The American Way

By Stephen Lendman

Anne-Marie Slaughter: the ultimate establishmentarian, loaded with Ivy League degrees and academic honors, but essentially a deranged warmongering imperialist. A war criminal. She naturally apes the rants of McCain, Lieberman and that other tower of irresponsible excrement, Lindsey Graham.

Past and present leaders reveal the soul of their nations. Arguably America never had one. Current domestic and foreign policies provide convincing evidence. Past and present leaders reveal the soul of their nations. Arguably America never had one. Current domestic and foreign policies provide convincing evidence.

Police state harshness targets defenders of right over wrong everywhere. National resources go for militarism, belligerence, and making super-rich elites richer. Corporations are licensed to steal, exploit, and plunder.

Wars ravage one country after another. Humanity is ruthlessly destroyed. Battlefields shift from one theater to another. Gangsterism writ large reflects official policy. Syria is ground zero. Months of Western generated violence left thousands dead, many more injured, and countless numbers displaced. Nothing deters America’s war machine madness.

Bloodlust defines it. Dominance matters most. Body counts mount. Rule of law principles and democratic values are considered quaint and out of date. Stomping on people is policy.

Concern for human and civil rights is off the table. Winning hearts and minds was never America’s game. Crushing the will to resist is more important. Repression enforces the message harshly. Death squad diplomacy eliminates non-believers. Where it ends, who knows!

Despite ongoing direct and proxy wars, hawkish US lawmakers want more. John McCain, Lindsey Graham and Joe Lieberman are three of America’s worst. Peace they believe is abhorrent.

Death squad massacres in Syria aren’t enough. As a 2008 presidential candidate, McCain’s advocated bombing Iran. “Bomb bomb bomb, bomb bomb Iran,” he sang on his “Straight Talk” tour to the tune of a popular Beach Boys song.

Lunatics like this run America. Now McCain wants more. So do Graham and Lieberman. They’re not alone. On August 5, the Washington Post gave them op-ed space. Together they headlined “The risks of inaction in Syria,” saying:

Provide “robust assistance” to opposition fighters. Establish and reinforce safe zones. Use “airpower and other unique US assets.”
Damn the risks. “(I)naction carries” greater ones. “(S)trategic” aims matter most. Failure to intervene more aggressively “jeopardiz(es) both our national security interests and our moral standing in the world.”

Fact check

Official US policy calls for replacing all independent governments with pro-Western ones. War is America’s national pastime. Dominance alone matters. Sovereign rights can’t be allowed to interfere.

Washington planned war on Syria years ago. It’s orchestrating events on the ground. It’s been involved from day one. It’s recruiting, arming, funding, training, and directing mercenary killers.

It’s not good enough so let’s bomb, say McCain, Graham and Lieberman. With these type lawmakers influencing policy, don’t bet money on humanity surviving. Don’t expect America to renounce war. Don’t imagine embracing democratic values is planned.

Hunker down for worse to come. Get involved and try to stop it. Syria is about to go up in flames. Iran is next, then other nations. No good ending comes from this. Wars beget more of them. Permanent ones assure self-destruction.

Perhaps America will take humanity with it. It’s not far-fetched. Partnered with Britain, other key NATO allies, Israel, and regional despots, chances of armageddon are too high to risk.

Chances for homeland tyranny are virtually certain. Militarism writ large heads it there. It’s closer than most people imagine. It’s not pretty now. Expect much worse ahead. It could come any time.

Battleground Syria could shift venues to America if popular resistance erupts. Daily violence and atrocities there could become commonplace domestically. Some neighborhoods already experience low intensity versions of what could easily ratchet higher.

Hammering one country after another draws it closer. Former State Department official Anne-Marie Slaughter mimicks McCain, Graham and Lieberman. Halting Syrian violence depends on increasing it, they believe.

People like this run America. They’re interviewed on US television. They’re given feature op-ed space. Earlier, Slaughter called for “no-kill zones.” Pentagon officials call them “buffer zones.” They’re ground-based no-fly zones. If established, they assure full-scale war.

