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President al-Assad: The Palestinian Cause Will Remain the Compass for the Syrian People

DAMASCUS, (SANA)- President Bashar al-Assad on Wednesday stressed that the Palestinian Cause has always been and will remain the compass for the Syrian people no matter how much the ferocity of targeting Syria and pressuring it gets intensified to deviate it from this Cause.

The President’s stress came during his meeting with the Secretary General of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine-General Command, Ahmad Jibril, and the delegation accompanying him.

Talks during the meeting dealt with the latest developments in the occupied Palestinian territories and the violations that are being daily committed by the Israeli occupation forces.

Particular focus with regard to these violations was placed on the continued constructing of new Israeli settlements in the West Bank to tighten siege on Jerusalem completely in preparation to Juidizing it particularly under the world’s preoccupation with the events witnessed in the region and the deliberate ignoring of the Palestinian Cause.

Discussion also touched upon the situation in Syria, with Jibril stressing that the Front stands by Syria who has always stood by the Palestinian people and the national resistance movements.

Twenty-Seven Army, Law-enforcement and Civilian Martyrs Paid Final Tribute

PROVINCES, (SANA) – On the music of the ‘Martyr’ and the ‘Farewell’, the bodies of 27 martyrs from the army and law enforcement forces on Wednesday were escorted from the military hospitals of Tishreen in Damascus, Zahi Azraq in Lattakia and the Military Hospital of Aleppo to their final resting place.

Solemn funeral processions were held for the martyrs who were targeted by armed terrorist groups while they were in line of duty in Damascus and its countryside, Lattakia, Aleppo and Daraa.

The martyrs are:

­           Lieutenant Colonel Mustafa Ibrahim al-Zahra, from Homs.

­           Chief Warrant Officer Mirshid Mahmoud Mohammad, from Lattakia.

­           Warrant Officer Wajih Mahmoud Ismandar, from Lattakia.

­           Sergeant Major Adel Jawdat Slara, from Tartous.

­           Sergeant Ghaith Ali Shaar, from Tartous.

­           Sergeant Hussein Qais Hassan, from Lattakia.

­           Sergeant Milad Tamin Ali, from Lattakia.

­           Sergeant Samer Allawi, from Deir Ezzor.

­           Sergeant hani Mohammad al-Youssef, from Homs.

­           Sergeant Haidar Saji’ Ismael, from Lattakia.

­           Sergeant Wissam Mahmoud Abboud, from Hama.

­           Sergeant Amer Ahmad al-Ali, from Hama.

­           Sergeant Sami Taysseer Sahnawi, from Sweida.

­           Sergeant Ghadir Sleiman Mohammad, from Hama.

­           Corporal  Khalil Nawaf al-Hammoud, from Deir Ezzor.

­           Conscript Munsif Hassan Abbo, from Aleppo.

­           Conscript Saeed Khaled Jaber, from Daraa.

­           Conscript Hazim Mahmoud Bajo, from al-Hasaka.

­           Conscript Wissam Farhan al-Ali, from Aleppo.

­           Conscript Hamza Abdul-Kafi Moussa Mansour, from Homs.

­           Conscript Karim Mohammad Abbour, from Hama.

­           Conscript Alawi Idan al-Ramthan, from al-Sweida.

­           Policeman Khaled Mahmoud Ibrahim, from Lattakia.

­           Policeman  Ghaled Ahmad Alia, from Lattakia.

­           Policeman Abdulllah Mohammad al-Jabli, from Damascus.

­           Civilian Khaled Fayez Dribati, from Lattakia.

­           Civilian Daham al-Wazzeh, from Lattakia.

The martyrs’ families and relatives called for firmly confronting the armed terrorist groups that have been committing criminal and sabotage acts in implementation of foreign agendas to undermine Syria’s national and pan-Arab role.

They expressed pride in the martyrdom of their sons, stressing their readiness for martyrdom in defending the homeland whenever duty calls.

Foreign and Expatriates Ministry : The Ongoing Is but a War against Armed Groups which Resort to Terrorism

DAMASCUS, (SANA)_ Foreign and Expatriates Ministry voiced astonishment Wednesday over the recent statements made in New York by UN peacekeeping chief, Herve Ladsous, that ”Syria is now in a full-scale civil war”.

The Ministry, in a statement received by SANA, asserted that any talk about ‘civil war’ in Syria doesn’t respond to the reality and contradicts the nature of the Syrian People, because the ongoing in Syria is but a war against the armed groups which chose terrorism as their way to achieve their objectives and conspire against the present and future of the Syrian People.

The statement added that Syria has expected and still expects from UN officials, and from Ladsous in particular, to deal evenhandedly, accurately and objectively with the ongoing developments in Syria, especially after the dispatching of UN monitors to most of the Syrian governorates.

Syria doesn’t witness a ‘civil war’, but a struggle to uproot the plague of terrorism and encounter the killing, abduction and payment of ransoms, aggressions, and explosions, outlined the statement, reiterating Syria’s right and duty to combat the crimes perpetrated by the armed groups and to extend the authority of the State over all of its territories in accordance with the international law and the preliminary understanding signed between Syria and the UN on April 19th 2012.

The Statement reiterated Syria’s respect to the UN envoy, Kofi Annan’s plan and Syria’s preparedness to implement it and that the international community, represented by the UN, should take a decisive stance against the crimes committed by the armed groups, and halt any military or financial backing by regional and international sides to these terrorist groups in commitment to related UN Security Council resolutions which stipulate the rallying of efforts to combat the plague of terrorism.

Authorities Foil infiltration attempts by terrorists from Lebanon into Syria

HOMS, HAMA, (SANA)-The competent Authorities today foiled two infiltration attempts by armed terrorist groups from the Lebanese lands into Syria at al-Arida and al-Armouta towns in Homs countryside.

A source in Homs told SANA reporter that the authorities clashed with the armed groups, killing a number of gunmen and wounding others while several of them fled back to the Lebanese lands.

Authorities discover a warehouse for manufacturing explosives while storming one of the terrorists’ dens in Hama

Competent authorities in Hama discovered today a warehouse for manufacturing explosives while storming one of the terrorists’ dens.

A source in Hama told SANA reporter that the authorities confiscated ammunitions, explosives, and a number of communication sets.

The authorities said that released citizen Muss’if Omar al-Tatan who was abducted several days ago by the armed terrorist groups.

Security, Calm Restored to al-Haffeh, UN Observers Called upon to Insepct the Situation

LATTAKIA, (SANA) – Authorities have restored security and clam to al-Haffeh district after clearing it from the armed terrorist groups which terrorized citizens and sabotaged several public and private properties.

An official source in Lattakia province told SANA reporter that the authorities tracked down the armed terrorist groups in the villages surrounding al-Haffeh and clashed  with them leading to the killing of many terrorists and arresting others.

The authorities also seized huge amounts of advanced weapons used by armed terrorist groups, including sniper rifles, explosive devices, RPG launchers and a large amount of ammunition.

The source added that clashes also led to the martyrdom of a number of the authorities’ members and wounding others.

Terrorists Leave Behind Gruesome Scenes of Destruction in al-Haffeh

The gruesome scenes of destruction that the terrorists left behind in al-Haffeh city in Lattakia unveil the subversive and terrorist face of these groups that desecrated the lives of citizens.

The terrorist groups turned al-Haffah into a ghost city after displacing its residents through the crimes and attacks that they perpetrated against the people there.

The images showed large scale destruction of public and private facilities that unveiled the mentality of the criminal groups.

The terrorists burnt down the national hospital that was providing health services to citizens. They also set fire to the finance, electricity and water directorates in the city, vandalized cultural centers and the fuel station, broke into houses and stole furniture and dug the roads by bulldozers.

Foreign Ministry Calls on UN Observers to Inspect Situation in al-Haffeh

Later, an official source at the Foreign and Expatriates Ministry stated that teh Ministry has called on the UN observers to go to al-Haffe city and inspect the situation there after the armed terrorist groups in the city carried out operations of killing and terrorizing against the innocent citizens and acts of looting and vandalism against public and private properties and shops.

The Ministry said this call comes in the framework of the observers’ mission to verify what is taking place on the ground and inspect the acts of these terrorist groups.

Lavrov: Russia Ready to Hold International Conference on Syria , Salehi: Syrian Crisis should be resolved internally and peacefully

TEHRAN, (SANA)- Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov on Wednesday stressed Russia’s support to the Syrian state, saying it is the axis of stability in the region.

In a joint press conference with his Iranian counterpart Ali Akbar Salehi, Lavrov said Moscow is interested in keeping Syria and the Syrian State intact against any disunification.

Lavrov stressed that Russia is ready to have the international conference on Syria held anywhere the participants see fit, urging all Syrian sides to the conflict and the forces with influence on them to work to make Anna’s plan a success.

He said that Russia and Iran are in agreement on solving the Syrian crisis and the importance that all international players take part in the conference, whose aim is to lend support to the implementation of the UN envoy to Syria Kofi Annan.

Lavrov said that certain sides announce support to Annan’s plan as they anticipate its failure, warning of the efforts to foil the plan, adding that the countries’ actions should match their words regarding finding a solution to the crisis in Syria and making Annan’s plan succeed.

He stressed the necessity of halting all acts of violence in Syria, noting that attacks against schools and government facilities were witnessed in Syria in the recent days.

The Russian Foreign Minister said what happened in Libya should not be repeated as it was destruction and terrorism on a large scale on the world’s level whose repercussions are still to date.

He noted that 15 states are suggested to participate in this conference who have to use their capabilities to push towards reaching a solution and bringing the Syrian sides to sit around the negotiating table.

In response to the statements recently made by the U.S. Secretary of State Hilary Clinton, Lavrov said all the Russian agreements being implemented with the Syrian side are related to defensive equipment and arms and do not contradict the international law.

For his part, the Iranian Foreign Minister stressed that the Syrian issue should be solved by the Syrian themselves.

Salehi said Syria has started effecting reforms and should be given the chance to get them completed, highlighting however the existence of parties that are providing support to the opposition and sending militias and impeding the reforms in Syria.

He said that Iran is working with Russia to find a peaceful solution to the crisis in Syria, which is being hindered by parties that are offering support to the gunmen to undermine stability in Syria.

Salehi hoped that an international conference on Syria would be held in which the participating countries would coordinate efforts to get Syria out of the crisis peacefully.

”We are looking forward to stopping bloodshed in Syria, and we call upon the parties concerned to provide the atmosphere for that,” Salehi added, stressing that those who claim to be interested in the wellbeing of the Syrian people are sending weapons and supporting armed opposition.

Syria Strongly Condemns Terrorist Bombings in Iraq

DAMASCUS, (SANA)- Syria on Wednesday strongly condemned the terrorist bombings which hit four cities in brotherly Iraq early in the morning causing tens of deaths and injuries.

“The Foreign Ministry, while stressing that terrorism has no religion or home, asserts that the vicious hand of terrorism which hit various Syrian cities lately is the same one that targeted the capital Baghdad and other Iraqi cities on Wednesday,” a statement by the Foreign and Expatriates Ministry said on Wednesday.

It added that “the pure blood that was spilt on the Iraqi territories is the same blood spilt a few days ago on the Syrian territories.”

The Ministry offered to the brotherly government and people of Iraq deepest condolences over the martyrs and expressed its full solidarity with and condolences to the victims’ families and hope that Iraq restores security and stability.

Early in the morning, terrorist bombings hit a number of Iraqi cities claiming the lives of more than 70 people and causing injury to 100 others.

Syria Strongly Condemns Terrorist Bombings in Iraq

DAMASCUS, (SANA)- Syria on Wednesday strongly condemned the terrorist bombings which hit four cities in brotherly Iraq early in the morning causing tens of deaths and injuries.

“The Foreign Ministry, while stressing that terrorism has no religion or home, asserts that the vicious hand of terrorism which hit various Syrian cities lately is the same one that targeted the capital Baghdad and other Iraqi cities on Wednesday,” a statement by the Foreign and Expatriates Ministry said on Wednesday.

It added that “the pure blood that was spilt on the Iraqi territories is the same blood spilt a few days ago on the Syrian territories.”

The Ministry offered to the brotherly government and people of Iraq deepest condolences over the martyrs and expressed its full solidarity with and condolences to the victims’ families and hope that Iraq restores security and stability.

Early in the morning, terrorist bombings hit a number of Iraqi cities claiming the lives of more than 70 people and causing injury to 100 others.

Mikdad: Relations between Syria and Russia deep and historic

DAMASCUS, (SANA)-Deputy Foreign and Expatriates Minister Fayssal Mikdad described relations between Syria and Russia as deep and historic, saying that the national Day of Russia is a day for all Syrian people.

“This day represents the top of cooperation and coordination between the two friendly countries and the two Presidents Bashar al-Assad and Vladimir Putin,” Mikdad said during a celebration for the Russian National Day held by Ambassador Azamatullah Kulmohammadov at Dama Rose Hotel in Damascus.

The Russian Ambassador, for his part,  called for the necessity of unifying the efforts of the international community to end violence in Syria and stop providing armed groups with weapons and stop pressures practiced by some foreign sides on Syria.

Interior Minister, the Commander-in-Chief Visit Injured Army and Law-enforcement Members in Lattakia

LATTAKIA, (SANA) – Interior Minister, Lt. Gen. Mohammad al-Shaar, and General Commander-in-Chief of the Army and the Armed Forces, Gen. Fahd Jassem al-Freij, visited the injured army and law-enforcement members in Zahi Azraq Military Hospital, al-Assad University Hospital and the National Hospital in Lattakia.

