Now that Eastern Aleppo has been finally retaken by Syrian government troops and their allies after 4 years of war there, we see a curious phenomenon in the Western press. Rather than applauding the return to peace for the millions of civilians in Western Aleppo and a potential return to some normalcy for the few remaining in Eastern Alleppo, we are instead treated to ongoing accusations from ‘rebel’ sources of massacres; statements that cannot be verified in any way because the reporters are not on the ground in Syria, and statements which are intended to undermine the Assad victory. We are also told in each of these mainstream reports that ‘the war will go on regardless’- one might be forgiven for thinking that those journalists and media outlets are actually wanting the war to continue?
We know that Western governments and the Gulf State dictatorships have poured millions of dollars, not only into arming and training the ‘rebels’ of any affiliation in Syria over the past five years- but also poured millions into a huge propaganda network designed to convince the Western public that Al Qaeda in Syria is in fact moderate and cuddly and that only the Syrian government forces do terrible things.
This is a brutal war without question. Both sides have committed atrocities and enormous devastation: to pretend otherwise is to be blind to the costs of war.
But it is absolutely clear that without the ongoing Western government resourcing of salafist extremists in Syria this war would have been long over.
This war was not inevitable; it was a deliberate decision by Western governments to overthrow Assad; firstly , because the Syrian government opposes the ongoing Israeli occupation of Palestine and the Syrian Golan Heights heights and secondly because their allies; the Gulf dictatorships of Saudi Arabia , Qatar and UAE see a secular Syria under Assad as a threat to their support for the Wahhabist sunni extremist doctrine espoused by Al Qaeda and ISIS, and thereby alters their power play against shi-ite Iran.
I for one, hope that peace will prevail over the dogs of war.
Postscript
As of 15th December, mainstream media are now reporting that Chinese green buses are now transporting some of the remaining East Aleppo rebels and their families to Idlib province and possibly Turkey. This is going to make the ongoing reporting of massacres and pictures of carefully cement dust covered babies, that much harder for Western PR agencies to make plausible for the western public. The ruthless evil dictator Assad granting amnesty to the poor defenceless rebels?- that doesnt quite add up…? hmmm
Saudi Arabia and Qatar have put huge resources, not only into funding and paying for anti-Shiite Salafist soldiers in Syria, but also into resourcing a vast media campaign to attack Iran and the IRGC for its role in supporting the Assad regime.
With the imminent defeat of the Saudi funded jihadists in Aleppo, the Saudis are facing a huge hit to their morale and international standing- especially when taken alongside their disastrous war in Yemen, which increasingly is seen to be a humanitarian human rights genocidal campaign against the Yemen people. The anti-Iran campaign now means that it will be considered internationally that Iran has in effect, defeated the Saudis in Syria. This is however, not the true state of affairs; while Iran’s IRGC has played a significant role in Syria over the past two years, their role does not appear to have been a game changer- despite the Iranian hype about the famed General Suleiman and his soldiers.
With the likely defeat of all opposition forces in Eastern Aleppo in the next few weeks, those 25,000 battle-hardened SAA (Syrian Government) soldiers in action there can now be deployed elsewhere in Syria. This re-deployment will likely result in the final defeat of the majority of forces aligned with the Saudis and Qataris and trained by Western governments in the Jordanian ‘rebel’ camps. The “King’ of Jordan will now have to make some considerable contortions in order to ‘make up’ with Assad – but it’s quite possible that those jihadis escaping back over the Jordanian border will now make a serious attempt to overthrow another of the West’s pawns in the Middle East. Additionally, those rebels of European origin, which Western intelligence agencies have been facilitating into Syria for the past five years, are also likely to return to their native European countries bringing their carefully honed military skills and sectarian hatreds with them.
Should the Assad regime succeed in pacifying the majority of Syria , the huge resources put into destabilising Syria by the George Soros business empire, the French, the U.K., Turkey and the U.S., means that their corporate intent to profit from re-building the Syria they have destroyed, will have come to nothing. Chinese and Russian businesses are now well placed to do that.