Slaughter supports no holds barred escalation. On July 31, her Financial Times article headlined “We will pay a high price if we do not arm Syria’s rebels,” saying:

She wants that and more. “It is time for bold action,” she said. She suggests Libya 2.0. Go for broke, she urges. Other hawks echo her sentiment. “Syrians will remember those who remember them,” she said.

The longer fighting rages, the greater Assad’s support grows, the more America is hated.

Syrians aren’t stupid. They know what Washington did to Iraq and Libya. They know what’s gone on in Afghanistan since 2001. They understand that wherever America arrives, death, destruction, and unspeakable human misery follow.

If Washington wins, they lose. They’re willing to die to prevent it. America plans full-scale war. Imagine how many more will die. Imagine the vast destruction. Imagine any nation ravaging others. It’s the American way.

Permanent wars are waged for wealth, power and dominance. At the same time, homeland needs go begging. Out-of-control militarism heads America for tyranny and ruin. Along the way, millions suffer and die.

Obama follows in the tradition of previous warrior presidents. Over time, stakes and risks grow exponentially. State-of the art weapons threaten everyone. Obama’s National Security Strategy “reserve(s) the right to act unilaterally if necessary to defend out nation and our interests.”

In other words, preemptive wars with weapons of mass destruction is policy. Obama claims it’s “to keep the American people safe (and advance the nation’s) values and ideals.” It threatens other countries to bend to Washington’s will or else.

In the process it destroys freedom. Chalmers Johnson called war profiteering “the most efficient means for well-connected capitalists to engorge themselves at the public trough.”

Expect more of it, he warned. Expect tyranny to replace democracy. Expect hell on earth so globalists can control it. Maybe they’ll destroy it instead.

Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago and can be reached at Email address removed .

His new book is titled “How Wall Street Fleeces America: Privatized Banking, Government Collusion and Class War”

http://www.claritypress.com/Lendman.html

Visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com and listen to cutting-edge discussions with distinguished guests on the Progressive Radio News Hour on the Progressive Radio Network Thursdays at 10AM US Central time and Saturdays and Sundays at noon. All programs are archived for easy listening.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

I was born in 1934, am a retired, progressive small businessman concerned about all the major national and world issues, committed to speak out and write about them.

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Al-Qaeda flags fly over rebel-held Syria

By John Rosenthal, Transatlantic Intelligencer

There has recently been a small stir in the American media, as media organizations from the New York Times to the Wall Street Journal to the Associated Press have finally gotten around to acknowledging a “presence” of al-Qaeda and like-minded jihadist groups among the Syrian rebel forces seeking to topple the regime of Bashar al-Assad.

It is difficult to see what the cause of the excitement is. After all, such a presence has been blindingly obvious for many months: whether as a result of the dozens of suicide attacks that have plagued Syria or the numerous videos that have emerged showing rebel forces or supporters proudly displaying the distinctive black flag of al-Qaeda.

But observations made by German journalist Daniel Etter during a recent visit to rebel-controlled towns near the embattled city of Aleppo suggest that there is no mere “presence” of jihadists among the rebels: religiously-inspired mujahideen is what the rebels are. The real question is whether there is a presence of anything else. Etter’s report, which appeared in the leading German daily Die Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, also provides evidence that rebel authorities are subjecting civilians to arbitrary detention and torture and summarily executing captured members of the regular Syrian armed forces.

In the town of Maraa, north of Aleppo, Etter saw some 120 prisoners, apparently civilians, “herded into a large classroom” in what had previously been a school. Many of the prisoners showed signs of abuse. The prison director, whom Etter identifies only as “Jumbo,” refused to allow Etter to speak with them alone. Etter notes that Jumbo “looks like his name.” “Jumbo is not someone with whom you would like to pick a fight,” Etter writes:
[N]ot someone whom as a prisoner you would like to have as your jail keeper. Thus the detainees say that their wounds and bruises are the product of falls or shrapnel. They say how well they are treated here, and they swear loyalty to the Free Syrian Army. Much of what they say is not credible.

The most gruesome wounds that Etter describes involve a certain “Tamer” from Aleppo: until recently an enthusiastic supporter of Assad – so enthusiastic that he had a portrait of the Syrian president tattooed on his chest. In the meanwhile, the tattoo has been excised from Tamer’s body with a razor blade. Tamer insists that he did the deed himself after rebel forces entered Aleppo. He says that he ran to the rebels’ headquarters and sliced at the tattoo while yelling, “I give my blood for the Free Syrian Army!”

