Syria's Fictional Revolution Exposed

EXPOSED: The ‘Walter Mitty’ of Syria’s Fictional ‘Revolution’

by Prof. Tim Anderson - Global Research

via 21st Century Wire

November 16, 2017

Some western “Liberals” and “Leftists” pay homage to Yassin al-Haj Saleh, an intellectual leftist of the ‘Syrian Revolution’. In fact Saleh represented only a tiny part of Syria’s left. He was ‘persecuted’ because he aligned himself with the 1980 and 2011 bloody uprisings by the sectarian Muslim Brotherhood, and their international Salafist (al Qaeda) supporters. In the end he had to flee for his life from those same sectarian terrorists.

With popular forces in Syria/Iraq destroying globalised sectarian jihadist mercenaries – sponsored principally by Washington and the Saudis – some ideologues in colonial cultures still nurture the romantic idea of a ‘Syrian Revolution’ that tragically failed. This is also a myth propagated by the Muslim Brotherhood and their western sponsors to cover an otherwise naked aggression against Syria.

It is a myth that matters much less now, as such propaganda no longer has the capacity to fuel deeper NATO intervention in Syria. Yet it seems important for the self-image of small groups of western pseudo-leftists, who committed themselves to the cause of ‘red-washing’ Washington’s latest war of aggression, backed by the most reactionary forces in the region.

By pseudo-leftist I mean those fanatic ideologues who cling to their fantasies, showing little interest in what the masses of ordinary people want. Those ‘Syrian Revolution’ fans betrayed the Syrian people, just as they betrayed the people of Libya, Cuba and many other small countries, when under attack from the big powers.

But imagine the western pseudo-leftist’s delight on meeting an apparently like-minded individual Syrian. Enter Yassin al-Haj Saleh, author and proud backer of what he imagined might be a socialist revolution in Syria. His aptly titled book ‘The Impossible Revolution’ (Haymarket Books September 2017) spells out his failed dream and angry disillusionment. He claims to have been caught between “the hammer of Bashar al Assad’s counter-revolution and the anvil of his reactionary Islamic fundamentalist opponents”. On closer examination, his personal dilemmas seem entirely of his own making.

Saleh was jailed for 16 years (1980-96) under Hafez al Assad, for what he and his fans and publisher call ‘activism’. Does this mean ‘dissident’ or ‘peaceful protestor? In fact his party had aligned itself to the bloody and sectarian Muslim Brotherhood insurrections of 1979-1982. In this article I will discuss the implications of that decision.

Conditions in prison were terrible he says, but adds that he read “hundreds of books [and] … I learned more there than at university”. Not all prisons allow for such study. He had been a member of the Syrian Communist Party (Political Bureau), and so boasts socialist credentials. In 2011 he joined the ‘revolution’, moving from East Ghouta to Raqqa. There, fearing DAESH in 2013 he left the country. He survived the ordeal and published his book in 2017.

His US publisher portrays Yassin Al-Haj Saleh as “the intellectual voice of the Syrian revolution”. In the book Saleh presents a bleak portrait – but one which will probably appeal to western cynicism – of “three monsters … treading on Syria’s corpse”:

(1) the Assad regime and its allies,

(2) DAESH/ISIS and the other jihadists, and

(3) the West (the USA, UK, France, etc).

In other words, a plague on all their houses. Such cynicism, if popular, is weak analysis.

We know from independent Turkish pollsters TESEV that, by the end of 2011, only 5% of Syrians supported ‘violent protest’, the lowest figure in the region (c.f. 33% in Tunisia and 31% in Palestine) (TESEV 2012: 15). The big influx of foreign jihadists in 2012 would have hardened views against jihadist violence. And we know that the Syrian Arab Army, after some relatively small defections in the first year, did not fracture on religious grounds, as the Salafists had hoped.

The key problems with promotion of a figure like Saleh, to keep afloat the romantic idea of a failed ‘revolution’, are these:

(a) the self-serving story hides who this new hero is and what forces in Syria he might represent;

(b) the idealistic narrative (for a ‘democratic and egalitarian Syria’, etc) hides the actual historical forces of the Syrian insurrections; and

(c) in particular, it whitewashes Saleh’s own foolish collaboration with sectarian Islamists.

You don’t have to buy Saleh’s book, as most of his arguments appear in an extended interview with Ashley Smith, in the US journal International Socialist Review. Smith is a member of the US International Socialist Organization, a Trotskyist group drawing on the ideas of the late Tony Cliff.

Prominent amongst those ideas is Cliff’s theory of ‘state capitalism’, which suggests that there has never been a true ‘socialist’ revolution and that all capitalist and ‘state capitalist’ nation-states must be smashed and rebuilt. That line is quite consistent with support for attacks on any state, progressive or otherwise, as also with alliance with imperialism and reactionary forces to do so. To what extent that sort of Trotskyism is consistent with Saleh’s view is another matter.

However we know these things about Saleh. First, his Communist Party (Political Bureau) faction was a tiny ‘Maoist’ splinter from Syria’s main Communist Party, back in the late 1970s. The main reason for this split was that Saleh’s faction wanted to ‘form an alliance’ with the Muslim Brotherhood, as they engaged in a series of sectarian attacks on the Syrian state (Gambill 2001). Most Syrian communists sided with the Ba’ath socialist state. However Saleh and his former leader, Riyad al Turk, persisted in their subordinate ‘alliance’ with the al Qaeda linked Muslim Brotherhood, into the 2000s (Pace 2005).

What precisely was Syria’s Muslim Brotherhood doing, back in 1979? Let’s read it from the late British writer Patrick Seale:

“The artillery school massacre of June 1979 marked the start of full-scale urban warfare against Alawis [and] against Ba’ath party officials … when cornered they often blew themselves up with grenades … In Aleppo between 1979 and 1981 terrorists killed over 300 people, mainly Baathists and Alawis but including a dozen Islamic clergy who had denounced the murders” (Seale 1988: 324-325).

All the other opposition parties, including most communists, rejected the Muslim Brotherhood’s sectarian terror; but not Saleh’s sect. Collaboration with the Muslim Brotherhood terrorists is why Saleh received a long jail term in 1980, not because he was simply an ‘activist’.

Muslim Brotherhood terror has been romanticised over the years. At the end of the 1979-1982 attacks a final Brotherhood insurrection at Hama city was put down by Hafez al Assad. Revisionist historians these days, including many western writers, claim there was a large ‘civilian massacre’ at Hama in May 1982. For example author Rafaël Lefèvre (2013: 77) credulously reports: “While initial reports suggested 10,000 civilians were killed, other reports put the number as high as 40,000”. This is poor revisionist history.

Seale (1988: 333-334) observes that Hama 1982 was a serious conflict, not a ‘civilian massacre’. The Hama insurrection “was a last ditch battle” for the Brotherhood and it “raged for three grim weeks .. many civilians were slaughtered in the prolonged mopping up … in nearly a month of fighting about a third of the historic inner city was demolished”. On overall casualties he notes that “government forces too suffered heavy losses to snipers .. and grenades”, while total losses of life were controversial even at the time, “with government sympathisers estimating a mere 3,000 and critics as many as 20,000”.

The ‘civilian massacre’ mythology tries to hide the Brotherhood’s hand in initiating the violence, as recurred in Daraa and Homs in 2011. US intelligence back in 1982 had no such illusions. Of course the US had quietly backed those who financed and armed the Brotherhood’s attacks on Syria (the Saudis, the King of Jordan, Saddam Hussein and others). But Washington’s intelligence was dry and pragmatic, in its final assessment of May 1982:

“the Islamic Revolution in Syria, the Nom de Guerre for the Muslim Brotherhood … [spoke of] the rebels’ seizure of the city and the execution of some 50 “spies and informers” … about 3,000 government forces had been killed, according to the communique … the total casualties for the Hama incident probably number about 2,000. This includes an estimated 300-400 members of the Muslim Brotherhood’s elite Special Apparatus … the Syrian Government defeated the fundamentalist[s] … most Syrians, regardless of their difference with the present government, do not want the Muslim Brotherhood in power … [but] their modus operandi will continue to be terrorism, particularly bombings and assassination” (DIA 1982: 6-7).

Even if Saleh was young in 1980, most of the political prisoners with whom he shared prison time would have been Muslim Brotherhood. He was certainly not unaware of their approach to ‘revolution’ when he joined their next major insurrection in 2011. Indeed he says:

“When the [2011] revolution broke out I went into hiding … [and] while I was writing I was directly involved in the struggle” (Smith 2017).

His greatest claim to fame was to be one of the founders of the ‘Local Coordinating Councils’ (LCCs), indeed he says he was “the main author of the first political statement LCCs issued in June 2011” (Smith 2017). This tells us that the apparently secular language of the LCCs masked the faces of Muslim Brotherhood collaborators.

In any case, we know that the LCCs were little more than a fig leaf on the thoroughly sectarian insurrection, dominated by Syrian Muslim Brotherhood groups until 2012. Then they were displaced from leadership by their international jihadist partners, in the form of Jabhat al Nusra (al Qaeda in Syria, set up as a support group for the Syrian Salafis) and DAESH / ISIS, an outreach of al Qaeda in Iraq (AQI).

