Mitayo
They have not reached where I really want them to go, I need them in Iran. And
under such a dumn president they surely can. That is when we will settle down
to discuss the real Middle East politics and in earnest.
EM
On the 49th Parallel
Thé Mulindwas Communication Group
"With Yoweri Museveni, Ssabassajja and Dr. Kiiza Besigye, Uganda is in anarchy"
Kuungana Mulindwa Mawasiliano Kikundi
"Pamoja na Yoweri Museveni, Ssabassajja na Dk. Kiiza Besigye, Uganda ni katika
machafuko"
From: Mitayo Potosi [mailto:[email protected]]
Sent: Saturday, September 27, 2014 11:47 AM
To: The First Virtual Network for friends of Uganda
Subject: England Reserves Right to Bomb Niggers !!
They Are At it Again
Syria, the Latest Crusade
“At Geneva, other countries would have agreed not to use aeroplanes for bombing
purposes, but we insisted on reserving the right, as D[avid] puts it, to bomb
niggers!
By Andre Vltchek
September 27, 2014 " <http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/> ICH" - "
<http://www.counterpunch.org/2014/09/26/syria-the-latest-crusade/>
Counterpunch" The West is striking again; it is stabbing the very center, the
heart of the Arab World.
This time it is targeting the group – ISIS – which it created itself, and which
it had been arming, feeding and pampering until just very recently.
Airplanes and missiles are flying, and bombs are falling. The war has begun.
But is it really a war, or just a brutal game, a gigantic PlayStation operated
by thousands of hooked-up maniacs in the Pentagon and all over Washington,
Brussels and some servile capitals in the Middle East?
A war is, after all, when two sides are facing each other, when two sides
fight, when two sides are risking their lives.
In this surreal and post-modern ‘war’, the only victims will be the people of
the Middle East, most likely civilians. Their lives will be risked by those who
are sitting, in safety, on their destroyers and in control rooms, hundreds and
thousands of miles away, drinking coffee and cracking jokes.
The Übermenschen of the West will not descend from the sky, in order to fight,
– man to man – in order to minimize the casualties of a peaceful population.
The killing will be done by Tomahawks and F22’s (at least those have real
pilots), and by drones.
This is actually not a war but a massacre, a mass murder.
Another massacre. This one may last very long and take millions of human lives
in the most brutal circumstances.
Western leaders are ready… to sacrifice the lives of the “others”; the regime
is ready. You can read it on Obama’s face, and on the face of Cameron.
***
The Empire began attacks against its own creation – the Islamic State or ISIS
as it is known here in the Middle East. Countless ISIS cadres were armed and
trained in the NATO-run refugee camps in Turkey and Jordan, right on the Syrian
border. And the main purpose of ISIS was to destabilize and destroy Bashar
al-Assad’s Government in Damascus.
ISIS did not fall from the sky. Nor is it some sort of spontaneous movement.
Like the Mujahedeen forces in Afghanistan, which fought both, the Democratic
Republic of Afghanistan (DRA) and later the Soviet Union, ISIS were paid, armed
and trained by the United States and its allies.
It is a common tactic used by the West, to identify and groom the most radical
forms of Islam, including Wahhabism, which is now choking Saudi Arabia and
other countries in the region.
I was told in Istanbul by a leading Turkish documentary filmmaker from Ulusal
TV, Serkan Koc, who has produced several ground-breaking works on the subject
of the ‘Syrian opposition’:
“Of course you do realize that those people are not really ‘Syrian opposition’.
They are modern-day legionnaires collected from various Arab countries,
including Qatar and Saudi Arabia, paid by western imperialist powers. Some are
members of Al-Qaeda and other terrorist organizations. Most are militant Sunni
Muslims. One could describe them as rogue elements hired to fight the Assad
government.”
I have covered those border camps for more than two years, often risking my
life, occasionally being harassed and detained by Turkish intelligence.
In 2012 and 2013, I visited the areas around the Turkish city of Hatay, and
camps like Apaydin, where various ISIS fighters were being trained by Western
and Turkish intelligence. I investigated the situation at the border and also
around Incirlik air-force base near Adana, which both the RAF and USAF use. And
I worked in Jordan, at the camps that are openly utilized for the training of
the ‘Syrian opposition’, a fact that is not concealed, even by the regional
press.
I thought that my reports, and the reports by Serkan Koc, Huseyin Guler and
others, dispersed the myth of a ‘spontaneous uprising against the President
al-Assad’.
