The recent article in the Guardian which notes that the world has the “worst cascade of human rights setbacks in our lifetimes’, focuses on a rather selective set of human rights abuses. While no-one in the West at least, can argue that Russia is a ‘selective’ democracy and the Chinese Communist Party (while supported by the vast majority of mainland Chinese) rules the country with a strong and often repressive hand, those excesses pale into insignificance when we look at the human rights abuses perpetrated by many Western states across the globe.
Wars of aggression in Afghanistan, Syria, Libya, Iraq and Yemen (let alone their unconditional support for Israel’s slow genocide of the Palestinian people), by the West are indisputably gross human rights transgressions which require the U.N. to demand , on behalf of those populations, compensation from the aggressor. The U.N. is silent….
While Uighur ‘re-education’ camps, which significantly impact on some Uighurs’ human rights, certainly exist in Xinyang (China says these are to reduce the risk of Uighur Muslim extremism and terrorism promoted by Turkey, the Saudis and Western intelligence groups); current evidence tends to suggest that statements about genocide are a fabrication by those very groups.
The Uighur genocide stories can perhaps be likened to the U.S. state political propaganda theatre of American POWs captured by the Koreans and Vietnamese in the United States’ genocidal colonial wars against those two countries. No solid evidence exists of genocide of Uighurs, but we can make up a really good story with ‘anecdotal evidence’ and ‘statistics’ and newspaper headlines …..
In response to U.N. criticisms of Navalny’s political party in Russia being forcibly disbanded, and Hong Kong protesters and their Western funded protests militantly arguing for separatism from mainland China, we may yet have to see how Western countries respond to foreign countries funding political parties advocating separatism and sanctions of their own countrymen, on their own patch….
Indeed the continuing and increasing use of sanctions by Western countries against those countries they wish to destabilise is surely another key example of breaches of human rights of those populations. Cutting off access to food, energy and medical supplies and ‘withholding’ ( i.e stealing) money in state bank accounts from countries like Iran, Venezuela and Cuba are blatant abuses of those populations ‘ human rights.
As Telesure notes about Nicaragua: Human Rights Watch… has been notorious for taking a pro-State Department line on Latin America and even contains former State Department personnel on its board of directors. The former (the Bianca Jagger Human Rights Foundation ) , meanwhile, is led by an anti-government partisan who supports imperialist sanctions on her own country. As The Canary reported in December 2018, Jagger has not only expressed support for the crippling US sanctions already in place but even called for the European Union, Canada, and other Latin American nations to issue their own set of sanctions as well.
And perhaps we could look at the multiple and gross human rights violations committed by the West’s ‘colonial’ troops in Africa in the past decade, or the ongoing catastrophe in South and Central America caused by the United States’ brutal Monroe Doctrine tactics.
Western led statements supporting greater freedom and democracy in Russia and China and other autocratic states that don’t kneel to Western business interests, should indeed be a wonderful ideal and a catalyst for freedom for all, were it not for that fact that those very Western governments- particularly the U.S., the U.K., Canada, Australia and some other Western European countries, are also the countries that have waged savage wars across the third world to promote their own ‘interests’ ( i.e. money).
For some unknown reason, those countless wars of aggression by Western and predominantly ‘white’ countries; along with indiscriminant sanctions, torture, drone murders and the promotion of extremism in other countries, do not appear on the list by the U.N. advocate for human rights- one might wonder why that is?
Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison is apparently incensed about Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian’s posting of an image of an Australian soldier slitting the throat of a young Afghan boy.
Why such a report about murders and abuse should be a surprise to anyone, is a mystery. Western countries have prided themselves on their superiority to the ‘less than pink’ skinned races of the world in their centuries’ old thrust to control the world’s resources for their exclusive benefit. Such superiority extends to a war culture that dehumanises the ‘enemy’ as ‘gooks’, ‘rag-heads’ and the ‘yellow peril’, among many other perjorative names..
Australia and the Western media at large depict their country as an innocent victim of ‘Chinese bullying’, ‘coercion’ and ‘aggression’, through China’s use of tarriffs, border controls and monitoring of import goods’ quality, to press its argument that Australia needs to learn which side its bread is buttered on.
