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Supplies of Antitank Missiles Will Test Whether Fighters Can Keep Arms Out of Extremist Hands

 

By

Ellen Knickmeyer,

Maria Abi-Habib and

Adam Entous

 

The U.S. and Saudi Arabia have supplied Syrian rebel groups with a small number of advanced American antitank missiles for the first time in a pilot program that could lead to larger flows of sophisticated weaponry, people briefed on the effort said.

The new willingness to arm these rebels comes after the failure of U.S.-backed peace talks in January and recent regime gains on the battlefield. It also follows a reorganization of Western-backed fighters aimed at creating a more effective military force and increasing protection for Christian and other religious minorities—something of particular importance to Washington.

This shift is seen as a test of whether the U.S. can find a trustworthy rebel partner able to keep sophisticated weapons out of the hands of extremists, Saudi and Syrian opposition figures said. The U.S. has long feared that if it does supply advanced arms, the weapons will wind up with radical groups—some tied to al Qaeda—which have set up bases in opposition-held territory.

The White House would neither confirm nor deny it had provided the TOW armor-piercing antitank systems, the first significant supply of sophisticated U.S. weapons systems to rebels. But U.S. officials did say they are working to bolster the rebels’ ability to fight the regime.

Rebels and their Saudi backers hope the Obama administration will be persuaded to ease its long-standing resistance to supplying advanced weaponry that could tip the balance in the grinding civil war—especially shoulder-fired missiles capable of bringing down planes.

Some of the TOWs provided to rebels since March are equipped with a complex, fingerprint-keyed security device that controls who can fire it, said Mustafa Alani, a senior security analyst at the Geneva-based Gulf Research Center who is regularly briefed by Saudi officials on security matters.

“The U.S. is committed to building the capacity of the moderate opposition, including through the provision of assistance to vetted members of the moderate armed opposition,” White House National Security Council spokeswoman Bernadette Meehan said. “As we have consistently said, we are not going to detail every single type of our assistance.”

Saudi Arabia and other Gulf states lobbied aggressively for the Obama administration to step up its support for the moderate opposition, especially since the collapse of the peace talks.

U.S. refusal to better arm the rebels has created strains with Saudi allies that President Barack Obama tried to mend on his recent visit to the kingdom. After the visit, senior administration officials said the two countries were collaborating more closely on material support for the rebels and the Central Intelligence Agency was looking at ways to expand its limited arming and training program based in Jordan.

A newly created moderate rebel group called Harakat Hazm said it had received about a dozen BGM-71 TOWs and was being trained on them by an unspecified allied country. It is the only group known to have received the weapons so far, though there may be others.

“To make it clear, our allies are only delivering these missiles to trusted groups that are moderate,” said one senior leader of Harakat Hazm. “The first step is showing that we can effectively use the TOWs, and hopefully the second one will be using antiaircraft missiles.”

Another Syrian opposition figure in the region confirmed the U.S., with Saudi assistance, supplied the TOW missiles.

Mr. Alani said the two countries oversaw the delivery through neighboring Jordan and Turkey to vetted rebels inside Syria. Rebels already had some types of recoilless rifles in their stocks, which can also be used against tanks and other targets. But U.S.-made TOWs are more reliable and accurate, opposition officials and experts say.

A senior Syrian opposition official in Washington who works closely with the Americans said the TOWs were part of a small, tailored program coordinated by U.S. and Saudi intelligence services to “test the waters” for a potentially larger arming effort down the road.

The official said the introduction of a small number of TOWs will have limited impact on the battlefield.

The main objective is to develop a relationship between vetted fighters and U.S. trainers that will give the Obama administration the confidence to increase supplies of sophisticated weaponry.

The U.S. has blocked Saudi Arabia from giving rebels Chinese-made man-portable air defense systems, known as Manpads.

Earlier this year, Saudi Arabia offered to give the opposition Manpads for the first time. But the weapons are still stored in warehouses in Jordan and Turkey because of U.S. opposition, according to Saudis and Syrian opposition figures.

“Basically, this is supposed to be the next step” in the eyes of rebels and their Saudi backers, Mr. Alani said of the hoped-for antiaircraft artillery.

Senior administration officials said the White House remains opposed to providing rebels with Manpads. Antiaircraft and antitank weapons could help the rebels chip away at the regime’s two big advantages on the battlefield—air power and heavy armor. The regime has used its air force to devastating effect in the civil war—frequently dropping crude barrel-bombs packed with explosives on opposition neighborhoods and cities.

In hopes of reinvigorating Western support, more moderate rebels began this year openly battling increasingly powerful extremist groups in their midst and reorganized their ranks in hopes of forming more effective fighting forces.

Harakat Hazm was created in January out of the merger of smaller secular-leaning rebel groups in the north, the main opposition stronghold. It was set up to assuage U.S. concerns that the Western-backed and secular-leaning Free Syrian Army was too fractured to be effective and that rebels weren’t doing enough to protect religious minorities.

The group is working closely with the Syrian Revolutionaries Front, another large formation of several rebel brigades that turned their guns on the extremist group Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS) in January. The Front was created in January to address U.S. criticism that rebels were too fragmented and that they were turning a blind eye to extremist groups. “The agreement is that the Syrian Revolutionaries and Hazm work together to get support from the international community but not step on each other,” said a member of the political opposition based in Turkey.

The official added that Hazm started to receive lethal and nonlethal aid from Saudi and the U.S. in March “because [rebels] are organizing like a proper army.”

The Western- and Gulf-backed Free Syrian Army has shaken up its ranks and strategy to try to reverse the regime’s consistent battlefield gains since last year.

“The U.S. wants pragmatic groups within the Free Syrian Army that can deal with a post-Assad Syria and secure Alawites and Christians,” said a member of the political opposition with ties to Harakat Hazm.

Syria’s conflict has strong sectarian undertones. President Assad is a member of the Alawite sect, an offshoot of Shiite Islam, and his regime is dominated by the minority group while the opposition is made up largely of Syria’s Sunni majority. Many Christians have remained loyal to the regime, hoping it will protect them.

The fate of religious minorities has been a major concern of the U.S. Several extremist rebel groups were involved in massacres of Alawite villagers last year, and desecration of Christian and Alawite religious sites, according to human rights groups.

The opposition made a point of trying to secure the Christian village of Kassab in northern Syria this month after it was overrun by extremist groups, prompting a mass exodus of its population.

Opposition leader Ahmad Jarba visited the village earlier this month and vowed that the FSA wasn’t fighting a sectarian war.

—Rudayna El-Baalbaky and Mohammed Nour Alakraa contributed to this article.

 

April 18, 2014 7:03 p.m. ET

 

By Kourosh Ziabari

15 April, 2014
Countercurrents.org

Only a few weeks after the UN Human Rights Council endorsed a resolution in condemning the alleged violations of human rights in Iran on March 28, the European Parliament also took action to do its share of attacking the Islamic Republic for its “human rights violations” in what was introduced as the “European Parliament resolution on the EU strategy towards Iran.”

The two U.S.-allied bodies, in line with their customary and conventional policies of interfering in the internal affairs of other countries and sowing the seeds of discord and strife across the globe, expressed serious concern over the “alarming level” of rights violation in Iran and called on the Iranian government to respect the rights of its citizens!

It’s a very praiseworthy and significant idea to protect the essential and fundamental rights of all people around the world, regardless of their nationality, age, gender, religion, race, color or place of residence, and raise voices to protest any infringement upon these rights. However, what is disturbing is that those who usually raise their voice in protest and accuse others of violating the human rights are those who violate these rights the most and blatantly disrespect the internationally-recognized conventions and agreements that ensure the protection of the rights, life and dignity of the humankind.

At the first glance, for those who are not familiar with the West-engineered hostility toward Iran, it sounds like the accusations of rights violation and condemnatory resolutions are purely aimed at improving the status of human rights in Iran and intended by those who really care about the welfare and interests of the Iranian people. But a deeper look at the course of developments in the Iran-West relations prove that it’s not the case and that the idea of human rights is being used as a leverage and an instrument of coercion to overdue an independent nation that has resisted unrelenting international economic and political pressures for more than 3 decades.

So, what are these human rights that have turned to be so controversial and problematic? Different entities give different definitions for human rights. But there are some elements and concepts which can be unanimously found in all of these definitions. For example, according to Amnesty International, “Human rights include civil and political rights, such as the right to life, liberty and freedom of expression; and social, cultural and economic rights including the right to participate in culture, the right to food, and the right to work and receive an education. Human rights are protected and upheld by international and national laws and treaties.”

Just consider the first example the AI gives, that is the “civil and political rights, such as the right to life,” and rest assured that the United States, which habitually and more often than not accuses Iran and other nations of violating the human rights, is the biggest machinery of stripping the people in different countries of this basic, rudimentary and essential right to life. People in Asia, Africa and Latin America have experienced the taste of the American-style human rights. The U.S. government decides to invade a distant country overnight, and as a result of its invasion, thousands of lives perish away and millions of hopes evaporate. The United States gives its own justifications for its endless military expeditions and increases its enormous military budget every year, but for the innocent children in Iraq and Afghanistan who should inhale the Sarin gas and other nerve agents when the U.S. Army bombards their cities, or successive generations of fathers and mothers in Hiroshima and Nagasaki who should give birth to defected babies as a result of exposure to the nuclear materials dropped on the heads of their parents some 50 years ago, these justifications are irrelevant and senseless.

