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Joseph Camilleri

Published: September 3, 2013 – 9:55AM

The case for intervention in Syria is strangely reminiscent of the Iraq War. The planned US strike looks as if it rests on the same dubious logic. It could well have the same tragic consequences.

The British government has discovered the hard way that many of its people understand the troubling parallel. Not surprisingly, last Thursday the House of Commons firmly resisted government attempts to railroad it into giving the green light for a military strike.

Uncannily, Prime Minister David Cameron was following in the footsteps of Tony Blair. Like Blair he pressed the Obama administration to delay a strike until United Nations inspectors completed their investigation and until an attempt was made to get the necessary support from the UN Security Council.

Cameron’s failure to persuade enough of his parliamentary colleagues of the wisdom of this approach has given the international community breathing space and the US time to think again.

In deciding what to do about Syria the White House and the US Congress would do well to recall the prelude to the US invasion of Iraq in March 2013. The issue then as now was weapons of mass destruction.

A UN inspection team, headed by Hans Blix, was in Iraq investigating the situation but had yet to complete its investigation.

Having sought but failed to get authorisation from the UN Security Council, the Bush administration decided there was no point waiting any longer. The time had come to strike.

To gain international support for its decision the US produced evidence suggesting Saddam Hussein’s regime was developing – and possibly intending to use – weapons of mass destruction. Most experts and governments – and world public opinion – remained unconvinced.

And so it was that the US set out on a military adventure, based at best on shaky legal grounds.

Getting rid of Saddam proved the easy part. No WMD were found. But what was meant to be a limited intervention turned out to be a protracted one that left the US demoralised and Iraq in ruins.

Prolonged sectarian violence, which continues to this day, has generated a destabilising dynamic that now engulfs much of the Middle East.

Ten years later the Obama administration, with the support of a few European governments, is on the verge of embarking on a similarly ill-conceived expedition.

Last time it was Britain that bolstered an otherwise feeble coalition. This time the hope is that France will come to the party. Several Arab countries, including Egypt and Jordan, have already indicated they oppose military intervention.

US Secretary of State John Kerry claims to have conclusive evidence that the Assad government has launched a chemical attack on its people, and argues that such actions must not go unpunished. Obama has spoken of a limited strike not aimed at regime change.

But what is the reality? The indications are that a chemical weapons attack did take place in the Damascus suburb of Ghouta. But we know little about the chemicals used – though sarin gas has been mentioned frequently – the means of delivery or their provenance.

The US intelligence report released on Friday speaks of more than 1400 casualties – but this and other details given are asserted rather than demonstrated.

As for the sources of the evidence we are simply referred to general categories, much of it available on the public record, and generally regarded as less than conclusive.

As for motive, US policymakers remain remarkably silent. Why should Assad decide to use chemical weapons at a time when his forces are making considerable gains against the rebels? And why should he do it at the moment that UN inspectors are inside the country and within 10 minutes’ reach of the site of destruction?

And the possibility of one or other of the rebel groups acquiring such weapons has been all too easily dismissed. It is only three months since Carla del Ponte, a member of the UN Independent Commission of Inquiry on Syria, announced she had “strong concrete suspicions” that rebels had used the nerve gas sarin.

The sarin attack on the Tokyo subway in 1995, which killed 13 people, severely injured 50 and caused temporary vision problems for nearly a thousand others, was the work of a small unaided cult group. One of the well organised and internationally supported rebel groups would, one assumes, be capable of inflicting much greater havoc.

With evidence that is still less than conclusive, Obama appears on the verge of repeating the mistakes of his predecessor – assuming he is able to persuade Congress to vote for the proposed strike.

If he does go ahead, he will, like Bush, be doing so on dubious legal grounds. Even if it is established that the Syrian army did carry out the chemical attack, the US is not under direct military threat – it is not therefore acting in self-defence. And, in the absence of UN Security Council authorisation, which will not be forthcoming, the “responsibility to protect” principle does not allow third parties to take matters into their own hands.

In any case, why not wait, at least for the UN inspection team to complete its report? Why discredit the credibility of its investigation before it has had a chance to submit its report.

The Syrian government claims it has given the UN inspectors clear evidence that it was not responsible for the attack. Why not wait to see what the inspectors make of such claims?

If it goes ahead, a US military strike on Syria will be the ninth Western military intervention in a Muslim country in 15 years. The gains thus far for peace and security have been negligible and the costs for the authors and victims of intervention nothing short of horrendous.

A US military foray into Syria will reopen Pandora’s box. What will the US do if, as seems likely, the planned “limited strike” fails to achieve its objective of intimidating Assad? In all probability, the US and its allies will be tempted to take additional military action, with incalculable consequences for Syria, and for regional and global security.

As UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and Pope Francis have stated in clear language, only a politically negotiated solution offers any prospect of peace in Syria and the reconstruction of that war-torn country.

An Australian government wishing to exercise the limited leverage afforded by membership of the Security Council would do well to press for this option in the difficult days and weeks ahead

Joseph Camilleri is Emeritus Professor, La Trobe University and founding director of the Centre for Dialogue.

This story was found at: http://www.theage.com.au/comment/us-risks-making-syria-another-iraq-20130902-2t0ya.html

By Prem Shankar Jha,

September 2, 2013, DHNs:

The US and France are about to unleash an attack upon Syria  that will open the way for 10,000 to 20,000 jihadis who form a ‘floating army of Islam’ to invade Lebanon, Jordan and Egypt.

None of this seems to bother the Obama administration, because its purpose in destroying Syria, if we are to believe him and his Secretary of State, is to uphold a moral principle no matter what its political cost. This is not realpolitik, simply necessary punishment. But shouldn’t punishment follow conviction, and shouldn’t conviction be based on proof beyond reasonable doubt ? Even as the US readies for war two other far more plausible explanations have emerged for the alleged  gas attack. The first is what the Syrian government and many others are  asserting — that the rebels launched it to force Nato into the attack on Assad. The second is that it was an accident — a horrible consequence of a Machiavellian plan that went wrong.

The 1,300 word US intelligence assessment that the White House on August 30 added little to what he had said on the August 26. Its main contribution was to flesh out Assad’s possible motive for such a heinous act. “The regime has failed to clear dozens of Damascus neighbourhoods of opposition elements, including neighbourhoods targeted on August 21, despite employing nearly all of its conventional weapons systems. We assess that the regime’s frustration ….may have contributed to its decision. ”

On the surface this is not implausible. Dale Gavlak, an Amman-based correspondent of the Associated Press who speaks fluent Arabic, and is one of the very few western journalists to have visited the site of the atrocity, reported that the rebels told him they had built tunnels in which they hid from bombardments, stored their weapons and moved from one building to another, but would sleep in mosques and peoples’ house at night. So trying to penetrate the tunnels with gas would be a sound military, even though politically suicidal, strategy.

The assessment also describes the attack in greater detail. It “began at 2:30 am local time and within the next four hours there were thousands of social media reports from at least 12 different locations in the Damascus area. Among “multiple streams of intelligence” it specifically noted “the detection of rocket launches from regime controlled territory early in the morning, approximately 90 minutes before the first report of a chemical attack appeared in social media”.

Anomalies revealed

The report does not explain what it means by ‘detection’, or how many launches but the rebels uploaded at least one video which, they claimed, captured the launch of the chemical rocket. Repeated viewings of this video, however,  reveal several anomalies:

 

This video was shot at around 1.00 am. That meant that there was someone on a balcony looking towards the launch site at this unearthly hour with his phone, or a camera in hand. Could this be mere coincidence ?

 

The video starts four seconds before the rocket launch. That suggests the man knew when it would happen and had started shooting at the appointed time.

The video reveals that the man also knew the exact spot from which the rocket would rise, for when it rose, it was only slightly to the left of centre of his screen. By reflex, he corrected the camera angle to get it into the centre of the frame.

The time the sound took to follow the flash was between six and seven seconds. That placed the cameraman almost exactly a mile away from the launch site — an optimum safe distance for filming.

Contrary to the White House claim,  the rocket launch does not seem to have been a part of a salvo. The video is 34 seconds long and there is absolute silence the rest of the time.

Foreknowledge, if confirmed, will be conclusive proof that it was the rebels who launched this particular rocket. But there is another possible explanation. In the same article (August 29) Dale Gavlak and a young Jordanian colleague Yahya Ababneh, reported “from numerous interviews with doctors, Ghouta residents, rebel fighters and their families, a different picture emerges. Many believe that certain rebels received chemical weapons via the Saudi intelligence chief, Prince Bandar bin Sultan, and were responsible for carrying out the gas attack.”

“My son came to me two weeks ago asking what I thought the weapons were that he had been asked to carry,” said Abu Abdel-Moneim, the father of a rebel fighting to unseat Assad, who lives in Ghouta. Abdel-Moneim said his son and 12 other rebels were killed inside of a tunnel used to store weapons provided by a Saudi militant, known as Abu Ayesha, who was leading a fighting battalion”.

The conspiracy between the Saudi secret service, headed by Prince Bandar bin Sultan, and the CIA has already been thoroughly exposed by the Wall Street Journal (August 25). Gavlak’s story therefore opens up a third possibility:  that the intense Syrian bombardment of the area (which began on August 19) penetrated a tunnel that was being used by Saudi backed jihadis to store chemical weapons supplied by Prince Bandar’s men. This would explain the panic heard in a high Syrian army official’s voice in the allegedly intercepted phone call that is the most concrete evidence that US sources have (unofficially) revealed.

