
While those on the Republican side of the aisle are able to parade their support for the brutal, racist, and horrific Zionist settler state of Israel as a positive aspect of their campaigns, Democrats generally need to be a little more couched in terms of their position on Israel. This is not because the Democratic Party is any less dedicated to the facilitation of the Israeli campaign of extermination of the Palestinians, promotion of Israeli aggression in the Middle East, or any less beholden to AIPAC or the Israel lobby than the Republican Party. It is merely because a sizeable portion of the base of the Democratic party are either legitimately anti-war, opposed to genocide, or simply consumed with the desire to take up human rights causes (real or imagined).
Hillary Clinton, however, has been open in her unwavering support for the Zionist settler state on numerous occasions.
For instance, in 2000, when Clinton was running for New York Senate, she became embroiled in a Senate debate that essentially turned into a contest of who could placate and pledge allegiance to Israel the most. Clinton seems to have won that debate.[1] Consider the brief exchange:
Q: In recent weeks, scores of people have been killed in the Middle East. In view of what’s happened, do you think there should be a Palestinian state now?
CLINTON: Only as part of a comprehensive peace agreement. That’s always been my position, that [it should] guarantee Israel’s safety and security and the parties should agree at the negotiating table. A unilateral declaration is absolutely unacceptable and it would mean the end of any US aid.
LAZIO: That’s a change of heart for Mrs. Clinton, because back in 1998 you called for a Palestinian state. You undercut the Israeli negotiating position. The people of New York want to have somebody who has a consistent record. For eight years I have been consistent and strong in my support for the security of the state of Israel. Without equivocation. Without a question mark next to my name.
CLINTON: There is no question mark next to me. There’s an exclamation point. I am an emphatic, unwavering supporter of Israel’s safety and security. [2]
Clinton has also supported the “West Bank Barrier,” a construction that is not so much a border fence as it is a Ghetto divider. “This is not against the Palestinian people. This is against the terrorists. The Palestinian people have to help to prevent terrorism. They have to change the attitudes about terrorism,” she stated.[3]
In 2006, Clinton attended a pro-Israel rally being held outside the United Nations headquarters in New York where she expressed support for Israel in the 2006 Lebanese-Israeli conflict. Clinton lumped Hamas and Hezbollah into the same category, condemning both, and expressing her undying love for the Israelis. “We are here to show solidarity and support for Israel. We will stand with Israel, because Israel is standing for American values as well as Israeli ones,” she said.[4]
Clinton has long opposed steps by the Palestinian Authority to attempt to declare its own state and receive recognition of Palestinian statehood. While the standard American line on the conflict is that a two-state solution is the only solution, Clinton has consistently opposed Palestinian efforts to seek full membership with the UN. Instead, Clinton suggested that the Palestinians should negotiate one-on-one with the Israelis, a method of negotiation that has brought the Palestinians nothing over the last 80 years. Obviously, Clinton’s line is one that would have the Palestinians weighed down in attempt to reason with the unreasonable until the Israeli war of attrition and genocide is completed. Eventually, when there are no Palestinians left, there will be no more Palestinian conflict. The logic is there but the morals are not.[5]
Clinton has also stated her support for “A strong Israeli military,” saying that it “is always essential, but no defense is perfect. And over the long run, nothing would do more to secure Israel’s future as a Jewish, democratic state than a comprehensive peace.” In addition to supporting a strong Israeli military – courtesy of the American taxpayer – it is worthy of note that Clinton would likely find it difficult to recognize another country as a “Muslim” or “Christian” state.
In 2012, Clinton invoked the personal. She stated “protecting Israel’s future is not simply a matter of policy for me, it’s personal. I know with all my heart how important it is that our relation goes from strength to strength. I am looking forward to returning to Israel as a private citizen on a commercial plane.”
In 2014, Hillary offered strong support for the Israeli government, the state of Israel, and Benjamin Netanyahu when she stated in an interview with the Atlantic that “I think Israel did what it had to do to respond to Hamas rockets. Israel has a right to defend itself. The steps Hamas has taken to embed rockets and command and control facilities and tunnel entrances in civilian areas, this makes a response by Israel difficult.” Clinton was referring to the Israeli bombing of Gaza which resulted in large numbers of dead civilians and the destruction of civilian infrastructure, all of which Clinton simply chalked up to the “mistakes” of war.
As Shadi Ashtari of the Huffington Post wrote regarding Clinton’s defense of Israel’s war operation,
The fog of war may be more of a Rorschach test, it turns out.
Here’s Hillary Clinton, on the downing of a Malaysia Airlines plane in Ukraine: “I think if there were any doubt it should be gone by now, that Vladimir Putin, certainly indirectly … bears responsibility for what happened.”
And here’s Clinton, on the bombing of a United Nations facility in Gaza: “I’m not sure it’s possible to parcel out blame because it’s impossible to know what happens in the fog of war.”
The two remarks were made less than three weeks apart, and offer a window into how one’s view of how the world should be, can color how it’s seen — or at least how it’s relayed to the public.
In her July interview with CNN’s Fareed Zakaria, Clinton forcefully implicated the Russian leader in a strike that claimed the lives of 298 passengers after overwhelming evidence indicated that Russian-supplied rebels shot down passenger liner MH17.
A few weeks later, on July 30, five Israeli shells rained down on a U.N. school at the Jabalia refugee camp, killing more than 15 people, mostly women and children. The attack, which also wounded more than 100 civilians, marked the second time in a week that a U.N. school housing hundreds of homeless Palestinians had been targeted.[6]
Indeed, Clinton has been vocal enough in support of Israel and its brutal treatment of Palestinians that Peter Beinart, an academic who regularly comments on the Israeli-Palestinian issue, once labeled her as “the Israeli government’s best spokesperson.”[7]
Gary Luepp of Counterpunch describes Hillary’s position on Israel as by writing that,
She has been an unremitting supporter of Israeli aggression, whenever it occurs. The Israeli newspaper Haaretz described her last year as “Israel’s new lawyer” given her sympathetic view of Binyamin Netanyahu’s 2014 bombardment of Gaza and even his desire to maintain “security” throughout the occupied West Bank. She postured as an opponent of Israel’s unrelenting, illegal settlements of Palestinian territory in 2009, but backed down when Netanyahu simply refused to heed U.S. calls for a freeze. In her memoir she notes “our early, hard line on settlements didn’t work”—as though she’s apologizing for it.
In 1999 as First Lady, Hillary Clinton hugged and kissed Yassir Arafat’s wife Suha during a trip to the West Bank. She advocated the establishment of a Palestinian state. She changed her tune when she ran for the New York Senate seat. When it comes to the Middle East, she is a total, unprincipled opportunist.[8]
It is this “opportunism” that Hillary is putting to good use when attempting to suck up money from wealthy Jewish donors. As Kenneth P. Vogel and Tarini Parti write for Politico in their article “Hillary Clinton Signals To Jewish Donors: I’ll Be Better For Israel,”
Hillary Clinton is privately signaling to wealthy Jewish donors that — no matter the result of the Iranian nuclear negotiations — she will be a better friend to Israel than President Barack Obama.[9]
But, even as donors increasingly push Clinton on the subject in private, they have emerged with sometimes widely varying interpretations about whether she would support a prospective deal, according to interviews with more than 10 influential donors and fundraising operatives.
. . . . .
Publicly, she’s expressed support for the negotiating process, which she secretly initiated during her time as secretary of state, but has also said “no deal is better than a bad deal.”[10] [11] [12]
. . . . .
At a fundraiser last month at the Long Island home of Democratic donor Jay Jacobs, Clinton was asked by an Orthodox rabbi about threats to Israel’s security. “She did stress in no uncertain terms her full and fervent support of the state of Israel and the defense of the state of Israel,” recalled Jacobs. “And the people in the audience who heard it seemed to be comfortable with her answer.”
. . . . . .
Clinton’s allies are carefully monitoring the sensitivities of a handful of hawkish Democratic mega-donors for signs that the Iran talks may be influencing their willingness to write million-dollar super PAC checks. Chief among that group is billionaire Hollywood entrepreneur Haim Saban, who sources say has spoken multiple times with Clinton and her top aides about the deal.
In April, he strongly suggested that Clinton opposed the deal. “I know where she stands, but I can’t talk about it,” Saban told an Israeli television news channel, adding under questioning, “She has an opinion, a very well-defined opinion. And in any case, everything that she thinks and everything she has done and will do will always be for the good of Israel. We don’t need to worry about this.”[13]
He soon backtracked, saying “I have no idea what Hillary thinks about the Iran deal.”[14] [15]
If one simply goes by Clinton’s campaign rhetoric and public speeches, then it is entirely justified to be unaware of Clinton’s position on the Iran deal, the State of Israel, or a possible plan for peace. If one follows the money and observes her past history, however, Hillary’s position on Israel is abundantly clear.
[1] “Hillary Clinton On War And Peace.” On The Issues. http://www.ontheissues.org/Celeb/Hillary_Clinton_War_+_Peace.htm Accessed on September 8, 2015.
