McCain & other top officials accused of illegally visiting Syria
RT | January 6, 2015
Several senior US and French officials, including US Senator John McCain, entered Syria illegally – without proper visas – on separate occasions, thus violating the country’s sovereignty, Syria said in a complaint submitted to the United Nations.
The list of officials also included former French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner and former US diplomat Peter Galbraith, according to a letter dated December 30 cited by Reuters and AFP.
In the letter, Syria’s UN ambassador Bashar Ja’afari urged UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and the Security Council to put additional pressure on governments to implement “the necessary measures against their nationals who enter Syrian territory illegally.”
“Such actions are a blatant violation of Syria’s sovereignty and of the resolutions of the Security Council concerning Syria,” Ja’afari said.
The letter included complaints from “certain journalists and prominent figures” entering Syria illegally, pointing out McCain’s visit to the country in June 2013, as well as Kouchner’s visit in November 2014 and Galbraith’s in December 2014, along with other US political and military leaders.
Former Kuwaiti politician Walid Tabtabai is also mentioned as making an illegal visit in September 2013.
At the time, McCain’s spokesperson only confirmed that the former Republican presidential candidate visited Syria in May 2013 to meet with Syrian rebels.
McCain responded to the complaint by downplaying the accusations, and in turn accusing Syrian President Bashar Assad of the “massacre” of his own people.
“It is a sad but unsurprising truth that the Assad regime is less concerned with its massacre of more than 200,000 men, women and children than it is my visit with those brave Syrians fighting for their freedom and dignity,” McCain’s statement said. “The fact that the international community has done virtually nothing to bring down this terrible regime despite its atrocities is a stain on our collective moral conscience.”
According to earlier media reports, McCain crossed into Syria in May 2013 from Turkey with General Salem Idris, who was in charge of the Supreme Military Council of the Free Syrian Army, and stayed there for several hours before returning.
During the visit, the senator met with leaders of Free Syrian Army units in Turkey and Syria.
McCain’s visit created a media storm, especially after a picture surfaced of him posing with allegedly IslamicState-linked jihadists (formerly ISIS/ISIL).
The original claim came from Kentucky Republican Senator Rand Paul, who accused McCain of unknowingly meeting with Islamic State fighters.
Among the Senator’s other controversial visits was a trip to Ukraine in December 2013 amid mass anti-government protests. During the visit, McCain met with Ukrainian opposition leaders in the country’s capital of Kiev, voicing his support for the protests, adding that he saw Ukraine’s future with Europe.
Also, back in 2011, McCain visited Benghazi to meet the Libyan rebels, calling them “my heroes.” McCain boldly stated that the fall of the ousted Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi would inspire people all over world – including in Russia – which raised eyebrows globally.
“We believe very strongly that the people of Libya today are inspiring the people in Tehran, in Damascus, and even in Beijing and Moscow,” said McCain.
McCain’s travel tendencies landed him on Russia’s black list in March, part of Russia’s retaliation against US-led sanctions. The list bans the Senator along with other individuals from traveling to Russia as well as freezes any of his assets there.
Turkey, US set to train “moderate” Syria rebels as SNC rules out Moscow talks
Al-Akhbar | January 5, 2015
Turkey and the United States aim to finalize an agreement on equipping and training the so-called “moderate” Syrian rebels this month, a senior Turkish foreign ministry official said Monday.
Meanwhile, Syria’s Turkey-based opposition, the Syrian National Coalition (SNC), ruled out taking part in a Russian-led bid for new talks to end the Syrian conflict.
The training is expected to start in March, simultaneously with similar programs in Jordan and Saudi Arabia, the Turkish official said.
The aim is to train 15,000 Syrian rebels over three years.
“Around 1,500 to 2,000 people are expected to be trained in Turkey (in the first year),” the official said, adding that a “limited number” of US soldiers would come to Turkey to help carry out the training jointly with Turkish colleagues.
The training, which the US says is part of its campaign to battle the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) militants, is planned to take place at a base in the central Turkish city of Kirsehir.
In October of last year, John Allen, a senior US official, said that his country does not expect the Free Syrian Army (FSA) it trains to fight ISIS militants to also take on Syrian Arab Army forces, but sees them as a crucial part of a political solution to end the war.
“There is not going to be a military solution here,” he added.
The FSA is a term used to describe dozens of armed groups fighting the Syrian army to overthrow President Bashar al-Assad but with little or no central command. They have been widely outgunned by Islamist insurgents such as ISIS.
The plans gained momentum in November 2014 when Britain announced it would also make “a significant contribution” to equip and train the so-called “moderate” Syrian opposition to defeat the ISIS group as well as the Syrian army.
Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond said that “the UK is helping the opposition establish security and governance, and to deliver essential services. This includes life-saving search and rescue training, helping Syrians whose homes have been reduced to rubble by the regime’s bombs.
“We are providing non-lethal equipment and the UK expects to make a significant contribution to the US-led Train and Equip program,” Hammond said in the statement, adding that “Assad can play no future role in Syria.”
Meanwhile, Gulf state Qatar, with the help of the US, has already been covertly training the so-called “moderate” Syria rebels to fight the Syrian army and ISIS group as well as other extremist groups for over a year, sources claimed in November.
The camp, south of the capital between Saudi Arabia’s border and Udeid area, the largest US air base in the Middle East, is being used to train the Free Syrian Army (FSA) militants and other so-called “moderate” rebels, the sources said.
Reuters could not independently identify the participants in the program or witness activity inside the base, which lies in a military zone guarded by Qatari special forces and marked on signposts as a restricted area.
But Syrian rebel sources said training in Qatar has included rebels affiliated to the FSA from northern Syria.
The sources said the effort had been running for nearly a year, although it was too small to have a significant impact on the battlefield, and some rebels complained of not being taught advanced techniques.
The training is in line with Qatar’s constant meddling in regional affairs.
Small groups of 12 to 20 militants are identified in Syria and screened by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), the sources said.
Once cleared of links with jihadist factions, they travel to Turkey and are then flown to Doha and driven to the base, though it wasn’t clear how the militants are ‘cleared’ of jihadist links.
Rebel fighters have voiced frustration with the US-led approach to fighting ISIS. They say Washington and its Arab allies are too focused on quashing the militant group at the expense of confronting Syrian army, which many rebels still see as the ultimate “enemy.”
ISIS militants have seized large swathes of territory in Syria and around one third of Iraq. They seized Mosul, Iraq’s second-largest city, in June last year.
Turkey has been a reluctant partner in the US-led coalition against the insurgents, refusing a frontline military role despite its 1,200 km (750-mile) border with Iraq and Syria.
But it agreed in principle to train and equip Syrian rebels and is already training Kurdish peshmerga fighters in northern Iraq. Ankara has signalled that it is ready to extend similar assistance to the Iraqi army and send arms.
The US decision to train and equip rebel groups in Syria was criticized by several renowned officials who warned of dire consequences.
Former US Congressman Ron Paul, an outspoken anti-interventionist, denounced in an interview with Russia Today the plans, noting that these Western-backed forces have been “helpful to ISIS.”
“The FSA turned over the weapons, that we (the US) sent them, to ISIS,” Paul said. “It is pretty well recorded that for $50,000 the FSA turned over one of the two American journalists to ISIS.”
In an article, Dennis Kucinich quoted historian Alastair Crooke who described “moderate” rebels in Syria as being “rarer than a mythical unicorn,” and warned that “funding Syrian rebels will precipitate a new and wider war in the Middle East.”
“Saudi Arabia, which, with Qatar funded the jihadists in Syria, is now offering to ‘train’ the rebels,” which means that “the sponsors of radical jihadists are going to train ‘moderate’ jihadists,” Kucinich added.
Kucinich also described the US Treasury as becoming the “piggy bank” of ISIS.
“The US has supplied weapons to the Iraqi government and to Syrian rebels which have ended up in the hands of ISIS,” he explained. “As a result, the US Air Force has been bombing Humvees and armored troop carriers purchased with US taxpayer money.”
