Okay, let’s get to the heart of things which any even remotely-corporate media can’t begin to.
Chris Marsden writes:
The international media is conspiring to conceal the real aims and intentions of the United States and other major powers towards Syria.
This week a renewed push in the United Nations to condemn the regime of Bashir al-Assad for “crimes against humanity” has been accompanied by a drumbeat of accounts of rising casualties in Homs, including the deaths of journalists. The media barrage excludes any objective analysis of the social and political character of the opposition, its ties to the imperialist powers, or the historical origins of the present crisis. All casualties in a civil war stoked by the US and its allies are automatically attributed to government security forces.
This is a coordinated campaign to manipulate public opinion in support of military intervention in the name of “human rights,” following the script of last year’s bloody exercise in regime-change in Lybia. The immediate demand is for the setting up of “humanitarian corridors” protected militarily by the Gulf States, Turkey and NATO, as well as the arming of the opposition.
We are being PLAYED once again by our government and our corporate media to enable war -- horrifying, devastating, genocidal war-for-profit! The WAR OF TERROR of the US, NATO, Israel FOR CRAVEN PROFIT.
Ben Schreiner writes:
Since failing to win United Nations Security Council backing for “regime change” in Syria, Washington and its lackeys in the corporate media have been unrelenting in voicing their great moral outrage at both the violence of the Assad regime and the seeming indifference to it all by the likes of Russia and China. Washington is no doubt long in forgetting those that thwart the will of the “international community.” After all, as Secretary of State Hillary Clinton stated, the “travesty” of the Russian and Chinese veto left the entire Security Council “neutered.”
Given this, it was of little surprise to see Ms. Clinton mount her soapbox once more last week in Tunis at the meeting of the so-called “friends of Syria.” As Ms. Clinton moralized Friday:
“It’s quite distressing to see two permanent members of the Security Council using their veto when people are being murdered, women, children, brave young men. Houses are being destroyed. It is just despicable. And I ask, whose side are they on? They are clearly not on the side of the Syrian people.”
Clinton’s remarks won swift and high praise from the American punditry. On the PBS Newshour, Mark Shields swooned over Clinton’s performance. As he commented, “It was impassioned. It was eloquent. It was really, I thought, quite moving.” David Brooks likewise fawned, “The reaction was something I think we should be proud of, clearly a lot of passion, a lot of directness.”
I used to respect Mark Shields LONG LONG AGO. Did he change or did I grow up and smell out faux-progressivism? At the moment the NewsHour is on doing its best for “manufacturing consent’ for war against Syria and Iran.
Schreiner goes on:
But least one think the violence gripping Syria really moves such pillars of the U.S. liberal establishment like the New York Times and Ms. Clinton, let us briefly recall how the both responded to Operation Cast Lead. That is, Israel’s 23-day assault on the Gaza strip in late 2008, early 2009. The Israeli assault—or more properly, war crime—left a total of 1,385 Palestinians dead, 318 of which were under the age of 18. (5,300 more Palestinians were also wounded.)
So, as Israel slaughtered Palestinians in Gaza, did Ms. Clinton deride the distressing murder of women and children? Did she bemoan a “neutered” Security Council unable to respond? No. Instead, just the same as then President-elect Obama, Ms. Clinton hid behind the notion that “there is only one secretary of state.” Not that she would have acted any differently had she been actively serving as secretary of state.
But how about the Times? Did the paper of record lament the horrors unfolding in Gaza? Did it call on the U.S. to meet the test of leadership and stand against the Israel siege of Gaza? No. In fact, in the midst of the slaughter, the Times boldly editorialized, “Israel must defend itself.” Then to perhaps demonstrate their “humanity,” the editorial board cautiously affirmed that, “Israel must make every effort to limit civilian casualties.” The Israeli motive behind its attack on Gaza, of course, was beyond rebuke for the Times.
