Category: War on Terror

Western Hypocrisy on Afghanistan

As Hollywood has noted, and later U. S. records confirm, the predecessors to the Taliban, the U.S. funded and armed brutal Afghan Mujahideen or jihadist freedom fighters were instrumental in securing the withdrawal of Soviet troops from Afghanistan in the 1980s and 90s , who were supporting the communist secular Afghan government in Kabul. A government it should be noted, who fully supported the rights of Afghan women to be educated, to work and live a life equal to men.

After several years of extreme violence and turmoil across Afghanistan, the Taliban came to power in the late 1990s,

As Consortium News notes: The triumphant Taliban imposed harsh Islamic law on Afghanistan. Their rule was especially cruel to women who had made gains toward equal rights under the communists, but were forced by the Taliban to live under highly restrictive rules, to cover themselves when in public, and to forgo schooling.

The Taliban also granted refuge to Saudi exile Osama bin Laden, who had fought with the Afghan mujahedeen against the Soviets in the 1980s. Bin Laden then used Afghanistan as the base of operations for his terrorist organization, al-Qaeda, setting the stage for the next Afghan War in 2001.

After the 9/11 attacks in New York by Al Qaeda, the Taliban agreed to hand over Osama bin Laden to the United States. However their offer was refused, and instead President Bush launched a war to remove the Taliban from power beginning with a brutal bombing campaign in October 2001

If the purpose of Bush’s Afghan war was not to trap Osama bin Laden – what was the purpose?

The United States had been negotiating with the Taliban for an oil pipeline to traverse Afghanistan from Central Asian oil fields, and appeared to be on relatively good terms with them.

It was only much later that the hype about a humanitarian intervention for women’s rights etc came to the fore in Western media. However this supposed human rights agenda by the United States and the United Kingdom is contradicted by their wholehearted support for the brutal Mujahideen the Saudi regime, and their unconditional support for the Israeli genocidal actions against Palestinians (amongst many other brutal regimes supported and armed by Western governments)

This was simply one more racist colonial invasion; putting more money into the pockets of U.S. war profiteers.

See below, John Pilger’s video ‘Breaking the Silence’ from 10 years ago in Afghanistan

http://johnpilger.com/videos/breaking-the-silence-truth-and-lies-in-the-war-on-terror

As a Western person I oppose discrimination against any person of any gender or race- however I also oppose the barbaric use of violence to impose one’s will on others we do not agree with- something my country New Zealand has been complicit in along with other Western white countries.

Setting up an indigenous Afghan army funded and trained and managed by foreigners to oppose local people who they may in fact know by tribe or family, and who are trying to defend their country from invasion, was always a recipe for failure. Such troops’ only motivation could be their paycheck, not patriotism for their country: so when the occupation force goes in the dead of night, the money goes with them and the local funded military disintegrate- they have nothing to fight for.

Similarly a ‘democracy’ funded and approved and beholden to an occupying power is not a democracy -it is a mockery of ‘democracy’.- and an extraordinarily corrupt one at that– why else would you pretend to lead your country whilst under an occupying power?

As Marshall Auerback and Patrick Lawrence note in ‘The Scrum’: Ashraf Ghani, (the last of the U.S. appointed Afghan ‘Presidents’) was among the more preposterous creations of the Obama administration, a man who personified our American presumption that we can go around the world making all others in our image without reference to histories, cultures, or political traditions. 

We know the colonial occupation forces killed many thousands of civilians (through bombing campaigns, drone murders, the brutal occupation and destruction of villages and people’s homes and the use of torture at Bagram airbase and other locations in Afghanistan- civilian losses that the occupying forces continue to largely deny.

New Zealand’s ex-prime minister Helen Clark’s commentary on the resurgence of the Taliban might be interpreted as disingenuous, were it not for the fact that she is a United Nations employee and knows full well the extent of the indiscriminate murder, torture and destruction, let alone the phenomenal levels of corruption by NGOs supposedly ‘re-building Afghanistan’ committed by the occupying powers in their 20 year presence in Afghanistan.

We might also note the opium and heroin rat lines from the Afghan poppy
fields which miraculously came into full bloom (Afghanistan  now supplies by  far the largest  share of opium in  the world), after the American occupation
and which will now , once again, be shut down by the Taliban. Mysteriously drug trafficking explodes in volume in those areas where Western intelligence
operatives, and particularly the CIA, are heavily involved: Colombia,
Afghanistan, Laos….

The New Zealand presence in Afghanistan is one more shameful example of our complicity in the United States’ war crimes..

While there will be many in Kabul and other major Afghan cities who have come to enjoy Western values, comforts and the easy money that came with the occupiers, there will be many many more Afghans who are thankful that the brutality and systematic racism of the Western occupying powers is finally at an end.

