Tuesday, August 27, 2013

Saudi Carrot, Saudi Stick: Bringing Russia Onside with Syria Attack

Saudi Prince Bandar's Second Attempt at Bribing Russia to Drop Support of Syria

by Patrick Henningsen - 21st Century Wire

As the US-led coalition of the willing inches closer towards their initial cruise missile and bombing attack on Syria this week, it seems that their ‘best friend’ Saudi Arabia has been busy throwing about a series of financial incentives – and threats, at the Russians, all in a bid to persuade them to drop their support of Syria.

On August 10th, 21st Century Wire expanded on a Reuters news release which reported how Saudi intelligence head, Prince Bandar bin Sultan offered a $15 billion weapons contract to Russian President Vladimir Putin during a meeting on July 31st. Apparently, Russia rebuffed this rather generous offer, because the deal was dependent upon Moscow letting go of its existing arms contracts with the Syrian government in Damascus.

Today, we learned about another possible carrot – and a potentially nasty stick, also offered by the Prince Bandar. According to a report in today’s London Telegraph, Saudi Arabia also secretly offered Russia a chance to ‘control the world’s oil market’ in some type of strategic alliance between OPEC and Russia, and to ‘safeguard’ Russia’s present and pending gas contracts in the Mediterranean – but again, only if Russia washes its hands of the Assad regime in Syria.
Talk of war usually rings bells for the oil markets and this past week is no exception, with Brent crude prices reaching a five-month high of $US112 a barrel this week.

It’s pretty clear at this point that Bandar is operating on behalf of major transnational energy corporations and interests in Washington DC. The alleged leak reveals a bold hand being placed on the table by the Prince:

‘‘We understand Russia’s great interest in the oil and gas in the Mediterranean from Israel to Cyprus. And we understand the importance of the Russian gas pipeline to Europe. We are not interested in competing with that. We can cooperate in this area,’’ he said, purporting to speak with the full backing of the US.

The leak then goes on to describe actual threats being made, with Prince Bandar saying that there can be ‘‘no escape from the military option’’ should Russia turns down this Saudi offer. Is he threatening military option against the Syrians, or is this a veiled threat for a future confrontation between the West/NATO and Russia?

If this explosive leak is genuine, then it more or less crystalises the western allied and Saudi agendas in the region, because events are currently unfolding exactly as Prince Bandar has foretold.
Here’s where this leak gets really dodgy…

According to the Telegraph report, bundled within this toxic offer from the elite Arab emissary, is perhaps the most insidious mafia-style threat heard to date regarding the Syria crisis. It’s said that Bandar threatened to - unleash his Chechen terrorists in order to shutdown, and possibly kill civilians at the upcoming 2014 Sochi Winter Olympics. He goes on:
‘‘I can give you a guarantee to protect the Winter Olympics next year. The Chechen groups that threaten the security of the Games are controlled by us,’’ he allegedly said.
Prince Bandar went on to say that Chechens operating in Syria were a pressure tool that could be switched on and off.
‘‘We use them in the face of the Syrian regime but they will have no role in Syria’s political future.’’
The Saudi end game in Syria was laid bare in our previous report, as the Prince let slip to the effect, “Whatever regime comes after Assad will be completely in Riyadh’s hands”.

But here the main point. The Prince reportedly stated that if his offer is accepted, then Saudi Arabia would not sign any contracts damaging Russian interests… by ‘allowing Gulf countries to transport its gas across Syria to Europe’. Yes, that pipeline – the one which will transport Qatari gas through Syria, to the Mediterranean. Paid for with Saudi Arabian cash.

This would explain exactly why both the Saudis and Qataris – both staunch allies of Britain and the US, have been financing this confab of rebels and terrorist brigades in Syria for the last two years.

According to previous reports, Bandar himself has been assigned to personally oversee this operation:

“Saudi intelligence, led by Prince Bandar bin Sultan bin Abdulaziz, is bringing the militants fighting the Syrian forces under the umbrella of the al-Nusra Front. The report said Prince Bandar is organizing these terrorists through Jordan and Lebanon.
“Thanks to funding from the General Intelligence Department (of Jordan) and support from the Saudi Intelligence in Lebanon, al-Nusra was able to swiftly arm its forces, and make the Syrian regime suffer painful blows through its expertise in Iraqi bombings,” the Intelligence Online report noted. 
Bandar bin Sultan, who is Tony Blair’s partner in crime, was made the Saudi intelligence chief on July 19 at the height of the Syrian crisis, not only to strengthen the arming of the terrorists against Syria’s Bashar al-Assad regime, but also to bring to the fore an anti-Assad, Saudi-run administration in Lebanon, bordering Syria. The objective is to push more arms and terrorists inside Syria.”
Bandar is not only ‘good friends’ with Tony Blair, he is considered the closest of family friends with the Bush family, as well as involved in their global defense and construction powerhouse the Carlyle Group. His involvement in the destruction of Syria came as quite a revelation to some back in January, but with the evidence coming through about NATO’s own ‘Fast and Furious’ style illegal weapons transfer into Syria via Europe.

And there is your war in a nutshell. Just as with Iraq before it, this one has been engineered and financed at the highest levels, and it certainly has nothing to do with the ‘horror of chemical weapons’, or a humanitarian intervention. It has everything to do with threats, bribes and backhanders used to nail down the future gas supplies to Europe and the global oil markets – and of course, it’s also about the dollar.

Will it be propped up, or will it be allowed to drop to its true value?

We can’t answer that question yet (who can?), but we are pretty well sure that arms sales reps Barack Obama and David Cameron, along with their trusty sidekicks, John Kerry, John McCain and William Hague – are blowing pure smoke to a mostly naive public regarding Assad and Syria.

The White Saviour and Charitable-Industrial Rape of Haiti


Ezili Dantò's Note: The Western sex push and ethnic cleansing in Haiti

by Ezili Dantò

Haiti is occupied, raped and tormented by the wealthiest country in the world. It's terrorized cruelly at the hand of the greatest superpower on planet earth, the white-savior industry and its charitable-industrial complex.

Dr. Paul Farmer gives thumbs up to Douglas Perlitz
(See also, Paul Farmer and World Bank president Jim Yong Kim exposed and Ezili Dantò on Washington Post editorial supporting expansion of Farmer’s ineffective cholera vaccines.) 

US charity worker and pedophile, Douglas Perlitz is in jail for nearly 20-years plus 10-year probation for molesting homeless boys in Haiti for 10 years. He was convicted and sentenced on federal charges for travel with intent to engage in illicit sexual conduct (18 U.S.C. Sec. 2423(b) and engaging in illicit sexual conduct in foreign places (18 U.S.C. Sec 2423 (c). (See, Justice for Haiti prevailed: Perlitz going away for a long time.)






Human rights lawyer, Ezili Dantò, President of the Haitian Lawyers Leadership Network, talks to the media about Catholic philanthropist, Haitian charitable works icon, the Venerable Pierre Toussaint, whom Douglas Perlitz named his school after, while outside the Richard C. Lee United States Courthouse in downtown New Haven, Conn. during a recess in the sentencing hearing for Perlitz on December 21, 2010. Photo: Christian Abraham / Connecticut Post Last month, US charity worker, Matthew Andrew Carter, was sentenced to 165 years in prison for sexually abusing Haiti orphans for 16 years. “Altogether, U.S. authorities identified 52 victims they said were sexually abused by Carter over the years at the group home.” (See, US occupation: Uselessness of USAID, UN, NGOs in Haiti.)

