Wednesday, May 30, 2012

Be skeptical of the mainstream media's narrative on Syria. . . more bullshit to fuel the agenda for imperialist war!

BBC Engages In Anti-Syria Propaganda?
Truth behind BBC’s vicious tactic



By Press TV

Britain’s state-run broadcaster BBC ("Bullshit Broadcasting Corporation"?!) has been heavily criticized for using a  
fake photo of Iraqi dead children in order to sell a new NATO-led invasion, this time targeting Syria. Continue




West's Houla Syria Narrative Crumbles, Expels Syrian Diplomats Anyway

By Tony Cartalucci

UN admits almost all of the 108 killed in Houla were killed at close range by militants, not Syrian soldiers firing artillery. Continue





Syrian Houla Massacres: Divide & Conquer Strategy Exposed

Video By Syrian Girl

The massacres in Syria are purposeful, to fuel a civil war in my country and pave the way for foreign interventions. Continue




Monday, May 28, 2012

Washington’s Hypocrisies

By Paul Craig Roberts

May 27, 2012 "Information Clearing House" --

The US government is the second worst human rights abuser on the planet and the sole enabler of the worst–Israel. But this doesn’t hamper Washington from pointing the finger elsewhere.
 
The US State Department’s “human rights report” focuses its ire on Iran and Syria, two countries whose real sin is their independence from Washington, and on the bogyman- in-the-making–China, the country selected for the role of Washington’s new Cold War enemy.

Hillary Clinton, another in a long line of unqualified Secretaries of State, informed “governments around the world: we are watching, and we are holding you accountable,” only we are not holding ourselves accountable or Washington’s allies like Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, Israel, and the NATO puppets. 

Hillary also made it “clear to citizens and activists everywhere: You are not alone. We are standing with you,” only not with protesters at the Chicago NATO summit or with the Occupy Wall Street protesters, or anywhere else in the US where there are protests. (ref

The State Department stands with the protesters funded by the US in the countries whose governments the US wishes to overthrow. Protesters in the US stand alone as do the occupied Palestinians who apparently have no human rights to their homes, lands, olive groves, or lives.

Here are some arrest numbers for a few recent US protests. The New York Daily News reports that as of November 17, 2011, 1,300 Occupy Wall Street protesters were arrested in New York City alone. Fox News reported (October 2, 2011) that 700 protesters were arrested on the Brooklyn Bridge. At the NATO summit in Chicago last week, 90 protesters were arrested (Chicago Journal).

In the US some protesters are being officially categorized as “domestic extremists” or “domestic terrorists,” a new threat category that Homeland Security announced is now the focus of its attention, displacing Muslim terrorists as the number one threat to the US. 

In September 2010, federal police raided the homes of peace activists in Chicago and Minneapolis. The FBI is trying to concoct a case against them by claiming that the peace activists donated money to the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine. As demanded by Israel, the US government has designated the PFLP as a terrorist group.

In Chicago last week, among the many arrested NATO protesters with whom the State Department does not stand are three young white americans arrested for “domestic terrorism” in what Dave Lindorff reports was “a warrantless house invasion reminiscent of what US military forces are doing on a daily [and nightly] basis in Afghanistan.”

If the US government, which stands with protesters everywhere except in America, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, Yemen and Palestine, can make this into a terrorism case, the three americans can be convicted on the basis of secret evidence or simply be incarcerated for the rest of their lives without a trial.

Meanwhile the three american “domestic terrorists” are being held in solitary confinement. Like many of the NATO protesters, they came from out of town. Brian Church, 20 years old, came from Fort Lauderdale, Florida. Jared Chase, 27, came from Keene, New Hampshire. Brent Betterly, 24, came from Oakland Park, Florida. Charged with providing material support for terrorism, the judge set their bail at $1.5 million each.

These three are not charged with actually throwing a Molotov cocktail at a person or thing. They are charged with coming to Chicago with the idea of doing so. Somehow the 16 federal intelligence agencies plus those of our NATO puppets and Israel were unable to discover the 9/11 plot in the making, but the Chicago police knew in advance why two guys from Florida and one from New Hampshire came to Chicago. 

The domestic terrorism cases turn out to be police concoctions that are foiled before they happen, so we have many terrorists but no actual terrorist acts. 
 
Two other young americans are being framed by their Human Rights Government. Sebastian Senakiewicz, 24, of Chicago is charged with “falsely making a terrorist threat,” whatever that means. His bail was set at $750,000. Mark Neiweem, 28, of Chicago is charged with “solicitation for explosives or incendiary devices.” His bail is set at $500,000.

This is human rights in america. But the State Department’s human rights report never examines the US. It is a political document aimed at Washington’s chosen enemies.

Meanwhile, Human Rights america continues to violate the national sovereignty of Pakistan, Yemen, and Afghanistan by sending in drones, bombs, special forces and in Afghanistan 150,000 US soldiers to murder people, usually women, children and village elders. Weddings, funerals, children’s soccer games, schools and farmers’ houses are also favorite targets for Washington’s attacks. 

On May 25 the Pakistani Daily Times reported that Pakistani Foreign Office spokesman Moazzam Ali Khan strongly condemned the drone attacks: “We regard them as a violation of our territorial integrity. They are in contravention of international law. They are illegal, counter productive and totally unacceptable.” 
 