But obviously our efforts could not match the tremendous propaganda and
brainwashing campaign unleashed by Western corporate media.
In a totally irrational, logically bizarre pirouette, the US accused Syria of
not destroying Islamic State, that unsavory offspring of Western imperialist
policy.
As reported by Reuters:
“In a letter to U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, U.S. Ambassador to the
United Nations Samantha Power wrote, “The Syrian regime has shown that it
cannot and will not confront these safe-havens effectively itself.”
The strikes were needed to eliminate a threat to Iraq, the United States and
its allies, she wrote, citing Article 51 of the U.N. Charter, which covers an
individual or collective right to self-defense against armed attack.”
To interpret what was written above: ‘Bashar al-Assad, we helped to create ISIS
in order to overthrow you… Now we hold you responsible for not managing to
destroy our offspring… Therefore, we are going to bomb your country, kill
thousands of your people, and possibly overthrow you in the process.’
The Western public is fully ignorant; it is indoctrinated and brainwashed,
otherwise hundreds of millions of European and North American citizens would be
now rolling around all over the streets, many dying of laughter.
The statements made by Obama and Power are so absurd and philosophically foul,
that they would make even Orwell and Huxley blush in embarrassment. Even the
most brilliant of novelists could not invent such twists of logic!
The Middle East is well informed, it is aware of the game, but people in so
many countries here are too scared to protest, or even to speak up. The West
overthrew progressive and truly patriotic governments, and upheld the most
oppressive tyrannies.
There is some commonsense left, of course. In Lebanon, Hezbollah snapped back,
most likely expressing the feelings of a great number of the people living in
the Middle East. In its televised address, the leader of Hezbollah, Sayyed
Hasan Nasrallah, clearly stated his position:
“The U.S. isn’t qualified morally to lead an anti-terrorist coalition. In our
view, America is the mother of terrorism and the cause of terrorism in the
world… Everyone knows that Hezbollah is against ISIS and Takfiri groups and is
fighting them… However, that doesn’t mean we support U.S military intervention
in the region. Hezbollah is against any US-led coalition that uses terrorism as
an excuse for a military intervention in Syria and Iraq.”
And one could add: and most likely, one day, in Iran…
It is clear that in this region; almost nobody is fooled by empty clichés and
the twisting of language. ISIS is a multi-purpose, flexible stick in the hands
of the West. It is also ‘helpful’ when it operates on its own, when it ‘gets
out of control’. It served as a weapon against Mr. al-Assad and now it is
turning into a perfect scarecrow, a justification for the direct invasion of
Syria, for redeployment, or more precisely for an increase of the Western
military might in the region, for the creation of a pro-Western puppet Kurdish
state, and quite likely, for deposing the government in Damascus.
The trigger-happy Turkish government is already making noises, promising to get
involved, militarily, but only if the goal is defined concretely and openly: to
overthrow Mr. al-Assad.
To overthrow the government in Damascus is, of course, the main goal of
Washington, as well, but Mr. Obama is not as honest and open as his counterpart
and ally in Ankara.
***
All this can be, of course, only the beginning of something truly horrendous.
One should never forget that the Empire and its Saudi, Qatari and Israeli
allies are always ‘thinking big’.
There is always more to destabilize, to ruin, and to conquer – there is Iran on
the horizon, and much more.
To them – to the Empire – places like Syria or Iran do not constitute some of
the oldest and greatest cultures on Earth, inhabited by gentle and peaceful
people. To the Empire, these places are only booty, consisting of natural
resources and strategic locations.
People mean nothing. If one million die, if two or three millions vanish, it
makes absolutely no difference. Cultures mean nothing, as they are not Western,
as they are not Christian ones, as they are not ‘white’.
Obama and Cameron are building on that grand old tradition of the deranged
British colonial empire. It was, after all, only 80 years ago when then British
Prime Minister Lloyd George commented on Britain’s success in undermining a
disarmament conference— which would have barred the use of air-power against
civilians, particularly those in the Middle East. He pointed out that it was a
success. His secretary and second wife Frances wrote:
“At Geneva, other countries would have agreed not to use aeroplanes for bombing
purposes, but we insisted on reserving the right, as D[avid] puts it, to bomb
niggers! Whereupon the whole thing fell through, & we add 5 million to our air
armaments expenditure…”
Decades later, the Empire retains this and many other similar ‘rights’.
***
What is left, how much is left, of the Arab world?