There are thousands more foreigners in Haiti still, behind their high walls, and apartheid hotels, daily raping, molesting, trafficking, sodomizing distraught Haiti children and sexually preying on Haiti women and powerless men in exchange for money, power, jobs, US visas or approval, as we’ve detailed over the years.

Recently there was an article about a British aid worker in Haiti and his "gay Haitian partner" reportedly assaulted by some locals at their engagement party in Haiti.

Haiti has far bigger problems than these isolated incidents, but the Western press and wealthy gays insist on their various Droit du seigneur rights and privileges in Haiti, notwithstanding that the NGO charitable industry’s very presence in Haiti is a denial of Haiti sovereignty and basic human rights.

These foreigners are working in Haiti from monies collected on Haiti misery and where the basic rights of the locals have been abrogated with their complicity. (Haiti: US AID Go Home! and, Rich countries use trade deals to seize food from the world's hungriest people.)

In fact, these are the same adults who mostly turn a blind eye to the occupation of Haiti, the NGO false benevolence, the imperialism, neocolonialism, unfair trade and rampant abuse of Haiti children, men and women by powerful homosexual and heterosexual foreigners as a matter of course.

There is, of course, the question of POWER and the tastes white supremacy forces upon others that may not be their natural predispositions. We know this at the Haitian Lawyes Leadership Network (HLLN), for instance, from working with sexually abused Haiti minors, victims of foreign pedophiles, who became victimizers themselves, sexually sodomizing other children because that's what they learned as a child from the US/Euro charity workers.

Many of these abused orphans grow up to prostitute themselves to foreigners whose sexual taste and proclivities they were taught, like some of the victim boys learning from US charity worker Douglas Perlitz or certain foreign priests and pastors how to have sex with a man. Court papers detailed how Douglas Perlitz' minor victims were forced to watch US porn films to learn his requirements. These children did not have a choice. Their innocence was taken and now many, as adults, are in need of psychological help to understand sexuality, their lost innocence, their self-hatred, outcast feelings, mental disorders, and certain other imported anti-social behaviors forced on them every night when they were young and helpless.

What's to say an adult gay partnership with a perceived rich white man at the Red Cross, with a UN soldier, a powerful Western politician stationed in Haiti is a “natural choice” where there are no jobs, visas, or positions except if one is a "nice Negro" in the eyes of the sexually liberal foreign worker.



Stop NGO pillage of Haiti – London Protest, May 1, 2012. Women of Colour and Global Women’s Strike campaigners gathered outside the British Red Cross in the capital in solidarity with the people of Haiti. See, Haiti's earthquake generated a $9bn response – where did the money go?

When hunger, death and joblessness are the alternative if one doesn't cooperate is consent effective? This is not to condone attacks on adult LGBT folks overseas. It is to point out that white supremacy in Haiti ushers in issues of power, racism and occupation that must end before certain Western accepted norms, and sexual tourism even between consenting adults may be said to be freely and consensually adopted. Even then, it is offensive for the US, as a policy, to force legalized prostitution and special homosexual rights in Haiti, in Africa, in the Caribbean, despite overwhelming opposition. (See the film showing this at Video documentary- Cultural Imperialism: The Sexual Rights Agenda.)

Neither Black culture nor Black people are random accessories. To alternatively dismiss, demean or appropriate.

After the earthquake with hundreds of thousands more charitable industry folks landing in Haiti and the US occupation blatantly being "open for business," sexual rape, like the US abuse of power in occupying Haiti is simply ignored by journalist as a norm that Black Haiti should endure from the white settlers.

The foreign abuse is happening in the very luxurious hotels built on the corpse of 310,000 quake victims whose deaths were used to collect millions to pay for building said foreign enclaves in occupied Haiti. (See- Haiti “Reconstruction”: Luxury Hotels, Sweat Shops and Deregulation for the Foreign Corporate Elite by Julie Lévesque).

Ezili's HLLN used to try and record as many of the US/Euro/UN charity worker sexual abuse of Haiti children and powerless women as we could.

For years, HLLN was the only voice doing this and then the US/Euro/UN molesting, raping and pedophilia and sex push in Haiti became so Sodom-Gomorrah blatant and pervasive, it overwhelmed our ability to keep up.

Here are the links still on-line on their abominations:

UN Peacekeepers and Humanitarian Aid Workers raping, molesting and abusing Haitian children.

I am the History of Rape:
HLLN Letter to UN asking for investigative reports on UN soldier's rapes in Haiti

Cultural imperialism, forced assimilation and the white settler's genocidal sex push in Haiti and Africa - A Video documentary.

In the age of Obama, US Ambassador Pamela White and the Martelly/Lamothe government, "Haiti open for business" literally means the small, innocent bodies of Haiti's children and defenseless Black women are the newly added tourist enclaves for the Northern vampires to gorge their every perversion upon.

What Haiti today is forced to endure, nearly 10-years after the US occupation began behind UN mercenary guns and the Paul Farmer-led NGO invasion, is beyond what a sane human mind and soul will absorb.

******

Haiti is one of the safest destinations in the Americas. In 2012, according to the UNODC, Haiti’s violence rate of 6.9 out of every hundred thousand Haitians is among the lowest rates in the Americas, and the same as Long Beach, California.

There is less violence in Haiti than in Washington D.C., Brazil, Mexico, Columbia, Bahamas, Jamaica, Dominican Republic, Trinidad and Tobago, Honduras. Than in most of the countries in the Western Hemisphere. (See UN Global Study on Homicide at pg 93 and Haiti: The soul of Africa, not for sale.)

What’s a Chapter 7, peace enforcement UN mission doing in Haiti for nearly 10-years when there is no peace agreement to enforce? There’s much greater violence elsewhere in the hemisphere, including in some US cities and in Brazil, the country that heads the UN mission to Haiti.

*****

The Clintons/Obama administration and the Farmer-led NGO divvied up $9 billion in the name of Haiti relief and reconstruction, most of which went back to their own coffers for their own plantation vision of Haiti.(See-US to Rewrite Constitution to Better Serve the One Percent ; Vision of Plantation Haiti - A White Pearl, Again! ; The Plantation Called Haiti: Feudal Pillage Masking as Humanitarian Aid and, Poverty Pimps Masturbating on Black Pain.)


In Haiti, the most educated and powerful on planet earth benefit from and help hide the US genocidal occupation of Haiti. The US de-legitimized every Haiti elections since it began the occupation, put in its own puppet government (Cholera Democracy) and controls Haiti.

The US occupation of Haiti is to blame for the 15,000 to 20,000 Haitians dead from cholera since their UN proxy brought the deadly disease to Haiti.

The US built its now fourth largest embassy in the world in tiny Haiti, not to bring Haiti democracy or development as evidenced by the last 10-years of terrorizing Haiti, and Obama simply continued the Bush/Clinton warmongering, to cart out Haiti riches, take its lands, profit from imposed Haiti chaos, misery and deaths.

It's called disaster capitalism, unfettered capitalism, forced assimilation, white supremacy and it’s been a great business boon for the Western elites since the days of their outright slavery in Haiti.



Ezili Dantò of HLLN research work, visiting UN-cholera victims at the epicenter of the outbreak in Mirebalais Haiti. Photo credit: Jean Ristil Jean Baptiste

Most foreign aid to Haiti or Africa is about Western profit, about money laundering to return the money back into the hands of the economic elites. Thus, it's more profitable for Dr. Paul Farmer/Bill Gates Foudation to partner to buy and sell Western drugs, vaccines, vitamin supplements than to promote and teach abstinence and monogamy, which is the more culturally natural African way of life for the majority. More profitable to make a market in Haiti and Africa for Harvard/WHO pharmaceuticals or to use poor Black women as lab rats to test dangerous Western contraceptives - norplant, quinacrine, depo provera and to even promote condom sales rather than to teach the hard facts about at-risk sexual behaviors. (See, Is there an international plan to depopulate and exterminate a large portion of Haiti's population? and Haiti a time bomb which must be defused immediately.)

