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Fantastic progress of democracy: New York Times barely notice the new war in Libya!

By Adam H. Johnson | Defend Democracy Press | August 9, 2016

The Obama administration announced on Monday the beginning of US air strikes in Libya against ISIS targets, marking the fourth country the United States is currently bombing with the goal of “degrading and destroying” the terror group. A campaign that began two years ago this Sunday has now, 50,000 bombs and 25,000 dead ISIS fighters later, expanded to a whole new continent.

You’d hardly notice, however, if you followed US media. While the air strikes themselves were reported by most major outlets, they were done so in a matter-of-fact way, and only graced the front pages of major American newspapers for one day. The New York Times didn’t even find the news important enough to give it a front-page headline, instead relegating it to a quick blurb at the far-bottom corner of the page, next to a teaser about the G train “having a moment.”

Even many center-left outlets barely touched on the massive mission creep. To give some perspective, Slate, Mother Jones, and Buzzfeed News all ran more stories about Trump’s dust-up with an infant than they did on what was effectively the start of a new war. ABC World News Tonight mentioned the Libyan air strikes for only 20 seconds, 13 minutes into the show, and NBC Nightly News didn’t mention the air strikes at all. The president’s announcement that the United States is bombing a new country has become entirely banal.

This is by design. Obama’s “frog in boiling water” approach to war removes a clear deadline, thus stripping his use of military force of the urgency of, say, Bush’s “48 hours to get out of Baghdad” Gary Cooper approach.

Meanwhile, an anti-ISIS bombing campaign that began as “limited,” “targeted” air strikes in Iraq two years ago expanded to Syria six weeks later, to Afghanistan in January of this year, and to Libya this week. Combat troops and special forces have also crept into play, with US military personnel first appearing in Iraq and Syria in 2014, 2015, or 2016, depending on how one defines “boots” and “ground.”

All of this has unfolded with US media that almost never put these developments in a broader context. Instead, news outlets report each expansion as if it were obvious and inevitable. The war just is, and because it’s done piecemeal, there doesn’t seem much to get outraged over.

The question pundits should be asking themselves is this: Had Obama announced on August 7, 2014, that he planned on bombing four countries and deploying troops to two of them to fight a war with “no end point,” would the American public have gone along with it? Probably not.

To authorize his perma-campaign, Obama’s administration has dubiously invoked the 15-year-old, one-page Authorization for Use of Military Force, passed three days after 9/11. The president has to do this, the White House and friendly media claim, because Congress “refuses” to act  to authorize the war (notice that’s a rubber-stamp question of when, not if). But such apologism largely rests on a tautology: Congress doesn’t have a sense of urgency to authorize the war because the public doesn’t, and the public doesn’t because the media have yawned with each new iteration.

What’s lacking is what screenwriters call “an inciting incident.” There’s no clear-cut moment the war is launched, it just gradually expands, and because media are driven by Hollywood narratives, they are victims to the absence of a clear first act. This was, to a lesser extent, the problem with the last bombing of Libya, in 2011. What was pitched to the American public then as a limited, UN-mandated no-fly zone to protect civilians (that even the likes of Noam Chomsky backed), which quickly morphed, unceremoniously, into all-out, NATO-led regime change three weeks later.

Then, as now, there was no public debate, no media coming-to-Jesus moment. Obama just asserted the escalation as the obvious next step, and almost everyone just sort of went along—an ethos summed up in Eric Posner’s hot take at Slate the day after Obama expanded the ISIS war to Syria: “Obama Can Bomb Pretty Much Anything He Wants To.”

Some, such as The Week’s Ryan Cooper and The Atlantic’s Conor Friedersdorf, have argued that the specter of a Donald Trump presidency could provide this inciting incident, that the fear of an apparently mentally unstable reality-show host taking over this sprawling, limitless war could compel us to examine the wisdom of this unilateral executive approach. But, thus far, this fear has done no such thing.

Obama’s mission creep, without public debate or congressional sanction, goes on without examination of what it may entail for future presidents, let alone the present one. This is the new normal, and it’s a new normal the press codifies every time it treats Obama’s ever-expanding war as dull and barely newsworthy.

August 9, 2016 Posted by | Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Militarism, Progressive Hypocrite | , , | Leave a comment

Obama Has Launched Yet Another Military Aggression against Libya

By Jean Perier – New Eastern Outlook – 09.08.2016

The unlearned lesson of Washington’s armed aggression against Libya back in 2011 has come to haunt the US yet again, since the US Air Force are back to bomb this African country again. The assault started on August 1st with the vigorous bombardment of the Libyan port city of Sirte. The new round of US military aggression against Libya was announced by Pentagon spokesman Peter Cook, who pointed out that the decision to launch the so-called “military operation” was taken by Barack Obama himself.

The beginning of a new US campaign in Libya was confirmed by the Prime Minister of the Government of National Consensus (GNC), Fayez Mustafa al-Sarraj that is conducting all his meetings at the military base near Tripoli. According to Fayez al-Sarra, “Washington carries out the operation at the request of the GNC.”

The air assault on Sirte, American military commanders say, is provoked by the allegations that this city has become a new base of ISIS in the region. In this regard, it is noteworthy that in the recent interview that Barack Obama gave to the Fox News, American President announced that he considers the American armed aggression against Libya the biggest mistake that he made during his presidency.

One should not forget the fact that once the Wall Street Journal reported last February that ISIS was taking hold of Sirte, Obama rejected the idea of a new military campaign in Libya that was presented by the Pentagon and rejected the very idea of air strikes against ISIS in this state, as it was reported by The Daily Beast.

Therefore, it’s clear that even though Washington says that the aim of the new armed aggression is the fight against ISIS, everyone understands that this is but a pretext, while the White House aims at supporting certain terrorist groups in their fight against other terrorists, in a bid to spill chaos in the neighboring countries, primarily to Algeria and Egypt.

We shouldn’t forget that once the Libyan government was toppled back in 2011, divided armed groups started providing their support to various branches of the government, which resulted in the duality of power in Libya. So, we are in the situation when the internationally recognized Parliament – the House of Representatives is being sited in the city of Tobruk, the body that is being supported by the troops of the Libyan national army, headed by Lieutenant-General Khalifa Haftar.

The capital of the country – Tripoli is being occupied by the new General National Congress, that is being supported by a coalition of armed groups that is called the Shield of Libya. This coalition is closely associated with the Muslim Brotherhood movement, which is being labeled as a terrorist organization by a number of states. The second-largest city of the country – Benghazi is being run independently by the so-called Islamic Shura Council.

A number of territories are not being controlled by any official group and those territories are quickly being subjected to ISIS rule, which creates a foothold for the further development of this terrorist group if it is to suffer a crushing defeat in Iraq and Syria.

In the meantime, there’s a long list of contradictions between the government in Tripoli and the officially recognized one. Therefore, the the Government of National Consensus (GNC) that was created in accordance with the accords signed in Morocco on December 17, 2015 has not been ratified by the Parliament. Therefore, the GNC cannot be regarded as the legitimate representative of Libya. However, Washington and other Western players are trying to ignore this fact, putting particular emphasis on supporting those people at the head of the GNC. The Tobruk Parliament explains its negative attitude towards the GNC by the fact that this government is acting in accordance with Washington’s demands. This fact has been announced bluntly in the US Senate by the newly appointed commander of Africa Command of the US Armed Force Thomas D. Waldhauser. In addition, according to the statements made by Libyan members of parliament, the GNC consists mainly of terrorists and extremists that have been murdering and torturing civilians and participated in the creation of training camps for militants that were later sent to fight in Syria.

Under these conditions, there can be no discussion of the legal status of the new US armed aggression against Libya.

When assessing the new US campaign in Libya one must bear in mind the fact that Libyan elites have shown their willingness to combat radical militants. In particular, the head of parliament Aguila Saleh Issa has declared June 18 a total mobilization across Libya, while the regular armed forces so far resisted ISIS pretty successfully. Although it’s true that Libyan troops have been pretty slow at entering the areas dominated by terrorists, like Benghazi and Sirte, out of the fear of the massive civilian casualties that such an operation can bring.

