From Stop the War Coalition
23 November 2015.
Other resources at http://www.stopwar.org.uk/index.php/resources/leaflets-fact-sheets
http://www.stopwar.org.uk/index.php/resources/leaflets-fact-sheets/don-t-bomb-syria-placard
Syrian Army unblocks the road to the Armenian region of Kessab
From Fort Russ
Translated by Ollie Richardson for Fort Russ
13th December, 2015
Syrian forces, during an anti-terrorist operation in the Northern Latakia province, unblocked the most important road in the Armenian-populated region of Kessab through Castel Maaf. Pro-Turkish militants were trapped in a cauldron, and were told if they did not lay down their arms, they would be destroyed.
During the fighting in the mountains of Jabal al-Turkman, which are inhabited mostly by the Syrian Turks (the so-called Turkomans), the Syrian military destroyed the commander of the battalion “al-Nasr” and a member of the 1st Coastal brigade of the Free Syrian army, Syrian Turk Akila Juma. Juma has fought against the people of Syria since 2013 and under him were 400 fighters from the Syrian Turks.
The Turkish press has published an obituary for the terrorist, in which he is cynically called “a Martyr, a Martyr for the faith.”
Another terrorist, but from the North Caucasus, who had the nickname “Abu Hamza”, fought against the people of Syria in the group of “al-Sham Adzhnad”, which is composed of people from the Russian North Caucasus, and Central Asia. Hamza participated in the attack on Armenian Kessab in March last year, where he the etched “in memory” onto a captured Armenian house.
[O.R: there are more gruesome photos in the original article, which were not published by Fort Russ in this translation]
Nobel Peace Laureate Mairead Maguire brings a message to the UK from Syrian children
From Stop the War Coalition
By Mairead Maguire
07 December 2015
Syrian children who have suffered so much from violence and war in their young lives, send a message: ‘UK please do not bomb our country’.
On 28 November 2015, Mairead Maguire visited a school in Homs, where children have suffered from violence and war.
On 2nd December, 2015 the United Kingdom Parliament voted to bomb Syria and the world watched as British planes, equipped with the latest bombs aptly named ‘Brimstone’ are dropped on Syrian targets and country.
On 28/ll/2015 during my visit to Homs and at a school in the heart of Old Homs, Syrian children who have suffered so much from violence and war in their young lives, send a message: ‘UK please do not bomb our country, we love Syria’.
Having returned from my third visit to Syria, the message from the Syrian people is, they do not want outside military interference in their country, they want through peace and reconciliation to stop all violence and build a just and peaceful Syria, and they are already doing this themselves.
Syrian children send a message: ‘UK please do not bomb our country, we love Syria’.
Mairead Maguire, Nobel Peace Laureate. www.peacepeople.com
Join Stop the War
The campaign against the British government’s war policies continues. If you are angry at Parliament voting for the UK’s fourth war in 14 years, and sickened by MPs cheering the bombing of Syria:
Join Stop the War now »
Biological warfare against the people of Iraq
And the people of eastern Ukraine, Syria, Yemen, Libya, Afghanistan, etc., etc., etc.
Global Research, December 13, 2015
International Journal of Epidemiology Volume 32, Issue 4 1 December 2003
The Anglo-American bombing of water supplies, sanitation plants, and the power plants that are necessary for their functioning, constitutes a biological attack.
This article was first published by the International Journal of Epidemiology in 2003 in the immediate wake of the war on Iraq
The only property of micro-organisms that enables them to be used as biological weapons is their capacity to cause infectious disease. People may be deliberately exposed to pathogenic micro-organisms in a variety of ways but it is the fact of exposure rather than the method of delivery that determines whether disease will result. Because the ability to cause infection is the defining aspect of a biological weapon, then any malevolent intervention that causes infection in the civilian population constitutes an attack with a biological weapon.
Micro-organisms are necessary but not sufficient in the causation of infectious disease and other causal factors are required for infection to occur.1 Host resistance is an important factor in the chain of causation leading to clinical infection.2 Whether or not exposure to a micro-organism causes disease depends on whether or not the exposed individual is susceptible or immune. Dietary deficiency of key vitamins and micronutrients increases susceptibility to a number of infectious agents and also increases the likelihood that infectious disease will result in severe illness and death. Vitamin A and zinc deficiency impair the ability of the immune system to fight infection and the ability of mucous membranes to resist infection.2,,3 Indeed, the decline in infectious diseases in high-income countries is more readily attributed to increased host resistance from better nutrition than to a reduction in the virulence of the relevant micro-organisms. It follows that any malevolent intervention that impairs the ability of a civilian population to resist infection constitutes biological warfare.
