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By Junaid S. Ahmad

There’s a scene from the popular American series Homeland where one of the star characters, a US Special Ops/highly trained CIA hitman named Peter Quinn, is asked by his higher ups how he thought US strategy against the Islamic State was going. His response is instructive: he wants to know if someone can please tell him what that strategy is exactly? Only then, he says, would he be able to respond.

To which there is an ominous silence.

Quinn goes onto say, short of sending about two hundred thousand troops, perhaps what could help is…”pound Raqqa into a parking lot.” As well-intentioned as the likable Quinn may be, he effectively is advocating war crimes on a colossal scale.

The current escalatory rhetoric that has now resulted in the US bombing of Syria is emblematic of a similar sentiment. When confronted with a maddeningly confused policy toward one of the bloodiest civil wars of our time, Washington routinely is opting for one option alone: military force. Whether done on an indiscriminate, massive scale as in Mosul or Raqqa, or just some symbolic strikes to demonstrate a mindless, machismo display of force when the US president needs to look ‘presidential,’ fighter jets, cruise missiles, and ‘smart bombs’ become substitutes for any intelligible policy toward the bloody conflict.

All that we are able to ascertain with any certainty is that gone are the days where we were told that ‘terrorism’ is the greatest threat to American interests and the civilized world. The Trump administration’s National Defense Strategy this year revealed what should have been known all along: that the real ‘threats’ are actors that place genuine restraints on American power: principally, Russia and China. That is, the era of unipolar hegemony is effectively over, and if other crises in Eastern Europe and Asia have not exposed that sufficiently, then Syria seems to have revealed most glaringly that we are no longer in the world of unbridled American dominance.

Gone are the days of the late Cold War where American aims were essentially accomplished by proxy forces and client regimes. Gone are the days when US direct interventions right after the demise of the USSR were effectively ‘CNN video game’ wars essentially meant to ‘shock and awe’ the world with the spectacle of utter, unmatched American military prowess.

The flashy lights of the ‘toolbox’ of American weaponry is still present, the wreckage it inflicts there for all to see, but what happens next? Stable occupations? Stable pro-Western regimes? Not quite.

One of the most significant markers of the decline of an empire is precisely the fact that it will, with more frequency, have to resort to direct military interventions on its own, by itself – rather than relying on its proxy forces and client regimes to get the job done. In Syria, as in Afghanistan and Iraq, we have seen the abysmal failure of relying on proxies to defeat actors that Washington deems inimical to its interests, or to those of its two principal regional partners, Israel and Saudi Arabia.

America’s latest ‘animal’ that needs to be taught a lesson in this conflict, Bashar Al-Assad, has probably survived so long because US regime change operations (Iraq, Libya) have utterly terrified the region’s people, and there could hardly have been a more reactionary proxy force of ‘moderate rebels’ that the NATO-GCC alliance could have mobilized, funded, trained, and supported. The only recent historical parallel seems to be Afghanistan in the 1980s, and we know how that turned out.

It’s hard to keep track of all of the animals, Hitlers, butchers, and monsters that Western elites have named and punished when it has suited their interests to do so. The list is indeed a sordid reminder of state terror unleashed by vile despots, only made more grotesque by the fact that most of them received support from Western powers at some point or the other.

In this geopolitical crossfire, Syria’s civilians have been murdered in the hundreds and thousands and displaced in the millions, causing the largest refugee crisis since World War II. Though it may seem like the most graphic and gory scene of mass violence, the use of chemical weapons by the regime or other forces is nothing more or less despicable than the gratuitous acts of atrocities committed wholesale throughout this conflict.

The world just recently commemorated the fifteenth anniversary of the catastrophic war in Iraq that devastated the country, doing irreparable damage to the region. Millions have been killed and displaced, and unparalleled sectarianism, violence, and terror unleashed. It was done because a ‘Butcher in Baghdad’ was concealing his ostensible weapons of mass destruction and because he oppressed his own people.

But did anyone ever think that there would be a day that the horrific rule of Saddam Hussein would be missed with nostalgia? Only such a monumental bloodbath as the US invasion and occupation of 2003 could accomplish this.

The fact that the preservation of by now that pipe dream of American preeminent hegemony a-la the post-war period, or deflecting attention away from domestic political scandal, should compel this US administration to bring the world closer to the precipice, ought to be frightening enough. The fact that the most dangerous and reckless National Security Advisor in America’s history will be calling the shots should make countries seriously invest large amounts of their national budgets into the possibility of life on other planets.

The tragedy of Syria is that a genuine oppositional movement that challenged the political and socio-economic status quo in the country rapidly morphed into a geopolitical proxy war unlike that ever witnessed in the region. Syria has become a playground for so many outside actors and their surrogates. Up until recently, one would be lucky not to run into a dozen different groups and foreign personnel in most parts of the country and all the major cities. The mind boggling traffic of hodgepodge forces made the country infested and congested with God knows who, when, and where. Again, ordinary Syrians suffered so tragically in this entire power play.

In the newly composed American war cabinet’s desire to act tough to demonstrate that the US is not as weak as it really is, we can only expect the gloves to come off with more tenacity and recklessness. The ongoing resort to senseless military force to resolve the fundamental structural condition of imperial decline brings the world to a dangerous juncture. The routine US ‘Nuclear Posture Review’ makes it abundantly clear that, under sanitized and harmless-sounding terms like military ‘toolbox’ and ‘smart’ bombs’ and ‘tactical’ nukes, the principal objective is to normalize the use of the most heinous weaponry – albeit trying to repackage and rename them.

Does calling the Al Qaeda affiliate, Jabat al-Nusra (now renamed again), ‘moderate rebels’, fool anyone about their true ideological character? Well, Western intelligence agencies, perhaps, but certainly not the Syrian people.

The most depressing fact of the entire Syrian tragedy is that for the US, Israel, and Saudi Arabia – Syria (the regime, its people, the nation) is merely a sideshow, a stepping stone to hit at the real target: Iran. Remember the notorious refrain of the good old neocons: Baghdad is fine, Damascus is OK, too, but real men…go to Tehran. For Tel Aviv and Riyadh, and their overlord in Washington, the Islamic Republic is the ultimate disobedient miscreant that has deserved disciplining and punishment since its revolution in 1979.

Nevertheless, things are moving more rapidly than expected by planners in Washington. It would have been great if the Syrian conflict was only limited to engaging regional actors like Hezbullah and the Iranian regime. These were forces that the Washington-Tel Aviv-Riyadh axis wanted to confront head on and finally eliminate, the US-Iran nuclear accord be damned.

But there is Russia, the country with the second largest nuclear arsenal in the world. The fact that possession of this stockpile allows what NATO thought would be a third-rate semi-colony after the Cold War to hijack Western plans in Eastern Europe and West Asia is what annoys Western political elites the most. Contempt for Putin is really contempt for Russian reassertion of sovereignty as well as its emergence as a global power advancing its own interests. For NATO capitals, this seems to be the special prerogative that only they deserve.

Finally, in the immediate conflict, there is one reason why a prolonged military engagement by Washington, Paris, and London is not a good idea: Turkey, one of the most formidable NATO members, is going ‘rogue.” That is, Turkey understands that a senseless non-strategy that is simply meant to carve up Syria to facilitate outside powers’ spheres of influence is a recipe for further disaster. Turkey, no friend of Russia’s in the past, perceived the latter along with Iran as at least wanting to sit down and discuss a pathway toward brokering some diplomatic resolution that deescalates the conflict. Looking Westwards, Ankara has seen no such sentiment. Instead, one hears Trump say one day that the US will remain indefinitely in Syria, then claim that the US is going to leave, and now of course begin to bomb.