However, the White House prefers to ignore these facts, since the Obama administration has failed miserably in other regions of the world (including in Iraq, Syria and Afghanistan), therefore it tries to show at least some positive results before Barack Obama leaves the office.

As for yet another violation of the international law that Washington has just committed, the White House doesn’t want to hear any of it, while being convinced that bombs can subdue the whole world to its will, regardless of the growing death toll among the civilian population of various states.

August 9, 2016 Posted by | Militarism, Progressive Hypocrite | , , | 1 Comment

Gaddafi’s Ghosts: Return of the Libyan Jamahiriya

By Dan Glazebrook | RT | July 30, 2016

When NATO murdered Gaddafi and blitzed his country in 2011, they hoped the socialist ‘Jamahiriya’ movement he led would be dead and buried. Now his son has been released from prison to a hero’s welcome with his movement increasingly in the ascendancy.

There were various moments during NATO’s destruction of Libya that were supposed to symbolically crown Western supremacy over Libya and its institutions (and, by implication, over all African and Arab peoples): the ‘fall of Tripoli’ in August 2011; Cameron and Sarkozy’s victory speeches the following month; the lynch-mob execution of Muammar Gaddafi that came soon after. All of them were pyrrhic victories – but none more so than the death sentence handed down to Gaddafi’s son (and effective deputy leader) Saif al-Gaddafi in July 2015.

Saif had been captured by the Zintan militia shortly after his father and brother were killed by NATO’s death squads in late 2011. The ‘International’ Criminal Court – a neocolonial farce which has only ever indicted Africans – demanded he be handed over to them, but the Zintan – fiercely patriotic despite having fought with NATO against Gaddafi – refused. Over the next two years the country descended into the chaos and societal collapse that Gaddafi had predicted, sliding inexorably towards civil war.

By 2014, the country’s militias had coalesced around two main groupings – the Libyan National Army, composed of those who supported the newly elected, and mainly secular, House of Representatives; and the Libya Dawn coalition, composed of the militias who supported the Islamist parties that had dominated the country’s previous parliament but refused to recognize their defeat at the polls in 2014. After fierce fighting, the Libya Dawn faction took control of Tripoli. It was there that Saif, along with dozens of other officials of the Jamahiriya – the Libyan ‘People’s State’ which Gaddafi had led – were put on trial for their life. However, once again the Zintan militia – allied to the Libyan National Army – refused to hand him over. After a trial condemned by human rights groups as “riddled with legal flaws”, in a court system dominated by the Libya Dawn militias, an absent Saif was sentenced to death, along with eight other former government officials. The trial was never recognized by the elected government, by then relocated to Tobruk. A gloating Western media made sure to inform the world of the death sentence, which they hoped would extinguish forever the Libyan people’s hopes for a restoration of the independence, peace and prosperity his family name had come to represent.

It was a hope that would soon be dashed. Less than a year later, the France 24 news agency arranged an interview with Saif Al Gaddafi’s lawyer Karim Khan in which he revealed to the world that Saif had in fact, “been given his liberty on April 12, 2016″, in accordance with the amnesty law passed by the Tobruk parliament the previous year. Given the crowing over Saif’s death sentence the previous year, and his indictment by the International Criminal Court, this was a major story. Yet, by and large, it was one the Western media chose to steadfastly ignore – indeed, the BBC did not breathe a single word about it.

What is so significant about his release, however, is what it represents: the recognition, by Libya’s elected authorities, that there is no future for Libya without the involvement of the Jamahiriya movement.

The truth is, this movement never went away. Rather, having been forced underground in 2011, it has been increasingly coming out into the open, building up its support amongst a population sick of the depravities and deprivations of the post-Gaddafi era.

Exactly five years ago, following the start of the NATO bombing campaign, Libyans came out onto the streets in massive demonstrations in support of their government in Tripoli, Sirte, Zlitan and elsewhere. Even the BBC admitted that “there is no discounting the genuine support that exists”, adding that “’Muammar is the love of millions’ was the message written on the hands of women in the square”.

Following the US-UK-Qatari invasion of Tripoli the following month, however, the reign of terror by NATO’s death squad militias ensured that public displays of such sentiments could end up costing one’s life. Tens of thousands of ‘suspected Gaddafi supporters’ were rounded up by the militias in makeshift ‘detention camps’ where torture and abuse was rife; around 7,000 are estimated to be there still to this day, and hundreds have been summarily executed.

Black people in particular were targeted, seen as symbolic of the pro-African policies pursued by Gaddafi but hated by the supremacist militias, with the black Libyan town of Tawergha turned into a ghost town overnight as Misratan militias made good on their promise to kill all those who refused to leave. Such activities were effectively legalised by the NATO-imposed ‘Transitional National Council’ whose Laws 37 and 38 decreed that public support for Gaddafi could be punished by life imprisonment and activities taken ‘in defence of the revolution’ would be exempt from prosecution.

Nevertheless, over the years that followed, as the militias turned on each other and the country rapidly fell apart, reports began to suggest that much of southern Libya was slowly coming under the control of Gaddafi’s supporters. On January 18th 2014, an air force base near the southern city of Sabha was taken by Gaddafi loyalists, frightening the new government enough to impose a state of emergency, ban Libya’s two pro-Gaddafi satellite stations, and embark on aerial bombing missions in the south of the country.

But it was, ironically, the passing of the death sentences themselves – intended to extinguish pro-Gaddafi sentiment for good – that triggered the most open and widespread demonstrations of support for the former government so far, with protests held in August 2015 across the country, and even in ISIS-held Sirte. Middle East Eye reported the following from the demonstration in Sabha (in which 7 were killed when militias opened fire on the protesters):

Previous modest pro-Gaddafi celebrations in the town had been overlooked by the Misratan-led Third Force, stationed in Sabha for over a year – originally to act as a peacekeeping force following local clashes. ‘This time, I think the Third Force saw the seriousness of the pro-Gaddafi movement because a demonstration this big has not been seen in the last four years,’ said Mohamed. ‘There were a lot of people, including women and children, and people were not afraid to show their faces … IS had threatened to shoot anyone who protested on Friday, so there were no green flags in towns they control, apart from Sirte, although there are some green flags flying in remote desert areas,’ he said. ‘But if these protests get stronger across the whole of Libya, people will become braver and we will see more green flags. I know many people who are just waiting for the right time to protest.’

In Sirte, demonstrators were fired at by ISIS fighters, who dispersed the group and took away seven people, including four women. The same Middle East Eye report made the following comment:

The protests have been a public representation of a badly kept secret in Libya, that the pro-Gaddafi movement which has existed since the 2011 revolution has grown in strength, born out of dissatisfaction with the way life has worked out for many ordinary citizens in the last four years… [Mohamed] added that some people who had originally supported the 2011 revolution had joined the protests. Most Libyans just want a quiet life. They don’t care who takes over or who controls Libya’s money, they just want a comfortable life. That’s why Gaddafi stayed in power for 42 years. Salaries were paid on time, we had good subsidies on all the essentials and living was cheap.

Mohammed Eljarh, writing in the conservative US journal Foreign Policy, added that,

These pro-Qaddafi protests have the potential to turn into a national movement against the 2011 revolution, not least because a growing number of Libyans are deeply disillusioned by its outcome… there is now a building consensus that the atrocities and abuses committed by post-Qaddafi groups since the revolution exceed by far those committed by the Qaddafi regime during its rule.

At the same time, the Green resistance is becoming an increasingly influential force within the Libyan National Army, representing the country’s elected House of Representatives. Earlier this year, the Tobruk parliament allowed Gaddafi’s widow back into the country, whilst the LNA entered into an alliance with pro-Gaddafi tribes in the country’s East, and began to recruit open supporters of Gaddafi into its military structures. Gaddafi’s Tuareg commander General Ali Kanna, for example, who fled Libya following Gaddafi’s fall in 2011, has now reportedly been welcomed into the LNA. The policy is already bearing fruit, with several territories near Sirte already seized from ISIS by the new allies.

