The British Are Driving the West’s War Agenda—But Why?

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By Richard C. Cook

Crossposted with Global Research and Strategic Culture
England has not been called "Perfidious Albion" for nothing.

Over the past two months the news has been dominated by two bizarre but related events:

2) the supposed gas poisoning of Syrian civilians by the Assad government, leading to the “retaliatory” April 13-14 missile attack against the Syrian nation by the U.S. and Great Britain as ordered by President Donald Trump and Prime Minister Theresa May.

This attack was an act of war against a sovereign nation carried out without approval of the U.N. Security Council or the U.S. Congress or British Parliament and were cheered on by French presidentEmmanuel Macron.

Mounting evidence shows that both the Skripal and Syrian incidents were actually false-flag provocations, likely carried out by or with the connivance of Western intelligence services. The target of both provocations was, without question, the Russian state and its president Vladimir Putin. Of course Syria has also long been on the “hit list” of Middle Eastern nations targeted for “regime change” by the U.S. neocons after 9/11, with Israel a key beneficiary.

Numerous news sources are documenting the false-flag nature of these incidents that will not be repeated here. Note, however, that it has been the British that have been whining the loudest in both cases, though, if Theresa May and her cronies, along with France’s Macron, do succeed in starting a war with Russia, it will be the U.S. military that does the heavy lifting: the same as the U.S. did in World Wars I and II in Britain’s epic geopolitical campaign to take down its greatest continental rival, Germany.

Few commentators have noted strongly enough that a key nation driving the current war agenda against Russia is in fact Britain, not just the U.S.

Regarding Israel, that nation owes its origin to its status as a British proxy, supported as an Asian beachhead to control Middle Eastern oil. Modern Israel is a British project as much, if not more so, than it is of the U.S.

Zionism actually originated in Britain in the early 19^th century. Its leading financial supporters were the British Rothschilds. The 1917 Balfour Declaration stated Britain’s support for a “national home for the Jewish people” in Palestine. The declaration was contained in a letter from British Foreign Secretary Arthur Balfour to Baron Lionel Walter Rothschild, then a private citizen but heir to the fortune left to him by his father Nathan Rothschild.

And where does Theresa May get her orders? Again, few, if any, commentators have noted that she gets them through the U.K. Privy Council, to which she has belonged since 2002.

Members of the Privy Council take an oath that was released publicly in 1998 by the Tony Blair government and appears in Wikipedia:

“You do swear by Almighty God to be a true and faithful Servant unto the Queen’s Majesty, as one of Her Majesty’s Privy Council. You will not know or understand of any manner of thing to be attempted, done, or spoken against Her Majesty’s Person, Honour, Crown, or Dignity Royal, but you will let and withstand the same to the uttermost of your Power, and either cause it to be revealed to Her Majesty Herself, or to such of Her Privy Council as shall advertise Her Majesty of the same….You will to your uttermost bear Faith and Allegiance unto the Queen’s Majesty; and will assist and defend all Jurisdictions, Pre-eminences, and Authorities, granted to Her Majesty, and annexed to the Crown by Acts of Parliament, or otherwise, against all Foreign Princes, Persons, Prelates, States, or Potentates. And generally in all things you will do as a faithful and true Servant ought to do to Her Majesty. So help you God.^”

Also from Wikipedia, new Privy Council appointees undergo an initiation ceremony that “is held in private and typically requires kneeling on a stool before the sovereign and then kissing hands. According to The Royal Encyclopaedia:

‘The new privy counsellor or minister will extend his or her right hand, palm upwards, and, taking the Queen’s hand lightly, will kiss it with no more than a touch of the lips.’”

The Privy Council consists of the leaders of the major British institutions that rule the U.K. and the British Commonwealth, including the extended royal family (part of a Europe-wide matrix of old nobility), the British political parties, both houses of Parliament, multiple governmental departments, political leaders from Australia, Canada, New Zealand, and elsewhere in the Commonwealth, and the top bishops of the Church of England.

The Privy Council is in fact the managing directorate of the British oligarchy.

So much for where Theresa May gets her direction and whose hand she kisses. The key to understanding all this is that the British Empire is very much alive in 2018, though it doesn’t use that name any more and largely takes cover behind the American military fist.

The empire today is heavily financial, organized around the banking and other financial institutions housed in the City of London and replicated in financial centers worldwide, particularly New York, Paris, Frankfurt, Milan, Tokyo, Hong Kong, etc. One reason Britain’s role in world affairs is not as well publicized as that of the U.S. is the deep secrecy surrounding the workings of the Privy Council, where utterance of the truth may be high treason.

I have pointed out elsewhere how Cecil Rhodes and his Round Table, toward the end of the 19^th century, vowed to recapture the U.S. for the Empire. Nathan Rothschild was a key member of the Round Table, after having financed Rhodes’ gold and diamond operations in South Africa. All this was documented by American scholar Carroll Quigley in several books, including Tragedy and Hope: A History of the World in Our Time.

The British succeeded in regaining control of the U.S. They did so by instigating the creation of the Federal Reserve System on the model of the Bank of England, taking charge of leading American newspapers to put forth pro-British propaganda, dragging the U.S. into World War I to defeat Kaiser Wilhelm, and setting up the Council on Foreign Relations on the model of the British Royal Institute of International Affairs.

The U.S. fought World War II on Britain’s behalf to defeat Hitler. After the war, President Harry Truman chartered the National Security Agency and CIA on British models. According to a confidential source, the NSA in particular is an asset of British intelligence.

The U.S. national security advisor, in charge of advising the president of the United States on all security issues, actually reports to internationalists headquartered in London and New York. The leading such figure in the U.S. is Dr. Henry Kissinger.

The cat was let out of the bag in a speech by Major General James Jones at the February 8, 2009, Munich Conference on Security Policy, where he said,

“As the most recent National Security Advisor of the United States, I take my daily orders from Dr. Kissinger, filtered down through General Brent Scowcroft and Sandy Berger, who is also here. We have a chain of command in the National Security Council that exists today.”

Britain is now dragging the U.S. toward World War III against Russia, which is the continental European power that succeeded Germany through the unexpected and shocking victory won by the Soviet Union on the Eastern Front in 1944-45. It was shocking because the British and Americans were hoping Hitler and Stalin would finish each other off. But that didn’t happen.

It was also likely the British that took part in actions to arm the Soviet Union with nuclear weapons to balance American power after World War II. Experts agreed there was no way the Soviets could have acquired atomic weapons so quickly without help. If the British really were involved, were they playing off the two main victors of that war against each other through instigating the Cold War?

Screengrab from Smithsonian

[dropcap]I[/dropcap]t may still be the British plan to induce the U.S. and Russia to reduce each other to rubble, or at least so to distract each other so that British financial hegemony can proceed unhindered. We are seeing Cold War II unfold as we speak, even though no sane person in the U.S., Russia, or Russia’s ally China, really wants it.

But Britain obviously does, along with its imperial brethren imbedded within the U.S. “Deep State.” These brethren are currently engaged in their own war against the Donald Trump administration to undermine any predilection Trump may have to seek a cooperative relationship with Russia instead of pushing toward the conflict they desire.

The people and government of the U.S. are too blind and ill-educated to see any of this. They are laughingly easy to manipulate through the mass media, as the British figured out via the research conducted at the Tavistock Institute decades ago. British author George Orwell warned of this in his book 1984. It’s all being played out today according to script.

Another prophet of our time was 19^th century Scottish author Robert Lewis Stevenson. In his short story “When the Devil Was Well,” he wrote of the evils of the Machiavellian politics of the Italian Renaissance. In today’s London, New York, and Washington, “The Devil is Well.” Lies are Truth. War is Peace. Theresa May and Emmanuel Macron certainly agree. And their American Deep State allies are waging a daily campaign to get Trump to go along.

Theresa May in particular must be gloating. Her husband, Philip May, is an executive for Capital Group, the largest shareholder in arms manufacturer BAE and the second largest in Lockheed Martin. Stock values for both companies reportedly have soared since the latest attacks on Syria.

Along these lines, I would like to address a question to the Archbishop of Canterbury, His Grace Mr. Justin Welby, also a member of the Privy Council, as well as to all Anglican church ministers, and to the religious leaders of the U.S.

I won’t include France, because the French seem to be mostly hedonistic atheists, so why should any of this matter to them?

Archbishop Welby is author of a book entitled Reimagining Britain: Foundations for Hope. He writes on the official Archbishop of Canterbury website:

“In writing Reimagining Britain, I’ve tried to make a personal contribution to the challenge I believe lies before us: reimagining our future at this critical time in the life of our country. It’s my belief that the values we find in our Christian heritage – compassion, generosity and solidarity, to name a few – offer a source of hope and wisdom for Britain in the 21st century, even as we rightly embrace who we are becoming as a multi-faith and multi-cultural society.”

My question is, wasn’t there a time in British history when the Archbishop of Canterbury stood up to the king and uttered words of truth to power? Didn’t T.S. Eliot write a play about it entitled Murder in the Cathedral?

The archbishop was Thomas à Becket, who was killed by knights loyal to King Henry II in 1170 for opposing the will of the crown through actions that violated Christian ethics. Yes, Thomas à Becket paid the ultimate price, but he didn’t back down, because that was the Christian thing to do.

What modern clergyman would do this? Today the clergy in England and America seem to be either really nice people who wouldn’t hurt a fly, or raging lunatics who foam at the mouth as their imagined Armageddon approaches through escalation of war in the Middle East, leading, they hope, to… “Rapture”?

When is His Grace Mr. Welby going to tell Theresa May that she’s lying about the Skripal and Syria affairs and to cut it out? Or maybe his oath to the queen, along with his kneeling and kissing the queen’s hand via his membership on the Privy Council, wouldn’t allow it. Would Thomas à Becket have signed that oath?