The lessons other vulnerable countries have learnt from Western occupying powers’ brutal occupation of Afghanistan will not be soon forgotten..

Nor will the boys coming home from that 20 year war be immune to its effects on the psyche..

“One man cannot hold another man down in the ditch without remaining down in the ditch with him.”
– Booker T. Washington

That is not to say Afghanistan is going to become some liberal, rights respecting country any time soon: traditional rigid views about women’s rights and other ethnicities and belief systems -particularly in rural areas, are gong to prevail for some time to come. And Sharia law is not exactly a very forgiving dogma; but there are signs that the new Taliban leadership recognise that they will have to adapt to the modern world if they are to be accepted by the wider international community, especially investment from Chinese and  other neighbouring countries. Certainly, as of 17th August 2021, the Taliban command have so far largely behaved with honour and discipline for the defeated.

It should also be noted that the Taliban are not ‘terrorists’ and in no way resemble ISIS or the earlier Mujahideen . While they may have sheltered Al Qaeda in the past, they have no record and no stated intent of terrorist actions outside (or within) Afghanistan.

And it should also be remembered that the Taliban’s astonishing victory in the past week has been at minimal cost of human life and suffering; a victory, as Pepe Escobar notes, contrived by ” lots of persuasion, tribal deals, zero columns of tanks (and) minimal loss of blood”.

It is  time now for the new Afghan  government to  demand reparations from all those Western  occupation governments for the deaths,  torture,  trauma and misery;  and land and property losses of the last 20  years.

Perhaps Westerners could also remember, for the future, that the way for outsiders to encourage change in any other society, is to demonstrate your positive values: your generosity, your honesty, your capacity to forgive and your willingness to listen…

Postscript

As Richard Falks  and others note, what follows next in Afghanistan  will  depend not only on how the Taliban keep  their promises of greater tolerance , but also  on  the United States and its Western  occupying allies respond to the Taliban in power.  To  date Western media is hyping up  the threat  and supposed savagery of the Taliban  to extraordinary  degrees  (my local  New Zealand  TV news channel  interspersed commentary of the Taliban  with video of ISIS troops marching in uniform) and the  U.S.  withholding of Afghan federal  reserve money  and aid by  other Western countries . Without the  Western aid that  Afghanistan infrastructure has come to  rely on  over the last 20  years,  severe hardship  and starvation will  be the lot of Afghans already  brutalised by  this pointless war.

It is now likely that  further Western brutal  adventures, such  as the Afghan occupation , will not be viable options , as China particularly expands its  somewhat  more benign influence in  the region.

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Links

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/aug/16/20-years-invasion-afghanistan-unnecessary-post-imperial-fantasy

https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/politics/126081418/utterly-surreal-and-devastating-former-pm-helen-clark-shellshocked-to-be-back-where-we-were-in-afghanistan-as-taliban-take-over

https://smoothiex12.blogspot.com/

https://www.commondreams.org/news/2021/08/16/diplomacy-not-bombs-anti-war-voices-say-afghanistan-shows-need-stop-any-further?

https://www.unz.com/pescobar/the-islamic-emirate-of-afghanistan-back-with-a-bang/

https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2021/08/16/afghanistan-history-taliban-collapse-504977

https://www.moonofalabama.org/2021/08/afghanistan-taliban-press-conference-notes.html#more

https://consortiumnews.com/2021/08/16/hollywoods-dangerous-afghan-illusion-2/

https://thescrum.substack.com/p/and-now?

https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2019/investigations/afghanistan-papers/afghanistan-war-confidential-documents/

https://scheerpost.com/2021/08/17/the-u-s-government-lied-for-two-decades-about-afghanistan/

https://scheerpost.com/2021/08/16/what-the-classroom-didnt-teach-me-about-the-american-empire/

https://original.antiwar.com/Yves_Engler/2021/08/17/what-a-waste-of-human-life-and-resources/

https://taibbi.substack.com/p/we-failed-afghanistan-not-the-other?

https://consortiumnews.com/2021/08/19/create-two-three-many-saigons/

https://www.sigar.mil/interactive-reports/corruption-in-conflict/lessons.html

As Kabul Is Retaken, Papers Look Back in Erasure

https://annebonnypirate.org/2021/08/17/afghanistan-the-end-of-the-occupation/

https://wikileaks.org/wiki/CIA_report_into_shoring_up_Afghan_war_support_in_Western_Europe,_11_Mar_2010

https://www.globaltimes.cn/page/202108/1232167.shtml

https://www.globaltimes.cn/page/202108/1232142.shtml

https://richardfalk.org/2021/08/23/everything-went-wrong-in-afghanistan/

John Pilger: The Great Game of Smashing Nations

https://www.greenleft.org.au/content/wests-meddling-has-caused-calamity-afghanistan

The Russophobe Farcical Ride to War

Apparently we are expected to now believe that the Russians have now not only been paying the Taliban to kill U.S. occupying troops (likely ‘admitted’ after a little bit of healthy torture of a Talban suspect) but have also been blowing up Czech munitions dumps.