As I wrote in my book The Dirty War on Syria (Anderson 2016: 83-84), the LCCs were seen as having a mainly media or PR role in 2011 (Asi Abu Najm 2011) and, by 2013, they were embedded with the Islamist groups, mainly reporting on jihadist casualties (LCC 2013).

Yassin al-Haj Saleh says he fled from East Ghouta to Raqqa, before leaving the country. However his early presence in Douma (East Ghouta) demonstrates how reliant he had become on his Salafist partners. For many years Douma had been dominated by Jaysh al Islam, in alliance with Jabhat al Nusra. Although the civilian population there has been decimated, from many thousands fleeing the conflict, it remains one of the few areas in Syria with a social base for sectarian extremists. The same can be said about Raqqa. Both areas had a strong, reactionary culture, with women in burkas and families preferring to send their children to a Salafist-led mosque than to school.

The US certainly knew from early days that this ‘revolution’ (1) was being led by extremists and (2) wanted to create a sectarian Islamic state in eastern Syria. US intelligence in August 2012 observed that

“Internally, events are taking a clear sectarian direction. The Salafist, the Muslim Brotherhood and AQI are the major forces driving the insurgency in Syria … there is the possibility of establishing a declared or undeclared Salafist principality [i.e. Islamic State] in eastern Syria (Hasaka and Der Zor) and this is exactly what [the US and its allies] want, in order to isolate the Syrian regime” (DIA 2012 in Hoff 2015).

Washington knew it and most Syrians knew it. The head of the Syrian Brotherhood, Muhammad Riyad Al-Shaqfa, issued a statement on 28 March 2011, which left no doubt that the group’s aim was sectarian and their target was what they perceived as a secular state. The enemy was “the secular regime”, he said, and Brotherhood members “have to make sure that the revolution will be pure Islamic, and with that no other sect would have a share of the credit after its success” (Al-Shaqfa 2011).

International jihadists, in the form of Jabhat al Nusra (al Qaeda in Syria) appeared in Homs in early 2011, specifically to help the Farouq Brigade (then the largest ‘FSA’ group) with its infamous genocidal slogan ‘Alawis to the tomb, Christians to Beirut’ and genocidal practice: the sectarian murder of supposedly apostate Muslims and the ethnic cleaning of Christians. Those slogans and practice were reported as early as 5 April 2011 (Farrell 2011) and in the New York Times in May (Shadid and Kirkpatrick 2011).

Tens of thousands of Syrian Christians from Homs were indeed driven to Beirut (CNA 2012). Claims that the “Assad regime” was behind the sectarianism were simply dishonest. Whatever their views of the Ba’athist system, most Syrians, and particularly the minorities, swung behind the Syrian state and the Syrian army very quickly.

As international jihadists (mainly from the Arab world, North Africa, the Caucasus and Europe) joined the Syrian Salafis in large numbers in mid-2012, even the western media began reporting that these were fanatics, not revolutionaries.

Well before DAESH / ISIS came across from Iraq to Syria the ‘Free Army’ leaders were complaining that the Syrian President had at least “70 percent” support in Aleppo (Bayoumy 2013); that the local people,

“all of them, are loyal to the criminal Bashar, they inform on us” (Abouzeid 2012); and that the people are “all informers … they hate us. They blame us for the destruction” (Ghaith 2012).

But, they went on to say, they had God on their side. James Foley, himself subject to a theatrical style execution by DAESH in 2014, reported two years earlier that the FSA ‘rebels’ had little public support. Indeed one leader promised Aleppo ‘would burn’, because the people there did not support the ‘revolution’ (Foley 2012).

Unpopularity is fatal to a revolution; to a religious fanatic it is merely inconvenient.

It is impossible that Saleh – an ideological fanatic, but an educated fanatic – did not know all this. Even if he himself was not an sectarian Islamist, he knew that the extreme sectarians with whom he collaborated in 1979 and again in 2011 were leading his ‘revolution’.

Saleh maintains his own self-serving myths about the conflict: that the ‘Assad regime’ was the source of sectarian violence, that Sunni Muslims and Kurds were oppressed, and that the US and its minions really supported the Assad Government. Saleh claims that the Obama administration (despite its repetitive and imperious ‘Assad must go’ demands) really wanted “regime preservation not regime change” (Saleh in Smith 2017).

It is hard to see how any reasonable person can take this seriously. We even have admissions from senior US officials, including former Vice President Biden and former head of the US military Martin Dempsey, that the ‘Arab Allies’ of the US financed every jihadist group from the ‘Free Army’ to DAESH / ISIS, precisely to get rid of Assad. More recently, former Qatari Foreign Minister Hamad Bin Jassimadmitted that his little petro-state coordinated with Saudis, Turkey and the US to support all anti-Government jihadist forces (Syriana Analysis 2017).

Saleh’s former mentor, Riyad al Turk (who “liked” Saudi-backed Lebanese Prime Minister Rafiq Hariri), was calling for US military assistance in 2005 to help “the opposition” get rid of the Assad Government (Pace 2005). Of course he did not represent the Syrian Opposition. In the Damascus Declaration (2005), while making harsh criticisms of the Baathist system, most Syrian opposition groups specifically renounced violent attacks on the state and outside intervention. The Muslim Brotherhood and its hangers on, in contrast, always wanted violence with US and/or NATO assistance.

Saleh’s claim to fame as a secular communist against ‘the regime’ is undermined by how unrepresentative his small group was of Syria’s communists. He, like al Turk, criticises most other communists who “supported the regime” (Smith 2017). So how much support did his faction have? Al Turk maintained “we don’t announce how many members we have” (Pace 2005), but Gambill (2001) suggests it was “very little”.

Syria’s main Communist Party split in the mid-1980s (over Gorbachev’s policies), into two groups. Both stood candidates in the Peoples’ Congress (Majlis al Shaab) elections of 2007, 2012 and 2016, gaining 8, 11 and 4 MPs out of 250, respectively. That indicates that Syria’s main communist parties had electoral support of between 80,000 and 140,000 Syrian voters (IDEA 2017; Syrian Parliament 2017). We have no way of knowing how much support there ever was for the Communist Party (Political Bureau), or its successor the ‘Syrian Peoples Democratic Party’. But ask yourself, how many genuinely secular Marxists would collaborate with sectarian, al Qaeda styled Islamists?

After his successive failures Saleh blames everyone (Bashar al Assad, alQaeda/ISIS, the West) but himself. Yet it seems he has become a useful figure for western pseudo-leftists (who never could identify an actual Syrian armed group that they supported) to point at and say “Look, there really was a left revolution in Syria! Here he is!”

Pseudo-leftists in western countries – who for years held on to the Washington-promoted fiction of a ‘Syrian Revolution’ – are desperate for token Syrian ‘hero’ on which to hang their fantasies. That could be an ex-Islamist or an ex-communist; they don’t look too closely to see where these people come from. This desperation highlights their failure to confront actual history, and to care about the things that matter to ordinary people.

Sources

Abouzeid, Rania (2012) ‘Aleppo’s Deadly Stalemate: A Visit to Syria’s Divided Metropolis’, Time, 14 November, online: http://world.time.com/2012/11/ 14/aleppos-deadly-stalemate-a- visit-to-syrias-divided- metropolis/

Al-Shaqfa, Muhammad Riyad (2011) ‘Muslim Brotherhood Statement about the so-called ‘Syrian Revolution’’, General supervisor for the Syrian Muslim Brotherhood, statement of 28 March, online at: http://truthsyria.wordpress. com/2012/02/12/muslim- brotherhood-statement-about- the-so-called-syrian- revolution/

Amazon (2017) Promotion and reviews of Saleh’s book ‘The Impossible Revolution’, online: https://www.amazon.com/ Impossible-Revolution-Yassin- al-Haj-Saleh/dp/160846850X

Anderson, Tim (2016) The Dirty War on Syria, Global Research, Montreal

Asi Abu Najm (2011) ‘Syria’s Coordination Committees: a Brief History’, Al Akhbar, 1 October, online: http://english.al-akhbar.com/ node/764

Bayoumy, Yara (2013) ‘Insight: Aleppo misery eats at Syrian rebel support’, Reuters, 9 January, online: http://www.reuters.com/ article/2013/01/09/us-syria- crisis-rebels- idUSBRE9070VV20130109

CNA (2012) ‘Syrian violence drives 50,000 Christians from homes’, Catholic News Agency, online: http://www.catholicnewsagency. com/news/syrian-violence- drives-50000-christians-from- homes/

Damascus Declaration (2005) ‘The Damascus Declaration for Democratic National Change’, English version in Joshua Landis blog ‘Syria Comment’, 1 November, online: http://faculty-staff.ou.edu/L/ Joshua.M.Landis-1/syriablog/ 2005/11/damascus-declaration- in-english.htm

DIA (1982) ‘Syria: Muslim Brotherhood pressure intensifies’, Syria360, May, online: https://syria360.files. wordpress.com/2013/11/dia- syria- muslimbrotherhoodpressureinten sifies-2.pdf