In public health practice, prevention involves removing one or more of the components in the chain of causation leading to disease. From an epidemiological perspective, causation and prevention are two sides of the same coin.1 For this reason, a consideration of the actions that can prevent infectious disease from occurring after exposure to a biological agent can help to identify the other components in the causal chain. For example, following an attack with anthrax, spores can be washed off with soap and water and oral antibiotics can be given to prevent infection from developing.4 If an anthrax attack occurred in situations where antibiotics were unavailable then some cases of anthrax infection would be attributable to their absence. Consequently, any malevolent intervention that destroys a population’s ability to respond effectively to infectious diseases constitutes a biological attack.
These rather mundane scientific considerations have important implications for how biological warfare is defined in the context of the current conflict in Iraq. First, it implies that the Anglo-American bombing of water supplies, sanitation plants, and the power plants that are necessary for their functioning, constitutes a biological attack. Standard texts on biological weapons point out that three factors must be taken into account in selecting a biological agent for a biological attack: ease of manufacture, stability, and lethality. Despite widespread public concern about the use of anthrax, smallpox, and plague, all three are difficult to manufacture and disseminate. Anthrax requires sophisticated methods of manufacture and virulent stock is hard to find. The only confirmed sources of smallpox are in the US and Russia, and plague is both difficult to obtain and difficult to weaponize.4
On the other hand, the microbial agents that can cause devastating epidemics of diarrhoea are ubiquitous, lethal, and are readily disseminated by destroying the civilian sanitation infrastructure by bombing or otherwise destroying water sanitation and sewage disposal systems. These actions will ensure that food and water supplies to the civilian population will quickly become contaminated. Because the faeces of infected people will further contaminate the water supply and because there will be extensive person-to-person transmission this strategy has the potential to result in extensive, population-wide, and self-propagating epidemics. The scope for civilian casualties with such an approach is massive in comparison with the use of agents such as anthrax for which there is no evidence of person-to-person transmission. Declassified documents from the American Defense Intelligence Agency show that during the 1991 Gulf War, the ‘Allies’ deliberately targeted Iraq’s water supply. Twelve years later, half the water treatment plants are still out of action.5
Second, the economic sanctions imposed by the United Nations Security Council that have caused widespread dietary deficiencies throughout the civilian population, seriously reducing the ability of the population to resist infection, constitute a form of biological warfare. Micro-organisms that pose little threat to those with intact immune systems can be highly lethal to those with impaired immunity as a result of micronutrient deficiency and malnutrition. For example, life-threatening diarrhoea can be caused by ubiquitous microbes such as Escherichia coli that reside in the gastrointestinal tract and common respiratory viruses can cause highly lethal pneumonia. As a result of the sanctions against Iraq there has been a more than doubling of the infant and under-5 mortality rates, with most of the excess child deaths being due to diarrhoea and pneumonia exacerbated by malnutrition.6 The imposition of economic sanctions in Iraq is as much a form of biological attack as was the distribution of anthrax in the US mail system.
Third, the destruction of the Iraqi population’s ability to respond to outbreaks of infectious disease by restricting the import of essential medicines and medical equipment, by destroying the public health infrastructure, and by overwhelming the capacity of the healthcare system to respond effectively constitutes a further biological attack.
Fourth, having destroyed Iraq’s water and sanitation systems, leaving the civilian population highly vulnerable to major epidemics of infectious disease, the failure to restore the public health infrastructure and provide safe water supplies to homes and hospitals constitutes a biological attack. In this context, recent reports that reconstruction contracts may be awarded to the US company Bechtel are a particular cause for concern. In 1999, a Bechtel subsidiary took over the control of the public water system in Cochabamba in Bolivia and within weeks doubled and tripled the water rates for some of the poorest families in South America resulting in massive public demonstrations.7 Also, we must not forget that in the case of Afghanistan, despite the Bush administration’s claim that ‘the US will not walk away from the Afghan people’, the administration subsequently forgot to ask for any money for humanitarian and reconstruction costs in its 2003 budget.
The full extent of civilian casualties resulting from the war on Iraq will become clear in the coming weeks and months. An effective humanitarian response must be mounted urgently to reduce the death toll from this appalling episode in the history of biological warfare.
- © International Epidemiological Association 2003
References
-
Rothman KJ. Modern Epidemiology. Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1986.
- Stephensen CB. Vitamin A, infection and immune function. Annu Rev Nutr2001;21:167–92.
- Berger A. What does zinc do? BMJ 2002;325:1062.
- Levy BS, Sidel VW (eds). Terrorism and Public Health. New York: Oxford University Press, 2002.
