The US “Plan B” for Syria and the threat of world war


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Bill Van Auken


 obama-syria-war-Negotiations on Syria’s bloody armed conflict were held in Munich Thursday against the backdrop of a government offensive, supported by Russian airstrikes, to break the grip of Western-backed “rebels” over the largely shattered eastern part of Aleppo.

The talks were convened under the auspices of the 17-member International Syria Support Group, which includes the US and its regional allies—Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Qatar—in the war for regime change in Syria, along with Russia and Iran, which are allied with and actively aiding the government of President Bashar al-Assad.

Washington demanded an immediate cease-fire and halt to Russian airstrikes in Syria. The US, together with the reactionary Arab monarchies and the regime in Turkey, fears that without a halt to the fighting, the Islamist militias that they have supported, financed and armed for nearly five years may face irreparable defeat.

Russia, for its part, reportedly proposed a cease-fire that would begin on March 1, thus allowing enough time for the Syrian government to reestablish its control over Aleppo.

Late Thursday night, US Secretary of State John Kerry and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov announced that they had reached a tentative deal that would see a ceasefire “within a week” along with expedited humanitarian aid. Kerry allowed that while the agreement looked good “on paper,” it was yet to be tested. All of the underlying conflicts remain unresolved, and both US and Russian military operations are to continue in the name of the struggle against the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS).

On the eve of the Munich talks, Kerry, in an interview with Washington Postcolumnist David Ignatius, delivered an unmistakable threat in connection with the US negotiating strategy in Munich: “What we’re doing is testing [Russian and Iranian] seriousness.” he said. “And if they’re not serious, then there has to be consideration of a Plan B… You can’t just sit there.”

“Plan B” would consist of a sharp escalation of the US military intervention in Syria, carried out under the cover of combating ISIS, but directed at toppling the Assad government.

The ruins of Aleppo—the whole Middle East is now is now a heap of rubble—owing to the greed and sociopathy of the global ruling class.

The ruins of Aleppo—the whole Middle East is now a heap of rubble—owing to the greed and sociopathy of the global ruling class, whose leaders are in Washington.

Saudi Arabia and Qatar have also reportedly spent the last several days discussing a “Plan B” that would involve their participation in direct military intervention to save the “rebels” that they have supported. The Saudi-owned news group al-Arabiya has quoted officials in Riyadh as confirming the House of Saud’s decision to send troops into Syria in what would constitute a provocatively hostile invasion.

Responding to the ominous implications of such an escalation, Russia’s Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev told the German daily Handelsblatt Thursday: “The Americans and our Arab partners must think hard about this—do they want a permanent war? All sides must be forced to the negotiating table instead of sparking a new world war.”

“Plan B” would consist of a sharp escalation of the US military intervention in Syria, carried out under the cover of combating ISIS, but directed at toppling the Assad government.

Medvedev’s choice of words was not mere hyperbole. A military intervention to rescue the “rebels,” which amounts to a war to save Al Qaeda’s Syrian affiliate, the Al Nusra Front, the leading force on the ground in Aleppo province, could quickly bring the US and its allies into combat with Russia, an armed confrontation between the world’s two major nuclear powers.

US officials have spoken in recent days of creating a “humanitarian corridor” to Aleppo and other rebel areas under siege by government forces. Presumably this “corridor” is meant to replace the main supply route for the “rebels” from Turkey, which has been cut off by the government offensive, disrupting the CIA-orchestrated arming of the “rebels” with stockpiles poured in from Libya, the Gulf oil kingdoms and beyond. Such a corridor would require a military force to protect it and enforcement of a “no-fly zone,” meaning a confrontation not only with Syrian government forces, but with Russian warplanes as well.

Turkey, Washington’s NATO ally, is meanwhile blocking its border to Syrian refugees in order to create the maximum crisis possible so that it can pursue its own strategic aims, which include not only regime change in Damascus, but also the bloody suppression of the Kurdish minority on both sides of the frontier.

The Obama administration has issued no warning to the American people that it is embarking on a policy in Syria that could pit the US against the Russian military and potentially trigger a global catastrophe.

There is no significant popular support for US military intervention in Syria, which has been promoted under the false flag of “humanitarianism,” aided by a whole coterie of pseudo-left organizations that have specialized in portraying a bloody sectarian campaign by CIA-backed Islamist militias as a “Syrian revolution.”

The extent of the catastrophe unleashed upon Syria through this intervention was spelled out in shocking terms with the release of a new study by the Syrian Center for Policy Research, which found that fully 11.5 per cent of the population inside Syria has been either killed or injured as a result of the armed conflict. The death toll from the war—combined with the systematic destruction of the country’s social infrastructure and health care system and a dramatic drop in living standards—has caused life expectancy to plummet from 70.5 years in 2010 to an estimated 55.4 years in 2015.

The study found further that the country’s unemployment rate had soared from 14.9 percent in 2011 to 52.9 percent by the end of 2015, and that the overall poverty rate is estimated at 85.2 percent.

In short, the Obama administration has inflicted upon Syria a war that is every bit as criminal and lethal as the war carried out by the Bush administration against Iraq.

The Syrian people are the victims of a US-orchestrated war that is driven by the global strategy of American imperialism to reverse its economic decline through the use or threat of military force. Washington sought regime change in Syria as a means to an end: the weakening of the two principal allies of Damascus, Russia and Iran, and the reassertion of a Western stranglehold on the vast energy resources of the Middle East.

The threat of world war is posed not merely by the prospect of US and Russian warplanes facing off in the skies over Syria, but by the entire logic of the Syrian war for regime change and the broader strategic aims that it serves. This finds expression in NATO’s escalation of the military encirclement of Russia and the increasingly provocative anti-Chinese policy being pursued by the Pentagon in the South China Sea.

The US drive for global hegemony was articulated in the strategic maxim enunciated by the Pentagon nearly a quarter of a century ago that Washington must prevent the emergence of any power capable of challenging the dominance of American capitalism on a global or even regional scale. This “grand strategy” has led to unceasing US wars of aggression since and now poses the real threat of a third, nuclear, world war.

Against this barbaric strategy of the US ruling establishment, the American and international working class must advance its own independent strategy, fighting for the withdrawal of US and all foreign military forces from Syria, Iraq and the entire Middle East and for the unity of the working class across all national, religious and ethnic boundaries in a common struggle to put an end to capitalism, the source of militarism and war.


Bill Van Auken is a senior editorial writer with wsws.org.


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How the West Creates Terrorism

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By ANDRE VLTCHEK


European and North American masses prefer not to know anything about their criminal past and the present. As far as they are concerned, they rule the world because they are free, bright and hard working.

Coptic Christians were caught and killed by ISIS in Libya.

Coptic Christians were caught and killed by ISIS in Libya. The modern Western terrorist disease is grotesquely brutal, by design. It seeks to shock and intimidate. Which makes Washington’s sanctimonious pronouncements all the harder to take.

Terrorism has many forms and many faces, but the most terrible of them is cold cruelty.

We are asked to believe that terrorists consist of dirty lunatics, running around with bombs, machine guns and explosive belts. That’s how we are told to imagine them.

Many of them are bearded; almost all are “foreign looking”, non-white, non-Western. In summary they are wife beaters, child rapists and Greek and Roman statue destroyers.