[2] “New York Senatorial Campaign Debate.” September 13, 2000. C-SPAN. http://www.c-span.org/video/?159214-1/new-york-senatorial-campaign-debate Accessed on September 8, 2015.
[3] Benhorin, Yitzhak. “Settlements, Iran, and Hamas: Hillary Clinton’s Israel Policy.” YNet News. April 12, 2015. http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4646394,00.html Accessed on September 8, 2015.
[4] Benhorin, Yitzhak. “Settlements, Iran, and Hamas: Hillary Clinton’s Israel Policy.” YNet News. April 12, 2015. http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4646394,00.html Accessed on September 8, 2015.
[5] Benhorin, Yitzhak. “Settlements, Iran, and Hamas: Hillary Clinton’s Israel Policy.” YNet News. April 12, 2015. http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4646394,00.html Accessed on September 8, 2015.
[6] Ashtari, Shadi. “Hillary Clinton Twists Herself In Knots To Avoid Blaming Israel For UN Bombing.” Huffington Post. August 13, 2014. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/08/13/hillary-clinton-israel-gaza-school-bombing_n_5672881.html Accessed on September 8, 2015.
[7] Merica, Dan. “With Vocal Support Of Israel, Clinton Rankles Pro-Palestinian Americans.” CNN. August 11, 2014. http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2014/08/11/with-vocal-support-of-israel-clinton-rankles-pro-palestinian-americans/ Accessed on September 8, 2015.
[8] Luepp, Gary. “The Warmongering Record Of Hillary Clinton.” Counterpunch. February 11, 2015. http://www.counterpunch.org/2015/02/11/the-warmongering-record-of-hillary-clinton/ Accessed on September 8, 2015.
[9] Crowley, Michael. “Iran Talks: 5 Key Things To Watch.” Politico. June 27, 2015. http://www.politico.com/story/2015/06/iran-nuclear-talks-geneva-john-kerry-5-things-to-watch-119482 Accessed on September 8, 2015.
[10] Karni, Annie. “Clinton On Iran: ‘Diplomacy Deserves A Chance To Succeed.’” Politico. April 2, 2015. http://www.politico.com/story/2015/04/clinton-on-iran-deal-diplomacy-deserves-a-chance-to-succeed-116646 Accessed on September 8, 2015.
[11] Crowley, Michael. “Hillary Clinton’s Secret Iran Man.” Politico. April 3, 2015. http://www.politico.com/story/2015/04/hillary-clintons-secret-iran-man-116647 Accessed on September 8, 2015.
[12] “Hillary Clinton: No Deal Better Than ‘Bad Deal’ With Iran.” Associated Press. May 14, 2014. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/05/14/hillary-clinton-iran_n_5323991.html Accessed on September 8, 2015.
[13] Friedman, Naomi. “Saban Hints: Clinton Opposes Iran Deal.” The Hill. April 17, 2015. http://thehill.com/blogs/congress-blog/foreign-policy/239091-saban-hints-clinton-opposes-the-iran-deal Accessed on September 8, 2015.
[14] Goodman, Alana. “Top Pro-Israel Donor Unsure Of Clinton’s Position On Iran Deal.” April 21, 2015. http://freebeacon.com/politics/top-pro-israel-donor-unsure-of-clintons-position-on-iran-deal/ Accessed on September 8, 2015.
[15] Vogel, Kenneth P.; Parti, Tarini. “Hillary Clinton Signals To Jewish Donors: I’ll Be Better For Israel.” Politico. July 3, 2015. http://www.politico.com/story/2015/07/hillary-clinton-jewish-donors-israel-119705 Accessed on September 8, 2015.
Brandon Turbeville – article archive here – is the author of seven books, Codex Alimentarius — The End of Health Freedom, 7 Real Conspiracies, Five Sense Solutions and Dispatches From a Dissident, volume 1 andvolume 2, The Road to Damascus: The Anglo-American Assault on Syria, and The Difference it Makes: 36 Reasons Why Hillary Clinton Should Never Be President.
Brandon Turbeville’s new book, The Difference It Makes: 36 Reasons Hillary Clinton Should Never Be President is available in three different formats: Hardcopy (available here), Amazon Kindle for only .99 (available here), and a Free PDF Format (accessible free from his website, BrandonTurbeville.com).
February 19, 2016
Posted by aletho |
Corruption, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes, Wars for Israel | AIPAC, Haim Saban, Hillary Clinton, Jay Jacobs, Middle East, Palestine, Zionism |
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When a prominent American political figure speaks boldly about Jewish-Zionist power, that’s news. So the remarks by South Carolina’s senior Senator in May 2004 that Iraq was invaded “to secure Israel,” and that “everybody” in Washington knows it, are indeed remarkable.
Ernest “Fritz” Hollings, a Democrat who has represented his state in the US Senate since 1966, is now serving his final term in Washington. That fact may also help explain why he’s now willing to defy the pro-Israel lobby and speak candidly about its power.
It began with an essay, headlined “Bush’s Failed Mideast Policy is Creating More Terrorism,” which appeared in the Charleston daily Post and Courier, May 6, 2004. “With Iraq no threat, why invade a sovereign country?,” he wrote. “The answer: President Bush’s policy to secure Israel. Led by [Paul] Wolfowitz, Richard Perle and Charles Krauthammer, for years there had been a domino school of thought that the way to guarantee Israel’s security is to spread democracy in the area.”
Several Zionist organizations, as well as some prominent Jewish political figures, quickly chastised Hollings, and his remarks were denounced as anti-Semitic. But he didn’t back down. Instead, he rose in the Senate on May 20 to defend and explain his essay. “I don’t apologize for this column,” he said. “I want them to apologize to me for talking about anti-Semitism.” President Bush went to war in Iraq “to secure our friend, Israel” and “everybody knows it,” Hollings declared.
Referring to the cowardly reluctance of his Congressional colleagues openly to acknowledge this reality, he said that “nobody is willing to stand up and say what is going on.” With few exceptions, members of Congress uncritically support Israel and its policies due to “the pressures that we get politically,” he said. The pro-Israel lobby knows “how to make you tuck tail and run.” But “not the Senator from South Carolina,” he added, referring to himself. To emphasize the seriousness of his remarks, Hollings said: “I have thought this out as thoroughly as I know how, and it worries me that here we are…”
Bush’s motive in going to war for Israeli interests, Hollings charged, was to get Jewish support in election campaigns. “President Bush came to office imbued with one thought: reelection. I say that advisedly. I have been up here with eight Presidents. We have had support of all eight Presidents. Yes, I supported the President on this Iraq resolution, but I was misled. There weren’t any weapons, or any terrorism, or al-Qaida. This is the reason we went to war. He had one thought in mind, and that was reelection…
“That is not a conspiracy. That is the policy. I didn’t like to keep it a secret, maybe; but I can tell you now, I will challenge any one of the other 99 Senators to tell us why we are in Iraq, other than what this policy is here. It is an adopted policy, a domino theory of The [Zionist] Project For The New American Century. Everybody knows it [is] because we want to secure our friend, Israel…
“Let’s realize we are in real trouble. Saudi Arabia is in trouble. Israel is in trouble. The United States is in trouble. I am going to state what I believe to be the fact. In fact, I believe it very strongly. They just are whistling by on account of the pressures that we get politically. Nobody is willing to stand up and say what is going on.”
Hollings cited the role of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), the most important pro-Israel lobby group in Washington, in determining US policy in the Middle East. “You can’t have an Israel policy other than what AIPAC gives you around here. I have followed them mostly in the main, but I have also resisted signing certain letters from time to time, to give the poor President a chance.
“I can tell you no President takes office — I don’t care whether it is a Republican or a Democrat — that all of a sudden AIPAC will tell him exactly what the policy is, and Senators and members of Congress ought to sign letters. I read those carefully and I have joined in most of them. On some I have held back. I have my own idea and my own policy…”
The Iraq war has been “a bad mistake,” said Hollings. “Getting rid of Saddam was not worth almost 800 dead GIs and over 3,500 maimed for life…” This war is “a mistake like Vietnam,” he added. “We got misled with the [1964] Gulf of Tonkin [incident]. We got misled here, and we are in that quagmire…
“The entire thing is a mess. Don’t give me ‘support the troops, support the troops.’ I have been with troops, about three years in combat, so don’t tell me about troops. I have always supported the troops.”
Source: Remarks by Ernest F. Hollings, May 20, 2004. Congressional Record – Senate, May 20, 2004, pages S5921-S5925.
See also: Iraq: A War For Israel.
February 17, 2016
Posted by aletho |
Timeless or most popular, Wars for Israel | AIPAC, Iraq, Israel, Israel Lobby, Middle East, United States, Zionism |
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Every villain needs a safe house and the Islamic State (IS) is no exception. Luckily for IS, it has two, possibly three waiting for it, all of them courtesy of NATO and in particular the United States.
The war in Syria has been going particularly poor for IS. With Russian air power cutting their supply lines with Turkey and the Syrian Arab Army closing in, it may soon be time for them to shop for a new home.
If the war is going bad for IS, it is going even worse for the supporting powers that have armed and funded them. To understand where IS might go next, one must first fully understand those supporting powers behind them. The premeditated creation of IS and revelations of the identity of their supporters were divulged in a Department of Intelligence Agency (DIA) memo first published in 2012.