Saudi supply of chemical weapons is not as far-fetched as it sounds, because on December 29 the London Daily Mail had published the hacked emails of a British ‘security contracting’ firm, Britam defence, which revealed that Qatar had offered it an ‘enormous’ sum of money to obtain a chemical warhead from Russian stock, ‘similar to what Syria has’, to supply to the rebels.

These disclosures show that there are at least two other explanations for the gas attack fatalities that are far more plausible than the one the Americans have chosen to believe.

http://www.deccanherald.com/content/354924/a-saudi-conspiracy.html

 

 

By Prof. Mazin Qumsiyeh

31 August, 2013

@ popular- resistance.blogspot.com

It is not difficult to understand the power-game being played in Syria and no decent human being should stand on the sideline in a conflict that will shape the future of our humanity.  The global intifada (uprising) is spreading and it is rejecting war and hegemony and now even President Obama is reeling under pressure.  It is an earthquake that is shaking the very foundation of post-WWII world order (what used to be referred to mistakenly as “the American century” when it was really the Zionist century).  The British, French and American public long exposed to Zionist propaganda have joined the revolution.  Politicians started to panic especially after the British parliament voted against war. This was the first major and stunning defeat to the US/Israel hegemony of British politics since WWII.

US President Obama was stuck after the British vote and the clear solid position of Lebanon, Syria, Iran, Russia, China and even overwhelming public opposion in the US despite the attempt to whip frenzy by Israel media stooges like Wolf Blitzer of CNN.   Obama was also stunned by what his own intelligence services told him about potential repercussions of a military strike on Syria especially without UN mandate and without US public support.  These repercussions included presence of strong defensive and offensive capabilities in Syria. There was intelligence leaks about downed “test” incursion. But repercussions discussed include strengthening rather than weakening Iran (after all, this is what happened after Iraq!).  President Obama spent countless hours talking with his Zionist and non-Zionist advisers and key government officials (there are no anti-Zionists in his group). Faced with no good option in trying to maintain Israel/US hegemony, Obama decided not to decide and shift the debate to Congress to buy time. Now it is up to the American people who overwhelmingly reject war on Syria to stand up and pressure the Israeli-occupied US congress to do what is good for US citizens not what they perceive to be good for Zionism.

The Russian president spoke of a number of key points that he called “common sense” while Obama just lied.  Russia and the US had agreed to the parameters of a political conference in which all sides were invited. Russia talked the Syrian government into attending this Geneva conference (even though most Syrians opposed a dialogue with Western backed thugs and Western backed mercenaries). Under Israeli pressure, the US administration started to rethink their agreement and their stooges announced they cannot join discussion with their opponents unless their opponents are defeated and surrender!  Syrian government forces then gained momentum against the Western and Israeli backed extremist rebels and cornered them in very few pockets.  Syria was opening up and international inspectors were coming.   Putin rightly points out that under such conditions: who has the benefit of using chemical weapons: the Syrian government or the rebels trying to provide excuses for Western defeat of a government they could not defeat themselves? It is common sense. Syria, Russia and China and all humanity ask logically: if the US has proof that the Syrian government used chemical weapons to attack its own people (including its own soldiers), then give us the proof. They rightly ask why the mandate of UN inspectors was  limited to only find out if they were used but not to explore who might have used them. After the lies Israeli and US intelligence concocted to go the war on Iraq, they now seem rather reluctant to manufacture evidence again.

Obama lied about many other things and perhaps the only part of his speech that touched on reality is when he admitted that he is part of a system and that he cannot make a decision by himself.  The military-industrial complex is now too entrenched in US politics for any president to challenge it.  In fact, no one would be allowed to become president if they were to have even a slight chance of potential to challenge it.  So Obama says: I am with the machine that was in place before I came to power and will always be with the machine.  By this he showed that his campaign retorhic about “change” was just what American call “bull-shit”.  That is why Obama is stuck.  When President Obama paid tribute to Martin Luther King Jr just a week ago, he was being hypocritical. King had famously said that the US is the greatest purveyor of violence on earth.  The US public can and must push Obama and Congress to change just like they pushed previous politicians to get civil rights, women’s right to vote, ending the war on Vietnam, ending US support for Apartheid South Africa and more.

The fact remains that the most destabilizing country in the Middle East is the one that receives unconditional billions of US taxpayer money. It is the state that caused millions of refugees and that introduced weapons of mass destruction including nuclear weapons to the Middle East.  It is the state that used white phosphorous and depleted uranium on civilian populations.  It is the state that started five wars and that lobbied successfully to ge the US to go to wars in places like Iraq and Afghanistan that caused millions of lives lost and trillions of US taxpayer money spent. It is the state that fits all the criteria discussed in the International convention against the crimes of apartheid and racial discrimination.

The fact is that this latest Israel-inspired conflict is not about form of government in Syria. The US/Israel backed dictators in a dozen Arab countries are far, far worse than Bashar Assad of Syria. The fact remains that this is a clear attempt by the US through ist secretary of state under influence from the Zionist lobby and with the support of puppet rulers in the Arab world to liquidate the Palestinian cause.  The parameters of this are clear: liquidating Palestinian rights like the right of refugees to return to their homes and lands, limited Palestinian autonomy that Palestinian puppets can call a state in parts of the occupied West Bank in confederation with Jordan.  This will ensure the “Jewishness” of the apartheid state of Israel. Gaza would be relegated to Egyptian administration or continuing to manage it as one Israeli official said “by putting Gazan’s on a diet”.  To get this program through, resistance must be made to look futile.  Israel set-up a high-level ministerial committee to fight boycotts, divestment, and sanctions.  Israel told the US that the Hizballah-Syria-Iran axis must be destroyed. Potentially developing Arab countries will be broken up into sectarian and other conflicts (divide and conquer) beginning with Iraq.  They thought Syria is the next weak link that can be removed in the same way that Libya was disposed of. They underestimated the level of rejection to their demonic schemes of divide and conquer.

What happened actually is the opposite. A strengthening block evolved starting in Iran, Iraq and Palestine and spreading globally.  The counter-revolutionary efforts are failing and in some cases getting the opposite effect of unifying and strengthening resistance.  The attempts by some to ignite sectarian strife in Lebanon failed miserably.  The positions of China, Russia, Venezuela and other governments came to reflect the international consensus of resisting US/Israeli hegemony.  No human being and no government can claim neutrality.  Neutrality is rather meaningless when there is such an evel attempt to dominate the world for the benefit of just a few people at the expense of millions. The vast majority of people in all countries (Palestine, USA, Britain, France, Russia, China etc) stand on one side of this against the Zionist attempts to drag the world into yet one more destructive conflict.  Clearly a win here is a win for Palestine and a win for all people of the world.

Before we talk about democracy in Syria, we must respect the fact that the vast majority of people on earth insist that Western governments respect their own citizens’ will instead of trying to smother them or shape them with propaganda or bypass them to serve the Israel lobby.  Before we talk about democracy in Syria, we must end apartheid in Israel, and end the repressive regimes supported by the US especially those in the oil producing Arab countries.  Perhaps this is the reason gulf states are pouring billions to fund murderers in the so called “Syrian rebels” (most of them turn out to be mercenaries).  It is the same reason that Netanyahu and Obama are both very nervous.  When the US/Israel program of liquidating the Palestinian cause and destroying Syria fails (and it will), all bets are off.  People stand up to tyranny and stand up for human rights and that is why governments (US, Israeli, Saudi Arabia, Turkey etc) are starting to panic.  They do have good reason to worry because people power is coming and each of us must be part of it.  We ask you to join the global intifada which will liberate oppressors and oppressed alike and create a better world for all.

By Simon Barrow

30^th August, 2013

@http://www.ekklesia.co.uk

Having followed some six hours of the House of Commons debate on Syria yesterday (29 August), while channeling news, commentary and media requests for Ekklesia, it was evident to me that concern, questioning and scepticism were the dominant feelings being expressed.

Yes, there were tub-thumping speeches for military intervention by the likes of Sir Malcolm Rifkind and some of the less thoughtful back benchers on the government side. There were some strong declarations in the opposite direction from the left. But by far the most powerful interventions were by people like James Arbuthnot and Julian Lewis, Conservatives who could hardly be accused of being anti-war liberals, raising a host of questions about the propriety, legality, regional consequences and strategic sense of directly attacking the Assad regime.

David Cameron gave a confident performance, but it was style over substance: his case for moving down the military street – one that had been proceeding at breakneck speed only a few days ago – proved weak, uncertain and contradictory. He appealed to humanitarian motives (without explaining how Tomahawk cruise missiles are going to stop the cycle of atrocities), he talked about limited objectives (without spelling out what they might be), he invoked deterrence (it sounded more like wishful thinking), he spoke of “degrading chemical weapons capability” (without mentioning that a frontal attack on such facilities is out of the question) … and he endlessly reiterated how the sceptics were making “valid points”, how there were “no guarantees” about outcomes, and how “we cannot be 100 per cent certain” about who commissioned what happened around Damascus last week.