The Gazan massacre in late 2008 was one of those early stomach-turning monolithic test cases (nevertheless massively ignored or 180 degrees-spun which proved how horrifyingly amoral our media as well as administration, Congress and let’s face it our vast majority of citizenry are) that Obama was a full-out pretender in concern for the sanctity of human life. A sense of humanitarian responsibility -- RESPONSE-ABILITY? PULLLLLLEEEEEEEEZZZZZZ!
Syria is of course on the US/NATOWarMachine’s bloody clipboard and these craven nations, addicted to imperialism in their coven of mass violent evil, feel entitled to “take out” any regimes they please. And in their war-criminal minds, that means especially any pro-Palestinian nation on behalf of the “interests” of co-war criminal bully, Israel, and those ends incidentally coincide with the “interests” of all of them to crush and exploit ANY country not desperately dependent on Western insane level profits over people oligarchy. We are not at the beginning by a long shot of this killing-spree the US/NATOWarMachine has been on. Are there any obtuse dunderheads left out there who still see the white hats on our US leadership?
Using the Iraq pre-emptive war playbook, the Obama administration is willing to do all it can to manipulate the UN for another illegal war and let’s also ask, where did the UN’s collective backbone go, though Russia and China are beginning to get they are on the bloody short-term clipboard as well. The US/Israel/NATO mafia are trying once again to exploit the UN “R2P” ("responsibility to protect" though Pepe Escobar calls it more aptly "right to plunder") mandate if they can BY MENDACIOUSLY DECLARING THEY CARE ABOUT HUMANITARIANISM, CARE ABOUT THE SANCTITY OF HUMAN LIFE AND HUMAN WELFARE NOW IN SYRIA, JUST LIKE THEY DID IN LIBYA. BULLSHIT, BULLSHIT, BULLSHIT!!!!
Hillary is outraged by Russia and China vetoing against their criminal wills???? How much vetoing has the US done in the UN Security Council to let Israel perpetrate its anti-humanitarianism outrages through the decades? HAH!
Speaking of Hillary, just as an aside, you may want to start taking convenient propaganda for manufacture of consent declarations from humanitarian watchdog groups with a grain of salt, as some are now courted by and colluding with the US/Israel/NATO WAR OF TERROR. From Felicity Arbuthnot:
The new Executive Director of Amnesty International USA, is Suzanne Nossel, formerly Hillary Clinton’s Deputy Assistant for International Organization Affairs at the State Department. She has also previously worked for Human Rights Watch.
And for all you MSNBC-progressives out there, are you watching Barack and Hillary climb into pro-Zionism bed with Lieberman and McCain and Graham? If that doesnt’ have you reaching for the vomit bucket you really are lost to the dark side!!! Well, let’s face it. We all have been lost for a long time in terms of our own citizen powerlessness.
President Obama threatened that he would use “every tool available to stop the slaughter in Syria,” calling for further international pressure on al-Assad’s regime. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton had nothing to offer except false predictions that al-Assad’s regime is getting closer to collapse. Obama and Clinton left it to pro-Zionist senators John McCain, Lindsey Graham, and Joe Lieberman to call for “tangible actions” to be taken, such as providing Syrian opposition (SNC and its FSA) with weapons, intelligence tools, and aerial drone surveillance to “ensure that the Syrian people have the means to protect themselves against their attackers”.
The US and the West are not fighting for democracy anywhere. Democracy is their enemy. Look at what is happening to us in the US and our civil rights. They are destabilizing as many non-West-puppet global governments as possible and leaving people at the mercy of whomever. Tribal war lords -- fundamentalist autocrats -- whether organized to set up some kind of survivable instrastructure for the desperately hapless citizens or not. Who cares? The more corruption at local levels over our poor global brethren the more corruptible these puppet pirates are by the oligarchical -- seriously genocidally evil -- big boys!!!! The one percent mafia that has targeted the entire globe.
