Category: Israel

Brothers in Arms – Saudis and Israelis

On July 10th  2017  the U.K. High  Court rejected a bid by  the Campaign Against Arms Trade (CAAT) that ‘Britain’s multi-billion-pound arms sales to Saudi Arabia should be halted because they were being used in Yemen in violation of international humanitarian law. ‘

The British  High  Court judges claimed that the Saudis had “sought positively to address concerns about International Humanitarian Law”…..”Saudi Arabia has been, and remains, genuinely committed to compliance with International Humanitarian Law; and there was no ‘real risk’ that there might be ‘serious violations’ of International Humanitarian Law (in its various manifestations) such that UK arm sales to Saudi Arabia should be suspended or cancelled,” the court said. “

One wonders whether judges can be indicted for perjury? Those judges would have known  full  well  that  their legal  judgement  was a total  and outright lie. The Saudis have in  fact  done everything possible to  exacerbate the suffering  of the Yemen population over the past two years,  with  massive starvation and typhoid outbreaks the consequence of  Saudi bombing of civilian  infrastructure and a blockade of aid and food to Yemen (using British  and U.S. aircraft  ordinance, guidance and coordination) .

One might put this ruling alongside the  eagerness of the U.K. to   continue to  pour millions into  the Israeli  military, which  has for the past 60  years engaged in  a war of not-so- slow motion genocide of the Palestinian  people, for whom  it has  legal  responsibilty as the occupying entity . One has only to  read John Pilger’s account  of the horrendous ordeal  of the Palestinian  people, to be shamed  by  our complicity in  Israeli  war crimes. What  do  these two  delightful  pariah  states have in  common?-  firstly an overweaning desire for  expansion and power; secondly the destruction of the Iranian state,  and thirdly the use of religion to  justify  their  expansionist  goals; with  the Saudis using  their  Wahhabist dogma  to  promote sectarian violence against those who  do  not subscribe to  their bizarre version of  the muslim faith,  while the Zionists use the Jewish  religion as a weapon  against  all  those who  defy  their expansionist  policies and  appropriation of other people’s lands.   As the Boycott,  Divestment Sanctions  (BDS) movement gathers steam  against  the  Israeli  entity, having at least some friends  Israel  can  rely on, may prove rather useful…

It is no  wonder then that  the long-standing secret  alliance between the Saudis and Israel  is now becoming visible, as  political  and moral  pressure  continues to  escalate against  both of them. The Saudi ‘princes’ have continued to  publicly preach  their opposition to  Israeli  occupation of Palestinian  lands , whilst  clandestinely supporting Israel. As the article in Investigaction notes: With some exceptions, support for the Palestinian cause in the Arab world is overwhelming. And regimes like Saudi Arabia have happily betrayed the Palestinian cause over and over again because they are aware that key to their survival is subservience to the United States, and that an alliance with Israel may boost their regional hegemony prospects. But because their legitimacy to rule is incredibly thin to say the least, royals and officials need to keep pretending in public that they are defending and fighting for the Palestinians.

As the economic and military  power of Iran continues to grow,  (despite the best efforts of most of the Western world; with sanctions and  attempted coups and assassinations and wars), the  anti-Iran hysteria within  the ruling classes in these two  regimes continues to  escalate. For the Saudis,  Iran , a largely Shi-ite theocracy ( i.e.  decidely more democratic than  the Saudis,  but  with brutal  political  oversight by  its religious governing bodies) is  a complete anathema to  Saudi Wahhabist  Sunni  ideology,  which holds that all  non-Sunni  muslims are in  fact not muslim  at  all.  In addition  Iran’s rapid development of an internal  arms industry (particularly in  missile development) totally unreliant on  Western imports, along with an economic  structure largely  independent  from  the West ( largely as a result of Western  sanctions based on  fraudulent claims of its  development of nuclear weapons) has allowed it to pursue a totally independent foreign policy line-  unlike the Saudis who  remain completely reliant on  U.K.  and U.S.  weaponry  and therefore required to  be  largely compliant  to U.S.  and U.K military   and political  objectives in  the Middle East.

For the Israelis,  Iran  remains the one  major threat   to its goals of a larger and all-powerful  Israel;  the Middle East  country with the largest  military (courtesy  of the United States)  and  a nuclear arsenal . Iran continues to  support fund and train  Hezbollah  in Lebanon,  and to some degree Hamas  in  the Occupied Territories of Palestine itself. Both Hezbollah,  with its devastating victory over the Israeli  Army in  Lebanon in 2006, and to  a smaller degree Hamas, with its ongoing resistance to  Israel’s brutal military incursions into  the West  Bank, have been  a thorn in  the side of Israeli  expansionism, and hence have been deemed ‘terrorist  organisations’  by the West.  Hezbollah  has again  played a significant role  against  Al Qaeda (Al Nusra) and ISIS ( funded and armed by  the Saudis and to  some degree by  Turkey, Qatar   and Israel in  the Syrian  war, with coordination and logistics provided by  British and United States intelligence agencies).  And while Israel  knows that  Iran is not going to  acquire nuclear weapons,  it is fearful  of the increasingly advanced home-grown missile technology  that Iran  posseses which now poses a significant deterrant to Israeli  expansion.

Thus  Israel  and  the Saudi  regimes; both rapidly becoming pariah states,  have  increasingly cosied up to each other, (just  as Israel  did with  apartheid South  Africa in  the 1960s) with Israel  providing overt  support to  the Saudi  war  in Yemen,  along with the British and Americans,  on the premise that somehow/somewhere  the Iranians must  be supporting the Yemenese Houthi forces there.  This most un-holy of alliances will  inevitably be the undoing of both  regimes…

Links

https://www.caat.org.uk/campaigns/stop-arming-saudi/judicial-review

http://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-britain-saudi-arms-idUKKBN19V0YR

http://johnpilger.com/articles/palestine-is-still-the-issue

http://wolvestuc.org.uk/index.php/local-campaigns/wolves-palestine-solidarity/256-wolverhampton-link-to-arms-exports-to-israel

Yemen: The War That Isn’t Happening Even as It’s Happening

http://www.investigaction.net/en/israel-and-saudi-arabia-a-match-made-in-heaven-or-in-washington/

 

 

Yemen: The War That Isn’t Happening Even as It’s Happening

Saudi Arabia: the Useful Idiots

As Christopher Davidson makes clear in his 2016 book ‘The Shadow Wars’; the extremist ideology of wahhabism – an ‘offshoot’ of Islam, is deeply imbedded in the Saudi regime. That sectarian brutal regime could not have come to power and retained  its military domination over the Arabian peninsula, without the unconditonal support of first the British and latterly the United States. Their Wahhabist dogma states that all who don’t believe in their version of Islam are heretics and should be forcibly converted or put to death.