Farrell, Shane (2011) ‘Lebanese Christians react to regional instability’, Now Media, 5 April, online: https://now.mmedia.me/lb/en/ reportsfeatures/lebanese_ christians_react_to_regional_ instability

Foley, James (2012) ‘Syria: Rebels losing support among civilians in Aleppo’, PRI, 16 October, online: https://www.pri.org/stories/ 2012-10-16/syria-rebels- losing-support-among- civilians-aleppo

Gambill, Gary C. (2001) ‘Dossier: Riyad al Turk’, Middle East Intelligence Bulletin, Middle East Forum, Vol 3 No 9, September, online: https://www.meforum.org/meib/ articles/0109_sd1.htm

Ghaith, Abdul-Ahad (2012) ‘The people of Aleppo needed someone to drag them into the revolution’, The Guardian, 28 December, online: http://www.theguardian.com/ world/2012/dec/28/aleppo- revolution-abu-ali-sulaibi

Hoff, Brad (2015) ‘2012 Defense Intelligence Agency document: West will facilitate rise of Islamic State “in order to isolate the Syrian regime”’, Levant Report, 19 May, online: https://levantreport.com/2015/ 05/19/2012-defense- intelligence-agency-document- west-will-facilitate-rise-of- islamic-state-in-order-to- isolate-the-syrian-regime/

IDEA (2017) ‘Syrian Arab republic, Total vote, Parliamentary elections, 1994-2016, online: https://www.idea.int/data- tools/question-countries-view/ 437/274/ctr

LCC (2013) ‘Dignity Strike … We make our revolution by our own hands’, Local Coordination Committees of Syria, December, online: http://www.lccsyria.org/3528

Lefèvre, Rafaël (2013) Ashes of Hama: the Muslim Brotherhood in Syria, Hurst and Company, London

Pace, Joe (2005) ‘Riyad al Turk, interviewed by Joe Pace on Mehlis, the Opposition, Ghadry’, Joshua Landis Page, October 22, online: http://joshualandis.oucreate. com/syriablog/2005/10/riad-al- turk-interviewed-by-joe-pace. htm

Seale, Patrick (1988) Asad: the struggle for the Middle East, University of California Press, Berkeley

Shadid, Anthony and David D. Kirkpatrick (2011) ‘Promise of Arab Uprisings Is Threatened by Divisions’, New York Times, 21 May, online: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/ 05/22/world/middleeast/22arab. html?pagewanted=all

Smith, Ashley (2017) ‘Revolution, counterrevolution, and imperialism in Syria, Interview with Yassin al-Haj Saleh’, International Socialist Review, Issue #107 online: https://isreview.org/issue/ 107/revolution- counterrevolution-and- imperialism-syria

Syrian parliament (2017) Syrian Peoples’ Assembly, online: https://web.archive.org/web/ 20121008210031/http:// parliament.sy/forms/cms/ viewStatistics.php ; and Inter-Parliamentary Union (2016) ‘SYRIAN ARAB REPUBLIC: Majlis Al-Chaab (People’s Assembly)’, online: http://archive.ipu.org/ parline-e/reports/2307_E.htm; and as compiled in Wikipedia ‘Syrian parliamentary elections’ 2007 / 2012 / 2016, online: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ Syrian_parliamentary_election, _2007

Syriana Analysis (2017) ‘Hamad Bin Jassim: We Supported Al-Qaeda in Syria’, online: https://www.youtube.com/watch? v=9f33l30kQxg

TESEV (2012) ‘The perception of Turkey in the Middle East 2011’, Türkiye Ekonomik ve Sosyal Etüdler Vakfi, Istanbul, February, online: http://tesev.org.tr/en/yayin/ the-perception-of-turkey-in- the-middle-east-2011/

***

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Keystone's Busted Pipeline, or When Pigs Don't Fly

The Pig That Burst The Keystone Pipeline

by Greg Palast

November 17, 2017

Yesterday, the Keystone pipeline cracked and dumped 210,000 gallons of oil onto the South Dakota prairie. Here’s the reason the pipeline burst: the PIG didn’t squeal.

The PIG, the Pipeline Inspection Gauge, is sent through the Keystone to check for evidence of any leak, failure, or corrosion that will cause it to burst.

But the PIG didn’t squeal a warning.

Why not?

Because, as disclosed in my investigation for Britain’s investigative TV series Dispatches in 2010, the PIG has been silenced, its software jacked and hacked by a company that provides PIGS. The software is deliberately set to reduce the warning signals and thereby cut costs of replacement and repair by billions of dollars on the Keystone and other pipes.

We warned you. In the Dispatches report, in our print reports, and in the "The Pig in the Pipeline", a chapter in Vultures Picnic.

No oil or gas pipeline should ever leak, burst or explode if the PIG is working as it should. Absent of sabotage, pipelines don’t just suddenly crack and break. The signs of thinning of the walls, small warning leaks, corrosion, failing gauges, should all provoke the PIG to squeal. (Technically, the issue is the software that analyzes the billions of data points transmitted by the PIG, which looks like…well, a pig… as it travels through the pipe.)

We have obtained independent confirmation from three software engineers who designed the PIG "warning" system.

* * * * * *

[Prior to turning to investigative reporting, Palast directed the investigation of pipeline explosions for the Attorney General of Illinois and, as a private investigator for the Alaskan Native Corporations, the operation of the Alaska Pipeline and oil shipping system. ]

Greg Palast (Rolling Stone, Guardian, BBC) is the author of The New York Times bestsellers, The Best Democracy Money Can Buy and Billionaires & Ballot Bandits, out as major non-fiction movie: The Best Democracy Money Can Buy: The Case of the Stolen Election (the brand new, updated, post-election edition). Watch the movie and get the info on the Keystone Pipeline

Stay informed, get the signed DVD, a signed copy of the book companion — or better still, get the Book & DVD combo.

Visit the Palast Investigative Fund store or simply make a tax-deductible contribution to keep our work alive! Alternatively, become a monthly contributor and automatically receive Palast's new films and books when they're released!

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Losing the Wild: Fish Farm Threat to Pacific Salmon

Losing Our Wild Salmon

by Susanne Lawson

November 16, 2017 

Tofino, B.C. - I am sitting in a boat near a Marine Harvest fish farm in the Broughton Archipelago...I walk outside and the air stinks of acrid, penned Atlantic salmon and feed pellets that are continuously sprayed into the pens. The sound of the sprayers never ceases.

It is depressing to see these fish leaping in the air trapped in these stinking pens. Salmon should never be in pens.

This farm has been occupied by local First Nations for almost three months now. There are multiple First Nations involved, very dedicated people.

There is a camp in the woods of kayakers standing by to help...they call themselves Kyactivists. These are public lands, public waters. There is another camp of people at a land based house nearby that was built by Marine Harvest which First Nations occupied. Marine Harvest has several land based houses for workers, leased quite permanently (it seems) for comfort and ease of access.

At the farm, 5 pens are empty as the protest has so far prevented more Atlantic salmon from being restocked and 4 are full of approximately 8 month old fish. Marine Harvest does not have permits to restock at this time yet are determined to go ahead.

There are about 4 to 5 boats belonging to supporters of the protest with people aboard them, providing support, transportation and warmth.

The weather has been stormy, cold and wet...it is mid November 2017.

First Nations people...Chiefs and their families, have maintained a presence here since August, with two young women, Molina Dawson and Karissa Glendale, in their early twenties, of the Musgmagw and Namgis First Nations, living on the floats. Chief Ernest Alfred and other hereditary First Nations of Alert Bay occupied Swanson Island fish farm and Wicklow fish farms this fall. Marine Harvest came in and stocked the pens in front of the Chiefs who were occupying the farm in full traditional regalia.

Seven people have set up a camp in the woods nearby, treating the area with great respect and understanding, one of them doing his doctorate in law and jurisdiction. It is a sweet space with big trees and a creek bubbling nearby, (photos available).

Marine Harvest has gone to court seeking an injunction to have everyone removed. The judge has given both parties until Dec. 14th to present their case and in the meantime the First Nations agreed to remove their occupation and buildings. Marine Harvest wants to go ahead and restock the empty pens with Atlantic salmon smolts despite First Nations demanded they don't.

Things are at a standstill right now, sad that nothing is preventing more Atlantic salmon and diseases to continue to prevail in B.C. waters, especially after such a concerted effort to bring about positive change to such a destructive process as fish farmig. So much and so many are losing ... commercial fishermen, sports fishing, families dependent on the wild salmon resource, bears, eagles, trout, marine life like seals, sea lions, and so much more...it is impossible to weigh the values of what wild salmon have provided for the coast.

Wild salmon are on the brink of disaster...wild stocks are crashing, Alaska has closed all Chinook fishing and bears and more have been starving on the coast. Sea lice are out of control all over the world where these farms exist and have been found on emaciated trout, ling cod, herring and more. An application for 18 hectares of pesticide use has been made for Clayoquot Sound waters by another fish farm company, Cermaq, owned by Mitsubishi and operated out of Norway. We are all losing while others are profiting from our loss.