It’s good to be attentive to the status of human rights in the world, but not when you are simply unable to meet the demands of your own people, the racial and religious minorities living under your rule and those vulnerable people needing your support.
A clear example is discrimination against the Muslims and the colored people in the United States and Europe. Islamophobia is a growing phenomenon in the West as the Muslims face greater restrictions in practicing their religious rituals, observing their special dressing code and having equal job and education opportunities with the other citizens. When a lunatic pastor decides to burn a holy book which some 1.5 billion people hold to be sacred, the U.S. government shows no reaction in protest, unless asking the pastor to abandon his plan simply because it may endanger the lives of the Americans in uniform, not because the burning of holy books is a devilish and loathsome act. Of course you remember what I’m referring to; the 2011 plan by the pastor of Dove World Outreach Center Terry Jones who set several copies of the Holy Quran ablaze on the anniversary of the 9/11 attacks.

The blacks are also under different kinds of pressure because of the color of their skin, and although the Jim Crow laws that stipulated segregation in public places in the United States based on race and color were abolished around 5 decades ago in 1965, there are still traces of racial discrimination, racial profiling and anti-black prejudice in the American and other Western societies. The black athletes are usually booed and scoffed at in the sport stadiums, and this kind of bigotry is really a disgrace for the societies that boast of being highly civilized and developed. The African-Americans are still facing difficulties finding jobs in the United States, are deprived of certain voting rights in such states as Iowa, and should pay more expenses for healthcare services. These are realities which the U.S. mainstream media don’t talk about too much, but they exist.

The same goes for the freedom of speech and expression. The United States and its European allies frequently accuse Iran and other non-aligned nations of restricting the freedom of speech, while knowing that following the 9/11 attacks, a bunch of laws, acts and legislations which restrict the freedom of speech, press and the civil liberties of the ordinary citizens were introduced by the Congress and signed into law by the U.S. Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama after him.

Simple examples are the Patriot Act of 2001 and other regulations foreseen in the National Defense Authorization Act of 2012, 2013 and 2014 including the extrajudicial and indefinite detention of any American or foreign citizen traveling in the States who is seen to pose a threat to the U.S. national security. By virtue of the Patriot Act, the U.S. government is allowed to monitor and overhear the phone calls and email correspondences of any citizen whom it considers dangerous and threatening.

We may not also forget the barbaric and horrendous mental, sexual and corporal abuse and torture of the prisoners held in the Guantanamo bay detention facility and the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq; prisoners who are kept there for more than 10 years without any trial or specific charge.

The conscious minds haven’t also forgotten the unjustified imprisonment of the critics of the Israeli regime in the West who were jailed because of criticizing Israel and questioning the veracity of the official accounts of Holocaust: David Irving, Fredrick Toben, Ernst Zundel, Gremar Rudolf, Robert Faurisson and many others.

If detaining people without a court warrant is a human rights violation, then the United States and its Western partners are human rights violators and should be held accountable.

If persecuting the religious minorities and depriving them of their basic rights is a human rights violation, then the West has perpetrated serious violations and should justify its crimes.

If killing innocent civilians en masse is a human rights violation, then the United States military-industrial complex is the biggest culprit and should be tried.

If restricting the freedom of speech of the citizens and mass media is a crime, then the U.S. government should be equally responsible for restricting the alternative, progressive media and silencing the critics.

These are only simple instances of rights violation by those who claim to be the harbingers of freedom and human rights. It’s only a fair and balanced investigation of their crimes which will ensure the comprehensive and inclusive protection of human rights around the world, not directing baseless accusations against the political rivals and those whom they want to use the pretext of human rights as an instrument of coercion to put pressure on.

Kourosh Ziabari is an Iranian journalist and media correspondent

By Franklin Lamb

Yarmouk Palestinian camp, Damascus: This observer does not write these words casually.

And he is no huge fan of some of the intellectually lazy quick spun internet conspiracy theories, too many of which appear given to flights from reality when facts get complicated and dispositive information is obscure.

However, after months of studying the political, social, military, and economic situation in Yarmouk camp, and based on insightful meetings with former camp residents and PLO stalwarts who have been active in the Palestinian cause going back to the 1980’s, or earlier, Yarmouk’s survival prospects appear fatally bleak. If one allows oneself some basic deductions about the last three years and the ongoing upheaval, it is difficult to escape the conclusion, increasingly heard from Palestinians themselves, that Yarmouk, as with four other Palestinian refugee camps in Syria, is deeply wounded by the war being waged, that it is unlikely to survive the crisis, whether the latter ends in months or continues for decades, as many regional and western intelligence analysts are concluding.

In part, Yarmouk’s curse and current fate is due to its location. This is a triangular-sliced area of land pointing straight into central downtown Damascus, a strategic last piece in the mosaic necessary for a strong rebel advance on the capital. Its relative isolation from the conflict was shattered in mid-December 2012, when armed groups first entered the camp. The government surrounded the area; clashes ensued. UNRWA’s 28 schools and three clinics ceased operation, and the armed gangs also occupied homes and looted hospitals and stores. Camp residents who did not manage to flee, or did not want to, got caught in a tight stranglehold that continues today.

UNRWA’s HQ in Damascus estimates that more than 70 percent of the Palestinian refugees in Syria are in need of emergency humanitarian assistance immediately, while more than 50 percent are internally displaced. In Yarmouk alone, 142 people have died from hunger and lack of medical care just since June of 2013. Yet attempting to flee does not afford one copious or abundant opportunities either. As of last week, more than 11,000 Palestinians refugees fleeing Syria had sought support from UNRWA in Jordan. Yet even if they can somehow gain entry to the country, the Kingdom’s policy is to deport them back to Syria, in essence robbing them of their right to survival.

UNRWA expects the numbers of Palestinians seeking safety in Jordan to exceed 20,000 by the end of 2014. Slamming the gates or deporting them all would be unconscionable. Even the White House reminded Jordan’s King Hussein that such a policy violates the international law principle of non-refoulement, a UN protocol protecting refugees from being sent back to places where their lives or freedoms could be threatened.

With respect to Yarmouk, there is a very real possibility that this largest of Syria’s refugee camps will succumb to a fate similar to those of the Tel al-Zaatar, Nabatieh, and Nahr al-Bared (now partially rebuilt after seven years) camps in Lebanon, but the loss of Yarmouk will be doubly compounded because in Syria, Palestinians found secure, sympathetic refuge in 1948. At that time, Palestinians fleeing their homeland were welcomed in solidarity—as Yarmouk became a symbol of resistance—but in 2014, there simply is no more welcome. For over six decades the Palestinian residents here nurtured families and communities, integrated economically, and formed a subset of the cultural and intellectual fabric of a vibrant and proud Syrian society, but a civil war and a Western-backed insurgency have changed the landscape, perhaps for good.

Yet even besides resistance, Yarmouk is also a symbol of Palestinian insistence—insistence that the right of return be addressed, insistence that their narrative be recognized, that their need for safety be respected, that their rights be upheld, that they live in dignity. One aspect which always stood out for foreign visitors to Yarmouk were the youth clubs, which provided teenagers with a safe creative space where they developed skills while choosing colleges over Kalashnikovs.

UN negotiator Lakhdar Brahimi’s recent warning about the “Somalization” of Syria is not merely a disturbing metaphor, for as he told this observer in a meeting last year at the Dama Rose Hotel in Damascus, “Somalization” has already become a daily reality for Yarmouk camp.

The trio of Palestinian factions now fighting inside Yarmouk consist of Ahmed Jibril’s, Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine-General Command (currently the PFLP-GC has approximately 800 fighters inside Yarmouk); the Nidal Front ( a few hundred fighters at most); and Fatah Intifada (close to 600 Palestinian fighters). The FI, since the death last year of its founder “Abu Musa”, is now headed by Abu Hazim, in whose company this observer spent an evening two weeks ago in Damascus along with FI’s articulate spokesman, Yaser al-Masri.

The Nidal Front (NF) is led by Khaled Abdul Majeed. Since 1992 it has been a breakaway faction of the PLO-affiliated Palestinian Popular Struggle Front, a split that came about in protest over Yasser Arafat’s compromises with Israel leading to the 1993 Oslo Accords. The NF, as of 4/11/14, has a few hundred fighters in Yarmouk, but is recruiting more as funds permit. It does not recognize the so-called Palestinian National Authority chaired by Mahmoud Abass. Majeed insisted to this observer that only armed resistance will liberate Palestine, and that the NF works with the PFLP-GC and FI on most Palestine strategy issues, evincing cooperation and coordination among the three PLO splinter groups inside Yarmouk.

Despite occasional bravado at news conferences, some of the leaders of these three factions will intimate privately that they see few prospects for Yarmouk, and that the camp’s fate is likely sealed, at least when compared to what it has been since its founding in 1957. And though they claim to be fighting “terrorists,” current refugee views with respect to Yarmouk’s “resistance” factions span the political spectrum, with some former camp residents, along with Palestinian analysts, viewing members of the above-noted groups as traitors.

Some of those who have fled Yarmouk, and even others still trapped inside or who have made it to surrounding countries, blame the three PLO splinter groups for making the Yarmouk situation even worse. Charges of treason may even be heard, or of playing the Palestinian card for political and economic gain, this while entering with Jabhat al-Nusra and other takfiri groups into fake negotiations—including the last seven negotiated “breakthroughs,” supposed to have lifted the siege while allowing those trapped to flee to safety, but which alas, as events have shown, were doomed to failure before they were even announced.

