Saoedi-Arabië geeft toe gruwelijke oorlogsmisdaden te hebben begaan in Jemen en nog
onderneemt men geen stappen tegen deze bloederige dictatuur, die
schunnig genoeg door de reguliere westerse media, het grootste deel
van de westerse politici en zelfs door Wikipedia wordt aangeduid als ‘koninkrijk…..’ Bovendien wordt S-A door diezelfde media en politici regelmatig genoemd als bestrijder van terreur……
Nee,
Saoedi-Arabië geeft haar gruwelijke oorlogsmisdaden natuurlijk niet
letterlijk toe, oorlogsmisdaden waarvan verreweg de grootste wel het uitvoeren van een genocide is, een genocide op de sjiitische bevolking van
Jemen…
Hele
huizenblokken heeft de Saoedische coalitie onder regie en met hulp
van de VS platgegooid, dit nog naast de vernieling van ziekenhuizen,
scholen, energiecentrales, waterzuiveringsinstallaties en de
infrastructuur in brede zin, zoals de riolering, waardoor een cholera uitbraak kon
ontstaan…… (een cholera uitbraak die nog steeds een groot aantal slachtoffers maakt, een paar weken geleden bombardeerde Saoedi-Arabië nog een ziekenhuis dat net was opgeleverd, een ziekenhuis van Artsen zonder Grenzen en gespecialiseerd in cholera…..*)
Door
de acties van de Saoediërs is er ook honger ontstaan in Jemen (weet
je nog de landelijke actie eind maart vorig jaar?) en heeft het land
sinds vorig jaar ook te kampen met een difterie uitbraak….. Ondanks dat blokkeert S-A met hulp van de Verenigde Arabische Emiraten (VAE) en de VS het door de Houthi’s beheerste gebied, waardoor humanitaire hulpgoederen niet of amper de zo onder terreur liggende bevolking bereiken…….
Terug
naar de reden voor dit bericht: de reli-fascistische dictatuur van
Saoedi-Arabië heeft besloten haar militairen niet te vervolgen voor
de misdaden begaan tegen het sjiitische volk van Jemen, dit om de
‘heroïsche inzet’ van de militairen te vieren……. Hoe godvergeten
cynisch wil je het hebben..???!!!! Jezus op een houtvlot!!
Lullig genoeg heeft de Saoedische dictatuur het voor elkaar gekregen van de VN dat het zelf de wandaden van haar politie (ook in eigen land gaat S-A tekeer tegen sjiieten..) en het leger mag onderzoeken…… Terecht vraagt Jason Ditz zich in het hieronder opgenomen artikel af, wat de zin van zo’n onderzoek is, als je van tevoren al zegt niet te zullen vervolgen, sterker nog: deze militairen zelfs te zullen eren…….
Wedden dat de VS en Israël, beiden als S-A terreurstaten, dit land hebben gesteund in haar eis aan de VN zelf onderzoek in te stellen?
Als het Internationaal Strafhof (ICC) in Den Haag nu geen onderzoek instelt naar de genocide die S-A uitvoert op de sjiieten in Jemen, toont het voorgoed aan totaal overbodig en een lachertje te zijn!!
Saudi
Arabia Issues Royal Pardon for Everything Soldiers Have Done in Yemen
The
Saudi invasion of Yemen has been widely controversial
internationally. Saudi airstrikes have killed massive numbers of
Yemeni civilians, and the war has also caused a famine, and the
largest cholera epidemic in human history.
Faced
with UN criticism, Saudi officials heavily resisted allegations of
wrongdoing, and ultimately got the UN to agree that Saudi Arabia
would be allowed to investigate its own forces, and police
themselves. This pardon shows none of that is going to matter.
It
is unclear what prompted the pardon to be offered no, as the war
shows no sign of ending, and there is no suggestion from official
reports that the Saudis had punished any of their troops more than
nominally for war crimes in the first place.
Het Britse bedrijf Strategic
Communication Laboratories (SCL Group), waarvan de VS tak ofwel
dochtermaatschappij het vermaledijde Cambridge Analytica is, viel fiks
door de mand (met bewijzen >> gelekte officiële documenten) voor o.a. het manipuleren van
verkiezingen, terwijl voor ‘Russische manipulaties na godbetert 2 jaar nog steeds geen
flinter aan bewijs is geleverd……..’ Overigens ook in WikiLeaks zijn bewijzen te vinden van VS manipulaties van verkiezingen elders… Zo de waard is vertrouwt deze zijn/haar gasten, om nog eens een cliché aan te halen, al is de waard de VS …..
SCL gebruikte in 2009 m.n. Jemen als
proefgebied voor haar smerige spelletjes….. De in Jemen ontwikkelde
onderzoeks- en psychologische tactieken, werden later gebruikt tegen
bevolkingen de wereld rond, o.a. in landen als Libië, Syrië en
Iran……
SCL heeft een dubieuze reputatie van
stoken in conflictgebieden, zoals deze organisatie dit heeft gedaan in Nigeria, Oekraïne, Litouwen en
in meerdere westerse landen…… (zie de link onder het hieronder opgenomen artikel)
Randi Nord, schrijver van het hieronder opgenomen artikel, eerder gepubliceerd op Geopolitics Alert, neemt m.n. Project Titania onder de loep, dit is het project van SCL dat in 2009 van start ging in Jemen, een project waarvan men de uitkomsten heeft ingezet in een aantal andere landen…..
Heel smerig is het gebruik van informatie door SCL, informatie die door o.a. NGO’s werd verzameld…… SCL Group gebruikte (en gebruikt) deze informatie voor psychologische manipulaties en zelfs voor psychologische oorlogsvoering……. SCL Group lanceerde Project Titania t.b.v. een militaire onderaannemer genaamd Archimedes……..
Sinds Project Titania van start ging hebben de VS en de Verenigde Arabische Emiraten (VAE) 18 ‘black site prisons’ geopend in Jemen, ofwel geheime gevangenissen waar men martelt en de ergste vorm van marteling >> verkrachting toepast op gevangenen die niet eens zijn veroordeeld, gevangenen van wie niemand uit de achterban weet waar ze zijn, zoals je zal begrijpen uit het voorgaande…..
Cambridge
Analytica Parent Co. Used Yemen as Test Site for Global Manipulation
Tactics
London (GPA)
– Leaked documents show that Strategic Communication Laboratories
(SCL), the parent company of the notorious Cambridge Analytica,
carried out a surveillance operation embedded among local Yemeni
populations in 2009. The research and psychological tactics of
deception were likely later used against populations around the world
including Libya, Syria, and Iran where SCL Group carried out
various operations to influence social climates on behalf of their
clients.
SLC
Group has a dubious history of stirring up trouble with
“psychological warfare” in places like Nigeria, Ukraine, Latvia
and many Western countries.
The
leaked documents, obtained by the Grayzone
Project,
detail a program called “Project Titania” carried out in Yemen
which SCL Group appears to have used for honing their psychological
manipulation skills. Grayzone spoke
with a media professional who SCL attempted to recruit for an
operation in Iran in 2009.
According
to SCL Group, they launched Project Titania on behalf of an entity
called Archimedes — a U.S.-based military contractor. This
highlights the dangers of private companies like Facebook and Google
merging with the military-industrial complex.
Since
launching Project Titania, the United States and United Arab Emirates
have opened 18
black site prisons in
Yemen for arbitrarily detaining, torturing, and sexually abusing
Project
Titania
Strategic
Communication Laboratories (SLC) launched Project Titania in 2009
between June and July in very specific areas of Yemen’s Marib
province and al-Mukalla city in Hadramaut province. Working on behalf
of their client (a U.S.-based military contractor), SCL Group chose
these locations after careful consideration and research about
al-Qaeda’s (AQAP) growing presence.
Project
Titania included four main phases: motivation and segmentation,
research plan, field phase, analysis, and reporting. The experience
SCL Group gained and the tactics they used were later employed
throughout the rest of the world for other clients.
In
Yemen, SCL’s goal with Project Titania was to reduce what they
called “non-desired behaviors” or NDB by using something called
“communication campaigns.” In Project Titania’s case, “the
non-desired behavior” involved young men joining terrorist groups
like al-Qaeda. Research leading up to the communication campaign
included recorded interviews and questionnaires with local Yemenis
while deceiving respondents about the interview’s or
questionnaire’s purpose.
The
victims’ responses were later used to determine if NDBs (joining
terrorist groups)
could
be reduced through deceptive intervention techniques.
Open-source
Deskwork
A
large portion of Project Titania took place before the foreign agents
even began conducting interviews. Researchers at SCL Group used
open-source information from NGOs, local publications, census data,
“earlier studies,” and other entities deemed relevant or
accurate.This draws into question the role non-governmental
organizations play supporting the military-industrial complex.
The
public doesn’t hear about this scenario too often, but it’s
really not uncommon for U.S. military contractors or other
individuals with ulterior motives to seek employment at NGOs. In
2015, the Yemeni resistance group Ansarullah (aka. the Houthis)
apprehended a U.S.
military contractor working
undercover for the Red Cross in Yemen. The contractor, Scott Darden,
was tasked with setting up sleeper cells and safe houses for U.S.
commando units inside Ansarullah-held territory.