Apparently we are expected to now believe that the Russians have now not only been paying the Taliban to kill U.S. occupying troops (likely ‘admitted’ after a little bit of healthy torture of a Talban suspect) but have also been blowing up Czech munitions dumps. And that those pesky Russian GRU ‘intelligence’ operatives Alexander Petrov and Ruslan Boshirov, identified by the ‘brilliant’ Western intelligence funded masterminds at Bellingcat (using Google Photos and other hi tech equipment) not only botched the poisoning of Sergie Skripal and his daughter in Salisbury in March 2018 , but had, 4 years earlier, botched the blowing up a Czech munitions dump, whose armaments were supposedly destined for the Ukraine after the Maidan anti-Russian coup in Ukraine.

This fits with the Skripal chain of events, where the most senior nurse in the entire British Army just happened to stumble across the Skripals, and where “military grade’ Novichok takes hours to actually work and then doesn’t kill the victims but then kills an innocent bystander some months later.

Curiously the Czech allegations were suddenly revealed 7 years later after the information had suddenly come to the hand of the newly installed Czech foreign minister, Jan Hamacek  (an enthusiastic supporter of NATO) , just before the Czech president was to have headed to Moscow to sign up for Sputnik V vaccines for the country, when tenders for the construction of a nuclear power plant in Czechia are just about to begin, (and which Russian companies would have had a good chance of winning), and a day after the Americans had announced more sanctions against Russians for somehow trying to influence U. S. elections in impossible ways.

And now we have the Le Monde in Paris creating little stories that the GRU had an espionage base deep in the Swiss Alps ( its gone now they say)

Presumably Western intelligence and their media arms are vying with each other on how far Western publics can be sucked in with ludicrous Russian plots.

“Hey guys, they swallowed that ridiculous story we made up about Gadaffi and the boxes of viagra for his troops to rape civilians, I’ll bet they swallow this one about Petrov and Boshirov again!”

The Russian government it would appear, has now lost its patience with the Americans after Biden deliberately insulted the Russian president as a ‘soul-less killer’, after years of sanctions of the Russian state, and will now make life very difficult for the remaining American diplomats in Moscow .

Diplomacy is thus now at an end between the two countries. In addition, the forceful tit for tat Russian response to the Czech expulsion of Russian diplomatic staff will mean that diplomatic efforts are also unlikely to occur in Eastern Europe in the near future.

The recent attempted coup and assassination of Belarus president Lukashenko, which Russia alleges was planned by Western intelligence operatives, has also not helped the current crisis.

War is becoming increasingly likely.

40,000 NATO troops are massed near Russian borders and 80,000 Russian troops and other units are stationed close to the Russian border with Ukraine.

Steadily increasing NATO military exercises along the border with Russia seem to presage an attempt by NATO forces to probe for weaknesses and then attack Russia, or at least provoke a response from Russia that Western media can proclaim is proof of Russian evil.

Not content with setting the scene for a war over Crimea (a territory occupied by the Russians since it ‘acquired’ it from the Turks in 1774), and the festering Donbass civil war in Russian speaking Eastern Ukraine; the Ukrainian Kiev government is now bizarrely accusing another Russian ally, Iran, of deliberately downing a Ukrainian airliner in the confused aftermath of the Soleimani execution by the United States.

Along with the escalation along Russian borders by the U.S. and its ‘allies’ – particularly the Baltic states, the Poles, Ukrainians, the English and the Australians-we see escalations by the Israeli racist regime against the Iranians, in the form of constant provocations , the most recent being the sabotage at the Natanz nuclear facility in Iran, and the provocations by the Americans in the South China Sea and elsewhere.

The decision by the Biden administration to withdraw some of it’s forces from Afghanistan by September 11 2021 , is indeed welcome and indicative of the total pointlessness of that 19 year war- other than to maintain a lucrative heroin supply trail for Western intelligence services. However the withdrawal is possibly also indicative of the American military’s recognition that fighting too many wars on two many fronts, is a recipe for defeat.

Alongside these aggressive actions go the sanctions designed to weaken Russia, Iran and China (and Syria, Venezuela and North Korea) for their temerity in not kowtowing to the American ‘world order’.

As American society and their economy continues to implode, we see increasingly desperate measures by the U.S. and their remaining ‘allies’ to try and contain and destroy those governments which do not support the American way of brutal colonial aggression.

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This short and innocuous tweet from U.S. Strategic Command on April 20th 2021, gives Russian and China clear warning that the U.S. is quite prepared to use nuclear weapons as a first option in resolving their differences.