“Just by ID card and ancestry maybe,” the observer went on to add. “They are owned by a foreign government and have many times targeted Yarmouk camp residents, claiming to ‘protect’ the camp. These guys, and the rebels, claim to be protecting Yarmouk, but the truth is sometimes they work with each other to exploit the crisis in various ways—for politics and money. Take your motorcycle and visit refugees from Yarmouk staying in Shatila, Burj Barajneh, Mar Elias– or Yarmouk residents sheltering in any of the camps here in Lebanon. (Ask them) what they think about these traitors and what they are doing to destroy Yarmouk!”

 

Few Palestinians in Syria have much hope that the so-called ‘cease-fires’—nine announced over the past year—will hold or allow more than a trickle of aid into Yarmouk. The most promising ‘reconciliation’ between rebels and government supporters inside Yarmouk began in early February. Al-Nusra and some of its allies did withdraw from the south side of the camp for nearly 30 days, but then re-entered, while the three Palestinian factions proclaimed they had been double-crossed. There are, not surprisingly, other views of what happened to the ‘reconciliation,’ and this observer heard one view in detail during a meeting with the al-Nusra spokesman and one of his commanders in south Damascus late last month. Briefly put, the rebels claim that they kept the agreement for 30 days, but that PFLP-GC and Shabiha forces inside Yarmouk failed to allow in more than token aid for the refugees under siege, and failed to neutralize the camp. Al-Nusra claims the Palestinian factions instead brought in more arms and fighters, while continuing to use snipers to kill Yarmouk refugees trying to leave or get food. Reentering Yarmouk last month, (3/12/14), the Islamic State of the Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) admitted to this observer that they executed 21 Palestinians upon arrival in Yarmouk. At about the same time, Al-Nusra kidnapped 30 other Palestinians who had mediated a ceasefire between the warring sides after they also returned. Both groups told this observer that their victims were ‘fair game’ because they were supporters of the government.

Again, the exact truth of events inside Yarmouk is illusive, but many opinions are offered by Yarmouk residents who did manage to escape in January-February 2014, and from former residents who still hope that something is left of their homes.

Another sign of the approaching demise of Yarmouk is the pressure for its residents to join the long lines at Western embassies and seek a new, more secure and prosperous life for themselves and their children—far, far away from the refugee camp or their home country, Palestine. It is a development which many, including this observer, consider likely in the next couple of years. Among the forces fueling it are John Kerry’s recent pronouncements of rewards for Palestinians who give up their birthright—the Right to Return to their ethnically cleansed homeland and their homes there. Also voiced are reports in Israeli media of a secret EU deal with Israel and the Palestinian Authority in Ramallah for substantial material rewards if the Right of Return is surrendered. The Zionist colonial enterprise has been working for 65 years to deal this inalienable right a death blow, and mediation on the matter comes just as we are witnessing growing international support for sanctions against the apartheid state, Israel, which last week pledged to the US and the EU its assistance with this au courant idea.

Those hoping to asphyxiate the Right of Return by purchasing the birthright from its rightful heirs are using AIPAC-furnished ‘talking points,’ as seen in a mailing to Congressional offices last week. These include reports of a survey supposedly conducted in several Palestinian camps, including Beddawi camp near Tripoli Lebanon, and Ain al-Hilweh camp in Sidon, as well as among former Yarmouk residents, that Palestinian refugees want to emigrate—emigrate to anywhere they can get a visa to, from Asia to Zambia, but preferably to Europe.

Rumors this week about the German Embassy in Beirut being overwhelmed with applications from Palestinians have been echoed by other EU embassies in Lebanon. On 4/10/14, the German Embassy in Beirut went to the trouble to deny reports that their system had been hacked so that visa slots would be booked up minutes after they were released. The embassy said the problem was due to over-demand and had since been rectified, but a report had emerged last week in the German national newspaper Welt am Sonntag, the Sunday edition of Die Welt, alleging that hackers had infiltrated the embassy’s visa appointment system in Beirut, and that they were snapping up all available slots to sell on the black market outside Yarmouk camp, as well as in Lebanon, for up to $5,000. The Beirut Daily Star reported that as of yesterday (4/10/14) there was one slot available for Palestinians wishing to apply for a family reunion national visa appointment, and none for those seeking a Schengen visa.

The “international community” has been unable to significantly help Palestinian refugees trapped in Yarmouk (or other Palestinian camps in Syria), and the camp may well die. The unfolding tragedy is devastating to the psyche of every Palestinian refugee in more ways than the sheer suffering of those directly affected by it. We see a ripple effect of anxiety and fear emanating from Yarmouk; walk by and you can experience it. For six decades Yarmouk defined Palestinian solidarity and hope, but now it defines loss, uncertainty, not only for its residents, but for Palestinians all over Syria and in the wider diaspora.

Those still trapped in Yarmouk and elsewhere continue their descent into the abyss. Perhaps not until the guns finally fall silent, in months or maybe decades, will we fully realize the price paid by Palestinian refugees, and Syrians, and the extent of their shared loss.

But what has already become perfectly clear is the magnitude of our own shared shame for allowing the carnage, starvation, and crimes against Palestinian refugees to continue.

Franklin Lamb is a visiting Professor of International Law at the Faculty of Law, Damascus University and volunteers with the Sabra-Shatila Scholarship Program .

15 September, 2014

Countercurrents.org

 

 

 

By Radha Surya

 

The good times are rolling. By now every analyst worth his or her salt has made a point of waxing indignant in the mainstream Anglo-American media over the “criminality” of the Russian intervention in Crimea. The media is not in the least deterred by the fact that the Russian operation took place with next to no loss of life. It’s been a season for name calling and for exhibiting moral superiority, for crying foul and denouncing President Vladimir Putin as a bully and a thug. The more inventive the writer, the more over-the-top the epithet of abuse has been. Along with all the invective, the public has been treated to sage speculations regarding the inner workings of President Putin’ s mind (e.g. “A View inside the Mind of Vladimir Putin,” NPR, March 4 2014, “3 Presidents and a Riddle Named Putin,” New York Times, 24 March 23, 2014, “Ukraine and Crimea: what is Putin thinking?” Guardian, March 23, 2014 and so on) sttag0.

The re-integration of Crimea into the Russian Federation has been an unexpected bonanza for reporters and analysts in the mainstream Anglo-American news media. It has been a field day for the commentariat in particular who are enviably free from the constraints of neutrality and objectivity. The Russian action in Crimea has gifted them with a pretext for seizing the moral high ground and proclaiming the superiority of Western political values and institutions. The post-Soviet world order is one in which the US-EU axis has repeatedly flouted international law with impuni ty. But this privilege is reserved for the US led bloc–and for countries that have a special relationship with the US. Steps that could constitute even a minor transgression are out of bounds for every other nation. The commentariat, servants to the masters of the world, have done a great job of upholding the prevailing double standards. They have vied with each other in proposing measures s22—preferably hawkish ones—for isolating Russia internationally and punishing President Putin for offering resistance to the US led world order.

Why have prominent commentators lately displayed so much enthusiasm for international law? To understand the reason, let us play for a moment the empathy game and regard international events from the mainstream Anglo-American media perspective. Consider from this vantage point the phenomenon of President Obama’s kill Tuesdays. These are the weekly authorization of extra judicial murder of individuals who ar e under unproven suspicion of harboring hostile intentions toward the United States. In essence the US President signs off on a weekly hit list that targets victims across the world. Consider how the murder of thousands of innocent civilians by drone attacks and the terrorizing of defenceless human beings by killer drones has become the norm in places like Waziristan. The drones that are ceaselessly buzzing overhead envelope in a pervasive mantle of dread the daily activities of every man, woman or child whether it be working in the fields, going to school, sttag0 or gathering for a group celebration. Consider how the CIA embrace of unmanned aircraft has inaugurated an era of video game like warfare in which drone operators in a Nevada base have adopted the use of the term bug splat to describe the victim of the missile fired by a drone. Consider in particular the moral abomination of the signature strike in which a killer drone returns to attack those who have rushed to the aid of the victims of a missile strike. Just how much angst have the pundits expended on the moral bankruptcy displayed by the acts described above? They were perfectly cool with the use of drones to massacre helpless civilians in Pakistan. They gave two hoots for the sovereignty of Pakistan. These are the people who are now throwing a hissy fit over Russia’s purported violation of Ukraine’s territorial integrity. To restate the initial question–Why are we seeing this selective outrage?

*

The answer lies in the toll taken by the discursive constraints necessitated by the task of upholding American supremacy and American exceptionalism. There are many things that must go unsaid. Although for the most part the commentariat has turned a blind eye to various forms of lawlessness that are routinely perpetrated by the US across the world such self-enforced silence must have been very frustrating. Given a choice between delivering a lecture on the sacrosanct status of international law and holding one’s peace on the topic which analyst would not prefer the former? The moment of catharsis arrived when Russia acted in defence of its strategic interests in the region and took control of Crimea. In effect the Anglo-American commentariat were handed an opportunity that they proceeded to milk for all it was worth. Hence the hysteria and the o utrage that has been witnessed recently. They who consider not the beam that is in their eye behold with relish the mote in their brother’s eye. This cynicism and opportunism has not gone unnoticed in Russia where President Vladimir Putin has had some devastating things to say about the discovery of international law by his West European and North American critics. As he put it in his historic address of March 18: It is good they realize that international law still exists. Better late than never.