The injured members were targeted by the armed terrorist groups while performing their national duty in preserving the homeland’s security and stability.

Al-Shaar and al-Freij also visited al-Ikhbaria TV channel’s reporter and cameraman of who were injured by the terrorists’ gunfire in al-Haffeh city in the countryside of Lattakia.

The two officials listened to the doctors about the health condition of the injured, stressing that their sacrifices for the sake of the homeland and achieving stability are appreciated by all the Syrians.

They called upon doctors and nurses to provide the best health services to the injured.

For their part, the injured members stressed that the crimes of the terrorist groups will not prevent them from performing their national duty in confronting these groups.

Aleppo University Students Stress Adherence to National Unity, Condemn Terrorist Acts

ALEPPO, (SANA) – Crowds of students gathered at Aleppo University to stress adherence to the national unity and their support to the comprehensive reform program.

The students reiterated rejection of any foreign interference in Syria’s internal affairs, condemning criminal acts committed by the terrorist groups against civilians, military members and private and public properties.

They also denounced the instigative misleading media campaign lead by some satellite channels against Syria and its people.

The participants raised national flags and banners that stress their readiness to sacrifice themselves for the sake of the homeland, chanting slogans in appreciation of the Army’s role in confronting the armed terrorist groups and defending the homeland.

A member at the Students’ Union, Mohammad Za’azoe, said that the rally stresses the role of the youth in the comprehensive reform process.

Student Maher Ahmad al-Sayyed called for holding the armed terrorist groups accountable for their criminal acts against the homeland and the Syrian people.

In turn, student Nadeem al-Shaar said that he wanted to express appreciation and gratitude to the martyrs who sacrificed their lives to safeguard the homeland.

Deputy of Mood: Media Statements about Outbreak of Civil War in Syria Not Issued by Gen. Mood or Observers

DAMASCUS, (SANA)-Following statements by a number of mass media attributed to Head of the UN mission in Syria General Robert Mood about the outbreak of a civil war in Syria and the Syrian government’s loss of control on several Syrian areas, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Expatriates inquired the office of Mood in Damascus where his deputy Martin Grifith underlined that these statements have not been issued by Mood or any of the international observers in the country.

A number of media institutions attributed statements to Mood that Syria entered a civil war. They also claimed that Mood had stated that the Syrian government lost control on wide areas.

Independent Newspaper: Arab States Arming Syrian Opposition with Turkish Support

LONDON, (SANA) – The British Independent newspaper on Wednesday published an exclusive report about the Arab States arming the opposition in Damascus.

The newspaper stated that Qatar and Saudi Arabia are funding the opposition in Syria in a move to inflame the conflict in the region.

The report said, according to a Western diplomat in Ankara, that the militias of the so-called Free Army have received weapons from these two Gulf countries via Turkey with the implicit support of the Turkish intelligence agency.

It added that the Western diplomat, who spoke on a condition of anonymity, confirmed that “light weapons” were delivered to the armed Syrian opposition which were transported to the border by unmarked trucks and that many of the arms were transported with the knowledge of the Turkish authorities under the supervision of the Syrian National Council (SNC).

The report cited the diplomat as saying that despite the Council’s “failure to unite the fractured opposition, it appears that Turkey insisted the SNC vouch for the specific FSA groups that would receive the weapons before allowing the arms to cross the border.”

“Officially, they are not going to admit it,” the diplomat added according to the report, stressing that the SNC are “their guys”, referring to MIT.

The British newspaper noted that members of the groups comprising the Free Army militias said three weeks ago that they had received “multiple shipments of arms including Kalashnikov assault rifles, BKC machine guns, rocket-propelled grenades and anti-tank weaponry from Gulf countries and that Turkey was assisting in the delivery of the weapons.”

“The Turkish government helped us to be armed,” the newspaper quoted a member of these militias as saying, who claimed that “the weapons had arrived at a Turkish port and were then driven to the border without interference from Turkish authorities.”

The newspaper underlined that Saudi officials have in the past made clear their feeling that the opposition members should be armed.

Plumbly: UN Concened that Lebanon Should Not  Turn into Conduit for Flow of Weapons to Syria

BEIRUT, (SANA)- United Nations Secretary General Special Coordinator for Lebanon, Derek Plumbly, said that the UN is concerned that Lebanon not to turn into a conduit for the flow of weapons to Syria.

In a statement to the Lebanese As-Safir Newspaper published on Wednesday, Plumbly added ” It’s not in Lebanon’s best interest to turn into a conduit for weapons transfers to Syria,” calling on the Lebanese army and security authorities to exert all efforts to prevent that.

He pointed out that all representatives of the Western and Arab countries seek to protect Lebanon from the repercussions of the Syrian crisis and to support the national dialogue which was launched on Monday.

Terrorist Groups Assassinate Former Head of Football Union in Daraa, Abduct 30 Citizens in Hama and Idleb, Authorities Seize and Dismantle 15 IEDs in Hama and Idleb

PROVINCES, (SANA) – An armed terrorist group assassinated Dr. Marwan Arafat, Former head of the Syrian Football Union.

Dr. Arafat was on his way back from Jordan, his wife was critically injured in the attack which took place between Nasib border crossing and al-Tayba town in Daraa Countryside.

The General Sport Union mourned Dr. Arafat, saying that the Syrian sport has lost one of its pioneers.

Lieutenant General Moafaq Jouma, Head of the General Sport Union, said that ‘We offer condolences to his family and to our sport family, because his death is a loss for all of us’.

Dr. Marwan Arafat was a member of the Executive Office of the General Sport Union and the Olympic Committee from 1982 until 1996, he headed the Football Union for two terms.

Authorities Seize and Dismantle Nine IEDs in Hama

Meanwhile, authorities seized and dismantled nine improvised explosive devices (IED) which were found in an abandoned house in Souk al-Shajara area in Hama Province.

SANA reporter quoted a source at the province as saying that the house was a den of an armed terrorist group, adding that the weight of the charges ranges between 35 to 40 kilograms.

6 Citizens Abducted in Hama

An armed terrorist group abducted 6 citizens in a bus belonging to Adra Transport Company in al-Salamiyeh in Hama countryside.

A source in the province told SANA reporter that the terrorist group blocked the way of the bus near Tal Mardikh while heading to al-Salamiyeh city.

The abducted citizens are Mohammad Ali Sattouf, Tareq Suheil Zaido, Mohammad Ismael, Ismael Haidar, Kareem Saif-Eddin Haidar, Abdulkareem Mustafa Mahmoud and Wassim Deeb, the source added.

Terrorists Attack Peasants Association in Hama Countryside, Burglarize 20 Tons of Wheat

In the same context, the source said that another armed terrorist group attacked the headquarters of the Peasants’ Association in Jinan town in al-Salamiyeh region and burglarized a tractor-trailer loaded with 20 tons of wheat and a tractor.

Armed Terrorist Group Abduct 24 Passengers in Idleb

An armed terrorist group kidnapped a bus carrying 24 passengers on Ariha – Saraqeb road who were heading from Lattakia to Aleppo.

A source in the province told SANA reporter that terrorists in two cars with machineguns opened fire on the bus to force it to stop, injuring the university student Ali Radwan who happened to be nearby.

6 Explosive Devices Dismantled in Idleb

The military engineering units dismantled 6 explosive devices planted by an armed terrorist group on Ariha-Saraqeb road in Idleb.

A source in the province told SANA reporter that the weight of the explosive devices, which were ready for remote detonation, ranged between 30 to 40 kg.

Authorities Arrest Two Wanted Terrorists, Wound Others in Deir Ezzor

The authorities in Deir Ezzor countryside, in cooperation with locals, arrested the terrorists Bashar al-Haki and Ahmad Hassan al-Younes, who are wanted on charges of murder and sabotage acts, and seized their weapons.

A source in the province told SANA reporter that the two terrorist were riding a motorcycle in al-Jaradiq neighborhood in al-Mayadin city and carrying machineguns and grenades.

The source added that the authorities clashed with an armed terrorist group in al-Bseireh town in the countryside of Deir Ezzor and wounded a number of terrorists.

An armed terrorist group attacked a telecommunications center in al-Dweir town in Deir Ezzor countryside and sabotaged its contents.

Cutting Iran’s link to the Mediterranean Sea is a strategic prize worth the risk.

We’re not done with the possibility of an Israeli strike on Iran. Given that the current round of negotiations with the world’s major powers will not fundamentally change Iran’s nuclear program, the question of an Israeli attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities is likely to return to center stage later this year. In addition to hard-headed diplomacy and economic sanctions, there is an important step the United States can take to change Israel’s calculations — helping the people of Syria in their battle against President Bashar al-Assad’s regime.

Iran’s nuclear program and Syria’s civil war may seem unconnected, but in fact they are inextricably linked. Israel’s real fear — losing its nuclear monopoly and therefore the ability to use its conventional forces at will throughout the Middle East — is the unacknowledged factor driving its decision-making toward the Islamic Republic. For Israeli leaders, the real threat from a nuclear-armed Iran is not the prospect of an insane Iranian leader launching an unprovoked nuclear attack on Israel that would lead to the annihilation of both countries. It’s the fact that Iran doesn’t even need to test a nuclear weapon to undermine Israeli military leverage in Lebanon and Syria. Just reaching the nuclear threshold could embolden Iranian leaders to call on their proxy in Lebanon, Hezbollah, to attack Israel, knowing that their adversary would have to think hard before striking back.

That is where Syria comes in. It is the strategic relationship between the Islamic Republic and the Assad regime that makes it possible for Iran to undermine Israel’s security. Over the three decades of hostility between Iran and Israel, a direct military confrontation has never occurred — but through Hezbollah, which is sustained and trained by Iran via Syria, the Islamic Republic has proven able to threaten Israeli security interests.

The collapse of the Assad regime would sunder this dangerous alliance. Defense Minister Ehud Barak, arguably the most important Israeli decision-maker on this question, recently told CNN’s Christiane Amanpour that the Assad regime’s fall “will be a major blow to the radical axis, major blow to Iran…. It’s the only kind of outpost of the Iranian influence in the Arab world … and it will weaken dramatically both Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas and Islamic Jihad in Gaza.”

The rebellion in Syria has now lasted more than a year. The opposition is not going away, and it is abundantly clear that neither diplomatic pressure nor economic sanctions will force Assad to accept a negotiated solution to the crisis. With his life, his family, and his clan’s future at stake, only the threat or use of force will change the Syrian dictator’s stance. Absent foreign intervention, then, the civil war in Syria will only get worse as radicals rush in to exploit the chaos there and the spillover into Jordan, Lebanon, and Turkey intensifies.

U.S. President Barack Obama’s administration has been understandably wary of engaging in an air operation in Syria similar to the campaign in Libya, for three main reasons. Unlike the Libyan opposition forces, the Syrian rebels are not unified and do not hold territory. The Arab League has not called for outside military intervention as it did in Libya. And the Russians, the longtime patron of the Assad regime, are staunchly opposed.

Libya was an easier case. But other than the laudable result of saving many thousands of Libyan civilians from Muammar al-Qaddafi’s regime, it had no long-lasting consequences for the region. Syria is harder — but success there would be a transformative event for the Middle East. Not only would another ruthless dictator succumb to mass popular opposition, but Iran would no longer have a Mediterranean foothold from which to threaten Israel and destabilize the region.

A successful intervention in Syria would require substantial diplomatic and military leadership from the United States. Washington should start by declaring its willingness to work with regional allies like Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and Turkey to organize, train, and arm Syrian rebel forces. The announcement of such a decision would, by itself, likely cause substantial defections from the Syrian military. Then, using territory in Turkey and possibly Jordan, U.S. diplomats and Pentagon officials could start strengthening and unifying the opposition. Once the opposition knows real outside help is on the way, it should be possible over time to build a coherent political leadership based on the Syrian National Council as well as a manageable command and control structure for the Free Syrian Army, both of which are now weak and divided. This will be difficult and time-consuming, but we should remember that the Syrian civil war is now destined to go on for years, whether the outside world intervenes or not.

A second step worth serious consideration is to secure international support for a coalition air operation. Russia will never support such a mission, so there is no point operating through the U.N. Security Council. And given the reluctance of some European states, NATO may be difficult as well. Therefore, this operation will have to be a unique combination of Western and Middle East countries. Given Syria’s extreme isolation within the Arab League, it should be possible to gain strong support from most Arab countries, led by Saudi Arabia and Turkey. U.S. leadership is indispensable, since most of the key countries will follow only if Washington leads.

Some worry that U.S. involvement risks a confrontation with Russia. However, the Kosovo example — where NATO went to war against another Russian ally, while Moscow did little more than complain — shows otherwise. In that case, Russia had genuine ethnic and political ties to the Serbs, which don’t exist between Russia and Syria. Managing Russia’s reaction to outside intervention will be difficult but should not be exaggerated.

Arming the Syrian opposition and creating a coalition air force to support them is a low-cost, high-payoff approach. Whether an air operation should just create a no-fly zone that grounds the regimes’ aircraft and helicopters or actually conduct air to ground attacks on Syrian tanks and artillery should be the subject of immediate military planning. And as Barak, the Israeli defense minister, also noted, Syria’s air defenses may be better than Libya’s but they are no match for a modern air force.