Going
Undercover
SCL
Group employed what they called “Researchers” to conduct recorded
interviews with local Yemenis to gather psychosocial information
about relevant issues, historic context, language, literacy, channel
exposure, channel credibility, noise, values, attitudes and beliefs,
current behavior, common enemies, binary opposition, decision paths,
power structures, message appeals, skills, intent, motivations, and
everything else that makes a person tick.
SCL
Group’s “Researchers” told the victims that the questionnaires
and interviews were for seemingly benign purposes like market
research. “Prior
to completing the interview or the questionnaire, all
participants will be given a rationale for the study (i.e., that the
study is part of a university research programme or a market research
programme),” the
document reads.
Each
questionnaire contained 35 questions and took about 30 minutes to
complete. SCL Group carried out 30 in-depth interviews and a
staggering 300 guided interviews during a mere month-long period in
the two target locations. The respondents were also asked to provide
their gender, education level, income level, religious affiliation,
and other demographic data in addition to the psychosocial questions.
Understanding
and Using the Data
Groups
of eight Researchers were lead by a team leader known as a Research
Leader. Their goals were to answer the following questions about
al-Qaeda in Marib and al-Mukalla but it’s easy to see how the same
strategy was later applied elsewhere among different populations with
different goals.
Accessibility: how
easy is it to gain access into the group or contact people in the
group?
Salience
of Impact: how
likely is the communication campaign to change NDB?
Problem
Relevance: how
relevant is a factor to the client’s goals and objectives?
Measurability: any
instance of applying numbers to the behavior
Influenceability: how
likely is the campaign to influence the target audience behavior?
The
research described here was part of a larger campaign to influence
behavior in Marib and al-Mukalla. The entire project included three
steps: identify campaign target groups (CTG), understand
campaign target groups to develop an influencing plan, and
understanding a target audience to create an influence path to the
CTG.
A
Few Things…
In
Project Titania’s case, the “campaign target group” included
young men at risk for joining al-Qaeda but, again, it’s very easy
to see how this same strategy could be applied in numerous situations
to produce a desirable social climate for any client.
It’s
possible that these tactics were used by one entity or another for
several purposes since 2009 including in now-current war zones like
Syria or Libya as well as elections in various countries throughout
the entire world.
The
detailed assessment and analysis SCL Group conducted of Marib and
al-Mukalla shows that similar or affiliated entities like Cambridge
Analytica run into no trouble gathering publicly available or
user-provided information from social media, NGOs, censuses, and
other sources before even lifting a finger to conduct their own
questionnaires or interviews.
However,
SCL Group’s detailed assessment of Yemen’s 2009 current and
future political situation were not at all accurate as they described
the overall political security as “country collapse currently
slim.” We all know how that’s worked out.
The
report mainly appeared concerned with AQAP and, to a lesser extent,
Yemen’s southern separatist movement al-Hirak. Unsurprisingly, SCL
Group highly underestimated Ansarullah’s potential for gaining
enough public support to control the capital city and most of the
northern provinces. Their report knocks the Houthis for “draining
precious military resources” (the then-president Ali Abdullah Saleh
was receiving military support from the United States to keep
al-Qaeda at bay).
The
report also counters Saudi
Arabia’s line that
Ansarullah (the Houthis) are a terrorist group. The document mentions
that hostilities might occur, but it mentions nothing about violent
terror attacks on civilians akin to al-Qaeda. If SCL Group (or the
U.S. military contractor they were conducting Project Titania on
behalf of) believed that the Houthi group was apt to launch similar
attacks or behave like al-Qaeda, SCL probably would have lumped them
into the project’s research.
It’s
also worth mentioning that since Project Titania, the United States
and United Arab Emirates have set up a series of 18 black site
detention centers throughout areas of Yemen under their control. The
victims are swept up under the guise of fighting al-Qaeda, but locals
say the men were arbitrarily detained and forced into confessions
with physical and sexual torture.
These
documents were released by the Grayzone
Project as
the first in a two-part series. Featured photo: a woman walks near
the Marib ruins by Will De Freitas on Flickr.
====================================
Zoals al vaker op deze plek verzucht: het is de allerhoogste tijd dat de VS, Groot-Brittannië en bedrijven als SCL voor het Internationaal Strafhof (ICC) worden gedaagd!
Zie ook:
‘Martin Vrijland ontmaskerde SCL groep al voordat The New York Times dat deed over verkiezingsbeïnvloeding‘ (SCL is o.a. mede verantwoordelijk voor de coup in Oekraïne, de coup tegen de democratisch gekozen president Janoekovytsj, dit deed SCL als onderaannemer van de VS regering en in dit geval in innige samenwerking met Hillary Clinton,destijds minister van BuZa Hillary Clinton, die hier maar liefst meer dan 4 miljard dollar voor uittrok….. SCL werkt voorts nauw samen met de uiterst agressieve oorlogshond van de VS, de NAVO….)
Het
zal voor weinigen nog een verrassing zijn dat de gewelddadige psychopaat Pompeo een enorme
schoft is die vaker liegt dan de waarheid spreekt. Het laatste
‘wapenfeit’ (althans voor zover ik weet) is zijn uiteenzetting over
de gaande zijnde genocide in Jemen (een genocide die hij ‘als christen uiteraard’ niet zo noemt).
Ploert Pompeo durft de schuld voor de ellende van de bevolking in Jemen in de schoenen van Iran te schuiven, terwijl de enige bemoeienis van Iran met de dood voor ogen hebbende sjiitische bevolking in Jemen, het sturen van humanitaire
hulpgoederen is……. Voor al de door de VS en Saoedi-Arabië gemaakte
beschuldigingen aan het adres van Iran, dat het wapens, raketten en militaire training zou geven aan de Houthi rebellen, is tot op heden niet één
bewijs geleverd, terwijl die beschuldigingen al een paar jaar lang
worden gemaakt…….
De
Saoedische coalitie die in feite een illegale oorlog voert tegen de Jemenitische sjiieten (onder regie en met hulp van de VS), heeft door haar bombardementen
en blokkades gezorgd voor een gigantische cholera uitbraak waar, bovenop ook
nog eens een grote difterie uitbraak plaatsvond en dat voor een bevolking
die honger lijdt….. Ziekenhuizen, scholen, elektriciteitscentrales,
waterzuiveringsinstallaties, en hele woonwijken werden door de
Saoedische coalitie gebombardeerd, allen enorme oorlogsmisdaden!! Het
laatste ziekenhuis dat door deze moorddadige coalitie werd
gebombardeerd was een net afgebouwd ziekenhuis van Artsen zonder
Grenzen, een ziekenhuis om de cholera uitbraak te bestrijden……
De
VS tankt de straaljagers en bommenwerpers van deze Saoedische
coalitie af in de lucht, zodat ze zo ‘efficiënt’ mogelijk hun
moorddadig werk kunnen doen….. Voorts
helpt de VS de Saoediërs mee met de blokkade op zee en vechten er
met grote regelmaat VS speciale troepen op de grond in Jemen*, zogenaamd
ingezet tegen IS, maar blijkbaar denkt de VS legerleiding dat de
Houthi rebellen voor IS vechten, terwijl ze dondersgoed weten dat de
Houthi’s juist erg succesvol waren in het bestrijden van IS en Al Qaida, die onderdak kregen in Jemen van de huidige ‘president’ Al-Hadi, voordat deze vrijwillig vertrok (S-A zette hem onder druk terug te
keren zodat hij de Saoediërs te hulp kon roepen in de strijd tegen de
Houthi rebellen en S-A met haar moorddadig werk tegen de sjiitische bevolking van Jemen en haar beschermers de Houthi rebellen kon beginnen….)
Voorts levert de VS, als Groot-Brittannië, wapens, munitie (waaronder een tijdlang clusterbommen en sinds kort ook ‘slimme munitie’), training en militaire hardware als straaljagers en ander moorddadig wapentuig, aan de reli-fascistische dictatuur in Saoedi-Arabië……. (dit nog naast het adviseren van het Saoedische militaire apparaat, ofwel het regisseren en coördineren van bombardementen en gevechtsacties op de grond, door dezelfde VS…..)
Pompeo
zou vervolgd moeten worden voor zijn enorme leugens (en oorlogshitserij), die voor velen
zelfs een doodvonnis betekenden……. (waar men meteen even kan kijken voor welke moorden en andere smerige praktijken Pompeo als verantwoordelijk is aan te wijzen tijdens zijn functie als directeur van de CIA……..)
Lees het volgende ontluisterend artikel van Daniel Larison (die overigens niet over een genocide spreekt, terwijl dat wel degelijk het geval is..), eerder gepubliceerd op The American Conservative:
#Iran’s support for Houthis in Yemen not only enables attacks on Saudi Arabia & UAE, but also risks increasing Yemen’s already massive humanitarian crisis. Ayatollah Khamenei must be held accountable for destabilizing Gulf’s security & prolonging suffering of the Yemeni people.
The
administration has consistently focused on the small Iranian role in
Yemen and exaggerated its importance while doing everything possible
to cover for the Saudis and Emiratis at the same time that the U.S.
has aided and abetted their bombing campaign and the many war crimes
they have committed. Even now that the coalition is launching an
offensive on the major port of Hodeidah that serves the vast majority
of the population, the U.S. is not calling them out for their
destabilizing and destructive activities. Instead of condemning the
coalition for putting millions of Yemeni lives in jeopardy, the U.S.
helps them to attack their impoverished neighbor.