Actually, during the Cold War, there were some white looking “terrorists” – the left-wingers belonging to several revolutionary cells, in Italy and elsewhere in Europe. But only now we are learning that the terrorist acts attributed to them were actually committed by the Empire, by several European right-wing governments and intelligence services. You remember, the NATO countries were blowing up those trains inside the tunnels, or bombing entire train stations…

It “had to be done”, in order to discredit the Left, just to make sure that people would not become so irresponsible as to vote for the Communists or true Socialists.

stateofSiege-BWposter

In State of Siege director Costa Gavras put US policy in Latin America under the microscope. The film focuses on Washington’s covert war against the left, a war that included CIA/Pentagon paid interrogation “experts” like Dan Mitrione, captured and eventually executed by the Uruguayan Tupamaro guerrillas. Montand plays Mitrione.

There were also several Latin American ‘terror’ groups – the revolutionary movements fighting for freedom and against oppression, mainly against Western colonialism. They had to be contained, liquidated, and if they held power, overthrown.

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But terrorists became really popular in the West only after the Soviet Union and the Communist Bloc were destroyed through thousands of economic, military and propaganda means, and the West suddenly felt too exposed, so alone without anyone to fight—or provide an excuse for its criminal actions. Somehow it felt that it needed to justify its monstrous oppressive acts in Africa, the Middle East, Latin America and Asia.

It needed a new “mighty”, really mighty, enemy to rationalize its astronomical military and intelligence budgets. It was not good enough to face a few hundred ‘freaks’ somewhere inside the Colombian jungle or in Northern Ireland or Corsica. There had to be something really huge, something matching that ‘evil’ Soviet “threat”.

Oh how missed that threat was, suddenly! Just a threat of course; not the danger of egalitarian and internationalist ideals…

And so the West linked terrorism with Islam, which is one of the greatest cultures on earth, with 1.6 billion followers. Islam is big and mighty enough, to scare the shit out of the middle class housewives in some Western suburb! And on top of that, it had to be contained anyway, as it was essentially too socialist and too peaceful.

[dropcap]A[/dropcap]t that time in history, all great secular and socialist leaders of Muslim countries, (like in Iran, Indonesia and Egypt), were overthrown by the West, their legacy spat on, or they were simply banned.

But that was not enough for the West!

In order to make Islam a worthy enemy, the Empire had to first radicalize and pervert countless Muslim movements and organizations, then create the new ones, consequently training, arming and financing them, so they could really look frightening enough.

There is of course one more important reason why “terrorism”, particularly Muslim “terrorism”, is so essential for the survival of Western doctrines, exceptionalism and global dictatorship: it justifies the West’s notion of absolute cultural and moral superiority.

This is how it works:

For centuries, the West has been behaving like a mad bloodthirsty monster. Despite the self-glorifying propaganda being spread by Western media outlets all over the world, it was becoming common knowledge that the Empire was raping, murdering and plundering in virtually all corners of the Globe. A few more decades and the world would see the West exclusively as a sinister and toxic disease. Such a scenario had to be prevented by all means!

And so the ideologues and propagandists of the Empire came up with a new and brilliant formula: Let’s create something that looks and behaves even worse than we do, and then we could trumpet that we are still actually the most reasonable and tolerant culture on earth!

And let’s make a real pirouette: let’s fight our own creation – let’s fight it in the name of freedom and democracy!”

This is how the new generation; the new breed of “terrorist” was born. And it lives! It is alive and well! It is multiplying like Capek’s Salamanders.

Just imagine, ISIS chopping thousands of European heads, in order to perform medical experiments aiming to demonstrate the superiority of the Arab race. It would be absolutely unthinkable..!” 

[dropcap]W[/dropcap]estern terrorism is not really discussed, although its most extreme and violent forms are battering the world relentlessly and have for a long time, with hundreds of millions of victims piling up everywhere.

Even the legionnaires and gladiators of the Empire, like the Mujaheddin, Al-Qaida, or ISIS, can never come close to the savagery that has been demonstrated time and again by their British, French, Belgian, German or US masters. Of course they are trying very hard to match their gurus and bread-givers, but they are just not capable of their violence and brutality.

It takes “Western culture” to butcher some 10 million people in just one single geographic area, in almost one go!

***

So what is real terrorism, and how could ISIS and others follow its lead? They say that ISIS is decapitating their victims. Bad enough. But who is their teacher?

For centuries, the empires of Europe were murdering, torturing, raping and mutilating people on all continents of the world. Those who were not doing so directly, were “investing” into colonialist expeditions, or sending its people to join genocidal battalions.

Leopold would have given Hitler a run for his money. His sociopathic disdain for human suffering mirrored a civilization whose technological pride obscured its moral bankruptcy.

Leopold would have given Hitler and certainly ISIS a run for their money. His greed and sociopathic disdain for human suffering, bathed in racism, mirrored a civilization whose technological pride obscured its moral bankruptcy.

King Leopold II and his cohorts managed to exterminate around 10 million people of Western and Central Africa, in what is now known as the Congo. He was hunting people down like animals, forcing them to work on his rubber plantations. If he thought that they were not filling up his coffers fast enough, he did not hesitate to chop off their hands, or burn entire village populations inside their huts, alive.

Ten million victims vanished. Ten million! And it did not take place in some distant past, in the “dark ages”, but in the 20th century, under the rule of so-called constitutional monarchy, and self-proclaimed democracy. How does it compare with the terrorism that is ruling over the territories occupied by ISIS? Let’s compare numbers and brutality level!

And the Democratic Republic of Congo has, since 1995, lost again close to 10 million people in a horrid orgy of terror, unleashed by the West’s proxies, Rwanda and Uganda (see the trailer to my film “Rwanda Gambit”).

[dropcap]G[/dropcap]ermans performed holocausts in South-Western Africa, in what is now Namibia. The Herero tribe was exterminated, or at least close to 90% of it was. People were first kicked out from their land and from their homes, and driven into the desert. If they survived, the German pre-Nazi expeditions followed, using bullets and other forms of mass killing. Medical experiments on humans were performed, to prove the superiority of the Germanic nation and the white race.

These were just innocent civilians; people whose only crime was that they were not white, and were sitting on land occupied and violated by the Europeans.

The Taliban never came close to this, or even ISIS!

To this day, the Namibian government is demanding the return of countless heads severed from its people: heads that were cut off and then sent to the University of Freiburg and several hospitals in Berlin, for medical experiments. Can it get any more gruesome?

Just imagine, ISIS chopping thousands of European heads, in order to perform medical experiments aiming to demonstrate the superiority of the Arab race. It would be absolutely unthinkable!

Local people were terrorized in virtually all colonies grabbed by Europe, something that I have described in detail in my latest 840-page book “Exposing Lies of the Empire”.

And what about the Brits and their famines, which they were using as population control and intimidation tactics in India! In Bengal at least 5 million died in 1943 alone, 5.5 million in 1876-78, 5 million in 1896-97, to name just a few terrorist acts committed by the British Empire against a defenseless population forced to live under its horrid and oppressive terrorist regime!

What I have mentioned above are just 3 short chapters from the long history of Western terrorism. An entire encyclopedia could be compiled on the topic.

But all this sits far from Western consciousness. European and North American masses prefer not to know anything about the past and the present. As far as they are concerned, they rule the world because they are free, bright and hard working. Not because for centuries their countries have plundered and murdered, and above all terrorized the world forcing it into submission.

The elites know everything, of course. And the more they know, the more they put that knowledge to work.

Terrorist trade and experience are passed on from Western masters to their new Muslim recruits.

