The US is not interested in defeating ISIS but would want to control its movements to create a geopolitical balance on the ground and provide the US-led coalition with leverage at the Vienna talks, said Middle East geopolitics analyst Sharmine Narwani.
RT:There are more than 60 countries in the coalition fighting against Islamic State. How hard is it for the US to keep them all united?
Sharmine Narwani: I think the US is playing loose with international law. To start off with, this coalition is illegitimate. The reason to have signed up 60 countries is more to create some kind of cover, some kind of legitimacy for these illegal operations in Syria. The main struggle is probably with the key Arab members of the coalition who were the starting members of the coalition – five Persian Gulf countries and Jordan included – because they have quite disparate objectives from the US.
RT:How many countries in the coalition are actually contributing to its goals?
SN: That is a very interesting point, because even though there are 60 countries listed in the coalition, there are only 11 who have contributed in Syria. There are two groups: like I mentioned, the Arab states – I call them the Sunni states, because they provide some kind of Arab Sunni legitimacy for the Americans; the other states are the UK, the US and France – three of the five permanent members of the UN Security Council, and Canada and Australia.
What is interesting about this is – of those five Western countries it is only Canada that stepped in relatively early, when things kicked off last year. It was the US mainly with the Arab States, and the UK, France and Australia have only come in the last three months, as well as Turkey, who is a new entrant in this coalition of 11, not 60.
RT:It’s been more than a year since the US-led bombing campaign started. Why has the coalition failed to prevent ISIS from seizing new territory?
SN: Again, interesting that Turkey is a new entrant in this coalition of 11 bombing Syria. It only came on board around I think two months ago, in August, when it launched strikes against ISIL. Now, about a month ago we, after Turkey launched its airstrikes, we’re looking at still only about three airstrikes against ISIL – the rest were against Kurdish targets. So Turkey is an example of another Sunni state in this coalition of 11 that has disparate objectives from the US. So Turkey’s interest may be on the Kurdish issue, but for instance, in the other Arab Sunni states – their interests diverge from the Americans, because they are interested in regime change in Syria, whereas the Americans have taken a back seat on that in recent months. So it is very, very hard to keep this coalition together, because there are no common objectives among its 11 partners.
RT:What are the reasons, do you think the coalition is breaking apart? How can the coalition increase the efficiency of its actions?
SN: I see the coalition breaking apart or being redundant for two reasons. One is the lack of common objectives among the 11 actors participating in the coalition, but the other is more in line with military strategy in fighting any war or conflict, anywhere. We’ve heard this over and over again in the Syrian conflict – you need a coordination of air force and ground power. The US-led coalition does not have this. Part of the reason it doesn’t have this is because it entered Syrian air space and violated international law in doing so against the wishes of the Syrian government. So it cannot coordinate with the Syrian government who leads the ground activities, whether it is the Syrian army or various Syrian militias that are pro-government; or Hezbollah – a non-state actor from Lebanon; or the Iranian Revolutionary Guards and their advisory capacity. The Russians of course do enjoy that relationship, so their airstrikes are not only both valid and legal, but also useful – a coordinated effort to target ISIL and other terrorist organizations.
RT: Do you think the US doesn’t have real intentions to fight ISIS, and that is the main reason of instability of its coalition?
SN: Absolutely. The US-led coalition has failed in attaining goals to defeat ISIS, not just because it cannot lead a coordinated military effort in air, land and sea in Syria, or because it lacks legality, or because the member states of the coalition have diverging interests. But I think the US interest as well has to be called into question. I mean: does the US want to defeat ISIS? I would argue very strongly based on what we’ve seen in the last year that the US is not interested in defeating ISIS. The US is interested in perhaps controlling ISIS’ movements, so that it helps to create a geopolitical balance on the ground that will provide the US government and its allies with leverage at the negotiating table. So they don’t want ISIS to take over all of Syria [because] that poses threats to allies in the region. They don’t want ISIS and other terrorist groups like Jabhat al-Nusra, Ahrar al-Sham, and others, and the various coalitions they have formed to lose ground, because at the end of the day the only pressure they are going to be able to apply on the Syrian government and its allies is what is happening on the ground. And they need something; they need advantage on the ground that they can take with them to the negotiating table in Vienna.
Sharmine Narwani is a commentator and analyst of Middle East geopolitics. She is a former senior associate at St. Antony’s College, Oxford University and has a master’s degree in International Relations from Columbia University. You can follow her on Twitter at @snarwani
I think most people who have dealt with me think I am a pretty straight sort of guy, and I am.
— Tony Blair, October 21, 2011, BBC1
Given the ongoing revelations on the extent of Tony Blair’s duplicitous collusion in the illegal bombing and invasion of Iraq, it seems – to muddle metaphors – the “bunker busters” and Cruise missiles are finally coming home to roost.
In what has been dubbed “an apology” Blair even took to CNN in an interview with his pal Fareed Zakaria to – sort of – explain himself. It was no “apology”, but a weasel-worded damage limitation exercise as more and more revelations with respect to disregard for law – and to hell with public opinion – surface. The fault was that “… the intelligence we received was wrong”, there were “mistakes in planning” and a failure to understand “what would happen once you removed the regime”, said Mr. Tony. Statements entirely untrue. It is also now known he plotted with George W Bush in April 2002, a year before the onslaught, to invade, come what may.
He also found it “hard to apologise for removing Saddam.” Sorry, Mr. Blair, the all was lawless, illegitimate and criminal – and Saddam Hussein was not “removed”. He was lynched, his sons and fifteen year old grandson extra-judicially slaughtered in a hail of US bullets – the all in a country whose “sovereignty and territorial integrity” was guaranteed by the UN.
Whatever opinions of the former Iraqi government, the crimes committed by the US-UK war of aggression and its aftermath, make the worst excesses of which Saddam Hussein’s Administration were accused pale by comparison.
Blair brushed off the mention of a war crimes trial and made it clear that he would trash Syria as Iraq, had he the chance. To this barrister (attorney) by training, legality is clearly inconsequential.
Now no less than the UK’s former Director of Public Prosecutions (2003-2008) Sir Ken Macdonald has weighed in against Blair. That he held the post for five years during the Blair regime (Blair resigned in 2007) makes his onslaught interesting. Ironically Macdonald has his legal practice at London’s Matrix Chambers, which he founded with Blair’s barrister wife Cherie, who also continues to practice from Matrix Chambers.