It admitted:
If the situation unravels there is the possibility of establishing a declared or undeclared Salafist principality in eastern Syria (Hasaka and Der Zor), and this is exactly what the supporting powers to the opposition want, in order to isolate the Syrian regime, which is considered the strategic depth of the Shia expansion (Iraq and Iran).
The DIA memo then explains exactly who this “Salafist principality’s” supporters are (and who its true enemies are):
The West, Gulf countries, and Turkey support the opposition; while Russia, China, and Iran support the regime.
Before the Syrian war, there was Libya…
The DIA memo is important to remember, as is the fact that before the Syrian conflict, there was the Libyan war in which NATO destroyed the ruling government of Muammar Qaddafi and left what one can only described as an intentional and very much premeditated power vacuum in its place. Within that vacuum it would be eventually revealed through the death of US Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens that from the Libyan city of Benghazi, weapons and militants were being shipped by the US State Department first to Turkey, then onward to invade northern Syria.
And it appears the terrorists have been moving back and forth both ways through this US-sponsored terror pipeline. IS has since announced an official presence in Libya, and Libya now stands as one of several “safe houses” IS may use when finally pushed from Syria altogether by increasingly successful joint Syrian-Russian military operations.
Before Libya, there was Iraq…
Iraq, devastated by a nearly decade-long US invasion and occupation, has teetered on the edge of fracture for years. Sectarian extremism is eagerly promoted by some of the US’ strongest regional allies, particularly Saudi Arabia. The US itself has been cultivating and encouraging the separatist proclivities of select Kurdish groups (while allowing Turkey to invade and torment others) in the north, while Wahhabi extremists seek to dominate the north and northwest of Iraq.
IS itself has made its way into all of these trouble spots, coincidentally. And should the terrorist organization be flushed for good from Syria, it may find these spots yet another “safe house” that surely would not have existed had the US not intervened in Iraq, divided and weakened it and to this day worked to keep it divided and weak.
Before Iraq there was Afghanistan..
Of course, and perhaps the most ironic of all of IS’ potential “safe houses,” there is Afghanistan. Part of the alleged reasoning the United States embarked on its war in Afghanistan, stretching from 2001 to present day, was its supposed desire to deny terrorists a safe haven there.
Yet not only are terrorists still using the country as a safe haven, as pointed out in great detail by geopolitical analyst Martin Berger, the US intervention there has created a resurgence of the illegal illicit narcotics trade, and in particular a huge resurgence of opium cultivation, processing and exporting. This means huge financial resources for IS and its supporters to perpetuate its activities there, and help them project their activities well beyond.
Berger’s analysis lays out precisely the sort of narco-terrorist wonderland the US intervention has created, one so perfect it seems done by design, a blazing point on a much larger arc of intentionally created instability.
Where Russian bombs cannot follow…
Libya, Iraq and Afghanistan would be ideal locations to move IS. Libya’s state of intentionally created lawlessness gives the US and its allies a fair degree of plausible deniability as to why they will be unable to “find” and “neutralize” IS. It will be far more difficult for Russia to organize military resources to effectively strike at IS there. Even in Iraq, Russia has significant hurdles to overcome before it could begin operating in Iraq to follow IS there, and only if the Iraqi government agreed.
Afghanistan would be problematic as well. The ghosts of Russia’s war in Afghanistan still linger, and the US is already deeply entrenched, allegedly fighting a terrorist menace that seems only to grow stronger and better funded by the presence of American troops.
But while IS will be safe from complete destruction in Syria, where it looks like finally Damascus and its allies have begun to prevail, relocating outside of Syria and its allies arc of influence in the Middle East will drastically reduce its ability to fulfill its original purpose for being, that is, the destruction of that very arc of influence.
Furthermore, its reappearance elsewhere may change regional geopolitical dynamics in unpredictable ways. It is very unlikely IS’ new neighbors will wish to sit idly by while it broods. Libya’s neighbors in Egypt and Algeria, Afghanistan’s neighbors in Pakistan, China and Iran, and Iraq itself along with Syria and Lebanon, all may find themselves drawn closer together in purpose to eliminate IS in fear that it may eventually be turned on any one of them as it was on Syria.
What is least likely is that those “supporting powers” realize this is a trick tried one time too many. While that is certainly true, it appears to be the only trick these powers have left. They will likely keep IS around for as long as possible, if for no other reason but to exhaust its enemies as they attempt to chase it to the ends of the earth.
February 17, 2016
Posted by aletho |
Militarism, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | Afghanistan, Africa, Algeria, Egypt, Iran, Iraq, Libya, Middle East, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Turkiye, Zionism |
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Seyyed Hassan Nasrallah, the secretary general of the Lebanese resistance movement Hezbollah, says Israel seeks government change in Syria in order to undermine the resistance front against the Zionist regime.
Israel prefers the Daesh Takfiri terrorists and al-Qaeda militants to the Syrian government, Nasrallah said in a televised address to the Lebanese nation on Tuesday, the Martyr Leaders Day.
He said the government of the Syrian President Bashar al-Assad poses a danger to the interests of the Israeli regime.
Israel agrees with Saudi Arabia and Turkey that any solution to the crisis in Syria must not prolong the existence of the government in Damascus, Nasrallah said.
He added that Israel prefers the partition of Syria to a political settlement of the crisis in the Arab country.
Nasrallah rejected claims that the Syrian government will finally bow to pressures for the disintegration of the Arab country, saying Syrian forces are present everywhere across Syria, meaning that the government will not allow such partitioning and the “national will” is clearly against that.
He also slammed Turkey and Saudi Arabia for their active support of the militants in Syria, saying they have failed in their plots against the government of Assad.
Militants in Syria are suffering successive defeats, Nasrallah stated, pushing Saudi Arabia and Turkey to consider deploying ground troops into Syria under the banner of the so-called international coalition against the Takfiri Daesh terrorists.
The Hezbollah secretary general said the plan for sending troops into Syria is a plot by Ankara and Riyadh to maintain their position at the ongoing peace talks over Syria.
He said the resistance movement and their allied forces will not allow any country to determine the future of Syria.
‘Tel Aviv only sees own interests in region’
The Hezbollah chief said that the Israeli regime is also after the formation of an alliance with some Sunni states, warning the Arab countries that this would only serve the interests of the Israeli regime.
Israel only looks after its own interests, he warned.
Nasrallah drew the attention of Arab states to the Israeli crimes against Sunni states since its creation.
“How can any sane person in Sunni states consider Israel as a friend, ally or a protector?” he asked.
If Israel becomes an ally of Sunni states, “Palestine will be lost eternally,” he warned.
He added that Israel also sees Iran and the resistance movement in Palestine and Lebanon as threats.
February 16, 2016
Posted by aletho |
Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Timeless or most popular, Wars for Israel | Da’esh, Israel, Middle East, Palestine, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Turkiye, Zionism |
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Officials with the Israeli regime, which is already widely accused of supporting Takfiri militants wreaking havoc in Syria, have called for the partition of the Arab country along sectarian lines.
Ram Ben-Barak, the director general of Israel’s Intelligence Ministry, said the proposed breakup was “the only possible solution” to the conflict in Syria.
“I think that ultimately Syria should be turned into regions, under the control of whoever is there – the Alawites where they are, the Sunnis where they are,” Ben-Barak told Israel’s Army Radio on Sunday.
Israel’s Minister of Military Affairs Moshe Ya’alon, who was in Munich to meet with European counterparts and Jordan’s King Abdullah, also echoed Ben-Barak’s remarks.
“Syria as we have known it will not be united anew in the foreseeable future, and at some point I reckon that we will see enclaves, whether organized or not, formed by the various sectors that live and are fighting there,” he said in a statement on Sunday.
Ya’alon also voiced doubt that a ceasefire plan for Syria agreed upon recently would succeed.
After negotiations in Munich, diplomats from a working group of 17 countries, including the US, Russia, Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Iran, agreed Thursday to establish a temporary “cessation of hostilities” in Syria within a week.
The International Syria Support Group (ISSG) also called for rapid humanitarian access to besieged Syrian towns.
The Israeli officials’ statements come as reports say Israel has been supporting the militants fighting the government of Syria’s President Bashar al-Assad.
The Israeli regime has set up hospitals near the border with Syria to treat the injured militants coming in from the battlefield there. Locals in the occupied Golan Heights have also intercepted Israeli vehicles transporting injured militants on the road between al-Sheikh Mountain and the village of Majdal Sham.
The Israeli calls for dividing Syria was raised as Turkey and Saudi Arabia, two regional sponsors of militant groups in Syria, have in recent weeks voiced their interest in launching a ground operation inside the country.
On February 12, Saudi Foreign Minister Adel al-Jubeir told CNN that Riyadh is ready to deploy special forces to Syria if the US-led coalition, carrying out airstrikes in the country since September 2014, decides to take such a move.
The idea of a possible participation in ground operations in Syria was first raised on February 4 by Ahmed Asiri, a spokesman for the Saudi Defense Ministry.