President Putin’s remarkable address to Parliament on integration with Crimea ( http://rt.com/politics/official-word/vladimir-putin-crimea-address-658/) is noteworthy for a number of reasons. The case for re-unification with Crimea is made with grace and eloquence. There is heartfelt appreciation of the importance of maintaining cordial ties with Ukraine. There are those who say that President Putin is fiercely nationalist. These observers are abundantly vindicated by the speech in Parliament. The language of the address is imbued with historical depth and feeling. An uncompromising stand is taken on the issue of Russian sovereignty and Russia’s status as an independent active participant in world affairs. Above all the address is hard-hitting. There is both scorn and sarcasm for the hypocrisy of the US led Western powers and their expertise in manipulating or disregarding or violating international law as suits their purpose. Pr esident Putin’s landmark address has not been well received in the Western world if media reaction is anything to go by. Anglo-American media outlets have done their utmost to run down the Russian President’s extraordinary speech. A concerted effort seems to have been made to detract from the truth telling and the denunciation of US led military assaults on Yugoslavia, Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya. “An aut ocrat like Putin plays his own game, and always finds his own excuses,” sniffed George Packer of the New Yorker magazine. Putin’s bile and bitterness poured out unchecked in the address to Parliament claimed Simon Tisdall of the Guardian newspaper. The New York Times alleged that the address was steeped in years of resentment and bitterness at perceived slights from the West. No doubt these examples could be multiplie d with ease.

A common thread runs through much of the media commentary on President Putin. Time and again analysts speak of the Russian President’s deep seated grievance toward the West. Usually it is implied that these grievances are somehow imaginary or insubstantial. Nothing could be further from the truth. We are not talking here about some minor grouch that has been blown up out of all proportion by the nasty and evil Putin. We are talking about unconscionable acts of betrayal perpetrated by the victorious side in the cold war. Academic experts in Russian or East European Studies commonly recognize that the treatment of its fallen adversary by the United States has set the stage for future conflict. Many observers have used the Versailles analogy to convey the gravity of the h umiliations that Russia had to swallow when the Soviet Union disintegrated. Among other issues there is the actual fact of NATO’s eastward expansion in direct contravention of assurances given by top officials like US Secretary of State James Baker and (the future) Chancellor Helmut Kohl to then Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev when he reluctantly agreed to the unification of Germany. This is treachery pure and simple.

lang1033 No need for mincing words here or whitewashing black deeds. That sort of thing is best left to those who appear regularly in the Opinion pages of the Washington Post and other corporate run media. They are old hands at obfuscating or suppressing plain facts.

Why has the betrayal of President Gorbachev by US led policy makers somehow escaped the attention of the media analysts who are infuriated by Russian “aggression” in Crimea? By what subterfuge is it possible to condemn Russia for purportedly violating international law while exonerating the United States from blame for spearheading NATO expansion in flagrant disregard of objections made by the Ru ssian side? Having incorporated nine former Warsaw Pact states and three former Soviet republics into the alliance NATO announced in 2008 that Ukraine and Georgia would be inducted as well. NATO was now set to expand all the way to Russia’s borders. With this prospect before them, the Russian leadership acted on behalf of Russia’s national interests. As Mr.Putin put it in his speech to Parliament: If you compress the spring all the way to its limit, it will snap back hard. You mus t always remember this.

NATO is the elephant in the room. NATO’s eastward creep and in particular its impending expansion to Russia’s borders are key to understanding why the showdown in Crimea took place. Apart from s22 honourable exceptions (e.g. Seumas Milne “The Clash in Crimea is the Fruit of Western Expansion” Guardian, March 5, 2014) the mainstream analysts have disregarded the provocative implications of NATO expansion. At best they mention NATO expansion in passing and move on to other topics, preferred ones being President Putin’s aggressive inclinations and the sanctions that should be enforced by way of punishment. The continued existence of NATO more than two decades after the fall of the Soviet Union calls for more than pa ssing mention. The Warsaw Pact had a termination date but not NATO. It is essential to ask why a military alliance that was originally founded for the purpose of containing the Soviet Union flourishes in the post-Soviet world order. The Anglo-American media is deceiving the public by glossing over issues of crucial importance. To obtain ltr reliable information it is necessary to turn to the academic literature. Of particular interest in this context is a study by the historian J.L.Black (J.L.Black, Russia Faces NATO Expansion. Lanham, Maryland: Rowman & Littlefield, 2000

lang2057). The author shows that from the early 90’s onward NATO expansion has been a festering issue in Russian political discourse. The author’s findings are substantiated by the use of Russian language materials— g2057reports and analysis in the news media, opinion polls, books and journal articles. As far back as 1993 the Russian Foreign Minister Yevgenni Primakov predicted that NATO’s expansion of its membership eastward would cause Moscow to institute counter measures (Russia Faces NATO Expansion, p.16)

f0. In other words the concept of the red line is not the exclusive product of President Putin’s diseased, empire obsessed mind. The red line was being delineated in strategic thinking on the Russian side long before President Putin declared that it had been crossed by the Western powers in Ukraine.

The media coverage of Russian integration with Crimea has been shameful, irresponsible and misleading. It is vitiated by the myopic inability to see beyond US-EU interests. And it is incorrect on essentials. Despite what the New York Times says it’s not tr ue that Russia is facing international isolation. Although Russia has been expelled from the G-8 the countries of the BRICS economic alliance (Brazil, Russia, g2057India, China, South Africa) have not taken the US-EU side on the Crimea issue. India has explicitly recognised that Russia has legitimate interests in Crimea. Very little of this is noticed in the Anglo-American news media. Today the public is witnessing the vilification of Putin’s Russia brought to us by the very media who some ten years ago were all gung-ho over the invasion of Iraq. The news media has grown tired of awaiting the unearthing of r Saddam Hussain’s weapons of mass destruction and is now waiting with bated breath for Russian forces to overrun Ukraine. No doubt the commentariat has already composed anti-Russian diatribes befitting the occasion.

 

Radha Surya is a freelance writer. Her articles have appeared on Znet and Countercurrents.

 

15 April, 2014

Countercurrents.org

 

 

Rifat Odeh Kassis*

 

Taking the twelve disciples aside, Jesus said, “Listen, we’re going up to Jerusalem, where all the predictions of the prophets concerning the Son of Man will come true.” Then Jesus had his disciples bring him a colt, and they threw their cloaks over it for him to ride. The news of his arrival rippled through the city, and crowds poured out onto the road to see him.

For me — as for most Palestinians, both Muslims and Christians — Jerusalem is the city we love most and visit least.

As a little boy, I remember traveling to Jerusalem with my late father along the old road — a trip that took many hours due to the “no-man’s zone” that forbade us from directly accessing the divided city.

Despite the obstacles that existed even then, I remember going to Jerusalem as a deeply happy event. It meant eating the sweets we couldn’t find in our village, and visiting the holy places we’d only heard about in school and church. Or else it meant going to the doctor, since most doctors were based in Jerusalem at that time. In any case, my sentimental relationship with the city is strong.

When the First Intifada broke out in 1987, Jerusalem was sealed off to those of us who lived in the so-called West Bank, and we had to obtain special permits in order to enter the city. Legally, visiting Jerusalem became impossible for me; because I was a past political prisoner, I was put on some kind of state blacklist, and so the Israeli authorities wouldn’t grant me a permit.

Since 2002, I have not returned to Jerusalem. My 29-year-old son, Dafer, has never visited it at all, although he has probably traveled around half the world. Being barred from Jerusalem is a great emotional and psychological loss to me and to my family.

For Palestinian Christians, Jerusalem is marked not only by symbolic richness, but also by symbolic tensions. First of all, although Jerusalem is considered to be sacred for Christians all over the world — the place of Jesus’ crucifixion and resurrection, the birthplace of Christianity itself, the site of the first churches and the historical destination of pilgrimages — it is in many ways a normal city for us, Palestinians. It is our political capital, and has traditionally been an economic hub, a center of tourism, health services and education.

In this sense, then, my relation to Jerusalem as a Palestinian Christian is twofold: it is, for me, both the universal sacred place where people go to pray and connect to the holy sites and the capital of my country, Palestine — even when the occupying state doesn’t acknowledge it as such.

Even more powerfully, however, Jerusalem is the universal sacred place I cannot go to practice my faith, and the capital city I cannot visit.

Jerusalem is also a focal point of the Palestinian struggle: the place where our struggle began and where it will end. Its significance is symbolic on both a religious and a political scale, both for Palestinians and for Israelis.

According to international law, East Jerusalem is occupied territory, as are the parts of the West Bank that Israel unilaterally annexed to the district of Jerusalem. The Fourth Geneva Convention of 1949 and the Hague Regulations of 1907 forbid occupying powers from altering the ways of life of occupied citizens; they likewise prohibit members of the occupying state from settling in the occupied territory.

This means that Israel’s actions in East Jerusalem, throughout history as well as today, constitute gross violations of international law.

The violations themselves are copious and ongoing: historical expropriation (since 1967 and through the present day) of private Palestinian-owned land, paving the way for illegal Israeli settlements (referred to as “neighborhoods” in internal Israeli discourse) and demolition of Palestinian houses, leaving many people homeless along with discriminatory housing permit policies; Israel’s “quiet transfer” policy, revoking the residency of East Jerusalemites who moved away from municipal borders and countless others.

Israel is not simply trying to find its place in Jerusalem. Rather, it is trying to monopolize Jerusalem (again, on both quotidian levels and on universal, sacred ones) and exclude Palestinian Christians and Muslims from the city.

For us Palestinians, Jerusalem is a city for all three faiths: Christians, Muslims, and Jews. Its sacredness should not be stifled, and its holiest symbols — like the Al-Aqsa Mosque for Muslims, the Church of the Holy Sepulchre for Christians and the Wailing Wall for Jews — all deserve their space in this universal city. Any attempt to monopolize them is an attempt to monopolize that universality, and this is an effort we, all peoples, must resist.