China is particularly annoyed with Australia foolishly following the Trump propaganda line that COVID19 is a Chinese communist government threat to the world. Startling, when it is China who has done most to show the world how to limit infection spread…
Australia’s former finance minister, Joe Hockey, labeled China’s President Xi’s actions “economic coercion.” As Hockey told Bloomberg in a Nov. 3 interview: “That’s not the China that I knew when I was treasurer” for two years until September 2015. This “immature action,” Hockey says, is “not the behavior of a great power.”.
One might be forgiven for laughing at Joe Hockey’s ‘belief’ that Western ‘great powers’ never use extortion, threat and violence to get their economic way. The creation of economic sanctions and wars of aggression on countries the West does not like, is a time honoured tradition- not the sole prerogative of Donald Trump!
One should therefore not be surprised by a Chinese (and North Korean, Vietnamese, Syrian, Iraqi, Libyan etc etc ) call in the future to demand reparations for all those countries Australia and the other Five Eyes and Fourteen Eyes countries ( In addition to the Anglo-Saxon countries, the group includes Italy, Spain, Belgium, the Netherlands, Denmark, France, Sweden and Norway), that have ‘bullied’ with war and sanctions over the past 60 years- the genocidal wars in Korea and Vietnam come to mind; let alone Iraq, Libya or Syria…..and recently American sponsored atrocities have come to light….
That Australia and New Zealand continue to defend their positions as ex-colonial powers allied to racist and war-mongering Western European states and the U.S., is no surprise; but it does give an indication of the intelligence and humanity of their political and ‘intelligence’ communities, and their capacity to grasp where the future lies.
As the tragi- comedy trial of Julian Assange in London wends its way to its inevitable conclusion: (extradition to the United States); the day to day accounts of those few people (noted below in the links) permitted by the Court to view ‘proceedings’, shows a client British state determined to kowtow to the United States, regardless of the cost to its intended credibility as an upholder of international human rights.
We are reminded of Gilbert & Sullivan’s comic-opera, ‘Trial by Jury’ of Victorian times in its absurdities: from the bombastic prosecutor, to the Judge who chooses to pretend the terrors inflicted by her government simply do not exist,
The contrast between Assange’s courage and morals in the face of the “Exceptional Empire”, and the duplicity of the mainstream media in either not reporting about the trial or continuing to excuse the depravity of the U.K and U.S. court systems, could not be more complete.
And once Assange is extradited and sent to the Eastern District of Virginia, where thousands of CIA staff are based at Langley, where traditionally “whistleblowers’ are tried and prosecuted and sent to jail , we will once again be reminded of those great freedoms we posses in the West- (provided we toe the line).
The longer Assange languishes (and perhaps dies) in some American prison for ‘terrorists” ( perhaps he can be sent to Guantanamo Bay so any actions against can be ‘extra-judicial’?) the more the United States “Shining City of the Hill will be exposed as the house of horrors it truly is.
And one last thought. How is it that the great ‘democratic’ institutions of the U.S. and U.K. government have spent millions on hunting down and imprisoning Assange for reporting the truth about their crimes, and not one dollar or pound has been spent in tracking down, trying and imprisoning those ‘patriots’ who have engaged in these war crimes by either those governments or their mainstream media?
The current actions of the U.K. and U.S. governments, in trying to suppress and punish Assange and Wikileaks, have demonstrated very clearly that those governments and state apparatus continue to fully support the very genocide, mass murder and torture that Wikileaks has exposed to the world.
Lieutenant-General Soleimani; leader of Iran’s Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC) Qods Force, was, as Soleimani himself expected, assassinated by United States drone or helicopter rockets on the morning of Friday 3rd January 2020, while leaving Baghdad Airport by car after a civilian flight in to Baghdad from Tehran to meet with the Iraqi prime minister.
Soleimani was revered by many Shiite Muslims around the world for his military successes in helping Shiite Hezbollah protect and defeat an Israeli invasion of Lebanon (part of Israel’s ‘grand’ strategy of building a mythic “Greater Israel”), but more importantly, for his work in both Iraq and Syria coordinating the largely successful battle against Al Qaeda in Syria (or HTS) and ISIS (otherwise known as Daesh).
As Iran has consistently and publicly stated, and the evidence confirms, both Al Qaeda and ISIS, were not only funded and supported by the lunatic Wahhabist Saudis, but also by the United States and other Western countries, particularly the U.K. (long a mercenary supporter of the Wahhabist Saudi tribe since Lawrence of Arabia in the First World War. Also note the very apt comment from UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson that Soleimani was a ‘threat to our interests”.