Furthermore, Saudi Arabia has dispatched warplanes to the Incirlik Air Base in southern Turkey, claiming that the move is in line with the fight against Daesh terrorists in neighboring Syria.
Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu has said Ankara and Riyadh could launch a ground operation in Syria “if there is a strategy.”
The United States has welcomed the Saudi offer, while it has been met with strong criticism from Syria and its allies.
Syrian Foreign Minister Walid al-Muallem has said that any “ground intervention on Syrian territory without government authorization would amount to an aggression that must be resisted.” He has also warned that potential aggressors would return home in a “wooden coffin.”
Russia, Iran and Iraq have also warned against the deployment of foreign ground forces in Syria.
The foreign-sponsored conflict in Syria, which flared up in March 2011, has killed some 470,000 people and left 1.9 million injured, according to the so-called Syrian Center for Policy Research.
February 15, 2016
Posted by aletho |
Illegal Occupation, War Crimes | Da’esh, Israel, Middle East, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Turkiye, United States, Zionism |
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Coercive Engineered Migration: Zionism’s War on Europe (Part 8 of an 11 Part Series)
It is particularly ironic that the Zionist-controlled media are pushing the agenda of multiculturalism in Europe while insisting on the right of Israel, the world’s only racist, apartheid state, to exist. At the same time, the conditions for this artificial, dystopian form of multiculturalism involve the destruction of some of the world’s most successful multi-racial states such as Yugoslavia, Libya, Syria and, if they succeed, possibly Eritrea.
What we are witnessing here is a process of engineered acculturation where people are being uprooted, displaced and abandoned to the limitless tyranny of the market and commodity fetishism. The boats crossing the Mediterranean Sea are, to quote Freisleben again, ‘Rothshild’s slaughterships’, the slave-boats of Zionism’s New World Order.
Jacques Attali is one of France’s most respected Zionist penseur, and has been an advisor to successive French governments. He has referred to globalisation’s war against the nation-state as the ‘Somalisation of the world’. Attali has predicted that the Westphalian state will be destroyed during the epochal chaotic transition to a ‘gouvernement mondial’, a global state with Jerusalem as its capital. The idea might appear as utterly far-fetched to a reasonable person but Zionists are not reasonable people and it should be of deep concern that the world’s most powerful governments are being advised by such influential racist fanatics with overtly global ambitions.
At a meeting of World Jewish Congress in 2014, Attali referred to the Jews in France as a privileged class. Therefore, in order to prevent Muslim immigrants from developing resentment of this ethnocentric class rule, Attali suggested that rich Jews should help create a French Muslim petite-bourgeoisie. They should also, he argued, finance the Imams in order to prevent objections to Zionism. In other words, an elite of French Muslims should be groomed by Zionist Jews so that they can keep the proletarian Muslims driven from North Africa and the Middle East by Zionism from overthrowing their Jewish overlords, both at home and in their countries of exile.
As the mass media drum up Islamophobia while glorifying Al-Qaida terrorists in Syria in the service of Zion, the ancillary regimes of the Jewish state, namely Qatar and Saudi Arabia, are zealously implementing Attali’s suggestions. Giulio Meotti for the Israeli National News reports:
A few days ago, the president of the Sorbonne, Philippe Boutry, signed an agreement with the attorney general of the state of Qatar. Within the next three years, the Islamic monarchy will finance the studies of hundreds of Syrian immigrants at the Parisian academic jewel. The Sorbonne has accepted 600,000 euros per year for three years.
Jacques Attali is on record stating the he does not consider non-Jews as human beings. The view that non-Jews are subhuman comes from Talmudism and does not necessarily represent the views of secular or Orthodox Jews. There IS a difference.
In France, the rise of the Marine Le Pen’s Front National is increasing steadily. Le Pen’s party appears to have the backing of a considerable portion of Zionism, which may account for why Le Pen’s image and stature has dramatically improved in the French press. The Front National is now being courted by prominent public intellectuals as the party of the oppressed. Its reactionary agenda is being marketed as ‘left-wing’ and ‘anti-globalisation’. Although Marine Le Pen opposed the war against Libya-as opposed to the Trotskyite Jean Luc Melanchon, who supported it- Le Pen has supported all other French wars of aggression in Africa, such as the French bombing and invasion of Mali and the French invasion of the Central African Republic. Nor has Le Penn ever called into question the French financial control of many Francophone neo-colonies in Africa. Le Pen is a populist playing up to popular discontent, exploiting the despair of the masses with empty slogans and a hefty dose of xenophobia, adroitly eschewing any reference to the real problem in France: capitalism.
The Europe depicted by Michel Houellebecq in his nightmarish novel Soumission– submission- where a French Muslim community led by a Muslim Brotherhood political party faces Marine Le Pen, is inexorably becoming a reality.
The French and European political scene is being irrevocably set for a Huntingtonian ‘clash of civilisations’. The clichéd theory of the ‘Jewish conspiracy’ against all non-Jews appears so crude and essentialist, so simple and vulgar in its implications, as to pass for irrational, urban and ‘anti-Semitic’ folklore, which, of course, it is. But objective and rational analysis of the centrality of the “Jewish question” and Zionism in the context of the current, global power-configuration is more urgent than ever. For if we do not bring Zionism under control, Zionism will eventually control us. This also applies to Jews. As Professor Yoakov Rabkin in his book Comprendre L’Etat d’Israel: Ideologie, Religion et societe, argues:
Paradoxically, Jewish nationalism is conceptually compatible with anti-Semitics theories, for it also postulates the impossibility of the Jew becoming a full and equal member of European society. History shows that the attraction of Zionism augments with the intensity of anti-Semitism or of economic difficulties, which explains the fact that relatively few British, American or French Jews have accepted the Zionist project since its inception up to to today and rarely leave their countries to settle in Israel. (p. 49)
In 2013, the European Jewish Parliament was set up by Jewish Ukrainian billionaire and (ironically) neo-Nazi Ihor Kolomoyski. While the organisation claims to be an NGO, it functions according to the structures of a veritable parliament. Why does an ethnic minority in Europe have its own parliament? Will other ethnic minorities in Europe receive their own parliament too? Perhaps Jews deserve their own European parliament because they are officially recognised as ‘Europe’s chosen people’, as its ‘constitutive minority’. That is what was said in the opening remarks of a conference held in Israel in 2013, sponsored by the Konrad Adenhauer Foundation.
Since the counter-revolutions in Eastern Europe of 1989, Jewish supremacy has accompanied the triumph of neo-liberalism and globalisation in Europe and the United States. This racial supremacy is being stealthily enshrined in US law. In 1991, the 102nd US Congress passed a resolution on the Noahide Laws. These are seven laws which Jewish rabbis believe should rule the lives of non-Jews, while Jews are to be ruled by a special set of laws.
The aforementioned racist Rabbi Manachem Mendel Schneerson, of the Lubavitch Movement, is praised in the resolution.
In 1995 Professor Ernest S. Easterly of the Southern University Law Centre presented a paper entitled “The Rule of Law and the New World Order” to the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe.
An expert in Jewish law, Easterly is a zealous proponent of the Noahide Laws. He referred to the passing of the laws by the US congress in 1991 as “the first rays of dawn” which “evidence the rising of a yet unseen sun”. According to Micheal A. Hoffman: The Jewish Encyclopedia envisages a Noahide regime as a possible world order immediately preceding the universal reign of the Talmud.
While it is possible to simply ignore these policy documents as aberrant and marginal manifestations of ruling class ideology, they nonetheless constitute a sinister form of racism and religious bigotry, one which has, to a large extent, been unperceived.
Belgian physicist Jean Bricmont was ostracized and branded an ‘anti-Semite’ by the French media after he argued that it is high time Zionism was discussed and debated by non-Jews. Pro-Zionist and ostensibly ‘anti-Zionist’ literature and discourse tends to be dominated by Jews. And many Jewish ‘leftists’ tend to ignore the primacy of the Jewish Lobby in the formulation of US foreign policy. Instead, they advance the theory that Israel is simply a colony of the US empire, a tool with which to control the Middle East. This is patent nonsense to anyone who has studied what sociologist James Petras refers to as the ‘Zionist power-configuration’ in the United States, a power-configuration that extends to Europe and beyond.
During the run-up to the Iraq war in 2003 Jewish ‘leftists’ blamed the US ‘neo-cons’ and their desire to control Iraq’s oil for the drive towards war. Little or no mention was made of the fact that the real driving force behind the propaganda campaign for the war on Iraq came from the Jewish Lobby. This is amply documented in James Petras’ book The Power of Israel in the United States.
The strategic imperatives of the Zionist entity require the division and conquest of all Arab lands, so as to clear the Middle East in preparation for expanded Israeli colonisation, as stipulated in the Yinon Plan and the project of Eretz Israel-Greater Israel. Yet we were being told by many Jewish leftists that the Iraq invasion was a ‘war for oil,’ in spite of the fact that Western corporations had already acquired as much Iraq oil as they could manage.