In “A Moment of Truth,” the Kairos Palestine document, we address Jerusalem both from a specifically Palestinian Christian perspective and from a universal human one.

We state very clearly that Jerusalem is an occupied city; that the occupation of Jerusalem is a sin against God and humanity; and that it constitutes a defiance of His will as well as that of the international community. We also stress that Jerusalem should be the place of and model for reconciliation — not the locus of and reason for our conflict, which is the role it has today.

Thus, we believe that the issue of Jerusalem should be the beginning of our reconciliation, and should absolutely not be left to the so-called “final” items on the negotiation agenda. Resolving the conflict over Jerusalem first will establish a model for the two nations themselves, as well as for resolving other conflicts between them; it will also encourage the growth and development of a just peace in our region.

No matter what, Palestinians must have the right to exert their sovereignty in East Jerusalem. No matter what, I am certain that the future of Jerusalem will dictate the future of the conflict itself. And no matter what, I hope, as the Kairos Document urges, that the very nature of Jerusalem — universal, sacred, and embracing — will be honored as we proceed. It has much to teach us.

This Easter, Kairos Palestine chose to issue an alert to all churches and Christians all over the world. The focus of this alert is on Jerusalem and Jerusalemites: their reality, their plight, and their rights. In this alert, Kairos Palestine urged, all Christians all over the world to turn their eyes to Jerusalem and its inhabitants; to keep them in their prayers; and to work toward exercising pressure on Israel as the occupying power to life its occupation and to open Jerusalem for all faithful people.

Kairos Palestine asked its supporters to turn the tide by engaging in several activities like distributing the alert and the study materials within their church communities to inform and educate them about the situation of Palestinians living under Israeli occupation, and to the Alert with congregations and dioceses across their countries. And to send letters of solidarity and support for justice in Palestine/Israel to the Israeli embassies in their own countries.

Kairos Palestine urged them to answer its call to come and see to know the facts and the people of this land and to be in solidarity with them to finally live in peace with justice.

*Rifat Odeh Kassis is the general coordinator of the Palestinian-Christian activist group Kairos.

This reflection was first published in Ma’an News

 

Compiled by Ranjan Solomon, Communications Consultant, Palestine Israel Ecumenical Forum

 

By Bill Van Auken

Venezuela’s President Nicolás Maduro has charged that Washington is fomenting a Ukrainian-Style “slow-motion” coup against his government in a bid to “get their hands on Venezuelan oil.”

The accusation against the Obama administration was made in an interview with the British daily Guardian published Monday. It came as the Maduro governments headed into talks brokered by the Union of South American Nations (UNASUR) with the right-wing opposition aimed at ending the political violence that has swept the country since mid-February.

At least 39 people have been killed in the violence, including eight members of the police and security forces and several supporters of the Maduro government. Hundreds of people have been wounded and over 2,200 arrested, of which roughly 190 remain in custody.

Maduro said the protests, organized by a hardline faction of the opposition coalition known as the MUD (Democratic Unity Roundtable), were in line with the kind of “unconventional war that the US has perfected over the last decades,” from the coups it backed in Latin America to the more recent events in Ukraine.

This faction of the Venezuelan right, led by figures like Leopoldo López, the head of the Voluntad Popular (Popular Will) political party, and former opposition deputy María Corina Machado, called the demonstrations under the slogan la salida (the exit or the way out) with the express aim of forcing Maduro, who won a narrow majority in presidential elections one year ago, from office.

The protests, the Venezuelan president said, had “the aim of paralyzing the main cities of the country, copying badly what happened in Kiev, where the main roads in the cities were blocked off, until they made governability impossible, which led to the overthrow of the elected government of Ukraine.”

Those behind the unrest in Venezuela, which has been confined largely to the wealthy and better off sections of the middle class, were trying “to increase economic problems through an economic war to cut the supplies of basic goods and boost an artificial inflation,” Maduro further charged. “To create social discontent and violence, to portray a country in flames which could lead them to justify international isolation and even foreign intervention.”

There are unquestionably parallels between the US-orchestrated coup in Ukraine and the political unrest in Venezuela. In both cases, those in the leadership have enjoyed close collaboration with and direct funding from Washington. In Venezuela’s case, some $5 million in overt funding (and no doubt considerably more in covert cash) has been funneled annually to opposition groups through agencies such as USAID and the National Endowment for Democracy. These same agencies provided direct assistance to the right-wing parties that overthrew the government in Ukraine.

Also, as in the Ukraine, the US government has denounced the government’s repression—US Secretary of State John Kerry recently accused Maduro of waging a “terror campaign” against his own people–while portraying opposition demonstrators, who have torched public buildings and shot down policemen, as “peaceful protesters.”

Even while denouncing Washington’s role, Maduro has searched for renewed accommodation with US imperialism, recently announcing the unilateral appointment of a new ambassador to the US, as well as a special commission to work on improving relations. Maduro last week also had a column published in the New York Times appealing for “dialogue and diplomacy.” He wrote: “My government has also reached out to President Obama, expressing our desire to again exchange ambassadors. We hope his administration will respond in kind.”

The Venezuelan government has likewise moved ahead rapidly with plans for talks with the MUD opposition aimed at reaching an accommodation with the Venezuelan right. Maduro announced Wednesday that the first round of public “dialogue” would be held the following day, April 10, with mediation to be provided by the foreign ministers of Brazil, Colombia and Ecuador, as well as Cardinal Pietro Parolin, the Vatican’s representative in Venezuela.

In a public statement, Maduro appealed for “civilian and military support” for laying the “foundations for peace in new stage of republican life of our Bolivarian revolution of the 21st century.”

He added, “The road forward has to be one of dialogue to build the country; we won’t convert them to socialism, nor will they convert us into capitalists.”

Maduro said that he would propose two main items for discussion: a National Pacification Plan aimed at combating crime, and an Investment and Economic Development Plan, designed to confront inflation and shortages.

In reality, the Maduro government has been seeking such “dialogue” and a pact with the Venezuelan right for some time. It entered into such talks in the wake of last December’s municipal elections, after the ruling party defeated the opposition—which had proclaimed the vote a referendum on Maduro’s presidency—by a margin of 10 percent.

These talks were aimed at reaching a consensus on a set of economic adjustment measures designed to confront the country’s deepening crisis, characterized by a 57 percent inflation rate last year, shortages of basic commodities and a declining growth rate (with the economy predicted to shrink by 0.5 percent over the course of this year). Among the proposals discussed were devaluation of the currency, ending subsidies on gasoline prices and other price hikes, all measures that spelled a further attack on the living standards of Venezuelan workers.

Right-wing political figures, like Henrique Capriles, governor of Miranda and a two-time loser as a presidential opponent of first Hugo Chávez and then Maduro, voiced support for these IMF-style measures and indicated that they would coordinate security efforts in the face of anticipated popular opposition.

While the violence unleashed by the hardline faction of the MUD upended these efforts, the government has nonetheless sought to revive “dialogue” with elements of the Venezuelan right, as well as with representatives of major capitalist interests in the country.

In the midst of the protests, Maduro announced the convening of “a national conference for peace,” in which the government sat down with figures such as Lorenzo Mendoza, the billionaire owner of the Grupo Polar food conglomerate, the president of the big business federation Fedecámaras, Jorge Roig, and Miguel Pérez Abad, president of the Fedeindustria (small and medium-sized business groups). Also present were representatives of the political right and leading clerics of the Catholic Church.

Capriles, who had earlier rejected talks with the government, indicated Wednesday that he now would participate. This is in part a reflection of the diminishing support for and participation in the anti-government protests.

Having failed in their objective of toppling the government, the MUD opposition will now use the “peace” talks as a vehicle for pushing it further to the right, seeking further guarantees for the fat profits of Venezuela’s financial and commercial sectors and for the wealth and privileges of those in the top income brackets. All such concessions will be paid for by Venezuelan workers, who have seen their real income decline sharply, even as the government has unleashed repression against those who have sought to mobilize independently to press their demands.

In the end, the Venezuelan military will play a major role in determining the course of the Maduro government. Its active and retired officers are in control of 11 government ministries, including Defense, Interior and Economy, as well as the majority of the country’s governorships. The announcement last month that three Air Force generals had been arrested on charges of plotting a coup in conjunction with the right-wing opposition is symptomatic of disquiet within top brass over the protracted violence in Venezuela.

There is no way forward for the masses of workers and oppressed in Venezuela outside of organizing their own political power independently of the Maduro government and its ruling party in the struggle for a workers’ government and a genuine socialist transformation of the country’s economy.

 

10 April, 2014

WSWS.org

 

 

By Paul Craig Roberts

 

2014 is shaping up as a year of reckoning for the United States.

Two pressures are building on the US dollar. One pressure comes from the Federal Reserve’s declining ability to rig the price of gold as Western gold supplies shrivel and market knowledge of the Fed’s illegal price rigging spreads. The evidence of massive amounts of naked shorts being dumped into the paper gold futures market at times of day when trading is thin is unequivocal. It has become obvious that the price of gold is being rigged in the futures market in order to protect the dollar’s value from QE.

The other pressure arises from the Obama regime’s foolish threats of sanctions on Russia. Other countries are no longer willing to tolerate Washington’s abuse of the world dollar standard. Washington uses the dollar-based international payments system to inflict damage on the economies of countries that resist Washington’s political hegemony.

Russia and China have had enough. As I have reported and as Peter Koenig reports here http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article38165.htm Russia and China are disconnecting their international trade from the dollar. Henceforth, Russia will conduct its trade, including the sale of oil and natural gas to Europe, in rubles and in the currencies of its BRICS partners.