Opposition leader Ed Milliband’s message was for a pause, for proof and for perspective. But his speech was lacklustre, and his amendment offered no real alternative (unlike the rejected one by articulate Green MP Caroline Lucas). The Liberal Democrats vacillated to- and fro-, as usual. The SNP, Plaid and – tellingly – the Democratic Unionists made strong calls for restraint.

Mr Lewis set the bar necessarily high. First, was Assad responsible for the recent chemical attack “beyond reasonable doubt”? (It is hardly appropriate to go to war because it is “highly likely” that someone has done something), and he required that a military response should be based on specifiable, limited and realisable positive outcomes (the glaring hole in the government’s case).

The BBC also had a lacklustre day. It passed over some of the most telling interventions in its coverage, with political correspondent Nick Robinson falling in with the mistaken consensus that, despite moans, the government would narrowly win. The BBC website at first headlined Mr Cameron’s speech, ‘UK makes the case for Syria action’. This was entirely wrong. Polls that very morning had shown that the country was not just divided but mostly opposed, and the Prime Minister is not, in fact, the UK.

Meanwhile, Allegra Stratton, political editor of BBC Two’s Newsnight programme, seemed to think that the most powerful speeches had been pro- ones on the Tory side. One wondered which debate she had watched. A heart-rending account of a (non-chemical) attack on a Syrian school was shown immediately after reporting of the Commons debate, with Jeremy Paxman asking whether the House vote might have gone differently if MPs had seen it. In saying this, he and the Corporation’s frontline functionaries completely missed the central point: thoughtful parliamentarians were not unpersuaded of the brutality of the Assad regime. They were unpersuaded that military escalation would stop these appalling atrocities (or those of the jihadist wing of the armed opposition, for that matter), and they were concerned that missile strikes might actually make things worse for ordinary people in Syria and in the MENA region. That is why they voted as they did.

This was not an endorsement of Labour’s feeble amendment. That was lost too. The egg on Mr Miliband’s face is only less noticeable because there is so much more on Mr Cameron’s (and Mr Clegg’s, after a weak showing on Radio 4 Today in the morning, and an unpersuasive summing up). No, this vote was a severe question mark against the received tendency for Britain to act in the slipstream of the US (Mr Kerry’s response has made it clear, as had State Department spokeswomen Marie Harf (http://www.ekklesia.co.uk/node/18914), that there is little concern for “other countries’ foreign policy”), and against the presumption that ‘action’ and ‘military action’ are necessarily synonymous.

That last point is vital. Almost all of those backing military intervention in Syria on the government benches, or among Lib Dem acolytes, addressed their remarks as if the only choice was and is between bombing, or else sitting around idly twiddling our thumbs. Labour MP Chris Bryant called the falsity of that one, but it was thereafter repeated again and again, indicating that the pro-military action camp was not listening and not learning. They were stuck in a mindset overshadowed by guns and bombs.

Mr Cameron knows that it is best not to kick yourself when you are down, and and he also knows how to play a populist card. He quickly responded to the unexpected turn of events with the “Parliament and the people have spoken” line — leaving Defence Secretary Philip Hammond, appallingly, to demean those who had voted against bombing as giving “succour” to the Syrian dictatorship, while Michael Gove stormed around like a spoilt child, calling Tories who had voted the “wrong way” a “disgrace, disgrace, disgrace.”

Mr Hammond also suggested that disillusion over the misrepresentations behind Mr Blair’s Iraq war (rightly termed a political failure, not just an intelligence one, by one Conservative MP) had “poisoned the well” of public opinion. Equating a desire not to go to war recklessly with “poison” is a potent illustration of just how far removed from humane reality some of the advocates of military strikes are in this matter, and why their arguments were robustly scrutinised and ultimately rejected last night.

But does this vote presage a larger change in UK or western policy? It is significant, certainly. But in the immediate aftermath of unexpected political events, exaggerations about change can take hold too rapidly. Over the next few days, the status quo ante will do its best to reassert itself in the shape of more political manoeuvring by the pro-intervention camp. Every development in Syria will be accompanied by an “I told you so” (presupposing that a missile attack would put it all right). If the US goes ahead with an armed response despite the UK vote and lack of endorsement from the UN Security Council, which is probable but not certain, we will be told that the Commons vote “made no difference”. The line will be pursued that “this was really a vote against the Iraq war, not a Syrian one”. And so on.

Despite such smokescreens, there should be no doubting the importance of this Commons vote, however. It shows that it is possible for a parliament to resist the drums of war (for the first time in living memory). It exposes, one way or another, the archaism of the ‘Royal prerogative’. And most important of all, it opens up the opportunity for a different course and a different policy to be developed.

That is the real challenge. Voting against a bad option is one thing. Constructing a better way forward is quite another, and it requires a continuing shift in temperament, perspective and political aptitude to achieve. A ‘steep learning curve’, in the current jargon. For the gaping void between inaction and military adventurism needs urgently to be filled. We now require moves towards, and backing for, a regional conference (more likely a series of them) in search of political and diplomatic solutions – ones coming from the Middle East itself, not ones imposed from outside. Russia and Iran need to be engaged seriously, despite the difficulties and compromises that involves. The International Criminal Court must be activated more fully in relation to war crimes and atrocities committed by the government and by asymetric armed opposition groups. Further action is needed on the MENA refugee crisis, and on supporting Syrian refugees in Britain (http://www.ekklesia.co.uk/node/18949). Demilitarisation and negotiation, rather than sabre-rattling and arms sales, has to be taken seriously as the real realpolitik. The idea that those with the biggest arsenals (or vetos) should automatically be the world’s moral arbiters has to be ditched, in favour of radical reform within our international institutions and processes.

Meanwhile, civic organisations, faith groups and NGOs need to go on pressing the case for nonviolent methods of conflict transformation and intervention, no matter how far removed they may seem from current perceptions of what reality is. There are alternatives. A huge amount of work has gone into them over the past 25 years. But these different ways of responding require a renewed political imagination, a wider civil influence, a different calculation of the odds, and a much larger, more adaptable skill-set to bring to them to fruition. Getting a parliament to vote against militarism as the “in principle” answer to calumny and tragedy is one thing. Stopping that deadly ghost from re-entering the building by introducing new thinking and action into the equation is a much bigger task.

(c) Simon Barrow is co-director of Ekklesia. Follow him on Twitter @simonbarrow

By Pepe Escobar

29 August, 2013

@ Russia Today

Only a few days before the 12th anniversary of 9/11, Nobel Peace Prize winner Barack Obama might be fighting side by side with… al-Qaeda, as he was foolish enough to be trapped by his own rhetoric on Syria.

The dogs of war bark and the caravan… is Tomahawked. Amid out-of-control hysteria, the proverbial “unnamed US officials” spin like demented centrifuges.

Obama’s “kinetic operation” on Syria will fall out of the sky “in the next few days.” It will be “limited,” lasting only “three days,” or “no more than two days.” It will “send a message,” a “short, sharp attack” against less than 50 sites on a list of targets.

But then long-range bombers may “possibly” join the Tomahawk barrage, and all bets are off.

A proverbial, anonymous “senior administration official” even stressed the “desire to get it done before the president leaves for Russia next week.”

That’s it; we bomb a country like dialing a pizza delivery, and then we go to a G20 summit with the world’s emerging powers hosted by no less than Russia’s president, Vladimir Putin. Just because we need to prove that the president of the United States meant what he said: chemical weapons are a red line. And to hell who’s responsible for deploying them.

I’m not making this up. This is the core of White House spokesman Jay Carney’s message, when he said, in faultless Newspeak: “The options that are being considered do not contain within them a regime change focus.”

So the administration of “constitutional lawyer” Barack Obama is mulling how to attack Syria, bypassing the UN Security Council – which will veto, via Russia and China, the new resolution proposed by the UK; bypassing always-docile NATO; and with 91 percent of Americans against it, just to send an (explosive) political message. And all because a US president was foolish enough to get trapped in his own rhetoric.

Remember Iraq?

Call it a 10th anniversary special: it’s Iraq 2003 all over again.

The attack dog presumably in charge of the Obama administration war brigade is Secretary of State John Kerry. Here, Gareth Porter thoroughly debunks Kerry’s game – and lies. No wonder Kerry’s “Powell moment” has gone viral – as in “deceived” Colin Powell in his infamous February 2003 UN presentation telling the world Saddam Hussein had tons of WMDs. Unlike Powell though, Kerry knows exactly what he’s doing.

The White House promises a “revelation” from above this Thursday, “above” being the Office of the Director of National Intelligence. Yet the heart of the matter is that the UN chemical inspectors have had no time to identify what sort of chemical weapon is involved in the Ghouta attack (sarin or something else); where it was manufactured; how it was delivered (possibly by DIY rockets); and last but not least, who did it.

It’s imperative to remember that Russia presented an 80-page report last month to the UN Security Council detailing serious evidence about the “rebels” being behind the March 19 attack in Khan al-Assal. That’s why the inspectors are in Syria now. So the Obama administration is lying when it insists that it’s “too late” for the inspectors to investigate the latest attack.

This time though, Russia may not have collected enough evidence; it’s too early. Otherwise Ambassador Vitaly Churkin would be talking to the press, like he did last month.

These investigations take time. And the results cannot be fixed around the policy.

‘Fixing’ the facts

Let’s follow a track that is much more plausible than Washington’s official narrative.