“(Uganda is) a country where we have seen our loved ones die of HIV/AIDS, seen the suffering, the toll that such illness bears not just on the affected individual but the family, the society, our whole economy is suffering. It is our deepest belief that we owe it to our fellow Ugandans to put the right policies in place policies and homesexuality erodes the very fabric of our society in the sense that it puts our people at risk”– Rossette Katungye , Ambassador/Uganda Deputy Permanent, Geneva /quoted from the video documentary: Cultural Imperialism: The Sexual Rights Agenda Gay rights, just like the Haiti human rights the U.S. is supposed to have been concerned about when they overthrew Haiti's democratically elected government, is the cover behind which HIV/AIDS drugs are sold and ethnic cleansing, depopulation are brought to application. With the added benefit that the wealthy white gays, bisexuals, lesbians and transgenders (LGBT) charity workers or UN/USAID/Embassy executives get to feast and gorge on sexual tourism, for engaging in illicit sexual conduct, or certain tabou-at-home sexuality proclivities, in mostly transient, power-based, non-committed relationship, while stationed in at-risk countries.

******

Ezili Dantò: Great Mother Roots in Haiti and Africa. This interview begins 15 minutes into the music. Drag icon forward to get to the interview immediately. It's a May 2010 Ezili Dantò interview for black wombniverse radio, recorded four months after the earthquake. Touches on Haiti epistemology and the warrior women of the Haiti revolution that abolished slavery.

*****

The illnesses they leave behind, like HIV/AIDS, other STDs or diseases like UN-cholera in Haiti then refuels the need for more Western drugs and more Western saviors. Keeping the poverty pimps perpetually employed and masturbating on black pain, crisis and deaths. (See, UN Capitalizing on Cholera: playing arsonist and fireman.)

For instance, how useful is it to make a market in Haiti for vitamins and nutritional supplements if the recipients have to drink it down with cholera water or on hungry, empty stomachs caused by US big agri-business famine brought to Haiti.

For instance, the illnesses US aid workers left behind include cervical cancers, ovarian cancers, endless bleedings Haiti women are suffering from, as a result of Norplant implants and other controversial contraceptive drugs that USAID used decades ago. This refuels the need for more Western presence, more pharmaceuticals as aid. More opportunity to impose Western sanctions and economic warfare to force nations in Africa, Afghanistan, Iraq or in Haiti to do what Westerners think is right, including legalizing prostitution and promoting sex. It's raw imperialism. White supremacy's bloodsucking vampire activity.

Rich Western heterosexuals, homosexuals, bi-sexuals, lesbians, transgenders who want to talk to the Haiti masses about promoting their sexual preferences in Haiti ought to first address Haitian sovereignty, right to self-defense, self-reliance, self-determination, a domestic economy. Ought to first address the right to LIFE.

If there's no life, how is sexual behavior of any importance to the dead Haitian?

The white-savior industry and UN workers ought to first be about bringing into application universal human rights in Haiti, not claim and act as if they are above the laws. Ought to be about ending white supremacy, cultural imperialism, the profit-over-people insatiable greed of the wealthy elites. Ending NGO/USAID/US embassy false benevolence - its so-called aid, its unfair trade, its regime change embassies, WB/IMF/IFIs ecocide, genocide and their various operatives' warmongering in the global South. Go home. Fix that terror.

******

End the uninterrupted Euro-US pillage and plunder of Haiti Riches - over $20 billion in gold reserves, its iridium, silver, copper, coal and the Haiti oil cache Haiti geologists say is "an olympic pool to Venezuela's glass of water." (See- The Pain Rush in Haiti: Clorox Hunger lives in the same space that billions of dollars in "aid" are supposed to have been poured and In the Age of Obama: Truth You Won't Hear at the 50th Anniversary March on Washington.)

*****

Once the all-consuming Western terror is gone, once the NGOs are gone, the US occupation has ended and the US embassy is closed, Haiti would find its own way around exploiting its vast oil and mineral riches to raise its own peoples' domestic living standards - including tackling police issues of protecting all humans from Christian fanatical violence, regardless of their sexual orientation, in an equitable, civil and responsible manner.

Only Haiti has the ability to define its priorities, not foreigners. The over $2.5 billion dollars in yearly diaspora remittances are the ONLY effective and sustainable aid that works in Haiti.

Barack Obama who mostly betrayed core justice and peace values during two terms, the Clintons, the Bushes, the Dr. Paul Farmer-led NGOs, the UN Security Council, their employees, agents and sycophants have no moral standing to preach about oppression and human rights to the distraught and traumatized Haiti masses. None. We are the history and evidence of their systematic, every day tyranny and rape.

Ezili Dantò of HLLN
Disengagement is not an option
Grenadye alaso



Ezili Dantò is a human rights lawyer, performing artist, writer and award wining playwright. She was born in Haiti. Holds a BA from Boston College, a JD from the University of Connecticut School of law. She is a cultural and political activist and the founder and president of Ezili’s Haitian Lawyers Leadership Network (HLLN). She runs the Haitian Perspectives on-line journal, the Ezili Dantò Network and is the creator of Zili Dlo: Clean Water, Skills Transfer and Solar Power for everyone in Haiti. More info at - ezilidanto.com/zili

Damn the Evidence and Pay the Devil: Kerry's "Declaration of War" on Syria


John Kerry Delivers Obama’s War Declaration Against Syria

by 21st Century Wire

US Secretary of State John Kerry just entered his name in the ledger of history, only he will hence forth be listed in the liability column, next to the likes of Colin Powell, Tony Blair and others.

This week the White House, on behalf of the US military industrial corporation, sent their emissary John Kerry in front of the public to do the dirty work of a President who still requires a safe distance from the source of this particular dirty war decision, until of course, the inertia of war is so great that the President can claim it as a fait accompli.

On this momentous occasion, Kerry’s Ivy League speech writers have invoked a new level propaganda which would dazzle even Josef Goebells. Incredibly, he crowed, “Anyone, who would claim that an attack of this staggering scale could be contrived or fabricated, need to check their conscious and their own moral compass.”

Kerry is not just implying – he is insisting, that anyone who dare questions Washington’s own expedited, and fabricated version of events in Syria – is somehow immoral. Even though the US, UK and France lack any real proof that Assad has launched a chemical weapons attack against its own people, Kerry is, in effect, slandering anyone who has exposed the facts on the ground, including the UN, Russia and others who have taken a more sober approach to analysing the important issues.

Why the rush, and why the harsh and conclusive language from Kerry?

The answer is simple: they must get their war underway before the real evidence can be shown to the world – that NATO’s US, UK, France and Turkish-backed rebels in Syria are out of control, and have been dabbling with chemical weapons and killing civilians under the direction of western intelligence agencies and private military contracting firms operating in the region. Israel is also involved, in cooperation with the US.

Interestingly enough, in 2009, less than 24 months before Washington’s covert proxy coalition began its destablisation campaign against Syria, John Kerry believed that, “Syria is an essential player in bringing peace and stability to the region”.

“President Barack Obama’s administration considers Syria a key player in Washington’s efforts to revive the stalled Middle East peace process”.

Some months later, Kerry met again with Assad not once, but twice. “US Senator John Kerry met Syrian President Bashar al-Assad for a second time in as many months on Saturday for talks on ‘regional issues,’ the American embassy in Damascus said,” reported the AFP.