The Jamahiriya, it seems, is back. But then, it never really went away.

Dan Glazebrook is a freelance political writer who has written for RT, Counterpunch, Z magazine, the Morning Star, the Guardian, the New Statesman, the Independent and Middle East Eye, amongst others. His first book “Divide and Ruin: The West’s Imperial Strategy in an Age of Crisis” was published by Liberation Media in October 2013. It featured a collection of articles written from 2009 onwards examining the links between economic collapse, the rise of the BRICS, war on Libya and Syria and ‘austerity’. He is currently researching a book on US-British use of sectarian death squads against independent states and movements from Northern Ireland and Central America in the 1970s and 80s to the Middle East and Africa today.

July 30, 2016 Posted by | Timeless or most popular | , , | 1 Comment

Neo-con West and global destruction

New Middle East 5abe9

By Mark Taliano | American Herald tribune | July 28, 2016

The neo-con “West” and its allies want to destroy the Middle East so that they can control the Middle East.

Under the auspices of their imperial “New Middle East” project, the criminals (U.S–led NATO, the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC), and Israel, are targeting everything that they falsely profess to cherish.

All of the “values” that the politicians falsely parade as important, even sacrosanct, are instrumentalized as false fronts that belie the dark undercurrents dragging humanity towards a barren “New World Order” of globalized degeneracy and despair.

Nation-state self-determination, sovereignty, territorial integrity – all vital components of world peace, prosperity, and democracy are meaningless to the elites, except for their propaganda value.

A meta-national project of top down control, enforced by anonymous elites, controls how we think, feel, and live.

This dystopian present has rendered political choices moot. Choices are non-choices, puppet shows sold by empty words and conflicting narratives — all bereft of substance.

The real agenda is unspeakable. The real agenda must be unspeakable, because it is poison, a dark distillate of degenerate barbarism, mostly hidden from view.

This real agenda, masked beneath the Big Lies, and the stories told by scripted “politicians”, bares its sanguine teeth, and imposes its dark will with barely a whimper. There are no “mistakes”.  It’s all by design.

War planners knew full well that the sanctions imposed prior to the invasion of Iraq were targeting children. They accurately predicted when the plants would fail, and how many lives would be lost.

A Defence Intelligence Agency (DIA) document accurately predicted that,

“IT PROBABLY WILL TAKE AT LEAST SIX MONTHS (TO JUNE 1991) BEFORE THE (water treatment) SYSTEM IS FULLY DEGRADED.” And that,

“FAILING TO SECURE SUPPLIES WILL RESULT IN A SHORTAGE OF

PURE DRINKING WATER FOR MUCH OF THE POPULATION. THIS COULD LEAD

TO INCREASED INCIDENCES, IF NOT EPIDEMICS, OF DISEASE …  “

The end result?  Over 500,000 children under the age of five were killed, with intent (murder), in addition to over one million other people, none of whom who had committed a crime.

The “West” regularly targets innocent people, including children, with a view to weakening the morale of countries about to be conquered. Madeleine Albright infamously intoned that the “price (murdering 500,000 children) … is worth it”, in one of the rare moments when dark truths and media messaging intersect.

War planners also knew that they were supporting al Qaeda ground troops in Libya when they exploited the Responsibility To Protect (R2P) clause to bomb the sovereign state of Libya, to assassinate Muammar Gaddafi, to destroy water infrastructure, to loot, to plunder, to commit genocide, and to set up an ISIS strongehold. Prior to the invasion, Libya’s standard of living was the highest in Africa. There were no mistakes.

The weapons ratline from Libya to Syria was not a mistake either. The West intentionally funded its terrorist proxies so that they would be well provisioned to invade Syria. The weaponization and training of its terrorist foot soldiers supplements the terrorists’ now dwindling additional sources of income such as funding from illicit drugs, the plunder of historical Syrian artifacts, the theft of Syrian oil resources, and so on. All planned by the West. Again, no mistakes.

Equally degenerate is the fact that the Western intelligence agencies, allied with Wahhabi Saudi Arabia, and Pakistan’s ISIS, perpetuate the degeneracy by raising new recruits into the culture of the un-islamic, Wahhabi ideology. Prof. Michel Chossudovsky explains in America’s “War on Terrorism” that

“In 1979, the largest covert operation in the history of the CIA was launched in Afghanistan: With the active encouragement of the CIA and Pakistan’s ISI, who wanted to turn the Afghan Jihad into a global war waged by all Muslim states against the Soviet Union, some 35,000 Muslim radicals from 40 Islamic countries joined Afghanistan’s fight between 1982 and 1992. Tens of thousands more came to study in Pakistani madrasahs. Eventually, more than 100,000 foreign Muslim radicals were directly influenced by the Afghan jihad. ”

Just as the CIA, through the Pakistani ISI, creates “radicals” by indoctrinating children in “madrasah” schools, so too ISIS indoctrinates Syrian children in the ways of the degenerate Wahhabi ideology in ISIS occupied areas of Syria.

Samuel Westrop writes in “U.K: Jihadists as Charity Workers”,  that

 “ISIS has supplemented its violence with dawa’h programs – a system of social provision, or ‘soft-power outreach’ – in areas under its control. A key component of this dawa’h … is providing educational outreach initiatives ‘as part of its wider strategy to foster a new generation of Syrians in support of its ideological agenda.’ “

The cancer of this un-islamic ideology is intentionally promoted in occupied areas of secular, pluralist, democratic Syria with a view to “weaponizing” children, and to destroying the country with an internalized cancer of Wahhabism and violence.

None of this is accidental. All of it is the fruit of considerable forethought and pre-planning by the imperial “West”, its allies, and their intelligence agencies.

Whereas the West proclaims that it is spreading democracy, it is spreading terrorism, Wahhabism, death and destruction on each and every one of its pre-planned imperial invasions.

Syria’s stand against the Western agencies of death and destruction is a stand for all of humanity against the dark forces that fester beneath our politician’s empty words and the courtesan media’s toxic lies.

July 28, 2016 Posted by | Militarism, Timeless or most popular, Wars for Israel | , , , , , | Leave a comment

Chechen leader blames US for bloodshed in Afghanistan & other Muslim nations

RT | July 25, 2016

Ramzan Kadyrov has accused the US authorities of instigating the civil war in Afghanistan and other Muslim countries, and called on senior politicians in these states to set aside their differences and unite in the face of what he sees as a common enemy.

“During the 37 years of the war in Afghanistan peace has not become closer, not even by a single step. The United States used the excuse of fighting their own Bin Laden to unleash a decades-long civil war there. America and NATO could have solved the Afghan problem in just two years, but they need this eternal bloody cauldron in Afghanistan that takes the lives of many thousands of young Muslims,” the acting head of the Chechen Republic stated in comments on the latest terrorist attack in Kabul.

Kadyrov expressed his position in a post on Instagram – a medium he normally uses for communication with the public.

In the message, he emphasized that the United States and its NATO allies have artificially created the instability in the region. “Step by step they start wars in Muslim countries. Iraq, Syria, Libya, Egypt, Yemen are now facing the threat of losing their sovereignty,” Kadyrov wrote.

The Chechen leader also called on all Afghanistan’s leaders to set aside personal ambitions and ethnic and religious differences to unite in the face of the common threat. “Once Pashtu, Uzbeks, Tajiks, Sunnis, Shia all join their ranks, no one would ever be able to impose some external will on you,” he wrote.

At least 80 people were killed and 231 injured as a result of a bomb blast at a mass rally in Afghanistan capital Kabul on July 23. The Islamic State terrorist group (IS, formerly ISIS/ISIL) has claimed responsibility for the attack.

Kadyrov has repeatedly accused the United States and other Western nations of deliberate policies aimed at destroying Muslim countries and the Muslim faith. In February last year he said IS had been “spawned” by the West to incite hatred towards Muslims all over the world. Kadyrov also suggested the West was backing the terrorist group in order to distract public attention from numerous problems in the Middle East, in the hope of destroying Islamic nations from within. In November he accused the Turkish authorities of aiding Western nations’ plot to weaken and destroy Islam by assisting Islamic State and its allies in Syria.

