwani | RT | December 22, 2015
In January, the Syrian government will – ostensibly – sit across the negotiating table from ‘the Syrian opposition’ to decide on the structure and make-up of a transitional government that promises to end the 5-year Syrian conflict.
The ‘Syrian opposition,’ we are told by US Secretary of State John Kerry, will be selected by ‘Syrians’ and will therefore be ‘representative.’
“This is not about imposing anything on anyone,” Kerry remarked about the Vienna process, convened to broker a Syrian peace – which was negotiated by 20 countries, but without the involvement of Syrians.
“I want to be clear: the Syrian people will be the validators of this whole effort,” says Kerry again – lest we forget. This is just before he instructs us that Syrian President Bashar al-Assad cannot hold any long-term position in Syria: “Asking the opposition to trust Assad or to accept Assad’s leadership is simply not a reasonable request, and it is literally therefore a non-starter,” explains Kerry from his non-Syrian perspective.
Incidentally, Kerry now also calls any Syrian demand for Assad to leave before the political transition “a non-starting position.” It appears that to be part of this ‘Syrian solution,’ you must first agree with Kerry’s many nuanced positions on Syria.
But back to the ‘Syrian opposition’ – those able negotiators who will represent the ‘Syrian people’ come January.
This is where it gets really confusing. The 20 non-Syrian countries participating in the Vienna process will ultimately decide 1. which Syrians will speak for the opposition at future talks, and 2. which Syrians will instead be labelled ‘terrorists’ to be slaughtered on the battlefield.
To whittle down the ‘Syrian opposition’ to a few dozen individuals that are ‘representative’ of Syrians, several meetings were held to fight it out – mostly in foreign countries.
The Saudis shrewdly tried to grab front-runner advantage for their favorite Syrians by hosting a highly-publicized meeting in Riyadh that cobbled together a 34-member opposition ‘turnkey solution.’
But several countries balked at some of the Riyadh-cooked opposition, which consists of groups or individuals they think should be on the ‘terrorist’ list instead of the negotiating table.
Others on the Saudi shortlist don’t appear to be ‘representative’ of anybody, let alone the ‘Syrian people.’ They include several former heads of the now widely-discredited Syrian National Coalition (SNC), once viewed by Syria’s foes as the country’s ‘legitimate’ government-in-exile.
These Riyadh-backed luminaries include ex-SNC President George Sabra, who gained his Syrian ‘legitimacy’ in 2012 from a whopping 28 votes cast by 41 Syrians – in Qatar.
They also include Khaled Khoja, who squeaked through as president of the now-rebranded ‘National Coalition for Syrian Revolutionary and Opposition Forces’ with 56 votes out of 109 cast – in Turkey.
They also include the likes of Saudi-based Ahmad Jarba, who won his second term at the helm of the National Council in 2014 with 65 votes – also cast in Turkey. Jarba beat his only rival Riad Hijab by 13 whole votes. Hijab turned the tables on Jarba in Riyadh last week, however, when 34 Syrians chose him instead to represent them at peace talks in Vienna.
Hijab, of course, is best known as the highest-ranking official to defect from the Syrian government during this crisis. He was prime minister of the country at the time – and I was in Damascus sitting in a roadside café when the news of his defection first broke. It created quite a stir in the café: Half of the Syrian customers were asking “who is the prime minister?” while the other half were asking “who is Riad Hijab?”
Representative of the Syrian people? Not so much.
The ‘Terrorists’
There are two lists being drawn up per the agreement reached in Vienna: the first list is to decide the ‘Syrian opposition’ negotiators. Since 22 million Syrians will not be voting for their own representatives, this list will basically be ‘manufactured’ by a handful of influential foreign states via some frenzied horse-trading.
The second list created by the Vienna-20 will determine which Syrian opposition militias are to be designated as ‘terrorist’ organizations. It is understood that those who make this list will not be participating in any ceasefires. It is also understood that the groups on this list will be mowed down by the Syrian army, its allies and foreign coalition airstrikes – unless they flee back across the Turkish border, of course.
For years, Washington has insisted there are armed ‘moderate’ groups in Syria, but have gone to great lengths to avoid naming these ‘moderates.’ Why? Because if moderates were named and identified, the US would have to be very, very certain that no past, present or future ‘atrocity video’ would surface to prove otherwise. And the US could not guarantee this with any of the groups they have armed, trained or financed in Syria over the past five years.
The twenty countries involved in Vienna talks have already agreed that ISIS and Jabhat al-Nusra (Al Qaeda’s Syrian franchise) are on this list. The big question now is who else makes the cut. And in everyone’s sights first and foremost is Ahrar al Sham, a Turkish, Qatari and Saudi-funded extremist group whose backbone is a mix of the Syrian Muslim Brotherhood and Al Qaeda.
Earlier last summer, when I queried the US State Department about how they viewed Ahrar, I was told: “The US has neither worked with nor provided any assistance to Ahrar al-Sham. The US supports moderate Syrian opposition groups.”
Put it this way, if Ahrar were ‘moderates,’ they would have already received direct US assistance, so desperate has Washington been to find Syrian fighters to do their bidding. And influential Americans have worked overtime to whitewash Ahrar – to distance it from Al Qaeda and other extremists, even though Ahrar’s closest primary ground force ally is none other than Jabhat al Nusra.
This strange western-Turkish-GCC determination to mainstream radical Salafist militants was seen again in Riyadh in December, when Ahrar reps were invited to join the opposition deliberations. The group is reported to have signed on to the final Riyadh declaration, but this was later hotly disputed by its leadership inside Syria. Either way, Ahrar is never going to be comfortable with Vienna’s terms today – to do so will be to turn its guns on its comrades in Nusra tomorrow, and to renounce many of its core beliefs.
The Ahrar challenge is mirrored by many of the hundreds of militias fighting inside Syria right now. These are mostly Sunni Islamist fighters, who over the course of this conflict have become overtly sectarian, violent and intolerant. Are they terrorists? The Syrian state says yes, and so do its allies Iran and Russia.
And this leads us to why they are right.
Armed and foreign-backed
Whatever this Syrian crisis has been, a ‘revolution’ it is not. No revolution, borne from the heart of a genuinely popular insurrection, is financed, armed and trained by the enemies of a state. What has transpired in Syria for the past five years is a long-planned foreign conspiracy – in coordination with a small sliver of its nationals – to create regime-change on the back of the narratives of the ‘Arab Spring.’
The US military’s ‘unconventional warfare’ manual contains the blueprint for exactly this kind of regime-change operation:
But this is not the first time this trick has been tried in Syria. In the late 1970s and early 1980s, the Syrian branch of the Muslim Brotherhood launched a similar operation from inside Hama and tried to replicate it nationwide. They failed and were wiped out by Bashar al Assad’s father, Hafez, who was not constrained by the threat of today’s foreign “humanitarian intervention” and “Responsibility To Protect” (R2P) doctrines.
The US Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) in their now-declassified 1982 report on Hama called the Muslim Brotherhood’s actions “terrorism,” and rightly so.
You cannot pick up arms against a central government, impose your will with weapons on population centers, blow up police stations, public transportation, bread factories, pipelines, waterworks, target your national army, human-shield yourself in mosques and schools, assassinate public and private figures – and imagine yourself anything but a terrorist. You are not fighting an occupation, where your right to self-defense is enshrined in law. You are fighting your state, and your state has an internationally-mandated legal duty to protect its nationals – from you.
Furthermore, no state would shelter you from lawful consequence if you were doing all these things at the behest of, and with material support from, an enemy state.
Syria’s largest militant opposition groups are – one and all – financed, armed, trained, supported by the United States, Great Britain, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Qatar, France and a smattering of other states and nationals.
None of these groups belong at a negotiating table across from the Syrian government – for one, they do not represent ‘Syrians,’ they represent foreign interests.
Can Washington name a single of its own anti-government, US-based, armed militias that it would term “moderate?” If an enemy state was financing and arming a group of American citizens, what would the consequence be if this group burned vehicles, killed police officers, set banks ablaze?
Moderate or extremist, secular or Islamist, why should Syria’s foreign-backed armed groups sit at the table in Vienna? And, for that matter, why should Syria’s foreign-backed unarmed politicos represent ‘Syrians’ at talks either?
Foreign states that spent five years ignoring the many non-violent Syrian dissidents based in Syria who have spent decades in opposition – in order to manufacture a thoroughly unrepresentative, subservient, malleable and repressive ‘Syrian opposition’ that will serve their interests – should not be rewarded for their deeds in Vienna.
None of their hand-picked ‘Syrian opposition’ will do – these mini-tyrants, warlords and militants will just prolong Syria’s tragedy indefinitely.
Think of Vienna as a stage. Right now, several western powers are seeking a political solution in Vienna as an exit from the Syrian theater – because it has become too costly. The extremism of ISIS, terror threats on the home front, a flood of migrants and refugees, and the promise of indefinite chaos in the Middle East has created a new-found bargaining spirit in the west. For the west, Assad, the Russians and Iranians suddenly look like worthy partners today – able, potentially, to help negotiate a face-saving exit from the Syrian quagmire. It is no coincidence that the US pushed through a nuclear deal with Iran this year – or that Kerry and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov are co-chairing the Vienna talks.
But in the east – in Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Qatar – Vienna represents potential defeat unless Assad goes. These states either believe they are facing down existential threats, or at best, political humiliations from which they are unlikely to recover.
This brings another level of complexity to the Vienna stage. Allies in east and west find themselves with vastly diverging interests. All are still looking to stack their hands with cards which can improve their fortunes at the table, but their militants in the Syrian field have been losing ground since Russian jets took to Syria’s skies. Their own anti-terror Coalition is being outed and shamed for its complicity with the very terrorists it purports to fight. And they still, five years on, cannot construct a cohesive ‘Syrian opposition.’
Vienna is unlikely to ever see a genuine Syrian political solution. But it could still act as a springboard for some new thinking. Think ‘terror’ first. Disarm militants, halt weapons transfers, shut down borders, besiege them in their strongholds, cut off their financing, sanction their supporters.
Many of these components were in last week’s UN Security Council Resolution 2254, co-sponsored by Syria, in a new twist. An important start.
Cooperate with the Syrian state; coordinate airstrikes, ground battles; share intelligence. This stage may yet arrive.
Finally, acknowledge the reforms that the state tried to implement in the first few months of the Syrian crisis – Syria shut down its military court at the same time that Jordan was establishing a new security court. Why was one derided and the other lauded? Provide the time and space – reconciliation takes time – for Syrians to gear up for new elections under international observation.
If a ‘Syrian opposition’ is the desired outcome, this can only come organically from inside Syria, when Syrians are no longer under the threat of violent conflict.
The alternative, of course, is this Syrian opposition circus that is gearing up for a fall in Vienna. You can pay these clowns through the nose, but you will never get a performance out of them.
Sharmine Narwani is a commentator and analyst of Middle East geopolitics. She is a former senior associate at St. Antony’s College, Oxford University and has a master’s degree in International Relations from Columbia University. Sharmine has written commentary for a wide array of publications, including Al Akhbar English, the New York Times, the Guardian, Asia Times Online, Salon.com, USA Today, the Huffington Post, Al Jazeera English, BRICS Post and others. You can follow her on Twitter at @snarwani
‘Sick of being targeted’: French authorities conducting warrantless raids on Muslims
RT | December 9, 2015
Emergency legislation enacted after last month’s Paris attacks has led to a fierce crackdown on France’s Islamic population. Warrantless searches and raids have become commonplace, a move which many say violates the civil liberties of Muslims.
Speaking to RT’s Daniel Bushell, the manager of the Pepper Grill restaurant on the outskirts of Paris recalled a police raid at his restaurant on Saturday night.
“They blocked the roads with trucks, and up to 40 armed men stormed our restaurant… Saturday night’s the busiest time. Children were eating. The cops had shotguns, black masks, and shields, making the women tremble with fear. Several officers rushed downstairs, then suddenly… they began breaking the doors with battering rams. The door wasn’t even locked,” the restaurant manager said.
After police failed to find any weapons during the search, they raided so-called “undeclared prayer rooms” above the restaurant. However, legal experts told RT that it is unlikely that such rooms are illegal, even under the country’s new emergency legislation.
The emergency laws, implemented after last month’s terror attacks which killed 130 people and left 352 others injured, have led to thousands of warrantless searches and raids.
But it’s not just private property that is being targeted – Muslims are also being singled out on the street.
“Police tried to pull the hood off the head of an Arab friend eating with my little brother. Then they detained him, saying it’s a state of emergency so they have the right,” a local told RT on condition of anonymity, fearing police reprisals. He added that the community is “sick of being targeted.”