Most anti-imperialist intellectuals in the Middle East will tell you that the war against Syria is a proxy-war waged by the Jewish state in order to create the conditions of a ‘New Middle East’ a euphemism for Greater Israel. Yet, many Jewish critics of US policy in Syria insist that it is the United States (plus Israel). An historical analogy might be helpful here. For centuries Ireland was colonised by the British Empire. Irish farmers paid rent to British aristocrats who had dispossessed them. Ireland was impoverished from debt. Although some Irishmen played an important role in the British army and served in high office throughout the empire, no one could claim that it was the ‘Irish Lobby’ in London who persuaded the British to conquer India, Hong Kong or Kenya or that the Irish nation somehow benefited from those conquests. Empires exploit colonies. Colonies do no exploit empires. If Israel were a colony of the United States, then we would surely see the emergence of an Israeli national liberation movement from US exploitation and colonisation! No such movement exists.
Zionist and crypto-Zionist Jews, through their control of both the corporate and much of the ‘alternative’ media, have managed to play down the centrality of the Jewish state’s role in America’s foreign wars and the importance of Jewish ‘hasbara’-propagandists and ‘sayonim’- helpers in that war effort. They ignore the fact that the only state which is really benefiting from America’s wars is Israel.
One might object to the thesis of Israel’s power over US foreign policy by citing the very clear differences expressed by Washington and Tel Aviv regarding Iran’s nuclear programme. Here, surely, one might argue, the United States is not following Israel’s agenda. While Israel’s Likudniks oppose the deal with Iran, more ‘moderate’ Zionists agree with the compromise. For Israel and the United States, the deal with Iran is but a stepping stone towards an infiltration and destabilisation of the Islamic Republic. Diplomatic and business contacts with the West will inevitably facilitate greater ideological and intelligence penetration of Iran by the US and Israel, while the proxy- terrorist groups fighting against Iran in Yemen, and Syria will continue to receive support from the Mossad and the CIA. In fact, the Zionist destabilisation of Iran has already begun. The Kurdish social movement in Iran is supported by Israel.
The litmus-test for distinguishing the genuine anti-Zionist from the crypto-Zionist is the question of Israel’s relationship to the United States and Europe. As for the independent
media, one will often find that the bullying and derisive techniques of the corporate media to discredit dissidents are employed to discredit those who would dig too deeply into the Zionist machinations of US imperialism. The fallacy of reductio ad absurdum is a particularly common technique. This usually involves discrediting an anti-Zionist theory by falsely implying that the proponent of that theory believes in the supernatural, that he is a deranged simpleton who believes the world is run by goblins and such like. Another technique is the reductio ad Hitlerum, whereby those who discuss the problem of Jewish supremacy are compared to racists such as Adolf Hitler.
Jewish ‘anti-imperialist’ pundits regularly become ‘leaders’ and ‘gurus’ of ‘leftist’ movements and often use their credibility to police how issues of ethnicity, class and nationalism are conceptualized and discussed. Once people among their ‘ranks’ probe too deeply into Zionist intrigue, Zionist racial supremacy, warning signals are promptly sent out of a ‘far right’ and ‘fascist’ infiltration of the ‘movement’, this in spite of the fact that ‘fascism’ is precisely what genuine anti-Zionists are denouncing.
Such techniques sometimes work but more often than not, they only draw more attention to the suspicion among non Jewish critics of Zionism that an attempt is being made by ‘leftist’ Jews to deflect attention from the real sources of power in the capitalist world order, namely the Zionist power configuration.
It is therefore important for such individuals to occasionally re-emphasise their ‘opposition’ to Israel. In this sense, the Jewish ‘anti-imperialist’ bears a striking resemblance to the spokesmen of the Islamic State.
For what is the Islamic State or Da’esh other than the foreign legion of Israel. They have achieved in little time what no other Israeli proxy-force could have achieved. They have cleared vast territories of Iraq and Syria, have attacked Hamas in Gaza and have conveniently occupied the Sinai peninsula in Egypt. It is perhaps more apposite than ironic that security experts also refer to the Mossad as ISIS, Israel’s Secret Intelligence Service. It is hardly surprising, therefore, that official UN documents confirm Israel is covertly supporting Da’esh.
Like the Jewish pseudo anti-imperialists, the spokesmen of the Islamic State always refer to their hatred for “America” and the “freedoms of Americans” as the reason for their crusade. They do not seem to be too concerned about Israel, except, of course, when they miraculously manage to stage terrorist attacks on European soil, which often take place in formerly Jewish owned properties. Such attacks foment Islamophobia and the notion that Jews are hated and in danger, an agenda which serves Zionist regional and global hegemonic ambitions. In this sense one could argue that both the Islamic State and crypto-Zionists serve the same purpose: constantly deflecting attention from Zionism by blaming Israel’s giant, stultified Leviathan — the United States of America.
• Read Part One, Part Two, Part Three, Part Four, Part Five, Part Six, Part Seven,
February 14, 2016
Posted by aletho |
Timeless or most popular, Wars for Israel | Africa, Da’esh, European Union, France, Israel, Libya, Middle East, Multiculturalism, New World Order, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Yinon Plan, Zionism |
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At first I thought it ironic that Saturday’s Republican debate happened in the “Peace Center” in Greenville, South Carolina. [video and transcript]
But perhaps that had a positive effect.
Actually, no. For the discerning listener, Donald Trump has been critical of U.S. militarism for some time. On Russia, on Syria, on Iraq, on North Korea.
People say that Trump is loud. But I don’t think he’s been loud enough.
Last night, he screamed an anti war stance to the boos of Bush’s and Rubio’s and Kasich’s one percent donors. It’s only half of what needed to be said, but it was a measure of reality that’s desperately needed.
Trump: “You fight ISIS first. Right now you have Russia, you have Iran, you have them with Assad and you have them with Syria. You have to knock out ISIS. … You can’t fight two wars at one time.” But of course, to some of the U.S. establishment, two wars is slacking, they want more than two wars. Trump continued: “We shoulda never been in Iraq. We have destabilized the Middle East. They said there were weapons of mass destruction. There were none. And they knew there were none. … The World Trade Center came down (BOOING) during the reign. He [G. W. Bush] kept us safe?”
And, if anyone noticed, even as the auditorium packed of monied interests booed Trump, the tracker at the bottom of the screen went up for him.
Trump’s truth telling was met with more ridiculousness and lies.
Jeb Bush described Trumps attacks as “blood sport” which, given the subject matter at hand — his brother’s appetite for illegal war and failure in his responsibility to protect the U.S. public was, to put it mildly, ironic. And then Bush appealed to the values of his family, which, evidence would show, includes hands quite drenched in blood.
John Kasich’s reaction on Iraq WMDs was to appeal to Colin Powell’s credibility, which has been a late night TV joke for over a decade. He also claimed the U.S. got into a civil war, which is wrong — the U.S. government helped foster the sectarian violence. And no, Kasich, the borders of the Mideast were not “drawn after World War I by Westerners that didn’t understand what was happening there” — they were drawn by Westerners who wanted to divide and rule — as is the actual goal of Western interventions to this day.
Marco Rubio was perhaps the most priceless — “Saddam Hussein was in violation of UN resolutions, in open violation, and the world wouldn’t do anything about it.” That’s a total lie. Iraq had disarmed and the U.S. did everything it could to not have the UN verify that disarmament so that the draconian sanctions would continue on Iraq indefinitely and they could have their regime change war, see my time line: accuracy.org/iraq.
The worthies at the Weekly Standard now write: “Interviewers should press Trump on this: What evidence does Trump have that George W. Bush and his top advisers knowingly lied about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq? How many other government officials does Trump believe were in on the deception? What does Trump believe would have been the point of such a lie, since the truth would soon come out?”
In fact, it’s quite provable that the Bush administration lied about Iraqi WMDs before the invasion. I know, I helped document such lies at the Institute for Public Accuracy, where I work, before the 2003 invasion:
In October, 2002, John R. MacArthur, author of Second Front: Censorship and Propaganda in the 1991 Gulf War, noted: “Recently, Bush cited an IAEA report that Iraq was ‘six months away from developing a weapon. I don’t know what more evidence we need.’ The IAEA responded that not only was there no new report, ‘there’s never been a report’ asserting that Iraq was six months away from constructing a nuclear weapon.” That’s just the tip of the iceberg of what was knowable at the time. See other such news releases from before the invasion: “White House Claims: A Pattern of Deceit” and “Bush’s War Case: Fiction vs. Facts at Accuracy.org/bush” and “U.S. Credibility Problems” and “Tough Questions for Bush on Iraq Tonight.”
The problem in 2002 and early 2003 was that Bush didn’t get those tough questions. Just like there are no real tough questions about U.S. policy in Libya, Syria, etc now.
What we’re getting is Trump raising these issues years later when it seems some of the public is finally/still willing to hear them. And that’s splendid. The establishment has tried to just keep rolling along with their wars and deceits after the Iraq invasion. No accountability, no nothing. They make Wall Street look like self-critical introverts. To answer the Weekly Standard’s question — the truth still hasn’t come out in full force; Bush and the other pro-war deceivers have managed to get away with it all.
