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
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://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
The recent election by the British Labour Party members of a new person to head the party, may foreshadow a new groundswell of public opinion to negate the years of right-wing propaganda that has enveloped many Western party structures in the past few decades. The Labour Parties and Social Democrats of Europe had become bought enterprises- vehicles for corporate business to make shady deals, rather than political parties representing those who have been disadvantaged, and the factory working class.
While the gap between rich and poor across the Western world has widened significantly (none more so in my own country of New Zealand), as a result of these neo-con or “New Labour” business policies, we have also seen a marked decline in the industrial bases of all of those countries ( save Germany), with industrial output outsourced, or simply acquired by businesses predominantly in China. That decline in western industrial production has resulted in a marked decline in the numbers of the “working class” (ie factory workers). Instead, the service industries (primarily tourism, the hospitality industry, and the provision of support to the disadvantaged) have blossomed, but the collective power of their respective trade unions, has not. Thus the collective capacity to negotiate or confront the widening economic gap, has dwindled as the need has become greater.
Along with increasing disparity; perhaps even because of it, we have seen the power of media manipulators who represent the rich, consolidated. The media empires controlled by people like Rupert Murdoch, Michael Bloomberg ,Ted Turner, and more recently the Qatari ruling dictatorship via Al Jazeera, now have the capacity to bombard the public day and night using multiple media. That barrage of media is unremittingly designed to favour the perspectives of the rich. While western democracies still retain some capacity to deliver independent and non-partisan news; that capacity is a minute proportion compared to the deluge of “news” delivered by the media moguls. Thus the mogul’s news is seen by the general public as “mainstream”, “orthodox” and not “radical”, and somehow because of that, the real legitimate news.
So, returning to Jeremy Corbyn: will he be able to withstand the certain onslaught of “mainstream” media condemning him as a ‘radical’, ‘communist’, ‘anti-semitic’, ‘terrorist’, ’crazy’, ‘neolithic’, ‘out-of-touch –with –reality’, ‘has-been’ politician. That war has already begun in the U.K. media. See the Daily Mail’s most recent diatribe here . Or the U.K. Conservative Party’s somewhat bizarre atempt at scaremongering below.
http://twitter.com/Conservatives/status/642765041708740608/photo/1?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
And will Mr Corbyn stick to his promises should be come to power in Britain? Or will he, like the Syriza Party in Greece, fold under the intense pressures of other more “business-friendly” governments? If he can indeed keep to his political promises, and be elected as Prime Minster of England in the UKs general election of Thursday 7 May 2020, and not be pulled to pieces by the mainstream media dogs in the interim, he will have done our international democratic landscape a great service; and potentially as service to our environment and an end to senseless wars (senseless other than to line the pockets of politicians, war manufacturers and international re-development agencies) . May he be one of the first markers of a return to true democratic pluralism rather than oligarchy, along with the demoralised Syrizas of Greece, the Podemos of Spain and the other radical truly left-wing groups re-forming all over Europe.
I note with pleasure Mr Corbyn’s first political gesture on his election:- the singing of “The International” (completely tunelessly), in a London pub before his foray out to greet his fellow celebrants of his victory outside Parliament.
The International (The Red Flag) (first chorus)
The people’s flag is deepest red,
It shrouded oft our martyred dead,
And ere their limbs grew stiff and cold,
Their hearts’ blood dyed its every fold.
So raise the scarlet standard high,
Beneath its shade we’ll live and die,
Though cowards flinch and traitors sneer,
We’ll keep the red flag flying here.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Red_Flag#cite_note-5“>[5]
However, this return to representation of the disadvantaged, the marginalised and the impoverished must be matched by a new understanding of the urgent need of our species to co-exist with all the others on this planet. The old fight over the means of production (capitalism versus socialism/communism) must be replaced by one which questions at every turn, our need to produce and “grow” countries’ economies. A sustainable world for all the remaining species on this planet , along with an end to all wars, is an incredibly urgent goal for humanity at this late, late hour.