This dogma is the foundation of Al Qaeda and ISIS ; and these groups, along with fanatical wahhabist ideology promoted  in many Saudi  funded  Sunni mosques around the world, has been actively promoted by those in power in Riyadh since they were effectively installed by the British in the First World War to counter the Turkish Ottoman Empire’s reach..

As Davidson meticulously notes in his book, the support of the British and then the Americans for this fanatical regime, has never wavered; even after the 9/11 terror attack and now the genocide occuring in Yemen. The ongoing U.S. and British support for wahhabist terror to further Western agendas can be taken as a given.

As Human Rights Watch notes (2017) Saudi Arabia does not tolerate public worship by adherents of religions other than Islam and systematically discriminates against Muslim religious minorities, notably Twelver Shia and Ismailis, including in public education, the justice system, religious freedom, and employment. Government-affiliated religious authorities continued to disparage Shia Islam in public statements and documents.

And now we see a Saudi  attempt to completely eliminate any Shia  influence within the  ‘kingdom’  in  their ongoing brutal  crackdown  of the minority Shia population in Awamiya  on the Arabian peninsula.

Because of the huge amounts of money flowing from the Saudis into Washington and other Western ‘think-tanks’ ( ie propaganda outlets) , both Western media mainstream media and the Washington and London ‘intelligence’ communities are largely  uncritical of this despotic regime and its outpourings of hatred and violence to any Muslims and other Middle Eastern religions who do not espouse their Wahhabist ideology. As long as the Wahhabists remain useful in the cause of eliminating any threats to Israel, countering an independent Iran  or eliminating other Middle Eastern states critical of the United States or the United Kingdom- then that is all good!- regardless of the loss of lives or the devastation left behind…The destruction of the Shi-ite state of Iran is a priority of both the Saudis, Israel, as well as the U.S. and U.K. The re-appropriation of Iranian assets and oil by Western interests is looked upon longingly.

Saudi Arabia funds many wahhabist sect mosques throughout the Western world; whose aim is to preach hate and sectarian discord and promote the killing of others who do not accept their extremist views. Given that this sectarian dialogue is visible open and blatant, how is it that those western mosques have not been closed and the Saudi funnelling of money towards Wahhabists has not been blocked?

Or is this ‘minor’ irritant of localised terrorism and hate in Western states ‘worth it’, when the majority of the mosques’ gullible and disenfranchised indoctrinated young adherents can be shunted off to the Middle East with the assistance of Western intelligence agencies, so that Shi-ite or non secular non U.S. aligned states can be destroyed?

We have reached a rather surrealist situation where the previously hidden long term ‘agreement’ to divide the Middle East according to their respective spheres of influence between Israel and Saudi Arabia has now become completely visible, and now means that ISIS has needed to apologise to Israel for their unintended attack on Israeli ‘Defence’ forces. For many Arabs this apology is a clear signal of the betrayal by the Saudis of the Palestinians and their 60 year brutal occupation of Palestine by Israel military forces. Taken in conjunction with their genocidal war against the impoverished Yemen people by massive Saudi military forces, and with the total support of the U.K. and U.S., Saudi credibility has reached an all time low amongst Arab populations across the Middle East.

Once can only hope that the end of the brutal ‘reign’ of the House of Saud is nigh.

Links

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wahhabism

https://www.hrw.org/world-report/2017/country-chapters/saudi-arabia

https://off-guardian.org/2015/12/10/saudi-arabia-leads-the-jihadist-nations-u-s-assists-them/

https://www.sott.net/article/308121-Investigating-Saudi-Arabias-sponsorship-of-Turkish-politics-terrorism-and-the-frenzied-conflict-in-Syria

http://intpolicydigest.org/2015/11/29/why-isis-exists-the-double-game/

http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2007/03/05/the-redirection

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/alastair-crooke/isis-wahhabism-saudi-arabia_b_5717157.html You Can’t Understand ISIS If You Don’t Know the History of Wahhabism in Saudi Arabia

Shadow Wars-The Secret Struggle for the Middle East, Christopher Davidson 2016

https://www.opendemocracy.net/uk/christopher-davidson-ian-sinclair/christopher-davidson-interview-what-is-role-of-west-in-middle-e

http://thesaker.is/who-are-the-sunnis-a-lamentation/

https://www.lrb.co.uk/v36/n08/seymour-m-hersh/the-red-line-and-the-rat-line

http://www.unz.com/pcockburn/war-with-iran-seems-likely-as-trump-cosies-up-with-saudi-arabia/

Postcript  Links

https://sputniknews.com/columnists/201705201053811797-abu-trump-al-amriki/

http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/manchester-attack-salman-abedi-salafi-jihadism-wahhabism-isis-al-qaeda-islam-muslim-suicide-bombing-a7754301.html

Aleppo- the final battle ground for the Saudis?

Saudi Arabia and Qatar have put huge resources,  not only into  funding and paying for anti-Shiite Salafist  soldiers in  Syria, but also into  resourcing  a vast media   campaign to   attack   Iran  and the IRGC for its role in  supporting the Assad regime.