Kadyrov also previously claimed that he possessed information that the Islamic State leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, had been personally recruited to work for the US by General David Petraeus, the former director of the CIA and former commander of coalition forces in Iraq and Afghanistan. At that time, Kadyrov claimed IS “was acting on orders from the West and Europe.”

Read more:

Chechen leader blames US for bloodshed in Afghanistan & other Muslim nations

July 25, 2016 Posted by | Deception, False Flag Terrorism | , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

The dangers of Western military action in Libya

By Jessica Purkiss | MEMO | July 22, 2016

In April, the French and British foreign ministers visited Tripoli to show support for Libya’s UN-backed unity government. France’s Foreign Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault urged Libya’s neighbours to get behind the government, adding, “There is no other possible path.” Reports have however recently surfaced showing that Western forces, including France, have been assisting General Khalifa Haftar – a figure who has been threatened with EU sanctions for refusing to support the unity government and who has been fighting some groups involved in the Western-backed campaign against Daesh.

Earlier this month, air traffic control recordings obtained by the Middle East Eye showed that British, French, Italian and US troops, have been coordinating air strikes in support of Haftar. On Wednesday, the death of three French soldiers led to the first official confirmation that French special forces are operating in Libya, something the unity government say they were not informed of. France’s presence in the country was first reported by Le Monde in February, with reports claiming that a detachment was aiding Haftar in his battle against Daesh from a base at Benghazi airport. Earlier this year, the Pentagon said its units were deployed to “partner” local militias against Daesh and Britain has admitted sending RAF reconnaissance flights over the country.

Since the fall of the Libyan leader Muammar Gadaffi in 2011, the country has struggled to stay on course. Today Libya is in the middle of a civil war and is split between two warring parliaments. The political vacuum has allowed for the powerful militant group Daesh to gain a foothold and criminal networks to flourish.

General Khalifa Haftar, who leads the Libyan National Army (LNA), has been the key force fighting against Libya Dawn, an umbrella of several armed groups who have supported Omar Al-Hassi’s General National Congress (GNC). The GNC was replaced by the House of Representatives (HoR) following an election but political opponents of the new parliament challenged its legitimacy and revived the GNC in Tripoli. Fighters from Libya Dawn forced the government of Prime Minister Abdullah Al-Thani and the HoR to Tobruk. Haftar’s crackdown is known as Operation Dignity.

The UN-backed unity government, effectively Libya’s third parliament, was formed in Tunisia in December 2015, with the aim of bringing an end to the conflict. It has the difficult task of replacing the two governments, bringing unity to the fractured country and dealing with security concerns arising from the presence of Daesh.

But it has faced endless opposition. The government only managed to sail into Tripoli in March 2016 as opposition groups prevented them from flying in. Daesh has also made things difficult – in the run-up to the January 16 2016 deadline for its formation, the militant group led a sustained attack against Libya’s vital infrastructure. While the unity government does have the mandate to call for the UN to militarily intervene, unsanctioned military actions by Western countries only works to undermine the already very thin veneer of legitimacy it has.

In Libya, the response to the news of the French soldiers has been strong, with condemnations from the UN-backed government and angry protests in Tripoli.  As Fayez Serraj, the Prime Minister of Libya, said in a recent op-ed, “Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (Daesh) is not our greatest enemy. National division is.” The divisions within Libya have allowed it to veer into civil war, with groups such as Daesh managing to exploit the cleavages in the country. The growth of Daesh is a symptom of conflict in Libya not the cause.

Serraj continues, “The stark lesson from the past five years of turmoil is that when Libyans fail to work together they empower those who would destroy our country… terrorists will be defeated by our Armed Forces uniting under civilian command, not rival militias rushing to claim a political prize.” This applies to achieving peace in Libya- by backing one side politically while supporting another militarily, divides that are preventing peace only widen. In supporting Haftar whose power base is in the east, it undermines the unity government’s struggle to gain control of this heavily divided area.

Aside from the implications of peace for the country, there is also a question of the legality of the action. As Libya’s Supreme State Council put it, it is a “clear deception by a permanent member of the UN Security Council and a sponsor of the [December 2015] political agreement”. Stop the War Coalition’s Chris Nineham told RT: “They are not backed by the UN, these interventions. They are not checked anywhere. They are just unilateral acts of military aggression.” Some have gone even further. “This is a sort of coup against the political process and against the democratic path chosen by the Libyan people,” Mansour Al Hasadi, a member of the GNA, told Al Jazeera.

Britain and France took the lead in pushing for military intervention in 2011. While the intervention led to rapid results and was initially considered successful, the country now contends with three parliaments, the growing presence of Daesh and continued violence. Peace seems a distant prospect. Yet the same international powers have not learned from their mistakes.

July 22, 2016 Posted by | Illegal Occupation, Militarism, War Crimes | , , , , | Leave a comment

No Chilcot for Copenhagen: Denmark Hushes up Crucial Iraq War Document

Sputnik | July 15, 2016

Denmark has decided to spare its former Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen the embarrassment his British colleague Tony Blair experienced for involving his country in the war in Iraq by keeping vital documents away from the public eye.

Unlike the United Kingdom, which last week published the Chilcot Report, which unleashed strong criticism of Tony Blair’s Iraqi venture, Denmark decided to block a secret note regarding the 2003 Iraq War from public access, obviously with the intention of shielding its former Prime Minister and NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen from similar scrutiny.

Whereas a batch of documents, including communications between Blair and former US President George W. Bush, were made available for public download after the publication of the Chilcot Report, a similar 14-year old document written by Rasmussen amid preparations for the US-led invasion of Iraq will be kept under wraps, Jyllands-Posten reported.

According to Denmark’s parliamentary ombudsman, Danish law prohibits the publication of such material, which was described as “potentially damaging for other countries.” Therefore, the document will be kept classified in accordance with the controversial 2013 Freedom of Information Law.

The debated document relates to a meeting between Rasmussen and then-US Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz in 2002, which is widely believed to have pushed Denmark into the US-led campaign to oust former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein.

Remarkably, Copenhagen opposes the very idea of shedding light on Denmark’s involvement in the bloody war, which threw Iraq into chaos and left millions dead as the nation was turned into a battleground. In 2015, Prime Minister Lars Løkke Rasmussen controversially cancelled a government inquiry into the Iraq War shortly after taking office.

A number of opposition politicians have been calling for the document to be made public, despite the perpetual blockade by the government. The background for Denmark’s military involvement in the wars in Kosovo, Iraq and Afghanistan should be examined through an independent investigation, the Red-Green Alliance stated. According to party spokesperson Eva Flyvholm, Denmark should investigate this painful period to be able to learn from its mistakes and look forward, the Danish newspaper Extra Bladet reported.

Denmark has been a loyal NATO associate ever since it joined the alliance as a founding member. Over the past decades, Danish soldiers fought in the former Yugoslavia, Iraq and Libya. Anders Fogh Rasmussen was Danish Prime Minister from 2001 to 2009, whereupon he went on to become NATO Secretary General and remained in office until October 2014.

July 15, 2016 Posted by | Deception, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

The Sanders Sell-Out and the Clinton Wars to Come

By Gary Leupp | Dissident Voice | July 13, 2016

The worst disservice Sanders has done to his supporters, other than to lead them on a wild goose chase for real change, is to virtually ignore his rival’s vaunted “experience.” He need not have mentioned Hillary Clinton’s Senate record, since there was nothing there; her stint as law-maker was merely intended to position her for a run for the presidency, according to the family plan. But there was a lot in her record as Secretary of State.

As she recounts in her memoir, she wanted a heftier “surge” in Afghanistan than Obama was prepared to order. Anyone paying attention knows that the entire military mission in that broken country has been a dismal failure producing blow-back on a mind-boggling scale, even as the Taliban has become stronger, and controls more territory, than at any time since its toppling in 2001-2002.