The Wahhabist Muslim sect believes that all non Sunni Muslims are ‘heretics’ and should either be forcibly converted or killed . General Soleimani was therefore following the lineage of the great Shiite Imams of medieval times, in protecting all Shiites -this time from the scourge of Wahhabism.
In collaboration with the Russians, a revitalized Syrian Arab Army (Assad’s forces), a re-armed Iraqi Army, and Shi-ite militias under his command, Soleimani had at the time of his death largely succeeded in defeating ISIS in Syria and Iraq. The jaws are rapidly closing in on the remnants of Al Qaeda, HTS, ISIS and other Saudi and Western backed jihadists in Idlib in Northern Syria and Iraq. There is real fear in Washington “intelligence” circles that mainstream media will finally be forced to expose the direct linkage between Washington and the head-chopping jihadists.
The recent death in Ankara of James Le Mesurier, leader of the White Helmets, supposedly humanitarian aid workers in Syria, but in reality well funded propaganda units for the jihadist groups and their backers, is likely to be directly linked to the imminent exposure of the White Helmets as fakes, and the revelation of Western governments’ manipulation and likely bribery of senior staff at the OPCW to create a ‘scientific finding” that the Assad government had gassed civilians. Western governments will consequently be finally forced to acknowledge their appalling collaboration and support of pyschopathic jihadist killers in the Middle East- all in the name of oil and support for the Israeli entity.
American intelligence agencies consequently panicked and reasoned that a decisive provocation against Iran, would ensure that Iran would ‘over-react”, and could thus be seen by the world as the crazed religious pariah state that the United States has always tried to portray Iran as being since the Islamic revolution.
It might be useful at this point to list just some of the legitimate grievances Iran has against the United States.
The arming and support for Saddam Hussein’s attempted invasion of Iran which cost at least a million Iranian lives (and in which ferocious war, Soleimani learnt his battle skills)
The shooting down of a civilian Iranian Airbus A300 by a US warship in the Persian Gulf , with 290 resultant deaths. There was no official apology from the United States although some compensation was paid out belatedly.
Ongoing promotion of Iran as a pariah state at the UN and with other Western governments, which resulted in severe sanctions and the deaths of many innocent Iranians because of Iran’s non existent nuclear weapons programme.
Unconditional support by the United States of the Wahhabist Saudi clan who have funded and managed Sunni jihadist groups, killing many Shi-ite across the world, but particularly in Iraq, Syria and Yemen.
United States unconditional support for the Israeli entity, in their desire to create a “Greater Israel” by the theft and extremely brutal occupation of land from (largely Sunni) Palestinians, Shi-ite Lebanese and Syrians.
Perhaps it might therefore be understandable why Iran’s leadership calls the United States, the “Great Satan”.
Iran is, unlike many of the United States’ allies in the Middle East, a democracy of sorts. However the rules for democracy are managed and controlled at a central level by its Shi-ite Islamist leaders, and democratic choice is very limited (not too dissimilar in fact to the U.S. presidential election process).
While there are undoubtedly many in Iran who long for what Western democracy appears to promise, most are also fiercely patriotic; proud of their many thousands of year’s history as Persians. Faced with ‘existential” external threats, as Iranians have been since the Islamist revolution in 1979, few Iranians would support an overthrow of their current government.
Soleimani’s death was mourned by hundreds of thousands of Shiites in Iraq and Iran. Memorials in Tehran had to be postponed because of the size of the crowds mourning him in other cities in Iran, but the most crucial memorial was held for him in the Iranian city of Qom . “Qom is considered holy by ShiʿaIslam, as it is the site of the shrine of Fatimah bint Musa, sister of Imam Ali ibn Musa Rida[6] (Persian Imam Reza, 789–816 CE). The city is the largest center for Shiʿa scholarship in the world, and is a significant destination of pilgrimage, with around twenty million pilgrims visiting the city every year..” -Wikipedia.
The red Shi-ite flag of the blood of the martyrs and revenge, was raised in Qom at his funeral procession. According to local reports it is the first time in the Qom mosque’s history – a holy site since the Middle Ages – that the red flag has been raised over the building.
It should be noted that the raising of the red-flag over Qom is not simply an Iranian government contrivance, but a religious appeal to all Shi-ite believers around the world to avenge Soleimani’s death -one who battled with the forces of evil to save Shi-ites.
Albawaba .com notes that ‘Last night Khamanei and Rouhani consoled Soleimani’s family.
‘Who is going to avenge my father’s blood?’ One of the commander’s daughters asked.