This, perhaps, is the biggest scandal, i.e. no questions at all raised in mainstream Western media that ask: where in the world is any diplomatic initiative by Washington to try to deescalate and resolve the Syrian nightmare. The ‘liberal’ media has reached new lows that its main contention with the Trump administration is that the latter is not sufficiently bellicose and hawkish with regards to Syria and Russia. One must only come to the conclusion that the editors of the New York Times and The Washington Post must have some special bunkers and capsules that beam them and their families up to safety in outer space when World War Three breaks out.

In a nutshell, for the first time in its history as the preeminent hegemonic global power, the US imperium confronts discernible actors challenging, in a dramatic way, the two pillars of what has sustained its global rule: its geopolitical domination in the inter-state system and its economic supremacy. Russia is leading the way in the former, and China in the latter. Nothing is certain in this age of transition, except for the fact that only the proverbial guy living under a rock cannot see that the world has drastically changed.

Going back to Quinn from Homeland, it’s important to note that his death is ultimately not at the hands of terrorists or Russian spies in Europe or Syria. He is killed in the factional warfare running within the ruling political establishment within the US, taking a bullet to protect the President of the United States from being assassinated by her own intelligence services.

As much of a dangerous con-artist Trump may be, it is now patently obvious that he is a prisoner of the party line of the ‘deep state, from which he is forbidden to deviate. And the fact that no matter how many more Syrians need to suffer, more cruise missiles need to be launched, more tensions need to be heightened that result in a myriad different, dangerous possibilities, Trump may still become a victim – not of any foreign terrorist or Russian – but of his very own. The ‘palace intrigues’ of Washington may result in the victimhood of not only many more Syrians and others throughout the world and internally within the US, but ultimately, of Trump himself.

But who will apologize to Syrians and the world, then? I can’t remember any apologies from Bush, Cheney, or Rumsfeld.

17 April 2018

Junaid S. Ahmad is the Director of the Center for Global Studies and Faculty in the School of Advanced Studies, UMT, Lahore, Pakistan, and is a Research Fellow at the Center for Islam and Global Affairs (CIGA) in Istanbul, Turkey. He is also a JUST member.

By K M Seethi

The airstrikes launched by the US, Britain and France in Damascus and nearby areas on Friday night have worsened the already volatile situation in Syria. The ‘precision’ strikes were purported to destroy Bashar Al Assad regime’s alleged chemical weapons capability. The Anglo-French-American attacks were in response to the “chemical weapons attack” in Syria’s Douma.  Curiously, the Fact-Finding Mission (FFM) team of the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) was expected to start its work on 14 April to establish facts around the allegations of chemical weapons use in Douma. Now the question is whether OPCW team will be allowed to carry out its task in the background of a series of airstrikes launched in the alleged sites. Observers said that these attacks have only disrupted the conduct of an impartial investigation. Meanwhile, it was reported that Syria’s air defence systems intercepted as many 71 out of more than a hundred cruise missiles.

Anatoly Antonov, Russian Ambassador in Washington, accused the Western powers of undertaking “a pre-planned scenario” in Syria. He even warned that “such actions will not remain without consequences. All responsibility for them rests upon Washington, London and Paris.” According to Dmitry Sablin, a Russian jurist, the strike on Syria sought to sabotage the OPCW investigation. He said: “… the strike on the very same day when the OPCW mission had to start its work says that nobody is interested in the truth. Just like with the Iraqi WDM, this is only a pretext. This has been done intentionally to disrupt the investigation of the alleged chemical attack in Eastern Ghouta,” Sablin added. Other Russian officials said that the US has the largest arsenal of chemical weapons in the world and it “has no moral right to accuse other countries.”

Syria’s Permanent Representative to the United Nations Bashar al-Jaafari said at a UN Security Council meeting on Friday that his country had invited an OPCW fact-finding mission to come to Syria and visit the site of the alleged incident. We were ready to provide all necessary conditions for a transparent work of this mission. We expected this team to begin work within hours, he said. The Russian envoys argued that there was no ‘reliable evidence’ of any chemical attack. “Our specialists found no traces of the use of toxic agents. Douma’s residents know nothing about the attack. All information about the alleged attack comes from anti-government forces that are interested in such development of the situation,” adding that Russia has evidence indicating that “it was a provocation involving secret services of a number of countries,” they said.

The Russian Foreign Ministry questioned the claims of some agencies such as White Helmets, that the government used chemical weapons in Douma, Eastern Ghouta, on April 7. The organization’s website posted information on April 8, stating that chlorine bombs were dropped to kill civilians. The Russian Defense Ministry pointed out that White Helmets were an “unreliable source, notorious for disseminating falsehoods.” The Russian agencies, meanwhile, examined this in Douma and found no traces of chemical weapons. It may be noted that this town became the last opposition stronghold in capital. The Syrian army recaptured the town in the days following the attack. Then the question raised was whether the army making headway in the operation had to resort to such a course of action. That the date chosen for the attacks also coincided with the arrival of the OPCW fact-finding mission in Syria raised many eyebrows. Is it that the three major powers had a skeleton in the cupboard?

Russia and Iran have openly condemned the attacks. There are indications that the ground situation in Syria would witness further escalation in the days to some. President Trump hailed the strikes carried out by the trio as “perfectly executed” and declared that the “Mission Accomplished.” But the UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres said that the Cold War was “back with a vengeance,” warning about the dangers of escalation over Syria. He said. “The mechanisms and the safeguards to manage the risks of escalation that existed in the past no longer seem to be present.”

If the situation gets further worsened, Syria will witness another spell of disaster.  Since the beginning of the war in 2011, more than half a million Syrians have been killed, nearly a million have been maimed, and 14  million – more than half the Syrian population – have been forced to flee their homes. As many as 6 million have moved abroad and registered as refugees.  Now, in the seventh year of war, these 14  million people are in need of humanitarian assistance within the country and abroad. The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) estimated that nearly 5 million have fled to Turkey, Lebanon, Jordan, Egypt and Iraq, and nearly 7 million are internally displaced within Syria. About a million have sought asylum in Europe. Germany, which has more than 3 lakh applications, and Sweden with 100,000, are EU’s top receiving countries.

There has been a colossal loss of material resources over the last seven years – by way of damaging and destroying healthcare centres and hospitals, schools, utilities, and water and sanitation.  Historic sites and market places have been reduced to ruins. Long years of civil war broke the base of business and social life in Syria. Consequently, millions scattered, creating the largest refugee and displacement crisis of the century half of people affected by the excruciating agonies were children. In a report, UNICEF estimated that 85 per cent of registered Syrian refugee children were living below the poverty line. Besides,  94 per cent of children below 5 living in host communities were  “multi-dimensionally poor,” implying that they stood deprived of a minimum of two out of the five basic needs – education, health, water and sanitation, child protection and child safety.

The UNICEF assessment brought out earlier said that the Syrian refugee children and their families living in host communities were experiencing deprivations of multiple kinds. They included:

4 out of 10 Syrian families do not have enough food for an adequate diet, with an additional 26 per cent vulnerable to becoming food insecure; 45 per cent of Syrian 0-5 year olds have no access to proper health services including vaccinations and disability services; 38 per cent of Syrian children cannot go to school, due to distance, cost, lack of space etc  as reasons for dropping out or not enrolling; For children aged 6-17 years, child labour and violence have become major challenges; 16 percent of Syrian children from 0-5 years are lacking a birth certificate, which will present challenges and expose them to additional risks as they grow up.