Hillary wanted to impose regime change on Syria in 2011, by stepping up assistance to armed groups whom (again) anyone paying attention knows are in cahoots with al-Nusra (which is to say, al-Qaeda). In an email dated Nov. 30, 2015, she states her reason: “The best way to help Israel…is to help the people of Syria overthrow the regime of Bashar Assad.”

In her memoir she criticizes Obama for not doing more to oust the secular Assad regime. She has repeatedly stated during her campaign that she favors a no-fly zone over Syria, like the one she advocated for Libya. That means conflict with Russia, which is bombing sites in Syria, with the permission of its internationally recognized government, under what Russia’s leaders (and many rational people) consider to be terrorists’ control.

Sanders–sorry, I cannot call him “Bernie” anymore, since he has become precisely as avuncular as Dick Cheney—could have effectively attacked Hillary the Skjaldmær (Old Norse for “Shield-maiden,” referring to an often berserk warrior-woman) for her role in the destruction of Libya. But no! Always referring to her deferentially as “Secretary Clinton”–as though her actions in that role merit respect—he rarely alluded to her greatest crime at all. That’s unforgivable.

(Yes, in one debate he mentioned Libya in passing–timidly, and with no follow-up. While he repeatedly mentioned how The Secretary had voted for the Iraq War and he hadn’t, he hardly exuded moral outrage about that or any other Clinton decision. His campaign was all about her Wall Street ties and well-paid, secret talks, the transcripts of which he once wanted to see but has now apparently lost interest. It was never about “foreign policy,” which is supposedly her forte. He may call himself a “socialist,” but he’s no anti-imperialist. He has voted in favor of every “defense spending” bill, supported the NATO assault on Serbia in 1999, supported Israel’s attack on Gaza in 2014, etc.)

He could have attacked Clinton savagely–with the savagery of mere matter-of-fact honesty–by citing those emails exchanged between Clinton and her vicious confidant and former adviser Anne-Marie Slaughter, in which the latter—under the subject line “bravo!”–congratulates her on engineering Obama’s agreement for the bombing of Libya. (On March 19, 2011, as the bombing of Libya began, Slaughter wrote: “I cannot imagine how exhausted you must be after this week, but I have NEVER been prouder of having worked for you. Turning [Obama] around on this is a major win for everything we have worked for.”

He could have quoted that email from Sidney Blumenthal, that Svengali figure who has long been Clinton’s unofficial mentor (along with Henry Kissinger and others): “No-fly! Brava! You did it!” (Brava, if you’re interested, is the feminine form of Bravo.)

He could have repeatedly used that damning clip that reveals Hillary’s joy at the grotesque murder of Muammar Gaddafi–who had become a friend of Tony Blair, Silvio Berlusconi, and the CIA as of 2011–at the hands of Islamist thugs, who rammed a stick and knife up his anus on camera just to make it more humiliating. His ads could have started with some appropriately edited version of this:

And ended with this:

And left the people to draw their own conclusions.

He could have asked, “Why the hell did you appoint Dick Cheney aide Victoria Nuland as Under Secretary of State for Eurasia, and support and fund that coup in Ukraine in 2014 in your goddamn ambition to expand NATO?”

But no. He didn’t have it in him. And now he wants his youthful erstwhile followers to transfer their support to someone who is not only the embodiment of Wall Street, with all its blood-sucking and all its crookedness, but the personification of U.S. imperialism in an era when its depth of crisis has produced a state of perpetual war.

Savvy people in Syria and elsewhere surely understand what the Sanders endorsement means: Syria is the next Libya.

Hillary in the Oval Office, Binyamin Netanyahu at her side, will laugh as Assad gets her knife up his ass, chaos deepens, the draft is re-instated, and boys and girls–of all ethnicities, gay and straight together–march off to fight the Brava Wars drastically reducing youth unemployment and making legions more eligible for the GI Bill.

Even if Sanders doesn’t vote for the war (and why should there be a vote, after all, in this post-constitution era?), he will share responsibility.

Shame! And shame on any once “Bernie” supporter who follows him into his moral morass.

*****Feel the burn. The burn of the rigged system. Why be drawn into it—the object of Hillary’s praise, for switching so readily from him to her (for the sake of “unity”)?

What is there to unite with, but more corruption, exploitation, and wars based on lies?

The votes that matter are the votes on the street. Either Trump or Clinton will provoke mass upheaval. The key contribution of the Sanders campaign has been to lay bare for idealistic youth the magnitude of the rot in the system itself, while raising (however dishonestly) the prospect of “political revolution.”

It’s the hope Sanders has sold out. But yes, that’s what we need. Social, economic, and political revolution. Too bad he’s chosen the other side.

Gary Leupp is a Professor of History at Tufts University, and author of numerous works on Japanese history. He can be reached at: gleupp@granite.tufts.edu

July 13, 2016 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes, Wars for Israel | , , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

Scottish Nationalism & the Yinon Plan

By Barbara McKenzie | July 13, 2016

The Scottish National Party, under Alex Salmond, has long been associated with opposition to illegal and immoral wars. Salmond was one of the few MPs who opposed the bombing of Serbia, and campaigned actively against the invasion of Iraq, subsequently supporting Plaid Cymru’s Adam Price in his attempt to impeach Tony Blair. Like Jeremy Corbyn he has been responding to the publication of the Chilcot report; like Jeremy Corbyn he is calling for Blair to be charged with war crimes.

What exactly is the position of the Scottish National Party with regard to global peace and justice?

The foremost objective of the Scottish National Party is Scottish independence. Beyond that, it has been  obliged to position itself as the centre-left party of Scotland, there being scarcely room on the right along with Labour and the Tories, and espouses certain left-wing causes such as the question of upgrading Britain’s nuclear missile system, Trident. However a commitment to Scottish independence and opposition to nuclear weapons do not in themselves add up to an ethical view on global affairs.

Despite Salmond’s stance on Iraq, the SNP, with Salmond as party leader, voted with the Government and Labour Opposition to bomb Libya in 2011. It should be noted that both Jeremy Corbyn and John McDonnell voted against the motion, along with 11 other MPs. The reasons given for their No vote are varied and convincing.  That of Caroline Lucas, Green MP for Brighton Pavilion, went : ’Given the West’s colonial past, its history of adventurism and support for dictatorship in the region, its failure to enforce UN resolutions in Palestine and the legacy of the invasion of Iraq in 2003, I think its motives in Libya will always be in doubt.’ Quite so.

The SNP clearly did not see it that way. As Steve James puts it:

Since coming to power in Edinburgh in 2007, the [SNP] has repeatedly made clear it is willing to support British military actions, particularly if a UN flag is flying over the slaughter of the day—including in Libya. […] The SNP has repeatedly made clear that they support NATO, the European Union, a struggle against Russia, and increased spending on frigates, fast jets and long-range reconnaissance aircraft.

The SNP’s line on Syria could be seen as being consistent with its position on Iraq, in that it opposed the overt bombing of the country (ostensibly ISIS in Syria) in December, 2015.  When talking to the press after the vote was passed Salmond made a lot of sense (as he usually does), pointing out the lack of a proper strategy to deal with Islamic State.

However the elephant present in the chamber when the bombing of Syria was debated was the UK government’s known support for the extremist militants fighting the legitimate government in Syria, see here and here. Neither Salmond’s statement on the ‘bomb Syria’ vote nor Nicola Sturgeon’s contain any proposal for the obvious moral alternative, to stop supporting armed extremists, mostly imported, and instead help the Syrian people fight these terrorists. There is nothing said by either politician to suggest that the SNP does not support in principle the proxy war on Syria and enforced regime change.

It is obvious to all and sundry that there is a gross contradiction between the West’s claims to see terrorism and the growth of ISIS as a major threat, while in real terms prioritising the overthrow of the Syrian government who is actually fighting them on the ground. By not pressing the UK government and the EU to actually help the Syrian people fight jihadi extremists, instead of providing those same extremists with moral and material support, the SNP has shown itself to be just as compromised as the Labor and Conservative parties.