Instead of using
its influence with these governments to rein in their abuses and
alleviate the civilian population’s suffering, the U.S. gives them
carte blanche, never criticizes them even when they massacre
wedding-goers and
refugees, and goes out of its way to fault one of the few governments
in the region that isn’t attacking Yemen for the country’s
miserable state.
The
humanitarian crisis in Yemen is the worst in the world, and the
coalition blockade and bombing campaign are principal causes of that
crisis. If the administration were even slightly concerned with
addressing the suffering of Yemen’s people, it would not be
providing weapons, intelligence, and refueling to the coalition, and
it would be holding them accountable for their numerous and egregious
war crimes and crimes against humanity. They aren’t concerned, and
so they continue to support the war on Yemen no matter what the
coalition does.
Support for this war is indefensible, so it is no
wonder that top U.S. officials have to try to distract the world from
what our government is enabling in Yemen. It is the Saudi and Emirati
governments along with ours and the coalition’s other Western
patrons that need to be called out and held accountable for creating
the disaster engulfing the people of Yemen.
Daniel
Larison is a senior editor at The
American Conservative,
where he also keeps a solo blog.
He has been published in the New
York Times Book Review, Dallas Morning News, Orthodox Life, Front
Porch Republic, The American Scene, and Culture11,
and is a columnist for The
Week.
He holds a PhD in history from the University of Chicago, and resides
in Dallas. Follow him on Twitter.
This article is reprinted from The
American Conservativewith
permission.
===================================
* Volgens zeggen zouden die troepen permanent in Jemen zijn, echter dat is moeilijk aan te tonen, daar men geen pottenkijkers wenst als het moorddadig werk, ofwel grootschalige terreur wordt uitgeoefend………
Ben
Rhodes, adviseur van Obama tijdens diens presidentschap, gaf in een
interview schoorvoetend toe dat Obama en hijzelf wisten dat
terreurgroepen als IS door de VS werden bewapend en ondersteund en
zelfs vochten onder leiding van de VS……
Niets
nieuws zou je zeggen, immers dat de VS de zogenaamde gematigde
rebellen (psychopathische moordenaars, verkrachters en martelbeulen)
steunden met o.a. wapens en transportmiddelen was al lang geen geheim
meer, althans voor mensen die verder kijken dan wat de reguliere westerse
(massa-) media aan ‘nieuws’ brengen.
Het
nieuwe is wel het toegegeven van deze zaken door de rechterhand van
Obama, ten tijde van diens presidentschap, al moet daar onmiddellijk
aan toegevoegd worden dat zoals gezegd een aantal zaken al lang bekend waren,
zoals het onder leiding van de VS vechten van het Vrije Syrische Leger (FSA) in combinatie met IS…. Zaken die door de reguliere westerse
media en het grootste deel van de westerse politici worden afgedaan
als samenzweringstheorieën en ‘fake news….’ (nogmaals dit wordt gezegd over feitelijke berichtgeving in de sociale media en Wikileaks, terwijl wat betreft op de laatste site, die van Wikileaks, officiële documenten van de VS overheid zijn te vinden die e.e.a. bevestigen….)
In
2013 werkte VS ambassadeur in Syrië, Robert Ford, nauw samen met een
bekende IS commandant, zo heeft Ford zelf toegegeven……
Lees
het volgende ontluisterende artikel van Tyler Durden over deze zaak
(eerder gepubliceerd op Zero Hedge), het steunen door de VS van
jihadistische terreurgroepen, die liefkozend ‘gematigde rebellen’
worden genoemd en waartoe, zoals nogmaals blijkt, zelfs een tijdlang IS
behoorde…… Het lullige is wel dat gezien de feiten je niet
anders kan dan de volgende conclusie trekken: de VS heeft zelfs aan
‘de wieg van IS’ gestaan…….. (en ook dat is al veel langer bekend >> zie de links onder dit bericht…..)
Oh ja, mocht je het vergeten zijn: Obama kreeg de Nobelprijs voor de Vrede…. ha! ha! ha! ha! ha! ha! ha!
Obama
Adviser: We Knew We Were Arming and Funding Terrorists in Syria
Rhodes
has been described as being so trusted and close to Obama that
he was“in
the room” for almost every foreign policy decision of
significancethat
Obama made during his eight years in office. While
the Intercept interview
is worth listening to in full, it’s the segment on Syria that
caught our attention.
Did
you intervene too much in Syria? Because
the CIA spent hundreds of millions of dollars funding and arming
anti-Assad rebels,a
lot of those arms, as you know, ended up in the hands of jihadist
groups, some even in the hands of ISIS.
Your
critics would say you exacerbated that proxy war in Syria; you
prolonged the conflict in Syria; you
ended up bolstering jihadists.
Rhodes
initially rambles about his book and “second guessing” Syria
policy in avoidance of the question. But Hasan pulls him back with
the following: “Oh,
come on, but you were coordinating a lot of their arms.”
The
two spar over Hasan’s charge of “bolstering jihadists” in the
following key
section of the interview,
at the end of which Rhodes reluctantly answers “yeah…”— but
while trying to pass ultimate blame onto US allies Turkey, Qatar, and
Saudi Arabia (similar to what Vice President Biden did in
a 2014 speech):
MH: Oh,
come on, but you were coordinating a lot of their arms.You
know, the U.S. was heavily involved in that war with the Saudis and
the Qataris and the Turks.
BR: Well,
I was going to say:Turkey, Qatar, Saudi.
MH: You
were in there as well.
BR: Yeah,
but, the fact of the matter isthat
once it kind of devolved into kind of a sectarian-based civil war
with different sides fighting for their perceived survival, I think
we, the ability to bring that type of situation to close, and part of
what I wrestled with in the book is the limits of our ability to pull
a lever and make killing like that stop once it’s underway.
Deputy
National Security adviser Ben Rhodes and President Obama. Image
source: AP via Commentary Magazine
To
our knowledge this is the
only time a major media organization has directly asked a
high ranking foreign policy adviser from the Obama administration to
own up to the years long White
House support to jihadists in Syria.
Though
the interview was published Friday, its significance went without
notice or comment in the mainstream media over the weekend (perhaps
predictably). Instead, what did circulate was a Newsweek article
mocking “conspiracy theories” surrounding the rapid rise of
ISIS, including
the following:
President
Donald Trump has done little to dispel the myth of direct American
support for ISIS since he took office. On the campaign trail in
2016, Trump
claimed—without
providing any evidence—that President Obama and then-Secretary of
State Hillary Clinton co-founded the group and that ISIS “honors”
the former president.
Meanwhile,
mainstream media has been content to float the falsehood that
President Obama’s legacy is that he “stayed
out” of Syria,
instead merely approving some negligible level of aid to
so-called “moderate” rebels who were fighting both Assad and (supposedly)
the Islamic State. Rhodes
has himself in prior interviews attempted to portray Obama as wisely
staying “on
the sidelines” in Syria.
But
as we’ve pointed
out many
times over the years, this narrative ignores and seeks to
whitewash possibly the
largest CIA covert program in history,
started by Obama, which armed and funded a jihadist insurgency bent
of overthrowing Assad to the tune of $1 billion
a year (one-fifteenth
of the CIA’s publicly
knownbudget according
to leaked Edward Snowden documents revealed
by the Washington
Post).
Syria
experts, as well as a
New York Times report which
largely passed without notice, verified the below footage from
2013 showing
then US Ambassador to Syria Robert Ford working closely with a
“rebel” leader who exercised operational command over known ISIS
terrorists(Ambassador
Ford has since acknowledged
the relationship to McClatchy News):
This
latest Ben
Rhodes non-denial-cum-sheepish-affirmation on
the Obama White House’s arming jihadists in Syria follows
previous bombshell reporting by Mehdi Hasan from 2015.
As
host of Al Jazeera’s Head
to Head,
Hasan asked the former head of Pentagon intelligence under Obama,
General Michael Flynn, who
is to blame for the rise of ISIS? (the
August 2015 interview was significantly prior to Flynn joining
Trump’s campaign).
Hasan
presented Flynn with the 2012
Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) declassified memo revealing
Washington support to al-Qaeda and ISIS terrorists in Syria in order
to counter both Assad and Iran. Flynn affirmed Hasan’s charge
that it was “a willful
decision to
support an insurgency that had Salafists, Al Qaeda and the Muslim
Brotherhood…”.
Soon
after, The
Intercept’s Glenn
Greenwald appeared on Democracy
Now to
discuss the shocking contents of the Flynn interview:
It
will be interesting to see years from now which “narrative”
concerning Obama’s legacy in the Syrian conflict future historians
choose to emphasize.
…Obama
the president who “stayed out” and “on the sidelines” in
Syria? …Or Obama the president whose decisions fueled
the rise of the most brutal terrorist organization the world has ever
seen?
Below
is the relevant excerpt covering Syria from the 26-minute Intercept
interview with
Obama deputy national-security adviser Ben Rhodes [bold emphasis
ours].
Mehdi
Hasan:My
guest today was at President Obama’s side every step of the way
over the course of those two terms in office. Ben Rhodes joined the
Obama election campaign in 2007 as a foreign-policy speechwriter,
when he was just 29, and rose to become a deputy national-security
adviser at the White House, who was so intellectually and
ideologically close to his boss that he was often described as having
a mind-meld with Obama.