Israeli intelligence has leaked to a Kuwaiti newspaper that Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) Chief of Staff Benny Gantz handed over to his good pal US Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Martin Dempsey “documents and pictures” as evidence of the Syrian government’s culpability. Arguably, this will be the core of the White House “revelation” this Thursday.

The evidence points to rockets launched from a “Syrian army post near Damascus” – which Finnish researcher Petri Krohn, currently conducting a meticulous investigation, conclusively placed as occupied by the “rebels” since June.

Add to it the Defense Ministry in Baghdad, one month ago, dismantling an Al-Qaeda cell in Iraq that was planning to launch attacks in Iraq and “abroad,” as in Syria, using chemical weapons.

According to Iraqi national security advisor Faleh al-Fayyadh, Jabhat al-Nusra (al-Qaeda in Syria) would have free access to these chemicals.

So here we have all the elements of a sophisticated false flag operation. Jabhat al-Nusra jihadis, mostly mercenaries, connected to al-Qaeda in Iraq, but with no connection with Syrian civilians, including women and children, use an area formerly occupied by the Syrian army to launch a chemical attack – perhaps using chlorine – under the cover of a Syrian offensive (admitted by the government). The offensive was codenamed “Operation City Shield.” Damascus had solid intel about scores of “rebels” trained by the CIA and the Saudis in Jordan converging to the area and planning a massive attack on the capital.

Then there is Saudi intel tsar Bandar bin Sultan, aka Bandar Bush’s threat to President Putin in their notorious four-hour meeting earlier this month: The military solution is the only one left for Syria. Bandar, a master of the dark arts, is in charge of “winning” Syria to the House of Saud by all means available, chemical or otherwise.

Any serious UN chemical weapons inspector would be following this lead as we speak. They might not – because of US political pressure (as in “It’s too late”). They might not because Washington wants the inspections over barely after they started – as in a lightning quick remix, once again, of Iraq 2003; fixing the facts around the policy.

Deconstructing Obama’s game

So we have to come back to the policy – as in “we bomb because we want to.” What exactly is Obama’s game?

Tel Aviv’s Yedioth Ahronoth newspaper, as I reported earlier, badly wants Washington to attack Syria’s chemical weapons sites – regardless of possible, horrible, “collateral damage”, not to mention the possibility of al-Qaeda-linked jihadi outfits taking control of some of them.

Israel’s agenda is Syria bleeding in total chaos for the foreseeable future. Which is not the same as the House of Saud’s agenda: regime change. Which is not the same as the Obama administration’s agenda. At face value, it’s regime change, but Plan B calls for “leveling the playing field,” and that melts into the Israeli agenda.

As for President Obama, establishing a hazy “red line” with no context, just to appease clueless but influential neo-cons, not to mention the liberal hawks/humanitarian interventionists that surround him, and without regard for the consequences; this has to be construed as criminal irresponsibility.

Granted, Obama’s IQ in theory would equip him to know that yet another war of choice in the Middle East is the last thing he needs. At the same time, when we look at his record, we know he doesn’t have the balls to confront the awesome War Party Hydra – also featuring the mini-coalition of the willing, ranging from nostalgic opportunists such as Britain and France to cold-blooded actors pursuing their specific agendas, like Israel and the House of Saud.

And all this after Obama announced he would weaponize the “rebels” – in fact that’s been going on for ages, now fully supervised by Bandar Bush. The infinitely fractious rebel gangs have fractioned even further into sub-gangs of looters and assassins, with the more organized jihadis promising that after the Ghouta attack, they will kill any Alawite in sight.

Obama knows these are bit players; the only factor that can deliver another one of his red lines – “Assad must go” – is a US military attack. Crucially, Assad also knows it; that’s why the notion that Assad would sanction a chemical weapons attack is beyond ludicrous.

So if we take the Obama administration at their word – at our own peril – they couldn’t care less about who deployed chemical weapons. Yet at the same time they don’t want regime change. They want a bombing to fulfill a “moral obligation,” and to boost Washington’s horrendously shattered “credibility.” American exceptionalists are even carping on “purity of intent” – as if purity was inherent to cold-blooded, hardcore geopolitical power play.

Both US and Israel assume they have perfect intel – as in knowing exactly where all of Syria’s chemical weapons are stored. Yet if anything could go wrong, it will. We all thought that the “war on terror” could not be topped as a meaningless concept. Wrong: meet the “war on chemical weapons.”

Amid all the hysteria, we’re not even talking about a counterpunch from Damascus itself, Hezbollah, Iran or, crucially, Russia. Moscow and Tehran are playing the chessboard like ninjas – as they clearly see the possibility of Washington being bogged down in a net of its own. All it takes would be a single Onyx SS-N-25, also known as Super-Sunburn SS-22, the fastest hypersonic anti-shipping missile in the world – which is part of Syria’s arsenal – to sink a US warship. Then what? Shock and Awe all over again?

So if we take the White House at its word, this “limited” kinetic whatever will end in a couple of days. Or it could spiral into something more hellish than Iraq 2003. And then, the clincher; only a few days before the 12th anniversary of 9/11, Nobel Peace Prize winner Obama is fighting side by side with… al-Qaeda. Why? Because, together, they can.

Pepe Escobar is the roving correspondent for Asia Times/Hong Kong, an analyst for RT and TomDispatch, and a frequent contributor to websites and radio shows ranging from the US to East Asia.

By Thomas Gaist & Alex Lantier

29 August, 2013

@ WSWS.org

Washington’s campaign to justify war against Syria is disintegrating, as it becomes ever clearer that the war is illegal, and that Washington has no evidence to back up charges that Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s regime used chemical weapons in Ghouta. Despite press reports of an imminent US-NATO attack, US and British officials suggested yesterday that they might delay launching the war.

There is rising concern inside the political establishment about how to package a war in Syria modeled on the hated 2003 invasion of Iraq. Again, Washington and London are moving to launch a war based on lies about weapons of mass destruction and without legal sanction from the UN Security Council—that is, in violation of international law.

Even before war has begun, Obama administration officials are in disarray. In a PBS television interview last night, Obama attempted to back away from threats of an imminent attack: “We have not yet made a decision, but the international norm against the use of chemical weapons needs to be kept in place. If we are saying this in a clear and decisive but very limited way, we send a shot across the bow saying, stop doing this; that can have a positive impact on our national security over the long term.”

Obama’s claim that his administration has not decided to move against Assad is an absurd lie. Washington has called for Assad’s overthrow for over a year, while the CIA massively armed Al Qaeda-linked Islamist opposition militias against his regime.

A senior US official contradicted Obama yesterday, telling NBC that US moves toward intervention in Syria are “past the point of no return,” and that strikes will be launched in days.

Obama is also encountering opposition to his attempt to launch a war without a vote in Congress, in violation of the US Constitution. A petition signed by 111 House lawmakers, 94 Republicans and 17 Democrats, warns that this would “violate the separation of powers.” The petition asks that Congress be reconvened so it can back the war and “share the burden of decisions made regarding US involvement in the quickly escalating Syrian conflict.”

Yesterday the British Conservative-Liberal Democrat government retreated from its intention to take a vote today supporting war with Syria. With public support for war hovering in polls between six and nine percent and predictions of mass anti-war protests, as well as disagreements within the military and even the government, the opposition Labour Party declared that it would not support direct action by UK forces without a further vote in the Commons.

To provide a fig-leaf for its support for war, Labour insisted that the United Nations Security Council must be allowed to consider a report from weapons inspectors charged with investigating the alleged chemical weapons attack and that “every effort should be made to secure a Security Council Resolution backing military action before any such action is taken.”

The UN has said that it will be at least four days before inspectors are able to finish their work in Syria.

The motion will now leave the door open for intervention, asking MPs to agree the principle that a “strong humanitarian response” is required from the international community that “may, if necessary, require military action that is legal, proportionate and focused on saving lives by preventing and deterring further use of Syria’s chemical weapons”

The fact that the US and Britain embarked on such reckless and unpopular policies—first arming Islamist opposition militias against Assad, then moving to illegally attack Syria—testifies to the fact that they are indifferent to public opinion. With their repeated, inflammatory statements, Obama and Cameron have staked their political authority on this war. They will seek at all costs to proceed with it, despite its unpopularity and rising international pressure.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov charged this week that Washington had no proof to back up its allegations that Assad’s forces gassed Syrian civilians in Ghouta. “They cannot produce evidence, but keep on saying that the ‘red line’ has been crossed and they cannot wait any longer,” he said, pointing out that “the use of force without the sanction of the UN Security Council is a crude violation of international law.”

Concerned that the Obama administration is undermining the credibility of the UN by pressing for war before inspectors have even investigated Ghouta, UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon pleaded yesterday: “The team needs time to do its job. Give peace a chance; give diplomacy a chance, stop fighting and start talking.”

Obama administration officials have told the UN to call off the inspectors, however. According to the Wall Street Journal, the administration told Ban that UN inspectors’ efforts in Syria were “pointless.” CNN reported Wednesday that “US officials are all but telling United Nations inspectors in Syria to get out of the way.”

Washington clearly does not want the truth about what happened in Ghouta to come out. The chemical weapons incident itself could have been manufactured by US intelligence, in an operation aiming to provide the pretext for war. Since the middle of this month, the areas near the chemical incident have been flooded with CIA-trained militants led by US, Israeli, and Jordanian commandos.