The Mujahideen, Al-Qaida, ISIS – on closer examination, their tactics of intimidation and terrorization are not original at all. They are built on imperialist and colonialist practices of the West.

News about this, or even about the terror that has been inflicted on the Planet by the West, is meticulously censored. You would never see them on the programs broadcast by the BBC, or read about them in mainstream newspapers and magazines.

On the other hand, the violence and ruthlessness of the client terrorist organizations are constantly highlighted. They are covered in their tiniest detail, repeated, and “analyzed”.

Everybody is furious, horrified! The UN is “deeply concerned”, Western governments are “outraged”, and the Western public “has had enough – it does not want immigrants from those terrible countries that are breeding terrorism and violence”.

The West “simply has to get involved”. And here comes the War on Terror. The phony war on terror.

Terrorists win

It is a war against the West’s own Frankenstein. It is a war that is never meant to be won. Because if it is won, god forbid, there would have to be peace, and peace means cutting defense budgets and also dealing with the real problems of our Planet.

Peace would mean the West looking at its own past. It would mean thinking about justice and rearranging the entire power structures of the Planet. And that can never be allowed.

And so the West is “playing” war games; it is “fighting” its own recruits (or pretending to fight them), while innocent people are dying.

No part of the world, except the West, would be able to invent and unleash something so vile and barbaric as ISIS or Al-Nusra!

Look closer at the strategy of these group-implants: it has no roots in Muslim culture whatsoever. But it is fully inspired by the Western philosophy of colonialist terrorism: “If you don’t fully embrace our dogmas and religion, then we will cut off your head, slash your throat, rape your entire family or burn your village or city to the ground. We will destroy your grand cultural heritage as we did in South America 500 years ago, and in so many other places.”

And so on and so on! It would really require great discipline not to see the connections!

***

[dropcap]I[/dropcap]n 2006 I was visiting my friend, a former President of Indonesia, and a great progressive Muslim leader, Abdurrahman Wahid, (known in Indonesia as “Gus Dur”). Our meeting was held at the headquarters of his massive Muslim body Nahdlatul Ulama (NU). At that time the NU was the biggest Muslim organization in the world.

We were discussing capitalism and how it was destroying and corrupting Indonesia. Gus Dur was a “closet socialist”, and that was one of the main reasons why the servile pro-Western Indonesian “elites” and the military deposed him out of the Presidency in 2001.

When we touched on the topic of “terrorism”, he suddenly declared in his typically soft, hardly audible voice: “I know who blew up the Marriott Hotel in Jakarta. It was done by our own intelligence services, in order to justify the increase in their budget, as well as aid that they have been receiving from abroad.”

Of course, the Indonesian army, intelligence services and police consist of a special breed of humans. For several decades, since 1965, they have been brutally terrorizing their own population, when the pro-Western coup toppled the progressive President Sukarno and brought to power a fascist military clique, backed by the predominantly Christian business gang. This terror took between 2-3 million lives in Indonesia itself, as well as in East Timor and (until now) in occupied and thoroughly plundered Papua.

Three genocides in only 5 decades!


indonesianGenocidePrisoners

Djakarta, 1965. Indonesia’s military—heavily infiltrated and controlled by the Pentagon—faithfully rounded up, tortured, and “disappeared” hundreds of thousands of “reds.” The manufactured hysteria created bloodbaths throughout the archipelago. The total has been documented at over one million. Fewer than 0.00001% of Americans have ever heard of this crime, let alone identify the real culprits.

[dropcap]T[/dropcap]he Indonesian coup was one of the greatest terrorist acts in the history of mankind. The rivers were clogged with corpses and changed their color to red.

Why? So that capitalism would survive and Western mining companies could have their booty, at the expense of a completely ruined Indonesian nation. So the Communist Party of Indonesia (PKI) would not be able to win elections, democratically.

The war on “terror” is a war against the West’s own Frankenstein. It is a war that is never meant to be won. Because if it is won, god forbid, there would have to be peace, and peace means cutting defense budgets and also dealing with the real problems of our Planet.

But in the West, those 1965 intensive massacres planned by the Empire were never described as “terrorism”. Blowing up a hotel or a pub always is however, especially if they are frequented by Western clientele.

Now Indonesia has its own groups of “terrorists”. They returned from Afghanistan where they fought on behalf of the West against the Soviet Union. They are returning from the Middle East now. The recent attacks in Jakarta could be just a foreplay, a well-planned beginning of something much bigger, maybe an opening of the new “front” of toy soldiers of the Empire in Southeast Asia.

For the West and its planners – the more chaos the better.

Had Abdurrahman Wahid been allowed to stay as the President of Indonesia, there would, most likely, have been no terrorism. His country would have undergone socialist reforms, instituted social justice, rehabilitated Communists and embraced secularism.

In socially balanced societies, terrorism does not thrive.

That would be unacceptable to the Empire. That would mean – back to Sukarno’s day! The most populous Muslim nation on earth cannot be allowed to go its own way, to aim for socialism, and to annihilate terrorist cells.

It has to be at the edge. It has to be ready to be used as a pawn. It has to be scared and scary! And so it is.

***

[dropcap]T[/dropcap]he games the West is playing are complex and elaborate. They are murky and nihilist. They are so destructive and brutal that even the sharpest analysts are often questioning their own eyes and judgments: “Could all this be really happening?”

The brief answer is: “Yes it can. Yes it is, for many long decades and centuries.”

Historically, terrorism is a native Western weapon. It was utilized freely by people like Lloyd George, a British PM, who refused to sign the agreement banning aerial bombardment of civilians, using unshakeable British logic: “We reserve the right to bomb those niggers.” Or Winston Churchill who was in favor of gassing the ‘lower grade’ of races, like Kurds and Arabs.

That is why, when some outsider, a country like Russia, gets involved, launching its genuine war against terrorist groups, the entire West is consumed by panic. Russia is spoiling their entire game! It is ruining a beautifully crafted neo-colonialist equilibrium.

Just look how lovely everything is: after killing hundreds of millions all over the Globe, the West is now standing as the self-proclaimed champion of human rights and freedom. It is still terrorizing the world, plundering it, fully controlling it – but it is being accepted as the supreme leader, a benevolent advisor, and the only trustworthy part of the world.

And almost nobody is laughing.

Because everyone is scared!

Its brutal legions in the Middle East and Africa are destabilizing entire countries, their origins are easily traceable, but almost no one is daring to do such tracing. Some of those who have tried – died.

The more frightening these invented, manufactured and implanted terrorist monsters, the more beautiful the West looks. It is all gimmicks. It has roots in advertisement, and in hundreds of years of propaganda apparatus.

The West then pretends to fight those deep forces of darkness. It uses powerful, “righteous” language, which has clear bases in Christian fundamentalist dogma.

An entire mythology is unleashed; it feels like Wagner’s “Ring”.

The terrorists represent evil, not the enormous expenditure from the coffers of the US State Department, the European Union and NATO. They are more evil than the Devil himself!

And the West, riding on the white horse, slightly pissed on wine but always in good humor, is portrayed as both a victim and the main adversary of those satanic terrorist groups.

It is one incredible show. It is one terrible farce. Look underneath the horseman’s mask: look at those exposed teeth; that deadly grin! Look at his red eyes, full of greed, lust and cruelty.

And let us never forget: colonialism and imperialism are two most deadly forms of terrorism. And these are still the two main weapons of that horseman who is choking the world!