THE US, Israel and NATO countries ARE ALSO EVEN GETTING INTO BED WITH AL QAEDA. Oh yes. In Libya they did. And now with Syria. But this is never a biggie if the US Big Media spotlight isn’t shining down on the fact. Nope, they turn off the light, entirely. You would think this would be a BIG STORY. We are so Pavlovian that whether or not this revelation has appeared on our limited news gathering horizon, we shelve it because it hasn’t been UNDERLINED by the propaganda police, BIG MEDIA. Al Qaeda-”type” (and what world of mendacity does that little add-on hyphen addition cover up?) forces are teaming up with the US/NATO/Israel and SELL OUT ARAB nations (I have been ignoring them too much in this blog) to remove Pro-Palestinian regimes for MUTUAL interests. To US and its corrupt and craven cronies realpolitik translates to the ENDS ALWAYS JUSTIFY THE MEANS. To us bobble-headed citizenry, we give such Al Qaeda mention a pass, since we are seemingly helplessly willed to do so by our authoritarian gangster-leadership and their media puppets.
Syria is being targeted with the aim of setting up a new government that would break Syria’s alliance with Iran, consolidating US regional hegemony and undercutting Russia and China.
The Friends of Syria is a new version of the Contact Group that led the assault on Libya and the “Coalition of the Willing” through which Washington invaded Iraq. The Syrian National Council (SNC) and Free Syrian Army (FSA) constitute the proxy force being groomed as a vehicle for imposing regime change, like the National Transitional Council (NTC) in Libya and the Kosovo Liberation Army in the former Yugoslavia before them.
The SNC and FSA do not fully control a Syrian opposition made up of disparate elements, including a significant presence on the ground of Al Qaeda-type forces. It is under orders to form a coherent and authoritative command structure with which the imperialists can deal. Once this has been accomplished, and they are declared the official representative of the Syrian people, it is a short step to declaring “humanitarian corridors” and mounting a NATO air campaign fronted by Turkey and the Arab League. On cue, SNC spokesperson Bassma Kodmani declared Wednesday, “We are really close to seeing this military intervention as the only solution.”
This well-rehearsed scenario threatens to end in a conflict far bloodier than Libya and trigger a wider regional or even global war.
I am not championing the leadership of Assad in Syria. I am questioning the now presumed right a/k/a international war criminality of avaricious Western nations at the inducement of the US especially in “special friend” codependent respect of the murderous vendetta “interests” of Israel to “take out” regimes that are inconvenient not only to Israel but to their GREED and LUST FOR POWER AND CONTROL OF THE GLOBE.
Elias Akleh writes of Syria:
Since its independence from the French mandate in 1946, Syria had marched slowly, though faster than many other Arab states, towards political reforms, human rights, freedom and economical growth. Syria has been governed by a constitution since 1973 unlike many Arab states that are still ruled by oppressive authoritarian absolute familial tribal monarchies such as Qatar and Saudi Arabia who pretend to call for democracy in Syria. Like all other Arab ruling regimes in the region Syria has need for more improvement.
Yet foreign induced rebellions and civil wars would bring chaos, destruction, and more authoritarian regimes (Tunisia, Egypt and Libya) rather than steady gradual reform. Syria had moved towards such gradual reform during the last eleven months, further than what most Arab States had gone for the last forty years.
Also actual winning (whatever that is to the murderous gamesters) in Syria seems not a primary goal for the US. Look at the mess of Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya to name a few. The struggle of the survivors of the US/NATOWarMachine so not a priority to the US government and these craven western nations, including the welfare of our poor troops unlucky enough to be “serving” for the profiteering of oligarchs in the military and facing down futures, well, only some of them, of psychological and physical maiming.