Karl Barth had these people figured out. Barth was a Swiss German-speaking theologian who rewrote the principles of the Protestant Reformation during the first half of the 20^th century. Barth also stood up to Hitler by telling us that it was Jesus Christ who conveyed the Word of God for our redemption and salvation, not the almighty Nazi state.

The teachings of Christ, Barth made clear, begins with the “baptism of repentance.” It starts with realization of our sinful nature and teaches us how to resist it and discover instead our Living God as a presence within ourselves. When this happens, our behavior toward other people changes.

We can then begin to love our neighbor as ourselves and act according to Christian precepts in all our affairs. This likely does not include bombing other people under false pretenses in order to boost stock prices.

Barth traveled to England in the 1930s and said to them something really interesting. He told them, “You are all Pelagians.” (Eberhard Busch, Karl Barth: His Life from Letters and Autobiographical Texts, Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co. 1994, p. 204)

According to Wikipedia,

“Pelagianism is the belief that original sin did not taint human nature and that mortal will is still capable of choosing good or evil without special divine aid. This theological theory is named after the British monk Pelagius (354–420 or 440)…Pelagius taught that the human will, as created with its abilities by God, was sufficient to live a sinless life, although he believed that God’s grace assisted every good work. Pelagianism has come to be identified with the view (whether taught by Pelagius or not) that human beings can earn salvation by their own efforts.”

The tendency toward Pelagianism has been recognized by all branches of the Christian religion as one of the fundamental heresies, as it denies the need for the baptism of repentance brought to mankind by Jesus.

Pelagianism asserts as fundamental that, “I’m ok.” This leads to the idea, “I’m okay just as I am. Nothing about me needs to change. If it does, I’ll easily take care of it.”

Psychology teaches us, however, that the human individual lacks discernment as to where within himself his impulses are coming from. It thus becomes likely, if not inevitable, that he turns to self-interest, as such impulses are fed to his consciousness by his animal self.

Pelagianism devolves into the dual philosophy of egotism combined with the pleasure principle—I, me, my, and mine; and, if it feels good, do it. Politically, Pelagianism ends with imperialism and oppression of the weak. Economically, it turns into unbridled capitalism and the pursuit of profit at all costs. Throw in Machiavelli, and we’ve arrived at where we are in the world today.

It is instructive in light of Barth’s views on the British predilection toward Pelagianism to compare the Protestant Reformation as it played out in Europe vs. what took place in England. In Europe, Luther and Calvin began with the idea taught by Jesus that every human being born on earth needs redemption and can find it through the Divine Word, the guidance of the Holy Spirit, and the sacraments.

In England, by contrast, the Reformation was brought about by King Henry VIII, who wanted to shake off the influence of the Church so that he could be free to murder any of his wives who crossed him and seize monastic property. Henry VIII appears to have been an exemplar of British Pelagianism.

Since then, the Church of England has been largely the tool of secular power, even though its liturgy and sacraments, as they appear in the Book of Common Prayer, still contain much of original Christian teaching. In its Thirty-Nine Article of Religion, Anglicanism also specifically renounces Pelagianism.

Nevertheless, the Anglican clergy are beholden to the British state for their salaries. Perhaps that’s one reason they are always so nice to those in charge.

The British are indeed “nice” people. They enjoy life. They are “comfortable” in the world. They adore their “royals.” They understand that real democracy is rather unclean—not really for them. That’s why they still have a queen.

The British are subjects, not citizens. So are the Canadians, the Australians, the New Zealanders, and many others in Commonwealth countries where the queen is the head of state.

British Pelagianism leads to what German theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer called “cheap grace,” “where no contrition is required, still less any real desire to be delivered from sin.” (Dietrich Bonhoeffer, The Cost of Discipleship, Touchstone Edition 1995, p. 43) Essentially you consider yourself justified simply by being polite. If you want, you can spend £45 having High Tea at Highclere Castle, ancestral home of a genuine British earl. That’s as polite as it gets.

Meanwhile, in Britain, you have a government of manipulators and assassins working in the dark behind the scenes with a population absorbed by BBC comedies, murder mysteries, historical dramas—and by “Brexit.”

British Pelagianism and its psycho-spiritual equivalents open the door to abuses of every kind. They open the door to the decadent lifestyles of the rich and famous among the British upper crust, the American “one-percent,” and oligarchs everywhere.

They also open the door to conquest of other countries. They open the door to U.S. fantasies about being the “exceptional nation.” They open the door to the destruction of the environment with pesticides, herbicides, and greenhouse gases so the petroleum and chemical industries, and the capital funds that own them, can reap endless profits from all that too. The same with her husband’s armaments industries that are doing so well thanks to Theresa May’s stellar decision-making.

Finally, they open the door to endless war propelled by a stream of false-flag incidents so transparent that even intelligent high school students are now seeing through them.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Richard C. Cook is a retired federal government analyst. He is author of “Challenger Revealed: How the Reagan Administration Caused the Greatest Tragedy of the Space Age,” “We Hold These Truths: The Hope of Monetary Reform,” and numerous print and internet articles on public policy issues. Mr. Cook may be reached at monetaryreform@gmail.com.

Featured image is from Strategic Culture Foundation.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License

ALL CAPTIONS AND PULL QUOTES BY THE EDITORS NOT THE AUTHORS

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Things to ponder

While our media prostitutes, many Hollywood celebs, and politicians and opinion shapers make so much noise about the still to be demonstrated damage done by the Russkies to our nonexistent democracy, this is what the sanctimonious US government has done overseas just since the close of World War 2. And this is what we know about. Many other misdeeds are yet to be revealed or documented.

Parting shot—a word from the editors
The Best Definition of Donald Trump We Have Found

In his zeal to prove to his antagonists in the War Party that he is as bloodthirsty as their champion, Hillary Clinton, and more manly than Barack Obama, Trump seems to have gone “play-crazy” — acting like an unpredictable maniac in order to terrorize the Russians into forcing some kind of dramatic concessions from their Syrian allies, or risk Armageddon.However, the “play-crazy” gambit can only work when the leader is, in real life, a disciplined and intelligent actor, who knows precisely what actual boundaries must not be crossed. That ain’t Donald Trump — a pitifully shallow and ill-disciplined man, emotionally handicapped by obscene privilege and cognitively crippled by white American chauvinism. By pushing Trump into a corner and demanding that he display his most bellicose self, or be ceaselessly mocked as a “puppet” and minion of Russia, a lesser power, the War Party and its media and clandestine services have created a perfect storm of mayhem that may consume us all.— Glen Ford, Editor in Chief, Black Agenda Report

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Robert Fisk’s Douma Report Rips Away Excuses for Air Strike on Syria

Calling Pres. Assad a ” dictator” is a gratuitous insult that mars some of the impact of this otherwise worthwhile piece. We regret that some American intellectuals are still willing and capable of regurgitating US propaganda memes without acknowledging the implications of such an act in a dirty information war in which countless lives and world peace are at stake.

This report shows that there is a highly credible alternative explanation for what happened in Douma – one that needs to be investigated.

by Jonathan Cook, Crossposted with Common Dreams

Fisk is the first western journalist to reach the area and speak to people there. One is a senior doctor at the clinic that treated victims of what a video purported to show were chemical weapons used by the Syrian government. The incident was used as the justification for the air strikes launched jointly by the US, the UK and France.

The doctor says the video was real, but did not show the effects of a chemical weapons attack. It showed something else. This is what the doctor is reported saying:

“I was with my family in the basement of my home three hundred metres from here on the night but all the doctors know what happened. There was a lot of shelling [by government forces] and aircraft were always over Douma at night — but on this night, there was wind and huge dust clouds began to come into the basements and cellars where people lived. People began to arrive here suffering from hypoxia, oxygen loss. Then someone at the door, a ‘White Helmet’, shouted ‘Gas!’ and a panic began. People started throwing water over each other. Yes, the video was filmed here, it is genuine, but what you see are people suffering from hypoxia – not gas poisoning.”

On my social media pages there are plenty of armchair warriors furiously denying the importance of this report, by claiming either that the doctor made up the story or that Fisk is a mouthpiece for the Assad regime, or maybe both.

That will not wash for reasons that ought to be obvious – and it still won’t wash even if the testimony later turns out to be wrong.

The air strikes on Syria at the weekend were patently illegal according to international law. That would have been the case even had there been a chemical weapons attack in Douma, in part because it would have been necessary for independent inspectors to determine first whether the Syrian government, and not the jihadists there, was responsible.

The air strikes would have been illegal too, even if it could have been shown that a chemical weapons attack had taken place and that Assad personally ordered it. That is because air strikes would have first required authorization from the UN Security Council. That is why international law exists: to regulate affairs between states, to prevent militarism of the “might is right” variety that nearly destroyed Europe 80 years ago, and to avoid unnecessary state confrontations that in a nuclear age could have dire repercussions.

Had Assad been shown to be responsible, Russia would have come under enormous international pressure to authorize action of some kind against Syria – pressure it would have been extremely hard for it to resist.

But had it resisted that pressure, we would have had to live with its veto at the Security Council. And again, for very good reason. Israel, the US and the UK have used depleted uranium munitions in the Middle East, and Israel and the US white phosphorous. But who among us would think it reasonable for Russia or China to unilaterally carry out punishment air strikes on Maryland (US), Porton Down (UK) or Nes Ziona (Israel), and justify the move on the grounds that the US and UK could veto any moves against themselves or their allies at the Security Council? Who would want to champion belligerent attacks on these sovereign states as “humanitarian intervention”?