In response, Rouhani promised her that ‘everyone will take revenge’ and assured her as she wept, ‘we will, we will avenge his blood, you don’t worry.’
‘The Americans did not realize what a grave mistake they have made. They will suffer the consequences of such criminal measure not only today, but also throughout the years to come,’ Rouhani said.
‘This crime committed by the US will go down in history as one of their unforgettable crimes against the Iranian nation.’
Is it possible that United States intelligence officials were unaware of the paramount importance of Soleimani to the 112 million people in the Shiite world? Did they not understand that his killing would provoke a desire for revenge against the United States which would be unstoppable?
No matter whether President Trump carries out his threats to bomb 52 targets in Iran including “cultural sites”. (which would of course be a war crime, but nothing new to the United States, which has been guilty of horrendous war crimes and genocide in so many parts of the world since the U.S began: see our blog article; America’s Exceptional Interest in Wars) or whether the United States might lose its residual sanity and nuke Tehran, the revenge would continue .
The United State’s only option now is to seek forgiveness from the Iranians and negotiate a deal which allows their soldiers to leave safely from their many many bases circling Iran.
In just one example, the United State’s main military base in the Persian Gulf is located on the island of Bahrain. Bahrain is ruled by an autocratic and brutal Sunni ‘prince” over a population which is 62% Shi-ite. It would not require any intervention on the part of the Iranians for a rebellion to once again boil over to depose the Bahrain Al Khalifa royal family and for Shi-ites in Bahrain to destroy the U.S. base there and its occupants.
While Western media choose to portray any actions by Shi-ite groups around the world as being by “Iranian proxies”, Shi-ite groups, whether military of otherwise, will seek to avenge the death of Soleimani; they have now been called to do so.
It would be timely for someone in Washington who is sane, and with more than the level of intelligence currently displayed, to seek the mediation skills of someone with credibility to both sides, like Russian Federation Foreign Minister Lavrov- who may be able to help forestall what currently looks like the inevitable tragedy for the 60,000 plus United States soldiers stationed in the Middle East, as a result of General Soleimani’s killing.
As Craig Murray has eruditely noted, even the greatest of scoundrels who die, have wives, children and other people who love and care for them and who mourn their loss.
What however we do get from that obituary is an acknowledgment of the close ties that Le Mesurier and MI6 had and continue to have with Israeli secret police and military in brutally putting down what Churlov describes as the Gaza “insurgency” ( a curious but telling name for an uprising against the disgusting barbaric ( and internationally illegal) Israeli occupation and imprisonment of Gaza’s population). But again; this should not come as a surprise; we know the U.K. intelligence community’s and UK Military’s longstanding and ongoing involvement with corruption, torture and murder across the Middle East , and its mercenary longstanding involvement with the Saudi regime’s jihadist terror and genocidal campaigns against Shiites.
If you believe Martin Churlov, Le Mesurier was able to somehow mysteriously access large amounts of Western government money to establish and maintain and provide Western logistics to a band of humanitarian workers who operated in areas where the officially recognised Syrian Red Cross could not access because the jihadists would have killed them.
In Wikipedia we are told (without any hint of sarcasm) that: The Times reported that Le Mesurier was “the subject of an intense black propaganda campaign for years by pro-Assad activists and Russian diplomats”.[28][29]The New York Times reported that the group and Le Mesurier were the target of “unfounded conspiracy theories”.[3] It was alleged that Le Mesurier’s British Army background meant that he was effectively operating as a British state agent.[30]Janine di Giovanni has written the claim he was a spy lacks any evidence.[31] The accusations, from those who are opposed to any Western involvement in Syria and are backers of the Assad regime, include bloggers connected to the English-language Russian media who claim the White Helmets and Le Mesurier were intending to push for regime change in Syria.[32][33]
One of the White Helmet’s key functions ( unlike any other internationally recognised humanitarian mission), was to publicise itself and the supposed military actions of the Syrian Arab Army (SAA) under Assad. The recent expose of reports made by the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) after the allegations by the White Helmets of SAA chemical weapons use in Douma, clearly show corruption at a senior level in the OPCW to manipulate evidence and come to conclusions not supported by their investigators .
Le Mesurier died mysteriously; somehow falling from his balcony at his home in Ankara to his death in the middle of the night without his wife hearing anything. And yes, security cameras reveal no breach of security at his home- so presumably-no evidence of murder.