More from Akleh:
Syria has been a main resistance and oppositional front against the Zionist expansionist dream, a major opponent to the American hegemonic plans for the oil-rich Persian Gulf region, and an important ally to Iran that is considered a major enemy by USA and Israel. To get rid of Hezbollah and Hamas, Israel needs to weaken Syria. To control the oil-rich Gulf region the USA needs to get to Iran through Syria. There arose, therefore, in the West a decision to destroy the Syrian secular state, to divide it into smaller conflicting sectarian regions, to displace or co-opt the Syrian national elite, and eventually to install a pro-Western/pro-Zionist regime similar to that in Qatar and Saudi Arabia or at least an American-compliant Islamic republic similar to that in Tunisia and Egypt. Qatar and Saudi Arabia became the instruments used to manipulate the Arab League towards regime change in Syria.
Since Syria is free from American domination (it does not depend on American financial aid, does not buy weapons from any Western country, and it is not dependent on any Western economy or trade agreement), it becomes very difficult for any Western interference to affect a regime change. So a sinister plan was put together to urge Syrians to revolt against their government. This plan was called “Arab Spring”. It was hoped that Syrians would be encouraged to revolt against their government after witnessing the seemingly successful revolts in Tunisia, Egypt, and Libya.
To avoid the fate of Libya, the Syrian regime hastened to speed up reform. The regime lifted the state of emergency right away, declared measures for reform, cooperated with the mandates of the Arab League to the surprise of other Arab leaders, allowed Arab observers in the country, and called for dialogue with the opposition within Syria and later in Russia, and finally introduced a new, more democratic constitution and offered it to the masses for a referendum. The majority of the Syrian people countered the anti-regime demonstrations with massive pro-regime demonstrations. But the protesters and the movers behind them have evidently much more far-reaching goals in mind. They had refused all the compromising gestures offered by the regime, and demanded regime change before any dialogue. I wonder whom are they going to engage in dialogue with if the regime is not there!
When demonstrations did not gain popularity, the extremists of the opposition were pushed towards forming what is called Free Syrian Army (FSA) to commit violent acts, whose objective is to draw in armed security forces including the deployment of tanks and armored vehicles in order to give the Security Council the justification of foreign military intervention under NATO’s “Responsibility to Protect” mandate.
Sophisticated weapons were smuggled in through Iraq, Turkey, Lebanon, Jordan, and Saudi Arabia. The FSA attacked government institutions, police and army personnel, murdered some demonstrators, and bombed facilities and infrastructures in order to accuse security forces of these acts.
Some were trained and armed by Qatari, Turkish, and British special operations units, who have been fighting in Homs alongside the rebels. Captured Turkish officers confessed of being trained in Israel according to Syrian MP Khaled el-Abbod. Members of Turkish Parliament Human Rights Committee declared that Syrian militias are being trained in guerilla warfare in camps in Antioch, Turkey. The unfortunate FSA were not a match for the well-trained and well-equipped Syrian security forces. Some of them got killed in battle, others were captured, and many of them are now dropping weapons and surrendering to the army. Their leaders are urging their foreign operatives to seek cease-fire, thus we witnessed the so-called Friends of Syria Conference calling for a cease-fire to allow alleged humanitarian aid to reach needy civilians (militias).
I am liberally (pun intended) quoting from Elia Akleh because this kind of reality-sharing we will not see in a myopic, stenographer media whether at Fox or MSNBC:
The Friends of Syria Conference was doomed to failure since the planning. Thousands of Tunisians picketed the conference calling it “Friends of Israel” conference, denouncing the attendants, and chanting for Syria. Saud bin-Faisal, the Saudi foreign minister, withdrew from the conference complaining of its inefficiency because it did not support his call for foreign military intervention to protect the Syrian people by ousting al-Assad’s regime. His hypocrisy is so apparent in his oppressive absolute familial monarchy that is murdering demonstrators daily in Qatif and Awamiyah demanding justice, freedom, and democracy. Saudi Interior Ministry’s Prince Naif bin Abdulazziz described these demonstrators as terrorists and threatened to use an iron fist against them. Close to 25% of Saudis, according to official consensus, are living under the poverty line; a scandalous fact in a super rich oil-producing country, where all citizens could live leisurely had their rulers not horded the oil revenue for themselves. (Check youtube’s poverty in Saudi Arabia). Saudi’s alleged support for democracy does not appear in its sending the Peninsula Shield Forces to savagely murder freedom-seeking Bahraini peaceful demonstrators. Saudi’s sympathy for other Arab citizens was not apparent when its leaders cheered on for Israeli troops attacking South Lebanon in 2006 and in late 2008 when Israeli phosphorous bombs rained on helpless hungry Palestinian children in Gaza Strip.