“… And in 2011, when Kerry again wanted to go to Syria, his visit was blocked–by the Obama administration. “The Obama administration and France reportedly nixed a visit by U.S. Sen. John Kerry to Syria. Kerry (D-Mass.), the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, has cultivated a relationship with the Syrian regime otherwise treated as a pariah in the West in the hope of drawing it away from Iranian influence. The Wall Street Journal reported Monday that Kerry had planned a visit last month, but the governments of the United States and of French President Nicolas Sarkozy blocked the visit out of concern that it would signal ‘Western weakness’ as pro-Iranian and pro-Western forces jockeyed for influence in Syria’s neighbor, Lebanon,” reported the Jewish Telegraphic Agency in March 2011″, reported the Weekly Standard in 2012.

In fact, the Kerrys and the Assads shared an intimate social life outside of diplomatic circles, as evidenced by this leisurely outing in Damascus (photo below):


IMAGE: John Kerry and his wife dining with President 
Bashar al Assad and his spouse in 2009.

SO what happened?

Kerry, more than anyone else in Washington, would know the character of President Assad who was a strong ally of the United States in the War on Terror and know full well Syria’s yeoman efforts in flushing out the scourge of Islamic jihadists and religious fundamentalism in his country.

As with Hosni Mubarak and Mumar Qadhafi, this should be yet another lesson to any world leader or government who believes that they are “doing business” with the United States and its allied gang of NATO district nations. This lesson should also be heeded by the undemocratic, petrolium-monarchies in Saudi Arabia and Qatar who have been paying most of the bills so far for the Syrian opposition.



When you do a deal with the devil, eventually, the devil will come collecting.

R2P: Massacres That Count, and Who's Counting?

Massacres That Matter - 'Responsibility To Protect' in Egypt, Libya, and Syria (part 1)

by David Edwards - Media Lens

The 'responsibility to protect' (R2P), formulated at the 2005 UN World Summit, is based on the idea that state sovereignty is not a right but a responsibility. Where offending states fail to live up to this responsibility by inflicting genocide, ethnic cleansing and other crimes against humanity on their own people, the international community has a responsibility to act. Economic sanctions and the use of military force can thus be employed as 'humanitarian intervention'.

A second version of R2P, proposed by the [Gareth] Evans Commission, goes much further. It authorises 'regional or sub-regional organisations' such as Nato to determine their 'area of jurisdiction' and to act in cases where 'the Security Council rejects a proposal or fails to deal with it in a reasonable time'.

Gareth Evans - described by the BBC as someone 'who has championed the doctrine that the international community has a responsibility to protect civilians' - has an interesting CV. John Pilger wrote in 2000:

'One of the nauseating moments of the East Timor tragedy was in 1989, when Gareth Evans, the then Australian foreign minister, raised his champagne glass to his Indonesian equivalent, Ali Alatas, as they flew over the Timor Sea in an Australian aircraft, having signed the Timor Gap Treaty. Below them was the small country where a third of the population had died or been killed under Suharto.'

Pilger added:

'Thanks largely to Evans, Australia was the only western country formally to recognise Suharto's genocidal conquest. The murderous Indonesian special forces known as Kopassus were trained in Australia. The prize, said Evans, was "zillions" of dollars.'

R2P is often described as an 'emerging norm' in international affairs. But as Noam Chomsky has noted, Japan's attack on Manchuria, Mussolini's invasion of Ethiopia, and Hitler's occupation of Czechoslovakia were 'all accompanied by lofty rhetoric about the solemn responsibility to protect the suffering populations'. In fact, R2P has 'been considered a norm as far back as we want to go'.

On March 18, 2011, the day before Nato launched its assault on Libya, the BBC quoted from a speech by prime minister David Cameron:

'On the 23rd February the UN Secretary General cited the reported nature and scale of attacks on civilians as "egregious violations of international and human rights law" and called on the government of Libya to "meet its responsibility to protect its people."'

Two weeks earlier, the BBC had published an interview with Gareth Evans, asking:

'Is there a clear-cut case for a "responsibility to protect" justification for intervention in Libya?'

Evans responded:

'Absolutely... The question now, of course, is whether a step further should be taken to go down the military path and I think, morally, the case is overwhelming.'

Two weeks later, on March 22, 2011, with Nato bombing underway, Jonathan Freedland focused in the Guardian on how 'in a global, interdependent world we have a "responsibility to protect" each other'. Freedland's article was titled:

'Though the risks are very real, the case for intervention remains strong - Not to respond to Gaddafi's chilling threats would leave us morally culpable, but action in Libya is fraught with danger'

One day later, the Guardian's former Middle East editor Brian Whitaker wrote under the title:

'The difference with Libya - Unlike Bahrain or Yemen, the scale and nature of the Gaddafi regime's actions have impelled the UN's "responsibility to protect."'

Whitaker examined the origins and development of R2P, concluding that it had at last borne fruit: 'it deserves to be recognised as an intervention based on principle and not as the "petro-imperialist" plot that Gaddafi claims it to be'.

The following day, also in the Guardian, Ian Williams discussed the origins and merits of R2P:

'Under those principles, as Brian Whitaker demonstrates, the Libyan operation emerges with great credibility. Gaddafi had been repeatedly warned to stop killing his own people, but carried on using heavier and heavier weapons...'

Like other liberal commentators, Williams caveated freely, noting concerns about flaws in R2P, about 'Washington's methods and motivations', and so on. But his conclusion was clear enough.

These articles were all published between March 22-24, 2011, shortly after Nato began its attacks. Whitaker referenced Freedland, Williams referenced Whitaker, an echo chamber in which three senior journalists all took seriously both R2P and the idea that the Libya 'intervention' was an example of the doctrine in action.

At the beginning of March, Timothy Garton Ash had also written in the Guardian on the application of R2P in Libya:

'To intervene or not to intervene? That is the question... I defy anyone to watch Gaddafi's planes attacking besieged towns and not accept that there is at least a legitimate question whether outside powers should intervene in some way to prevent him killing more of his own people.'

Although 'unconvinced' that a no-fly zone would be 'justified - at the time of writing' (our emphasis), Garton Ash nevertheless asked:

'And do we not have some responsibility to protect the people who have risen against him, if only in the form of the no-fly zone supported by Libyans?'

In yet another Guardian piece the following week, Menzies Campbell, former leader of the Liberal Democrats, and Philippe Sands, professor of law at University College London, commented:

'International law does not require the world to stand by and do nothing as civilians are massacred on the orders of Colonel Gaddafi...'

They added:

'It would be tragic for the Libyan people if the shadow of Iraq were to limit an emerging "responsibility to protect", the principle that in some circumstances the use of force may be justified to prevent the massive and systematic violation of fundamental human rights.'

The Guardian was not alone in tirelessly promoting R2P as a basis for a Western war in Libya. Also in March 2011, human rights barrister Geoffrey Robertson asked in the Independent:

'Will the world stand idly by once Colonel Gaddafi, a man utterly without mercy, starts to deliver on his threat to "fight to the last man and woman" - and, inferentially, to the last child?'

Robertson also discussed the origins and development of R2P, concluding:

'The duty to stop the mass murder of innocents, as best we can, has crystallised to make the use of force by Nato not merely "legitimate" but lawful.'

Ostensibly at the other end of the media 'spectrum', Matthew d'Ancona wrote of Libya in the Telegraph on March 27:

'It is surely a matter for quiet national pride that an Arab Srebrenica was prevented by a coalition in which Britain played an important part...'