- Sengupta K. The Independent. Saturday 19 April 2003.
- Arnove A (ed.). Iraq under Siege: The Deadly Impact of Sanctions and War. London: Pluto Press, 2003.
- Palast G. New British Empire of the Dammed. The Observer. Sunday 23 April 2000.
The original source of this article is International Journal of Epidemiology Volume 32, Issue 4
Copyright © Ian Roberts, International Journal of Epidemiology Volume 32, Issue 4 , 2015
Canada’s state crimes against children: Duplessis orphans and Indian boarding schools — kidnapping, rape, torture, lobotomies, experimentation, murder, trafficking, genocide
Over 350,000 children were taken and used by Canadian and religious authorities. Many were murdered.
More than 50,000 First Nation indigenous children disappeared and were murdered in Church of England and Catholic boarding schools, and 300,000 children (some of whom were United States citizens) were sold or were incarcerated in mental hospitals in Quebec to make money from the Canadian government.
From RT
Duplessis Orphans (S3E8)
December 13, 2015
A special edition of In the Now: A story of an atrocity against children, a cover-up, and the sheer strength of survivors. One Canadian “Duplessis Orphan” shares what she had to go through in her childhood.
Video at: https://www.rt.com/shows/in-the-now-summary/325769-duplessis-orphans-atrocity-children/
From Hidden No Longer
More than 50,000 children died in “Indian residential schools” operated jointly by the government of Canada and the Roman Catholic, Anglican and United Church of Canada
Report
Hidden from History: The Canadian Holocaust
http://canadiangenocide.nativeweb.org/genocide.pdf
Background documents
http://canadiangenocide.nativeweb.org/intro.html
Canada speaks so passionately about human rights. Then why do they murder, enslave, and experiment on their own children?
There is still no justice for these children.
Fallujah is being slaughtered silently
It’s time to stop “supporting our troops”: 30 million people killed by U.S. since the end of World War II
Another searing article by West Point grad and former US Army officer Joachim Hagopian.
Global Research, December 13, 2015
With the 115 year old tradition of the annual Army-Navy football classic on Saturday, the so called “America’s game” and “rivalry for the ages” is now once again upon us. This occasion never fails to pay reverent homage to America’s so called “cream of the crop” elitist military academies and always from the president to celebrities Americans give tribute to our armed forces. At this time we hear that familiar patriotic mantra “support our troops” mindlessly repeated. So it seems appropriate now to take a cold hard look to examine what it actually means to “support our troops.”
As both a West Point graduate and critic of the American Empire, to me the “support our troops” sentiment has long outworn its propagandized welcome. US Empire has been using that contrite expression to brainwash Americans and justify its wars and violence for far too long. It sprang up during this last decade’s protracted war losses in Iraq and Afghanistan. Never was it ever heard during the Vietnam War when our combat veterans returned home feeling defeated and suffering from untreated PTSD symptoms, shunned by a nation that had bitterly turned against them and their war, particularly by their own peer group. Fast forward to four decades and three war defeats later, and our government is still sending Americans off to fight and die inAfghanistan (9800 currently) and Iraq (3500 with another 100 on the way), and now in Syria (50 just proposed with more on the way while war-hawk Bobbsy twins McCain and Graham are calling for 20,000 more troops in Syria). But this century’s wars we keep hearing red, white and blue, flag waving Americans urging us to “support our troops.”
Over the long haul, supporting our troops has resulted in the United States being the most warring, aggressive nation on earth, bar none. As we’re about to enter 2016, our ultraviolent country will be killing other human beings somewhere on this planet for 223 out of the last 240 total years the US has been in existence. That’s 93% of our time as a nation-turned-Empire we’ve been destroying human life. That’s certainly nothing to be proud of. Yet it’s “our troops” who’ve been the murdering culprit. No compassionate, rational person could possibly place blindly obedient support behind such rampantly wanton disregard and contempt for fellow human life.
Another fact that Americans can’t be proud of is knowing that the most warring nation on earth just since World War II alone has murdered up to 30 million people around the globe with an estimated 90% of them being civilians. Having initiated 201 out of the total of 240 armed conflicts from the end of WWII to 2001, it then follows that between those years the US Empire of Chaos and Destruction has murdered 27 million innocent people whose lives have tragically been cut short through no fault of their own for simply living in the wrong place at the wrong time belonging to the wrong ethnic nationality targeted by America’s full spectrum dominance and global superpower hegemony. And that was before the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.
