Saturday 27th of April 2024
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full of their own dangerous and hypocritical hubris...

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The United States has a new strategy for Syria, according to The Washington Post and The Wall Street Journal. The new direction, however, is simply the old, largely unrecognized, one, transformed from a de facto status to official one by presidential authorization. In other words, an aggressive US policy on Syria will continue to be implemented—one the US president had, for a time, openly mused about reversing, but has now accepted.

The strategy, crafted by “the steady state”, and now acquiesced to by the US president, features the continued illegal and indefinite occupation of roughly one-third of Syrian territory by US forces as well as US interference in Syrian attempts to liberate Idlib from the control of Al Qaeda forces allied to Washington, its Arab monarchist collaborators, and their partner, Israel. It also features US pressure, military and otherwise, to confront Iranian forces and to drive them out of Syria. The overarching goal of the strategy, clearly articulated by US officials, is to dictate the form, nature and raison d’être of the Syrian state, the self-appointed prerogative of a globe-girding dictatorship. In the words of US officials, Washington seeks to build “a stable, nonthreatening government acceptable to all Syrians and the international community”. The goal, redolent with the stench of imperialism, can be challenged on democratic and liberal grounds, as well as on legal and moral ones.

First, it might be noted that almost every state in the Arab world was created by the dominant imperialist powers of the day, Britain and France, to serve their own interests at the expense of the Arabs they subordinated to their rule, occasionally directly but usually indirectly. London and Paris partitioned West Asia and North Africa without the slightest regard to the aspirations of the people who inhabited these regions, and imposed rulers upon them, quislings who collaborated with their imperial patrons in plundering the region’s resources. Washington’s plan to establish a government in Syria acceptable to the international community, i.e., the United States, continues a long imperialist tradition of indirect rule by outside powers.

Partisans of democracy should object to this plan for three reasons.

First, a Syrian government doesn’t have to be acceptable to the United States or any other country. It only needs to be acceptable to Syrians.

Second, democracy has both intra- and inter-national aspects. Internationally, it means that peoples have the right to organize their own affairs, free from the interference of foreign states. Governments need only answer to their own people; not to Washington. While the point should be obvious, it is studiously avoided in public discourse and therefore needs to made: US “leadership” and democracy are antitheses.

Third, there can be no democracy intra-nationally, if a government has been imposed on a people by outside powers, as provided for in Washington’s plan. Clearly, a government acceptable to Washington would be a government willing to do Washington’s bidding; one that would assent to reshaping Syria’s economy and politics to comport with US business and military-strategic interests, not with the interests of Syrians. There are already too many quisling governments in the Arab world; another is not needed.

Washington’s objection to the Assad government is of a piece with its fierce opposition to Nasser’s Egypt, Saddam’s Iraq, and Gaddafi’s Libya. All these governments pursued the Arab socialist project of breaking the control of the region’s wealth by the Western oil companies and their Arab Petains in order to direct it to the uplift of Arabs. While the Western-backed emirs, kings and sultans built pharaonic palaces and lived lives of luxury in exchange for allowing Western oil corporations to pile up a Himalaya of profits, their subjects wallowed in poverty. Meanwhile, in Iraq, during the 1970s, the Arab socialists used their country’s oil wealth to build a Golden Age.

In Libya, Muamar Gaddafi, inspired by Nasser’s Arab socialism, built a society beyond the dreams of his compatriots who had lived lives of stark under-privilege under the Western-imposed King Idris I. In Syria and Egypt, Arab socialists implemented social reforms to uplift the poor, and asserted the right of women to equality. At the same time, they brought large parts of the economy under public control and implemented plans to overcome the economic legacy of colonialism. In Egypt, the president Gamal Abdel Nasser, the most popular Arab since the Prophet Mohamed, lived in the modest house he occupied as an army colonel, while sending his children to public school. He threatened the West by proclaiming the democratic slogan “Arab oil for Arabs”. All these governments were assisted ably by the Soviet Union. Syria’s government stands in this tradition.

It is the only Arab socialist government that has withstood the anti-democratic designs of Washington, Israel and the Saudi kings, to bring the entire Arab world, from the Atlantic to the Gulf, under their uncontested domination.

As part of its campaign to topple the last force of Arab independence, the United States currently controls about one-third of Syrian territory, by means of an unspecified number of US service personnel who direct a mercenary force of Kurds, and some traitorous Arabs under Kurd control. Dennis Ross, who held several senior national security positions in the US state, says that “the U.S. and its partners control about 40% of Syrian territory.” The Pentagon says there are some 2,500 US troops in Syria, but acknowledges the number is higher, since covert forces and aircrew are not counted.