The Yinon Plan

Many active users of social media who follow global events will be familiar with General Wesley Clark’s  revelation in 2007 about the US plan, after having already invaded Afghanistan, to take out 7 further countries in 5 years.  It was made known to Wesley Clark a couple of weeks after 9/11 that the US planned to invade Iraq,  Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and finally Iran.

Likewise, many people will be familiar with Oded Yinon’s ‘Strategy for Israel in the Nineteen Eighties’, a proposal to further Israel’s interests by destabilising the whole of the Middle East. The plan operates on two essential premises. To survive, Israel must 1) become an imperial regional power, and 2) must effect the division of the whole area into small states by the dissolution of all existing Arab states.

The objectives of the proposal articulated by Wesley Clark clearly further those of the second premise of the Yinon Plan. Furthermore, leaked documents (such as Clinton’s emails) confirm that Israel’s interests are paramount for US foreign policy. The same documents show that the decision to take out Syria had been made at least by 2006, but probably much earlier.

Given the catastrophic progression of wars from Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya to Syria, all strongly promoted and either actively waged or heavily sponsored by the West, Israel and their ally Saudi Arabia, there is no moral or intellectual justification for seeing these wars as anything but a cold-blooded plan to destabilise the greater Middle East and fulfill the Yinon plan.

There is little in the actions of the SNP (and many of their supporters) to suggest that they do not support in principle this path of destruction. Nicola Sturgeon declared her unequivocal support for the Israel lobby by putting on a blue nose to celebrate Yom Ha’atzmaut, which translates as something like ‘Destroy Palestine Day’.

nicolasturgeonyomhaatzmaut

Support for Israel, and for the Israel-backed programme of regime change in the Middle East, is a thread that runs through the Scottish independence movement.

The main Scottish ‘leftist’ pro-independence blogs, while they probably opposed the Iraq war, have abandoned any pretense at a moral perspective when it comes to global affairs. Rev. Stuart Campbell, the editor of Wings over Scotland and a strong supporter of the SNP, has wisely avoided commenting on issues such as the Syria conflict, focusing on what he knows best, i.e. Scottish affairs. However Campbell forms a mutual admiration society with one Stephen Daisley, a journalist with STV News who has been termed a ‘hate-filled and crazed right-winger’ by ex-UK ambassador Craig Murray. Daisley authored a quite extraordinary article attacking those who criticise Israel, which fully justifies Murray’s categorisation, offering such objective analysis as, ‘Why deny the Holocaust when you can throw it back in the Jews’ faces by fictionalising Gaza as a concentration camp? Why hurl rocks at a Jew in the street when you can hurl endless vexatious UN resolutions at Israel?’

Daisley’s article was published 24 August 2015. On the same day Wings over Scotland tweeted (not, I hasten to add, in reference to Daisley’s article, but also not for the first time)

WingslovesDaisley2

Daisley promoted Wings over Scotland’s crowd fundraiser in February 2015, while until late last year his blog was listed among the suggested links on Wings over Scotland’s Home Page.

The other major pro-indy blog, Bella Caledonia, which has been praised by such notable Scots as Irvine Welsh, has come out strongly in support for enforced regime change in Syria, posting, for example, an article What is to be Done about Syria by determined propagandist for the ‘revolution’, Mohammed Idrees Ahmed. To be fair to Scotland, the article attracted a number of negative (or appalled) comments, but editor Mike Small responded to criticism by digging himself into an ever deeper hole, and disappointed readers were left in no doubt of his support for illicit regime change in Syria.

Who’s next?

It is widely assumed that the next country in the sights of the NATO/Israel alliance will be Iran (although with all the recent sabre-rattling about Russia, one could be forgiven for thinking that country may be next in the firing line). It has also been widely assumed that the progression to war on Iran, either through direct military intervention or via a bogus revolution on the Syria model, is impeded by the failure so far to achieve a resolution in Syria that satisfies the NATO/Israel alliance, and that the ‘West’ will not move its attentions to Syria until the Syrian situation is resolved.

Quite how long Iran is safe from the predatory NATO/Israel alliance is hard to say. But those wanting to move against Iran sooner rather than later met in Paris on 9-10 July 2016, at a rally called Free Iran: Our Pledge Regime Change. This is an annual event convened by the People’s Mujahedeen of Iran (PMOI), more commonly known as the Mujahedeen-e-Khalq or MEK, which was until 2012 on the US prescribed terrorist list. Daniel Larison in the hardly left-wing American Conservative described MEK in less than glowing terms.

… the MEK is probably best-known for its role fighting on the side of Saddam Hussein in the Iran-Iraq war against their own country. That is one of the chief reasons why the group is still loathed by almost all Iranians in Iran and around the world. The idea that this group speaks for dissident Iranians is nonsensical and insulting to the latter, and the fantasy that such an abusive, totalitarian cult has any interest in the freedom of Iranians is laughable even by Washington’s low standards.

The touted 100,000 participants included a number of politicians and other dignitaries such Prince Turki al-Faisal, ex-intelligence chief from Saudi Arabia, who talked of the importance of overthrowing an oppressive regime, but obviously could not go too deeply into the question of human rights, and Newt Gingrich, a potential running mate for Donald Trump.

It is well known that the MEK has close ties with pro-Israel lobby groups, so perhaps it should not surprise that convenor Maryam Rajavi paid a special tribute to Elie Wiesel, who won a Nobel Prize for his book on his holocaust experience. Now Elie Wiesel is considered by all except the most hardened Zionists as a fraud and a hypocrite, and certainly nothing like the great messenger for humanity described by Rajavi. Again, it is difficult to see such concern for the priorities of the Israel lobby resonating with the people of Iran.

The sentiments of the conference are also supported by a number of Anglican bishops. This episcopal empathy with Iranian Christians might inspire more conviction if the same had been shown for Syrian Christians. However a Google search for such an outpouring of compassion found only an article in the very unlikely Spectator, asking that Cameron Should Listen to Syrian Bishops Not the Anglican Ones. My search for “UK Bishops grateful to Hezbollah for protecting Syrian Christians” was no more successful.

Very proud to be sharing a platform with such august company as Prince Turki al-Faisal and Newt Gingrich were three MPs from the Scottish National Party:

iranparismonagh

Despite all these years of bloody war in the greater Middle East, the implications of attending a conference dedicated to regime change were clearly lost on the SNP representatives.

paulmonaghanliked-your-tweet

The PMOI/MEK have an unsavoury reputation as terrorists and manipulators. The rally itself was a blatant display of hypocrisy of the highest order, with participants giving standing ovations to Turki al-Faisal of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, as he lectured on oppressive regimes. His hostess Maryam Rajavi, who aspired to ‘win the hearts and minds of the Iranian diaspora’, stood on the same platform as al-Faisal and spoke of Iran as the source of terrorism and extremism, completely disregarding the fact that Iran (unlike Saudi Arabia) support no terrorist groups, but the legitimate government of Syria. Participation in such an event does the organisations that the delegates represent no favours.

Anyone who puts too much trust in the integrity and consistency of politicians is headed for disappointment. But for the Scottish National Party to allow three of its MPS to be associated with an organisation and event of such ill repute is an exceptional display of poor judgement, quite apart from what this says about the party’s values.

It is likely that when the decision is made to go for Iran, the NATO/Israel alliance will go for the more deniable ‘revolution’ option, though they will be hoping for more credible partners than the MEK. The chances of such an organisation ever managing to acquire credibility as an Iranian opposition within Iran are minimal. However the case of Syria has shown that as long as their governments are not actually invading or bombing, the British and American publics are quite happy to put up with blatant hypocrisy and hardly less blatant support for murderous extremists.

Whatever method is chosen to wipe out Iran, we needn’t look to the Scottish National Party to stand in the way.

July 13, 2016 Posted by | Militarism, Timeless or most popular, Wars for Israel | , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

9/11 and the Zionist Question: Is Noam Chomsky a Disinfo Agent for Israel?