The degree of deceit involved in our decision to go to war on Iraq becomes steadily clearer. This was a foreign policy disgrace of epic proportions …
Referring to the CNN interview he witheringly dismissed Blair’s performance saying:
… playing footsie on Sunday morning television does nothing to repair the damage.
Moreover:
It is now very difficult to avoid the conclusion that Tony Blair engaged in an alarming subterfuge with his partner, George Bush, and went on to mislead and cajole the British people into a deadly war they had made perfectly clear they didn’t want, and on a basis that it’s increasingly hard to believe even he found truly credible.
Macdonald cuttingly cited Blair’s: “sycophancy towards power” being unable to resist the “glamour” he attracted in Washington.
In this sense he was weak and, as we can see, he remains so.
Ouch!
Since those sorry days we have frequently heard him repeating the self-regarding mantra that ‘hand on heart, I only did what I thought was right’. But this is a narcissist’s defence, and self-belief is no answer to misjudgment: it is certainly no answer to death.
No wonder Sir Ken had headed the country’s legal prosecuting service.
Macdonald’s broadside coincides with further “bombshell revelation” in the Mail on Sundayrevealing that “on the eve of war” Blair’s Downing Street “descended into panic” on being told by the Attorney General Lord Goldsmith that “the conflict could be challenged under international law.”
There was “pandemonium”, Blair was “horrified” and the limited number of Ministers and officials who had a copy of the written opinion “were told ‘burn it, destroy it’” alleges the Mail.
The “burning” hysteria centered on Lord Goldmith’s thirteen page legal opinion of March 7, 2003 – just twenty days before the attack on Iraq. The “pandemonium” related to the fact that at this late juncture with “… the date the war was supposed to start already in the diary”, Goldsmith was still “saying it could be challenged under international law.”
It is not known who gave the “burn”, “destroy” order, but the Mail quotes their information as coming from a former senior figure in Blair’s government. They then “got to work on” Lord Goldsmith. Ten days later His Lordship produced an advice stating the war was legal. It started three days later, leading eminent international law Professor Philippe Sands to comment memorably: “We went to war on a sheet of A4.”
A spokesman for Tony Blair called the claims or orders to destroy “nonsense” adding that it would be “… quite absurd to think that anyone could destroy such a document.” With what is now known re the lies, dodging and diving related to all to do with Iraq under Blair, the realist would surely respond: “Oh, no, it wouldn’t!”
The US, of course, stole and destroyed or redacted most of the around 12,000 pages of Iraq’s accounting for their near non-existent weapons, delivered to the UN on December 7, 2002 and Blair seemingly faithfully obeyed his Master’s voice or actions.
In context of the lies and subterfuge of enormity being told both sides of the Atlantic at the time, it is worth remembering George W. Bush, that same December, on the eve of a NATO summit, addressing students and comparing the challenge of the Iraqi President to the Nazi invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1938, which led to World War II.
We face … perils we’ve never seen before. They’re just as dangerous as those perils that your fathers and mothers and grandfathers and grandmothers faced.
On November 1st this year, in an interview on BBC1, Blair was asked: “If you had known then that there were no WMDs, would you still have gone on?” He replied: “I would still have thought it right to remove (Saddam Hussein.”)
Adding: “I mean obviously you would have had to use and deploy different arguments about the nature of the threat.”
Thus he would, seemingly, have concocted a different set of lies to justify the assassination of a sovereign head of State.
Perhaps he had forgotten the last line of Attorney General Goldsmith’s legal advice of February 12, 2003 “… regime change cannot be the objective of military action.”
So is Charles Anthony Lynton Blair, QC. finally headed for handcuffs and a trial at The Hague? Ian Williams, Senior Analyst with Foreign Policy in Focus, New York, has a view. He believes:
… it’s increasingly serious enough to be worrying to him. And I think Tony Blair is rapidly joining Henry Kissinger and Chilean Dictator [Pinochet] and other people around the world.
Now, he’s got to consult international lawyers as well as travel agents, before he travels anywhere, because there’s said, (may be) prima facie case for his prosecution either in British courts or foreign courts under universal jurisdiction or with the International Criminal Court, because there is clear evidence now that he is somebody who waged an illegal war of aggression, violating United Nations’ Charter and was responsible for all of those deaths.
Justice, inadequate as it might be given the enormity of the crime, may be finally edging closer for the people of Iraq as international jurisprudence slowly encroaches on Tony Blair.
Felicity Arbuthnot is the author, with Nikki van der Gaag, of Baghdad in the Great City series for World Almanac books.
Ever since allegations that Saddam Hussein’s WMD program were “sexed up” to give the UK reason for joining the 2003 US-led invasion of Iraq, the BBC has been “cowed,” a claim that seemed vindicated following last month’s US attack of an Afghan hospital.
On October 3rd, the US carried out a sustained bombing raid on a Medecins Sans Frontiere hospital in Kunduz, Afghanistan. The attacks continued every 15-minutes for over an hour and involved five separate strafing runs. By the time it was over, at least twenty two people had been killed.
According to Counterpunch : “The hospital was deliberately set ablaze by incendiary weapons, and the people inside not incinerated were killed by a spray of bullets and anti-personnel flechettes.”
US officials initially claimed the attacks were an accident. However, this was refuted by MSF, who pointed out that not only were the US fully aware of the precise coordinates of the hospital, but that they had also called the US army during the strike itself begging them to stop, to no avail.
Eventually, as Media Lens has noted, US officials changed their story, claiming that the attack was justified because the Taliban had been using the hospital as a “base” – effectively admitting that it had indeed been deliberately targeted. MSF completely denied that claim as well, and noted that the claim “amounts to an admission of a war crime.”
So why was it that on October 15th, the BBC News at Ten was still claiming that the hospital had been “mistakenly bombed” by the US – a claim disputed by MSF from the start, and which even US officials themselves later admitted was a lie?
To answer this question requires an appreciation of the way in which the BBC has, over many years, been cowed and intimidated into an attitude of almost total subservience towards the foreign policy agenda of Britain and its allies.