The Pentagon, then, is running a semi-covert war on a sovereign Arab state, having obtained no legal authorization for its actions, either from the United Nations Security Council or the US Congress. The point is only partly relevant, since even if the Pentagon had obtained legal authorization for its actions, the legal cover would in no way justify the occupation. Still, failure to obtain legal authorization is significant in bringing to the fore the question of why US forces are in the country. Trump raised the question, though predictably not on moral or legal grounds, but in relation to the implications that US entanglement in Syria have for the US Treasury. This, of course, reflects Trump’s Mattis-identified inability to grasp the subtleties of US imperial strategy.

The ostensible purpose of the US presence in Syria is to defeat ISIS. Washington says that it must maintain its presence in the Levantine country to prevent an ISIS resurgence. This implies an indefinite occupation, based on the pretext of the occupation acting as an anti-ISIS prophylaxis. But US officials acknowledged earlier this year that the Pentagon plans to occupy the territory to a) prevent its recovery by the Syrian government; b) to create administrative structures, i.e., to impose a government on the US-controlled portion of a partitioned Syria; and c) to rebuild the territory under US control, using Saudi financing, while denying reconstruction funds to Damascus.

Another plank of the US strategy is to interfere in the Syrian government’s campaign to liberate Idlib from Al Qaeda. “Brett McGurk, the U.S. envoy to the international coalition fighting Islamic State, has called Idlib ‘the largest al Qaeda safe haven since 9/11.’”

The joint Syrian-Russian campaign will resemble other campaigns that have been waged by Syria, Russia, the United States and Iraq to wrest control of territory captured by Islamist guerillas. What has distinguished these campaigns is not the military methods used, but the way they have been presented by the Western media. Western news organizations have condemned ISIS as the bad jihadists and lionized Al Qaeda as the good ones. The US-directed campaigns in Mosul and Raqqa to wrest control of these cities from ISIS were portrayed as laudable US-Iraqi military victories against a foe, ISIS, of ineffable depravity, whose fighters were branded as “terrorists.” In contrast, the Russia-Syria campaigns in Aleppo and now Idlib have been painted as murderous projects aimed at good jihadists, Al Qaeda, branded as “opposition fighters”.

In the former case, civilians caught in the crossfire were presented as a grim but necessary cost that regrettably needed to be incurred to eradicate the ISIS evil. US Defense Secretary James Mattis, in reference to the US campaign to capture Raqqa, intoned: “Civilian casualties are a fact of life in this sort of situation.” In the latter case, civilian casualties become a humanitarian tragedy that evidences the evil of the Russian and Syrian governments. The fact of the matter is that Mattis is right: civilian casualties are unavoidable.

Added to the patent double standard is a clear attempt to build public support for US intervention against the Idlib campaign and therefore on behalf of Al Qaeda by announcing that the United States has information that Damascus is planning to use chemical weapons in liberating Idlib. Making the allegation appear credible to an all too frequently lied to public is facilitated by the single voice with which the Western media proclaim matter-of-factly that Damascus has built a track record of using chemical weapons in the long-running war. And yet the only so-called evidence presented of Syrian chemical weapons use are assessments by US officials that amount to: “We believe the Syrians have used chemical agents, but have no definitive evidence to back up our claim; still this is the kind of thing the evil Assad would do.”

Inasmuch as the Syrians dismantled their chemical weapons under an internationally supervised process and inasmuch as no credible evidence exists that they have retained or regained access to weaponized chemicals, any discussion of the possible future use of chemical arms by the Syrian military represents a decent into a world of fantasy. What’s more, even if Syrian forces had gas to use, “with the Russians positioning forces to carry out naval and air bombardments,” they have no need to use gas, as former US national security official Dennis Ross argues.

Lest we take Syria’s previous possession of chemical weapons as emblematic of a unique Syrian evil and menace, we ought to give the matter some thought.

First, Israel, with which Syria remains in a state of de jure and de facto war, has its own stock of chemical weapons. If Syria’s former possession of chemical weapons makes it evil, then what are we to say of Israel?

Second, the United States and its satraps, Israel included, use their military superiority to dominate, oppress, and exploit poor countries. What options are open to Syria to defend itself? Achieving parity in conventional arms is out of the question. On top of monopolizing the world’s wealth, the United States and its allies monopolize the world’s weapons systems. Syria can’t hope to compete with the United States or US-subsidized Israel in conventional military terms.

Israel’s function within the US Empire is to weaken Arab and Islamic nationalism and prevent either from becoming a significant force that would challenge US control of the Arab world’s oil resources. As the last bastion of Arabism, Syria quite naturally is a target for Israeli aggression.