Previous UN investigations found the US-backed rebels responsible for other chemical weapons attacks in Syria.

State and media propaganda maintains that US attack plans are a limited response to violations of international law by Assad. These claims, dutifully disseminated by a state-controlled media, are lies intended to disorient the public. The objective of the planned US strikes is to kill Assad and cripple his military, thus changing the balance of power inside Syria between the Assad regime and US-backed Islamist opposition militias.

The US offensive is based on a carefully prepared plan to destroy the Syrian regime’s military capability. According to CNN, “there is no indication that the missiles would target stockpiles of chemical weapons.” In fact, strikes against “military command bunkers” and airfields are being planned.

The US is moving significant forces into the region, including at least one nuclear submarine and four destroyers in the Mediterranean, and two aircraft carriers in the western Indian Ocean. Together with the British build-up of fighter-bombers and military equipment on nearby Cyprus, these deployments make clear that claims in the media that the Syrian war would be a limited pinprick operation are lies. The US and its allies are preparing devastating attacks that will kill thousands and savage Syria’s infrastructure.

The offensive by the US and its allies threatens to unleash a far broader regional and even global war. US hawks and military planners have pushed for war and “regime change” against Syria for a decade, aiming to clear the way for an attack on US imperialism’s main regional target, Iran, and set the stage for a US confrontation with Russia and China.

Iran has responded to the war threats by warning that attacks will be launched against Israel in retaliation. Iranian foreign ministry spokesman Abbas Araqchi said: “We want to strongly warn against any military attack in Syria. There will definitely be perilous consequences for the region. These complications and consequences will not be restricted to Syria. It will engulf the whole region.”

On Wednesday, apparently in response to the statements from Iran, Israel mobilized reservists and bolstered its missile defenses.

 

Egypt at the Rubicon

By Ranjan Solomon*

Egypt has refused to stop stunning the world for multiple reasons from the beginning of history. Ancient Egypt was a Northeastern Africa civilization, reaching the lower stretches of the River Nile in what is now modern Egypt. Egyptians in early times engaged in vocations that resulted in the epic pyramids and temples, even a system of mathematics, a practical and valuable system of medicine and agricultural production techniques, the first known ships, glass technology, and new forms of literature. Egyptian antiquities were taken to far flung places in the world. Its grand ruins have stirred the thoughts of travelers and writers for centuries. Sadly, this great nation has now achieved notoriety in recent weeks for the political convulsions that have killed and maimed tens and thousands of people.

In 2011 Egyptians joined other parts of the Arab world in abandoning decades of intimidation from dictatorships that ruled with no deference to popular wishes. With the mass protests in Tahrir Square in 2011 which drove out strongman Hosni Mubarak, Egypt was seen as a progressive place; where young activists were viewed as models for a new kind of twenty-first-century mobilization. A country once thought off as being politically stagnant inaugurated an era of rapid political transformation that captured the attention of the world. Democracy became the password and the people seemed to find a natural instinct to make things work according to their will. The ‘Arab Spring’ that offered hope for a new vision and system of governance has now given way to a summer of discontent.

Mohamed Morsi, a politician from the Muslim Brotherhood became the fifth and first democratically elected President of Egypt. During the 13 months when he held power, he began to assert his independence from western-imposed economic stereo types, even snubbing the IMF labeling their loans as being out of line with ‘Islamic finance’. The boldness indicated a line of thinking that defied the lure of easy finance and intent to depart from earlier economic policies. Morsi instead lauded the proposal for the establishment of a BRICS bank that would “support countries to achieve high growth rates and supplement the role of the IMF, World Bank and similar institutions”. He intended for Egypt to join BRICS once its own economy gets back on track.

Morsi had inherited an economy that relied heavily on USAID and drew instructions from the World Bank and the IMF and was clearly all set to assert Egypt’s distinct place and profile on the face of global economics and politics.

Somewhere the Morsi dream went erroneous. Morsi had to contend with a rotten system in which foreign powers that cared little or nothing for Egypt, propped-up Ehud Mubarak, a dummy of the West, at the expense of supporting and building democratic institutions in the country. But Morsi himself adopted political patterns of decision making that angered people. The vision of democracy collapsed in just over a year when Morsi chose to adopt dictatorial trends sparking off massive protests against his rule. He may have been under the weight of irrational expectations from people who had wanted him to reverse the corrupt practices of the previous era which had preferred the elite and their ‘crony economics’ in record time. To bring visible change in the conditions of the majority of the urban and rural poor within a year was a perverse expectation. Yet, rather than build a consensus and dialogue when protests occurred, Morsi chose a model of ruling by decree

In November 2012, Morsi had decreed greater authorities for him and effectively neutralized a judicial system that had emerged as a key opponent of his by declaring that the courts are barred from challenging his decisions. An Associate Press report points to how “Riding high on U.S. and international praise for mediating a Gaza cease-fire, Mohammed Morsi put himself above oversight and gave protection to the Islamist-led assembly writing a new constitution from a looming threat of dissolution by court order.

It stirred public alarm that his Muslim Brotherhood was confiscating excessive political power for himself as President and neutralizing the newly won democratic rights of the people. One of Morsi’s decrees gave him the power to take “due measures and steps” to deal with any “threat” to the revolution, national unity and safety or anything that obstructs the work of state institutions. Morsi embedded his actions in the dubious arguments that “he had to act to save the country and protect the course of the revolution.” The decrees were dubbed as being dictatorial and with the potential to create more political rifts in a nation already reeling from months of turmoil. Some even argued that Morsi’s steps exceeded the powers once enjoyed by Mubarak. When mass protests erupted and gained momentum, Morsi acted in defiance of the sentiment on the street. The street was packed with pro and anti Morsi supporters.

Two years of political upheaval formed the backdrop to the latest violence. When democracy was inaugurated in 2012 and Mr. Morsi won the presidency in what was considered a free and fair contest. Mubarak supporters seemed hell-bent on not giving him a chance and called for swift results. They initiated a movement to oust the government for its failures. The military gave Morsi an absurd time-bound ultimatum to quell the protest by acting on the demands of the street. Then, they unilaterally seized power in a coup that flouts all norms of democracy and governance by the will of the people. Morsi’s enemies, of course, endorse the coup seeing in it, a chance for their own preferred people to access power.

Western nations with their usual standards of double speak were reluctant to call it for what it is – a plain and brutal coup. The United States remains disinclined to call the Egyptian military’s overthrow of Morsi a coup, even though the interim government has now named generals to 19 of the country’s 25 provincial governor positions. Naming it a coup would mean that $1.3 billion in annual U.S. military aid would have to be cut off. That’s not likely to happen since the money is used to pay U.S. companies that manufacture tanks and planes for Egypt. Besides if the US were to lose control and influence over the Egyptian army, it would be losing yet another sphere of influence in the region where its influence is already on the wane. Obama’s speech calling on the withdrawal of emergency regulations etc appears to be more rhetoric than intended to send a stern warning. A White House statement said the interim government should “respect human rights.” Small wonder that US attempts to serve as mediator have failed to find claimants on both sides! The EU is no better. They have called for “restraint” and described it all as “extremely worrying.” That translates into nothing!

Qatar condemned the coup chiefly because it was funding the Morsi presidency. The Islamic Action Front, the political wing of the Muslim Brotherhood in Jordan, encouraged Egyptians to keep protesting to “thwart the conspiracy” of Mubarakites from the former regime. Turkey called for the UN Security Council and the Arab League to act quickly to stop a “massacre” and Iran rightly warned of the risk of civil war. If all is fair in love and war, the winners will collect their awards. They include Saudi Arabia; Israel since they will be the Egyptian army is a safer bet than the Brotherhood). Pentagon,

The Egyptian military has shown zero tolerance for protest choosing instead to brutally suppress those who dare resist their usurping of power. There have been too many deaths and even the most conservative approximations of numbers dead and injured are daunting. Estimates ranging from the low hundreds (the “interim government”) to at least 4,500 (the Muslim Brotherhood), including at least four journalists and the 17-year-old Asmaa, daughter of top Muslim Brotherhood politician Mohamed El Beltagy.

The state of emergency, and harm to the Egyptian economy, particularly tourism, continues rapidly. They must go back to the barracks. They have no mandate and it is more-than-obvious that the coup has neither legitimacy nor wide backing. Broad-based coalitions of people have condemned the coup although the mainstream media manages to obfuscate this fact and, instead, focus on the violence.

As Pepe Escobar the Brazilian investigative journalist in his article ‘Bloodbath That Is Not A Bloodbath’: Why Egypt Is Doomed says: “Egypt’s ‘bloodbath that is not a bloodbath’ has shown that the forces of hardcore suppression and corruption reign supreme, while foreign interests – the House of Saud, Israel and the Pentagon – support the military’s merciless strategy…There’s no other way of saying it; from Washington’s point of view, Arabs can kill each other to Kingdom Come, be it Sunnis against Shiites, jihadists against secularists, peasants against urbanites, and Egyptians against Egyptians. The only thing that matters is the Camp David agreements; and nobody is allowed to antagonize Israel.”