Of course, the BBC has always been an instrument of the British state, established by statute in 1928 and run by a governor appointed by the Prime Minister. As Seumas Milne has pointed out: “There is no point in romanticizing a BBC golden age. The corporation was always an establishment institution, deeply embedded in the security state and subject to direct government control in an emergency…[with] around 40 percent of the staff… vetted by MI5.”
Yet within this framework there was, for a time, some degree of freedom to make programs that challenged the status quo.
Particularly irksome to the Conservative government of the 1980s were three in particular – Maggie’s Militant Tendency, a Panorama special on the influence of the far right in the Conservative party; Real Lives, featuring an extended interview with the Irish republican leader Martin McGuinness; and a documentary about a secret British intelligence satellite. The latter program, which was never broadcast, even triggered a raid by Special Branch on the BBC’s Glasgow offices – but, Milne notes, “By [that] time… preparations to sack the director general were far advanced.”
Thatcher installed the “fiercely anti-union” Marmaduke Hussey as BBC Chairman, and, following discussions with Rupert Murdoch, Douglas Hurd and security advisor Victor Rothschild, forced Alasdair Milne (Seumas’s father) to resign as director general. The move had its intended effect.
As Seumas Milne put it: “This was a No 10 coup by any other name – and one from which the BBC has never fully recovered. Once the government had demonstrated it could not only manipulate the license fee to ensure BBC compliance, but summarily dispatch its leadership at barely one remove, what BBC director general or chair would do anything but bend the knee or jump ship?”
Of course, the message still needs reiterating from time to time.
Shortly after the 2003 invasion of Iraq, BBC Radio Four’s Today program broadcast an interview with the journalist Andrew Gilligan in which he claimed that the British government had “sexed up” its notorious ‘intelligence dossier’ on Iraqi weapons, deliberately including information it “probably knew” was untrue.
We now know such claims were entirely correct.
But Alastair Campbell, Prime Minister Tony Blair’s Director of Communications desperately sought blood. An inquiry was launched, with a suitably supine judge appointed to lead it; Lord Hutton was a former Lord Chief Justice of Northern Ireland, who had presided over the system of notorious ‘Diplock courts’ which abolished the right to trial by jury (The Diplock courts had been an innovation of Brigadier Frank Kitson, whose manual on counter-insurgency instructed that “the activities of the legal services have to be tied into the war effort in as discreet a way as possible). Hutton proved himself true to his mentor’s understanding of ‘judicial neutrality’ – and its disposability in matters of war.
During the inquiry, it was revealed that the wording of the dossier had indeed been altered to make a stronger case for war; that Alastair Campbell had requested these changes himself; and that the serious reservations of Intelligence experts about the intelligence presented was indeed known to the government. Nevertheless, Hutton’s conclusions completely exonerated the government, concluding that Gilligan’s accusation of “sexing up” the dossier was “unfounded”, and that the BBC’s editorial and management processes were “defective”.
Effectively, the BBC was being told: yes, what you reported was true; but how dare you broadcast it? The BBC was breaching another of Brigadier Kitson’s principles – that it is not only “legal services” that “have to be tied into the war effort” – but media as well.
The Director-General, Greg Dyke, and the Chairman Gavyn Davies were forced to resign; whilst those who had fabricated evidence in order to justify an illegal war of aggression got off, and continue to get off, scot-free.
The BBC has been cowed ever since. As a report by the Independent on the Hutton inquiry ten years on noted: “Damage was done to the BBC news room, which caught a chill. If this episode had never happened and Dyke had served a full term in charge, then ‘I think their journalism might have been a bit braver,’ he says. ‘I think the place was really shocked by losing the chairman and director general together over one issue.’”
Kevin Marsh, the Today program editor at the time of Gilligan’s broadcast, agreed there had been what the Independent called a “chilling effect on the BBC’s reporting” and noted that the new Deputy Director General Mark Byford, placed in charge of journalism, was “very cautious”.
Threats to funding are another good way the government can keep the BBC’s reporting ‘in line’ (whilst always, of course, maintaining the appearance of ‘hearty debate’). As already noted, Seumas Milne reports that “manipulating the license fee” had been a means of “ensuring compliance” in the 1980s; and so too today. With the ten-year renewal of the BBC’s charter looming, David Cameron remarked to a busload of journalists shortly before this year’s general election that he was “going to close down” the BBC.
“Some people on the bus regarded it as funny” said BBC Political Editor Nick Robinson, “but they generally didn’t work for the BBC. The people who did regarded it as yet another bit of pressure and a sort of sense of ‘don’t forget who’s boss here’…. We didn’t know at the time, of course, that he would carry on [as Prime Minister], but given that that was a possibility, given the timing of charter renewal … it’s quite a thing to say.”
And it bore results. Even the BBC’s so-called ‘attack dog’, John Humphrys of the Today program, has proved himself extraordinarily adept at avoiding the real issues. When he interviewed David Cameron in the days following the murder of thirty eight tourists at the beach resort of Sousse in Tunisia on June 26th of this year, for example, Britain’s destruction of neighboring Libya was not even mentioned. This is despite the fact that Libya had been the origin of just about every other terrorist attack in North Africa since 2011 – from the Al-Amenas attack in Algeria, to the storming of Timbuktu in Mali in 2012, to the growth of Boko Haram in Nigeria, to the Bardo museum attack in Tunisia itself just three months earlier.
Indeed, the day after that interview, the Tunisian authorities revealed that the Sousse attacker had, too, trained in Libya. But that was no surprise. Every serious analyst knows that the massive increase in the capability of the region’s death squads in North Africa is a direct consequence of Cameron’s war on Libya, which effectively handed control of the entire country – along with its arms depots – over to the region’s paramilitaries.
Does John Humphrys honestly not know any of this? Or does he just understand that he is not to raise it? To question the war on Libya is, it seems, completely taboo on today’s BBC.
However, the Cameron interview did produce results. Of the Al-Qaeda splinter group brought to power by British and US destabilization of Iraq and Syria (again, not mentioned by Humphrys), Cameron said: “I wish the BBC would stop calling it Islamic State.” But that is what they call themselves, Humphrys pleaded. “So-called [Islamic State]…would be better,” Cameron replied. The BBC have referred to them as “the group calling themselves Islamic State” ever since.