But all of this is irrelevant because whatever incontrovertible information the US, UK and France claimed to have that Syria carried out a chemical weapons attack last week is clearly no more reliable than their claims about an Iraqi WMD program back in 2002.

Fisk does not need to prove that his account is definitively true – just like a defendant in the dock does not need to prove their innocence. He has to show only that he reported accurately and honestly, and that the testimony he recounted was plausible and consistent with what he saw. Everything about Fisk’s record and about this particular report suggests there should be no doubt on that score.

Fisk’s report shows that there is a highly credible alternative explanation for what happened in Douma – one that needs to be investigated. Which means that an attack on Syria should never have taken place before inspectors were able to investigate and report their findings.

Instead, the US-UK-France launched air strikes hours before the UN inspectors were due to begin their work in Syria, thereby pre-empting it. At the time those air strikes took place, the aggressor states had neither legal nor evidential justification for their actions. They were were simply relying on the reports of parties, like the White Helmets, that have a vested interest in engineering the Syrian government’s downfall.

As is now known beyond doubt, our leaders lied to us about Iraq and about Libya. Some of us have been warning for some time that we should be highly skeptical of everything we are being told by our governments about Syria, until it is verified by independent evidence.

All of us have a moral responsibility to stop simply believing what our governments and their propagandists in the corporate media tell us, whether we have been doing so out of a kneejerk authoritarian impulse or because we have some romantic notion that, despite the evidence, our leaders are always the good guys and their leaders are always the bad guys.

Just consider for a moment the UK’s support for, and involvement in, the horrifying Saudi war against Yemen, or US politicians’ blanket silence on Israel’s massacre of unarmed demonstrators in Gaza. Our leaders have no moral high ground to stand on. Their foreign policy decisions are about oil, defense contracts and geo-strategic interests, not about protecting civilians or fighting just wars.

However bad Assad is, and he is a dictator, he is responsible for far fewer deaths and much less suffering in the Middle East than either George W Bush or Tony Blair.

Former New York Times correspondent Stephen Kinzer sets out a very plausible reason why the US, UK and France keep intervening in Syria. It is not about children or chemical weapons. It is to prevent the Syrian government and Russia triumphing over the jihadists, as they have been close to doing for some time.

These western states are adamantly opposed to allowing a peaceful resolution in Syria, Kinzer observes, because it:

“might allow stability to spread to nearby countries. Today, for the first time in modern history, the governments of Syria, Iraq, Iran and Lebanon are on good terms. A partnership among them could lay the foundation for a new Middle East.

“That new Middle East, however, would not be submissive to the United States-Israel-Saudi Arabia coalition. For that reason, we are determined to prevent it from emerging. Better to keep these countries in misery and conflict, some reason, than to allow them to thrive while they defy the United States. […]

“From Washington’s perspective, peace in Syria is the horror scenario. Peace would mean what the United States sees as a ‘win’ for our enemies: Russia, Iran, and the Assad government. We are determined to prevent that, regardless of the human cost.”

UPDATE:

Fisk’s account is corroborated by another reporter who is there, Pearson Sharp of the conservative news network One America. Unlike Fisk, who I know has a long track record as a highly credible reporter of events in the Middle East, Sharp is an unknown quantity to me. But it may be significant that he echoes Fisk in saying that no one he spoke to, even in the neighborhood where the attack supposedly occurred, seemed aware that chemical weapons had been used.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Jonathan Cook won the 2011 Martha Gellhorn Special Prize for Journalism. His latest books are Israel and the Clash of Civilisations: Iraq, Iran and the Plan to Remake the Middle East (Pluto Press) and Disappearing Palestine: Israel’s Experiments in Human Despair (Zed Books). His website is here.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License

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Parting shot—a word from the editors
The Best Definition of Donald Trump We Have Found

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World’s Greatest Military Has BRAVELY Bombed a Smaller Nation Again – Its 27th Small Nation Bombed.

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By Jay Janson

A US Navy F-18 Hornet. A plane of this type was used by the US to shoot down a Syrian jet on a mission to attack ISIL terrorists. Whose side is Washington really on? No need to answer. We know. But the overwhelming majority of Americans don't. Worse still, they don't seem to care.

Americans bombed Syria again just as its heroic army with the help of Russia, had finally defeated the terrorist groups armed by USA and Saudi Arabia. List of 27 bombed nations show that Millions had to die, murdered right in their homelands, because of the support or indifference of ordinary Americans, with enough of them willing to follow orders, even when unlawful orders, to bomb and invade whatever nation instructed to. An unmitigated disgrace.

So, ‘exceptionalist’ Americans in military uniform have bombed Syria again. They bombed Syria again just as the Syrian army with the help of Russia, Iran and Hezbollah had finally, after seven years, defeated the terrorist groups, which had heavy weaponry and Toyota trucks supplied to them by United States and Saudi Arabia. The terrorist groups destroyed much of the country and caused the death of some 350,000 Syrian men, women and children. Many Syrians had their heads cut off by the fanatic terrorists. It has been an open secret that Americans and Saudi Arabians have been funding and arming them for some seven years.[HOW ISIS GOT WEAPONS FROM THE U.S. AND USED THEM TO TAKE IRAQ AND SYRIA, NEWSWEEK, 12/14/17 http://www.newsweek.com/how-isis-got-weapons-us-used-them-take-iraq-syria-748468]

No sense in paying attention to the West’s criminal media propagated pretexts for the US government and other Western Colonial Powers ordering their airmen to bomb and invade former colonies. It is now documented history that in each case the publicly announced and promoted pretext has been either a blatant lie or an absurdity.

Absurdities and lies notwithstanding, every genocidal action performed by the GIs of superpower USA, has had all the Caucasian populated nations of the world, to one degree or another, in solidarity with USA, or looking the other way in tacit acquiescence. Meanwhile, Mr. & Mrs. America have been watching their sons and daughters in uniform go off to bomb smaller and poorer nations than their own and be acclaimed as heroic.

American attitudes have been media altered from what this writer was taught as a child some seventy-five years ago. Back then when we saw a fight, we’d cheer for the little guy, and that bully on the block slapping around kids half his size made us angry.

US trooper.

This archival research peoples historian thought it might be an enlightening reminder of similar unjust bullying for some readers, especially readers in nations that have suffered being bombed by Americans in uniform, to scroll down a list of all the smaller nations Americans have bombed since the Second World War.

Look into any of these regime change bombings upon innocent populations by GI sons and daughters of Mr. and Mrs. America, and it becomes clear that the defenders of their small but beloved countries are the real heroes facing American high tech missile weaponry and air power that can high altitude carpet bomb, strafe the ground and release fiery clouds of napalm.

Vietnamese villagers trying to escape American violence.

The insane upside down version of history propagated on American mainstream media internationally via satellite will eventually be exposed for the evil insanity that it is. With the rise in economic power of Chinese civilization, the rapid increase of populations of the victimized Third World, and personal communication technology racing forward, new sources of information will soon be available.

But why wait for honest media from the victim nations for enlightenment.

Your author has included a little extra history of unlawful bombing events that have received little attention both in criminal media and independent and alternate media. In the list, the name of the nation bombed is followed by the population of that nation at the time of earliest unlawful bombing committed by Americans. The nations of smallest populations are at the top of the list.

Grenada population 100,000 -

Hollywood icon Clint Eastwood, a lifelong reactionary chauvinist, produced and directed the 1986 flick Heartbreak Ridge, based on the 1983 US assault on tiny Grenada. The movie literally invents heroics for there were none on the side of the American invaders. Eastwood, as usual, plays the hero, an aging Marine gunny sergeant. Pure fluff and propaganda, the film's appalling dishonesty did not keep Eastwood from making a pile at the box office. The critics loved it, none mentioning the obvious cowardice implicit in this attack.

1983 invasion, codenamed Operation Urgent Fury, used, besides bombing, a parachute drop. There were Marine landings from Navy warships. Tiny and barely armed Grenada had its Marxist government overthrown.

Kuwait population 2 million - During the American led coalition offensive in the Persian Gulf War, American, and American led Canadian, British and French aircraft bombed retreating Iraqi military personnel attempting to leave Kuwait on the night of February 26–27, 1991, resulting in the destruction of hundreds of vehicles and an enormous death toll, including refugees trying to flee Kuwait. Between 1,400 and 2,000 vehicles were hit or abandoned on the main Highway 80 north of Al Jahra, Kuwait, thereafter dubbed ‘Highway of Death’. Several hundred more littered Highway 8 to Basra.

It failed to suppress communism. Laos has a communist party run government.

Nicaragua population 3.5 million The Reagan administration authorized the CIA to organize, fund, arm and train remnants of defeated dictator Somoza’s National Guard. The CIA run army operated out of camps in the neighboring countries of Honduras Costa Rica. It engaged in a systematic campaign of terror amongst the rural Nicaraguan population to disrupt the social reform projects of the Sandinista revolutionary government, destroying health centers, schools, and cooperatives. Murder, rape, and torture occurred on a large scale in contra-dominated areas.[Chomsky, Noam, Turning the Tide. South End Press, 1985].The United States also carried out a campaign of economic sabotage, and disrupted shipping by planting underwater mines in Nicaragua's port of Corinto, an action condemned by the International Court of Justice as illegal. The International Court of Justice, in Nicaragua v. United States in 1984, found, "the United States of America was under an obligation to make reparation to the Republic of Nicaragua for all injury caused to Nicaragua by certain breaches of obligations under customary international law and treaty-law committed by the United States of America". During the war between the contras and the Sandinistas, about 30,000 people were killed.