VltchekAndre Vltchek
 is a
philosopher, novelist, filmmaker and investigative journalist. He has covered wars and conflicts in dozens of countries. His latest books are: “Exposing Lies Of The Empire” and “Fighting Against Western Imperialism;  a discussion with Noam Chomsky: On Western Terrorism

Point of No Return is his critically acclaimed political novel. Oceania – a book on Western imperialism in the South Pacific. His provocative book about Indonesia: “Indonesia – The Archipelago of Fear”. Andre is making films for teleSUR and Press TV. After living for many years in Latin America and Oceania, Vltchek presently resides and works in East Asia and the Middle East. He can be reached through his website or his Twitter.


Exposing Lies of the Empire (Paperback)
THIS BOOK IS ENDORSED BY THE GREANVILLE POST EDITORS 

by Andre Vltchek 

vltchek-LiesofEmpireCoverANDRE VLTCHEK is one of this world’s greatest contemporary thinkers. A true internationalist, he does not belong to any single culture; he belongs to the entire world, a world battered by Western imperialism and capitalist fundamentalism. That is why he works relentlessly and courageously at the front lines and battlefields, as well as in the most forgotten corners of the globe; wherever he is needed and wherever our humanity is suffering, struggling and is rising to its feet. This book is 822 pages long, divided into 69 chapters. It is perhaps the most complete, and the most comprehensive account of the last several years, during which our planet has risen up and began its struggle against the Empire and its oppression. Vltchek takes us to all the continents, to slums and palaces, to the villages bombed into the ground, and to the front lines of the revolution. It alerts and provokes, clarifies and leads forward. It is a book of philosophy, a collection of exceptional investigative journalist reports, and a manifesto. It will inspire millions. It will be quoted for centuries to come.


Note to Commenters
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Saudi Arabia a Force for Stability? Dream On!

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 By  William Boardman 
reader supported news
 (rsn)

Enabling Saudi militancy is an irrational US policy

Obama with King Salman. Among other things, as a reigning kleptocrat and titular owner of Aramco, Salman is the richest man on earth with a worth put at 15 trillion dollars.

Obama with King Salman. Among other things, as a reigning kleptocrat and titular owner of Aramco, Salman is the richest man on earth with a personal worth put at 15 trillion dollars.

The Saudi mass beheadings on January 2 proved nothing new to a world that well knows Saudi Arabia is still a tribal police state with a moral code of medieval barbarity. Saudi Arabia is a Sunni-Muslim country that executes people for witchcraft, adultery, apostasy, and homosexuality (among other things). And the Saudi regime is perfectly willing to torture and kill a Shi’a-Muslim cleric for the crime of speaking truth to power, knowing that that judicial murder will inflame his followers and drive the region toward wider war. The Saudi provocation is as transparent as it is despicable, and yet the Saudis are held to no account, as usual. 



Below: Obama’s mealy-mouthed reply to why the US “must maintain” its relationship with Saudi Arabia, a “key ally in the region” despite its undeniable heinous record in human rights, not to mention as a constant disrupter of regional and global peace. 

Yes, the predictable reaction in Iran included street protest and breaching the security of an annex to the Saudi embassy in Tehran. Protestors ransacked the annex and set it on fire. Police responded quickly, put out the fire, and arrested some 40 protestors. No Saudis were hurt or taken hostage. (This was not Iran taking US hostages in 1979, despite the ritually repeated echo of that event as the Times wrote falsely: “ransacked and set fire to the Saudi Embassy….”) As such things go, the annex attack was pretty much a non-event – but it was enough for diplomats and media to create a false equivalency, as if vandalizing an empty building carried the same moral weight as the ISIS-style execution of Sheikh Nimr al-Nimr for nonviolent protest against a brutal dictatorship.

saudiBeheading-ISIS-cartoon

Hiding behind this false equivalency, governments around the world call for both sides to act with restraint, even though Iran has acted with restraint all along, while Saudi Arabia threw restraint to the winds from the start with the deliberate provocation of a political murder. Of course there’s nothing inherently wrong – ever – with both sides exercising restraint, it’s just a meaningless bromide as applied here, with a caution bordering on cowardice. These are, after all, the same people who mostly say nothing in opposition to the Saudi coalition’s brutally aggressive war against Yemeni fighters and civilians alike in daily violation of international humanitarian law. 


SIDEBAR

SAUDI ARABIA: A MEDIEVAL BUTCHER NATION AND CLOSE US ALLY

The following materials are both irrefutable and eloquent, among other things, of Washington's (and the Western media's) terminal duplicity. Can ANYONE imagine if these barbarities were being committed in North Korea or Russia today, or even in Syria, by the government of Pres. Assad? Never mind that in the case of the latter, such ugly lies are continually circulated.

DATELINE: Sunday, January 3, 2016 11:09 AM

Saudi Execution of Sheikh Nimr Similar to ISIS Propaganda Videos: Independent (UK)

Saudi Execution of Sheikh Nimr Similar to ISIS Propaganda Videos: Independent

A few days ago Shia cleric Sheikh Nimr was beheaded along with 46 other victims of Saudi medievalism. No protests of any sort were heard in Washington or London.


If Saudi Arabia included a video of the executions of prominent Shia cleric Sheikh Nimr al-Nimr and the 46 other people they killed on Saturday, it would have been nothing short of a Daesh (ISIS) Takfiri terrorist propaganda video. The macabre simile was uttered by the Independent’s Middle East correspondent Robert Fisk.

“All that was missing was the video of the decapitations – although the Kingdom’s 158 beheadings last year were perfectly in tune with the Wahhabi teachings of Daesh,” said Fisk.

Saudi Execution of Sheikh Nimr2-inCarDaesh has on multiple occasions released footage portraying elaborate mass executions of hostages. Fisk noted that the recent flood of beheadings are “certainly an unprecedented Saudi way of welcoming in the New Year.”

Following the execution, authorities refused to hand over the cleric’s remains and buried them at an undisclosed cemetery, according to the Sheikh’s brother, Mohamed Nimr.

He said that the family intended to bury Nimr in his home town, Qatif; Press TV reported.  - See more at: http://en.alalam.ir/News/1775576#sthash.OmCdohG2.dpuf


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Saudi mass executions are common. In this one, women were at the receiving end of Saudi "justice".

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Saudi executioner. Plenty of work in the 21st century. And let us not forget the butchers of ISIS so prone to beheadings and other revolting methods of killing are also an offshoot of Saudi-sponsored Wahabism.

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Tehran protests against the Saudis. Ryadh's murder of the Shia cleric was a calculated provocation. One wonders what the ulterior motive was?

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saudis-ShiaClericExecuted saudisExecute47people

Saudi Arabia Beheaded 59 People So Far This Year — Last month saw Saudi Arabia behead at least 8 people — twice the number of Western hostages who have so far featured in IS’s barbaric execution videos. In August those executed by Riyadh were sentenced to death for crimes such as apostasy, adultery and “sorcery : But Hardly Anyone is Talking About It | Global Research

In 2015 may people met their end by these gruesome methods. Those executed by Riyadh were sentenced to death for crimes such as apostasy, adultery and “sorcery" : But Hardly Anyone is Talking About It | COURTESY: Global Research

 

More savagery: Syrian rebels, so favored by Washington, behead Shia muslims. These are supposedly "moderate" fellows.