On the one hand, of course, Cameron’s argument that they are neither Islamic (as understood by the majority of Muslims), nor are they a state is correct. Yet his indignation is hardly consistent. After all, his own organization, the Conservative Party should, by rights, have fallen foul of the Trade Descriptions Act long ago. Genuine conservatism, as its founder Edmund Burke well understood, was about opposition to radical – and especially revolutionary – change, on the grounds that it undermined stability, tradition and social order.
He was vehemently opposed, for example, to the nature of British colonial rule in India for precisely its destructive impact on a civilization he argued demanded respect. No one who believed in such a philosophy could ever support wars of ‘regime change’ such as those wrought on Afghanistan, Iraq or Libya; yet John Baron was the sole Conservative MP to vote against the attack on Libya. Should the BBC, then, not be referring to Cameron’s organization as the “group calling itself the Conservative Party”?
I recently lodged a formal complaint with the BBC about their coverage of Syria. I was not really expecting it to be upheld – after all, guess who was adjudicating the complaint? None other than the BBC itself (being the only broadcaster officially exempt from investigation by Ofcom, the official regulatory body). But their grounds for rejecting my complaint were most revealing.
I had complained about their broadcasting, without comment, of a claim that President Assad had used chemical weapons in the suburbs of Damascus in August 2013 when, I argued, this was far from proven. The UN investigation team had only found that chemical weapons had been used, but had not attributed blame (and had no brief to do so). However, I pointed out, the leader of a previous UN team, Carla Del Ponte, had earlier in the year suggested that it was the Syrian opposition, not the government, that had been using such weapons.
Furthermore, the authors of an independent investigation by scientists at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology had concluded that “We do not claim to know who was actually behind the attack of 21 August in Damascus. But we can say for sure that neither do the people who claim to have clear evidence that it was the Syrian government.”
The BBC’s response was that whilst “You are right to point out that the UN did not establish that the Syrian government was responsible…. Nevertheless a number of governments concluded that the Syrian government was responsible.” Guess which governments? No prizes here – they mention only three: The UK, the US and France; that is, the three leading cheerleaders and patrons of the terrorist war against Syria, who had been desperate for a legal veneer to a bombing raid on that country since 2011, and who therefore had every interest in portraying the Syrian government as the perpetrator; and at least two of whom had very recent ‘form’ in manipulating intelligence for the purposes of justifying war. Yet, for the BBC, their judgments – which had even been opposed by the authors of the study from which they claimed to have derived them – are, apparently, unassailable. It is as if nothing has been learnt from Iraq.
But, of course, the reality is that the BBC has indeed learned their lessons from Iraq – or rather from Hutton – only too well: foreign policy can be ‘debated’ of course: but only in terms of its wisdom. Its ‘intelligence findings’ must never be questioned – and certainly not its noble aims.
Dan Glazebrook is a freelance political writer who has written for RT, Counterpunch, Z magazine, the Morning Star, the Guardian, the New Statesman, the Independent and Middle East Eye, amongst others. His first book “Divide and Ruin: The West’s Imperial Strategy in an Age of Crisis” was published by Liberation Media in October 2013. It featured a collection of articles written from 2009 onwards examining the links between economic collapse, the rise of the BRICS, war on Libya and Syria and ‘austerity’. He is currently researching a book on US-British use of sectarian death squads against independent states and movements from Northern Ireland and Central America in the 1970s and 80s to the Middle East and Africa today.
Palestinian political Islamists Hamas have demanded Britain apologize for agreeing to establish a Jewish homeland in Palestine in 1917, a move experts say had “profound and pervasive” consequences for those who lived there.
Hamas released its statement Monday to coincide with the 98th anniversary of the declaration. It claimed the 1917 agreement between then British Foreign Secretary Arthur Balfour and influential Jewish community leader Baron Walter Rothschild is now null and void.
The original declaration, which aimed to combine two apparently contradictory aims, read: “His Majesty’s government view with favor the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, and will use their best endeavors to facilitate the achievement of this object, it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine, or the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country.”
The Israeli News Network reports Hamas wants Britain to apologize for the declaration, retract it and admit it was a mistake.
“The path of our people towards freedom, return and liberation goes like the path of other peoples who were under occupation – through struggle by all methods and means, first and foremost an armed struggle,” the statement said.
Speaking to the Daily Mail, Oxford University history professor Avi Shlaim said the Balfour agreement continued to resonate throughout the region and beyond.
“Its consequences were both profound and pervasive, and its impact on the subsequent history of the Middle East was nothing less than revolutionary,” he said.
“It completely transformed the position of the fledgling Zionist movement vis-à-vis the Arabs of Palestine, and it provided a protective umbrella that enabled the Zionists to proceed steadily towards their ultimate goal of establishing an independent Jewish state in Palestine.”
The declaration’s impact was out of proportion to its size. It took the form of a mere letter from one party to another and yet, Shlaim says, defines the state of the Middle East to this day.
“Rarely in the annals of the British Empire has such a short document produced such far-reaching consequences,” he said.
A number of former British colonies have recently called for relations between themselves and the former imperial power to be redressed.
In September, Barbadian historian Sir Hilary Beckles reminded David Cameron that the prime minister’s own family was enriched by slavery in the Caribbean colonies.
In July, Indian politician Shashi Tharoor debated Britain’s past occupation of India at an Oxford Union debate.
“Britain’s rise for 200 years was financed by its depredations in India. We paid for our own oppression. It’s a bit rich to oppress, maim, kill, torture and repress and then celebrate democracy at the end of it,” Tharoor said at the debate.
Prime Minister David Cameron has reportedly scrapped plans to call a House of Commons vote on approving airstrikes against Islamic State (formerly ISIS/ISIL) in Syria after failing to win over enough Labour MPs to counterbalance rebellious Tories.
Whitehall sources told The Guardian and The Times that Downing Street had unofficially decided not to extend Royal Air Force (RAF) bombing campaigns from Iraq to Syria over fears Cameron would be humiliated by a second defeat on the issue.
MPs previously voted down launching airstrikes against Syria, specifically targeting forces loyal to President Bashar Assad, in 2013.