How far does this go...until our amazing wild salmon are extinct? I hope for sanity to prevail.... If this doesn't turn around now, the irreplaceable loss of our wild salmon migration and all it nourishes will be one of the greatest regrets of this century.

Sincerely, Susanne Lawson, Tofino, B.C.

Death in the Cradle: Is Troika the End of Greek Democracy?

Is Greek Democracy Dead?

by TRNN

November 15, 2017

The Real News has returned to Greece for the fourth time in three years to explore the development of the economic crisis and in particular, to examine whether a given current economic reality is, it can be persuasively argued that Greece has began to emerge from that economic crisis.

And today we are with Panagiotis Lafazanis who is the leader of the party that was founded in 2015 in the aftermath of the rebellion within the governing Syriza party. That party is called the Popular Unity Party. And Mr. Lafazanis was the leader of the left-platform of Syriza before leaving Syriza to form Popular Unity with other Syriza leftist MPs who were not satisfied with the Tsipras government's adoption of an austerity program.

Panagiotis Lafazanis, former leader of Syriza's Left Platform and current leader of Popular Unity, says Greece has become a protectorate of the Troika

Gorilla Radio with Chris Cook, Pablo Ouziel, David Rovics, Jainine Bandcroft November 16, 2017

This Week on GR

by C. L. Cook - Gorilla-Radio.com

November 16, 2017

More than six weeks have passed since the president of Catalonia defied the federal government, holding an independence referendum. The reaction by Spain's prime minister, Mariano Rajoy was swift and definitive; declaring the upstart region's government null and void and Catalan president, Carles Puigdemont, (along with several of his party's key ministers) criminals; and by decree rendering the independence movement itself effectively illegal.

Today, Puigdemont is in exile, out on bail in Brussels after being arrested on an EU warrant, and prime minister Rajoy has scheduled elections for a replacement government in Catalan for December 21st, Señor Puigdemont's participation being expressly unwelcome.

Listen. Hear.

Dr. Pablo Ouziel is a Post-Doctoral fellow at UVic whose project in progress is, ‘Towards Democratic Responses to the Crisis of Democracy in Spain: Forms of Participatory and Representative Civic Engagement.’

Pablo Ouziel in the first half.

And; next week Victoria will host inveterate American activist and singer/songwriter in the tradition of Woody Guthrie and Pete Seeger, David Rovics to town. It will be the first time I get a chance to talk to David since he dramatically dropped out of the US presidential race in 2015. We can now just wonder, if only he had stayed in the running, "What might have been?"

David Rovics bringing a world of politics and music to Victoria's doorstep in the second half.

And; Victoria-based activist and CFUV Radio broadcaster at-large, Janine Bandcroft will be here at the bottom of the hour with the Left Coast Events bulletin update of good things to do in and around our town in the coming week. But first, Pablo Ouziel and an increasingly darkening horizon for both Spain's and European democracy.

Chris Cook hosts Gorilla Radio, airing live every Thursday between 11-Noon Pacific Time. In Victoria at 101.9FM, and on the internet at: http://cfuv.uvic.ca.  He also serves as a contributing editor to the web news site, http://www.pacificfreepress.com. Check out the GR blog at: http://gorillaradioblog.blogspot.ca/

Censorgate: America's New Rush to Shut the Internet News Floodgates

America’s Righteous Russia-gate Censorship

by Robert Parry  - Consortium News

November 14, 2017

Exclusive: Arriving behind the anti-Trump “resistance” and the Russia-gate “scandal” is a troubling readiness to silence dissent in the U.S., shutting down information that challenges Official Narratives, writes Robert Parry.

A stark difference between today’s Washington and when I was here as a young Associated Press correspondent in the late 1970s and the early 1980s is that then – even as the old Cold War was heating up around the election of Ronald Reagan – there were prominent mainstream journalists who looked askance at the excessive demonization of the Soviet Union and doubted wild claims about the dire threats to U.S. national security from Nicaragua and Grenada.
Tomb of the Unknown Soldier outside
the Kremlin wall,
Dec. 6, 2016. (Photo by Robert Parry)

Perhaps the Vietnam War was still fresh enough in people’s minds that senior editors and national reporters understood the dangers of mindless groupthink inside Official Washington, as well as the importance of healthy skepticism toward official pronouncements from the U.S. intelligence community.

Today, however, I cannot think of a single prominent figure in the mainstream news media who questions any claim – no matter how unlikely or absurd – that vilifies Russian President Vladimir Putin and his country. It is all Russia-bashing all the time.

And, behind this disturbing anti-Russian uniformity are increasing assaults against independent and dissident journalists and news outlets outside the mainstream. We’re not just entering a New Cold War and a New McCarthyism; we’re also getting a heavy dose of old-style Orwellianism.

Sometimes you see this in individual acts like HuffingtonPost taking down a well-reported story by journalist Joe Lauria because he dared to point out that Democratic money financed the two initial elements of what’s now known as Russia-gate: the forensic examination of computers at the Democratic National Committee and the opposition research on Donald Trump conducted by ex-British spy Christopher Steele.

HuffingtonPost never contacted Lauria before or after its decision to retract the story, despite a request from him for the reasons why. HuffPost editors told a BuzzFeed reporter that they were responding to reader complaints that the article was filled with factual errors but none have ever been spelled out, leaving little doubt that Lauria’s real “error” was in defying the Russia-gate groupthink of the anti-Trump Resistance. [A version of Lauria’s story appeared at Consortiumnews.com before Lauria posted it at HuffPost. If you want to sign a petition calling on HuffPost to restore Lauria’s article, click here.]

Muzzling RT

Other times, the expanding American censorship is driven by U.S. government agencies, such as the Justice Department’s demand that the Russian news outlet, RT, register under the restrictive Foreign Agent Registration Act, which requires such prompt, frequent and detailed disclosures of supposed “propaganda” that it could make it impossible for RT to continue to function in the United States.

Russian President Vladimir Putin, following his address 

to UN General Assembly Sept. 28, 2015. (UN Photo)

This attack on RT was rationalized by the Jan. 6 “Intelligence Community Assessment” that was, in reality, prepared by a handful of “hand-picked” analysts from the CIA, FBI and National Security Agency. Their report included a seven-page addendum from 2012 accusing RT of spreading Russian propaganda – and apparently this Jan. 6 report must now be accepted as gospel truth, no questions permitted.

However, if any real journalist actually read the Jan. 6 report, he or she would have discovered that RT’s sinister assault on American democracy included such offenses as holding a debate among third-party candidates who were excluded from the Republican-Democratic debates in 2012. Yes, allowing Libertarians and Greens to express their points of view is a grave danger to American democracy.

Other RT “propaganda” included reporting on the Occupy Wall Street protests and examining the environmental dangers from “fracking,” issues that also have been widely covered by the domestic American media. Apparently, whenever RT covers a newsworthy event – even if others have too – that constitutes “propaganda,” which must be throttled to protect the American people from the danger of seeing it.

If you bother to study the Jan. 6 report’s addendum, it is hard not to conclude that these “hand-picked” analysts were either stark-raving mad or madly anti-Russian. Yet, this “Intelligence Community Assessment” is now beyond questioning unless you want to be labeled a “Kremlin stooge” or “Putin’s useful idiot.” [An earlier State Department attack on RT was equally ridiculous or demonstrably false.]

And, by the way, it was President Obama’s Director of National Intelligence James Clapper who testified under oath that the analysts from the three agencies were “hand-picked.” That means that they were analysts personally selected by Obama’s intelligence chiefs from three agencies – not “all 17” as the American public was told over and over again – and thus were not even a full representation of analysts from those three agencies. Yet, this subset of a subset is routinely described as “the U.S. intelligence community,” even after major news outlets finally had to retract their “all 17” canard.

So, the myth of the intelligence community’s consensus lives on. For instance, in an upbeat article on Tuesday about the U.S. government’s coercing RT into registering as a foreign agent, Washington Post reporters Devlin Barrett and David Filipov wrote, “U.S. intelligence agencies have concluded that the network and website push relentlessly anti-American propaganda at the behest of the Russian government.”

In the old days, even during the old Cold War and President Reagan’s ranting about “the Evil Empire,” some of us would have actually examined the Jan. 6 report’s case against RT and noted the absurdity of these claims about “relentlessly anti-American propaganda.” Whether you want to hear the views of the Greens and Libertarians or not – or whether you like “fracking” and hate Occupy Wall Street – the opportunity to hear this information doesn’t constitute “relentlessly anti-American propaganda.”

The U.S. government’s real beef with RT seems to be that it allows on air some Americans who have been blacklisted from the mainstream media – including highly credentialed former U.S. intelligence analysts and well-informed American journalists – because they have challenged various Official Narratives.

In other words, Americans are not supposed to hear the other side of the story on important international conflicts, such as the proxy war in Syria or the civil war in Ukraine or Israel’s mistreatment of Palestinians. Only the State Department’s versions of those events are permitted even when those versions are themselves propagandistic if not outright false.