The only problem with what Trump is saying is that he’s not saying it loud and strong enough. He didn’t back up the case for impeachment against G. W. Bush for the Iraq invasion, which was the point of one of the questions to him, though several legal scholars have done so, including Francis Boyle, Jonathan Turley, and Bruce Fein and Elizabeth Holtzman. Reps. Dennis Kucinich, Cynthia McKinney and John Conyers, in different ways and at different times, pursued the possibility.
Some are deriding Trump for apparently exaggerating his objections to the Iraq war in 2003 and 2004. Maybe so, but the fact of the matter is that most who spoke out meaningfully against Iraq war early were defacto drummed out of establishment media and politics.
Trump is being Buchanan 2.0 — that there’s some real bad that comes with that and there’s some real good that comes with that. And quite arguably in a post 9/11 world, the good is more important than it was in 1992.
As I’ve written elsewhere, I have no idea what Trump would actually do in office and what his current motivations are. He’s been contradictory, but the thrust of his comments is quasi isolationist. His campaign should certainly be a huge opening to groups wanting to reach out to millions of working class whites on issues of foreign policy, trade, as well as some core economic issues.
And even on foreign policy, Trump can be extremely dangerous. For example, the apparent force behind his anti Muslim comments is Frank Gaffney, a rightwing pro-Israel militarist.
The point is that what Trump is appealing to is an electorate that is sick of deceit and perpetual wars and there’s a lot of good that comes with that. It should be an opportunity for anyone claiming to care about peace — and not a cause to mock the people supporting him as I’ve seen many “progressives” do.
But, for the Democrats, the import now is this: What’s it going to look like if Trump is the Republican nominee? If Clinton is the Democratic nominee, Trump — with very good reason — will tie the stench of perpetual wars and the lies that accompany them around her neck. She will make the 2004 John “I-was-for-the-war-before-I-was-against-it” Kerry look like a stirring exemplar of gracefully articulated principles.
If any Democrat cares a bit about electability, Clinton — the candidate not only of Wall Street, but of endless war and of the war machine — should have been dumped yesterday.
February 14, 2016
Posted by aletho |
Militarism | Donald Trump, Hilary Clinton, Iraq, Libya, Middle East, Syria, United States |
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WASHINGTON — On Sunday, Bernie Sanders endorsed President Barack Obama’s violent, expansive foreign policy in an effort to distance himself from accusations of inexperience in matters of war.
At the beginning of an interview on CBS’ “Face The Nation” between John Dickerson and the Vermont senator, Dickerson noted:
Senator, while you were in New York, North Koreans launched a long range missile. As President, you’d face that kind of thing all the time, very often. And what Secretary Clinton is saying is that you don’t have the experience to be ready for those kinds of challenges on day one.
Sanders responded:
Well, that’s what she said about Barack Obama in 2008, and it turned out not to be true. I am impressed by the quality of his foreign policy.
Sanders also emphasized his vote against the Iraq War, which he said was “most important foreign policy issue in modern history.”
Under Obama, the U.S. military has expanded its presence throughout the globe, with bases or military advisors found in over 100 countries. Africa, in particular, has been transformed into what military scholar and journalist Nick Turse called a “laboratory for a new kind of war.”
Sanders has also been clear that he supports Obama’s use of drones, despite the weapons’ track record of killing mostly civilians.
While he claims to be against income inequality and wasteful spending, the U.S. spends $3.1 billion annually on aid to Israel, despite the occupation of Palestine, and Sen. Sanders has supported this deadly conflict with his votes.
In another echo of Obama’s foreign policy, Sanders made it clear during the interview that he won’t seek to end the wars in the Middle East, but rather would shift more of the burden of fighting them to foreign forces.
“We’ve got to learn the lessons of Iraq,” Sanders told Dickerson, “and that is that the United States of America cannot do it alone. We have to work in coalition with major countries and with Muslim countries whose troops will be on the ground.”
He added: “My main concern, in terms of the Middle East, is the United States does not get involved in perpetual warfare.”
However, Obama’s military aid to the Middle East has supported a number of deadly conflicts that show no signs of ending, and may even contribute to the rise of extremism. Saudi Arabia, one of Washington’s closest Middle Eastern allies and a buyer of billions of dollars worth of U.S. arms annually, is embroiled in a deadly conflict in Yemen that’s killed over 6,000 people, including more than 2,800 civilians.
The Obama administration aided local forces in the destabilization Libya, leading to the rise of extremism in that country. Last month, the Pentagon began laying the groundwork for new military actions in Libya, in order to quell the rise of Daesh (an Arabic acronym for the group commonly known in the West as ISIS or ISIL), which has flooded into the power vacuum left after the overthrow of the Gadhafi government.
And in Syria, U.S. aid has gone to so-called “moderate” rebels that were often allies of Daesh or al-Qaida. These rebel allies helped destabilize the nation, leading to one of the worst refugee crises the world has ever seen.
Sanders’ remarks reflect his consistent and familiar approach to foreign wars. Shadowproof’s Dan Wright, in a recent analysis of Sanders’ proposed foreign policy, noted:
If it sounds like another term of Obama’s foreign policy, at least rhetorically, that’s because it is. Minus the inclusions of fair trade … it is nearly identical to the principles espoused by President Obama.
February 14, 2016
Posted by aletho |
Militarism, Progressive Hypocrite, Timeless or most popular | Africa, Bernie Sanders, Israel, Libya, Middle East, Obama, Palestine, United States, Zionism |
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Reading Dennis Ross and David Ignatius is a good reminder that the neocons live in a different world than the rest of us. They do not conform their analysis to reality, but rather they conform reality to their view of the world. Where most people would be encouraged to read that Aleppo in Syria was about to be liberated from its 3.5 year occupation by al-Qaeda’s Syrian franchise, the neocons see a disaster.
On the brink of al-Qaeda’s defeat in Aleppo, the Washington Post’s Ignatius is furious that, “President Obama won’t approve military tactics that could actually shift the balance.” Yes, he wants to shift the balance toward al-Qaeda because like the other neocons he is so invested in the idea of regime change in Syria that he would even prefer turning the country into another Libya than to see government forces defeat his jihadist insurgents. Failing to “shift the balance” toward al-Qaeda fighters in Aleppo only brings “greater misery for the Syrian people,” in the world of Ignatius.
Ignatius’s Washington Post, which has never seen a potential war it did not want to see turned into an actual war, thinks it a tragedy that the Syrian army’s advance on al-Qaeda occupied Aleppo has “cut off all vital routes of supply from Turkey to the rebel-held areas of the city.” Those would be Turkish supplies in support of al-Qaeda and ISIS rebels, but the Post is too deceptive to mention that fact.
It is as dishonest an inversion of reality as anything printed in Pravda of old.
In the same vein as Ignatius, former Bush/Clinton/Obama Administration Middle East “expert” Dennis Ross writes to tell us, “what Putin is really up to in Syria.” In the above-linked article, The Los Angeles Times does not reveal that Ross is hardly an objective observer of the situation. As one of the founders of AIPAC‘s Washington Institute for Near East Policy — and a current counselor to that organization — Ross strongly supports AIPAC’s position in favor of regime change in Syria and Israel’s active role in assisting jihadist rebels from al-Qaeda’s Nusra Front in their efforts to overthrow the Assad government.
So what does regime change neocon Dennis Ross want us to believe is happening in Syria? The Russians, he asserts, are playing a dirty game by stepping up their bombing campaign against ISIS, al-Qaeda, and affiliated rebels instead of pushing for a ceasefire. How funny that when the US/Turk/Saudi/Israeli-back jihadists were on the verge of taking over all of Syria not that long ago there was no talk from neocon quarters about a ceasefire or a negotiated political solution. Only now that al-Qaeda’s stronghold in Aleppo is on the verge of liberation by government forces are the neocons screaming that diplomacy should be given a chance.
Russian operations are “designed to strengthen the Assad regime and weaken the non-Islamic State Sunni opposition in different parts of the country,” writes Ross. He doesn’t mention that particularly when it comes to Aleppo, the “non-Islamic State Sunni opposition” means al-Qaeda’s Nusra Front and affiliated forces.
By relentlessly bombing Islamic State and other jihadist groups seeking to introduce Sharia law into secular Syria, “Putin is… undercutting our aim of isolating Islamic State and having Sunnis lead the fight against it.” Read that again. By attacking ISIS he is preventing the US from isolating ISIS. Doublespeak.
What is Putin really up to in the world of Dennis Ross? He is not sincere about defeating Islamist extremism in Syria or even helping Assad’s forces win the war. No, Putin “aims to demonstrate that Russia, and not America, is the main power broker in the region and increasingly elsewhere.” Ah yes, the old argument about Russian expansionism. Baltic invasion, restoration of the USSR. All the neocon tripe.
Ah but here is where Ross plants his seed, whispers in the Administration’s neocon power brokers’ ears:
“Certainly, were Russia’s costs to increase, Putin might look for a way out.”
Hmm, now we see what he’s getting at:
… it is time we make it clear to the Russians that unless they impose a cease-fire on Assad and Hezbollah and insist that humanitarian corridors are open, we will have no choice but to act with our partners to create a haven in Syria — for refugees and for the organization of the Syrian opposition.