D'Ancona added:

'"R2P" is being given a trial run in Libya, and the results of the experiment will have momentous consequences in the decades ahead.'

Clearly, in March 2011, readers were bombarded with commentary promoting R2P as a basis for Western military 'intervention' in Libya. As we have discussed, many of the alleged horrors said to justify Nato's assault - Gaddafi's use of vicious foreign mercenaries and Viagra-fuelled mass rape, his planned massacre in Benghazi - were sheer invention. The violent chaos that has befallen Libya since Nato's war, however, is very real.

Some interesting questions arise. How did the same politicians and journalists respond to the overthrow of the democratically elected Egyptian government on July 3, 2013 by a military force trained, armed and supported by the United States? How did politics and media respond to the appalling and undisputed August 14 massacre of civilians by this same military? And how heavily did the much-loved R2P doctrine – allegedly rooted in ethics rather than realpolitik - feature in coverage of these crimes?

Comparing Obama on Libya, Syria And Egypt

According to the Egyptian Centre for Economic and Social Research, 1,295 Egyptians were killed between August 14-16, with 1,063 losing their lives on August 14 alone. The violence was one-sided, as the Guardian reported:

'But the central charges – that most Brotherhood supporters are violent, that their two huge protest camps were simply overgrown terrorist cells, and that their brutal suppression was justified and even restrained – are not supported by facts.'

To put the slaughter in perspective, 108 people were killed in the May 25, 2012 massacre in Houla, Syria, which was instantly blamed by the West on Syrian president Assad personally, leading to a storm of denunciations and calls for a Western military 'response'.

So how does the US-UK political response compare on Libya, Syria and Egypt?

The Guardian quoted Obama's view on Libya in an article entitled, 'Obama throws the weight of the west behind freedom in the Middle East':

'While we cannot stop every injustice, there are circumstances that cut through our caution - when a leader is threatening to massacre his people and the international community is calling for action. That is why we stopped a massacre in Libya. And we will not relent until the people of Libya are protected, and the shadow of tyranny is lifted.'

With standard objectivity, the Guardian described this as 'a stirring speech', one that placed the US 'unambiguously on the side of those fighting for freedom across the Middle East'.

How did this US commitment to human rights manifest itself in the aftermath of the vast massacre committed by the Egyptian military junta on August 14? Obama commented:

'We appreciate the complexity of the situation... After the military intervention [sic] several weeks ago, there remained a chance to pursue a democratic path. Instead we have seen a more dangerous path taken.

'The United States strongly condemns the steps that have been taken by Egypt's interim government [sic] and security forces. We deplore violence against civilians. We support universal rights essential to human dignity, including the right to peaceful protest. We oppose the pursuit of marshal law.'

Obama cancelled joint military exercises but he did not even suspend the annual $1.3 billion of aid to Egypt's armed forces. Jen Psaki, a State Department spokeswoman, commented:

'This is a rocky road back to democracy. We continue to work at it.'

The New York Times noted that the $1.3 billion in military aid 'is its main access to the kind of big-ticket, sophisticated weaponry that the Egyptian military loves'. Global Post listed the 10 biggest 'defence' contracts involving major US corporations like Lockheed Martin, Boeing, Raytheon and AgustaWestland.

Spencer Ackerman wrote in the Guardian:

'Perhaps the most mystifying thing about the cosmetic US response to Wednesday's massacre in Egypt is the reluctance for the US to use its massive aid leverage over Cairo's generals.'

This must indeed be 'mystifying' for journalists who believe that the United States is 'unambiguously on the side of those fighting for freedom'. Indifference to mass slaughter notwithstanding, Ackerman affirmed the happy truth:

'Paramount among US concerns was that the military not massacre Egyptian civilians.'

UK foreign secretary William Hague, who has tirelessly demanded war against Libya and Syria in response to crimes real, imagined and predicted, had this to say about the killing of many hundreds of civilians in Egypt:

'Our influence may be limited - it is a proudly independent country - and there may be years of turbulence in Egypt and other countries... We have to do our best to promote democratic institutions and political dialogue....'

Patrick Cockburn supplied a rare, honest summary of at least part of the ugly truth:

'For all their expressions of dismay at last week's bloodbath, the US and the EU states were so mute and mealy-mouthed about criticising the 3 July coup as to make clear that they prefer the military to the Brotherhood.'

This helps explain why the Lexis media database finds exactly two articles containing the words 'Egypt' and 'responsibility to protect', or 'R2P', since July 3. One is a single-sentence mention in passing in an Observer editorial focusing on Syria. Ironically, the other cites a statement issued by Egypt's interior ministry after the August 14 bloodbath:

'Upon the government's assignment to take necessary measures against the Rabaa and Nahda sit-ins, and out of national responsibility to protect citizens' security, the security forces have started to take necessary measures to disperse both sit-ins.' ('Voices from the violence,' Independent, August 15, 2013)

R2P is simply not an issue for the US-UK alliance in Egypt. But what is so striking is that R2P is simultaneously not an issue for the ostensibly objective and independent 'free press'.



Part 2 will follow shortly...

This Alert is Archived here:
Massacres That Matter - 'Responsibility To Protect' In Egypt, Libya And Syria - Part 1

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Monday, August 26, 2013

Learning Still to Embrace Decay

Learning to Embrace Decay

by C. L. Cook

In the Spring there will be growth in the garden.” - Chauncey Gardener

Odd, at the height of summer, to consider the inevitable decay of autumn, but watching the blooms and dry arbutus leaves fall in the garden today I felt a moment of seasonal depression. Maybe it’s just the signs of the times catching up to me.

I’ve always held a morbid fascination for the 1930’s; its economic crash, dust bowls, and the rise of fascism. I suppose it was naïve to believe I would never get the chance to see its revival. Reading the history, that ultimate exercise in Monday morning quarterbacking, any fool could see, the disastrous policy straws the politicians and pundits of that dirty decade grasped at to find their way out of the morass guaranteed the birth of monsters beyond imagining. But, to be charitable to those long gone wonks, they hadn’t the benefit of historical precedent when they made their awful decisions. We can’t make the same claim.

What had seemed an endless summer of economic and social progress following the Second World War is now crashing to earth faster than a stockbroker from a skyscraper. And, the powers that be, those “others”, a-flounder in the deep end of capitalism’s cyclical tsunami, are again reaching for the straw man salvation of crypto-fascism. From the Terror War, a concept pioneered by Hitler, and the fiscal barbarity practiced by Gordon Campbell, (doomed policies, it turns out, plagiarized directly from that same benighted era), to farm failures and the revocation of fiscal controls on capital flows and industry, the sense of mechanical repetition transcends déjà vu. And all this without the excuse of ignorance.

It makes one wonder: “Does history matter in the face of a systemic death wish?”

We’ve all seen the fruits of the totalitarian state. Who, of sound mind and conscience, would want to repeat the horrors of the Gulags and Final Solutions of the past? But recent revelations of plans for vast concentration camps for American Muslims, and presumably others ‘out of tune’ with the current realities, and savaging of constitutional rights is pointing us down a road travelled before.

Which begs the question: “Is this a moment of collective amnesia, or simply the inevitable terminal stage of western civilization?”

A quick study of the history of what we call ‘human civilization’ reveals patterns of rise and fall, ebb and flow: The great flowering of culture, ideas, and ideals inexorably followed by the cruel usurpation of egalitarian principles by elites controlling political, economic, and military power; and then, the Fall. You don’t have to be a Gibbons’ scholar to see the similarities between imperial Rome and the current American Nepotocracy, or surmise where it’s leading.