Accusations of killing Christians and destruction of churches have resonated around the world and alarm bells have sounded. Morsi’s supporters point the finger of blame on other factions and, until a full investigation happens, one will never get to the truth. But, a Facebook image of Muslims was heartening- it shows Muslims lined up holding hands to protect Catholic Christians during mass in Egypt. Even more uplifting was the image of a Coptic Pope Tawadros II and the Grand Imam of al-Azhar Mosque who stood side by side to proclaim that Muslims and Christians of Egypt are sisters and brothers and will unite to protect Christian properties and rebuilding churches.

Muslims guarding a church during a mass (catholicglasses.com)

The civil war is on at full blast. For peace and political reconciliation to be achieved, the violence must end. Justice and justice alone can be the foundation of such squaring off between all parties. Mubarak has been freed and is on house arrest. This kind of rank disregard for political propriety is going to swell the crisis. It illustrates contempt for the will of the people who overthrew an utterly corrupt and compliant dictator who has blood of the Egyptian street on his hands.  The military is brazenly trying to resurrect what was discarded barely two years ago in a truly popular revolution. Worse, the military is assessing whether it should or not ban the Muslim brotherhood. They have announced their intent to arrest the spiritual leader of the brotherhood. The Egyptian General Amr has even crudely suggested that he is geared up to direct operations that would virtually use six months to liquidate or imprison the entire brotherhood. The latter steps would further split the nation and spell disaster. It could mean that the violence could spiral out of control.

Morsi and his Muslim Brotherhood have failed to be a viable alternative to the Mubarak rule, but that is not license for a throwback to dictatorship of any form. Democracy must take root and, as the anti-Morsi protests reveal, it is gaining deep roots. People are unequivocally saying enough of misrule by politicians. They are claiming a say in their self-governance, desire accountability, results, and refuse to be silenced into submission when they see these become inaccessible.

If all else fails, Egyptians will be compelled to bear the consequences of the follies of the leaders and the manipulations of the international community. It would bring pain and more tragedy for the already anguished people of Egypt.

A new Egypt must emerge and that future must materialize in a mediated settlement. The military must go and the emergency must be withdrawn. If Morsi must go, then a democratic process must define the pathway for his exit. External powers- especially the US must be kept at bay even though it would itch to get a toe-hold in. Israel, the EU and other powers must also recognize that their will cannot be imposed from the outside. New and more reliable mediators must step in to restore democracy. Morsi himself will need to relent and withdraw measures which will bring back normalcy and begin to rule by consensus not with narrow and parochial interests in mind, but with an entire Egyptian aspiration under consideration.

*Ranjan Solomon, is Executive Director, Badayl-Alternatives,an international consulting agency whose mission is to support NGOs and Civil Society groups around the world that wish to effect authentic and insightful changes in global society. He works closely on the ‘Question of Palestine’ with Palestine solidarity and justice networks.

By Eric Draitser

@ RT.com

29 August, 2013

As America marks the 50th anniversary of a landmark speech delivered by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr, it’s fitting to ask the most important question: has the ‘dream’ of a just society built upon a foundation of morality and equality actually been fulfilled?

Or is it merely a collective delusion that all must accept?

Dr. King stood on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, DC, before the assembled masses on that summer day in 1963 as the United States slowly but surely charted a course for war in Vietnam.  He stirred the emotions of black Americans with his talk of freedom and brotherhood while overt and institutionalized racism in its myriad insidious forms was still the dominant force, not only in the South, but throughout the country.

He spoke of “the fierce urgency of now” at a time when the country was divided by race, class, and generation. King sought to lay out a vision of a better America and a better world while grounding his words in the harsh realities of the urban ghetto, the rural sharecropper, and the labor of the black worker.

And yet, while referring to the founding fathers and the Constitution, the Declaration of Independence and the Emancipation Proclamation, King never lost sight of the fact that his role was not simply as a man who delivered stirring speeches or led marches deemed ‘acceptable’ by the ruling establishment. Rather, he understood perhaps better than anyone that his responsibility to his people and to all people in the US and beyond, was to speak the truth with righteous indignation, and to rail against inequality and injustice in all its forms.

As the political establishment in the United States marks this momentous anniversary, it is simultaneously planning to rain death and destruction on the people of Syria. As the first black president, described by many delusional sycophants as being the “inheritor of the legacy of Dr. King,” continues to serve the interests of Wall St. and the military-industrial complex at the cost of the poor and most defenseless in society, it is fitting to re-examine King’s words in a critical light.

More than merely examining what King said, it is incumbent upon all those who today are on the same quest for peace and justice that he was on, to come together and ask the most important question: What would King say if he saw what this country has become?

The US clergyman and civil rights leader Martin Luther King addresses, 29 March 1966 in Paris’ Sport Palace the militants of the “Movement for the Peace”. (AFP Photo)

The US clergyman and civil rights leader Martin Luther King addresses, 29 March 1966 in Paris’ Sport Palace the militants of the “Movement for the Peace”. (AFP Photo)

The dream unfulfilled

As King climbed to the podium to deliver his now famous ‘I Have a Dream’ speech, the symbolism of the location was not lost on him or anyone else in the crowd. That he would be delivering his speech in front of the monument to ‘The Great Emancipator’ was more than fitting because he had no intention of simply glorifying the struggle since slavery. Instead, King set out to point out the stark realities of life in the so-called ‘land of the free’.

King said,

“One hundred years [after the Emancipation Proclamation] the Negro still is not free. One hundred years later, the life of the Negro is still badly crippled by the manacles of segregation and the chains of discrimination. One hundred years later the Negro lives on a lonely island of poverty in the midst of a vast ocean of material prosperity. One hundred years later the Negro is still languished in the corners of American society and finds himself in exile in his own land. So we’ve come here today to dramatize this shameful condition.”

King was not simply describing the material or social conditions of Black America, he was illuminating the inescapable fact that the inequality that all black people knew and understood as second nature was systemic, that it was built into the fabric of the institutions of the country and of society. This fact is all the more crucial today as black Americans experience record unemployment, mass incarceration, and a new and insidious Jim Crow structure which sees blacks as little more than violent criminals and cash cows for the for-profit prison industry.

What would King say when faced with the painful reality demonstrated by the Pew Research study which shows that black unemployment is nearly double that of white Americans?  Considering the fact that most economists acknowledge that the government’s statistics are considerably lower than the reality, one can see that joblessness among African-Americans is not just a problem, it is an epidemic.

As King arrived in Memphis in April 1968, not knowing that he would never leave that city alive, the main thing on his mind was to help, in whatever way he could, black sanitation workers in their quest for fair treatment and decent working conditions. It should not be lost anyone that King was always the first to side with labor, unlike President Obama, the alleged “inheritor of King’s legacy,” who has done everything in his power to crush working people in Wisconsin, Michigan, Chicago, and all over the country.

As a man of the cloth, King often spoke of justice for he believed in the true values of his Christian faith and the values purported to be the foundation of the United States – the Constitution. In calling for justice, however, there was the implication of all the injustices he and his people endured every day: injustices that seemed to simply be ‘the way it is’.

King said:

“We have come to this hallowed spot to remind America of the fierce urgency of now…Now is the time to make justice a reality for all God’s children. It would be fatal for the nation to overlook the urgency of the moment…No, no, we are not satisfied, and we will not be satisfied until justice rolls down like waters and righteousness like a mighty stream.”

And how would King react if, after delivering that emotionally charged appeal, he were told that the so-called criminal justice system of the United States is the most robust in the world, making the US by far the world’s foremost police state?

With only 5 percent of the world’s population, the US has 25 percent of the world’s prison population – numbers against which China, Russia, and all other countries pale by comparison. Knowing that the prison population is disproportionately black and brown only lends credence to the notion that, contrary to King’s dreams, justice has most certainly not become a reality for ‘all God’s children’. And, once again, the first black president is silent.

And when King spoke of his dreams for future generations of black and white children “sitting together at the table of brotherhood,” could he have imagined that that table would be brought to you by a charter school in a privatized public education system that disproportionately impacts communities of color while leaving affluent white schools mostly untouched? And would he be outraged that the first black president not only supported the privatization process, but presided over it? Would he demand that, rather than adulation at having a black man in the White House, that people should unite to stop this insidious and racist policy that benefits financiers at the cost of teachers and urban communities?

However, on this auspicious anniversary that is being treated as a victory parade for America while millions of working people are thrown out of their homes, laid off from their jobs, and made into little more than temporary workers beholden to the rich, we should remember that King’s vision was not a uniquely American vision. Rather, King saw in the struggle of his own people, that of the poor and marginalized around the world. To King, a black child in Mississippi was a Vietnamese child on the other side of the world. A young mother in Birmingham was a young mother in Ghana. And a man beaten on the streets of Harlem was a man beaten on the streets of Durban.

King the anti-imperialist

One of the most painful realities of contemporary discourse on King is the way in which he has been ‘sanitized’ by the power structure, robbed of his revolutionary spirit and indomitable anti-imperialism. For, at the core of King’s beliefs was the idea of justice. And how could there possibly be justice for his people when there was injustice and suffering on an unimaginable scale being perpetrated by his own country around the world? King could not possibly ignore the inherent hypocrisy of separating the struggle for equality in the US with the struggle for peace around the world. In his now legendary speech ‘Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break Silence’ at Riverside Church in Harlem, on April 4th, 1967, King said:

 

“I could never again raise my voice against the violence of the oppressed in the ghettos without first having spoken clearly to the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today – my own government. For the sake of those boys, for the sake of this government, for the sake of hundreds of thousands trembling under our violence, I cannot be silent…Now it should be incandescently clear that no one who has any concern for the integrity and life of America today can ignore the present war. If America’s soul becomes totally poisoned, part of the autopsy must read Vietnam. It can never be saved so long as it destroys the deepest hopes of men the world over.”