Lebanon population 2.7 million In the fall of 1983, President Reagan dispatched the battleship New Jersey to Lebanon, authorizing naval gunfire and airstrikes. On December 4, 1983, the Syrians shot down two U.S. planes, and held one of the pilots, Lt. Robert Goodman, prisoner until releasing him to Democratic presidential candidate Jesse Jackson.

Guatemala population: less than 4 million On 27 June 1954, a CIA Lockheed P-38M Lightning attacked Puerto San José and dropped napalm bombs on the British cargo ship, SS Springfjord, which was being loaded with Guatemalan cotton and coffee. CIA chosen regime change leader Castillo Armas began intensive aerial attacks, with the extra planes that President Eisenhower had approved. The brutal coup was widely condemned in Europe and led to decades of genocidal dictatorships.

Panama population 4.1 million United States Bombing and Invasion of Panama, code named Operation Just Cause occurred between mid-December 1989 and late January 1990.) Former US Attorney General Ramsey Clark estimated that 3,000 Panamanians died. Many sections of the city’s slums were destroyed.

Dominican Republic population 4.1 million Bombing began on April 28, 1965. 42,000 American troops invaded the Dominican Republic. Dominicans were seen to be becoming insufficiently anti-Castro and anti-communism.

In 1985, in El Salvador, a U.S. civilian pilot died on an CIA intelligence mission that ended in a crash on the side of a volcano near San Salvador. In 1983, US Army Sgt. Jay T. Stanley was wounded by gunfire while piloting a helicopter on a mission to establish an airborne communications link with a U.S.-trained rebel battalion in El Salvador. Civil war is of course the ubiquitous strategy of capitalist colonial imperialism. The United States provided huge amounts of military aid to the government of El Salvador during the Carter and Reagan administrations. By May 1983, US officers took over positions in the top levels of the Salvadoran military, were making critical decisions and running the war.[How U.S. Advisers Run The War in El Salvador, The Philadelphia Enquirer, 29 May 1983] The United Nations has estimated approximately 85% of all killings of civilians were committed by the Salvadoran armed forces and death squads.^[31]

Cambodia population 6 million On March 18, 1969, the United States began its Operations Menu and Freedom Deal, a four year long secret carpet-bombing campaign in the skies of Cambodia, devastating the countryside and causing socio-political upheaval that eventually led to the installation of the Pol Pot regime.

2011 massive missile strikes and bombing by Americans and NATO nations military acted as an air force for the armed terrorists made in criminal media to appear as ordinary citizens in uprising fighting the Libyan Army and militias. Three months before the assassination of Gaddafi, Gaddafi addressed a wildly pro Gaddafi and pro Socialist Libya demonstration by an near million Libyans with a mile long green flag while British and French planes bombed Tripoli. This was simply not reported in Western media as NATO warplanes finished off the Libyan Army and militias. After the total destruction of prosperous Libya, murderous infighting between the terrorists themselves and also against pro-Gaddafi tribes has continued on in what is now a waste land.[HUGE PRO GADDAFI RALLY IN TRIPOLI - RAW FOOTAGE, 7/2/2011, www.blacklistednews.com/?news_id=14505

Cuba population 7.3 million During the 1960s there were almost continual acts of sabotage, bombings and attempts on the life of the President Fidel Castro during CIA Operations Mongoose. [Worst CIA abuses, 'family jewels,' to be declassified, Washington Post, June 22, 2007] Henry Kissinger warned that if all operations were divulged, "blood will flow. For example Robert Kennedy personally managed the operation on the assassination of [Cuban President Fidel] Castro." Kennedy was the attorney general from 1961 to 1964.

There was Central Intelligence Agency–Mafia collusion. The CIA conspired with a Chicago gangster described as "the chieftain of the Cosa Nostra and the successor to Al Capone" in a bungled 1960 attempt to assassinate Fidel Castro, the leader of Cuba's communist revolution, according to classified documents published by the agency. The Chicago ‘Outfit’ was to be given access to its former casinos if it helped overthrow Fidel Castro. In 1976, CIA contacts blew up a Cuban passenger plane killing everyone on board including the Cuban Olympic Fencing Team.

Serbia (Yugoslavia) population, including Kosovo, 8.7 million The USA 1999 bombing was code named Noble Anvil. A group of economists from the G17 Plus party has estimated the total damages to have been about 29.6 billion dollars". The U.S. was the dominant member of the coalition against Yugoslavia, although other NATO members were involved. During the ten weeks of the conflict, NATO aircraft flew over 38,000 combat missions. "Dual-use" targets, used by civilians and military, were attacked; the targets included bridges across the Danube, factories, power stations, telecommunications facilities, headquarters of Yugoslavian Leftists, a political party led by Milošević's wife, and the Avala TV Tower. The Yugoslavian government gave estimates of between 1,200 and 5,700 civilian deaths.

Somalia population 10.5 million More than 15 years of US genocidal interventions have caused great starvation, for US led war on the popular conservative Islamic Courts Union government made famine relief nearly impossible. The dis and misinforming ploy used in media coverage was that the Islamic Courts Union government would hide Islamists wanted by US for questioning about US Embassy attacks. This pretext was hyped up to justify the next round of carnage by intervention of US military allies Ethiopia, Kenya and finally the hated UN African ‘Peacekeeping Force,’ organized and militarily supported by the US. •

January 3, 2007 - Ethiopians and U.S. airstrikes forced ICU withdrawal from Kismayo. (US airstrikes hit Badmadow Island; Chief of Staff to the Somali president: "US airstrikes killed 31 civilians.") US warplanes from aircraft carrier USS Dwight D. Eisenhower were used in strikes. AC-130 plane rained gunfire down on the southern village of Hayo - "many dead bodies and animals."reported Associated Press. The Islamic Courts' Youth Wing, al Shabaab (Shabaab = "youth' in Arabic), with great cost in deaths and casualties to themselves, heroically pushed the heavily weaponized Ethiopians back out of cities. In early December 2008, Ethiopia announced it would withdraw its troops. US kept this war going at great human cost after the US pro warlords conflict destroyed Somalia's chosen government. [Between 2010 and 2012, more than a quarter of a million people died in the famine in Somalia" " Famines are not natural phenomena, they are catastrophic political failures" Oxfam, 5/2013] This was true in Somalia's case because during all the above decades famine relief has taken second priority to Western exploitive business interests in Somalia with genocidal consequences. Distribution of food, seed and medical relief intended for drought victims suspended, the International Red Cross announced. Aid for up to 1.1 million people was held up because local authorities blocked distribution of ICRC food and seed relief.

By January, 2013, Al-Shabaab with other militants had taken back cities conquered by the Ethiopians and the hard pressed Ethiopians withdrew when more the UN authorized African Union Force troops arrived. When again the forces of colonialism were on the verge of defeat, US proxy Kenyan Armed Forces were added into the soup of death, to accomplish what the Ethiopians had begun. Al Qaida elements have now long introduced themselves into the fray, and the mayhem overseen by the USA continues. •

1993 - the ‘Blackhawk Down’ incident was an earlier brutal US air attack, which included indiscriminate firing down into the roof of a closed market, and ended with the sight of dead US soldiers being dragged through the streets of Mogadishu being broadcasted around the world. Hundreds of Somalis and eighteen US Elite Force members lost their lives that day.

Congo population 17 million In 1964, CIA and US planes bombs overthrew Congo’s first democratic government. CIA was complicit in the the assassination of its popular president, Patrice Lumumba, and the installing of the dictator Mobutu opening a fifty-four year history of constant civil wars that have taken many millions of lives.

Operation Desert Storm in 1991 began with the bombing out Bagdad’s infrastructure, and ended after Gen. Colin Powell had some 100,000 retreating Iraqi soldiers shot in the back from the air. In 2003 invasion Operation Enduring Freedom and subsequent US military action continuing through to 2018, has brought more than 2 million Iraqi casualties.

Sudan population 26 million In 1998, USA bombed out the only pharmaceutical plant in the Sudan with subsequent loss of lives for lack of critical medicine.

Afghanistan population 13.5 million in 1979; population 24 million in 2001 In 1979, President Carter had CIA invade Afghanistan with Pakistan and Saudi secret services fund, arm and train mountain warlord armies of terrorists - later paid Osama bin Ladin’s al Qaida ed al to attack popular women liberating socialist Kabul government and its Russian defenders. In 2001, Americans blitzed, invaded and murderously overthrew the Taliban government and occupied Afghanistan with a coalition included armed forces of every single nation of Caucasian population in the world.

Iran population 18 million in 1953; 38 million in 1980; 51 million in 1987; 80 million today.

The CIA has publicly admitted that it was behind the notorious 1953 coup against Iran's democratically elected prime minister Mohammad Mosaddeq in its Operation Ajax. 200 to 300 Iranians were killed.

In 1980, Operation Eagle Claw failed to retrieve American hostages in US Embassy. One Iranian was killed. His truck was rocketed and destroyed. • Operation Nimble Archer was the 19 October 1987 attack on two Iranian oil platforms in the Persian Gulf by United States Navy forces. The attack was a response to Iran's missile attack three days earlier on MV Sea Isle City, a reflagged Kuwaiti oil tanker at anchor off Kuwait. The action occurred during Operation Earnest Will, the effort to protect Kuwaiti shipping during the American assisted, Saddam Hussain ordered, eight year long Iraqi invasion of Iran. Iran subsequently filed a lawsuit against the United States for reparations at the International Court of Justice. The Court ruled, by 14 votes to two, that the retaliatory attacks by the U.S. Navy against certain Iranian oil platforms in the Persian Gulf in 1987 and 1988 constituted an unlawful use of force.