And Saudi Arabia, has by its attempts to play Iran as the key evil agent in Syria , almost literally, shot itself in the foot- with a consequence that the whole Saudi regime is now likely to go gangrenous in a relatively short space of time. No wonder the UK is panicking in its absurd manipulation of MSM media coverage of the Syrian war! The loss of the Saudi ‘kingdom’ to UK control and arms sales, would be a catastrophic loss for those who hold the puppet-strings of power in Whitehall and ‘The City’. Should the Qatari regime also be brought down in the aftermath of a SAA victory, the implications for Western influence in the Middle East will be huge.
Given that Egypt now appears to be wavering towards supporting the Assad regime and the Russians, there are serious international re-alignments happening. Even the wily but somewhat deranged President Erdogan of Turkey is admitting that his long-term interests no longer lie with being antagonistic to Russia – particularly if the oil pipeline from Russia to Europe can run through his backyard!
Early prognostications were that the EU and US sanctions against Russia, (ostensibly for their Crimean ‘invasion’) would cripple the Russian economy. With the shift of economic focus of Russia towards the East and China’s One Belt Road, the impacts of the sanctions have been somewhat reduced, and the medium term economic outlook for Russia now looks considerably more rosy than even the worst dreams of U.S. neocons .
For the Chinese, the increasing hysteria coming from the US about China’s growing power, economically and militarily, is now being mitigated by the rapid development of the ‘One Belt Road’ This new high-speed overland trade route to Russia and the West means that China will, in the near future, be somewhat insulated from the increasing risks of Western warships blockading its trade routes to the outside world. Bizarrely the U.K. government in London is now also sending its aging warships to the South China Sea (shades of the ‘Opium Wars’). Commercial engagement in a revitalised Syria is just one part the Chinese are likely to play in their resurgent role in the Middle East.
In short, the battle for Aleppo is one symptom of the shifting power alignments in the world. A victory for Assad and his allies implies a significant change in the ways of the world for the medium to long term.
As the Syrian government forces and its allies prepare for the final advance to push the jihadists from the small part of Aleppo still held by the jihadists, Western governments and their propaganda arm, the White Helmets, are upping the PR campaign to push for the establishment of a no-fly zone across Syria- effectively banning the Syrian and Russian airforces from the skies.
The PR campaign alleges that the only people killed in this evil war are civilians killed by the bombs from the sky. For some reason, the truck-bombs, tank fire, artillery, mortars, missile barrages, sniper fire and suicide attacks from the jihadist side, do not cause any civilian casualties for the vast majority (1.5 million) of Aleppo civilians sheltering on the government side of the warzone in Aleppo. Part of the issue is that Western media only report on casualty figures provided by the ‘rebel’ side; so we are left to assume that the SAA; -the Syrian Army, is entirely responsible for all civilian casualties; which, given the enormous amounts of firepower provided by Western governments, Turkey and the Gulf dictatorships to the ‘rebels’, would be somewhat unusual!
The U.S. military is well aware that Al Qaeda affiliates are the major force on the ‘rebel’ side in East Aleppo, and that Western interventions against the Assad government only strengthen Al Qaeda.
Western governments are also well aware that a no-fly zone- as in Libya , will create the perfect opportunity for Al Qaeda affiliates and their ‘moderate’ allies to defeat the Syrian government forces , over-run Damascus in a blood-bath, and establish a jihadist centre of power in Syria and the elimination of the more than 26% of the Syrian population who are not Sunni arabs or who do not subscribe to the medieval views of their Gulf state sponsors.
Just as in Iraq, with the fictional incubator babies on Iraqi bayonets in Kuwait saga, the fictional viagra supplied to Gaddaffi’s soldiers in Libya to rape civilians; we are now sold endless fictional stories of the “last hospital in Aleppo”, well- framed photos of young men carrying babies through war-torn streets, or babies and young children immaculately covered in concrete dust .