The larger point is that as long as Washington stays firm that no U.S. ground troops will be deployed, à la Kosovo and Libya, the cost to the United States will be limited. Victory may not come quickly or easily, but it will come. And the payoff will be substantial. Iran would be strategically isolated, unable to exert its influence in the Middle East. The resulting regime in Syria will likely regard the United States as more friend than enemy. Washington would gain substantial recognition as fighting for the people in the Arab world, not the corrupt regimes.

With the Islamic Republic deprived of its gateway to the Arab world, the Israelis’ rationale for a bolt from the blue attack on its nuclear facilities would diminish. A new Syrian regime might eventually even resume the frozen peace talks regarding the Golan Heights.

In Lebanon, Hezbollah would be cut off from its Iranian sponsor, since Syria would no longer be a transit point for Iranian training, assistance, and missiles. All these strategic benefits combined with the moral purpose of saving tens of thousands of civilians from murder at the hands of the Assad regime — some 12,000 have already been killed, according to activists — make intervention in Syria a calculated risk, but still a risk worth taking.

With the veil of fear now lifted, the Syrian people are determined to fight for their freedom. America can and should help them — and by doing so help Israel and help reduce the risk of a far more dangerous war between Israel and Iran.

BY JAMES P. RUBIN

4 JUNE 2012

@ Foreign Policy

James P. Rubin was assistant secretary of state during the Bill Clinton administration.

Twenty-Two Army, Law-enforcement and Civilian Martyrs Laid to Rest

DAMASCUS/ LATTAKIA, (SANA)- On the music of the ‘Martyr’ and the ‘Farewell’, the bodies of 22 martyrs from the army, law enforcement forces and civilians on Thursday were escorted from the military hospitals of Tishreen in Damascus, Zahi Azraq in Lattakia and the Police Hospitals in Damascus to their final resting place.

Solemn funeral processions were held for the martyrs who were targeted by armed terrorist groups while they were in line of duty in Lattakia, Homs, Aleppo and Daraa.

The martyrs are:

­           Chief Warrant Officer Hussam Mohammad al-Laimouni, from Lattakia.

­           Chief Warrant Officer Mohammad Adnan al-Ali, from Lattakia.

­           Chief Warrant Officer Ali Ma’arouf Dibo, from Hama.

­           Chief Warrant Officer Alaa Younis Ali, from Lattakia.

­           Warrant Officer Mohammad Jawad Asaad, from Tartous.

­           Sergeant Zaher Hatim, from Hama.

­           Corporal Hamad Okla Saud, from Deir Ezzor.

­           Corporal Wisam Ali al-Sa’adi, from Daraa.

­           Conscript Zakariya Subhi al-Khalil, from Aleppo.

­           Conscript Imad Eiyadeh al-Hamad, from Deir Ezzor.

­           Conscript Ibrahim Taktouk, from Hasaka.

­           Conscript Moussa Hasan Zamzam, from Lattakia.

­           Conscript Abdul-Rahman Shahadeh Ali, from Damascus Countryside.

­           Conscript Tamer Jassem al-Izzo, from Damascus Countryside.

­           Conscript Mouhannad Munir Mayya, from Lattakia.

­           Conscript Saeed Khaled Jabr, from Daraa.

­           Policeman Abdullah Mohammad al-Jabali, from Quneitra.

­           Policeman Osama Saeed, from Tartous.

­           Civilian Nizar Salim Salameh, from Lattakia.

­           Civilian Amer Mualla Ibrahim, from Lattakia.

­           Civilian Rabea Samir Abbas, from Lattakia.

­           Civilian Ali Samir Abbas, from Lattakia.

The families of the martyrs expressed their pride in the martyrdom of their sons who sacrificed their souls to defend Syria’s security and stability.

They called for enhancing the national unity, expressing rejection of the foreign interference in Syria’s internal affairs.

Authorities Arrest Al-Qaeda terrorist member who would blow himself up during Friday prayers

Damascus, (SANA)-The competent authorities on Thursday arrested terrorist Mohammad Houssam al-Sadaki, from al-Qaeda- Jabhat al-Nasra- who was planning to blow himself up inside al-Rifae mosque in Damascus during Friday prayers.

Al-Sadaki confessed that there are other persons supposed to explode themselves in a number of Damascus mosques today during Friday prayers.

Russia Expresses Deep Concern over Terrorist Attacks in Syria

MOSCOW, (SANA) – Russia expressed on Thursday its deep concern over escalating the terrorist attacks perpetrated by the armed groups and extremists in Syria and other regional countries, highlighting condemnation of the terrorist and inhuman attacks in Iraq yesterday.

In a statement, the Russian Foreign Ministry said that it is dangerous that extremists forces such as al-Qaeda are increasingly getting involved in the tragic events in the region.

The statement expressed Russia’s belief that a peaceful settlement to solve the crisis in Syria without foreign interference or military intervention serves the interests of Islamic countries and the international community.

Bogdanov: Settling the Crisis in Syria in accordance with the UN Envoy to Syria

The special representative of the President of the Russian Federation for the Middle East, Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs of Russia M.L.Bogdanov reiterated Russia’s calls for settling the crisis in Syria in accordance with the UN Envoy to Syria, Kofi Annan’s plan.

In a statement released by Russian Foreign Ministry, Bogdanov, during his talks with Jacques Audibert, a political director at the French Foreign Ministry , underscored the necessity to speed up the convening of an international conference about Syria as to effectively contribute to the implementation of Annan’s plan, asserting the need for all forms of violence to be halted.

The Russian and French officials, added the statement, exchanged views about prospects of diplomatic and political settlement to the crisis in Syria on the basis of Annan’s plan.

Earlier, Reuter News Agency disclosed that the armed opposition in Syria has received ‘newly armed with mortars, machine guns and rocket-propelled grenades smuggled across borders by truck and donkey’ quoting sources in the opposition as saying that they ‘have taken advantage of a shaky truce to regroup against a Syrian army .

Thousand of shells and hundreds of sniper rifles, as well as anti-armour missiles, have been smuggled in via Turkey, Lebanon and Iraq in recent weeks, much of them from suppliers in Saudi Arabia and Qatar, according to opposition figures quoted by Reuters.

Russian Emergency Ministry: Humanitarian Factor should be basic in Solving Crisis in Syria

Director of the International Directorate at the Russian Emergency Ministry Yuri Brazhnikov today said that the humanitarian factor should become a basic element in solving the Syrian crisis.

Russia Today Site quoted Brazhinkov as saying after a meeting between Russian Emergency Minister Vladimir Puchkov with Undersecretary General of the UN Humanitarian issues Valerie Amos “We will cooperate with the UN World Food Program and with the Red Cross to offer nutritional aid to the needed.”

Amos, for her part, said that she inspected the situation in Syria and the residents’ needs, adding “the UN food programs include now 500.000 needed people.”

Authorities Seize Large Amounts of Weapons in al-Haffeh

LATTAKIA, (SANA) – Authorities seized on Thursday large amounts of weapons in al-Haffeh district in Lattakia countryside.

A source at the province said that the seized weapons include boxes of ammunition for machineguns, 36 Russian rifles, 48 RPG launchers, 33 sniper rifles, mortars, a reconnaissance aircraft and a field hospital.

The authorities also seized advanced communication devices, IDs, maps, military suits and explosive devices.

Engineer Jaber al-Assi, Head of the Electricity Department in al-Haffeh, said that the vandalism acts of terrorists targeted the electricity departments in the city and smashed their contents, adding that work is underway to fix the breakdowns.

He said that the losses are estimated in the millions of Syrian pounds.

8 Explosive Devices Dismantled in Aleppo, Terrorists Arrested, Killed and Wounded in Idleb

The military engineering units dismantled 8 explosive devices planted by the armed terrorist groups on Khan al-Asal road which lead to the Police Academy, near Prophet Yousef Mosque, in Aleppo.

A source in the province told SANA reporter that the weight of the explosive devices, which were ready for remote detonation, ranged between15 to 40 kg.

Authorities Arrest, Kill and Wound Terrorists in Idleb

Authorities in Idleb clashed with an armed terrorist group that committed sabotage acts and planted explosive devices killing and wounding a number of terrorists.

In the same context, the authorities on Wednesday evening stormed a hideout of a terrorist group in a farm near Idleb city and clashed with it killing all of its members.

In Jabal al-Zawiyeh in the countryside of Idleb, the authorities clashed with an armed terrorist group which attacked the law-enforcement forces in Deir Sunbul and killed its members.

The authorities also clashed with an armed terrorist group which terrified locals in Harem area, arresting two of them, killing and wounding others.

14 Citizens Involved in Recent Events Turn Themselves In

14 citizens who were misled and got involved in the recent events in the country and whose hands are clear of the Syrian blood handed themselves and their weapons in to the authorities in Homs and Damascus Countryside on Thursday.

The citizens were released to go back to normal life after pledging not to take up arms again or take part in vandalizing public and private properties.

Authorities Storm Dens of Armed Terrorist Groups in Douma, Kill and Arrest Several Terrorists

In cooperation with the residents and after investigations, authorities stormed dens of armed terrorist groups in Douma city in Damascus Countryside.

A source in the province told SANA reporter that clashes between the authorities and the armed terrorist groups resulted in killing and wounding many terorrists and arresting others and seizing their weapons.

The source added that the clashes also led to the martyrdom of three authorities’ members and wounding others.

14 People Injured in a Booby-trapped Car Blast near Damascus

DAMASCUS COUNTRYSIDE, (SANA)- Fourteen people were injured Thursday morning when a booby-trapped car exploded at a garage for buses and cars near Imam al-Sadr Hospital in al-Sayeda Zainab near Damascus.

A source at Damascus Countryside Police Department told SANA reporter that a suicide bomber was driving the booby-trapped car who blew himself up in an open garage injuring 14 persons and causing great material damage at and nearby the place of the explosion.

China Reiterates Rejection of One-sided Sanctions and Pressure to Solve Crisis in Syria

BEIJING, (SANA) – Spokesman of the Chinese Foreign Ministry, Liu Weimin, on Thursday reiterated China’s rejection of one-sided sanctions and pressure to solve the crisis in Syria.

In a press conference on Thursday, Liu said that “The international actions on Syria should be conducive to easing tension in the country, promoting a political resolution to the issue and maintaining peace and stability in the Middle East region.”

He added that his county has maintained communication and coordination with all parties concerned in the crisis in Syria.

Liu stressed that the international community should provide full support for Annan’s mediation efforts and encourage the parties concerned to implement the relevant UN Security Council resolutions and Annan’s six-point plan.

He urged all Syrian parties to positively cooperate with the UN observers, halt all forms of violence and protect civilians, so as to defuse tension as soon as possible.

Regarding Russia’s proposal to convene an international conference on Syria and establishing a contact group on Annan’s initiative, Liu said that China adopts a positive stance towards the Russian proposal.

Liu added that his country believed the international community should adhere to the peaceful political solution.

“China has repeatedly said that it has no intention of siding with any Syrian party, and the Syrian people have the right to decide Syria’s development path and political system,” Liu said, adding that his country is open to all sides in Syria to reach a political solution that is based on dialogue and acceptable to the international community.

“China calls for patience and international solidarity, given the complicated situation in Syria,” said the spokesman, expressing his country’s hope that Annan’s efforts will make more progress as soon as possible.

Iran: Continuing Organized Terrorist Operations in Syria and Iraq Will Destabilize the Whole Region

TEHRAN, (SANA) – Iranian Deputy Foreign Minister for Arab and African Affairs Hussein Amir Abdullahian warned parties involved in the organized terrorist operations in Iraq and Syria of that continuing these acts will destabilize the security of the whole region.

In a statement to the Iranian News Agency IRNA, Abdullahian condemned the recent terrorist acts in Iraq, expressing sympathy with the martyrs’ families, indicating that the enemies of the region are the only beneficiaries of such acts.

UN Observer Teams Continue Tours in Syrian Provinces

PROVINCES,SANA_ A delegation of UN observers on Thursday inspected the site of the explosion that rocked al-Sayeda Zainab near Damascus injuring 14 persons and causing great material damage at and nearby the place of the explosion.

The terrorist explosion was carried out by a suicide bombers driving a booby-trapped car.

Another delegation visited Ma’aloula and met a number of citizens.

The observers also visited al-Haffah city in Lattakia countryside and were briefed on the acts of sabotage, looting and destroying public and private properties by gunmen to terrify civilians.

Special Ops, Drones, Spy Games, Civilian Soldiers, Proxy Fighters, and Cyber Warfare

It looked like a scene out of a Hollywood movie. In the inky darkness, men in full combat gear, armed with automatic weapons and wearing night-vision goggles, grabbed hold of a thick, woven cable hanging from a MH-47 Chinook helicopter. Then, in a flash, each “fast-roped” down onto a ship below. Afterward, “Mike,” a Navy SEAL who would not give his last name, bragged to an Army public affairs sergeant that, when they were on their game, the SEALs could put 15 men on a ship this way in 30 seconds or less.

Once on the aft deck, the special ops troops broke into squads and methodically searched the ship as it bobbed in Jinhae Harbor, South Korea. Below deck and on the bridge, the commandos located several men and trained their weapons on them, but nobody fired a shot. It was, after all, a training exercise.