This means a big drop in the demand for US dollars and a corresponding drop in the dollar’s exchange value.

As John Williams (shadowstats.com) has made clear, the US economy has not recovered from the downturn in 2008 and has weakened further. The vast majority of the US population is hard pressed from the lack of income growth for years. As the US is now an import-dependent economy, a drop in the dollar’s value will raise US prices and push living standards lower.

All evidence points to US economic failure in 2014, and that is the conclusion of John Williams’ April 9 report.

This year could also see the breakup of NATO and even the EU. Washington’s reckless coup in Ukraine and threat of sanctions against Russia have pushed its NATO puppet states onto dangerous ground. Washington misjudged the reaction in Ukraine to its overthrow of the elected democratic government and imposition of a stooge government. Crimea quickly departed Ukraine and rejoined Russia. Other former Russian territories in Ukraine might soon follow. Protesters in Lugansk, Donetsk, and Kharkov are demanding their own referendums. Protesters have declared the Donetsk People’s Republic and Kharkov People’s Republic. Washington’s stooge government in Kiev has threatened to put the protests down with violence. http://rt.com/news/eastern-ukraine-violence-threats-405/ Washington claims that the protests are organized by Russia, but no one believes Washington, not even its Ukrainian stooges.

Russian news reports have identified US mercenaries among the Kiev force that has been sent to put down the separatists in eastern Ukraine. A member of the right-wing, neo-Nazi Fatherland Party in the Kiev parliament has called for shooting the protesters dead.

Violence against the protesters is likely to bring in the Russian Army and result in the return to Russia of its former territories in Eastern Ukraine that were attached to Ukraine by the Soviet Communist Party.

With Washington out on a limb issuing threats hand over fist, Washington is pushing Europe into two highly undesirable confrontations. Europeans do not want a war with Russia over Washington’s coup in Kiev, and Europeans understand that any real sanctions on Russia, if observed, would do far more damage to Europeans. Within the EU, growing economic inequality among the countries, high unemployment, and stringent economic austerity imposed on poorer members have produced enormous strains. Europeans are in no mood to bear the brunt of a Washington-orchestrated conflict with Russia. While Washington presents Europe with war and sacrifice, Russia and China offer trade and friendship. Washington will do its best to keep European politicians bought-and-paid-for and in line with Washington’s policies, but the downside for Europe of going along with Washington is now much larger.

Across many fronts, Washington is emerging in the world’s eye as duplicitous, untrustworthy, and totally corrupt. A Securities and Exchange Commission prosecuting attorney, James Kidney used the occasion of his retirement to reveal that higher ups had squelched his prosecutions of Goldman Sachs and other “banks too big to fail,” because his SEC bosses were not focused on justice but “on getting high-paying jobs after their government service” by protecting the banks from prosecution for their illegal actions. http://www.counterpunch.org/2014/04/09/65578/

The US Agency for International Development has been caught trying to use social media to overthrow the government of Cuba. http://rt.com/news/cuba-usaid-senate-zunzuneo-241/

This audacious recklessness comes on top of Washington’s overthrow of the Ukrainian government, the NSA spying scandal, Seymour Hersh’s investigative report that the Sarin gas attack in Syria was a false flag event arranged by NATO member Turkey in order to justify a US military attack on Syria, Washington’s forcing down Bolivian President Evo Morales’ presidential plane to be searched, Saddam Hussein’s “weapons of mass destruction,” the misuse of the Libyan no-fly resolution for military attack, and on and on. Essentially, Washington has so badly damaged other countries’ confidence in the judgment and integrity of the US government that the world has lost its belief in US leadership. Washington is reduced to threats and bribes and increasingly presents as a bully.

The self-inflicted hammer blows to Washington’s credibility have taken a toll. The most serious blow of all is the dawning realization everywhere that Washington’s crackpot conspiracy theory of 9/11 is false. Large numbers of independent experts as well as more than one hundred first responders have contradicted every aspect of Washington’s absurd conspiracy theory. No aware person believes that a few Saudi Arabians, who could not fly airplanes, operating without help from any intelligence agency, outwitted the entire National Security State, not only all 16 US intelligence agencies but also all intelligence agencies of NATO and Israel as well.

Nothing worked on 9/11. Airport security failed four times in one hour, more failures in one hour than have occurred during the other 116,232 hours of the 21st century combined. For the first time in history the US Air Force could not get interceptor fighters off the ground and into the sky. For the first time in history Air Traffic Control lost airliners for up to one hour and did not report it. For the first time in history low temperature, short-lived, fires on a few floors caused massive steel structures to weaken and collapse. For the first time in history 3 skyscrapers fell at essentially free fall acceleration without the benefit of controlled demolition removing resistance from below.

Two-thirds of Americans fell for this crackpot story. The left-wing fell for it, because they saw the story as the oppressed striking back at America’s evil empire. The right-wing fell for the story, because they saw it as the demonized Muslims striking out at American goodness. President George W. Bush expressed the right-wing view very well: “They hate us for our freedom and democracy.”

But no one else believed it, least of all the Italians. Italians had been informed some years previously about government false flag events when their President revealed the truth about secret Operation Gladio. Operation Gladio was an operation run by the CIA and Italian intelligence during the second half of the 20th century to set off bombs that would kill European women and children in order to blame communists and, thereby, erode support for European communist parties.

Italians were among the first to make video presentations challenging Washington’s crackpot story of 9/11. The ultimate of this challenge is the 1 hour and 45 minute film, “Zero.” You can watch it here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QU961SGps8g&feature=youtu.be

Zero was produced as a film investigating 9/ll by the Italian company Telemaco. Many prominent people appear in the film along with independent experts. Together, they disprove every assertion made by the US government regarding its explanation of 9/11.

The film was shown to the European parliament.

It is impossible for anyone who watches this film to believe one word of the official explanation of 9/11.

The conclusion is increasingly difficult to avoid that elements of the US government blew up three New York skyscrapers in order to destroy Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Somalia, Syria, Iran, and Hezbollah and to launch the US on the neoconservatives agenda of US world hegemony.

China and Russia protested but accepted Libya’s destruction even though it was to their own detriment. But Iran became a red line. Washington was blocked, so Washington decided to cause major problems for Russia in Ukraine in order to distract Russia from Washington’s agenda elsewhere.

China has been uncertain about the trade-offs between its trade surpluses with the US and Washington’s growing encirclement of China with naval and air bases. China has come to the conclusion that China has the same enemy as Russia has–Washington.

One of two things is likely: Either the US dollar will be abandoned and collapse in value, thus ending Washington’s superpower status and Washington’s threat to world peace, or Washington will lead its puppets into military conflict with Russia and China. The outcome of such a war would be far more devastating than the collapse of the US dollar.

Paul Craig Roberts was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for Economic Policy and associate editor of the Wall Street Journal.

 

 

10 April, 2014

Paulcraigroberts.org

 

 

Fight the US imperialist agenda in Asia and the Pacific!

No to US bases, plunder and war!

Statement of the International League of Peoples’ Struggle Commission 1, on the cause of national liberation, democracy and social liberation

The International League of Peoples’ Struggle Commission One calls on the people of the world to protest the upcoming Asia visit of United States imperialist chieftain Barack Obama in April 2014. The imminent visits to Japan, South Korea, Malaysia and the Philippines are in line with the US strategic military “pivot” and the Trans Pacific Partnership Agreement (TPPA). Obama’s visit brings with it the US imperialist agenda of entrenching US hegemony in Asia in light of China’s rise as a major regional power, in order to continue imposing itself as the preeminent economic and military power in the Asia-Pacific region.

The US is using the strategic Asia “pivot” to advance its economic and geopolitical interests in the region and to encircle and contain potential “peer rivals” such as China. Within the first 10 years of the pivot, the US seeks to move 60% of its warships to Asia. The US is ramping up its military deployment in the Asia-Pacific region, with the construction of new US bases in Japan, South Korea and Guam, and the deployment of an increasing number of rotational troops as well as the prepositioning of war materiel in Australia and the Philippines. The US wants to maintain its status as a Pacific power by further riding roughshod on the sovereignty of countries in the region and imposing neo-liberal economic policies and programs.

Obama is attending the Japan-US summit on April 23 to affirm the two countries’ military alliance that includes Japan’s hosting of a wide range of US bases aimed at encircling China and threatening the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (North Korea). The TPPA is also on the agenda of the summit. Obama will move to Seoul, South Korea where he is expected to also affirm the US’ military alliance with South Korea. Obama will then go to Malaysia to make another pitch for the TPPA. His last stop will be the Philippines where he is expected to sign a de facto basing pact disguised as an “Enhanced Defense Cooperation Agreement”.  This would allow the US Armed Forces to use Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) facilities to station their troops and munitions as well as to set up their own exclusive facilities to be made accessible to Philippine authorities but subject to US-determined “operational safety and security considerations”. Obama’s Manila trip also coincides with revitalized attempts to amend the Philippine constitution in order to remove restrictions to foreign investments and thus pave the way for the Philippines’ joining the TPPA.

The move to “rebalance” towards Asia is both to escalate US military intervention and to secure US economic interests as stated in Sustaining US Global Leadership, Priorities for 21st Century Defense, a Department of Defense strategic guidance document. The US seeks to dominate strategic sea lanes, control the sources and flow of strategic resources such as oil, and force countries in this vast global region to accede to neoliberal economic impositions.