In a remarkable journalistic leap of faith, Etter writes, “Tamer’s story cannot be independently verified either, but it is unlikely that Jumbo would have let a journalist speak with him if his scars were the result of abuse.” As made clear by Etter’s own description of the circumstances under which he was able to speak with the detainees, it is surely far more unlikely that Tamer would have accused his captors with “Jumbo” present.

Moreover, even supposing that Tamer did indeed inflict his own wounds, why would he commit such an act of self-mutilation if he did not expect worse from the “new authorities,” as Etter puts it, if the tattoo was discovered? Rebel groups have repeatedly made clear that they feel entitled to target any and all supporters of the ancien regime.

Jumbo says that Tamer was a member of a pro-Assad militia: a so-called “shabiha”. But there is no evidence presented for this in the article. “I have no proof that he killed anyone,” Jumbo concedes.

It is equally unclear what “crimes” the other detainees are supposed to have committed. But their daily routine makes clear, at any rate, the ideological orientation of their captors. “They pray five times a day,” Etter writes:
[A]nd study the Quran. Perhaps out of a sense of remorse, perhaps to please their jailers, perhaps because they are forced to do so. Jumbo seems to be convinced that their turn to God is doing good. “They are happier and they are changing their attitude,” he says.

In the neighboring town of Azaz, Etter encountered a less didactic form of Islamism: namely, in the person of rebel commander Abu Anas. Etter describes meeting Abu Anas in his office: a Koran and a “silver sword” were lying on his desk and a black flag hung over it. An Arabic inscription on the flag proclaimed, ‘There is no God but God. Mohammed is his Prophet” “It is the flag that al-Qaeda also used,” Etter remarks.

Seemingly taking his cue from Western supporters – or perhaps indeed advisors – Abu Anas emphasized that the black flag was also used before al-Qaeda. But if it is the distinctive black flag with the circular white “seal of Mohammed” in the middle, there appears to be no evidence that this is the case.

This is the flag made famous by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi’s al-Qaeda in Iraq: notably, as a result of the group’s notoriously harrowing videos documenting the executions of captured Iraqi security personnel and American and other hostages. Indeed, even Zarqawi’s group went through various versions of its flag before settling on the version that has since become the standard banner of al-Qaeda affiliates around the world.

In any case, it is not only the choice of flag that appears to have been inspired by al-Qaeda in Iraq. The rebel leader tells Etter that his forces captured Syrian government troops in the battle for Azaz. Asked what became of the government soldiers, Abu Anas responds, “We could not take care of them. Most of them are dead.”

“Earlier,” Etter explains, “when Abu Anas was not yet in the room, a smiling subordinate of his showed with gestures how they bound prisoners and shot them.”

While there is not much he can do to put a positive spin on the actions of Abu Anas and his men, Etter labors mightily to try at least to cast “Jumbo” and his prison in Maara in a more positive light. In one somewhat surreal paragraph, he even praises the rebels for their supposed efforts to build a “fairer” system of justice in Maara – after he has raised the specter of prisoner abuse in Jumbo’s prison.

Jumbo tells him about one case involving a group of Alawites who were detained by the rebels, but then later released since “we had no evidence against them”. Etter does not ask: evidence of what? But even supposing that Jumbo’s claim is true, it amounts to an admission that Alawites are being detained in rebel-controlled territories simply because they are Alawites.

In the language of international humanitarian law, what Etter has described in his article are clearly war crimes and probably too crimes against humanity. But when it is a matter of the crimes of the Syrian rebels, the West’s otherwise supposedly so acute moral sensibilities appear to have become dull.

John Rosenthal is a journalist who specializes on European politics and transatlantic security issues. His website is Transatlantic Intelligencer

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In the Grip of the Bourgeois Press

All on the Wrong Side, From Fox News to the New York Times
by ANDREW LEVINE

Bourgeois press? Nobody says “bourgeois” anymore; it’s so pre-1989 (or 1981 or mid-70s). Another problem is that, decades ago, the word suffered from Stalinist and then Maoist overuse. It designated any object of animosity, and therefore became essentially meaningless.

