Stability Battles Chaos: From London to Aleppo
By Caleb Maupin – New Eastern Outlook – 17.11.2016
For over five years the leaders of the United States, Britain, France, and Germany have been working to topple the Syrian Arab Republic. In their efforts to remove the independent nationalist government led by the Baath Arab Socialist Party, the western imperialist powers have enlisted their collection of petroleum vassals and despots in the nearby area. The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, and Dubai; absolute monarchies that routinely behead, torture, and deny their populations even basic rights like freedom of speech are all sending weapons and training foreign fighters to destabilize Syria in what western leaders still pretend is a fight for “democracy.”
300,000 people are dead. Millions have become refugees. Among the fanatical colossus of anti-government forces in Syria, vile ISIL terrorist organization has emerged, unleashing horrors in Lebanon, Belgium, France, and elsewhere. Yet, western leaders do not end their mantra of “Assad Must Go!” and continue efforts to make the country less stable. It seems not to matter how many innocent people have to die, or how strong the dangerous terrorist “opposition” gets, western leaders seem unwilling to abandon their goal of regime change.
If the Syrian government were to fall, the results would be grim. The Al-Nusra Front, ISIL, and even a number of the forces the US has called “moderate” are devoted to establishing a Sunni caliphate. Syria’s religious minorities, the Christians, the Alawites, and others could face either forced deportation, or even outright extermination.
Russia, along with Iran, China, and Venezuela, have come to the aid of the secular, internationally recognized Syrian government, in the hopes of holding back the wave of extremism. The Syrian city of Aleppo is now divided, with the eastern section of the city under the control of various anti-government factions, including the US backed so-called “moderate” rebels, as well as the Al-Nusra terrorists, who were directly linked to Al-Queda until recent months.
Russia repeatedly requested that a humanitarian corridor be created so that civilians could flee Aleppo and escape the fighting, as the Iraqi forces did when fighting in Mosul. Neither the Al-Nusra terrorists, the US backed “moderate rebels”, or the United Nations, or the western powers would comply with Russia’s request. The call for a humanitarian corridor in Aleppo was denied. When speaking of the citizens of Aleppo, John Kirby of the US State Department insisted “they shouldn’t have to leave.”
Despite their efforts to protect innocent life, Russia and the Syrian government have been forced to fight against the Al-Nusra terrorists and their allies in close proximity to civilians. As Russia fights to retake the city from anti-government extremists, the US media suddenly has developed a concern for the civilian casualties of war. Allegations of Russian war crimes in Aleppo have filled the airwaves and the speeches of western leaders. Meanwhile, anti-government forces continue to shell civilian areas in the western side of the city. Western media ignores the cries of these civilians, while doing everything to demonize the Syrian government and Russia. The hypocrisy shouldn’t be missed by anyone. Some of very same individuals that backed the US invasion of Iraq which caused hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians to die, now voice “humanitarian” outrage about Aleppo. The leaders of NATO, who reduced Libya, then the most prosperous African country, to rubble, now bemoan the impact of war on civilian populations. The very same voices that long dismissed civilians killed by airstrikes, have now discovered that what they once called “collateral damage” indeed has human rights.
At the same time that Russia works with the Syrian government to retake Aleppo, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia is conducting a relentless bombing campaign against the people of Yemen. There is no dispute that the Saudi attack on Yemen is violating human rights. The UN has documented that civilian targets are being intentionally hit. But no pressure whatsoever is being placed on Saudi Arabia to end its slaughter of Yemeni civilians. The western governments continue to actively assist their Saudi “allies” as they violate international law in Yemen, while demonizing Russia’s cooperation with Syria against terrorism.
When speaking of Aleppo, western leaders employ language that is quite similar to the kind often used by left-wing anti-war activists. The British Foreign Secretary, Boris Johnson, even called for anti-war protests targeting Russia when speaking before parliament on October 11th.
The November 3rd Provocation
On November 3rd, a group of 25 people wearing “Save Aleppo” T-Shirt presented themselves outside of the Russian embassy in London, and appeared to be following Johnson’s directive. They brought with them a truck full of manikin arms and legs. They proceeded to dump these arms and legs in pile in front of the embassy, effectively blocking its doors and preventing anyone from leaving or entering.
The manikin arms and legs were said to symbolize the innocent people of Aleppo, whose deaths they blamed on Russia. The police did not halt this demonstration, which appeared to have barricaded a foreign mission. As the protest continued, some of the provocative individuals in “Save Aleppo” T-shirts are reported to have chained themselves to the fence surrounding the embassy’s perimeter. Yet, it appears that not a single arrest was made. The police, who were on hand, apparently did not stop the individuals.
So, who were these individuals? The money for the protest was supplied by “Syria Campaign.” This is a non-profit organization funded by a Syrian billionaire named Ayman Asfari, in addition to other anonymous sponsors. It makes sense that a billionaire of Syrian descent, residing in Britain, would want to topple the “Baath Arab Socialist Party” that has run his country for many decades. Parallels between Asfari and the many wealthy Cuban residents of Miami are easy to make. The Syrian government, like the Cuban government, has provided housing, healthcare, and education to its population, achieving this with policies that make the richest people quite uncomfortable.