Links
http://gordoncampbell.scoop.co.nz/2015/09/14/gordon-campbell-on-corbyn-trump-and-outsider-politics/
http://www.newstatesman.com/politics/uk/2015/09/epic-challenges-facing-jeremy-corbyn-labour-leader
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/sep/15/leftwing-evangelical-christianity-corbyn
The swirl of humanity across the globe has been a constant since ancient times.
In my little corner of the world, the traversings and re-travsersings of the Polynesians across the wide Pacific, travelling thousands of miles in their double hulled canoes , was a constant over hundreds of years , settling both inhabited and uninhabited islands .
In Eurasia and across Africa, the flow of humanity has ocurred for millennia. Our species has been wanderers from our first arrival on this planet as a specific primate species, as the International Organisation for Migration website attests.
Having said that, we know that wars and natural disasters create the necessity for families to flee to safer ground, and safer countries. In addition the gross discrepancies in living standards between various populations across the globe creates a drive for those who consider themselves disadvantaged to travel to more prosperous environments.
None of this would be unremarkable -indeed it is an obvious response for any human to move to a better place- we are indeed nomads on this planet. What makes it remarkable at this moment are the obvious drivers behind the disasters and impoverished societies of those immigrants; and the fact that most of those drivers are created by the very countries the immigrants want to migrate to!
The devastation of Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya and Syria – to name just a few of the countries bombarded by Western countries; predominantly the U.S., U.K., France , Italy, and to some degree Germany, with a few tag-alongs from other Western European and non-European western governments elsewhere, is the most significant cause for the huge influx of refugees and migrants from the Middle East into Europe. The decision by the West to support the anti-government groups in Syria prolonged what would likely have been a short but brutal war by the Syrian dictatorship against a few western oriented groups and many more salafist sunni extremist groups. The decision by the U.S., the U.K. France and its proxies in Turkey, Israel, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Turkey (not to mention Israel) to actively fund arm and train these terrorist groups, has created a life of hell for much of the Syrian population. unfortunately for the population of Yemen, the sea and land blockades by Saudi forces and their “allies” means those desperate Yemen peoples have no chance of escape from the war hell imposed by the Gulf dictatorships.
It is likely that, just as in Iraq and Libya the creation of totally destabilized middle east territories with no central governing structure and ripe for total exploitation, was exactly the intent of these Western governments. Now the chickens have come home to roost. While we know Western “intelligence” agencies are in fact far from being “intelligent”, we can anticipate that, even they, after first seeing the catastrophe that Iraq has become as a result of Western sanctions and military intervention, would understand the implications of repeating that exact same process in Libya and Syria. It is a supremely beautiful but vicious irony that those impoverished and desperate people from those brutalized countries are now “invading” the West . Well, that is what mainstream media would have us believe. Recent reports query for instance why suddenly, previously safe refugees in Turkey are now fleeing that country to Europe.
What would seem a just response therefore, would be for those countries involved in the defilement of Middle Eastern countries through war and economic rapacity, to take a commensurate number of refugees into their countries based on their military input into the ravagement of those destroyed environments. The United States will of course have to take many millions of refugees, as will the U.K; followed next by France, the Gulf dictatorships and Israel and some of the other western counties like Canada , Australia and New Zealand.
http://www.cbc.ca/news2/interactives/map-world-refugees/
The BBC link here, gives a more detailed graphical analysis of the source, the routes and European destinations of refugees.
In addition, those western corporations and their complicit governments that have despoiled the vulnerable economies and environments of Africa ad other developing countries around the globe , will make corresponding redress to those countries in the tangible form of infrastructure development, re-development of sustainable agriculture and the return of environments to their former natural states as directed by the populations of those developing countries.