And what does it take to be targeted as a US foreign enemy? Any country whose leaders choose to support their own citizens’ well-being, independence and quality of life over US Empire’s fascist transnational corporate interests is attacked economically through sanctions and embargos, politically through propaganda lies and threats, or militarily though unnatural disasters/weather warfare, occupied invasions involving long term bloody conflict or acts of terrorism, coups and assassinations. Just ask Cuba, Venezuela, Haiti, Panama, Iran, Syria, Iraq, Libya, Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia, Sudan, Congo North Korea, Donbas, Palestine or Russia just to name more than a dozen.
People around the world have been victimized for well over a century by American Empire’s willful rape and pillage of their lands in the name of stolen natural resources and inhumane forced slave labor, and those are the nations whose puppet dictators willingly succumbed and acquiesced to US demands and pressures. In fact in the tradition of the British Empire, North America’s entire domestic and foreign history has been made of genocidal killing, enslaving, stealing and subjugating other darker-skinned races into death and submission. Given this context with the bigger picture perspective, “supporting our troops” is really supporting mass murder around the world. So bearing that sobering, grim reality in mind, it’s time for Americans to cease and desist with their jingoistic rah-rah that only adds insult to injury to the rest of the victimized world.
In 2008 the US spent more money every 5 seconds to wage an immoral, unlawful war in Iraq than the average working American earned all year long. 80% of America’s taxes are earmarked towards funding the annual Pentagon budget to wage war around the world. When that kind of war investment misappropriating US citizenry’s hard-earned tax dollars places such lopsided priority over the well-being of its own people, with over a decade of wearing down an overextended military forced into fighting three, four and even five consecutive combat tours on two simultaneous warfronts, it also overburdened and decimated America’s middle class. And now for the first time in nearly a half century, the US middle class is no longer a majority in the United States. A large chunk of it died when sinking into an expanding lower class of impoverished, poverty-stricken Americans barely making ends meet.
But considering the costs of war to victim nations where since 2003 the US has killed over a million people in Iraq alone, this figure released from a study earlier this year is admittedly a conservative estimate. The study concludes that up to two million in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan have been killed by America’s wars. These colossal crimes against humanity constitute supporting the US federal government as well as its military troops a moral crime. America’s complete and utter destruction of the world’s second and third largest oil producers in Iraq and Libya, turning them into failed states because their one time US allied leaders moved away from the US petrodollar is unconscionable, yet that’s the tragic outcome of blindly supporting our troops. More than any other single country, the US today is responsible for allowing ISIS to make billions in profit from stolen oil from Iraq and Syria financing the biggest terrorist group on the planet. And US partners-in-crime Turkey and Israel are the two biggest buyers of terrorist oil. So in effect supporting our troops is also supporting both crimes against humanity as well as worldwide terrorism.
Supporting our troops has contributed to the world becoming far more armed and dangerous today than at any prior time in our recorded human history. Our nation is also responsible for spearheading the biggest arms race in history where it’s not just the US Empire spending so many billions on weapons of mass destruction but due to Empire aggression it has forced Russia and China to answer by also significantly increasing their military spending. A dozen years ago the US defense budget nearly equaled the rest of the world combined. But during this century’s two protracted US wars plus smaller secret ones around the world, America’s military expenditures have soared to $682 billion in 2012 from $417.4 in 2003.
he exponential rise of American aggression likewise has pressured the unilaterally declared US enemies Russia and China to significantly increase their military spending as well. The US has gone from spending near half (46%) of the world’s military amount in 2003 to just 35% in 2014 due to Russia and China dramatically expanding their military budgets. In fact following America’s lead, both the world’s annual arms sales as well as its military budgets have exponentially skyrocketed amongst dozens of countries all seemingly gearing up for “the big one.” Not surprisingly, at 31% the US is also the biggest arms dealer on the planet followed by Russia’s 27% with China accounting for 5% during the period from 2010-2014 that totaled a 16% increase from arms sold from 2005-2009.
Events and developments have escalated tensions and confrontations between the US and Russia and China in recent weeks. With the US backing NATO member Turkey recklessly shooting down a Russian fighter jet resulting in a Russian rescue helicopter also brought down last month, in addition to the probable ISIS bomb taking down the Russian airliner killing all 224 onboard a month and a half ago, the US Navy destroyer skirting inside the twelve nautical mile range of built up Chinese islands in the South China Sea, the United States and the West appear to be baiting Putin and the East into World War III. And with nuclear powers going directly head-to-head in Syria, Ukraine and Asia, self-annihilation of the human race becomes a very real and grave risk culminating after a quarter century of US Empire belligerently operating as the sole global superpower and “global village” bully.