But beyond Asfari’s well-funded “Syria Campaign” that uses its huge endowment to spread propaganda against the Syrian government and its allies, who were the individuals in the T-shirts? Very few of them appeared to be of Syrian origin, but one cannot assume they were merely hired stooges either.
The answer to this question can be found in the name of an organization that co-sponsored the malicious provocation. The organization “Syria Solidarity UK,” which took credit for the action on its website, is well known to be a front group for the Socialist Workers Party of Britain. This “socialist” organization follows the teachings of Tony Cliff and Leon Trotsky, has its grip on Britain’s “Stop The War Coalition” as well. It is safe to surmise that a decent percentage of those who barricaded the Russian embassy’s entrance were Trotskyites.
Two Currents of Communism
So, who are the Trotskyists? To answer this question we must begin to examine the anatomy of the political left throughout the course of the 20th century.
Within the mass movements associated with Marxism, there are a wide variety of sects, ideologies, and interpretations. However, among the individuals who envision and work toward the overthrow of capitalism there are two distinct personal or psychological categories. These two trends often work in concert with each other. The two trends often do not even intentionally dissociate with each other, and can often be found within the same political parties and movements, despite the huge differences between them. The differences are found in motivation.
Among the political left, the primary and constant current is an extremely alienated minority from within the privileged sectors of society. In Russia it was a current among the children of the aristocracy, as well as from within the emerging bourgeoisie, who made up much of the cadre of the Bolshevik Party in its early years. While they were born in relatively comfortable positions, they knew that things in society at large were deeply wrong. They saw the suffering of the poor, and the many other injustices that existed, and were filled with anger and motivation to correct them. While other members of their social caste could be at peace with society, they could not.
Whether it is due to their unique access to education, or the fact that they are encouraged to ponder political and philosophical questions while other strata are not; regardless of the reason, a section of the most privileged people always seems to be drawn to revolutionary anti-capitalist politics. The trend is not restricted to pre-revolutionary Russia. One can think of the young French radicals depicted in Victor Hugo’s novel Les Miserable, or even the radicals of Students for a Democratic Society or the Weather Underground in the United States, who came from some of the prestigious Universities. No matter how strong or weak the leftist current is in society at large, a certain sector of the privileged classes exists as a kind of “radical intelligentsia.” This is true even in under the most repressive anti-communist dictatorships.
The second current, which constitutes a very solid majority of those attracted to leftist and anti-capitalist currents around the world, are those among the working and impoverished classes. While in times of prosperity they are less politicized, as they see their conditions deteriorating, they become motivated to take action and embrace anti-capitalist and revolutionary ideology.
Unlike the first current, their motivation is not a moralistic impulse based on alienation, but rather the basic desire to see their lives improve. This does not mean that such people do not have political depth or brilliance. Often these forces are actually much more politically effective and ideological. However, their introduction to revolutionary politics originates in a basic material need.
While these two distinct political currents espouse the same phrases and philosophies, they seem to crave two different things. The privileged children of the wealthy who embrace revolutionary politics often have a deep desire to create chaos. They see the world as unjust and cruel. They want it to be smashed, shattered, burned to the ground, and rebuilt anew.
The second current, while espousing the same political line, tends to crave the opposite. They are motivated to take political action as society is becoming less stable. The economic crisis has made their lives more painful and unpredictable, intensifying the suffering all around them, pushing them toward a desperate need for radical change. They embrace anti-capitalism because it offers stability beyond the “anarchy of production.” The revolutionary left is for them, not the road to chaos and revenge, but the path toward a new order with a centrally planned economy, in which justice is created and the chaos is ended.
The Origins of “Trotskyism”
Lenin’s book “What Is To Be Done?,” which laid the foundation for the Bolshevik project of a Central Committee and a “Party of a New Type,” was largely directed at members of the first, moralistic, and privileged group. It urged them to look past their own motivations, abandon terrorism and tailism, and build an highly disciplined organization that could push the broader masses of Russian workers and peasants toward a full revolution.
The October Revolution of 1917 was successful because it merged the two trends. In a time of crisis, the revolutionary intelligentsia who longed to smash the old order, were able to mobilize the workers and peasants who were suffering and desperately wanted “Peace, Land and Bread.” The effective convergence of these two currents created a new political and economic system.
However, almost immediately after the Soviet Union was founded, political space began to develop between the two trends. Lenin banned factions in the Bolshevik Party during the early 1920s in order to hold an increasingly divided ruling party together. Despite the ban on factions, the two trends did not cease to exist. After Lenin’s death, the two poles became personified in Leon Trotsky and Joseph Stalin.
Trotsky, the son of wealthy landowners in Ukraine, who had lived in exile most of his life and was beloved among the world’s cosmopolitan intellectuals, called for “Permanent Revolution.” The Soviet Union, in his view, should exist simply as a temporary hold out in a global revolutionary explosion. In his view, Soviet society should be organized around the military, and focus primarily on seizing the western financial centers of Germany, Britain, and France for the global socialist project to remake all humanity.
Stalin on the other hand called for “Socialism in one country.” He advocated for the Soviet Union to focus on building a good society for the people of Russia and the surrounding countries, while offering limited support to revolutionary forces around the world. “Socialism in One Country” would require signing treaties with the western countries, restoring the traditional family, and eventually even legalizing the Russian Orthodox Church. For Stalin and the majority of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, socialism did not mean an endless global crusade to behead every last king and capitalist, but rather, building a peaceful, prosperous society with a planned economy in Russia and the surrounding countries.