Munificent US military aid has made the Jewish nationalist settler colonial state into the region’s military Leviathan. Not only is it more formidable than every Arab country in conventional arms, it is also much stronger militarily than the Persian country, Iran. Additionally, Israel holds a regional nuclear weapons monopoly, and boasts stocks of chemical and biological weapons. Moreover, the United States exempts Israel, as it does itself, from any legal constraints on its right to use force.

The only way Syria can defend itself against the imperialist predations of the United States and its Jewish nationalist janissary, both bursting at the seams with the world’s most sophisticated conventional arms and formidable collections of WMD, and unrestrained by international law, is to develop an equalizer. That means nuclear weapons, or, failing that, chemical and biological arms. It also means achieving parity with its adversaries by operating outside the constraints of international law.

We’re taught to shudder at the idea of chemical weapons (that is, when they’re used by a country that defies the international dictatorship of the United States, not when they’re used in its service, as they were in the 1980s by Iraq, then a temporary US ally of convenience against Iran, a US target. Washington accepted Iraq’s use of the chemical weapons it had helped the Arab state acquire.) But why should we shudder at the thought of chemical weapons any more than we do at cruise missile strikes, the Pentagon’s Mother of All Bombs, the incendiaries fighter pilot John McCain dropped on Vietnamese peasants and light bulb factory workers, Israeli snipers gunning down unarmed Palestinians in Gaza demanding their internationally-recognized right of return, and so on?

In all these cases, the outcome is death or disability, often brutal, regularly painful, and frequently prolonged. Does it matter how the death was brought about? The United States doesn’t use guillotines on the battlefield to kill quickly, painlessly and humanely; it maims, crushes, pulverizes, vaporizes, incinerates and leaves bodies to slowly bleed to death. And it reserves to right to use nuclear weapons, and assorted other WMD.

Shuddering at the methods available to the weak, the oppressed, the exploited, and the plundered, to fight back and defend themselves while accepting the more formidable weapons of the strong as legitimate makes no sense. Insisting we shudder at one but not the other is part of a class war of the oppressors against the oppressed, of tyrants against the tyrannized, carried out at an ideological level. To deplore the weapons of the weak is to concede ground in this war of class. Syria hasn’t a stock of chemical weapons to use, but if it did, far from condemning their use, the only defensible course would be to welcome it as one of the few effective means by which a secular, republican, Arab socialist state can assert its independence and preserve its freedom against the intolerable despotism and anti-democratic machinations of the world’s paramount tyranny, the United States.

 

Read more:

https://off-guardian.org/2018/09/17/washingtons-long-war-on-syria-isnt-a...

US playing russian roulette with syria...

russian roulette...

...

Nor was ousting Assad likely to end the humanitarian crisis. Overthrowing him would have merely led to the next conflict over who would succeed him. In countries from Iran to Nicaragua, diverse coalitions defenestrated long-ruling dictators only to see the most vicious authoritarians among them take control. There is no reason to believe Syria would have been any different. Alawites, Christians, and other minorities saw Washington’s previous production in Iraq and didn’t like the ending. For understandable reasons these groups saw Assad as their best protection.

In any case, today Washington’s ability to influence events in Syria is only a little above nil. U.S. forces occupy part of that sovereign nation without the slightest legal authority. And the Assad government is more secure today than at any point during the last seven years. Why would it give way now? American policy actually gives the regime a plausible excuse to its own people for a slow recovery.

In fact, the administration said it will not support reconstruction in government-controlled areas. The theory, apparently, is that people will rise up and throw off their Assad-imposed chains in disgust. That is unlikely, given the fact that Damascus triumphed against a plethora of well-armed and funded opponents. Anyway, disgruntled Syrians are more likely to target Washington with their disgust, having felt punished by the U.S. for not making political choices that aren’t actually empowered to make.

 

Read more:

https://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/washingtons-influence-i...

Note: a lot of the personnel in the toon above has been replaced, fired, resigned, spiked, dismissed, evaporated, turncoated and burnt to the stakes. 

it's curtain for the new york times...

Hours after posting an online smear of Ambassador Nikki Haley, The New York Times on Friday afternoon corrected the article to make it clear she had nothing to do with the decision to spend $52,000 on mechanized curtains in her official New York residence. Hours of criticism had left the Gray Lady no other choice.

The original piece, headlined “Nikki Haley’s View of New York is Priceless. Her Curtains? $52,701,” snarked about the expense in a blatant effort to make Haley seem like several other Trump administration officials (mostly ex-officials) who demanded outrageous taxpayer-paid perks upon taking office.

Besides noting the expense — $29,900 for the curtains and $22,801 for automatic open-and-close hardware — the Times report flagged the fact that the installation came at a time when the State Department faced deep budget cuts and a hiring freeze.