Ben,
who currently works at the Obama Foundation, has written a new book,
“The World as It Is: A Memoir of the Obama White House.” And
earlier this week I interviewed him about Obama’s rather
contentious foreign policy record…
…
MH:But
Ben, here’s what I don’t get, if you’re saying this about
Afghanistan and prolonged conflict, all of which I don’t disagree
with what you’re saying.How
do you, then, explain Syria?Because
you’ve been criticized a lot. I’ve been listening to your
interviews on the book tour; you talk about in the book about how you
were criticized for not doing enough on Syria. I remember being an
event in D.C. a couple years ago where Syrian opposition members were
berating you for not doing enough at an event, and you often were the
public face who came out and defended Obama. I
want to come to the other direction and say: Did you intervene too
much in Syria? Because the CIA spent hundreds of millions of dollars
funding and arming anti-Assad rebels,a
lot of those arms, as you know, ended up in the hands of jihadist
groups, some even in the hands of ISIS.Your
critics would say you exacerbated that proxy war in Syria; you
prolonged the conflict in Syria; you
ended up bolstering jihadists.
Ben
Rhodes:Well,
what I try to do in the book is, you know, essentially raise — all
the second guessing on Syria tends to be not what you expressed,
Mehdi, but the notion that we should’ve taken military action.
MH:Yes.
BR:What
I do in the book is I try to look back at 2011 and 2012, was there a
diplomatic window that we missed or that we, in some ways, escalated
its closure by pivoting to the call for Assad to go — which
obviously I believe should happen, I believe Assad has been a
terrible leader for Syria and has brutalized his people — but,
you know, was there a diplomatic initiative that could have been
taken to try to avert or at least minimize the extent of the civil
war. Because, you know, what ended up happening essentially there is,
you know, we were probably too optimistic that, you know, after
Mubarak went and Ben Ali and eventually Saleh and Gaddafi, that you
would have a situation where Assad would go. And, you know, not
factoring in enough the assistance he was going to get from Russia
and Iran, combined with his own nihilism, and how that could lead him
to survive. So I do look back at that potentially missed diplomatic
opportunity.
On
the support of the opposition, you know, I don’t know that I would
give us that much agency.
There
are a lot of people putting arms into Syria, funding all sorts of —
MH: Oh,
come on, but you were coordinating a lot of their arms.You
know, the
U.S. was heavily involved in that warwith
the Saudis and the Qataris and the Turks.
BR:Well,
I was going to say: Turkey,
Qatar, Saudi.
MH:You
were in there as well.
BR:Yeah,
but, the fact of the matter is that once it kind of devolved into
kind of a sectarian-based civil war with different sides fighting for
their perceived survival, I think we, the ability to bring that type
of situation to close, and part of what I wrestled with in the book
is the limits of our ability to pull a lever and make killing like
that stop once it’s underway.
So
that’s why I still look to that initial opening window. I also
describe, there was a slight absurdity in the fact that we were
debating options to provide military support to the opposition at the
same time that we were deciding to designate al-Nusra, a big chunk of
that opposition, as a terrorist organization. So
there was kind of a schizophrenia that’s inherent in a lot of U.S.
foreign policy that came to a head in Syria.
MH:That’s
a very good word, especially to describe Syria
policy…
Het
is al tijden duidelijk dat Iran het volgende land na Syrië is, waar
de grootste terreurentiteit op aarde, ofwel de VS zal toeslaan om een
verandering van regime door te voeren. Anders gezegd: de VS zal Iran voor een groot deel kapot bombarderen en in stukken opdelen, zodat het in de nabije toekomst
geen kans heeft om ook nog maar enige factor van betekenis te spelen in het Midden-Oosten……..
Israël
is al een paar jaar bezig om de boel in het westen op te hitsen tegen
Iran, zie in de afgelopen tijd de tocht van de psychopathische rotschoft en Israëlische premier Netanyahu, de
Palestijnenslachter, langs de parlementen van EU lidstaten en het
EU parlement……
Terwijl
Netanyahu het ene bloedbad na het andere aanricht onder de
Palestijnen en naar goeddunken Syrische bases aanvalt (zogenaamd
vanwege bevoorrading van Hezbollah in Libanon….), wijst hij met z’n
in bloed gedrenkte armen (beter: poten) naar Iran als
grote agressor…….
Waarschijnlijk
heeft de VS nu al groepen in Iran opgezet tegen de regering en mocht
deze vaak door de VS beproefde methode niet lukken (wat alweer hoogst
waarschijnlijk niet zal gebeuren, zoals dit ook in Syrië niet lukte),
is het zeer waarschijnlijk dat de VS Iran zal aanvallen, gesteund
door de Israëlische terreurluchtmacht….
Als
dit gebeurd zullen op zeker terreurgroepen als IS en Al Qaida op de
grond vechten tegen Iraanse troepen, zij aan zij met VS troepen
gesteund door een paar NAVO landen, als Australië, Groot-Brittannië,
Polen en Hongarije……. (waar je niet hoeft op te kijken als ook Rutte 3 niet minstens haar steun aan de VS zal uitspreken….)
Overigens is dit bepaald niet de eerste vorm van agressie die de VS tegen het Iraanse volk zal gebruiken, neem de door de CIA toegegeven coup tegen de democratisch gekozen regering Mossadegh in 1953 en de smerige economische oorlogsvoering van de VS tegen dit land…….
Lees
het volgende artikel van Caitlin Johnstone, waarin zij uitlegt waarom
de VS Iran zal aanvallen.
(CJ Opinion) — I
have been saying
all year that
the 8chan
phenomenon known as “QAnon” is
bogus, and as time has gone on the evidence has become overwhelming
that it is an establishment psyop designed to herd the populist right
into accepting the narratives and agendas of the establishment
orthodoxy. Whether they’re claiming that every capitulation
the Trump administration makes to longstanding neoconservative
agendas is
actually brilliant 4-D chess strategy, or saying that Julian Assange
isn’t really trapped in the Ecuadorian embassy, QAnon enthusiasts
are constantly regurgitating talking points which just so happen to
fit in very conveniently with the interests of America’s defense
and intelligence agencies.
A
recent “Q drop” (a fancy name for an anonymous user posting text
onto a popular internet troll message board with zero
accountability) makes
this more abundantly clear than ever,
with text reading as follows:
Free
Iran!!!
Fight
Fight
Fight
Regime change.
People have
the power.
We stand with you.
Q
Once
you’re cheering for a longtime neoconservative agenda to be
accomplished in one of George W Bush’s “Axis
of Evil”
countries, you are cheering for the establishment. Or, to put it more
clearly to Q followers, you are cheering for the deep state.
So
now you have conspiracy-minded populist right wingers being
manipulated into supporting the same standard Bush administration
globalist agendas that Alex Jones built his career on attacking. The
support for regime change interventionism in Iran isn’t limited to
the QAnon crowd, having now gone fully mainstream throughout Trump’s
base, and I’d like to address a few of the arguments here that they
have been bringing to me:
“Iran
is nowhere near the same thing as Iraq, Libya or Syria!”
Please
go look at a globe and think a little harder about your position
here. Iran is a target for regime change for the exact same reasons
its neighbors Iraq and Syria have been; it occupies and extremely
strategically significant location in an oil-rich region that the
US-centralized empire wants full control of. Thinking this one is
different because its government isn’t secular is the product of
many years of Islamophobic propaganda; the plutocrats and their
allied intelligence and defense agencies don’t care what religion
sits on top of their oil, and Saudi Arabia proves it. Any argument
made against Iranian theocracy could be made even more strongly
against KSA theocracy, but you don’t see Sean Hannity advocating
the overthrow of the Saudi royals, do you?
“But
this regime change intervention would be completely different!”
No
it wouldn’t. There has never been a US-led regime change
intervention in the Middle East that wasn’t disastrous. Cheering
for regime change interventionism in Iran is cheering for all the
destabilization, chaos, terror, death, rape and slavery that always
necessarily comes with such interventions. Wanting to inflict that
upon the world is monstrous.
“This
is different, though! This one is led by Trump! Look at all that he’s
accomplished in North Korea!”
Okay,
three things:
All
that Trump has done with North Korea is take the very first step in
the most rudimentary beginnings of peace talks. I fully support him
in taking that step, but you can’t legitimately treat it as an
“accomplishment” which proves that he is a strategic genius
capable of facilitating the impossible task of non-disastrous regime
change in Iran.
Even
if Trump does help bring abiding peace to the Korean Peninsula, it
won’t legitimize regime change interventionism in Iran. Hell, even
if Trump gets North Korea to denuclearize (and he won’t), it still
wouldn’t legitimize regime change interventionism in Iran. US-led
regime change interventionism is always disastrous, especially in
the easily destabilized geopolitical region of the Middle East.
Neocons
are always wrong about foreign policy. Always. There’s no reason
to believe Trump spearheading a longstanding neocon agenda would
work out any better than Bush or any other neocon.
“Well
what about the Iranians in Iran who want regime change?”
What
about them? The fact that some Iranians want their government changed
has nothing to do with you or your government. The Fox News
and Washington
Post pundits
who keep pointing out the fact that Iran, like America, contains
people who are unhappy with its current system of government are only
ever trying to galvanize the west against Tehran. There’s no good
reason for you to be acting as a pro bono CIA propagandist running
around telling westerners how great it would be if the Mullahs were
gone.