Did Mesurier jump because he knew he was soon to be exposed to the world as the charlatan he was, and not the humanitarian portrayed so well in the White Helmet’s expensive movie and Western mainstream media?
Or was he pushed because he knew too much? Perhaps we will never know.
We do know from TASS however that the British have been getting increasingly concerned about the ongoing ever-deeper incursions into Idlib in Northern Syria by Russian and SAA troops, where most of their intelligence operatives are working alongside the jihadists and particularly Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) , the Al Qaeda affiliated group funded by the Saudis. A captured British operative in Idlib could reveal much of the very embarrassing support by the British French, US and Turkey of the jihadists (including the White Helmets), and their links to Israeli operatives.
In addition, “Old Boy” Boris Johnson’s Etonian and City of London links might be put even more at jeopardy if any of this little escapade comes to light during the current British General Election…
As with U.S. foreign policy, we need to understand that British realpolitik is simply about the money. How much can I or my cronies get out of this next little war?
We have often heard that it is in America’s “interests” to start this or that war, to “defend democracy and human rights” or some other envisioning of the United States as that Shining City on the Hill of freedom and light. However when we come to examine what particular Interests are at stake for the United States in these aggressions, we somehow fail to note that those interest are solely business interests- – and not just any businesses- but big business- large powerful corporations with tentacles in many countries whose financial interests may either be jeopardized or opportunities lost if this or that country is not subjugated once again by the U.S. military for the profit margins of United States’ businesses.
Pity the poor country that dares to not bend its knee to U.S. corporate interest…it will be sanctioned, ridiculed, its minority groups funded and trained to create instability, (or worse), and if that doesn’t succeed in bringing that recalcitrant country to the ‘negotiating’ table- then a little genocidal war might help.
As U.S Major-General Smedley Butler has often been quoted:
Supporting big business in any way the U.S. military can ( regardless of international conventions, human rights, human lives, human decency or any other ‘soft’ issue) is and always has been, therefore the complete and total sum of United States international relations- it has no other purpose.
“Foolish” and soft issues like the global emergency ( maybe more like global ‘catastrophe’?) are therefore a complete irrelevance. American exceptionalism is seen in its true form- red in tooth and claw as Alfred Lord Tennyson wrote about nature. No morality, no ethics, pure barbarism and pure profit.
It is small wonder that those poor American soldiers coming back from America’s pointless and endless wars of total barbarism, struggle to come to terms with their “moral injury” to the propaganda they have been force-fed from an early age, of the United States being a civilizing and enlightened country in a world of barbarism.
U.S. bases surrounding Iran
Peculiar to those pink-skinned Americans who front for big business in the military and in Washington, is a deeply entrenched racism of those who are “other” and darker skinned:- whether they be Plains Indians, Filipinos, Japanese, Koreans, Vietnamese, Iraqi’s, Libyans, Syrians- even the Slavic Russian and Serbian nations .. the list goes on and on and on….
It is time for the world to recognise the savagery and brutality of United States’ international relations. It is time to press for reparations for the environmental destruction, the war destruction, war crimes, loss of life, the torture and the murders that the United States has inflicted on the world in the fictitious name of “democracy and freedom” in the past 100 years. It is time to end this barbarism and stupidity.
The United States is indeed ‘exceptional’, but not quite in the way that their propagandists planned it. The American state is exceptional in it being a war machine; the government’s role is largely to fund and plan wars which will assist the American armament industry to sell more weapons at home abroad.
Negotiated via U.N. auspices, the Iran deal limited Iran’s capacity to enrich uranium and thus limit any potential for Iran to develop nuclear weapons; something it has always said is has not intended nor planned to do. UN inspections prove that Iran has indeed complied with the JCPOA in full since its inception in 2015. The deal in no way prohibits Iran’s develop of missile technology, which would be seen by any state as a sovereign right to protect itself from aggressors.
And Iran has many threatening states to protect itself from. These include Israel, who sees Iran as its major spoiler to the ongoing expansion of Israeli territory in the Middle East; particularly because of Iranian support for Hezbollah in Lebanon, who roundly defeated Israel in its last attempt to occupy Lebanon in 2006 . Then there is Saudi Arabia, the despotic regime which pretends to be a ‘monarchy” who actively supports protects and funds the Salafist terrorists across the Middle East and beyond. Salafists believe that all other Islamic and other religious beliefs other than their own are ‘heretical”, and therefore those people who hold such beliefs need to be either forcibly converted or disposed of. Hence the millions of Shiite peoples of Iran and its Shi-ite theocracy are anathema to the Saudi ‘princes’. Iran is a large country of over 80 million people, and while its economy has been made vulnerable by years of U.S. and other Western countries sanctions, it has managed to develop a wide range of responses to those sanctions, and particularly a home grown defence industry.
