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By Jonathan Cook

With Jair Bolsonaro’s victory in Brazil’s presidential election at the weekend, the doom-mongers among western elites are out in force once again. His success, like Donald Trump’s, has confirmed a long-held prejudice: that the people cannot be trusted; that, when empowered, they behave like a mob driven by primitive urges; that the unwashed masses now threaten to bring down the carefully constructed walls of civilisation.

The guardians of the status quo refused to learn the lesson of Trump’s election, and so it will be with Bolsonaro. Rather than engaging the intellectual faculties they claim as their exclusive preserve, western “analysts” and “experts” are again averting their gaze from anything that might help them understand what has driven our supposed democracies into the dark places inhabited by the new demagogues. Instead, as ever, the blame is being laid squarely at the door of social media.

Social media and fake news are apparently the reasons Bolsonaro won at the ballot box. Without the gatekeepers in place to limit access to the “free press” – itself the plaything of billionaires and global corporations, with brands and a bottom line to protect – the rabble has supposedly been freed to give expression to their innate bigotry.

Here is Simon Jenkins, a veteran British gatekeeper – a former editor of the Times of London who now writes a column in the Guardian – pontificating on Bolsonaro:

“The lesson for champions of open democracy is glaring. Its values cannot be taken for granted. When debate is no longer through regulated media, courts and institutions, politics will default to the mob. Social media – once hailed as an agent of global concord – has become the purveyor of falsity, anger and hatred. Its algorithms polarise opinion. Its pseudo-information drives argument to the extremes.”

This is now the default consensus of the corporate media, whether in its rightwing incarnations or of the variety posing on the liberal-left end of the spectrum like the Guardian. The people are stupid, and we need to be protected from their base instincts. Social media, it is claimed, has unleashed humanity’s id.

Selling plutocracy

There is a kind of truth in Jenkins’ argument, even if it is not the one he intended. Social media did indeed liberate ordinary people. For the first time in modern history, they were not simply the recipients of official, sanctioned information. They were not only spoken down to by their betters, they could answer back – and not always as deferentially as the media class expected.

Clinging to their old privileges, Jenkins and his ilk are rightly unnerved. They have much to lose.

But that also means they are far from dispassionate observers of the current political scene. They are deeply invested in the status quo, in the existing power structures that have kept them well-paid courtiers of the corporations that dominate the planet.

Bolsonaro, like Trump, is not a disruption of the current neoliberal order; he is an intensification or escalation of its worst impulses. He is its logical conclusion.

The plutocrats who run our societies need figureheads, behind whom they can conceal their unaccountable power. Until now they preferred the slickest salespeople, ones who could sell wars as humanitarian intervention rather than profit-driven exercises in death and destruction; the unsustainable plunder of natural resources as economic growth; the massive accumulation of wealth, stashed in offshore tax havens, as the fair outcome of a free market; the bailouts funded by ordinary taxpayers to stem economic crises they had engineered as necessary austerity; and so on.

A smooth-tongued Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton were the favoured salespeople, especially in an age when the elites had persuaded us of a self-serving argument: that ghetto-like identities based on colour or gender mattered far more than class. It was divide-and-rule dressed up as empowerment. The polarisation now bewailed by Jenkins was in truth stoked and rationalised by the very corporate media he so faithfully serves.

Fear of the domino effect

Despite their professed concern, the plutocrats and their media spokespeople much prefer a far-right populist like Trump or Bolsonaro to a populist leader of the genuine left. They prefer the social divisions fuelled by neo-fascists like Bolsonaro, divisions that protect their wealth and privilege, over the unifying message of a socialist who wants to curtail class privilege, the real basis of the elite’s power.

The true left – whether in Brazil, Venezuela, Britain or the US – does not control the police or military, the financial sector, the oil industries, the arms manufacturers, or the corporate media. It was these very industries and institutions that smoothed the path to power for Bolsonaro in Brazil, Viktor Orban in Hungary, and Trump in the US.

Former socialist leaders like Brazil’s Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva or Hugo Chavez in Venezuela were bound to fail not so much because of their flaws as individuals but because powerful interests rejected their right to rule. These socialists never had control over the key levers of power, the key resources. Their efforts were sabotaged – from within and without – from the moment of their election.

Local elites in Latin America are tied umbilically to US elites, who in turn are determined to make sure any socialist experiment in their backyard fails – as a way to prevent a much-feared domino effect, one that might seed socialism closer to home.

The media, the financial elites, the armed forces were never servants of the socialist governments that have been struggling to reform Latin America. The corporate world has no interest either in building proper housing in place of slums or in dragging the masses out of the kind of poverty that fuels the drug gangs that Bolsonaro claims he will crush through more violence.

Bolsonaro will not face any of the institutional obstacles Lula da Silva or Chavez needed to overcome. No one in power will stand in his way as he institutes his “reforms”. No one will stop him creaming off Brazil’s wealth for his corporate friends. As in Pinochet’s Chile, Bolsonaro can rest assured that his kind of neo-fascism will live in easy harmony with neoliberalism.

Immune system

If you want to understand the depth of the self-deception of Jenkins and other media gatekeepers, contrast Bolsonaro’s political ascent to that of Jeremy Corbyn, the modest social democratic leader of Britain’s Labour party. Those like Jenkins who lament the role of social media – they mean you, the public – in promoting leaders like Bolsonaro are also the media chorus who have been wounding Corbyn day after day, blow by blow, for three years – since he accidentally slipped past safeguards intended by party bureacrats to keep someone like him from power.

The supposedly liberal Guardian has been leading that assault. Like the rightwing media, it has shown its absolute determination to stop Corbyn at all costs, using any pretext.

Within days of Corbyn’s election to the Labour leadership, the Times newspaper – the voice of the British establishment – published an article quoting a general, whom it refused to name, warning that the British army’s commanders had agreed they would sabotage a Corbyn government. The general strongly hinted that there would be a military coup first.

We are not supposed to reach the point where such threats – tearing away the façade of western democracy – ever need to be implemented. Our pretend democracies were created with immune systems whose defences are marshalled to eliminate a threat like Corbyn much earlier.

Once he moved closer to power, however, the rightwing corporate media was forced to deploy the standard tropes used against a left leader: that he was incompetent, unpatriotic, even treasonous.

But just as the human body has different immune cells to increase its chances of success, the corporate media has faux-liberal-left agents like the Guardian to complement the right’s defences. The Guardian sought to wound Corbyn through identity politics, the modern left’s Achille’s heel. An endless stream of confected crises about anti-semitism were intended to erode the hard-earned credit Corbyn had accumulated over decades for his anti-racism work.

Slash-and-burn politics

Why is Corbyn so dangerous? Because he supports the right of workers to a dignified life, because he refuses to accept the might of the corporations, because he implies that a different way of organising our societies is possible. It is a modest, even timid programme he articulates, but even so it is far too radical either for the plutocratic class that rules over us or for the corporate media that serves as its propaganda arm.

The truth ignored by Jenkins and these corporate stenographers is that if you keep sabotaging the programmes of a Chavez, a Lula da Silva, a Corbyn or a Bernie Sanders, then you get a Bolsonaro, a Trump, an Orban.

It is not that the masses are a menace to democracy. It is rather that a growing proportion of voters understand that a global corporate elite has rigged the system to accrue for itself ever greater riches. It is not social media that is polarising our societies. It is rather that the determination of the elites to pillage the planet until it has no more assets to strip has fuelled resentment and destroyed hope. It is not fake news that is unleashing the baser instincts of the lower orders. Rather, it is the frustration of those who feel that change is impossible, that no one in power is listening or cares.

Social media has empowered ordinary people. It has shown them that they cannot trust their leaders, that power trumps justice, that the elite’s enrichment requires their poverty. They have concluded that, if the rich can engage in slash-and-burn politics against the planet, our only refuge, they can engage in slash-and-burn politics against the global elite.

Are they choosing wisely in electing a Trump or Bolsonaro? No. But the liberal guardians of the status quo are in no position to judge them. For decades, all parts of the corporate media have helped to undermine a genuine left that could have offered real solutions, that could have taken on and beaten the right, that could have offered a moral compass to a confused, desperate and disillusioned public.

Jenkins wants to lecture the masses about their depraved choices while he and his paper steer them away from any politician who cares about their welfare, who fights for a fairer society, who prioritises mending what is broken.

The western elites will decry Bolsonaro in the forlorn and cynical hope of shoring up their credentials as guardians of the existing, supposedly moral order. But they engineered him. Bolsonaro is their monster.

Jonathan Cook won the Martha Gellhorn Special Prize for Journalism.

1 November 2018

Source: https://countercurrents.org/2018/11/01/bolsonaro-a-monster-engineered-by-our-media/

By Maung Zarni

The Free Rohingya Coalition is deeply troubled by yesterday’s announcement by Bangladesh and Myanmar that both countries will begin repatriating Rohingyas in mid-November.

We are Rohingya activists and international supporters who have been extremely appreciative of the political leadership of Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina and her compassionate embrace of Rohingyas, which has won worldwide praise and admirations.

So we are saddened and shocked by Bangladesh’s Foreign Secretary Md. Shahidul Haque telling the media that: “we are looking forward to start the repatriation in mid-November”. The Free Rohingya Coalition is, therefore, extremely disturbed that the Government of Bangladesh might be prepared to resort to the unconscionable and internationally illegal practices that characterized previous waves of repatriation.