“Well
I don’t want the US to intervene, I just want the Iranians to free
themselves!”
Two
things:
This
administration is already currently engaged in regime change
interventionism in Iran in the form of escalated
CIA covert operations and
harsh economic sanctions, and its involvement
with Iranian terror cult MEKsuggests
it may run far deeper than that in a similar way to US involvement
with extremist groups in Syria, Libya and Ukraine.
Why
say anything, then? Ever stop to ask yourself why you’re always
cheering for Iranians to overthrow their government? Why constantly
cheerlead for something which requires zero western involvement?
Whom does that help? Do you think Iranians don’t already know that
America hates their government?
All
you’re doing is helping to signal boost the pro-regime change
propaganda that US defense and intelligence agencies have been
seeding into American public consciousness for many years. Your “Yay,
free Iran!” sentiments aren’t helping Iranians, they’re helping
the western propagandists target western audiences. You’re just
helping the public get more okay with any actions taken against the
Iranian government, in exactly the same way Russiagaters help
manufacture support for escalations against Russia.
Come
on, people. Think harder. This one isn’t difficult. It’s not a
random coincidence that you’re all being paced into supporting
regime change in the final target named seventeen years ago in
General Wesley Clark’s famous “seven
countries in five years”
list of neocon regime change agendas. The only thing that has changed
is the face on the agenda.
Iran
is not different from the other regime change targets of Iraq, Libya
or Syria. Barack Obama served George W Bush’s third and fourth
terms, and Donald Trump is serving his fifth. They were strong-armed
in different ways by America’s unelected power establishment into
advancing different regime change agendas depending on where their
political support came from and public sentiment at the time, but
it’s all been pointed at the exact same region for the exact same
reasons.
Leave
Iran alone. Leave the Iranian people alone. There is no legitimate
reason for you to be cheering for regime change in Iran, and anyone
who tells you otherwise is an evil piece of shit. Reject them.
‘Het
is (de hoogste) tijd om razend te worden over wat westerse
imperialisten Syrië hebben aangedaan’, zo luidt de kop van het
hieronder opgenomen artikel, geschreven door Caitlin Johnstone.
Johnstone
heeft alles wat betreft de illegale oorlog van de VS (en de rest van
het westen) tegen Syrie nog eens op een rij gezet en dit op basis van
feiten.
Zo
legt Johnstone uit dat de VS en haar coalitie verantwoordelijk zijn
voor de oorlog in Syrië, vanaf ‘de opstand’ die werd georganiseerd en
gefinancierd door de VS (Saoedi-Arabië, Turkije, Groot-Brittannië en nog wat
arabische staten) tot de eerste aanzet die tot een oorlog in Syrië leidde, werd
al in 2006 gedaan….. Generaal Wesley Clark stelde zelfs dat het Pentagon
al in 2001 sprak over het omverwerpen van het Syrische bewind…. De voormalige Franse minister van buitenlandse zaken, Dumas zei over deze zaak dat hij al 2 jaar voordat in 2011 de gewelddadigheden losbarstten, hij informatie kreeg waaruit bleek dat de Britten bezig waren een opstand te organiseren in Syrië…….
Vlak
nadat in 2011 de eerste gewelddadige incidenten plaatsvonden in Syrië, heeft Obama in het geheim toegestemd in het trainen en
bewapenen van extremistische (moslim) groepen, ofwel: islamitische
terreurgroepen werden getraind en bewapend door de VS met
toestemming van Nobelprijs voor de Vrede winnaar Obama (de valse
slang)…..
Het Syrische volk staat weer een gifgasaanval te wachten, zo is de verwachting van o.a. Rusland*, een aanval uitgevoerd door de ‘gematigde rebellen’ (lees: terreurgroepen die zich schuldig maken aan massamoord, verkrachtingen en het op andere manieren terroriseren van in dit geval het Syrische volk….)…. Deze terreurgroepen hebben dit eerder al meermaals gedaan, waarbij men de schuld in de schoenen van het Syrische leger ofwel Assad schoof…. Een ‘false flag’ operatie noemt men een dergelijke aanslag, de meest beruchte is wel de grote gifgasaanval in 2013, waarvoor men onmiddellijk naar Assad wees…. Onder andere een VN commissie o.l.v. Delponte vond echter geen schijn van bewijs voor de schuld van het Syrische leger en verwees naar terreurgroepen waarvan bekend was dat deze voorraden gifgas in het bezit hadden……
Intussen zijn er door westers geweld, dan wel als gevolg van westerse manipulaties dan wel ander westers optreden, meer dan 600.000 mensen vermoord in Syrië……
Johnstone
stelt volkomen terecht dat we niet moeten hopen dat Trump (en zijn
militaire adviseurs) tot zinnen komt en VS troepen zal terugtrekken,
maar van de daken moeten schreeuwen dat het westen haar moorddadige
tentakels uit dit arme, door oorlog vernietigde land moeten halen.
Voorts stelt ze dat we niet bang moeten zijn voor repressie op
openlijke protesten, maar het ware verhaal over Syrië van de daken moeten schreeuwen, zodat ook de reguliere media er niet meer omheen
kunnen…. Johnstone stelt (alweer terecht) dat er geen tijd meer is, het
westen dient zich onmiddellijk terug te trekken uit Syrië!!
Lees
dit uit het hart geschreven artikel van Caitlin Johnstone (en zegt
het voort, de hoogste tijd voor grote demonstraties tegen westerse
terreur in Syrië, tijd voor vreedzame blokkades van ambassades van landen die
meewerken aan deze terreur en de allerhoogste tijd voor het inzetten van een boycot op producten uit die landen!):
It’s
Time to Start Getting Enraged at What Western Imperialists Have Done
to Syria
(CJ Opinion) — Rumors are
again swirling of
an impending false flag chemical weapons attack in Syria, just
as they did shortly
before the highly
suspiciousDouma
case in
April. Warnings from Syrian and Russian intelligence, as well as US
war ship movements and an uptick in US funding for the Al Qaeda
propaganda firm known as the White Helmets, give these warnings a
fair bit of weight. Since the US war machine has both a known regime
change agenda in Syria and an extensive history of
using lies, propaganda and false
flags to
justify military interventionism, there’s no legitimate reason to
give it the benefit of the doubt on this one. These warnings are
worth taking seriously.
So
some people are understandably nervous. The way things are set up
now, it is technically possible for the jihadist factions inside
Syria and their allied imperialist intelligence and defense agencies
to keep targeting civilians with chemical weapons and blaming the
Assad government for them until they pull one off that is so
outrageous that it enables the mass media to manufacture public
support for a full-scale assault on Damascus. This would benefit both
the US-centralized empire which has
been plotting regime change in Syria for decades and
the violent Islamist extremists who seek control of the region. It
also creates the very real probability of a direct military
confrontation with Syria’s allies, including Russia.
But
the appropriate response to the threat of a world war erupting in
Syria is not really fear, if you think about it. The most appropriate
response to this would be unmitigated, howling rage at the western
sociopaths who created this situation in the first place.
The
United States and its allies started
the war in Syria.
The narrative that it was an organic uprising brutally attacked by
the Assad government is a lie. There is no reasonable doubt about
this. The former Prime Minister of Qatar said
on television that
the US and its allies were involved in the Syrian conflict from the
very beginning. A WikiLeaks
cable and
a declassified
CIA memo both
show the US government plotting to provoke an uprising in Syria
exactly as it occurred, years before it happened. Former Foreign
Minister of France Roland
Dumas stated that
he was informed that the UK was engineering an uprising in Syria two
years before the violence erupted in 2011, and General
Wesley Clark stated that
there were Pentagon plans to take out the Syrian government in 2001.
Shortly after the violence started President Obama
secretly authorized
the arming and training of
violent extremist factions for the overthrow of Assad in a CIA
program code named Timber Sycamore, which along with Saudi finances
has wound up aiding
some of the most evil terror groups ever
to exist.
Six
hundred thousand Syrians have lost their lives as a result of this
regime change intervention, many of those lives ending in the most
horrific ways imaginable at the hands of depraved jihadists. It was
planned, and the people who planned it have names and addresses. They
deserve to be punished to the fullest extent of the law for what they
did. We should all be loudly demanding war crimes tribunals and life
imprisonment for these vicious criminals.
We
need a major adjustment of our emotional posture on this issue. We
shouldn’t be sitting around nervously hoping Trump pulls US troops
out and western-backed terror groups don’t stage another chemical
attack, we should be screaming at these bastards to get their
murderous tentacles out of that poor war-torn country immediately. We
shouldn’t be meekly trying to justify our skepticism of the
establishment Syria narrative while snide Guardian op-eds
inform us that we are not permitted to think such things. We know
that we are right. We know what these evil monsters did. We should be
shouting the imperialists down, not the other way around.
The
same depraved sociopaths who raped Iraq are presently raping Iraq’s
next-door neighbor Syria for the exact same reasons. They were wrong
then. They are wrong now. We should be much more angry and aggressive
in pushing back on their pernicious pro-interventionism narratives.
There is no excuse for any faction of the western empire to be
anywhere inside of that nation’s borders. Out. Now.
Much
like medicine, anger can do more harm than good when used improperly.