Iran is therefore not significantly vulnerable to attack by Saudi Arabia , despite S.A.s huge defence spending ($76 billion in 2017 – third highest in the world after the U.S. and China) , as opposed to Iran’s approximately $14 billion), largely because of its very effective home grown ballistic missile systems. (it is always amusing to note that U.S. military ‘specialists always attribute this or that countries’ home grown military capabilities to some other country – implying in some way that the specific country does not have the technology , research capability and technical know-how that only the great and exceptional U.S. has!)
And finally, Iran’s perhaps most significant threat comes from the United States, who has desperately tried to destabilize Iran’s theocracy in every way possible way since its inception in 1979, after overthrowing the U.S. and and U.K. installed despot, the ‘Shah’ of Iran .
The U.K. has also played a supporting role to the U.S. since 1953 in supporting the salafist regimes in the Persian Gulf and encouraging the export of Saudi and Qatari jihadist terrorists to Middle East states which are not active supporters of Western colonialism or Israeli expansionism.
Thus the latest move by the Trump administration to undermine the U.N. JCPOA agreement and threaten sanctions against countries and companies that do not comply with its renewed sanctions against Iran, is simply part of the ongoing war by the United States against Iran that had its inception in the overthrow of its brutal dictator , the Shah.
The drivers for this ongoing war against Iran are largely economic: primarily re-acquisition of the huge Iranian oil market by American oil companies will buffer the U.S. against the imminent collapse of the local shale oil market, whilst ensuring that Iranian owned oil and gas is not pipe-lined through to Europe and Turkey.
However the other major U.S. impetus for Iranian destabilisation and overthrow of its independent theocracy is the role of Israel and its Zionist lobbyists in Washington. Now that Saudi Arabia has been bought into the Zionist fold and accepts the Israeli theft of Palestinian lands since 1948 as legitimate, there is only Iran as a significant power player in the Middle East who is able to confront Israeli expansionism. A tame Iranian regime that supported both Israel and U.S. colonial policy in the Middle East would mean Chinese and Russian commercial and strategic ambitions there could be thwarted, and U.S. and U.K. (and to a smaller degree, French) companies could make billions exploiting the region. With the truly psychopathic John Bolton now as Trumps defence advisor, drooling for war with Iran, and Israel’s Netanyahu frothing at the mouth for the U.S. to bomb Iran, all options are truly on the table.
While Iran does not have an effective airforce, due to the long-standing sanctions against it; it’s ballistic missile capacity is indeed formidable, although largely deprecated by U.S. defence analysts . Should the U.S. launch an attack on Iran’s infrastructure, as it has continually threatened to do over the years, the U.S. would undoubtedly be able to , over time, obliterate much of Tehran and its key urban centres as it has done in North Korea, Vietnam Libya and Iraq in the past, along with the consequent huge suffering and civilian casualties that entails. However in the first days and weeks of such a war, Iran’s widely dispersed military units, and particularly its missile and anti-ship units, will be able to inflict massive damage on U.S. military bases and aircraft carriers in the Gulf because of their close proximity to Iran. An ongoing guerilla war against U.S. economic and military interests in the Middle East could well last for years. In comparison to the U.S. war against Iraq, Iran’s military capabilities cannot be under-rated as American defence analysts are wont to do in their arrogance. This would not be the “cake-walk” that the neocons pretended the Iraqi invasion would be!
Should Israel also enter the war, as it has often promised to, then Tel Aviv is now well within missile striking distance by Iran’s Lebanese allies. Hezbollah.
One would hope that the crazies like Netanyahu and John Bolton will finally be locked away somewhere safe for the rest of humanity’s sake , and the fools like Donald Trump fade into quiet oblivion, but sadly it seems , that may not be the case…
The recent cruise missile attack by the U.S. and its allies the U.K. and France ( former colonial exploiters in the region) raises some interesting dilemmas for Western military planners .
If we are to believe the Russian military assessment of the strike, 71 of the of 103 cruise missiles were brought down by Syrian air defence systems, particular via the Russian made Pantsir surface-to-air missile systems.