The Rohingya have long been very much aware of the past waves of bilateral repatriations since 1978 —particularly the 1978 and 1992/93 large scale repatriations — wherein a total of nearly 500,000 Rohingyas were sent back to Myanmar under questionable circumstances, and with UNHCR’s awareness of the unfavourable and unsafe conditions for repatriation once the Rohingyas were back in their homeland of Myanmar. The two waves of exodus of the past 2 years — in 2016 and 2017 — which resulted in the cross-border deportation of nearly 1 million Rohingyas, have proved Bangladesh’s policy failure in forcibly repatriating thousands of Rohingyas back.

This time, not even the UN High Commission for the Refugees can stomach this repatriation, which will be tantamount to refoulment, an illegal act of expulsion of individuals who deserve protection and refugee.

Chris Melzer, the UNHCR’s senior external officer based in Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh, openly opposed the latest development: “UNHCR was not a party to that agreement. We would advise against imposing any timetable or target figures for repatriation in respect of the voluntary nature and sustainability of return. It is unclear if refugees know their names are on this list that has been cleared by Myanmar. They need to be informed. They also need to be consulted if they are willing to return … It is critical that returns are not rushed or premature.”

Neither Bangladesh nor the Myanmar civilian government of Aung San Suu Kyi has been able to assuage Rohingyas’ widespread and well-founded fear that their lives, families and communities will once again face further attacks once they are back in their homeland of Western Myanmar.

Only a week ago on 24 October, the UN Fact Finding Mission Chief and former Indonesian Attorney General Marzuki Darusman officially told the Security Council that Myanmar’s genocide is “on-going” — pointing to the unchanging nature of the structures of genocidal repression and persecution, the same military leadership and the same public opinion which calls for the extermination of the Rohingyas.

It is widely acknowledged that neither Suu Kyi not her bureaucratic representatives led by permanent secretary Mr Myint Thu who came to negotiate the latest bilateral deal in Dhaka, have any control or influence over either armed Rakhine nationalists or Myanmar security forces.

Suu Kyi’s representative Myint Thu was heard promising the “esteemed people” of the Rohingyas in the camps 300 elementary schools, seed money for businesses, future jobs in an industrial park under construction, prefabricated homes, rows of toilets,mobile clinics, 10-days of exam coaching for Rohingya distance education students, and the official offer of a pathway to citizenship via NVC-cards – which Rohingyas have risked their lives rejecting.

Neither Myanmar nor Bangladesh nor international donors appear to grasp the fundamental driver behind periodic waves of the exodus of Rohingya from their homeland in Northern Rakhine: the hellish conditions which Myanmar’s genocidal policies have produced, and since August 2017, large scale mass slaughter, systematic mass rape, and the burning down of nearly 400 villages.

Dr Maung Zarni, a noted Burmese genocide scholar, and coordinator of the Free Rohingya Coalition, said: “sending Rohingyas back to Myanmar without their consent is sending them back to genocide with the hollow promise of new amenities and opportunities”.

As a grassroots international network of genocide scholars, rights activists and Rohingya exiles, with a broad base of supporters among Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh, we have been extremely supportive of the Government of Dhaka and sought to cooperate in whatever ways we could.

We therefore appeal to the Government of Bangladesh to ensure that no Rohingyas be sent back to Myanmar’s killing fields, without addressing Rohingyas’ need for a protection mechanism or “safe zone”, as Sheik Hasina has proposed to the United Nations in two consecutive General Assemblies.

Backgrounder:

Natalie Brinham “Genocide cards”: Rohingya refugees on why they risked their lives to refuse ID cards, Open Democracy, 21 October 2018

“‘Primitive people’: the untold story of UNHCR’s historical engagement with Rohingya refugees”.

Contact:

Nay San Lwin, Coordinator for Media Relations and Campaigns at nslwin@rohingyablogger.com; +49 176 62139138

Tun Khin, Coordinator for International Outreach at tunkhin80@gmail.com; +44 788 871 4866

Maung Zarni, Coordinator for Strategic Affairs at fanon2005@gmail.com; +44 771 047 3322

1 November 2018

Source: https://freerohingyacoalition.org/en/?p=1166

By Seyed Hossein Mousavian

The next round of economic sanctions on Iran, which will start going into effect on Nov.4, will mainly target the country’s oil and gas industries. These sanctions were eased after the 2015 signing of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), commonly known as the Iran nuclear deal, but are being phased back in following President Donald Trump’s decision to withdraw from the accord six months ago.

Trump’s goal in reinstituting the sanctions is to kill the nuclear deal, to bring Iran’s economy to the point of total collapse, to contain Iran’s regional involvement in Syria, Iraq and Yemen, and, in spite of Washington’s denials, presumably to celebrate the collapse of Iran’s ruling regime. The White House’s official position is that, by increasing economic and political pressure, it aims to bring Iran back to the negotiating table in order to replace the JCPOA with a new deal that bears Trump’s name.

There are at least five reasons why Trump’s strategy will fail.

First, while the United States seeks to cut Iran’s oil exports to zero, it has become clear that this is impractical; there is no viable replacement for Iran’s 2.5 million barrels per day in oil exports. While Saudi Arabia previously claimed it had made up for any shortages, experts believe that Riyadh and its allies do not have the capacity to fully offset the loss of Iranian oil. Now that Iran’s oil exports have dropped to an estimated 1.5 million bpd – down from more than 2.5 million before the U.S. withdrawal from the JCPOA in May – the price of the OPEC reference basket has gone up to around $76. If forecasts indicating that it could jump to $100 per barrel are correct, the price hike will make up for Iran’s loss of revenue even if Tehran’s exports are cut further to 1 million barrels.

Second, Trump’s trade war with China and the U.S. imposition of economic sanctions against Russia make Beijing and Moscow less likely to work with Washington on Iran. Moreover, the White House cannot count on cooperation from the European Union, which initiated nuclear negotiations with Iran in 2003 and which sees the JCPOA as one of its signature foreign policy achievements. Further, the EU increasingly views extraterritorial sanctions as a threat to its own identity and independence. French Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire said recently that the “outcome of that crisis with Iran will be the chance for Europe to have its own independent financial institutions, so we can trade with whoever we want.” In the past, cooperation with all major powers was critical to creating an effective Iran policy.

Third, U.S. sanctions have laid the groundwork for a historic change in the global financial system. For many decades, the U.S. dollar has dominated the international financial markets. However, American withdrawal from the JCPOA has encouraged countries such as Russia, China, India and Turkey to use their local currencies to trade with Iran. If Europe succeeds in creating a financial system that is separate from the U.S. dollar, other states can use euros in trade with Iran, diminishing U.S. domination of global markets.

Fourth, the remaining signatories to the JCPOA view the nuclear deal as a means to counter American unilateralism. This is due to the fact that the JCPOA is a multilateral agreement backed by UN Security Council resolution 2231, which the Trump administration exited unilaterally and is now trying to punish other nations for implementing. Any capitulation to Washington on this issue would further buttress the current U.S. approach. To avoid this, both Iran and the international community will see preserving the JCPOA as a strategic necessity.

Fifth, powerful U.S. allies such as the EU and Japan continue to support the JCPOA. Only a handful of regional allies – namely Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Israel – supported Trump’s decision to withdraw from the deal while other major regional players such as Turkey, Oman and Iraq continue to support the accord. At the same time, developments in other regional crises do not favor the United States and its allies: Bashar al-Assad, backed by Russia and Iran, is winning Syria’s civil war; the U.S. campaign in Afghanistan has failed; Saudi Arabia has been unable to defeat the Tehran-backed Houthis in Yemen and Qatar has prevailed against the Saudi-led blockade. These developments will make it easier for Tehran to find workarounds to sanctions imposed by Washington.

For the past six decades, the United States has been the region’s hegemonic power. However, Trump’s unilateralist approach and the future of JCPOA may change the calculation by creating a rift among the transatlantic allies, and bringing the eastern bloc powers, Europe and regional powers such as Iran, Turkey and Iraq, closer together. Moreover, the JCPOA has paved the way for other world powers – specifically Europe, China, Russia and India ­– to preserve international agreements without the United States. This, coupled with American withdrawal from the international scene, has the potential to transform international power politics, shifting from an American-led system to a multi-polar world, with regional actors playing a more substantial role.

Against this backdrop, the next round of U.S. sanctions against Iran is likely to increase Middle East tensions – and unlikely to bring Washington closer to achieving its goals on Iran.

Seyed Hossein Mousavian is Middle East Security and Nuclear Policy Specialist at Princeton University and a former spokesman for Iran’s nuclear negotiators. His most recent book, “Iran and the United States: An Insider’s view on the Failed Past and the Road to Peace” was published in 2014.

31 October 2018

Source: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-mousavian-iran-commentary/commentary-five-reasons-why-trumps-iran-sanctions-will-fail-idUSKCN1N42QY

By Nauman Sadiq

Recently, the Trump administration has announced the most stringent set of sanctions against Iran to appease Benjamin Netanyahu. Donald Trump has repeatedly said during the last two years that the Iran nuclear deal signed by the Obama administration in 2015 was an “unfair deal” that gave concessions to Iran without giving anything in return to the US.

Unfortunately, there is a grain of truth in Trump’s statements because the Obama administration had signed the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) with Iran in July 2015 under pressure as Washington had bungled in its Middle East policy and it wanted Iran’s cooperation in Syria and Iraq to get a face-saving.

In order to understand how the Obama administration bungled in Syria and Iraq, we should bear the background of Washington’s Middle East policy during the recent years in mind. The seven-year-long conflict in Syria, that gave birth to scores of militant groups, including the Islamic State, and after the conflict spilled across the border into neighboring Iraq in early 2014, was directly responsible for the spate of Islamic State-inspired terror attacks in Europe from 2015 to 2017.