When Stalin was victorious, the world communist movement began to shed the most adherent members of the first revolutionary category. The Communist parties began building unemployment councils, trade unions, and other organizations dedicated to aiding working people and fighting for direct material gains as capitalism collapsed into a “great depression.” Eventually the “Stalinists” built a People’s Front of anti-fascists that played a decisive role in the Second World War.
Meanwhile, Trotsky took a significant number of western intellectuals out of the Communist International and into his “Fourth International.” The Trotskyists worked to antagonize and isolate the Soviet aligned Communist Parties, while at the same time presenting a negative perception of the Soviet Union as a “totalitarian” and “repressive” society that did to live up to the utopian dreams of middle class radicals.
Trotsky saw the USSR as a “degenerated workers state,” socialist in its economic foundations but “bureaucratized” in its politics. In the final years of his life, a number of Trotsky’s followers disagreed with this assessment and argued that the USSR was capitalist. Max Shachtman, Irving Kristol, and a number of the more middle class elements broke with Leon Trotsky, arguing that the USSR was not a “worker’s state” but rather “bureaucratic collectivism”, “state capitalism”, or fascism. These elements called themselves “Third Camp” or “Neo-Trotskyists.” The International Socialist Tendency, of which the British Socialist Workers Party is aligned, along with the US International Socialist Organization, is the largest group continuing these politics. It is “Third Camp Trotskyists” in Britain who have built the organization called “Syria Solidarity UK” which conducted the recent protests against the Russian embassy.
Interestingly, it is from within the “Trotskyists” who broke with Trotsky, and completely denounced the USSR, that one can find the origins of Neo-Conservative thought in the United States. James Burnham, Edmund Wilson, Max Eastman, and many of the leading right-wing intellectuals of the Cold War were era were originally Trotskyists.
Brzezinski’s Permanent Revolution
Zbigniew Brzezinski, one of the leading CIA strategists during the Cold War, can largely be credited for defeat of the Soviet Union. Brzezinski’s career involved fomenting dissent and unrest in Soviet aligned countries. The gap between revolutionary intellectuals who crave chaos and revolution, and the pragmatic approach of Soviet leaders who wanted a stable, planned economy was a great asset to his activities. The CIA launched the “Congress for Cultural Freedom” to fund anti-Soviet leftists and artists, and further the space between them and the USSR.
In Hungary, Poland, Czechoslovakia, East Germany, and many other socialist countries, the US Central Intelligence Agency enflamed and exploited the grievances of artists and intellectuals, who felt stifled by the Marxist-Leninist political set up, and longed for the “freedom” of the west. It has become almost cliché to talk about the role of Beatles music and other western counter-cultural icons in “the fall of Communism.”
Brzezinski openly bragged that he was “giving the USSR its Vietnam War” in Afghanistan. When the People’s Democratic Party took power in 1978, the CIA worked with the Saudi monarchy to launch a global campaign of Wahabbi Muslims against it. The USSR sent its forces into Afghanistan to protect the People’s Democratic Party.
In the global media, it was a different story. The press painted the Taliban and other forces organized by Osama Bin Laden as romantic guerilla fighters, battling against the USSR, portrayed as a crude, repressive invading force. The “Trotskyists” of the world embraced the Mujahadeen Wahabbi fanatics in much the same manner that such forces now embrace the Free Syrian Army and the Al-Nusra Front. Among the organized left, pro-Soviet sentiments were left only to a small minority, dubbed “Stalinists” and “Hardliners.” The long-haired, counter-cultural “New Left” bought into the CIA narrative, and believed that Osama Bin Laden was some kind of Che Guevara.
In the 21st century, Anti-imperialist governments, even those who completely reject Marxism-Leninism, have a lot in common with the political and economic system developed by Stalin during the 1930s. Anti-imperialist countries tend have five year economic plans or other mobilizations of the population toward raising the living standards. They tend to have a ruling party with a very complex and specific ideology, that sits at the center of a tightly organized and politicized population. The strength of the various anti-imperialist regimes is their ability to control the centers of economic power, raise the standard of living, and provide a comfortable life for the majority of their people.
In China, each child is given a red scarf when they begin their education. They are told that this red scarf is their own piece of the Chinese flag, and that it represents a political project toward building a prosperous society, which they are automatically part of it. Similar rituals exist in the Bolivarian countries, the Arab Nationalist states, and almost every other country where the government can trace its origin to an anti-capitalist revolution.
Meanwhile, the primary strategy of Wall Street for toppling these governments has been to employ the rhetorical style of Trotskyists, and appeal to the alienation and anxiety of the privileged elite. The CIA and its network of aligned NGOs has discovered key methods of manipulating and unleashing the desire for chaos among the middle class. Figures like Samantha Power talk about “mobilizing” for human rights around the world.
The primary way the US has attacked independent countries in recent years has been fomenting revolts such as Euro-Maiden in Ukraine, the “Green Movement” in Iran, the “revolution” in Libya. These uprisings are supported by Non-Governmental Organizations and carried out to serve the interests of the western financial elite. While they effectively maintain the global status quo, they are decorated with the most Guevara and Trotsky-esque propaganda on social media and western television. It seems pretty clear that the vaguely emotional lust for revolution and unrest among the alienated middle class has been effectively harnessed as a mechanism for defeating “Stalinism” and ensuring the rule of western capitalists.