More savagery: Syrian rebels, so favored by Washington, behead Shia muslims. These are supposedly "moderate" fellows.

 

ISIS fanatics beheading a Christian Syrian.

ISIS fanatics beheading a Christian Syrian.

ISIS: drowning children. Nothing is too revolting for these bastards. And yet many in the US media deplore tyheir being blasted by Russian bombs.

ISIS: drowning children. Nothing is too cruel or revolting for these bastards. And yet many in the US media deplore their being blasted by Russian bombs.

ISIS video shows the mass murder of Syrian military personnel by beheading allegedly led by Jihadi John at a desert location. (Grabbed from Twitter account: https://twitter.com/zaidbenjamin) These are the brave men the Western media never ceases to denigrate in their effort to demonize Syria's current government.

ISIS video shows the mass murder of Syrian military personnel by beheading allegedly led by Jihadi John at a desert location. (Grabbed from Twitter account: https://twitter.com/zaidbenjamin) These are the brave men the Western media never ceases to denigrate in their effort to demonize Syria's current government.

More Syrian soldiers (SAA) summarily executed.

More Syrian soldiers (SAA) summarily executed.

Another ISIS maniac murdering a Syrian soldier. These are the guys the CIA and the Saudis, along with Qatar, the Emirates and others NATO accomplices, have set loose on the world.

Another ISIS maniac murdering a Syrian soldier. These are the guys the CIA and the Saudis, along with Qatar, the Emirates and others NATO accomplices, have set loose on the world stage. Russia is now spoiling their game, hence the loud screaming of "Foul!"

None of these heinous crimes would happen if the American people were consistently and scrupulously told the truth about their government's actions. Which is why they are not. 

Beheading of Syrian Christian from Maaloula

Disgusting, isn't it? But a true representation of the cynical criminality and hypocrisy ruling "the Western powers" these days. For it is they, first and foremost, who spawned this royal mess in the Middle East and elsewhere across the planet.

SIDEBAR ENDS HERE. NORMAL ARTICLE TEXT RESUMES.

[dropcap]T[/dropcap]he speed with which Saudi Arabia seized on the embassy attack as a pretext for cutting off diplomatic relations suggests that this was a Saudi goal from the start. The diplomatic break also complicates (or even scuttles) this month’s peace talks that contemplated Saudi Arabia coming to the same table with Iran to discuss the wars in Syria and Iran. The Saudis are fighting in both wars. Iran has fighters with Iraqi and US forces fighting the Islamic state in Iraq, and Iraq has something like “advisors” supporting President Assad in Syria. The Saudis allege that Iran has troops in Yemen on the side of the Houthis there, but there is no persuasive evidence that this is true. Whatever the reality on the ground, any restraint on Iran resulting from the Saudi provocation would likely help the Saudis in their unrestrained wars, neither of which is going all that well. The Saudis unilaterally ended the ceasefire in Yemen, killing more civilians there the same day it beheaded 43 prisoners and shot four others at home.  

When does US complicity in Saudi violence come to an end? 

[dropcap]T[/dropcap]he long game for the Saudis – regional dominance – requires relative Iranian weakness. The sanction-enforced weakness forced on Iran in recent years is about to end as a result of the multinational nuclear agreement between Iran and most of the [relatively] civilized world (China, France, Russia, United Kingdom, and the US – the five permanent members of the UN Security Council – plus Germany and the European Union). The return of Iran to the world community can only increase its challenge to Saudi regional hegemony. Whether this is good or bad for the rest of the world is arguable, but the current Western conventional thinking that Saudi Arabia is a force for stability in the region is pure fantasy. 

There is not a lot of moral high ground in the Middle East, where the most democratic nation is Israel, which treats its Palestinians worse (perhaps) than the Sunni dictatorship of Bahrain treats its Shi’a majority (with the blessing of the US 5th Fleet based there). When it comes to executing people, Iran and Saudi Arabia are #2 and #3 globally, behind China, and followed closely by Iraq, North Korea, and the US. 

In the midst of this moral quagmire, President Obama once again has an opportunity to actually earn that Nobel Peace Prize he received in 2009 in anticipation of his someday doing something to deserve it. He can act to contain and calm the nations of the Persian Gulf. Instead of relying on mealy-mouthed bromides from low-level State Department officials, the President of the United States could step up to defend his administration’s signal accomplishment to date, the multinational nuclear agreement with Iran, by telling the Saudis to behave like a mature nation and stop beheading clerics just to annoy the neighbors. 

The White House website has no searchable comment about recent Saudi actions. On January 4, White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest commented on the mass beheadings with seemingly helpless plaintiveness more reflective of weakness than any kind of leadership:  

“And, you know, this is a concern that we raised with the Saudis in advance, and unfortunately, the concerns that we expressed to the Saudis have precipitated the kinds of consequences that we were concerned about.” 

Well, if the White House had been truly concerned about heading off mass executions, or even just heading off the beheading of Sheikh al-Nimr, the White House could have done any number of things to give the Saudis pause, something other than what it did, including approving another $1.2 billion in arms sales

US has the choice of not abetting Saudi war crimes in Yemen

[dropcap]I[/dropcap]nstead of weeping for American children already beyond his help, President Obama could act immediately to save still-living Yemeni children by withdrawing US support of the Saudi-led war on Yemen (carried out with weapons from the US and others). President Obama has been complicit in the Saudi criminal war since the US helped launch it in March 2015. The US could end its role in the naval blockade that keeps Yemenis from fleeing the war zone, a blockade that keeps food and other humanitarian aid from Yemeni children and adults alike, a blockade that enforces mass hunger and one of the worst humanitarian crises in the world. For the US merely to abstain from its active role in crimes against humanity in Yemen would allow it to seize something like the moral high ground in a region where almost none exists. Pulling back from mindless support for one of the most depraved governments in the Middle East would seem, by contrast, like reaching a moral mountaintop. Why does the US support the Saudis anymore anyway, when the Saudis are most useful now for heating the world beyond habitation?  

The Saudis have demonstrated time and again that the US has no significant influence on Saudi Arabia. In 2001, when Saudis hit the World Trade Center, Saudi Arabia (with the connivance of President Bush) withdrew its people from the US before the FBI could have a word with any of them, even those who had had contact with the dead terrorists. Again and again, the US bows to Saudi pressure on issues large and small (with some magnificent exceptions like the multinational nuclear agreement with Iran). At some point the US should ask itself: if we have so little influence with Saudi Arabia, why should we let the Saudis make us look like their puppet? 

Saudi betrayals of trust and good will have a long history

[dropcap]T[/dropcap]here has been no doubt about Saudi duplicity at least since 1996, when the Khobar Towers bombing killed 19 Americans (wounding some 500) and the Saudis obstructed the FBI and other American investigators every step of the way, even though the Saudis knew from the start the identity of the Saudi terrorist who planned the attack. Even so, the US eventually indicted 14 people (13 Saudis and one Lebanese), but blamed it all on Iran. Iran denied any involvement, and also promised no further attacks. Having obstructed the investigation, after the indictment Saudi Arabia refused to extradite any of the suspects. According to Bruce Reidel, then a deputy assistant secretary of defense, at that time the Saudis were most worried about the US starting another Gulf War by attacking Iran and acted to avoid that escalation:

“In my meetings with senior Saudi officials in Dhahran in the days immediately after the attack, they pointed the blame at Saudi Hezbollah. It became clear the Saudis had a great deal of information on the group and had probably foiled an earlier bomb attack without telling Washington. The Saudis were certain it was not the work of Osama bin Laden. They knew Mughassil was the mastermind from the start.” 