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Links

Pure: Ten Points I Just Can’t Believe About the Official Skripal Narrative

https://www.rt.com/russia/521369-czech-republic-expels-russian-diplomats/

Sino-American Antagonism: How Does This End?

https://thegrayzone.com/2021/04/16/biden-afghanistan-war-privatizing-contractors/

Australia is playing in the international greyzone: it is time to get out of our unthinking alliance with the US

https://www.rt.com/op-ed/521315-biden-sanctions-russia-putin/

Chris Hedges: The Unraveling of the American Empire

Complicity

We are all in desperate need of real investigative journalism which is not paid, bullied or feel obliged to follow the current state propaganda line.

There is not much more one can say about Media Lens’ concise summary of the activities of Western countries- particularly the United States and its closest ally, the United Kingdom, in engaging in serial murder over many years, against countries and peoples more vulnerable than their own, whose misery and deaths can be exploited for profit.

While the barbarity of the U.S. and U.K is documented elsewhere in great detail, Media Lens’ great strength is to outline the consistent role Western mainstream media have played in actively supporting those wars and the lies they knowingly propagated ( or in a few cases simply failed to do their journalistic duty of investigation)

As the wheel turns, the U.S. will in a few short years, no longer have the preeminent global role it has acquired through military domination. As the U.S. global role declines, so the need for justice for those many millions victimised by that imperial power will steadily rise until those responsible are indeed facing the court at the Hague for their war crimes .

Alongside them in the dock will surely be those media propagandists who knowingly aided and abetted their crimes with media lies and encouraged the lust for war.

On a more absurd and light-hearted note, we note the allegations from an Australian TV channel, Channel 9, that Vladimir Putin hacked their TV broadcast because he didn’t like what they said about him . While the ridiculous allegations are unsurprising from such a news source, there will be any number of gullible xenophobic Australians ready to be whipped up into a frenzy about malign state actors ( any one of either China, Russia, North Korea or Iran-take your pick) interfering with their TV viewing !

We are all in desperate need of real investigative journalism which is not paid, bullied or feels obliged to follow the current state propaganda line.

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Links

Propaganda By Omission: Libya, Syria, Venezuela And The UK

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9411375/Did-Russian-hackers-force-Australian-TV-station-air-showing-Putin-investigation.html

Fact-Checking the Liars: the Record of U.S. Imperial War and Plunder

War with China

John Pilger has for several years now been talking about the ‘Coming War with China’-something I had in earlier years regarded as foolish speculation . However, in recent times I now hear much more loudly the drumbeats of war from America, and its more foolish and racist allies.

John Pilger has for several years now been talking about the ‘Coming War with China’-something I had in earlier years regarded as foolish speculation . However, in recent times I now hear much more loudly the drumbeats of war from America, and its more foolish and racist allies.

And in a more recent John Pilger article about the nuclear bombing of Hiroshima ‘ANOTHER HIROSHIMA IS COMING… UNLESS WE STOP IT NOW‘ he notes: “No radioactivity in Hiroshima ruin” said The New York Times front page on 13 September, 1945, a classic of planted disinformation. “General Farrell,” reported William H. Lawrence, “denied categorically that [the atomic bomb] produced a dangerous, lingering radioactivity.”-John Pilger .

It should therefore be no surprise that Western governments have lied and lied again in their pursuit of war and profit. The ongoing deluge of Western propaganda against China and its ally Russia, is clearly designed to ‘soften up’ Western publics for a war with those ‘evil orientals’.

The Western media claims of Uyghur genocide by the Chinese government have been largely constructed from one source; a somewhat ‘unusual’ gentleman called Adrian Zenz, a Christian fundamentalist evangelist and devout anti-communist. The Gray-Zone has published a damning report on the curious ways Mr Zenz has used public data to support his beliefs that Uyghur genocide is occurring. Western intelligence has latched onto Mr Zenz fundamentalist fervour to promote his views to the wider world, because it fits so well with their need to portray the Chinese government (and all things mainland Chinese) as evil .

As the GrayZone outlines in its article on the U.S. based Uyghur American Association (UAA), the Altay Club and other organisations determined to once again create an independent state in Xinjiang since its re-incorporation into the Chinese state in the 18th Century, there are multiple organisations both internal and external to China, determined to overthrow the current status quo in Xinjiang.

The Chinese government is now in the process of suing Zenz for libel in the courts.

Numerous Muslim Uyghur have in fact been radicalised by the Saudi Wahabbi doctrine and continue to play an important role as Salafi jihadi soldiers in Syria and other Middle Eastern countries, with funding and support from the Saudis and Western intelligence operatives. It is likely therefore that the Chinese government has put considerable effort into reducing the risk of Uyghur radicalisation in mainland China; the truth of how much repression of the Uyghur population in China is occurring is unknown at this point-although the Chinese government denies any such repression. It is however certain, given current population counts, that a Uyghur ‘genocide’ is not happening.