SNC refuses to take part in Moscow talks
Khaled Khoja, who was elected early on Monday to head the SNC opposition grouping, said Moscow’s proposal was impossible.
“The dialogue with the regime that Moscow is calling for is out of the question,” he said at a news conference in Istanbul, where the Coalition is based.
“We can’t sit at the same table as the regime… except in a negotiating framework intended to achieve a peaceful transition of power and the formation of a transitional body with full powers,” he said.
Russia, a key ally of Assad, has been trying to relaunch peace talks that would include meetings between delegates of the regime and the fractured opposition.
It has invited 28 opposition figures, including members of the tolerated domestic opposition as well as individual coalition members, to Moscow later this month.
Among them are Hadi al-Bahra, whom Khoja succeeded on Monday, and two other previous Coalition chiefs, Moaz al-Khatib and Abdel Basset Sida.
It remains unclear whether the coalition will prohibit its members, who have been invited by Moscow, from attending the talks.
(AFP, Al-Akhbar)
Who are the real human traffickers?
By FINIAN CUNNINGHAM | Press TV | January 4, 2015
This week saw yet another ship-load of refugees marooned on the Mediterranean high seas trying to make their way to “fortress Europe”.
Some 360 people, including pregnant women and children, nearly lost their lives as the cargo ship they were onboard made its perilous way towards the southern Italian rocky coast. The crew had reportedly jumped ship, leaving the “ghost vessel” to its fate.
The Western media were quick to condemn “heartless” human traffickers who abandoned those onboard to a possible watery grave. As it turned out, the freighter-turned-refugee ship was salvaged by the Italian coastguard and all lives were saved.
It was the third such incident in the past two weeks. On December 21 another drifting ship packed with some 400 refugees had to be dramatically rescued at sea and steered to safe mooring in the Sicilian port of Augusta. Again, as in the incident this week, human traffickers had abandoned the ship and left those onboard at the mercy of the seas.
Of course, criminal gangs that prey on refugees are the immediate culprits. It is estimated that unscrupulous traffickers can buy a decrepit cargo ship for a few hundred thousand dollars, pack it with hundreds of desperate refugees and make off with millions of dollars in extortionate passage fees. Nice profit for very dirty work.
Many of the would-be refugees never make it to mainland Europe. Over the past year, some 3,000 people have perished in the Mediterranean onboard rickety vessels that were far from seaworthy. The Italian coastguard has plucked 160,000 people from the sea in the last year alone – a figure that has escalated on previous years and underlines the crisis of immigrants trying to reach Europe.
But who, ultimately, is to blame for this crisis? Why have numbers of desperate refugees willing to risk their lives trying to reach Europe suddenly exploded?
Refugees coming from North Africa to Europe across the Mediterranean is not a new phenomenon. But what is significant about the latest surge in numbers is that most of the refugees are from Syria and Iraq, according to the United Nations and other monitoring groups.
Of the 360 onboard the ship rescued this week off Italy’s Calabrian coast most were from Syria. The same goes for the other two vessels salvaged in the past fortnight.
The crisis of immigrants trying – and dying – to reach Europe is thus a direct consequence of the conflicts raging in Syria and Iraq. Millions of people are fleeing from violence in those two countries. Their homes destroyed, their families butchered, their livelihoods decimated, who can blame those people for trying to seek refuge?
But who should we blame, ultimately, for this appalling humanitarian situation? ISIS terrorists, human traffickers? Well, to a degree, yes. But the real culpability lies squarely with the European governments who in league with Washington have covertly launched a criminal regime-change war in Syria since March 2011.
Britain and France, in particular, are the two European powers that have, along with their American ally, fomented and fuelled the conflict in Syria to overthrow the government of President Bashar al Assad. Over the past four years that country has been turned into a charnel house by these Western governments supporting a network of international mercenaries for the illegal objective of regime change.
Now these same Western powers have launched air strikes on Syria and Iraq – with the stated purpose of “wiping out” the so-called Islamic State mercenaries that they unleashed in the first place.
The humanitarian consequences should be obvious – except to the Western media, who try to disinform on the iniquitous cause-and-effect. Millions of Syrians and Iraqis are fleeing from the mayhem that Western powers have engendered, as they desperately seek relative safety in Europe, crossing hell and high water if that’s what it takes.
The humanitarian disaster unfolding in the Mediterranean is the tragic blowback of covert state-sponsored terrorism by the US, Britain and France in the Middle East. That’s the bottom line no matter how the Western media try to dissimulate it.
To the burgeoning numbers risking their lives attempting to cross the Mediterranean are nationals from Libya, Palestine, and the African countries of Mali, Niger, and the Central African Republic – all countries where US-led NATO powers have directly fuelled violence.
So, let’s not be distracted by Western media hype about anonymous “heartless human traffickers” abandoning “ghost ships” of refugees on the rocks of European coastlines.
The real heartless human traffickers are the governments responsible for creating the flood of refugees from the Middle East and Africa in the first place.
This is a crisis made in Washington, London and Paris.
Ironically, and sickeningly, it is the British and French governments who are the most strident in the European Union wanting to take a tough line on refusing entry of refugees into Europe. The Italian government to its credit last year ran an emergency naval rescue program, Mare Nostra, “Our Seas”, that saved the lives of many. That program had to be jettisoned at the end of last year because of a monthly cost of EURO 10 million to Rome.
Britain and France refused to contribute financial support and the Italian rescue response had to be terminated. The London government said the Italian naval operation was acting as a “pull factor” in encouraging would-be refugees to take to boats.
More pertinent is not “pull factors” but instead to understand the “push factors” for the flow of refugees. The biggest push factor in Europe for the immigration crisis is the British and French governments sowing deadly conflict in the Middle East and Africa that forces refugees out of their countries.
The real human traffickers are not anonymous low-level scumbag criminal gangs. The really big scumbag ones sit in plush government offices in London and Paris.
Glimpse into 2014 struggles draws image of upcoming year
By Roqayah Chamseddine | Al-Akhbar | December 31, 2014
This year was a powerful amalgamation of torment, dissent, and small victories – a mixture of struggles, oftentimes intersecting, which will shape the new year.
Resistance across Egypt, against the torrent of brutal authoritarianism, is ongoing, and the battle that is being waged against the Sisi regime, which is still netting protesters and attempting to expand its security forces, has not dimmed. This week, 24 protesters, including Yara Sallam, Transitional Justice Officer at the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights (EIPR), were sentenced to two years imprisonment after being charged under Egypt’s restrictive assembly law. This signifies not a deviation from the Mubarak-era suppression but a sustained follow-through, and arguably at times the actions of Abdel Fattah el-Sisi’s illegitimate government have outdone even Mubarak’s. Under the current regime a more brazenly Zionist Egypt has taken center stage, making life for Palestinians in Gaza, many of whom are internally displaced, a living nightmare as they watch another Arab regime collude with the occupier, preventing them from having access to education, healthcare and going as far as to plan the demolition of 1,000 homes in order to expand the Rafah border, forcing many, who are still healing from the latest Gaza war, deeper into the throes of despair.
The displacement of the Palestinians converges with another cruelty – the displacement of the Syrian people. Syrians have been forced into refugee tents by unwavering violence, not only from inside and above but from host countries who are preventing them from having access to proper medical care, work and housing. Lebanon, which is now home to the largest Syrian refugee presence, over 1.1 million according to UNHCR, has unleashed its own brutality against the Syrian people; from the sexual abuse of Syrian women, violence against Syrian workers, to incomprehensible living arrangements by greedy landlords who are looking to profit off misery. To make matters worse, Syrians are also facing ISIS, which threatens to destroy any viable resolution to the conflict, and seeks to expand a violent pseudo-state by indiscriminately targeting anyone deemed a threat, as ISIS is composed of equal opportunity destroyers.