Nowadays, most media critics are too historically illiterate, and too tied into the political culture of the moment, to raise that objection; it is enough for them that the term seems hopelessly dated. “Press” seems archaic too; it suggests print media, a species said to be on its way to extinction.

However we do hear a lot about “mainstream media.” The term is now so mainstream that even Sarah Palin picked up on it, though only to exercise her wit. “Lamestream media” doesn’t exactly make sense — not much she says does — but we get the general idea. Not bad either for somebody who couldn’t even name a newspaper she read when Katie Couric, the lamestream media’s girl next door, fixed her in her withering gaze.

We also hear about “corporate media.” That term has the advantage of calling attention to how concentrated ownership of media outlets has become and to the connection between our media and the corporations that dominate the American (and world) economy. It also forces us to focus on an issue that might otherwise pass unnoticed: the interests media serve.

Still, in at least one respect, “mainstream media” is better; it speaks to how media deal with challenges to the status quo. Media validate and therefore legitimize; what they do not validate they cast into the margins, outside the mainstream.

What is marginalized is still out there; anybody can still say or write pretty much anything they want. But if their views are not validated, then, regardless of their merits, they have little chance of being taken seriously in the “marketplace of ideas.”

This works well for those who benefit from keeping things as they are. Overt repression is not only base and demeaning; it is also ineffective, at least in the long run. Better to let dissent out in dribs and drabs than to allow it to build to a point where it might explode the status quo.

But “mainstream media” says nothing about the conditions within which ideas are legitimated or marginalized, and it is mute on the question of underlying interests. “Corporate media” deals with these issues better.

It is worth noting that these terms don’t always designate the same thing. The Public Broadcasting System (PBS) and National Public Radio (NPR) get corporate money but, strictly speaking, they are public, not corporate, media. Nevertheless, they are both painfully mainstream. Indeed, NPR is probably the best source out there for (articulate) conventional wisdom and pro-regime (as distinct from pro-government) propaganda; better even than The New York Times.

Still, for the most part, the two terms currently in use substantially overlap, and are rightly used interchangeably. How much better it would be, though, if there were a term that combines what is best in each of them, and that also explains the affinities linking commercial and public media. Better yet if it also connected media criticism with more general understandings of our social order and its possible futures.

We did have such an expression once – “bourgeois press.” It conveyed everything conveyed by the words media activists and social critics nowadays use, and more. The more that it conveys is precisely what we need to bring back on board.

Should we therefore revive the expression? Maybe, for want of a better alternative. But the old term is problematic too. Part of the problem, again, is that its constituent parts – “bourgeois” and “press” – seem dated. But we should not let changing fashions or technologies distract us. What “bourgeois press” forces critics to confront, and what the terms that have replaced it do not, is the connection between media and the class struggles that shape modern societies.

That a class perspective is indispensable for making sense of media today is not exactly news to anyone familiar with the core tenets of classical Marxism. But to appreciate the importance of the point, it is not necessary to think of human history as a history of class struggles or to construe today’s media as an element of a “superstructure” that reproduces existing class relations.

These positions accorded well with the lived experience of peoples in industrializing societies throughout much of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, before capitalism changed in ways that render class divisions and struggles less salient, though no less fundamental, than they formerly were.

The general idea is therefore hardly unique to intellectual currents that draw on Marx’s account of “the laws of motion” of capitalist society. Indeed, it is only in recent decades that the point has passed out of general awareness. Before that, it was part of the common sense of our political and intellectual culture.

Great Britain was for a very long time home to the world’s leading capitalist economy. But it was in revolutionary and post-revolutionary France that the emerging capitalist order took on its most definitive political expressions.

There, the foundations of an old regime, organized by and for the benefit of a landed aristocracy and the Catholic Church, gave way to a new kind of society in which formerly subaltern urban-dwellers, a “bourgeoisie,” became the new leading class.

As the nineteenth century unfolded, the bourgeoisie consolidated its political role as a ruling class. More importantly, it established itself as a hegemonic class, a basis for a new form of civilization.