As one of the Chinese government’s representative Yang Jiechi so rightly put it at the recent Alaska China/U.S. Anchorage summit at the Captain Cook Hotel;’ the United States uses its financial and military might to bully other countries. …(and that) America had its own long history of human rights problems and foolish actions abroad. ‘Foolish actions’ is a wonderful euphemism for the scale of genocidal war and terror inflicted by the United States on ‘non-compliant’ countries over the past century and more ( i.e. countries that do not comply with the United States view of it’s ‘international rules based order’- not to be confused in any way with U.N. declarations)

Alistair Crooke summarises the theme of the anti-Russia-China rhetoric as ‘the U.S. thinks to lead the maritime and rim-land powers in imposing a searing psychological, technological and economic defeat on the Russia-China-Iran alliance’.

As with all colonial powers, the current arrogance and bellicosity of the Americans is premised on racism- the view that the Chinese are somehow an inferior nation who need education and ‘realignment’ with Western values and principles of what the Americans call ‘democracy and freedom’-but which in reality are principles based on the exploitation and subjugation of others.

The United States’ personal delusions of their exceptionalism – which align closely to Nazi views on the superiority of the German ‘race’- also play an important role in their incapacity to peacefully collaborate with others.

Given the United States appalling centuries long history of abuse of the vulnerable, at home and abroad, its view of itself as a pure, supremely democratic and exceptional nation (which many in the States undeniably believe) is psychotic, and indicative of the level of risk the world is facing when delusional people hold the reins of power in the worlds’ most militaristic country.

The United States appears ‘hell-bent’ on ensuring that no other country can get in the way of ‘rule-based order’ where the United States can and does whatever it likes, to whomever it likes, to ensure the money keeps rolling into the troughs of its billionaires.

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Links

https://thegrayzone.com/2021/03/17/report-uyghur-genocide-sham-university-neocon-punish-china/

The Urgent Need for a Biden-Putin Summit
For Leviathan, it’s so cold in Alaska
https://www.strategic-culture.org/news/2021/03/15/leviathan-mobilises-for-decisive-battle/

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/56466.htm

Stoltenberg Comes Clean on China ‘Opportunity’ for NATO

https://thegrayzone.com/2021/03/31/china-uyghur-gun-soldiers-empire/

An Australia We Can Believe In

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.

Chin'as constrcuted image of Aussie war crimes in Afghanistan

The  ‘constructed’  image  that  Zhao Lijian  used  was based on  an  Australian government  report into  Special Operations Task Group in Afghanistan,  which  found   ‘credible information of 23 incidents of unlawful killing of 39 people “by or at the direction of members of the Special Operations Task Group in circumstances which, if accepted by a jury, would be the war crime of murder. None of these are incidents of disputable decisions made under pressure in the heat of battle, found the inquiry.” Those 39 prisoners and civilians were unlawfully killed and two treated so cruelly, the soldiers’ conduct amounted to a war crime.

This new report follows on  from  previous allegations of misconduct  by  New Zealand troops in  Afghanistan, by  journalists Jon Stephenson and Nicky Hager where New Zealand “Defence” Force personnel  breached rules of engagement in an SAS-led raid in Afghanistan in 2010 and covered up the resulting civilian deaths.

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!

We are now subjected to  the shameful  behaviour of both  the Australian  and New Zealand prime ministers whitewashing these current war  crimes by  claiming that  the images posted by  Zhao Lijian were ‘fake news’. Clearly the images posted were indeed not taken  in the heat of  Australians  killing Afghan children for fun; they  were intended as representations of real  events. Apparently,  ‘an obscure artist in China made an art about the tragedy which was widely circulated in Chinese social media, and which Chinese Foreign Ministry Spokesman Li JianZhao tweeted.’

Human  Right Watch  notes that: The former military lawyer and whistleblower David McBride, who was deployed to Afghanistan with the special operations task group, was charged with a number of offenses in 2017 after he spoke to reporters about the alleged abuses, and his trial is ongoing. He is the only person who was charged, and the charges are unrelated to his conduct in Afghanistan.

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.

Links

https://www.rt.com/op-ed/508216-china-australia-soldier-afghanistan/

https://www.hrw.org/news/2020/11/19/australia-follow-afghan-report-prosecutions

https://www.newshub.co.nz/home/new-zealand/2020/11/no-comparison-between-alleged-australian-defence-force-atrocities-in-afghanistan-and-kiwis-actions-in-operation-burnham-kiwi-war-journalist-jon-stephenson.html

https://asia.nikkei.com/Opinion/China-s-bullying-of-Australia-is-bound-to-backfire

Australian Lowlifes – American Empire’s Bitches

Stealing Mineral Wealth for Corporate Interests: U.S. Bankrolled Mass Murder of Millions in Central Africa

https://www.spiegel.de/international/world/secret-docs-reveal-dubious-details-of-targeted-killings-in-afghanistan-a-1010358.html

 

Assange’s Show Trial

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.