Since the beginning of the Syrian conflict in August 2011 to June 2014, when the Islamic State overran Mosul and Anbar in Iraq, an informal pact existed between the Western powers, their regional Sunni allies and jihadists of the Middle East against the Shi’a Iranian axis. In accordance with the pact, militants were trained and armed in the training camps located in the border regions of Turkey and Jordan to battle the Syrian government.

This arrangement of an informal pact between the Western powers and the jihadists of the Middle East against the Iranian axis worked well up to August 2014, when the Obama Administration made a volte-face on its previous regime change policy in Syria and began conducting air strikes against one group of Sunni militants battling the Syrian government, the Islamic State, after the latter overstepped its mandate in Syria and overran Mosul and Anbar in Iraq from where the US had withdrawn its troops only a couple of years ago in December 2011.

After this reversal of policy in Syria by the Western powers and the subsequent Russian military intervention on the side of the Syrian government in September 2015, the momentum of jihadists’ expansion in Syria and Iraq stalled, and they felt that their Western patrons had committed a treachery against the Sunni jihadists’ cause, that’s why they were infuriated and rose up in arms to exact revenge for this betrayal.

If we look at the chain of events, the timing of the spate of terror attacks against the West was critical: the Islamic State overran Mosul in June 2014, the Obama Administration began conducting air strikes against the Islamic State’s targets in Iraq and Syria in August 2014, and after a lull of almost a decade since the Madrid and London bombings in 2004 and 2005, respectively, the first such incident of terrorism occurred on the Western soil at the offices of Charlie Hebdo in January 2015, and then the Islamic State carried out the audacious November 2015 Paris attacks, the March 2016 Brussels bombings, the June 2016 truck-ramming incident in Nice, and three horrific terror attacks took place in the United Kingdom within a span of less than three months in 2017, and after that the Islamic State carried out the Barcelona attack in August 2017, and then another truck-ramming atrocity occurred in Lower Manhattan in October 2017 that was also claimed by the Islamic State.

More to the point, the dilemma that the jihadists and their regional backers faced in Syria was quite unique: in the wake of the Ghouta chemical weapons attacks in Damascus in August 2013, the stage was all set for yet another no-fly zone and “humanitarian intervention” a la Qaddafi’s Libya; the war hounds were waiting for a finishing blow and then-Turkish foreign minister, Ahmet Davutoglu, and then-Saudi intelligence chief, Bandar bin Sultan, were shuttling between the Western capitals to lobby for the military intervention. Francois Hollande had already announced his intentions and David Cameron was also onboard.

Here it should be remembered that even during the Libyan intervention, the Obama administration’s policy was a bit ambivalent and France under the leadership of Sarkozy had taken the lead role. In Syria’s case, however, the British parliament forced Cameron to seek a vote for military intervention in the House of Commons before committing the British troops and air force to Syria.

Taking cue from the British parliament, the US Congress also compelled Obama to seek approval before another ill-conceived military intervention; and since both the administrations lacked the requisite majority in their respective parliaments and the public opinion was also fiercely against another Middle Eastern war, therefore Obama and Cameron dropped their plans of enforcing a no-fly zone over Syria.

In the end, France was left alone as the only Western power still in favor of intervention; at that point, however, the seasoned Russian foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, staged a diplomatic coup by announcing that the Syrian regime was willing to ship its chemical weapons stockpiles out of Syria and subsequently the issue was amicably resolved.

Turkey, Jordan and the Gulf Arab states, the main beneficiaries of the Sunni Jihad against the Shi’a-dominated government in Syria, however, had lost a golden opportunity to deal a fatal blow to their regional rivals.

To add insult to the injury, the Islamic State, one of the numerous Sunni Arab militant outfits fighting in Syria, overstepped its mandate in Syria and overran Mosul and Anbar in Iraq in 2014, from where the US troops had withdrawn only a couple of years ago in December 2011, as I have already described.

Additionally, when the graphic images and videos of Islamic State’s executions surfaced on the internet, the Obama administration was left with no other choice but to adopt some countermeasures to show that it was still sincere in pursuing its dubious “war on terror” policy; at the same time, however, it assured its Turkish, Jordanian and Gulf Arab allies that despite fighting a war against the maverick jihadist outfit, the Islamic State, the Western policy of training and arming the so-called “moderate” Syrian militants will continue apace and that Bashar al-Assad’s days were numbered, one way or the other.

Moreover, declaring the war against the Islamic State in August 2014 served another purpose too: in order to commit the US Air Force to Syria and Iraq, the Obama administration needed the approval of the US Congress which was not available, as I have already mentioned, but by declaring a war against the Islamic State, which is a designated terrorist organization, the Obama administration availed itself of the war on terror provisions in the US laws and thus circumvented the US Congress.

But then Russia threw a spanner in the works of NATO and its Gulf Arab allies in September 2015 by its surreptitious military buildup in Latakia that was executed with an element of surprise unheard of since General Rommel, the Desert Fox. And now Turkey, Jordan, the Gulf Arab states and their jihadist proxies in Syria find themselves at the receiving end in the Syrian conflict.

Keeping this background of the quagmire created by the Obama administration in Syria and Iraq to please Washington’s regional allies, Israel and the Gulf states, in mind, it becomes amply clear that the Obama administration desperately needed Iran’s cooperation in Syria and Iraq to salvage its failed policy of training and arming jihadists to topple the government in Syria that backfired and gave birth to the Islamic State that carried out some of the most audacious terror attacks in Europe from 2015 to 2017.

Thus, Washington signed JCPOA in July 2015 that gave some concessions to Iran, and in return the then hardliner Prime Minister of Iraq Nouri al-Maliki was forced out of power in September 2014 and the moderate Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi was appointed in his stead who gave permission to the US Air Force and ground troops to assist Iraq’s Armed Forces and allied militias to beat back the Islamic State from Mosul and Anbar.

The Trump administration, however, is not hampered by the legacy of Obama administration and since the objective of defeating the Islamic State has already been comprehensively achieved, therefore Washington felt safe to annul the Iran nuclear deal in May and the crippling “third-party sanctions” have once again been put in place on Iran at Benjamin Netanyahu’s behest. In realpolitik, one cannot negotiate from a position of weakness, one can simply capitulate; because justice prevails among equals.

Nauman Sadiq is an Islamabad-based attorney, columnist and geopolitical analyst focused on the politics of Af-Pak and Middle East regions, neocolonialism and petro-imperialism.

6 November 2018

Source: https://countercurrents.org/2018/11/06/iran-nuclear-deal-was-meant-to-give-us-face-saving-in-syria/

By Abdus Sattar Ghazali

In a replay of 1977 anti-government demonstration against the government of Prime Minister Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto, the government of Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan is facing violent protests by religious parties to destabilize the newly elected government.

In 1977, the so-called Pakistan National Alliance, comprising three main religious parties – Jamaat-e-Islami (JI), Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam (JUI), Jamiat Ulema-e-Pakistan (JUP), some other political parties and fringe groups – launched a violent campaign with a single point agenda to remove the elected government of Prime Minister Bhutto accusing him of rigging the March 1977 elections in which religious parties performed poor. Their election agenda was to establish Islamic rule in the country. The PNA was successful in its mission as the Army Chief General Ziaul Haq deposed Bhutto and imposed martial law.

Fast forward to 2018, Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal (MMA) an alliance of five religio-political parties that include Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam (JUI-F), Jamaat-e-Islami (JI), Markazi Jamiat Ahle Hadith (JA), Tehreek-e-Jafaria Pakistan (TJP) and Jamiat Ulema-e-Pakistan (JUP), plans to hold a ‘million march’ in Karachi on Thursday (Nov 8) against the Supreme Court’s recent acquittal of Asia Bibi — a Christian woman who was previously sentenced to death on blasphemy charges by lower courts.

Ironically, three of the five MMA parties include three religious parties which were members of the 1977 anti-Bhutto alliance.

Pakistan witnessed violent demonstrations for three days as the Supreme Court announced the verdict on Wednesday Oct 31. The demonstrations were called by a new religious party, Tehreek-e-Labbaik Pakistan (TLP)

Shortly after the Supreme Court’s landmark ruling was pronounced, Tehreek-e-Labbaik Pakistan (TLP) leaders Khadim Rizvi, led a major protest outside government buildings in the eastern city of Lahore, with fellow TLP leaders declaring the three judges who acquitted Bibi to be “liable to be killed”.

The sit-in protest in Lahore remained the largest TLP demonstration on Thursday, with other major demonstrations being held in the southern city of Karachi, Pakistan’s largest. Protesters are also blockading a major highway into the capital, Islamabad.

Most schools and many businesses remained closed in all three cities through the day, with hospitals on high alert in case the protests turned violent. Highways were partially shut down and the federal cabinet held an emergency meeting to discuss the law and order situation.

On November 2, Tehreek-e-Labbaik Pakistan agreed with the government to end the violent demonstrations which had paralyzed the country and caused extensive material and economic damage.

According to agreement, a review appeal has been filed in the case of Asia Bibi which is the legal right of complainants and government will have no objection on it.

It was also agreed to initiate legal proceedings to prevent her from traveling abroad. She has been offered asylum by several countries.

The agreement adds that people who have been arrested against the acquittal of Asia Masih from October 30th onwards will be immediately released.

Tehreek-e-Labbaik says judges who acquitted Christian woman ‘deserve death’

Tehreek-e-Labbaik has called for the death of the country’s Supreme Court judges responsible for overturning the death sentence of a Christian woman accused of blasphemy.