Do the three Western powers who unleashed airstrikes in Syria realise the gravity of this huge human insecurity of Syrians in the country and abroad? If the establishments they destroyed in Damascus were actually ‘chemical weapons’ factories (with potentially dangerous substances), what would have been its impact on the living beings and the environment? Will they not lead to another ‘chemical-industrial tragedy’ with huge loss of population? Why is that these three powers were so hurry to undertake the operations on 14 April – the day the OPCW fact-finding mission was set to start its investigation? The hands of US, UK and France are obviously tied with innumerable questions that have nothing to do with the Syrian government’s ‘chemical weapons capability.’ These questions have more to do with the larger geopolitical interests of these powers and their ‘prosperous’ military-industrial complex. Setbacks in international commodity trade are now compensated by booming weapons’ business. Trump’s ‘fair trade’ is nothing but a chimera for ‘free trade’ in defence and unfair practices in geopolitical circuit routes.

The author is Professor, School of International Relations and Politics, Mahatma Gandhi University, Kerala. He can be reached  at  kmseethimgu@gmail.com

15 April 2018

Source: https://countercurrents.org/2018/04/15/syria-in-disarray-implications-of-airstrikes/

By Peter Koenig

Poison gas is not only deadly, itoften provokes a slow suffocating death. That, perpetrated on innocent children, is particularly cruel. But when such poison gas attacks are mere false flags, or by the new term, “false news”, and are used to provoke war, perhaps an all annihilating war, then humanity has turned to what it never should have become – a lowly-lowly herd of brainless zombies. Is that what we have become – brainless, greedy, selfish beings, no sense of solidarity, no respect for other beings; I am not even talking about humans, but any living being.

Poison gas, the weapon of choice for fear. Poisoning in Salisbury of the former Russian double-agent, Sergei Skripal and his daughter, Yulia, visiting her dad from Moscow. Poisoning with a nerve gas, called Novichok that was allegedly made in Russia. In the meantime, we know that nerve gas made in the former Soviet Union, now non-existent in Russia, was military grade and deadly. The gas used for the alleged attack was not deadly. We also know by now that the UK – all of their highest officials, from PM May down the ladder, lied so miserably that they will have a hard time recovering. It will backfire. The foreign secretary, Johnson boy, pretended their secret bio-gas / bio-weapon laboratory Porton Down, just 13 km down the road from Salisbury, where the pair was allegedly found unconscious on a park bench, assured him the gas was made in Russia. Alas, it was a miserable lie. The laboratory’s chief chemists testified later to the media that they could not be sure that the substance was made in Russia. No, of course not.

In fact, Porton Down, working in close collaboration with the CIA, is a highly sophisticated chemical warfare facility that can easily make the gas themselves – at the grades they please, deadly or not so deadly, if it should serve a “false news” purpose – which this did. In the meantime, as reported today by RT, the entire case has been deconstructed. The components of Novichok are easy to come by, and almost every decent lab can make the poison gas, tailored to its needs.

Were father and daughter indeed poisoned? – This is a legitimate question. Who has seen them since the alleged poisoning occurred on 28 March? – They disappeared from the public eye. Apparently, they are both recovering, Yulia having been released from hospital a few days ago, but has not been seen by anyone in public, nor been able to talk to the media, lest she could say “something” the public is not allowed to know. She is being kept in a secret place. Her father is also recovering and may be released soon – released from where? – Is this all a farce?

An aunt talked to Yulia from Moscow, where she noticed that Yulia was not free to talk. The aunt wanted to visit her niece in the UK but was obviously denied a visa.

Where are father and daughter? – Washington has “offered” them a new home and new identity in the US, to avoid further poisoning attempts… how ridiculous! A blind man or woman must see that this is another farce, or more correctly, an outright abduction. The two won’t have a chance to resist. They are just taken away – not to talk anymore to anyone ever. – That’s the way the story goes. The lies are protected, and the “Russia did it” syndrome will prevail – prevail in the dumb folded public, in the herd of pigs that we all have become, as Goebbels would say.
And the saga continues. The saga to drum up war. That’s the purpose of it all. Nothing else – Russia, the evil nation, led by an evil leader, must be subdued and conquered. But the empire needs the public for their support. And the empire is almost there. It disposes of a vicious media corporate army – that lies flagrantly about anything that money can buy. It’s like spitting in the face of the world, and nobody seems to care, or worse, even to notice.

On the other side of the Mediterranean is Syria. A vast and noble country, Syria, with a leader who truly loves his people and country, a leader who has despite a foreign induced war – not civil war – a proxy war, instigated and funded by Washington and its vassal allies in Europe and the Middle East; Syria, a highly educated socialist country that has shared the benefit of her resources, free education, free medical services, free basic infrastructure, with her people. This Syria must fall. Such strength cannot be tolerated by the all-dominating west. Like Iraq and Libya, also socialist countries once-upon-a-time, and like Syria, secular Muslim nations, sharing their countries wealth with the people, such countries must fall.

According to Pentagon planners and those Zion-neofascist thinktanks that designed the PNAC (Plan for a New American Century), as the chief instrument of US foreign policy, we know since Wesley Clark, the former Supreme Allied commander and Chief of NATO in Europe (1997-2000) talked to Democracy Now in 2007 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r8FhZnFZ6TY ), saying that within 5 years seven countries must fall, one of them is Syria. – Since 2011, the Syrian people have been bombarded by US and NATO and Saudi funded terrorists, causing tens of thousands of deaths, and millions of refugees. Now, even more blatantly, US bases are vying to occupying the northern third of Syria, totally illegally, but nobody says beep. Not even the UN.

The recent fake gas attack on Douma outside of Damascus, has allegedly killed 80 to 120 people, mostly women and children. Of course, that sells best in the propaganda theatre – women and children. But there is not proof, none whatsoever. To the contrary. People living in Douma say they haven’t heard of any nerve gas attack. Strangely, like last time, the infamous White Helmets discovered the gas victims, including a gas canister-like bomb laying on a bed, having been shot through the roof of a house… a totally unprofessionally staged event. As Russian military quickly discovered and reported. They called on an independent investigation, one that could not be bought and corrupted by Washington. President Assad invited a team of investigators to inspect the scene.

Instead of heeding this invitation, Trump, the bully, calls Mr. Assad an “animal” and a “monster”, twittering his brainless aggressions throughout the world. Tell you what, Mr. Trump, Bashar al-Assad is a far better human being than you are a monster. You and your dark handlers don’t even deserve being called human. Mr. Assad has regard and respect for his people, attempts to protect them and has so far succeeded with the help of Russia, Iran and Hezbollah, recovering the last bits of Syrian territory from the terrorist, except of course, the northern part, where the chief terrorist and the world’s only rogue state has installed itself, the US of A. –  Why in the world would Mr. Assad choose to gas his own people? Especially, when he is winning the war? – People, ask yourself, cui bono (who benefits?) and the answer is simple: The western aggressors, who seek a reason to mass bomb Syria into even more rubble, causing even more death and destitution. And making a shitload of money – as war usually does. That’s who.

While you, Donald, and those monsters that direct you from behind the scenes, have no, but absolutely no respect for your own people, for any people on this globe, for that matter, not even for your kind, for your greed-no-end kind of elite, as you bring the world to the brink of an all-destructive, all killing annihilating war.

Since the other fake event, 9/11, we are, of course, already in a “soft version” of WWIII, but that’s not enough, the United States needs a hard war, so badly it doesn’t shy away from destroying itself. That’s how blinded your own propaganda has made you Americans, you generals, you corporate “leaders” (sic-sic) – and all you Congress puppets. That is the sheer truth. You better read this and wake up. Otherwise your dead sentence is hastened by your own greed and ignorance.