Yes, this is a brutal war; civilians will and are dying in immense suffering on both sides of the ever shifting frontlines . But the most effective mechanism to stop the barbarity is for Western governments and their Gulf dictatorship proxies, to stop arming jihadist rebels.. The hypocrisy of Western leaders- particularly the ‘socialist’ premier Hollande, knows no bounds it would appear.
Obama’s legacy; and this may well be his prime legacy- and one he may remember in his older years as he stands before the International War Crimes Tribunal, (once its decisions are no longer controlled by the U.S. State Department), was his omnipotent capacity to decide who shall live and who shall die by drone anywhere in the world, based on limited pieces of information provided on baseball cards. (a kind of Roman Emperor type role: – thumbs- up or down at the Coliseum)
Lawfareblog.com notes ‘This is a mock-up/depiction of what an actual kill-list baseball card looks like. It is not a real baseball card and is not based on any classified information.’
Taken together, the secret documents lead to the conclusion that Washington’s 14-year high-value targeting campaign suffers from an over-reliance on signals intelligence, an apparently incalculable civilian toll, and — due to a preference for assassination rather than capture — an inability to extract potentially valuable intelligence from terror suspects. They also highlight the futility of the war in Afghanistan by showing how the U.S. has poured vast resources into killing local insurgents, in the process exacerbating the very threat the U.S. is seeking to confront. The Intercept
One might almost be forgiven therefore for coming to the conclusion that the intent of the U.S. targeted killing process is not to eliminate the sources of terror, but to exacerbate them.
Drone operator cabin- Daily Mail Australia
As we have seen in many a colonial war, those who ‘hand in’ terrorists to the colonial power inevitably have their own agendas; feuding families and clans, or perhaps financial or property interests, but rarely because they are in fact ‘terrorists”. In addition we can be certain that US military and State Dept claims of minimal ‘collateral damage’ (accidental killing of civilians who get in the way of a drone missile’s large detonation area) are complete fabrications. And we can be certain too that drone operators have less than minimal knowledge of foreign cultural issues- e.g. the difference between a wedding party celebrating by firing automatic weapons into the air and a terrorist group in weapons training , let alone their drone “eyes” having sufficient definition to pick up who is who on the ground.
So, when dear President Obama gives the thumbs down on that particular baseball card, he really has no idea what he is agreeing to; other than that his decision will kill someone or more likely , quite a few people, out there . But of course, if that Hellfire missile with its 9kg warhead just happens to kill a few other ‘military-age males’ in the vicinity of the explosion, all to the good. By using remote killing mechanisms the US president can appear to take a Herod-like hands-off approach to the art of murder, with the added benefit of limited capacity of verifying what carnage has actually occurred on the ground.
In addition the United States’ penchant for targeting supposed ‘leaders’ of terrorist groups, rather than their supply lines, infrastructure or financial backers, means that drones can be used over and over to kill the next leader who takes the deceased’s place in the leadership line; or as in many cases , the United States simply ‘kills’ the same person over and over again; such is the usefulness of remote unverified killing.
President Obama has even been known to joke publicly about his life and death decision-making powers, not too dissimilar from his psychopathic Secretary of State , Hilary Clinton.
I hope I will be around to see them stand before the International tribunal.
The blog heading is one of Mark Twain’s quotes. But here is a much better one from Mr Clemens.
Man is the only Patriot. He sets himself apart in his own country, under his own flag, and sneers at the other nations, and keeps multitudinous uniformed assassins on hand at heavy expense to grab slices of other people’s countries, and keep them from grabbing slices of his. And in the intervals between campaigns he washes the blood of his hands and works for “the universal brotherhood of man”- with his mouth. – “The Lowest Animal”- Mark Twain
Today, in my little part of the world; it is once again Anzac Day, originally commemorated to mark the bloody failure of the British Empire’s coordinated attack on Turkish positions in the Dardanelles at Gallipoli in World War One, but now, ( supposedly) it ‘acknowledges the sacrifice of all those who have died in warfare, and the contribution and suffering of all those who have served.” Strangely however this commemoration of all who have died in wars is marked by artillery salutes, marching uniformed men and much fanfare about this country’s patriotism. We are encouraged to believe that Anzac Day now promotes a sense of unity, perhaps more effectively than any other day on the national calendar. People whose politics, beliefs and aspirations are widely different can nevertheless share a genuine sorrow at the loss of so many lives in war, and a real respect for those who have endured warfare on behalf of the country we live in. (New Zealand Government).