“The patron in chief of TLP, Muhammad Afzal Qadri, has issued the edict that says the chief justice and all those who ordered the release of Asia deserve death,” party spokesman Ejaz Ashraf said, as cited by the news agency.

The party also demanded Prime Minister Imran Khan’s government be ousted following the court’s order.

Religious leaders had also demanded the ouster of the head of Pakistan’s military, Gen. Qamar Javed Bajwa, accusing him of acquiescing to Ms. Bibi’s release. Soon after the Supreme Court’s ruling, Pir Muhammad Afzal Qadri, another prominent protest leader, urged army generals to revolt against their top commander.

The military said Friday that it had nothing to do with Ms. Bibi’s release. “The armed forces hope that this matter is resolved without disruption of peace,” Maj. Gen. Asif Ghafoor, the army’s spokesman, was quoted by state-run media as saying.

Tehreek-e-Labbaik Pakistan

The TLP, founded in 2015, is known for widespread (often countrywide) street power and massive protests in opposition to any change to Pakistan’s blasphemy law.

The TLP party came into existence, and subsequently rose to fame, after the hanging of Mumtaz Qadri, the killer of Salmaan Taseer, an outspoken secular governor of Punjab Province who had campaigned for Asia Bibi’s release and for changes in the blasphemy laws

In October 2017, the government of Pakistan controversially changed the language in its 2017 elections bill. The Tehreek-i-Labbaik Pakistan and its leader Khadim Hussain Rizvi strongly opposed the new language, and demanded the resignation of Pakistan’s Minister for Law and Justice Zahid Hamid, who had changed the law.

The TLP held a large protest against the controversial amendment, stopping traffic at the Faizabad Interchange at first, which then led to further protests across the country. The party led a three-week sit-in protest that paralyzed the entire country including Pakistan’s capital, Islamabad. At least six protesters were killed and 200 were injured when police unsuccessfully tried to disperse the sit-in, the protest had already spread out nationwide.

That protest forced the resignation of the federal law minister Zahid Hamid and paved the way for the group to poll more than 2.23 million votes in the July 25, 2018 general election, in what analysts called a “surprisingly” rapid rise.

What did the Supreme Court say?

Asia Bibi, a Christian who spent eight years on death row under Pakistan’s divisive blasphemy law, had her conviction overturned on October 31 by the Supreme Court . She was convicted in 2010 under the blasphemy law after she was accused of insulting the Prophet.

The Supreme Court judges in their verdict said the prosecution had “categorically failed to prove its case beyond reasonable doubt”. The case was based on flimsy evidence, they said, and proper procedures had not been followed.

Blasphemy laws have often been used to get revenge after personal disputes, and that convictions are based on thin evidence.

The Supreme Court while acquitting Asia Bibi pointed out: “Sometimes, to fulfill nefarious designs the law is misused by individuals leveling false allegations of blasphemy. Stately, since 1990, 62 people have been murdered as a result of blasphemy allegations, even before their trial could be conducted in accordance with law. Even prominent figures, who stressed the fact that the blasphemy laws have been misused by some individuals, met with serious repercussions. A latest example of misuse of this law was the murder of Mashal Khan, a student of Abdul Wali Khan University, Mardan, who in April 2017 was killed by a mob in the premises of the university merely due to an allegation that he posted blasphemous content online.”

The Supreme Court also mentioned another instance of the misuse of the blasphemy law. The court said: “Reference may also be made to the case of one Ayub Masih, who was accused of blasphemy by his neighbour Muhammad Akram. The alleged occurrence took place on 14th October 1996, the accused was arrested, but despite the arrest, houses of Christians were set ablaze and the entire Christian population of the village (fourteen families) were forced to leave the village. Ayub was shot and injured in the Sessions Court and was also further attacked in jail. After the trial was concluded, Ayub was convicted and sentenced to death, which was upheld by the High Court. However, in an appeal before this Court, it was observed that the complainant wanted to grab the plot on which Ayub Masih and his father were residing and after implicating him in the said case, he managed to grab the seven-marla plot. The appeal was accepted by this Court and the conviction was set aside.”

At least 1,472 people were charged under the law between 1987 and 2016, according to the Center for Social Justice, an advocacy group. Of those, 730 were Muslims, 501 were Ahmedis — a sect that is declared as non-Muslim in Pakistan — while 205 were Christians and 26 were Hindus.

Pakistan’s blasphemy laws open to misuse

Those opposing the apex court’s verdict on Asia Bibi should go back to re-educating themselves on what Islam is truly all about , says Tariq A. Al Maeena, a Saudi journalist. Commenting on the violent reaction to the acquittal of Asia Bibi Al Maeena said:

“Alluding to the fact that the arguments involved insults on both sides, with Jesus Christ’s name thrown in, the court stated: “Blasphemy is a serious offence, but the insult of the appellant’s (Asia Bibi) religion and religious sensibilities by the complainant party and then mixing truth with falsehood in the name of the Holy Prophet [PBUH] was also not short of being blasphemous.”

“The verdict did not sit well with many fundamentalists who took to the streets to vent their anger. From burning rickshaws, cars and lorries to bringing traffic — including ambulances on their way to hospitals — to a standstill, the protesters vented their rage and not just at the court. Posters of Pakistan’s Prime Minister Imran Khan were burnt. Some even threw shoes at Imran’s pictures.

“These religious fanatics, as I see them, are the worst examples of what Islam truly is. Far from respecting the verdict, they have become a law unto themselves and have set about creating mayhem and anarchy, something that Islam specifically does not condone. With very little understanding of the true meaning of Islam, these hordes are no different from those ignorant non-Muslims who deride or insult Islam. The actions of these Pakistanis are just as despicable.

“It was during the military dictatorship of former Pakistan president General Zia-ul-Haq in the 1980s when blasphemy laws were radically introduced in the legislature, including punishment by death for those charged with defiling the sacred name of the Prophet (PBUH).

“Over the years, it became evident that the blasphemy law was used more and more for political gain, to settle land disputes or political rivalries than as an agent to maintain sanctity. The law became a way to challenge someone’s status and a powerful tool to intimidate anyone, Muslim or non-Muslim. Most of these cases reveal personal vendetta or are often used by extremists as a cover to persecute religious minorities.”

Abdus Sattar Ghazali is the Chief Editor of the Journal of America (www.journalofamerica.net) email: asghazali2011 (@) gmail.com

6 November 2018

Source: https://countercurrents.org/2018/11/06/religion-and-politics-in-pakistan/

By Dr Elias Akleh

The major media outlets had totally ignored the important three days October 26-28 IISS Manama Dialogue 2018 conference that was organized by International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS) in the city of Manama; the capital of the tiny island of Bahrain.

This Manama Dialogue was attended by very important international political representatives such as General James Mattis; US Secretary of Defense, Brett McGurk; Special Presidential Envoy for the Global Coalition to Defeat ISIS, Sheikh Khalid bin Ahmad Al Khlifa; Bahrain’s Minister of Foreign Affairs, Adel Al Jubeir; Saudi Minister of Foreign Affairs, Ayman Safadi; Jordanian Minister of Foreign Affairs, Yousef bin Alawi; Oman’s Minister of Foreign Affairs, Taro Kono; Japan’s Minister of Foreign Affairs, Ursula von der Leyen; German’s Minister of Defense, Elisabetta Trenta; Italy’s Minister of Defense, Raychelle Omamo; Kenya’s Secretary of Defense, Abdisaid Ali; Somalia’s National Security Adviser, and Jean-Christophe Belliard; Deputy Secretary General, Political Affairs, Political Director, European External Action service. Yet, surprisingly, the media had ignored the gathering of these important persons!!!???

The speeches of these representatives were characterized mainly as Iran bashing and condemnations, particularly the speeches of the American representatives; Mattis and McGurk, and the Bahraini and Saudi ministers. While their governments are pursuing hegemonic policies within the region, they accuse Iran of pursuing a hegemonic Iranian Crescent, previously called Shi’ite Crescent, covering Lebanon, Syria and Yemen. Iran did not impose itself on these countries. Lebanese Hezbollah requested Iranian help to free Lebanon from the 1982 Israeli occupation. Syria requested Iranian help to defeat American/Israeli/Gulf States supported terrorist groups. Yemen cannot get any outside help due to the air and sea siege imposed by American/Saudi/UAE’s forces.

While the USA and the Gulf States have enlisted, trained and armed all the terrorist groups that have been destroying Syria and Yemen during the last decade, they accused Iran of a terrorist supporting state. The facts on the ground show clearly that Iran has been fighting and defeating terrorist groups and protecting Syrian cities first and eventually the whole region.

While the USA and the Gulf States are spreading sectarianism, encourage terrorism, seeking to dominate other countries, waging wars and seeking to destabilize the Middle Eastern region, they accuse Iran of such crimes. Iran has never started any war or sent its military forces out of its own borders for the last 400 years.

While the American administration is gradually turning into a police state, and the Bahraini and Saudi kingdoms are despotic beheading dictatorships they accuse democratic Iran of abusing and suppressing its own people. Since its 1979 revolution Iran had held several democratic elections, something that had never happened in neither Bahrain nor Saudi Arabia.