Foreign Affairs: “Open International System” vs. “Populism”
The Council on Foreign Relations, the CIA-linked think tank, shed light on its worldview and strategy in the latest issue of their publication Foreign Affairs. In an essay by Anne-Marie Slaughter, one of the primary architects of the US backed regime change operation in Libya, she described her prescription for the ailments of the global situation.
“The people must come first,” she tells us, like a soap-box agitator. “When they do not, sooner or later they will overthrow their governments.” According to Slaughter, the job of western countries is to facilitate the free flow of information through social media, in order to allow these uprising to come about.
Furthermore, Slaughter argues that the Treaty of Westphalia, and the concept of the nation state is out of date. Rather “responsibility to protect” or R2P has replaced it. The NATO states and their military must intervene in order to strengthen these revolutions, and topple regimes that get in Wall Street’s way. The strategy is global revolution, endless destruction and chaos until “open governments, open societies and an open international system” can be erected. We can almost hear echoes of Trotsky’s fantasy of “permanent revolution” in Slaughter’s writing, though Trotsky’s stated goal was to overturn capitalism, not secure its grip on the planet.
And who are the villains in the CFR narrative? They are “Populists.” The entire issue of “Foreign Affairs” is titled “The Power of Populism.” Listed among them are Hugo Chavez, Evo Morales, the Supreme Leader of Iran, as well as Russian President Vladimir Putin and Chinese President Xi Jinping. According the analysis, it is these dangerous “demagogues” who reject the “open international system” of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, but instead mobilize their populations and preside over centrally planned economies that must be smashed. With the word “Populism”, the CFR seeks to link these governments to racism and anti-immigrant bigotry in western countries, and urge “progressive” and “enlightened” people to oppose them in the same manner.
Indeed, political navigation in the 21st Century can be quite difficult. The compass by which analysts have long determined left and right is broken. The defenders of free market capitalism and the rule of internationalist bankers have embraced the revolutionary blood-lust which was long a staple of the political left. Meanwhile, the anti-imperialists and advocates of planned economies now often position themselves as social conservatives and defenders of stability, morality, religion, and tradition.
While it is no longer exactly clear which way is “left” or “progressive,” it is blatantly obvious which way is better for the human race. The NATO regimes, despite mouthing left-sounding rhetoric in the process, have reduced Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, and Syria to civil war and chaos. The fruits of their imposed vision of an “open society” with “free markets” is not prosperity and freedom but poverty, chaos, and endless civil war.
However right-wing and conservative the governments of China, Russia, and Iran may seem, the societies they have created are ones in which profits are not in total command, and providing a decent life for the masses of people remains a priority. In the anti-imperialist regimes, the state is independent of market forces, and has the ability to restrict and control their actions. Meanwhile, a sense of collective vision and obligation exists, and people are not left isolated to fend for themselves.
Yes, the CFR’s vision of a clash between the “open international community” and the “populists” is certainly accurate as it is playing out before the world. Syria is simply the most visible battlefield.
Caleb Maupin is a political analyst and activist based in New York. He studied political science at Baldwin-Wallace College and was inspired and involved in the Occupy Wall Street movement.
‘Thousands of Syrians, Iraqis Killed in US Airstrikes Over Past Year’
Sputnik – 10.11.2016
Thousands of Syrian and Iraqi civilians have been killed in US airstrikes over the past year, a source in the Russian Defense Ministry said Thursday.
The statement was made in response to the statement by US Central Command spokesman Col. John Thomas that 64 people were killed and eight wounded in US airstrikes in Syria and Iraq in November 2015 — September 2016.
“Listening to such statements from the US Central Command spokesman, we have an impression that the Pentagon does not consider the remaining thousands of Syrian and Iraqi civilians killed in US Air Force strikes to be humans. But even such an advanced stage of dishonesty and cynicism of US colleagues should have its limits,” the Russian source said.
The statement noted that US Air Force has been conducting up to 20 strikes per day in Syria and Iraq, or about 7300 strikes in the past year.
“Moreover, a significant part of this ‘work’ has been assigned to the B-1B to the B-52H bombers, while the ‘humanity’ and ‘accuracy’ of their carpet bombings are well known since the days of the Vietnam War,” the statement added.
The US-led coalition of more than 60 nations has been conducting its anti-terror aerial campaign in Syria and Iraq since 2014. The strikes in Syria have not been authorized by Damascus or the UN Security Council.
US Hypocrisy’s Face at the UN – Samantha Power
International School in Even Yehuda, Israel, on February 15, 2016. (photo: YouTube)
By William Boardman | Reader Supported News | October 30, 2016
What is so remarkable and troubling about the presentation we’ve heard today is that what Russia really wants from the U.N. is credit. Congratulations, Russia, you’ve stopped, for a couple days, from using incendiary weapons. Thank you for not using cluster bombs in civilian areas. Thank you for staying the hand of brutality with regard to bunker buster weapons. You don’t get congratulations and get credit for not committing war crimes for a day or a week. – Samantha Power, US ambassador to the UN, October 26, 2016
Samantha Power is the face of American diplomacy at the UN, where she gives ardent voice to American hypocrisy, deceit, intellectual dishonesty, and mockery of the rest of the world. Appalling as her performance has been, her portrayal is accurate, right down to her denial-laden confidence in American exceptionalism.