“U.S. forces have conducted multiple ground operations and more than 120 strikes in 2017,” [Statement, U.S. Central Command in Tampa, Florida. [The U.S. Has Helped Saudi Arabia Bomb Yemen for Almost Three Years. Congress Just Noticed, Slatest 11/14/2017] Nawar al Awlaki, age 8, was killed in an airstrike in Yemen ordered by President Trump. Since March 2015, bombings have so far caused more than 14,600 civilian deaths and injuries. Over three million people have been forced to flee their homes due to the bombing and fighting. 22 million people (75 percent of Yemen’s population) need emergency aid, the greatest number in any country in the world. There is famine and 100,000 cases of cholera.[Oxfam, 4/2018] [1]

Korea 1950 population 30.2 million (North 11 million; South 19.2) All 38 cities of North Korea and most cities in South Korea were bombed into utter destruction, USA announced intentions: ‘fight communism.’ • In 1905, USA recognized all Korea as Japanese Territory in return for Japanese recognition of Philippines as USA territory. • In September, 1945 US Army landed in the south, cut the peninsula in half, overturned democratic Korean government allowed by departing Japanese, declared martial law, flew in Syngman Rhee from Washington, arranged his election as president of ‘independent’ nation of South Korea. Rhee’s secret police and special forces massacred 100,000 communists, socialists, unionists, farmer organizers, members of overthrown government and people who opposed the division of Korea, before the Northern army invaded the South [Documented by South Korea Legislature’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission] When North Korean Army unified the peninsula in five weeks (as South Korean Army refused to fight their brothers of the North), US invaded again and bombed all cities flat, both North and South, before the Chinese entered and pushed US forces out of the North. US holds live fire exercises within ear shot of Pyongyang twice a year ever since.

Vietnam population 35 million: USA dropped more than twice the bombs dropped in all of the Second World War in Europe, Asia and Africa on Vietnam. Millions of GIs took ‘tours of duty’ in Vietnam. In final body count, 15 Vietnamese are found to have died in their own country for each American who died there as an invader. USA announced intentions were to stop communism, but failed! Vietnam is still governed by its communist party today - pointless genocide.

[http://www.newsweek.com/how-isis-got-weapons-us-used-them-take-iraq-syria-748468]

CIA had supplied one pilot and six B-26 bombers to ‘anti-communist’ rebels trying to overthrow the Indonesian Government. American pilot Allan Pope’s plane was shot and Pope accused of bombing the rural village of Ambon and killing many people and was sentenced to death.[2]

Pakistan The Bureau of Investigative Journalism estimates the following cumulative statistics about U.S. drone strikes in Pakistan (as of 17 September 2017): Total strikes: 429; Total killed: 2,514 – 4,023; Civilians killed: 424 – 969; Children killed: 172 – 207; Injured: 1,162 – 1,749 [3]

Since the end of the unbelievably profitable for Wall Street Second World War, tens of millions of innocent children, women and men have died right in their own beloved countries during unlawful and prosecutable regime change bombings and invasions by Americans. All these tens of millions died so investors in the illegal and genocidal use of US Armed Forces, CIA, sanctions and US media could make money from wars that at the same time brought the investors increased financial hegemony and more opportunity for capital and power acquisition. These millions had to die, murdered right in their homelands, because of the support and/or indifference of ordinary Americans in all walks of life, with enough of them willing to follow orders, even when unlawful orders, to bomb and invade whatever nation instructed to.

All this hell and horror for millions of fellow human beings and their children could have been avoided if enough Americans had followed Champion Muhammad Ali, who stated before the US Supreme Court, “No I'm not going 10,000 miles from home to help murder and burn another poor nation simply to continue the domination of white slave masters of the darker people the world over. This is the day when such evils must come to an end.”

Inside the Shadowy PR Firm That’s Lobbying for Regime Change in Syria

“Posing as a non-political solidarity organization, the Syria Campaign leverages local partners and media contacts to push the U.S. into toppling another Middle Eastern government…”

NOTE: This article was first published in October of 2016 on Alternet. Republished here due to lasting relevance.

By Max Blumenthal } Crosspost with Russia Insider
As professional assassins of truth, the very nature of public relations is rooted in mendacity, to massage the public images of the powerful for hefty fees.

weekend of action” to “stop the bombs” raining down from Syrian government and Russian warplanes on rebel-held eastern Aleppo. Thousands joined the protests, holding signs that read “Topple Assad” and declaring, “Enough With Assad.” Few participants likely knew that the actions were organized under the auspices of an opposition-funded public relations company called the Syria Campaign.

By partnering with local groups like the Syrian civil defense workers popularly known as the White Helmets, and through a vast network of connections in media and centers of political influence, The Syria Campaign has played a crucial role in disseminating images and stories of the horrors visited this month on eastern Aleppo. The group is able to operate within the halls of power in Washington and has the power to mobilize thousands of demonstrators into the streets. Despite its outsized role in shaping how the West sees Syria’s civil war, which is now in its sixth year and entering one of its grisliest phases, this outfit remains virtually unknown to the general public.

The Syria Campaign presents itself as an impartial, non-political voice for ordinary Syrian citizens that is dedicated to civilian protection. “We see ourselves as a solidarity organization,” The Syria Campaign strategy director James Sadri told me. “We’re not being paid by anybody to pursue a particular line. We feel like we’ve done a really good job about finding out who the frontline activists, doctors, humanitarians are and trying to get their word out to the international community.”

Yet behind the lofty rhetoric about solidarity and the images of heroic rescuers rushing in to save lives is an agenda that aligns closely with the forces from Riyadh to Washington clamoring for regime change. Indeed, The Syria Campaign has been pushing for a no-fly zone in Syria that would require at least “70,000 American servicemen” to enforce, according to a Pentagon assessment, along with the destruction of government infrastructure and military installations. There is no record of a no-fly zone being imposed without regime change following —which seems to be exactly what The Syria Campaign and its partners want.

“For us to control all the airspace in Syria would require us to go to war against Syria and Russia. That’s a pretty fundamental decision that certainly I’m not going to make,” said Gen. Joseph Dunford, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, at a hearing of the Senate Armed Services Committee this month.

While the military brass in Washington seems reluctant to apply the full force of its airpower to enforce a NFZ, The Syria Campaign is capitalizing on the outrage inspired by the bombardment of rebel-held eastern Aleppo this year to intensify the drumbeat for greater U.S. military involvement.

The Syria Campaign has been careful to cloak interventionism in the liberal-friendly language of human rights, casting Western military action as “the best way to support Syrian refugees,” and packaging a no-fly zone — along with so-called safe zones and no bombing zones, which would also require Western military enforcement — as a “way to protect civilians and defeat ISIS.”

Among The Syria Campaign’s most prominent vehicles for promoting military intervention is a self-proclaimed “unarmed and impartial” civil defense group known as the White Helmets. Footage of the White Helmets saving civilians trapped in the rubble of buildings bombed by the Syrian government and its Russian ally has become ubiquitous in coverage of the crisis. Having claimed to have saved tens of thousands of lives, the group has become a leading resource for journalists and human rights groups seeking information inside the war theater, from casualty figures to details on the kind of bombs that are falling.

But like The Syria Campaign, the White Helmets are anything but impartial. Indeed, the group was founded in collaboration with the United States Agency for International Development (USAID)’s Office of Transitional Initiatives, an explicitly political wing of the agency that has funded efforts at political subversion in Cuba and Venezuela. USAID is the White Helmets’ principal funder, committing at least $23 million to the group since 2013. This money was part of $339.6 million budgeted by USAID for “supporting activities that pursue a peaceful transition to a democratic and stable Syria” — or establishing a parallel governing structure that could fill the power vacuum once Bashar Al-Assad was removed.

Thanks to an aggressive public relations push by The Syria Campaign, the White Helmets have been nominated for the Nobel Prize, and have already been awarded the “alternative Nobel” known as the Right Livelihood Award. (Previous winners include Amy Goodman, Edward Snowden and Israeli nuclear whistleblower Mordechai Vanunu.) At the same time, the White Helmets are pushing for a NFZ in public appearances and on a website created by The Syria Campaign.

The Syria Campaign has garnered endorsements for the White Helmets from a host of Hollywood celebrities including Ben Affleck, Alicia Keyes and Justin Timberlake. And with fundraising and “outreach” performed by The Syria Campaign, the White Helmets have become the stars of a slickly produced Netflix documentary vehicle that has received hype from media outlets across the West.

But making the White Helmets into an international sensation is just one of a series of successes The Syria Campaign has achieved in its drive to oust Syria’s government.

Targeting the UN in Damascus

When an aid convoy organized by the Syrian Arab Red Crescent (SARC) and United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs came under attack on its way to the rebel-held countryside of West Aleppo in Syria this September 18, the White Helmets pinned blame squarely on the Syrian and Russian governments. In fact, a White Helmets member was among the first civilians to appear on camera at the scene of the attack, declaring in English that “the regime helicopters targeted this place with four barrel [bombs].” The White Helmets also produced one of the major pieces of evidence Western journalists have relied on to implicate Russia and the Syrian government in the attack: a photographsupposedly depicting the tail fragment of a Russian-made OFAB 250-270 fragmentation bomb. (This account remains unconfirmed by both the UN and SARC, and no evidence of barrel bombs has been produced).

Ironically, the White Helmets figured prominently in The Syria Campaign’s push to undermine the UN’s humanitarian work inside Syria. For months, The Syria Campaign has painted the UN as a stooge of Bashar Al-Assad for coordinating its aid deliveries with the Syrian government, as it has done with governments in conflict zones around the world. The Guardian’s Kareem Shaheen praised a 50-page report by The Syria Campaign attacking the UN’s work in Syria as “damning.” A subsequent Guardian’ article cited the report as part of the inspiration for its own “exclusive” investigation slamming the UN’s coordination with the Syrian government.