In Bahrain the long shadow of despotism reaches far into the streets, generously filling the jail cells with people like women’s rights activist Zainab al-Khawaja, recently sentenced to three years in prison after she ripped up a photo of King Hamad bin Isa al-Khalifa, and Ghada Jamsheer, head of the Women’s Petition Committee, who has been under house arrest since December 19, facing at least 12 charges. Al-Khawaja and Jamsheer are not the only women in the region facing an all-encompassing totalitarian state. In Saudi Arabia, 25-year-old Loujain al-Hathloul, who called for women to join the October 26 movement to end, among other things, the absurd restrictions on driving by taking to the roads, was arrested for doing just that. Al-Hathloul and 33-year-old Maysa al-Amoudi were arrested November 30, al-Hathloul for attempting to drive from the United Arab Emirates to Saudi Arabia and al-Amoudi after she arrived to support her.
At the forefront of the greater campaign for women’s rights are organizations in the region that challenge patriarchy, heteronormativity, and imperialism such as Beirut-based Nasawiya and Lebanon’s secular Lebanese civil society organization KAFA (Enough). Nasawiya, working alongside other local groups, have been involved in the fight against Lebanon’s nationality laws, sectarianism, and domestic violence. A domestic violence law, the first of its kind in Lebanon, passed by Lebanon’s parliament on April 1, after a strong, year-long campaign lead by KAFA. KAFA, which works tirelessly to not only provide domestic abuse victims and abusers with counseling, but child protection services, has criticized legislators for not focusing more on women, though despite the laws shortcomings many are calling this a step forward and women’s right activists in Lebanon are promising to continue the fight so as to bring about even more impactful, long-lasting change.
Nasawiya and KAFA have long challenged local discourse regarding not only Lebanese women but migrant domestic workers in Lebanon, and provide migrants with social and legal counseling. A recent publication by KAFA, “If Not For The System,” reveals the stories of women migrant workers in Lebanon, in both English and Arabic, and the exploitation they face as they navigate the oftentimes racist and abusive landscape. Lebanon’s migrant workers, who already face physical abuse at the hands of those they work for, are now struggling even harder to make a living if they are found to be Syrian, as many Syrians are now facing the obstacle of a war being waged against their identities, as they are being senselessly blamed for violent extremism in the country. In Qatar we also see the horrific crimes being committed against migrant workers. In a report released in May the Qatari government admitted to some 1,000 migrant deaths, at least one a day, in the last two years alone. Six months after this report was published, and after promising to reform its abominable system, “only a handful of the limited measures announced in May have even been partially implemented,” according to Sherif Elsayid-Ali, Amnesty International’s head of refugee and migrant rights.
It is difficult to read into the future, despite the imprints left behind this year, like a constellation of stains on the inside of a coffee cup. But one can hope that the minor victories for rights that were attained this year – despite the major setbacks – can set the tone for the coming years and forge a more auspicious new year for all.
Roqayah Chamseddine is a Sydney based Lebanese-American journalist and commentator. She tweets @roqchams and writes ‘Letters From the Underground.‘
America stumbles through another year, spreading chaos and trivia everywhere in its path
By John Chuckman | Aletho News | December 30, 2014
The Palestinians are seeking a vote in the United Nations’ Security Council on a resolution favoring their statehood, unquestionably a reasonable proposal in the minds of most of the world’s people. Of course, the United States, a permanent member of the Security Council, would automatically veto such a resolution, as it vetoes all efforts to restore order to the chaos of the Middle East. And of course, were such a resolution somehow miraculously to pass, Israel would simply ignore it, as it has ignored a long list of binding UN resolutions. But a veto and certain contempt are not enough for an upright, God-fearing Southern gentleman like US Senator Lindsey Graham. He busied himself recently with threatening America’s withholding funds from a United Nations that gets involved in the “peace process.” Imagine, the United Nations getting involved in peace? That is a chilling thought. Since the United States has a history of withholding its UN dues against its solemn treaty obligations to bully its way to certain changes, such threats do carry weight.
Senator Graham, regarded neither as an idealist nor a voice for peace, is only doing what so many American politicians do under the unbelievably corrupt, money-drenched American election system, and that is to make ridiculous public statements about the Middle East in return for generous dollops of campaign funds from the world’s most tireless political lobby, that for Israel. You might think that the lobby itself would tire of funding backwater blowhards demanding the other ninety-five percent of humanity play the game by America’s rules or America is picking up its marbles or chips or whatever and going home, but clearly it does not.
“The peace process” is the longest running farce on the planet, continuing for nearly fifty years. It might have been funny in the vein of The Mouse That Roared, but there is nothing remotely funny in the killing of thousands of people and the extreme abuse and hopelessness of millions. You just could not make a worse hash of a diplomatic and human welfare situation than America has made in the Middle East. And the situation has only intensified in its cruelty and injustice. Today, Israel openly and regularly steals homes in East Jerusalem and the West Bank. It threatens ancient Muslim shrines and desecrates some of them. It has savaged Gaza, the world’s largest open-air prison camp, twice, killing close to four thousand including nearly a thousand children. It has attempted to starve Gaza’s people out with a years-long embargo, and is making ugly noises about still another invasion. It is about to steal Syrian oil on the occupied Golan Heights, drilling there illegally, and it is busy arranging the theft of offshore natural gas that belongs to Gaza and Lebanon. It does all of this with complete impunity and not even a cross word from the likes of Senator Graham. I do think the Middle East provides the strongest possible evidence of the complete unsuitability of the United States to play a dominant role in international affairs. It is genuinely a case of the inmates running the asylum.
In another example of chaos mixed with farce, the United States pretends to fight ISIS in Iraq and Syria, and while that charade continues, planes loaded with American weapons keep flying out of Turkey to make the seeming lunatics even stronger. Indeed, the various ragtag factions trying to overthrow the Syrian government, cutthroats assembled by the US and its friends from all corners of the globe in a kind of hellish foreign legion, announced a new alliance, so telling Washington’s approved terrorists in the conflict from those who haven’t made the cut is more difficult than ever. Recently, one or another of the lunatic mobs shot down two fighter jets, and how do you think they managed that without American anti-aircraft missiles? Turkey’s certifiably unbalanced president, Tayyip Erdoğan, one day makes fiery speeches threatening Israel (to please the poor fools voting for him) and the next makes new secret deals with Israel. Remember, this is a man who just built a one-thousand room palace for himself – yes, that’s right, exactly one thousand rooms – and it is the ugliest, most pointless large structure built since the early Soviet era, a kind of gigantic sprawling warehouse incrusted with jewels and filled with porcelain.
Well, dippiness is no barrier to membership in a secret club in the region which includes the UAE, Saudia Arabia, and Israel, all lovingly assisted by the US. They are all governments who regard change as desirable only when it results in an even more rigid status quo, as in Egypt. Never mind the welfare of the region’s people or democracy or human rights or national boundaries. These guys resemble twelfth century lords seeing paupers cross their paths: they run them down and proceed to a rollicking good dinner in the great hall. The club is all about security for hereditary monarchs, security for America’s crusader fortress colony in the Middle East, and security for helper states in the American agenda. We’ve had many reports recently of secret air-freight flights between Tel Aviv and Abu Dhabi. We also have reports of flights out of Turkey into Syria. The never explained events at Benghazi were undoubtedly blowback from an operation collecting unemployed thugs and arms for secret shipment to Turkey and then into Syria. Saudi Arabia is voluntarily taking a bath by pushing oil prices down, a favor to the US and Israel and Turkey and a way of hurting Russia, Iran, Syria, and even Venezuela – all current members in good standing of Captain America’s ever-changing galaxy of villains – aka, the Axis of Evil. The US is willing to sacrifice for the time being its booming shale oil industry, whose more costly production requires higher prices than Saudi conventional crude, in return for the Saudi sacrifice.
Since both countries are desperate to hurt Russia, Iran, and Syria, the deal is a marriage made in Realpolitik heaven. Russia has helped Syria and does business with Iran, while Saudi Arabia and Israel hate Iran and Syria. The US has made a large investment in toppling Syria for Israel’s benefit, but the plan has been thwarted by Syrian endurance and Russian help. The plan also overlooked the loyalty of important Syrian societal groups to President Assad, but America often overlooks details as it attempts to reshape the world to its liking with bombs. Of course, there was also the precedent of Iraq, a bloody fiasco that achieved nothing but a million deaths and splintering a country into pieces. That splintering, by the way, continues with the ISIS fiasco: Iraq’s Kurds are being used against ISIS to strengthen their own region’s quasi-independence from Iraq.