Both Russia and the US drafted each a Security Council Resolution – which of course are both not approved, with Nikki Haley lambasting Russia, accusing them of being responsible for the countless deaths in Syria – pointing again to the children and women, making up the majority. Again, it sells best in the world of psychological propaganda, while evil Nikki Haley knows very well who has caused all these deaths by the millions, destitution and refugees by the millions, tens of millions throughout the Middle East and the world – her own country, directly or through NATO, the European puppets allies and proxy wars, paid and funded by Washington and by elbow-twisting her vassals.

On 9 April – UNSC – while Nikki Haley, repeats and over-repeats her lies and fake accusations, the Russian Ambassador to the UN, Mr. VassilyNebenzia, listens. And then in a twenty-minute statement of sheer intelligence, he dismantles all the lies, and lays bare the truth, about all the fakeness being played out internationally. The depth with which he addresses the assembly is concise and so brilliant, none of his UK, French and German counterparts could have ever come close to a statement of this magnitude andexcellence. Even Ms. Haley can’t help glancing over ever-so often to VassilyNebenzia, as he speaks (http://thesaker.is/russian-ambassador-to-the-un-vasily-nebenzea-addressing-the-un-sc-9-april-2018/ ). Her eyes reveal some kind of hidden admiration for what he says. – After all, she can’t be as dumb as she is paid for to look and sound.

By now anybody who dares not just reading and listening to the mainstream presstitute “fake news”, but has the courage to dig into the truth news, RT, TeleSur, CGTN, PressTV – and a few others, or websites like Global Research, The Saker Blog, ICH, NEO, Greanville Post CounterCurrents, Dissident Voice and many other trustworthy sources – knows about the lies and the only, but the very only purpose these false flags cum false news serve: Provoking a war with Russia, subjugating and dividing Syria, and the Middle East and the US becoming the hegemonic masters of the universe.

For the simple reason, and hardly anybody talks or writes about it – the US economy is based on war, is based on weapon manufacturing and international banking which finances weapon manufacturing and the exploitation of mineral resources coveted by weapon manufacturing.

The entire war industry with all its associated civil services and industries, of banking, electronics, aviation, mining…. makes up more than half of the US GDP – but of course, it’s never broken down that way.The chosen people will control the world. Well, they do already – financially at least the western part of our globe. But it’s not enough. They will not stop, before they burry themselves in their own-dug graves, or rather in one massive mass-grave. But, please, do take all your fakeness, from money, to lies, to hypocrisy and more lies and coercion and sanctions and blackmail with you – never to surface again. And give peace a chance – for those who survive your (almost) terminal assault on humanity.

Peter Koenig is an economist and geopolitical analyst.

12 April 2018

Source: https://countercurrents.org/2018/04/12/poison-gas-weapon-of-choice-for-false-news/

By James Cogan

The US, France, Britain, Saudi Arabia and other American allies internationally continue to threaten military action against the Assad government in Syria over the unsubstantiated and dubious allegations that its armed forces used chemical weapons last weekend in the now re-captured city of Douma.

In response, the Syrian military, backed by Russian and Iranian forces, along with Shiite-based militias from Iraq and Lebanon, are preparing their defences and a potential counter-offensive, that could include attacks on US and allied forces in the Mediterranean, the Gulf states and Iraq.

Syrian forces are reportedly on high alert, and moving aircraft and other key military assets to bases that are protected by advanced Russian-manned missile defence systems. Senior government personnel, including Bashar al-Assad and his family, have been secured in safe locations out of fear of US assassination attempts.

Vassily Nebenzia, Russia’s ambassador to the UN, yesterday hit back at allegations of a chemical attack. “Our military, radiological, biological and chemical unit was on site with the alleged chemical accident [in Douma] and it confirmed that there were no chemical substances found on the ground,” he stated.

The Russian army has dispatched military police squads to protect the scene, ahead of Moscow’s proposed inspection of the site, and verification that the claims are false, by the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW)—the Netherlands-based agency established in 1997 to monitor the international ban on chemical weapons.

Contradicting the Russian and Syrian government denials that any chemical weapons were used, the World Health Organisation (WHO) is continuing to assert—based on information from its “local partners”—that up to 500 people were sickened by toxic chemicals and as many as 43 died. The WHO press release provided no details concerning its “local partners.”

The original source of the video purporting to show victims of a chemical weapon attack was the US-funded “White Helmets”—part of the anti-Assad and Islamist-dominated rebel militias who were defeated in Douma and agreed to withdraw just days after the alleged incident.

A leading Russian politician aligned with President Vladimir Putin, Andrei Krasnov, declared yesterday that if the allegations of a chemical attack are used as the pretext for an attack on Syria, it will be viewed “not just as an act of aggression but as a war crime of the Western coalition.”

Russia’s ambassador to Lebanon, Alexander Zasypkin, yesterday stressed Moscow’s repeated warnings that it will retaliate against any attack that threatens its personnel in Syria. He told Lebanese television: “Russia will execute the statement of its president related to any US aggression against Syria, knocking down American missiles and striking at the sources of fire.”

President Donald Trump responded to Zasypkin’s widely reported remarks with a 7 am tweet on Wednesday. He asserted: “Russia vows to shoot down any and all missiles fired at Syria. Get ready Russia, because they will be coming, nice and new and ‘smart’!”

Behind such rhetoric, however, the US and its allies are acutely aware they are about to cross a Rubicon, into a devastating war across the Middle East that could cripple world oil production, a potential conflict with nuclear-armed Russia, and mass anti-war opposition at home.

The former head of the British Joint Forces Command, General Sir Richard Barrons, warned that the Russian statements meant that “they are going to try and sink ships, sink submarines and shoot aircraft out of the sky—that’s war.”

According to French reports, a Russian fighter-bomber, fully armed with anti-ship missiles, flew over a French frigate at combat altitude earlier in the week, in a pointed reminder that the US and allied warships deployed off the Syrian coast can be targeted and destroyed.

The Iranian government has publicly vowed to support Syria against “foreign aggression.” An unknown number of Iranian military personnel are embedded with Syrian Army units. Thousands more are operating as part of Iraqi Army and militia units, in many cases in close proximity to American military personnel, mercenary contractors and their bases in Iraq.

Israel, which is believed to be responsible for a missile attack this week on a Syrian airbase that killed a number of Iranian advisors, has placed its military on high alert. Conveying the fears in the Israeli establishment, its former head of intelligence, Efraim Halevy, told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation: “You have all the players locked in battle in a very, very small area of land. We have a gradual escalation in the region and the question is, who is going to blink first?”

Trump’s administration faces a barrage of demands from the American political and media establishment that it not “blink.” Trump has effectively been warned that the already concerted efforts to end his presidency will be dramatically escalated if he fails to order some form of major attack on Syria—regardless of the consequences. A significant factor in the calls for war is the desire in ruling circles for some means to divert and suppress the burgeoning wave of strikes by teachers, which threatens to trigger a broader movement of the working class against decades of falling wages and deteriorating social conditions.

In Britain, Prime Minister Theresa May, under no less intense pressure than Trump, has felt compelled to call a cabinet meeting today to try to get agreement that British forces will take part in any US-led attacks without any parliamentary vote—a politically-fraught decision.

The 2013 vote by the British parliament against involvement in a US-led attack on Syria is widely blamed by analysts for the Obama administration’s backdown from taking any action. May, without even waiting for cabinet approval, reportedly ordered British submarines to join US, French and British warships already in the eastern Mediterranean.