Such targeting is reportedly worse for young people, many of whom said they pull hoods over their faces as soon as they see a police car, so officers can’t see the color of their skin.
That fear is a direct result of the war being waged against the Muslim community, according to Yasser Louati of the Collective Against Islamophobia in France. He recalled a situation where a mother was “touched in her private parts by police,” and another mother who “lost her baby after a raid.”
However, one French mayor is not backing down, believing that extra security is necessary because France is “living amid an Islamic threat.”
“I’ve already doubled the number of city policemen, but I went even further. I asked all the former policemen, firefighters and servicemen to come and help to protect our citizens. If my initiative goes against the law, we should change the law. We are living amid an Islamic threat and we should be aware of the consequences. Our country, as well as other European countries, is at war – both outside our borders, in Syria for instance, and inside our borders, because our enemies live in our own country,” Robert Menard, mayor of the French town of Beziers, told RT.
In addition to warrantless searches and raids, France’s state of emergency laws allow the government to put people under house arrest, seal the country’s borders and ban demonstrations. The laws were created during the Algerian war in 1955.
France is currently aiming to change its constitution to allow a state of emergency to last for six months, according to government sources. The proposal, which has been slammed by many who say the government is abusing its powers, will be put to ministers on December 23, according to AFP.
Paris-San Bernardino
XYMPHORA | December 4, 2015
Remember the Paris attack, with the teams of expendable “martyrs”, and the three white mercenaries, the “non-expendables“, who drove up in a Mercedes, did their shooting, and then disappeared, never to be heard from, or spoken of, again, while the Muslim world of France continues to be torn apart looking for ‘terrorists’. Then there was the Saint-Denis engagement, an explosion, and dead Muslims/witnesses.
Tweet (FOX 11 Los Angeles):
“#BREAKING: Reports of an active shooter in San Bernardino. Police looking for 3 white males dressed in military gear. At least 20 injured”
Eventually, there is an engagement on the highway, a shootout, and dead Muslims/witnesses.
Some things that make you wonder:
- “Farook and Malik, who are thought to have married earlier this year in Saudi Arabia, are parents to a young child, now orphaned, whom they left with a grandparent before heading out on their murder spree.”
- “A spokesman for the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives said the suspects threw a thick-gauge copper pipe out of the SUV, but no explosives were found inside. The fake pipe bomb was equipped with a piece of material made to look like a wick.” With an apartment allegedly full of real bombs – an apartment the authorities are allowing the press to rummage through – why would you throw a faked one?
- “Baccari says the reserved Farook showed no signs of unusual behavior, although he grew out his beard several months ago. He said he had been sitting at the same table as Farook at the party on Wednesday morning, but his co-worker suddenly disappeared, leaving his coat behind.” As if he knew when to leave.
- A comment by ‘Clouds are nice’: “Good job they caught them or everyone would still be looking for the three white men wearing balaclavas.” Ha!
“Correlations on Facebook Probably Key to ISIS Claim in San Bernardino” “Female San Bernardino Shooter “Pledged Allegiance” to ISIS on Facebook” A rather half-assed creation of the ‘legend’, with seemingly no other evidence of political inclination, and absurdly easy for anybody to fake.
“Lawyer For San Bernardino Gunman’s Family Floats Sandy Hook Trutherism”
Is this another ‘hybrid’ ‘terrorist’ attack like Paris, where elements of ISIS and French intelligence worked hand in hand like the brothers they are, or is this some kind of patsy situation?
Who is Right in Syria?
US, Turkey, NATO Supporting ISIS and al-Qaeda – Supporting the Creation of Buffer Zones
By Dr. Lawrence Davidson | To The Point Analyses | November 29, 2015
Here is the situation in Syria as I see it : Russia is taking a long-range view and wants stability in post-ISIS Syria. France and the United States are taking the short-range view and really have no achievable plans for Syria’s future stability. Turkey appears to have given little thought to Syria’s future. Ankara may be willing to see indefinite chaos in Syria if it hurts the Assad regime on the one hand and the Kurds on the other.
Part I – Russia
The Russians may be the only party interested in the long-term political stability of Syria. There is certainly no doubt that President Putin is more determined than Western leaders to act on the fact that the various so-called moderate parties standing against the Assad regime cannot work together, and that this fault cannot be corrected by enticements from the United States. For the Russians, this fact makes the Damascus government the only source of future stability.
This understanding, and not Soviet-era nostalgia, has led Russia to support the Assad regime, which possesses a working government, a standing army, and the loyalty of every religious minority group in the country.
Some might object that both Assad and Putin are dictators and thugs (by the way, thugs in suits in the U.S. government are all too common). However, this cannot serve as a serious objection. The only alternative to Damascus’s victory is perennial civil war fragmenting the country into warlord zones. With the possible exception of Israel, this scenario is in no one’s interest, although it seems that the leaders of in Washington and Paris are too politically circumscribed to act on this fact.
Part II – U.S. and France
Thus, it would appear that neither the U.S. nor France really cares about Syria as a stable nation. Once the present military capacity of ISIS is eliminated, Washington and Paris may well clandestinely continue to support a low-level civil war against the Assad regime. In this effort they will have the help of Turkey, the Kurds and Israel. The result will be ongoing decimation of the Syrian population and fragmentation of its territory.
As if to justify U.S. strategy, President Obama, with French President Hollande by his side, recently boasted that the United States stood at the head of a “65-country coalition” fighting terrorism in Syria. However, this is a hollow claim. Most of these countries are coalition members in name only, and some of them, like Saudi Arabia and the Gulf state governments, play a double game. And then Obama dismissed Russia and Iran as “outliers” and “a coalition of two.” Yet those two countries are the Syrian nation’s best hope for future stability.
The fact is that U.S. policy in Syria has been a losing proposition from the beginning just because of its hostility to the Assad government. Despite its air campaign against ISIS, Washington has no ground component nor any answer to the political vacuum in Syria. Both missing parts are to be found in an alliance with Damascus.
Refusal to make that alliance has also opened Washington to building neoconservative political pressure to increase U.S. military presence in the area. However, American “boots on the ground” in Syria is both a dangerous option as well as an unnecessary one. Syrian government boots can do the job if they are properly supported. The support has come from Russia, Iran and Hezbollah. It is the United States and its coalition who are the “outliers.”
Part III – Turkey
It is not easy to explain Turkey’s animosity toward Damascus. Prior to the civil war in Syria, the two countries had good relations. Then something changed. It may have been something as foolish as President Erdogan’s taking personal offense against President Assad because the latter chose to heed the advice of Iran rather than Turkey at the beginning of the war. Whatever happened, it sent Ankara off on an anti-Assad crusade.
That anti-Assad mindset is probably the backstory to the recent reckless Turkish decision to shoot down a Russian warplane operating in support of Syrian government troops close to the Turkish border.
The Turks say that the Russian jet strayed into Turkish airspace. The Russians deny this. The Turks claim that they tried to communicate with the Russian plane to warn it away. When it did not respond, they destroyed it. Of late the Turkish Prime Minister, Ahmet Davutoglu, has said that Ankara “didn’t know the nationality of the plane that was brought down … until Moscow announced it was Russian.” This statement is frankly unbelievable given that Davutoglu followed it up with an admission that Turkey had complained to Russian about military flights in this exact border area. He also asserted that both Russian and Syrian operations in this region of northern Syria should stop because ISIS has no presence there. This assertion makes no sense, since Damascus’s aim is to reassert government authority by the defeat of armed rebels regardless of their organizational affiliation.
It is hard to say whether the Turks are telling the truth about an incursion into their airspace. Most of their evidence, such as recorded Turkish warnings to the Russian plane, is easily fabricated. However, in the end it does not really matter if the plane crossed the border. There was no need to shoot it down.
If the Russian jet strayed into Turkish airspace, there would have been a range of options. The Turks could be very sure that the Russian plane had no hostile intention toward their country, and they should have assumed, for the sake of minimizing any consequences, that no provocation was meant on the part of the Russia. In other words, they should have acted as if the alleged overflight was a mistake. The Turks could have then shadowed the Russian plane in a way that coaxed it back into Syrian airspace and followed the incident up with a formal protest to Moscow. Instead they made the worst possible choice and shot the plane down. Now both Ankara and Washington are shouting about Turkey’s right to defend its territory despite the fact that the Russian plane never posed any threat.
Part IV – Conclusion
In all of the bloodshed, population displacement and terror that has accompanied the Syrian civil war, the least-considered party has been the Syrian people and their future. ISIS, or at least its present infrastructure, will ultimately be destroyed. However, while that destruction is necessary, it is an insufficient outcome because it fails to provide long-term stability. Right now that vital ingredient can only be supplied by the reimposition of order by Damascus. The folks in Washington, Paris and Ankara might not like that, but they are not the ones facing a future of anarchy. And indeed, the more they stand in the way of Damascus, the more chaos they will help create.
Terrorism, tyranny and the end of freedom
By Sam Gerrans | RT | November 27, 2015
Are the powers-that-be using crises such as recent events in Paris to drive through a tyrannical agenda?
Rahm Emanuel – Obama’s former Chief of Staff – once famously said “You never want a serious crisis to go to waste – it’s an opportunity to do things you think you could not do before”.
He was not saying anything new. He was simply rehashing something self-evident to those who deal in strategy rather than hysteria, and passing off as his own something said years before by Churchill.
Today, the world is hysterical about the recent serious crisis in Paris.
Naturally, these terrorist actions are tragedies for those individually impacted by them. But strategically, they are opportunities for “things you think you could not do before.”
A substantial minority of people have now got the point that since “a serious crisis” is so useful to those who rule us, our rulers will not only sit around waiting for things to happen which they can use, they will also initiate such things.
It was the events in New York on 9/11 – in which the laws of physics were apparently suspended – which allowed the Patriot Act to be pushed through and the Plan for a New American Century to be enacted.
But it took several years before opinions unencumbered by official propaganda percolated through society.
Due to the proliferation of social media, that same process of dissemination and cross-pollination of cynicism towards the official version of events was in full sway only a matter of minutes after the Paris bombings were announced.
And while the larger portion of the herd is running about crying out for someone to save it and the architects of policy are calmly ramming through their agenda, the new challenge is how to clamp down on dissent from media orthodoxy.
So what’s coming down the pike?
First off: boarder crackdowns. The Guardian recently noted that: “EU interior and justice ministers are to meet in Brussels where they will discuss tightening checks on all travelers at the external borders of the 26-nation Schengen zone as an emergency measure.
“Cazeneuve called on his fellow ministers to agree on a Europe-wide passenger information register, improved controls along Europe’s external borders, and better coordination against arms trafficking.”
“France has been calling for these measures for more than 18 months, and some progress has been made,” he said. “But it is not fast enough, and it does not go far enough … Everyone must understand Europe has to organize, recover, defend itself against the terrorist threat.”
The Independent informs us that EU ministers (i.e. those bureaucrats none of us voted for and whose power structure mirrors that of the Soviet Union’s Politbureau) are considering setting up their own “CIA-style intelligence agency”.
The current stampede will also help push through other items already openly on the agenda.
In the UK, for example, the government is busy enacting a bill to give police access to everyone’s entire internet history.
Richard Berry, the National Police Chiefs’ Council spokesman for data communications, told the newspaper: “We essentially need the ‘who, where, when and what’ of any communication – who initiated it, where were they and when it happened.”
In short: the police want access to your entire life.
Where this is going is total surveillance, general suspicion, and the removal of the velvet glove from the hand of power to reveal the iron fist which was there all along – all served up in the form of a palliative citing the need to protect us from an outside threat.
From Nero to Bush, nothing changes – except who benefits.
So who does benefit?
Western media are intractably incurious on such questions, barely daring to stray beyond the prescribed narrative and sternly serving up Pentagon press releases as news.
A notable exception is political journalist and author Gearóid Ó Colmáin.
Interviewed by RT, Ó Colmáin stated boldly what many have already surmised but had been denied a platform beyond social media to express.
The points Mr. Ó Colmáin makes include the fact that the war against Syria is orchestrated by NATO; that it has been conducting attacks against the civilian population of that country for four years now, and that this itself is a “terrorist campaign”.
He states that there is a worldwide war the object of which is to make the world’s population submit to a “global order” – a war which serves the interests of what he rightly calls a “tiny and particularly tyrannical ruling elite.”