None of these representatives dared to point to the core issue driving all these wars and destructions in the region except the Omani Minister; Yousef bin Alawi, who stated the following:

“We consider that the Palestinian issue is the core of all the problems that we have seen during the second half of the last century and the 18 years of the 21st Century … the state of Palestine needs to be established, because it has become a strategic necessity”

This Manama Dialogue came as a preliminary foundation for the planned for summit in November of the six leaders of the GCC; Gulf Cooperation Council (Oman, UAE, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Bahrain and Kuwait) plus Jordan and Egypt in Washington with President Trump to lay the foundation for what Trump had called Middle Eastern Strategic Alliance (MESA) also dubbed Arab NATO-like Alliance.

Forming military alliances between Arab states to protect the Middle Eastern region goes back to post WWI era. The Arab League, formally known as the League of Arab States, was formed in 1945 with six-member Arab states and later expanded to include 22 states. The League was rendered ineffective first by British and then by American interfering policies and banking systems especially after the League’s opposition to the establishment of the illegal Zionist state of Israel on occupied Palestinian land. Such policies had also foiled any inter-Arab military alliances such as those attempted by former Egyptian president Gamal Abdel Nasser.

Nasser’s pan-Arabism ideology was very popular in the 1950’s. It led to the formation of the 1957 Regional Defense Pact between Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Syria and Jordan. Nasser’s pan-Arabism was viewed by the US as a threat to Israel, and when Nasser nationalized all British and French assets in Egypt, President Eisenhower’s administration decided to do everything it can to isolate Nasser and his ideology by transforming King Saud as a counterweight. Nasser was portrayed as a threat first to Jordanian King Hussein, and later a threat to King Saud. Eventually the Regional Defense Pact was dissolved.

In mid-1957 when Turkish troops were amassed on the Syrian border threatening to topple the government, Nasser sent a contingent force to aid Syria. In February 1958 Egypt and Syria were united into United Arab Republic (UAR). Later Yemen joined the UAR, and a loose federation was formed under the name of United Arab States.

With tacit Eisenhower’s encouragement king Saud planned to assassinate Nasser while in Syria, but the assassination failed and was exposed by Nasser in a public speech. King Saud then was replaced by his brother; King Faisal, who advocated pan-Islamic unity with non-Arab Moslem countries to counter Nasser’s pan-Arabism.

In September 1961 a Syrian army unit launched a coup in Damascus declaring Syria’s withdrawal from the UAR. Avoiding inter-Arab fighting Nasser refused to send Egyptian forces to Syria to reinforce the allies, and accepted the separation.

Saudi Arabian money provoked civil war in Yemen in 1962. This war drew Egyptian forces in a war of attrition that ended in 1967 when Nasser withdrew his forces leaving Yemen divided into North and South.

With the death of Nasser in September 1970, the ideology of pan-Arabism and United Arab States faded gradually since none of the Arab leaders, except Syrian Hafez al-Assad, had called for it but found no positive response. It was left to the inefficient non-unitarian and divisive Arab League to deal with regional security issues.

It must be said that since WWI the western powers; US, British and France, had planned to divide the Arab World into weaker states that could be controlled and manipulated through pro-western despots in order to blunder its resources, particularly oil, and to control its geostrategic location. The Zionist Greater Israel Project had been adopted and implemented for this purpose. Any Arab attempt to unite militarily was opposed and spoiled.

Yet, at the present, Trump’s administration is in the process of forming a military Middle Eastern Strategic Alliance (MESA) allegedly to protect the region from any military threat. MESA is just a new form of the old western designed Middle Eastern Alliance projects; whose real goals were to wage American proxy inter-Arab wars to further divide and weaken Arab states to safeguard Israel and to rake great financial profits for the American military industrial complex.

We had witnessed these military alliances in the 1980-1988 Iraq/Iran war where the Gulf States supported Iraqi Saddam Hussein. Then the same Gulf States allied with Egypt, Jordan and Syria to join the western coalition in the two Gulf Wars; 1991 and 2003, against Iraq. In 2011 the Gulf States of Qatar, Saudi Arabia, UAE, Jordan and Turkey joined the so-called American Coalition to defeat ISIS in Syria when the facts on the ground showed that such coalition was a terrorist supporting coalition providing training, finance and weapons to ISIS to destroy Syria. In 2014 this same coalition supported terrorists who destroyed Libya. In 2015 we witnessed Saudi/UAE coalition, supported by Israel and US, waging war against Yemen.

So far, all these alliances had led to the destruction of Arab states. The proposed MESA is no different. Its major goal is to finish what the terrorist groups had started; destroying Syria, destroying Hezbollah and weakening or affecting a regime change in Iran. MESA, though, has one important distinction from its previous alliances, namely Israel.

As we have seen in the past, the American administrations will not allow the formation of an Arab military alliance that would threaten Israel. MESA will actually include Israel in the alliance as intelligent gathering partner. This would allow Israel to infiltrate its Arab partners’ military, security and intelligence systems. Israel is already involved in the terrorist war against Syria and in the Saudi/Emirati war against Yemen. MESA is perceived to include nine states; the six Gulf States (Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, UAE and Oman), Jordan, Egypt and Israel.

The Arab’s enmity towards Zionist Israel, who occupied Palestine, attacked neighboring Arab states, and supported terrorist groups in Syria, would be turned into a friendly alliance, while Iran, who shares same religious faith with Arab states, supports the Palestinian cause, and considers Israel a main threat to the region is turned into an Arab enemy.

Vital issues remain to be tackled for this alliance to succeed. Arab states have their own separate policies and conflicts. Qatar was branded as a terrorist supporting state due to its conflicting agenda with those of the Saudi Arabia/UAE/Bahrain/Egypt alliance. Turkey, annoyed by Saudi decision to assist the Kurds in Syria, moved to become a shield for Qatar against the Saudi alliance by building a military base in the peninsula.

Kuwait took a neutral position towards the Qatar/Saudi conflict. Kuwaiti/Saudi tension increased during MBS’s short visit to Kuwait early October demanding that Kuwait re-open the Khafji and Wafra oil fields to compensate oil shortage and high prices anticipated by the expected American sanctions against Iran. Kuwaiti crown prince; Sheikh Nawaf Al-Ahmad was displeased by MBS’s snobby attitude and ordered him to leave Kuwait immediately.

To reconcile these inter-Arab conflicts the Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has been touring the Middle East offering incentives as well as inciting enmity against Iran at the same time.

There are other complicated issues to be solved before this alliance is formed. Issues such as finance, command, bases, cooperation between member states, and logistical arrangements. It is obvious that Saudi money will mainly finance the alliance. Saudi Arabia is the milking cow as described by President Trump. American military generals will assume command for sure, and will impose how member states would behave and contribute militarily.

Iran and the rest of the Arab states; Iraq, Syria, Lebanon and Palestine, perceive MESA as a pro-Zionist anti-Arab coalition, whose covert real goals are further division, destruction and weakening of the Arab World. This coalition is looked at as a political and financial Arab suicide succeeding only in milking billions of Saudi money to buy American weapons that will only rust in Saudi desert, and in accepting the Zionist occupation of Palestine, that will eventually expand to cover more Arab land.

If stronger and larger international “ … 79 members of coalition in 75 countries, plus NATO, the EU, Interpol and the Arab League” according to Brett McGurk, had failed to affect regime change in Syria for a period of seven years, and the armed to the teeth with the latest sophisticated weapons American/Israeli/Saudi/Emirati/ coalition had failed to defeat the impoverished state of Yemen during the last three years, how then, would conflict-ridden MESA can accomplish any real victory?

The Iranian Minister of Foreign Affairs; Mohammad Javad Zarif, suggested a more efficient mechanism for security in the Persian Gulf region rather than building military alliances that create more enmity. He proposed starting a modest confidence building measures leading to a non-aggression pact. He suggested creating “a regional dialogue forum” among all the littoral states of the Persian Gulf to build “a security networking, rather than security alliances” to create “a strong region as opposed to a strong man in the region, where small and large nations – even those with historical rivalries – contribute to stability”

“You cannot have security at the expense of the insecurity of your neighbor.” Zarif emphasized.

Dr. Elias Akleh is an Arab American from a Palestinian descent.

6 November 2018

Source: https://countercurrents.org/2018/11/06/mesa-arab-nato-like-alliance/

By Medea Benjamin

Iranian government officials want to know how the Trump administration can get away with punishing Iran and other countries for complying with the internationally recognized nuclear deal signed in 2015. “The US is, in effect, threatening states who seek to abide by Resolution 2231 with punitive measures,” said President Rouhani. “This constitutes a mockery of international decisions and the blackmailing of responsible parties who seek to uphold them.”

Treating the welfare of the Iranians people like a TV show, Donald Trump used a meme from The Game of Thrones—an arrogant, stylized photo of himself with the tagline: “Sanctions Are Coming November 5”—to announce the new round of crippling sanctions targeting Iran’s oil exports, banks and shipping.

This is the second round of sanctions since Trump pulled out of the Iran nuclear deal, a deal that was signed in 2015 not only by the US and Iran, but also by Germany, England, France, Russia and China—and approved unanimously by the UN Security Council. It’s also a deal that has been working. Iran has been complying with the most intrusive inspections regime ever devised, as the International Atomic Energy Agency has confirmed 13 times.

Trump, always ready to bulldoze international agreements, unilaterally withdrew from the deal and imposed a first round of sanctions in August and the second round now. These sanctions are designed to stop not just US companies from trading with Iran, but all companies—anywhere in the world. According to Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin, “Any financial institution, company, or individual who evades our sanctions risks losing access to the U.S. financial system and the ability to do business with the United States or U.S. companies.” In effect, the Trump administration, practicing imperial hubris on steroids, is determined to punish countries abiding by an internationally approved agreement.