The chaos the secret club-member countries have created in Syria – perhaps 200,000 killed and a couple of million refugees – appears not to bother them in the least, just so many paupers in the roadway when galloping home to dinner at the great hall. The victims do provide useful free material for the propaganda war being waged, the understanding implicit in America’s and Canada’s and Europe’s press being always that President Assad is responsible for the catastrophe. The US, and cheerleaders on the sidelines like Canada’s current dismal right-wing government, are doing virtually nothing for the refugees, or for the many civilians crippled or wounded. Ironically, Israel actually accepts for treatment in its northern medical facilities some of the very fanatics wounded in the dirty work. After all, it is ultimately Israel’s dirty work they do, regardless of their fanaticism. It’s a phenomenon we might call selective terrorism: fanatical killers who do America’s work, or Israel’s, are not treated as terrorists at all. No matter how many women and children you kill, no matter how many places you bomb, you only become a terrorist if you oppose the interests of America or Israel.
The toll in killed and wounded and homeless in Eastern Ukraine continues to mount. New punitive measures come regularly from Kiev, undoubtedly with American advice about possible vulnerabilities – after all, a top cabinet minister in the coup-created government is American. Only the other day we read reports of Ukrainian militia-types, the kind of right-wing thugs who helped the US overthrow an elected government in Kiev, blocking food traffic into the East. Attempting to starve people into submission is defined in international law as a war crime, but we hear no word of concern from America, just as we heard no word of concern for Israel’s original blockade of Gaza which actually included a calculated level of calories intended to just keep the population alive (since modified under intense secret international pressure).
In all these induced chaotic situations, we hear little or nothing from the UN, an institution which should be among the first condemning aggressive behavior. But the UN, despite the many differing private views of its members, is now in all official capacities under the thumb of the US. Its current Secretary-General, Ban Ki-moon, a candidate favored by America, is ineffectual and behaves at times almost as though he headed an organization having nothing to do with peace or human rights.
Well, there is some intimidating history. Boutros Boutros-Ghali was the only UN secretary-general not to be elected to a second term in office, and the reason was an American plan to be rid of him, one of Madeleine Albright’s glorious career achievements. America vetoed his second term because it was most unhappy when he did not embrace the bombing of Bosnia, and they disliked other of his views which tended to be thoughtful and compassionate. Earlier, Secretary-General Dag Hammarskjöld, a much admired man, was assassinated in an engineered plane crash, said to have been the work of Belgian mining companies unhappy with the UN’s policies in Congo, a place the mining companies had drained of wealth for decades of brutal exploitation, but I think it unlikely anything of that nature happened without at least a nod of approval from Washington, which after all was a major customer for the products of Congo.
The evidence is piling up, despite delays and many irregularities in the official investigation into the crash of airline Flight MH-17 in Ukraine, that a Ukrainian pilot deliberately shot the plane down. His fighter jet is said to have been armed with air-to-air missiles on take-off, something completely out-of-the-ordinary in the conflict since Eastern Ukrainians have no air force. It returned, according to an eye-witness, with no missiles and the pilot muttering cryptic phrases. Of course, this would be the kind of act you might expect from people who used sniper rifles earlier this year to kill many hundreds of civilians in Maidan, the central square of Kiev, in order to terrorize the population and start the coup. But where is America’s voice in these grotesque doings? As Russia has patiently pointed out, an American spy satellite was virtually overhead at the time of the crash, so definitive evidence exists without a doubt but is not produced. But then neither is it produced for the destruction of Flight MH-370 in the Indian Ocean, an event it is virtually certain was the work of American forces at the secret Diego Garcia base as the plane came their way for whatever unknown reason.
The irregularities around Flight MH-17’s investigation include Malaysia, owners of the airline, being excluded from the group conducting the investigation and include the fact that segments of the wreckage were left behind at the crash site, and that after taking a very long time to get there in the first place, making manipulation of forensic evidence possible and even likely. We also have the absence of any American satellite or radar records, and we have not a word about the autopsy on the pilot, something which might solve the entire mystery, as from the discovery of Ukrainian missile fragments in his body.
What kind of world do we want to live in? One where coups and civil wars are engineered for the pleasure of others? One where airliners full of people are shot down deliberately? This is the chaos, and just part of it, America has bestowed upon us in the twenty-first century. I won’t even go into the financial tsunami it created in 2008 with the same lack of caution for others and concern about doing things correctly. The full impact of that has yet to strike us all.
But America brings laughable trivia, too. The President of the United States spending time and breath on the hacking of a private company’s web site? A Japanese company, no less? And turning the relatively trivial business of hacking, which happens every day now somewhere, into an international incident by blaming, almost certainly incorrectly, North Korea?
The President said the FBI had investigated and assured him that North Korea was responsible. What he didn’t tell us was that the FBI has a decades-long record of being wrong, seriously wrong, a great deal of the time. Given the FBI’s history, it certainly is in the running for the title of Most Incompetent Security Organization in the Western World, although, like other national security institutions in the United States, it is grossly over-funded with money gushing out like water from broken plumbing. Americans pay more per unit of misinformation than likely any other people on the planet.
Anyone familiar with the record of the FBI listens to assurances like the President’s with a sarcastic smile at best (see FOOTNOTE for a partial list of the FBI’s viciousness and incompetence over the years). Shortly after the president’s silly words, we had several world-class tech experts tell us why it could not have been North Korea, and I’ll take bets against the FBI on this one from anyone.
It likely was someone at Sony doing a publicity stunt to promote what by all reports is a dud of a film, but why should the man with the biggest job in the world join in? Consider also the fact that if you make what can be viewed as a threatening comment or presentation of any kind against the President of the United States, you will be visited and interviewed by the Secret Service, who will then keep you on file permanently. Why is it okay to make a movie about the assassination of North Korea’s president then, the subject of The Interview ? Sony certainly has a right to do stupidly foolish things, but it is more than a little muddled for the President, eagerly, to support it. Will he now address the rights of porn actors in California to work without condoms?
As I write this, a British newspaper reports that some Sony employees have been quietly dismissed. Reported also is the discovery of a web site strongly suggesting disgruntled employees. See what I mean about America overlooking the facts before it acts?
FOOTNOTE ON HOW WRONG AND DISHONEST THE FBI HAS BEEN: The FBI was wrong in claiming there was no such thing as the Mafia, something J. Edgar Hoover insisted for many years while he gambled at their racetracks and stayed at their resorts for free, some biographers believing Hoover had been compromised by the Mafia with photos of his secret gay, cross-dressing life. The FBI was wrong in focusing huge resources for many years on the pathetic American Communist Party, half of whose small membership is said to have consisted of FBI agents. The FBI was wrong about the threat of Albert Einstein, seeking his extradition for a time and checking the contents of his garbage to his dying day. The FBI was wrong about the danger of Dr. Martin Luther King, and it played judge and jury with his personal life. The FBI was wrong about Dr. Wen Ho Lee of Los Alamos being a spy, although it ruined his career. The FBI was wrong about the crash of TWA Flight 800, taking an inordinate amount of time trying to let public interest cool and avoid the obvious fact that the crash was an accidental shoot-down by the American military, there being a radar track showing something like a missile rising towards the plane. Despite its vast resources, the FBI never saw 9/11 coming. One of its own senior agents, Robert Hanssen, was one of the more damaging spies of modern times, a man whose carelessness in many details, classic indicators of a paid spy, went unnoticed for years. The FBI was wrong in the Atlanta Olympic bombing, ruining the life of another innocent man. It couldn’t have been more wrong in its handling of the sad kooks at Waco, effectively murdering them all. So, too, at the Ruby Ridge standoff where an FBI sniper killed a woman and her child needlessly. The FBI Crime Labs were cited in the 1990s by the Inspector General for misconduct and manipulating evidence, something many had suspected for years. The FBI specialized for years in hurting the reputations of those it didn’t like or those it merely suspected, as by asking questions at their place of work and neighborhood, not have any proof of wrong-doing. The FBI, at least under J. Edgar Hoover, held career-threatening information obtained by spying over the heads of many prominent congressmen and government leaders, effectively blackmailing them to do its bidding. It did the same with non-government officials where it felt so inclined. The FBI was wrong about the assassination of President Kennedy, it being the only investigative agency for the lamentable, embarrassing Warren Commission, thereby assuming at least equal responsibility for its inaccurate, dishonest report. Indeed, the FBI did not reveal at the time that Oswald secretly worked for them as a paid informant (since documented). It also lied about evidence a senior FBI agent destroyed after the assassination, a note Oswald had written.