The French government of President Emmanuel Macron, also confronted with mounting strikes and student protests, appears to have provided the US with a guarantee of French military participation. Internationally, other US allies are extending diplomatic support. These include Australia, Canada, and a number of European Union states, headed by Germany.

Originally published in WSWS.org

12 April 2018

Source: https://countercurrents.org/2018/04/12/opposing-forces-mobilise-for-war-in-syria/

By Afro-Middle East Centre (AMEC)

The Egyptian government’s need to artificially increase voter turnout in the presidential election at the end of March through a combination of enticements and threats indicates a growing disillusionment among ordinary Egyptians with the political situation in the country. With the victory of the incumbent, Abdel-Fattah el-Sisi, which was never in doubt, it is likely that Egypt will see an increase in already-high levels of repression.

Long before official electoral results gave Sisi ninety-seven per cent of the vote, his victory had been expected by everyone, especially after former military chief of staff, General Sami Anan, had been arrested in January, and human rights lawyer Khaled Ali had been forced to withdraw from the race. These events occurred in an atmosphere in which dissent was being violently repressed. That repression intensified in the past few months as the regime sought to shut down the already minuscule space available for opposition.

Sisi’s rein has seen thousands killed and tens of thousands arrested; a 2013 law severely curtailed the right to protest; and a 2017 law ensures that only NGOs supportive of the regime are able to operate. Some constituencies that had initially given some level of support to SIsi, such as leftist parties and youth organisations, have seen  their members arrested more recently, and the state has been formenting leadership contestation within some such groups. In a 29 January statement, Anan, Ali, and others labelled the electoral process a sham and advocated a boycott. To prevent Sisi being the sole candidate, the regime allegedly influenced Al Gad party’s Moussa Mostafa Moussa, who had already expressed his love for Sisi, to register as a candidate hours before the close of nominations. Until a week before his registration, he had been actively campaigning for Sisi.

With all these shenanigans, the only question that the election would answer was how large the voter turnout would be. The regime resorted to threatening voters to ensure a high turnout, which it believed would indicate support for Sisi. Teachers were forced to sign voter cards with their inked fingers in an attempt to ensure that they had voted, and in the governorates of Beheira and New Valley, officials had promised increased social services for districts with high voter turnouts.

In Minya and Sohag, police sought to pressure citizens to participate, and street vendors were threatened with the confiscation of their property if they failed to vote. Despite these attempts, voting numbers were still low, and the preliminary turnout had to be adjusted upward from forty to forty-two percent; Sisi’s vote of ninety-two per cent was also upped to ninety-seven per cent in order to equal the 2014 poll.
Astonishingly, the National Election Agency (NEA) claimed a high turnout in northern Sinai despite the Egyptian military’s scorched earth operations in the peninsula, and despite many in the region not being regarded as integral to Egypt, and many not even possessing full citizenship rights.

Although Sisi’s victory was guaranteed, the severity of the measures instituted to crack down  on dissent and ensure that citizens voted point to his many failings. His handling of the economy has alienated many Egyptians; a twelve billion dollar IMF loan was conditioned on the regime drastically reducing subsidies and allowing the currency to float. This aggravated the conditions of Egyptians, and criticism of the regime has increased, even from previously supportive lawmakers and television personalities. The president’s decision to hand over the Tiran and Sanafir islands to Saudi Arabia angered many Egyptians who had supported his nationalist rhetoric; and the insurgency in northern Sinai (and its spillover into the mainland) saw Sisi’s security credentials being questioned. The opposition from Anan and former air force General Ahmed Shafiq are significant in this regard, and suggest the possibility that there is not unanimity within the military regarding Sisi’s rule. In October 2017, he dismissed his confidante and military chief of staff Mahmoud Hegazy, and in January 2018 he fired the head of intelligence, Khaled Fawzy, leading some former insiders to argue that military discontent is at a high.

With Sisi’s electoral victory, it is likely that harsher measures will be implemented in Egypt, especially as regards economic policy, which could see further subsidy cuts to unlock the second tranche of the IMF loan. This will likely lead to more discontent and further repression, especially if citizens’ socioeconomic conditions worsen dramatically. The international community, especially since the accession of Donald Trump to the US presidency in 2017, and later Emmanuel Macron’s election to the French presidency, has been willing to tolerate Sisi’s repression since Cairo is regarded as being in the frontline of the battle against the Islamic State group, whose strongest branch (Sinai ‘Province’), operates in Egypt, and because Cairo is largely supportive of the dominant powers on regional issues. Sisi’s victory is also being seen by many as a sign that he might attempt to amend the constitution to remove the two-term presidential limit. Already, pro-Sisi parliamentarians are agitating for this, thus laying the ground for a new confrontation.

10 April 2018

Source: http://www.amec.org.za/egypt/item/1561-scripted-electoral-victory-for-egypt-s-sisi.html

By Dr Ramzy Baroud

Why did Israel kill many unarmed Gaza protesters and wound over 2,000 on Friday, March 30 and on the following days, when they clearly posed no threat to Israeli soldiers?

Hundreds of Israeli soldiers, many of them snipers, were deployed to the deadly buffer zone that the Israeli army has created between besieged Gaza and Israel, as tens of thousands of Palestinian families held mass rallies at the border.

“Yesterday we saw 30,000 people,” tweeted the Israeli army on March 31. “We arrived prepared and with precise reinforcements. Nothing was carried out uncontrolled; everything was accurate and measured, and we know where every bullet landed.”

The tweet, which was captured by the Israeli rights group, B’Tselem, was soon deleted. The Israeli army must have realized that killing children and bragging about it on social media is too cruel, even for them.

Palestinian popular mobilization deeply concerns Israel, partly because it is a PR nightmare. By killing and wounding this number of Palestinians, Israel had hoped that the masses would retreat, the protests would subside and, eventually, end. This was not the case, of course.

But there is more to Israeli fear. The power of the Palestinian people, when united beyond factional allegiances, is immense. It disrupts Israel’s political and military tactics entirely, and places Tel Aviv wholly on the defensive.

Israel killed those Palestinians precisely to avoid this nightmarish scenario. Since the cold-blooded murder of innocent people did not go unnoticed, it is important that we dig deeper into the social and political context that led tens of thousands of Palestinians to camp and rally at the border.

Gaza is being suffocated. Israel’s decade-long blockade,combinedwith Arab neglect and a prolonged feud between Palestinian factions, have all served to drive Palestinians to the brink of starvation and political despair. Something has to give.

Last week’s act of mass mobilization was not just about underscoring the Right of Return for Palestinian refugees (as enshrinedin international law), nor about  commemoratingLand Day, an event that has united all Palestinians since the bloody protests of 1976. The protest was about reclaiming the agenda, transcending political infighting and giving voice back to the people.

There are many historical similarities between this act of mobilization and the context that preceded the First Intifada(or ‘uprising’) of 1987. At the time,Arab governments in the region had relegated the Palestinian cause to the status of ‘someone else’s problem’. By the end of 1982, having already been exiled to Lebanon, the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) along with thousands of Palestinian fighters, were pushed even further away to Tunisia, Algeria, Yemen and various other countries. This geographic isolation left the traditional leadership of Palestine irrelevant to what was happening on the ground.

In that moment of utter hopelessness, something snapped. In December 1987, people (mostly children and teenagers) took to the streets, in a largely non-violent mobilization that lasted over six years, culminating in the signing of the Oslo Accord in 1993.

Today, the Palestinian leadership is in a similar state of increasing irrelevance. Isolated, again, by geography (Fatah holding the West Bank, Hamas Gaza), but also by ideological division.