For example, you’re not supposed to hear about the huge holes in the Syria-sarin cases, nor about Ukraine’s post-coup regime arming neo-Nazis to kill ethnic-Russian Ukrainians, nor about Israel’s evolution into an apartheid state. All right-thinking Americans are to get only a steady diet of how righteous the U.S. government and its allies always are. Anything else is “propaganda.”

Also off limits is any thoughtful critique of that Jan. 6 report – or apparently even Clapper’s characterization of it as a product of “hand-picked” analysts from only three agencies. You’re not supposed to ask why other U.S. intelligence agencies with deep knowledge about Russia were excluded and why even other analysts from the three involved agencies were shut out.

No, you must always think of the Jan. 6 report as the “consensus” assessment from the entire “U.S. intelligence community.” And you must accept it as flat fact – as it now is treated by The New York Times, The Washington Post, CNN and other mainstream news outlets. You shouldn’t even notice that the Jan. 6 report itself doesn’t claim that Russian election meddling was a fact. The report explains, that “Judgments are not intended to imply that we have proof that shows something to be a fact.”

But even quoting from the Jan. 6 report might make an American reporter some kind of traitorous “Russian mole” whose journalism must be purged from “responsible” media and who should be forced to wear the journalistic equivalent of a yellow star.

The Anti-Trump/Russia Hysteria

Of course, much of this anti-Russian hysteria comes from the year-long fury about the shocking election of Donald Trump. From the first moments of stunned disbelief over Hillary Clinton’s defeat, the narrative was put in motion to blame Trump’s victory not on Clinton and her wretched campaign but on Russia. That also was viewed as a possible way of reversing the election’s outcome and removing Trump from office.

Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton speaking with 

supporters at a campaign rally in Phoenix, Arizona, 

March 21, 2016. (Photo by Gage Skidmore)

The major U.S. news media quite openly moved to the forefront of the Resistance. The Washington Post adopted the melodramatic and hypocritical slogan, “Democracy Dies in Darkness,” as it unleashed its journalists to trumpet the narrative of some disloyal Americans spreading Russian propaganda. Darkness presumably was a fine place to stick people who questioned the Resistance’s Russia-gate narrative.

An early shot in this war against dissenting information was fired last Thanksgiving Day when the Post published a front-page article citing an anonymous group called PropOrNot smearing 200 Internet news sites for allegedly disseminating Russian propaganda. The list included some of the most important sources of independent journalism, including Consortiumnews.com, apparently for the crime of questioning some of the State Department’s narratives on international conflicts, particularly Syria and Ukraine.

Then, with the anti-Russia hysteria building and the censorship ball rolling, Congress last December approved $160 million for think tanks and other non-governmental organizations to combat Russian propaganda. Soon, reports and studies were flying off the shelves detecting a Russian behind every article, tweet and posting that didn’t toe the State Department’s line.

The New York Times and other leading news organizations have even cheered plans for Google, Facebook and other technology companies to deploy algorithms that can hunt down, marginalize or eliminate information that establishment media deems “fake” or “propaganda.” Already Google has put together a First Draft coalition, consisting of mainstream media and establishment-approved Web sites to decide what information makes the cut and what doesn’t.

Among these arbiters of truth is the fact-check organization PolitiFact, which judged the falsehood about “all 17 intelligence agencies” signing off on the Russian “hacking” claim to be “true.” Even though the claim was never true and is now clearly established as false, PolitiFact continues to assert that this lie is the truth, apparently filled with the hubris that comes with its power over determining what is true and what is false.

But what is perhaps most troubling to me about these developments is the silence of many civil liberties advocates, liberal politicians and defenders of press freedom who might have been counted on in earlier days to object to this censorship and blackballing.

It appears that the ends of taking down Donald Trump and demonizing Vladimir Putin justify whatever means, no matter the existential danger of nuclear war with Russia or the McCarthyistic (even Orwellian) threats to freedom of speech, press and thought.

Investigative reporter Robert Parry broke many of the Iran-Contra stories for The Associated Press and Newsweek in the 1980s. You can buy his latest book, America’s Stolen Narrative, either in print here or as an e-book (from Amazon and barnesandnoble.com).

Seal Team Dark Side: The Mysterious Death of Logan Melgar

Killing of Green Beret Illuminates Dark Side of Famed Navy SEAL Team Six

by Whitney Webb - MintPress News

November 14 2017

Sergeant Melgar’s death is just the latest confirmation that the most celebrated and mysterious group of the U.S. military continues to function with minimal oversight and accountability — producing a climate in which even other members of the U.S. military are not safe.

After several months of investigation into the strangling of U.S. Army Green Beret Logan Melgar, the accounts of those at the center of the homicide investigation – two members of the famed Navy SEAL Team Six – have unraveled. The killing occurred while the SEALs and Melgar were on a secret assignment in the West African nation of Mali, where they were said to have been helping with training and counterterrorism efforts led by local and French forces.

Following Melgar’s sudden death, found by an autopsy to have been the result of “homicide by asphyxiation,” the two SEALs told their superiors that Melgar had been drunk and later became violent.

34-year-old Staff Sgt. Logan J. Melgar,
killed while on a secret assignment in Mali.

However, Melgar’s autopsy showed no presence of alcohol or drugs at the time of his death and several sources, including Melgar’s wife, stated that he did not drink.

Melgar’s wife later gave emails to investigators, including one in which Melgar told her that he had “a bad feeling” about two of his partners, both of whom were members of SEAL Team Six.

Now, as the Daily Beast reports, two special-operations sources have confirmed the likely reason for Melgar’s sudden death. Melgar had allegedly discovered that the two SEALs in question were illegally pocketing money from a fund used to pay informants in counterterrorism efforts. 

The SEALs had offered to let Melgar in on the scheme, but Melgar refused. A day later he was dead.

The New York Times noted late last month that the investigation “threatened to stain” the sterling reputation of SEAL Team Six. Indeed, the unit has practically become a household name in the United States following its reported participation in a 2011 high-profile raid on a compound that was said to have housed Osama bin Laden — owing in part to the enshrinement of the raid in a high-profile movie and book that were later found to have been highly imaginative in their portrayal of events.

However, despite its fame and repute for allegedly having “taken out” Osama bin Laden, SEAL Team Six has been no stranger to controversy, and Melgar’s untimely death is just the latest in a string of incidents that highlight the group’s more sinister side.

“Global manhunting machine” with little accountability 

 

A SEAL Team Six operator stands guard while on Close Protection

duty in Afghanistan. (Photo: public domain)

SEAL Team Six’s dark side has become more well known in recent years — in parallel with the group’s transformation from small elite squadron to “global manhunting machine” that has killed numerous suspected militants, as well as civilians, over this period. The testimony of former members and officers has revealed that the much-celebrated SEAL team now regularly partakes in so-called “revenge ops,” extrajudicial killings, mutilations of the deceased and other war crimes – crimes that were not only tolerated by the command’s leadership but also covered up.

Numerous high-profile raids performed by the SEALs since 9/11– such as a 2009 rescue mission meant to deliver Capt. Richard Phillips from the hands of Somali pirates — illustrate the less glamorous side of the group. That operation saw members of SEAL Team Six shoot and kill pirates – though the authorization to shoot was never given – and saw over $30,000 in cash previously taken by the pirates disappear. Though the SEALs were suspected of stealing the money, the money was never found and no charges were ever filed for its disappearance nor for the group’s decision to shoot without authorization. Despite the controversy, the mission was turned into a Hollywood movie starring Tom Hanks.

In addition, the mutilation of the bodies of the deceased became fair game for members of SEAL Team Six, as evidenced by the widespread practice of “canoeing” — in which rounds are fired into the foreheads of the deceased in order to split open the skull and expose brain matter. The practice – referred to by a former SEAL Team Six leader as “sport” — became so common that the head of the Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC), which oversees SEAL Team Six, was forced to require “full photographic accounting” of the dead to ensure mutilation was kept to a minimum.

Aside from such measures intended to rein in the group, SEAL Team Six is subject to minimal oversight. For instance, JSOC has self-investigated numerous inquiries of wrongdoing without passing them along to Navy investigators. In addition — according to Harold Koh, the State Department’s former top legal adviser, who provided guidance to the Obama administration on clandestine war — Congress has been largely uninterested in scrutinizing the command’s behavior. As a former SEAL Team Six leader told the Intercept, “You can’t win an investigation on us.”

Given SEAL Team Six’s culture of lawlessness and impunity, Sergeant Melgar’s death can hardly be seen as an isolated incident. Instead, Melgar’s death is just the latest confirmation that the most celebrated and mysterious group of the U.S. military continues to function with minimal oversight, control, and accountability — producing a climate in which criminality has become tolerated to the point that even other members of the U.S. military are not safe.



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Saudi Reality Check, Please

What’s Really Going On in Saudi Arabia

by John Chuckman - CounterPunch

November 13, 2017  
 

“Trump Says Saudi Elites Caught In Anti-Corruption Probe Were ‘Milking’ Kingdom For Years.”

This is just nonsense from Trump. Corruption is and has been everywhere in Saudi Arabia.