And so, in fits and starts, both state and society became “bourgeois.” This was by no means just a French phenomenon. It occurred throughout Europe, though, as in Great Britain, the ascendance of this newly empowered class in most countries was generally not as abrupt or complete.

From the beginning, the United States was organized along commercial and therefore incipiently capitalist lines, but the English colonies in North America had no feudal past and therefore no aristocracy against which merchants and farmers, and later, owners of manufacturing enterprises, could define a new identity.

Southern planters came closest to adopting aristocratic lifestyles, but their economic role was quite different from that of true aristocrats. Their plantations were not landed estates. They were commercial enterprises worked by slaves, not peasants or tenant farmers, and they were anything but self-sustaining in the way the manors of the Old Country were. Southern plantations were integrated into a market system linking the Americas with Europe and Africa. No matter how atypical they seem, they were, in other words, part of bourgeois society.

At most, then, we once had a quasi- or pseudo-aristocracy, and that only in the South, the least developed region of the country. That was well done with, in any case, long before America’s emergence as the world’s leading capitalist economy. The plantation system suffered an historic defeat in the War Between the States and never subsequently revived.

Just as we never had real aristocrats, neither did we have a real bourgeoisie. The adjective “bourgeois” has therefore never fit comfortably into the American context. But as a term of art for connecting our economic and social structure with that of other capitalist countries, and for laying bare the class character of the institutions that shape our lives, it is still the best available term.

The historical differences between the United States and the leading capitalist powers of Europe fed a longstanding, largely mythological, conceit: that ours is a classless society. Ironically, a similar view is characteristic of “bourgeois” social science and philosophy.

In this respect, our intellectual culture is indeed bourgeois. Not only do we go out of our way to deny the obvious, when the obvious suggests the centrality or even the relevance of class divisions and struggles; we go so far as to depoliticize issues that are plainly political in nature.

This happens across the “mainstream” spectrum; it is a particular affliction of the “left,” evident in the well-meaning disposition of those whom Hegel would have called “beautiful souls” to ethicize political questions.

This is why, all too often, debates about, say, abortion, focus on what personhood is and implies, or on the rights of fetuses, or the moral relevance of choice — or anything except what the issue is ultimately about: patriarchy and the subordination of women. Similarly, debates about punishment, capital and otherwise, typically have to do with everything but social control. To the extent that questions of political import are engaged, they are discussed mainly in ethical, not political, terms.

Ethical issues connected to real world politics can be intellectually engaging, and they can be of philosophical interest in their own right. But as dispositive treatments of issues of on-going concern, they miss the mark – in a way that reinforces existing practices and constraints.

Political philosophy nowadays is especially depoliticized.

When the bourgeoisie was a rising, even a revolutionary, class, some of the best minds in Europe and America devised justifying theories for the emerging capitalist order and for the kinds of institutions suitable for sustaining it.

John Locke (1632-1704) was only the best known of a group of thinkers whose accounts of (private) property and the right to accumulate it without limitation have returned, along with a panoply of related doctrines, in the form of contemporary libertarianism. In this guise, seventeenth and eighteenth century ideas have become the focus of some of the most trenchant philosophical discussions of the past several decades.

But unlike the original libertarianism (or classical liberalism) of Locke and his co-thinkers, the neo-Lockean variety is mum on the class interests it represents. What was once an aggressive ideology, a weapon in the bourgeoisie’s struggle against remnants of pre-capitalist modes of thought, has become a magnet for philosophical conundrums that, though rife with political implications, seem as timeless and ahistorical as any of the perennial problems of philosophy.

This is “bourgeois” through and through. It is the class struggle, waged at a theoretical level, but in a form that masks what it is ultimately about. This is why, no matter how fascinating some of its positions may be to practitioners of abstract thought, libertarianism reeks of inauthenticity, and why, no matter how politically otiose it may seem, it is an inherently conservative ideology with untoward consequences.

Our mainstream or corporate media are similarly “bourgeois.” NPR and Fox News, The New York Times and The New York Post seem worlds apart. Superficially they are, and the differences can be important. But in the final analysis, they are all of a piece – and all on the wrong side of the principal struggle of our time.