Out of nearly 200 countries no other nation on earth has more than a few military bases outside its own country except the United States. In contrast to the rest of the world, the US sends 1.5 million military occupiers on active duty to over a thousand military installations on every continent throughout the globe. Just this week the Pentagon announced a worldwide expansion of military bases without specifying a total number under the auspices of secrecy. West Africa, East Africa and Afghanistan are slotted for full scale bases. Meanwhile US Special Forces that covertly operate by stealth surprise often at night in guerilla-type, fast strike operations are busily secretly committing acts of terror in over 135 nations globally, that’s about 75% of the all world’s nations.
Let’s look at the way our federal government supports our troops. After sending over6800 US soldiers (along with 7000 civilian contractors) to their early graves fighting in America’s two longest running wars in the nation’s history, leaving one million wounded personnel filing VA claims ranging from life threatening physical injuries to emotionally crippling PTSD traumas and scars, the feds have betrayed our patriots serving our country by treasonously targeting all returning combat veterans as the biggest enemy threat on American soil. Indeed veterans, gun owners and dissidents are deemed to pose a greater danger than even the feds’ own created terrorist monster ISIS that Obama’s open border policy facilitates easy access to establishing terrorist cells inside America.
Those veterans seeking help are customarily snowed under by lethal Big Pharma poison, fast becoming addicted and even more unstable. Many are haplessly waiting and dying on lists for medical services that often don’t come soon enough. Exposing forty veterans who died awaiting services on invisible lists at the Phoenix VA hospital alone triggered a major scandal last year. For several years running on average twenty-two veterans have been killing themselves each and every day in the United States. The overloaded Veterans Administration has been caught grossly ill-prepared to adequately deal with the sheer enormity of the problem with so many severely damaged ex-soldiers in dire need of long term assistance and care. One study predicts that up to nearly a half million veterans will end up with criminal cases in the court system.
With nearly half (44%) of Congress millionaires and so few (19%) ever serving in uniform now, the DC warmongers are ever-at-the-ready to send young men and women from America’s lower class into harm’s way fighting Obama’s dirty little secret wars in multiple combat zones around the world that the public never even hears about. Yet you’ll see next to none of their own sons or daughters fighting in some far off war. The way our own government has used, abused and not supported our troops is despicable.
And then a sizeable percentage of those Americans who are so vocal in their claims of “supporting our troops,” are too frequently disingenuous. Often hypocrites merely mouth the same banal platitudes year after year from their ivory-towered, pretend world, living so far removed and disaffected from actual war conditions or even knowing anyone who wears a military uniform. Never fathoming the tragic insanity or bloody lifelong consequences that US wars ravage on millions worldwide, permanently damaging all involved, Americans who haven’t a clue will glibly pay lip service, “We owe so much to our soldiers who fight to keep us safe and free.” What bubble, planet or century are they living on or in?
Since the inside coup of 9/11 was perpetrated, US citizens have become the murderous neocons’ war on terror victims as well, terrorized by their own international crime cabal government and militarized police state that’s effectively stolen their freedom and civil liberties while the guilty treasonously continue violating sworn oaths to uphold and protect both the Constitution and American people. Yet too many brainwashed, dumbed down and clueless in America don’t seem to get it. Maybe it’s because they’re bombarded 24/7 by MSM lies and disinformation that never expose the ugliness of war as it really is. The ruling elite controls all aspects of mass media, engaging in widespread censorship of films, television and video games where violence and war are only glorified. Military, CIA and FBI liaisons control every aspect of what comes out of Hollywood these days.
But over four decades of a volunteer army comprised of less than half of one percent of the total US population also contributes greatly to the widening disconnect between the 99+% civilian population and the less than 1% Americans in uniform. The atrocities and horror that the imperialistic Empire’s killing machine has inflicted on Third World nations half a world away may as well be billions of miles away on another planet or galaxy. Out of sight, out of mind goes many civilians’ insulated, tunnel version reality.
Those currently in uniform need to be reminded that they have a sworn duty to protect America from domestic and foreign enemies. As citizens who no longer live in a democratic republic but now a totalitarian police state, they need to recognize that their federal government has a diabolical agenda to enslave and eliminate fellow Americans. Instead of criminalizing dissent, the real domestic enemy has become the federal government and all Americans need to accept this tragic development. Therefore, both those already in uniform as well as those ready to sign up and allow themselves to become their crime cabal’s latest cannon fodder in the elite’s wars need to stand up and be counted as patriots loyal to their nation and fellow citizens rather than adhere to blind obedience to their psychopathic masters. It’s no longer okay to support the troops when they’re misdirected into committing treason against their own citizenry. Military personnel need to take responsibility for their actions and do what’s right by both their Constitution as well as humanity.