All of those ship-searchers were SEALs, but not all of them were American. Some were from Naval Special Warfare Group 1 out of Coronado, California; others hailed from South Korea’s Naval Special Brigade. The drill was part of Foal Eagle 2012, a multinational, joint-service exercise. It was also a model for — and one small part of — a much publicized U.S. military “pivot” from the Greater Middle East to Asia, a move that includes sending an initial contingent of 250 Marines to Darwin, Australia, basing littoral combat ships in Singapore, strengthening military ties with Vietnam and India, staging war games in the Philippines (as well as a drone strike there), and shifting the majority of the Navy’s ships to the Pacific by the end of the decade.

That modest training exercise also reflected another kind of pivot. The face of American-style war-fighting is once again changing. Forget full-scale invasions and large-footprint occupations on the Eurasian mainland; instead, think: special operations forces working on their own but also training or fighting beside allied militaries (if not outright proxy armies) in hot spots around the world. And along with those special ops advisors, trainers, and commandos expect ever more funds and efforts to flow into the militarization of spying and intelligence, the use of drone aircraft, the launching of cyber-attacks, and joint Pentagon operations with increasingly militarized “civilian” government agencies.

Much of this has been noted in the media, but how it all fits together into what could be called the new global face of empire has escaped attention. And yet this represents nothing short of a new Obama doctrine, a six-point program for twenty-first-century war, American-style, that the administration is now carefully developing and honing. Its global scope is already breathtaking, if little recognized, and like Donald Rumsfeld’s military lite and David Petraeus’s counterinsurgency operations, it is evidently going to have its day in the sun — and like them, it will undoubtedly disappoint in ways that will surprise its creators.

The Blur-ness

For many years, the U.S. military has been talking up and promoting the concept of “jointness.” An Army helicopter landing Navy SEALs on a Korean ship catches some of this ethos at the tactical level. But the future, it seems, has something else in store. Think of it as “blur-ness,” a kind of organizational version of war-fighting in which a dominant Pentagon fuses its forces with other government agencies — especially the CIA, the State Department, and the Drug Enforcement Administration — in complex, overlapping missions around the globe.

In 2001, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld began his “revolution in military affairs,” steering the Pentagon toward a military-lite model of high-tech, agile forces. The concept came to a grim end in Iraq’s embattled cities. A decade later, the last vestiges of its many failures continue to play out in a stalemated war in Afghanistan against a rag-tag minority insurgency that can’t be beaten. In the years since, two secretaries of defense and a new president have presided over another transformation — this one geared toward avoiding ruinous, large-scale land wars which the U.S. has consistently proven unable to win.

Under President Obama, the U.S. has expanded or launched numerous military campaigns — most of them utilizing a mix of the six elements of twenty-first-century American war. Take the American war in Pakistan — a poster-child for what might now be called the Obama formula, if not doctrine. Beginning as a highly-circumscribed drone assassination campaign backed by limited cross-border commando raids under the Bush administration, U.S. operations in Pakistan have expanded into something close to a full-scale robotic air war, complemented by cross-border helicopter attacks, CIA-funded “kill teams” of Afghan proxy forces, as well as boots-on-the-ground missions by elite special operations forces, including the SEAL raid that killed Osama bin Laden.

The CIA has conducted clandestine intelligence and surveillance missions in Pakistan, too, though its role may, in the future, be less important, thanks to Pentagon mission creep. In April, in fact, Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta announced the creation of a new CIA-like espionage agency within the Pentagon called the Defense Clandestine Service. According to the Washington Post, its aim is to expand “the military’s espionage efforts beyond war zones.”

Over the last decade, the very notion of war zones has become remarkably muddled, mirroring the blurring of the missions and activities of the CIA and Pentagon. Analyzing the new agency and the “broader convergence trend” between Department of Defense and CIA missions, the Post noted that the “blurring is also evident in the organizations’ upper ranks. Panetta previously served as CIA director, and that post is currently held by retired four-star Army Gen. David H. Petraeus.”

Not to be outdone, last year the State Department, once the seat of diplomacy, continued on its long march to militarization (and marginalization) when it agreed to pool some of its resources with the Pentagon to create the Global Security Contingency Fund. That program will allow the Defense Department even greater say in how aid from Washington will flow to proxy forces in places like Yemen and the Horn of Africa.

One thing is certain: American war-making (along with its spies and its diplomats) is heading ever deeper into “the shadows.” Expect yet more clandestine operations in ever more places with, of course, ever more potential for blowback in the years ahead.

Shedding Light on “the Dark Continent”

One locale likely to see an influx of Pentagon spies in the coming years is Africa. Under President Obama, operations on the continent have accelerated far beyond the more limited interventions of the Bush years. Last year’s war in Libya; a regional drone campaign with missions run out of airports and bases in Djibouti, Ethiopia, and the Indian Ocean archipelago nation of Seychelles; a flotilla of 30 ships in that ocean supporting regional operations; a multi-pronged military and CIA campaign against militants in Somalia, including intelligence operations, training for Somali agents, secret prisons, helicopter attacks, and U.S. commando raids; a massive influx of cash for counterterrorism operations across East Africa; a possible old-fashioned air war, carried out on the sly in the region using manned aircraft; tens of millions of dollars in arms for allied mercenaries and African troops; and a special ops expeditionary force (bolstered by State Department experts) dispatched to help capture or kill Lord’s Resistance Army leader Joseph Kony and his senior commanders, operating in Uganda, South Sudan, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and the Central African Republic (where U.S. Special Forces now have a new base) only begins to scratch the surface of Washington’s fast-expanding plans and activities in the region.

Even less well known are other U.S. military efforts designed to train African forces for operations now considered integral to American interests on the continent. These include, for example, a mission by elite Force Recon Marines from the Special Purpose Marine Air Ground Task Force 12 (SPMAGTF-12) to train soldiers from the Uganda People’s Defense Force, which supplies the majority of troops to the African Union Mission in Somalia.

Earlier this year, Marines from SPMAGTF-12 also trained soldiers from the Burundi National Defense Force, the second-largest contingent in Somalia; sent trainers into Djibouti (where the U.S. already maintains a major Horn of Africa base at Camp Lemonier); and traveled to Liberia where they focused on teaching riot-control techniques to Liberia’s military as part of an otherwise State Department spearheaded effort to rebuild that force.

The U.S. is also conducting counterterrorism training and equipping militaries in Algeria, Burkina Faso, Chad, Mauritania, Niger, and Tunisia. In addition, U.S. Africa Command (Africom) has 14 major joint-training exercises planned for 2012, including operations in Morocco, Cameroon, Gabon, Botswana, South Africa, Lesotho, Senegal, and what may become the Pakistan of Africa, Nigeria.

Even this, however, doesn’t encompass the full breadth of U.S. training and advising missions in Africa. To take an example not on Africom’s list, this spring the U.S. brought together 11 nations, including Cote d’Ivoire, The Gambia, Liberia, Mauritania, and Sierra Leone to take part in a maritime training exercise code-named Saharan Express 2012.

Back in the Backyard

Since its founding, the United States has often meddled close to home, treating the Caribbean as its private lake and intervening at will throughout Latin America. During the Bush years, with some notable exceptions, Washington’s interest in America’s “backyard” took a backseat to wars farther from home. Recently, however, the Obama administration has been ramping up operations south of the border using its new formula. This has meant Pentagon drone missions deep inside Mexico to aid that country’s battle against the drug cartels, while CIA agents and civilian operatives from the Department of Defense were dispatched to Mexican military bases to take part in the country’s drug war.

In 2012, the Pentagon has also ramped up its anti-drug operations in Honduras. Working out of Forward Operating Base Mocoron and other remote camps there, the U.S. military is supporting Honduran operations by way of the methods it honed in Iraq and Afghanistan. In addition, U.S. forces have taken part in joint operations with Honduran troops as part of a training mission dubbed Beyond the Horizon 2012; Green Berets have been assisting Honduran Special Operations forces in anti-smuggling operations; and a Drug Enforcement Administration Foreign-deployed Advisory Support Team, originally created to disrupt the poppy trade in Afghanistan, has joined forces with Honduras’s Tactical Response Team, that country’s most elite counternarcotics unit. A glimpse of these operations made the news recently when DEA agents, flying in an American helicopter, were involved in an aerial attack on civilians that killed two men and two pregnant women in the remote Mosquito Coast region.

Less visible have been U.S. efforts in Guyana, where Special Operation Forces have been training local troops in heliborne air assault techniques. “This is the first time we have had this type of exercise involving Special Operations Forces of the United States on such a grand scale,” Colonel Bruce Lovell of the Guyana Defense Force told a U.S. public affairs official earlier this year. “It gives us a chance to validate ourselves and see where we are, what are our shortcomings.”

The U.S. military has been similarly active elsewhere in Latin America, concluding training exercises in Guatemala, sponsoring “partnership-building” missions in the Dominican Republic, El Salvador, Peru, and Panama, and reaching an agreement to carry out 19 “activities” with the Colombian army over the next year, including joint military exercises.

Still in the Middle of the Middle East

Despite the end of the Iraq and Libyan wars, a coming drawdown of forces in Afghanistan, and copious public announcements about its national security pivot toward Asia, Washington is by no means withdrawing from the Greater Middle East. In addition to continuing operations in Afghanistan, the U.S. has consistently been at work training allied troops, building up military bases, and brokering weapons sales and arms transfers to despots in the region from Bahrain to Yemen.

In fact, Yemen, like its neighbor, Somalia, across the Gulf of Aden, has become a laboratory for Obama’s wars. There, the U.S. is carrying out its signature new brand of warfare with “black ops” troops like the SEALs and the Army’s Delta Force undoubtedly conducting kill/capture missions, while “white” forces like the Green Berets and Rangers are training indigenous troops, and robot planes hunt and kill members of al-Qaeda and its affiliates, possibly assisted by an even more secret contingent of manned aircraft.

The Middle East has also become the somewhat unlikely poster-region for another emerging facet of the Obama doctrine: cyberwar efforts. In a category-blurring speaking engagement, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton surfaced at the recent Special Operations Forces Industry Conference in Florida where she gave a speech talking up her department’s eagerness to join in the new American way of war. “We need Special Operations Forces who are as comfortable drinking tea with tribal leaders as raiding a terrorist compound,” she told the crowd. “We also need diplomats and development experts who are up to the job of being your partners.”

Clinton then took the opportunity to tout her agency’s online efforts, aimed at websites used by al-Qaeda’s affiliate in Yemen. When al-Qaeda recruitment messages appeared on the latter, she said, “our team plastered the same sites with altered versions… that showed the toll al-Qaeda attacks have taken on the Yemeni people.” She further noted that this information-warfare mission was carried out by experts at State’s Center for Strategic Counterterrorism Communications with assistance, not surprisingly, from the military and the U.S. Intelligence Community.

These modest on-line efforts join more potent methods of cyberwar being employed by the Pentagon and the CIA, including the recently revealed “Olympic Games,” a program of sophisticated attacks on computers in Iran’s nuclear enrichment facilities engineered and unleashed by the National Security Agency (NSA) and Unit 8200, Israeli’s equivalent of the NSA. As with other facets of the new way of war, these efforts were begun under the Bush administration but significantly accelerated under the current president, who became the first American commander-in-chief to order sustained cyberattacks designed to cripple another country’s infrastructure.

From Brushfires to Wildfires

Across the globe from Central and South America to Africa, the Middle East, and Asia, the Obama administration is working out its formula for a new American way of war. In its pursuit, the Pentagon and its increasingly militarized government partners are drawing on everything from classic precepts of colonial warfare to the latest technologies.

The United States is an imperial power chastened by more than 10 years of failed, heavy-footprint wars. It is hobbled by a hollowing-out economy, and inundated with hundreds of thousands of recent veterans — a staggering 45% of the troops who fought in Afghanistan and Iraq — suffering from service-related disabilities who will require ever more expensive care. No wonder the current combination of special ops, drones, spy games, civilian soldiers, cyberwarfare, and proxy fighters sounds like a safer, saner brand of war-fighting. At first blush, it may even look like a panacea for America’s national security ills. In reality, it may be anything but.

The new light-footprint Obama doctrine actually seems to be making war an ever more attractive and seemingly easy option — a point emphasized recently by former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Peter Pace. “I worry about speed making it too easy to employ force,” said Pace when asked about recent efforts to make it simpler to deploy Special Operations Forces abroad. “I worry about speed making it too easy to take the easy answer — let’s go whack them with special operations — as opposed to perhaps a more laborious answer for perhaps a better long-term solution.”

As a result, the new American way of war holds great potential for unforeseen entanglements and serial blowback. Starting or fanning brushfire wars on several continents could lead to raging wildfires that spread unpredictably and prove difficult, if not impossible, to quench.

By their very nature, small military engagements tend to get larger, and wars tend to spread beyond borders. By definition, military action tends to have unforeseen consequences. Those who doubt this need only look back to 2001, when three low-tech attacks on a single day set in motion a decade-plus of war that has spread across the globe. The response to that one day began with a war in Afghanistan, that spread to Pakistan, detoured to Iraq, popped up in Somalia and Yemen, and so on. Today, veterans of those Ur-interventions find themselves trying to replicate their dubious successes in places like Mexico and Honduras, the Central Africa Republic and the Congo.

History demonstrates that the U.S. is not very good at winning wars, having gone without victory in any major conflict since 1945. Smaller interventions have been a mixed bag with modest victories in places like Panama and Grenada and ignominious outcomes in Lebanon (in the 1980s) and Somalia (in the 1990s), to name a few.