Too much to ask?-
Links
https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2015/09/selective-demonization/
Reports are now coming thick and fast from both the Middle East and from the United Stated sources of the role the United States and its key allies have played in first establishing and then maintaining ISIS, Al Qaeda and numerous other salafist affiliates, under the flimsy guise of them being “moderate” jihadists.
As one more instance of this support, the recent debacle of a defeat for Iraqi troops against ISIS in Ramadi points to the clear decision by United States forces not to conduct airstrikes against ISIS positions, when there was every opportunity to do so., and the US recommendation to the Iraqi government not to deploy Shi-ite militias in Ramadi The United States is now aggrieved that Iranian military players are now directly involved in the re-taking of Ramadi for the Iraqi government .
The consistent intent for United States policy since the Iranian revolution in1979, has been to contain and eliminate any potential threat from Shi-ite groups that might negatively impact on the US supported Persian Gulf (Sunni) dictatorships. The Gulf State dictatorships have consistently demonstrated their unconditional support and loyalty for US and Israeli imperial policies in the region; unlike the Shi-ite states of Iran, Syria and now Iraq, who foolishly prefer a path of self-determination for their peoples.
The usual pack of neocon psychopaths , with John Bolton snarling in the lead, has been to attempt to ramp up the non-existent Iranian nuclear weapon threat, to provide unconditional support for Israeli genocide in Palestine and to support anything , regardless of international law or the rights of humanity, that will extend the United State’s power internationally. If that means using delusional Saudi and Qatari “princes” to find and resource even more psychotic ISIS military leaders,who believe that all Shi-ites must be exterminated; then so be it.
There is clear evidence of an ongoing policy by the neocons to destroy secular Middle East governments ( ie not specifically Sunni oriented governments) like Saddam’s Iraq, Libya, Syria, which can lead on to the ultimate goal for the US, Israel and the Saudis; the destruction of Shi-ite Iran. The Saudi bombardment of Yemen’s Houthi movement and all Yemeni civilians , is just a minor diversion in the larger game plan.
The recent public announcement by the US that it wil be funding training and arming “moderate” Syrian opposition forces to fight the Syrian Assad regime , is one more step in this bizarre and farcical journey of creating monsters to kill them. As has been clearly demonstrated; there is in fact no “moderate” opposition fighters. It is possible that at the beginning of the fight against Assad in the “spontaneous” Arab Spring uprising against him , that there were a few secular and moderate voices, but they have long gone. As this Department of Defence report for 2012 clearly indicates, the US knew well (even 3 years ago) that the Syrian opposition fighters that it supported and continues to support, were almost entirely composed of extremist jihadists and salafist ( anti-Shiite and anti any other non-Sunni sect)
Additional little snippets of the tight connection between Western governments and Middle East terrorist groups can be found in Seamus Milne’s account here. Or the recent post in the Levant Report documenting how the ISIS Leader Omar al-Shishani Fought Under U.S. Umbrella as Late as 2013
But even in these accounts, Western reporters are extremely cautious in ascribing a direct linkage between terror and the West ; one which now undoubtedly exists. Note how key Western governments are now happy to pay ISIS good prices for their stolen Syrian and Iraqi oil.
Or note ex-President of Afghanistan, Hamid Karzai’s view that the U.S is actively taking a two sided approach to creation and destruction of jihadist groups to serve its power interests.
Time and time again we are seeing reports in the mainstream U.S. and U.K. media that ISIS is here to stay for the long term; how hard it will be to eliminate them; and really, things are such a lot better for those people in Iraq, Libya and Syria now that ISIS and its Western subsidised offshoots are there. After all we have “law and order”-never mind that this “law” is an obscene psychopathic one As a “delightful ” example of this obscene Western view on that”Isis isn’t really that bad” -read this article in the U.K. Independent by Richard Barrett (who) was head of counter-terrorism at MI6 before spending nine years as the co-ordinator of the UN’s Al-Qaeda and Taliban Monitoring Team.