Channeled in a wholesome, conscious direction, however, it can be an
indispensable tool for driving out the toxic influence of
manipulators and exploiters.
The
social engineers who manufacture the narratives which are dispensed
to the mass media and repeated as fact to unsuspecting audiences rely
heavily on the tactic of generating sympathy.
Sympathy
opens people up and allows narratives to be imbued with the power of
belief in a way that bypasses skepticism and critical thinking. This
is why the users and abusers you have known in your personal life are
always telling stories about how much wrong has been done to them, or
even going out of their way to make themselves look helpless and
pathetic; if they can suck you in with sympathy, they can get you to
buy into the other stories they need you to believe about who they
are, who you are, what your relationship to them is, and how much
money/resources/affection/sex/forgiveness you should give them.
This, right here, is the real reason anyone hates @georgegalloway. Not because he has been wrong, but because he has been completely, loudly, unapologetically right. Be George Galloway.
The propagandists understand this dynamic all too well. They used people’s emotional reaction to 9/11 to manufacture support for not one but two full-scale ground invasions. They circulate pictures of dead children whenever their deaths can be blamed on a longtime target of western imperialism, but never when their deaths are caused by western imperialism. Today the narratives most prolifically circulated by proponents of regime change interventionism in Syria are almost entirely emotional in nature, consisting of nothing more than constant repetition of nonsensical talking points about civilians being brutalized by a sadistic dictator in various ways for no apparent reason. This is all to generate sympathy in order to bypass people’s skepticism of pro-interventionist narratives.
Anger
is sympathy poison. It kills the sympathy you are feeling toward the
narratives being promoted by those you are angry with, thus allowing
you to see things clearly and eject them like the parasites they are.
This is a very useful tool for dealing with the manipulators and
exploiters in your personal life, and it is equally useful for the
manipulators and exploiters who control western society with money,
media manipulation, intelligence agency operations and brute military
force. Creating momentum for widespread rage at those who unleashed
the horrors inflicted upon the Syrian people immunizes the public
from toxic war propaganda narratives by that much.
Six
hundred thousand human lives. The chaotic violence which ended them
was planned, orchestrated and overseen by the same multinational
power establishment whose media propaganda machine has been singing
us a seven-year lullaby keeping us from questioning the ongoing
military presence and interventionism in that nation and steering us
away from seeking justice for those responsible for all that death.
If anyone is deserving of our loud, lullaby-shattering howling rage,
it is these people.
And
of course we will be fought tooth and claw on this by the
US-centralized power establishment; no one is going to give us
permission to do this. They will do everything they can to maintain
control of the narrative and the veil of government opacity which
shrouds those responsible for their Syria atrocities. But we will be
attacking, which means that they will be forced to defend against
those attacks. Rather than playing defensive and trying to justify
our right to be skeptical while praying that there isn’t a
devastating false flag attack in the illegally-occupied nation of
Syria, we should be putting them on the back foot with rage and loud
demands for justice. Righteous anger can severely hobble the
propaganda machine they intend to use for further interventionism in
that nation.
You
cannot argue with the rage of someone who is certain that an
unforgivable evil has been perpetrated. You simply cannot manipulate
and narrative-spin your way around that; it plants an unbreakable,
immovable object in the gears of the propaganda machine. By getting
unapologetically furious, loud and aggressive and letting the wisdom
of our anger guide our response to the situation in Syria, we can
shift the zeitgeist of anti-imperialist sentiment from a meek “Oh
gosh darn I sure hope the people who decimated Iraq do the right
thing in Syria” to a thunderous “FUCK YOU. OUT. NOW.”
Which
is where it should be.
A
world in which war crimes tribunals are actually carried out for the
imperialists responsible for the evils inflicted upon the Syrian
people will look very different from the world that we are in now.
But shoving angrily and aggressively against the establishment
structures which made it possible and screaming for justice and
vengeance is the first step toward creating that world.
Let’s
not play defense and reaction anymore. Let’s stop waiting for
something to go wrong and start forcing things to be right. It’s
time to go on the offensive with this thing. Get angry and let it
roar through you.
Het
VS ministerie van buitenlandse zaken heeft Syrië gewaarschuwd niet de gebiedenin het zuidwesten van Syrië te bevrijden van terreurgroepen…… De VS is NB illegaal aanwezig in de soevereine,
democratische staat Syrië en beschermt het bewuste gebied dat ‘oh
wonder’ in de buurt ligt van voor het westen belangrijke olie- en
gasvelden……..
Ofwel: de VS verbiedt Syrië op eigen bodem, haar door terreur getroffen bevolking te bevrijden van psychopathische moordenaars, verkrachters en martelbeulen……. Deze terreurgroepen zijn dan ook nog eens voor een groot deel vanuit Libië naar Syrië vervoerd door de VS dan wel in opdracht van de VS……
Eerder
veegde het reguliere Syrische leger al gebieden schoon van deze psychopathische terreurgroepen (hier aangeduid als ‘gematigde
rebellen…’), een verdere ‘grote schoonmaak’ kan Syrië wel vergeten,
zo heeft de uiterst agressieve VS dus laten weten en zoals bekend: als er olie en/of gas in het spel is, laat
de grootste terreurentiteit op aarde, de VS, niet met zich sollen…..
De VS had het gore lef te wijzen op eerder gesloten akkoorden over de-escalatie zones tussen de VS, Rusland en Turkije….. Terwijl het hier om zoals gezegd een soeverein democratisch land gaat, waar zowel de VS als Turkije volkomen illegaal verblijven en dood en ellende zaaien…… Bovendien: alsof de VS zich aan dergelijke bestanden houdt, als het deze terreurentiteit niet uitkomt……
Hier het artikel van Jason Ditz over deze zaak, gisteren geplaatst op ANTIWAR:
US
Threatens ‘Measures’ Against Syria for Offensive in Southwest
State
Dept says offensive would violate de-escalation deal
Syria
has been expected to launch such an offensive for awhile. Russia
negotiated with Israel to get them to agree to keep out of the
fighting, in return for Russia urging Iran and Hezbollah to remain
out of the border region. The assumption has been for some time this
cleared room for the push.
US
officials, however, say that Syria would be violating the previous
de-escalation deal made between the US, Russia, and Turkey, as some
of the offensive would take place in that area. Other de-escalation
zones have effectively been erased by government gains, or the wiping
out of certain rebels by others.
The
southwest zone protects some rebel factions along the border with
Jordan, though some of the rebels in the area are also tied to
al-Qaeda. Syria has isolated the rebels into only a handful of areas,
and the southwest is likely a priority because of the region’s
proximity to the western oil and gas sites.
Het
Europees Hof voor de Rechten van de Mens heeft Roemenië en Litouwen
veroordeeld voor het hebben van geheime CIA gevangenis op hun
grondgebied en het faciliteren van die martelcentra. De zaak draait om 2 gevangenen te weten: Abu
Zubaydah en Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, die bloot hebben
gestaan aan vreselijke martelingen, zowel fysiek als
geestelijk…….
Roemenië
en Litouwen zijn beiden lid van de EU, hoe is het in godsnaam
mogelijk dat deze landen alleen al op dit feit niet direct uit de EU zijn gezet?? Bovendien was het al langer
bekend dat zich in die landen geheime CIA gevangenissen bevonden…. Gevangenissen? Zoals eerder gesteld niets anders dan smerige martelcentra….
Deze
CIA praktijken zijn zonder meer zware oorlogsmisdaden en geven nog
eens aan dat deze machtige terreurorganisatie onder en boven de wet
staat, niet alleen in eigen land, maar blijkbaar ook in EU lidstaten. De combinatie van (illegale) ontvoeringen, gijzelingen in onbekende gevangenissen en martelingen in die centra is meer dan voldoende om daar het etiket fascistisch op te plakken……..
Men
laat daarnaast landen als Polen (waar overigens ook gemarteld werd,
aldus de Raad van Europa en bekend bij de Poolse fascistische autoriteiten) en Hongarije ongemoeid bij een enorm aantal
schendingen van mensenrechten en een keiharde persbreidel (zoals je begrijpt: voor de
kritische pers in die landen)…….
Ach
af en toe laat een EU bons weten zwaar ontstemd te zijn, zoals PvdA
sierdrol Timmermans, maar daar blijft het bij, daar men als de dood
is dat landen uiteindelijk uit de EU zullen treden en dat precies had de EU
kunnen voorkomen, door die landen met een ferme punter onder de reet
de straat op te schoppen…… Schrijnend te zien dat de EU niet weet in
welke bochten het zich moet wringen om vooral dat te voorkomen,
ongelofelijk!!
De
hoogste tijd dat Nederland zich terugtrekt uit de EU, men heeft
Nederland toch nodig vanwege onze centrale ligging en (voor het
bedrijfsleven) geweldige infrastructuur!
Neem
ook het uitblijven van maatregelen tegen Spanje nadat de fascistische en corrupte regering Rajoy zo tekeerging tegen de Catalanen voorafgaand en
tijdens het referendum voor onafhankelijkheid…. Dezelfde Timmermans
liet al vrij snel weten dat hij achter het dictatoriale optreden van
de corrupte Spaanse regering stond…….