Cameron had insisted he would only call a vote when he had achieved a clear, cross-party consensus.
However, the estimated number of Labour MPs expected to vote in favor of airstrikes – between 20 and 30 – would not counteract the number of Tories planning to rebel.
One Downing Street source denied the claims, saying Cameron will still call a vote when a consensus is reached.
“The prime minister’s position hasn’t changed,” the source said.
“He’s consistently said that we would only go back to the House [of Commons] on this issue if there was clear consensus and that remains the case.”
“Meanwhile, the government continues to work to bring the conflict to an end in Syria and we are working closely with our allies to inject greater momentum into efforts to find a political solution, which we’ve always said will be the way to bring this war to an end and give Syria hope for the future.”
In a further blow to Cameron’s campaign to extend British bombing to Syria, the Foreign Affairs Select Committee released a report saying they are “not yet persuaded” by the case for Syrian airstrikes.
The report expresses concerns that Royal Air Force airstrikes would only have a “marginal effect” and could prove a “distraction” from a diplomatic solution.
MPs agreed that the humanitarian catastrophe means there is a “powerful sense that something must be done.”
But they added that military action should not be used unless there is a “coherent international strategy.”
“We believe that there should be no extension of British military action into Syria unless there is a coherent international strategy that has a realistic chance of defeating ISIL and of ending the civil war in Syria.
“In the absence of such a strategy, taking action to meet the desire to do something is still incoherent,” they added.
However, one former Labour minister threatened to quit the party after suggestions Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership team would consult the Stop the War coalition over a government proposal to begin military action.
Tom Harris MP, a former transport minister, posted on Facebook it would be “goodbye” from him if the anti-war group was consulted.
The British government has already authorized drone strikes against ISIS targets in Syria without the backing of parliament. In September, it was revealed that two British nationals fighting for extremist organizations had been killed by RAF drones.
US Secretary of State John Kerry will visit London this week to discuss international relations, including the situation in Syria. The US is already carrying out airstrikes in the country.
“While in London, [Kerry] will meet with British Foreign Secretary [Philip] Hammond to discuss a range of bilateral and global issues, including Syria,” a spokesperson for Kerry said.
America’s top diplomat John Kerry appears to have developed a bleeding heart of emotional concern for Syria. So too have his British and French counterparts.
After nearly five years of relentless killing, destruction and suffering in Syria, the Western leaders are saying it’s now time for peace – and hence the talks in Vienna, convened primarily at the behest of Kerry’s shuttle diplomacy last week.
“It’s time to stop the bleeding and to start the building,” said the US Secretary of State in the Austrian capital. Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov featured prominently at the summit, which was also attended by arch-rivals Saudi Arabia and Iran. Delegates are to meet in the next two weeks to pursue, allegedly, a political resolution of the Syrian conflict.
Anyone with an informed understanding of the war in Syria will not buy Kerry’s “bleeding heart” for peace. Nor that of Washington’s lackeys, including Britain, France, Turkey, or the Gulf Arab monarchies Saudi Arabia and Qatar.
These countries have been responsible for instigating and fuelling a covert war for regime change in Syria. An entirely criminal enterprise that has been instrumented by funding, arming and training an array of foreign mercenary armies comprising some of the most blood-thirsty terror groups on the planet. The notion peddled by the Western news media of “moderate rebels” is an execrable fiction that belies the truth of how Washington and its allies have attempted to destroy Syria and terrorise the population into submitting to their objective of overthrowing the elected government of President Bashar al-Assad.
“World powers in quest for peace,” intones the BBC, with the typical whitewashing service of the incredulous Western media.
The Western powers have drenched Syria in blood since March 2011. The regime-change conspiracy has been well documented. Former French Foreign Minister Roland Dumas disclosed in 2013 that he was approached by British officials back in 2009 – two years before the conflict erupted – with the proposition of a secret plot to overthrow Assad. To his credit Dumas refused, knowing that it was a criminal interference in a sovereign state.
British-based academic Sharmine Narwani, reporting from Syria, has compiled how the initial protests were infiltrated by armed agents who shot down protesters and Syrian state forces – thus sparking what the Western media mendaciously refer to as a “civil war” and “pro-democracy uprising”. There was no such thing. It was a US-led subversion from the outset, the kind of black ops that the Western imperialist powers specialise in. A relevant recent example is the CIA-sponsored coup in Ukraine which was consummated by the notorious sniper massacre in Kiev on February 20, 2014.
American, British, French and Turk special forces have been embedded in Syria from the get-go. Saudi Arabia and Qatar have funnelled billions of dollars worth of weapons into the country to fuel the “jihadists”. The CIA has delivered anti-tank TOW missiles, as well as the finest Toyota jeeps to transport the mercenary armies, who openly wave Al Qaeda and Islamic State flags. We could go on. The ratlines have been well covered elsewhere.
So, are we to seriously believe that at this late hour, Washington and its minions are suddenly overcome with humanitarian concern for Syria? Only perhaps if you rely on the New York Times, CNN, BBC, the Guardian and so on for “news” – which translated from Orwellian speak into plain language means “shameless propaganda”.
This, by the way, is why the US and its lackeys are gunning for Russian media outlets. Because the Russian media are actually providing a proper journalistic information service, exposing the criminal fraudulence and terror-sponsorship of Western governments in the Syria mayhem.
Anyway, back to the bleeding hearts of Kerry, Hammond and Fabius. What is really jerking this triumvirate of rogues into convening “peace talks” is this: Russia’s military intervention in Syria, beginning on September 30, is wiping out the Western-sponsored terror armies. Over 1,600 targets smashed over the past month. Russia is doing what the Western powers claimed that they were doing for the past year (another cynical ruse laundered by the Western media.)
This is why the Western terror masters are all of a sudden running to Vienna for “negotiations”. Their covert war in Syria is being eviscerated on the ground by the combined forces of Russia, the Syrian national army and Iranian military advisors. The West’s billion-dollar terror assets are being annihilated.
Kerry wants to stop the bleeding alright – the bleeding of regime-change mercenaries that the West and its Turk and Arab clients have invested in over the past five years.
In desperation, the Western powers are now turning to the political lever, as opposed to their soon-to-be defunct covert military lever.