2015 has been a tumultuous year when by globalist design terrorism has expanded to all corners of the earth, spreading death, war and destruction in its wake. Meanwhile, feeling its economic prowess slipping away in the face of the emerging power of Eastern rivals China and Russia, the United States government has already conceded losing its war to retain the US dollar as the world’s reserve currency.
So this late in the power elite’s endgame when we’re still hearing “support the troops,” in actuality it’s time to fight for our lives in support of humanity’s struggle for survival and good ultimately triumphing over evil.
Joachim Hagopian is a West Point graduate and former US Army officer. He has written a manuscript based on his unique military experience entitled “Don’t Let The Bastards Getcha Down.” It examines and focuses on US international relations, leadership and national security issues. After the military, Joachim earned a master’s degree in Clinical Psychology and worked as a licensed therapist in the mental health field for more than a quarter century. He now concentrates on his writing and has a blog site at http://empireexposed.blogspot.co.id/.
The original source of this article is Global Research
Copyright © Joachim Hagopian, Global Research, 2015
U.S. “unofficially” waging war on Russia without a formal declaration of war
By Stephen Lendman
Global Research, December 12, 2015
Washington’s undeclared war on Russia (and China) is the greatest threat to world peace, risking the unthinkable – possible nuclear war.
Both countries stand in the way of unchallenged US global dominance – allied with NATO partners (mainly Britain, France, Germany and Turkey), Israel and the Middle East regimes led by Saudi Arabia, a metastasizing cancer masquerading as a nation-state.
Two major flashpoint areas risk igniting global war – Ukraine and Syria.
Washington transformed Kiev into a de facto Neo-Nazi regime (for the first time in Europe since WW II) – used as a dagger targeting Russia’s heartland, along with other Eastern European countries close to its border.
Preserving Syrian sovereign independence is the lynchpin of preventing Iran’s isolation and the entire region from becoming a US/Israeli colony, partnered with ruling Saudi tyrants using ISIS and other terrorist groups partnered with Washington to ravage Syria, Iraq and Yemen, ahead of what increasingly looks like an inevitable US/Russia clash.
On December 15, John Kerry will meet with Vladimir Putin and Sergey Lavrov in Moscow. Ongoing conflicts in Syria and Ukraine will be discussed – both countries at odds on resolving them.
Russia’s supports nation-state sovereignty, America wants all independent governments replaced by pro-Western ones it controls – using ISIS and other terrorist groups to achieve its objectives.
Next week’s meeting between US and Russian officials will resolve nothing, not as long as Washington’s hegemonic aims remain unchanged.
Russia’s Foreign Ministry called US/Moscow relations “difficult,” citing Washington’s “confrontational steps…under the pretext of the Ukrainian crisis.” They negatively “impacted cooperation between (both) countries.”
US support for ISIS and other terrorist groups in Syria, Iraq and elsewhere further exacerbated relations. Nothing in prospect suggests positive change.
“…Russia has been consistently stressing the necessity to observe the principles of equality, mutual respect and non-interference into (the) domestic affairs” of all nations, its Foreign Ministry said.
Moscow’s hope for better US/Russian relations furthered by Kerry’s upcoming visit is more pipe dream than reality.
Kerry heads to Moscow after a planned December 14 meeting in Paris with European and Arab foreign ministers. They’ll discuss ongoing Middle East conflicts, plotting strategy to continue them and ways to subvert Russia’s war on terrorism.
Separately, interviewed by Spanish EFE news on Friday, Bashar al-Assad stressed Washington, its NATO partners and regional allies aren’t serious about fighting terrorism. They’re the problem, not the solution.
Russia’s intervention alone achieved progress, Washington trying to subvert it. The struggle for Syria’s soul continues, along with Putin’s efforts to save humanity from the scourge of another global war. He deserves universal support against US-led pure evil.
Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago. He can be reached at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net.
His new book as editor and contributor is titled “Flashpoint in Ukraine: US Drive for Hegemony Risks WW III.”
http://www.claritypress.com/LendmanIII.html
Visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com.
Listen to cutting-edge discussions with distinguished guests on the Progressive Radio News Hour on the Progressive Radio Network.
It airs three times weekly: live on Sundays at 1PM Central time plus two prerecorded archived programs.
The original source of this article is Global Research
Copyright © Stephen Lendman, Global Research, 2015
US, France, and Britain: The destruction of Syria is the plan
Global Research, December 07, 2015
RT 5 December 2015
Since Russia stepped up to the plate, suddenly western countries can’t wait to bomb ISIS. Are they now there to get the job done? Or are they there to stop Russia increasing its influence, and to make sure it doesn’t succeed where they failed?