Only at the end did the article mention that the plans to buy the tapestries were made in 2016, by the Obama State Department.

 

Read more:

https://nypost.com/2018/09/14/the-times-disgraceful-smear-of-nikki-haley/

 

If the media want to attack Nikki Haley, please do so against her gastly policies and the US/Israeli/Saudi racket she runs at the United Nations... which was the same racket run by Obama baby...

See: 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pg2p-K_bqHk

Western demands on Syria

Western demands on Syria

by Thierry Meyssan

While on the ground, the war is ending, and only Idlib still needs to be freed from the terrorists, the Western powers are starting trouble all over again. They have just presented their demands to the UN special envoy, Staffan de Mistura. Unsurprisingly, the United States refuse the process led by Russia, for the unique reason that they didn’t have anything to do with it, while the United Kingdom and France seek to impose institutions which would allow them to govern the country from the shadows.

The special envoy for the Secretary General of the UNO for Syria, Staffan de Mistura, received a delegation of the Astana Group (Iran, Russia, Turkey) in Geneva, then, on 14 September, a delegation from the Syria Small Group (Saudi Arabia, Egypt, United States, France, Jordan and the United Kingdom).

From the Western side, ambassador James Jeffrey and Colonel Joel Rayburn led the US delegation, while the ambassador and ex-director of the Exterior Intelligence Service (DGSE 2012-16), François Sénémaud, presided the French delegation.

Each delegation handed the UN a secret document listing their demands, with a view to applying pressure to the intra-Syrian negotiations which are currently under way. Russia Today leaked the Western document [1], just as, two weeks ago, Kommersant had leaked the internal directives of the UNO [2].

- First remark - point 3 of the Small Group document resumes the internal directive of the UNO : «There will be no international reconstruction assistance in Syrian-governement-held areas absent a credible political process that leads unalterably to constitutional reform and UN-supervised elections, to the satisfaction of potential donor countries».

Germany, which has participated in meetings of the Small Group, does not seem to have been represented at this meeting. The night before, their Minister for Foreign Affairs, Heiko Maas, had dissociated himself from this point. Just before he met with his Russian counterpart, Sergeï Lavrov, he tweeted that his country was ready to participate in reconstruction « if there exists a political solution leading to free elections [3] [4]. »While for the Small Group and the UNO, reconstruction will not begin until the potential donor countries have attained their war objectives, for Germany, it can accompany the process of political reconciliation.

- Second remark – the different international interlocutors refer to resolution 2254 of 18 December 2015 [5]. However, the Small Group extrapolates the meaning of the text. Although the resolution of the Security Council states that the composition of the Constitution is the affair only of the Syrians between themselves, the Small Group declares that it must be drawn up only by a Committee placed under the auspices and control of the UNO.

This is obviously aimed at sabotaging the decisions taken in Sotchi, in other words, to destroy what has been achieved over the last few months and oppose the role of Russia in the solution to the crisis [6]. The United States aim to conserve their status as the indispensable power, while the United Kingdom and France intend to pursue their colonial project.

- Third remark - the Small Group means not only to transfer the responsibility for the composition of the Constitution from Sotchi to Geneva, it already has an idea what it should be. This would be to reproduce the model that Washington has already imposed on Iraq, and which maintains a state of permanent crisis for the greater benefit of the Western powers. The powers of the President would be exclusively formal; those of the Prime Minister would be non-existent at a regional level; and those of the army would be limited.

The colonial powers maintain their power in the Near East behind an appearance of democracy. They always manage to constitute governments which do not represent their people. Since 1926 in Lebanon and since 2005 in Iraq, the institutions have been conceived above all to prevent these countries from once again becoming nation-states. Lebanon is divided into religious communities, and Iraq into distinct regions according to the predominance of a religious community. As for Israël, it no longer has a representative government, not because of its Constitution – it doesn’t have one – but because of its electoral system.

- Fourth remark – while resolution 2254 specifies that elections must be held under the supervision of the UNO, the Small Group considers that the Syrian agency in charge of their organisation must work daily under the orders of the UNO, notably in matters concerning eventual complaints of fraud.

In this way, the Western powers conserve for themselves the possibility of cancelling results which do not correspond to their wishes – it would be enough to register a complaint and declare that it is valid. The Syrian People would have the right to vote as long as they fall into the trap which has been laid for them, and even then, on the condition that they vote for the leaders who have been chosen for them.

In Europe, the citizens are seeking their sovereignty, in Syria, they are fighting for their independence.