Now, in 2016, President Obama asks in vain for the Saudis to join the peace talks on Syria, but authorizes billions of dollars of arms sales to Saudi Arabia to pursue its covert support for the Islamic State (ISIS) and its criminally brutal war on Yemen. And Secretary of State Kerry asks in vain for the Saudis to spare the life of a cleric whose crime is speaking truth to power, but Saudi Arabia cuts off his head along with 42 others, just to make a point. Saudi Arabia has long since broken with the US whenever it felt like it. Will the US finally get it this time that our Saudi ally is not only unreliable but is not an ally? 

The multinational nuclear agreement with Iran is, if it holds, an actual achievement worthy of a Nobel Peace Prize. Yet this President acts as if the Saudi kingdom of corruption and war is somehow more worthy of protection and support than a world with a diminished threat of nuclear war.   


ABOUT THE AUTHOR
William M. Boardman has over 40 years experience in theatre, radio, TV, print journalism, and non-fiction, including 20 years in the Vermont judiciary. He has received honors from Writers Guild of America, Corporation for Public Broadcasting, Vermont Life magazine, and an Emmy Award nomination from the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences.


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Politics and Anti-politics—Thoughts About Most Beloved Greek Words

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"The Fall of Icarus"

Hubris in ancient Greek referred to excessive behavior or lack of measure, transgressions for which the gods punished offenders. Hubris referred to actions that humiliated the victim for the pleasure of the abuser. In modern usage, hubris means extreme pride, a loss of contact with reality and an overestimation of one’s own capabilities, usually of persons in positions of power. Political writers apply it also to groups and in a special way to the United States of America and its leaders. Personally I try to avoid words which are being widely used, sometimes, it seems, at random. When I use the word hubris I have in mind the meaning of arrogance; in any case I intend a despicable quality.

An expressive Greek word I have come to love is hamartia. The meaning I attach to the word is a character FLAW. Though hamartia, especially in ancient Greek literature, is a negative quality that leads to tragic consequences, I also use hamartia as a character weakness such as drug or alcohol addiction, a flaw to be overcome after a life-and-death struggle, a struggle, if won, that molds and strengthens character. I conceive of hamartia as a necessary quality in a positive literary protagonist or in a hero in real life. The person you love and admire most has most probably struggled and overcome his hamartia, which most of us have somewhere in our being.

Though ancient Greeks as a rule applied these dramatic words to the individual—Antigone’s flaw was her stubborn loyalty for which she paid with her life—we today apply these words also to entire societies or nations. We can label Europe’s hubris its Eurocentrism; its hamartia (for which the ancient Greeks would perhaps punish it collectively), is its destructive nationalisms on the one hand, and its contemporary subservience to America on the other.

Today a powerful anti-political spirit is spreading across Old Europe, a Europe of old politics and old ideologies, Europe which, despite its vaunted geographical and demographical growth, is in reality shrinking. Hubristic Europe is withering away. Neo-Fascists in Hungary, right wing nationalists growing by leaps and bounds in France, Poland and Italy, Socialists who are not really Socialists or even leftists in other places, and Conservatives who claim leftist values elsewhere. All are in doubt; socio-political suspense reigns.

Among the faint signs of hope for political survival of this Europe, at least, are the decreasing number of countries with majority parties and the rise of faintly anti-systemic movements and political parties and/or leaders, such as Syriza in Greece and the Labourite Corbyn in the United Kingdom

After post-WWII Italy established the multiparty model (based on Weimar in post-WWI in Germany with its 15 parties), today we have also Spain abandoning the two-party system and the new center-left PODEMOS stepping onto front stage. Here and there across the sub-continent, populist anti-political movements are suddenly born and rapidly emerge from the debris and ashes piling up around the crumbling traditional political parties, which, in their unjustified hubris, lose once solid pillars one by one, faster and faster, louder and louder the din, as they disintegrate more each day, each week, each month, and sink deeper into a dark sticky morass.

Meanwhile, citizens who no longer feel protected—much less represented—by the political class desert the vote and the heretofore political class. Why is that? How did it come about? The English poet Percy Shelley asked the same 200 years ago: “Is public virtue dead?—is courage gone?’” One hundred years later, the German, Walter Benjamin, answered: “For never has experience been contradicted more thoroughly than moral experience by those in power.”

Or, the disoriented citizens, still brainwashed, vote, helter-skelter, at random, for the lesser evil, ALSO, and still a majority, though rapidly decreasing, we find naïvely fanatic electors who continue to cling to the electoral process like to a life jacket on a sinking ship to change things and turn out at the poll stations to vote for the new anti-politicals or the super nationalists or extremists of Right and Left as for example:

Leftist PODEMOS in Spain,

Centrist FIVE STAR MOVEMENT in Italy,

Extreme rightwing FRONT NATIONAL in France,

Leftwing GREENS or DIE LINKE in Germany

Rightwing populist FREEDOM PARTY OF AUSTRIA

Leftist GREENS in Finland

One of the several rightwing conservative parties in Poland

Neo-Fascists in Hungary

Fascists and Nazis in Ukraine

[dropcap]C[/dropcap]lear ideologies? Nada. Nineteenth and Twentieth century myths! Workers rights, heath care, care for the aged, for the unemployed and homeless, for the socially excluded classes? Zero.

Away with the old. Bring on the new.

We ask what is the new? We are right to wonder. Analysts too search for a handle. Is the politically new a party or a movement? Is it Right or Left? Populist? Apolitical?

Spaniards just turned out at the polls in record numbers—maybe in one last desperate attempt to save something of the familiar old two-party system. Or maybe to say NO to the existing system. Spain voted. No one won. The conservative Popular Party got the most votes but not enough to govern, not even in a potential coalition with the far right party of Los Ciudadanos, The Citizens. The second of the heretofore two-party tandem, the Socialist Party of Spanish Workers (PSOE), lost; that is, it got fewer votes than the Populars. And the New? Podemos, the brand new “non-ideological party” emerged as the real victor albeit with a few votes less than the “old” Socialist Party. No one party has a majority. The nearly powerless King, of all people, must now decide who to charge to search for a new kind of majority. Quo vadis, Espana? No one knows.

SO IS THE EUROPEAN UNION FALLING APART?

What with all the tensions, dissension, the many different forms of government (Or non-government) from fascist to extreme rightist nationalism to populist to moderate socialist to leftist socialist, the EU should be crumbling. Perhaps it is, but I do not believe it will happen … not yet. Europe has too much to lose by abandonment now.

However, as one of the consequences of America’s imperialistic actions throughout the world grave splits mark the European Union. These splits threaten to break up the union of 27 nations and return Europe to the confusing jigsaw puzzle of small separate nations, which in any case would be lost in the era of planetary unions, while nonetheless remaining totally subservient to America.

TWO COUNTRIES—Poland and Italy

[dropcap]T[/dropcap]he extreme right government of Poland is spreading dissension in the EU. Tensions reached the culmination when the present alternating President of the EU Council, the Polish political leader, Donald Tusk, rammed through the EU extension of sanctions against Russia. Moreover, the EU Commission opposes the new Polish far-right government’s attempts to change the Polish Constitution in order to be able to enact the laws and policies it desires. Many Commission members opine that if that happens Poland’s voting rights in the EU should be suspended. With 38% of the vote the Polish Law and Justice Party won an absolute parliamentary majority. It aims at control over the Constitutional Court and the media.