He says: “There is no War on Terror. There is a war which is being waged using terrorist proxy groups and they are being used against nation states who are resisting U.S. and Israeli hegemony. And they are also being used as a means of disciplining the work forces in Europe. In a period of mass unemployment and austerity, you now have terrorist attacks being committed by terrorists funded, armed and trained by Western intelligence agencies. There is no such thing as ISIS. ISIS is a creation of the United States.”
Finally, someone tells it like it is.
The powers-that-be are going to try to shut people like Gearóid Ó Colmáin up. And they are going to use the very “terrorism” that Mr. Ó Colmáin accuses them of creating to do it.
By means of apparently supernatural prescience the UK’s Prime Minister David Cameron anticipated just such a problem.
In July, 2015, Cameron set out plans to deal with people who question the official line. He is particularly concerned to contain – and we assume later to criminalize – “ideas” which are “based on conspiracy”.
Cameron asserts: “In this warped worldview, such conclusions are reached – that 9/11 was actually inspired by Mossad to provoke the invasion of Afghanistan; that British security services knew about 7/7, but didn’t do anything about it because they wanted to provoke an anti-Muslim backlash.”
In the meantime – as the Independent informs us – France has declared a “state of emergency for three months, allowing authorities to shut down websites and giving police sweeping new powers.”
Those powers “include the ability to put people under house arrest without trial and to block websites.”
As Orwell tells us in 1984: “In a time of universal deceit – telling the truth is a revolutionary act.”
And the “ruling elite” Ó Colmáin refers to is in the process of conflating such revolutionary acts with “terrorism”.
While people at Mr. Cameron’s level and above understand perfectly well how power works, if those whose interests Cameron represents get their way, we the people are to be forced by law to believe the type of foolishness which benefits precisely those interests Ó Colmáin had the forthrightness to identify.
If facts are thought so fragile they need laws to enforce their acceptance, once they are enacted it is time to stop pretending we are free and face reality: We are living under tyranny.
Given the right “serious crisis” of the kind Mr. Emanuel so enthusiastically embraces, the herd can doubtless be stampeded over the cliff of any form of resistance to the political will to drive such new laws through. And once such a principle is accepted, there is no philosophical barrier to expanding it.
The loss of what we thought of as our rights will be achieved under the cloak of what works best: appeals to decency and reasonableness and the need to protect the innocent.
While men such as Ó Colmáin are working to awaken the people to the specter of open tyranny, history and experience are against him.
Gustave Le Bon in his seminal work on realpolitik, The Crowd (1895) wrote: “Whoever can supply them [the masses] with illusions is easily their master; whoever attempts to destroy their illusions is always their victim.”
By that measure, Ó Colmáin will be thought a terrorist, and those who condemn him hailed as defenders of freedom.
Le Bon believed that the majority respects only tyranny and force and spurns freedom.
We are in the process of learning if he was right.
Sam Gerrans is an English writer, translator, support counselor and activist. He also has professional backgrounds in media, strategic communications and technology. He is driven by commitment to ultimate meaning, and focused on authentic approaches to revelation and realpolitik. He is the founder of Quranite.com – where the Qur’an is explored on the basis of reason rather than tradition – and offers both individual language training and personal support and counseling online at SkypeTalking.com.
Turkey’s Actions Show the Despair of the Regime Change Camp
By Dan Glazebrook | RT | November 25, 2015
Turkey’s shooting down of a Russian jet today shows the utter desperation currently sweeping through the regime change camp as Russia closes in on the death squads in Syria – and does so with massive international support.
At 9.30am on Tuesday morning, a Russian SU-24 jet was shot down by Turkish fighter planes. Its pilots were then allegedly killed by Syrian Turkmen anti-government militias, with the body of one paraded on camera in a video that was immediately posted on youtube. Turkey claimed the jet had encroached on Turkish airspace, but Russia maintains the plane was shot down well inside Syrian territory, 4km from the Turkish border. Rather than calling Russia to defuse any tension arising from the attack, Turkey then immediately called an emergency NATO meeting to ramp it up – “as if we shot down their plane”, Putin commented, “and not they ours”.
To make sense of this apparently senseless provocation, it is necessary to cut through the multiple layers of obfuscation which surround Western narratives around Syria and ISIS. The reality is that the forces essentially line up today just as they did at the outbreak of this crisis in 2011: with the West, Turkey and the gulf monarchies sponsoring an array of death squads bent on bringing down the Syrian government; and Russia, Iran, Iraq, Syria (obviously) and Hezbollah resisting this project; the rise of ISIS has not fundamentally changed this underlying dynamic. Indeed, the next-to-useless impact of the West’s year-long phony war against ISIS – alongside its relentless funneling of weaponry to militias with an, at best, ambiguous relationship with Al Qaeda and ISIS – has demonstrated that the Syrian state (or “Assad” to use the West’s puerile personalization) remains the ultimate target of the West’s Syria policy. As Obama himself put it, the goal is not to eliminate ISIS, but rather to “contain” them – that is, keep them focused on weakening Syria and Iraq, and not US allies like Jordan, Turkey or the US’s favoured Kurdish factions. In civil wars, there are only ever really two sides: those who want the insurgency to overthrow the government, and those who want the government to defeat the insurgency. In the Syrian civil war, NATO remains on the same side as ISIS. In this sense, Putin is entirely correct when he commented on the Turkish attack it was a “stab in the back, carried out by the accomplices of terrorists” and asked: “do they want to make NATO serve ISIS?”
Russia’s direct entry into the Syrian conflict two months ago, however, has caused utter panic in the ‘regime change’ camp. Belying all their ‘anti-ISIS’ rhetoric, the US and Britain were openly horrified that Russia might actually be putting up an effective fight against the group and restoring governmental authority to the ungoverned spaces in which it thrives. Immediately, the West began warning of ‘blowback’ to Russia, and ramping up advanced arms shipments to the insurgency. Within a month, a Russian passenger plane was blown up, with ISIS claiming responsibility and British Foreign Minister Philip Hammond calling the attack a “warning shot”. It was a “shot” alright, aimed not only at Russia, but also at her allies; the downing of the plane on Egyptian soil was a deliberate act of economic war against the Egyptian tourist industry, a punishment for Egypt’s support for Russia and Syria and its choking off of fighters to Syria since Sisi came to power. Then, two weeks later, came the attack on Paris. White supremacist niceties prevented Hammond calling that a “warning shot”, but that is precisely what it was, this time at those within the regime change/ anti-Russia camp who were showing signs of ‘wobbling’. Hollande had suggested back in January that sanctions on Russia should be lifted asap, and more recently had showed a willingness to cooperate with Russia militarily over Syria: a ‘red line’ for France’s ‘Atlantic partners’. This is what France was being punished for.
Nevertheless, the net continues to close on the West’s death squad project in Syria. From the start the key to ISIS success has been, firstly, the porous Syria-Turkey border, through which Turkey has allowed a free flow of fighters and weapons back and forth for the past four years, and secondly, the massive amounts of finance ISIS receives both from oil sales and from donors in countries prepared to turn a blind eye to terror financing. In recent weeks, all of this has been threatened by the Russian-led alliance (of which France is increasingly willing to be a part).
The past week has seen a large scale Syrian ground offensive, supported with Russian air cover, in precisely the Syrian-Turkish border region which is the death squads’ lifeline: a move which prompted the Turkish foreign ministry to warn of “serious consequences” if the Russian airstrikes continued. Simultaneously, Russia has embarked on a major campaign against ISIS’ reportedly 1,000-strong oil tanker fleet which is so crucial to the group’s financial success. As the Institute for the Study of War reported, “Russian military chief of staff Col. Gen. Andrey Kartapolov announced on November 18 “Russian warplanes are now flying on a free hunt” against ISIS-operated oil tanker trucks traveling back and forth from Syria and Iraq, claiming that Russian strikes had destroyed over 500 ISIS-operated oil trucks in the past “several days.”” This massive dent in the group’s oil transporting capacity even shamed the US into belatedly and somewhat half-heartedly launching similar attacks of their own. The smashing of ISIS’ oil industry will not only be a blow to the entire death squad project, but will directly affect Turkey, widely thought to be involved in the transportation of ISIS-produced oil, and even Erdogan’s family itself, as it is the company run by his son Bilal that is believed to be running the illicit trade.
Finally, France yesterday announced a crackdown on ISIS’ financiers, and demanded other countries do the same. French Finance Minister Michel Sapin implied that the report to the G20 on the issue last month was a whitewash, and demanded that the international Financial Action Task Force be much more explicit in its report to the next G20 finance meeting in February about which countries are lax in terms of terror financing. The move is very likely to expose not only Turkey and Saudi Arabia but also, given HSBC’s links to Al Qaeda, the City of London. Indeed, as the Politico website noted, Sapin specifically “said that considering the reputation of the City of London, he would be “vigilant” on the U.K.’s implementation of EU-agreed measures to clamp down on money laundering and exchange financial information on shady transactions or individuals”.The reactions to his demands that implementation of tougher EU regulations be moved forward will also be instructive (in another move exposing the total lack of urgency in the West’s supposed ‘war on ISIS’, they are currently not due to be implemented for another two years).
And on top of all this, the UN Security Council finally passed a resolution authorizing ‘all necessary measures’ to be used against ISIS, Al Qaeda and other terrorist groups in Syria, effectively granting UN approval to Russia’s intervention. As Pepe Escobar has pointed out, French support for the resolution rendered it politically impossible for the US or UK to use their veto – although US ambassador Samantha Power, an extreme Russophobe and ‘regime changer’, registered her disapproval by failing to turn up for the vote and sending a junior official along instead.
In other words, on all sides the net is closing in on the West’s death squad project in Syria. Turkey’s actions today have merely demonstrated, again, the impotent rage of those who have thrown in their chips with a disastrous and bloody attempt to remake the Middle East. Syria is indeed becoming the Stalingrad of the regime changers – the rock on which the imperial folly of the West and it’s regional imitators may finally be broken.
Breaking international law in Syria
By Sharmine Narwani | RT | November 25, 2015
The war drums are getting louder in the aftermath of ISIS attacks in Paris, as Western countries gear up to launch further airstrikes in Syria. But obscured in the fine print of countless resolutions and media headlines is this: the West has no legal basis for military intervention. Their strikes are illegal.
“It is always preferable in these circumstances to have the full backing of the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) but I have to say what matters most of all is that any actions we would take would… be legal,” explained UK Prime Minister David Cameron to the House of Commons last Wednesday.
Legal? No, there’s not a scrap of evidence that UK airstrikes would be lawful in their current incarnation.
Then just two days later, on Friday, the UN Security Council unanimously adopted Resolution 2249, aimed at rallying the world behind the fairly obvious notion that ISIS is an “unprecedented threat to international peace and security.”
“It’s a call to action to member states that have the capacity to do so to take all necessary measures against (ISIS) and other terrorist groups,” British UN Ambassador Matthew Rycroft told reporters.
The phrase “all necessary measures” was broadly interpreted – if not explicitly sanctioning the “use of force” in Syria, then as a wink to it.
Let’s examine the pertinent language of UNSCR 2249:
The resolution “calls upon Member States that have the capacity to do so to take all necessary measures, in compliance with international law, in particular with the United Nations Charter…on the territory under the control of ISIL also known as Da’esh, in Syria and Iraq.”
Note that the resolution demands “compliance with international law, in particular with the UN Charter.” This is probably the most significant explainer to the “all necessary measures” phrase. Use of force is one of the most difficult things for the UNSC to sanction – it is a last resort measure, and a rare one. The lack of Chapter 7 language in the resolution pretty much means that ‘use of force’ is not on the menu unless states have other means to wrangle “compliance with international law.”
What you need to know about international law
It is important to understand that the United Nations was set up in the aftermath of World War 2 expressly to prevent war and to regulate and inhibit the use of force in settling disputes among its member states. This is the UN’s big function – to “maintain international peace and security,” as enshrined in the UN Charter’s very first article.
There are a lot of laws that seek to govern and prevent wars, but the Western nations looking to launch airstrikes in Syria have made things easy for us – they have cited the law that they believe justifies their military intervention: specifically, Article 51 of the UN Charter. It reads, in part:
“Nothing in the present Charter shall impair the inherent right of individual or collective self-defense if an armed attack occurs against a Member of the United Nations, until the Security Council has taken measures necessary to maintain international peace and security.”
So doesn’t France, for instance, enjoy the inherent right to bomb ISIS targets in Syria as an act of self-defense – in order to prevent further attacks?
And don’t members of the US-led coalition, who cite the “collective self-defense” of Iraq (the Iraqi government has formally made this request), have the right to prevent further ISIS attacks from Syrian territory into Iraqi areas?