What you sow, so shall you reap……
Postscript
A great article on where all that wonderful hardware comes from that ISIS uses at Antiwar.com http://original.antiwar.com/Dan_Sanchez/2015/06/15/where-does-isis-get-those-wonderful-toys/, which rather begs the question; who is training those little psychopaths in all this new hi-tech equipment?
And some additional information from Andrew P Napolitano at antiwar. com brings to the sunlight at least one war equipment ratline managed by Secretary of State Clinton to terrorists in Libya and Syria .
And from Sibel Edmonds, ex-American intelligence operative; a podcast on the role of the U.S. Black-ops community in establishing and maintaining various international terrorist groups
Links
http://journal-neo.org/2015/05/25/washington-confesses-to-backing-questionable-actors-in-syria/
http://rt.com/op-edge/265474-isis-syria-iraq-rebels/
We learned recently from Paris that the Western world is deeply and passionately committed to free expression and ready to march and fight against attempts to suppress it. That’s a really good thing, since there are all sorts of severe suppression efforts underway in the West — perpetrated not by The Terrorists but by the western politicians claiming to fight them.
Read more here
What more do I need to say?
Link
Judicial Watch download of State Dept document 2012
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…..
Richard Falk; ex- U.N. rapporteur for Palestine, writes another beautifully effective and rational analysis of the realities of international law in his blog entitled “Opposing Impunity for Geopolitical Criminality” .
In this of many similar articles from Richard Falk, he exposes the hypocrisy of state entities who proselytize about the rule of law in state conflicts.
The ongoing theme of “victor’s justice” permeates all current and historical rule of international law – that needs to change if we are to see the end to wars and state violence.
Once again we see bombs falling in the middle east; this time on the civilians in Sana the capital of Yemen by Saudi Arabia and their arab coalition friends, with the full support of the United States. 
Once more the mainstream media portrays these bombings as some fair and responsible response to evil aggressors. The reality could not be further from the truth. In reality we see the hereditary dictatorship in Saudi Arabia , which holds to extremist wahhabinist Sunni views, providing logistical support for its Al Qaeda affiliates in Yemen: the home of Al Qaeda, and the original home of the Bin Laden family. The Houthi separatist rebels that the Saudis and their friends are now attacking from the air are no angels themselves, but they in no way equate to the terrorists that the Saudis, and by proxy,the United States and its allies, are supporting in the Yemen. The Saudis and the Arab League have been touting the bombing campaign and the preparation for 40,000 Arab league troops to invade Yemen as the result of Iranian “meddling’ in Yemen to support their fellow Shi-ite brethren ( however the Houthi Zaidi Shi-ite sect is apparently more closely related to Sunni practice than it is to Iranian Shiites’). In reality there is currently no evidence but much speculation about Iranian involvement, with the Houthis themselves denying Iranian involvement.
Gareth Porter provides his usual convincing argument to demonstrate the tenuous Iranian arms link. However the spectre of Iranian hegemony is a very useful tool for both the Saudi and Israeli regimes. The reality again is somewhat different. It is Saudi wahhabi extremism and its grand goal of violently eliminating all other “heretical” Islamic sects, (including the Sunni Sufis who form a large proportion of the Yemen Sunni population) as well as Israeli fears of a rising major middle east power which (unlike the other Gulf states) cannot be bought by the United States, that is prompting this assault on Yemen.
The Houthis have been in danger of fully ousting Al Qaeda from Yemen and therefore had to be forcefully removed as a threat. Be assured that Western intelligence is fully informed of the implications of this invasion, but will not for some months recognise that this new adventure is in fact the beginning of the end of the extremist Saudi regime, with many of their military composed of Yemen nationals not so sympathetic to Wahhabi extremism and its hatred of Shiites and other Muslim sects. The removal of the wahhabist Saudi “monarchy” will remove one of the key drivers for any rationale for the supposed “war on terror” and as such, is something to be feared in Washington and their war industry.