Thierry Meyssan

Translation 
Pete Kimberley

 

Read more:

http://www.voltairenet.org/article202998.html

 

 

Meanwhile: Israel fight dirty... What do you expect? :

 

Russian Defense Minister Sergey Shoigu spoke to his Israeli counterpart Avigdor Lieberman on the phone about the downing of the Russian Il-20 plane on Monday night. He relayed Moscow’s position on the incident, blaming the Israeli military for setting up the Russian plane to be shot down by Syrian air defenses, which were responding to an Israeli air raid, an official statement from the Russian military said.

Shoigu reiterated that Israel failed to notify Russia of the impending attack in a way that would have given its military an opportunity to move the Il-20 out of harm’s way. Instead, the warning came just one minute before the Israeli F-16 fighter jets launched their attack.

“The blame for the downing of the Russian plane and the deaths of its crew members lies squarely on the Israeli side,” the Minister Shoigu said. “The actions of the Israeli military were not in keeping with the spirit of the Russian-Israeli partnership, so we reserve the right to respond.”

 

Read more:

https://www.rt.com/news/438690-russia-israel-il20-blame/

USA gang rape the world...

If in 2010 we could hear the head of the National Oil Corporation (NOC) of Libya, Mustafa Sanalla, saying that Tripoli was on the verge of a fuel crisis, that would be akin to a report about the disappearance of sand in the Sahara. Today, this is part of objective reality that leads to the future of nowhere.

"Only three full fuel storages remain for the whole of Tripoli, the situation is very complicated ... The city may remain without gasoline, diesel fuel and gas," Mustafa Sanalla stated in his video message on Facebook.

If only Muammar Gaddafi had such an opportunity, he would have liked the post of the head of the National Oil Corporation of Libya. He would have liked the post from the netherworld and put a smilie next to it too. 

The civil war in Libya began in 2011. "Peaceful civilians" suddenly showed their ability to handle not only small arms, but also complex military equipment. The wealthy country that used to feed all of Maghreb has turned into an exemplary mess very quickly.

As many as twelve fuel storage facilities were destroyed in Tripoli during the unrest. More than 60 people died in armed clashes in Tripoli only in August of 2018. 

It seems that all are fighting against all as officials from Western countries are expressing their concerns and migrants are fleeing to other countries in a desperate effort to survive. 

Muammar Gaddafi used to warn of such consequences. Libya used to be a buffer zone that was holding back the migration traffic preventing radical Islamists from raising their heads.

The weapons that were plundered at warehouses of the Libyan army migrated to Syria. It is quite possible that Gaddafi's guns are killing Russian soldiers somewhere near Aleppo or Idlib.

For Western democracies, there is no law. It is customary for the countries suffering from acute exceptionalism to bomb others at their own discretion, and a resolution from the UN Security Council is not required at all.

When Muammar Gaddafi spoke about a possibility to switch from US dollars to euros for Libyan oil deals, his future was predetermined. The issue of preserving the dominance of the dollar as the main reserve currency is still relevant.


The West started putting pressure on Russia long before 2014. All the fairy tales about the Crimea as a reason for sanctions were only a convenient excuse, just like the replacement of the Jackson-Vanik amendment with Magnitsky's act. China fell under the pressure of sanctions of the West too.  It appears that the Americans were not at all enthusiastic about the news of the yuan becoming one of the world's reserve currencies.

Indeed, how dare they run US-independent policy? They should have followed the example of the European Union that turned independent states of the Old World into US-ditto entities. European leaders still may show verbal cramps of disagreement with their role of corps de ballet in the great American dance show. In fact, they obey almost all ideas of their exceptional transatlantic ally.

Europe is living under US sanctions too. The United States is preparing sanctions for Iran, as well for India, Turkey, Saudi Arabia and other countries that decided to buy Russian S-400 surface-to-air missile systems and Su-35 fighters from Russia. 

The attempt of the sanctions gang rape may boomerang on the United States itself. The trade war is gathering pace and may eventually go out of control. Russia has clearly declared its unwillingness to accept USA's global leadership. Iran, being a full-fledged veteran of US sanctions pressure, reacts rigidly to new restrictions. China has changed the benevolent tone and is frowning at the US. It's hard to predict what India and Turkey can do, but Saudi Arabia is unlikely to swallow the sanctions pill. This country has every opportunity to pinch the Americans very hard.

Also read:

What Russia needs to learn from Gaddafi's mistakes

Libya without Gaddafi: Chaos and collapse


See more at http://www.pravdareport.com/world/americas/24-09-2018/141653-gaddafi_san...

 

pimps

a war in waiting...

International relations: the calm before the storm?

by Thierry Meyssan

All international problems are currently suspended, awaiting the results of the US mid-term elections. The partisans of the old international order are gambling on a change of majority in Congress and a rapid destitution of President Trump. If the man in the White House holds fast, the protagonists of the war against Syria will have to admit defeat and move on to other battle fields. On the other hand, if Donald Trump should lose the elections, the war on Syria will immediately be revived by the United Kingdom.