Gaza, Syria, militarized cops, and ‘lone-wolf’ shootings: during a brutal year, 9/11 truth held its own
The people of Gaza experienced real terrorism during a siege that left 2,100 dead
By Craig McKee | Truth and Shadows | December 30, 2014
Gaza, ISIS, Syria, Ukraine, Ferguson, militarized cops, Malaysian planes, torture, drones, and “lone-wolf” shootings. It has been a tough year for the truth.
But in the midst of all the deception and brutality, it has been an intriguing year for the struggle to expose the lies of 9/11. The elusive breakthrough that 9/11 truthers fantasize about may not be coming any time soon, but there are encouraging signs on a number of fronts. There were also some disappointments, but even those don’t seem so bad if you subscribe to the idea that there’s no such thing as bad publicity.
A major highlight was the spectacular sight of an 89-foot wide electronic billboard in New York City’s Times Square repeatedly showing the destruction of WTC 7 throughout the month of September. An estimated two million New Yorkers saw the message. Who would have thought something like that would ever happen? This latest project was the initiative of Rethink 9/11 and Architects and Engineers for 9/11 Truth, which were responsible for billboards in major cities around the world last year.
At the beginning of December we had the presentation of a petition asking the Canadian government to conduct a Parliamentary review of the evidence of 9/11. For years, no politician was willing to touch this subject or this petition in Canada until Green Party leader Elizabeth May agreed to present it to Parliament. Of course the likelihood of Parliament reviewing the evidence is about as good as Congress doing so in the U.S. But anything is positive that gets 9/11 into the news and lets people know that the movement continues to fight.
Unfortunately, May chose to tell the mainstream media that she only presented the petition because Parliamentary rules obligated her to do so. They don’t. She also said she doesn’t agree with the petition, which was regrettable but predictable. Any politician who shows any openness about 9/11 is going to get roasted in the media, and she was. But at least May was willing to take some political risk. Following up on the petition effort, AE911Truth has commissioned a poll of Canadians, asking them their views about 9/11.
Speaking of media, the High-Rise Safety Initiative launched by the New York Coalition for Accountability Now got 9/11 into the news even though it ultimately did not succeed in getting the initiative on to the New York City ballot. The goal was to force a change to the city charter obligating the Department of Buildings to investigate any building collapses going back to Sept. 11, 2001 (including Building 7 but not the twin towers).
The money was raised and the signatures were collected. It was quite an effort. But the courts did what they always do, dashing hopes for the time being. I know many truthers are quick to say that no official investigation will ever get to the truth of 9/11 – and that’s probably true – but the publicity the effort would produce would be worth it. Mayor Bill De Blasio calling the initiative “inappropriate after all the suffering that went on 9/11,” got the subject some welcome mainstream coverage.
The most hostile – and incoherent – attack on 9/11 truth occurred after AE9/11Truth distributed information pamphlets at the opening of the 9/11 Memorial and Museum at Ground Zero. The hook was that the pamphlets used the same design to offer an alternative view of what happened on 9/11. CNN’s Jake Tapper and his guest, Slate editor Emily Bazelon combined on a five-minute piece that made the usual gibberish about conspiracy theories seem intelligent.
My favorite quote from Bazelon: “You see these dark corners of the Internet where people pile on, and there’s this minute parsing of the technicalities of the supposed evidence, and more and more detail gets added and accumulated, and it kind of feeds on itself.”
Don’t you hate it when conspiracy theorists parse evidence and examine details?
Then there was the vicious maligning of Richard Gage and all truthers as being anti-Semitic hate mongers by the Canadian “news” network, Sun News. This came in an interview of Gage done by right wing hack Michael Coren in Toronto. I filed two complaints against Coren with the Canadian Broadcast Standards Council and waited more than six months for a decision from their adjudicating panel. I got an email from the national chair of the Council, Andrée Noel, saying that the complaint did not deal with anything that hadn’t been ruled on in the past, and that she had dismissed both complaints without giving them a hearing.
In an interview, Noel said that Coren’s accusation that Gage was a hate monger was “not unduly aggressive.” Riiiight. The only recourse left is to refer the complaint to the Canadian Radio and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC). My expectations for that are not high.
The year produced some excellent research material relating to 9/11 in the form of books, films, and art. Graeme MacQueen published an important book, The 2001 Anthrax Deception: The Case for a Domestic Conspiracy, which explains the failure of the anthrax false flag and reveals how 9/11 was its twin false flag. This excellent book was the subject of a review on Truth and Shadows by Barrie Zwicker.
David Hooper also released his personal documentary The Anatomy of a Great Deception, which chronicles his awakening about 9/11 as well as offering an excellent overview of the evidence that the official story of what happened at the World Trade Center is false.
The most pleasantly unexpected bit of news was that a wonderful piece of 9/11 truth art was (inexplicably) accepted into the private collection of the “official” 9/11 Museum. And the best part is that the artist, Anthony Freda, is a prominent illustrator who works with mainstream media like the New York Times and Rolling Stone, but who is also an articulate voice on behalf of 9/11 truth. The donation of the art will also be featured in an upcoming documentary called Behind Truth Art by John Massaria.
The bigger picture in 2014
While progress on the 9/11 front was encouraging but slow, world events were neither and seemed to be filled with ever more contrived chaos, deception and violence. The supposed “war on terror” – which was truly launched by the 9/11 false flag deception – played out in the CIA-backed assault on Syria, and the appearance of ISIS, the latest Muslim “threat.” The convenient and implausibly sudden emergence of this well-funded and outfitted band of “extremists” has provided the West with all the excuse it needs to bomb Iraq and Syria. There were highly suspicious videos of beheadings and a highly unbelievable back story to explain ISIS, the latest excuse for more military action in the Middle East and the stripping away of more civil liberties at home.
The U.S. Senate torture report got lots of press in 2014, but of course that’s because it serves the illusion that terrorists are truly a genuine threat, and the most important issue is how we deal with them.
On the domestic front, there was the police state crackdown on protests in Ferguson, Missouri after a cop shot unarmed black 18-year-old Michael Brown. Not only did this focus attention on the targeting of blacks for police violence, but also on the militarization of police forces across America – a process that has been ongoing for two decades.
We’re being conditioned to accept police in military gear as being standard and normal. In the U.S., 2014 was a truly disturbing year during which a shocking number of individuals were killed by police, often for minor infractions or no infractions at all. The most visible of those was the choking of Eric Garner as he was held down by five New York City police officers. Finally, we had the killing of two NYPD cops, seemingly in retaliation for police violence.
And the number of “lone wolf” shootings (in some cases labelled terrorist attacks) continued to increase in 2014. While the media automatically accepted all of these as being authentic and focused on the emotional and sensational aspects of each, many alternative voices seriously questioned whether some of the shootings were either staged or perpetrated by organized entities rather than crazed extremists or disturbed loners.
We had the killings of two soldiers in Canada in October. There was the Santa Barbara shooting, the Portland shooting, the Las Vegas shooting, the LAX shooting, the Seattle shooting, the Vancouver shooting, the Moncton shooting, and finally the Sydney hostage taking and shooting.