In other words, tell Russia if you do not stop fighting al-Qaeda and its affiliates in Syria we will face-off in a WWIII-threatening stance to establish a “jihadistan” in part of Syria from where the hundredth or so version of a rebel fighting force can be re-assembled.
Ross’s plan is not for the weak of heart. “[W]e cannot threaten to create a haven without following through if Putin refused to alter his course,” he writes. Meaning of course that we must be willing to actually go through with WWIII if Putin does not blink, back down, and pull out of Syria just as Russia’s intervention is meeting its objective. Surrender when on the verge of victory in Syria or face a nuclear war with the United States.
No one ever accused the neocons of thinking small. But with much of the Middle East a smoldering ruin due to the disastrous interventions they lied us into, no one should count out even their most insane-sounding plan being seriously considered somewhere in Washington.
February 13, 2016
Posted by aletho |
Mainstream Media, Warmongering | AIPAC, al-Qaeda, David Ignatius, Dennis Ross, Middle East, Syria, United States, Washington Post, Zionism |
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The Syrian Army and its allies have clearly turned the tide in the Syrian war. The “facts on the ground” have changed dramatically for all the major players, and constitute a major reversal for all the forces that have tried to institute “regime change” in Syria, in violation of its sovereignty. The Geneva “Peace Conference” opposition delegation, composed of marginal figures representing a tiny fraction of the armed anti-government factions but ostensibly speaking for all of them, is now largely irrelevant. As the terrorists and foreign mercenaries and their families flee Aleppo, thousands or tens of thousands of Syrian civilians are returning to their homes in secure government held areas.
Given the reversal of fortunes for Turkey, Saudi Arabia, the US, NATO and their allies and mercenaries, what’s next? The sensible thing would be for all the actors to declare victory by finishing off the ostensible terrorist enemy and accepting a face saving solution that includes a Syrian government commitment to reform, with expertise provided by a friendly international team of experts that puts Russia, the US, Europe, Iran and perhaps even Saudi Arabia on the same side.
But this is not the advice we are hearing from the advisers that got us into this mess in the first place, and who are disappointed that Syria might not go the way of Iraq, Libya and Somalia after all. They are suggesting that a more and bigger war is the way to complete the job of turning Syria into a failed state. Such a war would involve an invasion of Turkish forces amassed and poised on the border, direct intervention by Saudi forces, US and perhaps other NATO ground forces, and potentially Israeli forces as well.
Such a plan risks putting these forces directly in confrontation with Syrian and Russian units and objectives. It is a recipe for great power confrontation on a scale rarely seen since the Cuban missile crisis in 1962. Rarely, but not totally. When Turkey shot down a Russian aircraft on November 24, 2015, only very cool Russian heads prevented the unthinkable by deciding that the Russian response might best be served cold.
That dish is now on the table, and it is for the Turks and bigger warmongers to decide if they want to risk Armageddon by unleashing even greater forces of destruction. There are players that would love to do so; they profit from death, misery and cataclysm, and would never miss such an opportunity. Chief among them are the arms merchants that dominate in the US and Israel, the neoconservative movement, also heavily subsidized by Israel and its Zionist lobbies in other countries, and by Israel’s investment in weakening all potential adversaries. Saudi Arabia has decided that it has much the same adversaries and has therefore thrown its lot in with Israel. The Erdogan administration in Turkey finds that its interests, including territorial aggrandizement, are congruent, and US objectives are defined by the neoconservative movement and the Israel Lobby, which have kidnapped US strategic policy in this regard, to the dismay of the Foreign Service, intelligence and military professional core of the American government.
The Syria Solidarity Movement suggests that further escalation is not a solution, but that the application of international law can bring the hostilities to a close. Astonishingly, this a war in which there are few declared enemies. Of the many parties and their sponsored combatants, only the armed groups and the Syrian government have declared themselves to be enemies, unless you count the insincere protestations that “terrorist” groups are also enemies of the same nations that are aiding and abetting them.
Syria is still recognized universally and diplomatically as a sovereign state, and under international law no power may interfere in its security considerations except by invitation from the recognized government of that state. To seek “regime change” (overthrow) is strictly illegal under international law, and prohibited by the United Nations. Governments that are pursuing such an objective should be sanctioned by the UN, although there is no realistic possibility of such action.
The Syria Solidarity Movement believes that it is time to complete the expulsion of the terrorist and mercenary forces that have been attacking Syria for the last five years. This can be accomplished by denying all support of arms and funding from the US, Europe, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Israel and other countries. In addition, these countries can choose to either cooperate with the Syrian government and its allies to rid Syria of this scourge, or at least not interfere while Syrian, Russian and other allied forces complete the job. In this case, Syria can resume its role of providing government services and representation for its people, and its people can resume shaping their own government without outside interference.
It is time to end this ill-advised adventurism, and to put to flight the rascals and criminals, not only in Syria but also inside the countries whose strategic policies have been hijacked by gangs who are in many respects worse than those who bring beheadings and crucifixions to our computer screens.
The Syria Solidarity Movement
ILLEGAL USE OF OUR NAME: Counterpunch recently published an article from an individual claiming to be from “Syria Solidarity UK”. This constitutes infringement of the use of the name of the Syria Solidarity Movement and a misrepresentation of who we are. We wish to caution all persons and organizations against the fraudulent use of our name, even if published in good faith as a result of information provided by third parties. We are pursuing legal remedy and would not wish anyone to unnecessarily incur liability.
Paul Larudee is one of the founders of the Free Gaza and Free Palestine Movements and an organizer in the International Solidarity Movement.
February 12, 2016
Posted by aletho |
Illegal Occupation, War Crimes, Wars for Israel | Israel, Middle East, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Turkiye, United States, Zionism |
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The recently released minutes from a November meeting between Erdogan and the EU prove that the Turkish strongman is manipulating the immigrant flow into Europe for strategic ends.
The Greek financial website euro2day.gr published the shocking record of what transpired at a November meeting between Erdogan, Tusk, and Juncker in Antalya. In attempting to squeeze more money out of Brussels for his cooperation in halting the refugee flow, the Turkish leader thuggishly threatened that “We can open the doors to Greece and Bulgaria anytime and we can put the refugees on buses”, snarling to the EU leaders and rhetorically taunting them by asking “how will you deal with refugees if you don’t get a deal? Kill the refugees?”
€3 billion later, Erdogan shut up but he didn’t shut his borders, and the human wave continues to crash into Europe.
Now that the cat’s out of the bag and there’s a smoking gun to prove what most Europeans had already figured out by now — that the immigrant crisis is a strategically engineered weapon against them — the US has gone into full spin mode by doing what it does best, blaming Russia.
A day before the minutes were leaked, Carnegie Europe published a mudslinging piece which alleges in its title that “Putin Uses The Refugee Crisis To Weaken Merkel“, and a day after the Erdogan bombshell was made public, George Soros followed up with one of his famous speculative attacks (albeit this time non-financial) in which he ludicrously proclaimed that “Putin’s current aim is to foster the EU’s disintegration, and the best way to do so is to flood the EU with Syrian refugees.”
Ironically, but as is the established pattern, every time that the US is caught doing something unsavory, they always reflexively resort to blaming Russia for their own sins, and the immigrant crisis is no different. What’s new this time around, however, are the strange “anti-imperialist” bedfellows that they’ve aligned with in doing so.
‘Weapons Of Mass Migration’
The first thing to understand about the immigrant crisis is that the on-the-ground conditions for it were created by the US’ aggressive unipolar wars on the Mideast and North Africa, and that the resultant humanitarian catastrophe has been strategically weaponized by Washington and its allies for various geopolitical and economic ends.
Kelly M. Greenhill, an Associate Professor at Tufts University and Research Fellow at Harvard Kennedy School of Government’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, published a groundbreaking 2010 book about “Weapons of Mass Migration: Forced Displacement, Coercion, and Foreign Policy” in which she proved that there are at least 56 instances in which states have purposefully generated, provoked, and exploited massive waves of human migrations as an instrument to further their respective policies. Excerpts from her book were culled to form a summarized article that’s available for free at the Naval Postgraduate School’s website.
In terms of the present application of “Weapons Of Mass Migration”, the US and Turkey have a few overlapping goals in mind. Ghassan Kadi brilliantly explained that Erdogan wants to use the immigrants as leverage in order to extract financial and institutional concessions from the EU, while concomitantly flooding the West with Islamist-sympathizing individuals that can act as a fifth column of support for his expansionist policy of Neo-Ottomanism.
The latter goal segues in nicely with what the US wants to do, which is to kaleidoscopically fracture hitherto largely homogeneous European societies via provoked and prolonged Hobbesian conflict between the locals, refugees, and host governments. It’s aware that the civilizational dissimilarity between the native Europeans and the migrating Muslim masses will inevitably lead to multifaceted tension, and it aims to perpetually exploit the resultant identity cleavages in order to conveniently craft various Color Revolution scenarios in keeping certain governments in check and away from pragmatic cooperation with Russia and China (e.g. Nord Stream II, Turkish/Balkan Stream, and the Balkan Silk Road).