Well, no. Article 51, as conceived in the UN Charter, refers to attacks between territorial states, not with non-state actors like ISIS or Al-Qaeda. Syria, after all, did not attack France or Iraq – or Turkey, Australia, Jordan or Saudi Arabia.
And here’s where it gets interesting.
Western leaders are employing two distinct strategies to obfuscate the lack of legal justification for intervention in Syria. The first is the use of propaganda to build narratives about Syria that support their legal argumentation. The second is a shrewd effort to cite legal “theory” as a means to ‘stretch’ existing law into a shape that supports their objectives.
The “Unwilling and Unable” Theory – the “Unable” argument
The unwilling and unable theory – as related to the Syria/ISIS situation – essentially argues that the Syrian state is both unwilling and unable to target the non-state actor based within its territory (ISIS, in this case) that poses a threat to another state.
Let’s break this down further.
Ostensibly, Syria is ‘unable’ to sufficiently degrade or destroy ISIS because, as we can clearly see, ISIS controls a significant amount of territory within Syria’s borders that its national army has not been able to reclaim.
This made some sense – until September 30 when Russia entered the Syrian military theater and began to launch widespread airstrikes against terrorist targets inside Syria.
As a major global military power, Russia is clearly ‘able’ to thwart ISIS –certainly just as well as most of the Western NATO states participating in airstrikes already. Moreover, as Russia is operating there due to a direct Syrian government appeal for assistance, the Russian military role in Syria is perfectly legal.
This development struck a blow at the US-led coalition’s legal justification for strikes in Syria. Not that the coalition’s actions were ever legal – “unwilling and unable” is merely a theory and has no basis in customary international law.
About this new Russian role, Major Patrick Walsh, associate professor in the International and Operational Law Department at the US Army’s Judge Advocate General’s Legal Center and School in Virginia, says:
“The United States and others who are acting in collective defense of Iraq and Turkey are in a precarious position. The international community is calling on Russia to stop attacking rebel groups and start attacking ISIS. But if Russia does, and if the Assad government commits to preventing ISIS from attacking Syria’s neighbors and delivers on that commitment, then the unwilling or unable theory for intervention in Syria would no longer apply. Nations would be unable to legally intervene inside Syria against ISIS without the Assad government’s consent.”
In recent weeks, the Russians have made ISIS the target of many of its airstrikes, and are day by day improving coordination efficiency with the ground troops and air force of the Syrian Arab Army (SAA) and its allies -Iran, Hezbollah and other foreign groups who are also in Syria legally, at the invitation of the Syrian state.
Certainly, the balance of power on the ground in Syria has started to shift away from militants and terrorist groups since Russia launched its campaign seven weeks ago – much more than we have seen in a year of coalition strikes.
The “Unwilling and Unable” Theory – the “Unwilling” argument
Now for the ‘unwilling’ part of the theory. And this is where the role of Western governments in seeding ‘propaganda’ comes into play.
The US and its allies have been arguing for the past few years that the Syrian government is either in cahoots with ISIS, benefits from ISIS’ existence, or is a major recruiting magnet for the terror group.
Western media, in particular, has made a point of underplaying the SAA’s military confrontations with ISIS, often suggesting that the government actively avoids ISIS-controlled areas.
The net result of this narrative has been to convey the message that the Syrian government has been ‘unwilling’ to diminish the terror group’s base within the country.
But is this true?
ISIS was born from the Islamic State of Iraq (ISI) in April, 2013 when the group’s leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi declared a short-lived union of ISI and Syria’s Al-Qaeda branch, Jabhat al-Nusra. Armed militants in Syria have switched around their militia allegiances many times throughout this conflict, so it would be disingenuous to suggest the Syrian army has not fought each and every one of these groups at some point since early 2011.
If ISIS was viewed as a ‘neglected’ target at any juncture, it has been mainly because the terror group was focused on land grabs for its “Caliphate” in the largely barren north-east areas of the country – away from the congested urban centers and infrastructure hubs that have defined the SAA’s military priorities.
But ISIS has always remained a fixture in the SAA’s sights. The Syrian army has fought or targeted ISIS, specifically, in dozens of battlefields since the organization’s inception, and continues to do so. In Deir Hafer Plains, Mennagh, Kuweires, Tal Arn, al-Safira, Tal Hasel and the Aleppo Industrial District. In the suburbs and countryside of Damascus – most famously in Yarmouk this year – where the SAA and its allies thwarted ISIS’ advance into the capital city. In the Qalamun mountains, in Christian Qara and Faleeta. In Deir Ezzor, where ISIS would join forces with the US-backed Free Syrian Army (FSA): al-Husseiniyeh, Hatla, Sakr Island, al-Hamadiyah, al-Rashidiyah, al-Jubeileh, Sheikh Yasseen, Mohassan, al-Kanamat, al-Sina’a, al-Amal, al-Haweeqa, al-Ayyash, the Ghassan Aboud neighborhood, al-Tayyim Oil Fields and the Deir ez-Zor military airport. In Hasakah Province – Hasakah city itself, al-Qamishli, Regiment 121 and its environs, the Kawkab and Abdel-Aziz Mountains. In Raqqa, the Islamic State’s capital in Syria, the SAA combatted ISIS in Division 17, Brigade 93 and Tabaqa Airbase. In Hama Province, the entire al-Salamiyah District – Ithriyah, Sheikh Hajar, Khanasser. In the province of Homs, the eastern countryside: Palmyra, Sukaneh, Quraytayn, Mahin, Sadad, Jubb al-Ahmar, the T-4 Airbase and the Iraqi border crossing. In Suweida, the northern countryside.
If anything, the Russian intervention has assisted the Syrian state in going on the offensive against ISIS and other like-minded terror groups. Before Russia moved in, the SAA was hunkering down in and around key strategic areas to protect these hubs. Today, Syria and its allies are hitting targets by land and air in the kinds of coordinated offensives we have not seen before.
Seeding ‘propaganda’
The role of propaganda and carefully manipulated narratives should not be underestimated in laying the groundwork for foreign military intervention in Syria.
From “the dictator is killing his own people” to the “regime is using chemical weapons” to the need to establish “No Fly Zones” to safeguard “refugees fleeing Assad”… propaganda has been liberally used to build the justification for foreign military intervention.
Article 2 of the UN Charter states, in part:
“All Members shall refrain in their international relations from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state, or in any other manner inconsistent with the purposes of the United Nations.”
It’s hard to see how Syria’s sovereignty and territorial integrity has not been systematically violated throughout the nearly five years of this conflict, by the very states that make up the US-led coalition. The US, UK, France, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Qatar, the UAE and other nations have poured weapons, funds, troops and assistance into undermining a UN member state at every turn.
“Legitimacy” is the essential foundation upon which governance rests. Vilify a sitting government, shut down multiple embassies, isolate a regime in international forums, and you can destroy the fragile veneer of legitimacy of a king, president or prime minister.
But efforts to delegitimize the government of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad have also served to lay the groundwork for coalition airstrikes in Syria.
If Assad is viewed to lack “legitimacy,” the coalition creates the impression that there is no real government from which it can gain the necessary authority to launch its airstrikes.
This mere ‘impression’ provided the pretext for Washington to announce it was sending 50 Special Forces troops into Syria, as though the US wasn’t violating every tenet of international law in doing so. “It’s okay – there’s no real government there,” we are convinced.
Media reports repeatedly highlight the ‘percentages’ of territory outside the grasp of Syrian government forces – this too serves a purpose. One of the essentials of a state is that it consists of territory over which it governs.
If only 50 percent of Syria is under government control, the argument goes, “then surely we can just walk into the other ‘ungoverned’ parts” – as when US Ambassador to Syria Robert Ford and US Senator John McCain just strolled illegally across the border of the sovereign Syrian state.
Sweep aside these ‘impressions’ and bury them well. The Syrian government of Bashar al-Assad is viewed by the United Nations as the only legitimate government in Syria. Every official UN interaction with the state is directed at this government. The Syrian seat at the UN is occupied by Ambassador Bashar al-Jaafari, a representative of Assad’s government. It doesn’t matter how many Syrian embassies in how many capitals are shut down – or how many governments-in-exile are established. The UN only recognizes one.
As one UN official told me in private: “Control of surface territory doesn’t count. The government of Kuwait when its entire territory was occupied by Iraq – and it was in exile – was still the legitimate government of Kuwait. The Syrian government could have 10 percent of its surface left – the decision of the UN Security Council is all that matters from the perspective of international law, even if other governments recognize a new Syrian government.”
Countdown to more illegal airstrikes?
If there was any lingering doubt about the illegality of coalition activities in Syria, the Syrian government put these to rest in September, in two letters to the UNSC that denounced foreign airstrikes as unlawful:
“If any State invokes the excuse of counter-terrorism in order to be present on Syrian territory without the consent of the Syrian Government whether on the country’s land or in its airspace or territorial waters, its action shall be considered a violation of Syrian sovereignty.”
Yet still, upon the adoption of UNSC Resolution 2249 last Friday, US Deputy Representative to the United Nations Michele Sison insisted that “in accordance with the UN Charter and its recognition of the inherent right of individual and collective self-defense,” the US would use “necessary and proportionate military action” in Syria.
The website for the European Journal of International Law (EJIL) promptly pointed out the obvious:
“The resolution is worded so as to suggest there is Security Council support for the use of force against IS. However, though the resolution, and the unanimity with which it was adopted, might confer a degree of legitimacy on actions against IS, the resolution does not actually authorize any actions against IS, nor does it provide a legal basis for the use of force against IS either in Syria or in Iraq.”
On Thursday, UK Prime Minister David Cameron plans to unveil his new “comprehensive strategy” to tackle ISIS, which we are told will include launching airstrikes in Syria.
We already know the legal pretext he will spin – “unwilling and unable,” Article 51, UN Charter, individual and collective self-defense, and so forth.
But if Cameron’s September 7 comments at the House of Commons are any indication, he will use the following logic to argue that the UK has no other choice than to resort to ‘use of force’ in Syria. In response to questions about two illegal drone attacks targeting British nationals in Syria, the prime minister emphasized:
“These people were in a part of Syria where there was no government, no one to work with, and no other way of addressing this threat… When we are dealing with people in ISIL-dominated Syria—there is no government, there are no troops on the ground—there is no other way of dealing with them than the route that we took.”
But Cameron does have another route available to him – and it is the only ‘legal’ option for military involvement in Syria.
If the UK’s intention is solely to degrade and destroy ISIS, then it must request authorization from the Syrian government to participate in a coordinated military campaign that could help speed up the task.
If Western (and allied Arab) leaders can’t stomach dealing with the Assad government on this issue, then by all means work through an intermediary – like the Russians – who can coordinate and authorize military operations on behalf of their Syrian ally.
The Syrian government has said on multiple occasions that it welcomes sincere international efforts to fight terrorism inside its territory. But these efforts must come under the direction of a central legal authority that can lead a broad campaign on the ground and in the air.
The West argues that, unlike in Iraq, it seeks to maintain the institutions of the Syrian state if Assad were to step down. The SAA is one of these ‘institutions’ – why not coordinate with it now?
But after seven weeks of Russian airstrikes coordinated with extensive ground troops (which the coalition lacks), none of these scenarios may even be warranted. ISIS and other extremist groups have lost ground in recent weeks, and if this trend continues, coalition states should fall back and focus on other key ISIS-busting activities referenced in UNSCR 2249 – squeezing terror financing, locking down key borders, sharing intelligence…”all necessary measures” to destroy this group.
If the ‘international community’ wants to return ‘peace and stability’ to the Syrian state, it seems prudent to point out that its very first course of action should be to stop breaking international law in Syria.
Sharmine Narwani is a commentator and analyst of Middle East geopolitics. She is a former senior associate at St. Antony’s College, Oxford University and has a master’s degree in International Relations from Columbia University. Sharmine has written commentary for a wide array of publications, including Al Akhbar English, the New York Times, the Guardian, Asia Times Online, Salon.com, USA Today, the Huffington Post, Al Jazeera English, BRICS Post and others. You can follow her on Twitter at @snarwani
Mastermind of The Bamako Terror Attack Mokhtar Belmokhtar: A CIA Sponsored “Intelligence Asset”?
By Michel Chossudovsky | Global Research | November 22, 2015
In response to the tragic Paris events of November 13, Central Intelligence Agency director John Brennan warned that “ISIL is planning additional attacks… It is clear to me that ISIL has an external agenda, that they are determined to carry out these types of attacks.” (Quoted in Daily Telegraph, November 16, 2015)
Five days later following the CIA Chief’s premonition, the Bamako Radisson Hotel Blu in Mali’s capital was the object of a terrorist attack, resulting in 21 people dead. Following the attack and the taking of hostages by the terrorists, French and Malian special forces raided the hotel. US. Africa Command (AFRICOM) also confirmed that US special forces were involved.