While the United States and its two allies have claimed that the missile attack was in response to their espoused view that there had been a gas attack by the Assad military in Douma against the civilians trapped there, the evidence seems to suggest that this attack was aimed at eliminating the air support threat from the Syrian Air Force for the jihadists those 3 Western governments have been extensively supporting since the start of the war to overthrow the Assad regime.
Having failed in their bid to convince the United Nations of a ‘no-fly’ zone in Syria on multiple occasions ( ie elimination of Syrian government aircraft from the skies above rebel-held territory) ; the use of a chemical weapons attack as a pretext for bombing airfields has become the next best option. Using The American government ( and Muslim Brotherhood) funded Syrian American Medical Society (SAMS), and the largely British intelligence funded and managed White Helmets to produce videos purporting to show a chemical weapons attack in Douma, Western media has been united in showing moral outrage at ‘animal Assad’s” killing of his own people, and baying for more attacks on the Syrian military.
The apparent logic given by Western media and politicians for ‘animal Assad” to drop barrel bombs filed with toxic chemicals on the people of Douma was to demonstrate that there was no hope for the rebels there and they should surrender. According to this logic, it was worth the risk of a repeat of the previous cruise missile attacks ordered by President Trump last year for the Assad regime to drop a few barrels of toxic chemicals on Douma to dislodge the few remaining “rebels’ there who were already negotiating an exit with the Syrian government from the enclave . One assumes those politicians and the Western media think their publics are very very stupid….Unfortunately for Western intelligence, the overrunning of the last of the rebel enclaves in Ghouta and their departure in buses to Idlib came far sooner than they expected, allowing the Syrians and Russians and journalists like the respected British Robert Fisk, to enter the area where the supposed gas attack had occurred and interview civilians and medics there .
One finds it strange that neither Western media nor their governments have bayed for large cruise missile attacks on the Al Qaeda affiliate Al Nusra, or ISIS, or any of the other head-choppers supported by Gulf and Western states. And that in fact there have been no reported cruise missile attacks by Western countries on ISIS throughout this entire war. How could this be one wonders?
The chemical weapons scam is largely similar to the earlier and still ongoing farce in the Western media about Assad’s “barrel bombs”. “Barrel bombs’ are nothing but impromptu explosives packed in drums and dropped from government helicopters and fixed wing aircraft. They are in fact, unguided ordinance, which the majority of the aerial weapons at play in Syria by the United States and its allies, as well as the Russians and the Syrian government, are. But we are somehow expected to believe that packing munitions into oil drums and dropping them on targets creates far worse dangers, chaos, injury and death than those caused by other unguided munitions. But again the ‘barrel bomb’ farce is one more attempt by the Western media and politicians to remove the threat to their tunnel based jihadists from aerial warfare of any kind. If the Syrian airforce can be removed and then the Russian airforce, then ISIS and the other Al Qaeda affiliates and salafists out to exterminate all Christians , Allawites, Shi-ites and other non fundamentalist Sunni sects in Syria, will have a much free-er hand on the ground.
Despite American denials, it would appear that in fact the vast majority of the cruise missiles were therefore aimed at Syrian airfields, rather than the alleged chemical weapons storage and production facilities ( which had been vetted by the OPCW as ‘clean’ just last October 2017). The Syrian and Russians had in fact deployed most of their more effective anti-missile stations around those airfields; and if they are to believed, destroyed the vast majority of the incoming missiles at those airfields. There is some speculation that Russian electromagnetic interference jamming systems may have played a part in the incoming missiles’ lack of effectiveness, but that cant be confirmed as yet.
Very clearly, the battle to partition Syria by the West and its Gulf allies using jihadists is far from over.
But -as in previous unilateral totally illegal strikes ( ie not approved by the U.N. Security Council) by Western governments on states that do not comply with the Western political and economic agenda , this latest missile attack provides ample rationale to China, as the upcoming dominant global power, that missile strikes on countries who do not acquiesce to its political and economic agenda, are a completely legitimate response, in the future.
It may not be too long before China’s aircraft carrier armada are patrolling the seas off the United States, the U.K and France..