The Palestinian Authority (PA) in Ramallah is rapidly losing its credibility among Palestinians, thanks to long-standing accusations of corruption, with calls for the PA leader Mahmoud Abbas to resign (his mandate having technically expired in 2009). Last December, US President Donald Trumpcompounded the isolation of the PA, recognizing Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, in defiance of international law and UN consensus. Many see this act as the precursor designed to further marginalize the PA.

Hamas– originally a grassroots movement born out of the refugee camps in Gaza during the First Intifada – is now similarly weakened by political isolation.

Recently, there seemed to be a ray of hope. After several failed initiatives towards reconciliation with Fatah, a dealwas signed between both rival parties in Cairo last October.

Alas, like previous attempts, it began to falteralmost immediately. The first hurdle came on March 13, when the convoy of PA Prime Minister, Rami Hamdallah, was thetargetof an apparent assassination attempt. Hamdallah was en-route to Gaza through an Israeli border crossing.The PA quickly blamed Hamas for the attack which the latter vehemently denied. Palestinian politics went back to square one.

But then, last week happened. As thousands of Palestinians walked peacefully into the deadly ‘buffer zone’ along the Gaza border into the sights of Israeli snipers, their intention was clear: to be seen by the world as ordinary citizens, to show themselves as ordinary human beings, people who, until now, have been made invisible behind the politicians.

Gazans pitched tents, socialized and waved Palestinian flags – not the banners of the various factions. Families gathered, children played, even circus clowns entertained. It was a rare moment of unity.

The Israeli army’s response, using the latest technology in exploding bullets, was predictable. By shooting dead 15 unarmed protesters and wounding 773 people on the first day alone, the aim was to discipline the Palestinians.

Condemnations of this massacre flooded in from respected figures around the world, like Pope Francis and Human Rights Watch. This glimmer of attention may have provided Palestinians with an opportunity to elevate the injustice of the siege up the global political agenda, but is, sadly, of little consolation to the families of the dead.

Aware of the international spotlight, Fatah immediately took credit for this spontaneous act of popular resistance. Deputy Chairman, Mahmoud Al-Aloul, said that the protesters mobilized to support the PA “in the face of pressure and conspiracies concocted against our cause,” undoubtedly referring to Trump’s strategy of isolation towards the Fatah-dominated PA.

But this is not the reality. This is about the people finding expression outside the confines of factional interests;a new strategy. This time, the world must listen.

Ramzy Baroud is a journalist, author and editor of Palestine Chronicle.

10 April 2018

Source: https://countercurrents.org/2018/04/10/why-israel-feels-threatened-by-popular-resistance-in-palestine/

By Rima Najjar

The reaction of Israelis to The Great March of Return depends on the “nationality” of the Israeli being referred to.

In Israel, there are Israeli citizens but no Israeli nationality – only “Jewish nationality” or “Palestinian Arab”, etc. (this is intentionally aimed at maintaining Israel as a Jewish State).

So, we have Palestinian-Arab MK Haneen Zoabi reacting to Israel’s massacres in Gaza as follows, and in the process expressing the feelings and reactions of Palestinian Israeli citizensas quoted in Forward and Y-netNews:

“We need to go on popular marches to remind the world of the siege. We need millions of Palestinians to march on Jerusalem. That is the aspiration. But we can’t do it, because the Israelis would kill them … Israel has turned from a racist country to a fascist one… Israel is not defending itself as it is claiming, the occupation and the siege are not an act of self defense, but rather one of terrorism … [the #GreatReturnMarch is] a march of peace, a peaceful act of popular struggle… We have popular resistance of women and children who want to put an end to the siege… Israel is opposed and kills Palestinians not because they endanger their soldiers. The children of Gaza don’t want to be killed quietly without receiving any recognition from the world. They are sending a message that we are under siege, and we need to do something, and that is to march and remind the world about the siege. Our problem is the silence of the international community… I don’t see what is violent about setting fire to a tire. Is burning a tire violence, while shooting at protesters not violence? Show me one Israeli who was hurt by these actions. Israel is only looking for an excuse to kill the Palestinians… Stop buying the Israeli propaganda… I am a Palestinian; they expect me to be loyal to the Zionists, while the only meaning of Zionism is to revoke my rights and to reject my identity.”

On the other hand, we have Israeli Jews reacting as described below by Nir Dvori, a reporter for the Israeli channel 2 news, in a photo tweet of Jews watching the mass murder of Gazan demonstrators by Israel’s snipers with the caption, “Best show in town.

And Here is Gideon Levy, Jewish Israeli journalist and author, in Haaretzdescribing an image captioned as “Israelis facing the Gaza border. Alex Levac” and expressing the sentiments of some liberal Israeli Jews:

A crocheted kippa, a head scarf and a guitar on the stone bench beneath the eucalyptus tree. A couple from Moshav BneiNetzarim, evacuees from the Gaza Strip. He’s singing a love song to her. And from here, too, Gaza is on the horizon. It doesn’t let go.

Diana Buttu’s reaction to the images shared by Nir Dvori and Alex Levac were as follows:

On Nir Dvori’s image/comment: “This is sick. Israeli residents of Nahal Oz watch as snipers kill Palestinians.”

On Alex Levac’s image: “Nothing to see here but people in prison being gunned down and gassed.”

Still other Israeli Jews, like SabiShaylan of Tel Aviv University, are incredulous and horrified. Shaylanposted this video clip with the following comment (computer translation from Hebrew):

To see and not believe. Aired a few minutes ago on channel 12-Snipers shooting Palestinians and unarmed men like ducks at the range of the men’s whinnies. The IDF is at its peak. One of the soldiers celebrates shooting in the head of one of the protesters. If there is an accurate definition of bloodthirsty expression, it is. If these aren’t war crimes, I don’t know what is.

AmerZahr, a Palestinian-American comedian, speaker, writer, academic, and adjunct professor at University of Detroit Mercy School of Law, pointed out that Israeli Jews have yet to learn to understand Palestinians:  “Israel just can’t seem to understand us, despite our quite clear and consistent message. It can’t figure out, after decades of anguish, why we won’t just go away.”

Without both understanding and empathy toward those struggling for freedom and return to their homeland as per Res 194 from those whose government holds all the power, we are simply left with a hot and tragic mess.

As Remi Kanazi, a Palestinian-American performance poet, writer and organizer based in New York City, posted on Facebook, unfortunately, the reaction of most Israeli Jews to the Palestinian struggle for justice is, “Just shut up and die or disappear.”

A list of things Palestinians can’t do under any circumstance:

No armed resistance
No unarmed protests
No marches for rights
No direct action
No international criminal court
No UNESCO
No boycotts
No divestment
No international solidarity

Just shut up and die or disappear. That is the only option Israel finds suitable.

Rima Najjar is a Palestinian whose father’s side of the family comes from the forcibly depopulated village of Lifta on the western outskirts of Jerusalem.

10 April 2018

Source: https://countercurrents.org/2018/04/10/just-shut-up-and-die-or-disappear-reaction-of-israelis-to-the-gaza-massacres/

By Leonard Sax

Isabelle Robinson describes sitting in the school cafeteria in seventh grade, when a boy threw an apple at her, striking her so hard that the wind was knocked out of her. The boy smirked, and his eyes “lit up with a sick, twisted joy as he watched me cry.”

Five years later, on February 14, 2018, Robinson was a senior at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School when the same boy, Nikolas Cruz, rampaged through the school, killing seventeen of her classmates and teachers. One month later, young people organized a nationwide school walkout, lasting seventeen minutes to honor each of the dead. Other young people challenged the walkout, suggesting that students should “walk up” instead. If more students befriended the loners and the bullied, then there would be less school violence. Or so the #WalkUpNotOut organizers suggested.