At a website created by The Syria Campaign to host the report, visitors are greeted by a UN logo drenched in blood.

The Syria Campaign has even taken credit for forcing former UN Resident Coordinator Yacoub El-Hillo out of his job in Damascus, a false claim it was later forced to retract. Among the opposition groups that promoted The Syria Campaign’s anti-UN report was Ahrar Al-Sham, a jihadist rebel faction that has allied with Al Qaeda in a mission to establish an exclusively Islamic state across Syria.

A Westerner who operates a politically neutral humanitarian NGO in Damascus offered me a withering assessment of The Syria Campaign’s attacks on the UN. Speaking on condition of anonymity because NGO workers like them are generally forbidden from speaking to the media, and often face repercussions if they do, the source accused The Syria Campaign of “dividing and polarizing the humanitarian community” along political lines while forcing humanitarian entities to “make decisions based on potential media repercussions instead of focusing on actual needs on the ground.”

The NGO executive went on to accuse The Syria Campaign and its partners in the opposition of “progressively identifying the humanitarian workers operating from Damascus with one party to the conflict,” limiting their ability to negotiate access to rebel-held territory. “As a humanitarian worker myself,” they explained, “I know that this puts me and my teams in great danger since it legitimizes warring factions treating you as an extension of one party in the conflict.

“The thousands of Syrians that signed up with the UN or humanitarian organizations are civilians,” they continued. “They not only joined to get a salary but in hopes of doing something good for other Syrians. This campaign [by The Syria Campaign] is humiliating all of them, labelling them as supporters of one side and making them lose hope in becoming agents of positive change in their own society.”

This September, days before the aid convoy attack prompted the UN to suspend much of its work inside Syria, The Syria Campaign spurred 73 aid organizations operating in rebel-held territory, including the White Helmets, to suspend their cooperation with the UN aid program. As the Guardian noted in its coverage, “The decision to withdraw from the Whole of Syria programme, in which organisations share information to help the delivery of aid, means in practice the UN will lose sight of what is happening throughout the north of Syria and in opposition-held areas of the country, where the NGOs do most of their work.”

Despite The Syria Campaign’s influence on the international media stage, details on the outfit’s inner workings are difficult to come by. The Syria Campaign is registered in England as a private company called the Voices Project at an address shared by 91 other companies. Aside from Asfari, most of The Syria Campaign’s donors are anonymous.

Looming over this opaque operation are questions about its connections to Avaaz, a global public relations outfit that played an instrumental role in generating support for a no-fly zone in Libya, and The Syria Campaign’s founding by Purpose, another PR firm spun out of Avaaz. James Sadri bristled when I asked about the issue, dismissing it as a “crank conspiracy” ginned up by Russian state media and hardcore Assadist elements.

However, a careful look at the origins and operation of The Syria Campaign raises doubts about the outfit’s image as an authentic voice for Syrian civilians, and should invite serious questions about the agenda of its partner organizations as well.

A creation of international PR firms

[dropcap]B[/dropcap]est known for its work on liberal social issues with well-funded progressive clients like the ACLU and the police reform group, Campaign Zero, the New York- and London-based public relations firm Purpose promises to deliver creatively executed campaigns that produce either a “behavior change,” “perception change,” “policy change” or “infrastructure change.” As the Syrian conflict entered its third year, this company was ready to effect a regime change.

On Feb. 3, 2014, Anna Nolan, the senior strategist at Purpose, posted a job listing. According to Nolan’s listing, her firm was seeking “two interns to join the team at Purpose to help launch a new movement for Syria.”

At around the same time, another Purpose staffer named Ali Weiner posted a job listing seeking a paid intern for the PR firm’s new Syrian Voices project. “Together with Syrians in the diaspora and NGO partners,” Weiner wrote,“Purpose is building a movement that will amplify the voices of moderate, non-violent Syrians and mobilize people in the Middle East and around the world to call for specific changes in the political and humanitarian situation in the region.” She explained that the staffer would report “to a Strategist based primarily in London, but will work closely with the Purpose teams in both London and New York.”

On June 16, 2014, Purpose founder Jeremy Heimans drafted articles of association for The Syria Campaign’s parent company. Called the Voices Project,Heimans registered the company at 3 Bull Lane, St. Ives Cambridgeshire, England. It was one of 91 private limited companies listed at the address. Sadri would not explain why The Syria Campaign had chosen this location or why it was registered as a private company.

Along with Heimans, Purpose Europe director Tim Dixon was appointed to The Syria Campaign’s board of directors. So was John Jackson, a Purpose strategist who previously co-directed the Burma Campaign U.K. that lobbied the EU for sanctions against that country’s ruling regime. (Jackson claimed credit for The Syria Campaign’s successful push to remove Syrian president Bashar Al-Assad’s re-election campaign ads from Facebook.) Anna Nolan became The Syria Campaign’s project director, even as she remained listed as the strategy director at Purpose.

“Purpose is not involved in what we do,” The Syria Campaign’s Sadri told me. When pressed about the presence of several Purpose strategists on The Syria Campaign’s board of directors and staff, Sadri insisted, “We’re not part of Purpose. There’s no financial relationship and we’re independent.”

Sadri dismissed allegations about The Syria Campaign’s origins in Avaaz. “We have no connection to Avaaz,” he stated, blaming conspiratorial “Russia Today stuff” for linking the two public relations groups.

However, Purpose’s original job listing for its Syrian Voices project boasted that “Purpose grew out of some of the most impactful new models for social change” including “the now 30 million strong action network avaaz.org.” In fact, The Syria Campaign’s founder, Purpose co-founder Jeremy Heimans, was also one of the original founders of Avaaz. As he told Forbes, “I co-founded Avaaz and [the Australian activist group] Get Up, which inspired the creation of Purpose.”

New and improved no-fly zone

The Syria Campaign’s defensiveness about ties to Avaaz is understandable.

Back in 2011, Avaaz introduced a public campaign for a no-fly zone in Libya and delivered a petition with 1,202,940 signatures to the UN supporting Western intervention. John Hilary, the executive director of War On Want, the U.K.’s leading anti-poverty and anti-war charity, warned at the time, “Little do most of these generally well-meaning activists know, they are strengthening the hands of those western governments desperate to reassert their interests in north Africa… Clearly a no-fly zone makes foreign intervention sound rather humanitarian—putting the emphasis on stopping bombing, even though it could well lead to an escalation of violence.”

John Hilary’s dire warning was fulfilled after the NATO-enforced no-fly zone prompted the ouster of former President Moamar Qaddafi. Months later, Qaddafi was sexually assaulted and beaten to death in the road by a mob of fanatics. The Islamic State and an assortment of militias filled the void left in the Jamahiriya government’s wake. The political catastrophe should have been serious enough to call future interventions of this nature into question. Yet Libya’s legacy failed to deter Avaaz from introducing a new campaign for another no-fly zone; this time in Syria.

“To some a no-fly zone could conjure up images of George W. Bush’s foreign policy and illegal Western interventions. This is a different thing,” Avaaz insisted in a communique defending its support for a new no-fly zone in Syria. Sadri portrayed The Syria Campaign’s support for a no-fly zone as the product of a “deep listening process” involving the polling of Syrian civilians in rebel-held territories and refugees outside the country. He claimed his outfit was a “solidarity organization,” not a public relations firm, and was adamant that if and when a no-fly zone is imposed over Syrian skies, it would be different than those seen in past conflicts.

“There also seems to be a critique of a no-fly zone which is slapping on templates from other conflicts and saying this is what will happen in Syria,” Sadri commented. He added, “I’m just trying to encourage us away from a simplistic debate. There’s a kneejerk reaction to Syria to say, ’It’s Iraq or it’s Libya,’ but it’s not. It’s an entirely different conflict.”

Funding a “credible transition”

For the petroleum mogul who provided the funding that launched the Syria Project, the means of military intervention justified an end in which he could return to the country of his birth and participate in its economic life on his own terms.

Though The Syria Campaign claims to “refuse funding from any party to the conflict in Syria,” it was founded and is sustained with generous financial assistance from one of the most influential exile figures of the opposition, Ayman Asfari, the U.K.-based CEO of the British oil and gas supply company Petrofac Limited. Asfari is worth $1.2 billion and owns about one-fifth of the shares of his company, which boasts 18,000 employees and close to $7 billion in annual revenues.

Through his Asfari Foundation, he has contributed hundreds of thousands of dollars to The Syria Campaign and has secured a seat for his wife, Sawsan, on its board of directors. He has also been a top financial and political supporter of the Syrian National Coalition, the largest government-in-exile group set up after the Syrian revolt began. The group is dead-set on removing Assad and replacing him with one of its own. Asfari’s support for opposition forces was so pronounced the Syrian government filed a warrant for his arrest, accusing him of supporting “terrorism.”

In London, Asfari has been a major donor to former British Prime Minister David Cameron and his Conservative Party. This May, Cameron keynoted a fundraiser for the Hands Up for Syria Appeal, a charity heavily supported by Asfari that sponsors education for Syrian children living in refugee camps. The Prime Minister might have seemed like an unusual choice for the event given his staunch resistance to accepting unaccompanied Syrian children who have fled to Europe. However, Asfari has generally supported Cameron’s exclusionary policy.

Grilled about his position during an episode of BBC’s Hardtalk, Asfari explained, “I do not want the country to be emptied. I still have a dream that those guys [refugees] will be able to go back to their homes and they will be able to play a constructive role in putting Syria back together.”