Ironically Iran has proved itself adept in the many middle east wars initiated by the United States and its proxies, at using the confusion and anarchy so created to its advantage . The Saudis and their “allies” have undoubtedly already committed a multitude of war crimes in their bombings of Yemen infrastructure and civilian targets. Those crimes will not be forgotten .
Interestingly the Wall St Journal is clearly (and proudly?) stating that US Command is providing the intelligence and command for Saudi air-strikes in Yemen. Once again this implicates senior US Military and political figures in further war crimes in just another Middle East country. Once again as Pepe Escobar notes; we see the total absurdity of this “War on Terra”.
Postscript
The decision by the U.N Security Council on 14th April 2015, by 13 votes to Russia’s abstention, to condemn the Houthi invasion of southern Yemen, and impose sanctions on the Houthi leadership, is a sad indictment of international politics.
While support for sanctions by the US and UK for their Saudi arms and oil trading partner, was to be expected, most troubling was China’s willingness to support sanctions; this presumably indicates a shift in China’s alliances towards Saudi Arabia as a major oil producer which will then reflect badly on their developing relationship with Iran. This is a serious miscalculation of coming events by the Chinese.
One has also to wonder how these supposedly educated and informed security council members could have failed to notice that , right from the very beginning, that this was a genocidal war; a war by the Saudis that conformed to no international agreements to protect civilians. But of course; this was indeed all known to those representatives who voted to support the Saudi airstrikes. A savage indictment indeed of our international processes designed to protect civilians.
And a lovely lucid article on the role of Iran in all this Persian Gulf game playing from Flynt Leverett and Hillary Mann Leverett at Consortium News…: the wonderful “turn facts on their head and make them lies” type of gambit from the Saudis and Israelis..
And, as of 20th June 2015, a tranche of top secret Saudi Foreign Ministry files released by Wikileaks, showing the less than savoury role played by the Saudi hereditary dictatorship in the affairs of the Gulf and beyond..
Links
http://rt.com/op-edge/244585-yemen-conflict-saudi-arabia-intervention/
http://disquietreservations.blogspot.co.nz/2015/03/putting-sanctions-on-saudi-arabia.html
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/graham-e-fuller/decipher-yemen_b_6965564.html
A Call to Resist Saudi (and US) Aggression in Yemen
http://www.thenation.com/article/203225/call-resist-saudi-and-us-aggression-yemen?utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=socialflow#
Al-Qaeda Seizes Yemen Port, Frees Over 300 Prisoners
Is the Whole “War on Terror” a Fraud?
Appendix:
Peace vigils calling for increased humanitarian assistance and diplomatic support for Middle East peace processes, and opposing the military deployment to Iraq, will be held around the country from Hokianga to Dunedin at 5pm tomorrow, Thursday 5 March, coordinated by Peace Movement Aotearoa. The details of each vigil are included below and available online at https://www.facebook.com/events/757364991025571 and http://www.converge.org.nz/pma/iraq2015.htm – please share the links, thank you. The details of vigils in other towns and cities will be added to those pages when confirmed.
If there isn’t a vigil in your area, you are invited to gather friends and family at 5pm on 5 March, light a candle for peace, then make your support visible by taking a photo of yourself or your gathering holding the ‘Military deployment in Iraq? Not in our name’ message and posting it on our Facebook page at http://www.facebook.com/PeaceMovementAotearoa The ‘Not in our name’ poster is available in colour at http://www.converge.org.nz/pma/nion-col.pdf and in black and white at http://www.converge.org.nz/pma/nion-b&w.pdf If you are not a Facebook member, please send your photo to Peace Movement Aotearoa email pma@xtra.co.nz with ‘Peace vigil photo’ in the subject line of your message and we will post it for you.
There is also the opportunity to add your name to the Open letter on military deployment to Iraq at http://www.converge.org.nz/pma/iraq-ol15.htm
New Antarctica 