The current situation – extending from the Russian response to the destruction of its Ilyuchin-20 to the US mid-term elections on 6 November - is uncertain. All the protagonists of the war in Syria are waiting to see whether the White House will be able to pursue its policy of breaking away from the current international order, or if Congress will become the opposition and immediately trigger the process for the destitution of President Trump.

The origins of the war

It has become clear that the initial project by the United States, the United Kingdom, Israël, Saudi Arabia and Qatar will not be realised. The same goes for France and Turkey, two powers that entered the war against Syria somewhat later.

What we need to remember is not the way in which we were informed about the start of the events, but what we have discovered about them since. The demonstrations in Deraa were presented as a « spontaneous revolt » against « dictatorial repression », but we now know that they had been in preparation for a long time [1].

We also need to free ourselves of the illusion that all the members of a Coalition, united in order to achieve the same goal, share the same strategy. Whatever the influence of one or the other, each State conserves its own history, its own interests and its own war objectives.

The United States pursued the strategy of Admiral Arthur Cebrowski, which was the destruction of the State structures in the Greater Middle East [2]. For this they relied upon the United Kingdom, which implemented Tony Blair’s strategy aimed at placing the Muslim Brotherhood in power throughout the region [3]. And also on Israël, which rebooted the strategy of Oded Yinon [4] and David Wurmser [5] for regional domination. The necessary weapons were stored in advance by Saudi Arabia in the Omar mosque [6]. Qatar stepped in by inventing the story about the children whose nails were torn out.

At that time, Saudi Arabia was not seeking to impose a new form of politics on Syria, nor even to overthrow its government. Riyadh’s intention was exclusively to prevent a non-Sunni from becoming President. By some strange historical evolution, the Wahhabites, who, two centuries ago, considered both Sunnis and Chiites as heretics and called for their extermination if they failed to repent, are today presenting themselves as the defenders of the Sunnis and the killers of the Chiites.

As for the tiny emirate of Qatar, it was exacting its revenge after the interruption of its gas pipeline in Syria [7].

France, which should have taken part in the conspiracy by virtue of the Lancaster House agreements, was sidelined because of its unexpected initiatives in Libya. The Minister for Foreign Affairs, Alain Juppé, attempted to push France into rejoining the conspirators, but the ambassador in Damascus, Eric Chevallier, who could see the distortion of facts on the ground, resisted as far as humanly possible [8].

When France was once again admitted to the group conspiracy, it continued its 1915 objective of the colonisation of Syria, pursuing the Sykes-Picot-Sazonov agreements. Just as the French mandate over Syria was considered to be transitory compared with the lasting colonisation of Algeria [9], it is considered, in the 21st century, as secondary to control of the Sahel. Besides which, while attempting to realise its old engagement, Paris pushed for the creation of a national home for the Kurds, on the model used by the British in 1917 for the Jews in Palestine. In order to do so, it allied itself with Turkey [10] which, in the name of Atatürk’s « national oath » [11], invaded the North of Syria in order to create a State to which the Turkish Kurds could be expelled.

While the war objectives of these first four aggressors are mutually compatible, those of the latter two are not compatible with the others.

Besides which, France, the United Kingdom and Turkey are three old colonial powers. All three are now trying to impose their power over the same throne. The war against Syria has thus reactivated their old rivalries.

The Daesh episode within the war against Syria and Iraq

At the end of 2013, the Pentagon revised its plans within the framework of the Cebrowski strategy. It modified its initial plans, as revealed by Ralph Peters [12], and substituted the plan by Robin Wright for the creation of a « Sunnistan » straddling Syria and Iraq [13].

However, in September 2015, the deployment of the Russian army in Syria, as an obstacle to the creation of « Sunnistan » by Daesh, ruined the projects of the six principal partners in the war.

The three years of war that followed had other objectives - on the one hand, to create a new state straddling Iraq and Syria within the framework of the Cebrowski strategy, and, on the other, to use Daesh to cut the Silk Road that Xi Jinping’s China were seeking to reactivate - thus maintaining continental domination over the « Western » part.

The Syrian / Russian victory and the reversal of the United States

The affair of the destruction of the Ilyuchin-20 on 17 September 2018 handed Russia the occasion to terminate this extended war and come to an agreement with the White House to stand against other aggressors. This is a rerun, on a smaller scale, of the Russian / US reaction to the Suez crisis of 1956 [14].