With the imminent defeat of the Saudi  funded jihadists in Aleppo, the Saudis are facing a huge hit to their morale and international  standing-  especially when  taken alongside their disastrous war in Yemen, which increasingly is seen  to be a humanitarian  human rights genocidal  campaign against  the Yemen people. The anti-Iran campaign  now means that it will be considered internationally that Iran has in effect, defeated the Saudis in Syria. This is however, not the true state of affairs; while Iran’s IRGC has played a significant role in Syria over the past two years, their role does not appear to have been a game changer- despite the Iranian  hype about the famed General  Suleiman and his soldiers.

With the likely defeat of all opposition forces in Eastern Aleppo in the next few weeks,  those 25,000  battle-hardened SAA (Syrian Government) soldiers in  action there can  now be deployed elsewhere in  Syria. This re-deployment will likely result in  the final defeat of the majority of forces  aligned with the Saudis and Qataris  and  trained  by  Western  governments  in the Jordanian  ‘rebel’  camps. The “King’  of Jordan will  now have to make  some considerable  contortions in  order  to ‘make up’  with Assad – but it’s quite possible that  those jihadis escaping back over the Jordanian border will now  make a serious attempt to overthrow  another of the West’s  pawns in  the Middle East. Additionally, those rebels of European origin,  which  Western intelligence agencies have been facilitating into Syria  for the past five years, are also likely to return  to  their native European countries bringing their  carefully honed military skills and sectarian hatreds with them.

Should the Assad regime succeed in  pacifying the majority of Syria , the huge resources put into destabilising Syria by the George Soros business empire, the French,  the U.K., Turkey and the U.S.,  means  that  their corporate intent to profit from  re-building the Syria they have destroyed,  will have come to nothing. Chinese and Russian businesses are now well placed to do that.

And Saudi Arabia, has by its attempts to play  Iran  as the key evil  agent in Syria ,  almost literally, shot itself in the foot-  with  a consequence that  the whole Saudi  regime is now likely to  go  gangrenous  in a relatively short space of time. No wonder the UK is panicking in its absurd manipulation of MSM media coverage of the Syrian war! The loss of the Saudi ‘kingdom’ to UK control and arms sales, would be a catastrophic loss for those who hold the puppet-strings of power in Whitehall and ‘The City’. Should the Qatari regime also be brought down in the aftermath of a SAA victory, the implications for Western influence in the Middle East will be huge.

Given that Egypt now appears to be wavering towards supporting the Assad regime and the Russians, there are serious international re-alignments happening. Even the wily but somewhat  deranged President Erdogan of Turkey is admitting that his long-term interests no  longer lie with  being antagonistic to  Russia – particularly if the  oil pipeline from Russia to Europe can run  through  his backyard!

Early prognostications were that the EU and US sanctions against Russia, (ostensibly for their Crimean ‘invasion’) would cripple the Russian economy. With the shift of economic focus of Russia towards the East and China’s One Belt Road, the impacts of the sanctions have been somewhat reduced,  and the medium  term economic outlook  for Russia  now looks  considerably more rosy than even the worst dreams of  U.S. neocons .

For the Chinese, the increasing hysteria coming from the US about China’s growing power, economically and militarily, is now being mitigated by the rapid development of  the ‘One Belt Road’   This new high-speed  overland trade route to  Russia  and the West means that China will, in  the near future, be somewhat insulated from the increasing risks of Western  warships blockading its trade routes to the outside world. Bizarrely the U.K. government in London is now also sending its aging warships to the South China Sea (shades of the ‘Opium Wars’). Commercial  engagement in  a revitalised Syria is just one part the Chinese are likely to  play in their resurgent role in the Middle East.

In short, the battle for Aleppo is one symptom of the shifting power alignments in the world. A victory for Assad and his allies implies a significant change in the ways of the world for the medium to long term.

Patriotism: The Refuge of Scoundrels

The blog heading is one of Mark Twain’s quotes. But here is  a much  better one from Mr Clemens.

Man is the only Patriot. He sets himself apart in his own country, under his own flag, and sneers at the other nations, and keeps multitudinous uniformed assassins on hand at heavy expense to grab slices of other people’s countries, and keep them from grabbing slices of his. And in the intervals between campaigns he washes the blood of his hands and works for “the universal brotherhood of man”- with his mouth.
– “The Lowest Animal”- Mark Twain

Today, in my little part of the world; it is once again  Anzac Day, originally  commemorated to  mark  the bloody  failure  of the  British  Empire’s coordinated attack on Turkish  positions in the Dardanelles at  Gallipoli   in World War One, but now, ( supposedly) it ‘acknowledges the sacrifice of all those who have died in warfare, and the contribution and suffering of all those who have served.” Strangely however  this commemoration of all  who  have died in  wars is marked by   artillery salutes, marching uniformed men and much  fanfare about  this country’s patriotism. We are encouraged to  believe that Anzac Day now promotes a sense of unity, perhaps more effectively than any other day on the national calendar. People whose politics, beliefs and aspirations are widely different can nevertheless share a genuine sorrow at the loss of so many lives in war, and a real respect for those who have endured warfare on behalf of the country we live in. (New Zealand Government).

I for one,  am  appalled  that  the majority consensus in New Zealand appears to  be that  ‘plucky little New Zealand’  became a real  country  with its own  identity, and not just  a member of the British  Empire, by  maiming and killing its way through  a series of foreign “adventures”.  The one possible exception to this catastrophic jingoistic litany of murder and mayhem, is New Zealand’s very  real  contribution to  the war  against  Nazi Germany and  Japan  during the Second World War, when  a New Zealand invasion by  the Japanese Imperial Army was a high  probability at  one point.

Every  other war  we have fought, we have fought at  the behest  of others-  from  the genocide inflicted on the Boers during the Boer Wars as part of the British  Imperial  Army’s need to maintain  control of South African assets, the First  World War’s bizarre clash of European monarchies , the  staggering level  of genocide  inflicted on Koreans  by  the “Allies’ (including New Zealand naval  bombardment  of civilian areas) during the Korean War, our implicit involvement in American  genocide in Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia, our explicit connection to  rendering of Afghan suspects to   U.S. torture centres in Afghanistan, and our ongoing  complicity in the Five Eyes  intelligence project,  which  currently serves American  and U.K. interests in  promoting terrorism  around the world and destroying  human rights.