In the case of the LAX event, a drill had been practised three weeks before using “the exact same scenario,” according to an LAPD spokesman. We learned that in the few weeks before the Canadian one-two punch, authorities had carried out an exercise simulating a terrorist attack in Quebec followed by one in a large Canadian city – exactly what happened. We found out that police in Melbourne, Australia had practised their response to a hostage taking in a cafe just six weeks before the real thing happened in Sydney. They had also held a drill a year before in Martin Square where the hostage taking would play itself out 12 months later.
With all this, the story that affected me more than any other was Israel’s brutal siege against Gaza, leaving 2,100 Palestinians dead, tens of thousands homeless, and turned large parts of the city to rubble. And while this human catastrophe was going on the Israeli government and its apologists in the U.S., Canada, and elsewhere were making the Orwellian claim that Israel was the victim, that Hamas was the aggressor, and that it was the Palestinians’ own fault for electing them.
ISIL militants equipped with US anti-tank missiles: Report
File photo shows a foreign-backed militant preparing to launch a US-made TOW anti-tank missile in Idlib countryside in northwestern Syria.
Press TV – December 30, 2014
The ISIL Takfiri group has released a photo showing one of its members preparing to launch a US-made TOW anti-tank missile against rival terrorists in Syria’s strategic and mountainous Qalamoun region along the border with Lebanon.
The ISIL militant is shown aiming at the positions of the Jaysh al-Islam militant group on the outskirts of al-Qaryatayn, located approximately 120 kilometers (74 miles) northeast of the capital, Damascus.
Political analysts say the photo shows the scale of threats the ISIL militants pose to the Qalamoun region against fighters of the Lebanese Hezbollah resistance movement.
On October 5, Hezbollah fighters killed scores of Takfiri militants after the gunmen crossed from crisis-hit Syria into eastern Lebanon and attacked the Lebanese resistance movement’s posts.
Most of the militants killed during the clashes were from the al-Qaeda-linked al-Nusra Front. Two Hezbollah fighters were also killed in the shootout.
Meanwhile, Ghuraba al-Sham Battlion and Lions of Shahba Battalion, both allied to the so-called Free Syrian Army, are reportedly training their members in a camp set up in Qalamoun.
Over the past months, Lebanon has been grappling with terrorist attacks by al-Qaeda-linked militants and rocket attacks, in what is said to be a spillover of the conflict in Syria.
The Takfiri ISIL terrorists currently control parts of Syria mostly in the east and north. They have also seized large swathes of land in neighboring Iraq.
More than 1.1 million Syrian refugees are currently taking shelter in Lebanon. The influx of Syrian refugees is exerting huge pressure on Lebanon’s poor infrastructure, education and health systems.
Syria has been grappling with a deadly crisis since March 2011. Western powers and their regional allies – especially Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and Turkey – are the main supporters of the militants operating inside Syria.
More than 200,000 people have died so far in the conflict in Syria, according to UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Zeid Ra’ad Zeid al-Hussein.
Selling ‘Peace Groups’ on US-Led Wars
By Margaret Sarfehjooy and Coleen Rowley | Consortium News | December 25, 2014
“War is peace” double-speak has become commonplace these days. And, the more astute foreign policy journalists and commentators are beginning to realize the extent of how “liberal interventionists” work in sync with neocon warhawks to produce and sustain a perpetual state of U.S. war.
More and more “peace and social justice” groups are even being twisted into “democracy promotion,” U.S. militarism style. But rarely do we get a window to see as clearly into how this Orwellian transformation occurs as with the “Committee in Solidarity with the People of Syria” (CISPOS) based in Minnesota’s Twin Cities, a spin-off of “Friends for a Nonviolent World” (FNVW), steering its Quaker-inspired founding in nonviolence to promote speakers and essayists with strong ties to the violent uprising to topple the Syrian government of President Bashar al-Assad, resulting in a war that has already taken some 200,000 lives.
Do the real pacifist members approve? Or even know?
Middle Eastern expats who support U.S. intervention in their countries are especially effective in promoting their message to Western audiences because they provide “proof” of the demonization of governments that the U.S. plans to invade and dominate, and often peace groups include these expats in presentations believing them to be representatives of an entire country.
In Minneapolis, FNVW and its spin-off CISPOS hosted several events with Syrian expats who were on record as supporting the U.S. bombing of their country. (This isn’t only happening in the U.S. In April 2011, a Vancouver peace group documented its objection to the fact that other Canadian “peace” groups were sponsoring speakers who justified and advocated “in favour of the NATO bombing of Libya.”)
Often Syrian “experts” speaking to peace groups, such as FNVW/CISPOS’s upcoming speaker, Mohja Kahf, have ties to the early destabilization of Syria. This American Prospect article documents how Najib Ghadbian, Kahf’s husband of over 20 years (apparently up to last year when they divorced) was one of the Syrian dissidents who attended the early 2006 meeting with Liz Cheney (then-Vice President Dick Cheney’s daughter), along with other Syrian dissidents to plan how to destabilize Syria and topple its government. Like some Syrian version of Ahmed Chalabi, the neocons’ choice to run post-invasion Iraq, Kahf’s husband apparently got himself invited to Liz Cheney’s “Iran-Syria Operations Group” by having signed the “Damascus Declaration” in 2005, the year before.
When Najib and Mohja sat down for a long 2011 interview with The Arkansas Traveler, they discussed their involvement with the Syrian Revolution, even joking about Ghadbian becoming the next Prime Minister. Kahf and Ghadbian reportedly divorced in 2013 but when CISPOS-FNVW first published her long essays, they were still appearing together at Syrian revolutionary meetings and speaking forums. Additionally, CISPOS’s latest handout (December 2014) lists Ghadbian’s organization, www.etilaf.us (The National Coalition of Syrian Revolutionary Forces) as a resource “For More Information on Syria and How to Help.”
Resources for information on Syria often come from “citizen journalists” with deep ties to neocons and U.S. government sources. From the State Department’s website , the $330 million in support for the Syrian opposition includes training for networks of citizen journalists, bloggers and cyber-activists to support their documentation and dissemination of information on developments in Syria.
Syrian dissidents received funding from the Los Angeles-based Democracy Council, which ran a Syria-related program called the “Civil Society Strengthening Initiative” funded with $6.3 million from the State Department. The program is described as “a discrete collaborative effort between the Democracy Council and local partners” to produce, among other things, “various broadcast concepts.”
James Prince, the founder and President of the Democracy Council, is also an adviser to CyberDissidents.org , a project created in 2008 by the Jerusalem-based Adelson Institute for Strategic Studies, founded and funded by Sheldon Adelson, a patron and confidant of Benjamin Netanyahu.
Other resources include postings on social media and alternative websites with sensational stories such as the anti-Assad activist “Gay Girl in Damascus” who turned out to be a middle-aged American man in Scotland or Syrian Danny Abdul Dayem, who was frequently interviewed using fake gun fire and flames in his interviews.
With all of the information about Syria, what are we to believe as true? We know the facts about recent U.S. interventions in Middle Eastern countries. Why would Syria be any different?
Afghanistan is still in shambles with the majority of the people living in extreme poverty; Libya, which had the highest GDP per capita and life expectancy on the continent, is now a failed state; Western intervention transformed Iraq from an emerging country with moderate prosperity into an impoverished country with a starving population. In the lead-up to each intervention, “experts” emerged to explain that while anti-imperialism is good in general and in past scenarios, this time is different. Is it?
Isn’t it time for war-weary Americans to wise up and stop falling for these pretexts of bringing democracy and human rights to foreign countries through training and funding of “color (and umbrella) revolutions,” inciting of coups and regime changes and eventually, through U.S.-NATO military might?
Liberal interventionists clearly assist neocon warhawks towards their mutual goal of “full spectrum dominance” under the euphemistic guise of Pax Americana. Only the “Pax” always turns out to be endless war and occupation.
Margaret Sarfehjooy is an anti-war activist and registered nurse in Minnesota. Coleen Rowley is a retired FBI agent and former Minneapolis Division legal counsel.