Moscow has not only given the Syrian Arab Army anti-aircraft missiles (S-300’s), but has also deployed an entire integrated surveillance system. As soon as this system is operational, and Syrian officers have been trained to use it, which will take three months at the most, it will be impossible for Western armies to over-fly the country without permission from Damascus [15].

President Trump announced in advance that he intends to withdraw US troops from Syria. He went back on this decision under pressure from the Pentagon, then agreed with his general officers to maintain pressure on Damascus as long as the United States were excluded from the peace negotiations in Sotchi. The deployment of the Russian armies – for which the White House had probably given its agreement – provided President Trump with the occasion of forcing the Pentagon to back off. It would have to withdraw its troops, but it could maintain the presence of its mercenaries (as it happens, these would be the Kurds and Arabs from the Democratic Forces) [16].

The Syrian Minister for Foreign Affairs, Walid el-Mouallem, speaking before the General Assembly of the UNO, demanded the immediate and unconditional withdrawal of the foreign forces of occupation, US, French and Turkish [17].

If the United States leave, then the French and Turkish troops will be unable to stay. The Israëlis would no longer be able to overfly and bomb the country. The British have already left.

However, Tel-Aviv, Paris and Ankara still hope that President Trump will lose the elections of 6 November and will be fired. They are therefore awaiting the results of this fateful election before they decide.

If it happens that Donald Trump should win the mid-term elections in Congress, another question will arise. If the Western powers give up on the battle in Syria, where will they go to continue their endless war? This is indeed a reality on which all experts agree – the Western ruling class has become so swamped in bad blood and hubris that it is unable to accept the idea of being geared back behind the new Asian powers.

Wisdom would dictate that once the war is lost, the aggressors should withdraw. But the intellectual disposition of the West prevents them from doing so. The war here will cease only when they find a new bone to gnaw on.

Only the United Kingdom has given its response any thought. It is clear by now that although London maintains its diplomatic pressure on Syria via the Small Group, its attention is already focused on the revival of the « Grand Game » which saw the Crown confront the Tsar throughout all of the 19th century. After having invented the Skripal affair, and on the model of the « Zinoviev Letter » [18], London has just ’caught’ the Russian Exterior Intelligence Services red-handed in their attempt to discover what is being plotted against them by the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPWC).

This geopolitical doctrine is independent of the events which serve as its pretext. The « Grand Game » was the strategy of the British Empire. Its resumption by the current United Kingdom is the consequence of Brexit and the policy of « Global Britain ». Just as in the 19th century, this anti-Russian configuration will lead in time to an exacerbated rivalry between London and Paris. On the contrary, should Theresa May fail, along with the questions concerning Brexit and the maintenance of the United Kingdom in the European Union, all these projections will be cancelled.

If France is now studying the possibility of leaving the Middle East in order to concentrate on the Sahel, the position of the United States is a lot more problematic. Since 9/11, the Pentagon has enjoyed a certain autonomy. The ten combat Commanders of the armed forces no longer receive orders from the president of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Committee, but only from the Secretary of Defense.

With time, they have become the veritable « viceroys » of the « American Empire » - a function which they do not wish to see reduced by President Trump. Some of them, like the Commander for South America (SouthCom) [19], intend to continue with the Cebrowski strategy, despite the admonitions of the White House.

So there remains much uncertainty. The only positive step taken concerns Daesh – for three years, the Western powers pretended to be fighting this terrorist organisation, while at the same time supplying them with weapons. Today, Donald Trump has ordered the cessation of this experience of an explicitly terrorist state, the Caliphate, and the Syrian and Russian armies have pushed the jihadists back. The Westerners have no desire to see their friends, the « moderate rebels », now qualified as « terrorists », turn up in their countries en masse. Consequently, whether they admit it or not, they hope they will all be killed in Syria.

It is the US mid-term elections which will decide whether the war continues in Syria or move on to another battle field.

Thierry Meyssan

Translation 
Pete Kimberley

 

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http://www.voltairenet.org/article203382.html

 

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no more lies to tell?...

US President Donald Trump has accepted the surprise resignation of UN Ambassador Nikki Haley.

He told reporters in the Oval Office alongside Mrs Haley that she would be leaving the post at the end of the year after doing "an incredible job".

The 46-year-old former South Carolina governor - who is one of the few women in the Trump cabinet - gave no reason for her exit after two years.

But she dismissed speculation she was planning to run for president in 2020.

 

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https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-45802828

 

Has Nikki run out of bullshit to tell? An "incredible job"? Sure totally non-credible...

 

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apparent there was nothing there...

“She was picked for UN Ambassador for one reason,” explained a senior GOP political consultant to me, reacting to the news that Nikki Haley, the former governor of South Carolina, had just resigned from the Trump administration. “She was supposed to present a feminine, or supposedly softer version of Trump’s America First message. Instead she became the administration’s national security sledgehammer.”