There’s a promise of war in the autumn. The legions of America and her faithful allies will, if punditry be true, crusade to the next most brutalized country, after battered Afghanistan, and eject the infidels of Iraq. George W. Bush, like Caesar before him, is busy replacing the republic and no doubt dreams nightly of his laurelled visage beaming at the head of a tickertape parade. The great Pretender will preside clueless over the end of the democratic experiment, and his fascist winter interlude will unknowingly play harbinger to the next world order.

And the thought of that Spring’s possibilities is worth planting for.



Chris Cook hosts CFUV’s Gorilla Radio,
broad/webcast from the University of Victoria
August/2002

War Racketeers Ready Syria Conflagration

Lying About Syria, and the Lying Liars Who Lie About the Lying

by David Swanson - War is a Crime

UPDATE: Flyers you can use to oppose this war: Color PDF, Black and White PDF.

"U.S. prepares for possible retaliatory strike against Syria," announces a Los Angeles Times headline, even though Syria has not attacked the United States or any of its occupied territories or imperial forces and has no intention to do so.

Quoth the article:

"the president made no decisions, but the high-level talks came as the Pentagon acknowledged it was moving U.S. forces into position in the region."

Forgive me, but who the SNAFU made that decision? Does the commander in chief have any say in this? Does he get to make speeches explaining how wrong it would be to attack Syria, meet with top military officials who leave the meeting to prepare for attacks on Syria, and go down in history as having been uninvolved in, if not opposed to, his own policies?

Threatening to attack Syria, and moving ships into position to do it, are significant, and illegal, and immoral actions. The president can claim not to have decided to push the button, but he can't pretend that all the preparations to do so just happen like the weather. Or he couldn't if newspapers reported news.

(Yes, illegal. Read the U.N. Charter:

"All Members shall refrain in their international relations from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state, or in any other manner inconsistent with the Purposes of the United Nations.")

"The Defense Department has a responsibility to provide the president with options for all contingencies," said the so-called Defense Secretary, but do any of the contingencies involve defending the United States? Do any of them involve peace-making? If not, is it really accurate to talk about "all" contingencies?

In fact, Chuck Hagel only has that "responsibility" because Obama instructed him to provide, not all options, but all military options.

Syrian rebels understand that under all possible U.S. policies, faking chemical weapons attacks can get them guns, while shifting to nonviolent resistance can only get them as ignored as Bahrain. (Ba-who?)

"Obama also called British Prime Minister David Cameron," says the LA Times, "to talk over the developments in Syria. The two are 'united' in their opposition to the use of chemical weapons, the White House said in a statement issued after the call." Well, except for white phosphorus and napalm. Those are good chemical weapons, and the United States government is against bad chemical weapons, so really your newspaper isn't lying to you at all.

What did Obama say to CNN on Thursday?


"[T]he notion that the U.S. can somehow solve what is a sectarian, complex problem inside of Syria sometimes is overstated"

Ya think?

CNN's Chris Cuomo (son of Mario) pushed for war:

"But delay can be deadly, right, Mr. President?"

Obama replied that he was still verifying the latest chemical weapons horseshit. Cuomo brushed that aside:

"There's strong proof they used them already, though, in the past."

Obama didn't reply to that lie, but spouted some vacuous rhetoric.

Cuomo, his thirst for dead Syrian flesh perhaps getting a bit frustrated, reached for the standard John McCainism. Senator McCain, Cuomo said, thinks U.S. "credibility" is lost if Syria is not attacked. (And if the U.S. government were to suddenly claim not to be an institution of mass-murder, and to act on that -- then how would its credibility be?)

Obama, undeterred, went right on preaching against what he was about to do.

"Sometimes," Obama said, "what we've seen is that folks will call for immediate action, jumping into stuff, that does not turn out well, gets us mired in very difficult situations, can result in us being drawn into very expensive, difficult, costly interventions that actually breed more resentment in the region."

But you promised, whined Cuomo, that chemical weapons use would be the crossing of a Red Line!

Obama replied that international law should be complied with. (For the uninitiated, international law actually forbids attacking and overturning other nations' governments -- even Libya's.) And, Obama pointed out, there are options other than the military.

There are?!

I've found that when Obama starts talking sense like this, he's actually moving rapidly in the opposite direction. The more he explains why it would be wrong and illegal and stupid and immoral to attack Syria, the more you can be sure he's about to do just that.

Here are my, previously published, top 10 reasons not to attack Syria, even if the latest chemical weapons lies were true:
1. War is not made legal by such an excuse. It can't be found in the Kellogg-Briand Pact, the United Nations Charter, or the U.S. Constitution. It can, however, be found in U.S. war propaganda of the 2002 vintage. (Who says our government doesn't promote recycling?)

2. The United States itself possesses and uses internationally condemned weapons, including white phosphorus, napalm, cluster bombs, and depleted uranium. Whether you praise these actions, avoid thinking about them, or join me in condemning them, they are not a legal or moral justification for any foreign nation to bomb us, or to bomb some other nation where the U.S. military is operating. Killing people to prevent their being killed with the wrong kind of weapons is a policy that must come out of some sort of sickness. Call it Pre-Traumatic Stress Disorder.

3. An expanded war in Syria could become regional or global with uncontrollable consequences. Syria, Lebanon, Iran, Russia, China, the United States, the Gulf states, the NATO states . . . does this sound like the sort of conflict we want? Does it sound like a conflict anyone will survive? Why in the world risk such a thing?

4. Just creating a "no fly zone" would involve bombing urban areas and unavoidably killing large numbers of people. This happened in Libya and we looked away. But it would happen on a much larger scale in Syria, given the locations of the sites to be bombed. Creating a "no fly zone" is not a matter of making an announcement, but of dropping bombs.

5. Both sides in Syria have used horrible weapons and committed horrible atrocities. Surely even those who imagine people should be killed to prevent their being killed with different weapons can see the insanity of arming both sides to protect each other side. Why is it not, then, just as insane to arm one side in a conflict that involves similar abuses by both?

6. With the United States on the side of the opposition in Syria, the United States will be blamed for the opposition's crimes. Most people in Western Asia hate al Qaeda and other terrorists. They are also coming to hate the United States and its drones, missiles, bases, night raids, lies, and hypocrisy. Imagine the levels of hatred that will be reached when al Qaeda and the United States team up to overthrow the government of Syria and create an Iraq-like hell in its place.

7. An unpopular rebellion put into power by outside force does not usually result in a stable government. In fact there is not yet on record a case of U.S. humanitarian war benefitting humanity or of nation-building actually building a nation. Why would Syria, which looks even less auspicious than most potential targets, be the exception to the rule?

8. This opposition is not interested in creating a democracy, or -- for that matter -- in taking instructions from the U.S. government. On the contrary, blowback from these allies is likely. Just as we should have learned the lesson of lies about weapons by now, our government should have learned the lesson of arming the enemy of the enemy long before this moment.

9. The precedent of another lawless act by the United States, whether arming proxies or engaging directly, sets a dangerous example to the world and to those in Washington for whom Iran is next on the list.

10. A strong majority of Americans, despite all the media's efforts thus far, opposes arming the rebels or engaging directly. Instead, a plurality supports providing humanitarian aid.

In sum, making the Syrian people worse off is not a way to help them.

But -- guess what? -- the evidence suggests strongly that the latest chemical weapons claims are as phony as all the previous ones.

Who would have ever predicted?