All in all,  it is not a record I for one am proud of.  Our ongoing subservience to  the  paranoid and psychopathic American  war machine and its  business interests, serves no-one’s interests  on this planet, other than  a few  crazed right wing  American  idealogues and the military/industrial  complex.

I was proud of my country  when our prime minister of the time, Norman Kirk, sent frigates to  Muroroa Atoll  in the south Pacific,  to protest  the French  destroying that island with nuclear bombs and contaminating the environment for thousands of miles.  I was proud when  our prime minister of the day,  David Lange, announced we would henceforth  be a nuclear-free nation, and even a little proud when prime minister Helen Clark refused to send   significant ground troops to Iraq  to  support the American  invasion there.  But we have sunk to new lows since those times, in obsequiously following our U.S.  masters into Iraq once more, to   fight a stupendously foolish  war  in Afghanistan,  and to  mouth support for America’s duplicitous  ‘war on terror’   while  unconditionally  supporting the key  centres of terror in the world; Saudi Arabia and Turkey,  along with support for the 60  year  old  brutal  Israeli  occupation of Palestine .

Despite successive  New Zealand governments’ posturings that  we are now a sovereign nation  because of Anzac Day, when are we truly going to be a proud and  independent nation  who  stands in truth  for peace and international justice?

 

 

Where next for Syria?

The recent  announcement  by  the Obama administration that it will  send 50  U.S.  military  advisers into  Syria  apparently adds another layer of complexity to  an already  viciously complex and violent  war in Syria, however in this analysis I will  argue that this U.S.  announcement simply attempts to  legitimise  what  already  exists on the ground.

Some media have portrayed this  “civil war’  as a sectarian one. However  the sectarianism is a one-side affair in this instance. Those who play  the  sectarian  card are invariably those of an extremist Sunni  Wahhabi   and takfiri persuasion – ie they  wish to  ensure that  Syria becomes  a completely  Sunni wahhabi dominated society where other  Syrian religions and Muslim sects  are either eliminated or marginally tolerated. Those who  fund and support these  extremist doctrines  are primarily those in the Gulf dictatorships- the Saudi and Qatar governments,  and the increasingly  sectarian  government of Turkish  president Erdogan (particularly after his  most suspiciously positive and unexpected electorate  win  a few days ago).

In part this takfiri  response can be explained as a fear of Shi-ite Iran, and to  a smaller degree, Shi-ite Iraq,  reasserting their  influence  and non Western-government alignment in  the Middle East. In part it  also symbolises the  hold that  the bigots of the Wahhabi sect have over the Gulf regimes.  In tandem  with this approach we have the United States ( and the U.K.  France and Italy)  actively supporting these extremist regimes in  the vain  hope that  destabilisation and balkanisation of the Middle East  will  serve their economic interests ( more weapons sales) and preserve the increasingly fragile Israeli  occupying power in Palestine.  The United States has been actively supporting destabilisation of the Syrian Assad government  since at  least  2004, with  supposedly non-lethal military  hardware and  ‘advisors’ to  what  are described by  the U.S.  as  “moderate’ anti-Assad groups, on  the ground in Syria.

The resultant avalanche  of Syrian  refugees into  Eastern  Europe and beyond, is  perhaps an unanticipated  impact  on already  vulnerable  European economies. However, in  all  of this, the U.S. remains largely immune to  the horrendous human impacts  and geopolitical  disaster its support for extremism has incurred across the Middle East and now, to a  vastly smaller degree, to Europe.

On the other “side” we have the SAA, the Syrian government army; which  despite the hype from  the opposition, is largely composed of non-Allawite  and non-Shi-ite  troops, but is increasingly supported by  Shi-ite Hezbollah fighters from Lebanon and  Iranian “advisers” from  their irregular army,  the IRGC, the Army of the Guardians of the Islamic Revolution.  The decision of Russia to  escalate its support for the Assad regime; (it has had a naval  base at  Tartus on the Syrian  coast for many years, and provided some military  resources and advisors to  the SAA  since the start  of the war) and begin  bombing  all  of the groups opposing the SAA, has shifted the military  balance on  the ground significantly in  favour of the Assad government. The fiction that  the Russians are in  fact only bombing the ‘nice guys’ opposing the Assad regime, belies the fact  that all  of  the opposition groups’ key aim is to  topple the secular Assad government and establish  a Sunni Wahhabi state  or caliphate . While the opposition groups  fight amongst  each  other  for dominance, and disagree on  the level  of intolerance and extremism   required to  achieve this goal, they also  increasingly collaborate on  the ground  in  the face of  threats of potential  extinction by  the resurgent Assad government forces and their allies.

As Wikipedia notes here, the number of factions fighting in Syria is  already  in the  forties  and the “civil war” environment  is growing increasingly complex day  by  day. What  the proportion of  foreign fighters  (whether mercenaries or jihadists) in the anti-Assad camp is  impossible to  verify  at  this point;  but  the reports of deaths caused by  the recent SAA resurgence,  indicate a substantial  proportion are non-Syrian.

As the U.S. knows well, a victory  for the anti-Assad (anti-Syrian  government) forces, will  result  in the total  breakdown of Syrian  infrastructure,  the destruction of Damascus,  the creation of a multitude of states within  states in Syria and Iraq, a bloodbath  for those remaining non-Sunni   sects  in Syria and a greater avalanche of refugees into  Europe. One can  only assume that this  is what  the United States and its Western  allies want.

Yet, when  we look  at  mainstream  Western media,  the Russian intervention is portrayed as  being caused by Putin’s megalomania,  Russian attempts to  reinstate themselves as  a global  power  or  an  attempt to  re-live the old glories of the Soviet empire , rather than  a fearful  response to  Western  destabilisation. Russia  Iran  and Hizbollah  are only too  familiar with   the ongoing destabilisation of their countries by  Western intelligence agencies and their proxies, to  not see  the export of Wahhabi extremism  to  Syria as a serious threat  to their own  long-term viability.