The US reportedly funnels money to the Iranian terrorist group, MEK, declared terrorists by no less than the US State Department. But it is OK as long as MEK is terrorizing Iran. 

Washington stands with MEK’s protests delivered via bombs and the assassin’s bullet. After all, we have to bring freedom and democracy to Iran, and violence is Washington’s preferred way to achieve this goal.

Washington is desperate to overthrow the Syrian government in order to get rid of the Russian naval base. 

On May 15 the Washington Post reported that Washington is coordinating the flow of arms to Syrian rebels. Washington’s justification for interfering in Syria’s internal affairs is human rights charges against the Syrian government. 

However, a UN report finds that the rebels are no more respectful of human rights than the Syrian government. The rebels torture and murder prisoners and kidnap civilians wealthy enough to bring a ransom. 

NATO, guided by Washington, went far outside the UN resolution declaring a no-fly zone over Libya. NATO in blatant violation of the UN resolution provided the air attack on the Libyan government that enabled the CIA-supported “rebels” to overthrow Gadhafi, killing many Libyan civilians in the process. 
 
Under the Nuremberg standard (principle VI.a.i), it is a war crime to launch a war of aggression, which is what Washington and its NATO puppets launched against Libya, but, no sweat, Washington brought Libya freedom and democracy. 

Assassinating foreign opponents is the West’s preferred diplomacy. The British were at ease with it, and Washington picked up the practice. 

In his book, The Decline and Fall of the British Empire, Cambridge University historian Piers Brendon, the Keeper of the Churchill Archives, reports from the documents he has at hand, that in the build up to the “Suez Crisis” in 1956, British Prime Minister Anthony Eden told Foreign Office minister Anthony Nutting, “I want him [Nasser, Egypt’s leader] murdered.”

Brendon goes on to report: “Doubtless at the Prime Minister’s behest, the Secret Intelligence Service did hatch plots to assassinate Nasser and to topple his government. Its agents, who proposed to pour nerve gas into Nasser’s office through the ventilation system, were by no means discreet.” The secret agents talked too much, and the scheme never came to fruition.

Last week in Malaysia a war crimes tribunal found George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld and their legal advisers, Alberto Gonzales, David Addington, William Haynes II, Jay Bybee, and John Choon Yoo guilty of war crimes. (ref

But don’t expect Washington to take any notice. The war crimes convictions are merely a “political statement.”


Paul Craig Roberts was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for Economic Policy and associate editor of the Wall Street Journal. He was columnist for Business Week, Scripps Howard News Service, and Creators Syndicate. He has had many university appointments. His internet columns have attracted a worldwide following. www.paulcraigroberts.org
 

Saturday, May 26, 2012

An Ongoing Disaster
Libya, Africa and Africom


By Dan Glazebrook

The scale of the ongoing tragedy visited on Libya by NATO and its allies is becoming horribly clearer with each passing day...

Libyan resources are now being jointly plundered by the oil multinationals and a handful of chosen families from amongst the country’s new elites; a classic neo-colonial stitch-up. The use of these resources for giant infrastructure projects such as the Great Manmade River, and the massive raising of living standards over the past four decades (Libyan life expectancy rose from 51 to 77 since Gaddafi came to power in 1969) sadly looks to have already become a thing of the past....

This is the reality of the new Libya: civil war, squandered resources, and societal collapse, where voicing preference for the days when Libya was prosperous and at peace is a crime, but lynching and torture is not only permitted but encouraged.

Nor has the disaster remained a national one. Libya’s destabilisation has already spread to Mali, prompting a coup, and huge numbers of refugees – especially amongst Libya’s large black migrant population – have fled to neighbouring countries in a desperate attempt to escape both aerial destruction and lynch mob rampage, putting further pressure on resources elsewhere. Many Libyan fighters, their work done in Libya, have now been shipped by their imperial masters to Syria to spread their sectarian violence there too.


Most worrying for the African continent, however, is the forward march of AFRICOM – the US military’s African command – in the wake of the aggression against Libya. It is no coincidence that barely a month after the fall of Tripoli – and in the same month Gaddafi was murdered (October 2011) – the US announced it was sending troops to no less than four more African countries – the Central African Republic, Uganda, South Sudan and the Democratic Republic of Congo...


None of this would have been possible whilst Gaddafi was still in power...Now he has gone, AFRICOM is stepping up its work. The invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan showed the West that wars in which their own citizens get killed are not popular; AFRICOM is designed to ensure that in the coming colonial wars against Africa, it will be Africans who do the fighting and dying, not Westerners. The forces of the African Union are to become integrated into AFRICOM under a US-led chain of command. Gaddafi would never have stood for it; that is why he had to go... 
 





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By Chris Marsden 
The UN is well aware that Washington is pursuing a deliberate policy of destabilisation in Syria in order to justify a war for regime change waged by its allies—above all in Riyadh, Ankara and Doha—with Washington’s military support. Continue


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By Eric Draitser
Neo-Imperialism by Faux-Democracy, Terrorism, and Propaganda. Continue


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Video 
A gripping, deeply informative account of the plunder, hypocrisy, and mass violence of plutocracy and empire; insightful, historically grounded and highly relevant to the events of today. Continue