The trouble is, it’s hard to tell what an intervention will grow up to be — until it’s too late. While they followed different paths, Vietnam, Afghanistan, and Iraq all began relatively small, before growing large and ruinous. Already, the outlook for the new Obama doctrine seems far from rosy, despite the good press it’s getting inside Washington’s Beltway.

What looks today like a formula for easy power projection that will further U.S. imperial interests on the cheap could soon prove to be an unmitigated disaster — one that likely won’t be apparent until it’s too late.

is the associate editor of TomDispatch.com. An award-winning journalist, his work has appeared in the Los Angeles Times, the Nation, and regularly at TomDispatch. He is the author/editor of several books, including the just published Terminator Planet: The First History of Drone Warfare, 2001-2050 (with Tom Engelhardt). This piece is the latest article in his new series on the changing face of American empire, which is being underwritten by Lannan Foundation. You can follow him on Twitter @NickTurse, on Tumblr, and on Facebook.

By Nick Turse

14 June, 2012

@ TomDispatch.com

Scare the hell out of the American people- Senator Arthur Vandenburg, 1947

It is part of the general pattern of misguided policy that our country is now geared to an arms economy which was bred in an artificially induced psychosis of war hysteria and nurtured upon an incessant propaganda of fear. While such an economy may produce a sense of seeming prosperity for the moment, it rests on an illusionary foundation of complete unreliability and renders among our political leaders almost a greater fear of peace than is their fear of war.- General Douglas MacArthur, May 15, 1952

At one point in my youth it became clear that the U.S. was a violent force in the world, probably as I watched the Vietnam war news on the local TV news. Later, it also became clear that its whole history is one of violence, at home and abroad. More recently I had naively hoped that as the U.S. Empire goes through its death throes, that it would quit the world peacefully. The latter thought was more a suspension of belief of my knowledge that I knew violence was the U.S. way of life, that I feared what the end of empire might bring. My current thinking is that through this course of historical violence to all people who oppose the corporate state – from the labourers and workers at home, to the farmers, workers, and labourers in foreign countries – the ending of the empire is in process and is and will continue to be violent.

But it is ending. After a brief hiatus from computer news reading, I came back on line to two articles that examine the economic problems faced by the world. The first by Paul Craig Roberts, Collapse at Hand, ( Counterpunch, June 05, 2012) discussed the U.S. economy and its relationship with the world, China in particular. The conclusion was that the U.S. economy was destined to fail, with the only indeterminate part being the “sooner or later.” The second article was by Mike Whitney, whom I have followed for the past several years and found his examinations and qualified predictions to be very much on the mark. His article, In Negative Territory – A Synchronized Global Slowdown, (Counterpunch, June 04, 2012) took a stronger look at the situation with the European Union and its problems. His general conclusion was the same, “sooner or later” it has to fall apart in some way.

At least the empire is ending. The violence, so much a part of U.S history, will continue and may become worse, more subtle abroad with the use of drones, and more obvious at home with the application of the dictates of the militarized state within the police forces.

Violence over the Americas

The U.S. was birthed in violence with its revolution of New World elites wanting to shed their relationship with the British Empire and continue on with their own. The empirical violence followed across the continent, using genocide against the indigenous populations, and military violence against the British and French, who were not paragons of virtue themselves. Mexico was defeated after a false flag set-up, and the way west was clear.

Following this came the Monroe Doctrine, an extension of their Manifest Destiny, and a pretext against Old World imperialism in order that their own imperialism could be applied to Central and South America, and the Caribbean. With all the agricultural and mineral riches of the New World now at their disposal, the violence continued as U.S. corporations controlled many of the land resources with the direct assistance of the U.S. military. From Haiti to Chile, subversion, covert actions, training of death squads and police squads, naval and marine interventions became the norm. It continues today most actively in Central America – most recently with the removal of Zelaya in Honduras in 2009 – and in Columbia with the pretext of the war on drugs used to establish military bases to cover the continent.

The corporations look overseas

The violence spread overseas with the fall of the Spanish possessions in South East Asia. The Philippines had as many as one million casualties as the U.S. defeated the native insurrections against the Spanish rulers. Later in Indonesia, half a million people were killed in U.S. supported genocide of an insurrection against government corruption there. The oil, tin, and rubber of the region fell under U.S. corporate dominance.

French Indo-China became the next focus, where the created fear of falling dominos under communist rule provided the rationale for the genocide and murder of several millions of indigenous peoples of the region. Had Canada and the U.S. allowed the UN sanctioned vote to proceed, there would have been no war and a united country not torn up and poisoned by war.

Falling dominos

The propaganda against the Soviet Union after the Second World War was persistent and ubiquitous. The lies and deceptions that were extended throughout this period still form a part of the U.S. myth of defending freedom. In reality, the Soviet Union never acted overtly to extend its empire beyond Eastern Europe, which it desired as a buffer against repeated German and French wars against their territory.

Elsewhere in the world, whenever a democratically elected government acted for the people rather than for the corporate interests of the U.S., the propaganda mill turned events into a communist threat against the very heart of U.S. ideology and mythology. There was no war with the Soviets, but there was an ongoing war with Third World countries that attempted an independent economic and political path supporting their own people and not the corporate interests of the elites.

With the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, the U.S. achieved a unipolar world, with their military unmatched by any other in the world. It created a great chance for global peace, but the U.S. policy makers wanted ‘full spectrum dominance’ over the globe for ever and a day. Rather than declining, the military violence increased, only this time directed at the Middle East.

Europe

Europe had not escaped U.S. military dominance. Immediately after the end of WW II, the U.S. helped Great Britain restore the old order in Greece by turning on the resistance that had almost driven the Germans from the country and had established a collective governance system. The same occurred in Italy where their resistance, especially in the north, had set up a similar system. In order for Italy not to fall to the communist and socialist parties that were very popular after the war, the U.S. mounted a huge campaign of financial support for the old crony lineage of governance.

The Marshall Plan and NATO were larger ideas to cement a renewed industrial Europe to the U.S. empire. While superficially benevolent, the Marshall Plan was designed to get rid of the socialist ‘threat’ and with the wise use of loans and economic support, tie the region into U.S. economic alignment. NATO, theoretically designed to stop a Soviet invasion of Europe, has been a successful attempt to extend the U.S. military over Europe and to use that dominance to pursue U.S. purposes outside of Europe (Yugoslavia, Afghanistan, Libya…) while extending it ever closer to Russia’s borders. Germany has been nominally occupied by the U.S. since the end of the war, and has attained status as the EU’s economic powerhouse, creating its own mini-economic empire that is now unravelling.

Middle East adventures

The British rapidly lost influence in the Middle East after WW II. Over-extended and embattled in India and Palestine, the British passed the baton to the rising U.S. empire. With the huge resource of oil readily available – the resource that has powered the world in its military and consumptive excesses for the past century – the Middle East was a prime target for U.S. interventions. It began with the overthrow of Mossadegh in Iran and the installation of the corrupt Shah Pahlavi regime.

Interventions continued and increased with support for Israel and various neighbouring monarchic and totalitarian regimes whose elites supported the U.S. requirements for easy cheap oil. The Iran-Iraq war created a situation in which both countries could be weakened while the empire provided information and military assistance to Iraq. Later of course, as Hussein acted more independently, more vociferously against Israel, and swept aside the petrodollar to trade oil in Euros, he became a target of U.S. economic and military interests.

Propaganda – or advertising – or patriotism – it is all the same.

No matter what the rhetoric, the ultimate aim of empire is the centralization of wealth and power in the hands of the elite. The management of empires is largely achieved by the application of basic psychology – creating fear of some ‘other’, in order to have a target for the average citizen to focus on rather than swindles, cheats, thievery, and lies of their own government. To accompany the fearful ‘other,’ a ‘hero’ is created, a patriotic mythological character embodying the best of uber-patriotism, someone who rallies others to the flag regardless of the occasion or occurrence.

This is all so obvious yet unseen as we literally swim in it with our everyday lives. From the moment of birth when the first advertisers throw their bounty on the newborn, the propaganda for our lifestyle is continuous and ubiquitous. It is often so obvious that it is simply considered normal, but propaganda it is, all in support of the elites who receive the benefits of complacent masses whose uncertainties and discomforts can be attributed to this ‘other’.

It is achieved through mass advertising. It is achieved through the self obeisance of the major media networks who self-censor – or in reality never have to self-censor because to get along in the business means one already accepts the self regulating criteria of the major media supporting the imperial view of the world. It is achieved through cheap entertainment, every day, every minute entertainment, much of it simply silly and ignorant, other parts sensationalistic but neither significant nor earth moving, and the important news is filtered into sound bites taken out of context, with references to ‘sources’ unknown who plant the seeds of disinformation into the news world.

The U.S. empire has been extremely successful with all this. It started with Edward Bernays, a nephew of Freud, before WW II when he thought, along with many others, that the masses were too stupid to govern. The real government was to be the elites, and it was through the manipulation of the psyche of the masses that would allow the elites to govern and create a world over which they had control and power.

For the U.S. fear of the ‘other’ started with its origins, a country founded on the support of racial fear and prejudice. The black slaves and the indigenous populations felt the brunt of this designation as the fearful ‘other’. Through various other permutations it became fear of Bolshevism at home – fear of the unions – and their increasing power in the workplace before and after WW I. After WW II it became fear of communism, with all its propaganda about the Soviet Union seeking world dominance when in reality it was the U.S. seeking world dominance. With the collapse of the Soviet Union, the fear factor momentarily found refuge in fear of drugs and fear of crime, waiting only for “another Pearl Harbour.”

Empirical crusades

Lo and behold, another Pearl Harbour occurred, when someone, somehow managed to destroy the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center along with Tower Seven and with another device hitting the Pentagon. Theoretically, it was the work of Osama bin Laden and twenty or so Saudi citizens, and was greeted with announcements of a “crusade” by George Bush and questions and answers by ignorant pundits and experts answering the question, “Why do they hate us?”

A new and everlasting ‘other’ had been found, the Islamist terrorist, and because it was difficult to differentiate between a simple follower of Islam and those that are terrorists, they all became suspect terrorists.

The imperial rhetoric was ratcheted up, now about freedom and democracy and rule of law, while the very same things were being slowly eroded at home. New imperial wars were started, more millions of peoples have been displaced and killed by U.S. imperial troops and their mercenaries from NATO and private corporations. Internally, the economy has been hollowed out by this war effort, by the slow destruction of unions, by the out-sourcing of manufacturing and employment through “free trade,” by the artificially induced bubbles of technology and housing used to maintain an economy run ever more deeply on consumption financed by debt.

Empirical challenges

This violent empire has demonstrated that it is going to pass violently. It faces serious challenges on several fronts, all intertwined and related.

The first is economic. It is encumbered by its huge debt, a significant portion of which is held by its new arch rival, China, who could unload it at any moment and destroy the value of the dollar and its reserve currency status. Along with its debt, it is also pulled down by the large unemployment rates, much larger than the official version and not likely to substantially change with so many jobs transferred overseas. Interest rates are near zero, they cannot go significantly further down, and any raise in rates will only make the debt woes of the consumer and mortgage holders worse. The economy is in a trap, and the citizens are in a trap of paying off the huge bail-outs received by the ‘too big to fail’ banks and financial corporations. The largest sector of the economy is now the military, with over half of discretionary spending going to the military, with the largest military budget in the world, and the main manufacturing sector highly reliant on government funding for military hardware or research.

Another aspect is resources. Much of the wealth of the U.S. came originally from its own natural resources, especially oil. As we ride along the bumpy road of peak oil, with new sources becoming much more difficult and expensive to extract, the cost of everything – food, clothing, transportation, pharmaceuticals, fertile, pesticides – will rise with the cost of oil – unless the economy dips rapidly enough that its price goes down. The U.S. is not completely reliant on outside oil, but it has to import its fair share. Its allies in Europe are completely dependent on Russian and Middle East oil, while China, India, and Brazil of the emerging economies are trying to gain and retain their own markets away from U.S. influence. Canada is attempting to be best friends by offering the toxic tar sands before the Chinese gobble it up, but the overall amount is small and will not significantly affect long term supplies and usage. Other resources – labour, agricultural, mineral – are all in critical demand as the empire extracts wealth from the Third World.

The military is another serious challenge. Even though it is the most powerful and most technologically advanced in the world, it only seems capable of creating more enemies, more people who really do hate the U.S. for what it stands for in action rather than rhetoric. The acceptance of torture, of extra judicial murder, the denial of international standards of law created at Nuremberg, at the UN and at the International Criminal court, the use of drones under the control of the president to assassinate theoretical enemies, takes the empire into a moral territory where only the devil treads lightly. Apart from the judicial aspects, with over eight hundred bases in over one hundred and fifty countries, there is an obvious disconnect between the rhetoric of freedom, liberty, and rule of law when so many other countries are militarily subjugated one way or another to U.S. corporate demands.

The environment is an often unstated challenge to empire, ignored or pushed aside, not considered as an equal component of geopolitical concern. Yet it is the very nature of our consumptive society, our consumption of large amounts of carbon based fossil fuels – coal, oil, natural gas, shale oil, tar sand – that has pushed the CO2 to a recent high of 400 ppm, well over the estimated 350 ppm considered maximum to prevent runaway global climate change. The Arctic sea ice average for June 2012 is already below the record low of 2007, and while this leaves the empire hopeful for more oil and gas exploration, it also will produce large unexpected climatic outcomes.