The announcement by  Obama of 50 U.S. “Special Forces” troops to  be deployed to  Syria, is therefore simply smoke and mirrors. In all  likelihood, those same 50  special  forces have been on the ground  (along with other Western  intelligence officers and  advisors from  the Gulf states, for at  least  the past 5 years in Syria; advising, training and channelling weapons to  their “moderate” jihadists. The announcement is an  attempt to  somehow legitimise the status quo, when in fact those men  are operating illegally inside a sovereign  state with  the sole  purpose of destabilising that state.

The other often mentioned U.S. response of a  ‘no-fly zone’ in Syria, is another rather transparent attempt to  ensure that  the Syrian air-force and helicopters cannot  engage the jihadists;  with the inevitable outcome being  a  full  collapse of the Damascus government and infrastructure and a massive increase in  human suffering and refugees..

The recent flurry  of diplomatic manoeuvering in Vienna between some, but not all of the key players, reflects in  part the concerns in Washington about the impacts of the recent active bombing of ISIS and other Al Qaeda affiliates in Syria by  the Russian airforce, and the consequent  apparently significant  military  successes on the ground by  the SAA and its  allies.

 

Links

http://www.lrb.co.uk/v37/n21/patrick-cockburn/too-weak-too-strong

http://original.antiwar.com/porter/2015/11/08/the-sham-syrian-peace-conference/

Israel: In the death throes of a racist dream: Susan Abulhawa, Middle East Eye

A haunting and wrenching account of the brutal  rascist occupation of Palestine by  an Israeli entity embued with  that  sense of “exceptionalism” which is the downfall  of all  empires.  http://www.middleeasteye.net/columns/seeing-other-israeli-side-803375093

Links

https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/charlotte-silver/obama-backs-israel-5-more-palestinians-are-killed

http://www.countthekids.org/

The Russian Move: Syria

The recent decision by  Russia to  intensity its military  support to  the Syrian government in Damascus, highlights some interesting issues for Eastern  governments.

It comes at a time when the Syrian refugee influx via Turkey is reaching a peak  in Eastern European states and Germany/Austria with strident calls from  mainstream  Western  media  arguing the case for more arming of the anti-Assad  terrorist groups in Syria and naturally , a no-fly that can only benefit…. guess who?.

Interestingly, Turkish  President Erdogan, has now done an abrupt about-face in  declaring that President  Assad of Syria should now be part of the transition process in Syria; something that  Erdgan had opposed for  more than 4 years previously.  Is this, as Moon of Alabama proposes, because of the  potential threat of Russian  forces taking out his  Turkish  supplied terrorists in Syria and re-caslibrating the ?  I  have my doubts.  Erdogan is a wily political  player,and used to  navigating the whirlpool of political players in  the Middle East.  Is the Russian move , as Mike Whitney suggests, an attempt to  pre-empt the installation of  a Turkey  based  no-fly zone by  the United States, in Syria , which  would once and for all  eliminate any Syrian government threats to the jihadist  groups  fighting Assad?

However it  would appear  that  some Western  governments and intelligence agencies are perceiving a real  threat  to  the  destabilisation agenda they  have pursued since at  least  2011 in Syria, as a result of a shift in western public  opinion.

How to  rationalize  support for anti-Assad  military  groups who  are clearly  Wahhabist terrorists whilst maintaining a philosophical  stance that  Assad must  go  and is the root of the refugee problem and pretending that  you are fighting terrorism  globally? The information on the the vast  majority of groups opposing  the Ba’ath secular government and military   in Damascus is clear; their need and wish  is, like all  good salafists, to  exterminate those  sects of Islam which  doe  not fit with their  mediaeval  view of  what  Islam  should be- ie Sunni and Sharia.

Let me be clear,  Western  governments are actively supporting this genocidal   and mythical  view of the Middle East. In reality the Ba’ath  military  is largely Sunni  in composition, with elements of Christian and other Muslim sects, as well  as of course many secular Syrians. And useful  to note  perhaps, that the Iraqi equivalent Ba’ath  party of Saddam Hussein  was supposedly Sunni  in character. That is not to  say  that  Assad’s Ba’athist government is not a brutal one;  but in  comparison with the Saudis, with the salafists and other extremists in the Middle East, it is benign; and supported by  the vast  majority of Syrians  as the only alternative to  the vicious  brutal  alternative of chaos  that  Western governments are hoping for in Syria. But, one would never imagine that in your wildest  dreams, that  is the true state of affairs  by  reading Western mainstream media.

The weight of alternative press reports  which  articulate  the threat  from  Western  governments of  further direct  intervention in Syria to  complete their mission of balkanising the  region and  installing   tribal and  extremist  religious groups in Syria  and elsewhere in the middle east is becoming  hard for western public opinion to  ignore.

The apparently unexpected move by  the Russians to  bolster their  military  support and risk   boots on  the ground and potentially another  debacle like the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. This move  is in many respects,  a  mirror of that Soviet-Afghan war, with the Gulf States and the Americans, as before , supporting Al  Qaeda and its affiliates, and Russia supporting a secular dictatorship in the form of President Assad and the Ba-ath Party.  Has the Russian  military  learnt its lessons from  the Afghan  war and the wars of Chechnya?- time will  tell.

We have yet  to  see how Israel  will  respond to  this new front opening up  across the occupied Golan  Heights. Its dreams of a slow annexation of Syrian  territory beyond the Golan  Heights, and the  splitting of that  rump state into  splintered largely powerless  enclaves, with the active assistance of the United States , have now been  significantly compromised.

The difference this time around, may be the guerrilla fighting  skills of Hizbollah  and  Iran’s Revolutionary  Brigades.

Postscript

The flurry  of  both   mainstream western  media and  Obama’s superlatively  hypocritical    and;  speaking bluntly,  speech  of  unadulterated  lies; at  the U.N. , expressing concern that  Russia was adding “fuel  to  the fire”  by its Syrian  air-strikes, and that  (bizzarely) chaos might ensue in Syria as a result of Russia actually wanting to   get  rid of the terrorists in Syria. Their messages  are   stretching the  cloth  of credulity to  breaking point, even  for those of  the Western public who  accept everything their politicians tell them.  We are, I believe, seeing the end-game in Western public’s placid acceptance of the   reality  and rationality of the “War  on Terror”.