The EU shifting its strategy on Syria, Iraq and fighting ISIS
By Sami Kleib | Al-Akhbar | December 27, 2014
After the United States abandoned the idea of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad stepping down and enhanced security coordination with the Syrian army against the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS), it appears the Europeans began some time ago a series of meetings to change their policy on Syria. According to information obtained by Al-Akhbar, some senior European officials did not hesitate to say at the last Council of European Union Foreign Ministers meeting that “this policy was wrong.” It is necessary, therefore, to change it and let the United Nations envoy Staffan de Mistura’s initiative lead the way. Does that mean we will soon see favorable signs towards the Syrian regime and further disregard for the external opposition?
Geneva – A European official told Al-Akhbar about the proceedings of an important meeting between United Nations (UN) envoy Staffan de Mistura and European Union (EU) foreign affairs ministers on December 11, confirming that there is a change in the European position towards Syria. He said the meeting was closed like all meetings during which Europeans discuss sensitive matters. De Mistura began to explain the situation in Syria and the regional and international framework surrounding his plan that is supposed to be implemented in three months “otherwise it loses its ability to be implemented.”
This, in short, is what de Mistura said and the Europeans’ position towards it.
- The plan to freeze the fighting in Aleppo is the only one currently available. There is no hope for another plan. Therefore, the EU should support it practically and not just verbally. It is the only plan capable of freezing the fighting, securing people’s needs and returning the displaced people who are burdening neighboring areas and states. It will also allow for the eventual process of reconstruction.
- Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, who showed readiness to ensure the success of the international plan in Aleppo, convinced Russian President Vladimir Putin of the plan and played a major role in convincing his Iranian allies as well. This was necessary because Moscow was reluctant, thinking that no US-Atlantic effort can be trusted and the plan might lead to dire consequences for Russia and its allies.
- Although the Americans expressed reservations and doubt about the plan at the beginning, they have become more flexible, tying their approval with that of some of their regional allies, meaning of course Saudi Arabia primarily. In any case, I am going to Riyadh to convince Saudi officials of the plan’s feasibility. If we obtain preliminary approval from them, I will subsequently continue my efforts in Damascus so we can start as soon as possible because time is running out.
Here, we should remember that Brahimi had told the Europeans once what he said on more than one occasion and in more than one place, namely, that his resignation will “relieve two people, Assad and Saudi Foreign Affairs Minister Saud al-Faisal” because his personal relationship with both men was quite bad. He was probably speaking about “Saud al-Faisal’s personal hatred towards Assad being a hindrance to finding a solution.” It is also known that the Syrian president, from his very first meeting with Brahimi, questioned his intentions especially when the Algerian UN envoy suggested that Assad should step down and intended to meet Syrian Vice President Farouk al-Sharaa before Assad prevented him from doing so, arguing that this is improper on an official visit. Brahimi at the time had to make do with a phone call. After a while, Sharaa was removed from power.
- Turkey remains a real problem for the Europeans. Some officials say it is impossible to predict what Ankara could do next. Others believe that Turkey is pretty much the only country still facilitating the passage of foreign fighters to Syria, it has not made up its mind about fighting the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) and is trying to blackmail the international community with its position. Here, the Europeans make two suggestions. Either put pressure on Turkey, including perhaps issuing a warning – which some believe is pointless because it might make the Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s position more intransigent and push him further into Russia and Iran’s arms – or try to cajole and get closer to Turkey, prompting it to commit to the international decision to fight ISIS and stop the flow of foreign fighters. Either way, the Turkish position remains worrisome for Europe.
- Iran has become a central player in both the Syrian and Iraqi crises. It is necessary to deal with this reality regardless of the reservations that some might have. There is nothing to prevent engaging with Iran in a serious dialogue about Syria, even before signing a nuclear agreement. This is useful because it could lead to political concessions from the Syrian regime and it could strengthen the presence of European companies in Iran. Perhaps this has become a European need despite French reservations, which are understandable, given French-Saudi relations and France’s concern not to upset Israel.
- It is impossible to think of serious solution or temporary solutions in Syria without Saudi Arabia, which has extensive relations with a number of Anti-Assad parties. It is important to reassure Riyadh that the European efforts do not intend to buoy up the regime. De Mistura said that Saudi Arabia implicitly welcomes his initiative. The Spanish foreign affairs minister was clearer, saying that Riyadh accepts the plan and it is in France’s interest to tone down its critique otherwise it will appear more extremist than Saudi Arabia, which is not an understandable position. The Spanish minister went as far as suggesting that an international conference for Syria be held in his country given that the idea might be accepted by everybody.
- Russia remains the main obstacle to any solution that does not satisfy the Kremlin and the Syrian regime. Since its relationship with the US and Europe is currently strained because of Ukraine, it is necessary to look for ways to separate any discussion with Russia about Syria from the position regarding Ukraine. Some European officials intend to strengthen the dialogue with Moscow because “it is unacceptable to return to the logic of the cold war.” Perhaps the High Representative of the EU for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy Federica Mogherini will visit Moscow soon. Besides, Russia is active and serious about finding a political solution. The Europeans keeping their distance from Moscow might mean distancing the US and Russia.
The Europeans with and against Assad
First, everyone agrees to de Mistura’s plan, but they want to support it because it is the only plan currently available while awaiting the results of Russian efforts to bring the opposition and the Syrian regime delegation together in Russia. However, France, which currently enjoys strong trade relations with Saudi Arabia and Britain, is ahead of other Europeans in its contacts with Iran and insists that the plan should not support the Syrian army against the moderate opposition in Aleppo. In other words, the issue should not be portrayed as standing with the army against ISIS because in Aleppo and its surroundings there are fighters affiliated with the moderate opposition and they should be taken into consideration and supported “so we won’t appear as though we are drawing a parallel between the regime and the opposition and that we view both sides equally.”
The French foreign affairs minister was the most intransigent even though some within the current French administration point out the need to take a new position towards Syria, especially after the terrorist attacks that took place on French soil. Laurent Fabius said, “We don’t want what happened to Homs to happen in Aleppo,” where suspending the fighting benefited the regime only and was not balanced. The fighters left after they turned in their weapons to the state and were transported in government buses to the areas they come from.
A European official with ties to the Syrian opposition said “the departure of the fighters then was a farce for them. Imagine that the Grand Mufti, Ahmad Badreddin Hassoun, who is a regime loyalist showed up in the buses transporting the fighters joking with them and asking them isn’t it better to marry while they are young instead of getting killed on battlefronts? They were given cell phones to talk with their families and undermine their morale. In the end, the media image and the reality on the ground were in the interest of the regime.”
The French minister was insistent that “the regime should not benefit from this plan in terms of relieving it at the Aleppo front so it can focus on other fronts in other areas.” That is what Fabius was saying when the EU received information about the possibility of the Syrian and Iraqi armies engaging in a wide joint military operation in Deir Ezzor.
Second, the European relationship with Assad is possible, but it becomes evident during the discussions of the foreign affairs ministers and commissioners of the EU that they are at a loss on how to deal with Syria. For example, a European official in Geneva says that a number of his European colleagues have begun to talk about the failure of the policy adopted so far and about the “uncalculated mistake” of suggesting early on that Assad step down.
Some Europeans argue that their assessment of the situation was erroneous while others believe that trusting the US from the beginning was a mistake because Washington, as usual, places its interests ahead of all its alliances, often putting the Europeans in an awkward position. Still others argue that underestimating the capabilities of the Syrian army and its allies was their biggest mistake.
As such, EU officials are currently discussing how to “modify” the political position that has been adopted for more than three years in Syria. One sign of this change is abandoning the mantra of “Assad stepping down” and finding more realistic statements that have been repeated now and then, such as “Assad is not a final solution to the crisis” or “Assad will not stay at the end of the political solution” or “it is only natural that a political solution will eventually lead to transferring powers from the presidency and not all powers” according to Geneva I. Another sign of a change in position is abandoning the phrase “proceeding with a transitional process now” and replacing it with one accepted by all, namely, “calling for the start of a transitional process.”