Power’s comment above came in the midst of a discussion of the carnage in Syria, a discussion without substance or pity, without a care for ending the killing. Her tone and content were in sharp, ugly contrast to the report of UN aid chief Stephen O’Brien addressing the Security Council about the layered wars in Syria that began with peaceful protests early in 2011:
Each month, I have come before you and presented an ever-worsening record of destruction and atrocity, grimly cataloguing the systematic destruction of a country and its people. While my job is to relay to you the facts, I cannot help but be incandescent with rage. Month after month, worse and worse, and nothing is actually happening to stop the war, stop the suffering.
Stephen O’Brien is “incandescent with rage” at the outrage that is Syria, and the perhaps greater outrage of inaction by the Security Council as a body as well as its individual states. O’Brien bears witness to destruction and atrocity that the council cannot stop and to which its member states contribute. They do not express rage, incandescent or otherwise; they express the snide posturing of politics and tactical advantage.
Vitaly Churkin, the Russian Federation’s ambassador to the UN, said O’Brien had delivered a sermon, not an objective report. Churkin said that the Russian Federation continued to negotiate with armed groups, continued to deliver humanitarian aid by the ton, and continued the eight-day-old bombing pause. Churkin said Aleppo was worse because the Al Nusra Front had not yet fulfilled its promise to separate from more moderate opposition forces. Churkin said that negotiation demands were constantly changing, that fighters used civilians as human shields, that a political solution should remain the first priority, and that New Zealand should be thanked for working to build a consensus among the members to end the fighting.
The American response is as heartbreaking as ever:
What is so remarkable and troubling about the presentation we’ve heard today is that what Russia really wants from the U.N. is credit.
Samantha Power responded to the Russian assertion of facts not with rebuttal, but with sarcasm, mockery, and pettiness. Hers is an essentially ad hominem response that allows no credit for a bombing halt of any duration. And no wonder. Power speaks for a country that bombs others more or less at will for as long as it likes. The US has bombed Afghanistan without serious surcease since 2001, and Iraq almost as long. The US continues to participate in the Saudi Arabian coalition’s relentless bombing of Yemen’s hospitals, schools, and funerals, taking part in war crimes as part of a criminal war.
Congratulations, Russia, you’ve stopped, for a couple days, from using incendiary weapons.
Mockingly, the ambassador from the country of military shock and awe acts as if her hands are clean from decades of devastation visited upon the region. Power acts as if the US aerial destruction brought to bear on defenseless tribes in Afghanistan and Pakistan or defenseless urban civilians in Syria, Iraq and Yemen had never happened. Power has nothing to say about American use of depleted uranium weapons that leave their targets – both people and the land – as radioactive threats to human health for generations.
Thank you for not using cluster bombs in civilian areas. Thank you for staying the hand of brutality with regard to bunker buster weapons.
The US/Saudi assault on Yemen uses cluster bombs in civilian areas, but Samantha Power has no sarcastic objection to that. The US manufactures cluster bombs – banned by most of the rest of the world – to sell to the Saudis to use in civilian areas in Yemen. The US had no hesitation using bunker-busting bombs in laying waste to Iraq.
You don’t get congratulations and get credit for not committing war crimes for a day or a week.
Beyond her heavy-handed mockery, Power offered nothing useful. She might have admitted the constant pattern of American war crimes, especially since 2001, whether torture, kidnapping, imprisonment at dark sites, drone strikes, or any of the other horrific acts of American policy throughout the Middle East since World War II. Being the United States means never having to say you’re sorry, no matter how sorry your human rights record, no matter how sorry your fidelity to international law, and worst of all in the world of power politics, no matter how sorry your actual accomplishments are. No matter how monstrous American behavior becomes, Samantha Power is paid to praise it as the necessary actions of the world’s indispensible nation.
In 2008, when Samantha Power was part of Barack Obama’s presidential campaign, she famously called Hillary Clinton a “monster.” So does it take one to know one?
William M. Boardman has over 40 years experience in theatre, radio, TV, print journalism, and non-fiction, including 20 years in the Vermont judiciary. He has received honors from Writers Guild of America, Corporation for Public Broadcasting, Vermont Life magazine, and an Emmy Award nomination from the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences.
Mideast partition plot meant to ensure Israel’s security: Velayati
Ali Akbar Velayati, senior adviser to Leader of the Islamic Revolution Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei
Press TV – November 1, 2016
A senior adviser to Leader of the Islamic Revolution Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei has warned of plots hatched by the US and its regional allies to divide the Middle East countries, saying such a move aims to safeguard the Israeli regime’s security.
“The Americans and some of their regional allies are trying to sow discord and break up the region and want to partition and weaken big, strong and ancient countries in the region in order to [ensure] Israel’s security and meet their own excessive demands,” Ali Akbar Velayati, the Leader’s top adviser on international affairs, said in a meeting with Mala Bakhtiar, chief of Executive Body of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK), in Tehran on Tuesday.