How else could it be with all the countless billions changing hands in a fairly closed society?

So, it is easy for a guy like the new Crown Prince to glance around and conveniently find some corruption among people he wants to discredit anyway.

It may go beyond merely discrediting them to having hundreds of billions seized by the Crown Prince. Not a bad day’s work.

What is going on is a kind of coup against the old order by the new usurper Crown Prince. His recent appointment was by a King well known for his senility, and it suddenly and surprisingly upset the established order of succession and all kinds of extended family compacts.

We likely will never know what truly happened in this secretive kingdom. But we do know the abrupt changes created lots of enemies who needed attending to, and that seems to be what is happening.

And the enemies have no friends in Washington to whom they can appeal. The old order in Saudi Arabia suffered terribly in the wake of 9/11, and despite great efforts to pacify the US with new levels of cooperation, it is now being swept out.

Now, whatever is considered good for a hyper-aggressive United States is coincidentally good for its de facto colony in the Middle East.

Trump himself has already proved to be one of Israel’s best-ever American friends. Israel has long had great influence, but it possibly never had it so good as it does now, as with a UN Ambassador who speaks as though she were a joint appointment of Trump and Netanyahu. Trump’s only competitor in this regard would be Lyndon Johnson.

The US and Israel closely embrace the usurper because he has proven his dependability with bloody projects like making illegal war on Yemen. That war is exactly like the proxy war waged by mercenaries – ISIS and Al-Nusra et al – in Syria except that in this case it is the open work of a nation-state. And now he joins Israel in making threats on Lebanon.

In all the Neocon Wars in the Mideast, great effort has been made, one way or another, not to have Israel at center stage, to avoid having Israel appear as aggressor. But, in fact, without the influence of Israel, none of these terrible wars would have happened.

Yes, the Crown Prince will be a dependable component in the years-long American-Israeli project of creating a new Middle East. The Crown Prince is essentially Israel’s man in Saudi Arabia, just as President el-Sisi is in Egypt. Israel is comfortable being surrounded by absolute governments, so long as they are absolute governments beholden to its patron, the United States.

Right now, the new Crown Prince is doing another bloody service for Israeli interests. The Prime Minister of Lebanon, Saad Hariri, was called to come to Riyadh in the King’s name for some business, as it turned out on false pretenses. Hariri had his plane surrounded and he was effectively arrested upon landing. Just pure modern piracy. Later, and who knows after what threats, he announced his sudden and unexpected resignation as prime minister, and he remains in Saudi Arabia.

It just so happens, in very recent time, Netanyahu and some of his officials have made some very ugly noises against Lebanon and even staged a large-scale set of war games, including calling up reservists, clearly threatening the country.

Israel just cannot stand the idea of Hezbollah being part of the Lebanese government whereas a reasonable observer would say Lebanon had achieved a peaceful balance in governing a land of many diverse political and religious groups.

After all, it hasn’t been that long ago since Israel helped catapult Lebanon into a terrible, bloody civil war, and it did so with its own bloody and unwarranted invasion of the country. Hezbollah, an organization which has never been a true terrorist group no matter what Israel goes on about, came into its own by opposing Israel’s long-term, illegal occupation of Southern Lebanon.

They were only defending what is theirs, but they made Israel look very bad, and that is an unforgivable offence. So, here we have the new Saudi Crown Prince doing more dirty work on Israel’s behalf, much as with his war in Yemen where he bombs civilians regularly, saving Israel from having to act on its own to get what it wants in someone else’s country.

You see, if Israel itself actually had to do all the ugly deeds it wants done in the region, the world would see it with blinding clarity for the pariah state that it truly is, starting wars incessantly. Proxies – whether mercenary gangs like ISIS and Al-Nusra in Syria or tyrants like the new Saudi Crown Prince in Yemen and Lebanon – are the latest fashion statement from Tel Aviv.

John Chuckman lives in Canada.
More articles by: John Chuckman

A Tale of Two Nuclear Powers: Comparing Israel and North Korea

A Telling Comparison: Israel versus North Korea

by Kim Petersen - Dissident Voice

November 14th, 2017

Missing from corporate media accounts is what causes the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK aka North Korea) to be singled out for opprobrium for what, essentially, is developing a deterrent against any entity that would attack it.

A comparison with how the United Nations deals with North Korea vis-à-vis another member state state, Israel, is instructive.

Israel occupies Palestinian territory; destroys Palestinian olive groves and poisons Palestinian sheep; sprays Palestinian homes with sewage; sabotages Palestinian water supplies; cuts off power to Palestine; terrorizes Palestinians for hours at checkpoints, including the sick, infirm, and pregnant women, some who are forced to give birth at the checkpoints; stops fishermen from earning a living from the sea; shells hospitals, schools, and playgrounds; blows up kids on beaches; and commits myriad other war crimes. Israel has nuclear weapons and ICBMs. The last point is the only one that North Korea shares with Israel.

Yet only North Korea is vociferously criticized and sanctioned by the US and its allies. Is this fair? And is it just that North Korea is bullied and sanctioned for developing a self-defense?

Creation

Israel was brought into existence by the UN granting Palestinian land from Mandate Palestine to Jews, who happened to be mainly migrant Jews from another continent – Europe.

North Korea was created by World War II victors, predominantly the United States, splitting a country into two halves. Thereby, one ethnic group was separated from the other by a border.

Occupation

Whereas the Koreans are indigenous to Korea, Americans are occupying the territory of many Indigenous nations, as are Jewish Israelis (with the exception of Mizrahi Jews) occupying Arab territories.

Israel signifies a situation whereby one group of outsiders was favorably positioned by the UN to carry out an occupation of an Indigenous people.

The DPRK signifies a situation where a people indigenous to a territory were separated from kin by an outside entity. The self-determination of Koreans was not respected.

Notably, the US came into existence as a colonizer, a colonial-settler state, that remains in occupation of the territory of many Indigenous peoples; this includes the Hawaiian islands, Puerto Rico, Guam, Saipan, and other islands of Micronesia, the Chagos archipelago, etc.

The Role of the UN

Over and over again, the US and NATO ideologues describe the DPRK as a threat. Why? What country has DPRK ever been at war with other than an internecine conflict with the Republic of Korea over half a century ago, a war into which the US inserted itself and the United Nations provided diplomatic approbation. Since the preamble to the UN Charter stated its determination to allay future generations from experiencing the scourge of war, what could be more hypocritical than for the UN to authorize war against another UN member?

The scope of the tendentiousness of the US and UN becomes fully transparent when the case of Israel is considered.

The case of Israel is another blight on the UN as it abnegated its Article 1 which calls for “respect for the principle of equal rights and self-determination of peoples.” The people of Mandate Palestine were not permitted self-determination, and the land was carved up. The Palestinian majority wound up with 42 percent of the land, the Jews were gifted 56 percent of Palestinian land, and Jerusalem was designated an international city. Palestinians rejected the plan. Subsequently Jews ethnically cleansed Palestinians from the land, waged wars, built settlements in occupied Palestine, and erected an illegal wall that has rendered the remainder of Palestine into discontiguous bantustans.

Israel has hardly been a sterling member of the UN, and the list of UN Resolutions targeting Israel is long. The list would be much longer were it not for the US wielding its veto power in the UN Security Council.

If indeed the UN is handling similar issues differently depending on who the member states are, then a question arises: How is the supposed neutrality and image of the UN as an honest arbiter affected by its differential treatment of members? And: What impact does this have for international justice?

Israel’s Wall and the DMZ

The World Court has ruled the Apartheid Wall (Wikipedia calls the 650-700-km structure that reaches a maximum height of 8 meters and cuts through much of the West Bank the “Israeli West Bank barrier”) to be illegal and ordered it torn down.

William Parry’s picture book — Against the Wall: The Art of Resistance in Palestine (Pluto Press, 2010) — vividly drives home the oppressor-oppressed dynamic. The book portrays Israelis separating Palestinian families from one another, Palestinians being prevented from tending to their crops, Israelis inflicting economic deprivation on Palestinians, Israelis targeting of school children, and Israelis intended humiliation of Palestinian workers passing through checkpoints in the wall. Against the Wall also depicts the spirit, art, and determination of the Palestinian resistance, the anger of the occupied people, and messages to the world.

In the case of Israeli Jews, the wall is their statement of desiring separation from Palestinians. In stark contrast, the 38th parallel on the Korean peninsula is a demilitarized zone forced by Americans on Koreans, many of who still desire reunification.

With the defeat of Japan looming in the closing days of World War II, the division of Korea was decided at the Potsdam Conference. North Korea states, “[T]he Korea question was decided according to the interests of the United States … contrary to the requirement and demand of the Korean people.”1 Koreans also blame Japan for the separation:

"Had the Japanese not occupied Korea, the United States could not have interfered in Korean affairs and the question of the 38th parallel would not have come into being. Therefore, Japan also takes blame for the division of Korea."2

Pyongyang’s Arch of Triumph consecrated to liberation from Japanese occupation

Nukes and ICBMs

Although undeclared, it is well known that Israel has a nuclear arsenal, yet it escapes censure by the US and sanctions by the UN.