Clayoquot Gold Project Pushes on Without First Nations Consultation


CLAYOQUOT SOUND GOLD MINE PROPOSAL MOVING FORWARD WITHOUT FIRST NATIONS APPROVAL

by Wilderness Committee

Consultation on Fandora Mine inadequate, says Tla-o-qui-aht First Nation
TOFINO, BC - The Tla-o-qui-aht First Nation is angered to learn that plans to begin gold mining work in the Tranquil Valley in Clayoquot Sound took a significant step forward last week. A letter was sent to the BC Minister of Energy and Mines from a Senior Mines Inspector recommending approval for a permit to conduct exploratory mining at the long-abandoned Fandora mine site.

The Tla-o-qui-aht oppose mining in their territory and are not satisfied with the level of consultation by the company, Vancouver-based Selkirk Metals (owned by Imperial Metals Corporation) and the BC government. The Nation was awaiting word on a meeting with the Minister, which they expected to happen in September.

The Tla-o-qui-aht have declared Tranquil Valley a Tribal Park, have been working to attract investors in a conservation model, and aspire to build a salmon hatchery and other sustainable projects. The mine does not fit the Tla-o-qui-aht vision of ecosystem management and resource stewardship.

“We’re not anti-development; we’re pro-sustainable development,” said Saya Masso, Tla-o-qui-aht Natural Resource Manager and councillor. “As a First Nation working hard for a resilient homeland and sustainable economies, it’s upsetting to be disregarded by the consultation process that the government is using to approve projects like this.”

Mining is controversial in Clayoquot Sound, a region designated as a UNESCO Biosphere Reserve and world-renowned for wildlife and pristine ecosystems. Tla-o-qui-aht opposition to mining is strongly supported by the Wilderness Committee, Greenpeace, Friends of Clayoquot Sound, Clayoquot Action, and Sierra Club BC.

“A gold mine would jeopardize watershed and salmon recovery, and risk all the progress that has been made in Clayoquot,” said Torrance Coste, Vancouver Island Campaigner with the Wilderness Committee. “This is a region that could be an example of how to look after the environment, but a mine here would shatter that potential.”

The District of Tofino has called for the modernization of mineral tenure laws in BC to give First Nations and municipalities a larger say in the process.

“Local governments and First Nations deserve greater latitude to shape their economic development paths and protect the full range of their residents’ interests,” said Tofino District Mayor Josie Osborne.

The Tla-o-qui-aht are demanding that their original request for a meeting with the Minister finally be honoured.

“We hope that a meeting with the Minister will put this back on track for the people of Vancouver Island, and those who currently benefit from the healthy territories of the Tla-o-qui-aht Nation,” Masso said.

– 30 –
For Immediate Release - August 26, 2013
For more information, contact:

Saya Masso | Tla-o-qui-aht First Nation

Josie Osborne | Mayor, District of Tofino

Torrance Coste | Vancouver Island Campaigner, Wilderness Committee
 
Eduardo Sousa | Senior Forests Campaigner, Greenpeace
 
Dan Lewis | Clayoquot Action

Emery Hartley | Campaigner, Friends of Clayoquot Sound

Suckering Obama on Syria

It's A Trap!

by Peter Lee - China Matters

Did the Syrian rebels trap President Obama into military action by using his own words, specifically his definition of use of chemical weapons as a "red line"?

I, for one, am somewhat skeptical of the idea that the Assad regime decided to mount a chemical weapon attack against a Damascus suburb just as a UN chemical weapons investigation team was hunkering down in Damascus.

Assad is no angel, but, like most dictators, his survival skills—particularly, the skill of keeping his outrages below the level that provoke Western military action—seem pretty well honed.

As an alternative version of what might have gone down, imagine some guy, let’s say, Prince B---, tells President Obama:

Yeah, the chemical weapons attack was a false flag operation by the rebels. Whatcha gonna do about it, Mr. Red Line? Pin the attack on the rebels and destroy the Syrian uprising? Do nothing and look like a wuss? Or blame Assad, bury the truth about the attack under a pile of cruise missiles and propaganda, keep the insurrection going, and promote an image of American leadership in the Middle East?

For the rebels and their supporters, foreclosing the possibility of any West-brokered negotiated settlement with Assad might be worth a few hundred innocent lives.

The carefully prepared—written!—U.S. backgrounder laying the PR groundwork for some kind of military action against Syria deployed the “too late” argument, as in “The Syrian government was ‘too late’ in permitting access to the site of the alleged attack”.

I’m no expert on sarin forensics and the difficulties of detecting traces after five days, but I do have a pretty good recollection of the run-up to the Iraq War, when the Bush administration was rather anxious to bring an end to UN inspection process, primarily, I suspect because it had discovered an embarrassing lack of WMDs.

Here’s a nice item of “too late” memorabilia from CNN in September 2002:

Powell says it's too late for Iraq to negotiate
 
WASHINGTON (CNN) --Secretary of State Colin Powell said Sunday that U.N. weapons inspectors must be allowed to go "anywhere, anytime" if they returned to Iraq -- rejecting that country's conditional offer to allow inspections to resume.
"If they have no weapons, what are they hiding?" Powell said on CNN's "Late Edition With Wolf Blitzer."
"They find all kinds of excuses, a thousand excuses -- 'There are spies on this team. We don't want this. When are sanctions going to be relieved and removed?' The issue is Iraqi noncompliance, and we should not allow them to move us off that issue."
At a news conference Saturday, Iraqi Deputy Prime Minister Tariq Aziz said his nation would allow inspectors to return only if the United States doesn't bring military action and if U.N. sanctions are lifted.
"If there is a solution which maintains Iraq's sovereignty, dignity and legitimate rights and prevents aggression, we are ready," Aziz said.
President Bush brought his case against Iraq to the U.N. General Assembly last week, challenging the international organization to enforce resolutions seeking to disarm the Saddam Hussein regime.
Aziz denied Iraq was harboring weapons of mass destruction and accused Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair of exaggerating the threat Iraq poses to the region.
Powell said it was too late for Iraq to negotiate the terms for the return of international weapons inspectors.
He said he was working with members of the U.N. Security Council to try to hammer out a resolution that lays out Iraq's violations of U.N. resolutions, what the country must do to meet the U.N. conditions and what the international community will do if it does not respond.
"The time for Iraq to respond was years ago," Powell said. "They now have an opportunity to respond now with this new resolution. But what we cannot allow to have happen is to get into this haggling and listening to the duplicitous comments that are constantly coming out of Deputy Prime Minister Tariq Aziz."
...
"Enough is enough," said Bush, who argued that Saddam has defied the United Nations 16 times since the Persian Gulf War. "The United Nations will either be able to function as a peacekeeping body as we head into the 21st century, or it will be irrelevant, and that's what we are about to find out."
Bush also said if the world body did not act, he was prepared to take matters into his own hands.
"Make no mistake about it," Bush said. "If we have to deal with the problem, we'll deal with it."

Past Perfect Crime: Syria and the 'Kosovo Treatment' Precedent


US Uses Past Crimes to Legalize Future Ones

by Diana Johnstone - CounterPunch

Paris - The liberal warhawks are groping around for a pretext they can call “legal” for waging war against Syria, and have come up with the 1999 “Kosovo war”.

This is not surprising insofar as a primary purpose of that US/NATO 78-day bombing spree was always to set a precedent for more such wars. The pretext of “saving the Kosovars” from an imaginary “genocide” was as false as the “weapons of mass destruction” pretext for war against Iraq, but the fakery has been much more successful with the general public. Therefore Kosovo retains its usefulness in the propaganda arsenal.

On August 24, the New York Times reported that President Obama’s national security aides are “studying the NATO air war in Kosovo as a possible blueprint for acting without a mandate from the United Nations.” (By the way, the “air war” was not “in Kosovo”, but struck the whole of what was then Yugoslavia, mostly destroying Serbia’s civilian infrastructure and also spreading destruction in Montenegro.)