Despite being an internationally-renowned civil rights leader, a Nobel Prize winner, and one of the most famous figures in the world, King spoke out. He took an unpopular position against the imperialist policies of the United States in Vietnam and, in doing so, separated himself from the so-called ‘moderates’ in his own camp who feared breaking with the Johnson administration that had, after all, signed the Civil Rights Act of 1964. And yet, that was secondary for King, who understood that the quest for justice was not a political quest, but a moral one. He eschewed politics in favor of justice and truth.

King’s words could not ring truer today as the first black president sits in the Oval Office preparing for war against Syria, preparing to again cause the deaths of untold numbers of innocents half a world away solely because of America’s perceived ‘strategic interests’ and in the name of ‘humanitarianism’. King would speak out against not only Obama, but all those who enable him: those politicians, religious leaders, and influential personalities who prostrate themselves before power, just hoping for a chance at being ‘on the inside’.

Likewise, he would condemn all the so-called ‘liberals’ who claimed to oppose wars when they were initiated by George Bush and his right-wing, white Republican machine, but who are eerily quiet or downright enthusiastic about wars initiated by the first black president and his Democrat advisers. King would rightly call them hypocrites and impediments on the path to peace. He would not be concerned by their posture as ‘left liberals’ for, to King, labels did not matter, only actions. In his famous ‘Letter from a Birmingham Jail’, King wrote:

“I must confess that over the past few years I have been gravely disappointed with the white moderate. I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro’s great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen’s Councilor or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate, who is more devoted to ‘order’ than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice…Shallow understanding from people of good will is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will. Lukewarm acceptance is much more bewildering than outright rejection.”

The ‘moderates’ of King’s day are today called ‘liberals’, but his analysis is as true today as it was then. The so-called liberals who are more devoted to ‘humanitarianism’ than peace, the war-making doctrine of ‘Responsibility to Protect’ more than the responsibility to love. Yes, King would attack all those who, under the guise of liberalism, find every possible justification for war in Syria, Libya, drone strikes that kill Pakistani and Yemeni women and children, and a military footprint in every corner of the globe. King would have much to say to those who chastise human rights abuses around the world while ignoring the most serious abuses taking place in their own country, in their own name, and by their own idols.

US clergyman and leader of the Movement against Racial Segregation Martin Luther King, displays 10 December 1964 in Oslo his Nobel Peace Prize medal. (AFP Photo)

US clergyman and leader of the Movement against Racial Segregation Martin Luther King, displays 10 December 1964 in Oslo his Nobel Peace Prize medal. (AFP Photo)

As King said,

“We will have to repent in this generation not merely for the hateful words and actions of the bad people but for the appalling silence of the good people.”

King would look to his left and his right and would see that of those who speak in the name of peace, only a select few would be standing beside him. He would know that the hypocrisy and treachery that typified the ‘moderate’ of his day is alive and well in the ‘establishment liberal’ who rails for war in our day. King would look to Syria and Libya and Afghanistan and make common cause with the people there, rather than be a servant to power here.

America is fond of celebrating itself, and this 50th anniversary of King’s famous speech is no exception. Speeches will be made, and the president will hold his head and speak in just such a way as to mimic Dr. King. All the pomp and circumstance of a great celebration will be there. And yet, on the other side of the world, the US prepares to bomb innocent Syrian children, uses a ‘Kill List’ to rain death upon Pakistani and Yemeni civilians, and destroys the lives of millions of others in every corner of the world. And yet, America sings and rejoices in its dream of itself.

Dr. King, were he alive today, would have nothing to do with the celebration of himself. He’d be on the first flight to Damascus or Tripoli or Congo to stand with the victims of US empire. He’d be in Harlem or Oakland or South Chicago embracing the victims of police brutality and sanctioned murder. No, King was not an ‘American hero’…he was simply a hero – one who stood against the forces of oppression and subjugation, whatever form they took.

Eric Draitser is an independent geopolitical analyst based in New York City and the founder of StopImperialism.com.

By Dale Gavlak and Yahya Ababneh

29 August, 2013

@ Mint Press News – http://www.mintpressnews.com –

Ghouta, Syria — As the machinery for a U.S.-led military intervention in Syria gathers pace following last week’s chemical weapons attack, the U.S. and its allies may be targeting the wrong culprit.

Interviews with people in Damascus and Ghouta, a suburb of the Syrian capital, where the humanitarian agency Doctors Without Borders said at least 355 people had died last week from what it believed to be a neurotoxic agent, appear to indicate as much.

The U.S., Britain, and France as well as the Arab League have accused the regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad for carrying out the chemical weapons attack, which mainly targeted civilians. U.S. warships are stationed in the Mediterranean Sea to launch military strikes against Syria in punishment for carrying out a massive chemical weapons attack. The U.S. and others are not interested in examining any contrary evidence, with U.S Secretary of State John Kerry saying Monday that Assad’s guilt was “a judgment … already clear to the world.”

However, from numerous interviews with doctors, Ghouta residents, rebel fighters and their families, a different picture emerges. Many believe that certain rebels received chemical weapons via the Saudi intelligence chief, Prince Bandar bin Sultan, and were responsible for carrying out the dealing gas attack.

“My son came to me two weeks ago asking what I thought the weapons were that he had been asked to carry,” said Abu Abdel-Moneim, the father of a rebel fighting to unseat Assad, who lives in Ghouta.

Abdel-Moneim said his son and 12 other rebels were killed inside of a tunnel used to store weapons provided by a Saudi militant, known as Abu Ayesha, who was leading a fighting battalion. The father described the weapons as having a “tube-like structure” while others were like a “huge gas bottle.”

Ghouta townspeople said the rebels were using mosques and private houses to sleep while storing their weapons in tunnels.

Abdel-Moneim said his son and the others died during the chemical weapons attack. That same day, the militant group Jabhat al-Nusra, which is linked to al-Qaida, announced that it would similarly attack civilians in the Assad regime’s heartland of Latakia on Syria’s western coast, in purported retaliation.

“They didn’t tell us what these arms were or how to use them,” complained a female fighter named ‘K.’ “We didn’t know they were chemical weapons. We never imagined they were chemical weapons.”

“When Saudi Prince Bandar gives such weapons to people, he must give them to those who know how to handle and use them,” she warned. She, like other Syrians, do not want to use their full names for fear of retribution.

A well-known rebel leader in Ghouta named ‘J’ agreed. “Jabhat al-Nusra militants do not cooperate with other rebels, except with fighting on the ground. They do not share secret information. They merely used some ordinary rebels to carry and operate this material,” he said.

“We were very curious about these arms. And unfortunately, some of the fighters handled the weapons improperly and set off the explosions,” ‘J’ said.

Doctors who treated the chemical weapons attack victims cautioned interviewers to be careful about asking questions regarding who, exactly, was responsible for the deadly assault.

The humanitarian group Doctors Without Borders added that health workers aiding 3,600 patients also reported experiencing similar symptoms, including frothing at the mouth, respiratory distress, convulsions and blurry vision. The group has not been able to independently verify the information.

More than a dozen rebels interviewed reported that their salaries came from the Saudi government.

Saudi involvement

In a recent article for Business Insider, reporter Geoffrey Ingersoll highlighted Saudi Prince Bandar’s role in the two-and-a-half year Syrian civil war. Many observers believe Bandar, with his close ties to Washington, has been at the very heart of the push for war by the U.S. against Assad.

Ingersoll referred to an article in the U.K.’s Daily Telegraph about secret Russian-Saudi talks alleging that Bandar offered Russian President Vladimir Putin cheap oil in exchange for dumping Assad.

“Prince Bandar pledged to safeguard Russia’s naval base in Syria if the Assad regime is toppled, but he also hinted at Chechen terrorist attacks on Russia’s Winter Olympics in Sochi if there is no accord,” Ingersoll wrote.

“I can give you a guarantee to protect the Winter Olympics next year. The Chechen groups that threaten the security of the games are controlled by us,” Bandar allegedly told the Russians.

“Along with Saudi officials, the U.S. allegedly gave the Saudi intelligence chief the thumbs up to conduct these talks with Russia, which comes as no surprise,” Ingersoll wrote.

“Bandar is American-educated, both military and collegiate, served as a highly influential Saudi Ambassador to the U.S., and the CIA totally loves this guy,” he added.

According to U.K.’s Independent newspaper, it was Prince Bandar’s intelligence agency that first brought allegations of the use of sarin gas by the regime to the attention of Western allies in February.

The Wall Street Journal recently reported that the CIA realized Saudi Arabia was “serious” about toppling Assad when the Saudi king named Prince Bandar to lead the effort.

“They believed that Prince Bandar, a veteran of the diplomatic intrigues of Washington and the Arab world, could deliver what the CIA couldn’t: planeloads of money and arms, and, as one U.S. diplomat put it, wasta, Arabic for under-the-table clout,” it said.

Bandar has been advancing Saudi Arabia’s top foreign policy goal, WSJ reported, of defeating Assad and his Iranian and Hezbollah allies.