Links

Waiting for the Old Bailey: Julian Assange and Britain’s Judicial Establishment

https://www.unz.com/pescobar/julian-assange-prometheus-bound/

As British judge made rulings against Julian Assange, her husband was involved with right-wing lobby group briefing against WikiLeaks founder

Julian Assange Show Trial Resumes: Why the U.S. Government Wants Him Silenced

https://www.dailymaverick.co.za/article/2020-09-04-as-british-judge-made-rulings-against-julian-assange-her-husband-was-involved-with-right-wing-lobby-group-briefing-against-wikileaks-founder/

https://www.rt.com/op-ed/500083-assange-pilger-court-trial/

As Assange extradition hearing resumes, the future of a free press is on trial

Media Freedom? Show me the MSM Journalist Opposing the Torture of Assange

 

 

Navalny’s Novichok

The recent suspected poisoning  by  Novichok of Alexei  Navalny , politician & anti-corruption campaigner  in Russia, apparently  demonstrates remarkable levels of incompetence by the  Russian Federation & Vladimir Putin.

It should be noted that while Navalny is certainly a thorn in the side of Vladimir Putin  and his United Russia party from  an  anti-corruption point of view, and attains mythical  status  in Western  mainstream  media as Putin’s   potential  nemesis leading his  ‘Russia of the Future’ political  party , Nalvany’s  has 3 to  5% support amongst  Russian voters nationally and  by whom he is often perceived as an extremist, means that he is  currently little  of a political  threat to Putin.  However Nalvany’s   supporters in Russia and West allege, “state-run” media ignore him  and the ballot boxes are always stuffed in  Putin’s candiates’ favour. He may however have many enemies in both  government and private corporate Russian circles.

Craig Murray,  ex U.K.  ambassador, whistleblower on U.K  complicity in torture, supporter of Assange and other unpopular human rights issues,  and  now conveniently  likely soon  to  be imprisoned by  the U.K.  government on  some highly questionable charges , outlines below just  some of the  ‘peculiarities’ of the poisoning.

Let us first take the weapon of attack. One thing we know about a “Novichok” for sure is that it appears not to be very good at assassination. Poor Dawn Sturgess is the only person ever to have allegedly died from “Novichok”, accidentally according to the official narrative. “Novichok” did not kill the Skripals, the actual target. If Putin wanted Navalny dead, he would try something that works. Like a bullet to the head, or an actually deadly poison.

“Novichok” is not a specific chemical. It is a class of chemical weapon designed to be improvised in the field from common domestic or industrial precursors. It makes some sense to use on foreign soil as you are not carrying around the actual nerve agent, and may be able to buy the ingredients locally. But it makes no sense at all in your own country, where the FSB or GRU can swan around with any deadly weapon they wish, to be making homemade nerve agents in the sink. Why would you do that?

Further we are expected to believe that, the Russian state having poisoned Navalny, the Russian state then allowed the airplane he was traveling in, on a domestic flight, to divert to another airport, and make an emergency landing, so he could be rushed to hospital. If the Russian secret services had poisoned Navalny at the airport before takeoff as alleged, why would they not insist the plane stick to its original flight plan and let him die on the plane? They would have foreseen what would happen to the plane he was on.

Next, we are supposed to believe that the Russian state, having poisoned Navalny, was not able to contrive his death in the intensive care unit of a Russian state hospital. We are supposed to believe that the evil Russian state was able to falsify all his toxicology tests and prevent doctors telling the truth about his poisoning, but the evil Russian state lacked the power to switch off the ventilator for a few minutes or slip something into his drip. In a Russian state hospital.

Next we are supposed to believe that Putin, having poisoned Navalny with novichok, allowed him to be flown to Germany to be saved, making it certain the novichok would be discovered. And that Putin did this because he was worried Merkel was angry, not realising she might be still more angry when she discovered Putin had poisoned him with novichok- Craig Murray

Curiously again, Navalny’s poisoning just happened to coincide with an  intense level  of blackmail  and lobbying from  the United States for Germany to  renege on its agreement with Russia to  provide  Germany with cheap  natural  gas via Nordstream 2 pipeline ( to  ensure Germany buys vastly more expensive U.S. gas) and  the current political  debacle occurring in  Belorussia,  where Poland,   the Ukraine and the Nordic states are putting intense pressure on  the Belorussian state to  not sign  up  to the previously agreed political  and military  merging of Belorussia with Russia.