The world is falling over itself to bomb Syria.
The following statement from Reuters summarizes the situation:
“Most of the world’s powers are now flying combat missions over Iraq and Syria against Islamic State. But any consensus on how to proceed has been thwarted by opposing policies over the 4-year-old civil war in Syria, which has killed 250,000 people, driven 11 million from their homes, left swathes of territory in the hands of jihadist fighters and defied all diplomatic efforts at a solution.”
While it may seem to the outside observer that this catalogue of mayhem is the result of incompetence, to me – on the contrary – it is evidence of things going to plan.
I have never, thus far, seen a war the ruling elite clearly wanted to happen not happen.
Here, as in all other cases, there has been a bit of hand-wringing, some crying, some protests, some moving speeches. But like the morality plays of medieval times, after enjoying the sermon dressed as entertainment, life has inevitably carried on as normal with the barons raping and pillaging and everyone else having to put up with that reality.
Destruction of Syria is the plan
This time the plan – at least judging from the outcomes – is to destroy Syria.
Syria has been anathema to the self-appointed arbiters of righteousness: the ‘international community’, that coterie of hypocrites which arrogates to itself the monopoly on meting out death to those who won’t get with the program.
This group dislikes Syria which has had an uncompromising stance towards Israel and an independent financial system, and is using the chance to destroy it to flood Europe with refugees, thus further debasing the makeup of its constituent nations, and simultaneously justifying a lockdown in those countries.
Enter Putin
Everything was going swimmingly until Putin stepped in.
While many in the West who have grown jaundiced at the obvious usurpation of our governments by outside interests ascribe almost saint-like motivations to Putin, I do not. He is a superb strategist. Exactly what he is strategizing for is not clear yet.
What is clear is that his move into Syria threw a spanner in the works of a status quo the US was quite happy with: growing terrorism and mayhem in Syria and spreading nicely to Europe.
Assad himself said a few days ago to the BBC (courtesy of Czech Television) that ISIS was growing smaller after Russian bombing intervention whereas moves by other countries served only to strengthen ISIS and increase their recruitment.
He added: “The facts are telling.”
So what do the facts tell?
They tell us that Russia is the only country involved to date which has the removal of ISIS as an actual goal.
Russia is also the only country with a legitimate mandate under international law.
In addition, ISIS was most eloquently outed by author and journalist Gearóid Ó Colmáin on Russia Today as a US creation.
<iframe width=”690″ height=”400″ src=”https://www.youtube.com/embed/L7GAbVhjTSw” frameborder=”0″ allowfullscreen><!–iframe>
In this scenario, the reason for further western efforts in the region is looking increasingly like an attempt to prevent Russia from routing its assets or achieving the informational coup that would follow.
France and Britain milking the crises
The propaganda war is hotting up, with western press issuing unsubstantiated and emotional surmise as news.
Meanwhile, the French and the British are now, of course, bombing Syria.
At home, the French government not only voted to bomb but enacted ‘emergency’ powers at the same time. And Holland wants to change the constitution to extend these powers.
The Telegraph states: “The draft “Protection of the Nation” bill […] would extend the right to strip French citizenship from dual nationals convicted of terrorism offences by also including people born in France.
It would also prolong certain powers after a state of emergency was lifted.
No time limit will be inscribed in the constitution under the new proposals. As is currently the case, parliament will decide how long a given state of emergency should last.”
This all looks so like a dictator’s wet dream, it takes an effort of will to believe it has not been planned this way.
And a man no less respected than Dr. Paul Craig Roberts, formerly Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for Economic Policy and associate editor of the Wall Street Journal, has raised legitimate questions about the official line on the Paris attacks.
He says:
“European peoples want to be French, German, Dutch, Italian, Hungarian, Czech, British. They do not want their countries to be a diverse Tower of Babel created by millions of refugees from Washington’s wars.
To remain a nationality unto themselves is what Pegida, Farage, and Le Pen offer the voters.
Realizing its vulnerability, it is entirely possible that the French Establishment made a decision to protect its hold on power with a false flag attack that would allow the Establishment to close France’s borders and, thereby, deprive Marine Le Pen of her main political issue.”
The same event, of course, justifies France’s bombing of Syria.
The British government for its part – despite some theatrical hand-wringing – has got on the bandwagon and opted to join in whatever further criminality the US has planned in Syria.
As though to justify the decision, the Telegraph breathlessly informs us that ISIS (or ISIL as it calls it) is planning to attack the UK “next”.