The recent very fake news from the White Helmets about Assad’s government gassing civilians in Douma in Ghouta province of Syria has clearly been orchestrated by Western intelligence agencies ( who largely control the White Helmet’s agenda and their Al Qaeda affiliates on the ground in Syria). As has been noted elsewhere, Syrian government forces have no need to gas anyone; they are on a roll and likely to overrun all Al Qaeda rebels in the Ghouta area in the next week..And in fact Syrian government forces and Russian advisers now control the area where the gassing supposedly occurred. An unfortunate fact for the U.S. now gunning for war…
The appointment of John Bolton as Secretary of State for the U.S., who along with U.S.’s U.N. representative, Nikki Haley, know no other response to perceived threats to U.S. global omnipotence than war and more war, is a solid indication that the U.S. intelligence community and State Dept is indeed preparing for war with Russia.
Russia has given categorical statements at the U.N. , and to the U.S. , that missile attacks against the Syrian government will be responded to “at source” ie by attacking U.S. French or U.K. aircraft , airbases or aircraft carriers that carry out such attacks.
As noted in a previous post on this site; the argument in NATO command and the Western “think tanks”, is that by destroying once and for all, the threat of Russia as an state entity capable of having an independent foreign policy and economic pathway, all the other dominos; China, Iran, North Korea who currently oppose Western global control, will inevitably ‘fall into line”
We know from previous experience, that Western countries; particularly those who have signed up to NATO, will indeed fall into line with their masters, and both acquiesce and actively participate in whatever horrific actions the Americans and their British allies have decided upon.
The blatantly absurd arguments about Saddams’ little trucks full of WMD, or the viagra given to Libyan soldiers so that they could rape Libyan civilians, or any of the ridiculous other casus belli formulated in the rather small brains of the military strategists in London and Washington over the past 60 years since the second world war, have been promulgated by a compliant (or perhaps ‘bought”) Western media without analysis, and accepted as fact by the vast majority of the Western world’s population. We do not need rational or factual arguments, any old rationale, however ridiculous, will do to destroy another country and its population.
We are after all, as members of the Western world- defenders of democracy and freedom and civilised humanity- are we not?…..
Except this time, making war with Russia as a major nuclear power, and with very formidable weaponry, will not be the ‘cake-walk’ it was supposedly going to be in Iraq. In addition it is unknown at this point, but likely, that China will have to take a stand beside Russia in the lead-up to war-knowing they will be next if Russia falls. The writing is on the wall for the Chinese with Trump’s ‘trade war”, and the Chinese have demonstrated they will not be bullied by the U.S.
If you think that none of this could be possible , (we wouldn’t risk global war- would we?) it is well to be reminded about the last Western allies in the pursuit of ….something…. invaded Russia.
Why should such barbaric partners therefore need things like evidence or truth when responding to allegations by the jihadists they support in Syria, of gas attacks by the Syrian military ( and therefore Russia).
There is a higher goal here- the pursuit of more money and power…
As Donald Trump has announced: ‘Qatar has been funding terrorism at a very high level”. Trump is of course correct; Qatar has been funding training and arming jihadists across the Middle East and the Western world for many years. However, funding terrorists is not Qatar’s sin for the Saudis , the Americans and the British. Qatar’s crime is that they not only support Hamas to respond to Israeli terror against the Palestinians , but they also have a distant alliance with Iran promarily via their shared Pars field gas resource; and, to cap it all off, are now agreeing to sell some gas in non-US dollars!
The reality is that a few deaths on London Bridge or somewhere else in Europe are simply collateral damage; worth it, in the bigger interest of huge kickbacks from the Saudis, and Israel’s backers in the States and the U.K. .. This is purely and simply about money. The festering cesspool of British/American mainstream politics and their respective ‘intelligence’ units , is all about money- what’s a few blown-up innocent citizens compared to the billions that can be made through arms deals, oil deals and kickbacks?-with the added benefit of de-stabilising the one final disruptor to Israel’s’ plans to once and for good ‘solve’ the Palestinian question- by removing Iran and their allies Hezbollah and to some degree Hamas.
As Angry Arab notes: If Western media want to really serve their readers in their (lousy) coverage of the Gulf crisis, they would adhere to those two basic standards of professional journalism: 1) they would tell their readers while interviewing academics, journalists, or “citizens” in UAE or Saudi Arabia or Qatar that opposition the government or disagreeing with the government in tweets or in retweets would land you in jail for up to 15 years with a hefty fine. They would tell them people in those countries are not free to express views different form the government. 2) they would tell readers when they cite “experts” at DC think thanks that those think tanks are all funded by UAE and/or Saudi Arabia (except Brookings which is funded by Qatar). These are basics.’
New Antarctica 