The US “strategic pivot” to Asia involves not only the further deployment of military forces but a broad-spectrum offensive that includes, among other objectives, forging the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement, a mega-free trade agreement favorable to the US-led imperialist alliance, and strengthening its strategic military alliances with its old allies while forging new ones.

The US is aggressively seeking more basing opportunities, access agreements, mutual defense pacts, and bilateral and multilateral military exercises in the region. US treaty allies such as Japan, South Korea, the Philippines and Australia are being made to host an increasing number of US troops and naval as well as air force assets..

As the US reels from its own fiscal crisis, it is making its treaty allies shoulder the rising cost of its self-assigned role as global policeman. The US is passing on to its treaty allies the increasing cost — monetarily and socially — of hosting US military forces including but not limited to paying for new bases construction, upgrades and maintenance; absorbing consequent environmental degradation and destruction; and dealing with a slew of social problems such as prostitution of women and children, drug trafficking, abandoned Amerasian children and various violent crimes such as rape, homicide and murder.

In South Korea, the US is preparing to use the military base being constructed by the Korean government in Jeju Island near China. Similarly, in the Philippines, it is expected to use a naval base now being constructed by the Philippine government in Oyster Bay, Palawan near the disputed Spratly group of islands. In Australia, some 200 to 250 US troops are being “rotated” but are considered based in Darwin Airbase. By 2014, the US expects to have 1,150 troops in Australia; the number is further expected to increase to 2,500 by 2016.

The US also exploits regional territorial disputes involving China, Japan, South Korea and the Philippines, pretending to help countries against China so as to have a pretext in operating US bases in these countries. The US is not interested in taking sides in territorial disputes in the South China Sea. It is only interested in gaining control of the sea lanes. The US would not risk open war with China in the near future as the US has far greater economic interests there compared to countries like the Philippines. This includes some USD 1.28 trillion in US debt to China.

The US continues to push countries to accept the TPPA to mitigate its own imperialist crisis. The trade pact’s details have largely been kept secret from the public, but main provisions are expected to require member-countries to remove any remaining barriers to investments, to strictly enforce intellectual property laws that would raise pharmaceutical costs and stifle digital innovation and freedom of expression, and to allow private corporations to sue states before an international tribunal—thus in effect obliging member-countries to surrender their national sovereignty to the imperialist masterminds of the TPPA.

The people of the world demand an end to US imperialism and its long history of wars and exploitation. We oppose US imperialism’s desperate efforts to entrench itself in the Asia-Pacific and other global regions through war and plunder. The people want to end the brutal regime of US bases, armed intervention, drone strikes, and other brazen violations of national and the people’s sovereignty. The people oppose highly damaging neoliberal economic dictates aimed at passing on the burden of the crisis of imperialism to the peoples of the world.

The people of Asia demand and aspire for peace, genuine development and social justice as opposed to imperialist wars and plunder.

No to US bases, and imperialist wars and intervention! US troops out of Asia and the Pacific!

Resist neo-liberal economic dictates! Fight the TPPA!

Peoples of the world unite against imperialism and all reaction! Long live international solidarity!

By John Scales Avery

 

Legacies from the First and Second World Wars and the Cold War

In both World War I and World War II, participation by the United States brought victory to the Allies. In the years that followed 1945, the Marshall Plan helped Europe to recover. During the Cold War period that followed, many people in Europe saw NATO, and a close alliance with the United States, as means for preventing a takeover by the Soviet Union. However, whatever debt of gratitude Europe may owe to the United States for its past help, we must now ask whether the time has not now arrived for Europe to be independent. Just as the US once declared it is independence from England, Europe must now declare its independence from the United States.

The loss of democracy in the United States

Recent revelations by Edward Snowdon, Wikileaks and other whistle-blowers have made it clear that the United States has suffered a decay of its political institutions. The US can hardly be called a democracy today, since it seems to be ruled by an extremely wealthy oligarchy rather than by its people. In fact, the people of the US do not really know what their government is doing because the activities of the CIA, the NSA, Secret Service, Homeland Security the FBI, and many other agencies are masked in secrecy. A country where the people do not know what their government is doing, and where the people have no control over their government’s actions, cannot be said to be a democracy.

The history of this huge secret side of the US government goes back to the Cold War period, during which both sides engaged in both covert and military interference with the internal affairs of smaller countries. The Soviet Union and China also intervened in the internal affairs of many countries, for example in Korea in 1950-53, Hungary in 1956, Czechoslovakia in 1968, and so on; very long list.

Meanwhile the US interfered, militarily or covertly, in the internal affairs of a large number of nations: China, 1945-49; Italy, 1947-48; Greece, 1947-49; Philippines, 1946-53; South Korea, 1945-53; Albania, 1949-53; Germany, 1950s; Iran, 1953; Guatemala, 1953-1990s; Middle East, 1956-58; Indonesia, 1957-58; British Guiana/Guyana, 1953-64; Vietnam, 1950-73; Cambodia, 1955-73; The Congo/Zaire, 1960-65; Brazil, 1961-64; Dominican Republic, 1963-66; Cuba, 1959-present; Indonesia, 1965; Chile, 1964-73; Greece, 1964-74; East Timor, 1975-present; Nicaragua, 1978-89; Grenada, 1979-84; Libya, 1981-89; Panama, 1989; Iraq, 1990-present; Afghanistan 1979-92; El Salvador, 1980-92; Haiti, 1987-94; Yugoslavia, 1999; and Afghanistan, 2001-present, Syria, 2013-present. Egypt, 2013-present,Venezuela, 2013-present. None of these interventions can be justified, since people have a right to live under governments of their own choosing, regardless of whether those governments are optimal.

With the fall of the Soviet Union, intoxication with the idea of the United States as the sole superpower expressed itself in the form of contempt for international law and the United Nations, and especially in the declarations of the “Project for a New American Century”, which many people have compared to Hitler’s “Mein Kampf”. Here are some links:

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article3249.htm

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article29129.htm

NATO

Former UN Assistant Secretary General Hans Christof von Sponeck used the following words to express his opinion that NATO now violates the UN Charter and international law: “In the 1949 North Atlantic Treaty, the Charter of the United Nations was declared to be NATO’s legally binding framework. However, the United-Nations monopoly of the use of force, especially as specified in Article 51 of the Charter, was no longer accepted according to the 1999 NATO doctrine. NATO’s territorial scope, until then limited to the Euro-Atlantic region, was expanded by its members to include the whole world”

One might say that in recent years, participation in NATO has made European countries accomplices in US efforts to achieve global hegemony by means of military force, in violation of the UN Charter and international law.

Article 2 of the UN Charter requires that “All members shall refrain in their international relations from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state.” This requirement is somewhat qualified by Article 51, which says that “Nothing in the present Charter shall impair the inherent right of individual or collective self-defense if an armed attack occurs against a Memeber of the United Nations, until the Security Council has taken measures necessary to maintain international peace and security.”

Thus, in general, war is illegal under the UN Charter. Self-defense against an armed attack is permitted, but only for a limited time, until the Security Council has had time to act. The United Nations Charter does not permit the threat or use of force in preemptive wars, or to produce regime changes, or for so-called “democratization”, or for the domination of regions that are rich in oil. NATO must not be a party to the threat or use of force for such illegal purposes. At present the United States government is trying to force the European members of NATO to participate in aggressive operations in connection with the coup which it carried out in Ukraine. Europe must refuse. See the following link:

NATO’s Aggression against Russia and the Danger of War in Europe

US tactical nuclear weapons in Europe

At present, NATO’s nuclear weapons policies violate both the spirit and the text of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty in several respects: Today there are an estimated 200 US nuclear weapons still in Europe The air forces of the nations in which they are based are regularly trained to deliver the US weapons. This “nuclear sharing”, as it is called, violates Articles I and II of the NPT, which forbid the transfer of nuclear weapons to non-nuclear-weapon states. It has been argued that the NPT would no longer be in force if a crisis arose, but there is nothing in the NPT saying that the treaty would not hold under all circumstances.

Article VI of the NPT requires states possessing nuclear weapon to get rid of them within a reasonable period of time. This article is violated by fact that NATO policy is guided by a Strategic Concept, which visualizes the continued use of nuclear weapons in the foreseeable future.’

The principle of no-first-use of nuclear weapons has been an extremely important safeguard over the years, but it is violated by present NATO policy, which permits the first-use of nuclear weapons in a wide variety of circumstances.

NSA spying on European leaders

The massive illegal collection of private data by the National Security Agency has produced worldwide anger. The targeting of European leaders has included the famous bugging of Angela Merkel’s cellphone.

In the words of former Assistant Secretary of the Treasury Paul Craig Roberts, “Obama’s US Trade Representative, who has been negotiating secret trade agreements in Europe and Asia that give US corporations immunity to the laws of all countries that sign the agreements, has threatened WTO penalties if Europe’s communications network excludes the US companies that serve as spies for NSA. Washington in all its arrogance has told its most necessary allies that if you don’t let us spy on you, we will use WTO to penalize you.”

What will the future bring?

For many years, the US dollar has acted as a global currency. However, we can already see moves away from the “petrodollar”. When China, India, Russia, Iran and Brazil begin non-dollar trading, the value of the dollar will fall drastically, and US political and economic power will fall with it. This is just one more reason why European independence is desirable. But the most important reasons are ethical ones: Europe must not be the close ally (or puppet?) of the world’s greatest purveyor of violence and war.

John Avery received a B.Sc. in theoretical physics from MIT and an M.Sc. from the University of Chicago.