The senior Iranian official stressed the importance of resisting such a malicious plot, saying that the enemies of Islam are committing crimes against oppressed nations in the region, including the Iraqis and Syrians, in the name of Islam by waging “proxy wars” and creating extremist and Takfiri terrorist groups.
Velayati added that plotters and reactionary countries in the region seek to sow discord among Muslim nations; however, regional people would certainly be the final victors.
He further pointed to the great cultural and religious commonalities between the Iranian and Iraqi people and said both countries give priority to the development of relations.
Bakhtiar, for his part, said the era of hegemony and arrogance is over and added that plotters would fail to achieve their divisive goals in the region.
The PUK official added that Iran is carrying out effective measures to promote regional peace and stability.
Conflict, terrorism in Mideast serving Israel: Larijani
Press TV – October 29, 2016
Iranian Parliament Speaker Ali Larijani says terrorists have created chaos in the Middle East, adding that the continuation of conflicts and acts of terror will serve the Israeli regime’s interests.
“The [critical] situation and chaos in the region has been created by a number of terrorists and the enemy does not want this chaos to end,” Larijani said on Saturday.
He added that all Muslim countries, including Syria, Yemen and Iraq, are entangled in conflicts and only the Israeli regime benefits from such a chaotic situation.
“Superpowers formed an anti-terror coalition in coordination with 60 countries but since they do not want to see the end of wars in the region and regard such an end as detrimental to the Zionist regime [of Israel], they are fanning the flames of tensions in the region,” Larijani said.
He noted that even American and Israeli experts and strategists have confirmed that the current conflicts in the Muslim world best serve the interests of the Zionists and that any success by Iran and the Lebanese resistance movement, Hezbollah, would be detrimental to them.
The top Iranian parliamentarian added that whenever promising prospects emerge for putting an end to the regional conflicts, the world powers rush to hold meetings and try to prolong the crises.
He said these powers have reinforced their links with terrorist groups operating in regional countries and are covertly providing them with weapons and military equipment.
Since March 2011, Syria has been hit by militancy it blames on some Western states and their regional allies. The Syrian military is engaged in an operation to rid the country of Daesh and other terrorist groups.
Over the past months, Syria has managed to recapture swathes of land from Daesh and other groups in the east and north of the country. The Syrian military has used the assistance of fighters from Hezbollah as well as advisory military support from Iran. Russia also helps Syria in the fight against terrorists through a series of coordinated airstrikes on their positions.
This is while Iraqi army troops, backed by fighters from allied Popular Mobilization Units, have been engaged in military operations to win back regions held by Daesh and have managed to liberate most of these areas.
The militants have been committing heinous crimes against all ethnic and religious communities in the northern and western parts of Iraq.
CNN Celebrates Iraqi Housewife Who ‘Beheaded and Then Cooked the Skulls of ISIS fighters’
Peter Van Buren | We Meant Well | October 4, 2016
When Islamic State beheads someone it is terrorism. When an Iraqi housewife beheads an ISIS fighter and cooks his skull, it is freedom. That is the CNN doctrine.
CNN reports the story of 39-year-old Wahida Mohamed aka Um Hanadi, an Iraqi woman who supposedly leads a tribal militia force of around 70 men south of Mosul. She and her band allegedly helped “government forces” drive Islamic State out of a small town.
“I began fighting the terrorists in 2004, working with Iraqi security forces and the coalition,” she told CNN. CNN cites no other source other than Um Hanadi herself and Facebook in its coverage.
As a result, Um Hanadi said, she attracted the wrath of what eventually became al Qaeda in Mesopotamia, which later morphed into ISIS. “I received threats from the top leadership of ISIS, including from Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi himself,” she says. “I’m at the top of their most wanted list, even more than the [Iraqi] Prime Minister.”
Um Hanadi stated al Qaeda/AQI/ISIS planted car bombs outside her home in 2006, 2009, 2010, 2013, and 2014.
Along the way, her first husband was killed in action. She remarried, but ISIS killed her second husband. ISIS also killed her father and three brothers. They also killed, she added, her sheep, her dogs and her birds, and tried to otherwise assassinate her six times.
Where Has Um Hanadi Been Hiding All These Years?
Despite her claim to have worked with the U.S. coalition, to be higher on the ISIS hit list than the Prime Minister, to have been the target of multiple bombing attempts, and to be a very, very, very rare example of a Muslim woman leading Muslim men in combat, I could not find any references to Um Hanadi that predate the CNN report. Um Hanadi does have a self-created social media presence which she updates between battles.
In addition, Um Hanadi may be the luckiest person in Iraq, apparently cheating death on a near-daily basis.
CNN did not explain in its coverage how it came to locate and interview Um Hanadi amid the chaos of present-day Iraq.
The Beheadings
Now, on to the beheadings.
CNN quotes Um Hanadi as saying of ISIS “I fought them. I beheaded them. I cooked their heads, I burned their bodies.” CNN states “She made no excuses, nor attempted to rationalize this. It was delivered as a boast, not a confession.”
“This is all documented,” she said. “You can see it on my Facebook page.”
The CNN reporter wrote that he indeed checked her Facebook page and saw photos, and though he could not verify them, still “got the point.”
Comment
This is propaganda of the worst, and most infantile, kind. In addition to the broad question of whether or not any of this is even true, the question of who set CNN up to meet with Um Hanadi is left unanswered. That CNN would run this story on its television news, and website, is a shameful descent into the decaying corpse of the First Amendment. Media around the globe, including the once venerable New York Times, have reprinted the story.