On the other hand, the nuclear industry is exposing its true nature with the wreck of the Fukushima reactors. Deadly radiation continues to poison the land and water, and the Daishi reactor (No. 4) is on the edge of global catastrophe. With thousands of tons of used nuclear fuel spread world wide, and no effective means of storing and controlling it long term, sooner or later another mishap will occur.

Geopolitical challenges are a summative affect of the above challenges. As the empire creates its own economic chaos, fights for control of resources, destroys the environment and continues to rely on the military as the necessary solution to its problems, the global chaos spreads accordingly. Its focus is now against recalcitrant resource countries abroad, against those trying to free themselves from dollar dominance, and at home, the police are increasingly militarized against protestors, ecologists, environmentalists, and anyone challenging the status quo of the elites.

Palestine

I first started reading the enormous amount of literature available on the U.S. empire and the Middle East when my curiosity required more information other than what seemed the obviously false, devious, or created information concerning the 9/11 attacks. I had always considered the U.S. to be an aggressor state, and understood more than most in my sphere its adventurism abroad and its poor social record internally. Still, I needed deeper analysis and began reading whatever I could on U.S. foreign policy, history and global history and current events. Superficially I knew a fair bit, but had yet to grasp the significant imperial nature of it all.

At that time, 2002-03, all the reading pointed to oil as the resource, Israel as the outpost, and Palestine as the festering wound that poisoned relationships in Israel, the whole of the Middle East, and much of the rest of the world depending on their alliances and strategic needs vis a vis Israel, the Middle East, and U.S. foreign policy – its imperial policy.

At that time the ‘peace process’ for Israel/Palestine had died although its death went unannounced for a while. Iraq was under attack, again, on trumped up charges of WMD. Afghanistan had already been demolished and then left with a small occupation force while the real target, the oil resources of Iraq and its aggressive position towards Israeli domination of Palestine, came under occupation. Russia had recovered somewhat from the disaster of allowing the west to enter the country and take off with much of its wealth, leaving behind an oligarchy that controlled the remains. The Eurozone was comfortably coasting along as another center of economic power supporting the U.S. The dot com bubble had burst, leaving behind many unemployed rich techno freaks, and the housing bubble was taking off nicely thanks to low interest rates and unscrupulous lending practices. The U.S. economy, now dependent on Chinese imports and Chinese purchases of U.S. debt, hummed along quite nicely for most. The U.S. economy had become based on financialization and China’s economy was a rising star of the global manufacturing economy.

The unease in the Middle East tended to be caused by two related factors. The first was the festering wound of Palestinian resistance, the Second Intifada having recently died out. The people the Middle East knew too well the story of Israeli occupation and subjugation of the Palestinian people. Citizens of the U.S. remained ignorant thanks to a sycophantic media, the AIPAC lobby, and a generalized amnesia of history. Accompanying this was the perceived and real hypocrisy and contradictions of U.S. foreign policy, supporting dictatorships, monarchies, and nominal puppet democracies (Egypt) while calling out for democracy and freedom.

The first decade of the long war

During the first decade of the Twenty-first Century, the U.S. empire showed its true colours, its true intentions. Its stated purpose was to apply regime change through the arc of the Middle East and bring it under U.S. subservience. It became a decade of war abroad, of increasing state powers internally with the militarization of the police. It became a decade in which Israel could do no wrong, the Palestinians and most other Arab and Muslim people became the ‘other’, the new fear factor, to be hated and despised as irrational violent actors.

In Palestine the situation became more aggressive and bloodier. Land occupation and confiscation by settlements increased. Expropriation of Palestinian land by the military, increased severity of the occupation, and the building of the Security wall all continued with strong U.S. support. In 2006, the democratic election of Hamas within the Palestinian Authority was annulled as the election of ‘terrorists’ would not be tolerated (even though it worked in Ireland (Sinn Fein), South Africa (ANC), and Lebanon (Hezbollah) with mainly peaceful results).

In 2006 Gaza was attacked in Operation Cast Lead, an act of aggressive war against an impoverished and mostly unarmed civilian population. In 2006, Israel attacked Lebanon under the guise of defending itself against a border incursion, and while not truly defeated, had their nose well bloodied by the stiff resistance of Hezbollah. In both cases, the U.S. and its sycophantic supporters, in particular Canada, now under the Conservative government of Stephen Harper, stood aside and judged the Israel “defence” as an “appropriate and proportional response” to what was in reality an offensive illegal act of war.

The war in Iraq turned horribly sour, at least for the U.S. and its allies, for the Iraqis it was the second decade of attacks by the U.S. and its allies after the Gulf War. Afghanistan went through its third decade of occupation and invasion by foreign forces, a war pushed aside by Iraq until it too became a more troubling hotspot with the resurgence of the Pashtun and Taliban and the convoluted relationships with Pakistan.

Iran, always a sore point for the U.S. after they were kicked out in 1979, remained under the spotlight in a war of words and a war of sanctions. It was the latest fear factor, of an Iranian nuclear weapon, even though Israel carried an estimated +/- 200 nuclear weapons with delivery capability and encountered no reproach of any kind.

In 2008, the global economy took a dive. The U.S. economy, bogged down by the expenses and waste of war, by the bursting of the housing bubble, by the over-extensions of the unregulated financial markets, and by continued high unemployment and high debt, began its current series of bail outs for the elites and austerity for the masses.

In 2008, George Bush exited and Barak Obama, riding on a wave of hope and change, became president. Nothing changed except for the worse. In spite of his grand sounding rhetoric and lofty ideals, Obama carried on the illegal wars, the torture, Guantanamo continued to operate, judicial processes were put aside under various new laws, the full on support of Israeli aggressions in Palestine and its support of Israeli intentions elsewhere continued.

While the U.S. faced these challenges the BRIC nations improved their position and worked more closely together in order to guard against the U.S. military hegemon. Russia reasserted itself economically and as a resource nation by supplying and making arrangements to provide oil and gas to the European and Chinese markets. India’s economy boomed statistically with a large middle class. It still had serious problems with its general high level of poverty and problems associated with agriculture and land use and land resource consumption. Brazil asserted itself as a world player, the largest economy in Latin America with ties and associations reaching beyond the U.S. Monroe Doctrine barriers of previous eras.

All countries were tied more and more into the Chinese behemoth. Its economy has boomed for several decades as its manufacturing industry, cheap labour, and more laissez faire economic policies created the right environment for its huge gains. While this was in process the Chinese were also arranging resource purchases with many other countries, many in Africa, and South America, geopolitical arenas less well tended by the U.S. focus on the Middle East.

At the end of the decade, the global situation was and remains precarious. Problems with the economy, the environment, and the military have all increased substantially.

Arab Spring

There are far too many problems occurring in different regions of the world to even list them all. The festering wound of Palestine remains, obscured by the many other problems in the region, by the creation of a threat from the ‘other’ that occupies media attention well away from Palestine.

The Israel – U.S. alliance is as strong as ever, and well within Israel’s ongoing intentions of gaining more and more land within Palestine, to create facts on the ground and prevent any resemblance of a contiguous Palestinian state from ever developing. Along with land, water is a major concern, and Israel has done its best to harvest most of these resources through confiscation of land where water resources are best, and direct the flow of available water to Israel and the settlements in Palestine.

The Arab Spring, and U.S. double standards according to requirements and influences, has not been a threat to Israel. Tunisia created the first element of the Arab Spring, a small player in the Arab coterie of nations, with successful elections creating a moderate Islamist government. Egypt followed, but with a large military supplied by the U.S. as part of the peace accord with Israel, the U.S. could sit back and watch how the army reacted. To this day, the army remains powerful, obviously well aligned with its U.S. monetary sources. With all its economic problems and a western oriented military, it probably cannot do much to change relationships with Israel (one can ask, for instance, why is the border to Gaza not wide open? ).

When the Arab Spring hit Bahrain, the U.S. sat back as the government attacked its own citizens, receiving indirect U.S. support when Saudi Arab forces entered the country to quell the protests. Yemen has seen a significant increase in U.S. intervention on the government side, with drone attacks and cruise missile attacks targeting government opponents and killing many civilians. When Libya followed suit, the U.S. and its NATO partners created the conditions that allowed for full scale aerial bombing support for the rebel forces. Kaddafi’s main crime, after being both a darling and a beast at different times in U.S. propaganda, was his attempt to create an African currency union that would not need to rely on the U.S. dollar. As well, very commonly, the U.S. wanted to control Libyan oil resources.

Syria has been the next Arab country to revolt, and the regular news channels present a very confusing picture. A civil war in Syria works to the benefit of both Israel and the U.S. For Israel, it eliminates the power of a potential enemy by destroying its infrastructure and its economy. For the U.S., it helps their ally Israel at the same time eliminating another countries influence within the Middle Eastern arc of interest. At the same time it creates a problem for Russia with its only naval base on the Syrian coast.

Russia, however, is not as accepting as it was when it came to the efforts in Libya, recognizing that giving the U.S. and NATO a green light for any kind of intervention will be the proverbial giving an inch, taking a mile – or allowing the nose of the camel into the tent. China has its own geopolitical strategies, many of which coincide with Russian concerns about the U.S. and its allies.

At the moment Syria remains the focus of imperial efforts. A concerted effort appears to be underway by U.S. allies to arm the rebels and create even more chaos, hoping for more and more atrocities that can be blamed on the Assad regime, regardless of who perpetrated them, or who set them up as false flag operations. This will allow the ultimate goal of using more military force to end the regime, leave the country in ruins, eliminate -maybe – the Russian base, leave Israel to focus other matters, and in extension, to tighten the noose on Iran.

Iran

Once again, U.S. double standards abound. Iran has been a dedicated ‘other’ since the revolution of 1979 removed the Shah from power. Israel’s nuclear arsenal was achieved outside the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). Pakistan and India both developed nuclear arsenals outside the NPT. North Korea has an estimated capacity for 10 weapons, after dropping out of the NPT. Many other countries have the ability to go nuclear if they wish to on relatively short notice. Japan in particular has tons of plutonium in storage. Any nation that has a nuclear energy program could transform it into a weapons producing industry, which is one of the prime purposes for the set up of the U.S. nuclear industry.

However, with the AIPAC lobby , the need for an enemy ‘other,’ Iran has become a tremendously distorted nuclear threat. It is a combination of racial fear, religious prejudice and fear, and fear of nuclear disaster that is used to propagandize against Iran. The leaders of Iran are rational actors and even with a nuclear weapon capability, or further a deliverable nuclear weapon, they are in no position to use it other than as a deterrent. To do so would be suicide and one has to give them the benefit of the doubt that they know and understand that.

Its main usefulness is that it is one way in which Israel creates distractions and distortions in order that it can proceed with its coveted process of possessing all the land within Eretz Israel. For Israel, forever the victim, never the perpetrator, the Palestinian situation is pretty much completely obscured by Iran and all the other events surrounding the region. The western media gives little or no coverage to the ongoing process of land confiscation, and the abuses, denials, and contortions of international laws and conventions concerning occupation and basic human rights.

It provides the U.S. with the needed enemy adversary, the evil ‘other’, someone requiring extensive militarization in order to control them. As with other geopolitical situations it has been in, the manner in which they wish to resolve it, in spite of rhetoric about “all other options”, this one is definitely not off the table, and is quite likely biding its time near the head of the table.

Iran represents an evil other, but only to the U.S. and its NATO allies. China has maintained strong ties with Iran for the obvious energy necessities of their huge population as well as for the strategic benefits of helping maintain control of regional events, keeping the U.S. away from its boundaries and areas of direct influence. India, ostensibly a U.S. ally, plays its own geopolitical game, desiring energy from Iran, but also considering its regional interests and influences vis a vis Afghanistan, Pakistan, and China.

Outcomes

There are far too many parameters and convolutions and possibilities concerning the outcome of the focus on Iran – too many unexpected unknowns that no one can truly deal with. The one constant is the violent nature of the U.S. empire, and its extensive use of creating the ‘other’ in its empirical adventures. Its allies in NATO and in Israel follow the same pattern.

There are far too many other associated regions and disassociated regions that all tie together into the web of imperial hegemony that the U.S. has created for its needs. These needs are mainly economic, requiring the easy energy of oil, the easy access to cheap labour, the access to the mineral resources and labour resources of the Third World. At home, the U.S. elites have created a system where a select few hold the power and the wealth to the detriment of many others. The economy for the rich is based mainly on pure financial speculation, with the big banks and financial institutions receiving huge bailouts that may have prevented a greater economic collapse, but still leave it teetering on the brink of an abyss.

I cannot say how the empire will pass, but it appears to be in process already. Still, it may last another many decades, backed by overt military force. The problems that beset it are numerous: economic, military, environmental, and resources. Its decline may or may not be gradual, and similarly it may or may not be fast. It may have a punctuated decline where different actions and events create sudden turmoil that is stabilized at a lower level. Distinct events may set off serious declines: war on Iran, nuclear reactor disasters (there are over 400 in the world, over 100 in the U.S. – Chernobyl, Three Mile Island and Fukushima indicate that something catastrophic can and will happen), nuclear wars, financial collapse of the EU and the euro, collapse of the dollar as the reserve oil currency, perhaps at China’s instigation if pushed too hard by the U.S. in other areas.

This is an entirely sceptical and pessimistic outlook for the future – at least for those of us living in the first world on the riches and abuses of the Third World. For the billions of people subject to the imperial hegemony of the U.S in one form or another, it may be a blessing.