The Bamako terror operation was allegedly coordinated by Mokhtar Belmokhtar (aka Khaled Abu al-Abbas), leader of an affiliate of Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM), the Islamist al-Mulathameen (Masked) Brigade, or “Those who Sign with Blood.”
Belmokhtar’s group was created in 2012 in the wake of the war on Libya. His organization has also allegedly been involved in the drug trade, smuggling as well kidnapping operations of foreigners in North Africa. While his whereabouts are said to be known, French intelligence has dubbed Belmokhtar “the uncatchable”.
In June he was reported dead as a result in a U.S. air strike in Libya. His death was subsequently denied.
Based on shaky evidence, The New York Times report below (November 20) concludes that Belmokhtar’s group (together with AQIM) is unequivocally behind the Bamako attacks:
A member of Al Qaeda in Africa confirmed Saturday that the attack Friday on a hotel in Bamako, Mali, had been carried out by a jihadist group loyal to Mokhtar Belmokhtar, an Algerian operative for Al Qaeda. The Qaeda member, who spoke via an online chat, said that an audio message and a similar written statement in which the group claimed responsibility for the attack were authentic. The SITE Intelligence Group, which monitors jihadist groups, also confirmed the authenticity of the statement.
The Qaeda member, who refused to be named for his protection, said that Mr. Belmokhtar’s men had collaborated with the Saharan Emirate of Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, … In the audio recording, the group, known as Al Mourabitoun, says it carried out the operation in conjunction with Al Qaeda’s branch in the Islamic Maghreb.
The recording was released to the Al Jazeera network and simultaneously to Al Akhbar, … The recording states: “We, in the group of the Mourabitoun [Arabic Rebel Group], in cooperation with our brothers in Al Qaeda in Islamic Maghreb, the great desert area, claim responsibility for the hostage-taking operation in the Radisson hotel in Bamako.” (emphasis added)
The SITE Intelligence Group is presented as an “independent” Washington think tank with a mandate of analyzing data pertaining to Al Qaeda affiliated terror organizations. SITE is also on contract with a number of US government agencies and has close links to US intelligence.
SITE has provided no substantive evidence which supports the authenticity of the online audio chat recording, which is considered as a reliable source. The story could have been planted.
Following the audio release, the Western media in chorus immediately pointed to an act of revenge directed against the French Republic in response to France’s 2013 military intervention in Mali, which had been ordered by President Francois Hollande.
“France saved Mali from al-Qaeda but it never broke terror threat”. “France saved northern Mali from al-Qaeda’s brutal rule … But the country is still beholden to outsiders and, as events at the Radisson hotel have demonstrated, acutely vulnerable to the worst of terrorism” (The Independent, November 20, 2015)
Screenshot The Independent, November 20, 2015
In turn, the French Minister of Defense acknowledged –prior to the conduct of a police investigation– that the authors of the attack were “most likely” led by Mokhtar Belmokhtar’s group in association with Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM).
What Defense Minister Jean-Yves Le Drain failed to mention was that both Belmokhtar and AQIM have longstanding links to the CIA, which in turn has a working relationship with France’s General Directorate for External Security, Direction générale de la sécurité extérieure (DGSE).
Casually ignored by the Western media, the leaders of Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) including Belmokhtar were trained and recruited by the CIA in Afghanistan. Acknowledged by the Washington based Council on Foreign Relations (CFR):
Most of AQIM’s major leaders are believed to have trained in Afghanistan during the 1979-1989 war against the Soviets as part of a group of North African volunteers known as “Afghan Arabs” that returned to the region and radicalized Islamist movements in the years that followed. The group is divided into “katibas” or brigades, which are clustered into different and often independent cells.
The group’s top leader, or emir, since 2004 has been Abdelmalek Droukdel, also known as Abou Mossab Abdelwadoud, a trained engineer and explosives expert who has fought in Afghanistan and has roots with the GIA in Algeria. (Council on Foreign Relations, Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, cfr.org, undated)
Saudi born terror mastermind Osama bin Laden was recruited in 1979 ironically under the auspices of the CIA. The training, recruitment and indoctrination of Mujahideen launched in 1979 was considered to be “the largest covert operation in the history of the CIA” in response the Soviet Union’s military support of the pro-Communist secular Afghan government of Babrak Kamal.
Al Qaeda in Arabic means “the Base”. What it referred to was the CIA’s “Database” of Mujahideen recruits who were referred to by President Ronald Reagan as “freedom fighters”:
Shortly before his untimely death, former British Foreign Secretary Robin Cook told the House of Commons that “Al Qaeda” is not really a terrorist group but a database of international mujaheddin and arms smugglers used by the CIA and Saudis to funnel guerrillas, arms, and money into Soviet-occupied Afghanistan. (See Pierre-Henri Bunel, Al Qaeda: The Database, Global Research, November 20, 2005, emphasis added)
Mokhtar Belmokhtar: Post Cold War CIA intelligence asset?
The Council on Foreign Relations erroneously describes “Mokhtar Belmokhtar as the one-eyed veteran of the anti-Soviet Afghan insurgency.” (CFR, op cit, emphasis added). Belmokhtar (born in 1972) did not fight in the Soviet-Afghan war (1979-1989). He was recruited in 1991 at the age of 19 in the immediate wake of the Cold War.
CIA recruitment continued in the wake of the Cold War. It was in large part directed against the Russian Federation and the former Soviet Republics as well as the Middle East.
The purpose of this later CIA recruitment was to establish a network of “intelligence assets” to be used in the CIA’s post-cold war insurgencies. Leaders of the Chechen Islamist insurgencies were also trained in CIA camps in Afghanistan and Pakistan, including the notorious leader of the Chechen insurrection Ibn al-Khattab (a citizen of Saudi Arabia).
Following his training and recruitment and a two year stint in Afghanistan (1991-1993), Mokhtar Belmokhtar was sent back to Algeria in 1993 at age 21 where he joined the Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat (GSPC) (emblem left). The latter was initially part of the so-called Armed Islamic Group (Groupe islamique armé (GIA)) in Algeria which sought to overthrow the secular Algerian Government with a view to installing a theocratic Islamic State.
Supported covertly by the CIA, Belmokhtar fought in Southern Algeria in the civil war opposing Islamist forces and the secular government. He was also instrumental in the integration and merging of “jihadist” forces.
In January 2007, the Armed islamic Group (GIA) which had been prominent in the 1990s, officially changed its name to the Al-Qaeda Organization in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM).
In turn, as of 2007, the newly formed AQIM established a close relationship with the Libya Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG), which was directly supported by NATO during the 2011 war on Libya, “providing weapons, training, special forces and even aircraft to support them in the overthrow of Libya’s government.” (Tony Cartalucci, The Geopolitical Reordering of Africa: US Covert Support to Al Qaeda in Northern Mali, France “Comes to the Rescue”, Global Research, January 2013).
British SAS Special Forces had also been brought into Libya prior to the onset of the insurrection, acting as military advisers to the LIFG.
In fact, what has unfolded since the war on Libya is the merging of LIFG and AQIM forces. In turn, many of the LIFG operatives have been dispatched to Syria to fight within the ranks of Al Nusrah and the ISIS.
Robert Stephen Ford, US Ambassador to Algeria (2006-2008)
It is worth noting that the 2007 restructuring of jihadist forces in Algeria and the Maghreb coincided with the appointment of Robert Stephen Ford as US ambassador to Algeria in August 2006. Ford had been reassigned by the State Department from Baghdad to Algiers. From 2004 to 2006, he worked closely with Ambassador John Negroponte at the US embassy in Baghdad in supporting the creation of both Shia and Sunni death squads in Iraq.
This project consisted in recruiting and training terrorists modelled on the so-called “Salvador Option” which had been applied by the CIA in Central America. Negroponte as we recall played a central role in supporting the Contras terrorists in Nicaragua as ambassador to Honduras from 1981-1985. For further details see Michel Chossudovsky, “The Salvador Option For Syria”: US-NATO Sponsored Death Squads Integrate “Opposition Forces”, Global Research, May 28, 2012)
The 2006 appointment of Robert Stephen Ford to head the US Embassy in Algeria was timely. It coincided with the consolidation of jihadist groups within Algeria and the Maghreb. It preceded the 2011 US-NATO sponsored insurrections in Libya and Syria.
In 2010, Ford was approved by the US Congress as US Ambassador to Syria. He presented his credentials to president Bashar al Assad in January 2011, barely two months prior to the onslaught of the terrorist insurrection in the border city of Daraa in mid-March 2011. Ford played a central role in assisting the channelling of US and allied support to Syrian “opposition” groups including Al Nusrah and the ISIS.
Concluding Remarks
Belmokhtar’s history and involvement in Afghanistan confirms that from the very outset he was an instrument of US intelligence. While, he operates with a certain degree of independence and autonomy in relation to his intelligence sponsors, he and his organization are bona fide CIA “intelligence assets”, which can be used by the CIA as part of a covert agenda.
There are various definitions of an “intelligence asset”. From the standpoint of US intelligence, “assets” linked up to terrorist organizations must not be aware that they are supported and monitored by Western intelligence.
With regard to Al Qaeda, from the outset in 1979, the CIA chose to operate through various front organizations as well as indirectly through its Saudi, Qatari and Pakistani intelligence partners. CIA’s Milton Beardman who played a central role in the Soviet Afghan war confirms that members of Al Qaeda including Osama bin Laden were not aware of the role they were playing on behalf of Washington. In the words of bin Laden (quoted by Beardman): “neither I, nor my brothers saw evidence of American help”(Michel Chossudovsky, Who is Osama bin Laden, Global Research, September 12, 2001):
Motivated by nationalism and religious fervor, the Islamic warriors were unaware that they were fighting the Soviet Army on behalf of Uncle Sam. While there were contacts at the upper levels of the intelligence hierarchy, Islamic rebel leaders in theatre had no contacts with Washington or the CIA. (Ibid)
Amply documented, Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM)and its affiliated groups including the Libya Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG) was serving the interests of the Western military alliance. Confirmed by the Washington Post, June 29, 2011 (See below), France was supplying weapons to the LIFG at the height of NATO’s bombing raids.
AQIM in turn was receiving weapons from the LIFG, which was supported by NATO. Moreover, LIFG mercenaries had integrated AQIM brigades.
According to alleged Terror Mastermind Mokhtar Belmokhtar, who also coordinated the 2013 In Amenas Mali kidnapping operation:
“We have been one of the main beneficiaries of the revolutions in the Arab world. As for our benefiting from the (Libyan) weapons, this is a natural thing in these kinds of circumstances.” http://www.hanford.gov/c.cfm/oci/ci_terrorist.cfm?dossier=174
Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) is indelibly tied into a Western intelligence agenda. While it is described as ”one of the region’s wealthiest, best-armed militant groups”, financed covertly by Saudi Arabia and Qatar. France’s Canard enchaîné revealed (June 2012) that Qatar (a staunch ally of the United States) has been funding various terrorist entities in Mali:
The original report cites a French military intelligence report as indicating that Qatar has provided financial support to all three of the main armed groups in northern Mali: Iyad Ag Ghali’s Ansar Ed-Dine, al-Qa’ida in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) and the Movement for Unity and Jihad in West Africa (MUJWA).
The amount of funding given to each of the groups is not mentioned but it mentions that repeated reports from the French DGSE to the Defense Ministry have mentioned Qatar’s support for ‘terrorism’ in northern Mali. (quoted by Jeune Afrique June 2012)
Qatar is a proxy state, a de facto Persian Gulf territory largely controlled by Washington. It hosts a number of Western military and intelligence facilities.
The Emir of Qatar does not finance terrorism without the consent of the CIA.
And with regard to Mali, the CIA coordinates its activities in liaison with its French intelligence partners and counterparts, including la Direction du renseignement militaire (DRM) and the Direction générale de la sécurité extérieure (DGSE).
The implications are obvious and should be carefully understood by Western public opinion. Inasmuch as Belmokhtar and AQIM are “intelligence assets”, both US and French intelligence are (indirectly) behind the Bamako attacks.
Both US and French intelligence are complicit in the State sponsorship of terrorism.
PARIS & the City of ‘ISIS’: Major Occult Symbolism, Hypnosis & the Massive Psy-Op Now Underway…
The Burning Blogger Of Bedlam | November 24, 2015
A week now after the attacks in Paris that news broadcasters keep telling us has “changed the world forever”, it looks less and less likely that this was a straightforward ISIL terrorist attack and more likely that something much more sinister may have gone on.