Mainstream  media are now contorting themselves into  indecent positions to  “prove” that  Russia is not targeting ISIS, but is instead only targeting those “moderate”  anti-Assad groups. Despite the acknowledgement by  Western intelligence agencies that   secular moderate groups fighting the Assad government  are practically non-existent in Syria, we are led to  believe that  Russia is  deliberately leaving the ‘evil ones’,  ISIS, alone and targeting the “good guys”, Al Nusra and  other similar   Al Qaeda affiliate groups, funded and trained by  the US and the Gulf States. Given that all  those groups are fighting to bring down the Assad government  and the Assad military is by  far the greatest opponent of all of those groups; including ISIS ;  one might almost be forgiven  for thinking that the  US wants ISIS to  succeed and roll into  Damascus to bring its rein  of terror to  all  suitably non Sunni  members of that  population.

One is also  intrigued with  Brown  Moses ( or should that  be ‘Brown Nose’?) under his new pseudonym, Bellingcat ,  “proving”  that   the video  and pics of Russian  attacks  were deliberately being  edited by  the Russians to  ensure their “true” target  areas were not identified-again  the meme  that  the real  terrorists were in  fact not being targeted,  but instead targeting   some of the mythical   moderates on the ground.

And again   further  hype from  ” unidentified State Dept officials that   four of the 26 Russian cruise missiles fired from  the Caspian  Sea at Syrian  rebels had in  fact crashed in  Iran with loss of life. The Pentagon  appears considerably concerned  about these new previously unknown  Russian cruise missiles, because they  have much  longer trajectory  than  supposed and can be fired from  far smaller  ships  than the American  ones can, and are hence more mobile.

The decision by  the Obama administration to  supposedly pull  out of direct  involvement with  the  jihadist  groups in Syria  is more likely to  reflect  a concern that  Russian,Syrian, Iranian and Hizbollah groups may very  shortly, if not already, be killing Western intelligence operatives on  the ground in Syria, rather than  any  back-down of intent to overthrow Assad.

Also  expect  an  intensification of ‘independent’ human right s organizations  demanding  that  Assad  (and now the Russians) be tried for war crimes . This war is a tragedy and an  avoidable one, and  the civilian death  toll has been   immense and calamitous.However expecting the Assad government to  have precision guided ammunitions (only available to  the U.S. and its western  allies and Russia and China) rather than  ‘dumb’ bombs and barrel  bombs, does not a war crime make.

More incredibly, the Pentagon is clearly wishing desperately for Russian losses  in fighting  the rebels in Syria and that  they  will “begin to lose in Syria”. Russian Defense Ministry spokesman Konashenkov also “lashed out” at a fresh statement from Pentagon head Ashton Carter, who predicted Russian losses in its Syrian operation.

Moscow’s air operation in Syria “will have consequences primarily for Russia itself,” Carter said at a press conference at NATO headquarters in Brussels. Such  provocative, foolish  and dangerous  statements  amount to  a  direct threat  to  use the United State’s proxy terrorists in Chechnya and other  Russian   muslim populated districts, in retaliation for the Russian  attacks on the United State’s ‘friendly terrorists’ in Syria. Carter added, “I expect that in the next few days the Russians will begin to lose in Syria.”. Should such  attacks come in the next few weeks on  Russian soil, Russia will be in  doubt of their source; with the added bonus of more certainly enlisting the help  of China in this war  against   the West’s terrorists; also  vulnerable to  American  involvement in  Uighur  attacks inside China.

We are seeing a desperate attempt  on multiple fronts to  discredit the Russian  war efforts  in Syria by  Western  powers .  One has to wonder why  do they  wish  ISIS and their favourite ‘moderate’ jihadist  to be  marching into  Damascus? – how important is it to  curry  favour with  Wahhabists in  power in the Arabian peninsula?. As  Gareth Porter notes, or  just maybe its simply a matter of propping up  the US and UK “defence”  Industries for a little longer…?

Links

http://journal-neo.org/2015/09/24/us-blockade-of-syria-a-war-crime/

http://journal-neo.org/2015/09/24/on-russia-israel-clash-over-syria/

https://elijahjm.wordpress.com/2015/09/19/russian-elite-units-on-the-land-of-zabadani-homs-hama-and-aleppo/

http://www.todayszaman.com/latest-news_turkeys-erdogan-says-assad-may-be-part-of-syria-transition-process_399907.html

https://consortiumnews.com/2015/09/30/obamas-ludicrous-barrel-bomb-theme/

http://fff.org/2015/10/02/the-chaos-of-the-war-on-terrorism-spreads-to-syria/

https://www.lewrockwell.com/lrc-blog/cia-interventions-in-syria-a-partial-timeline/

http://journal-neo.org/2015/09/23/the-secret-isis-safe-havens-nobody-wants-you-to-know-about/

http://www.middleeasteye.net/columns/ahrar-al-sham-s-apocalyptic-vision-syria-and-beyond-455405201

http://original.antiwar.com/porter/2015/10/16/obama-wont-admit-the-real-targets-of-russian-airstrikes/

Oily Euphemisms and Weasel Words

The courageous ex U.N Special  Rapporteur for Palestine, Richard Falk once again notes  the slick cynicism of those in positions of power in the West  and East who  clothe   the evils of Israeli occupation of Palestine  in  what Richard Falk  beautifully describes as “oily eupehemisms”, but which  in  my homeland we would simply call  “weasel  words”: i.e. cloaking evil  in nice words to  ensure  our privileged place is not compromised.

The  murder, theft, torture   and terror that  Palestinians have had to  ensure at  the hands of an occupation  government that has been  wholeheartedly supported  in their  70 years of genocide by  every  Western government, has been  completely unfettered . However just  as with apartheid South Africa, and  the wholehearted Western  support for   a “good”  white government “battling the darkies”; the reality of the despotism  of  this  undisputed pure and simple   rascism, is finally hitting home to  many in  the West.