As Southfront notes, it would appear that  the Navalny case and the colour revolution style demonstrations   supported from  those states, has prompted the Belorussian  President Lukashenko; just  recently re-elected on  somewhat dubious grounds after obtaining 80% of the vote!- to  once again  change direction and support the merger with the Russian Federation.

It also  appears somewhat  strange that  Germany has decided that  a Russian national ,  supposedly poisoned on Russian soil,  is the political  business of the German  state. Should Germany wish  to pursue that line of political  enquiry, then  Germany should have  rightly long ago  sanctioned and demanded explanations from the United States, United Kingdom, France and other Western  states for their appalling record of genocidal wars  they they have engaged in.

And one more speculative narrative  explores whether the Novichok accusations are part of a campaign  by  the U.S.  to  ensure the  newly developed  (and rather rushed) Russian COVID19  vaccine, does not  undercut U.S.  attempts (and particularly Bill Gates’) initiatives to  market a vaccine to the world.

All  this  alongside the ongoing attempt by  Western intelligence  agencies  and their mainstream  media “associates” to ‘fit up’  Russia and China  with every possible charge of criminal  activity and human rights violations, so  that  Western  populations can  accept and applaud the loss of access to Russian and Chinese goods, the need for more weapons and even the justification for war. It is important to recognise too, that the linkages between Western  intelligence agencies are very  strong,  and often can be at  odds with  the positions of those in  government, to the benefit of those who  can make money  out of death  and destruction.

The U.S.  and the U.K.  are very much aware that  their economic influence on the rest of the world is rapidly waning, and their historical  methods of violence intimidation and corruption no longer have the power they use to,  with the rise of China as an economic counterweight.

Thus we see  a long term pattern of accusations of the use of “Weapons of Mass Destruction” or other mass human rights violations  against  states the U.S.  and the U.K wish  to  first destabilise and  then  extract   the profits from  that destruction. The list  includes   Iraq,  Syria,  Libya, Iran,  Russia, Venezuela,  China…   Those countries that  continue to  violate human  rights on  a massive scale like Israel, Saudi Arabia, Colombia and many others  are exempt from  that pressure because they are already  within  the US/UK economic sphere . And of course the  genocidal  activities of the U.S. and U.K.  in their endless colonial  wars are simply brushed under the carpet.

Both the U.S.  and the U.K.  know that once China ,  in collaboration with its Belt and Road partners, achieves overwhelming economic ( and military) superiority,  there will be many many British and American  leaders  confronting the International  Court of Justice in the Hague for their crimes and the need for just  compensation for those states they have destroyed over the past  100  years.

Follow the money….

Postscript

Southfront posits some alternative reasons for Navalny being ‘poisoned’ here 

Links

Homo Homini Lupus Est: Did Navalny’s Allies Poison The Oppositionist For Flying Too Close To The Sun?

https://www.moonofalabama.org/2020/09/navalny-gets-skripaled.html#comments

https://www.unz.com/ishamir/navalny-poison/

https://www.thelocal.de/20200822/whos-behind-the-berlin-ngo-which-rescued-russias-opposition-leader

The Navalny case: Poisoning or another occasion to heighten Russo-European tensions?

https://www.unz.com/ishamir/navalny-poison/

Novichok, Navalny, Nordstream, Nonsense

https://www.sott.net/article/440822-German-Novichok-poisoning-claims-over-Navalny-will-prompt-familiar-circus-of-sanctions-Russia-demonisation-But-who-benefits

https://www.thenation.com/article/world/alexei-navalny-poisoning/

 

Belarus Chooses Integration With Russia Against Navalny Poisoning

Novichok and Nonsense: From a Post-Factual to a Post-Logic World

https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2020/09/05/pers-s05.html

Germany, Not Russia, Should Answer Questions Over Navalny Case

 

Justice & the International Criminal Court (ICC)

Field of sunflowers
Field of sunflowers

On 11th  June 2020, the United States reacted  with outrage that  the International  Criminal  Court (ICC) intends to  investigate the United States and Israel  for crimes against humanity. How dare they?  Surely the exceptional  nation and its closest  ally have every  right to  conduct  mass-murder and  torture with impunity?

ASP President O-Gon Kwon described it thus:These measures are unprecedented. They undermine our common endeavor to fight impunity and to ensure accountability for mass atrocities. I deeply regret measures targeting Court officials, staff and their families.

While the ICC has rightly been  accused in  the past  of prosecuting third world  ( dark  skinned) countries since its implementation in  2001, (as you can  clearly  see from  this list  of people indicted by  the ICC)  whilst ignoring the far greater human  rights abuses of first  world countries , its current chief prosecutor now apparently has some balls,  and is prepared  to  incur the wrath of the “greatest  nation on  earth’  to  bring to  court  the gargantuan  levels of   international  crimes by  the United States.