I for one, am appalled that the majority consensus in New Zealand appears to be that ‘plucky little New Zealand’ became a real country with its own identity, and not just a member of the British Empire, by maiming and killing its way through a series of foreign “adventures”. The one possible exception to this catastrophic jingoistic litany of murder and mayhem, is New Zealand’s very real contribution to the war against Nazi Germany and Japan during the Second World War, when a New Zealand invasion by the Japanese Imperial Army was a high probability at one point.
Every other war we have fought, we have fought at the behest of others- from the genocide inflicted on the Boers during the Boer Wars as part of the British Imperial Army’s need to maintain control of South African assets, the First World War’s bizarre clash of European monarchies , the staggering level of genocide inflicted on Koreans by the “Allies’ (including New Zealand naval bombardment of civilian areas) during the Korean War, our implicit involvement in American genocide in Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia, our explicit connection to rendering of Afghan suspects to U.S. torture centres in Afghanistan, and our ongoing complicity in the Five Eyes intelligence project, which currently serves American and U.K. interests in promoting terrorism around the world and destroying human rights.
All in all, it is not a record I for one am proud of. Our ongoing subservience to the paranoid and psychopathic American war machine and its business interests, serves no-one’s interests on this planet, other than a few crazed right wing American idealogues and the military/industrial complex.
Despite successive New Zealand governments’ posturings that we are now a sovereign nation because of Anzac Day, when are we truly going to be a proud and independent nation who stands in truth for peace and international justice?
The Brussels nail bombing attacks occurred on the morning of March 22nd 2016; two in the departure area of Brussels international airport near the town of Zaventem seven miles from Brussels and one in the Maelbeek metro station in the centre of the city.28 victims and three suicide bombers were killed, and 330 people were injured. Another bomb was found during a search of the airport. Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) claimed responsibility for the attacks.
We now know that Turkey ‘deported’ the presumed key instigator of the Brussel’s attack to Amsterdam in the Netherlands, rather than to Belgium. Which meant, that rather than being detained as a terrorist in Belgium upon leaving the plane, he was instead permitted to drive back to Belgium from Amsterdam’s Schiphol Airport because he was not on any Netherlands wanted list. Poor bad luck? or was it-as has been suggested, a cosy arrangement between Turkey and the Israeli owned security firm ICTS International (owned by ‘former’ Shin Bet intelligence agency personnel) managing the security at the airport. You will perhaps recall that ICTS International is the same security agency that escorted Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab on Christmas Day 2009 , without a passport or ticket, to a First Class seat on Northwest flight 253 at Schiphol Airport, and who then attempted to detonate plastic explosives hidden inside his trousers.
But the key issue that Western media consistently ignore, is their and their political masters’ support for anti-Assad rebel groups; who are in fact, terrorists. Their ‘moderate’ terrorists have been trained by Western intelligence and sited in Jordan and Turkey to inflict terror on Syrian populations. Hillary Clinton’s psychopathic need to kill and destroy is reflected in her weird emails using agents like Google and the Qatari terrorist supporting Al Jazeera media outlet. Now that , with a little help from Russian bombers, Assad ‘s military is inflicting serious losses on these terrorists groups in Syria- many are rushing ‘home’ to safety. But with all that training and nowhere to go-whats a good terrorist to do but blow up something close to home?
This all suits the US vacuous political and military establishment very well. Heightening fear and loathing about these ‘Islamic’ groups in European communities, and encouraging right wing imbecilic xenophobia, is incredibly useful to ensure that the Eurozone limits its citizens freedoms, expands its military and supports NATO weirdness.