Lastly is the horrific idea that atrocities such as beheading people are somehow right when an anti-ISIS person does it, and justification for an entire undeclared war by the U.S. when ISIS does it.
CNN have you no shame? Hah, trick question, you bast*rds really don’t, do you?
US Impunity Erodes World Justice
By Nicolas J S Davies | Consortium news | October 25, 2016
In the past week, Burundi and South Africa have joined Namibia in declaring their intention to withdraw from the jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court (ICC). They are likely to be followed by a parade of other African countries, jeopardizing the future of an international court that has prosecuted 39 officials from eight African countries but has failed to indict a single person who is not African.
Ironically, African countries were among the first to embrace the ICC, so it is a striking turnaround that they are now the first to give up on it.
But it is the United States that has played the leading role in preventing the ICC from fulfilling the universal mandate for which it was formed, to hold officials of all countries accountable for the worst crimes in the world: genocide; crimes against humanity; and war crimes – not least the crime of international aggression, which the judges at Nuremberg defined as “the supreme international crime” from which all other war crimes follow.
As the ICC’s founding father, former Nuremberg prosecutor Benjamin Ferencz, lamented in 2011, “You don’t have to be a criminologist to realize that if you want to deter a crime, you must persuade potential criminals that, if they commit crimes, they will be hauled into court and be held accountable. It is the policy of the United States to do just the opposite as far as the crime of aggression is concerned. Our government has gone to great pains to be sure that no American will be tried by any international criminal court for the supreme crime of illegal war-making.”
The U.S. has not only refused to accept the jurisdiction of the ICC over its own citizens. It has gone further, pressuring other countries to sign Bilateral Immunity Agreements (BIA), in which they renounce the right to refer U.S. citizens to the ICC for war crimes committed on their territory.
The U.S. has also threatened to cut off U.S. aid to countries that refuse to sign them. The BIAs violate those countries’ own commitments under the ICC statute, and the U.S. pressure to sign them has been rightly condemned as an outrageous effort to ensure impunity for U.S. war crimes.
Resistance to U.S. Impunity
To the credit of our international neighbors, this U.S. strategy has met with substantial resistance. The European Parliament overwhelmingly passed a resolution stating that BIAs are incompatible with E.U. membership, and urged E.U.- member states and countries seeking E.U. membership not to sign them.
Fifty-four countries have publicly refused to sign BIAs, and 24 have accepted cut-offs of U.S. aid as a consequence of their refusal. Of 102 countries that have signed a BIA, only 48 are members of the ICC in any case, and only 15 of those countries are on record as having ratified the BIAs in their own parliaments.
Thirty-two other ICC members have apparently allowed BIAs to take effect without parliamentary ratification, but this has been challenged by their own country’s legal experts in many cases.
The U.S. campaign to undermine the ICC is part of a much broader effort by the U.S. government to evade all forms of accountability under the laws that are supposed to govern international behavior in the modern world, even as it continues to masquerade as a global champion of the rule of law.
The treaties that U.S. policy systematically violates today were crafted by American statesmen and diplomats, working with their foreign colleagues, to build a world where all people would enjoy some basic protections from the worst atrocities, instead of being subject only to the law of the jungle or “might makes right.”
So current U.S. policy is a cynical betrayal of the work and wisdom of past generations of Americans, as well as of countless victims all over the world to whom we are effectively denying the protections of the U.N. Charter, the Geneva Conventions, the U.N. Convention on the Rights of the Child and other multilateral treaties that our country ignores, violates or refuses to ratify.
Avoiding the jurisdiction of international courts is only one of the ways that the U.S. evades international accountability for its criminal behavior. Another involves an elaborate and well-disguised public relations campaign that exploit the powerful position of U.S. corporations in the world of commercial media.
Major Propaganda Funding
The U.S. government spends a billion dollars per year on public relations or, more bluntly, propaganda, including $600 million from the Pentagon budget. The work of its P.R. teams and contractors is laundered by U.S. newspapers and repeated and analyzed ad nauseam by monolithic, flag-waving TV networks.
These profitable corporate operations monopolize the public airwaves in the U.S., and also use their financial clout, slick marketing and the support of the U.S. State Department to maintain a powerful presence in foreign and international media markets.
Foreign media in allied countries provide further legitimacy and credibility to U.S. talking-points and narratives as they echo around the world. Meanwhile, Hollywood fills cinema and TV screens across the world with an idealized, glamorized, inspirational version of America that still mesmerizes many people.
This whole elaborate “information warfare” machine presents the United States as a global leader for democracy, human rights and the rule of law, even as it systematically and catastrophically undermines those same principles. It enables our leaders to loudly and persuasively demonize other countries and their leaders as dangerous violators of international law, even as the U.S. and its allies commit far worse crimes.
Double Standards in Syria/Iraq
Today, for instance, the U.S. and its allies are accusing Syria and Russia of war crimes in east Aleppo, even as America’s own and allied forces launch a similar assault on Mosul. Both attacks are killing civilians and reducing much of a city to rubble; the rationale is the same, counterterrorism; and there are many more people in the line of fire in Mosul than in east Aleppo.