Qualifying Caveats And The Smoking Gun Pattern
It’s useful at this moment to point out that while there definitely are some legitimate refugees reaching Europe’s shores, many of the newcomers are economic migrants that aren’t even from Syria, and that a highly disproportionate number of the people who have come to the continent are draft-age young males. This is why the author collectively and more accurately refers to these people as immigrants and not “refugees”. Russian Defense spokesman Igor Konashenkov, American Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, and French Minister of Defense Jean-Yves Le Drian have all recently warned that Daesh terrorists are actively infiltrating borders under the guise of being “refugees”, so there are absolutely some legitimate concerns about the types of people getting into Europe undetected.
Another thing is that “Islamist” isn’t a synonym for Muslim (as it’s commonly mistaken to be), but rather a label in referring to those that seek to impose Islam on others, such as Muslim Brotherhood and Wahhabi sympathizers. These individuals don’t have to be instructed on how to stir up problems in their host countries because their Islamist ideology naturally inspires them to clash with the locals, which thus organically satisfies the US’ 21st-century “Operation Gladio” plans. Regrettably, the sexual terrorist attacks in Cologne and other cities leave no doubt that many of these undesirable immigrants have already gotten into the EU, confirming that the US and Turkey’s destabilizing geopolitical plans are already in full swing.
Most Europeans figured out on their own that something was amiss about the whole immigrant crisis, questioning why so many of the new arrivals, if they were genuine refugees, would behave with such arrogant, ungrateful, and callous disregard for the host population that literally (as they were led to believe) saved their lives. The smoking gun of Erdogan’s transcribed threat, proving the degree of control that he has over the floodgates and his willingness to leverage this in as self-interested of a manner as possible, showed many Europeans that they weren’t wrong for questioning the mainstream media’s narrative on this whole matter.
Similar smoking guns have dispelled the Western myth about other high-profile crises as well. The Nuland-Pyatt recording proved that the US was scheming for regime change in Ukraine, and a 2012 Defense Intelligence Agency memo explicitly states that the Syrian “opposition” was full of terrorists from the beginning and that a “declared or undeclared Salafist principality in eastern Syria”, which later turned out to be Daesh, was “exactly what the supporting powers to the opposition want”. The latest revelation validates many people’s prior fears that the immigrant crisis had been strategically engineered, and it casts a damning light on the US’ role and intended agenda behind it. Tellingly, the faked hysteria that Putin is “flooding the EU with Syrian refugees” to “weaken Merkel” seems to imply that the German Chancellor’s days are numbered, but the US wants to cover its tracks and clumsily pretend that it’s Moscow which actually has something to gain by deposing its strategic Nord Stream II partner and not Washington like is actually the case.
Strange Bedfellows
Up until the point where the US had to begrudgingly acknowledge that strategically engineered “Weapons of Mass Migration” were being used against the EU and predictably blame it all on Russia, its allied “NGOs” and information outlets had categorically denied that such a planned phenomenon was taking place, slurring anyone who dared to even infer this possibility as being “racist”, “fascist”, and “white supremacist”. Astonishingly, this mainstream media-imposed “political correctness” and ideological intimidation was aggressively repeated by social and alternative media “activists” who fashioned themselves as (militant) far-left “anti-imperialists” — typically the sort of individuals who speak out against the US’ “thought police” or at least respect others’ right to do so.
These “anti-imperialists” claim to support Russia’s role in the world, yet state that border controls and assimilative & integrational immigration policies are some kind of “new fascism”. Apparently they never read President Putin’s 2012 manifesto on the topic, otherwise they would know that the Russian leader has a very firm and publicly declared stance against open borders and the Western conception of “multiculturalism”. By attacking concerned individuals that espouse these exact same principles as “racist”, “fascist”, and “white supremacist”, they’re indirectly attacking Russia and associating it with those slurs. It’s a documented fact that the tentacles of unipolar influence are long and deeply embedded in all sorts of social and political movements, so it’s reasonable to question whether these “anti-imperialist” voices are just “misguided activists” or if they’re really just anti-Russian provocateurs with an ideological ax to grind.
February 12, 2016
Posted by aletho |
Aletho News | Africa, Erdogan, European Union, George Soros, Human rights, Middle East, Russia, Turkiye, United States |
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One could hardly find a person both within the UK or outside it that would look positively at the steps that have been taken by David Cameron and his government if, of course, we’re not talking about members of the Conservative Party and certain military circles. The reasons are plenty, but the most obvious ones are the crimes against humanity committed by this government, along with a total disregard for the social needs of UK citizens and the revanchist policies it pursued in the Middle East and Africa.
It will suffice to note that Cameron’s government is going to cut its social spending to the lowest possible level to be able to carry on foreign military campaigns. The Guardian notes:
Sarah Wollaston, the Conservative chair of the all-party Commons select committee on health, is calling for the government to act, saying that social care providers are reeling from rising costs and declining fees from cash-strapped local authorities.
As a direct result of the steps that are being taken by British government, those citizens that are facing retirement today will lose all means to pay their expenses in the next 10 years.
The benefits cuts on sheltered housing that have been recently announced by the UK government will literally make tens of thousands of those in dire need homeless. Those that are forced to experience the consequences of the shortsighted policies of London are to be the most vulnerable, namely older residents, domestic violence victims and people with mental illness. Those caps were first announced last autumn by the Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne.
However, the Guardian refuses to mention that the army is still enjoying substantial budgets just as it always has, to the benefit of countless military contractors and those politicians who represent them in the parliament. It is therefore not surprising that these lobbyists are among the most ardent supporters of David Cameron’s plan of the possible British military engagement in Syria, despite attempts of some sane politicians to put an end to airstrikes that the UK is carrying out in this Arab country, calling them “infanticide“
The above mentioned activities predictably result in an ever growing body count that British troops are producing with their “fire and sword” across the world in the name of vague “democratic principles”, while actually protecting the interests of the City of London.
Therefore, the British political elite are putting every effort into a bid to prevent the investigation of their criminal policies in the Middle East, Africa and other regions around the world. For instance every possible step has been taken to derail an inquiry of the commission headed by Sir John Chilcot that was entrusted back in 2009 to give an answer on how justified Tony Blair’s decision was to go to war against Iraq, which resulted in 179 British soldiers killed and hundreds of thousands of Iraqis left suffering in lawlessness and bitter misery to this date. Moreover, a few days ago it was announced that the British Ministry of Defense was going to close the Iraq Historic Allegations Team (IHAT) that was created in 2010 to study at least 58 allegations against British servicemen allegedly involved in murder cases in Iraq. And although the IHAT was investigating the deaths of 1,500 possible victims, out of which 280 were allegedly unlawfully killed, there’s every reason to believe that it won’t be funded up to 2019 as originally intended.
David Cameron is anticipating complete impunity for his actions, therefore refusing to launch an investigation of war crimes that were carried out with the use of British weapons, especially those supplied by the British to Saudi Arabia. Cameron excused himself for this decision by announcing that arms exports are being “closely monitored”.
Lately Amnesty International has been vocal in condemning the UK role in the Yemeni conflict, while directly pointing to the shameful support of routine brutality that the Saudi regime has been exhibiting. At the same time The Independent published an article that stated a member of the British government, while staying in Riyadh, praised Saudi authorities for the “remarkable progress” in the field of human rights, a month after the public execution of 47 people!
As for the British responsibility in the massive civilian killings in Yemen, it is necessary to recall that during the first nine months of 2015 the United Kingdom supplied Saudi Arabia with 2.95 billion pounds worth of arms, which were used to launch airstrikes against heavily populated urban areas. The total worth of weapons sold to Saudi Arabia throughout all of Cameron’s premiership amounts to 7 billion pounds, including a contract to supply the regime with 72 Eurofighter Typhoons. Numerous media sources have been calling repeatedly to bring to justice those responsible in the bloody conflict in Yemen. So there’s little wonder that the UN Security Council decided to form a special committee to investigate reports of violations of international humanitarian law by all the parties of the Yemeni conflict to identify those responsible. And the UK is not particularly happy about that fact.
As it was reported by The Independent :
An influential joint committee of MPs is set to investigate claims that British-made weapons may have been used for strikes against civilian targets. The Committee on Arms Export Controls (CAEC), made up of members of the Foreign Affairs, International Development, Defence and Business select committees, has not sat so far this Parliament, but will be re-established.
Crispin Blunt, chair of the Foreign Affairs Committee, and Stephen Twigg, chair of the International Development committee, have both indicated that they want the CAEC to investigate whether UK arms have been used for military strikes against civilians, and also to scrutinise the role of UK personnel working in Saudi command and control centres orchestrating airstrikes.
Taking into account the steps that David Cameron has made to hide numerous crimes committed by him and his government both in the UK and abroad, it’s about time for the international community to take such investigations into its own hands, to ensure that no felon, whether a politician or not, escapes justice.
Martin Berger is a Czech-based freelance journalist and analyst.
February 11, 2016
Posted by aletho |
Corruption, Militarism, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | Afghanistan, Africa, Human rights, Middle East, Saudi Arabia, Syria, UK, Yemen |
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