To ensure we all believe that America is in fact attempting to destroy terrorists ( ie the long long looong war!) the US military prioritises killing heads of terrorist organizations- the key advantage of such vaunted actions is that they can never be corroborated – (unless of course ISIS agrees that their man has been killed)!, as opposed to destroying terrorist supply lines, banking activities, training camps, weapons supply routes etc, which can all be independently verified. The evidence is mounting that these fundamentalist Islamic terrorists are in fact nothing but mercenaries who can conveniently use the fear of Islamism to increase their impact on gullible Western populations.
As Pepe Escobar notes, NATO headquarters is less than 2 kilometers from the site of the Brussels terror; why choose a metro station to create an impact , rather than the central supposedly core of Western values sited at NATO headquarters? Soft targets are of course easy targets, but they clearly have less impact on Western political actions than hard targets….
If we are to believe the quoted media response from ISIS, that; ‘let France and all nations following its path know that they will continue to be at the top of the target list for the Islamic State and that the scent of death will not leave their nostrils as long as they partake part in the crusader campaign … [with] their strikes against Muslims in the lands of the Caliphate with their jets.’, then this soft target response to the ‘11,111 air strikes launched by Western and Gulf states against targets in Syria and Iraq’, then this supposed ISIS response is certainly a circuitous route to conquering the crusaders.
Sibel Edmonds, ex-FBI operative, argues however that the proximity of the attacks to NATO headquarters is no coincidence, and simply forms part of a long sequence of CIA/NATO sponsored Gladio attacks in Europe- or in Belgium, the ‘stay-behind’ Gladio units were known as S.D.R.A. VIII , with strong connections to far-right organisations.
Despite his genetically ingrained Russophobic tendencies, Craig Murray makes the very good point that terrorists can in fact attack any soft target at will. Current anti-terrorist measures , such as at airports are a complete farce, largely useless, and result in long, vulnerable to attack, queues.
We live in a bizarre world of lies, disinformation, half-truths and extraordinary events where individuals with limited intelligence have accumulated great power, and are quite prepared to kill any number of innocents for their own foolish ends.
Reports are now coming thick and fast from both the Middle East and from the United Stated sources of the role the United States and its key allies have played in first establishing and then maintaining ISIS, Al Qaeda and numerous other salafist affiliates, under the flimsy guise of them being “moderate” jihadists.
As one more instance of this support, the recent debacle of a defeat for Iraqi troops against ISIS in Ramadi points to the clear decision by United States forces not to conduct airstrikes against ISIS positions, when there was every opportunity to do so., and the US recommendation to the Iraqi government not to deploy Shi-ite militias in Ramadi The United States is now aggrieved that Iranian military players are now directly involved in the re-taking of Ramadi for the Iraqi government .
The usual pack of neocon psychopaths , with John Bolton snarling in the lead, has been to attempt to ramp up the non-existent Iranian nuclear weapon threat, to provide unconditional support for Israeli genocide in Palestine and to support anything , regardless of international law or the rights of humanity, that will extend the United State’s power internationally. If that means using delusional Saudi and Qatari “princes” to find and resource even more psychotic ISIS military leaders,who believe that all Shi-ites must be exterminated; then so be it.
There is clear evidence of an ongoing policy by the neocons to destroy secular Middle East governments ( ie not specifically Sunni oriented governments) like Saddam’s Iraq, Libya, Syria, which can lead on to the ultimate goal for the US, Israel and the Saudis; the destruction of Shi-ite Iran. The Saudi bombardment of Yemen’s Houthi movement and all Yemeni civilians , is just a minor diversion in the larger game plan.