Je
kan er dan ook donder opzeggen dat de EU alles prima zal vinden wat
er in Italië wordt uitgevreten door de fascistische regering van de
Vijfsterrenbeweging en de Lega, zolang ze maar van de eure en de EU
afblijven………
Over
Italië gesproken: waar was de EU toen de Italiaanse president Mattarella een ministerspost voor Lega afgevaardigde Savona weigerde?? Dat
was minimaal antidemocratisch, wat je ook van deze rechtse hufter vindt……*
Lithuania
and Romania Knowingly Hosted Secret CIA Prisons
(MEMO) — Lithuania
and Romania violated the rights of two terror suspects by helping the
US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) to torture them in “secret
rendition,” the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) ruled on
Thursday.
The
European judges have ruled in two separate cases filed by victims
Zayn Al-Abidin Muhammad Husayn — also known as Abu Zubaydah — and
Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri in 2011 and 2012, respectively.
The
two were captured by the US after the 9/11 attacks and they are
currently being held at the Guantanamo Bay prison.
The
top European Court said both countries — Lithuania and Romania —
had assisted US’s ill-treatment of the two suspects at the
so-called “black sites” controlled by the CIA from 2004 to 2006
on their territories, exposing them to “a foreseeable serious risk
of further ill-treatment”.
The
ECHR ruling said Romania hosted a CIA prison in 2003-2005, where Abd
al-Nashiri was subjected to “an extremely harsh detention regime”
and suffered “inhuman treatment… which Romania had enabled by
co-operating with the CIA”.
The
same verdict was issued against Lithuania, concerning Abu Zubaydah.
The CIA operated a prison in Lithuania in 2005-2006.
Both
applicants complained that the respondent countries enabled the CIA
to detain them secretly on their territory, allowing the CIA to
subject them to torture, various other forms of mental and physical
abuse, incommunicado detention, and the lack of a possibility to
contact their families or the outside world.
They
also alleged that the two countries allowed them to be transported to
other CIA-run secret detention sites, exposing them to years of
further similar treatment.
Lastly,
they complained of the lack of a prompt and thorough investigation
into their allegations.
Abu
Zubaydah, a stateless Palestinian born in Saudi Arabia, is thought to
have been al Qaeda’s chief recruiter in the 1990s, and later became
a key organizer, linking Osama Bin Laden to other al Qaeda cells.
Saudi-born
Abd al-Nashiri led al Qaeda’s operations in the Gulf region,
according to US intelligence.
The
judges said they took their decision based on CIA documents,
according to which terror suspects were subjected to blindfolding or
hooding, solitary confinement, the continuous use of leg shackles,
and excessive exposure to noise and light.
The
court ordered Romania and Lithuania to pay Al Nashiri 100,000 euros
(EUR) in respect of non-pecuniary damages.
It
also ordered Lithuania to pay Abu Zubaydah 100,000 euros (EUR) in
respect of non-pecuniary damage, and EUR 30,000 in respect of costs
and expenses.
Tyler
Durden plaatste afgelopen woensdag een artikel op Zero Hedge waarin
hij het nieuws bracht dat Iran de VS gaat aanklagen (bij het
Internationaal Strafhof, ofwel het ICC).
Iran
doet dit n.a.v. uitlatingen die Trump deed voordat hij aantrad als
president, meermaals liet hij destijds weten dat Obama en Hillary
Clinton in feite ISIS hebben opgericht en gesteund in de vreselijke
terreur die deze groep uitoefende op de bevolking van Irak en
Syrië……. Trump
stelde voorts dat Clinton verantwoordelijk was voor de snelle groei
van IS.
Iran hoeft niet veel moeite te doen om haar zaak hard te
maken. Zo vertelde Michael Flynn aan Al Jazeera dat het een
weloverwogen beslissing van de VS was om IS te steunen……
Deze aanklacht van Iran staat in schril contrast tot de uitspraak van een rechter in de VS die Iran verantwoordelijk stelde voor de 911 aanvallen, ondanks dat daar geen flinter van bewijs voor is….. Bewijs daarvoor hoeft niet eens gezocht te worden, daar de terreurgroep die de VS aanwees als dader voor de 911 aanvallen Al Qaida is en als er één land is waar terreurgroepen als Al Qaida en IS de pest aan hebben, is het wel het sjiitische Iran, het gaat tenslotte om soennitische terreurgroepen……..
Iran had wel degelijk te lijden onder terreuraanvallen van IS, daar is geen twijfel aan…..
Lees
het artikel van Durden en je zal verstelt staan hoeveel bewijzen er
zijn voor de aanklacht van Iran tegen de VS…..
Laten
we hopen dat de VS wordt veroordeeld voor deze terreur, niet dat het
veel zal uitrichten, maar hoe meer bewijzen er liggen voor de
grootschalige terreur van de VS, hoe beter het is!! Wellicht dat de
westerse wereld zich dan geheel zal afwenden van de VS, kunnen we
meteen de uiterst agressieve terreurorganisatie NAVO ontmantelen en
kan de wereld eindelijk eens rustig ademhalen.
Iran
To Bring International Lawsuit Against “ISIS Founder”
America Based On Trump Statements
After
a US federal judge in New York ordered Iran to pay billions of
dollars to the families of victims of the September 11 terror attacks
earlier this month in a largely
symbolic default judgement,
Iran is reportedly prepping to sue Washington for terror attacks
carried out against Tehran within the last year.
Iran
says the
US is responsible for the rise of ISIS,
and is therefore indirectly to blame for twin terror attacks that
rocked the Iranian parliament building and a popular religious shrine
in June 2017, which left 17
civilians dead and 43 wounded,
according to Iranian media figures.
“During
the presidential campaign, Trump clearly spoke about the performance
of his rival, Mrs. Clinton, saying that the US has created the
ISIL,” Abolfazl
Aboutorabi, a member of parliament’s judicial
commission, announced on
Tuesday in comments carried by Iranian state media. “The
public prosecutor has also filed a lawsuit in this regard,”
Aboutorabi added.
Iran
hopes the initiative will shine an international spotlight on the
Obama administration’s role in facilitating the rise of ISIS in Iraq
and Syria — something
President Trump repeatedly affirmed while on the campaign trail.
Trump
also famously blamed
then Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton for the rapid
rise of ISIS,
especially in relation to policies she oversaw in Libya and Syria as
Obama’s Secretary of State.
Trump
first told his
supporters in January 2016 that “Hillary
Clinton created ISIS with Obama.” And
in a CBS 60 Minutes interview that aired July 17, 2016, he
said again,
“Hillary Clinton invented ISIS with her stupid policies.”
Trump:
Obama and “crooked Hillary Clinton” are the “founder”
and “co-founder” of ISIS:
It’s
the first time in history that a candidate who would go on to become
president has blamed his predecessor for founding a terrorist group.
A
fairly consistent theme of Trump on the campaign trail was that Obama
and Hillary’s massive covert aid program to Islamist “rebels”
in places like Libya and Syria facilitated the terror group’s rapid
growth. He
also blamed Obama’s hasty troop pullout from Iraq.
Long
before joining the Trump campaign, former Defense Intelligence Chief
under Obama Michael Flynn told Al-Jazeera it was a “willful
decision” to support jihadists groups in Syria that included
ISIS:
(de volgende video behoort bij het Twitterbericht daaronder, helaas kan ik die video niet overnemen, hier is dezelfde video direct van YouTube)
A
revealing light on how we got here has now been shone by a
recently declassified secret US intelligence report, written in
August 2012,
which uncannily predicts – and effectively
welcomes – the prospect of a “Salafist principality” in eastern
Syria and an al-Qaida-controlled Islamic state in Syria and Iraq. In
stark contrast to western claims at the time, the Defense
Intelligence Agency document identifies
al-Qaida in Iraq (which became Isis) and fellow Salafists as the
“major forces driving the insurgency in Syria” –
and states that “western countries, the Gulf states and Turkey”
were supporting the opposition’s efforts to take control of eastern
Syria.
Raising
the “possibility of establishing a declared or undeclared Salafist
principality”, the Pentagon report goes on, “this
is exactly what the supporting powers to the opposition want, in
order to isolate the Syrian regime,
which is considered the strategic depth of the Shia expansion (Iraq
and Iran)”.
It
appears that Trump’s provocative charge of Obama and Clinton being
the “co-founders of ISIS” — statements made
a year after the Pentagon intelligence memo’s initial release — were
likely the direct result of his reading the Pentagon memo and
accompanying media commentary.
In
June of 2016 Trump tweeted
a story linking
to the Pentagon memo which opened
with: “Hillary
Clinton received a classified intelligence report stating that the
Obama administration was actively supporting Al Qaeda in Iraq, the
terrorist group that became the Islamic State.” Trump
said of himself concerning his accusations against Obama and Hillary
made that summer: “But he’s right”.
At
the time, multiple Iranian state media outlets also featured the
Pentagon document, while also highlighting then candidate Trump’s
statements blaming the Obama administration.
It
is this past commentary that Iran will utilize to make its case that
the US is to blame for the 2017 ISIS terror attacks inside Iran,
which it plans to file with the international court, according
to FARS
News Agency.
The 2012 Pentagon memo, which has since 2015 been available
to the public,
will likely play a central role in Iran’s presentation of the case.
Iran’s
parliamentary judicial committee spokesman noted, “there
is nothing more reliable than a claim raised by a country’s
president.”
In
the summer of 2017 Trump announced that he shut
down the CIA’s covert program to
train and arm anti-Assad militants in Syria after he reportedly saw a
video of “CIA vetted rebels” beheading a child in Aleppo.