The Global War on Terror, 2001-2016: Fifteen Years of the 9/11 Cover Up

Prof. Tony Hall | American Herald Tribune | July 13, 2016

The Kevin Barrett-Chomsky Dispute in Historical Perspective – First part of the series titled “9/11 and the Zionist Question”

Looking back with hindsight fifteen years after the transformative events of September 11, 2001, the quality of life for most people has significantly declined since 9/11. Beginning immediately on the very day of infamy, the forces of authoritarian reaction began to ramp up the power of unbridled militarism abroad and greatly expanded police powers at home, all in the name of combating Islamic terrorism. But what really happened on 9/11? Who did what to whom? Who is telling the truth and who is lying?

In the fifteen years since 9/11 a vast and multi-faceted citizens’ movement has done much of the investigative work that our thoroughly corrupted governments refused to do on our behalf. Why have there been no genuine investigations by officialdom into the originating event of the Global War on Terror? How was the federal investigation of the 9/11 crime transformed into a federally orchestrated cover up?

The outcome of the people’s inquiry points compellingly to the conclusion that the real culprits behind the 9/11 attacks were not a group of Islamic jihadists acting alone out of no other motivation than religious zealotry. Rather, the dominant group directing the 9/11 false flag event was composed primarily of Israel First neoconservatives who sought to demonize Muslims in order to create the necessary malleable enemy required for their purposes. The real culprits of 9/11 used the event to create a replacement enemy meant to revitalize the vast military and national security apparatus that was fast becoming obsolete following the end of the Cold War with the demise of the Soviet Union.

One of the objectives of the 9/11 criminals was to traumatize whole populations thereby making them more compliant and subject to manipulation. From the opening hours of the 9/11 debacle, the murder and mayhem was immediately blamed, without any forensic investigation whatsoever, on Muslim extremists said to be hostile to the West. The event was thereby framed within a pre-existing geopolitical concept already dubbed by Samuel Huntington as “a clash of civilizations.” The effect of the instant interpretation was to cast the Jewish state’s regional enemies as part of a larger Islamic conspiracy to undermine “the West.”

Huntington’s Clash of Civilizations was meant to signal that the core political economy of the USA, the so-called permanent war economy, should continue even though the Cold War had ended. The fabricated story line introduced on 9/11 was consistent with Huntington’s assessment that the new post-Cold War conflicts would cut across religious and cultural spheres of human interaction. With Huntington and Bernard Lewis as their guides, the authors of the 9/11 psychological operation have developed a false concept of “the West” as an exclusively Judeo-Christian construct. This post-9/11 interpretation has involved the creation of a false assumption that the history of Islamic religion, culture and philosophy is entirely external to the history of Western Civilization.

The characterization of Islam as a new and aberrant strain of influence in Europe and throughout the so-called “West” misrepresents the deep history of cross-cultural interaction. The Zionist-directed campaign to mischaracterize Muslims as a recent and alien injection into Western Civilization fails to take into account the importance of Islamic advances in mathematics, architecture, medicine and art in the genesis of the European Renaissance. As Edward Said has reminded us, there is an especially rich heritage in the Iberian peninsula of cross-fertilization between Jewish, Christian and Muslim scholars. Their collaborative exchanges flourished especially in Cordoba, the Iberian jewel of the Islamic caliphate of Al-Andalus.

Since 2001 the culprits of 9/11 have hired, armed, organized, and directed various mercenary proxy armies that fight under Islamic flags. With assistance being channeled especially through the CIA and Mossad safe haven of Saudi Arabia, these mercenary forces have done the bidding of their Zio-American patrons. Western-supported mercenary forces, including al-Qaeda and its supposed antagonistic cousin the “Islamic State” [ISIL, ISIS, IS, Daesh], have been deployed in a series of false flag terror events designed to keep alive anti-Muslim fear and loathing in Western minds.

Moreover, units of the so-called “Islamic State”, which funnel stolen oil to the European Union through Turkey, are regularly deployed throughout the Grand Chessboard of Eurasia. The aim is to give justification for Western military operations aimed ultimately at preparing the ground for the expansion of Greater Israel. The world’s dominant military-industrial complex has been covertly harnessed to this project of expansion. A crucial part of this network of military-industrial power lies in the Zionist-controlled mainstream media and institutions of higher education. These agencies have been co-opted to become instruments of the Islamophobic propaganda so crucial to preparing Western public opinion for aggressive invasions of Muslim countries such as Afghanistan, Iraq, Somalia, Libya and most recently Syria.

The deceptive façade of the Global War on Terror is meant to disguise this military and psychological system of aggressive warfare combined with engineered pollution of the mental environment with the toxin of hyped up Islamophobia.

Dr. Kevin Barrett has characterized the Global War on Terror as a global war on Muslims for Israel. Noam Chomsky disagrees. He has made himself a very significant nemesis to Kevin Barrett. Barrett is one of the most unrelenting researchers and publicists in the 9/11 Truth Movement. So far Chomsky has been quite effective in deploying his enormous prestige to prevent the citizens’ investigation on 9/11 from receiving a fair hearing, but especially in the foundation-funded platforms of progressive, Left, and anti-war activism.

This opening part introduces my essay, “9/11 and the Zionist Question: Is Noam Chomsky a Disinfo Agent for Israel?” In due course the larger paper will be published in its entirety here at American Herald Tribune. This essay explores the antagonisms between Kevin Barrett and Noam Chomsky with particular emphasis on the research and scholarship on false flag terrorism and especially on the contested events of 9/11. The argument is advanced that Prof. Chomsky has quite purposely promoted an agenda of cover up on 9/11, reducing himself to the level of crude propagandists and paid proponents of the dominant 9/11 narrative such as Jonathan Kay and Michael Shermer.

In the fifteen years since 9/11 the concerted and continuing cover up of the truth has become an enormous element of the overall 9/11 crime. Growing understanding of the role of mass media and institutions of higher learning in maintaining this cover up is fast eroding the credibility of these strategic agencies. The health of free and democratic societies depends on an informed citizenry who more often than not are deceived by the very agencies supposed to be responsible for public education.

You will read “Noam Chomsky as the Left’s Trojan Horse” in the next part.

July 13, 2016 Posted by | Deception, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, False Flag Terrorism, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Timeless or most popular | , , , , , , , , , , | 2 Comments

Following the Chilcot Report, time for a proper reckoning

By Neil Clark | RT | July 6, 2016

Although Chilcot was not the Establishment cover-up which many feared, it’s also true that it doesn’t tell us much that we didn’t already know.

The long-awaited and much-delayed Chilcot report, published today, provides a damning indictment of the New Labour government of Tony Blair and the lies that were told in the lead-up to the disastrous Iraq war.

The Iraq war was ‘not a last resort’ but in fact a war of choice. ‘Peaceful options’ were not exhausted.

In 2003, there was “no imminent threat from Saddam Hussein” – contrary to what Blair and the neocons told us. Intelligence had “not established beyond doubt” that Iraq had continued to produce chemical and biological weapons, despite us being told it was a sure thing that Saddam had WMDs.

While supporters claimed the war was “legal”, and haughtily dismissed those of us who called it a “war crime”, Chilcot found that the circumstances in which it was decided that there was a legal basis for war were “far from satisfactory”.

We knew that the Iraq war was not a ‘last resort’ as UN weapons inspectors in Iraq were not allowed to finish their job. We know that the war was illegal- as it had no UN sanction- and was a war of aggression and not a war of self-defense.

The Nuremberg judgement, following World War Two, was quite unequivocal on the subject:

War is essentially an evil thing. Its consequences are not confined to the belligerent states alone, but affect the whole world. To initiate a war of aggression, therefore, is not only an international crime; it is the supreme international crime differing only from other war crimes in that it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole.

And although Chilcot does not directly accuse Blair of ‘deceit’ (that would be a step too far for the Establishment figures on the panel), common sense and logic also tells us that if Blair and Bush had genuinely believed Iraq had WMDs that could be launched within 45 minutes they would not have invaded. The very fact that the US and the UK did attack Iraq, proves that the leadership of those two countries knew the WMD claims to be false.

Saddam was attacked not because he had WMDs, but because the war lobby knew he didn’t have any. To hold otherwise is to expect us to believe, that just for this one occasion, the rules of deterrence did not apply. By the same people, incidentally, who tell us we need our own WMDs to deter attack!