On Friday, Obama admitted that going in and attacking another country “without a U.N. mandate and without clear evidence” raised questions in terms of international law.

According to the New York Times, “Kosovo is an obvious precedent for Mr. Obama because, as in Syria, civilians were killed and Russia had longstanding ties to the government authorities accused of the abuses. In 1999, President Bill Clinton used the endorsement of NATO and the rationale of protecting a vulnerable population to justify 78 days of airstrikes.”

“It’s a step too far to say we’re drawing up legal justifications for an action, given that the president hasn’t made a decision,” said a senior administration official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the deliberations. “But Kosovo, of course, is a precedent of something that is perhaps similar.”

Ivo H. Daalder, a former United States ambassador to NATO, suggests that the administration could argue that the use of chemical weapons in Syria amounts to a grave humanitarian emergency, just as the Clinton administration argued in 1999 that “a grave humanitarian emergency” presented the “international community” with “the responsibility to act”.

This amounts to creative legality worthy of the planet’s number one Rogue State.

An Illegal War as Precedent for More War

The US/NATO war against Yugoslavia, which used unilateral force to break up a sovereign state, detaching the historic Serbian province of Kosovo and transforming it into a US satellite, was clearly in violation of international law.

In May 2000, the distinguished British authority on international law, Sir Ian Brownlie (1936-2010), presented a 16,000-word Memorandum, evaluating the war’s legal status for the Select Committee on Foreign Affairs of the British Parliament.

Brownlie recalled that key provisions of the United Nations Charter state quite clearly that “All Members shall refrain in their international relations from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any State, or in any other manner inconsistent with the Purposes of the United Nations.”

Brownlie added that the alleged right to use force for humanitarian purposes was not compatible with the UN Charter.

During the past decade, the Western powers have invented and promoted a theoretical “right to protect” (R2P) in an effort to get around the UN Charter in order to clear the way for wars whose final purpose is regime change. The use of R2P to overthrow Gaddafi in Libya gave the game away, ensuring Russian and Chinese opposition for any further such manoeuvre in the UN Security Council.

Concerning the Kosovo war, in his Memorandum Professor Brownlie reached the following major conclusions:

- The primary justification for the bombing of Yugoslavia was always the imposition of the NATO plans for the future of Kosovo. It was in this context that the bombing campaign was planned in August 1998.

- The threats of massive air strikes were made in the same context and were first made public in October 1998. Neither the purpose of the planned air strikes nor their implementation related to events on the ground in Kosovo in March 1999.

- The cause of the air strikes was quite simple: given that Yugoslavia had not given in to threats, the threats had to be carried out.

- The legal basis of the action, as presented by the United Kingdom and other NATO States, was at no stage adequately articulated.

- Humanitarian intervention, the justification belatedly advanced by the NATO States, has no place either in the United Nations Charter or in customary international law.

- If the view had been held that the Permanent Members of the Security Council would recognise the need for humanitarian action, then no doubt a resolution would have been sought.

- The intentions of the United States and the United Kingdom included the removal of the Government of Yugoslavia. It is impossible to reconcile such purposes with humanitarian intervention.

- The claim to be acting on humanitarian grounds appears difficult to reconcile with the disproportionate amount of violence involved in the use of heavy ordnance and missiles. The weapons had extensive blast effects and the missiles had an incendiary element. A high proportion of targets were in towns and cities. Many of the victims were women and children. After seven weeks of the bombing at least 1,200 civilians had been killed and 4,500 injured.

- In spite of the references to the need for a peaceful solution to be found in Security Council Resolutions, the public statements of Mrs Albright, Mr Cook, Mr Holbrooke, and others, and the reiterated threats of massive air strikes, make it very clear that no ordinary diplomacy was envisaged.

The “Kosovo treatment”


As a final synopsis, Brownlie wrote a prophetic note on future use of “the Kosovo treatment”:

“The writer has contacts with a great number of diplomats and lawyers of different nationalities. The reaction to the NATO bombing campaign outside Europe and North America has been generally hostile. Most States have problems of separatism and could, on a selective basis, be the objects of Western ‘crisis management’. The selection of crises for the ‘Kosovo’ treatment will depend upon the geopolitical and collateral agenda. It is on this basis, and not a humanitarian agenda, that Yugoslavia is marked out for fragmentation on a racial basis, whilst Russia and Indonesia are not.”
He added: “Forcible intervention to serve humanitarian objectives is a claim which is only open to powerful States to make against the less powerful. The fate of Yugoslavia will have caused considerable damage to the cause of non-proliferation of weapons of mass destruction.”

The Brownlie Memorandum to the British Parliament is the most thorough assessment of the legal status of the Kosovo War. It is quite remarkable that the liberal warhawks around Obama talk of using that war as a “legal precedent” for a new war against Syria.

This amounts to saying that a crime committed once becomes a “precedent” to justify the crime being committed the next time.

How Many Times Can You Fool Most of the People?

If understood correctly, the Kosovo war was indeed a precedent that should act as a warning signal.

How many times can the United States use a false alarm to start an aggressive war? Non-existent “genocide” in Kosovo and Libya, non-existent weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, and now what looks to much of the world like a “false flag” chemical weapons attack in Syria.

The United States habitually announces the presence of a desired casus belli, dismissing demands for concrete evidence.

In Kosovo, the United States obtained withdrawal of international observers who could have testified whether or not there was evidence of “genocide” of Kosovars. The accusations escalated during the war, and when, afterwards, no evidence of such mass murder was found, the matter was forgotten.

In Iraq, there was never any proof of WMD, but the US went ahead and invaded.

In Libya, the pretext for war was a misquoted statement of Gaddafi threatening a “massacre of civilians” in Benghazi. This was exposed as a fake, but again, NATO bombed, the regime was toppled, and the pretext falls into oblivion.

Sunday, just as the Syrian government announced readiness to allow international inspectors to investigate allegations of chemical weapons use, the White House responded, “too late!”

A senior Obama administration official demanding anonymity (one can reasonably guess the official was Obama’s hawkish National Security Advisor Susan Rice) issued a statement claiming that there was “very little doubt” that President Bashar al-Assad’s military forces had used chemical weapons against civilians and that a promise to allow United Nations inspectors access to the site was “too late to be credible.”

In the world beyond the beltway, there is a great deal of doubt – especially about the credibility of the United States government when it comes to finding pretexts to go to war. Moreover, setting “chemical weapons” as a “red line” obliging the US to go to war is totally arbitrary. There are many ways of killing people in a civil war. Selecting one as a trigger for US intervention serves primarily to give rebels an excellent reason to carry out a “false flag” operation that will bring NATO into the war they are losing.

Who really wants or needs US intervention? The American people? What good will it do them to get involved in yet another endless Middle East war?

But who has influence on Obama? The American people? Or is it rather “our staunchest ally”, who is most concerned about rearranging the Middle East neighborhood?

“This situation must not be allowed to continue,” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said, expressing remarkable concern for Syrian civilians “who were so brutally attacked by weapons of mass destruction.”

“The most dangerous regimes in the world must not be allowed to possess the most dangerous weapons in the world,” Netanyahu added.

Incidentally, polls have been taken showing that for much of the world, the most dangerous regime in the world is Israel, which is allowed to possess the most dangerous weapons – nuclear weapons. But there is no chance that Israel will ever get “the Kosovo treatment”.


DIANA JOHNSTONE is the author of Fools Crusade: Yugoslavia, NATO and Western Delusions. She can be reached at diana.josto@yahoo.fr