American cultural debate today quickly breaks down along partisan lines. The students protesting school violence almost immediately aligned themselves with advocates of gun control, calling for a ban on assault rifles. Their #WalkUpNotOut adversaries soon affiliated with supporters of the National Rifle Association. But the debate about gun control is only part of the picture. The bigger question, which simmers beneath the surface warfare over gun control, is Why?

Why do a growing number of young people feel that they have, as R. R. Reno recently observed, “permission to kill”? Ever since Columbine, there has been a continuous stream of American commentary about “the root causes of teen violence.” Some blame school bullying. Others blame the high rate of gun ownership in the United States, or violent video games, or social media. Commentators on both left and right seem reluctant to blame the perpetrator. All parties appear to assume that humans, left to themselves, are good, and that acts of violence stem from conditions external to the self.

I am a family doctor and a psychologist. I have seen how trauma in childhood can create scars that never heal. But during more than a quarter-century of medical practice, I have been led by my clinical experience to reject the deterministic assumptions underlying the therapeutic worldview that now pervades American culture. I have seen survivors of child abuse and neglect grow up to be kind and gentle adults. I have seen children who had every possible advantage—two loving parents, a stable home, and a close-knit community—grow up to be cruel and violent.

“He who rules his own spirit is greater than he who takes a city” (Proverbs 16:32). The Jewish and Christian traditions understand the problem of violence differently than does our therapeutic culture. In the Jewish and Christian traditions, sin is a temptation. Before the first murder, God warned Cain, “Sin is crouching at your door … but you can rule over it” (Genesis 4:7). Cain chose to yield to the temptation, to indulge the sin: the unspeakable pleasure of killing his brother. But he had the ability to choose. B. F. Skinner was wrong: Humans are not the helpless products of their previous experience. By the grace of God, we can choose to do right and shun evil.

Contemporary American psychology largely ignores the possibility of moral choice rooted in a framework of transcendent values. “Grit” is among the latest fashions in American psychology. But grit without a moral framework quickly degenerates into a careerist looking-out-for-number-one mentality, as Jeffrey Aaron Snyder has observed. The assumptions underlying contemporary American psychology are now relentlessly materialistic and goal-oriented. Teach children that they will get in trouble if they hurt others, and they will behave better because they fear the bad outcomes of misbehavior. Work hard, always obtain affirmative consent before you engage in intimacy, and you will have a good life.

It doesn’t work. More than half of the mass shooters in the past fifty years committed suicide at the conclusion of their crimes. They wanted the unspeakable pleasure of taking human life; they were willing to sacrifice their own lives for it. No approach to such individuals, or to such acts of violence, can be empirically valid if it denies the reality of moral choice and of the temptation to do evil.

Culture has consequences. If a boy is raised in a culture that teaches “Do not murder” as a moral imperative, that culture may give him the tools to understand his evil impulses and, one hopes, to master them. If a boy is raised in a culture that teaches “If it feels good, do it,” he is less likely to understand himself, and less likely to master his evil impulses.

Part of the answer to the question Why? may be: The culture has changed. Elsewhere I present more detailed evidence that American popular culture fifty years ago communicated a strong and consistent message—in movies and TV shows, in books and magazines, in schools, and in churches and synagogues—that moral norms were absolutes which all good people obeyed. That is less true today. Contemporary American popular culture is now the culture of “If it feels good, do it,” “Whatever floats your boat,” and “You do you.”

There is nothing new about hate. The temptation to kill is as old as Cain. But today, moral absolutes have been undermined by a popular culture that celebrates individual fulfillment over self-sacrifice, the indulgence of personal pleasure over doing one’s duty. A corollary to “You do you” is “Haters gonna hate.” If my analysis has any merit, then the road ahead is clear, though it will be a long road. We must combat the culture of “You do you.” We must teach haters to love.

Leonard Sax is author of The Collapse of Parenting.

10 April 2018

Source: https://www.firstthings.com/web-exclusives/2018/04/the-unspeakable-pleasure

By Ishaan Tharoor

As expected, right-wing Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban won a third consecutive term on Sunday. His ruling Fidesz party secured more than two-thirds of the seats in parliament, a decisive mandate that many observers consider an ominous sign for the future of democracy in Hungary — and even the rest of Europe.

Orban ran a stridently anti-immigrant campaign, fixating on the phantom menace of Muslim migrants and refugees overwhelming Hungary. He repeatedly styled himself as the defender of Europe’s traditional Christian identity, likening an anti-migrant fence he erected on Hungary’s southern border to the ramparts of Western civilization. And he cast his enemies, both abroad and at home, as agents of an alien threat.

But there’s one actual leader of European Christendom who probably vehemently disagrees with Orban. On Monday, as the Hungarian leader basked in his victory, Pope Francis issued an apostolic exhortation on the subject of holiness. His message centered on the importance of caring for migrants, with the pope arguing that their plight should be as important to Catholics as their opposition to abortion.

“Our defense of the innocent unborn, for example, needs to be clear, firm and passionate,” the pope wrote. “Equally sacred, however, are the lives of the poor, those already born, the destitute, the abandoned.”

As the New York Times reported, the Vatican introduced the exhortation with a promotional video featuring a Muslim refugee from Afghanistan named Mohammad Jawad Haidari, who expressed his awe for the pontiff’s compassion. “It was a surprise, and a revolutionary text with respect of the vision I had before of the Christian world,” Haidari said in response to the pope’s new message.

As European politicians have turned to scaremongering over migrants, Francis has been conspicuous with his open-armed embrace of refugees. He bathed the feet of asylum-seekers from sub-Saharan Africa in 2016 and transported a group of displaced Syrians in his own plane. Those actions, along with his strong stance on refugees, have gained the pontiff a legion of critics among the far right and even within more conservative circles at the Vatican.

He has also had awkward dealings with clergy members in Hungary and Poland, both historically Catholic nations with right-wing nationalist governments that practice virtually the opposite of what the pope seems to preach.

Orban, though, did not risk a war of words with the head of the Roman church. Instead, he made Jewish American philanthropist George Soros, who has invested in promoting civil society and democracy in his native Hungary, into public enemy number one.

Orban said that Soros aimed to strike a “final blow to Christian culture” through his support for greater pluralism and compassion toward migrants. Anti-Soros messaging suffused the election campaign, which international monitors declared was “significantly compromised” by the ruling party’s overweening control over state television and even some commercial broadcasters.

Douglas Wake, the head of mission from the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, told reporters in Budapest that Orban’s virulent anti-migration message subsumed the election cycle and marginalized the opposition. The “hostile and intimidating campaign rhetoric,” Wake said, “limited the space for substantive debate and diminished voters’ ability to make an informed choice.”

For his hard-line agenda — which reeked of anti-Semitism — Orban was swiftly congratulated by the doyens of Western Europe’s far right, who also oppose both Muslim immigration and the European Union’s fitful efforts to respond to the Syrian refugee crisis. These included Italian ultranationalist Giorgia Meloni, anti-Islam Dutch politician Geert Wilders and French far-right leader Marine Le Pen, who hailed Orban’s victory as a rejection of Brussels. Even German Interior Minister Horst Seehofer, who has said Islam has no place in his country, urged his liberal colleagues to drop their “arrogance and condescension” toward Orban in the wake of the election result.

With another term now in hand, Orban has become one of the continent’s most potent illiberal demagogues, bending the state to his favor and eroding the country’s fledgling democratic norms. Now his critics fear bigger moves to silence opposition to his rule.

“Approximately 2,000 people are working in Hungary to overthrow the government in the election campaign and replace it with a pro-immigration cabinet favorable to George Soros, as well,” Orban told state radio before the vote. “We know exactly, by name, who these people are and how they operate in order to turn Hungary into an immigrant country.”