And not just a staged, false-flag operation, but a pre-fabricated, mass Psy-Op designed to bring about radical changes and to shape or re-configure public perception and psychology.
It has become evident to me *why* it was Paris and why it was Friday 13th; the answers are unsettling. I will get to the significant occult symbolism shortly.
But any time we’re told over and over again that something “has changed the world forever”, we’re best served to be suspicious. In regard to terror attacks, the only other time this mass psychological conditioning has occurred was with 9/11, which probably did change the world forever and which we were repeatedly *told* would change the world forever. Other terror attacks have simply been treated as precisely that: as terror attacks – 7/7, Boston, and others weren’t sold to us as ‘world changing’ or historic, but just as terrorism.
The 13/11 Paris attack seemed pre-packaged from the start as something much more important. This is mass psychological programming we’re witnessing right now; and everyone should pay attention so they can observe how it works.
The mainstream media all over the Western world was on virtual 24-hour Paris coverage for days. In the UK, BBC News 24 reported on virtually nothing else. On Sunday, I watched even the UK’s Channel 4 news do a one-hour news special from Paris, forsaking all other world news. It didn’t show or report on anything new that hadn’t already been reported on the Saturday, but seemed to exist purely to amplify the mass hysteria and sense of historic, world-changing drama.
This weekend, the English Premier League was to play the French anthem before all football matches.
Facebook asking all its billions of users whether they wanted to change their icon to incorporate the French flag?
On the one hand, it’s a nice sentiment to show solidarity with the Paris victims. On the other hand, where was this sentiment in previous tragedies or losses of life? The Houla massacre in Syria? The relentless Saudi-led decimation of Yemen? The downing of a Russian passenger plane in the Sina? Five years of civilian casualties in Syria? ISIL massacres in Iraq last year? Or even natural disasters like earthquakes or tsunamis? Why is it only for Paris that Facebook tries to guilt-trip its scores of users into showing solidarity? To be fair, I was surprised by how many people seemed to react badly to this and ask the same question; but maybe that’s just the circles I tend to roll in, because I did see lots of users changing their icons like they were told to. You Tube, Amazon and others got in on the symbolism too.
This psychological operation was best exemplified by the lighting-up of various landmarks across the world in French colors, again to show solidarity. This actually seemed to happen suspiciously quickly in some cases, particularly the World Trade Center site.
Again, this was never done for the quarter-of-a-million dead in Syria or for the children of Yemen, or for the thousands of Palestinians killed by Israel’s bombardment of the Gaza Strip last year, etc. And I don’t believe it’s just because ‘white lives matter’ or anything like that, but more specifically because we are all *meant* to have focused deeply on Paris and what we’re told was happening.
These aren’t just friendly gestures. These images and gestures are designed to imprint themselves onto our minds, to shape our psychology.
We’re supposed to believe and always remember that Friday 13th 2015 ‘changed the world forever’, just as 9/11 changed the world forever. And we’re supposed to understand that the whole civilised world (including Qatar, which hilariously also lit up a landmark in French colors, despite being a primary funder of ISIL and terrorism) has united against this terrible, demonic ‘threat’ to civilisation and that we’re all together in both accepting the official narrative of what happened and in regarding ourselves and our societies as somehow the great ‘victim’ of the entire narrative.
It’s this mass identification with victimhood that is the main part of the Psy-Op. Never mind the hundreds of thousands dead in Syria on account of Western-funded terrorism. Never mind the million-plus Iraqis dead from Western, US-led aggression or the permanent erasing of the nation of Libya from existence by a French-led, illegal military operation. And most of all, never mind the fact that ‘ISIS’ is largely our creation.
No, the West is the victim; wealthy and eternal Paris, just like wealthy, eternal New York, is the victim.
Everyone is told, both overtly and subliminally, ‘focus all of your grief and sympathy here’ in Paris or New York and not in Aleppo or Mosul, Tripoli or Gaza.
That’s the Psy-Op. People are so mass-media reliant that they’ll only mourn who they’re told to mourn, while they’ll vilify who they’re told to vilify, and they’ll come together in their masses to mark one tragedy, while entirely ignoring another tragedy going on elsewhere. Now this mass-media manipulation goes on all the time, of course, and not just in terms of the CIA’s famous ‘Operation Mockinbird’ program; but every now and then major events like Paris or 9/11 are created to more aggressively, more overtly, focus everyone’s attention and emotion, so that the great masses of people can all be hypnotically, subliminally and overtly conditioned by the same event and the same symbols and at the same moment in time.
That shared, collective trauma is a shared, collective psychological conditioning that can inform our world-view on an emotional and subliminal level, even if our *intellect* thinks there’s something not right about the narrative.
Wikepdia defines Psy-Ops as ‘planned operations to convey selected information and indicators to audiences to influence their emotions, motives, objective reasoning, and ultimately the behavior of governments, organizations, groups, and individuals’. That’s as good a description as you could get of what appears to have happened in Paris.
This has looked more and more like a planned psy-op, a scripted drama, a trauma-based collective hypnosis, as the days have passed; all perfectly designed to draw everyone in and create a permanently resonating ‘moment in time’ that everyone will look back to as a justification for whatever is going to happen now or later. 9/11 served the same purpose, so that no matter what happened in Iraq or in the War on Terror, people – especially Americans – could look back to 9/11 and their collective emotional trauma, with all its accompanying images, as justification for anything the American military-industrial complex and Neo-Con regime subsequently did. That’s partly why George W. Bush was able to win a second term (even though he hadn’t actually won his first term), and why the American State Department is able to continue peddling nonsensical, insane ideas and statements with a straight face and why mainstream media is able to play out ludicrously fake narratives. Because ‘Never Forget 9/11’.
It’s a way of shutting down debate by forcing everyone to focus on symbols, catchphrases and emotions (and permanent association of specific emotions with those symbols). ‘Pray For Paris’, ‘Je Suis Charlie’, ‘Never Forget’, etc, are all designed to be emotional triggers or ‘trigger-words’.
Hypnosis often works a similar way; by what are known as ‘key words’ or ‘triggers’. A simple trigger word or trigger phrase can be employed by a hypnotist to evoke specific associated feelings or perceptions in their subject.
All that’s necessary is for the trigger word, phrase or symbol to be firmly planted in the subject’s emotional memory and psychology first. Events like 9/11 and 13/11 can be therefore be seen in many ways as a mass hypnosis almost on a par with the Nuremberg Rallies.
Don’t misunderstand; I’m not comparing the modern French or American states with Nazism in any moral or ideological terms; I’m simply talking about the power of imagery and dramatic moments as psychological conditioning. The power of mass hypnosis centering around ideas or symbols was something masterfully used by the Nazis. At Hitler’s personal request, a 31-year-old actress and movie director named Leni Riefenstahl filmed an entire week-long rally, producing an extraordinary film record, utilising many unique camera angles and dramatic lighting effects. Riefenstahl’s finished masterpiece was called Triumph of the Will.
It was a similar business after the Charlie Hebdo attack, which involved mass gatherings, a popular catchphrase, and mass solidarity events in different parts of the world. I wrote back then that the ’emotionally-charged issue is serving to engulf the masses in the fog of a trauma-based emotional reaction (further amplified by the experience and imagery of the marches in Paris and elsewhere) and is preventing people from looking beyond that fog’.
That is even more the case now in the wake of this latest attack, where it isn’t only the large gatherings and vigils or the minute’s silence, but the evocative visual stimuli of world landmarks and the social conditioning of Facebook icons. The message all of this instills isn’t just about fearing terrorists, but it is designed to also instill the idea that Western societies – in this instance the great symbolic city of Paris – are the innocent victims in everything that’s happening in the world and that anything Western states do in response is merely justified retaliation. ‘Pray For Paris’, because Paris is the victim; don’t pray for Syrians, because that’s where the Bad Guys came from.
Even children who’ve been seeing all this coverage are going to be conditioned by it to view the world a certain way, just as lots of children on 9/11 were conditioned for life.
Another interesting thing about hypnosis is that it can be induced via crippling fear. In human terms, it’s a much more psychologically complex version of the trance-like state you can induce in certain animals, like a mouse, by startling it with sudden movement or noise. Fear and anxiety can also make people more docile, more susceptible to things they might otherwise not be. This is particularly relevant in France, a society that, in normal circumstances, cherishes liberty above all else.
Fear and trauma also don’t allow you to think straight or reason properly. Many of the people who were attacked in Paris on Friday 13th probably have even had their suspicions about the emerging narrative. But when you’re abruptly caught up in terrifying or horrific events like that and you’re shaken and traumatised, all you want is to be safe and to be assured of your safety. In all the confusion and panic of Friday 13th, it is impossible to tell how many people caught up in the events of that night were crisis actors and how many were complete innocents with no idea what was going on; certainly some of them, especially some of those we’ve seen on film, were actors (in the same vein as in the Boston Marathon bombing), but the majority probably had no idea what was happening and might not have thought they were under attack by ‘ISIS’ until they got home and turned on the TV and were told.
Had they not been told they’d been attacked by ISIL, they might’ve been telling a very different story about what happened. This is already evident in some of the eyewitness testimony we’ve had that contradicts the official narrative.
The celebrity involvement is also tediously employed to further glamorise the drama and make it all the more relatable for a dumbed-down, celebrity-obsessed TV audience, particularly in America. This is seen in scripted dramas like an American TV personality claiming his daughter was at the Stade de France and then later saying she was at the Bataclan. It all seems to be part of a real-world ‘movie’ production being played out. What I have observed, disturbingly (and reluctantly), in the past week is that masses of people, not just in France but everywhere, are being psychologically programmed.
You, your children, your grandmother, even your little kitty-kat, are all being majorly mind-fucked. I was too; but only for about an hour. As soon as it became obvious they had no footage whatsoever of any explosions at the Stade de France, I was thankfully snapped out of any mass-induced trance immediately.
Furthermore, ‘ISIS’ itself is a massive Psy-Op designed to create fear and anxiety in the West and exacerbate racial and cultural tension and mistrust, all the while being used to achieve Geo-political objectives in Libya (already accomplished), Syria (pending), and the rest of the Middle East (as per the Zionist/Yinon Plan and US/Neo-Con agenda). Lebanon will be next, but no one cares because we’re all too busy watching Paris.
‘ISIS’ is in fact the ultimate Psy-Op. Even the name ‘ISIS‘ was invented by Western media, probably following directions from intelligence agencies. The jihadists in Iraq and Syria call themselves ‘ISIL’, and the Arabs call them by the derogatory name ‘Daesh’; ‘ISIS’ is a Psy-Op name the media continues to use because it has occult connotations and ancient connotations of the Egyptian Goddess, and – I suspect – because it phonetically sounds very similar to ‘SS’ when you say it, bringing to mind associations with the Nazi Stormtroopers. Things like this work on a subliminal level, but help to convince the broader population that ‘ISIS’ is the new ‘SS’ and that a Third World War may be necessary, just as the Second World War was.
And the idea is frequently put across now that this is a grave threat to Western society on a par with the Nazis and that this attack in Paris was the worst since World War II.
‘ISIS’ also has its menacing black-flag symbol that terrifies peace-loving people in the West, just as the Nazi swatsika became a symbol of evil decades ago; even though the swastika itself, prior to the Nazis, wasn’t a negative symbol at all – just as the Koranic script on the ‘ISIS’ flag doesn’t represent anything remotely ‘evil’, but is made to seem so. It is intended to terrify and program people on multiple levels, some of it overt, some of it subliminal. Daily ‘ISIS’ stories in mainstream newspapers are part of the long-playing Psy-Op, designed to condition people to be afraid of this terrible, inhuman threat from the East.
And in actual fact, the emergence of ISIL in the Middle East in many ways was also a Psy-Op conducted against populations in parts of Iraq and Syria (and Libya subsequently), with populations being – certainly in the early stages – terrified by what they were seeing and the stories they were hearing. This was something I touched upon when writing about Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi.
Last summer, when I first heard that a mysterious figure named ‘Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi’ was being declared “the leader of all Muslims everywhere” by ‘Islamic State’ propagandists, it was one of the most disturbing things I had heard in a while; but I also clearly recognised it as a major, major piece of psychological warfare being conducted against Muslims in part of Iraq, Syria and beyond, and that it was cleverly rooted in Islamic prophecy concerning the End of the World. It was all designed to confuse, terrify and even bewitch some people, particularly young men, in those places; because here comes an ultra-violent group, spouting prophecy, massively funded, armed with Western weapons and vehicles, clearly supported from the outside by powerful backers, and declaring a holy, puritan Caliphate – that in itself is a big-time Psy-Op. According to a Brigadier General Kevin Bergner, a chief American military spokesman of the Iraq campaign, Baghdadi never even existed and was actually a fictional character whose audio-taped declarations were provided by an elderly actor.