Four things should be remembered: Adolf Hitler established his dictatorship with 43% of the vote, Poland borders on Ukraine, it is very hostile toward Russia and is very friendly with the USA.

Today at year’s end conflict governs relations between Italy and the EU leaders (not elected by the people) of economic Europe. A battle between Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi and the EU Commission and German Chancellor Angela Merkel rages on three fronts: banks and the European banking system, state support for failing big industry and Italy’s national deficit (percentage wise similar to that of the USA). Moreover, Italy opposes military intervention in Syria.

Pravda of December 22 published an interview with an Italian politician of Silvio Berlusconi’s Forza Italia Party, Fabrizio Bertot, about Russo-Italian relations. Bertot: the economy of Russia is perfectly complementary to our economy. Russia has a big market and large oil and gas reserves. In Italy, we know how to make many products. The ‘made in Italy’ label is respected, and we need a market like yours. At the same time we need energy, because ours is insufficient. This complementary relationship needs an incentive. Sadly, this is not in the interest of the USA. We must discuss this within the EU and maybe change completely the EU and its institutions.”

TIME IS OUT OF WHACK

[dropcap]T[/dropcap]his Russo-Italian relationship reflects the atmosphere among people across Europe. Perplexity, indecision, confusion, disorientation. Perplexity about what to do to better one’s own situation. Indecision about for whom or for what to vote. Confusion about nationality: for example, Italian first, European second? Or the reverse? Disorientation about the form of society: social or individualistic?

The chief competitions today are between system and anti-system, between nationalism and internationalism.

Consequently, planning for the future seems futile. For Europeans time in general seems out of whack. Never has the present seemed more a time of transition. For the rich and the powerful 1%, time perhaps seems to stand still. For them, the hands of the clock move slowly and sometimes action seems truant … or they wish it were, so that their good things would last forever. And fuck the rest. Nuclear war and destruction of our planet hardly concerns them, no more than Syrian children fleeing the bloody war drowning in the stormy winter waters of the Aegean Sea. In reality, we, the 99%, know it is as the song recalls: time waits for no one.

The less fortunate too stand as with one foot lifted now toward a factory gate, now to board a tram, hands frozen, afraid of touching the uncertain future. For still others, time itself is clearly the enemy. Time is filled with tension and seems ready to explode into a still unwritten direction. Everyone knows that time means change. But what change is the question.

The most problematic group are Europe’s thinking people, the people still socially and politically aware, intellectuals, academics, journalists. For they know that this is a time when anything can happen. The outrageous can occur. To think that World War III can explode in the American-created, fascist Ukraine two hours from Rome or Paris is mind-boggling.

And, as Tony Cartalucci noted on this site, beyond Ukraine similar scenarios are developing, where as USA/NATO expands closer and closer to Russia’s borders, it is finding it increasingly difficult to find allies who are not fascists or nazis. Or something worse.

Other Europeans—though their number is decreasing at an alarming rate—hold onto legality: naively some still believe that the next elections can change things. The present will end, they hope. Normal time will resume. Things will return to what they once were. A better future can begin.

The subject of America’s imperialistic footprint across the world as outlined above lends itself to a dialectical analysis, as, in an abbreviated form, I have undertaken here:

America’s hubris has spawned the thesis of the nation’s purported exceptionalism and, consequently—because of its wealth, power and way of life—its self-proclaimed god-blessed destiny to dominate the entire planet.

The antithesis of America’s over-estimation of its rights and its capabilities is the rejection of uni-polar domination by vast parts of the rest of the world. For example, the Eurasian pole of Earth’s Heartland headed by Russia and China stands diametrically (antithetically) opposed to U.S. hegemony.

The synthesis of the two variants would require America’s cognizance of the reality that the consequence of its blind insistence on world domination will be universal conflagration and the probable extinction of the human species. America must join the rest of mankind. As a first step, America must show genuine atonement for the ills its hamartia—i.e. evil conviction of its exceptionalism—has wrought on mankind.

In such a way, that is if America comes to its senses and recognizes the realities of a multi-polar world living in peace, a new synthesis of the drives and destinies of peoples of the world for a rational world order can be achieved.

As Percy Shelley at age 18 wrote in the last eight lines of his Poetical Essay on the Existing State of things, a work lost for two hundred years and re-found in 2006:

Man must assert his native rights, must say

Oppressive law no more shall power retain,

Peace, love, and concord, once shall rule again,

Then, then shall things, which now confusedly hurled,

Seem Chaos, be resolved to order’s sway,

And errors night be turned to virtue’s day.—


gaither-new GAITHER photoSenior Editor Gaither Stewart, based in Rome, serves—inter alia—as our European correspondent. A veteran journalist and essayist on a broad palette of topics from culture to history and politics, he is also the author of the Europe Trilogy, celebrated spy thrillers whose latest volume, Time of Exile, was just published by Punto Press.


Public Domain The myth goes that Daedalus made the wings and warned his son Icarus to not fly too high. Icarus, in his hubris disregarded his father’s warning and fell from the sky.)


 

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DISPATCH FROM BEIJING: Russian Black Hat-Chinese White Hat—The Valdai Speech

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DISPATCH FROM BEIJING
With Jeff J. Brown
Pres. Putin’s Valdai Speech Has Been Downplayed by the Western Media (As Usual) But It Packs Some Hards Truths That Deserve the Widest Possible Audience
First general publication on video on Oct. 31, 2015. Reposted by reader request.
This is a revised and enhanced version.


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TRANSCRIPT

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If you have not read Russian President Vladimir Putin’s October, 2015 Valdai speech and subsequent question and answer session, you are missing out on a real treat. http://en.kremlin.ru/events/president/news/50548 He has essentially been saying the same thing for years, going back at least as far as his hard hitting Munich speech, in February, 2007.https://vimeo.com/38311242 In the interim, at the annual United Nations General Assembly speeches and previous Valdai talks, President Putin has come out four square against Western colonialism and global empire.

Almost all of his previous Anti-West declarations have been carefully couched in diplomatic obliqueness and inference. He would lambast “certain countries” (NATO) and “countries that think they are the world’s policeman” (the United States), etc. Putin would avoid ad hominem comments targeting Western leaders, although he once correctly said US Secretary of State John Kerry lied. http://www.newsmax.com/Newsfront/putin-kerry-syria-lying/2013/09/04/id/523875/ Must have had a bad day. Otherwise, behind the diplomatic legalese, everybody knew who Putin was talking about, without naming names. Using the “black hat-white hat” motif, I guess we could say that for a number of years, Russia’s president has been sporting a grey hat on the world diplomatic scene.

However, this year’s Valdai talk was different. The grey hat got tossed aside and Putin defiantly wore the blackest of hats. He said,

“Recently the United States conducted the first test of the anti-missile defense system in Europe. What does this mean? It means we were right when we argued with our American partners. They were simply trying yet again to mislead us and the whole world. To put it plainly, they were lying”.
 putin-russianFlag

Americans are liars. So what else is new? Ditto all of Uncle Sam’s slavish satraps in Eurangloland. But it takes on a whole different and refreshing dimension, when the president of Russia says it.