* FOAI: Freedom of Information Act (bij ons wet op openbaarheid van bestuur, ofwel: WOB)
Darius
Shahtahmasebi buigt zich in het hieronder opgenomen artikel over de
vraagt waarom de Trump administratie de Iran-deal (JCPOA) niet ziet
zitten.
Volgens
Shahtahmasebi werkt de (nucleaire) Iran-deal uitstekend, veel te goed
in de ogen van de oorlogshitsers, die allesbehalve zitten te wachten
op vrede waar dan ook, oorlogshitsers die uiteraard gelieerd zijn aan
de wapenindustrie en daar onbeschaamd voor lobbyen middels het
verspreiden van leugens en het zaaien van angst….. Helaas zijn deze lobbyisten (zeker in de VS) niet zelden de politici die aan de touwen trekken……
Met
al zijn gebral tegen Iran heeft Trump nooit aangegeven wat er nu echt
mis is met de Iran-deal, aldus Shahtahmasebi, anders dan te stellen
dat de Iraniërs zich niet aan de deal houden, maar zoals gezegd daar
is geen flinter bewijs voor gegeven. Sterker nog: volgens de VN
wapeninspecteurs en andere deskundigen heeft Iran geen mogelijkheden
meer om nog een kernwapen te ontwikkelen en nog sterker is het feit
dat VS ambtenaren bij herhaling hebben gezegd dat Iran zich aan de
deal houdt………
De
Trump administratie stelt dat er een nieuwe deal moet worden gesloten
met Iran, waar deze deal met zoveel voor Iran onmogelijke bepalingen zal worden ingekleed dat Iran deze niet
zal tekenen…… Met de stok van de VS sancties achter de deur, zal
ook de EU zich uiteindelijk achter Trump scharen, immers met de VS
sancties in werking zal elk EU bedrijf dat zich niet aan de VS
sancties houdt, geen zaken meer kunnen doen met
instellingen/bedrijven die in eigendom zijn van VS burgers, aandeelhouders, dan wel van VS
investeerders (zoals hedge funds).
Het
laatste betekent dat bedrijven die zich niet aan de VS sancties
houden, niet alleen geen zaken meer kunnen doen in de VS, maar ook
gedwarsboomd zullen worden in handelen met bedrijven buiten de
VS…… Bovendien moet de leiding van bedrijven die zich niet aan de
VS sancties houden erop rekenen dat zij door de VS op de lijst van
gezochte misdadigers worden geplaatst, waarmee zelfs hun
bewegingsvrijheid zal worden beperkt, immers de VS heeft met een
groot aantal landen een uitleveringsverdrag…..
Shahtahmasebi
is in zijn schrijven vergeten Israël als één van de redenen te noemen waarom Trump de Iran-deal ‘afschoot’: als er één land is
is dat Iran liever vandaag dan morgen aanvalt, is het Israël wel en
zoals bekend de zionisten in de VS bepalen op diverse manieren hoe de VS handelt op gebied van buitenlandpolitiek…..
Al
even aangestipt in het voorgaande: de VS is niet uit op vrede in de
wereld, dat zou het militair-industrieel complex geen goed doen en
daarmee zouden de grote beleggers kapitalen kunnen verliezen…..
Terecht
merkt Shahtahmasebi op dat de Trump administratie vorig jaar Rusland en China (plus Iran en Noord-Korea) heeft aangewezen als de grootste vijanden van de VS,
dus niet IS, Al Qaida of noem nog wat van deze terreurgroepen (in het westen vaak aangeduid als ‘gematigde rebellen’……. ha! ha! ha! ha! ha!)…. Met de nu nog woordelijke aanvallen op Iran, maakt de Trump-administratie (en Israël) Rusland duidelijk dat het Iran moet laten vallen en gezien het niet leveren aan Syrië van het nieuwste Russische raketafweersysteem, lijkt die opzet van Trump geslaagd……..
Eén
ding heeft de Trump administratie ten overvloede nog eens bewezen:
met de VS gemaakte afspraken kunnen op elk moment door de VS als van
nul en generlei waarde worden vernietigd, ofwel de VS is totaal onbetrouwbaar….. Vandaar ook dat een land als Noord-Korea kernwapens
wilde bouwen….. Benieuwd wat Kim Jong-un denkt over de schandalige
VS manier van handelen t.a.v. de Iran-deal en wat dit betekent voor
de besprekingen tussen Noord-Korea en de ontmoeting die hij zal hebben met Trump……..
The
Real Reason Trump Abandoned the Iran Nuclear Deal
(ANTIMEDIAOp-ed)—Donald
Trump doesn’t hate the Iran deal because it is a bad deal. He hates
it because it is by all accounts a decent deal that has actually been
working.
If
you doubt this statement, ask yourself: What sensible argument has
Trump ever offered to support his opposition to the deal? Sure, he
has used his ever-expanding and descriptive vocabulary to call it
some grandiose names, but he hasn’t actually explained what is
wrong with it.
If
the deal is so bad, why would he even want to bother pursuing a deal
with North Korea? What deal could he possibly make that wouldn’t
involve an arrangement similar to the Joint Comprehensive Plan of
Action (JCPOA)? (We will turn to this point in a moment).
“Trump
doesn’t hate the Iran deal for policy reasons. He’s never offered
a detailed public policy case against it, and experts don’t really
believe he has one. ‘I don’t think anyone actually thinks he
knows anything about the particularities of this agreement,’ says
Sarah Kreps, a professor at Cornell University who studies arms
control agreements.”
So
what could he possibly hate about the Iran deal? If he does have
sound reasons, why has he never presented them? What can he possibly
hope to achieve with North Korea after proving to the entire world
that the U.S. can renege on its word at any given time?
The
blunt truth about the Iran deal is that Donald Trump rejects it
because it has been working. His own administration has been forced
to consistently certify
Iran as compliant with the terms. The neocon dream for people like
Trump and the warmongers who advise him is to prevent the U.S. from
being the unilateral cause of the destruction of the deal (as it
transpired, the U.S. was one hundred percent responsible for its
demise). Rather, the strategy appears to be to devise a deal so
impossible for Iran to accept that Iran will, in the eyes of the
international community, become the dangerous and untrustworthy party
in major need of a military intervention, as the U.S. has
long painted the
situation.
As outlined in
the neoconservative guide to destroying Iran, titled, “Which Path
to Persia? Options for a New American Strategy toward Iran”:
“For
those who favor regime change or a military attack on Iran (either by
the United States or Israel), there is a strong argument to be made
for trying this option first. Inciting regime change in Iran would be
greatly assisted by convincing the Iranian people that their
government is so ideologically blinkered that it refuses to do what
is best for the people and instead clings to a policy that could only
bring ruin on the country. The ideal scenario
in this case would be that the United States and the international
community present a package of positive inducements so enticing that
the Iranian citizenry would support the deal, only to have the regime
reject it. In a similar
vein, any military operation against Iran will likely be very
unpopular around the world and require the proper international
context – both to ensure the logistical support the operation would
require and to minimize the blowback from it. The
best way to minimize international opprobrium and maximize support
(however grudging or covert) is to strike only when there is a
widespread conviction that the Iranians were given but then rejected
a superb offer – one so good that only a regime determined to
acquire nuclear weapons and acquire them for the wrong reasons would
turn it down.” [emphasis
added]
You
see, the Iranian nuclear deal in its current form doesn’t include a
major source of tension between Iran and the U.S., namely, Iranian
ballistic missile testing. Trump wants to include
this as part of the agreement.
Why would he want to do that? For exactly the reason above: to give
Iran such an inconceivable agreement that even if Iran decided to
sign it in good faith, the Islamic Republic could never realistically
implement as it would lose one of its major deterrents against a U.S.
or Israeli strike.
And
this is where the upcoming summit between Trump and Kim Jong Un
becomes that much more important. Trump is purportedly trying
to send a strong message to North Korea that he wants a ‘real
deal.’ So what is a ‘real deal’ in Trump’s eyes if the JCPOA
didn’t cut it for him?
A
‘real deal’ is one North Korea cannot realistically abide by.
Even if they could, the terms of the agreement would put the country
in such a defenseless position that the U.S. could easily formulate
an invasion without any significant repercussions.
Further,
we have to remember that the ultimate goal of
the Washington D.C. establishment is regime
change in
both Iran and North Korea, two countries with abundant resources that
are far too close to America’s chief rivals, China and Russia.
Remember that the Trump administration’s National Defense
Strategy listed China
and Russia as the top threats to the United States, not ISIS or
al-Qaeda or any of the entities the U.S. is supposedly at war with.
Either
way, the U.S. is not entering either of these agreements in good
faith and has only one agenda throughout this entire process. If you
don’t believe this, you need only turn to the op-eds
written by newly appointed national security advisor John
Bolton, who has openly advocated for violent regime change strategies
in both North Korea and Iran.
A
deal that Iran or North Korea complies with while getting on with
their lives and rebuilding their countries’ respective economies
without succumbing to the United States’ interests is a
deal-breaker for Washington. As Executive Board Member of the
National Iranian American Council (NIAC), Saïd Amin
told Anti-Media via email, “Kim Jong-un
would be a fool to believe any promises made by the Trump
administration.”
by 