On the positive side, for future generations, their lives will be the new normal, a world to be accommodated to in order to live and survive as humanity has always done. Perhaps for many of the currently dispossessed it will be better and brighter as new paradigms come into play and old powers lose influence around the world. Hopefully the future will be in societies with time and energy to put into the care and compassion that humanity so desperately needs, that the world as a whole so desperately needs, with concerns for each other and for the environment in which we live overcoming the power and greed of elitist politics.

By Jim Miles

14 June, 2012

@ Countercurrents.org

Jim Miles is a Canadian educator

One issue that requires urgent attention in the current discussion is that of Egypt’s shattered economy. In the first round of elections on May 23, Egypt’s presidential candidates appeared to hold vastly different ideas regarding their vision for the future. With the elimination of independent candidate Hamdeen Sabahy before the final round on June 16-17, the economic program for the two remaining candidates seemed oddly similar and suspiciously familiar.

The oddity stems from the fact that the two contenders – Freedom and Justice Party candidate Mohamed Mursi and former Prime Minister Ahmed Shafiq – are supposed to represent the two extremes defining Egypt after the 2011 revolution. Mursi is a Muslim Brotherhood figure, long oppressed by the very regime that Shafiq dutifully served.

The “run-off in Egypt’s presidential elections between the two most polarizing candidates has escalated investor concerns of renewed unrest,” claimed Arabia Monitor, a market research company. However, both candidates are united by their advocacy of the same free market economy, the guiding model for the discredited Mubarak regime. The news is hardly shocking in the case of Shafiq, an establishment man who would not be expected to challenge Egypt’s chronic inequality; Mursi’s position is bewildering.

While “rivals portray the Brotherhood as a nebulous organization obsessed with religion,” according to Patrick Werr, “its wide-ranging plan, details of which were revealed during the buildup to last month’s first-round presidential vote, projects a pragmatism that puts rapid economic growth ahead of ideology.” The Brotherhood ‘pragmatism’ is only commended here because it promotes “a strongly free-market economic plan” and a pledge to move quickly to secure a loan from the International Monetary Fund (IMF).

Some estimates put Egypt’s current debt at close to $190 billion. The Egyptian revolution, which in part sought economic justice and equitable distribution of wealth, is yet to produce a new economic reality. Under Mubarak, the economy operated through a selective interpretation of free market economy marred by extreme corruption in favor of the ruling elite. Over 15 months of haggling between the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF), angry masses, a new elected parliament and other forces have now wreaked havoc on an already struggling economy. The Egyptian pound is facing the prospect of ‘disorderly devaluation.’ The IMF’s original loan offer of $3.2 billion, rejected by Egypt at the time, would not be enough to rectify the damage. Per Egyptian government and IMF estimates, the country requires $10-12 billion to secure the pound.

Currency devaluation is only a small aspect of Egypt’s current economic woes. The Economist (May 19-25) reported that Egypt’s foreign exchange reserve is now down to third of its value of 15 months ago and the budget deficit has surged to 10 percent of GDP. “The budget shortfall could be resolved by a stroke of scrapping energy subsidies, but in a country where 40% of people live in poverty; this is a sizzling political potato.”

It is actually much more than a ‘sizzling political potato’. The handling of the economy will ultimately make or break the relationship between Egypt’s new rulers and its people – most of whom are not only politically disfranchised, but economically marginalized as well.

Although most Egyptians now frown at Mubarak’s legacy, the country’s economic indicators were for years perceived favorably by Western financial institutions. After all Egypt recorded steady growth. Its ‘economic reforms’ post 1991 were largely celebrated for further liberalizing trade and investment, cutting subsidies (thus forcing the poor to continue teetering at the edge of poverty and utter desolation) and dismantling the public sector.. The IMF and other Western lending institutions do not settle for anything but more austerity measures – regardless of whether Egypt’s new president is a bearded Muslim or an avowed liberal. The only ideology that matters for the IMF is the free market economy.

So what must be done for the almost 14.2 million people who live on less than one US dollar a day? 1.5 million Egyptian currently live in a large graveyard at the outskirts of Cairo. Austerity and further cuts could only lead to the kind of misery that instigated last year’s revolution.

Egypt’s remaining candidates promise to revive the economy while keeping social justice on the agenda. While Shafiq has promised an abundance of perks to various sectors of society, the Brotherhood has been promoting a detailed program called Al-Nahda, or The Renaissance. Enlisting the help of internationally renowned economists such as Peru’s Hernando de Soto Polar, Al-Nahda is reportedly a study of many economic models around the world, including Turkey, Malaysia and South Africa.

The Brotherhood’s initial presidential candidate, Khairat al-Shater was the “driving force behind the project,” according to the Daily Beast (June 7). In an interview last April, he laid down the basic premise of his plan: “The Egyptian economy must rely to a very, very large degree on the private sector. The priority is for Egyptian investors, then Arab then foreign.”

It is expected that Egypt’s intense public discussions in the current phase will be fixed on foundational issues such as the formation of a constitutional assembly and a redefinition of the rule of SCAF. But Egypt’s economy is deeply flawed. An IMF-style free market economy is of no use to millions of Egyptians when they lack proper education and the most basic rights and opportunities. For an Egyptian day laborer to have a better life in a country with a huge and growing income gap between rich and poor, something fundamental needs to take place.

Referencing ‘social justice’ while negotiating IMF loans suggests a precarious start for any truly fundamental economic reforms. While Hamdeen Sabahy is no longer in the race to challenge the free market wisdom of his contenders, the debate must not end here.

By Ramzy Baroud

14 June, 2012

@ Countercurrents.org

Ramzy Baroud (www.ramzybaroud.net) is an internationally-syndicated columnist and the editor of PalestineChronicle.com. His latest book is My Father Was a Freedom Fighter: Gaza’s Untold Story (Pluto Press, London).

The latest Hollywood brouhaha over Gwyneth Paltrow’s decision to tweet the caption “ni**as in Paris for real” to accompany a picture of her with friends Jay-Z and Beyoncé while in Paris doesn’t compare to the new evidence of “fraud upon the Court” that has emerged in a largely unnoticed civil rights case that very well should be reopened after being unfairly dismissed six years ago. How about Hollywood executives regularly referring to their own clients, and Blacks in general, as “niggers,” “niggas,” “coons,” “spooks,” and “monkeys” while they intentionally discriminated against Black concert promoters, putting them out of business? It is the contention of Leonard Rowe, perhaps the best-known and most successful of all Black concert promoters, that the regular use of these words by powerful Hollywood executives is a telling indicator of Hollywood’s pervasively racist attitudes toward Blacks, an attitude that produced illegal trust-like business practices that essentially made Black concert promoters extinct.

How could these particular Hollywood executives do that?

According to music industry veterans, once a Black entertainer “crossed over” to a White audience, Black concert promoters were almost never allowed to promote that entertainer again. Moreover, according to Rowe, not once was a Black concert promoter allowed to promote a White entertainer. According to Rowe, this collusion to fix profits effectively denied the Black community the spin-off economy associated with concerts and concert promotions, and the multiplier effect of dollars turning over in the Black community. Someone presented evidence to me that was just presented to District Judge Robert P. Patterson and Chief Judge Loretta A. Preska of the Southern District of New York: a summary of the racially-charged words that were regularly used by these particular Hollywood executives: “nigger,” “spade,” “colored,” “monkey,” “nigga,” “uncle tom,” “spook,” and “coon.” It makes for depressing reading: page after page after page after page, the evidence provided to me shows the last name of the particular executive and the number of times that person used one of the above words in e-mail traffic. It is 18 pages, with two pages mysteriously missing, of heartbreak where specifically the word “nigger” is used hundreds of times. Even more to the point of “fraud upon the Court,” decisions were made in Rowe’s previous case without even a mention of the e-mail evidence. In fact, Rowe was never given the e-mails that produced the 18-page summary sheet although he paid for them. Rowe’s case was dismissed by the Court at Summary Judgment.

To think that this is the way these Hollywood executives view their African-American clients is not only appalling, but represents more than a virtual throwback to the ignominious days of a Southern Plantation. According to Marcus Washington who worked at William Morris, that company client list has included Bill Cosby, Whoopi Goldberg, Lauryn Hill, Rihanna, Outkast, Trya Banks, Serena Williams, LeBron James, Whitney Houston, Maxwell, Jill Scott, Erykah Badu, Spike Lee, Janet Jackson, Tyler Perry, Kanye West, Jay-Z, Usher, Halle Berry, Alicia Keys, Jennifer Hudson, Queen Latifah, and Denzel Washington to name a few.

The evidence of how particular Hollywood executives referred to their own clients is available for anyone interested in seeing it. Just click here: http://www.scribd.com/doc/93697362/Rowe-Entertainment-Inc-v-William-Morris-Agency-et-al-98-8272-Breakdown-of-Racial-Epithets-Including-Nigger-Used-By-Execs-Email-Search-Re

And who exactly are these particular Hollywood executives? Rowe’s lawsuit is against The William Morris Agency (now known as William Morris Endeavor) and Creative Artists Agency, the biggest and the baddest of the bunch. (And adding political muscle to this tawdry script, William Morris Endeavor is currently headed by Ari Emanuel, brother to the former Chief of Staff of President Obama and now Mayor of Chicago, Rahm Emanuel.) For many aspiring Black entertainers, signing with these agencies represents a dream come true. Too bad that this new evidence brought forward in the Leonard Rowe case shows how these agencies truly feel about African Americans when they think no one is watching.

Sadly, Leonard Rowe is not the only witness to Hollywood’s institutional racism. Marcus Washington, with whom I have spoken, has his own sordid tale of life while employed at Hollywood’s titan–The William Morris Agency. In published reports on the internet, Marcus, acting as his own lawyer, filed a $25 million lawsuit alleging racial discrimination in December 2010. Among the many details in his 80-page complaint, Washington said that upon his entry into William Morris’ New York office in September of 2008, there were zero Black, zero Latino, and only one Asian-American Agent employed out of an executive staff of 50. Washington wrote that he was the only Black hired into the Agent Trainee program and while he had recently graduated from the University of Miami with his Masters in Music Business and Entertainment Industries and helped co-manage the career of J Records singer/songwriter and now eight-time GRAMMY® nominated artist Jazmine Sullivan, all of his White counterparts advanced above him having considerably fewer academic achievements and less professional work experience.

According to Washington, William Morris immediately sought to have Washington’s case compelled into arbitration because of an arbitration agreement Washington signed as a condition of employment. Washington argued that the provision which stated that “any issue” including ones of “discrimination” and “retaliation” were to be arbitrated was “unconscionable, tainted with illegality and malum in se” given the historical evidence presented to the Court showing the company’s 113-year history of systemic disparate treatment towards Blacks. In July 2011, Washington’s judge ruled in favor of William Morris. In September 2011, Washington appealed to the Second Circuit that his lawsuit against William Morris was erroneously compelled into arbitration, and over the last nine months, Washington has attempted three times to have this decision reversed so that his case can be impartially decided in a public forum by a jury that reflects the diversity of New York City. Each time, the Court has denied his appeal without providing a judicial opinion. Sadly, this industry has been successful at keeping this type of racial discrimination away from the eyes of a jury. But now, after acquiring the new evidence discovered in the Rowe case, Washington filed a motion in the Court to introduce evidence that various attorneys at Loeb & Loeb LLP–the law firm representing William Morris in both the Rowe and Washington cases–as well as judges, have been involved in a corrupt conspiracy to collude and commit “fraud upon the Court.”

Because of what Rowe felt were unreliable lawyers colluding and conspiring with his opponents’ lawyers, Rowe has joined Washington as a pro se litigant in the Southern District of New York. They both have refiled their cases and they are awaiting decisions from the Court. This time around, the Southern District Court of New York has the opportunity to do the right thing. Both Rowe and Washington are involved in litigation that could produce landmark Civil Rights decisions. Both of them are willing to share the evidence unearthed in the Rowe case that could deal a devastating blow to “business as usual” in the entertainment industry.

By Cynthia McKinney

14 June, 2012

@ Countercurrents.org

Leonard Rowe and Marcus Washington are available, together or individually, for interviews to explain their firsthand experiences with Hollywood, racism, or corruption in the U.S. justice system.

Leonard Rowe can be reached at roweentertain@aol.com

Marcus Washington can be reached at humanrights.areamust@gmail.com

For news from, by and about Cynthia McKinney, former Georgia congresswoman and Green Party presidential candidate, subscribe to her Updates at http://lists.allthingscynthiamckinney.com/listinfo.cgi/updates-allthingscynthiamckinney.com. She can be reached at Cynthia@runcynthiarun.org

Military intervention will only intensify the violence, not reduce it. There is another way.

First, do no harm. That should be engraved on the foreheads of all those who breezily call for intervention in Syria.

“Intervention”: is there a more overused, abused or ill-defined term? It’s thrown around by politicians, journalists, soldiers and human rights activists alike. But what does it actually mean to “intervene” in Syria? Supplying arms to unknown and unaccountable rebel groups with dodgy human rights records? Carving out chunks of sovereign Syrian territory for “safe havens” that may not be very safe (think Sre­brenica)? Dropping bombs from 15,000 feet on crowded cities (think Fallujah)?

It doesn’t matter to some. On 10 June, for instance, the Observer’s Nick Cohen made a forceful case for intervention, without deigning to spell out to his readers what his favoured intervention would be. Details are for doves.