And I don’t mean those few flashy airports, complemented by ‘6-star hotels’,
shopping malls for the elites, and European limousines. I don’t only mean those
oil wells and artificial islands with palm-tree-shaped villas.
This part of the world used to be a beacon, one of the lighthouses of humanity.
This is where the first universities were erected, the first public hospitals,
and this is where the very ideas of ‘social’, of ‘egalitarian’ and of
‘compassionate’ values, came to life.
The Arab world and Persia were where the greatest doctors, architects,
astronomers, scientists and poets used to reside and create.
This is where many great men like the first Sultan of Egypt and Syria – Ṣalāḥ
ad-Dīn –defended the world against those brutal European hordes, invading in
the name of the cross, while being obsessed with looting and rape.
After centuries of colonial wars, Western cruelty and militarism finally won.
They conquered Arabia, as well as the rest of the planet.
The Arab world was reduced to subservient kingdoms and states, ruled by a few
outrageously rich and ruthless families.
In Egypt and Iran, the heroic attempts to create egalitarian and socialist
societies in the post-WWII era, were brutally crushed by the Western powers.
Nihilism, cynicism, corruption and militarism were introduced and upheld.
In modern days, even those relatively socially-oriented states like Iraq and
Libya, were annihilated, at the cost of hundreds of thousands, even millions of
human lives. Oil had to belong to the international corporations, not to the
state, not to the people.
Now what is here, are a few countries in total ruins, including Iraq, Libya and
Syria. There are several staunch allies of the West, states like Qatar and
Saudi Arabia, governed by secretive and oppressive monarchies that are
spreading the most tyrannical form of Islam all over the region, and as far
away as Southeast Asia, while enjoying the full support of the West, as well as
impunity.
What else can be seen in this devastated part of the world? Egypt where
pro-Western elites and the military managed to choke all hopes of what used to
be called the ‘Arab Spring’, that strife for social justice and true freedom
from foreign diktats.
There is Bahrain, where a Shia majority is immobilized by fear, Yemen once
socialist but now repressive, ‘extremist’ and miserable. In places like UAE
there are pockets of luxury for the rich and hell on earth plus humiliation for
the migrant workers who built the place but are left with almost no rights.
Palestine is bleeding from its wounds, as it has been, for countless decades.
Israel and its backers are blocking all solutions for full Palestinian
independence. Almost the entire world votes in support of Palestinian state,
almost the entire world condemns Israel. But it clearly shows, who are in
charge of the planet and the region: the Empire determinedly vetoes all
resolutions and blocks anything that could lead to justice for the Palestinian
people.
Jordan has become something of a huge refugee camp for Palestinians, Syrians
and Iraqis, as well as the service station for Western interests, from the
military ones to those of the ‘development agencies’.
Lebanon, once the jewel of the region, is suffering from spillovers of various
conflicts, as well as from Israeli incursions. It has basically no functioning
government, and the socially-oriented and anti-Western Hezbollah has been
placed on the “terrorist list” by the US and that of several European
countries. This is of course consistent with the twisted logic of the Western
regime: caring for the welfare of one’s people is seen as the worst imaginable
crime, punishable by death.
***
This is all consistent with the legacy of colonialism, neo-colonialism and
imperialism.
The Empire has entered its final gaga stage. In the youngest and the mightiest
part of it – a nation that came to life through people like Jefferson and
Lincoln (not saints, but at least giants), has now ended up by being controlled
by the souk, by the market vendors. And it shows.
If one were detached, it all seems so comical, so grotesque.
It is also tremendously vulgar.
One feels like laughing, like cracking sarcastic jokes.
But then, laughter freezes in our thoughts. It does, when we suddenly realize
that all this is actually for real! Missiles are flying towards Syria, and so
are the bombers.
And children are howling in horror. And bodies are torn to pieces. Millions of
refugees are on the move. Millions of men, women and children have lost their
homes. Women are being raped. Entire communities have ceased to exist.
There used to be countries like Iraq, like Libya, like Syria. True, Iraq was
shaped by British colonialism, and so was Kuwait, but it was there for decades.
It is no more. Now Western imperialism is reshaping the region again, at a
horrendous cost to the local population.
The Empire is ‘experimenting’. It uses ‘trial and error’ tactics. ‘We created
the Syrian opposition and now let us see what will happen. The ‘opposition’
mutates into a militant regional force, which dares to cross our interests?