“Bourgeois press” may indeed be unsatisfactory, even if there is no better alternative at hand. But it’s the idea that counts, and even if the term is dated, the idea behind it is not. This is one of those many instances in which the more things change (or seem to change), the more they stay the same.

ANDREW LEVINE is a Senior Scholar at the Institute for Policy Studies, the author most recently of THE AMERICAN IDEOLOGY (Routledge) and POLITICAL KEY WORDS (Blackwell) as well as of many other books and articles in political philosophy. His most recent book is In Bad Faith: What’s Wrong With the Opium of the People. He was a Professor (philosophy) at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and a Research Professor (philosophy) at the University of Maryland-College Park. He is a contributor to Hopeless: Barack Obama and the Politics of Illusion (AK Press).

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OpEds: The CIA proxy war in Syria and the pro-imperialist “left”

By Alex Lantier, WSWS.ORG

Unsavory types, like this fellow supplied by Blackwater to fight against Gaddafi, are now a major component in the volatile mix complicating the Syrian situation. Their Godfathers are in Washington, London, Paris and Ankara.

Reports that US intelligence is giving covert assistance to “rebel” militias in Syria mark the latest stage in an escalating US campaign for an out-and-out takeover of the country.

Yesterday, as videos emerged showing Syrian “rebels” carrying out mass executions of soldiers captured in Aleppo, it was reported that US President Barack Obama had signed an order earlier this year authorizing US intelligence to aid anti-Assad forces. Washington is also helping to distribute weapons and money donated by its right-wing Middle East allies Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Qatar.

These powers are not waging a struggle for democracy as part of the “Arab Spring”—the wave of revolutionary working class uprisings that toppled US-backed dictators in Tunisia and Egypt last year and terrified Washington and its Middle East allies. They are fighting a reactionary war to oust Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and install a pro-US puppet regime in Damascus.

Washington has set up a “nerve center” for the Syrian insurgency in Adana, Turkey, the site of Incirlik Air Base, a major US military and intelligence installation only 60 miles north of the Syrian border. This region of southern Turkey is now a key transit point for weapons and pro-US foreign fighters traveling to fight in Syria.

The Syrian “rebels” largely act on operational instructions from Washington. US forces communicate regularly through their allies with “rebel” forces inside Syria, providing them with reports on Syrian troop movements to guide them on the ground.

Islamist fighters are pouring in to join the fighting in Syria from around the Middle East, including US-occupied Afghanistan and Iraq and the Islamist US puppet regime in Libya, as well as Algeria, Chechnya and Pakistan. Former US Special Operations officials told the press that many arrive with help from Al Qaeda in Syria, which relies on the services of “traffickers—some ideologically aligned, some motivated by the money.”

In the Orwellian world of the American media, no attempt is made to reconcile Washington’s claims that it is occupying Afghanistan simply to wage a “war on terror” against Al Qaeda with its de facto alliance with Al Qaeda in Syria.

Obama’s reassurance that the US is providing only “non-lethal assistance” to anti-Assad forces is a cynical lie. The US is waging a brutal civil war by proxy that has already cost tens of thousands of lives and displaced hundreds of thousands of people.

Its goal is to install a US puppet regime in Damascus to isolate and prepare for war against Iran, remove a potential enemy of Israel, and advance a broader agenda of complete dominance of the Middle East by US imperialism. This agenda—pursued in the course of a decade of US wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and intensified after last year’s mass uprisings in North Africa with wars in Libya and Syria—is deeply unpopular in the working class in the United States and internationally.

Washington’s covert backing for the Syrian “rebels” lays bare the role of pro-imperialist pseudo-left groups—like the International Socialist Organization (ISO) in the US, the Socialist Workers Party (SWP) in Britain and the New Anti-capitalist Party (NPA) in France—which have promoted the war in Syria. Their “leftism” amounts to nothing more than giving “left” justifications for the crimes of American and European imperialism.

The ISO openly declares its support for intervention. In an article by Yusuf Khalil and Lee Sustar in its Socialist Worker publication, it writes: “The increasing role of the armed struggle raises the question whether to accept arms and support from the West … While many in the Syrian revolutionary movement are opposed to US and Western intervention, they will take whatever help they can get.”