One might inquire how a state like the US with its huge stockpile of nuclear-tipped ICBMs has standing to criticize other states for doing what it does? Does this not pose a moral quicksand for the US? Also why does the US elude censure for not abiding by article VI of the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons?

Some Questions

If outsiders had allowed Koreans to decide their fate, if outsiders had not forcibly split the Korean peninsula, would Koreans be agitating, fighting to unify the Korean peninsula?3

If Palestinians had been able to determine and control immigration to their country, as is the case for nation states everywhere, would they have allowed a group of outsiders to establish an exclusive state for that group’s people negating their own state?

If the answer to both questions is no, then why are the Palestinians and North Koreans demonized for decisions made by outsiders that denied them their natural rights?

Conclusion

On the one hand we have a self-designated Jewish State that was carved out from a landmass colonized by Britain. Britain passed the matter to the UN which took a chunk of the land and gave it to others, without the consent of the Palestinian people who for millennia have lived, loved, played, worked, and farmed there. Israel, the Jewish state, ethnically cleansed 800,000 non-Jews from the land and later expanded its non-declared borders. Israel is clearly a racist state. All this was with the acquiescence of the US. Israel has been in contravention of several UN resolutions, in violation of the Geneva Conventions, and has never been sanctioned by the UN. In addition, the US has exercised several vetoes in the UN Security Council to protect Israel from censure. As well, Israel became a nuclear-armed state with ICBMs. Does the US demand sanctions against Israel? No, it lavishes billions upon Israel each year; currently running at $3.8 billion a year. Most of this “aid”4 is in the form of military assistance — which is being challenged as violating US law against supporting secret nuclear states.

Korea, the state of the Korean people, saw its people separated into the two halves of the peninsula. This again was imposed from the outside, without the consent of the Korean people, chiefly by the US. North Korea has committed no acts of ethnic cleansing. On the contrary, it was the victim of major devastation caused by the US when the latter intervened in a civil war, committing numerous war crimes.5 The US threatened North Korea with nuclear weapons during the war on the Korean peninsula, had nuclear weapons stationed on South Korean soil for several years, has nuclear-armed warships docking in South Korea, has nuclear-armed warplanes and nuclear-armed submarines stationed in nearby Japan. Yet North Korea, in stark contrast to Israel, is singled out for the severest vitriol from the US and its western allies. The UN bends to the US through its Security Council imposing sanctions on North Korea although it has attacked no other country. It has pursued nuclear weapons and ICBM capability as has the US, Israel and the seemingly hypocritical China and Russia, the latter two nuclear states having voted for sanctions against North Korea.

A simple analogy should suffice: If a bully — much larger than you and who has used unrestrained violence against you in the past — threatens you with a gun, would you want to face the bully without a gun?

Is there a moral principle that would posit that North Korea should face the mightily armed US, a US which rejects peace with North Korea, without a deterrent to attack against it?

Unless one can reasonably answer yes to the preceding two questions, then the punitive actions targeting North Korea should cease immediately. If actions targeting any entity are required, then how about targeting the entity/entities that caused North Korea to seek a nuclear deterrent?

First published at Global Research.

Notes

1. Korea in the 20th Century: 100 Significant Events, (Foreign Languages Publishing House, 2002), p 98. 

2. Korea in the 20th Century, p 98. 

3. An earlier article looks at what was transpiring in Korea following the defeat of Japan: “A ‘Presence’ in the South of Korea.” 

4. It is farcical to refer to financial gifts to an OECD member state as “aid.” 

5. See Korean Truth Commission, Report on U.S. Crimes in Korea: 1945-2001 (New York: 2001). 

Featured image is from Al-Monitor.

The original source of this article is Global Research

Copyright © Kim Petersen, Global Research, 2017

Kim Petersen is a former co-editor of the Dissident Voice newsletter. He can be reached at: kimohp@gmail.com. Twitter: @kimpetersen.

Read other articles by Kim.

Trump's Artful Middle East Dodge?

Art of the Deal: Behind Saudi-Lebanon Crisis Is Trump's Middle East 'Peace Project'

by Patrick Henningsen - 21st Century Wire 

November 13, 2017

The recent ‘forced’ resignation by Lebanese PM Saad Hariri in Riyadh under the influence of Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, and subsequent threats by Saudi Minister Thamer al-Sadhan against Lebanon and Hezbollah – have puzzled analysts as to the motivation behind this seemingly irrational series of events.

While true, Saudi Princes and their Wahhabi order have been slighted by both Shia-based popular mobilization movements’ eradicating ISIS from the region – Hezbollah in Syria, and the Hashed al-Shaabi in Iraqi – with Arabian Sheikhs having to watch their Gulf billions invested in the destablization of Syria and Iraq go down a blood-soaked drain of history – in reality, neither Lebanon nor its Hezbollah movement pose any direct threat to Saudi Arabia.

So who is directing these events?

Is this Saudi tirade just a case of an unstable young, soon-to-be king in 32 yr-old Crown Prince, consolidating too much power too soon, or is there more to it? Some analysts have been speculating that maybe Israel is the invisible hand pushing the oil Kingdom to do its bidding in the region as they both share a common enemy in Iran.

Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah (right) also made the claim this week that Saudi Arabia has offered Israel ‘billions of dollars’ to attack Lebanon on its behalf, as well as accusing the Saudis of strong-arming Lebanese PM to resign on camera. Nasrallah knows that both Tel Aviv and Riyadh (with full US backing) have Hezbollah in mind when any threats are made toward Lebanon, but as Middle East analyst Eisa Ali explained on yesterday’s Sunday Wire radio program, this perceived joint-threat by Israel and Saudi has driven Lebanon closer to political unity on this issue.

Last night the Israeli press began to try and distance itself from a Saudi-led conspiracy, with Haaretz being the first to dismiss the ranting threats coming out of Riyadh, while simultaneously pushing the Trump Administration to the frontline.

Writer Amos Harel’s op-ed entitled, “Saudi Arabia Is Opening a New Front Against Iran, and Wants Israel to Do Its Dirty Work,” helps to reveal part of a still concealed agenda:

“As the days passed, the resignation seemed more like a Saudi dictate, stemming from Saudi Arabia’s displeasure at the way Hariri was compelled to cooperate with Hezbollah in Lebanon’s government.

It’s unclear if the Saudis will necessarily make do with these moves. The royal house is particularly close to the Trump administration and Saudi Arabia was one of the few countries, along with Israel, which enthusiastically welcomed Trump’s election, this time last year. Over the past year there have been a growing number of reports around the world of increasing diplomatic coordination between Riyadh and Jerusalem, accompanied by cooperation in intelligence matters. Israel and the Saudis see Iran as a common enemy, and both are frustrated at the West’s incompetence in dealing with Iran’s growing influence in what is known as the “Shi’ite Crescent” in the region.”

If Lebanon and Hezbollah do not pose a direct threat to Saudi Arabia, then what’s really going on? Is this really an American-led stage-managed drama that we are watching unfold now?

While the liberal Israeli press may be taking a stand-offish position in relation to recent events, you can be certain that Israel is very much involved in this process, albeit working diligently behind the scenes through an Israeli-friendly White House in Washington, and Netanyahu and Trump’s shared personal assistant, wunderkind Jared Kushner. Indeed, it’s through Kushner that we can track the real agenda which is in motion right now, as these latest events between Saudi Arabia and Lebanon are directly linked to Donald Trump’s big-ticket item – the Israel-Palestine “Two State Solution” peace deal – which he had promised on the campaign trail. It’s happening as we speak.

Make no mistake about it: this ‘peace deal’ will become Trump’s major pièce de résistance for his first term, and his ticket to redemption heading into the 2020 election cycle. The question is, who in America will resist it?

Here Haaretz lets the cat out of the bag as to how this will be used to leverage Israeli interests:

“The string of events, starting with the Qatari crisis last summer, strengthens the assumption that this is part of a wider Saudi move, an ambitious attempt to reach a new regional order. On the diplomatic front this is linked to the internal Palestinian reconciliation, led by Cairo but which also requires financial backing by the Saudis and the Emirates. This won’t be all, apparently. The defense establishment and political circles in Israel are preparing for the likely possibility that the Trump administration will soon present Israel and the Palestinian Authority with a new document, in an attempt to jumpstart the stalled peace process. Such a move may be pursued in a coordinated way between the United States and the Saudis. Saudi ambitions may have other results as well.”

There it is. The Art of the Deal, and it’s not going to be Camp David style this time. It will be a transactional deal – to be fronted in part by Egypt, with Syria left out, and most certainly with large strings attached for Lebanon, likely designed to first isolate Hezbollah and then used to try and evict Iranian influence from the region. You can be sure of one thing though – if this ‘deal’ is being drafted by the US and Israel then you can be certain that it will not be well-thought out, and it will surely discount the interests of Syria, and the Shia majorities in Lebanon, and in Iraq too. This will be drafted as another neocolonial sectarian project.