In Washington, Asfari is regarded as an important liaison to the Syrian opposition. He has visited the White House eight times since 2014, meeting with officials like Philip Gordon, the former Middle East coordinator who was an early advocate for arming the insurgency in Syria. Since leaving the administration, however, Gordon has expressed regret over having embraced a policy of regime change. In a lengthy September 2015 editorial for Politico, Gordon slammed the Obama administration’s pursuit of regime change, writing, “There is now virtually no chance that an opposition military ‘victory’ will lead to stable or peaceful governance in Syria in the foreseeable future and near certainty that pursuing one will only lead to many more years of vicious civil war.”

Asfari publicly chastised Gordon days later on Hardtalk. “I have written to [Gordon] an email after I saw that article in Politico and I told him I respectfully disagree,” Asfari remarked. “I think the idea that we are going to have a transition in Syria with Assad in it for an indefinite period is fanciful. Because at the end of the day, what the people want is a credible transition.”

For Asfari, a “credible” post-war transition would require much more than refugee repatriation and the integration of opposition forces into the army: “Will you get the Syrian diaspora, including people like myself, to go back and invest in the country?” he asked on Hardtalk. “…If we do not achieve any of these objectives, what’s the point of having a free Syria?”

The Independent has described Asfari as one among of a pantheon of “super rich” exiles poised to rebuild a post-Assad Syria — and to reap handsome contracts in the process. To reach his goal of returning to Syria in triumph after the downfall of Assad’s government, Asfari not only provided the seed money for The Syria Campaign, he has helped sustain the group with hefty donations.

Just this year, the Asfari Foundation donated $180,000 to the outfit, according to The Syria Campaign’s media lead Laila Kiki. Asfari is not The Syria Campaign’s only donor, however. According to Kiki, the Rockefeller Brothers Fund also contributed $120,000 to the outfit’s $800,000 budget this year. “The rest of the funds come from donors who wish to remain anonymous,” she explained.

Shaping the message

Among The Syria Campaign’s main priorities, for which it has apparently budgeted a substantial amount of resources, is moving Western media in a more interventionist direction.

When The Syria Campaign placed an ad on its website seeking a senior press officer upon its launch in 2014, it emphasized its need for “someone who can land pieces in the U.S., U.K. and European [media] markets in the same week.” The company’s ideal candidate would be able to “maintain strong relationships with print, broadcast, online journalists, editors in order to encourage them to see TSC as a leading voice on Syria.” Prioritizing PR experience over political familiarity, The Syria Campaign reassured applicants, “You don’t need to be an expert on Syria or speak Arabic.” After all, the person would be working in close coordination with an unnamed “Syrian communications officer who will support on story gathering and relationships inside Syria.”

Sadri acknowledged that The Syria Campaign has been involved in shopping editorials to major publications. “There have been op-eds in the past that we’ve helped get published, written by people on the ground. There’s a lot of op-eds going out from people inside Syria,” he told me. But he would not say which ones, who the authors were, or if his company played any role in their authorship.

One recent incident highlighted The Syria Campaign’s skillful handling of press relationships from Aleppo to media markets across the West. It was August 17, and a Syrian or Russian warplane had just hit an apartment building in rebel-held eastern Aleppo. Sophie McNeill, a Middle East correspondent for the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, received a photo from the Syrian American Medical Society, which maintains a WhatsApp group networking doctors inside rebel territory with international media.

The photo showed a five-year-old boy, Omran Daqneesh, who had been extracted from the building by members of the White Helmets and hoisted into an ambulance, where he was filmed by members of the Aleppo Media Center. The chilling image depicts a dazed little boy, seated upright and staring at nothing, his pudgy cheeks caked in ash and blood. “Video then emerged of Omran as he sat blinking in the back of that ambulance,” McNeill wrote without explaining who provided her with the video. She immediately posted the footage on Twitter.

“Watch this video from Aleppo tonight. And watch it again. And remind yourself that with #Syria #wecantsaywedidntknow,” McNeill declared. Her post was retweeted over 17,000 times and the hashtag she originated, which implied international inaction against the Syrian government made such horrors possible, became a viral sensation as well. (McNeill did not respond to questions sent to her publicly listed email.)

Hours later, the image of Omran appeared on the front page of dozens of international newspapers, from the New York Times to the Wall Street Journal to the Times of London. CNN’s Kate Bolduan, who had suggested during Israel’s bombardment of the Gaza Strip in 2014 that civilian casualties were, in fact, human shields, broke down in tears during an extended segment detailing the rescue of Omran.

Abu Sulaiman Al-Muhajir, the Australian citizen serving as a top leader and spokesman for Al Qaeda’s Syrian offshoot, Jabhat Fateh Al-Sham, took a special interest in the boy. “I cannot get conditioned to seeing injured/murdered children,” Al-Muhajir wrote on Facebook. “Their innocent faces should serve as a reminder of our responsibility.”

Seizing on the opportunity, The Syria Campaign gathered quotes from the photographer who captured the iconic image, Mahmoud Raslan, and furnished them to an array of media organizations. While many outlets published Raslan’s statements, Public Radio International was among the few that noted The Syria Campaign’s role in serving them up, referring to the outfit as “a pro-opposition advocacy group with a network of contacts in Syria.”

On August 20, McNeill took to Facebook with a call to action: “Were you horrified by the footage of little Omran?” she asked her readers. “Can’t stop thinking about him? Well don’t just retweet, be outraged for 24 hours and move on. Hear what two great humanitarians for Syria, Zaher Sahloul & James Sadri, want you to do now.”

Sadri happened to be the director of The Syria Campaign and Sahloul was the Syrian American Medical Society director who partnered with The Syria Campaign. In the article McNeill wrote about Omran’s photo, which was linked in her Facebook post, both Sahloul and Sadri urged Westerners to join their call for a no-fly zone— a policy McNeill tacitly endorsed. (Sahloul was recently promoted by the neoconservative columnist Eli Lake for accusing Obama of having “allowed a genocide in Syria.” This September, Sahloul joined up with the Jewish United Federation of Chicago, a leading opponent of Palestine solidarity organizing, to promote his efforts.)

As the outrage inspired by the image of Omran spread, New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof (a friend and publisher of Syria Campaign board member Lina Sergie Attar) called for “fir[ing] missiles from outside Syria to crater [Syrian] military runways to make them unusable.” Meanwhile, on MSNBC’s Morning Joe, host Joe Scarborough waved around the photo of Omran and indignantly declared, “The world will look back. Save your hand-wringing…you can still do something right now. But nothing’s been done.”

As breathless editorials and cable news tirades denounced the Obama administration’s supposed “inaction,” public pressure for a larger-scale Western military campaign was approaching an unprecedented level.

Damage control for opposition extremists

The day after Omran made headlines, the left-wing British news site the Canary publicized another photograph that exposed a grim reality behind the iconic image.

Culled from the Facebook page of Mahmoud Raslan, the activist from the American-operated Aleppo Media Center who took the initial video of Omran, it showed Raslan posing for a triumphant selfie with a group of rebel fighters. The armed men hailed from the Nour Al-Din Al-Zenki faction. At least two of the commanders who appeared in the photo with Raslan had recently beheaded a boy they captured, referring to him in video footage as “child” while they taunted and abused him. The boy has been reported to be a 12-year-old named Abdullah Issa and may have been a member of the Liwa Al-Quds pro-government Palestinian militia.

This was not the only time Raslan had appeared with Al-Zenki fighters or expressed his sympathy. On August 2, he posted a selfie to Facebook depicting himself surrounded by mostly adolescent Al-Zenki fighters dressed in battle fatigues. “With the suicide fighters, from the land of battles and butchery, from Aleppo of the martyrs, we bring you tidings of impending joy, with God’s permission,” Raslan wrote. He sported a headband matching those worn by the “suicide fighters.”

Despite its unsavory tendencies and extremist ideological leanings, Al-Zenki was until 2015 a recipient of extensive American funding, with at least 1000 of its fighters on the CIA payroll. Charles Lister, a senior fellow at the Middle East Institute who has said his research on the Syrian opposition was “100% funded by Western govts,” has branded Al-Zenki as “moderate opposition fighters.”

This August, after the video of Al-Zenki members beheading the adolescent boy appeared online, Sam Heller, a fellow for the Washington-based Century Foundation, argued for restoring the rebel group’s CIA funding. Describing Al-Zenki as “a natural, if unpalatable, partner,” Heller contended that “if Washington insists on keeping its hands perfectly clean, there’s probably no Syrian faction—in the opposition, or on any side of the war—that merits support.”

This September 24, Al-Zenki formally joined forces with the jihadist Army of Conquest led by Al Qaeda-established jihadist group, Jabhat Fateh Al-Sham. For its part, The Syria Campaign coordinated the release of a statement with Raslan explaining away his obvious affinity with Al-Zenki. Sophie McNeill, the Australian Broadcasting Corp. reporter who was among the first to publish the famous Omran photo, dutifully published Raslan’s statement on Twitter, acknowledging The Syria Campaign as its source.

Curiously describing the beheading victim as a 19-year-old and not the “child” his beheaders claimed he was, Raslan pleaded ignorance about the Al-Zenki fighters’ backgrounds: “It was a busy day with lots of different people and groups on the streets. As a war photographer I take lots of photos with civilians and fighters.”

Mahmoud Raslan may not have been the most effective local partner, but The Syria Campaign could still count on the White Helmets.

In Part II: How the U.S.-funded White Helmets rescue civilians from Syrian and Russian bombs while lobbying for the U.S. military to step up its own bombing campaign.