Faced with US threats, big Western companies that had recently signed contracts with Iran, such as Total, Eni, Boeing, Airbus, and Peugeot, have cancelled multi-billion dollar deals.

Desperate to counter US sanctions, the European Union is creating a mechanism called the “special purpose vehicle.” It is essentially a barter system, similar to one used by the Soviet Union during the Cold War, to exchange Iranian oil for European goods without money changing hands.The US government has vowed to sabotage this effort. “I have no expectation that there will be any transactions that are significant that go through a special purpose vehicle based upon what I’ve seen,” Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin said. “But if there are transactions that have the intent of evading our sanctions, we will aggressively pursue our remedies.”

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo boasted that even before the November 5 sanctions went into effect, the US had already succeeded in reducing Iranian crude oil exports by more than 1 million barrels, and insists that the goal is to stop ALL Iranian oil exports. The administration is granting temporary waivers to eight countries, including India, South Korea and Japan, principally out of concern that withdrawing so much oil from the market at once would lead to a spike in global oil prices. Moreover, they are merely six-month waivers contingent on countries “winding down” their oil business with Iran. A major stipulation for the waivers is that Iran’s revenues must be kept in foreign accounts that can only be used for trade in “nonsanctioned goods and services.”

While this economic stranglehold is officially designed to “stop Iran’s destabilizing activities across the world,” Trump administration officials are known to be gunning for regime change, hoping that distraught Iranians take to the streets to overthrow their government.

Indeed, since last December there have been sporadic protests against the economic hardships. But will unorganized protesters really be capable of toppling a well-armed, tightly controlled regime? Some analysts speculate that what the Trump administration wants in Iran is not even regime change but chaos, with Iranians fighting each other so they won’t be projecting power beyond their borders.

Trump’s wishful thinking aside, the most likely effects of the sanctions will be to further inflame regional conflicts, empower conservative forces in Iran, make other governments resentful of US imperial overreach and worst of all, needlessly cause suffering to millions of Iranian citizens.

The sanctions are already taking a tragic toll. While there are humanitarian exemptions on food and medicines, restrictions on banks and shipping companies make even exempted items difficult to obtain. Asked about humanitarian exemptions, French Ambassador to Washington Gerard Araud said, “The banks are so terrified by the sanctions that they don’t want to do anything with Iran.”

Below is a sampling of the desperate messages we have been getting from people in Iran:

– We are suffering the sanctions with our bodies and souls. Businesses are closing, workers are losing their jobs, food prices are increasing by the hour. We may not be happy with our government, but this economic situation makes us more dependent on the government.

– When I sleep at night there is one set of food prices. When I get up in the morning, they have doubled. We are losing our ability to buy food for our children because of Mr. Trump.

– My grandmother in Iran has gone blind in one eye because she can no longer access her diabetes medicine. Thanks America.

– I am a teacher in Iran. Before President Trump violated the nuclear deal, my salary was $800 a month. Now I have to work 12 hours a day, six days a week, just to make $250. The harsher the sanctions, the more difficult our lives become.I don’t know why we should suffer the consequences of decisions made by stubborn officials, whether here or in the United States. We just want to live normal lives.

Donald Trump is only too happy to make a mockery of international decisions. It is up to the rest of the world to stop him.

Medea Benjamin, co-founder of Global Exchange and CODEPINK: Women for Peace, is the author of the new book, Inside Iran: The Real History and Politics of the Islamic Republic of Iran.

6 November 2018

Source: https://countercurrents.org/2018/11/06/trump-bullying-will-hurt-millions-of-iranians/

By Mehdi Hasan

1 Oct 2018 – Meddling in foreign elections is bad. I think we can all agree on that.

And almost everyone — bar Donald Trump — seems to believe that the Russian government meddled in the 2016 election. So that should be condemned.

Here’s the problem, though: U.S. politicians and pundits cannot credibly object to Russian interference in U.S. elections without also acknowledging that the United States doesn’t exactly have clean hands. Or are we expected to believe that Russian hackers were the first people in human history to try and undermine a foreign democracy?

In this video, I examine the ways in which the United States has, in fact, spent the past 70-odd years meddling in elections across the world.

This article originally appeared on Transcend Media Service (TMS).

Mehdi Hasan is a columnist and senior contributor at The Intercept. He is the host of The Intercept podcast “Deconstructed.” Hasan is also the host of Al Jazeera English’s “UpFront.” He has interviewed, among others, Edward Snowden, Hamid Karzai, Ehud Olmert, and Gen.

29 October 2018

Source:https://www.transcend.org/tms/2018/10/a-short-history-of-u-s-meddling-in-foreign-elections/

By Ann Garrison

17 Oct 2018 – The imperial aggressions of western governments have inflicted multiple holocausts on the Congolese people.

This week I spoke to Swiss Congolese historian, activist and coordinator of the Congolese movement Likambo Ya Mabele, Bénédicte Kumbi Ndjoko, about recent developments in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

Ann Garrison: On February 12, 2018, the UN High Commissioner for Refugees reported that there were 4.49 million internally displaced persons (IDPs) in the Democratic Republic of Congo, and 630,500 refugees in neighboring countries. The IDP population had nearly doubled in the previous year alone, mainly as a result of clashes and armed attacks. It sounds like conditions on the ground in Congo are getting worse, much worse.

Bénédicte Kumbi Ndjoko: Congo is indeed in a critical situation. We know how much its people have suffered since the genocides in Rwanda and all the displacement they caused, then by the wars that Rwanda and Uganda waged against Congo from 1996 to 1997 and then from 1998 to 2003, with the support of the US, UK, and their allies. Today some observers speak of Congo as a post-conflict country, but it’s still in a low-intensity conflict, off and on, hot and cold. A conflict that drags on like this can become even deadlier than declared war, as it has in the North and South Kivu Provinces bordering Rwanda, Uganda, and Burundi. More than a million of the 4.49 million internally displaced people are in North Kivu Province.

In the past two years the situation has also deteriorated in the Kasai region, where people are being exterminated or displaced to Angola. There has also been an increase in attacks against the populations of the former Katanga Province, which was split into the Tanganyika, Haut-Lomami, Lualaba and Haut-Katanga Provinces in 2015. Congo and its people are not on the brink of the abyss, they have long since fallen into it.

“People are being exterminated in the Kasai region or displaced to Angola.”

AG: It’s hard to know what to say about so much suffering. What would you most like to say about it here?

BKN: Suffering should inspire compassion, but compassion should inspire reflection. Is the person who looks at a suffering human being able to ask himself if he is not involved in one way or another in the suffering of the individual in front of him? Can he or she grasp the causes of the crimes perpetrated against that human being and the political implications that arise from these acts? If we stop at the suffering of the Congolese people, we won’t be able to address its particularities and causes. It will be no different than the depressing and fatalistic images that have shaped the image of Africa in people’s minds. We must examine Western governments’ imperial aggression against Congo and Africa as a whole.

AG: Dr. Denis Mukwege, the Congolese gynecologist who became known as “the man who heals women” for treating the victims of brutal rape in eastern Congo, finally won the Nobel Peace Prize this year. Does that give you any hope?

BKN: I had the opportunity to meet Dr. Mukwege in person. I saw this man with women from all over the world who had all been raped during conflicts. They came from Congo, Rwanda, Sudan, Syria, and Iraq. I could see how this man spoke to these women, the concern he had for them and his way of telling them that their word counted. He has all my admiration.

That said, it seems to me that there is also something cynical about presenting him with the Nobel Peace Prize. It’s an organized, staged reality that obliterates the imperial aggression in Congo and encourages a global consensus to stop the rapes but continue the war. It makes the Western Nobel Peace Prize audience feel good about themselves and their compassionate response to the victims of African savagery. This was reinforced by Nadia Murad, the Iraqi rape survivor who shared this year’s Peace Prize with Dr. Mukwege. She said that she would continue as a global advocate for victims of rape and torture, and for persecuted minorities, like the Kurdish Yazidi minority she belongs to.

“The Nobel Peace Prize encourages a global consensus to stop the rapes but continue the war.”

The deeply political discourse imposed by the Nobel Committee is intended to bolster, not disturb, the dominant order. It is part of the Western will to write official history, where the important thing is constructing a discourse on the woman, on the brutalities she has to suffer. It’s a discourse wholly accepted in Western societies because of the feminist struggles. In this discourse, Dr. Mukwege is the man of an inter-world, a Black man who is meant to become white. He is like the white man who knows how to defend the rights of women against the barbarism of uncivilized men—Black in this case—who are essentially defined by their savagery.

AG: Male rape is also a weapon of war in Congo and elsewhere. It’s rarely reported, though it was given some attention in “The Nobel committee shines a spotlight on rape in conflict ,” an October 11 “Economist” report that said it’s hard to estimate its frequency because so many men fear to report it because they’re so humiliated and may fear being accused of the crime of homosexuality. Uganda’s Refugee Law Project explained this profoundly in their film Gender Against Men , which I recommend to anyone reading this. The rape of both men and women as a weapon to destroy community makes it more clear that there is an ongoing genocide against the Congolese people, not just “femicide.” Could you talk about how the singular focus on violence against women hides that?

BKN: I have always been disturbed by the speech of Margaret Wallström, the former UN Special Envoy for violence against women and children in conflict. In 2010, after a stay in Congo, she claimed that this country was the rape capital of the world, and urged the Security Council to act to stop it. This statement associated the crime of rape with a specific nation, Congo, and with all the male individuals within. The word “capital” typically refers to the most central location, the brain and heart of a nation, the carrier of the cultural values. So one of Congo’s cultural values would be rape?