Now that the tide is slowing turning, and Western populations are progressively becoming to  realise the enormity of these  human  rights violations  by  “poor little Israel”, we have increasing numbers of those governments now cynically attempting  to  divert the tide of public opinion by recognising   Palestine as an independent state. In its current  geographical  boundaries , which  have  been progressively sliced  and walled away by  the Israeli  occupation every  year, Palestine  is a completely nonviable state entity.

Because of the actions of  the Israeli military  and their government  over  this 70  years of depredation,  a single state solution is now the only answer. A single state where all  its occupants have equal  rights, where lands stolen over the past 70  years are restored, where  Palestinians forcibly  exiled have full  right of return and full  compensation from  those who  have destroyed their livelihoods, homes, orchards  and family members.

Maybe then the oily euphemisms can  be replaced with truth  and honesty.

Postscript

Here, we  have  a most wonderful  example ( were it not so  appalling and disgusting) commentary from  an Israeli apologist supreme, a David P Goldman  who argues , with such  authencity, that  all  those Gazan  women and children murdered by Israeli  soldiers in  their last onslaught  against the ghetto of Gaza, did so because Hamas  forced them to  stand up  and be bombed shot and strafed . Oh those Palestinians brought it on themselves didn’t they  Mr Goldman?

Read the account of “Jerusalem Day ” this year from  Electronic Intifada or see the resulting “Death to  Arabs” march  by  Israeli  children

And for those who  may  doubt the  barbarism of the Israeli  ongoing assault on Palestine and its tiny Gaza enclave-it may be useful  to  read the  testimonials of Israeli  soldiers in their recent  “Protective Edge” or “Stalwart Cliff” assault on Gaza here  at  Breaking the Silence

And, let us never forget, there are many  Jewish  voices internationally  resisting the Zionist  agenda of subjugation of occupied peoples- particularly the Jewish Voices for Peace movement

And a further piece of evidence of the  now desperate  responses from  those attempting to shore up  the  sordid reputation of the Israeli  occupation forces, from  the Israeli  newspaper Haaretz, noting among other points that:  A new website is publicizing the identities of pro-Palestinian student activists to prevent them from getting jobs after they graduate from college. But the website is keeping its own backers’ identity a secret. “It is your duty to ensure that today’s radicals are not tomorrow’s employees,” a female narrator intones in a slick video posted to the website’s YouTube account. Called Canary Mission, the site has posted profiles of dozens of students and recent graduates, alongside those of well-known activists like Omar Barghouti, founder of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement…..

Je suis …. une Charlie?

Firstly, it needs to be unequivocally stated that  any  murder, violence or threats of violence  need to  be condemned, and repeatedly  condemned, until  such  actions no  longer occur on this planet.  Violence in any form is a primitive and non-productive way of achieving one’s aims.  Because human beings are  predominantly social  beings,  intra-species violence  cannot create long-term positive outcomes for either party.

The killings by  religious extremists  of Charlie Hebdo’s cartoonists/ journalists and subsequent deaths in other parts of Paris, purportedly because  those cartoonist’s denigrated the Prophet, are an abomination, and certainly appear on the face of it, to be designed to  inhibit   further ridiculing of Islam, or more probably, to  incite   disenfranchised  white  males to  commit crimes against   local  Muslim populations to again  encourage French muslims to  rise against   the French  state.

But there are, in my view, three things to  consider here:

Nous sommes hypocrites from https://pbs.twimg.com/media/B7J15OGCAAMrB1F.jpg:large
Nous sommes hypocrites from https://pbs.twimg.com/media/B7J15OGCAAMrB1F.jpg:large

One, is the  equity of the Western public and media response to  these killings in comparison  with  the ongoing murders of thousands  of people in the Middle East by  Western  state war-machines.    Just  one example of this hypocritical  perspective is  the disgusting and appalling  treatment of Palestinians by  the Israeli  state to  which  every  Western  country  has not only turned a blind eye in  the last  67  years, but almost all  have   actively supported the ongoing atrocities against  that imprisoned population.  Where are the “je suis une Palestinian” mass rallies I wonder? or where were those demonstrators when the United States  for instance delivered “targeted strikes’  into  the hotel rooms of    Al Jazeera  journalists  while they  were staying  in Baghdad in the second Iraq War ? These organised Parisian  mass rallies,  with  their  identical  laser printed placards, smack  of hypocrisy , selective judgement and useful  scapegoating.

JesuiunePalestinian

Secondly, why  is the media so  keen to portray  these killings as organised, premeditated killings by   well-trained terrorists?. Losing your ID card in the getaway car does not particularly strike me as the work  of  a well-honed  hit -squad. More than likely (as with so  many other “terrorist” attacks) , these pathetic young men  were likely supported and encouraged by   (in this case) French intelligence services.  And before you  snarl  about “conspiracy  theories”, it is worth noting that much of   the “terrorist” activity during the French/Algerian war was in  fact  undertaken by French  intelligence;  they  are no strangers to  false flag operations. As The Intercept notes, many Western “law enforcement” agencies have provenly been active in the past few years  in  recruiting and fomenting “terrorist plots for their own ends.

This blog has noted many times the  multitude of advantages to  state security apparatus of hyping up  some “existential” threat  to  the population.  And if, as some reports suggest, the killers had recently been in Syria fighting with the rebels, then they  are most certainly  the product  of Western   tactical  and resource support for anti-Syrian government rebels.

This attack  also comes at a convenient time, when the President of France ,  the inept ‘socialist’  Francoise Hollande, appeared to be weakening in  his resolve to  support U.S. demands for continued sanctions against  Russia because of the  deleterious impacts on  the French  economy of those sanctions.