The recent public announcement by the US that it wil be funding training and arming “moderate” Syrian opposition forces to fight the Syrian Assad regime , is one more step in this bizarre and farcical journey of creating monsters to kill them. As has been clearly demonstrated; there is in fact no “moderate” opposition fighters. It is possible that at the beginning of the fight against Assad in the “spontaneous” Arab Spring uprising against him , that there were a few secular and moderate voices, but they have long gone. As this Department of Defence report for 2012 clearly indicates, the US knew well (even 3 years ago) that the Syrian opposition fighters that it supported and continues to support, were almost entirely composed of extremist jihadists and salafist ( anti-Shiite and anti any other non-Sunni sect)
Or note ex-President of Afghanistan, Hamid Karzai’s view that the U.S is actively taking a two sided approach to creation and destruction of jihadist groups to serve its power interests.
Time and time again we are seeing reports in the mainstream U.S. and U.K. media that ISIS is here to stay for the long term; how hard it will be to eliminate them; and really, things are such a lot better for those people in Iraq, Libya and Syria now that ISIS and its Western subsidised offshoots are there. After all we have “law and order”-never mind that this “law” is an obscene psychopathic one As a “delightful ” example of this obscene Western view on that”Isis isn’t really that bad” -read this article in the U.K. Independent by Richard Barrett (who) was head of counter-terrorism at MI6 before spending nine years as the co-ordinator of the UN’s Al-Qaeda and Taliban Monitoring Team.
And some additional information from Andrew P Napolitano at antiwar. com brings to the sunlight at least one war equipment ratline managed by Secretary of State Clinton to terrorists in Libya and Syria .
And from Sibel Edmonds, ex-American intelligence operative; a podcast on the role of the U.S. Black-ops community in establishing and maintaining various international terrorist groups
When I was at high-school in my quiet little New Zealand hometown, the Army came round each classroom every once in a while to show what a great job they were doing to defend us from the commies.
Claymore Mine operation
I have always remembered one swaggering staff sergeant and his corporal explaining in great detail to our class how the anti-personnel mines they used in Vietnam to fight the vietcong; or “charlie” as they liked to call them -(short for “victor charlie” or “vc”) – how our honourable soldiers would park these little green claymore mines on their scissor legs on the jungle trails with tripwires for the unwary-be they “charlie” or local peasants and their children.
Once detonated by the tripwire , the blast shot six hundred little ball bearings at deadly velocity in a 60 degree arc, shredding anything and everything in their path. Our staff-sergeant explained with a weary smile that that those cunning little charlie used to instead turn the mines around so that they sometimes shredded “our ” men instead.
Our staff-sergeant made it oh, so very clear to us , that this virtuous war in Vietnam was not just a war against the evil commies, but a war against the ‘yellow peril’ who would otherwise kill us good white folks in our beds some day.
A Harvard University study estimates that up to 3.8 million Vietnamese people died as a result of that war. A recent Guardian article says that:
The US dropped more high explosives on Vietnam than the allies used on Germany and Japan together in the second world war. It also dropped napalm jelly, which stuck to its victims while it roasted their skin; white phosphorous, which burned down to the bone; fragmentation bombs, which hurled ball bearings and steel shards in all directions; and 73m litres of toxic chemicals, including 43m litres of Agent Orange, which killed vegetation and inflicted illness on those who were exposed to it.
Infamously, the US also bombed Hanoi – a city full of civilians with no air force to defend it.
And please, make no mistake, our New Zealand government was fully aware of our complicity in these horrendous war-crimes against a people who made the mistake of wanting to kick out their colonial oppressors; the French.
And were our NZ military commanders also oblivious to the massive firebombing of every city and town in North Korea (and some South Korean cities too) during the Korean War that killed, using wild under-estimations, over one and a half million people? I think not. Were they aware of, or complicit in the extensive war crimes committed by British troops in the Malay Insurgency?
And please, let us not forget our active involvement in the capture and torture and murder of anyone who might just look like the Taleban in Afghanistan.
The White Poppy of Peace
But of course, this has all been in the name of freedom and democracy, and of course our ANZAC nation-building exercise….
For there to be true honour for our country, we must both acknowledge and compensate for the incredible human suffering our involvement in those wars have inflicted on other peoples. Are we a brave enough nation for that?
New Antarctica 