 

09 April, 2014

Countercurrents.org

 

 

By Franklin Lamb

 

National Museum, Damascus: Over the past three years not many victories in Syria have been witnessed by this observer. Indeed some developments have even brought to mind Plutarch’s description of the Greek King Pyrrhus’ defeat of the Roman legions some while back. But an achievement by the Syrian government and its people on 4/3/14 in an auction house in London is neither Pyrrhic, nor of the ‘Another such victory and I am undone’ variety.

The case involves an ancient black basalt stele (a stone or wooden slab, generally taller than it is wide, erected as a monument, very often for funerary or commemorative purposes). The artifact is of the Assyrian king Adad-Nerari III, who ruled Syria 2,800 years ago. With a weight of 830 kg, it measures 137.5 cm high, by 75 cm wide by 27 cm in depth. Many Syrian and international antiquities specialists believe it was stolen from Syria in 2000 after standing for nearly three thousand years in the temple of the god Sulmanu, in the ancient city of Dur Katlimmu, now known as Tell Sheikh Hamad. The tell is situated near the historic Khabour River between Hasaka and Deir al-Zour in eastern Syria, not far from Palmyra which this observer has visited recently.

Recently the object appeared in the possession of the British auction house, Bonhoms, a development that caused angst among archeologists in Syria and internationally. Exactly what happened next is a bit unclear, but the legal/political case was encapsulated in an urgent letter addressed to Dr. Maamooun Abkulkarem, the indefatigable Director-General of Antiquities and Museums (DGAM) in Syria’s Ministry of Culture, from a correspondent in Berlin. The letter arrived at DGAM on March 23, 2014.

“Dear Dr. Maamoun,

In the attachment I send you documentation on the stele of Tell Sheikh Hamad which is being offered for sale at Bonhams Auction house in London for April 3, 2014. According to my information UNESCO has already informed your government about this case. The only way to prohibit it from being sold is that your government responds to UNESCO, addresses Interpol, and request an investigation by the London police.

May I urge you Sir to inform your government quickly and act respectively before April 3!

Please note also this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FVucfdFWTdc

Yours sincerely,”

(Privacy of signer respected)

Dr. Maamoun and his dedicated Syrian nationalist team have been working nonstop (and some without pay for more than two years) to preserve, protect and plan for reconstruction of Syria’s, and by extension the world’s, cultural heritage. They and others are committed to stopping archeological theft, a phenomenon which has become more rampant since the current crisis erupted. The thefts have not been restricted solely to the rebel-held north or other areas not always under government control; they have also been a problem near Syria’s borders with Turkey, Jordan, and Lebanon, and to a lesser extent Iraq, and in some cases, stolen treasures have also been smuggled out of Syria by aircraft.

An international campaign is being launched to save our Global Culture Heritage in the custody of the people of the Syrian Arab Republic

Despite these crimes, the past few weeks have seen commendable cooperation between Lebanon and Syria leading to hundreds of Syrian antiquities being returned to Syria. On Syrian and Lebanese roads these days, soldiers at the frequent checkpoints not only look for explosives, wanted persons, and weapons, but they have orders at Syrian-Lebanon borders to search for more than 4000 stolen Syrian antiquities. A few hundred objects were returned to Syria this past year, and some are back on display in the garden of the National Museum in Damascus, where this observer photographed them.

Unfortunately there has been little, if any, help in stopping the flow of stolen Syrian antiquities into Jordan or Turkey, whose governments reportedly continue to turn a blind eye, ignoring their international obligations for reasons of politics and profit. In the case of Jordan, it has been widely alleged that King Abdullah’s government is condoning shipments of stolen Syrian artifacts, via Israeli drug and antiquities mafia operations. These international criminal enterprises then forward the global cultural treasures from Israeli ports and Tel Aviv airport to lucrative international markets—museums, auction houses, or private collectors in New York, London, Switzerland, Germany, Spain and elsewhere. With respect to Turkey, much of the 500 mile border is open to excavation teams sent in to strip Syria of her archeological treasures, again with widespread charges of Turkish government involvement.

Two DGAM staff members and scholars, Khaled and Iyam, explaining to a Damascus National Museum visitor details of a dozen recently returned (3/2014) Syrian antiquities with the sisterly cooperation of the government of Lebanon

The lower part of the stele of Adad-Nerari III is now at Bonhams auction house, where it was scheduled to be sold on 4/3/14, though initially the artifact came to public notice in 2000 at Christie’s auction house. The two houses are often competitors, but increasingly have become collaborators, as they witness a flood of stolen Syrian antiquities available to them and their clients. They and other auction houses, museums and dealers sometimes employ means to deceive prospective private purchasers, other museums, governments, and police agencies. One tactic is to obfuscate provenance and source of the particular Syrian antiquity.

The evidence for the date of removal from Syria of the stele of Adad-Nerari III is not flimsy. The report of 19th century archaeologist Hormuzd Rassam admits that he was not able to find it during his investigations in 1879. He reported that the upper part, which he sent to the British Museum, had been removed by local villagers from the area of a “venerated grave on top of the mound,” so that its pagan presence would not defile the grave. Rassam, quite correctly as it turned out, believed that the lower part of the King’s statue was still buried on top of the mound near the grave but the gentleman died before he could return to excavate it.

Both Bonhams and Christies sale notices state that the lower part of the stele was in the possession of the seller’s father by the 1960’s. This was a patently false representation by both houses.

For the 2014 Bonham’s sale, provenance is listed as “Private collection, Geneva, Switzerland, given as a gift from father to son in the 1960s.” This is also false, and neither auction house provided any documentation for the ownership history. In point of fact, the stele is not mentioned in any publication prior to its listing by Christies in 2000. The complete publication, by A. K. Grayson, of the royal inscriptions of King Adad-Nerari III appeared in 1996, and all Grayson does is list the upper (British Museum) part of the stele. He makes no mention of the lower part. Publications in this series include every known inscription of each Syrian king.

This observer submits that if any scholar had seen the stele prior to 1996, it would have been listed in the 1996 publication. Furthermore, it is extremely unlikely that an inscription of this importance would not have become known to scholars, since it is well known even among the general public that owners of inscribed monuments, especially ones of this value and size, quite naturally seek scholarly opinions about their property.

Moreover, probative and material evidence in found in a report from the current director of excavations at Tell Sheikh Hamad, Prof. Dr. Hartmut Kühne, of the Freie Universität, Berlin. Dr. Huhne has directed survey and excavations at the site of Tell Sheikh Hamad in cooperation with DGAM since 1978. According to the professor, his is the only excavation at this site that has been authorized by the Syrian government. On 25 September 1999, Prof. Kühne sent a report to DGAM stating that some unknown person excavated illegally on top of the mound, near the venerated grave, during the night of 14 September 1999. Prof. Kühne provided photos of the looter excavations and he opined that the looter pit is just large enough to have contained the lower part of the stele. Prof. Kühne notes that the German mission was not excavating on the mound in 1999, and in fact had not worked there since 1988.

Last but not least, the location of the 1999 looter pits on top of the mound is precisely where Rassam, back in the 19th century, wrote that the lower part was buried. The first announcement of the existence of the stele, as noted above, was at the 2000 Christie’s sale—less than a year after the reported looting incident at Tell Sheikh Hamad!

This observer submits that there is adequate Syrian law and international law and British law on the books, if applied, to makes things a bit tough legally for the auction houses of Bonhom and Christie and many others. Their lawyers apparently agree. It’s as though the Assyrian King might yet exact some sort of revenge on them from his grave. Or wherever the gentleman might be these days given local lore from the Tell Sheikh Hamad area.

Public awareness was raised with respect to this archeological criminal case by the people and government of Syria and others, and an international campaign mobilizing public opinion has ensued. The Directorate General of Antiquities and Museums (DGAM) of the Syrian Ministry of Culture urged their colleagues at the Syrian Ministry of Interior, the Syrian Department of Criminal Security, and Interpol to “work to stop the sale of the piece and return it to Syria.” As reported by Nadine Kaanan, the Saade Institute created a video entitled “Stop the theft and sale of Syrian antiquities,” in which it urges that “all necessary legal measures be taken to return this important monument to Syria when security conditions permit.” The institute said it had decided to raise its voice to “preserve our countries’ artifacts and the story of human history, and also out of respect for the laws of the United Nations and for the sake of Lebanon, Syria and Iraq.”

Long story made short, King Adad-Nerari III’s rare stele, prominently displayed in Bonhams auction house-with more than a few museums and investors interested in buying it, suddenly was stamped in Bonhoms to be sold catalog: “Withdrawn.” Some in attendance were not happy, and Bonhams administrative office is ‘holding consultations’ this week in light of expected public and trade journal reactions. Bonhams had planned to net around 1.3 million USD had the sale taken place.

Protecting the memory of King Adad-Nerari and preserving his place in the world’s cultural heritage may appear a modest victory given the nearly unimaginable suffering imposed daily on the people of the proud Syrian Arab Republic. But what happened to stop one auction house—from selling one stolen Syrian antiquity—was made possible by the people of Syria and others of good will who greatly value our Global Cultural Heritage. Hopefully, as international public awareness continues to increase about this aspect of the conflict in Syria, this case will enter the law books; maybe also it will result in legal statues and, consequently, a major advance toward preserving our Global Cultural Heritage.

May the people of Syria achieve many more such victories while ending this painful chapter in this ten millennia old Cradle of Civilization.

09 April, 2014

Countercurrents.orghas been doing research in Syria visiting, where and when possible, various locals across Syria and assessing damage to the seven UNESCO Global Heritage sites.

 

09 April, 2014

Countercurrents.org