“Haley was a great spokesperson for the administration; in fact, she was great at parroting whatever lines Trump wanted her to deliver,” the consultant continued. “But for anyone who has ever interacted with her, one thing became very clear. The second she left the land of talking points, any time she was asked to discuss any issue in any depth, it was apparent there was nothing there. And that is not what we need as ambassador at the UN.”

Perhaps I can come up with a better description of Nikki Haley. She was Donald Trump’s very own “Baghdad Bob,” the propaganda chief under Saddam Hussein who appeared on TV during the 2003 Iraq invasion and said anything the regime wanted, no matter how inflammatory or wrong. While Haley was never forced to claim anything so preposterous as that Saddam’s Republican Guard was winning a war against a superpower, her ability to trump even Trump in crazy talk was a rare talent—and not a welcome one.

 

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https://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/nikki-haley-trumps-bagh...

 

 

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whitewashing the intact virginal ambassadorette...

The decampment of Nikki Haley from Trump’s military regime is, or ought to be, a nonstory. The United States’ ambassador to the United Nations is a ceremonial position that serves no purpose. The very idea of it is absurd. The US is a law unto itself, readily violating the UN Charter whenever the latter’s principles get in the way of the former’s imperial agenda. Washington didn’t bother obtaining a Security Council resolution for its invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq; nor did it get one for its bombing of, and deployment of troops in, Syria; nor did it get one for its protracted bombardment of Yugoslavia; nor did it get one for its various military operations in Yemen.

True, Washington obtained a Security Council resolution re: Libya in 2011. Resolution 1973 authorized the “imposition of a no-fly zone on Libyan military aviation” and the establishment of “safe areas in places exposed to shelling as a precautionary measure.” It also expressed a “strong commitment to the sovereignty, independence, territorial integrity and national unity” (my emphasis) of the Libyan state. What did Washington and its NATO flunkies do? They immediately breached the terms of the resolution by relentlessly shelling Gaddafi’s security forces on behalf of the armed opposition.

While Gaddafi fled, NATO bombed his convoy. Gaddafi was captured, sodomized and murdered by a gang of “rebels.” Hillary Clinton (literally) cheered. The upshot: Libya, once North Africa’s most prosperous and stable country, became a failed state overrun by warlords and Wahhabi terrorists, and the main conduit through which all kinds of African migrants make it across to Europe. It remains so today; and Europe, in no small part due to said migrant crisis, continues its descent into political disarray.

The United Nations is useful insofar as it can provide cover for American crimes. Otherwise it’s merely a thing to be sidestepped and disregarded. It’s of no consequence who serves as the empire’s official envoy to the UN. Still, Haley’s resignation is a welcome circumstance, if only because we’ll be spared her vapid effusions going forward. This is the woman who has repeatedly cast blame on Iran for the cataclysm in Yemen, where Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates have been deliberately murdering civilians, millions of whom are starving to death, since 2015—using US-made munitions. So atrocious is the Saudi-led massacre that even CNN has begun to report on it objectively. For Haley, though, it pales in comparison to the handful of rockets fired at Saudi Arabia by the Houthis, Iran’s so-called proxy.

...

Moral hypocrisy may be part and parcel of politics, but Haley took it to uncommon depths. When Israeli snipers mowed down hundreds of non-violent demonstrators in Gaza earlier this year, killing children, medics and journalists, Haley had this to say: “Let's remember that the Hamas terrorist organization has been inciting violence for years, long before the United States decided to move our embassy [to Jerusalem in violation of international law]. This is what is endangering the people of Gaza. Make no mistake, Hamas is pleased with the results from yesterday.”

 

She went on to condemn Gazans for flying kites over the fence into Israel and asserted with a straight face that “No country in this chamber would act with more restraint than Israel has.” When the Palestinian envoy began to speak to the delegation, Haley walked out of the room. Such is her racist contempt for the victims of Israeli terrorism. She might just as well have called them “sand-niggers.”

...

Nevertheless, “Nikki Haley Will Be Missed.” That’s according to—who else?—The New York Times editorial board. Why will this immoral bigot be missed? Because apparently, she’s a “practitioner of multilateral diplomacy,” as evinced by her support for the unilateral embargo on Cuba, for instance, as well as her support for the unilateral axing of the Iran nuclear agreement. She is also apparently one of a small number of former Trump regime officials “who can exit the administration with her dignity intact,” because “dignified” is certainly the word to describe her unequivocal support for the mass murder of civilians in Gaza.


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https://ahtribune.com/us/maga/2535-the-times-haley.html

 

 

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