But the U.S. propaganda machine ensures that most Americans see one, in Mosul, as a legitimate counterterrorism operation (with Islamic State accused of using the civilians as “human shields”) and the other, in east Aleppo, as a massacre (with the presence of Al Qaeda’s Syrian affiliate, the former Nusra Front, virtually whited out of the West’s coverage, which focuses almost entirely on the children and makes no mention of “human shields”).
The phrase “aggressive war” is also a no-no in the Western media when the U.S. government launches attacks across international borders. In the past 20 years, the U.S. has violated the U.N. Charter to attack at least eight countries (Yugoslavia, Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia, Libya and Syria), and the resulting wars have killed about two million people.
A complex whirlwind of conflict and chaos rages on in all the countries where the U.S. and its allies have lit the flames of war since 2001, but U.S. leaders still debate new interventions and escalations as if we are the fire brigade not the arsonists. (By contrast, the U.S. government and the Western media are quick to accuse Russia or other countries of “aggression” even in legally murky situations, such as after the U.S.-backed coup in 2014 that ousted the elected president of Ukraine.)
Systematic violations of the Geneva Conventions are an integral part of U.S. war-making. Most are shrouded in secrecy, and the propaganda machine spins the atrocities that slip through into the public record as a disconnected series of aberrations, accidents and “bad apples,” instead of as the result of illegal rules of engagement and unlawful orders from higher-ups.
The senior officers and civilian officials who are criminally responsible for these crimes under U.S. and international law systematically abuse their powerful positions to subvert investigations, cover up their crimes and avoid any accountability whatsoever.
Pinter’s Complaint
When British playwright Harold Pinter was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2005, he bravely and brilliantly used his Nobel lecture to speak about the real role that the U.S. plays in the world and how it whitewashes its crimes. Pinter recounted a meeting at the U.S. Embassy in London in the 1980s in which a senior embassy official, Raymond Seitz, flatly denied U.S. war crimes against Nicaragua for which the U.S. was in fact convicted of aggression by the International Court of Justice (ICJ). Seitz went on to serve as Assistant Secretary of State, U.S. Ambassador to the U.K., and then Vice-Chairman of Lehman Brothers.
As Pinter explained: “this ‘policy’ was by no means restricted to Central America. It was conducted throughout the world. It was never-ending. And it is as if it never happened.
“The United States supported and in many cases engendered every right wing military dictatorship in the world after the end of the Second World War. I refer to Indonesia, Greece, Uruguay, Brazil, Paraguay, Haiti, Turkey, the Philippines, Guatemala, El Salvador, and, of course, Chile. The horror the United States inflicted upon Chile in 1973 can never be purged and can never be forgiven.
“Hundreds of thousands of deaths took place throughout these countries. Did they take place? And are they in all cases attributable to US foreign policy? The answer is yes they did take place and they are attributable to American foreign policy. But you wouldn’t know it.
“It never happened. Nothing ever happened. Even while it was happening it wasn’t happening. It didn’t matter. It was of no interest. The crimes of the United States have been systematic, constant, vicious, remorseless, but very few people have actually talked about them. You have to hand it to America. It has exercised a quite clinical manipulation of power worldwide while masquerading as a force for universal good. It’s a brilliant, even witty, highly successful act of hypnosis.”
If in 2016 the world seems to be more violent and chaotic than ever, it is not because the United States lacks the will to use force or project power, as both major party candidates for President and their military advisers appear to believe, but because our leaders have placed too much stock in the illegal threat and use of force and have lost faith in the rule of law, international cooperation and diplomacy.
After a century of commercial dominance, and 75 years of investing disproportionately in weapons, military forces and geopolitical schemes, perhaps it is understandable that U.S. leaders have forgotten how to deal fairly and respectfully with our international neighbors. But it is no longer an option to muddle along, leaving a trail of death, ruin and chaos in our wake, counting on an elaborate propaganda machine to minimize the blowback on our country and our lives.
Sooner rather than later, Americans and our leaders must knuckle down and master the very different attitudes and skills we will need to become law-abiding global citizens in a peaceful, sustainable, multipolar world.
Nicolas J S Davies is the author of Blood On Our Hands: the American Invasion and Destruction of Iraq. He also wrote the chapters on “Obama at War” in Grading the 44th President: a Report Card on Barack Obama’s First Term as a Progressive Leader.
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Fake 9/11 Activism on 9/11. “Saudi Arabia was Behind the Attacks”
By Prof Michel Chossudovsky | Global Research | September 10, 2017
There is an element of confusion which has served to divide the 9/11 Truth movement. Saudi Arabia is said to have supported the alleged 9/11 highjackers.
What are the implications of “the Saudi did it” narrative?
It is very convenient to say that Saudi Arabia was behind the 9/11 terrorists. Why, because it upholds the official narrative of the 9/11 Commission Report and it whitewashes the US Deep State including its military and intelligence apparatus.
The official narrative –which has been amply refuted– states that 19 Al Qaeda hijackers brought down the WTC towers, i.e Muslims were behind the attack on America, –i.e. it was not an “inside job” or a false flag.
And now what is happening is that Saudi Arabia is blamed for having supported the al Qaeda hijackers.
And if Saudi Arabia is held responsible, pari passu the official narrative holds, namely the hijackers did it with the support of the House of Saud. … continue
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