Thrown by Syria’s cooperation with the mandates of the Arab League and by the failure of his financing of terrorist armed militias (Free Syrian Army) and their recent calls to be saved from the attacks of the Syrian army by demanding a cease-fire, Hamad bin Jassim, the Prime Minister of Qatar, called for safe passage in Syria for what he claimed to be humanitarian aid to needy Syrian people, a ploy he used in the past in Libya’s case to smuggle weapons and to justify NATO’s military intervention. He also called for the formation of a joint international and Arab military force to intervene in Syria. It is known to many that Qatar, the host of the largest American base, has been playing a major pro-American/pro-Zionist role in the region. This role could be seen in the destruction of Libya, in oppressing the Bahraini freedom-seeking demonstrators, in arming the so-called Free Syrian Army, and lately in manipulating the Palestinian (Fatah/Hamas) reconciliation efforts. According to Al’alam TV reports, Saudi Prince Talal bin-Abdulaziz, the brother of Saudi king Abdullah bin-Abdulaziz, has exposed a Zionist-Qatari conspiracy to subdivide Saudi Arabia into smaller chunks, to destroy Syria and its regime, and to designate a part of Saudi northern desert as refugees camp-ground for Palestinians who will be evicted from occupied Palestine. It is worth noting here that the internet is full of pictures of Hamad bin Jassim and his absolute monarch Hamad bin Khalifa warmly shaking hands with Israeli criminal leaders such as Ehud Olmert and Tzipi Livni.
Alex Lantier calls out what the US is really doing in their call for humanitarian corridors. Remember those “no fly zones” over Libya that sounded like intended peace-mongering???? HAH!
Such comments expose the utterly deceitful character of the position of the US and its allies. Its hands dripping with the blood of hundreds of thousands of Iraqis and Afghans killed and wounded in counter-insurgency campaigns by US occupation forces, the US government is preparing a new war on the basis of hypocritical claims that it considers Assad’s suppression of a foreign-backed insurgency to be intolerable. Responsibility for ongoing fighting in Syria lies primarily with the US and its allies.
The pose of “humanitarian” anguish by Clinton and her accomplices is but one more weapon in the US diplomatic arsenal, alongside sanctions, targeted assassinations, drone strikes and mass murder.
Yesterday, leading newspapers openly aired the plans being drawn up by imperialist diplomats and intelligence agencies for the conquest of Syria by the United States and its allies.
In a Financial Times comment, former CIA official Emile Nakhleh wrote: “The assistance should begin with establishing a haven for the opposition and the military personnel who defect from the regime, as in northern Iraq in 1991. Food, water, clothes, medical supplies and technical equipment should be dropped into the safety zone. Ankara [the Turkish government] would have to play a critical role in planning, and ultimately in maintaining and supplying the zone, as it would almost certainly have to be contiguous to Turkey. If Syrian forces violate the sanctuary, the West should arm the opposition and work with military defectors to organize more effective resistance.”
Similar plans were laid out by former US State Department official Anne-Marie Slaughter in the New York Times. Calling for the supplying of “anti-tank, counter-sniper, and portable anti-aircraft weapons” to the US-backed forces, she called for the establishment of “no-kill zones” in which US-backed Syrian forces could find sanctuary. Once Syrian government forces in these misnamed “no-kill zones” were “killed, captured or allowed to defect without reprisal, attention would turn to defending and expanding the no-kill zones.”