[dropcap]T[/dropcap]he US Ambassador to Russia, Jack Matlock, was at the Valdai Conference that day. Matlock is an old time cold warrior and Sovietologist, but since the Western rape of Russia, after the fall of the USSR, he has occasionally shown some sympathy for the Slavic world view. Nonetheless, Matlock represents the interests of America’s deep state, and Putin was ready to pounce. After getting Matlock to concede that America’s militarized foreign policy is largely driven by the lust for defense industry profits, Putin gave a withering riposte that began with,

Matlock: diehard rep for the US deep state.

Ambassador Matlock: reluctant neo-Cold Warrior.

“Mr. Ambassador, I find your arguments unconvincing. I have the greatest respect for your experience and diplomatic skills, of which you have given us a flawless demonstration, avoiding a direct answer. Well, you did answer my question, but not without some embellishments”.

It was the start of a long, scorching attack on all that is evil with US and Western colonial empire, using Ambassador Matlock as an in-person punching bag. I would have loved to have had a camera beamed on Mr. Matlock, during Putin’s tour de force, to watch his face and body language, as he got a verbal beating few diplomats receive in a public venue. I’m surprised he didn’t walk out, but decorum and maybe an innate sense of historical guilt, kept him in his seat.

People often ask me why Russia’s towering partner in the Anti-West Alliance, China, does not come out swinging at Uncle Sam on the world stage. They opine that humanity needs another powerful voice, like Russia’s, to speak truth to imperial power. Yes, Cuba, Argentina, Venezuela, Bolivia, Ecuador, North Korea, Eritrea and occasionally a few other countries routinely denounce Western colonialism in the public sphere. But let’s face it, China and Russia are in a class all their own. They are Popeye’s geopolitical forearms, as it were, with bellies full of spinach and the superpower clout to land a knockout punch on Uncle Sam’s glass jaw.

Popeye-lifting-1000-pounds

Russia and China are like Popeye’s geopolitical forearms, ready to give Uncle Sam a knockout punch. (Image by Olive Oyl)

[dropcap]S[/dropcap]o, President Xi Jinping, where are you? Well, he is here, there and everywhere on the world stage. But the Chinese have a millennial modus operandi of wearing a white hat in public, when it comes to international relations, from the citizen on the street, up to the highest levels of power. When I talk to working or white collar class Chinese, they obviously see I am a Westerner. Even speaking Chinese together, it takes a lot of peeling off layers, to get them to bare their souls and rage about the West’s sordid and genocidal colonial hegemony. It is just not in the DNA of the Chinese psyche, to be face-to-face confrontational. You almost always find out about any animus or disagreement via a third party, or asymmetrically from where you least expect it, out of the blue – or red, as it were. These kinds of “rope-a-dope” and “flutter and feint” tactics may have been branded by world champion boxing genius Mohammed Ali, but they have been honed and tested for thousands of Chinese years, going back to the “36 Stratagems” and Sun Zi’s “Art of War”.

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Despite many attempts at staining his memory as a revolutionary leader, Mao remains a colossal figure whose wisdom and example helped to inspire the Chinese people in their long and hard journey of national liberation and construction of a new society.

Only one Chinese leader broke this longstanding mold: revolutionary Mao Zedong. Part of his zeal for transforming Chinese society and politics was to do away with “old thoughts and practices”. His in-your-face diplomacy against Western capitalism and “paper tiger America”, would make Putin and any other current Anti-West leader blush for their timidity. Few modern world leaders could or can match the Chairman’s brilliant use of mass media and diplomatic sword fighting. He inspired and still does today, many millions of anti-Western freedom fighters across the planet.

If you listen to Xi Jinping’s speeches and interviews, he is just as scathing and insulting as Mao or “2015 Valdai” Putin, but it is classically steeped in the “Art of War” and the “36 Stratagems”. He doesn’t say it, but he does. Baba Beijing detests America’s puerile microphone and Twitter diplomacy, finding it beneath the dignity of any world leader or power. Yes, Baba Beijing can see Putin hurling thunderbolts at the heart of Western hegemony, and they are privately doing a stadium wave in the National People’s Congress, Central and Political Standing Committees, to cheer him on. But no, they simply cannot imagine themselves doing the same thing.

I empathize with all my fellow anti-imperialists, who are pining for a quiver full of oriental lightning bolts, to be heaved with a vengeance across the wide Pacific. But it is a wishful waste of energy, for as much as we may desire otherwise, Mao’s vocal rhetoric was truly a Chinese anomaly. That being the case, you have to believe me that it is alright. Baba Beijing is extracting its kilo of Western colonial flesh in myriad ways, for which Uncle Sam has no answer, other than endless false flags, billion dollar color revolutions, psyops and bullying.

[dropcap]W[/dropcap]estern spydom can only berate China, while it steals wholesale petaflops of imperial governmental and industrial data, and its Ministry of State Security (MSS) is working closely with Russia’s FSB, for the good fight. NATO offers Africans its German based AFRICOM and Obama’s secret armies, to wreak death and destruction among the world’s weakest nations. Instead, China builds railroads, ports, hospitals and schools, while forgiving billions in sovereign debt that is owed by the great continent’s poorest. America is reduced to pathetically sending a destroyer into China’s Nansha archipelago waters, a brazen insult to President Xi, only five weeks after his state visit and private meetings with Obama in the White House. This, while the PLA (People’s Liberation Army) navy furiously builds artificial islands, 3km runways, lighthouses and living quarters there. NATO spends billions trying to overthrow legitimate, citizen supported governments, assassinating or deposing leaders, and China responds by constructing tens of thousands of low income apartments in Venezuela and signing trade deals and currency swaps with the Ukraine, or what’s left of it.

In any case, the white hat-black hat method of persuasion has a long and illustrious history, because it often succeeds, by playing on the tendencies of the human condition: the innate desire for acceptance and redemption. Whether you are business owners trying to close a deal, cops needing valuable information to track a lead, or are Xi and Putin trying to change the world order, for the betterment of all humanity, this good guy-bad guy gambit often gets results. So, instead of wishing the impossible, that Baba Beijing go against their longstanding way of doing diplomacy, let’s cheer on Putin’s Slavic thunderbolts and Xi’s asymmetrical switchblades, because they are both stabbing deeply into the West’s imperial heart of darkness.

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Jeff-front1Jeff J. Brown is the author of 44 Days (2013), China Rediscovered – A Personal Journey of Enlightenment in the Mouth of the Dragon (2015), and Doctor WriteRead’s Treasure Trove to Great English (2015). He is currently writing an historical fiction, Red Letters – The Diaries of Xi Jinping, due out in 2016. He is a contributing editor for The Greanville Post, where he writes a monthly column, Dispatch from Beijing. Jeff also writes a monthly column for The Saker, called the Moscow-Beijing Express. He is a member of The Anthill, a collective of authors who write about China, and also submits articles on Oped News and Firedog Lake. His articles have been published by Paul Craig Roberts, Ron Unz, Alternative News Network and scores of other websites around the world, and translated in several languages. He has been a featured guest on Press TV, Truth Jihad, Daily Coin, Shadow of Truth, KFCF Radio 88.1 and Wall St. for Main St., while also interviewing and podcasting on his own program, 44 Days Radio Sinoland.


44days-backpaingChina-book-covrWant a fun, low cost honorary degree in Chinese Studies? Jeff’s book, 44 Days, will have you laughing while learning and becoming an expert on all things Middle Kingdom. If you live in China, buy it on the 44 Days website, clicking on eitherPrint Book, Ebook or Color Ebook.


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