[/su_spoiler]

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Max Blumenthal is the award-winning author of Goliath, Republican Gomorrah, and The 51 Day War. He is also the co-host of the podcast, Moderate Rebels. Follow him on Twitter at @MaxBlumenthal.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License

ALL CAPTIONS AND PULL QUOTES BY THE EDITORS NOT THE AUTHORS

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Things to ponder

Parting shot—a word from the editors
The Best Definition of Donald Trump We Have Found

In his zeal to prove to his antagonists in the War Party that he is as bloodthirsty as their champion, Hillary Clinton, and more manly than Barack Obama, Trump seems to have gone “play-crazy” -- acting like an unpredictable maniac in order to terrorize the Russians into forcing some kind of dramatic concessions from their Syrian allies, or risk Armageddon.However, the “play-crazy” gambit can only work when the leader is, in real life, a disciplined and intelligent actor, who knows precisely what actual boundaries must not be crossed. That ain’t Donald Trump -- a pitifully shallow and ill-disciplined man, emotionally handicapped by obscene privilege and cognitively crippled by white American chauvinism. By pushing Trump into a corner and demanding that he display his most bellicose self, or be ceaselessly mocked as a “puppet” and minion of Russia, a lesser power, the War Party and its media and clandestine services have created a perfect storm of mayhem that may consume us all.— Glen Ford, Editor in Chief, Black Agenda Report

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Are We Over the US/UK Fomented Crisis In Syria? (Latest evaluations from Paul Craig Roberts)

HELP ENLIGHTEN YOUR FELLOWS. BE SURE TO PASS THIS ON. SURVIVAL DEPENDS ON IT.

Are We Over the US/UK Fomented Crisis In Syria?

Dateline: April 14, 2018

It appears from the very limited US missile attack, most of which were intercepted and destroyed by Syrian air defenses, that the US military prevailed over the crazed John Bolton and carefully avoided a strike that would have resulted in a Russian response. No significant Syrian site appears to have been targeted, and no Russians were endangered. https://www.fort-russ.com/2018/04/in-depth-syria-stuns-world-thwarts-us-attack/

The US ambassador to Russia said that the US strikes were coordinated with Russia to avoid a great power confrontation. https://www.rt.com/news/424132-us-russia-syria-strikes/ Russia Insider concludes that the exercise was a face-saver for Trump https://russia-insider.com/en/out-whimper-trump-blinks-delivers-limited-strikes/ri23132

The main effect seems to be that Trump has further discredited himself and the US by violating the UN Charter and international law and committing an act of aggression, which is a war crime for which Nazi civilian and military officials were executed. Russia’s President Putin said that the wanton and illegal use of force by Washington has had “a devastating impact on the whole system of international relations” and called for an emergency meeting of the UN Security Council. China also condemned the illegal US attack. https://www.fort-russ.com/2018/04/china-says-us-led-attacks-against-syria-are-illegal-and-against-international-law/

How was the feared conflict between the US and Russia avoided? From what I have been able to learn, the US Joint Chiefs of Staff would not accept the risk of conflict with Russia. The reason is not that the Joint Chiefs are more moral, more caring about the deaths and injuries that would result, or less inclined to go to war based on lies. Their objection was based on the lack of protection US Navy ships have from the new Russian weapons systems. An attack that brought a Russian response could sink the US flotilla and present the US with a humiliating defeat that would discredit American military prowess.

Bolton’s position was that Putin is a pussy who, as in every previous case, will do nothing. Bolton’s position is that the Russians are so scared of US military might that they will not respond to any US attack on their forces and Syrian forces. The Russians, Bolton says, will do what they always do. They will whine about the crime to the UN, and the Western media will ignore them as always.

The US Secretary of War, Mattis, represented the Joint Chiefs opinion. What, Mattis asked, if the Russians have had enough and do what they are capable of and sink the US flotilla? Is Trump prepared to accept a defeat engineered by his National Security Adviser? Is Trump prepared for a possible wider conflict?

The Joint Chiefs would rather use the orchestrated “Syrian crisis” to argue for more money, not to go to war that could be terminable of their retirement plans. The Joint Chiefs can tell Congress: “We couldn’t risk conflict with Russia over the use of chemical weapons in Syria because we were outgunned. We need more money.” The older American generation will remember the fantasy “missile gap” of the Nixon/Kennedy presidential campaign that was used to boost US defense spending.

It would be a mistake for anyone to conclude that common sense has prevailed and the conflict has been resolved. What has prevailed is the Joint Chiefs’ fear of a defeat. The next crisis that Washington orchestrates will be on terms less favorable to Russian arms. Bolton, the neoconservatives and the Israeli interest that they represent will go to work on Mattis and the dissenting generals. Leaks will appear in the presstitute media that are designed to discredit Mattis and to foment Trump’s distrust. The neoconservatives will advance military men more in line with the neoconservatives’ aggressiveness to positions on the Joint Chiefs.

Bolton, the neoconservatives and the Israeli interest that they represent will go to work on Mattis and the dissenting generals. Leaks will appear in the presstitute media that are designed to discredit Mattis and to foment Trump’s distrust. The neoconservatives will advance military men more in line with the neoconservatives’ aggressiveness to positions on the Joint Chiefs.

Syria is not about any chemical weapons use. Ahmet Uzumcu, director general of the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, reported that all chemical weapons had been removed from Syria. “Never before has an entire arsenal of a category of weapons of mass destruction been removed from a country experiencing a state of internal armed conflict, and this has been accomplished within very demanding and tight time frames.” https://www.military.com/daily-news/2014/06/24/last-of-syrias-chemical-weapons-removed.html

Syria is not about dictatorship or building democracy. It is not about the alleged 70 victims of chemical weapons. It would take a complete idiot to believe that Washington and its European vassals, who have killed, maimed, orphaned, and displaced millions of Muslims in seven countries over the last 17 years to be so upset over the deaths of 70 Muslims that they are willing to risk war with Russia.

Syria and Iran are an issue, because Syria and Iran supply the Lebanese militia, Hezbollah, with money and weapons. This support from Syria and Iran gives Hezbollah the capability of preventing Israel’s occupation and annexation of southern Lebanon, whose water resources Israel covets.

Twice the vaunted Israel Army has been chased out of Lebanon by Hezbollah. Israel’s military reputation cannot risk a third defeat by a mere militia, so Israel is using its control over US foreign policy and its rock solid alliance with the neoconservatives to use the US military to destabilize Syria and Iran as the US did to Iraq and Libya.

Additionally, there is the crazed neoconservative ideology of US world hegemony. The interests of Russia and China are in the way of US hegemony. Therefore, these two countries are defined as “threats.” Russia and China are not threats because they intend to attack the US, which neither has shown any indication of doing. They are threats because they are in opposition to US unilateralism which overrides their sovereignty. In other words, to be clear, the US cannot tolerate any country that has an independent foreign or economic policy.

That Russia and China have independent policies is the reason that they are “threats.”

It would be a mistake to conclude that diplomacy has prevailed and common sense has returned to Washington. Nothing could be further from the truth. The issue is not resolved. War remains on the horizon.

Is It Russian Surrender that Is on the Agenda or World War 3?

DATELINE: April 14, 2018

“As US President Donald Trump is said to be considering a full scale ground assault against the Syrian administration of President Bashar al-Assad, the top UN official has decried the onset of a new global Cold War and warned against “full-blown military escalation” in the war-torn region.” https://sputniknews.com/military/201804151063572249-UN-head-warns-of-escalation/

If this report of a US ground invasion of Syria is true, which I doubt, it will be a consequence of Russian passivity in the face of Washington’s aggression.

Is the Russian government too humane to comprehend the evil that Russia confronts?

If Russia and China do not take steps to defeat the US before Washington forces nuclear war on the world, we are all doomed.

The American people are denied information, are uninformed, and helpless. The same is true for Europe and Britain, Canada, Australia, Japan.

Even if the peoples knew, they are impotent.

Putin often relies on non-existent or impotent common sense in the West, but does Russia have enough common sense to realize that there is no common sense in the West that can be effective?

The Russian government does not understand that the “rule of law” constructed by Washington is not a rule of law. It is a rule of Washington’s rule. Washington owns Europe, Canada, Australia, Japan, the Atlanticist Integrationists inside Russia, and the UN. This is why Russia’s appeal to the UN is pointless, as Russia just again learned: https://www.rt.com/news/424171-unsc-russia-resolution-syria/

To restate the point once again, the passivity of the Putin government in the face of Washington’s aggressiveness is leading directly to nuclear war and the end of life on earth.

Why Do They Tell US Transparent Lies?

DATELINE: April 15, 2018

US officials and the presstitutes tell us that the illegal US missile attack on Syria destroyed chemical weapons sites where chlorine and sarin are stored/manufactured. If this were true, would not a lethal cloud have been released that would have taken the lives of far more people than claimed in the alleged Syrian chemical attack on Douma? Would not the US missile attack be identical to a chemical weapons attack and thus place the US and its vassals in the same category as Washington is attempting to place Assad and Putin?

What about it, you chemical weapons experts? Do chemical weapons only release their elements when they explode from intended use but not when they explode from being militarily attacked?

There is no evidence in Syria of chemical residue from the chemical weapons facilities allegedly destroyed by US missiles. No dead victims. No reports of hospitals treating Syrian casualties of the American chemical attack. How can this be if such sites were actually hit?

When I was a Wall Street Journal editor newspapers had competent journalists to whom such a question would occur. But no more. Stephen Lendman takes the New York Times to task for its unprofessionalism. The NY Times is no longer a news source. It is a propaganda megaphone. http://stephenlendman.org/2018/04/nyt-imperial-mouthpiece-2/

PCR with feline children.

About the Author

Paul Craig Roberts is a former Assistant Secretary of the US Treasury and Associate Editor of the Wall Street Journal. Roberts’ How the Economy Was Lost is now available from CounterPunch in electronic format. His latest book is The Neoconservative Threat to World Order.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.

Parting shot—a word from the editors
The Best Definition of Donald Trump We Have Found

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