Such plans do not describe a “humanitarian” operation, but a US-led war of extermination against any Syrian forces that refuse to submit to the colonial-style subjugation of the country.
By the way, I’ve watched Anne-Marie Slaughter on Up with Chris Hayes. She is one SCARY, NEO-LIBERAL-HAWK, let me tell you!!!!! She is earnestly caught up in Obaman bullshit war-mongering “truthiness”.
So stay tuned to where the media will direct you with its spotlight, on ONLY ONE SIDE of the story. On the plight of only one convenient group of the latest victims of a very craven GLOBAL WAR OF TERROR engineered by OUR GOVERNMENT and enabled by you and me and our tax dollars!
Keep ignoring reality at all of our PERIL!
[cross-posted at correntewire and sacramento for democracy]
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keep wondering why no member of the OS amen lobby ever attempts to refute Your courageous fact-filled pieces on the mideast.
Perhaps, I just answered my own query.
-R-
Perhaps, I just answered my own query.
-R-
Libby, thanks for this very comprehensive post! Lots of new material here I hadn't read before. I am certainly quite used to seeing the MSM not reporting on such critical issues.
Mark, it's really hard to rebut the truth. The news on New Zealand radio this morning is that the armed Syrian rebels have finally withdrawn from the Baba Amro district of Homs, enabling a two hour ceasefire for the Red Cross and Red Crescent to enter with humanitarian relief.
Stuart, what point are you making about the Red Cross/Crescent entry into Baab al-Amr for humanitarian relief?
Libby: I also follow Elia Akleh's writings in Dissident Voice: a radical newsletter in the struggle for peace and .... (so why don't you own it Libby? - there are many proud radicals and many of them spit on liberals), anyway - what does this mean and who else has a problem believing him:
"...it becomes very difficult for any Western interference to affect a regime change. So a sinister plan was put together to urge Syrians to revolt against their government. This plan was called “Arab Spring”. It was hoped that Syrians would be encouraged to revolt against their government after witnessing the seemingly successful revolts in Tunisia, Egypt, and Libya.1"
Yes, I followed the footnote and still think he's in the bag with the ones who write about black helicopters and The Illuminati. The fact that he is Christian and that is the community in Syria who stand to lose the most along with the Alawites from regime change, couldn't have affected his opinions. And as for relying on the truth from a former CIA operative, well, say no more, say no more.
I am not in favor of US/NATO intervention - I wasn't in Libya either just for the record, and no doubt I will still be DEFAMED in CAPITAL LETTERS as a member of the amen lobby, but I'm just trying to figure out how a massive reprisal can be avoided now without incapacitating Assad. His father didn't hesitate to slaughter 20,000 people in revenge for an attack on a cadet school.
Libby: I also follow Elia Akleh's writings in Dissident Voice: a radical newsletter in the struggle for peace and .... (so why don't you own it Libby? - there are many proud radicals and many of them spit on liberals), anyway - what does this mean and who else has a problem believing him:
"...it becomes very difficult for any Western interference to affect a regime change. So a sinister plan was put together to urge Syrians to revolt against their government. This plan was called “Arab Spring”. It was hoped that Syrians would be encouraged to revolt against their government after witnessing the seemingly successful revolts in Tunisia, Egypt, and Libya.1"
Yes, I followed the footnote and still think he's in the bag with the ones who write about black helicopters and The Illuminati. The fact that he is Christian and that is the community in Syria who stand to lose the most along with the Alawites from regime change, couldn't have affected his opinions. And as for relying on the truth from a former CIA operative, well, say no more, say no more.
I am not in favor of US/NATO intervention - I wasn't in Libya either just for the record, and no doubt I will still be DEFAMED in CAPITAL LETTERS as a member of the amen lobby, but I'm just trying to figure out how a massive reprisal can be avoided now without incapacitating Assad. His father didn't hesitate to slaughter 20,000 people in revenge for an attack on a cadet school.
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