This perception of a pathological Congolese society filled with male rapists is also shared by a lot of Western women who campaign for Congolese women, like Eve Ensler. They even go so far as to call what is happening in Congo a femicide, a war against women. This portrays the Congolese male as an atavistic rapist.

“The perception of a pathological Congolese society filled with male rapists is also shared by a lot of Western women who campaign for Congolese women.”

The extreme focus on Congolese women’s bodies is not intended to defend them but is part of a broader discourse on the savagery of Congolese men and Black African male populations in general. Congo is the world capital of rape. Congo is the capital of a savage nation in the heart of Black Africa where Congolese men rape women to destroy them. Who could regret seeing such a deviant society cleared off the face of the earth?

UN envoy Margaret Wallström didn’t call for an end to the imperialist war waged against Congo and Africa in general. She said nothing about the imperial powers who commissioned the war crimes, including rape, against the Congolese people. She did not call on the Security Council to establish a tribunal to prosecute the crimes that were evidenced in the 2010 UN Mapping Report on Human Rights Abuse in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, 1993-2003 , which revealed most significantly the crimes of longstanding US ally Rwanda. Instead, she called Congo the rape capital of the world and called on the Security Council to intervene against savage Congolese men.

AG: Some people have proposed that Dr. Mukwege, the most internationally recognized moral authority in Congo, should head a transitional government there. They include our mutual friends Patrick Mbecko and Jean-Claude Maswana, both of whom are highly respected Congolese scholars and activists. What do you think of that idea, and how do you imagine “transitional government” in Congo?

BKN: The fact is that I often wonder what people mean when they say that they want a transitional government. I’m sure that our friends Patrick Mbeko and Jean-Claude Maswana have very specific ideas on what it means, but when I read many other Congolese on “transition,” it seems that this is a kind of magic bag that would help us get rid of President Joseph Kabila, his troops, and the Rwandan occupiers. It does not in any way address, for example, the problem of neocolonialism or the case of the so-called Congolese opposition. The latter are, in my opinion, people who must be removed from the political sphere in Congo. They have flagrantly participated in sustaining Kabila’s tyrannical reign, even when the so-called constitution didn’t allow him to stay in power anymore. In addition, they never had the courage to explain to the population what role Rwanda and Uganda were playing in Congo’s tragedy. Are we going to include them in that transitional government? The transition presented this way has no appeal to me, even if it is led by Dr. Mukwege.

“Only a deep and radical rupture would give us the possibility of rebuilding the Congo state.”

I instead subscribe to the thought of another of my friends, Father Jean-Pierre Mbelu. For him, we cannot speak of transitional government in Congo, because it presupposes that there has been a form of democracy that should be restored after a period of crisis. The problem of Congo, however, cannot be summed up by a political crisis. The country is rather subjected to a permanent coup d’etat, and only a deep and radical rupture would give us the possibility of rebuilding the Congo state.Calling for transitions has been the solution that the international community has wanted to systematize in several African countries, including Congo, but its results leave much to be desired. The transition away from Kabila puts, in my opinion, too much weight on Kabila. It does not insist enough on revealing who created Kabila and does not inform us on the type of government and society we want to build after Kabila.

AG: Liberal Democrats and even leftists in the US are now so horrified by Donald Trump that our politics have been largely reduced to pro- and anti-Trump politics. You have the same problem regarding Kabila in Congo, don’t you?

BKN: Yes, and it is an eminently dangerous position because it means in fact no choice. It is an enclosure in a dichotomous circle that does not allow any escape or possibility to imagine other systems than the ones that exist. In this case, we are in the middle of a democratic illusion. Democracy according to this meaning is the right to be for or against. It is the right to change between two sides of the same coin while the ideology that creates the coin remains unchanged. This refers to the fundamental problem posed by capitalism. It is indeed a system that organizes a non-choice, that creates the illusion of choice for the benefit of the oligarchies that rule us. The tragedy of countries like ours is that they run after what they believe to be democracy, a binary system where it is only possible to be pro- or anti-X. It is even sadder because we’ve forgotten that this binary system never existed on the African continent prior to colonization but forms of real democracy did, especially in the Kongo Kingdom.

AG: Kabila should go, as Trump should, but what other forms of organizing are needed to alleviate the suffering and put Congolese on a path to claim their country’s enormous wealth and potential?

BKN: If we think about change, we need to understand that we all live within the context of globalized capitalism. We need also to understand that capitalism appears in different shapes and forms according to the space it is targeting. In Congo, it creates permanent chaos so as to maintain people in that chaos, with no boundaries to the violence because the state exists only as the most minimal simulacra of Western institutions. These are the prerequisites for plundering the country, draining it of its minerals and other natural resources, some of which have been declared strategic for US security. It not only kills and displaces Congolese but also dismantles their communities and so disorients them that they are unable to understand the global capitalist world and the role that Congo is relegated to within it. It all but eliminates their capacity to defend themselves. One must understand and broaden the understanding of this to fight back effectively and bring about change.

The individual alone, even if he or she understands what is at stake, cannot change anything, but Congo is hammered again and again with the idea that only an individual can change the course of events, so people are waiting for that particular individual. It is therefore not surprising to see the extreme focus on who will be the next president. That focus is fundamentally disorientating. It is a key element of the collaboration between the national comprador class and the imperialists, which summarizes the political history of the Congo since its independence.

“Political sovereignty can be regained only at a democratic community level, where pro-poor and rights based policies can be elaborated and ultimately shape the future of Congo.”

So we need to reverse things in a way that distributes power from the base to the top. It is therefore important not for the individual but for the communities to gain a level of control over different aspects of their daily lives. This means that we need strong base-building organizations that will be able to generate power and undertake collective actions to challenge the existing order. Such commitment requires that Congolese come to understand that power as it exists is a social construct put in place by the colonizers 500 years ago. Political sovereignty can be regained only at a democratic community level, where pro-poor and rights based policies can be elaborated and ultimately shape the future of Congo. And again, Congo has in its past known those forms of community-based organizations, so they have to be recovered and adapted to defeat the realities of neoliberalism as differentiated from formal colonialism and neocolonialism.

It will also be necessary to organize self-defense forces because we must not be fooled. Those who exploit us have weapons, and they are not ready to let go of Congo. This must be a war of liberation.

AG: Lastly, could you break down the latest developments in Rwanda’s ongoing occupation of Congo? Rwandan political prisoners Victoire Ingabire and Kizito Mihigo were released earlier this month. Then, last week, Rwandan Foreign Minister Louise Mushikiwabo won her bid to head the International Organization of La Francophonie . Also last week, a French prosecutor asked a French judge to dismiss charges against Rwandan Patriotic Army officers for assassinating Rwandan President Juvenal Habyarimana and Burundian President Cyprien Ntaryamira in 1994.

BKN: These last two years, Kabila, who is the proconsul of Kigali in the Congo, has worked to strengthen the Rwandan occupation of the country by appointing senior Tutsi officers in the national army and appointing men like Azarias Ruberwa at the head of the Ministry for Decentralization, which Congolese call the ministry for balkanization. This shows that Rwandan President Paul Kagame and those surrounding him have no intention of withdrawing from the Congo, a country whose wealth allows them to build big shiny buildings in Rwanda’s capital, then point to them and as proof of Rwanda’s economic growth even though most Rwandans are still very poor and the country still relies on foreign aid for 40% of its annual budget.

Rwanda’s shiny surface and the widespread fable about Rwandan economic growth also give Kagame credibility among Africans, and this is why the appointment of Mushikiwabo has been rather well received in Africa. Most Africans are, like the rest of the world, ill-informed about Rwandan realities. They have interpreted Mushikiwabo’s appointment as the victory of an African leader against Europe, France in particular. They forget that France plays the leading role in La Francophonie and France chose Mushikiwabo. [See “The ugly facts about the Francophonie .” When France says that they want a particular person to lead the organization, they more often than not get their way.

“Rwandan President Paul Kagame and those surrounding him have no intention of withdrawing from the Congo.”

Having Mushikiwabo as president is a way for France to regain the influence in Central Africa that it lost to the United States after Bill Clinton’s arrival in the White House. In this French/Rwandan bargain—because that is what it is—Kagame must have demanded that the long-running French investigation of his attack on Rwandan President Juvenal Habyarimana’s plane be permanently closed because it was an aggravating refutation of the panegyric that he is Rwanda’s savior. Some call this a victory for Rwandan diplomacy, but it’s more like a small hit man in the middle of an international mafia using blackmail to achieve his ends. On the French side of the bargain, it helps them reestablish France’s access to the immensely rich Congolese subsoil.

It is also important for France not to appear to be associated with a brutal regime that imprisons female opponents. Thus Kagame was forced to release political prisoners Victoire Ingabire Umuhoza and Diane Rwigara to polish his image.In a country that boasts of having worked so hard on the advancement of women, these high-profile female political prisoners, both of whom attempted to challenge Kagame for the presidency, hugely stained his image. But the good news is that these two women refused to keep silent about what was happening in Rwanda after their release. They presage a much more difficult future for Kagame and the deadly system he put in place. It is therefore a great joy to see these women free again and more determined than ever. They are among the leaders and organizers that this long suffering region has hoped for.

Ann Garrison is an independent journalist based in the San Francisco Bay Area. She attended Stanford University and is a member of the TRANSCEND Network for Peace Development Environment.