As to what happened post-invasion, we really don’t need Sir John Chilcot to tell us that the “planning and preparations for Iraq after Saddam Hussein were wholly inadequate” – we saw with our own eyes how the country imploded after the events of March 2003.

Iraq had no history of suicide bombings before the illegal invasion – it’s had over 2,000 since then.
Well done, Bush and Blair! You really ‘liberated’ the Iraq people all right. From their bodies.

The question now that Chilcot has finally been published is: What happens next?

Tony Blair was damaged goods before today: he’s now reached the point of no return. A few weeks ago I wrote about attempts to impeach Blair for lying to Parliament – those moves are now likely to intensify.

Labour’s anti-war leader Jeremy Corbyn – who’s been fighting off a Blairite-led coup against his own leadership – called the Iraq war “an act of military aggression launched on a false pretext”. He also said the war “fueled and spread terrorism across the region” – making reference to the suicide bombings in Baghdad this weekend which killed over 200 people.

Meanwhile, a woman who lost her brother in the Iraq war said that Tony Blair was “the world’s worst terrorist”.

“There is one terrorist in this world that the world needs to be aware of, and his name is Tony Blair”, said Sarah O’Connor.

But while Blair must take the lion’s share of the blame for Britain’s involvement in the Iraq war, this is not just about one man. His willing accomplices in the British Establishment must be held to account too. We not allow these people evade responsibility for the death and destruction they helped unleash throughout the Middle East.

Alistair Campbell, Blair’s spin doctor, cited Oxford University academic Vernon Bogdanor, in his defense today.

“My conclusion,” said Bogdanor (as quoted by Campbell) “is that there are no easy answers, that Bush and Blair were faced with an almost impossible dilemma, and that all of us should be very grateful that we were not in their shoes and did not have to make their difficult decisions.”

But Campbell doesn’t mention that Bognador was a signatory to the Statement of Principles of the uber neocon pro-war Henry Jackson Society.

In fact, Bush and Blair did not face an “impossible dilemma”, but chose to launch a war of aggression against an independent state which posed no threat to either Britain or America.

With the Middle East in turmoil and terrorism spawned by the Iraq invasion, killing civilians in the west and elsewhere in the world, it’s now time for a proper reckoning.

Politicians who voted for the Iraq war and who voted against an inquiry into it need to be publicly named and shamed and de-selected by their local parties.

Labour patrons of the Henry Jackson Society and other pro-war organizations need to be expelled without further delay and the anti-war George Galloway, who predicted accurately everything that would happen if Iraq were invaded, needs to have his expulsion from the Labour party rescinded.

We should also not forget the pernicious role played in the lead-up to the invasion by a clique of pro-war journalists (more accurately described as neocon propagandists) who regurgitated Establishment lies and who demonized anti-war protestors as “Saddam apologists” who had “blood on their hands” and who were “betraying the Iraqi people”.

These laptop bombardiers must be held to account too for what they did – with the Nuremberg tribunals’ indictment of pro-war Nazi propagandists arguably providing the precedent if/when there is an Iraq war crimes trial. Until that happy day, no one should ever believe a single thing they read by these individuals ever again. They deserve to be treated as total pariahs and certainly not invited into television studios to impart their ‘wisdom’ on foreign policy.

What’s made things worse and which explains why there is so much public anger, is that the Iraq war lobby, far from showing any contrition over what they did, have simply ‘moved on’ from Iraq to push for more wars. As the bombs continue to go off in Baghdad, Tony Blair himself has become a multimillionaire with a huge property portfolio.

The same rancid crew of politicians and journalists who supported the Iraq war were also – it needs pointing out – cheerleaders for the military intervention against Libya in 2011 (which as well as destroying the country with the highest living standards in Africa, also precipitated the current migrant crisis), and for military action against a secular Syrian government battling ISIS and Al-Qaeda in 2013. These people are also, incidentally, bellicose supporters of “tougher action” against Russia and – as Glenn Greenwald has noted – some of them are also at the forefront of the campaign against RT.

The endless war lobby (surprise, surprise), don’t want us to ‘Question More’ – but merely accept, like sheep, the WMD-style lies we’re fed by our ‘superiors’.

While we rightly castigate Blair and call for him to be put on trial for war crimes, we shouldn’t let David Cameron and Conservative Party foreign policy hawks off the hook either. ‘Call Me Dave’ consistently voted for the Iraq war and in office he’s carried on Blair’s disastrous ‘Divide and Destroy’ foreign policies.

While the word ‘Iraq’ should be engraved on Blair’s tombstone, ‘Libya’ should be on Cameron’s. The British Prime Minister has also played a malevolent and highly destructive role in relation to the crisis in Syria. If Cameron had got his way in 2013 and got Parliamentary approval for bombing the Syrian government, then it’s likely that ISIS and al-Qaeda affiliates would now be in charge of the whole of the country. That’s what the Blairites and neocons- who claim to be fighting ‘a war on terror’ appear to have wanted.

Significantly, Cameron was keen to stress in Parliament today that the Chilcot report doesn’t mean that we should rule out future military interventions.

“We should not conclude that intervention is always wrong. There are unquestionably times when it’s right”, he said.

Even now, after all the death and destruction their polices have caused, the war lobby and supporters of ‘liberal interventionism’ are trying to ensure that it’s still ‘business as usual’.

It’s up to the British people – whose taxes go to pay for these ‘military interventions’ – and whose children (unlike those of the political/media elite) are more likely to die in them, to say ‘Enough is Enough’.

Out with the serial warmongers, the serial liars and the war propagandists who never go anywhere near a war-zone, and in with those – like Jeremy Corbyn – who support international law, oppose wars of aggression and who have respect for the sovereign rights of independent nations in a genuine world of equals. If we meekly allow the architects and enablers of the Iraq war and their accomplices to get away with it scot-free, it will be a stain on our collective conscience. We can’t let it happen if we’re to retain our humanity. Or if we want to prevent more wars of aggression in the future.

The Chilcot report is around 2.6m words long- but the essence of what happened in 2003 can be summed up in just eight: The British government lied. One million people died.

Follow Neil Clark on Twitter @NeilClark66

July 6, 2016 Posted by | Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Enraged UK veterans blast ‘war of aggression’ ahead of Chilcot’s Iraq war report

RT | July 4, 2016

A UK veterans’ group has blasted the 2003 Iraq conflict as a “war of aggression” waged on the Iraqi people ahead of the publication of the Chilcot report on Wednesday.

Veterans for Peace UK (VFPUK), which is reported to contain up to 400 armed forces veterans from Britain’s recent conflicts, has criticized the country’s establishment over the war. It is the first public intervention by an ex-services organization on the issue.

“Whatever Chilcot says, this country and its armed forces executed a war of aggression on the people of Iraq,” the group claimed in a statement seen in advance by RT and due for release Monday evening.

The group also called for legal action against those who led the war.

“In a joint enterprise with the USA, we prosecuted an occupation of Iraq that defied the Geneva Conventions. Under the Nuremberg principles, those ultimately responsible should face trial,” the press release said.

While the ex-services group acknowledged and criticized the role of former Prime Minister Tony Blair in the war, they said that the issue was much broader.

“Whilst Tony Blair is the obvious villain and in our opinion should face a criminal investigation, it is the UK as a whole that needs to change.”

VFP also linked the Iraq war with other conflicts in which the UK had engaged over the last decade and a half. “Since Iraq, our forces have attacked Helmand [in Afghanistan], Libya, Iraq and Syria. We are playing a key role in the Saudi Arabian attack on the Yemen,” they said.

The toll of the wars, the group argued, included huge casualties, damage to infrastructure and the environment, a “significant rise in terrorism globally” and a “huge” refugee crisis.

VFP called for a deeper analysis of Britain’s role in the world and said that war was “not the solution to the problems the world faces in the 21st century.”

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July 4, 2016 Posted by | Militarism, Timeless or most popular, Video, War Crimes | , , , , | 2 Comments

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