As my colleague James McAuley reported, Orban and his allies intend to enact new legislation to crack down on civil-society groups it deems hostile to the government’s interests. “We can see an alarmingly fast crackdown on civil society, or independent voices, in Hungary,” Marta Pardavi, the co-chair of the Hungarian Helsinki Committee, a human rights group that works with migrants, said to McAuley.

Not unlike the nationalist grandstanding of autocrats in Russia and Turkey — whose politics Orban claims to admire — the Hungarian prime minister has used a culture war to entrench his rule. At home, his anti-immigrant, anti-E.U. sentiments helped him outflank the formerly neo-fascist Jobbik party on the right. Abroad, they helped him link up with leaders elsewhere in eastern and central Europe to build support for his defense of Europe’s Christian identity and his attack on what he famously called “the era of liberal babble.”

But his vision of Christendom is not shared in Rome, where the pope seems to have an inconvenient fondness for at least some “liberal babble.” In his exhortation, Francis pointed to how “welcoming the stranger” was fundamental to the Catholic faith, not a “a momentary fad” that happened to be “invented by some Pope.”

“That a politician looking for votes might say such a thing is understandable,” the pope wrote, “but not a Christian.”

Ishaan Tharoor writes about foreign affairs for The Washington Post. He previously was a senior editor and correspondent at Time magazine, based first in Hong Kong and later in New York.

10 April 2018

Source: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2018/04/10/the-popes-challenge-to-orban-and-europes-far-right/?utm_term=.80402e7bfabb

By Patrick Martin

After a reportedly heated meeting of the US National Security Council on Wednesday, the Trump White House announced that there was no change in US policy toward Syria, despite a volley of comments and tweets by President Trump demanding an immediate pullout of the 2,000 US troops now deployed in the country.

The meeting with the National Security Council was essentially a conference between Trump and his generals, since he has no current top-level civilian foreign policy advisers.

Trump fired Secretary of State Rex Tillerson last month, and his successor, CIA Director Mike Pompeo, has not yet been confirmed. National Security Advisor H.R. McMaster, an Army general, is a lame duck, and his replacement, former Bush administration UN Ambassador John Bolton, does not begin work until next week.

As a consequence, the meeting Wednesday involved Trump and Secretary of Defense James Mattis (a retired Marine Corps general); the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Joseph Dunsford; and the head of the Pentagon’s Central Command, General Joseph Votel, to discuss Syria policy.

The White House issued a brief statement after the meeting, declaring, “The military mission to eradicate ISIS in Syria is coming to a rapid end,” but adding that it would continue. At the same time, Washington appealed to “countries in the region and beyond, plus the United Nations, to work toward peace and ensure that ISIS never re-emerges.”

Press reports suggested that Trump had told the military brass that he wanted a complete pullout within six months, an indication that the wrangling over Syria is largely motivated by domestic political considerations. Trump wants to have the option of announcing a supposedly triumphant end to the Syrian intervention on the eve of the November 6 congressional election, now seven months away.

The Republican Party is trailing badly in the polls and has suffered a series of recent reverses in key industrial states.

Significantly, Trump made his initial announcement about withdrawing all US troops from Syria at a campaign-style rally in Ohio, another key industrial state in the Midwest. He is acutely aware—and the audience response at the rally demonstrated it—that the American public is deeply hostile to military interventions in the Middle East.

There is an enormous gulf between this popular antiwar sentiment and the demands of the military-intelligence apparatus, the Democratic and Republican parties, and the corporate media, where there has been near-universal denunciation of Trump’s suggestion of a pullout from Syria.

Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, who plays a major role on national security policy in the Republican caucus, warned on Fox News Sunday that a withdrawal from Syria was the worst decision Trump could make.

On Tuesday, there was a revealing split-screen moment, when Trump was declaring his support for withdrawal from Syria at a White House press briefing, at the very time that two top US officials, General Votel of Central Command, and Brett McGurk, the State Department coordinator of the campaign against ISIS, were a few blocks away addressing the US Institute for Peace, a think tank devoted, of course, to imperialist war, about the necessity to stay the course.

“We are in Syria to fight ISIS. That is our mission, and our mission isn’t over,” McGurk told the audience, citing two large pockets of ISIS fighters numbering several thousand men, and including ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi. “We have to work through some very difficult issues as we speak,” he said. “We are going to complete that mission.”

General Votel was even more categorical, saying, “The hard part, I think, is in front of us, and that is stabilizing these areas, consolidating our gains, getting people back into their homes.” He added, “There is a military role in this, certainly in the stabilization phase.”

Wednesday’s NSC meeting was only the latest demonstration of the sway that the generals exercise in all Trump administration policy matters. Besides the generals on the other side of the table, briefing Trump, his own chief of staff, John Kelly, is a retired Marine Corps general implacably opposed to any “premature” withdrawal of US forces from Syria, Iraq or Afghanistan.

The NSC meeting coincided with the meeting in the Turkish capital of Ankara between Russian President Vladimir Putin, Iranian President Hassan Rouhani, and Turkish President Reccep Tayip Erdogan to discuss the political situation in Syria in the wake of the destruction of ISIS and the military advances of forces loyal to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. The three presidents agreed on maintaining the territorial integrity of Syria, an implicit rejection both of Kurdish aspirations in the region.

At the same time, the Associated Press reported Wednesday that United States troops were building new positions near the front line close to the Syrian-Turkish border, with outposts flying the American flag. According to this report, “The structures look much like the fighting positions once seen in Iraq and Afghanistan, which projected a clear message: ‘We’re here for a while.’”

A top US general Thursday emphasized that Trump had not set a deadline for withdrawing US troops from Syria, despite his statement to that effect at a campaign rally last week, several tweets, and his comments to the press Tuesday during an appearance with visiting leaders of the three Baltic states.

Lt. Gen. Kenneth McKenzie, the director of the Joint Staff, told a Pentagon press briefing, “One of the things that we haven’t been given is a timeline,” and he went on to praise Trump, saying, “The President has actually been very good in not giving us a specific timeline.”

In a transparent effort to flatter Trump, General McKenzie contrasted the current posture in Syria with timelines like those set by the Obama administration in Afghanistan, where, he said, US forces “operated against a timeline that was known to the enemy.”

The real attitude towards Trump’s vacillations about Syria was spelled out in a scathing editorial published Thursday night by the Washington Post, which has been aligned with the Democratic Party efforts to push Trump towards a more confrontational policy against Russia.

Under the headline, “Trump’s mind-boggling gift to America’s enemies,” the Post took note of Trump’s belated climb-down before the demands of his “national security team,” and then warned of the devastating consequences that a pullout from Syria would have for the interests of US imperialism.

Brushing aside the question of ISIS, which has always been a pretext, calling it “only one of the major US interests at stake,” the Post spelled out the main US war aims: “preventing Iran and Russia from entrenching in the country at the expense of U.S. allies including Israel and Jordan;” as well as “preserving Turkey’s place as a NATO ally” and preventing “destabilizing waves of refugees headed for Europe.”

The editorial continued, making a sinister connection between US policy in Syria and the ongoing anti-Russian campaign by the Democrats and their media mouthpieces like the Post and the New York Times: “That Mr. Trump’s intended retreat is a gift to Vladimir Putin perhaps should not be surprising, given Mr. Trump’s curious eagerness to accommodate the Russian ruler.”

Originally published in WSWS.org

6 April 2018

Source: https://countercurrents.org/2018/04/06/trump-reverses-himself-on-syria-pullout-order/