The “political process” that the West has belatedly adopted is being pursued now to achieve their objective of regime change in Syria by other means, because the military means are being pulverised by Vladimir Putin’s bold intervention.
Washington and its cronies are pushing for a ceasefire, elections and a “political transition”. Saudi Arabia and Qatar advocating elections?
Come off it. These despots behead and crucify anyone calling for elections in their own feudalistic Western-backed fiefdoms.
This weekend, John Kerry’s subordinate at the US State Department, Tony Blinken, announced, hot on the heels, of the Vienna summit that Washington is to ply $100 million into Syria to “support the moderate opposition.”
According to Voice of America, Blinken said the money “would be given to help the Syrian opposition boost local governments and civil societies… for keeping schools open, restoring access to clean water and electricity, and supporting an independent media.”
This hoary formula is straight out of the US State Department’s manual for inciting “colour revolutions” as we saw in Ukraine, Georgia and several other countries.
The despicable difference in Syria is that the “civil society” and infrastructure supposedly being repaired with $100 million has been destroyed in the first place by Washington’s nefarious regime-change war. The apparent generous largesse of the US government in Syria is not just about infiltrating the country politically, it is also a disgusting bribe dangled before a war-torn, devastated nation.
Washington and its state-sponsoring terrorist cronies are reaching for the political lever not out of concern to broker peace, but out of necessity to engineer regime change through political subversion because Russia has nullified their covert violent methods.
The Western powers are endeavouring to co-opt Russia and Iran to contrive a political framework aimed at achieving their core goal – ousting President Assad.
Russia and Iran are not buying this ruse, insisting that the political future of Syria is the sovereign prerogative of the Syrian people.
There is no need for a “new political process”. The principle of sovereignty in Syria was already established in the Geneva Communiqué three years ago.
What Russia and Iran should do is defeat the Washington-led axis politically, as they are doing militarily. Peace in Syria will be achieved when Washington, principally, desists from its criminal scheming and finally abides by international law.
As for John Kerry’s “bleeding heart”. The blood-soaked hands of Washington, Britain, France, and the other criminal states, are the far more real and pertinent issue.
Former Prime Minister Tony Blair has denied ordering the burning of documents drafted by Attorney General Lord Goldsmith which argued the Iraq war would be illegal weeks before the invasion began in 2003.
In a statement responding to allegations made on Sunday, Blair’s office said: “This is nonsense as far as Tony Blair knows.
“No one ever said that in his presence and in any event it would be quite absurd to think that anyone could destroy any such document.”
“Mr Blair and Lord Goldsmith dealt with all the circumstances surrounding the advice at the (Iraq) inquiry at length and with all the documents. The fact is the advice given was that the action was legal and it was given for perfectly good reasons,” the statement added.
The Mail on Sunday newspaper had reported that on the eve of the war Downing Street was gripped with panic as Britain’s top lawyer declared any such move illegal in a 13 page document.
An anonymous insider told the Mail that ministers and aides in possession of a copy of the document were told to “burn it. Destroy it.”
Ten days after the events are alleged to have taken place, Goldsmith u-turned on his original advice and declared the invasion legal.
Defence secretary Geoff Hoon is said to have been one of the ministers who refused to obey the burning command – a move which allegedly saw Blair trying to kick him out of cabinet.
“Geoff received the ‘burn it’ order second-hand,” the Mail’s source claimed. “He did not regard it as an instruction to be followed.”
“Downing Street was very keen at the time that the document should not have wide circulation, but Geoff would argue that the remark should not be interpreted as a sign that they were determined to get the Attorney General to rewrite the advice.”
A senior figure who served at No. 10 at the time told the Mail : “There was pandemonium. The date when war was expected to start was already in the diary, and here was Goldsmith saying it could be challenged under international law.
“They said ‘burn it, destroy it’ and got to work on the AG [Attorney General].”
It is widely thought that Blair’s inner circle applied serious pressure on Goldsmith at the time to ensure that he advised in favor of invading Iraq.
“Peter [Goldsmith] did say in that original advice that as long as certain conditions were satisfied then war was legal, but it did not give an absolutely clear view which could be used by the military,” the source said.
“The later summary was much clearer,” the unnamed individual added.
Usually when politicians apologize it’s because they have been caught doing something wrong, or they are about to be caught. Such was likely the case with former British Prime Minister Tony Blair, who recently offered an “apology” for the 2003 invasion of Iraq. Blair faces the release of a potentially damning report on his government’s conduct in the run-up to the 2003 US/UK invasion of Iraq.
Similarly, a batch of emails released from the private server of former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton show Blair pledging support for US military action against Iraq a full year before the decision to attack had supposedly been made. While Prime Minister Blair was assuring his constituents that he was dedicated to diplomacy in the Iraq crisis, he was communicating through back channels that he was ready for war whenever Bush decided on it.
A careful observer of public opinion, Blair took the surprising step of “apologizing” for the Iraq war during an interview on CNN last month.
However, there are two other characteristics of politicians’ apologies: they rarely take personal blame for a misdeed and rarely do they atone for those misdeeds.
Thus Tony Blair did not apologize for his role in pushing the disastrous Iraq war. He did not apologize for having, as former head UN Iraq inspector Hans Blix claimed, “misrepresented intelligence on weapons of mass destruction to gain approval for the Iraq War.”
No, Tony Blair “apologized” for “the fact that the intelligence we received was wrong,” on Iraq. He apologized for “mistakes in planning” for post-Saddam Iraq. He boldly refused to apologize for removing Saddam from power.
In other words, he apologized that the intelligence manipulated by his cronies to look like Saddam had weapons of mass destruction and posed a threat to the UK turned out to not be the case. For Blair, it was someone else’s fault.
But if we are waiting for any kind of apology from George W. Bush for Iraq we shouldn’t hold our breath. Likewise if we are looking for any kind of apology from President Obama for a similarly disastrous war on false pretext against Libya we shouldn’t bother waiting.
If they ever did apologize, we can be sure that like Blair they would never really confess to their own manipulations nor would they seek to atone for the destruction their manipulations caused.