Thirdly, Charlie Hebdo’s cartoonists were, and are, hardly  the epitome of Western liberal tolerance and fair-play. Their cartoons are often racist, and inflammatory. That is of course, no  excuse for violence against  such  bigots, but neither does it provide a rationale to  eulogise such people.  Western democratic values presume that  everyone has the right to insult anyone  on the basis of their actions or beliefs, with  the opportunity to  address  outstanding concerns in  a court of law.  This is largely a civilised approach to  working through  dis-harmony: one to which  Western governments  publicly  subscribe to in the media, while  in reality  wreaking indiscriminate destruction and murder in other parts of the globe. The assumption of a  “free” media in the West, is  however, by and large, true.  Notwithstanding  Slate’s narrative that   “despite its 18th-century constitutional provenance, the First Amendment did not play a significant role in U.S. law until the second half of the 20th century. The First Amendment did not protect anarchists, socialists, Communists, pacifists, and various other dissenters when the U.S. government cracked down on them, as it regularly did during times of war and stress, non libelous  anti-government points of view, are  in most cases, allowed free dissemination. Western governments rely on the fact  that   wide spread dissemination of news requires large amounts of  financial resources. Those  financial resources, by definition, come from  those who  support the status-quo. Non status-quo points of view are therefore in the vast minority and largely invisible to  the public.  Status-quo  views,  even when  blatantly  and obviously lies, can  steam-roll  the public to  accept them  as truth through  the sheer volume and multiple sources of the “un-truths”.  George Monbiot’s  recent  examples on Canadian  and UK media’s “selective journalism” illustrates this argument well.

Charlie Hebdo  journalism falls into  that category of being some what  right -wing and subtly supporting the  conservative status-quo, with  simplistic  judgements of those who  are different from  “us”. Interestingly however, Stéphane Charbonnier, who was murdered in the attack, described the newspaper’s positions in 2012 as left-wing, secular, and atheist.

As noted in the Common Dreams article below. As the late great Molly Ivins said, “Satire is traditionally the weapon of the powerless against the powerful. I only aim at the powerful. When satire is aimed at the powerless, it is not only cruel — it’s vulgar.”

I for one, am not  a “Charlie”.

 

 

Links

http://aanirfan.blogspot.co.nz/2015/01/mossad-attacks-paris.html

http://www.occurrencesforeigndomestic.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/Madsen-on-Hebdo-false-flag-clues.pdf

Who Profits from Killing Charlie? -Pepe Escobar

I Will Grieve. I Will Laugh. But I Am Not Charlie

15 Signs The Charlie Hebdo Attack Was A False Flag

Latest FBI Claim of Disrupted Terror Plot Deserves Much Scrutiny and Skepticism

In Solidarity With a Free Press: Some More Blasphemous Cartoons

Freedom Rider: Charlie Hebdo: “Je Suis White People”

 

 

The Funny Little Ways of Western Governments…

(a shortened version of this  post was rejected  as a letter to  the editor of my local newspaper….)

The ongoing media and political  frenzy  about the sudden  emergence of ISIS as the new international  terrorist  threat would be laughable if it were not tragic for those  who  stand in  the path of both  ISIS and  the Western  military “response”.
The reality is that  ISIS, like most of the previous terrorist threats before them, are Western  and  Arabian Gulf state creations.
As with  Osama bin Laden before them (funded if not trained by  the CIA to fight the Soviets in Afghanistan) , the members of ISIS have been trained, financed and equipped  by  the US, the UK, France and Saudi Arabia, Turkey   and Qatar to  fulfill  other agendas;  namely  the dismemberment of functioning middle eastern states who  cannot be relied upon to agree to  US demands; eg Palestine, Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Yemen and  Syria .  This  trail  of failed states, brought about first  by Western funded terrorism  and then by Western aerial bombing campaigns, has brought death,  destruction, starvation  and  fear to  their populations  with no  positive  outcome in  sight. While Western governments  will deny their direct  involvement with  ISIS and pretend they  are financing “moderate” islamacists, the reality is that those  men in  the training camps in Turkey and  Jordan  run  by  western governments and Gulf dictatorships, are indeed one and the same men  who  sign up  to  ISIS or who  share resources, kidnapped  people and equipment with ISIS.
See this delightful  CNN interview of former NATO Supreme Allied Commander Gen. Wesley Clark, who  clearly doesn’t have a clue about anything much at  all..

For Turkey particularly, the opportunity to  both eliminate the Kurdish  threat  within  its own borders using ISIS, whilst   enabling the ‘necessity’ for  ‘humanitarian’ border corridors and no-fly zones  along the Syrian/Turkey border which  can then lead to  further incursions by Turkish  or even NATO  troops into Syria , is a double win for the Turkish  government.
For Israel, actively supporting  ISIS with  bombardment of Syrian government position on the Golan  Heights and  shooting down  Syrian   military  aircraft attacking ISIS military  positions,  furthers their long-term agenda of destabilizing any  Arab (or Iranian) state that  could potentially threaten Israel’s   territorial  integrity at  some time in the future.
For Western governments and their ‘intelligence’ agencies, hyping up  the threat  of ISIS terrorists re-invading the West and blowing up  defenseless white people, is a wonderful  method to  maintain  the level  of fear and hysteria in the public’s mind. and hence the rationale for more and more  “defence” purchases,  and more  surveillance and control of those who  do not abide by  the corporate agenda.  A new “thirty-year war” by  the U.S. is promised against   a rag-tag bunch of psychopaths and mercenaries. The reality is  that turning off the tap  of funding from  Western supported agencies, closing the supply routes and “rat-lines”,  and shutting down  the training camps would turn current ISIS victories into  a rout within  weeks.
 For Saudi Arabia and Qatar, the dream is  the predominance of  the Sunni   Wahhabi  ideology in the middle east  and beyond,  the destruction of  Shi-ite Iran, and ultimately the elimination of the Shi-ite sect .   ‘Perhaps’ ironically,  it is those Shi-ite ‘terrorists’ ;  Syria, Iran,  and Hezbollah who  are actually making the difference in  eliminating the threat  from  ISIS.
This cynical reality is  well-known to  most of the middle eastern public . The destruction of those states and their infrastructure  who  do not  toe the Western party line, and who  have resources than  can  be appropriated by  Western  companies, or who  might possibly threaten Israel’s hegemony in the region at  some future date, is the  grim  reality for the men women and children who inhabit those desolated countries  and who therefore must  be made to  suffer.
Links