Let’s bomb it and let’s also arm the Kurds so they can form their own,
pro-Western state, in the middle of the region. Let’s see how it goes… Once we
are on the move, we can also, perhaps, overthrow al-Assad… And who knows, maybe
we can also find a reason to invade Iran.’
The Empire is using people as if they were guinea pigs. There is no
consideration for the well being of the Arab population, there is no respect
for human lives. All basic human rights chapters are being violated; most of
the Geneva Convention clauses are spat on.
The world is so conditioned, so shackled, that this latest attack is being
accepted without any major protests or debates.
If questions are being asked, publicly, then there are no essential questions.
Entire debate is twisted. It is presumed that the West is doing right thing,
that it is defending the world against terrorism.
It is also accepted by a great majority of people and countries, that the
Empire enjoys absolute impunity, that it is above the law, that there is no
international body that can challenge it, or to make it reverse its devastating
and destructive course.
The West has finally reached the highest level of ‘freedom’. It is a freedom
for itself – a terrible freedom to play with the world as if it were a ball, a
cheap and insignificant thing.
***
As al-Qaeda is derived from the US-backed Mujahedin fighters in Afghanistan, so
ISIS was a part of the anti-Assad ‘opposition’ supported by the West and its
regional allies. The West played masterfully on local intolerances: Syrian
President Bashar al-Assad is generally secular, but belongs to the Alawite
sect, which is considered to be heretical in some Sunni Muslim circles,
especially in the most radical ones. That helped to mobilize and recruit
extreme religious cadres. And religious cadres historically, are very
determined fighters.
The Empire groomed both al-Qaeda (or more precisely, its predecessors) and ISIS
as true ‘multi-purpose’ groups. One helped to destroy the Soviet Union and the
other mortally wounded Syria and then, they became the justification for the
‘Global War on Terror’ and in the latest case, for an attack against Syria.
Both could be described as the 5th columns of the West in the Arab world. Just
like the West, they care nothing about the welfare of the people in this
region. The true socially-oriented groups here, like Hezbollah, are actually
fighting against ISIS, but are designated by the West as ‘terrorist
organizations’.
And so the Kafkaesque destruction of the region by Western lunatics continues.
Of course all this is nothing new. This is how, for centuries, the European and
later North American colonial terror functioned: divide and rule, destroy all
that stands on your way. Sacrifice millions of people for your economic and
geopolitical goals, even if you are not yet fully certain exactly what your
goals are.
Without the Western gaga/racist/PlayStation/genocidal realm, there would be no
al-Qaedas and no ISISs. There would be, however, several authoritarian but rich
and socially-balanced countries like Iraq and Libya, as well as well-educated
and secular Syria. If the West had not battered the region with its invasions
and coup d’états after WWII, there would have been at least two powerful and
socialist countries here: Egypt and Iran. In fact, most likely, entire region
would be by now socialist.
ISIS is an implant, which is now serving as the justification for an invasion.
It is so obvious. Not to see it requires great discipline. But the world, or at
least both Europe and the United States, appears to be increasingly
disciplined, obedient, even submissive.
And so the Western crusaders are again, as they had for centuries, riding their
horses, spreading devastation and fear wherever they pass.
But now, there is no brave, enlightened and compassionate Sultan – no
modern-day Ṣalāḥ ad-Dīn – to stop them: in the name of life itself, in the name
of justice and of our entire humanity.
Andre Vltchek is a novelist, filmmaker and investigative journalist. He covered
wars and conflicts in dozens of countries. The result is his latest book:
“Fighting Against Western Imperialism
<http://www.amazon.com/Fighting-Against-Western-Imperialism-Vltchek/dp/6027005823>
”. ‘Pluto’ published his discussion with Noam Chomsky: On Western Terrorism
<http://www.plutobooks.com/display.asp?K=9780745333878> . His critically
acclaimed political novel Point of No Return
<http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0977459071/counterpunchmaga> is
re-edited and available. Oceania
<http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1409298035/counterpunchmaga> is his
book on Western imperialism in the South Pacific. His provocative book about
post-Suharto Indonesia and the market-fundamentalist model is called “Indonesia
– The Archipelago of Fear
<http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0745331998/counterpunchmaga> ”. His
feature documentary, “Rwanda Gambit” is about Rwandan history and the plunder
of DR Congo. After living for many years in Latin America and Oceania, Vltchek
presently resides and works in East Asia and Africa. He can be reached through
his website <http://andrevltchek.weebly.com/> or his Twitter
<https://twitter.com/AndreVltchek> .
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