And what about the Palestinians? It’s also a safe bet that any ‘deal’ drafted by the US and Israel will not be a very good deal for the Palestinians – who will be the last party considered in all of this high-flying talk of ‘peace and stability’ in the region.Will they get the right of return? Will their current situation really improve from such a deal? Looking at Israel and the US track record of running the ‘peace process’ in this part of the world, I’d say it’s highly doubtful.

What about Mohammed bin Salman’s purge and all of the detained Saudi billionaires and officials detained in the Ritz Charlton Hotel in Riyadh? What is the Crown Prince angling for out of this three-way deal?

For starters, how about cash from the west, and cash from China, needed for the Kingdom to attain its lofty ‘Vision 2030’ goals and the Kingdom’s vast privatization scheme? Trump already let that cat out of the bag when he declared that Saudi’s biggest state-run oil and construction firm, Saudi ARAMCO, should do its IPO and be listed on the New York Stock Exchange. That would mean an initial cash injection based on 5% of ARAMCO market cap – around $100 billion (that’s a total market cap of $2 trillion for this company!) to Saudi Arabia via western stock exchanges, and more to come if each year Saudi keeps gradually milking its state-owned golden cash calf.

This money will be used to help finance the Crown Prince’s new NEOM futuristic ‘smart city’ – but also ARAMCO will be the main contracting firm charged with building the new city – which means guaranteed returns for ground floor investors.

Who will those preferred initial share holders be? Trump’s friends, and the Chinese? Your guess is as good as mine.

So there you have it – now we know it’s the US, in conjunction with Israel, who are maneuvering behind the scenes, and who will observe a mutual Saudi-Israeli-American desire to keep Iran weak and mitigate its influence throughout the region. Easier said than done.

So these are some of factors are what’s really driving events that we see rapidly unfolding in the Middle East, but that’s not all that’s not well in Arab wonderland:

“An article in Haaretz this week by former U.S. ambassador to Israel Dan Shapiro asked whether the Saudis were pushing Israel into a war with Hezbollah and Iran.”

So which will come first – the war, or the peace?

It’s difficult to tell. Certainly, avoiding the war should be everyone’s first priority.

And how long with the west continue to ignore Saudi and the UAE’s (with US-UK military backing) mass atrocities in Yemen?

In the meantime, Lebanon is still in the dark as to when they will get their Prime Minister back.

Should Lebanon (once again) consider itself a target in the crosshairs of the great powers in their latest plans to reshape the region?

READ MORE ISRAEL NEWS AT: 21st Century Wire Israel Files

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Britain's 'Tyranny of Correctness' Not a Priti Picture

Priti Patel and Jewish Conspiracies

by Gilad Atzmon

November 12, 2017

The British Jewish media is upset. Priti Patel, a cabinet minister responsible for international development, had no fewer than 14 meetings with Israeli politicians and political leaders. It seems that Patel didn’t clear any or most of these meetings with the Foreign Office. So Patel had to go and but now the British Jewish media is pressing the panic button.

The ultra Zionist Jewish Chronicle’s (JC) headline warns that the Patel Affair “will set us [the Jews] back 20 years.”

The JC predicts that it will have “a devastating impact on British Jewry.” It may even “bolster antisemitic conspiracy theories and damage relationships with British politicians for a generation.”

This is the crux of the matter -- Jews hate ‘Jewish conspiracy theories.’ Why? Because Jews do not conspire or operate in clandestine manner. They do it all in the open.

Jews wrote the Balfour Declaration on behalf of Lord Balfour and made sure everyone knows who really wrote it. They make sure we know that it was Leó Szilárd and Albert Einstein who initiated the Manhattan Project. AIPAC, CFI, LFI and the CRIF openly push for immoral interventionist wars in Iraq, Syria, Libya and Iran while JC writers Nick Cohen and David Aaronovitch advocate these global wars in the media.

All this is not merely a ‘Zionist agenda.’ Jewish anti Zionists employ the same technique to claim that it is down to progressive Jews to define the boundaries of free speech on Israel. I reiterate -there are no Jewish conspiracies. Everything is done in the open. And this was Patel’s mistake. She foolishly attempted to conceal her loyalty to our foreign rulers.

In a country led by Theresa Je suis Juif, there is no reason for minister Patel to hide her subservience to the Jewish Sate. In a country where the biggest lobby group in the parliament is the Conservative Friends of Israel there is no reason for a minister to be shy about what may seem to be disloyal inclinations. With 80% of the leading party listed as CFI members, treachery is the norm. Patel didn’t have to hide her allegiance to the Jewish State, she should have done it all in the open, like the PM and Sir Eric Pickles (see picture above).

The JC confirms the,

“CFI is the largest group in Westminster with an open line to almost every Tory MP, dozens of other countries’ diplomatic and political groups, and influence in Downing Street for decades.” 

The JC doesn’t attempt to conceal how forceful the CFI is, however, it is honest enough to reveal that “one senior (Jewish) communal figure said CFI would now be regarded as ‘toxic’.”

If you are looking for light Jewish entertainment, the Campaign Against Anti-Semitism (CAA) is the place to go. The CAA is a self-appointed Jewish thought police. It devotes its energies to the total castration of the Brits and their ability to think rationally, morally and independently.

The CAA provides a spectacle of anti-ethical thought totally foreign to the Western ethos.

“The resignation of Priti Patel,” the CAA writes, “ has unleashed some disturbing comments, including from politicians and journalists who have carelessly or deliberately evoked sinister stereotypes of powerful Jews.”

Let’s examine what the CAA considers to be a ‘disturbance’ and what is it they don’t want us to say: In an article in The Times, Policy Editor, Oliver Wright and Political Editor, Francis Elliott, cited an unnamed senior Conservative MP:

“Another senior Conservative MP claimed that Ms Patel planned to use her ministerial position in DfID (Department for International Development) to curry favour with Jewish Tory donors by supporting Israel. ‘The Israel lobby in the Party is hugely influential and this was about Priti cynically trying to win their support. She thought she could be the next leader.”

Confusing, don’t you think?

The JC admits that the CFI is the strongest body in Westminster, while the CAA insists that reference to CFI’s power and influence ‘evokes sinister Jewish stereotypes.’

The CAA openly attempts to police British journalism by stifling criticism of Israel. This shouldn’t take us by surprise. If Jewish power is the power to suppress criticism of Jewish power, here is the CAA exercising this power in broad daylight.

But there is good news. This power in falling apart now, and this may explain the panic within the JC’s ranks and the tantrum thrown by the CAA and other Jewish thought police organisations (CST, ADL, Hope not Hate, et al).

The ‘rationale’ of the CAA policing strategy deserves close attention:

“Under the International Definition of Antisemitism adopted by the British Government, ‘Making mendacious, dehumanising, demonising, or stereotypical allegations about Jews as such or the power of Jews as collective — such as, especially but not exclusively, the myth about a world Jewish conspiracy or of Jews controlling the media, economy, government or other societal institutions’ is antisemitic.”

This is a revolutionary legal defence strategy. According to the CAA, X is not guilty of committing Y as long as X is stereotypically associated with committing Y. If X is guilty, for instance, of shoving a banana into someone’s eye (Y), the defence would be that shoving bananas into other people’s eyes (Y) is one of the stereotypes about X.

Similarly, the CAA claims it is anti-Semitic to refer to the Jewish Lobby as the strongest lobby in Westminster because the accusation is consistent with the Jewish stereotype of Jewish lobbies being influential.

Likewise we should vindicate Harvey Weinstein of any wrong doing because Larry David admitted on Saturday Night Live that predatory behaviour has become a Jewish stereotype. I expect Bernie Madoff to capitalise on this line of defence and appeal for his immediate release. Alan Dershowitz can also come clean about his bad habits by blaming them on Jewish stereotypes.

The paradox here is obvious, The CAA’s circular argument has nothing to do with any consideration of ethics, truthfulness or correspondence with reality. The ‘stereotype’ redeems the sin. By this logic the CAA itself is innocent of any wrong thinking because such a Jerusalemite anti-ethical intellectual pattern is also a Jerusalemite stereotype.

The CAA practically calls upon British commentators and politicians to fib.

“It is therefore incumbent upon those commenting on the Priti Patel affair to do so in a way that is proportionate and rational. It is a dangerous stretch to accuse Ms Patel of doing Israel’s bidding in order to please wealthy Jews who have the power to influence the selection of the next Conservative leader.” 

Neither the CAA nor any other Jewish body has offered an alternative rationale for Patel’s misconduct. The CAA demands that British journalists set aside their intelligence and common sense. They expect British politicians and commentators to put Jewish sensitivities first.

We are touching upon the core of Jerusalemite thinking – a tyranny of correctness that is removed from morality and Western ethos. Instead of ethics, we are told to follow Mitzvoth, regulations and commandments.

For the Brits, Priti Patel is a wake up call. It is a final reminder that for the nation to sustain its values it must search for its Athenian roots: philosophy, science and ethics as opposed to a tyranny of correctness that is anti ethical and zero principled.

 

Being in Time - A Post Political Manifesto, 

If they want to burn it, you want to read it!

Amazon.co.uk , Amazon.com and here (gilad.co.uk).