Such arguments, which never analyze the forces referred to as “revolutionary,” are stunningly cynical. When did the CIA, Islamic fundamentalism and the Turkish army brass become forces for liberation? In writing this way, the ISO makes clear that it speaks for the pro-imperialist faction of the “left” petty-bourgeoisie.

Its attempts to posture as a left-wing organization descend into absurdity. The main concern it raises about US intervention in Syria is that “US support will be aimed at promoting their people and marginalizing others, even if it means fragmenting the revolutionary forces.”

What “revolutionary forces” is Sustar talking about? They are a collection of militias including the CIA’s “people,” as he calls them, various Al Qaeda operatives, and the flotsam and jetsam of Syrian society that these forces have attracted to themselves. In seeking to conceal the reactionary character of these forces under the mantle of revolution, Sustar functions simply as one of the State Department’s more left-talking operatives.

Sustar goes on to praise the ISO as “principled anti-imperialists who have managed to walk and chew gum at the same time—to support the revolutions in Libya and Syria against dictatorial regimes, while at the same time opposing intervention by the US and its imperialist allies.”

This foul comment goes to the heart of the politics of the ISO and the entire petty-bourgeois pseudo-left. For Sustar, the ISO can “walk and chew gum” because it knows how to support imperialist wars while at the same time posturing as “left.”

The class orientation of an organization always finds its clearest expression in its international policy. In Syria, the ISO and its international co-thinkers are nothing less than political agencies of imperialism.

Alex Lantier is a senior political analyst with WSWS.ORG, a socialist organization.

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Propaganda War on Syria

By Stephen Lendman

An image unlikely to be seen on the mainstream media: Syrian demonstrating support for Assad.

Major media scoundrels suppress truth and full disclosure. In times of war or when they’re planned, it dies first. John Pilger calls journalism war’s first casualty. It’s a “weapon of war,” he says. “(V)irulent censorship” by misinformation or “omission” condones imperial lawlessness.

George Seldes once called media scoundrels “the most powerful force against the general welfare of the majority of the people.”
Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR) calls “news” largely “the actions and statements of people in power.” Big media and reporters regurgitate what they say as fact. They “follow Washington’s official line. This is particularly obvious in wartime and in foreign policy coverage….”

What passes for news, information, and commentary is fundamentally unprincipled and duplicitous. “What’s wrong with the news,” asks FAIR? Institutionalized money and political power control it. AJ Liebling (1904 – 1963) said “Freedom of the press is guaranteed only to those who own one.” He also explained that “People everywhere confuse what they read in newspapers (or see on television) with news.”

Big lies launch wars. Public opinion is manipulated to enlist support. Truth is suppressed. Fear is stoked. Patriotism and democratic values are highlighted. Selling war depends on convincing people it’s about protecting national security, spreading democracy, humanitarian intervention and freedom.

Imperial wars are called good ones. Manipulative PR and scoundrel media reports convince people to go along with policies harming their interests. Sophisticated campaigns are waged. Most people don’t know they’re being had. Real motives and objectives aren’t explained. Selling war effectively depends on convincing people black is white. It plays out the same way every time. Syria reporting reflects it. On July 15, Reuters headlined “UN says Syria killings targeted opposition,” saying:

“United Nations observers found blood, burned homes and signs of artillery fire in the Syrian village of Tremseh on Saturday but were unable to confirm activists’ reports that about 220 people were massacred in an attack that prompted international outrage.”

“Activists” include everyone opposing Assad.

General Robert Mood heads the UN Supervision Mission in Syria (UNSMIS). He wasn’t picked to report independently. Some observers call him a spy. His statements leave much to be desired.

Commenting on the Treimseh massacre, he said:

Attacks targeted “specific groups and houses, mainly of army defectors and activists. There were pools of blood and blood spatters in rooms of several homes together with bullet cases.”

“The UN Team also observed a burned school and damaged houses with signs of internal burning in five of them.” “A wide range of weapons were used, including artillery, mortars and small arms.”

“UNSMIS is deeply concerned about the escalating level of violence in Syria and calls on the Government to cease the use of heavy weapons on population centres and on the Parties to put down their weapons and choose the path of non-violence for the welfare of the Syrian people who have suffered enough.”