By  2012, U.S. Congress had threatened that it would use military force to rescue any US citizens that were somehow called to account by the International Criminal Court in The Hague, and has signed agreements with more than 100 governments pledging them not to hand over US citizens to the ICC.   U.S. Secretary of State, Texan,  Mike Pompeo ;  the epitome of the “exceptional  nation”  in  all  its bravado,  bullying and sheer brutality ,  has also recently threatened the families of ICC justices with  ‘consequences’  should any  indictments proceed.

Impact  of sanctions

Korea, Indonesia, Vietnam,  Libya,  Yemen,  Venezuela, Cuba, Iran, Iraq, Syria, Eritrea,   Palestine, and hundred other little hidden  wars were American  troops are engaged in  “counter-terrorism” and ‘black sites’ of torture.

Only when it becomes the international  norm  that  any war fought by an  aggressor shall  require full  reparations to  the victim state,  will  wars be finally deemed not to be financially advantageous. That  day  is coming;  the United States should be aware that  its leaders are likely to  be prosecuted and condemned  for the litany of war  crimes they have committed since the most heinous of all-  their merciless slaughter of Koreans  in the Korean War,  and that  the reparations for their  endless wars will  be in  the many  trillions of dollars.

The United States  and its allies will  one day soon, no  longer be able to  inflict  its  savagery on the world.

Links

https://www.icc-cpi.int

https://www.icc-cpi.int/Pages/item.aspx?name=pr1527

https://news.yahoo.com/international-criminal-court-goes-too-223130026.html?

https://www.globalpolicy.org/international-justice/the-international-criminal-court/us-opposition-to-the-icc.html

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

Lieutenant-General Soleimani & the Red Flag of Qom

 

Sardar Qasem Soleimani
Sardar Qasem Soleimani

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.

  1. The deposing of Iran’s democratic government under Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddegh in 1953 by the United States’ Central Intelligence Agency and the United Kingdom’s MI6,  and the installation of the brutal Shah.
  2. 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)
  3. The provision of poison gas and equipment to Iraq, which resulted in further Iranian deaths and injury  in that war.
  4. 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.
  5. 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.
  6. 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.
  7. 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 Shiʿa Islam, 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.’  

Iranian  government news sources also  quote IRGC Commander Major General Hossein Salami  as saying that: The assassination of martyred General Qassem Soleimani will be followed by a strategic revenge which will definitely put an end to the US presence in the region…” 

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?

As the Shi-ite Hezbollah  leader in  Lebanon,  Nasrallah stated on the Sunday  following his killing; ‘When the coffins of American soldiers and officers begin to be transported … to the United States, (President Donald) Trump and his administration will realize that they have really lost the region and will lose the elections…” 

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.

Links

https://www.albawaba.com/news/iran-raises-flag-revenge-qom-city-after-us-killing-qassem-soleimani-1330888

https://www.presstv.com/Detail/2020/01/05/615439/US-soldiers-coffins-Soleimani-Hezbollah

Fragmentation in the Axis of Resistance led to Soleimani’s death

https://www.presstv.com/Detail/2020/01/03/615247/Qassem-Soleimani

https://www.arabnews.com/node/1365976/middle-east

https://www.opednews.com/articles/US-Kick-Starts-Raging-20s-by-Pepe-Escobar-Assassination_Iran_Iran-Versus-Israel_Iranian-Foreign-Minister-Javad-Zarif-200105-814.html

Lies, the Bethlehem Doctrine, and the Illegal Murder of Soleimani

https://www.almasdarnews.com/article/russia-highlights-qassem-soleimanis-role-in-fight-against-isis/

The Donald Is Now America First’s Own Assassin

Le Mesurier, Syria, Corruption & the OPCW

James Le Mesurier
James Le Mesurier

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.

That James le Mesurier,  likely “ex”-MI6  operative and founder of the White Helmets, was a scoundrel  and a man  with  few ethics is indisputable;  however you would certainly  not know that  from  Martin Churlov’s fawning obituary  in  the Guardian .

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?

White Helmets | Official Trailer [HD] | Netflix – YouTube

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?

External Links

The Sad Death of James Le Mesurier

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/nov/13/james-le-mesurier-obituary

https://www.theguardian.com/law/2019/nov/17/british-government-army-accused-covering-up-war-crimes-afghanistan-iraq

https://tass.com/world/1089495

The USA’s History Of Controlling The OPCW To Promote Regime Change

The ‘White Helmets’ and the Inherent Contradiction of America’s Syria Policy

Who is James Le Mesurier?

OPCW Losing Credibility As Even More Revelations Surface On Douma

International Middle East Media Center- and Israeli violations of norms of humanity

Relevant New Antarctica Links

Lieutenant-General Soleimani & the Red Flag of Qom

No flies in Syria