Even the name Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi is designed to be divisive and inflammatory; as the original ‘Abu Bakr’ was the first Caliph of the first Caliphate and is also seen as a symbol of the schism between Sunni and Shia Islam.
__________________
So it can be seen that a major psychological conditioning has been going on right across the board, engulfing minds and collective mind-sets in different parts of the world, most of it regarded as ‘post-9/11’. But the Friday 13th attacks in Paris and the subsequent outpouring of emotion, fear and anxiety, coupled with the heavy symbolism and focus is all designed to be a massive hypnotic/brainwashing amplifier that works at different levels of consciousness, some subtle, some overt.
And some of it occult in nature; which is the level at which the symbolism speaks to those ‘in the know’, but is missed by the majority of us plebeians.
Some non-linear thinking exposes possibilities that might explain why Paris was the site of the attacks, why Friday 13th was the chosen date, what is invoked or signified in the locations chosen, and what it may all be about.
It may be worth noting, as some others have, that Friday 13th is a date of occult significance, partly because it was the date the Knights Templar were betrayed and massacred in Paris in 1307, from which point – according to the legends – the Order’s occult or secret knowledge went underground to be preserved only by secret societies. It is believed by some – and possibly incorrectly – that the Templars were Satanists. That may be more a case of politically-motivated demonisation from the era (the authorities wanted a reason to steal the Templars’ immense wealth), but what certainly is accepted is that they were an Order of great occult significance.
These curiosities are in addition to the broader fact that Paris itself is historically a city of great occult or esoteric significance, a capital city for secret societies, and, like Washington DC and the City of London, believed by many to be laid out according to esoteric symbolism. In fact, Washington DC’s unique design was the work of Frenchman Pierre Charles L’Enfant. The esoteric city-plan of Paris and its national monuments was the subject of a book by Robert Bauval and Graham Hancock called Talisman: Sacred Cities, Secret Faith.
Even aside from that, however, the Knights Templar are particularly significant because they were the first international banking elite/cartel and were a model not only for subsequent and current secret societies but also for subsequent banking elites. The Templars also financed European Crusades and wars of aggression in the Middle East and oversaw the theft of wealth from the Muslim world, so they have great significance right across the board. It is also thought by many that these Crusades, conducted by barbaric religious fanatics from Europe (the ‘Daesh’ of their day, if you like), were what provoked Islamic societies into becoming more aggressive. This was at a time when the Islamic world was still quite close in time to its ‘Golden Age’, in which science, philosophy, medicine and astronomy had flourished and cities like Damascus, Cairo and Baghdad were great seats of learning while most of Europe was still mired in religious intolerance and persecution, with brutal inquisitions going on and people being burnt or tortured left, right and centre.
The date Friday 13th – especially in regard to the city of Paris – is highly symbolically significant. But the Templars aren’t the only factor. The Church of Saint Peter of Montmartre (pictured above) is the oldest surviving church in Paris and was held to be the location at which the vows were taken that led to the founding of the Society of Jesus, better known as the Jesuit Order. Jesuit conspiracy theories, particularly the earliest ones, often focused on the personality of Adam Weishaupt, a Professor of Canon Law at a Jesuit school who went on to found the Bavarian Order of the Illuminati.
I’ve usually kept a distance from modern fascination with ‘the Illuminati’ or the occult in general; I don’t particularly regard ‘the occult’ with any kind of disapproval or see it through any religious lens, so conspiracy-lore ‘Illuminati’ obsession isn’t something that has particularly interested me. However, there are times – and this Paris business is one of those times – where the symbolism and connection is so obvious that it becomes difficult to ignore it, even for someone who prefers to steer clear of it.
Wikipedia further highlights that Weishaupt was accused of being ‘the secret leader of the New World Order, and even of being the Devil himself’.
Now, let me just state this: the issue is not whether people like you or I believe in these religious or even occult concepts or realities, but it’s about understanding that *other people* and organisations *do* believe in these things. And in their world, all these things are symbolically significant and have symbolic/esoteric power. It’s the same reason that it is significant that Princess Diana was killed close to the site of the ancient Temple of Diana in Paris. I don’t demonise the ‘occult’ any more than I would demonise Christianity or Islam; in all three cases, my problem is with what specific organisations, networks and people are doing, and not about what belief system or mythology they happen to be co-opting or abusing in order to do it.
What’s fascinating is that both the Knights Templar and the Jesuit Order are claimed by contrary theorists to be both the source of Freemasonry and of the modern banking elite; and in regard to the city of Paris, both the Templars and Jesuits are historically significant.
But get this: getting back to the Jesuit Order and the Church of Saint Peter of Montmartre; according to its traditional history, the church was founded by Saint Denis in the third century, and moreover, Théodore Vacquier, the first municipal archaeologist of Paris, identified remains on the site belonging to the ancient Temple of Mars, from which Montmartre took its name. Mars was of course the God of War; and if there was one immediate thing these Paris attacks brought about it was Francois Hollande’s declaration that this was “an act of war” and France now would wage war in Syria. Hollande is known to be a high-ranking Masonic figure, and indeed French politics and high office are known to be riddled with masons; and to such men, symbols, invocations and reenactments are hugely important.
In that context, we can also note that the band playing at the Bataclan theatre on Friday 13th – the Eagles of Death Metal – are led by a musician who calls himself ‘the Devil’ (and who, like a lot of famous musicians, has been seen in recent years making occult signals and symbols – it’s only certain musicians and celebrities who seem to do this, probably because they’re very low-level initiates or fodder in secret fraternities), and more remarkably that the song they were reported to have been playing at the moment the unknown gunmen came in and began the massacre was titled ‘Kiss the Devil’, which begins with the lyrics ‘Who’ll love the Devil/Who’ll sing his song?’
Both the date of the attack and the nature of the performers at the Bataclan have led some to suggest the massacre was an occult or Satanic ‘blood sacrifice’ carried out as a symbolic sacrifice by those ‘in the know’; this could’ve therefore been, in part, a sacrifice to Mars, the God of War – and moreover as the event with which to literally *declare war*, as Hollande of course immediately did.
If you think I’m going off on one here, please note that the illegal operation to invade Iraq (2003) and the illegal operation to destroy Gaddafi and Libya (2011) both occurred on March 19th, and March 19th is the traditional date that celebrates the Roman goddess of war, Minerva; and Minerva is thought by some to be a particularly revered mythical figure in Masonic societies. According to John Robison’s Proofs of a Conspiracy (published in 1798), the third degree of the Bavarian Illuminati was called ‘Minerval’ or ‘Brother of Minerva’, in honour of the goddess. Later, this title was also adopted as the first level of initiation for the world-famous, notorious occultist/Satanist Aleister Crowley’s OTO rituals.
Robison was a renowned and accomplished Scottish physicist and mathematician and professor of philosophy. Following the French Revolution, Robison was suspicious about what had really been behind it and he had become disenchanted with elements of the Enlightenment; his 1798 book accused Freemasonry of having been infiltrated by Weishaupt’s ‘Order of the Illuminati’.
The full, original title of his work was Proofs of a Conspiracy against all the Religions and Governments of Europe.
And further, ‘Saint Denis’ (which, as explained above, is symbolic of the Jesuit church in Paris) is where the Stade de France is located and was also the location the alleged ISIL terrorists were holed up in and the site of the subsequent deadly raid that saw the remaining ‘perpetrators’ killed a few days ago.
So, as I said, even when – like me – you’re someone who usually resists this kind of area of discussion, there comes a point where the symbolism is so pronounced that you can’t really ignore it anymore.
What’s even more fascinating than all of that, however, is the pre-existing connection between the city of Paris and the goddess Isis. Paris was thought to be a center for the worship of Isis and the location of a major Temple of Isis.
As early as the 15th century AD, Parisian historians believed that the city of Paris owed its very name to Isis.
In 1512, the French historian Lemaire de Belge reported that an idol of the goddess Isis had been worshipped in the Abbey of St. Germain-des-Pres in Paris. The same belief was reported by Gilles Corrozet, the first historian to produce a comprehensive guide of the city. In 1550 Corrozet wrote, ‘… coming to the imposition of the name (of Paris), it is said that there, where stands St. Germain-des-Pres was a temple of Isis of whom it is said was the wife of the great Osiris or Jupiter the Just. The statue (of Isis) having come in our times, of which we recall… This place is called the Temple of Isis and, for the nearby city, this was called Parisis… meaning near the Temple of Isis‘.
New York’s iconic Statue of Liberty, for that matter, is regarded a statue of Isis that was gifted by French Freemasons to the American Freemasons who were the Founding Fathers.
So the manufactured ‘ISIS‘ coming to literally the city of Isis (Paris) to allegedly carry out attacks is just ridiculously rich in occult symbolism. The goddess Isis is, by all accounts, a favorite of occult or Masonic societies (and remember the jihadists don’t call themselves ‘ISIS’, but ISIL, and before that they were called simply ‘Al-Qaeda in Iraq’). For the record, I’m not saying there’s anything inherently wrong with the worshipping of the Egyptian goddess; it would seem as valid a religious belief as any.
But with all of that as context, the Paris attacks of Friday 13th look very different to what they’re portrayed as.
Whether or not there were any actual ‘jihadists’ on the ground (and there may well have been), when one examines the symbolism and its historic context, what we are looking at might well have been a symbolic false-flag massacre designed not only to pave the way for war, but to signal and announce an occult-inspired push towards what John Robison cited centuries ago as Weishaupt’s and the Bavarian Illuminati’s ‘New World Order’ model. The attack invoked all the necessary symbolic markers – the Templars, the Jesuits, the Bavarian Illuminati and the ‘New World Order’ concept, the God of War, the literal ‘sacrifice’ to the symbolic ‘Devil’ at the Bataclan, and so on.
And that would be why all the deliberate symbolism was invoked – to deliberately signal that fact to all ‘those in the know’, while letting the rest of us think this was simply the work of those terrible, disaffected and stupid, radicalised teenagers.
___________________________
Before I sound like a clichéd conspiracy theorist, however, I’d like to clarify that I don’t necessarily view ‘Masons’ as inherently a negative force, nor do I think a demonisation of the original, eighteenth century Bavarian Illuminati is necessarily historically accurate. The original movement, which was quickly suppressed, seemed to be an intellectual movement to oppose state abuses of power and the excessive influence of religion on public life; and excessive demonisation of Adam Weishaupt may have simply been a case of religious extremists objecting to the Enlightenment and the growth of reason and intellect.
A society or fellowship being secretive isn’t a reason to demonise it; sometimes the secrecy and secret handshakes and signals are necessary for safety purposes; in pre-Enlightenment Europe the church and the enforcers of religious orthodoxy were entirely intolerant of intellectuals and free-thinkers and intelligent people were therefore forced to conduct their gatherings and pursuits in secrecy. It would be comparable to if a ‘guild of liberals’ or a ‘fellowship of reformists’ were to form in modern-day Saudi Arabia – they’d have to meet in secret and develop secret language and vetting procedures to avoid being arrested and even executed.
The question, however, in my view is whether later offshoots or societies simply adopted or co-opted the ‘Illuminati’ ideology (just like co-opting ancient esoteric imagery like Isis, Egyptian mysteries, Roman gods, etc) and developed it in a different, sinister direction. In essence, all ideals or movements, no matter how noble in the first instance, are eventually hijacked or subverted – that is simply the way of the world. This can be seen in all religions, in most political movements, and classically in numerous states or governments that have been based on a high ideal or system only to later become corrupt, oppressive institutions that no longer resemble their original purpose or character.
With that in mind, it seems reasonable to consider that although the original thinkers and individuals behind the early ‘Illuminati’ or secret societies may have been entirely of noble intent and looking to the good of all society, subsequent perversions or subversions of those societies may well be a more sinister force, with collegiate fraternities (Skull and Bones), gentlemen’s clubs (Bohemian Club), and think tanks (Council on Foreign Relations, Trilateral Commission), all being movements of darker intent in the typical conspiracy-lore sense and trying to bring about a ‘New World Order’ based not on the original ideas or ideals but on something altogether more corrupt and sinister; as I said, all movements are eventually corrupted or degraded from within and all high-minded principles co-opted by ambitious men.