It says: “There are unconfirmed reports that Isil has decided that the next target of an attack will be Britain.
European security agencies, citing specific intelligence that had been obtained, stated that British Isil operatives in Syria and Iraq were being tasked to return home to launch an attack, CNN reported.”
This is the level of the propaganda now: CNN reports security agencies who say that a terrorist group whose name changes every five minutes might be sending members to Britain to do harm.
But this is unconfirmed.
The real reason for this war
I’m going to simplify things: the Plan for a New American Century – a document which was created by neoconservative warmongers in or close to power under George Bush Jr. – listed countries which it wanted the US to attack, namely: North Korea, Iraq, Iran, Libya and Syria.
The journal-neo.org site states:
“[all were] pinpointed as enemies of the U.S. well before the illegal war in Iraq in 2003, as well as the illegal 2011 war in Libya and the ongoing proxy war in Syria.”
Retired US General Wesley Clarke went on record in 2007 stating that the fix was in: the U.S. had unilaterally decided to destroy Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, and Iran.
This is not some wild-eyed conspiracy theorist. Clarke was a four-star general, and the man who commanded Operation Allied Force in the Kosovo War during his term as the Supreme Allied Commander in Europe of NATO from 1997 to 2000.
The pretense of choice
Any objective assessment of who benefits from attacks upon the countries Clarke mentioned would not include any European country – or even the U.S. for that matter.
But the subtext is clear: if Europeans don’t want to take part, terrorist attacks will be allowed or contrived until they acquiesce.
In short: the ruling elite wants this war. Our pretend governments voted it through on the nod. And we the people will have to deal with the fallout and put up with random terrorist acts if we wake up and speak out about how this charade is rigged.
At the same time, the people of Syria are subject to bombing raids by the US, France and the UK – none of which have any invitation from the legitimate government of that country – actions which, properly speaking, are acts of war against the country the perpetrators claim to want to help.
My prediction: the clean-up operation Russia initiated and Assad approves of will be made to fail; terrorism will increase and spread into Europe; and mass immigration from Syria and that area to Europe will continue; and acts of terrorism on European soil will magically justify endless war, internal lock-down, wholesale surveillance, detention without trial, and troops on the street.
And this – in the absence of hard evidence based in action to the contrary – I can only see as the actual plan.
Do you remember voting for that?
No, nor do I.
The original source of this article is RT
Copyright © Sam Gerrans, RT, 2015
Obama the “reluctant warrior”? Syria is the 7th country he’s bombed
Global Research, September 25, 2014
FAIR 23 September 2014
The trope of Obama as “reluctant warrior” has crossed the Atlantic–where it is greeted with a little more cynicism (Peter Brookes, London Times)
If there’s one thing elite media seem to know for sure, it’s that Barack Obama doesn’t like war. One phrase in particular seems to stand out:
It was a remarkable moment for a reluctant warrior.
–Jonathan Karl (ABC Nightline, 9/10/14)
He’s a very reluctant warrior, didn’t want to do this. But you have to say, it is good he recognized reality.
–David Gergen (CNN, 9/10/14)
Is he going to become a warrior, and not a reluctant warrior, when he is taking such a strong stance that he will do anything to defeat ISIS, except for if it involves American troops?
–Erin Burnett (CNN, 9/10/14)
He’s a reluctant warrior.
–David Brooks (PBS NewsHour,9/10/14)
You have a reluctant warrior in President Obama, and the press saying, “Do something.”
–Lauren Ashburn (Fox News, 9/12/14)
He is, as you know, the standard phrase, the reluctant warrior. And I think he’s played that long before this decision.
–David Bergen (CNN, 9/14/14)
But now with weekly beheadings by ISIS, the reluctant warrior must wage war, but not total war–tepid war.
–Bill O’Reilly (Fox News, 9/15/14)
Last night came the announcement that US had begun conducting airstrikes on Syria. Glenn Greenwald of The Intercept posted a story (9/23/14) with this headline:
It does make one wonder: What would an enthusiastic warrior look like to the corporate media? Would bombing eight countries in six years be enough?
The original source of this article is FAIR
Copyright © Peter Hart, FAIR, 2014
Comment: Besides being propaganda, this is public relations to maintain Obama’s popularity among the public and hype more bombing. If he can be seen to be reluctant, it somehow makes the bombing okay, and he still is a “good” guy. A little conflicted, but still a decent, moral guy. And if he’s reluctant, he clearly isn’t bombing hard enough (despite the evidence).
This is also minimization, a psychological technique. After all, it isn’t Americans who are being bombed and being hurt.
Free Ukraine Now 