29 October 2018

Source: https://www.transcend.org/tms/2018/10/congo-in-the-abyss/

By Rick Sterling

The October 16 issue of NY Review of Books has an article by Janine di Giovani titled “Why Assad and Russia Target the White Helmets”. The article exemplifies how western media promotes the White Helmets uncritically and attacks those who challenge the myth.

Crude & Disingenuous Attack

Giovani’s article attacks several journalists by name. She singles out Vanessa Beeley and echoes the Guardian’s characterization of Beeley as the “high priestess of Syria propaganda”. She does this without challenging a single article or claim by the journalist. She might have acknowledged that Vanessa Beeley has some familiarity with the Middle East; she is the daughter of one of the foremost British Arabists and diplomats including British Ambassador to Egypt. Giovanni might have explored Beeley’s research in Syria that revealed the White Helmets founder (British military contractor James LeMesurier) assigned the name Syria Civil Defence despite the fact there is a real Syrian organization by that name that has existed since the 1950’s. For the past several years, Beeley has done many on-the-ground reports and investigations in Syria. None of these are challenged by Giovanni. Just days ago Beeley published a report on her visit to the White Helmets headquarters in Deraa.

Giovanni similarly dismisses another alternative journalist, Eva Bartlett. Again, Giovanni ignores the fact that Bartlett has substantial Middle East experience including having lived in Gaza for years. Instead of objectively evaluating the journalistic work of these independent journalists, Giovanni smears their work as “disinformation”. Presumably, that is because their work is published at alternative sites such as 21st Century Wire and Russian media such as RT and Sputnik. Beeley and Bartlett surely would have been happy to have their reports published at the New York Review of Books, Newsweek or other mainstream outlets. But it’s evident that such reporting is not welcome there. Even Seymour Hersh had to go abroad to have his investigations on Syria published.

The New McCarthyism

Max Blumenthal is another journalist singled out by Giovanni. Blumenthal is the author of three books, including a NY Times bestseller and the highly acclaimed “Goliath: Life and Loathing in Greater Israel”. Giovanni describes his transition from “anti-Assad” to “pro-Assad” and suggests his change of perspective was due to Russian influence. She says, “Blumenthal went to Moscow on a junket to celebrate RT’s tenth anniversary. We don’t know what happened during that visit, but afterwards, Blumenthal’s views completely flipped.” Instead of examining the facts presented by Blumenthal in articles such as “Inside the Shadowy PR Firm that’s Lobyying for Regime Change in Syria”, Giovanni engages in fact-free McCarthyism. Blumenthal explained the transition in his thinking in a public interview. He also described the threats he experienced when he started to criticize the White Helmets and their public relations firm, but this is ignored by Giovanni.

Contrary to Giovanni’s assumptions, some western journalists and activists were exposing the White Helmets long before the story was publicized on Russian media. In spring 2015 the basic facts about the White Helmets including their origins, funding and role in the information war on Syria were exposed in my article “Seven Steps of Highly Effective Manipulators”. The article showed how the White Helmets were a key component in a campaign pushing for a “No Fly Zone” in Syria. It confirmed that the White Helmets is a political lobby force.

In spring 2016, Vanessa Beeley launched a petition “Do NOT give the Nobel Peace Prize to the White Helmets”. That petition garnered more support than a contrary petition urging the Nobel Prize committee to give the award to the White Helmets. Perhaps because of that, the petition was abruptly removed without explanation from the Change.org website. It was only at this time, with publicity around the heavily promoted nomination of the White Helmets for a Nobel Peace Prize that RT and other Russian media started to publicize and expose the White Helmets. That is one and a half years after they were first exposed in western alternative media.

White Helmets and Chemical Weapons Accusations

Giovanni ignores the investigations and conclusions of some of the most esteemed American journalists regarding the White Helmets and chemical weapons incidents in Syria.

The late Robert Parry published many articles exposing the White Helmets, for example The White Helmets Controversy and Syria War Propaganda at the Oscars. Parry wrote and published numerous investigations of the August 2013 chemical weapons attack and concluded the attacks were carried out by an opposition faction with the goal of pressuring the US to intervene militarily. Parry also challenged western conclusions regarding incidents such as April 4, 2017 at Khan Shaykhun. Giovanni breathlessly opens her article with this story while Parry revealed the impossibility of it being as described.

“Buried deep inside a new U.N. report is evidence that could exonerate the Syrian government in the April 4 sarin atrocity and make President Trump look like an Al Qaeda dupe.”

Legendary American journalist, Seymour Hersh, researched and refuted the assumptions of Giovanni and the media establishment regarding the August 2013 chemical weapons attacks near Damascus. Hersh’s investigation, titled The Red Line and Rat Line, provided evidence the atrocity was carried out by an armed opposition group with active support from Turkey. A Turkish member of parliament provided additional evidence. The fact that Hersh had to go across the Atlantic to have his investigation published suggests American not Russian disinformation and censorship.

In addition to ignoring the findings of widely esteemed journalists with proven track records, Giovanni plays loose with the truth. In her article she implies that a UN investigation blamed the Syrian government for the August 2013 attack. On the contrary, the head of the UN investigation team, Ake Sellstrom, said they did not determine who was responsible.

“We do not have the evidence to say who did what ….The conflict in Syria is surrounded by a lot of rumors and a lot of propaganda, particularly when comes to the sensitive issue of chemical weapons.”

First Responders or Western Funded Propagandists?

Giovanni says, “But the White Helmets’ financial backing is not the real reason why the pro-Assad camp is so bent on defaming them. Since 2015, the year the Russians began fighting in Syria, the White Helmets have been filming attacks on opposition-held areas with GoPro cameras affixed to their helmets.”

In reality, the ‘White Helmets” have a sophisticated media production and distribution operation. They have much more than GoPro cameras. In many of their movie segments one can see numerous people with video and still cameras. Sometimes the same incident will be shown with one segment with an Al Qaeda logo blending into the same scene with a White Helmets logo.

Giovanni claims “The Assad regime and the Russians are trying to neutralize the White Helmets because they are potential witnesses to war crimes.” However the claims of White Helmet “witnesses” have little credibility. The White Helmet “volunteers” are paid three times as much as Syrian soldiers. They are trained, supplied and promoted by the same western states which have sought to regime change in Syria since 2011. An example of misleading and false claims by a White Helmets leader is exposed in Gareth Porter’s investigation titled “How a Syrian White Helmets Leader Played Western Media” . His conclusion could be directed to Giovanni and the NYReview of Books:

“The uncritical reliance on claims by the White Helmets without any effort to investigate their credibility is yet another telling example of journalistic malpractice by media outlets with a long record of skewing coverage of conflicts toward an interventionist narrative.”

When the militants (mostly Nusra / al Qaeda) were expelled from East Aleppo, civilians reported that the White Helmets were mostly concerned with saving their own and performing publicity stunts. For example the photo of the little boy in east Aleppo looking dazed and confused in the back of a brand new White Helmet ambulance was essentially a White Helmet media stunt eagerly promoted in the West. It was later revealed the boy was not injured, he was grabbed without his parent’s consent. Eva Bartlett interviewed and photographed the father and family for her story “Mintpress Meets the Father of Iconic Aleppo Boy and says Media Lied About his Son”.

A Brilliant Marketing Success

The media and political impact of the White Helmets shows what money and marketing can do. An organization that was founded by a military contractor with funding from a western governments was awarded the Rights Livelihood Award. The organization was seriously considered to received the 2016 Nobel Peace Prize just three years after its formation.

The Netflix infomercial “The White Helmets” is an example of the propaganda. The scripted propaganda piece, where the producers did not set foot in Syria, won the Oscar award for best short documentary. It’s clear that lots of money and professional marketing can fool a lot of people. At $30 million per year, the White Helmets budget for one year is more than a decade of funding for the real Syrian Civil Defence which covers all of Syria not just pockets controlled by armed insurgents.

Unsurprisingly, it has been announced that White Helmets will receive the 2019 “Elie Wiesel” award from the heavily politicized and pro-Israel Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington. This, plus the recent “rescue” of White Helmets by the Israeli government, is more proof of the true colors of the White Helmets. Vanessa Beeley’s recent interview with a White Helmet leader in Deraa revealed that ISIS and Nusra terrorists were part of the group “rescued” through Israel.

The Collapsing White Helmets Fraud

Giovanni is outraged that some journalists have successfully challenged and put a big dent in the White Helmets aura. She complains, “The damage the bloggers do is immense.”

Giovanni and western propagandists are upset because the myth is deflating. Increasing numbers of people – from a famous rock musician to a former UK Ambassador – see and acknowledge the reality.

As described in Blumenthal’s article, “How the White Helmets Tried to Recruit Roger Waters with Saudi Money”, rock legend Roger Waters says,

“If we were to listen to the propaganda of the White Helmets and others, we would encourage our governments to start dropping bombs on people in Syria. This would be a mistake of monumental proportions…”

Peter Ford, the former UK Ambassador to Syria, sums it up like this:

“The White Helmets are jihadi auxiliaries… They are not, as claimed by themselves and by their supporters… simple rescuers. They are not volunteers. They are paid professionals of disinformation.”

Giovanni claims her article is a “forensic take down of the Russian disinformation campaign to distort the truth in Syria.” In reality, Giovanni’s article is an example of western disinformation using subjective attacks on critics and evidence-free assertions aligned with the regime change goals of the West.

Rick Sterling is a member of the TRANSCEND Network and an investigative journalist who lives in the SF Bay Area, California.

29 October 2018

Source: https://www.transcend.org/tms/2018/10/western-media-attacks-on-critics-of-the-white-helmets/