In fact, far from apologizing for leading the United States into the Libya war based on a false pretext, President Obama is taking US ground troops into Syria on a false pretext. Let’s not forget, this US military action was sold as a limited operation to save a small religious minority stranded on a hilltop in northern Iraq. After one year and thousands of bombing runs against Iraq and Syria, Obama announced last week he is sending US ground troops into Syria after promising no fewer than seven times that he would not do so.
Here’s an idea: instead of apologies and non-apologies from politicians, how about an actual debate on the policies that led to such disasters? Why not discuss why the US keeps being drawn into wars on false pretexts? But that is a discussion we will not have, because both parties are in favor of these wars. They are ready to spend us into Third World status to continue their empire. When we get there, we will never hear their apologies.
There is a new British organization called Culture for Coexistence with the aim of ending the cultural boycott of Israel, which has been relatively effective in raising public awareness of oppressive Zionist policies, and replace it with “open dialogue” and “cultural engagement.“ A “galaxy of 150 British artists and authors” signed an open letter published in the Guardian newspaper on Oct. 22 announcing the group’s position:
“Cultural boycotts singling out Israel are divisive and discriminatory and will not further peace,” while “open dialogue and interaction promote greater understanding and mutual acceptance and it is through such understanding and acceptance that movement can be made towards a resolution of the conflict.”
While concepts such as open dialogue and cultural interaction are, in principle, hard to disagree with, their efficacy as agents of conflict resolution has to be judged within a historical context. In other words, such approaches are effective when circumstances dictate that all parties seriously dialogue and interact meaningfully – in a manner that actually promotes “mutual acceptance.”
Is this the case when it comes to Israel? The burden of proof here is on Culture for Coexistence because they are the ones asking the Palestinians and their supporters to put aside a strategy (boycott) that is actually putting pressure on Israel to negotiate seriously.
The Culture for Coexistence signatories do not address this question of efficacy. Instead they make the simple assertion that cultural boycotts are bad and won’t help resolve the conflict while cultural interaction is good and will work to that end. How do they know this? Without evidence of its workability, such an assertion is merely an idealization of cultural engagement that ignores that pursuit’s historical futility during a nearly century long conflict.
Do Israeli Leaders Want a Just Peace?
Cultural interaction with Israel went on for decades before the boycott effort got going. It had no impact on the issue of conflict resolution. Such cultural activity certainly did not change the fact that Israel’s leaders have never shown interest in negotiating a resolution with the Palestinians except solely on Israeli terms.
And, that stubbornness is a major part of the reason why peace talks (and also the Oslo agreements) never worked. There is a whole set of histories, written by Israelis and based on archival research that support the claim that Israel has not sought a just resolution to the conflict. Here I would recommend the Culture for Coexistence signatories read the books of the Israeli historian Ilan Pappe.
Given this historical Zionist attitude, what sort of “greater understanding and mutual acceptance” does Culture and Coexistence expect to accomplish by swapping the boycott for “cultural engagement”? It is a question the signatories of the open letter might address to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who just recently was reported to have proclaimed that Israel will control all Palestinian land indefinitely.
The “galaxy of British artists and authors” aligned with Culture for Coexistence seems oblivious to all these contextual issues. Of course, there is a good chance that some of them are more interested in undermining the boycott of Israel than in the alleged promotion of peace through “cultural engagement.”
As the Guardian article discussing the group notes, “Some of the network’s supporters are closely aligned with Israel,” including individuals associated with Conservative Friends of Israel and Labour Friends of Israel.
Does Cultural Contact Lead to Peace?
There is another, more generic misunderstanding exhibited in the group’s statement. It is found in the letter’s closing assertion that “cultural engagement builds bridges, nurtures freedom and positive movement for change” – a position reiterated when Loraine da Costa, chairperson of the new organization, told the Guardian that “culture has a unique ability to bring people together and bridge division.”
No matter how you want to define culture, high or low, there is no evidence for this position except on the level of individuals or small groups. On the level of larger or whole populations, the assertion that “cultural engagement builds bridges” is another naive idealization that is belied by historical practice. Historically, culture has always divided people (both across borders and across classes) and acted as a barrier to understanding. At a popular level, most people are uninterested in, or suspicious of, foreign cultures and are unwilling to try to pursue cultural interaction.
Israel is a very good example of this cultural xenophobia. Historically, the European Jews who established the state despised Arab culture. They tried to eradicate it among the Mizrahi Jews who came to Israel from Arab lands. This intra-Jewish Israeli prejudice is still a problem today. What aspects of Arab culture (mostly having to do with cuisine) Israeli Jews are attracted to they try to repackage as “Israeli.”
There are two final considerations here: First is the need to be serious and clear in the use of language. One can, of course, say “culture has a unique ability to bring people together” but is this a statement that has any real meaning or is it just a platitude?
And second: If you are going to give advice about a century-old conflict you should know enough about its history to be sensible in your offering. Thus, in this case, if you know that high or low cultural intercourse with Israel (and, as suggested above, there has been plenty of it since the founding of the state in 1948), has actually improved the prospects for Israeli-Palestinian peace, you should lay out the evidence. However, if one is just offering a banal cliche, well, only the ignorant can take that seriously.
Those who first proposed the cultural boycott did not do it out of some anti-Semitic dislike for Israeli artworks, music, literature or theater. They did it because cultural interaction with Israel had not only failed to promote an equitable peace, but in fact camouflaged the policies of a nation-state that practices ethnic cleansing and other destructive policies against non-Jews.
The logical conclusion was drawn that if you want to pressure the Israelis to change their ways, you withdraw from cultural contact and make any reconnection a condition of their getting serious about conflict resolution.
How is it that the 150 artists and authors who signed the Culture for Coexistence open letter do not know the relevant facts? Setting aside the confirmed Zionists, whose ulterior motive is pretty clear, do these people take this stand because it “feels right” – that is, because they believe cultural interaction ought to, or even must, promote conflict resolution? Alas, this is wishful thinking and, taking history seriously, Palestine may go extinct before such an approach actually helps lead to a just peace.
The pro-Palestinian, anti-Israel candidate Jeremy Corbyn has become the new leader of Britain’s second biggest political force, the Labour Party.
Corbyn has often demonstrated against Israel’s wars on the Palestinian people. And he’s called for an economic boycott against Tel Aviv. When it comes to Palestine, historically there has been little to choose between Labour and the Conservatives, with both following a pro-Israel line for decades or more.