It appears that Mogherini succeeded, to some extent, in promoting the point of view that “we agree on the end result but political realism and the developments of the situation require us to adjust our course and use new phrases.” In other words, even if everyone in Europe wanted Assad to step down, political realism suggests that this is not possible at this point and encouraging a political solution might eventually lead to this end, meaning this is no longer a European priority.
The security council in Aleppo?
In light of these discussions about modifying the European position towards the Syrian regime, the most important question in the EU is how to ensure the success of the Aleppo plan and how to implement it without portraying Assad as the winner, especially given that the Syrian army advanced in a noticeable way in Aleppo recently?
The dominant trend is to find a monitoring mechanism by the UN Security Council. However, the Europeans realize that this is impossible due to the dual Sino-Russian veto that is always ready to protect Syria. Therefore, unlike the French and British positions which insist on an international force from the UNSC, the EU is more inclined towards finding a diplomatic formula that talks about “a monitoring mechanism linked to the UNSC.”
All of this will be released soon in what is now called “the EU strategy on Syria, Iraq and fighting ISIS.”
Despair with the Syrian opposition, particularly, the National Coalition for Syrian Revolution and Opposition Forces, which for a long time monopolized, with international support, the representation of the opposition has infiltrated EU states after the US. The Europeans too are now more inclined towards expanding the scope of the opposition to include forces that were previously not accepted and undermine the Muslim Brotherhood.
It is remarkable for instance that when the head of the Coalition, Hadi al-Bahra, visited the EU in Brussels few days ago, representatives from the Coalition were calling the Europeans to say that Bahra no longer represents them. A European official says jokingly: “Everytime we begin to talk with an official from the Coalition, we discover that this Coalition held new elections and changed the official. So we start all over again. And every time we meet with a Coalition official, he repeats the same question, how are you going to prevent the regime from benefiting from the plan you are proposing? But we have noticed for some time now that some parties within the Coalition have come to accept the idea of negotiating with the regime and reaching a political agreement with it even if their ultimate goal is for Assad to step down. This is the case with Moaz al-Khatib and his team for instance. The problem of the Coalition is that it does not know the meaning of political realism and continues in its fragmentation as it is tossed around by conflicting foreign alliances.”
In light of all the above, is the EU starting to change its position towards Assad? Perhaps all its members still support the departure of the Syrian president. But political realism requires a change in behavior and approach and not insisting on Assad’s departure as a priority. This will become more evident in the future as terrorist attacks inside Europe have increased. The only solution left is to cooperate with Syrian security forces, the Syrian army and Iran in the context of fighting terrorism.
As for de Mistur’as plan in Aleppo, it is currently in a feverish race between a military solution and security arrangements that cannot be undertaken without the regime’s approval and that might be to its advantage.
Once again, history repeats the same old maxim, “international interests are more important than principles and people’s tragedies.”
Russia to host Syrian opposition talks next month
MEMO | December 26, 2014
Russia intends to host a meeting of Syrian opposition groups in late January, possibly followed by talks between opposition figures and representatives of the regime, the Russian foreign ministry said on Thursday. Members of the Syrian opposition are expected to arrive in Moscow after 20 January, ministry spokesman Alexander Lukashevich told reporters.
“We expect this group to include representatives of both the internal and external opposition,” said Lukashevich. “It will be a compact group that will meet to work out a position.” He did not reveal the names of the expected participants, although he did explain that the intention was then to invite representatives of the Bashar Al-Assad regime to meet the group. “Both sides will be given the chance to try to express, in an informal atmosphere, their vision and ways of regulating the conflict,” he added.
Lukashevich did not rule out inviting the UN special envoy to Syria, Staffan de Mistura, to participate in the talks.
Reconciliation of political rivals in Lebanon
Press TV | December 25, 2014
Ever since the end of former president, Michel Sleiman’s tenure in May 2014, Lebanon has continued to function without a head of state.
The country is grappling with turmoil on its border with Syria due to different factors including the presence of foreign-backed Takfiri militants, a Syrian refugee crisis, and a spillover of the war in Syria.
Amid all this, Hezbollah and Saudi-backed Sa’ad Hariri’s Future Movement have held talks to try and diffuse tensions and pave the way for a joint fight against terrorism.
An atmosphere of cautious optimism prevailed over Lebanon after the resistance movement Hezbollah and the western and Saudi-backed March 14 Future Movement held their first dialogue session in over four years. The step has been praised by various Lebanese officials who have indicated that the dialogue process has got off to a good start. Hezbollah, in its first comments on the issue, highlighted the necessity of such a step as a means to strengthen the country against the menace of Takfiri terror.
To discuss Lebanon’s current political developments, Press TV has conducted an interview with Sukant Chandan, who is the co-founder of The Tricontinental from London, and Salah Takieddine, with Lebanon Future Movement from Beirut.
The Debate – Rivals Reconciliation (P.1)
The Debate – Rivals Reconciliation (P.2)
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From the Archives
Anti-science
The infinite list
The Naked Emperor’s Newsletter | October 12, 2022
Almost three years ago science entered a new dark age.
Jay Bhattacharya, a professor of medicine at Stanford University and co-author of the Great Barrington Declaration, seems to agree. He has been compiling a list of the examples of anti-science we have unfortunately become used to.
I have listed his thoughts so far but the list is continually expanding... continue
Blog Roll
Aletho News- Palantir touts record expansion and ‘battlefield’ AI value
- Israeli telecom networks used for mass surveillance across countries
- US claim of sinking Iranian boats ‘a lie’, senior military official tells IRIB
- New KC-46 Supertankers Promise Israel Conventional Samson Option Strike Сapability
- No, New York Times, We Don’t Need to Dam the Bering Strait
- Gates-Funded ‘Big Catch-Up’ Delivers 100 Million Vaccine Doses — Including High-Risk DTP Vaccine Not Used in U.S.
- No commercial ship or oil tanker transited Strait of Hormuz in past hours: IRGC
- Russia warns of escalating NATO military activity in Baltic region
- Government Kills the Spirit
- How ‘Israel’s’ Iran regime change plot failed – again
- If Americans Knew
- As in Gaza, Israel is targeting rescue workers in South Lebanon, killing more than 100 since March
- Israel’s Obliteration Ecocide from Gaza to Lebanon and Beyond
- Israel Said It’s Applying the Gaza Model in Lebanon. This Is What the Devastation Looks Like.
- New Member of Trump’s Iran Negotiating Team Comes From Notoriously Pro-Israel Think Tank
- Israeli army demolishes Christian monastery, nuns’ school in southern Lebanon
- Tokenizing Christians In Israel
- One Gaza is not enough: Israel is turning southern Lebanon into another Gaza – Daily Update
- As Palestinians die, Ben-Gvir celebrates birthday with golden noose cake – Daily Update
- Israel’s New Ambassador to the ‘Christian World’ Served as Envoy to Azerbaijan During the Ethnic Cleansing of Christians from Nagorno-Karabakh
- US set to sell $1B “Advanced Precision Kill Weapon System” to Israel – Daily Update
- No Tricks Zone
- 46 IPCC Scientists Break Rank, Publicly Challenge Long-Standing Dogmatic Climate Claims
- Another Study Links Warming To Cloud Forcing, Shortwave Radiation, Natural Atmospheric Circulation
- Wind Energy Is Toxic, Hazardous To Human Health, Scientific Review Shows
- Oversupply Of Volatile Solar Energy Leads To Record NEGATIVE Prices!
- New Study: Extreme Heat Records, Heatwaves, Extreme Cold Records Declining Across US Since 1899
- It’s The Cold, Stupid! Cold 20 Times More Lethal Than Heat, Multiple Studies Show
- European Institute For Climate And Energy: “Climate Debate is Seldom About Science”
- New Study: The Climate May Be 5 Times More Sensitive To Solar Forcing Than Commonly Assumed
- EV Industry Reached $70 Billion In Losses In 2024 Due To Delusional Green Ideologies
- Reality Check: Maldives Have Actually Grown In Size Or Remained Stable Over Recent Decades
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