Mood largely points fingers the wrong way. Independent eye witness accounts aren’t reported. “Opposition activists” are featured. Most are located far from Treimseh and other massacre sites. Their credibility is sorely lacking. Fake videos portray images unrelated to events. Reuters quoted an unidentified man “on video footage purportedly filmed in Treimseh.” Uploaded online, he said:

“We were surrounded from four sides….with tanks and armored vehicles, and the helicopters were hovering above. They burned people in front of our eyes. They held the men like this and stabbed them. They took out people’s eyes.”

We’ve heard and seen this all before. Manufactured lies conceal what’s really happening. Indeed government forces confronted killer gangs. They overran Treimseh and massacred dozens of civilians before Syria’s military arrived. Independent eyewitnesses report events accurately. Houla and Qubair massacres were replicated. Syrian troops intervened to stop more killing. Assad loyalists were targeted. Mood left these facts unexplained.

So did Reuters. Instead it misreported, saying:

Some people “said rebel fighters rushed to reinforce the village after it came under attack by infantry, artillery and aircraft, leading to a battle that lasted seven hours.”

Pro-Assad shabbiha elements were wrongfully blamed. Those responsible aren’t held accountable. Syrian Foreign Ministry spokesman Jihad Makdissi denied false Western reports, saying:

“Government forces did not use planes or helicopters or tanks or artillery. The heaviest weapon(s) used w(ere) RPGs (rocket propelled grenades).”

Security forces killed 37 insurgents and two civilians, he said. Clashes lasted about 90 minutes, not seven hours. Before government troops arrived, terrorists slaughtered over 50 civilians. On July 14, the New York Times headlined “Details of a Battle Challenge Reports of a Syrian Massacre.”

The Times acknowledged previous misreporting. At the same time, it tried explaining events both ways, saying:

“Although what actually happened in Tremseh remains murky, the evidence available suggested that events on Thursday more closely followed the Syrian government account.”

“But Syrian officials colored (it) with their usual terminology of blaming ‘foreign terrorist gangs’ for all violence. The government said the Syrian Army had inflicted ‘heavy losses’ on the ‘terrorists.’ “

“The official report also made the unlikely claim that government forces had killed no civilians, but that the dead civilians found in the town had been killed by the rebel fighters.”

Syrian Foreign Ministry spokesman Jihad Makdissi said government forces killed two civilians. Dozens were massacred before they arrived. Nothing in The Times report explains this. While partly admitting erroneous reporting, it still points fingers the wrong way.

At the same time, it repeated the same Wall Street Journal propaganda about Syria moving “parts of its huge stockpile of chemical weapons out of storage.”

Unnamed US officials are cited. What’s going on isn’t certain, they claimed. Targeting civilians may be planned. No evidence whatever suggests it.

Andrew Tabler was quoted. He’s a pro-Israel Washington Institute for Near East Policy (WINEP) senior fellow. He claims chemical weapons are being moved near Homs. Again, no evidence was cited. Without saying so, he implied relocation may reflect planned use in the area. Citing WINEP defense fellow Jeffrey White, The Times said if government forces are given chemical weapons, it “suggest(s) that preparations were being made for their use.” Moving them raises concerns, he added.

These type reports hype fear. They advance the ball closer to war. Media scoundrels promote it. They bear direct responsibility for what happens.

A Final Comment

On July 14, the Mossad-connected DEBKAfile (DF) headlined “Israel advised to brace for Syrian missile attack – conventional or chemical,” saying:

“Western military sources” that Israel and other regional “strategic targets….should prepare for (Assad) to launch surface-to-surface missile attacks.”

Chemical weapons might be used, said DF.

“Western intelligence sources say Assad has a list of targets ready to go.”

DF implied, but didn’t advocate preemptively attacking Syria. Doing so could be called defensive.

Spurious reports like this make war more likely. Nothing suggests Syria threatens neighboring states. Saying so doesn’t wash. Repeating Big Lies often enough gets people believing they’re true. War winds blow stronger. Each day it draws closer.

Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago and can be reached at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net. His new book is titled “How Wall Street Fleeces America: Privatized Banking, Government Collusion and Class War”

http://www.claritypress.com/Lendman.html

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