I also, for the record, don’t wish to sound like an anti-occult, right-wing religious fundamentalist, as nothing could be further from the truth; I actually have great interest in the ‘occult’, as well as in old mythologies and mystery traditions, including the Isis mythology. And I have no religious or other type of bias and consider myself always a neutral, objective observer.
But in the context of all the symbolism highlighted above, it is more than interesting to note what has happened since last week’s attacks. Rarely has a move towards the classic ‘New World Order’ model seemed so blatant as it seems right now in France.
_________________
Vanessa Beeley, on the Wall Will Fall, has just also put up a very good analysis, which also focuses on controversies over Facebook employing its ‘Safety Check App’ during the Paris operation and an explanation of why this probably wasn’t the friendly or sympathetic act that Facebook wants Parisians to think it was. She also makes the crucial point that ‘The 13/11 Paris attacks with all the accompanying media frenzy will surely lead us further down the path to the implementation of Patriot Act equivalents in Europe’.
In the United States, September 11th 2001 – the Neo-Cons’ predicted and desired “Pearl Harbour” – established a “permanent state of emergency” (the Patriot Act), allowing it to make radical changes domestically and also to launch several imperialist wars of aggression. France’s state of emergency could be paving the way for France and Europe to follow/adopt, or perhaps more accurately to come into line with, the American model.
Francois Hollande gave an historic speech at Versailles on Monday before the upper and lower houses of parliament – only the third time this has happened since 1848 – to declare “France is at war”. The bombing of Syria, on the surface of it, may be an assault on the ‘ISIL’ strongholds, but ultimately this renewed French military operation, in concert with American operations, is aimed at the removal of the Syrian state and the reconfiguration of the country.
France has not only sent out hundreds of its own troops again into the streets, but EU troops, we’re now told, could be sent to France. The EU has opened the door to even Britain sending troops or other specialists to France as part of this ‘state of emergency’. The French state has cited ‘Article 42’, which compels other EU states to send support, including military support.
All of this being to combat a rag-tag group of teenage terrorists that France, NATO, the United States and its allies created in the first place.
Meanwhile the deployment of army soldiers and possible Special Forces could also pave the way for more militarization to come, not limited to France. Earlier this year when the Charlie Hebdo attacks occurred, it wasn’t just France that deployed armed soldiers into the streets, but Belgium followed suit. If further terrorist attacks are to occur in Europe, this all may multiply and spread, drawing us towards the deployment of an ‘EU Army’. The elite Special Reconnaissance Regiment (SRR) are reported to be backing up undercover armed police officers to protect the UK in the wake of the Paris attacks. More than 60 soldiers, including SAS and SRR personnel were deployed after a high-level security meeting was held at MI5.
Moreover, Francois Holland has said the French constitution may need to be altered in order to deal with this terrorist threat, as the country is being prepared for potentially draconian policies, including the possibility of expelling foreigners considered a threat. With the state of emergency stated to extend over three months, the president seeks to expand his own powers and the powers of the state. This is comparable to what is happening in once-secular Turkey, where the ruling AKP government has stated intentions to alter Turkey’s secular constitution, partly in order to combat the very terrorist threat that the Turkish state itself has been enabling against Syria.
Some, even in France, see the dangers of this. “If you give the president powers that have been reserved practically for civil war, that is extremely serious,” said Adrienne Charmet, campaign director for a French digital-rights group, la Quadrature du Net.
These attacks have also occurred only a few months after legislators passed sweeping new surveillance laws affording the government expanded powers to closely monitor the mobile phone and Internet communications of its citizens, including monitoring phone calls and emails without the authorization of a judge. The same law requires Internet service providers to retain and provide mass data on the Web-browsing and general Internet habits of millions of people to intelligence agencies. All of this might be a very effective way of fighting terrorism and thwarting future attacks; but that’s assuming of course that there have been any genuine terrorist attacks.
France has essentially been maneuvering to go the US/NSA route and establish a surveillance super-state based on the American model; a route it can now follow with virtually unanimous public support thanks to the Friday 13th attacks. And where France leads, the EU might follow; and in that scenario, we’ll end up with a NSA-style surveillance super-state that spans the entire Western world, backed up on the ground by armed troops with expanded powers to arrest, confine or eliminate people.
In France, the talk is already of people being legally arrested without trial or charges and about law-enforcement agencies being allowed to break into people’s houses at any time of night and without any search or arrest warrants. This essentially turns parts of France into a situation comparable to occupation-era Iraq.
These are Orwellian ideas, to say the least – and in a society that is traditionally seen as the bastion of libertarian principles.
This isn’t a joke; these powers and the intention behind them allows the state to legally act as ‘thought police’ and to go after anyone it wants at any time it wants, without needing a justification. And the main vehicle for this expansion of control is the Internet. In his 1928 book, The Open Conspiracy, H. G. Wells offered blueprints for a world revolution and ‘world brain’ to establish a technocratic world state and planned economy.
Further to this, as France moves further towards inevitable thought-policing and curtailing of freedom of speech, Hollande has equated “conspiracy theories” to Nazism and is calling for government regulations to prevent the sharing or publishing of any views deemed as ‘dangerous thought’ by the state. Hollande isn’t alone in this implicated maneuver; British Prime Minster David Cameron has already publicly stated that so-called ‘conspiracy theories’ (for ‘conspiracy theories’, read anything that challenged the official narratives) should be deemed as “extremist” and equivalent to “terrorist” and should be stopped/policed on the basis of ‘national security’.
Thierry Meyssan covers that subject more fully on the Voltaire Network. But this is serious, serious territory we’re now in. The alternative media and independent journalism has been a major problem for geo-political and psy-op conspirators for some time, having played a substantial role in exposing the corporate-media misinformation and the various agendas, from the fraud of 9/11 to the false narratives of the War in Syria. Eliminating as much of this alternative media as possible is a major part of the agenda.
It seems therefore that every element of progression needed to move us into the ‘new world order’ paradigm has been serviced by the Friday 13th attacks in Paris.
And the idea that France, and Paris particularly, would be at the centre of this push is in keeping with all the symbolic significance I highlighted earlier, and also in keeping with the historical precedents in regard to the Templars, the Jesuits, the Masonic traditions, and the banking system. Again, for the record, I’m not saying the original Templars, Jesuits or Masons were dark conspirators, but that they are evoked by modern conspirators as powerful symbols and markers.
Also, further ‘terror attacks’, as we’re being constantly told, are imminent. There is almost certainly going to be a major attack in either the UK or the United States very soon, which will serve to reinforce everything evoked or accomplished in the Paris attacks and will therefore hasten any such agenda further.
Moreover, if we are now being pushed towards a changing world order, people in general are now so scared and unsettled that they’re more likely to embrace it than to resist it. As previously suggested, people are currently in the grip of a trauma-based collective conditioning that Friday 13th was probably designed to create and which the mass media has been excessively working to cement.
This entire paradigm was in fact very lucidly laid out by George Lucas in his Star Wars saga, which is easily viewed as a story about false-flag wars in which one source is controlling both sides of the conflict, the ultimate purpose being to end a democratic Republic and turn it into an imperial dictatorship. In the Star Wars saga, it is via a carefully arranged false-flag war that the republic is placed into a ‘state of emergency’ and the political conspirator is granted ’emergency powers’, setting him up as a dictator and paving the way for a totalitarian regime that lasts decades.
This is a particularly good video on Star Wars as a parable for false-flag terrorism and the New World Order, which is really worth a watch. And for anyone who’s never seen the Star Wars prequels, I’d highly recommend you look past the Jar Jar Binks problem and do so. George Lucas in fact clearly had a vision of Star Wars as not just a fantasy or even just a morality play, but as a warning. In fact even in his early notes for early drafts for the first movie in 1977, he wrote that the Empire was “America ten years from now”.
________________________
The actual reality is that ‘ISIS’ *isn’t* any kind of existential threat to ‘the West’, to Europe, to France or to civilisation, certainly nothing like on the level of 1930s fascism or the dangers of the Cold War.
‘ISIS’ is in fact simply a manufactured bogeyman, its rank-and-file consisting mostly of teenagers or disenfranchised young men who’ve been overly influenced by a mixture of Salafist indoctrination, violent, war-based computer gaming and intelligence-agency manipulation.
‘ISIS’ could be completely eliminated with little more than a sustained police-style investigation to identify and arrest recruiters, identify and cut off the sources of financing, identify the people buying oil from them, and identify the source of the arms supplies and put a stop to it. The air-strikes wouldn’t even be necessary. Of course, there’s probably a reason such investigations aren’t conducted; because no government wants to conduct an investigation in which they’d have to implicate or prosecute elements of its own state or call into question the activities of many of its allies. And any genuine investigation of the ISIL nightmare would lead any genuine investigator ultimately not to simply Baghdad or Syria, but to Qatar, Riyadh, Washington, Brussels and other problematic sources.
‘ISIS’ is an existential threat only in one part of the world and that’s the Middle East. It is an existential threat to the people and the nation of Syria and to Iraq and to post-Gaddafi Libya, even to parts of Egypt and possibly Lebanon. In those places, it is a matter of life and death; and not the life and death of just people, but of entire nations, national identities and cultures. But of course ISIL wouldn’t *be* there at all but for the US-led invasion of Iraq, US-led covert ops in Syria and the French-led NATO decimation of Libya.
But in terms of Europe or Western civilisation, ISIL is only a ‘threat’ to whatever extent it is enabled or allowed to be by the real orchestrators of the entire conspiracy. What now appears to be being played out is a very bloody, very disgusting pantomime for various purposes; we may in fact be approaching a Rubicon from which it might be very difficult to turn back.
France Privacy Loss Preceded and Failed to Stop Attacks
Who What Why | November 19, 2015
Is giving up civil liberties in exchange for more “security” from terrorists a good deal?
Here’s a surprisingly candid take from former New York State homeland security adviser Michael Balboni, who was interviewed by New York radio station WNYC on November 17:
“One of the things that is very disturbing about what happened in France is that after the Charlie Hebdo attacks in January, the nation of France undertook some of the most significant and severe surveillance laws, and what I mean by severe is no warrant needed to do real-time monitoring of your emails, and now they’ve suspended any requirements before they do a search,” he said, referencing measures granted to police under France’s state of emergency.
“That’s something we wouldn’t tolerate here in the United States, but nonetheless, even with that, (the attackers) were able to amass this amount of weapons and conduct this.”
Featured Video
Weaponized Journalism: 2021 Sayer Ji Interview with NPR
or go to
Aletho News Archives – Video-Images
From the Archives
How Rothschild Banking Clan Uses Its Vast Wealth to Influence World Events and Control Governments
By Ilya Tsukanov – Sputnik – 15.09.2024
How powerful is the Rothschild banking family? How did they amass their fortune? Just how rich are they? Do they secretly control the world? Sputnik explores. … continue
Blog Roll
Aletho News- London tourism expo promotes Israeli agency linked to theft of Palestinian land
- Dockworkers launch global strike against Israeli and US military shipments
- Europe facing gas price shock – Gazprom chief
- Ukraine continues recruiting people with disabilities
- Weaponized Journalism: 2021 Sayer Ji Interview with NPR
- Beyond Netanyahu: what Israel’s election means for Palestinians
- Lithuania plans universal conscription
- Lies, Damn Lies, and Ukraine News
- Financial Times rejects Nordic demands to correct Putin call story – media
- The Case for Less Unity in Europe
- If Americans Knew
- An error has occurred; the feed is probably down. Try again later.
- No Tricks Zone
- Germany’s Green Energy Transition Becoming Increasingly Expensive…Another 6 Trillion Euros!
- Sudden Stratospheric Warming, Powerful El Niño Combination May Lead To Extreme Europe Cold, Energy Crisis!
- Two New Studies Find Thwaites Glacier Melt Cannot Be Driven By Human Activity Or A Warming Ocean
- E-Cars Reduce CO2 Emissions By Only 41% Compared To Internal Combustion Engine Vehicles
- Predictions Made By Renowned Climate Professor Over Past Decades Have Been Proven To Be Poor
- New Study Suggests Large Regions Of The Pacific Ocean Have Been Cooling For The Last 80 Years
- Germany’s Green Energy Debacle: High Energy Costs Force Kahla Porzellan to Close After 182 Years!
- New Study: 50 Years Of The Most Aggressive ‘Net Zero’ Policies Can Only Affect The Global Climate By 0.03°C
- US September “Heat” Was No Record…Many Records Set Decades Ago
- Latest European Green Energy Debacle; Portugal’s Largest Flagship Solar Park Insolvent!