To that aim, Bandar worked Washington to back a program to arm and train rebels out of a planned military base in Jordan.

The newspaper reports that he met with the “uneasy Jordanians about such a base”:

    His meetings in Amman with Jordan’s King Abdullah sometimes ran to eight hours in a single sitting. “The king would joke: ‘Oh, Bandar’s coming again? Let’s clear two days for the meeting,’ ” said a person familiar with the meetings.

Jordan’s financial dependence on Saudi Arabia may have given the Saudis strong leverage. An operations center in Jordan started going online in the summer of 2012, including an airstrip and warehouses for arms. Saudi-procured AK-47s and ammunition arrived, WSJ reported, citing Arab officials.

Although Saudi Arabia has officially maintained that it supported more moderate rebels, the newspaper reported that “funds and arms were being funneled to radicals on the side, simply to counter the influence of rival Islamists backed by Qatar.”

But rebels interviewed said Prince Bandar is referred to as “al-Habib” or ‘the lover’ by al-Qaida militants fighting in Syria.

Peter Oborne, writing in the Daily Telegraph on Thursday, has issued a word of caution about Washington’s rush to punish the Assad regime with so-called ‘limited’ strikes not meant to overthrow the Syrian leader but diminish his capacity to use chemical weapons:

    Consider this: the only beneficiaries from the atrocity were the rebels, previously losing the war, who now have Britain and America ready to intervene on their side. While there seems to be little doubt that chemical weapons were used, there is doubt about who deployed them.

    It is important to remember that Assad has been accused of using poison gas against civilians before. But on that occasion, Carla del Ponte, a U.N. commissioner on Syria, concluded that the rebels, not Assad, were probably responsible.

Some information in this article could not be independently verified. Mint Press News will continue to provide further information and updates .

* Clarification: Dale Gavlak assisted in the research and writing process of this article, but was not on the ground in Syria. Reporter Yahya Ababneh, with whom the report was written in collaboration, was the correspondent on the ground in Ghouta who spoke directly with the rebels, their family members, victims of the chemical weapons attacks and local residents. 

Gavlak is a MintPress News Middle East correspondent who has been freelancing for the AP as a Amman, Jordan correspondent for nearly a decade. This report is not an Associated Press article; rather it is exclusive to MintPress News. 

Dale Gavlak is a Middle East correspondent for Mint Press News and has reported from Amman, Jordan, writing for the Associated Press, NPR and BBC. An expert in Middle Eastern affairs, Gavlak covers the Levant region, writing on topics including politics, social issues and economic trends. Dale holds a M.A. in Middle Eastern Studies from the University of Chicago. Contact Dale at dgavlak@mintpressnews.com

Yahya Ababneh is a Jordanian freelance journalist and is currently working on a master’s degree in journalism,  He has covered events in Jordan, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, Russia and Libya. His stories have appeared on Amman Net, Saraya News, Gerasa News and elsewhere.

 

By Thomas Gaist

28 August, 2013

@ WSWS.org

The Obama administration is in the final stages of its longstanding preparations for a massive military onslaught against Syria. President Obama is signing off on one of the various scenarios that have been developed over the past two years by the Pentagon. In all likelihood, the initial stages of the attack will involve the use of cruise missiles fired from US navy vessels and “standoff” attacks launched by US war planes from beyond Syria’s borders.

According to an NBC News report Tuesday evening, the US could hit Syria with an initial three days of missile strikes, beginning as early as Thursday. Subsequent waves of strikes could then be launched, unnamed senior officials told NBC, “to target what was missed in further rounds.”

“We are ready to go,” Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel told the BBC on Tuesday.

“This is as much a warning to Iran, as I see it, as it is action against Syria,” Representative Peter King of New York told CNN.

In order to provide political camouflage for the military operations and deceive the public, the administration and the media are claiming that the attack will be of a limited nature. This is a lie. Aside from the fact that the use of bombs and missiles against a heavily populated capital must lead to massive casualties, the political and military aims of the undeclared war are far-reaching.

The US and its imperialist co-conspirators in Britain, France and Germany intend to destroy the Assad regime’s military capabilities, eliminate its ability to resist the proxy “rebel” forces that are serving US interests, and bring about regime-change. This outcome will set the stage for a war against Iran within the next year or two, if not earlier.

The four US destroyers stationed off the coast of Syria are capable of delivering 160 cruise missiles to targets inside the country. Once the assault begins, the US onslaught will likely continue until Syria’s defenses have been decimated and the situation on the ground has shifted in favor of the US-backed militias, consisting for the most part of right-wing Islamists with connections to Al Qaeda forces. As in Iraq and Libya, the infrastructure of Syria will be devastated and countless thousands of Syrians will lose their lives.

Proposals for military intervention laid out by the top US military officer further expose the claims that a US assault will be limited in nature. In a letter written to Congress in June, Gen. Martin Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, proposed a scenario involving “stand-off strikes” which would target “high-value air defense, air, ground, missile and naval forces, as well as the supporting military facilities and command nodes… Stand-off air and missile systems could be used to strike hundreds of targets at a tempo of our choosing.”

A primary objective of the US intervention will be to kill Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, in a grisly repetition of what was done to Libya’s Muammar Gaddafi in 2011. In a bloodthirsty and fascistic column published Tuesday, entitled “Target Assad,” Bret Stephens of the Wall Street Journal declared:

“Should President Obama decide to order a military strike against Syria, his main order of business must be to kill Bashar Assad. Also, Bashar’s brother and principal henchman, Maher. Also, everyone else in the Assad family with a claim on political power. Also, all of the political symbols of the Assad family’s power, including all of their official or unofficial residences.”

The US-NATO war on Libya was a dress rehearsal for the coming war against Syria, which in turn is merely the prologue to future confrontations with not only Iran, but also Russia and China.

It is hardly a coincidence that top Israeli defense and intelligence personnel are in Washington, DC to discuss “Iran’s nuclear program” and “Hezbollah and Iran’s role in the Syria crisis,” according to Haaretz .

The public is being subjected to an unrelenting propaganda campaign designed to chloroform opposition to war by a media that ignores the howling contradictions and obvious lies in the Obama administration’s account of events. In a Tuesday editorial, the New York Times characterized Secretary of State John Kerry’s hypocrisy-drenched and fact-free moralistic condemnations of Assad as “forcefully making the case for action.”

Far from demanding that the administration back up its claims with scientifically verified evidence, the media is utterly indifferent to the factual foundations of the government’s allegations. Without evincing the slightest concern, PBS News reported Tuesday night that the Obama administration will not wait until the United Nations investigators complete their report on the alleged chemical attack before ordering military action. What better proof could there be that the allegations against the Assad regime have been manufactured only to serve as a pretext for war?

If a chemical attack took place, there are good reasons to believe that it was carried out by Syrian “rebels” with the assistance of the United States. Evidence of US-directed rebel operations in the areas where the chemical weapons were allegedly used continues to emerge.

Over the past two weeks, US Special Forces have reportedly been leading teams of opposition fighters in operations against regime targets near Damascus, in the very same area where the government claims the chemical attack took place. (See: “US prepares military assault on Syria”.) Le Figaro reported last week that guerrillas who were being trained in Jordan by CIA agents began massing near the Syrian capital beginning in mid-August. Hundreds of freshly trained fighters reportedly began crossing the border into Deraa on August 17.

The Jerusalem Post reported, “The rebels were trained for several months in a training camp on the Jordanian-Syrian border by CIA operatives, as well as Jordanian and Israeli commandos.”

 

Syrian Foreign Minister Walid al-Moallem corroborated these claims in a statement Tuesday, saying “rebel” fighters trained outside Syria were flooding into the Damascus suburbs and preparing an assault on “four different fronts.”

America’s regional allies and the European imperialist powers are lining up in support of the assault on Syria. Meeting in Cairo, the Arab League condemned the alleged chemical weapons attack and signaled support for a US-NATO assault by declaring that Assad was responsible. Arab League governments such as Qatar, Saudi Arabia and Jordan have been crucial backers of the anti-Assad forces fighting in Syria.

Turkey, which has also played a central role in stoking up a sectarian civil war in order to topple Assad, declared its full support for a US-NATO intervention.

Germany, Britain and France have joined in calls for action against Syria. Conversations between Obama and British Prime Minister David Cameron over the weekend yielded agreement on the need for “a serious response.” Additional Syria-related discussions between the US, British and French governments are set for this week. British Prime Minister David Cameron announced Tuesday that Parliament will cut short its summer holiday and reconvene on Thursday to authorize military action against Syria.

Top military officials gathered on Monday in Amman Jordan, including General Martin Dempsey and military chiefs from Britain, Italy, Germany, France, Canada, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Jordan, and an emergency meeting at NATO headquarters in Brussels is scheduled for Wednesday.

The US Congress is not planning to hold public hearings that might delay the outbreak of war, or submit the Obama administration’s claims to any critical examination. There are virtually no demands from Congress for even the legal fig leaf of congressional authorization for the war. While, according to a recent poll, only 9 percent of the public support a war against Syria, the pro-war mood in the Congress is overwhelming.

Obama, who won election in 2008 on a wave of anger against the Bush administration’s wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, is now, just five years later, about to drag the country into a war against Syria, once again on the basis of lies about weapons of mass destruction.