But now that Corbyn is Labour leader, will there at last be clear blue water between the major parties on this issue? And what implications does this have for British foreign policy and the Palestinian cause?
A UK arms factory was recently occupied by nine British activists in protest against the company’s alleged complicity in Israel’s Operation Protective Edge
An injunction banning protests from taking place outside a drone factory in Staffordshire has been thrown out by Birmingham High Court. The factory has produced parts for drones used to attack Gaza in 2008, according to Amnesty International.
UAV Engines Limited in Shenstone, owned by an Israeli arms manufacturer Elbit Systems, is one of the world’s leading drone producers. The company says it produces “engines for various size tactical armed unmanned aerial vehicles [UAVs], target drones and single mission platforms.”
Angered by the factory’s unethical behavior, hundreds of protesters have staged demonstrations outside its industrial unit, calling on the manufacturer to stop contributing to the death of Palestinians.
In June, campaigners shut down UAV and another Israeli arms factory in Kent as part of a protest marking the one-year anniversary of the Israeli assault on Gaza.
Soon after, it became illegal for activists to protest within 250 meters of the Shenstone factory. The ban came in the form of a temporary injunction granted by the High Court.
However, Birmingham High Court scrapped the ban on Tuesday, ruling Elbit had failed to disclose information on the history of protests which have taken place at the factory since 2009.
Judge Purle at the High Court said the injunction is dismissed “as if it never existed.”
“I think it inconceivable you would have got the same injunction, possibly even any injunction, if you had disclosed relevant information to me,” she told the court. “Accordingly the injunction I granted on 30 June is dismissed ab initio [from the beginning] and it is as if the injunction never existed.”
‘It shouldn’t have been introduced’
A spokesperson for campaign group Block the Factory said the injunction should not have been imposed in the first place.
“This injunction should never have been imposed.It seems to have been designed to deter protest and campaigning around ending the UK’s deadly arms trade with Israel,” they told IBT.
“It’s Elbit Systems and its arms factories that should be facing a ban, not our protests. Today’s decision will bring even more energy to our campaigning in solidarity with ongoing Palestinian resistance and for a two-way arms embargo on Israel.”
War on Want, a charity fighting against the root causes of poverty and human rights violations, said it is pleased the ban has been lifted.
“It would have been a travesty for people to be criminalized for protesting against the sale of arms that are killing Palestinians. It just goes to show the depths UAV Engines will stoop to in order to protect the profits they make from the sale of deadly drones,” campaigner Ryvka Barnard said.
“We welcome the news that the judge has binned this draconian injunction and we will keep up the fight for an immediate two-way arms embargo between the UK and Israel,” he added.
In July, hundreds of activists protested outside the factory, which led to 19 people being arrested by Staffordshire police.
Sir John Chilcot has told Prime Minister David Cameron that the long-delayed, highly controversial report into the legality of the Iraq War will certainly be published in June or July 2016.
In an official letter to Cameron, Chilcot said the text of the report would be completed by April 18, 2016, at which point “national security” checking of the content will commence.
Chilcot said that given the sheer size of the document, which he says will run to more than 2 million words, the intervening time will be required check the text before printing and publication.
In his correspondence, Chilcot tells Cameron that the process of ‘national security’ is distinct from the process of declassification.
It concerns the preparation of material to avoid endangering Article 2 of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) – in effect, the right to life – and to ensure the nation’s security as a whole is not breached by anything made public.
Blair’s office released a statement claiming the former-Prime Minister had always been keen to see the report published as soon it “properly” could be.
The statement claimed that delays over the report had not been due to the nature of past correspondences between himself and former-President Bush or because he had contested findings.
“It is our understanding that other witnesses also received information very late in the process, so any suggestion that witnesses have been the cause of the delay is categorically incorrect and this has again been stated clearly and publicly by Sir John,” the statement reads.
In mid-October it was revealed that, contrary to his claims at the time, former-Prime Minister Tony Blair had committed the UK to joining the US invasion of Iraq a year before it began.
The memo was obtained by the Daily Mail as part of the batch of emails from the private server of former US State Secretary Hillary Clinton, which US courts have forced her to disclose.
Among the leaked papers is one written in March 2002 by former US Secretary of State Colin Powell to then-President George W. Bush, in which he said: “On Iraq, Blair will be with us should military operations be necessary … He is convinced on two points: the threat is real; and success against Saddam will yield more regional success.”
At the time Blair was quoted by the British media as saying: “This is a matter for considering all the options.”
“We’re not proposing military action at this point in time.”
Following the release of the memo, Blair appeared to apologize for some parts of his involvement in the Iraq War and concede that the 2003 invasion and occupation led to the rise of the Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS/ISIL).
Reg Keys, whose son Tom was killed in Iraq in 2003, dismissed former Blair’s apology aired on CNN as an attempt to shift the blame and spin the long-overdue Chilcot Inquiry report into the war.
He told the Telegraph he felt Blair’s apparent apology was a political move, and not a heartfelt one.
“I feel that he’s obviously pre-empting the Iraq inquiry’s findings. It’s finger-pointing. He’s blaming intelligence chiefs for giving him the wrong intelligence. He’s not [apologizing] for toppling Saddam.”
“What about [apologizing] for the unnecessary loss of life? The reason we went to war was weapons of mass destruction, not to topple Saddam,” Keys added.
“I feel revulsion. This man [Blair] certainly got it wrong.”
Despite widespread opposition to the Iraq War, Blair is not without his defenders.
Michael Gapes MP, one of most hard-core Blair loyalists in the Labour Party, questioned whether the report should be published at all, tweeting “the hysterical Blair haters have decided already” and that “most journalists and commentators have made up their minds already so won’t bother to read it in any case.”
Beirut – During his visit with US Secretary of State, Mike Pompeo, Lebanese President Michael Aoun reportedly received a US-Israeli document detailing plans for creating a civil war in Lebanon with covert false flag operations and possible Israeli invasion.
Although the source of the document is Israeli and created in partnership with Washington, no one knows who presented it to Aoun. The Lebanese TV station, Al-Jadeed, initially reported the document on Lebanese TV and a video on its website. Geopolitics Alert translated the report for this article. … continue
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