And who would the interveners be? Just neighbouring Turkey? Or Turkey plus the US? How about the autocrats of the Gulf? Or the anti-Assad members of al-Qaeda? Do they get to join in the bloodletting, too?

The brutal and loathsome Bashar al-Assad may be responsible for most of the horrific killings in Syria but that doesn’t excuse the terror spread by some of his opponents. Last month, 55 people were killed when two car bombs – attributed by the UN secretary general, Ban Ki-moon, to al-Qaeda – exploded in Damascus. Who mourns these Syrian victims of violence? Who intervenes on their behalf?

Cycle of violence

The truth is that the case for foreign military intervention in Syria, however noble the motives may be, is based on four myths.

The first is that foreign military interventions always save lives. It’s a romantic idea – but it isn’t borne out by the evidence. After Nato’s air assault on Yugoslavia kicked off in March 1999, the number of civilian casualties and refugees in Kosovo went up, not down. In Iraq and Afghanistan, tens of thousands of innocents lost their lives at the hands of western troops as well as home-grown terrorists.

Violence begets violence. Ten months on from the fall of Colonel Gaddafi, hundreds of armed militias are now vying for control of big Libyan cities such as Benghazi and Misurata. “People are turning up dead in detention at an alarming rate,” a Human Rights Watch official announced this year. “If this was happening under any Arab dictatorship, there would be an outcry.” Yes, a potential massacre in Benghazi was averted; on the other hand, the town of Tawergha has since been ethnically cleansed of its black population by rebels who were armed by the west. But we’ve moved on from Libya, just as we moved on from Kosovo.

Myth number two is that the Syrian opposition is united in its demand for foreign intervention. Yet there is no single “opposition”: it’s fractured and disunited. The oft-mentioned Syrian National Council (SNC), a coalition of seven opposition groups formed in Istanbul last September, is in disarray. Last month, three high-profile members of the SNC – the former judge Haitham al-Maleh, the physician Kamal al-Labwani and the human rights lawyer Catherine al-Talli – quit the organisation in disgust. “The [SNC] members are not revolutionaries, [they] haven’t any history in politics, haven’t any history inside Syria,” said an angry al-Labwani. “They bring somebody from outside Syria to represent those who live inside Syria.”

The SNC has been described by former members as a front group for the Syrian Muslim Brotherhood – but that hasn’t stopped the BBC and other western media outlets from presenting it as the sole, authentic, pro-intervention voice of the Syrian people.

Meanwhile, the anti-interventionist National Co-ordination Committee (NCC), another anti-Assad faction, consisting of a dozen or so leftist political parties, doesn’t get a look-in. “We are the ‘other opposition’,” the NCC’s Paris-based spokesman Haytham al-Manna tells me. “But we can’t call on Reuters or al-Jazeera [for support].” Manna, whose brother was killed by the Assad regime, says: “We are against any foreign intervention in Syria.” And he adds: “We want democracy and sovereignty.”

The third myth is that non-violent resistance isn’t an option in Syria – even though the Syrian revolution began as a non-violent mass movement. “When we were non-violent, we had three million people with us,” says Manna. “Now, with the armed resistance, we don’t have more than 50,000 people in the streets.”

In their book Why Civil Resistance Works, the US academics Erica Chenoweth and Maria J Stephan challenge the conventional wisdom that the use of force against heavily armed opponents is the most effective way for resistance groups to achieve their aims. They discovered that the historical record – between 1900 and 2006 – shows non-violent campaigns were more than twice as effective (53 per cent compared to 26 per cent) at securing change – even against repressive dictators.

Diplomacy works

The fourth myth is that there is no diplomatic solution in Syria. Diplomacy, it seems, is a form of appeasement – and it has become fashionable to dismiss Kofi Annan’s peace plan, which rightly calls for an “inclusive Syrian-led poli­tical process” and a complete “cessation” of armed violence “by all parties”, as a complete failure. Yet, as Manna argues, “The only solution in Syria is to rebuild the Annan plan, make sure it is respected [by all sides] and triple the number of international observers.”

And, despite the massacres allegedly committed by militias loyal to the Assad regime, a recent report by the London-based Syrian Network for Human Rights showed that violence in the country is down by 36 per cent from its peak in March, and has declined in every month since Annan’s plan was agreed.

Military intervention will only intensify the violence, not reduce it. There is another way.

As the veteran foreign correspondent and Syria expert Patrick Seale has written: “The only way to prevent a full-scale civil war in Syria . . . is to demilitarise the conflict and bring maximum pressure on both sides to negotiate.”

This should be the focus. We are dealing with a complex conflict in a complex country; simplistic solutions by armchair generals won’t solve it. So remember: first, do no harm.

By Mehdi Hasan

13 June 2012

@ News Statement

A trip to Tunis’s slums finds young Salafi Islamists who were at the vanguard of the Arab Spring, and are now set to take the fight to Syria to take down the ruling secularist regime.

TUNIS – Just a few blocks from the hotels, the restaurants, and the government offices, Balancine is a labyrinth filled with piles of garbage and stray dogs. Teenage boys are lying around, laughing, some of them drunk.

We came here to find the new radical Islam which has become so popular since the Arab Spring. This is the house we are looking for. Going up a dark and slippery staircase, which smells of urine, sawdust and ammonia, we arrive at the third floor. We enter a darkened room, lit by a single dim light bulb hanging from the ceiling. A curtain is barely hiding the dirty toilet. A big couch, which also serves as a bed, occupies almost all the room.  A 22-year-old man, Yusef, is sitting cross-legged on the couch.

We have come to meet him before he leaves for Jihad in Syria. He is a Salafi Islamist, part of a movement that is fast becoming a major player in the region. This is not the pragmatic secularized Islam, nor the social democracy of the Muslim Brotherhood or of the moderate Ennahda movement (the Renaissance Party) whom the Western world found so reassuring after the Arab revolutions.

Yusef is set to leave for Syria to fight Bashir al-Assad’s unholy regime. Other young Tunisians have already joined the jihad, recruited in the city’s most radical mosques, and given a ticket to Turkey, along with directions on how to reach the army of rebels. “There are many other brothers: Egyptian, Libyan, Algerian,” says Yusef. Similar international Muslim brigades fought in Afghanistan, Iraq and Bosnia.

Yusef doesn’t look at us as he lays out his life story: poverty, the school, petty crimes to survive — and finally the revolution.

He is one among many other “ street thugs” from the slums who have kept the revolution alive in the streets, under the blows and tear gas. When asked if he is scared of a war which, at the end of the day is not his own, the boy suddenly comes to life: “ You don’t know anything,” he says. “Fear, courage… My strength is not in weapons. It is inside. I am an instrument. Muslims had become dependent on the things that you gave and taught us. This is our rebirth. How can we be afraid of a tyrant’s army? Don’t you see that God is helping us? God moved the Americans’ minds. The Americans are helping, arming and funding us. They are an instrument of the holy cause.”

I wonder if Yusef knows that a few days ago two other young Tunisian men were captured with explosives and weapons and paraded on Syrian television. Maybe he does, but it does not matter.

On May 20, more than 20,000 Salafi Islamists gathered in the Tunisian city of Kairouan. There are rumors about them, almost certainly false, that they are training an army. But what’s true is that Salafis in combat gear are patrolling Tunis’ “park of love,” where young couples meet up, behind a luxury hotel that Gadhafi’s son was building. The Salafis sometimes raid the park to stop acts they consider to be impure.

In Jendouba and Sidi Bouzid, the Salafis attacked and burned down bars that sold alcoholic drinks.

Islam, united

Ihmed Zouhari, another young man, is one of the heads of the Hezb el Tahrir, a radical party that is run like a sect. They hate the Muslim Brotherhood and don’t believe democracy has its place in Islamic society.

“We’ve tried everything: liberalism, dictatorships, nationalism, socialism. What did we get? Poverty and corruption. The only thing that stayed pure is Islam,” believes Zouhari. “We need a radical change, a new system based on the Islamic doctrine and the Koran, and then we will unite all the Arab and Muslim countries under the same flag.”

Asked how a doctrine that was born centuries ago can work in the modern world, he has no doubts: “You don’t understand. Your democracy works for you because you live in a world where people can’t decide on a political model, where ideology serves only to seize power and changes according to what is needed. Here, we don’t have political parties, only Islam. You say that this is the Middle Ages. I ask you: have men really changed since then?”

By Domenico Quirico

16 June 2012

@ World Crunch

As quietly as possible, BBC world news editor Jon Williams has admitted that the coverage of last month’s Houla massacre in Syria by the world’s media and his own employers was a compendium of lies.

Datelined 16:23, June 7, Williams chose a personal blog to make a series of fairly frank statements explaining that there was no evidence whatsoever to identify either the Syrian Army or Alawite militias as the perpetrators of the May 25 massacre of 100 people.

By implication, Williams also suggests strongly that such allegations are the product of the propaganda department of the Sunni insurgents seeking to overthrow Bashar al-Assad.

After preparatory statements of self-justification noting the “complexity of the situation on the ground in Syria, and the need to try to separate fact from fiction,” and Syria’s long “history of rumours passing for fact,” Williams writes:

“In the aftermath of the massacre at Houla last month, initial reports said some of the 49 children and 34 women killed had their throats cut. In Damascus, Western officials told me the subsequent investigation revealed none of those found dead had been killed in such a brutal manner. Moreover, while Syrian forces had shelled the area shortly before the massacre, the details of exactly who carried out the attacks, how and why were still unclear.”

For this reason, he concludes somewhat belatedly, “In such circumstances, it’s more important than ever that we report what we don’t know, not merely what we do.”

“In Houla, and now in Qubair, the finger has been pointed at the Shabiha, pro-government militia. But tragic death toll aside, the facts are few: it’s not clear who ordered the killings—or why.”

No trace of such a restrained approach can be found at the time on the BBC, or most anywhere else.

Instead the BBC offered itself as a sounding board for the statements of feigned outrage emanating from London, Washington and the United Nations headquarters—all blaming the atrocity on either the Syrian Army or Shabiha militias acting under their protection.

Typical was the May 28 report, “Syria Houla massacre: Survivors recount horror”, in which unidentified “Survivors of the massacre … have told the BBC of their shock and fear as regime forces entered their homes and killed their families.” Nowhere was the question even posed that in such a conflict these alleged witnesses could be politically aligned with the opposition and acting under its instruction.

Only now does Williams state:

“Given the difficulties of reporting inside Syria, video filed by the opposition on Twitter, Facebook and YouTube may provide some insight into the story on the ground. But stories are never black and white—often shades of grey. Those opposed to President Assad have an agenda. One senior Western official went as far as to describe their YouTube communications strategy as ‘brilliant’. But he also likened it to so-called ‘psy-ops’, brainwashing techniques used by the US and other military to convince people of things that may not necessarily be true.”

Williams is in a position to know of what he speaks.

On May 27, the BBC ran a report on Houla under a photo purporting to show “the bodies of children in Houla awaiting burial.”

In reality this was an example of opposition propaganda that was anything but “brilliant”. The photograph of dozens of shrouded corpses was actually taken by Marco di Lauro in Iraq on March 27, 2003 and was of white body bags containing skeletons found in a desert south of Baghdad.

Di Lauro commented, “What I am really astonished by is that a news organization like the BBC doesn’t check the sources and it’s willing to publish any picture sent it by anyone: activist, citizen journalist or whatever… Someone is using someone else’s picture for propaganda on purpose.”

The BBC again acted as a vehicle for such propaganda, despite knowing that the photo had been supplied by an “activist” and that it could not be independently verified.

Williams concludes with the advice to his colleagues: “A healthy scepticism is one of the essential qualities of any journalist—never more so than in reporting conflict. The stakes are high—all may not always be as it seems.”

Given its track record, the appeal to exercise a healthy skepticism should more correctly be directed towards the BBC’s readers and viewers—and towards the entire official media apparatus.

It may well be the case that Williams’ mea culpa is motivated by a personal concern at the role he and his colleagues are being asked to play as mouthpieces for the campaign for regime change in Syria. But with his comments buried away on his blog, elsewhere on the BBC everything proceeds according to script.

The BBC’s coverage of the alleged June 6 massacre in the village of Qubair once again features uncritical coverage of allegations by the opposition that it was the work of Shabiha militias that were being protected by Syrian troops. BBC correspondent Paul Danahar, accompanying UN monitors, writes of buildings gutted and burnt and states that it is “unclear” what happened to the bodies of dozens of reported victims. He writes of a house “gutted by fire,” the “smell of burnt flesh,” blood and pieces of flesh. He writes that “butchering the people did not satisfy the blood lust of the attackers. They shot the livestock too.”

This is accompanied by a picture of a dead donkey, but aside from this there is absolutely nothing of substance to indicate what happened in the village.

And at one point, Danahar tweets: “A man called Ahmed has come up from the village who says he witnessed the killings. He has says dozens were killed… He has a badly bruised face but his story is conflicted & the UN say they are not sure he’s honest as they think he followed the convoy” (emphasis added).

This does not stop Danahar from concluding, from tracks supposedly made by military vehicles, that “attempts to cover up the details of the atrocity are calculated & clear.”

So much for healthy scepticism!

It must also be pointed out that the BBC has not written a word regarding the June 7 report by the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung that the Free Syrian Army carried out the Houla massacre, according to interviews with local residents by opposition forces opposed to the Western-backed militia.

By Chris Marsden

15 June, 2012

@ WSWS.org